Threats to Reducing BC’s Carbon Emissions

Coalbed Methane

Developing coalbed methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is inconsistent with the provincial government’s pledge to slash BC’s greenhouse gas emissions 33 percent by 2020. Coalbed methane is a gas trapped in coal deposits. It is not yet produced commercially in BC, and existing provincial regulations for coalbed methane development are inadequate. In other jurisdictions, coalbed methane drilling has contaminated water sources and fragmented wilderness with roads, pipelines and thousands of gas wells.

Resource companies have applied to the BC government to drill for coalbed methane. The coal-mining company Hillsborough Resources Ltd. has made a controversial application to drill on Vancouver Island near Campbell River. Global petroleum giant BP has said it wants to drill in the pristine Flathead Valley in south western BC. Royal Dutch Shell plans to drill for coalbed methane in the Sacred Headwaters area of north eastern BC, where small tributaries join to form the Stikine, Nass and Skeena salmon-bearing rivers. Norwest Corporation plans to extract coalbed methane from the Bulkley Valley near Smithers, despite objections from a majority of local residents.

Oil and Gas Development

The oil and gas sector is responsible for approximately one-fifth of BC’s total greenhouse gas emissions, and this does not include the emissions from the final use of the products. Yet the BC government’s Energy Plan, released early in 2007, contains 20 policy actions aimed at increasing oil and gas development in BC. These range from promoting offshore oil and gas development--despite a federal moratorium prohibiting it--to promoting development of unconventional fossil fuel resources such as coalbed methane and shale gas. Sierra Club BC believes that British Columbia can meet its energy needs through conservation measures and renewable energy. We would be most unwise to increase our reliance on carbon-emitting fossil fuels.

By far the biggest chunk (40 per cent) of BC’s greenhouse gas emissions comes from the transportation sector. Although the BC government announced $14 billion for public transportation initiatives in January 2008, the government also plans continue full speed ahead with highway expansion and the twinning of the Lower Mainland’s Port Mann bridge (a move strongly opposed by the Greater Vancouver Regional District.) More highways lead to more cars, more pollution and higher greenhouse gas emissions. BC needs a comprehensive Transportation Plan that outlines how transportation emissions will be significantly slashed during the next12 years and beyond.

BC Coastal Forestry Policy

Forests and Range Minister Rich Coleman unveiled BC’s new Coastal Forest Action Plan in October, 2007. Only months earlier, Coleman had raised hopes that the plan might lead to a significant reduction in logging coastal old-growth forests: home to endangered species and some of the best carbon storage on Earth.

The world’s forests store about 50 per cent of the Earth’s terrestrial carbon. Canada’s forests store the equivalent of twice the total global annual carbon emissions. With up to 375 tonnes of stored carbon per hectare, B.C.’s coastal forests sustain some of the highest levels of biomass and ecosystem carbon on the planet. Intensively managed plantations, by contrast, offer less carbon storage, are more vulnerable to pests, windfalls and other calamities and don’t offer suitable habitat for endangered species requiring old growth structures - like the Marbled Murrelet.

Unfortunately, the new Coastal Forest Action Plan does not take into account new threats to our coastal forests. Next door to the Legislature, the BC Royal Museum exhibits maps showing how Western Red Cedar is likely to disappear along the outer strip of our coast by 2080 due to global warming. Scientists estimate that 15 to 37 percent of the world’s species could become extinct as a result of the changes in climate that are likely to occur between now and 2050. Apart from reducing global greenhouse gas emissions and possibly finding methods to remove them from the atmosphere, the only meaningful way to keep extinction levels down is to protect natural habitat and corridors that allow species to migrate into any remaining regions with suitable climate.

Converting old-growth to managed forest reduces carbon storage by up to 50 percent. Reducing logging significantly contributes to emission reductions, both maintaining the carbon storage of old-growth and enhancing the sink function of second-growth. One Oregon study showed that state forests, where the harvest rate has fallen dramatically, absorbed the equivalent of more than one-half of the state’s annual fossil fuel carbon emissions.

BC should become a global role model when it comes to protecting biodiversity and the ability of the world’s ancient forests to store carbon. Other smaller countries are already showing the way. Costa Rica, just five percent the size of B.C. but with a similar population, has already protected 20 per cent of its land base, mostly rainforest--six percent more than B.C.