Climate change is and will continue to be very expensive, with costs ultimately and unfairly landing on today’s youth, writes Coun. Greenlaw in a letter she sent to local media.
Dear Residents of the Sea to Sky region,
As a Municipal Councillor for the District of Squamish, and an earth scientist with a BSc Eng and an MSc in geology, I want to raise awareness for an initiative currently under way called Sue Big Oil. It is a class action lawsuit being pitched to municipalities to commit 1$ per resident toward the legal costs of pursuing climate change cost recovery from an industry that has been misleading the public about the environmental, social and health impacts of their products for decades.
It is a low-risk, low-cost initiative with a financial contribution capped at $ 1$ per resident, paid only once the lawsuit has reached 500k enrolled people. To put this cost into perspective, consider that the District of Squamish’s current Climate Adaptation and Mitigation capital projects amount to over $40 million or about $1300 per resident, in the next five years alone.
Climate change is and will continue to be very expensive, with costs ultimately and unfairly landing on today’s youth. Human-induced climate change is often branded as “political” or “subjective”: this is a tactic. In fact, it has nothing to do with political or personal ideologies: human-induced climate change has about the same scientific consensus (97%) as evolution, which is to say it is a close to a fact as science gets. Climate change is the defining issue of our time .
As a scientist I have studied the earth for 20+ years: I have looked at the raw data on climate change, watched natural trends, have a deep understanding of potential impacts and experienced, as we all have, the impacts of climate change: we are in trouble.
Insurance companies are increasingly deeming homes “uninsurable” due to wildfire and flood risk, leaving individuals at elevated financial risk. Government doesn’t have the capacity or reserves to fund the costs of extreme weather indefinitely.
The reality is that we will be seeing massive taxation increases if we don’t seek reparations from the very companies who have intentionally seeded misi
Municipalities get approximately 12% of the taxation income and cover the maintenance of 60% our infrastructure, leaving property tax payers on the hook for massive costs as climate change takes it’s toll on our infrastructure. My time as an elected official has led me to the conclusion that our best course of action is to pursue tactics for recovering climate change costs, like Sue Big Oil, as well as holding our provincial and federal governments accountable for fiscal transparency and social accountability: be clear about the subsidies; stop investing in the infrastructure of a dying fossil fuel industry; stop subsidizing one of the most lucrative and damaging industries of all time; instead redistribute these tax dollars back to services, the people and municipalities to cover the costs of growth, infrastructure, climate change, and cost of living escalations that we’re all facing. The fossil fuel industry doesn’t need our money: We need our money.
As somebody who has spent decades studying the earth, I cannot emphasize enough the impacts that climate change is having and will continue to have on our planet, with projected annual costs reaching the trillions globally. We are on a trajectory that will render this planet unrecognizable, as ever-increasing areas become uninhabitable for human
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has publicly implored all levels of governance to take whatever action we can. As an elected leader and earth scientist, it is incumbent upon me to take action to protect our safety, infrastructure and financial solvency, which is why I wholeheartedly endorse the Sue Big Oil campaign.
I would love to hear the opinions of those in their under-40s reading this, as they will carry the brunt of the financial, environmental, social, and emotional burden of climate change. If you are under 40, please comment below with your age, thoughts, and concerns about climate change. What do you think about holding fossil fuel companies accountable for their actions? How do you feel about our government’s actions to mitigate the impacts of climate change?
Lauren Greenlaw is a District of Squamish councillor.
N_Dj says
Not a resident of Squamish, but genuinely interested in the affairs in our Province, also after several Squamish councils politically painted decisions in the past, I am not sure myself this initiative, except will cost us all a lot on the long runs, is the true, scientific and vetted proper approach to the obvious problem… Looks more like an ad-hoc populist move…
Mike Quigley says
Hello! 39 years old.
Please close the taxation loopholes for the ultra rich instead. Statistically, the top 10% of wealthy people in the world are responsible for more emissions than the poorest 66%. The top 1% are responsible for more emissions than 50% of people in the world.
Don’t sue big oil. Figure out a way to properly tax Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and if you need some Canadian examples, Frank Stronach, Galen Weston, the Thompson family and Jim Pattison. Tax them municipally, provincially and federally.
Corporations are multinational. People aren’t. It’s individuals that can first be targeted. Work on closing the loopholes there before Suing Big Oil.
Greg Amos says
Mike, you’ve got the right idea, but at the wrong scale. Local governments don’t have much power. They have no say at all in provincial or federal tax policy. They have no more influence than you or I do as far as fairly taxing the billionaires you’ve listed.
One area where they do yield some power, thanks to Canadian law, is in banding together to create a class action lawsuit targeted at deceptive fossil fuel corporations. They should do it. There’s no risk to taxpayers for paying legal costs if it’s unsuccesful.
Kevin says
“As somebody who has spent decades studying the earth, I cannot emphasize enough the impacts that climate change is having and will continue to have on our planet, with projected annual costs reaching the trillions globally.”
Perhaps you should study the sun instead of the earth, you’d then understand the true cause of our always changing climate.
The constant vilification of fossil fuels without offering any viable alternative other than the wholesale destruction of our way of life, represents a childlike understanding of a complex issue. One that will never be ‘fixed’ by penalizing industry or flowing ungodly amount of tax money to an incompetent and corrupt State.
Greg Amos says
What’s hard about this, Kevin? When fossil carbon is burned, it piles up in the atmosphere, which is how we’ve gone from 280 ppm co2e to 420+ ppm in about 250 years. Think thicker, denser atmosphere. Think warmer sweater on a hot day. Burning all the coal and oil has caused most the climate change we are experiencing, and its been known for about 50 years.
Just because we’ve always done something doesn’t mean we must keep doing it that way.
We should Sue Big Oil.