This report makes the case for why the City of Surrey should look at legal options to recover some of its climate costs from major fossil fuel companies that contribute to climate change. West Coast Environmental Law prepared the report at the request of the City of Surrey, using publicly available information about current and future climate costs. By examining Surrey's climate costs resulting from sea level rise, flooding, extreme heat, fire risk and inadequate tree canopy, it shows how climate change upends all the assumptions on which our communities were built, leaving governments facing expensive upgrades and unknown risks.
The findings raise questions for residents of Surrey about how much the City needs to pay to keep residents safe, and whether those costs will be borne entirely by taxpayers. Surrey is not alone in facing these costs. Residents of all other BC communities should be asking similar questions of their own local governments, as well as the federal and provincial governments. Climate change is in many ways a financial crisis, one that is already downloading massive costs onto taxpayers so that a relatively small number of fossil fuel companies and their investors can continue to make enormous profits.