This week, a major accounting and consulting firm goes deep, the Canada Green Building Council extends a welcome hand to charities, and Mark Jaccard gives Alberta an earful over its carbon pricing policy.

1. A KPMG TREASURE TROVE: In a comprehensive new report, the consulting firmdeclared that this will be a busy year for clean energy investors and developers. We learned quite a bit reading this. So will you.

2. IT PAYS TO CUT CO2: The Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions askedClimateSmart to assess the impacts of carbon-cutting measures undertaken by nearly a dozen B.C. companies. No surprise: They slashed costs and rapidly recouped investments.

3. TORONTO TAKES KYOTO: Ottawa pulled out of the Kyoto Accord last year, having once pronounced the target “impossible.” We presume nobody told the City of Toronto, which just cut more than twice as much carbon as Kyoto required.

4. ALBERTA RIPE FOR WIND: Canada could have as much as 22,500 megawatts of installed wind capacity by 2021, with Ontario leading the pack. Alberta is poised to steal the second-place spot from Quebec, a new forecast concluded.

5. TWO FOR THE GEARHEADS: A pair of clean-energy trends stood out in this year’s edition of MIT Technology Review Breakthroughs: Supergrids for renewables and ultra-efficient solar power.

6. ENERGY-ENVIRO CROSS-BORDER COMBO: Canadians and Americans think their respective governments should combine environmental and energy departments, star pollster Nik Nanos said, flagging potential for an “energy strategy for the continent.”

7. BIOENERGY SUCCESS OUT WEST: The B.C. Bioenergy Network awarded itselftop marks for creating revenue and jobs. Since 2008, some $16.6 million of project funding has leveraged about $123.5 million worth of clean investments in the province.

8. A NEW ENERGY FUTURE FOR CANADA: The Conference Board of Canada released “Energy Futures for Canada” a set of four plausible energy futures in 2050. Scenario two, aka Green Machine, bears closest resemblance to our New Energy Vision for Canada.

9. RETURN OF THE ACCIDENTAL ACTIVIST: Economist Marc Jaccard roastedAlberta’s carbon-pricing regime: “One way for climate policy to fail is by having none. Another is to have… policy that looks to have more effect than it actually does.”Caution: Contains ultra-wonky content.

10. GREEN FOR ALL: The Canada Green Building Council said it would make affordable green buildings even more so by waiving the LEED certification and registration fees that it normally charges charitable projects.

If you would like to  like to subscribe to Clean Energy Review, please do so here.

]]> http://glave.com/2013/04/29/toronto-achieves-the-impossible/feed/ 0 http://glave.com/2013/02/03/a-peek-inside-the-library-branch/ http://glave.com/2013/02/03/a-peek-inside-the-library-branch/#comments Mon, 04 Feb 2013 04:36:15 +0000 James Glave http://glave.com/?p=1914 Contemporary artist Steve Miller sent me the work he created out of my 2008 book, Almost Green: How I Saved 1/6th a Billionth of the Planet. It’s called “Library Branch.” Here’s a look between the covers.

“Part of my practice is silk-screening into other books,” Miller wrote. “I recently completed a transformation of Almost Green.  There are some sample pages below.  I can assure you that in this effort you are in good company such as the Nobel Laureates Al Gore and James Watson.”

And then this, with these captions:

Amazon Land clearing seen from a satellite, offered to me by Woods Hole Research.

Palm tree on the edge of the Atlantic rain forest in Bahia.

Plant from the Atlantic rain forest in Bahia with computer code.

Electrical wires from Rocinha in Rio.

Electrical wires from the favela Rocinha in Rio.

Amazing, right? It gets better: “When I make these books I silk screen print on every page of the book, and this can take a year to do. In your case two years.”

Wait. Two years?

As it turns out, for the past 24 months, while I’ve been going about my life, on the other side of the continent, Steve has been quietly transforming my work into something truly spectacular. His email explained that he’s done similar treatments with Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance and James Watson’s The Double Helix.

I called Steve up to thank him for the tremendous honor, and ask a few questions, starting with, why me? Why this?

“You know The Strand bookshop? I came across your book there one day,” Miller said. “Your book caught my attention because I liked the premise, this idea of how its not easy being green, it takes a conscious effort, and its a dialogue that we aspire to, but getting down to it is another thing. I knew I had a lot of the imagery that could go with that, and so I said, ‘this works for me.’”

Miller called the transformations “absurdist exercises that I do, that are completely financially futile.”

This also describes the Eco-Shed I built in my front yard, the writing studio that became an obsession and a curse—the building that is at the heart of  Almost Green.

My book “embodies the dialogue we are all a part of , the contractions, the impossibility of it, the need to do it,” said Miller. “I hope that is implied in this object.”

“It is about doing something that doesn’t make any sense, it embodies all the absurdity of everyday reality.”

