Tag: Thinking globally

Cities and Carbon credits.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

We all agree that anthropogenic climate change is happening, and that Canada is one of the worlds worst offenders per capita (If not, perhaps you should review a bit of this and come back later). The question is what are we going to do about it?

Carbon Offsets are one of those ideas that might sort of work, much like a carbon tax, but their success and usefulness depends on very careful legislation. The problem is, in our hyper-policial world where logic and science rarely come into play during he drafting of legislation, they can seriously go wrong. I present to you as evidence, the Pacific Carbon Trust.

Some of you may know about the Climate Action Charter. This makes all local governments who “voluntarily sign” the charter, to be “carbon neutral” by 2012. Of course, it isn’t really voluntary, as these communities are offered a 100% rebate of the carbon taxes they pay if they fulfill this commitment. There is some strange calculus between reducing the carbon they use to the point where the savings in the taxes offset the extra carbon offsets you need to buy to get back to “carbon neutral”, but I leave that for the accountants.

The end result or this coercion is that Cities do often-good sometimes-questionable actions to reduce their carbon use. Retrofitting City buildings to be more energy efficient, introducing anti-idle policies and investing in a more efficient fleet of vehicles to line up around the token guy with the shovel, creating District Energy Utilities where the City’s ice rink takes all the waste heat it creates making ice and uses it to heat the water in adjacent swimming pool. You can also throw in building compact, transportation-efficient cities. These are all reasonable measures that should save taxpayers money in the long run and reduce the need to oxidize hydrocarbons. These are good things.

(Notably, one of any City’s largest green house gas producing activities is the generation and disposal of solid waste, and that is exempt from the Charter. I could go on…)

Recognizing that Cities can’t just stop burning fuel tomorrow, there is en expectation that Cities will use carbon offsets. This idea being that organizations that make money producing carbon dioxide can be provided economic incentives to not produce so much carbon dioxide, and sell that non-production of carbon dioxide to someone who cannot help but produce carbon dioxide. So for every tonne of carbon dioxide that a City produces, it will pay $25 to someone else to not produce a tonne of carbon dioxide. Alternately, they could just pay the $25 in carbon tax to the Provincial coffers.

I have had discussions with Municipal Energy Managers and GHG-reduction experts who are convinced this is a good idea for all kinds of traditional economics reasons. It is, they argue, the same as carbon tax, in that is puts a “cost” upon the production of pollution that can be used to directly reduce pollution. There are also some significant GHG Experts who think it is a terrible idea.

However, much like our completely misguided and ineffective carbon tax (another topic), the way the offset market is managed in BC is both unproductive and ethically compromised. You see, our local governments must purchase their carbon offsets from an entity known as the Pacific Carbon Trust. This is a Provincial Crown Corporation that operates under the direction of Kevin Falcon. Guilt by association is never a good idea, but considering Falcon’s greatest accomplishment up to this point is the ramming through of the largest climate crime of the last decade in this province, well, we know GHG reduction is not really a priority of his.

That said, we can measure the Pacific Carbon Trust for what it does, without worrying about the Falcon taint. After all, it is a public reporting company, and every person who pays property or school taxes in the Province is going to be buying carbon credits from the PCT, so let’s see where it is a going.

The PCT’s two largest offset purchases so far are from TimberWest (about $7.5 Million) and EnCana ($2 Million).

Timberwest is getting paid off by choosing not to log less than 8% of their 300,000 Ha of forest on Vancouver Island. The fact this area has not been logged up to here is pretty compelling evidence that it was not economical to log, either due to access issues, riparian protection laws, or political sensitivity. Reading the project summary is a twisted journey into justification. You see, they are anticipating a future “acceleration” in logging, after the current pine-beetle-harvest-glut of lumber passes, and they are committing to not accelerating in the future quite so much: a hypothetical agreement to reduce by 8% their future hypothetical logging based on hypothetical future market conditions. For this, our Cities and Schools have shipped them $7,500,000, so far.

