I’m old enough that I remember voting in the Seventies. I never miss a chance to vote so that’s a lot of elections. In all but one or two my vote has gone to the NDP, Canada’s social democrats. There’s a provincial election Saturday, and I’ll be voting Green, against the current NDP government.
It’s not complicated: I’ve become a nearly-single-issue voter. The fangs of the climate monster are closing on us, and drastic immediate action is called for by all responsible governments to stave them off.
The BC NDP has followed its unlamented right-wing predecessor in making a huge energy bet on fossil fuels, “natural” gas in particular, and especially LNG, optimized for export. “Natural” gas, remember, is basically methane. The fossil-fuels mafia has greenwashed it for years as a “better alternative”, and a “bridge to the renewable future”. Which is a big fat lie; it’s been known for years to be a potent greenhouse gas, and recent research suggests it’s more damaging than coal.
Tilbury · That was the LNG project that made me snap. Here is coverage that tries to be neutral. Tilbury was sold as being a good thing because LNG is said to have a lighter carbon load than the heavy bunker fuel freighters usually burn. Supposing that to be true, well so what: The terminal mostly exists to pump locally-extracted methane to the rest of the world. Check out Tilbury’s first contract, for 53,000 tons of LNG a year off to China, with no indication of what it will be used for and plenty of reason to believe it will end up heating buildings, which instead should be moving to renewable options.
Tilbury is just the latest chapter of the successful march of LNG infrastructure through the minds of successive BC governments; I’ll spare you the long, dispiriting story (but I won’t forget it in the polling booth).
I don’t believe it’s oversimplifying to say that essentially everything the fossil-fuel industry says is a pack of self-serving planet-destroying lies. Why would I vote for a party that apparently believes those lies?
The Carbon Tax · Post-Tilbury, I was probably 60% of the way to splitting with the NDP when they announced they were ready to drop the carbon tax. It is hard to find an economist who does not believe that a carbon tax is one of our sanest and most powerful anti-GHG policy tools. BC has been a North-American leader in instituting and maintaining a carbon tax. So, that sealed the deal. Bye bye, NDP.
What’s happening is simple enough: Canada’s right-wing troglodytes have united around an anti-Carbon-tax platform, chanting “axe the tax”. And our NDP has waved the chickenshit-colored tag of surrender. You can pander to reactionary hypocrites, or you can help us do our bit for the world my children will inherit, but you can’t do both. Bye.
The Greens · Their platform is the kind of sensible social-democratic stuff that I’ve always liked, plus environmentalist to the core. Leader Sonia Furstenau is impressive. It wasn’t a hard choice.
But tactical voting! · It’s been a weird election, with the official opposition party, center-rightists who long formed the government, changing their name (from “Liberals” to “United”) midstream, then collapsing. This led to the emergence of the BC Conservative Party, a long-derided fringe organization famous for laughable candidates, thick with anti-vaxxers, climate deniers, anti-wokesters, anti-LGBTQ ranters, and multiple other flavors of conspiracy connoisseur.
Guess what: That’s what they still are! But much to everyone’s surprise, they’re running pretty close to neck and neck with the NDP.
So people like me can expect to be told that by abandoning the NDP, we’re in effect aiding and abetting the barbarians at the gate. (To be fair, nobody has actually said that to me. The strongest I’ve heard is “it’s your privilege to waste your vote.”)
But what I see is two parties neither of which have any concern for my children’s future, and one which does. If it’s wrong to vote on that basis, I don’t want to be right.
