I recently came across a clip of Keith Baldrey referring to John Rustad’s interest in nuclear power as “controversial.” His punditry continued by predicting that a future NDP attack ad will “very strongly” denounce nuclear as an option that can facilitate clean energy generation in British Columbia.

As a climate scientist and a lead author of multiple assessments from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, I become concerned when I see worthwhile climate policy proposals being dismissed because of shortsighted electoral politics.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in our province’s current discourse on nuclear power generation as part of a clean energy agenda. When the BC NDP rejected such a prospect in 2023, it was little more than a continuation of the ideological ecosocialist decades-long opposition to nuclear technology.

As much as I celebrate robust discussions on climate action, employing misinformation as part of such an important exchange of ideas is a huge disservice to our province.

British Columbians are ready and willing to contemplate a new energy mix as part of our future, as evidenced by findings from a newly released Ipsos poll showing that 58% of residents support a review of current restrictions on the use of nuclear power (in contrast to only 27% in opposition).

Over the past two decades, I’ve advocated for nuclear as a viable interim power source. On the road to achieving an energy landscape that is abundant, reliable, cost-effective, renewable, and most importantly, clean, nuclear power should never be dismissed as effortlessly as our Premier did last year or the Greens did is 2021.

If we’re poised to have this debate during the upcoming election campaign, it’s important to be guided by science rather than political posturing and rhetoric.

First, let’s talk about the most obvious appeal of nuclear power from a carbon footprint perspective: it’s a zero-emission clean energy source. That’s because it generates power through fission, which is the process of splitting uranium atoms to produce energy.

Nuclear energy also produces more electricity on less land than any other clean-air source (such as solar or wind), is the highest-density fuel available (requiring less output than other options), and can be generated 24 hours a day, making it the most reliably available energy source to meet ongoing needs at any time.

It is also extremely safe when considering the death rates (from air pollution and accidents) as a ratio to per unit electricity output. Despite the unwarranted fear generated by pop culture dramatizations of nuclear accidents of the distant past (caused without the benefit of the huge technological advances in the decades since) or activists who dishonestly accentuate the manageable, localized problem of nuclear waste (also largely aided by breakthroughs in technology), nuclear power is as safe as it comes across the spectrum of clean energy options.

As George Monbiot noted in an article entitled Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power that he penned for the Guardian in 2011:

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.

Finally, I’m a booster of nuclear because of the strategic advantages Canada offers when compared to other global competitors. We are the second-largest producer and exporter of uranium in the world, have over seven decades of experience and success in nuclear energy production, and are on the cutting edge of producing small modular reactors, (like the NuScale Power facility illustrated in the header image for this post — in case anyone wonders, I do not own any shares in NuScale Power) which is a market projected to reach $150-$300 billion annually by 2040.

This discussion brings me back to my disdain for the apparent hubris of some within the NDP on the climate change agenda, as demonstrated by their attitude that they have exclusivity over climate concern and leadership. I remind them again that on their watch, they approved, and through extremely generous government subsidies advanced, the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in BC’s history (LNG Canada).

In my world of academia and research, any individual or entity willing to use misinformation to advance an agenda cannot claim a moral pulpit from which to deliver sermons. It is highly problematic for the NDP to use such tactics in responding to Rustad’s musings on nuclear power in BC.

The NDP’s insistence on falsely labelling their opponents as climate deniers is not only done in bad faith, but also represents an approach to governance that demonstrates a devotion to playing politics rather than lowering carbon emissions. One such individual they’ve incorrectly labelled a climate denier is John Rustad, the leader of the BC Conservative Party. Yet on September 20 at the recent Union of BC Municipalities Annual Convention, John Rustad addressed delegates and said:

“The climate change issue is real. There’s no question there.”

“Man is having an impact on our climate, there’s no question there. “

And so this brings to a point I recently conveyed to the NDP Minister of Energy, Mines & Low Carbon Innovation:

What’s worse, a few folk who didn’t understand the seriousness of global warming but now clearly do and are going all in on adaptation & to electrify BC or a party of MLAs who understood the seriousness of the issue yet collectivity advanced, subsidized and voted unanimously to throw future generations under the bus.

You decide. As I have said before, no one has a monopoly on determining the best path forward for a climate action agenda and I sincerely hope that brand of politics can be put aside during the ongoing election campaign.

Today the Vancouver Sun published an opinion piece I wrote in advance of the next provincial election. I am reproducing the text of this piece here so I am able to share it on my Facebook Page (which doesn’t allow news stories from Canadian Media to be published).

