You know what would make the city’s budget better for taxpayers and better for the climate? Make the companies that are profiting most from fossil fuels that cause climate change pay their fair share of climate costs.
Environmental Law Alert Blog
Through our Environmental Law Alert blog, West Coast keeps you up to date on the latest developments and issues in environmental law. This includes:
- proposed changes to the law that will weaken, or strengthen, environmental protection;
- stories and situations where existing environmental laws are failing to protect the environment; and
- emerging legal strategies that could be used to protect our environment.
If you have an environmental story that we should hear about, please e-mail Andrew Gage. We welcome your comments on any of the posts to this blog – but please keep in mind our policies on comments.
The start of a New Year is a time for reflection as much as it is a time for celebration.
As the Premier highlighted, fossil fuel pollution in the atmosphere is making events like we’ve seen this year much more frequent. It gives us a glimpse of just how costly the fossil fuel economy is becoming and underscores the need to rapidly move away from producing and using fossil fuels, and to build more climate-resilient communities.
Shortly after the federal election, we reviewed the Liberty Party of Canada’s election platform. This post follows that post by analyzing the federal mandate letters, released on December 16, 2021.
The telling of true stories is necessary to remember our collective history across the globe. Specifically, this has become clear in recent discussions about the abundant life of Semá:th Lake (also known as Sumas Lake) in the Fraser Valley of BC, which once “reached from Chilliwack into Washington State.”
Lawyers urge incoming federal government to apply a “climate justice lens” to all statutes
At a time when the human and financial costs of climate change are in such stark relief, it is hard to believe that our federal government is still talking about expanding oil pipeline infrastructure. But if the climate impacts of enabling oilsands expansion aren’t enough, skyrocketing costs, exacerbated by the floods and wildfires themselves, should cause them to pause.
As we live with increasingly frequent and severe impacts from climate change, it is important that we think about protecting ecosystems to buffer against climate impacts, and safeguarding nature to ensure that it continues to support human economies.
As the recent COP26 UN climate negotiations in Glasgow drew to a close, we were heartened to hear new announcements made there on protecting marine spaces. Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador and Panama announced a new “Mega-MPA” spanning from the Galápagos to the Pacific coast of Central America, protecting some of the most productive fisheries in the world.
What legal options do community members have to protect threatened ecosystems on private property? West Coast’s Access to Justice team helps clients across BC to find innovative solutions – including unique legal arrangements that can preserve healthy lands and waters for the long term.