I say “so far” because according to the report, TimberWest figures it will be offsetting up to half a million tonnes of carbon a year for perpetuity. That means taxpayers will be throwing up to $12,000,000 a year to Timberwest not to log trees they admit are not economical to log due to the glut of lumber on the market, presumably until the market forces them to “accelerate”, at which time they will probably find it more profitable to cut the trees that perpetuate the offset myth.

Now TimberWest is an interesting organization. It is mostly the investment wing of a bunch of public service and private pension funds (which means, ironically, that I am probably benefiting directly from this scheme, having a public service pension, but as a minor fouth-tier “shareholder”, have no say whateoever in its operations). However other “we promise not to log (this week)” deals with the PCT have been signed across the province.

The EnCana deal is even uglier. EnCana is one of Canada’s largest oil and gas companies, and is one of the largest natural gas companies in North America. They produce about $6 Billion in revenue per year, and are currently building the largest office tower in Western Canada. The BC government gave then $2 Million for a program where they capture residual gas from their drilling operations and use it instead of just flaring it off. The end result? That gas ends up in a pipeline, and is sold by EnCana.

In a rational world, the Province would pass a simple piece of legislation that says gas drillers cannot flare gas at their drill sites, but instead need to capture it. That gas is a provincial resource, we can pass any law we want about how it is managed, including insisting that if you are going to pull it out of the ground, you are going to sell it, not let it flare. Clearly, the technology to do this exists. Instead, we are paying a large profitable multi-national company to put gas in a pipe and sell it on the open market. We are paying them with your property taxes. And let us not forget, this gas is not being sequestered, every bit of that gas is still going to get burned and go into the atmosphere, it is just going to be sold to generate profit before being burned instead of being immediately flared.

So, what is my point? I am one of those people who think that the largest, most profitable companies in Canada do not need handouts from our municipal taxpayers and school boards. Therefore, I think the City/School board should take every measure to reduce their GHG emissions. Then they should fairly account their residual carbon, and pay the carbon tax to the provincial government. I would rather my tax dollars go to fund government services than line the pockets of profitable companies like EnCana. I guess that makes me a raving socialist.

An Epic Vancouver Weekend

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Sunday I did what all us “environmental types” are meant to do. Like a salmon heading back to the home stream to spawn, battling Orcas, fish nets and hooks, rapids, starvation, bears, all just to squirt in some gravel and drop dead of exhaustion. I went to EPIC Vancouver

A “Sustainable Living Expo”. A consumer fair promoting the “Green Lifestyle”. An event that bills itself as “The largest sustainable lifestyle show and eco-marketplace in Vancouver, Western Canada”. The entire thing is mind-bending.

But to maintian my eco-conscious credibility, I must go. Who can say to have supped from the well of sustainability if they have not embraced the EPIC lifestyle show? I needed to try it out, see what the latest thing in Green Living is, to see if I am keeping up with the Jonses in my pursuit of the perfect Green Lifestyle.

Right off the bat, the first two booths at the entrance are Toyota (the Worlds #1 automobile manufacturer) and Post Media (The Canwest print media spinoff that brings us the Sun, the Province, and the National Post). This is not starting well. I may not totally understand the whole “sustainability lifestyle”, but I’m pretty surprised to learn it includes building 8.5 million cars a year and turning dead trees into daily pro-business propaganda sheets.

But you aren’t going to hear me say anything negative about it, seeing as how just by walking near their products, I have apparently given Toyota “all necessary rights in perpetuity [to]…the worldwide use of [my] image, voice and/or comments, as is or as may be edited, in any media whatsoever now and hereinafter…yadda yadda yadda…”
Somehow, their wishing for my enjoyment is a little hollow after that legal beating…

Toyota and Canwest aren’t the only big companies greenwashing their way through EPIC. After all what is more sustainable than a toilet brush holder made of wood and cotton towels in pleasing earth tones?

