Your List of Demands, Please
Posted: October 7th, 2008 | Author: James Glave | Filed under: Almost Green, Habits, New Bill of Rights, top, Transformational Change | 13 Comments »I’m working on a presentation for Interesting Vancouver that I’m loosely calling the New Bill of Rights. In case you haven’t heard, we’re in a bit of a pickle, and while we each bring our own personal-life baggage to this perilous moment in history —ie, challenging legacy decisions regarding housing, vehicles, and so on — the time has come for bold thinking and big moves. The time has come to sweep away fear — of social backlash, of deep bright-green change — and turn up the volume. The time has come to hit the fast-forward button and demand our leaders use whatever means necessary to put the pieces of a better world in place.
We’re half-way there. I sense a rising chorus of individual voices out there who are literally crying out and scraping and scratching and clawing towards a bright-green society. They’re doing it one household at a time with more deliberate behaviors and more conscious purchasing decisions, or perhaps they are reaching over the back fence and dabbling in neighborhood-scale organizing — a process I call culdesactivism.
What this collective longing needs is a unified set of goals and principals, a list of things that are entirely within the realm of possible but kept at bay by the larger challenges of market subsidies and public policies engineered to preserve the brown status quo. We need to not think of this as a “wish list” but rather as a set of entitlements for the greater public good. We need to demand that greener choices exist, and that they come without premiums of price and life force. We need bold leadership to pour resources into these, to help avert catastrophe. Here are a couple to get you started:
1. I Have the Right to Efficient, Comfortable Public Transit. Here’s one of 206 new next-generation trams just rolling out in Berlin. It’s made by Bombardier, a Canadian company. There’s nothing like this in our cities. (Photo: IsarSteve.)
2. I Have the Right to Know What it Really Costs.This is the Pharos Lens, a project of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council. The lens is a concept hang-tag that would live at retail and convey to consumers, at a glace, a product’s various impacts. It’s a pilot program, and so far limited to the building-materials market, but there’s no reason we shouldn’t see this sort of thing on a package of pasta, or a pair of jeans. Food products come with a “nutrition label” for reasons of public health. It’s time we start thinking bigger to have the tools we need to make more informed snap decisions in the marketplace.
Now, what are YOUR demands? What would be in your New Bill of Rights? What is it time to stop pining for and simply demand with one loud voice? Perhaps if enough of us dive in, this might evolve into a kind of a petition to our leaders. Jump in the pool via the comments box, below.
I’d like to see HOAs remove the ban on clotheslines. Seriously, you’d be amazed at how many of them carry this clause.
I second the call for efficient–and inexpensive–transportation. I’d even forgo comfortable if only I could reliably get to work in Burnaby in less than 3 hours each direction. The more time I spend in Europe, the more angry I get at the lack of will to introduce better transit options to North America. In Paris this past summer, we lived in the home of a family that has not owned a car in 20 years–they just don’t have the need.
On Bowen Island, where I live, I will be voting for the candidate who shows the greatest commitment to improving transit options on the island. It is my bugbear at the moment.
I want more sidewalk space and roads/byways where cyclists can be free of their fear of cars!
There’s a rail line from the Scott Road Skytrain station to Abbotsford and Chilliwack. Why aren’t there regular commuter trains on this line?
I want the right to sit down when riding transit. Why is efficiency prioritized over comfort and safety. Efficiency, aka sardine packing, is a disincentive to use transit versus driving, event a SMART car is more roomy than a B-Line or Sky train at 2 in the afternoon let alone rush hour.
And how about the right to beautiful and well designed public spaces on these public resources. If we’re putting trains underground these are great galleries for our artists and musicians. Let them play where the people are. And I want the right to well designed and uplifting stations above ground. It’s not a waste of public money as some might say but a public asset and opportunity for our world class architects to design something world class here at home. Countless studies show people also tend to behave more civilized and respectful in well designed, functional and attractive public spaces.
Hear, hear, Brett. The aspect of “beauty” is important to underscore. It is a prerequisite of the Living Building Challenge, another Cascadia project. To wit:
Prerequisite 15: Beauty and Spirit
“The project must contain design features intended solely for human delight and the celebration of culture, spirit and place appropriate to the function of the building.”
I demand that my great-grandchildren will get to taste seafood, which means I demand that world governments get much more serious about fishery depletion and the need to limit catches and protect marine habitats. Also demand they don’t die from mercury poisoning.
i want the right to a small, healthy, super energy efficient home that can be easily powered by the sun, passively (heating and cooling) and actively (solar electric and hot water) using right now state of the shelf technology.
i want my yard and the public landscape to provide people with an abundance of fruits, nuts, and vegetables.
i want to be able to walk or bike to get most of my daily needs/desires met.
i want to spend time with my neighbors, garden, pursue hobbies and interests.
i want a 25-30 hour work week with good green collar employment and a living wage for all who desire it.
i want urban spaces that connect easily to deeper layers of nature.
i want health care for all (i live in california).
and that’s just for starters
let’s hear more!
I want the rest of the world to enjoy the freedom from fear and abundance of food that we take for granted on our little island.
I want the rest of the world to have affordable health care when they need it.
That’s just for starters…
I’m a tech guy and love technology. But I’m eternally disappointed at the throw-away nature of technology. I’d demand companies create technology that can a) easily be greened aka be recycled properly b) fit standards – like so this year’s power plug for my cell phone fits next year’s model (even within the same brand would be a step up) c) power ratings on equipment that show real impact – like “this fancy HDTV burns through the equivalent of 10 barrels of oil a year” and lastly, fund research that determines once and for all whether all the radiation caused by wifi, cell phones, satellite and GPS really causes brain cancer, warts and deformed children!!
I think locals of anywhere are entitled to have clean water and air, and access to nature, ie what we need for healthy life. So- to protect the natural world AND create sustainable communities.
And I think that future people are entitled to this too – our descendants and others. Here and in rest of world, so we can’t just export our problems.
And I think nature is entitled to exist here too.
Currently corporate rights appear poised to trump all of the above here on Bowen Island. As a neighbour pointed out in the local paper the other week, the only rights that appear to be non-negotiable re the proposed big-for-us Cape Roger Curtis development are the rights of the proponents to their profit projections. But we’ll see what the community has to say -
Stop the world’s population growing.
It is the single most important change we can effect by many order’s of magnitude.
The developed world must lead. The USA top of the list. It’s population will double in 70 years and it’s population uses massively disproportionately more resources.
Stop global warming? Stop population growth.
Stop famine? Stop population growth.
Stop disease? Stop population growth.
Conserve our resources? Stop population growth.
Protect flora and fauna? Stop population growth.
Keep property prices affordable? Stop population growth.
Space to sit on transit? Stop population growth.
It is simple but far from easy.
I had written a long declaration about demanding the right to know details of food production, a need for an affordable 4-seater electric car and the demise of the styrofoam tray in meat packaging and then it occurred to me – what I really and truly want more than anything else, and what think I deserve, is that everyone – people, companies, government – treat me the way that I treat them.
Am I demanding?….yeh, *sigh*, guess I am…