B.C. splashed onto the global climate scene in 2008 when then-premier Gordon Campbell introduced North America’s first economy-wide carbon tax, enacted stringent vehicle emission standards, introduced a low-carbon fuels regulation and required the provincial government (including schools, hospitals and Crown agencies) to be carbon neutral by 2010.

A decade later, premier John Horgan brought in a CleanBC plan that not only strengthened many of the previous government’s climate policies, but introduced a suite of new measures, including a more ambitious emissions reduction target set in law, an EV availability standard and new rules to reduce oil and gas emissions.

Seventeen years on and the evidence is clear: B.C. has moved the needle on emissions. While the province’s population has grown 25 per cent over this period, carbon emissions between 2008 and 2023 are down almost five per cent — or nearly seven per cent if you measure from 2018, when CleanBC was announced. Put another way, real GDP grew by 41 per cent (compared to a national average of 27 per cent) while the economy’s net greenhouse gas emission intensity........

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