Open letter to Christy Clark calls for credible plan for successful climate action
Posted November 20, 2015 10:19 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Increase the carbon tax and introduce higher standards to reduce carbon pollution — those are among the ideas included in an open letter to the premier about successful climate action in our province.
More than 25 academics and experts contributed to the letter. They are sending it to Christy Clark today, ahead of a climate summit in Paris.
“We know from 30 years of climate policy failures and successess [that] you have to tighten compulsary policies — that is, either regulations or emissions pricing. There’s no real magic here to reducing emissions,” says Mark Jaccard, a professor of Sustainable Energy at SFU.
“We need to be tightening regulations, capping emissions, or increasing the carbon tax,” he argues.
Jaccard says Clark needs a credible plan to meet her promised reductions. “There is no other way to reduce emissions. If she says British Columbia voters should support her because she’s acting on climate, we need to see that evidence.”
He says Clark also needs to introduce strict policies for regulating LNG production, adding we can learn a lot from California, which has taken concrete steps to reduce emissions.
