CLIMATE ACCOUNTABILITY LETTERS - AN INTRODUCTION FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

CLIMATE ACCOUNTABILITY LETTERS

AN INTRODUCTION FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

Andrew Gage, Staff Counsel

“Wildfires. Drought. Flooding. Rising sea levels. Climate change is already reshaping and impacting BC communities in profound and frightening ways. As unchecked fossil fuel pollution continues to push global temperatures ever higher, we are frightened for our communities, for communities around the world, and for the world we leave our children. Vulnerable groups - the poor, Indigenous communities, women and children - are often hardest hit by climate impacts.” – Letter from BC Community Groups to Local Governments, 25 January 2017

On 25 January 2017, over 50 community groups from around BC – organizations focused on health, faith, human rights and environment – wrote to all of BC’s local governments asking that they take action to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable for its role in causing climate change and in the climate costs being caused by fossil fuel pollution.

In the short term, we are asking your municipality (or regional district) to send “Climate Accountability Letters” to 20 of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies asking them to pay for climate costs that are being incurred by your community. This brief will answer some questions that you may have about why your community should send these letters.

Why does it matter to your community?

All our communities are facing a rising tide of costs, debt and claims for disaster relief arising from the many effects of climate change. With more frequent wildfires, 100-year storm events now coming every 25 years, snowpacks and aquifers disappearing, our communities are spending scarce taxpayer dollars to prepare for and respond to climate change. The situation is only going to get worse.

As it stands, the costs of building climate resilient communities fall to the taxpayer, as do the costs of re-building communities after floods or fires. Municipal governments bear much of the burden for these climate costs, because municipal infrastructure is frequently affected. In at least one case, municipalities in the U.S. were sued (by their insurers) for failing to prepare adequately for known climate impacts.ⁱ

It is time to ask whether taxpayers alone should be solely responsible to pay climate adaptation and damage costs, or whether costs should be shared with the companies that have made billions of dollars creating this situation. The products and operations of the 20 fossil fuel companies are collectively responsible for roughly 30% of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today. That greenhouse gas pollution is changing the climate, and costing your community money as it is forced to respond and adapt.

It is essential that we have this conversation now. Communities need to know how much they can expect the fossil fuel industry to pay for their climate costs. The fossil fuel industry and its investors need to be able to make informed decisions about the future of the industry once they factor in the real costs of their activities.

Why target fossil fuel companies?

Some argue that we’re all responsible for climate change, but if so, surely we can agree that some of us are more responsible than others?

In 2013 a peer-reviewed paper “Tracing anthropogenic carbon dioxide and methane emissions to fossil fuel and cement producers, 1854–2010”ⁱⁱⁱ estimated the emissions from the operations and products of 90 entities – primarily fossil fuel companies. Just 20 of those fossil fuel companies – the 20 that we are asking you to write to – are responsible for almost 30% of the fossil fuels in the global atmosphere today.

But for the actions of these companies in extracting fossil fuels from the ground, and (in many cases), processing, transporting, marketing, and selling them for use by end consumers, these emissions would not have ended up in our atmosphere. That’s doubly true if you consider the impact of some of these companies in lobbying against action on climate change and in funding public misinformation on climate science. Had these companies acted, when they learned of the science of climate change in the 1960s, to shift the economy towards renewable energy, we would live in a very different, and more sustainable, society.

In addition, a focus on local impacts caused by fossil fuel companies creates new opportunities for local communities to have a global impact. Rather than focusing only on reducing the comparatively small amounts of greenhouse gases created in our own communities, we can also have a conversation about 30% of global emissions.

Shouldn’t the Canadian (or BC) government be taking action?

Yes, of course all levels of government should be taking action to fight climate change. But the Canadian and BC governments still rely on the fossil fuel industry in many ways – from campaign contributions to hopes of economic growth.

The fact that the senior levels of government have not yet taken action to hold fossil fuel polluters accountable does not mean that local governments cannot take action to recover their own climate costs. Indeed, a community concerned about local costs of climate change may be more willing to show leadership to protect its residents and environment, and may be more willing to have a discussion about the role of the fossil fuel industry in contributing to those costs.

Sometimes when people look to the provincial or federal governments for climate leadership, they are looking for regulation of sources of greenhouse gases. While such regulation is important, such laws can only regulate emissions or other activities that take place in Canada (or in BC). The claims for compensation related to climate accountability that we recommend use legal tools that can cross borders and address global sources of emissions.