As Los Angeles burns, B.C. adds fuel to the fire

Around the world, people from every walk of life and every corner of the political spectrum are horrified and heartbroken by the disaster of the fires that destroyed vast swaths of Los Angeles. And as the long, hard work of cleaning up and rebuilding continues, so too, does the deadly serious task of understanding how and why the fires became so apocalyptic. 

A recent study from World Weather Attribution confirmed a key ingredient of these devastating calamities: the climate crisis, driven by burning fossil fuels, made the conditions behind the fire significantly more likely. The rain didn’t come to Los Angeles this winter. But intense heat did throughout the year, leading to tinder-dry conditions — fuel for the inferno causing billions of dollars in damage, killing at least 28 people and traumatizing millions more. 

Estimates of the cost of the L.A. fires range from $50 billion to $250 billion or more. Some experts suggest this will be the most expensive disaster in U.S. history. The final costs will take some time to fully tabulate. But there can be no doubt that this fire is yet another warning and yet another invitation to do the single most obvious and powerful thing to limit the destruction: stop building new fossil fuel projects and dramatically cut back on burning fossil fuels. 

As 21st-century fire expert John Vaillant said as entire neighbourhoods were being devoured by flames, “the L.A. fires, as shocking as their damage is to behold, and as traumatizing as they are for those affected by them, are just one manifestation of the atmospheric monster that fossil fuel emissions have loosed upon the world.”

If you live in British Columbia or many other parts of the country, you will know — perhaps, in a searing personal way — the overpowering destructive force of fires in this time of climate emergency.

But, despite one harrowing warning after another, here in Canada, the B.C. government is sending signals that it is on the verge of a massive expansion of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry. That would be pure madness for both climate and affordability reasons. 

LNG’s carbon footprint is even worse than coal’s and displaces renewable energy (not coal, as the industry and their political champions claim). Thanks to a recent think-tank report, we know the cost of the climate damage that would result from B.C. proceeding with the LNG projects now underway or proposed. 

If all seven projects analyzed in the report are built, they would cause more than $1 trillion in climate damage (using the social cost of carbon, a tool widely accepted by the B.C. and other governments). It’s a mind-boggling figure, and to know what that really looks like, we need look no further than L.A. And then, multiply by four or five. 

B.C.’s LNG projects would wreak hellish havoc, and yet, they are being actively considered and promoted by a government that takes the climate crisis seriously in many ways.

To add insult to injury, there is a truly cynical shell game at the core of the marketing push and political spin about LNG in B.C. Politicians and industry are touting the benefits of spending billions of dollars (your dollars) to electrify LNG production, in order to reduce emissions in the province.

But overall emissions would not be reduced one iota. The atmosphere doesn’t care where emissions happen. It just counts them and then, it rains down catastrophically. 

It takes a significant amount of gas to make LNG. But if you use massive amounts of electricity instead, (the equivalent of 8.4 Site C dams would be needed to electrify all projects under consideration in B.C.), then the gas that would otherwise be used in the industrial production of LNG is available for export. It would then be burned in importing countries, emitting greenhouse gases, of course, and making a mockery of “net zero” claims made by politicians and industry.

These are more than mere political and economic decisions. Given the existential gravity of the intensifying climate crisis, they're also moral decisions. Or, if the choice is to simply pour more fuel on the fire, they’re not moral decisions at all. 

John Young is the LNG senior strategist at Climate Action Network Canada.