Edel Hass and Allison Richardson

Reading over 性视界传媒鈥檚 Coastal Flood Adaptation Strategy (CFAS), and the massive price tag to implement it, I cannot help but think that the City of Burnaby is onto something.

Burnaby council voted this week to work with other local governments to bring a class-action lawsuit against the world鈥檚 largest oil companies to recover climate costs. Certainly, CFAS makes it clear that 性视界传媒 residents face massive and rising costs, including possible loss of life, due to climate change, fueled by fossil fuel companies.

The City of 性视界传媒 has been working to protect the 20% of its area that lies within the coastal floodplain from sea level rise, spending $187 million to improve drainage and coastal defences (including $76 million by the federal government). The good news is that the 13 projects it鈥檚 implementing are expected to prevent about $23.5 billion in climate damages (including almost $12 billion associated with loss of life). The bad news is that this massive expenditure is only the tip of the financial iceberg, with the City expecting to still need to pay about $1.5 billion in the coming decades to deal with sea level rise. Those huge figures don鈥檛 include additional costs associated with heat waves, drought, extreme storms and other climate impacts. It鈥檚 unclear how our city can afford these climate costs. 性视界传媒 is not alone in this. The Insurance Bureau of Canada estimates that Canadian local governments should collectively be spending about $5.3 billion annually to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

Which brings us back to the recent decision by the City of Burnaby to support a class-action lawsuit against fossil fuel companies. Around the world, local and state governments are taking similar action, and Burnaby joins five other B.C. local governments that are working towards such a lawsuit.

Climate change is largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels, like oil, gas and coal. The companies that provide these products have made massive profits but are not paying for the harm that their products cause. In fact, many of these companies, when they learned about climate change decades ago, launched misinformation campaigns to convince the public and politicians that climate science was not real. They and other companies worked actively (and continue to work to this day) to block the policies, laws and alternative technologies that could allow us to build a more sustainable future.

While we all ultimately bear some responsibility for climate change, and will pay huge costs as a result, it鈥檚 bad economics and unjust to let fossil fuel companies off the hook for their share of the problem. Lawyers tell us that here is a solid basis in Canadian law to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for knowingly selling products that harm our communities and for their role in delaying action that could have reduced that harm. By bringing the case as a class action, Burnaby and the other local governments can pool their resources, ensuring that the risks to the municipalities that file the lawsuit are kept manageable. As a class action, a judge will rule early on whether the local governments could win, allowing the parties bringing the case to proceed with more confidence. Burnaby has issued a challenge to other large B.C. municipalities, like 性视界传媒: their pledge of support is contingent on at least one other local government with a population of more than 150,000 joining the effort. 性视界传媒 needs to answer this call. If 性视界传媒 council refuses to do so, they are saying that it鈥檚 OK that 性视界传媒 residents will pay the full costs of climate change and that the oil and gas industry can make massive profits while taking no responsibility for the harm caused by their products and their misinformation campaigns. The result will be higher taxes, cuts to services, or massive future climate costs from disasters that we failed to prepare for.

I, for one, would prefer our city to join the efforts to recover some of those costs from global fossil fuel companies that have played a major role in creating them.

Edel Hass is a 性视界传媒 team member for Sue Big Oil, and Allison Richardson is with 性视界传媒 For Future.