It was over five years ago now when 100,000 people marched through downtown Vancouver inspired by then 16-year-old Greta Thunberg’s global climate strike. On the eve of 2019’s federal election, “climate change” was the third-most important voting issue in the country, a hair behind “affordability and cost of living,” according to an Ipsos poll that year.
Times certainly have changed.
But less top-of-mind does not mean less important to British Columbians. And attacks on climate action will cost politicians who miss the forest for the trees, while effective, tangible solutions will pay political dividends.
So finds a post-mortem analysis conducted by two Canadian political scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in consultation with Clean Energy Canada. In short, while climate change and energy did not take centre stage during last October’s provincial election, all else being equal, British Columbians prefer parties and politicians who take the issue seriously.
More specifically, the average B.C. voter across the political spectrum supports doubling renewable energy, expanding household electrification, keeping the industrial carbon tax and using LNG revenue for clean energy.
By contrast, the much-talked-about consumer carbon tax was not a major issue, and the survey found evidence that downplaying climate change significantly repelled most B.C. voters.
Futurist Alex Steffen provides a helpful lens through which to view this phenomenon: climate, he says, is not an issue but an era. Occasionally acute but fundamentally chronic. And irreversibly baked into the major issues of our time: affordability, economic opportunity, energy, security, health care, political identity. Climate change runs through it all.
When understood this way, two takeaways emerge: climate action will always be important to people, even when it feels less salient, and the way in which we navigate this climate era will often be through other political issues and even the very purchases and decisions we make at a household level.
Which is why it was good news the province held the line on its incentive programs for EVs and heat pumps in Budget 2025 earlier this week. It’s a move that certainly has support. In a survey of 1,500 Metro Vancouverites that Clean Energy Canada recently undertook with Abacus Data, due for public release this spring, 80 per cent of respondents agree that “governments should help make clean technologies more accessible through incentives, such as rebates, zero-interest loans, or investments in public EV charging.”
Indeed, more than half of Metro Vancouverites say they are personally motivated to lower their carbon footprint. At the same time, roughly three quarters of those under the age of 44 — who tend to be even more motivated — agree that young people face systemic barriers around accessing and adopting clean technologies “much in the same way it is often said that younger generations face systemic barriers in the housing market.”
Unfortunately, they’re not wrong. While once Canada’s EV adoption leader, B.C. now trails Quebec with sales that are flatlining at a time when Canada as a whole saw 44 per cent EV sales growth in 2024. S&P Global’s most recent analysis attributes B.C.’s sharp shift to “a change in incentives.”
Roughly two years ago, B.C. introduced an income cutoff for its full EV incentive that is now below the average income of full-time workers in the province between the ages of 25 and 54. In short, many retirees qualify, but middle-class working parents struggling to buy their first townhouse often do not. This is even more disharmonious than it sounds, given that nearly four in five British Columbians under 44 are inclined to buy an EV as their next car.
Yes, it is good news B.C.’s rebate will remain in place, but an update is in order.
British Columbians care deeply about climate change, even when it isn’t top of mind, and politicians forget that at their peril. As for those who would do the opposite—and empower their most eager citizens—they will find they have tapped into a reservoir of deep support.
This post first appeared in Business in Vancouver.
