Our Executive Director Lois Corbett largely panned the provincial government’s new climate change legislation, telling reporters the legislation misses the mark on pricing carbon and doesn’t provide enough help to New Brunswickers to use less fossil fuels.
“I understand what the government is trying to do by saying we’re going to take some action on climate change, but just a repurposing of the gas tax account doesn’t actually rise to the challenge or the urgency of the issue we’re trying to deal with,” Corbett told Kevin Bisset of the Canadian Press, for a story than ran on CTV Atlantic and Global New Brunswick on Dec. 14.
Corbett made similar comments to the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal, adding: “New Brunswickers are already experiencing the impact of climate change, whether it’s ice storms or hurricanes or floods, so we know it’s right here and we have to change behaviour.”
Corbett told reporters the legislation fails to protect families and communities from the worst impacts of climate change by providing no incentives, financial or otherwise, to innovate, reduce pollution or change behaviours.
She told CBC New Brunswick the plan is unlikely to meet the federal government’s carbon pricing requirements.
“In the Paris agreement, the federal government, along with all the other nations of the world, said they would only count measures that were in addition to [existing measures],” Corbett said. “This is obviously not an additional move. This is a reshuffling on the decks. That might be a stickler.”
Corbett said there are some good things in the bill, including enshrining carbon pollution targets in law and requiring the government to report on how the money in the climate change fund is spent each year.
Recommended links:
- Read the Conservation Council’s press release on the climate change legislation (Dec. 14)
- Read the Climate Change Act
- Read the government’s press release on the Climate Change Act
- Read the government’s backgrounder on the Climate Change Act
- Read the Conservation Council’s background materials on N.B.’s carbon pricing system (Dec. 12, 2017)
- Read the Conservation Council’s media backgrounder on carbon pricing (2016)
- List of the large carbon polluters in New Brunswick