Great news for a change: British Columbia Premier Christy Clark has renewed her government’s commitment to climate leadership and strengthening the province’s clean economy.
A notice from Clark appears after the jump below. In it, she reaffirms B.C.’s commitment to its carbon tax, and also the Western Climate Initiative — a critical regional cap-and-trade agreement scheduled to begin in early 2012. Both provide critical policy signals to investors that the province is serious about a clean-energy economy. Clark also states that she is open to the idea of possibly using future carbon tax proceeds to fund public transit. (Hey, now we’re talking!)
About a year ago, a dozen or so friends and I came together and formed a group called TRUE GREEN: Solutions for Bowen. To quote the mission statement, we’re…
…a grassroots community organization that advocates for a range of progressive social, economic, and ecological local-government policies and actions to create a more balanced, inclusive, and resilient community.
Bowen Island is grappling with some serious growth and change issues, against a backdrop of mounting challenges such as peak oil, demographic shifts, housing costs, and climate change. We are particularly vulnerable to these tectonic shifts, and struggling mightily with them. This is a special place, distinct from the city that is getting closer all the time. For many, the only response to unavoidable change is to keep it at bay as long as possible, by restricting growth and by effectively raising the drawbridge to newcomers. There is a deeply-grained sentiment that if we are to preserve and protect this jewel, we must keep the people away.
Last October, Canadian Geographic magazine published an investigative feature of mine on the emerging alliance between the green-building movement and the heritage-conservation community. During the reporting and research I uncovered a really interesting story of two different, but often complementary, groups with a shared passion for the built environment.
Unfortunately, the magazine does not release its content online. After several friends asked after the piece, I’ve created a .PDF of the article and published it here. If you missed it the first time, I hope you get a chance to check it out. Photography in the story is by Marina Dodis. As always, let me know what you think in the comments below. Thanks.
Under One Roof [.PDF, 1.8MB], Canadian Geographic, October 2009.
For about a year and a half, Vancouver’s regional government has been running a pretty innovative initiative to discourage bottled-water consumption. Here’s a deliciously subversive decal from the tap water campaign that I spied on the back of one of Metro Vancouver’s trucks this morning.
The large type reads “Tap Water. Drink it.” and the secondary copy says “World Class Water: Mountain Fresh and Pure.” Here’s to truth in advertising.
Now, I haven’t yet seen this on a billboard anywhere; Metro would have a hard time coughing up the cash for an outdoor campaign. But how great would that be, if the kind of money that Pepsi and Coke pumped into Dasani and Aquifina, instead sold some of the finest water on earth, the stuff that’s piped straight to your house? Does anyone else out there know of a local government that is actively marketing its water like this?
Last summer, Metro Vancouver also partnered with Pacific Cinematheque’s Summer Visions Film Institute for Youth to produce a series of public service announcements about drinking tap water. They’re all pretty good, but here’s my favorite of the bunch:
Metro has been working on other programs as well. During the Olympics, Metro parked a Kewl Earth Water Wagon outside the Main Library downtown, and offered refills of fresh tap water to visitors and residents. According to corporate communications division manager David Hocking, some 4,700 people took the “tap water pledge” during the two weeks of the games, compared to 3,700 who did so during previous 17 months.
The regional government also developed a program with the new Fairmont Pacific Rim hotel. The property offers co-branded reusable Metro Vancouver water bottles for sale in guest rooms, for visitors who would prefer not to use the one-off bottles in the mini-bar when they head out on daytrips into the city.
This is all classic community-based social marketing. Metro isn’t trying to educate residents or drown them in brochures or make them feel bad—it’s working to build new social norms. How is it going? In 2008, as part of its Zero Waste Challenge, Metro set a goal to reduce the sale of bottled water in the region by 20 percent by the end of this year. Hocking says they’ll do a survey at the end of the year to find out how they did. I’ll let you know when he does.
The Town that Food Saved (Rodale, $25) is among the most engaging, thoughtful, and manure-stained-honest appraisals of local agriculture and edibles since Michael Pollan rocketed to cult fame with a seven-word manifesto about plants.
The town in question is an otherwise unremarkable little dogpath called Hardwick, Vermont, which popped up on the national foodie scope a few years back after author Ben Hewitt wrote a magazine piece about its happy convergence of iconoclastic producers, food-related non-profits, cafes, doers, and dreamers. The New York Times followed suit, as did assorted other buzz-makers.
Why the fuss? It turns out that Hardwick hosts a wide range of innovative agricultural businesses and thinktanks, a semi-cohesive spontaneous community of “agrepreneurs.” The mix includes salt-of-the-earth farmers, publicity-hungry eNGO executive directors, and values-driven business people who are accomplishing a great deal with minimal fuss. While many small-town Americans still get groceries from Buy N’ Large, Hardwick has cooked up an almost-sustainable honest-to-god local food system of CSAs, co-ops, value-added geniuses, and everything in between.
You characterize yourself as “a very mediocre economist.” How does a mediocre economist win the Nobel Peace Prize?
I was just one of hundreds who shared the prize for our collective work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I understand people and policy, and people and delusion, but I’m not a topnotch academic.
You understand delusion—what do you mean?
