Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome to today's episode of Red Eye. I'm Jane Williams. On the podcast today I speak with Jens Wieding about what happened at COP 28 and what it means for BC and Canada. On December 12th, COP 28 closed with an agreement that the UN heralded as the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel era.
Speaker: At the meeting in Dubai, world leaders agreed to, quote, transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly, and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.
Speaker: I spoke with Jens Wieting shortly after the climate conference ended to get his assessment about what this means for BC and for Canada. Jens Wieting is Senior Forest and Climate Campaigner, Science Advisor for Sierra Club BC. Hello Jens!
Speaker: Hello, thanks for having me. It's great that you could join me today. Let's start with that wording that I just quoted. How big a step is this commitment to transition away?
Speaker: It is a significant step. It should not have taken 28 years and 28 United Nations climate conferences to get to this, but it is important that the international community finally acknowledged that we must transition away from fossil fuels
Speaker: And there are still a number of reasons to be concerned, in particular the fact that we have waited so long and now we have to do all the heavy lifting so quickly in just a few years. We must reduce emissions by about half.
Speaker: And it's an opportunity for countries, particularly major polluters like Canada and provinces like British Columbia with major fossil fuel production capacity to acknowledge this reality and do what is right, limit the fossil fuel production going above and beyond, not only to reduce emissions from production, but actually to reduce production because
Speaker: The whole world has now agreed that we must transition away from fossil fuels. Were there targets and dates agreed on for emission cuts in Dubai? It's a very high -level wording, accelerating action in this critical decade, but it is tied to science that is crystal clear. We know that we have to accomplish significant cuts in the next few years.
Speaker: because we have to accomplish this within a limited remaining carbon pollution budget. That means that those emission curves, those production curves must bend down quickly and steep. And here in Canada and BC with major oil and gas production, we have an opportunity now to follow through and inspire other polluters, other parts of the world.
Speaker: Both the federal government and the provincial government here in BC have proposals out for oil and gas emissions caps and there's still some uncertainty how exactly they will be implemented. In both cases there is
Speaker: a potential for loopholes and we have to keep the pressure up on governments to use these oil and gas emissions caps to bring down emissions swiftly and significantly and hopefully this momentum from the COP28 with this wording makes it clear that we have to act now today not tomorrow.
Speaker: Let's take a look at that framework that the federal government announced just before COP 28 wrapped up to cap oil and gas sector emissions. What's your assessment of that framework?
Speaker: Well, it is promising because it's tied to an actual cap and there will be a cap and trade system that will allow some of the oil and gas producers to trade their emissions allowance. So that means that if some move faster with using emissions and others, they can help each other out. The cap will be between 35 % to 38 % by 2030 in terms of reduction.
Speaker: Unfortunately, they are also proposing some so -called flexibility provisions, which would mean offsets or paying a fee into a fund to finance solutions. So there are still some open questions and it's really crucial to tighten the cap.
Speaker: And to make this a first step towards winding down production, it's going to be difficult for the federal government to do this because the provinces have so much power and we already see Alberta unsurprisingly pushing back rather aggressively.
Speaker: But it also means that other provinces that are working on a cap like British Columbia have a significant responsibility to follow through on their solutions to make this work. So the federal government
Speaker: needs provincial governments that work constructively on this. And British Columbia has a slightly different approach and there are lots of open questions how the cap discussed in British Columbia can dovetail with the federal cap
Speaker: But I think looking at the political reality, it's absolutely crucial for British Columbia to continue work on an oil and gas emissions cap so that we have certainty. There are some political risks. Looking at the federal cap makes it more important for BC to follow through on a provincial solution and inspire other provinces to do the same. And hopefully, eventually, Alberta will come around because
Speaker: We really face a significant risk in the oil and gas sector with increasing emissions, undermining progress in other parts of the economy, like bringing down emissions from buildings, from the transport sector, from other industries.
Speaker: There is progress in a number of sectors in different parts of the country, but the fossil fuel producing provinces like Alberta, Saskatchewan, they are undermining the progress. They are a major reason why Canada's emissions overall remain so stubbornly high.
Speaker: And here in BC we have a really big risk of expanding a fossil fuel industry with more fracking and potentially several LNG liquefied natural gas terminals going ahead. And we need the cap as a first step to limit this potential growth and then develop a plan to wind down this industry.
Speaker: BC released its Climate Change Accountability Report, or CCAR, on December 1st. What did that report show? Well, the report has some important information on progress towards 2030 targets by sector, for example, transportation, buildings,
Speaker: oil and gas, other industries. And there is information that shows that we might meet our 2030 target for the transportation sector. There's a problem with the buildings sector. Other industries look like they can meet their targets. And looking at oil and gas, it looks like BC can get close to meeting this 2030 target.
Speaker: But there are some assumptions in BC's report about only one major energy terminal going ahead, energy Canada phase one, and assumptions about a hard cap
Speaker: on oil and gas emissions. What this means is that the report has some baked -in assumptions about policies being successful, policies that do not yet exist. And it means that the BEC government really has to make sure, act swiftly to enact these policies, make sure that we don't get more energy terminals.