I almost felt sorry the guys who actually had good ideas:

This small start-up made a washable re-useable food wrapping product using fabric and bees wax. A sort of re-usable but biodegradable and completely sustainable Saran Wrap. It was actually a good idea, but how can he compete with a $150,000 zillion-mile-an-hour electric car?

Or even the dude making seatbelts out of seatbelts?

I mean not using saran wrap might be sustainable, but it doesn’t really fit the lifestyle, does it? A seatbelt purse tells the world you recycle, it is a “cars suck” bumper sticker for your bike that you don’t even need a bike for.

Again, I’m no expert, but my accountant brother tells me multi-level marketing is, inevitably, not sustainable.

The most sustainable thing I saw at the whole show was the row of Chiropractors, an “alternative health care modality” that actually cures nothing and has no demonstrable therapeutic value. It is, by definition,  a sustainable industry because no Chiropractor ever said to a customer “this will be our last session: you are cured!”

Despondent with my inability to grasp the green consumer lifestyle, my inability to geti n touch with the sustainability style of my generation, I finally stumbled upon a few businesses with products I could believe in. These products, although no more sustainable than cars or newspapers or Astroturf, had the power, if applied liberally enough, to wipe away all my concerns that I was not keeping up with the true sustainability lifestyle consumers who were going to prevent our consumer driven collapse by creative purchasing.

After a couple of hours at the booths, sipping sample after sample from my compostable plastic sample cup, I walked out of there with a strange rumbling in my gut. I was actually a little nauseous. Then it occurred to me, I may have been in the wrong conference. There were, after all, two going on at the same time at the Convention Centre:

on being visionary, one Clear, Open Stream at a time…

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 7 Comments.

I just had the Sustainable Communities equivalent of a Stones fan meeting Mick. I had a chance to meet and hear a talk by one of the major rock stars of sustainable Urban Development.

Dr. Kee Yeon Hwang is the President of the Korea Transport Institute, which is a somewhat unusual organization in the Canadian context: a policy research think tank, populated by academic experts in the field, that works directly for the Prime Minister. Dr. Hwang was visiting Vancouver as a Visiting Fellow in Urban Sustainable Development at the SFU Urban Studies Program. While here, he gave two public lectures, one on the Cheonggyecheon Project, and one on Seoul’s bus transit system. The sharp end of my curling season meant I could not attend the evening lectures, but Councillor Cote managed to arrange a visit to New Westminster for Dr. Hwang, which included a walking tour of the City’s waterfront, and a presentation by Dr. Hwang to members of City Council and City staff in Transportation and Planning. Councillor Cote invited members of the City’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, which is how I got into this great talk. The topic, Cheonggyecheon, is relevant and timely in New Westminster, with all the recent talk of North Fraser Perimeter Roads and United Boulevard Extensions, and the City entering a Master Transportation Plan process.

“Cheong Gye Cheon” can be roughly translated into “clear, open, stream”, which as a name was remarkably ironic, but is now iconic. The short version of the story is that the City of Seoul took 6 congested kilometres of stacked 12-lane freeway and solved the congestion by simply removing the road and replacing it with an urban stream and greenway/linear park, sparking a urban renewal in Seoul that is still going on today. But there is a longer version of the story, and I will try to condense Dr. Hwang’s talk here (based on my notes, so any factual errors are very likely mine!).

The history of Cheonggyecheon is of a small, ephemeral stream near the centre of Seoul. In the early 20th century, there were less than a million people in Seoul, and this stream was a water source, a place to wash clothes, and an open sewer, much like streams in developing urban centres the world. Things did not improve with the economic collapse around the Korean War. Post-war the stream was mostly home to squatter houses and squatter factories. Between sewage, waste, and dyes from the unofficial textiles industries, the stream was very polluted, and often ran multiple colours. When Dr. Hwang was a child, this was considered the “bad part of town”, with poverty and all the crime that comes with it.

