Thank Whistler for demanding climate accountability

TAKE ACTION! Thank Whistler Mayor and Council for demanding climate accountability

Climate change is real and it is happening now. The costs of recovering from climate-related extreme weather events, damage to infrastructure, and health impacts are estimated to cost Canadian taxpayers billions of dollars every year.

In the Sea to Sky we are already preparing for the immediate impacts of climate change, such as shorter ski seasons, and preparing for droughts, flooding, increased wildfire risk, and extreme weather. Developing these plans and implementing these recommendations to help protect residents from climate harm also carries real financial costs.

BC taxpayers cannot afford to continue to pay 100% of the costs of preparing for and dealing with wildfires, flooding, drought, sea-level rise, and other impacts made worse by climate change. Fossil fuel companies have not paid their fair share – and that has to end.

In September 2018, Whistler Mayor and Council voted to send climate accountability letters to the largest twenty fossil fuel companies (like Chevron and Exxon), to demand that they pay their fair share of climate change related costs facing BC communities.

However, Canadian oil and gas companies and their supporters have started to attack municipalities for sending climate accountability letters, claiming that emissions come from consumption of fossil fuels, pointing the finger at Whistler as hypocritical due to its reliance on tourism, and denying any responsibility for their products. Never mind that big oil and gas have known for decades that their products cause climate change, funded misinformation campaigns, lobbied governments to prevent climate action, and suppressed technology that could have allowed society to reduce its emissions earlier.

Please take a moment to write to Whistler Mayor and Council to show your support for their leadership in demanding climate accountability, and for ensuring that taxpayers are not left to pay 100% of the costs of climate change.

You can send a letter using the sample text provided, but please take a moment to personalize it - personal letters are much more powerful.

Example talking points:

• How is climate change impacting you? How is it affecting your community?
• Your concerns about how your community will deal with the current and coming impacts of climate change. Talk about the particular climate impacts (such as wildfires or flooding) that face your community and that you worry about.
• The injustice of taxpayers alone bearing the costs of climate change, while the companies that made billions of dollars selling the products that cause climate change pocket the profits.
• The fossil fuel industry has known since the 1960s that their products cause climate change, but funded misinformation campaigns, lobbied against climate action and sat on renewable energy patents, delaying the development of cleaner technology.
• As long as fossil fuel companies believe that they will not pay any of the costs of climate change, they have no financial incentive to start making the major changes that are needed in the energy business to solve the climate crisis.
• The recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns us that we have 12 years to avoid climate catastrophe. Scientists have made an urgent call to limit global warming to 1.5°C that will require “rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society."

This campaign is being coordinated in partnership with West Coast Environmental Law and local citizens groups throughout British Columbia. Sixteen communities across BC have sent climate accountability letters and momentum is building.

Click here for more information about the climate accountability campaign.