North America-wide polls reveal that most people think they are green consumers. There are so many books telling you how you can change your life and be green, but really the only way we can get there is by having laws and rules that prevent us from producing or emitting carbon.
Will carbon offsets help?
Quality research consistently shows that subsidies, like offsets, go significantly to “free-riders,” people and firms who get money for doing what they were going to do anyway. We must make things happen that were otherwise not going to happen and that require changes to prices (like a stronger carbon tax) and regulations (like building codes and vehicle standards) so that, for example, all homes get insulated. So when you think about buying an offset, I recommend instead sending your guilt money to organizations that are trying to change laws, like the Suzuki Foundation, the Pembina Institute, and PowerUp Canada.
Petroleum companies have shown their true colors again. Operation Stork, a Citizenship and Immigration Canada operation to evacuate Haitian orphans, flew an all volunteer mercy flight last week out of Port au Prince, the Globe and Mail reports.
It was an all-volunteer operation: Air Canada donated a fully crewed Airbus, flight AC2150.
Air Canada’s caregiver list was activated, as was their medical team, including a doctor who specializes in the effects of cabin air pressure on diseases while in flight. There were concerns about collapsed lungs among the children. An Air Canada customer service agent in Montreal, Jacqueline Dupont, who is known for her baking, baked all day, providing dozens of small cakes and muffins for the orphans.
Everyone volunteered their time, Jane Taber reports. Well, mostly.
Several of the airline’s suppliers donated their services, including supplying food on board, waiving of airport landing charges and air navigation fees. Not the oil companies, however. Air Canada asked the fuel suppliers to donate and were refused.
If you don’t count the various efforts to commercialize aviation biofuel, electrified high-speed rail (HSR) is our best bet when it comes to preserving continental mobility in the post-carbon age. Thing is, unlike much of the rest of the world, Americans are only just now figuring this out (and please don’t get me started on Canada). HSR represents a truly massive infrastructure project for the Lower 48 — comparable to the building of the Interstate system in the 1950s.
Here’s an infographics package that Rachel Swaby and I put together for WIRED. The piece unpacks the various HSR plans now underway in the States, explains the technology, and outlines the challenges that stand in the way — particularly in California, where plans are furthest along. Please forgive the slightly breathless intro.
Believe it: Bullet trains are coming. After decades of false starts, planners are finally beginning to make headway on what could become the largest, most complicated infrastructure project ever attempted in the US. The Obama administration got on board with an $8 billion infusion, and more cash is likely en route from Congress. It’s enough for Florida and Texas to dust off some previously abandoned plans and for urban clusters in the Northeast and Midwest to pursue some long-overdue upgrades. The nation’s test bed will almost certainly be California, which already has voter-approved funding and planning under way. But getting up to speed requires more than just seed money. For trains to beat planes and automobiles, the hardware needs to really fly. Officials are pushing to deploy state-of-the-art rail rockets. Next stop: the future.
It’s been a while since I fired up a MAPP Gas torch. But there I was the other day, kneeling on the floor of the Eco-Shed and blasting a 3/4-inch copper elbow with what wikipedia tells me is a 2927 °C flame (that’s 5301 °F) for you down yonder. I was sweating together a few bits of pipe to connect my Bosch PowerStar on-demand hot water heater to the supply stubouts under the sink in my kitchenette.
I’ve worked copper in the past, when I was adding a half-bath to my place back in Santa Fe, so I know what I’m doing. Well, mostly. Normally I let the plumbers do this sort of thing. But my pipe dude wouldn’t touch my Aquastar. “I’m not even going to take it out of the box,” he told me flatly.
Why? One word: liability. My plumber won’t shake a spanner at any appliance that doesn’t have a Canadian Standards Association (CSA) certification. The PowerStar has an Underwriters’ Laboratories of Canada (ULC) rating, but that’s not good enough for my man’s insurance. If the thing blows up, which it won’t, his insurance company won’t cover him in the event that I try to take him to court. So he left a couple of capped pipes under the sink and said nothing more.
“I can’t sue myself,” I told him, after making another snide comment about how lawyers are just making life harder for everyone these days. Anyway, here’s a little snap of the cut pipe, fittings, and a couple of the tools I used for the job.
In other news, I trimmed out the windows. I used MDF made of 100 percent pre-consumer wood waste, ie mill sawdust. It’s not FSC certified, and probably has formaldehyde in the glue. (So sue me!) The window ledge is FSC spruce from Tembec, some of the stock left over from framing. Three coats of Broda water-based low-VOC urethane on there, from CBR Products. Looks nice, eh? This bugger is almost ready for it’s close-up, which is good, because the cameras are circling….
Great news for a change: British Columbia Premier Christy Clark has renewed her government’s commitment to climate leadership and strengthening the province’s clean economy.
Last October, 
The Town that Food Saved (Rodale, $25) is among the most engaging, thoughtful, and manure-stained-honest appraisals of local agriculture and edibles since Michael Pollan rocketed to cult fame with a seven-word manifesto about plants.
You characterize yourself as “a very mediocre economist.” How does a mediocre economist win the Nobel Peace Prize?
Petroleum companies have shown their true colors again. Operation Stork, a Citizenship and Immigration Canada operation to evacuate Haitian orphans, flew an all volunteer mercy flight last week out of Port au Prince, 
If you don’t count the various efforts to commercialize 
