B.C. government presents side against carbon emissions lawsuit

Wednesday marked the second day that a B.C. environmentalist group spent in court against the province in a lawsuit about carbon emission targets.

The government’s lawyers presented their side for the first time in B.C. Supreme Court during day two of the trail.

The Sierra Club BC is an organization that focuses on protecting the environment.

With this in mind, it launched a suit against the province saying that the plan for meeting carbon emission targets over the next few decades is lacking.

They also note that the government isn’t telling people enough about what progress is being made toward meeting lowered emissions targets by industry.

“It’s not a question of how many pages…[are produced], its about the quality of that information. And whether it’s actually usable by the public, whether it allows us to tell whether the government is on track towards its target,” Alan Andrews, program director of climate change at Ecojustice said.

---

Related Articles: 

• Sierra Club BC takes province to court over emissions targets

• B.C. announces $19 million in funding to Forests Ministry to fight climate change

---

Ecojustice, a non-profit environmental law organization, is representing the Sierra Club BC in court.

On Tuesday, it presented the case before the judge.

“We argue that a plan must mean something. A plan can’t just be a shopping list of things that you’ve done or things that you plan to do. You’ve got to actually show how those measures add up towards progress, toward achieving those targets. Otherwise that information is pretty worthless,” Andrews explained.

Andrews says that on Tuesday, the judge seemed receptive to the concerns levelled against the government.

“The judge asked how the government could show that a particular project was compliant with the 2040 or 2050 climate targets if there wasn’t a clear plan to show progress towards those targets,” he added.

In a statement from Ecojustice, they explain that the reasoning behind the lawsuit is holding the province accountable.

“If the plans only get us part of the way there, B.C.’s accountability report has to be clear in telling us that,” Ecojustice added.

Ecojustice also notes that the last few years have been especially difficult for people in B.C. because of extreme weather events.

In a statement, the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change Strategy says B.C. has the most durable climate measures in all of Canada, and data is being used in those reports to help guide progress toward those goals.

With files from Kareem Gouda and Peter Wagner