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Opinion Editorial

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The B.C. NDP’s sudden abandonment of the consumer carbon tax is a disappointing and cynical ploy announced just days after the federal NDP did the same.

Rather than taking this golden opportunity to follow the lead of Alberta NDP’s Naheed Nenshi in calling for the separation of the provincial NDP from Jagmeet Singh’s party, David Eby piled on populist rhetoric with no alternative to offer in its place.

When leadership is so desperately needed on the most important environmental issue of our time, David Eby put politics ahead of principle. This is the same type of ambiguity in climate change policymaking that ultimately inspired me to run for office in 2013.

Simply put, the B.C. NDP botched the implementation of carbon pricing by completely omitting B.C.’s middle class from receiving the money other Canadians across the country enjoy.

Take, for example, Alberta, where under Danielle Smith’s United Conservative government, households of four are entitled to $1,800 per year from the Canada Carbon Rebate.

If we ignore the noise from the many falsehoods being spread about the federal carbon tax, the quarterly cheques that Canadians in eight other provinces collect add up to more in their pockets than they pay in overall costs.

By contrast, that same family of four in British Columbia receives nothing if their household income exceeds $107,688 and only $1,008 if it is below $57,288.

This is a deliberate decision that the B.C. NDP government has implemented. They chose who would be eligible for rebates, and the results equate to most British Columbians being left high and dry on financial relief.

Herein lies the egregious political error that caused Eby to capitulate on the eve of the election.

Over the coming fiscal year, the government will collect just over $2.5 billion in carbon tax revenues. Of that total, only $1 billion, or about 40 per cent, is returned to B.C. residents. This is a far cry from the revenue-neutral carbon tax introduced by Gordon Campbell in 2008, which set a standard for climate action that didn’t burden the pocketbooks of British Columbians.

Alas, the David Eby approach has allowed the B.C. Conservatives under John Rustad to politically emerge by speaking to the struggles B.C. residents face under what has become a tone-deaf government.

People were shocked when I publicly praised Rustad. But after Eby’s carbon tax retreat, nobody should have been.

While the B.C. Conservative leader and I have policy differences on climate action public policy, there is one quality I see in Rustad that I value above all else in public office holders: authenticity.

Democracy works when voters can make decisions based on accurate information. If nothing else, Rustad has been consistent on his plans to scrap the carbon tax, which is more than can be said for David Eby, who is tearing up his historical positions on climate action in a desperate bid for re-election.

This brings forth a much larger point that embodies my inclination to use pragmatism and collaboration when designing and implementing climate action plans. The NDP’s insistence on falsely labelling their opponents as climate deniers is not only done in bad faith, but also represents an approach to governance that demonstrates a devotion to playing politics rather than lowering carbon emissions.

Moreover, it was the B.C. NDP who approved and generously subsidized LNG Canada, the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in B.C.’s history.

No one has a monopoly on determining the best path forward for a climate action agenda and I sincerely hope David Eby’s brand of hegemonic politics can be put aside during the election campaign.

This is shaping up to be the most important election in our province’s history, and British Columbians deserve better than being manipulated into how they cast their ballots.

In February I penned an article arguing that fear-based climate messaging often drives people to despondency and apathy rather than climate action. In this post, I’d like to offer a counter example of how positive, thoughtful climate messaging can inspire people to want to do better. I am grateful to the students and teachers at St. Margaret’s school, Minister George Heyman and the students in my EOS 365 (Climate and Society) class for participating and contributing to an intergenerational conversation on climate change on Monday, March 4, 2024.

EOS 365 (Climate and Society) is a course I developed at UVic and first offered in 2009. The lectures follow the chapters in the book Keeping Our Cool: Canada in a Warming World that I first published in 2008. In the course I survey the climate system and its interaction with past, present, and future societies, including the onset of agriculture/domestication of animals in the Holocene, the rise and fall of early civilizations, the Anthropocene and global warming. Early in the course I teach a module on science communication. I emphasize that if one wants to advance lasting climate solutions, then one must bring people with you rather than alienating those who may not wish to prioritize climate action.  I point out that politicians are elected to represent everyone, not just their support base, and so policy makers need to listen and respond to the views of all stakeholders.  

I also suggest to the students that whether or not society wants to deal with global warming really boils down to one question:

Do we the present generation owe anything to future generations in terms of the quality of the environment we leave behind. Yes? or No?