Cheonggyecheon in the post-war period.

With the rapid development and industrialization of Korea in the 1970’s, there was little resistance to burying a small, heavily polluted, ephemeral stream in the bad part of town, and capping it with 8 lanes or surface traffic and 4-6 lanes of elevated traffic. Seoul was the heart of Korea, and building major freeways was a point of national pride: this is the progress Korea needed to become a leading world economy.

Cheonggyecheon expressway in all its glory.

???

Fast forward to 2002. Seoul is a modern “world class” city of more than 10 million people. The elevated Cheonggyecheon expressway is congested, the original watercourse has been buried in underground vaults and culverts, and the space between is nothing short of disaster. No sunlight, polluted by vehicles, traffic congested, not accessible to pedestrians as all open spaces are taken up by travelling vehicles, commercial vehicle parking, and unlicensed retail operations (street hawkers). The buildings were aging, and there was no impetus to improve them in this undesirable setting, so the businesses were declining. This was just one of the epicentres of overall urban decay in Seoul. Although they had built the trappings of a modern city, with advanced infrastructure and large dense population, the residents and officials in Seoul were realizing their quality of life – the liveability of their City – was lagging behind cities that were considered “World Leaders”.

This begat a paradigm shift. A new Mayor was elected in 2002, and the new broom swept clean. His new paradigm including shifting from development to conservation; from building spaces for automobiles to building spaces for people; from infrastructure efficiency to infrastructure equality. This is similar to what we now call “sustainability” in urban design. The Mayor immediately announced the plan to tear out the Cheonggyecheon freeway and return it to a 5.8km-long linear park. The project was master planned in less than 6 months, and completed in a remarkable 3 years. There obvious political motivation for the fast timing, in that Mayors in Korea face the polls every 4 years. The project cost almost $300 Million (US), but the planners calculated that this amount was about the same as they would save in 10 years of maintenance of the existing highway and buried waterway system that was reaching the end of it’s design life.

Before and after airphotos – where would you rather live?

Although there was an extensive (if rushed) consultation process, including the Transportation Institute, all levels of government, and citizen representatives, this did not prevent significant backlash and protest. The protests will sound familiar to anyone who has listened to the Hornby Street Bikeway project or who might suggest New Westminster might be better off without the waterfront parkade: local businesses worried about losing traffic and customers, concerns about where everyone will park, neighbouring areas concerned that the congested traffic till get worse on adjacent streets. The illegal street vendors were particularly militant in their protests, but the project went ahead.

The road was cut up and removed (with 95% of the material recycled). The stream was exposed and re-contoured. Since most of the stream’s flow was ephemeral and partly because of other water management projects in the City, the stream was going to be dry 8 months of the year. A diversion project from the adjacent river and groundwater sources were combined to provide up to 120,000 M3 of water a day through the stream to maintain a constant minimum of 40cm of water. Storm runoff and combined-flow sewer water was separated and treated before entering the stream. Aside from the base flow, the stream was designed to accommodate the 50-year flood in a lower tier, and the 200-year flood in its upper tier. There were also 22 bridges built to cross the 5.8-km route, although many of there ware actually restorations of original bridges that were partially deconstructed and buried in asphalt in the 70’s.

The end result is 5.8-km people space. Areas are very green and organic, other parts of very hard-surface with lots of facilities to accommodate public gathering, arts, or walking. People are encouraged to interact with the water. Where the symbol of “Korean Progress” used to be a 16-lane freeway full of cars, the new symbol is of urban children playing in a refurbished stream surrounded by green. Paradigm shift indeed.