Speaker: And I fear that many decision makers are not fully aware of just how globally significant these proposed energy terminals would be. Just to give you one example, LNG Canada, phase one currently under construction, supposed to go into operation in 2025.
Speaker: This terminal would produce 14 million tons of LNG, they would get exported, and then when burned in other countries, 14 million tons of LNG translate into 34 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions when burned.
Speaker: And that's more than half of BC's current annual emissions. These numbers are shockingly large and few are talking about it because these emissions would not be counted here in British Columbia.
Speaker: But then we have a discussion about phase one, which would double those emissions again. Then we have the LNG CDER project and we have XELIMS project, which is 12 million tonnes. So all these numbers are mind boggling and we should really look at these so -called downstream or scope three emissions, the emissions.
Speaker: that would occur in other parts of the world from burning the fossil fuels extracted here in British Columbia. The first step would be to report this in the Climate Change Accountability Report to address a higher bar in terms of accountability and transparency.
Speaker: And to acknowledge that if the world follows through on the COP commitments, there's a high risk of stranded assets. We would build fossil fuel infrastructure with permits for 40 years when the science and now the COP agreement shows
Speaker: that we can't continue burning this amount of fossil fuels. So I hope the BC government will improve the accountability report to go beyond good news stories and really address these risks and meet a higher bar in terms of transparency and accountability. Does BC include the emissions that result from forest fires?
Speaker: They are reported but not counted, which means that we have a really bizarre situation when we discuss the officially counted emissions. They are usually a bit over 60 million tons of CO2. We have only a small change compared to 2007, just 3 % below 2007, our baseline year.
Speaker: That's one big issue because we must reduce them by 40 % in the next seven years. But then we have all these uncounted emissions from logging, from forest fires, and those emissions are skyrocketing. They are now
Speaker: several times higher than all those emissions that are officially counted. So we're looking at hundreds of millions of tons of emissions from forest fires from BC alone in 2023. And it's a huge concern because by largely ignoring these emissions, we are also
Speaker: downplaying how severe the climate impacts already are and how little time we have left to prevent even greater climate impacts. Heat waves, fires, droughts, the list goes on and so we really have to include those emissions
Speaker: They are complex because we have forest carbon losses caused by climate impacts and by industrial practices like clear cutting and slash burning. So it makes sense to report them in a standalone report because they are so big and they are complex. But we must take a closer look at speeding up policy change
Speaker: protecting old growth, moving away from clear cutting, which always makes things worse, and quickly ending slash burning. These steps would bring down forest carbon emissions in the order of millions of tons quickly.
Speaker: And we need this paradigm shift if we want to have a fighting chance to stabilize the climate. Stabilizing the climate means saving forests, but we can only save the forest if we stabilize the climate in time, if we take action swiftly because otherwise we will see ongoing threats to the health of the forests and other ecosystems.
Speaker: Before I let you go, I wanted to ask you about the nature agreement for BC that was announced by federal, provincial, and First Nations leaders in early November. What's your assessment of that agreement?
Speaker: So the Nature Agreement, I'm glad you asked, because it's really inspiring, is a trilateral agreement between the First Nations Leadership Council, here in BC, the federal and the provincial government, and it includes a number of detailed pathways towards
Speaker: increasing protection to reach the goal of 30 % protection of lands in BC by 2030. It includes remarkable detail on protecting specific ecosystems like high productivity, old growth forests, spotted owl habitats, and curriboo habitats.
Speaker: in some cases with milestones for 2025 which is only two years away and this is now combined with proposed biodiversity and ecosystem health framework which is currently out
Speaker: for comment until January 31st. So listeners can visit our website and other resources to take a closer look. This biodiversity framework combined with the nature agreement has the potential to bring about the paradigm shift for biodiversity protection for all sectors.
Speaker: We are particularly looking at a clear timeline leading to legislation. This is going to be crucial to have lasting change in the near future. And interim measures, so similar like those deferrals, logging deferrals for at -risk old growth. We need interim measures, interim conservation solutions.
Speaker: for all at -risk ecosystems, for critical habitat of endangered species, to make sure that we don't lose these values during the process required to figure out the long -term
Speaker: designations together with indigenous nations using indigenous knowledge. There are a lot of exciting initiatives to create indigenous protected and conserved areas and other indigenous led conservation solutions. We need the interim solutions to make sure that we are not losing these values in the interim. Well, thanks so much for speaking with me today Jens. Thank you and all the best.
Speaker: All the best. I spoke with Jens Wieting in late December. Jens Wieting is Senior Forest and Climate Campaigner and Science Advisor with Sierra Club BC. You can find out how to comment on the biodiversity framework at sierraclub .bc .ca.
Speaker: The Red Eye Collective is based in Vancouver. You can check us out at coopradio .org slash redeye.
