Liquefied Climate Disaster

LNG IS A CLIMATE DISASTER

Peer-reviewed research shows that LNG’s climate pollution is as bad as or worse than coal. Natural gas is not a ‘transition fuel.’ That is a wrong understanding. BC’s fracked gas is the world’s sixth-largest carbon bomb, whose detonation will only make the climate crisis worse. An oil industry lobbyist disagreed. Fracked gas is primarily methane, which traps 105 times more heat than CO2 over its 10-year life-span. It leaks all along the supply chain, from fracking to liquefaction, transporting, shipping, regasification, and combustion, at a rate that may be 50-90% higher than the official reported figures. When LNG is shipped by tanker, its climate pollution is around 7.5 tonnes of CO2e per tonne of LNG. BC’s 8 proposed projects will export 50.6 MT of LNG, so they will produce 380 MT of climate pollution a year, six times more than BC’s current 62 MT a year. Our need is to reduce our climate pollution, not to increase it.

BC’s CLIMATE POLLUTION WILL RISE

B.C.’s legislated goal is to reduce our province’s climate pollution by 21 MT by 2030. If all of the LNG projects go ahead, however, our emissions will rise by 13 MT. We will fail on a key government commitment.

CLIMATE DISASTERS ARE COSTLY

Our use of fossil fuels is creating a blanket of pollution that is overheating the Earth. There is full scientific consensus on this. It’s causing extreme forest fires, heat waves, crop losses, and floods. In 2021, extreme weather cost B.C.’s economy $17 billion in lost income for workers, lost productivity, and impacts on communities. In 2023, global records were broken for climate pollution, surface temperatures, ocean heat, ocean acidification, sea level rise, Antarctic sea ice cover, floods, and glacier retreat. Climate scientists worry about tipping points that will make things irrevocably worse. Over the past 20 years, extreme weather events have cost the world $2.8 trillion. By 2050, the damage could be $1.7 to $3.1 trillion a year. We must stop burying our heads in the sand, hoping this will all go away.