Parts of British Columbia are warming at twice the global rate; local salmon streams may soon be too hot to sustain spawns; and governments at all levels are not doing enough to halt climate change, according to the David Suzuki Foundation. With the organization located on West 4th Avenue in the idyllic riding of Vancouver Quadra, Suzuki’s message has seeped into the electoral district’s stately heritage homes over the past four decades. And if there’s one thing all four Vancouver Quadra by-election candidates can agree on, it’s that when they’re out knocking on doors, the environment is the number-one issue for voters.

With stakes so high, this March 17 by-election should sizzle. But so far it’s a snoozer. Since Liberal Stephen Owen quit almost seven months ago, in July of 2007, an empty seat has dogged the riding. A federal election looms, so none of the parties has released a platform, and with voting day less than a month away, there have yet to be any all-candidates meetings.

To Donald Gordon, founder of the Kitsilano-based Voters Taking Action for Climate Change, this by-election is a real opportunity. The riding’s affluence means folks can “look beyond their own back yards” and vote globally. Gordon sees this vote as a preview of the upcoming federal election, but he said that in terms of the environment, the messages couldn’t be more convoluted.

“A couple of years ago, a candidate could have told a voter anything [about climate change], and 99 percent would have shrugged and said ‘Okay,’ ” he told the Straight in a phone interview. “People are so much more informed now. But unless you sit down with each candidate for several hours and figure out their platform and decide what approach will be best five years from now, well, your average mortal can’t do that.”

He noted that the messages coming out of the candidates’ mouths have been so tightly scripted that it’s hard to know what they believe as individuals. “In Ottawa, a small number of people come up with sound bites that are the least objectionable and the most fuzzy,” he said. “People need more information. Is this person going to hole up behind what their party platforms are, or will they push for something more? Are they a leader or a follower?”

Three candidates are working hard to brand themselves as the true green choice: the Liberals’ Joyce Murray, the NDP’s Rebecca Coad, and the Green party’s Dan Grice. (Previously, the riding has always elected either a Liberal or a Conservative, and never a woman.) Murray was the Liberal MLA for New Westminster from 2001 to 2005 and minister of water, land and air protection for the first three years of that term. She last ran federally in 2006 as a candidate for the new riding of New Westminster–Coquitlam, but lost to the NDP’s Dawn Black.

Although Murray’s master’s thesis was on forest carbon sequestration, Coad tore into her political environmental record in a February 9 statement on her Web site. In her comments, she said Murray “was the minister responsible when the government ended the moratorium on fish-farming, ended the moratorium on hunting grizzly bears, and rejected the Kyoto Accord.”

Robert Kraljii, Murray’s communications manager, told the Straight that Coad’s statement was “so full of inaccuracies we’re not responding to it.” Murray was indeed in cabinet when the moratoriums were lifted (grizzly hunting in July of 2001, and fish-farming in September of 2002, according to the B.C. government Web site) and when premier Gordon Campbell expressed his concerns about Kyoto implementation to then–prime minister Jean Chrétien (October of 2002).

None of this particularly helps voters decide who will best safeguard the planet. So for Voters Taking Action, this by-election is a chance to prod candidates to spill their green guts. On March 6, the group plans to hold an all-candidates meeting. See vtacc.org/ for time and location.