Miller is an accomplished artist. He has held 35 solo shows, all over the world. Currently, he is showing in a traveling museum show in Mexico and his next solo show opens January 9th in Bern, Switzerland. In August 2013, he will have a solo museum show at the National Academy Of Sciences in Washington, DC.  That work is about a collaboration with the 2003 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, Rod McKinnon.

Miller does not yet have a name for this new work, but he is shipping it to me to check out first-hand, and sign, before sending back.

I can’t wait to see it.

Postscript, January 24 2013:

I don’t have the book yet, but Steve has sent along two additional images, including the dust jacket.

Watch Climate of Doubt on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.

How would you spend $125 million to make your community stronger, healthier, and more prosperous and liveable? That’s the question the new Better Future Fund project asks.

The project is a collaboration between Clean Energy Canada at Tides Canada (where I work), the B.C. Sustainable Energy Association, and the David Suzuki Foundation. It’s an experiment to engage British Columbians on the carbon tax review.  It’s based on the idea that British Columbia’s carbon tax is a good policy that is working as designed — it is starting to reduce fossil fuel use in the province. But it could be made stronger.

How so? As the policy is currently designed, so-called “process” and “fugitive” emissions are not subject to the carbon tax. This is climate pollution that is leaked or released into the atmosphere when fossil fuels like natural gas are processed and transported, or as a byproduct of certain industrial processes.

If industry took responsibility for these emissions and paid the carbon tax on them, the province would have another $125 million in public coffers. Local B.C. communities could theoretically access these funds to secure a stronger future. Bike lanes? Neighbourhood heating systems? Energy retrofits for homes and schools? You name it.

Our team calls this hypothetical “green fund” the Better Future Fund.

So how about it? How would you invest $125 million? Swing on over to the site, it uses a cool SayZu word cloud to display all of the suggestions for how the money that is currently left on the table might best be invested to fight climate change and help secure a better future for British Columbians.

And ps while you’re there, be sure to use the form provided to send a quick email  to the finance minister. He wants to know what you think of the carbon tax. He needs to hear from those who support the policy before August 31, when the current review of the policy, now underway, wraps up.

Well worth seven minutes of your time: Ivan Thompson of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation appeared on CBC’s As It Happens last night to respond to ongoing misinformation about the role of charities in civil society, and why U.S. foundations are supporting Canadian conservation work.

Here is the link. The interview with Thompson begins at about 8:25. You may need to enable pop-ups to make it work.

Here’s a sample:

Jeff Douglas: Why do you think the government is focusing so much attention on environmental charities?

Ivan Thompson: “It is hard not to draw some conclusions when you look at the behaviour and background of oil industry front groups like Ethical Oil and those who echo their assertions….”

“The focus on international donations to environmental groups appears to be a diversionary tactic to silence voices that question key development decisions. In particular, decisions like, is it in the best interests of Canada to have supertankers throughout the waters of the Great Bear Rainforest? Pipelines through some of the world’s last functioning wild salmon watersheds? Or the degree to which our economy becomes more dependent on the oil industry that is influenced heavily by foreign interests, such as the Chinese government. These are legitimate questions and it appears that the interest appears to be in silencing voices that are trying to raise them.”

…

“The real casualty here, is the capacity of Canadians to have a say in how their natural resources are developed for the benefit of future generations.”

…

“The truth is, Charities can provide more than band-aids. They want to help solve the problems. Research, education, dealing with crises are important functions of charities, no question, but ultimately these groups want to see their efforts work their way into good public policy so the crises can be avoided in the first place.”

It looks like a solid list of interesting and eclectic stuff, so I thought I’d share it here. Thanks for all the recos, friends, and feel free to leave a comment below if you’ve read something lately that isn’t here, but that you feel needs to be.

Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile, Taras Grescoe

How to Win Campaigns: Communications for Change, Chris Rose



Elizabeth I, Margaret George

The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, Stephen Greenblatt

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, Charles C. Mann

Civilization: The West and the Rest, Niall Ferguson

Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Barack Obama

The Brain that Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science, Norman Doidge

Testimony for Earth, Bob and Linda Harrington

Making Good: Finding Meaning, Money & Community in a Changing World, Dev Aujla and Billy Parish

Imagine: The Science of Creativity, Jonah Lehrer

The Beekeepers Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America, Hannah Nordhaus

The World As It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress, Chris Hedges

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey, Jill Bolte Taylor

Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation, by Sharon Salzberg

The Boy in the Moon: A Father’s Search for His Disabled Son, by Ian Brown

The History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell

Blood Bones and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, Gabrielle Hamilton

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot

Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, Tim Wu

The Good Rain: Across Time & Terrain in the Pacific Northwest, by Tim Egan

The Biology of Belief: Unleashing the Power of Consciousness, Matter, & Miracles, Bruce Lipton

