Climate Accountability for Fossil Fuel Companies

Whereas communities in British Columbia face a range of impacts from climate change, including sea-level rise, increased coastal erosion, prolonged summer drought, and increased winter precipitation and communities are required to consider these impacts in infrastructure planning, construction and maintenance, as well as to mitigate the financial impacts of these costs on residents and businesses given the limits of local government revenue raising to property taxes and utilities; And whereas while the precise amount of increased costs due to the increase in work on infrastructure due to climate change is not yet quantified, local governments in British Columbia are almost certainly already paying significantly increased costs and those amounts will only increase, noting that fossil fuel companies have played a major role in the creation of climate change, making hundreds of billions of dollars in selling products which cause climate change with the twenty largest fossil fuel companies having contributedthrough their operations and productsto approximately 29.3 per cent of greenhouse gases in the global atmosphere today: Therefore be it resolved that UBCM and FCM on behalf of their member local governments write a climate accountability letter to the twenty fossil fuel companies outlining the types of costs that communities are incurring and expected to incur due to climate change, and requesting that the companies pay their fair share of those impacts.