Are you as sick of Earth Day stories as I am? Then I implore you to read The New Grand Tour, a long and masterful piece of reporting in The Walrus.
Chris Turner, author of The Geography of Hope, takes a trip around the clean-energy and green-economy innovations of present-day Europe. It’s an inspiring piece of reporting, with stops in pedestrian and bicycle haven Copenhagen, a ride on Spain’s AVE high-speed rail network, and a visit to a solar generating station. Turner visits with a couple who live in a passivhaus (like the new one in Whistler, btw). They lay out their energy bills on the kitchen table to show how the economics make dollars and Eurocents, given the right enabling policies.
In 2008, Harald Müller and Barbara Braun paid €398.69 (about $560) for their electricity consumption and €332.81 for their heat consumption. The same year, they were paid €3,750.29 for the electricity produced by the solar panels on their roof. Their net revenue totalled €3,018.79. They estimate that they’re still a few years from fully paying off their household power plant, but by 2012 or so they’ll be looking at more than a decade of pure profit.
This is the rub. “Going green” is not about hemp shopping bags and grapefruit-based cleansers, folks. It’s about public infrastructure and liveable cities. It’s about public policies that turn every rooftop into a cash machine.
Scared of subsidies? Then maybe it doesn’t hurt to be reminded that, according to an Ecojustice investigation, Canada’s oil and gas industry enjoys roughly a billion dollars a year in handouts. In 2006, the United States oil and gas industry received USD$3.06 Billion in federal subsidies, while the nation’s coal industry received USD$2.8 Billion.
The Stern Review estimated that the fossil-fuel industries globally receive about USD$150 billion per year. Subsidies for renewables and incentives for energy efficiency together receive about UDS$9 billion.
In other words, we’re already paying subsidies. And we’re not getting much out of them but deep trouble.
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.
Here’s a marvelous, hilarious, pump-your-fist gal-on-the-street British news clip starring actor Emma Thompson, best known for her work playing victorians on a number of Merchant Ivory films and adaptations of Jane Austen novels. First, a little background via Wikipedia:
…on 13 January 2009, after flying in from picking up a Golden Globe award in the US, it was announced that Thompson, in partnership with three other Greenpeace activists, had bought land near the village of Sipson, a village whose homes are under threat from the proposed third runway for Heathrow Airport . It is hoped that the area of ground, half the size of a football pitch, will prevent the government from carrying through its plan to expand Heathrow. The field, bought for an undisclosed sum from a local land owner, will be split into small squares and sold across the globe. When interviewed, Thompson said: "I don’t understand how any government remotely serious about committing to reversing climate change can even consider these ridiculous plans. It’s laughably hypocritical. That’s why we’ve bought a plot on the runway. We’ll stop this from happening even if we have to move in and plant vegetables."
The arch online magazine of politics and ideas has just posted an excerpt from Almost Green. The section in question is a bit of a romp — after obsessing over my neighbor’s exterior floodlamps for many nights, I launch a devious social-engineering campaign to convince him to turn the damn things off.
Salon will leave the piece up over the Thanksgiving weekend, which is awesome, because I figure we Americans will be turning to our computers in droves to escape our families! Take a look.
Shift alert: This is a full back-page Corona beer ad from yesterday’s Globe & Mail newspaper. The image shows the same deck chairs we’ve seen a million times, the same blissed-out vacationing couple, the same bright sunshine, but with a key difference. Instead of a beach in Cancun, they are clearly in cottage country–the lake district a few hours north of Toronto. Click the thumbnail above to see the full image.
The copy: “Relax responsibly.”
This is huge. Corona built its brand, at least in this country, on the dream of the cold-season tropical getaway, the prospect of blazing beachfront bliss for frostbitten Canucks. It would seem that the company now recognizes that these equatorial escapes aren’t as socially kosher in the target market as they used to be. By turning the old “Drink Responsibly” liability dodge on its head, the company links frivolous air travel — its marketing stock and trade — with frivolous carbon release. Bravo, and kudos.
