According to Rae Simpson (“Councillor wrong on Sue Big Oil,” published Nov. 20), it’s OK to leave the $40 million in dike upgrades, wildfire preparedness and other climate costs facing Squamish in the next five years entirely to Squamish taxpayers, while oil and gas companies make record profits without paying any of those costs.
How, Simpson asks, could we consider suing fossil fuel companies when pension funds and individual investors are invested in them?
Let’s think for a moment: why it is profitable for pension funds and investors to keep putting their money into an oil and gas industry whose products cause the massive flooding and other impacts that Squamish is working to address. This is because the costs that those products cause are missing from the balance sheets of those corporations.
This financial illusion is the same reason that fossil fuel companies have lobbied against climate laws and sat on patents that could have made low-emission vehicles and solar cells available decades ago. And why they now push false climate solutions that allow them to continue pumping ever greater amounts of their product.
The fact that companies put short-term profits over the health of our communities is not because they are run by “bad” people; it’s because they are rewarded financially and avoid paying for the costly climate impacts caused by their products. Both companies and their investors make poor decisions when the companies bear no responsibility for the harm that their products cause.
Squamish cannot afford to pay the mounting costs of climate change alone, and the planet cannot afford for oil and gas companies to continue to duck the responsibility for their products.
Simpson appears to be confused about the purpose of the lawsuit, insisting that it’s actually a lawsuit against other levels of government (it’s not). He fails to grasp that Squamish’s contribution to the proposed lawsuit is intended to help B.C., municipalities bring the case and hire a legal team (and is not, as he incorrectly alleges, for the Sue Big Oil campaign or lobbying). He mistakenly asserts that a lawsuit against global fossil fuel companies for their global emissions is not a global solution. He suggests (falsely) that a lawsuit would cause oil and gas products to “disappear instantly from the face of the earth.” Instead, it would ensure that the companies start paying the true costs of their products and provide an incentive to invest in sustainable solutions.
But at the end of the day, Simpson seems most confused about the relationship between Squamish residents and global oil and gas giants. The fact that the industry has managed to keep consumers, and our pension funds, hooked on their products does not mean that we are “those who profited from it.”
We are increasingly the ones who are paying for it. It is high time that the world’s largest polluters paid their fair share.
Andrew Gage
Staff Lawyer,
West Coast Environmental Law
For the Sue Big Oil campaign
