Global warming? In BC?

Never heard of it.

We’re visiting Vancouver right now. In fact we’ve arrived here after a couple of days in Kelowna, seeing family. The drive down brought us into the Fraser Valley around 4 pm on a Tuesday.

Dear God. I’m still processing the sight of thousands upon thousands of cars, in an endless crawling stream, three and four lanes wide, that flowed out of Vancouver. Most of these cars had one person in them, and the vast majority were burning gasoline and pumping pollutants and carbon waste into the atmosphere.

I was left thinking, “How can Vancouver, which claims to be a very green place, accept this kind of environmental devastation as normal?”

How is it possible that one of Canada’s richest cities lacks the kind of transit system that would move people out of slow cars and onto fast trains?

This is not rocket science. Other places have done this and have done it well. I can’t imagine visiting London or Paris and not using transit to get around, but aside from the few Skytrain lines that feels impossible in Vancouver, and even less so on the North Shore.

And, just to be clear, this is a choice made by the politicians in BC. They could have built these lines years and decades ago. As much as I disliked Gordon Campbell, the Skytrain to the airport - though grossly overpriced - is truly wonderful.

So where is all of that tax money flowing? One hint is the endless construction that tracked half of our drive to Kelowna - the Trans-Canada pipeline that carries oil from Edmonton to Burnaby. It’s being expanded dramatically as we speak.

At a time when pretty much every person understands global warming, and understands that fossil fuels are behind that damage, BC’s elected officials still refuse to take meaningful steps to reduce the burning of oil and gas. They refuse to expand fast transit options in any meaningful way, and they refuse to stop supporting projects that increase the sale and burning of oil.

It’s funny. When we moved into our new house in Nova Scotia we were concerned that we now had an oil fired furnace. In fact, we still are concerned. After living in the green paradise of Vancouver, and then in the comparatively green country that is France, it seemed terrible and backward.

Now though I realise that Vancouver never really was all that green, it’s just that it was sold that way, and those of us living here accepted that story as true.

Looking at this city with fresh eyes I am truly saddened by the extremes of the automotive culture, and by the support for the fossil fuel industries.

Ultimately, again, it all seems to come down to one dynamic: transit is seen as an expense. Money for oil pipelines is an investment. The priority in Canada is still to help rich people grow richer, and transit doesn’t do that.