Science can’t answer that question. But science tells us why this is ultimately the question that needs to be asked. If the answer is yes, then we have no choice but to immediately take steps to decarbonize energy systems for the consequences of unchecked emission growth are profound (widespread species extinction and unparalleled geopolitical instability). If the answer is no, then who cares about global warming?

In class I also note that formulating climate policy is often inconsistent with a four year political cycle as the effects of the policy decisions made today will not be felt in the political lifetime of those making the decisions. Yet these same politicians will not be around in the future to be held accountable for the decisions they did or did not make. And so policies with demonstrable short-term outcomes often take precedence over climate policy. Allocating resources to advance short term “wins” will allow you to point to your political successes in a few years and proclaim “I was responsive to your needs; please re-elect me and I will do more”.  It’s next to impossible to do the same with climate policy. But I would argue that there is a moral and ethical imperative to advance climate solutions now if society believes in the importance of intergenerational equity.

Building on the themes of effective climate communication and intergenerational equity, I hosted an event in EOS 365 on March 4 inspired by the Grade 7 (and 8) students at St. Margaret’s School, Victoria BC. Four generations were involved in the conversation: 1) the St. Margaret’s students; 2) the UVic students; 3) the teachers from St. Margaret’s; 4) the Honourable George Heyman (Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy) and me.

On February 1 2024,  I attended St. Margaret’s Grade 7 Environmental Summit and was blown away by the insight and creativity of the students. The Grade 7 class had been learning about the socioeconomic and environmental ramifications of global warming. Students took on the role of an affected party (e.g. firefighter, fisher, pilot, business owner etc.) and researched how global warming was going to affect them.  I listened to numerous testimonies from the Grade 7 students who role-played their chosen characters and was taken aback by their insight and how effectively, and articulately they were able to communicate their stories.

The highlight of the event for me was was when the Grade 7/8 St. Margaret’s choir sang a rendition of an SOS from the kids in front of all those in attendance.

My March 4 class began with the St. Margaret’s grade 7/8 choir, led by Mike Keddy, setting the tone for the rest of our conversation by once more singing an SOS from the kids. At the end of the song, and as the final words “you can do better than this” were sung, Mike Keddy held up a Montreal Canadians pennant (indeed one can do better than that).

We were keeping things light and continuing the playful banter that had started at St. Margaret’s School when I noticed middle years teacher Michael Jones had decorated his classroom with some Edmonton Oilers swag. Michael arrived at my class wearing his Oilers jersey, while the TA for the class Katherine Martin proudly sported a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater. She was joined by  middle years teacher and fellow Leaf’s fan Meaghan Thompson who showed up with a Leaf’s cap.

And of course, while noting the obvious irony, I adorned my Oilers jersey.

We were honoured to have Minister Heyman attend the class. He had just announced that he was not seeking reelection in the next provincial election moments before we started, and EOS 365 was his first public appearance following that announcement. Once the choir had finished, Minister Heyman spoke about CleanBC and how is government was responding to the challenge of global warming and capitalizing on the opportunity it provides for innovation and creativity in addressing the challenge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Minister Heyman kindly agreed to allow the EOS 365 and St. Margaret’s students to quiz him in a “kinder and gentler” version of Question Period. First, a St. Margaret’s student read out their prepared script. Unfortunately, in the time available I could only select six students to speak: SO was the CEO of the world’s largest oil company; SW was the heiress to Lululemon; DS was a climate scientist; AM owned a Victoria-based construction contracting company; LA was a young cosmetic designer and owner of an eco-friendly company; TA was a Victoria-based frefighter.

In advance of the class I had given six EOS 365 students copies of the scripts that were going to be read out (see the instagram reel at the end of this post). All six of these students were from the first cohort enrolled in UVic’s new BSc in Climate Science degree program. Each of these students asked the Minister a thoughtful yet probing question that they had prepared in advance and based on the script they were given. The Minister responded in an equally thoughtful way. I role-played the Speaker, and offered the class a supplementary question which was subsequently posed to the Minister. And so we proceeded to explore how the BC government was responding to climate change in six unique sectors.

This particular class was perhaps the most enriching and rewarding experience I’ve ever had while teaching at the university level. And I started teaching in 1986! My sincere thanks to the students and teachers at St. Margaret’s School, the Minister and his staff, and the BSc in Climate Science and other students in EOS 365 for making this event so successful.

