There are some things that we just have to accept. Basic fundamental truths of math, physics, chemistry, and biology are simply not up for negotiation. As humans we have shown that we get these natural laws, or we wouldn’t have been able to create human flight, wireless communication, the internet, or incredible medical procedures.
However, when it comes to the climate emergency we have shown ourselves to be outright delusional. The atmosphere doesn’t care whether we count our emissions or not…CO2 and methane still enter the atmosphere regardless of our human challenges to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels.
As a general rule we need to get to ZERO in 20. More specifically, this means in order to have a 67% chance of avoiding a 2 degree Celsius rise in global average temperatures, we need zero carbon emissions in 20 years. If that isn’t challenging enough we ALSO have to have a massive carbon sequestration push as well. Most of this will be in the form of Eco-Sequestration which means to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere and put it into the soils and vegetation. The good news is that the science tells us this is possible, but barely.
Society has decided that creating an inventory of what activities contribute to carbon emissions is the first step in a strategy to adapt to and mitigate the climate crisis. To make this rapid emissions reduction plan while transitioning to green energy sources, we need to know what, where, when, and how to do it.
The province used to give communities an inventory of GHGe called the Community Energy and Emissions Inventory, CEEI for short. Only problem was that they only counted less than half of our emissions. They left out anything to do with aviation, deforestation (from logging and development), loss of soil carbon from industrial agriculture, food, AND the embodied carbon in virtually all of our STUFF. Yikes!
In response to this glaring omission, the District of Highlands drafted a resolution for Union of BC Municipalities that was supported by all local governments in BC. The resolution specifically asked the province to update our CEEI to count ALL of our emissions.
The province is now working on a more comprehensive carbon counting plan called the BC Inventory…but municipalities have yet to see meaningful data, so it’s still up to BC municipalities to work with the very old, inaccurate emissions data. Highly misleading to our citizens as these numbers are grossly under reported in our annual reports and result in most of the population not understanding the magnitude of our climate predicament.
This is essentially setting ourselves up for failure. It’s kind of like trying to trick the atmosphere by not counting our emissions. Delusional at best and more likely willful ignorance.
Some larger municipalities like Saanich and Victoria have tried to address this by participating in a pilot project using the EcoCity Footprint Tool to more accurately measure their emissions. Their 2015 data showed that community emissions were roughly double the old 2007 CEEI numbers.
For Saanich, the 2007 GHG Inventory was 414,000 tonnes carbon (3.72 tonnes Carbon/pp), while the more accurate 2015 GHG Inventory was 881,000 tonnes carbon (7.7 tonnes Carbon/pp).
I applaud Saanich and Victoria for this innovative work, however, the sad part is that Saanich is still basing their policy goal of 80% reduction in GHGe on their outdated and inaccurate 2007 numbers. So misleading. I truly hope the new councils will create policy reflecting reality thus enabling us to proceed eyes wide open with honesty and integrity. You can’t lie to Mother Earth. Climate systems are NOT negotiable.
Here in my own very small community of Highlands we don’t have the resources to create a more accurate emissions inventory, so we continue to use the outdated information given to us by the Provincial government. However, we have learned from the pilot project with Victoria and Saanich, and next year, we hope to voluntarily double our community emissions data and base our offset and mitigation programs on these numbers. Perhaps our extra offsets could be used for Eco-Sequestration projects right here in the Highlands.
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Ann Baird has a BSc in Biology and is a Councillor for the District of Highlands.