Design in Nature: How the Constructal Law Governs Evolution in Biology, Physics, Technology, and Social Organization, Adrian Bejan and J. Peder Zane

In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives, Steven Levy

Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle, Chris Hedges

At Home: A Short History of Private Life, Bill Bryson

How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, Sarah Bakewell

This Book Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking, John Brockman

Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman

Snakes In Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work, Paul Babiak

The Little Prince, Antoine Saint-Exupery

Something Fierce, Carmen Aguirre

Trauma Farm, Brian Brett

The Wave, or The Devils Teeth, Susan Casey

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo

The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity & Hope, William Kamkwamba

The Unsettling Of America: Culture and Agriculture, Wendell Berry

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, Azar Nafisi

The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements, Dan Clawson

The Invention of Brownstone Brooklyn: Gentrification and the Search for Authenticity in Post-War New York, Suleiman Osman

The American Way of Eating: Undercover at Walmart, Applebee’s, Farm Fields and the Dinner Table, Tracie McMillan

Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class, Jefferson Cowie

Dark Matter: Art and Politics in the Age of Enterprise Culture, Gregory Sholette

This recent Mark Jaccard column articulates so much of what I want to say, and what I am feeling these days, that I want to reproduce all of it here until someone asks me to take it down. Original article appears here.

Pipeline itself not the only problem we should worry about

BY MARK JACCARD, VANCOUVER SUN JANUARY 26, 2012
As a sustainable energy researcher, I have been inundated with media requests to comment on the pro-posed new pipelines from Alberta’s tar-sands, especially Enbridge’s Northern Gateway here in British Columbia. I have mostly declined, assuming that with such intense public interest the key issues would get a full airing. But I was wrong – for no one is discussing the proverbial “elephant in the room.” This is the connection between tarsands expansion and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s 2007 promise to Canadians to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions 65 per cent by 2050.

Harper’s promise, recently recon-firmed, simply reflects the overwhelming scientific consensus that while any increase in average global temperatures from pre-industrial levels is dangerous, increases above 2 degrees Celsius will likely have cataclysmic effects for the ecosystems on which we depend. Yet human combustion of fossil fuels has already driven the temperature 1.2 degrees higher, and we are on a path of 4 degrees or more in this century alone, which will ultimately increase the sea level by tens of metres. This is why leaders of industrialized countries, like the U.S. and European Union, agreed to reduce emissions 80 per cent by 2050 and will work to require global emissions to start declining this decade.

A target 38 years hence might seem safely distant. But this is incorrect. All leading independent climate policy institutes concur that only with immediate action will we achieve a 65-80 per cent reduction in less than four decades. In the case of vehicles, this means the rapid deployment of near-zero-emission technologies which, thankfully, are already commercially available. These include hybrid vehicles using biofuels (ethanol or biodiesel), plug-in hybrid vehicles, and battery-electric vehicles. In contrast, our demand, and soon the global demand, for oil must contract, especially the demand for high-cost, high-emission tarsands.

Thus, for his promise not to be a lie, Harper cannot allow expansion of tarsands and associated pipelines, and he must require a growing market share of near-zero-emission vehicles. He knows this because his analysts are privy to the work of the world’s leading researchers. Canadians on all sides of the issue should read a 20-page report from MIT’s Joint Pro-gram on the Science and Policy of Global Change entitled Canada’s Bitumen Industry Under CO2 Constraints (found at http: //globalchange.mit. edu). The report shows how and why the Canadian tarsands must contract as part of a global effort to prevent a 4 degree increase in temperatures and catastrophic climate change.

Why, then, would anyone argue for tarsands expansion and pipelines like Gateway? The reasons are obvious, as writers have known through the ages.

People who stand to get rich from tarsands development will delude themselves and try to delude others that the climate science is faulty or uncertain. As Upton Sinclair wrote, “it is hard to get a man to understand something when his income depends on his not understanding it.” And those who stand to gain from the tar-sands indirectly (like politicians) will distract people from the obvious connection between tarsands expansion and climate catastrophe. “Tarsands are a small part of the problem.”

“What about the Chinese?” “The tar-sands will inevitably be developed.” “Low-emission vehicles and fuels are not ready yet.” And so on – all of it bogus. As H. L. Mencken wrote, “the truth that survives is simply the lie that is pleasantest to believe.”

The oft-heard argument that B.C. needs the jobs and tax revenue is particularly galling. This is like arguing we need jobs making a toxin or nuclear weapons. We are not helping ourselves and our children by creating jobs that spew CO2 into the atmosphere. We are already creating jobs that propel our vehicles without CO2 emissions, and we can do so much more.