Of course, there’s an elephant in this room; the beer is still made in Mexico. The most “responsible” way to relax would be to instead choose a locally brewed refreshment. But we’ll let Corona bask in this moment. I know this stuff is market-tested up the yin-yang, but this ad shows leadership on the climate file. They done good here.
I’ve been trying to answer this question lately, and it was one of the things that pulled me into the Ecotourism and Sustainable Tourism Conference that has been running in Vancouver this week. Well, that and Anna Pollock.
In an industry characterized by a boggling degree of blah blah blah , Pollock is a real sparkplug. She heads up The Icarus Foundation , a non-profit that is working to make Canada a climate-friendly destination. The group published a report earlier this year that tried to get a handle on the staggeringly huge challenges facing the travel sector. Pollock pulled data from that report in a lunchtime keynote yesterday, and threw out a few challenges and nuggets, including:
To come even close to meeting a 30 percent reduction of carbon before 2020, the tourism industry must somehow head off the release of 2.2 billion tons of equivalent CO2. She called this “one hell of a weigh-loss program.” Indeed. I’m afraid it simply means parking jets, folks.
So anyway, the industry needs to do this even as global international arrivals and departures crest the 1 billion mark. And more airplanes. “In 2007, there are 19,000 airplanes in the sky,” she says. “But by 2027, we are talking about 35,800 airplanes. That means more airports, more freeways, more parking lots, more aiport hotels, more kiosks, more hamburger stands.”
We are moving from an industrial age to a networked age. “We have a swarm model — complex adaptive systems, small simple agents with limited intelligence, local decision-making capability, and a communication path to nearby peers that can outperform a large centralized processor. It is robust and flexible.”
Enough, already, with all the nomenclature, it’s a distraction. Ecotourism, sustainable tourism, responsible tourism, authentic tourism, aboriginal culinary tourism etc etc. “We are so busy looking inward and trying to define what makes us separate that we are not uniting and solving the big issues.”
Simplify the Message. “Guests don’t want to know if the place meets 1,0001 criteria. They are on vacation. Use plain language, like ‘good tourism’ or ‘tourism cares.’”
Incentivize: “The destination that makes the brave decision to only market ‘green’ suppliers will win in the next five years. Encourage every guest to embrace an ecological mindset.”
Stop Building: “See the value in non-development,” Pollock urged. “Start to see the opportunities where not developing a piece of pristine land will pay you more than developing it. I can see a time where you will be paid to become stewards, but only if you show leadership now.”
Slow Down: “Stop trying to do too much too quickly. ‘Slow travel’ is going to see some of the fastest growth ever seen,” she said, noting the irony.
Engage the Locals.
When Appropriate, Go Virtual: “Some people will choose to experience places in a virtual way,” Pollock said. “This community should not see that—or telepresence—as a threat. It may be our biggest ally.”
Also, I hadn’t seen this YouTube visualization of global aircraft arrivals and departures over a 24 hour period. Pollock briefly threw this up on the screen. There are a couple of these simulations out there, but this one is just fascinating to watch:
I am convinced that the jet age will inevitably begin winding down in the coming decades. It’s hard to imagine, but passenger aviation will return to the days where it was a rare experience, the purview of the affluent. Setting aside peak oil, I could imagine air travel becoming a socially taboo behavior as the “relocalization” trend pushes ever-deeper into mainstream consumer behavior. Frequent flier cards could eventually become anachronisms, like slide rules.
High-end video conferencing will solve some of this. Imagine a new category of business that provides very-high-quality and secure telepresence services to companies, a kind of virtual conference room and post-meeting “bar” for socializing and networking, available by the hour, for less than it costs to fly.
But all that won’t deal with the carbon-age hangover that is the personal relationships we maintain all over the globe, with family and friends. These people will still want to visit each other for many decades to come, and even after high-speed rail networks finally, inevitably spiderweb across North America, there is still that damn ocean in the way for many. Remember, you can’t hug over Skype.
If you don’t count the various efforts to commercialize 
