The Village of Pemberton is inviting a representative from West Coast Environmental Law (WCEL) to present on the campaign Sue Big Oil.
The motion, passed Sept. 10, came from Councillor Katrina Nightingale, who asked for her fellow elected officials to keep an open mind and allow the officials to get an informed perspective.
Sue Big Oil is a campaign that aims to get municipalities to sign a declaration and file a class-action lawsuit against the oil-and-gas industry for its role of knowingly fuelling climate change.
Much of this evidence was explored in The Petroleum Papers, by journalist Geoff Dembicki, showing how American oil industry giants who founded the oil sands in Alberta knew about climate change in 1959, but actively campaigned to create doubt that climate change exists.
Climate change costs
“I proposed that a delegation from WCEL speak to council about the Sue Big Oil campaign because the only way to make an informed decision in the best interests of the community is to gather as much information as possible," Nightingale wrote in an email to Pique.
"Just by virtue of the name, ‘Sue Big Oil,’ people can default to entrenched positions effectively shutting down a conversation before it has even begun.”
She said she understands skepticism around the campaign, but noted citizens bear no costs by inviting a representative from WCEL. The Village of Pemberton (VOP) has yet to release a meeting date.
Nightingale highlighted other B.C. communities have joined the campaign, including the District of Squamish, Cumberland, Sechelt, Port Moody, Burnaby, Slocan, View Royal, Gibsons and Qualicum Beach.
Andrew Gage, staff lawyer and secretariat member with the non-profit WCEL, said climate change costs are a fiscal concern for all levels of government, and they have a responsibility to ask themselves how they will pay.
“It’s a basic fiscal responsibility issue for elected officials," he said. "If you know that you've got these looming costs, you have to ask yourself, how are we going to afford this? You can't just assume that taxpayers will pay ever-increasing amounts of climate costs."
He explained the first step in the campaign is getting as many municipalities as possible to sign on, collectively representing a half a million people, and have each town commit $1 for every resident.
“That helps identify which local governments are interested in this. It tells us which local governments might step up into a more leadership role of filing a lawsuit, but at the end of the day, they have to do that,” Gage said.
Tiny budgets, big bills
The reason Nightingale put forward the campaign is the VOP’s constrained resources. According to Nightingale, 80 per cent of the town's “miniscule” budget “goes to keeping the lights on, the toilets flushing and clean water running.” Then, there’s Bill 44, provincial legislation mandating sweeping changes to municipal housing zoning, which requires infrastructure to support increased housing. A second example of constrained resources is the potential future costs for policing. When the VOP’s population hits 5,000, which is expected in the near future, the municipality is responsible for covering 70 per cent of policing costs.
“Now, factor in climate change. As the severity of climate-related events increases, the strain on resources is only going to become more. One stark example is the millions of dollars required to upgrade our dikes to protect this community from more extreme flooding events,” she said.
“We all know we are extremely vulnerable to wildfire. There was significant lost revenue to local businesses and farmers with the cancellation of the Slow Food Cycle because of the Downton Lake fire in 2023 and the closure of Birkenhead Park due to wildfire means less traffic through Pemberton which impacts local businesses. We have had to budget to replace the boardwalk infrastructure around One Mile Lake due to the flooding event in January 2023.”
There’s also wildfire management, active transportation, public transit improvements, and food security, which are necessary for adapting and mitigating climate change. They require resources the VOP does not have.
“This campaign could provide municipalities with much-needed revenue to help us do that," Nightingale said. "As it stands now, taxpayers are shouldering the entirety of this financial burden."
Gage said sometimes people view climate change as an urban concern, but the costs per-capita for rural communities is actually higher.
“The infrastructure is spread out over a larger area with relatively low resources in terms of being able to rebuild them and retrofit them and deal with them,” he said.
'What I fear more is not doing my best'
Nightingale said her position on climate change is that it’s a mix of anthropogenetic—meaning caused by humans—and natural causes, but the knowledge oil companies didn’t adhere to a precautionary principle means average citizens are bearing the costs.
The precautionary principle, according to the Government of Canada’s guiding principles for the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, states “where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to prevent environmental degradation.”
In other words, not being certain of an impending disaster isn’t justification for doing nothing.
“Imagine where we might be today if they had used their influence at the policy level to move us away from our dependence on fossil fuels? But they didn’t. They doubled down … were able to maintain the status quo, ensure massive profits, and undermine a more just and equitable move toward renewable energies and policies grounded in conservation and stewardship,” Nightingale said.
The intent to make profits despite harms is “egregious” to Nightingale.
“I have a fiscal responsibility to this community to do what I can to recover some of the costs associated with climate change,” she said.
Calculating the overall cost of climate change for the VOP is a large task that would require resources the village doesn’t have, according to Nightingale. However, she said officials are actively looking at improving protection for the community through things like upgrading the diking infrastructure, which costs millions, and wildfire mitigation, which is “substantial.”
“I cannot emphasize enough the relentless behind-the-scenes work being done by Mayor [Mike] Richman, [chief administrative officer Elizabeth] Tracy, supported by staff and council in advocating to higher levels of government to help support us in addressing these pressing needs,” she said
Considering the backlash the Mayor of Whistler, Jack Crompton, received when he signed a climate accountability letter demanding major fossil-fuel companies pay for climate costs, Pique asked if Nightingale was concerned about backlash from industry.
“Absolutely not,” she said, noting all people are complicit to varying degrees, but reiterating the oil-and-gas industry is responsible for using its power for profit.
“Honestly, what I fear more is not doing my best for this community, future generations, and not having the courage to explore possibilities like this.”
