North Coast Regional District signs on to fossil fuel industry accountability campaign

The Board of the North Coast Regional District will be taking up the challenge of seeking accountability on matters of climate accountability, signing on to a campaign organized by the West Coast Environmental Law Group.

At their January 25th and 26th Board Meeting, the Directors of the NCRD voted to support a resolution that will see them send climate accountability correspondences to twenty of the largest fossil fuel companies in the world.

The main focus of the campaign is to track the costs of climate change that are being incurred in British Columbia communities and to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for a share of those climate costs.

The details of the program were included in the Agenda Package for the January Board Meetings, you can review them here (Pages 34-38), or from the pages below (click to enlarge)

The West Coast Environmental Law Group plan gained some significant attention earlier in January, when the City of Victoria joined the list of British Columbia communities that are looking to put pressure on the global energy companies.

Victoria is one of a dozen communities in the province that WCELG says have taken up the letter writing campaign and other initiatives to track climate change impact.

The municipality led by Mayor Lisa Helps is also backing the climate lawsuit approach offered up the Law Group.

Victoria backs climate change lawsuit against energy industry, is accused of hypocrisy in Alberta
City of Victoria recommends class-action lawsuit against the oil and gas industry
Victoria riles Alberta oil patch with support for oilpatch lawsuit
City of Victoria endorses potential class action lawsuit against fossil fuel giants

The initial phase of the project is the letter writing campaign, however West Coast Environmental Law Group has a much larger plan in mind when it comes to their work on climate issues.

The final page of their four page proposal provides some background to the class lawsuit option that they hope local governments will want to explore.

In their letter to NCRD, they outline the call for BC communities to work together and to pool their resources towards the class action  lawsuit approach against fossil fuel companies on behalf of all BC Local governments. Something that WCELG notes is being taken up by American local governments.

So far, it would seem that the North Coast Regional District has only committed to the letter writing campaign.

The move of Regional District towards that letter writing campaign did not come up at the Prince Rupert City Council meeting of January 28th, with neither Councillor Cunningham or Councillor Niesh making it part of their notes of interest  to share from their attendance at the NCRD session.

It's not know at this time if the City of Prince Rupert will join in with Regional District in signing on to the letter writing campaign, though as part of the campaign the WCELG is urging the Regional District Members to contact other officials and municipalities in the region to join in on the effort.

Some background on the work of the West Coast Environmental Law Group can be found from the video below and from their website here.

The focus on the fossil fuel industry and the current letter writing campaign can be found here.




 For more items of note from Regional District see our archive page here.

To return to the most recent blog posting of the day, click here.