My hope in organizing this event was to demonstrate to my class how positive, hopeful, constructive and solutions-focused climate communication can inspire others to want to take climate action. Too often, activists use fear-based messaging, or outrageous acts of civil disobedience, like throwing soup on a priceless Van Gogh or disrupting traffic and creating chaos on local streets in an attempt to raise awareness as to the seriousness of climate change. As I have argued before, more often than not, such behaviour does little more than drive people to despondency and apathy rather than climate action.

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This past weekend I received an email from a young adult from the US struggling with climate anxiety. Their email, and our follow-up conversation over Zoom, are what inspired me to write this piece.

As I wrote last year, one of the biggest surprises I found upon my return to the University of Victoria 1n 2021 after spending 7 1/2 years in the BC Legislature was the overall increase in underlying climate anxiety being experienced by students in my classes. I’ve been teaching at the university level since the mid 1980s. For most of this time, the students considered global warming to be an esoteric and highly uncertain distant future threat to others, somewhere else in the world – but not any more.

While I was not surprised that another young adult reached out to discuss their struggles with climate anxiety, their email was particularly thoughtful. It contained quotes that they had seen in the media or heard in conversations with their friends, and a link to a recent ITV Good Morning Britain interview with Canadian William Shatner, better known as Captain Kirk  from the Star Trek series.

Mr. Shattner is 92. He is passionate about climate change. Yet I struggle to understand what he was hoping to accomplish in the interview. It was over the top, outrageous and, in my opinion, utterly irresponsible. For example, when asked by the ITV reporter “So you don’t think it is an overreaction to say we’re digging our own graves“. Shatner responded incredulously “No, no, no it’s not dramatic enough.  We’re burrowing into our own graves” . “Really?“, the interviewer responded at which point Shatner lays into him: “I’m so unhappy that you don’t understand how imperative the situation is. We’re dying man, the seas are going to rise…  to me I’m stupefied that you as being a reporter aren’t filled with that passion“.

Later in the interview Shatner berates the reporter “you failed to grasp the dire situation. We’re talking about 20, 30 years.  We’re talking about .. are you married?“. “No”  the interviewer replied. “Are you going to get married? asked Shatner, “possibly” was the response. Shatner pushed further: “Do you want children?”, to which the reporter replied “possibly,  yes“.  Getting the answer he was obviously hoping for, Shatner  insisted “You want children. Your children are going to have difficulty LIVING. Do you understand that?”

But here’s the kicker, when the reporter asked Shatner “what sort of changes have you made in your life, because you are so passionate about the climate issue, what are you doing differently now that you perhaps weren’t doing 5,  10 years ago.” All Shatner could come up with in response was this: “I haven’t eaten meat in 6 months.  I was at a hamburger thing I got the other plant made vegan thing“. Really?

I am very disappointed in Mr. Shatner. He has a platform, a public profile and the potential to influence people of all ages. Yet he chooses to use this platform in a completely unhinged way to imply the world only has 20 to 30 years left because of climate change and other anthropogenic environmental influences.

Now I recognize some will just dismiss my concerns by saying he’s just an old guy with odd views that shouldn’t be taken seriously. Unfortunately, such views from his position of influence do a lot of damage and undermine the efforts of so many who recognize the seriousness of climate change yet reject his outlandish prognostications. His words would land like a 16 ton weight on younger generations. How dare he espouse his unhinged views about the end of the world when all he has done is not eaten meat for six months. The hypocrisy and demonstrable lack of leadership is shameful.

When I wrote a piece for in The Conversation last summer decrying an outrageous story  in the Guardian claiming  “Gulf Stream could collapse as early as 2025, study suggests”, I appealed to Hannah Ritchie’s elegant framework for how people see the world and their ability to facilitate change.

Ritchie, a senior researcher at the Oxford Martin School, lumped people into four general categories based on combinations of those who are optimistic and those who are pessimistic about the future, as well as those who believe and those who don’t believe that we have agency to shape the future based on today’s decisions and actions.

Ritchie persuasively argued that more people located in the green “optimistic and changeable” box are what is needed to advance climate solutions. Those positioned elsewhere are not effective in advancing such solutions.

More importantly, rather than instilling a sense of optimism that global warming is a solvable problem, the extreme behaviour (fear mongering or civil disobedience) of the “pessimistic changeable” group (in which I include William Shatner) often does nothing more than drive the public towards the “pessimistic not changeable” group.

Mr. Shatner is not alone in channelling his own climate anxiety in ways that drive people to despondency and apathy (we’re all doomed and there’s nothing we can go about it – the red box). But unlike most, he speaks from a very large podium.

