For a document meant to chart our future, British Columbia’s new economic strategy, Look West, clings to the past by expanding liquefied natural gas development.

Parts of Look West could have been written by a fossil fuel lobbyist. The strategy proudly states, “B.C. is currently ramping up LNG production. By the end of this decade, the proposed projects could add another 28.5 million tonnes of LNG per year and increase exports by adding 19.4 million tonnes per year.”

LNG is mentioned 27 times in the 50-page strategy, while “climate” appears only four times—and one mention is merely about “leveraging our colder climate” to explain a minor advantage that comes from putting LNG terminals in northern latitudes: it takes enormous energy to compress and cool fracked gas to -162 C.

Under the strategy, new wind projects would generate clean electricity to power LNG terminals and greenwash our fossil exports in a world with an overdrawn carbon budget.

The message is unmistakable: B.C. intends to exploit one of the world’s biggest carbon bombs, the Montney gas fields, and become a much bigger fossil-fuel exporter for decades.

A risky bet that ignores global trends

Canada’s LNG exports are already massive, through projects like LNG Canada, Woodfibre LNG (now partway through construction) and Cedar LNG (which receives federal........

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