The final numbers are not in yet, but climate change scientists have already issued their verdict: 2023 will be the warmest year in recorded history.
It comes as global mean temperature for the first 11 months hit the highest level on record with 1.46 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average. Experts are also predicting that 2024 will be even hotter.
British Columbians, of course, could feel the effects of climate change first hand in 2023. While B.C. did not experience a deadly heat dome as in 2021, record-breaking wildfires scorched large parts of the Cariboo and the northeast, further cutting into the supply of timber.
Worse, these fires destroyed hundreds of homes and forced tens of thousands to temporarily flee communities both large and small.
Blessed with some of the largest Canadian glaciers and rivers flowing through its territory, B.C. also experienced months of widespread drought and bouts of division as users competed over an increasingly scarce good, a once unimaginable prospect.
B.C. Green Party Leader Sonia Furstenau speaks to media ahead of the throne speech at the legislature in Victoria, B.C., on Monday, February 6, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito
On the surface, these conditions should have given further credence to the warnings and solutions coming from the BC Green Party. But the party — which celebrated its 40th anniversary this year — finds itself lagging in the polls heading into an election year.
While the party won 15 per cent of the vote in 2020, an Abacus Data poll released in early December gives the party nine per cent, confirming earlier surveys. The party also endured some controversy toward the end of the fall session when BC Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau fired deputy leader Sanjiv Gandhi for liking tweets referencing a notorious, genocidal Nazi doctor.
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By contrast, the other party in the legislature with just two seats, but on the opposite end of the spectrum is the Conservative Party of BC. It is surging, not just in the polls, but also in terms of messaging.
These facts are not lost on BC Green leader Sonia Furstenau.
“I would say that 2023 not only delivered again some of the most devastating impacts of climate change, including the record-breaking wildfires (and) the absolutely devastating droughts on Vancouver Island and across B.C, but B.C. also delivered a level of climate change denial in the B.C. legislature that I don’t think we have seen for decades.”
Only BC Greens, she added, “are taking climate change seriously.”
But if the party is as essential as Furstenau makes it out to be, why aren’t more British Columbians responding to the message?
“It comes back to the moment we are in, where people are feeling very insecure and they are feeling very frustrated and disappointed with their governments, whether that is provincial or federal. There are political parties that are offering very, very simple answers to very complex problems.”
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Looking at the bigger picture, Furstenau said “what people are feeling very legitimate.”
“A lot of people are working hard, they are doing everything they are supposed to be doing and they can’t make basic ends meet,” she said. “(That) sense of unfairness is growing into anger and resentment and that is being tapped into by political parties like the federal Conservatives and the B.C. Conservatives.”
Furstenau said “the solutions being offered won’t solve the unfairness,” which itself is rooted in “something much bigger,” namely “growing inequality” as governments in Canada and around the world have failed to protect the interests and well-being of their citizens from “unfettered profit-taking and greed.”
Case in point, according to Furstenau, is the recent run of housing laws. They leave it up to the market to solve the housing problem created by the market in the first place, she said, adding that government withheld crucial evidence from MLAs and by extension the public, when it waited to release the economic models behind two key pieces of legislation until after passage.
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Looking ahead to 2024, Furstenau said British Columbians will see the parties present their visions and solutions. “Our solutions will be rooted in evidence and in reality and our vision…is about ensuring that people in B.C. have the conditions to thrive, that they can count on government delivering the basic services, that they should be delivering, which they currently cannot count on, especially when you look at health care and the social safety.”
Furstenau added that BC Greens “have been consistently under-estimated” and have “consistently defied” expectations.
“When we look at specific areas of the province, which is where we will focus on in our election campaign, we have some very strong candidates in very winnable ridings and the goal is that we are going increase the number of BC Green voices in the legislature in 2024,” she said.
But that task won’t necessarily be easy, considering that 72 ridings including both Green ridings have undergone boundary changes, with Furstenau’s changing more significantly than Adam Olsen’s.
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“Stay tuned,” Furstenau said, when asked from where she takes the confidence of keeping her seat under the new boundaries.
“We are looking at all of this information and we are focusing on, ‘how do we succeed in the next election?’ For me, success is very importantly measured, not just by the number of seats, but I am absolutely committed to us increasing our number of seats, but it is also the foundational strength and capacity of the BC Green Party.”
“I’m very hopeful and excited that the party will demonstrate a whole new level of strength in 2024.”
@wolfgangdepner
wolfgang.depner@blackpress.ca
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