Nature is B.C.’s Anchor for Long-Term Security
February 21, 2025
By: David Mills
B.C.’s environment anchors our long-term security. Our response to Trump shouldn’t undermine it.
In the face of the new American threat to our livelihoods, citizens across B.C are striking a defiant stance, and using their own economic power to build up our local economy. Premier David Eby is among those fighting back.
However, one of his solutions is to fast-track new resource extraction projects to serve new markets in Asia. This simply replaces one problematic dependency with another, while also undermining B.C.’s environment, the true source of our resiliency and the irreplaceable part of our identity.
If Premier Eby follows through on this plan, we’ll be weaker, more dependent on foreign governments, and in sidestepping environmental safeguards, more like Trump. The risk is that if we keep lowering the bar, British Columbians will look out across our lands and no longer see something worth fighting for. This would be a terrible trade-off.
That everyday British Columbians have the courage and capacity to counter a hostile American president should be no surprise. Over the past five years, we have learned to live with epic levels of uncertainty. We fought unprecedented fires and floods and persevered through a global pandemic. We’ve been through a lot. We can handle this too.
However, a certain class of people use economic crises as opportunities. They offer quick hits of jobs and royalties if we remove the guard rails protecting our natural wealth. Gas exporters are pushing pipeline proposals controlled by out-of-province interests. These projects would tie us to unpredictable foreign markets, degrade the land and water at the expense of First Nations, increase home heating costs for British Columbians, and sabotage our efforts to control climate change. We learned this watching TC Energy, who is still being fined for their atrocious work building the Coastal Gas Link pipeline. Any fool can run their economy to produce those outcomes. Let’s not take the bait.
The people offering advice to our government say our security depends on new market access. The truth is never that simple. If we want authentic, durable, and long-term security, let’s manufacture heat pumps and wind turbines here in British Columbia, use excessive oil and gas industry profits to fund home retrofits, and restore our forests so our communities and salmon streams get enough water each year. Did you know we actually import the cans our prized craft beer goes into instead of making them here from our own aluminum? Surely there are similar oversights like this that we can correct to create jobs, with no downside. Let’s find and fix them all.
If you ask them, most British Columbians will have no trouble telling you why our province is so amazing.
It’s our clean rivers, stunning mountains, towering forests, and awe-inspiring wildlife like wild salmon, bears, and whales. Nature is that core part of our identity, not tailings ponds, cut lines, pump stations, or barges of raw logs.
In last week’s speech from the throne, Lt. Gov. Wendy Cocchia outlined the government’s plan to defend British Columbians from the economic impacts of the U.S. presidency. We must protect ourselves from the danger that is Donald Trump and his tariffs. However, if our government’s response lowers our natural immune systems or destroys that which makes up the true fabric of B.C., what’s left might not be worth defending.
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Nature is B.C.’s Anchor for Long-Term Security
February 21, 2025
By: David Mills
B.C.’s environment anchors our long-term security. Our response to Trump shouldn’t undermine it.
In the face of the new American threat to our livelihoods, citizens across B.C are striking a defiant stance, and using their own economic power to build up our local economy. Premier David Eby is among those fighting back.
However, one of his solutions is to fast-track new resource extraction projects to serve new markets in Asia. This simply replaces one problematic dependency with another, while also undermining B.C.’s environment, the true source of our resiliency and the irreplaceable part of our identity.
If Premier Eby follows through on this plan, we’ll be weaker, more dependent on foreign governments, and in sidestepping environmental safeguards, more like Trump. The risk is that if we keep lowering the bar, British Columbians will look out across our lands and no longer see something worth fighting for. This would be a terrible trade-off.
That everyday British Columbians have the courage and capacity to counter a hostile American president should be no surprise. Over the past five years, we have learned to live with epic levels of uncertainty. We fought unprecedented fires and floods and persevered through a global pandemic. We’ve been through a lot. We can handle this too.
However, a certain class of people use economic crises as opportunities. They offer quick hits of jobs and royalties if we remove the guard rails protecting our natural wealth. Gas exporters are pushing pipeline proposals controlled by out-of-province interests. These projects would tie us to unpredictable foreign markets, degrade the land and water at the expense of First Nations, increase home heating costs for British Columbians, and sabotage our efforts to control climate change. We learned this watching TC Energy, who is still being fined for their atrocious work building the Coastal Gas Link pipeline. Any fool can run their economy to produce those outcomes. Let’s not take the bait.
The people offering advice to our government say our security depends on new market access. The truth is never that simple. If we want authentic, durable, and long-term security, let’s manufacture heat pumps and wind turbines here in British Columbia, use excessive oil and gas industry profits to fund home retrofits, and restore our forests so our communities and salmon streams get enough water each year. Did you know we actually import the cans our prized craft beer goes into instead of making them here from our own aluminum? Surely there are similar oversights like this that we can correct to create jobs, with no downside. Let’s find and fix them all.
If you ask them, most British Columbians will have no trouble telling you why our province is so amazing.
It’s our clean rivers, stunning mountains, towering forests, and awe-inspiring wildlife like wild salmon, bears, and whales. Nature is that core part of our identity, not tailings ponds, cut lines, pump stations, or barges of raw logs.
In last week’s speech from the throne, Lt. Gov. Wendy Cocchia outlined the government’s plan to defend British Columbians from the economic impacts of the U.S. presidency. We must protect ourselves from the danger that is Donald Trump and his tariffs. However, if our government’s response lowers our natural immune systems or destroys that which makes up the true fabric of B.C., what’s left might not be worth defending.
