Does a carbon tax make the Liberals green?

Vicky Husband,
Special to Times Colonist
May 06, 2009

The NDP has let the government off the hook on its sorry record

The New Democratic Party's opposition to a carbon tax is a mistake. The result is that the NDP are pilloried as environmental dinosaurs, while the Liberals escape scrutiny for their own abysmal environmental record.

Even on the climate-change file, the Liberal government's record is decidedly mixed. Don't forget that the Liberals have supported massive urban sprawl -- a major source of B.C.'s greenhouse gas emissions.

The massive Gateway freeway initiative ensures dramatic new sprawl far up the Fraser Valley, while on Vancouver Island, the decision to allow Western Forest Products to remove massive tracts of forestland from managed forest status opened the door for another 50 kilometres of suburban sprawl between Sooke and Port Renfrew.

The auditor general heavily criticized that decision regarding Victoria's wild coast, saying that government failed to give due regard to the public interest, including environmental interests.

And how can the Liberals claim the high ground on climate change, when they have promoted offshore oil development, provided $1.5 billion in subsidies to the oil and gas industry and supported new pipelines for dirty tarsands oil?

Don't forget that when this government came into office, its first move was to repeal 40 years of environmental laws and slash Ministry of Environment staff, crippling that agency -- while cutting parks budgets and interpretation programs.

Don't lose sight of the fact that the Liberals repealed the Forest Practices Code, replacing it with a toothless regime that has resulted in increased raw-log exports and so many usable logs being abandoned at logging sites that you could add another five per cent to B.C.'s overall greenhouse gas emissions.

Don't forget, too, that this government has refused to pass a provincial Endangered Species Act while sabotaging the federal Species at Risk Act by instructing its scientists to remove the mapping of known endangered species habitat from SARA recovery strategies.

Don't forget, as well, that this government helped its developer friends by gutting the riparian areas regulation -- stripping critical protection for fish along new subdivisions. Then the government expanded fish farm production -- one of the biggest threats to the survival of our wild salmon. At least it was, until the government opened up the private hydro development gold rush on scores of our wild rivers.

And, in an assault on the province's fisheries, the Liberals have let gravel and cement makers strip-mine in the heart of the lower Fraser River.

Early on, the Liberals made industrial developers happy when they gutted the provincial environmental assessment process. They went on to make urban developers happy when they restructured the Agricultural Land Commission into regional review panels, making land removals from our shrinking prime agricultural land base easier.

Following the same mantra of deregulation that created the global economic meltdown, the Liberals have deregulated activities ranging from septic systems to pesticides, and from forest practices to subdivision development and contaminated sites.

It's a sorry environmental record. If the Liberals were really concerned about the environment, they would:

- End subsidies to the oil and gas industry.

- Stop the proposed northern pipelines that would increase tanker traffic on our coast.

- Stop promotion of offshore oil development.

- Cancel the southern Gateway project and massively increase public transit funding.

- Buy back the WFP tree farm licence lands west of Victoria, for parks and forest uses.

- Establish a moratorium on run-of-river projects until a comprehensive planning process is established, with full public and local government participation.

- Re-establish the mandate and budget of the Ministries of Environment and Forests (including parks budgets).

- Establish legislation to protect endangered species and their habitats.

- Close open-net cage fish farming.

And that's just for starters.

To my fellow environmentalists: Climate change is the biggest threat to life as we know it on Earth. We, as a society, must rapidly reduce our fossil fuel consumption.

But that doesn't mean we must trash the environment to get there.

Vicky Husband is a long-time conservationist and recipient of the Order of Canada for her work on environmental causes ranging from old-growth forest protection to sustainable fisheries.