BC’s Productivity Emergency vs Rising GHG Emissions

Roy L Hales/Cortes Currents - With the rise of global emissions already at 1.4°C, we are currently on track to reach 2.8°C by the end of this century. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims, “every additional 0.1°C of global warming causes clearly discernible increases in the intensity and frequency of temperature and precipitation extremes, as well as agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions.” 

Denise Mullen, from the Business Council of BC, recently informed the SRD’s Natural Resources Committee that the province faces a more urgent problem. British Columbia is in the midst of a productivity emergency.

“BC is unique among the provinces in registering effectively no private sector growth in the last five years.”

“Almost all of the job growth in British Columbia has been in the public sector. Mainly in education, health, and public administration and even more so in general government administration.”

85% of the job growth on Vancouver Island has been in this sector.

“The point to take away from the two, public and private, is that you need a strong private sector to pay for public sector jobs.”

Mullen pointed to CleanBC, the provincial government’s plan to fight climate change, “the plan is to shrink the economy.”

According to the Canada Energy Regulator, BC’s “emissions have INCREASED 26% since 1990.”

This is only half the amount of the global increase, but during this same time period the EU reduced its emissions 37% BELOW 1990 levels while dramatically growing its Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The European Commission states this reduction was ‘driven by the growth in renewable energy generation and fall in coal and gas use.’  

Denise Mullen: “We should be focusing on global emissions and not domestic emmissions. Our hard targets on emissions are damaging to the economy, especially given that the rest of the world is responsible for 99.81% of global emissions. There's not a lot we can do to create an inflection point in the direction of either energy use or GHG emissions, but we can hurt ourselves economically.”