And where is the logic in the almost-complete focus on pipeline or oil tanker spills by environmentalists and first nations? If Enbridge is able to convince the hearing panel that these local threats are acceptable, then the project goes ahead. But since climate change will devastate all of the ecosystems potentially affected by the project, efforts to prevent local damage from spills are fruitless if they are not part of a concerted effort to stop CO2 emissions. Otherwise, it’s like trying to prevent a fuel leak on the Titanic as it steams toward the iceberg. We need to turn the ship.

The facts are simple. Our political leaders are lying to us if they aid and abet the expansion of tarsands while promising to take action to prevent the imminent climate catastrophe. If you love this planet and your children, and are humble and objective in considering the findings of science, you have no choice but to battle hard to stop Gateway and other tarsands pipelines. It is time to face up to this challenge with honesty and courage.

Mark Jaccard is a professor at Simon Fraser University and lead author for sustainable energy policy in the upcoming Global Energy Assessment.

Photo: Lucas Finlay, lucasfinlay.com

Is the new Van Dusen Botanical Gardens visitors’ center “the greenest building in Vancouver,” as the headline on my new article on the place claims? That depends on how you slice it. Van Dusen’s architecture team, Perkins + Will, also designed the incredible  CIRS Building across town at UBC, which goes a level or so beyond LEED Platinum.

But the new Van Dusen center is easily a contender for the title. It’s aiming for a Living Building certification from the International Living Building Institute, the most rigorous green-building standard in the world. To meet the spec, the place must address a truly daunting series of imperatives and prerequisites, including being mostly free of PVC plastic and a variety of other nasty chemical cocktails, making all its own energy, treating all its own wastewater, and more. (Read the standard here.)

Jim Huffman, associate principal for Busby, Perkins + Will, and Rebecca McDiarmid, project manager for Ledcor Construction (the builder)—showed me around the site late last summer. Here’s a snip from the article.

When the VanDusen Botanical Garden Association decided it was time for a new visitor centre, in 2000, the idea that the building should be the greenest in the city—one of the greenest in the country—did not even make it onto the whiteboard. They had enough to deal with just raising the facilities to the level of adequate. “The existing buildings were built in the 1970s,” explains John Ross, project manager for the Vancouver park board. “They were small, not very efficient, with single-glazed windows and not much insulation, so they were expensive to run.” There was also little on hand for families—mums and dads couldn’t even get a cup of soup for their kids on a rainy day—and the library and educational program facilities were inadequate.

The garden, on 22 city-owned hectares off Oak Street, is managed jointly by the nonprofit VanDusen garden association and the park board. An early design for a new visitor centre proved useful for fundraising purposes, and when the partners sent out an expression of interest for architects, Peter Busby was among the respondents. “They brought energy and enthusiasm,” recalls Ross of the Busby Perkins + Will presentation. “They were quite interested in green buildings. That was an aspect the committee hadn’t considered.”

All the more surprising, then, that the recently opened $21.9-million centre should turn out to be a green overachiever. Early on, Busby’s team decided LEED Platinum just wouldn’t cut it. Instead of merely shrinking the building’s footprint, they set out to build something revolutionary. The centre’s water-harvesting roof, which evokes a series of giant orchid petals, is crowned in part with a glittering array of solar-thermal tubes. (The building is broadly modelled after a flower.) Below, a gently curving rammed-earth wall—a massive and sensual structure that will likely endure for centuries—beckons visitors.

Read the rest of the article over at Vancouver magazine.

Switching to gas in 2012.

According to an open letter to Bowen Island customers published in the local paper this week, in late 2012, B. C. Ferries will be converting the Queen of Capilano—our car ferry—to liquified natural gas fuel. This conversation, which will begin in October, will be the first such switch in the whole B.C. Ferries fleet.

This is good news on a number of levels. First—unlike bunker diesel fuel—in the event of a collision or fuel spill, natural gas will quickly evaporate. Second, burning bunker diesel fuel makes smog, while natural gas will produce a fraction of these particulates and compounds. But the best news in my opinion is that natural gas burns a fraction 27 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than diesel.

The Queen of Capilano is our second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. According to the 2003 Bowen Island Community Energy Planning Options Report, the boat kicks about 7,500 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions up to the atmosphere every year. However, this figure is likely low; in 2007 the company installed a less-efficient—albeit more robust— propulsion system.

Given that we have done virtually nothing as a community to reduce our share of heat-trapping pollution in almost a decade, it is encouraging to see B.C. Ferries showing leadership. Obviously, the company is making the move because the business case makes sense; gas is cheaper. It’s is far from perfect, of course. The process of extracting (“fracking”) and processing gas produces a tremendous amount of pollution.

Update: A friend reminds me of the Cornell University study from last year that concluded that, because of the way it is extracted, shale gas is is a worse source of greenhouse gas emissions than coal.

I’d love to hear from the company about what the conversion will mean for greenhouse-gas emissions.