Support a motion to make fossil fuel polluters pay a share of local climate costs
We need your help!
Tell Vancouver Council to vote next week to hold Chevron, Exxon Mobil and other global fossil fuel companies responsible for a share of Vancouver’s climate costs.
With the city facing a rising tide of climate-related costs (quite literally in the case of the estimated billion dollars in costs expected from sea level rise), Vancouver Councillors Jean Swanson and Christine Boyle are not content to leave all of those costs to taxpayers. On Tuesday, June 25th they are asking Council to hold fossil fuel companies responsible for a share of the harm that has been caused by their products.
If passed, Motion B5, Accountability for Climate Change, will commit Vancouver to:
- write to 20 of the world’s largest fossil fuel companies to demand that they pay a share of Vancouver’s climate costs (following the example of 21 other BC communities);
- ask the BC and Canadian governments to enact laws confirming the legal responsibility of fossil fuel companies to communities harmed by their products; and
- invite other communities to collaborate to develop joint legal strategies to hold fossil fuel companies accountable.
If you agree that global fossil fuel companies need to start sharing the costs that communities are suffering from climate change, here’s what you can do:
- Write to Mayor and Council to tell them to support Motion B5. Be sure to include your own thoughts about why fossil fuel companies need to pay their fair share of Vancouver’s climate costs.
- Sign up to speak to Council about the motion on Wednesday, June 26th (between 3-10pm). Applications to speak must be submitted by 9:30am on the morning that the motion is introduced (June 25th) but the public can speak to it the following day.
- Sit in at Council meetings on June 25th (from 9:30am) or June 26th (from 3pm) to support the motion.
Want more information on why this motion matters? You might want to check out Greenpeace Canada’s great backgrounder. We’re proud to be working with Greenpeace, Georgia Strait Alliance, Dogwood BC and others in supporting this motion.
As long as global fossil fuel companies think that they can make a lot of money while other people pay for the costs caused by their products, then they will continue to delay global action on climate change.
Motion B5 is Vancouver’s opportunity to insist that these global companies start reflecting the true costs of their products in their business decisions – while reducing the amount that Vancouver taxpayers will be expected to pay for current and future climate impacts.
Photo Credit: Steven Godfrey