Next time Mr. Shatner wants to decry the state of the world from his personal, rather than scientific, perspective, perhaps he could tell us more about what he is doing about climate change from his position of privilege. Leadership involves demonstrating through your own actions what you are expecting in others. Failing that, Mr. Shatner’s is just taking a page out of Granpa Simpson’s playbook.

My colleagues Karin Kvale, GNS Science, New Zealand, Natalia Gurgacz and I published a piece in The Conversation last week. It is reproduced below as Facebook appears to be blocking the reposting of Canadian news articles.

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The Article

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The dual pressures of climate change and plastic pollution are frequently conflated in the media, in peer-reviewed research and other environmental reporting.

Organic carbon leaching from plastic pollution

In nature, plants make organic carbon (carbon-hydrogen compounds) from inorganic carbon (carbon compounds not bonded with hydrogen) through photosynthesis. Most plastics are made from fossil fuels, which are organic carbon compounds. This organic carbon leaches into the environment from plastics as they degrade.

Concerns have been raised that this could disrupt global carbon cycling by acting as an alternative carbon source for bacteria, which consume organic carbon.

A key assumption in these concerns is that organic carbon fluxes and reservoirs are a major influence on global carbon cycling (and atmospheric carbon dioxide) over human timescales.

It is true that dissolved organic carbon is a major carbon reservoir. In the ocean, it is about the same amount as the carbon dioxide (CO₂) held in the pre-industrial atmosphere. But there are key differences between atmospheric CO₂ and ocean organic carbon storage. One is the climate impact.

Atmospheric CO₂ warms the climate directly, whereas dissolved organic carbon stored in the ocean is mostly inert. This dissolved organic carbon reservoir built up over many thousands of years.

When phytoplankton make organic carbon (or when plastics leach organic carbon), most of it is rapidly used within hours to days by bacteria and converted into dissolved inorganic carbon. The tiny fraction of organic carbon left behind after bacterial processing is the inert portion that slowly builds up into a natural reservoir.

Once we recognise that plastics carbon is better considered as a source of dissolved inorganic carbon, we can appreciate its minor potential for influence. The inorganic carbon reservoir of the ocean is 63 times bigger than its organic carbon store.

Plastics carbon has little impact on atmospheric CO₂

We used an Earth system model to simulate what would happen if we added dissolved inorganic carbon to the surface ocean for 100 years. We applied it at a rate equivalent to the amount of carbon projected to leach into the ocean by the year 2040 (29 million metric tonnes per year).

This scenario likely overestimates the amount of plastics pollution. Current pollution rates are well below this level and an international treaty to limit plastic pollution is under negotiation.

We repeated the model simulation of adding plastics carbon both with strong climate warming (to see if plastics carbon might produce unexpected climate feedbacks that increase warming) and without (to see if it could alter the climate by itself). In both cases, plastics carbon only increased atmospheric CO₂ concentrations by 1 parts per million (ppm) over a century.

This is a very small increase, considering that current burning of fossil fuels is raising atmospheric CO₂ by more than 2ppm each year.

Direct emissions from burning plastic

We also examined the impact of plastics incineration. We used a scenario in which all plastic projected to be produced in the year 2050 (1.1 billion metric tonnes) would be burned and directly converted into atmospheric CO₂ for 100 years.

In this scenario, we found atmospheric CO₂ increased a little over 21ppm by the year 2100. This increase is equivalent to the impact of fewer than nine years of current fossil fuel emissions.

Relative to the current continued widespread burning of fossil fuels for energy, carbon emitted from plastic waste will not have significant direct impacts on atmospheric CO₂ levels, no matter what form it takes in the environment.

However, plastics production, as opposed to leaching or incineration, currently represents about 4.5% of total global emissions. As fossil fuel consumption is reduced in other sectors, emissions from plastics production are expected to increase in proportional footprint and absolute amount.

A legally binding plastics pollution treaty, currently under development as part of the UN’s environment programme, is an excellent opportunity to recognise the growing contribution of plastics production to climate change and to seek regulatory measures to address these emissions.

Limiting the use of incineration is another climate-friendly measure that would make a small but positive contribution to the goals of the Paris Agreement.

Of course, environmental plastics pollution has many negative impacts beyond climate effects. Our work does not diminish the importance of cleaning up plastic pollution and implementing stringent measures to prevent it. But the justification for doing so is not primarily grounded in an effort to cut emissions.