Canada is drifting toward petrostate politics, even in B.C.

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Tzeporah Berman, who has been advising governments on environmental and climate policy for over 30 years, is the founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Treaty and the co-founder of Stand.earth.

As conflict disrupts global oil supply, a familiar pattern is re-emerging: price spikes, economic instability and governments scrambling to respond. Even in oil-producing countries such as Canada, the benefits are far less straightforward than they appear.

Higher prices boost profits for oil and gas companies, but they also drive inflation, increase public costs, and expose households to rising living expenses. The result is a system where gains are concentrated, and where risks, especially climate risks, are widely shared. This is not economic or energy security. It is structural vulnerability.

And yet, in the middle of this instability, our governments are not retreating from fossil fuels. They are doubling down.

For years, I studied the influence of fossil fuel interests on political systems. I read about “petrostates,” countries where oil and gas wealth distorts decision-making, concentrates power and overrides long-term public interest.

It has been striking to watch these dynamics take hold in Canada, and especially where I live in British Columbia, in real time.

Globally, the fossil fuel industry is one of the most profitable industries in history. Analysis of World Bank data shows us that the oil and gas sector earned an estimated $2.8-billion in profits per day, every day, for the last 50 years.

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That level of wealth translates into extraordinary political influence. And that influence is increasingly visible in policy decisions that contradict both climate commitments and economic evidence.

Nowhere is this more evident these days than in British Columbia.

Under the B.C. NDP, a government many viewed as progressive and committed to climate action, fracking and liquefied natural gas (LNG) development have expanded significantly, running roughshod over Indigenous rights and reducing access to health care as physicians flee rural communities to escape the local health impacts.

Fracked methane gas production in the province has nearly doubled over the past decade, rising from 3.7-billion cubic feet per day in 2013 to 6.7-billion cubic feet per day in 2023, according to the Canada Energy Regulator.

B.C. has been failing to cut climate pollution. Now, the increasing production of fracked gas and LNG will put legislated climate targets far out of sight.

In March, the province eliminated the Climate Action Secretariat, one of the institutions intended to ensure accountability for those targets. Indeed, according to one report some of its former staff have been moved into a department tasked with advancing LNG production.

These are not the decisions of a jurisdiction unaware of the climate crisis. British Columbia has experienced extreme wildfires, flooding and heat events that have killed hundreds of people. Its political leadership, one assumes, understands the science.

And yet, fossil fuel expansion continues.

At the federal level, similar dynamics are evident. Recently, Ottawa offered to cover fees estimated at $1-billion for Equinor to revive offshore oil development in Bay du Nord. That would be a billion dollars to a Norwegian company to help them make huge profits off extremely risky oil development in a sensitive marine environment.

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This is public money being used to reduce financial risk for one of the world’s largest oil companies, in an industry that is already extraordinarily profitable.

What is most striking is not only the policy direction, but how it is being justified.

Leaders who understand the need to reduce emissions increasingly describe fossil fuel expansion as “necessary” or “pragmatic,” framed as a response to economic pressures rather than a political choice.

This is how petrostate dynamics take hold – not through sudden shifts, but through gradual normalization. Decisions that once would have been contested become accepted. Public support for fossil fuel expansion is reframed as economic responsibility. This is how, in petrostates, oil and gas slowly poison our politics.

But the economic case for continued expansion is increasingly weak.

Renewable energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels in most markets. According to the International Renewable Energy Agency, more than 90 per cent of new renewable projects globally are more cost-effective than fossil fuel alternatives. Clean energy investment is also creating significantly more employment, with estimates from the United Nations showing that renewable energy generates roughly three times more jobs per dollar than fossil fuels.

At the same time, fossil fuel dependence exposes economies to precisely the volatility we are now witnessing: price shocks, supply disruptions and geopolitical risk.

For decades, climate policy has focused on reducing demand for fossil fuels, on the assumption that supply would follow. In practice, supply has continued to expand, supported by subsidies, infrastructure investments and political influence.

In fact, oil-industry executives were quoted this year acknowledging that supply is now driving demand. The system is now sustaining itself, ensuring continued dependency despite the affordability of alternatives and the climate, human health and economic risks.

What is now becoming clear is that reducing demand alone will not be sufficient. Managing the decline of fossil fuel supply must be part of the transition. We need to cut, as economists would say, with both sides of the scissors.

There are early signs that a recognition of this fact is beginning to take hold. At COP30, a group of countries supported the development of roadmaps to transition away from fossil fuels. This month, governments will meet in Santa Marta, Colombia, for the first international diplomatic conference dedicated specifically to planning that transition.

A growing number of countries are also exploring the idea of a Fossil Fuel Treaty, a framework for coordinating a fair and managed phase-out of fossil fuel production.

These initiatives remain at an early stage. But they reflect an important shift: an acknowledgement that the problem is not only emissions, but the continued expansion of fossil fuel production itself.

Canada now faces a choice.

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We can continue to expand fossil fuel production, subsidize the industry, and justify those decisions as economic necessity, even as the system becomes more volatile, more expensive and more dangerous.

Or we can begin to govern its decline.

The path we choose will have real effects. Every increase in fossil fuel production locks in more air pollution, more warming, more fires, more floods and more extreme weather. Air pollution from fossil fuel combustion has been linked to one in seven premature deaths in Canada, and one in five globally. Climate-related disasters are now costing the global economy an estimated $16-million an hour, and extreme heat alone is contributing to the death of one person every minute, according to recent global health and climate analyses, including those from the World Health Organization and climate risk researchers.

This is what delay looks like.

The transition away from fossil fuels will not happen safely on its own. If it is managed, we have the opportunity to build a cleaner world that leaves no worker or community behind. Left unmanaged, it will be chaotic, driven by crisis, disruption and escalating human cost. And let’s be clear: Oil and gas companies are not going to manage their own decline.

Governments have a responsibility to do what markets and short-term politics will not: to keep us safe, to plan, regulate and co-ordinate a fast, fair and orderly phase out of fossil fuels.

That is the real choice in front of us. Not whether the transition happens, but whether we shape it – or allow it to be shaped by disaster.