What of the externalities, and what of the protests? The complaints about increased traffic elsewhere disappeared, just as the traffic did. Ridership on the adjacent subways increased, some people changed their travel times, some changed route, but mostly, people just stopped travelling so much through the area. Adjacent traffic congestion increased less than 1.5%, but overall there was a concurrent 2.5% decrease in Central Business District traffic. Property values adjacent to the stream increased 30%, and businesses prospered as they were suddenly adjacent to a site where there were more than 50 Million visits during the first year. The air temperature in this part of the Central Business District dropped several degrees during Seoul’s hot, humid summers, as the water flow acted as natural air conditioner and created a conduit for cool breezes. All this in a public place for festivals, for lunch, for art, for living space…

One of several “under bridge Art Galleries”

However, this progress does not forget the past. At several locations along Cheonggyecheon, there are reminders of the past. Those forgetting history are doomed to repeat it.

Several columns preserved, to remind people what they lost.

How does this translate to the rest of the City? Once the success of this project was apparent, every part of the City wanted one. Other viaducts have been removed under a “sky-opening” initiative. Other significant public areas in the City have seen the removal of traffic lanes to make room for green space: effectively building for people instead of cars.
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Seoul City Hall before…

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…and after.

There has been a renaissance across the Central Business District, with more people moving into the area (12,000 new residential units in the CBD being planned right now), greenways popping up in exchange for density across the city, and all of the sudden, people in Seoul are finding they can walk places. With the new mayor talking up plans to refurbish their industrial river front:

Oh, and the visionary Mayor who proposed and fast-tracked this project? He is now the President of the Country.

So… the question is, are we ready in Canada, in BC, in New Westminster, for this kind of shift?


Are we ready to re-evaluate our public space and our public spending? The province is currently spending billions of dollars building more freeways, with little protest. There is huge pressure to push more lanes of “important regional traffic” through New Westminster and along our water front, and people seem indifferent, or think it will solve some problem in a magical way that has never worked anywhere else in the world.

When will our paradigm shift happen? When will we catch up to Korea? Or are we visionary enough now to not bury our waterfront under cars?

Movie Night

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

Love him or hate him, you cannot deny his impact. There has been no one more strident and resolute about environmental issues in Canada in the last 25 years than David Suzuki. To truly understand the impact he has made, just surf over to the Right Side of the Internet, and see how much rage and vitriol is directed towards him by the Climate Change Denier crowd, by the CBC haters, and by pretty much anyone who thinks Corporations matter more than Cooperation.

Tonight at 7:30pm at the Massey Theatre, there will be a showing of an award-winning biographical documentary about Suzuki, his life and times, and the experiences that made him such a Force of Nature.

Even if you disagree with him, it is worthwhile going to see the film. Partly because, as Sun Tzu says, you must know your enemy. However, it is also a chance to support the New Westminster Arts Council, as this is part of their monthly “Last Monday at the movies” series.

See you there!

John Baird is an evil little man.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.
Last month when Jim Prentice resigned as Minister of Environment, my initial reaction was “good”, followed quickly be “aw, shit.” Because despite Jim Prentice’s troubles with the portfolio, he might have been the best the Harper Conservatives had to offer in that role.
Harper’s previous picks for Minister of Environment were Rona Ambrose and John Baird. Ambrose is, of course, the dim-witted Ayn Rand-quoting Calgary ideologue who once suggested a Federal Child Care plan would violate Canadian women’s rights and that the spotted owl population was not threatened just because their total population was reduced to 17 individuals. Rona’s main asset appears to be that Sarah Palin – Christine O’Donnell kinda-puffy former cheerleader vibe that is so damn attractive to puffy white male conservative voters. An asset that puffy white Harper is quick to exploit by assuring she is in the near background whenever you see him speaking in the house.
Here: see if you can play a game of “Find Rona”: 

After Ambrose’s embarrassing run as Minister of Environment became too embarrassing, even for Harper, The PM propped Baird into the role, despite the obvious handicap of Baird’s disfigured hand, which prevents him from ever bending his index fingers:

When Baird was eventually replaced by one of the reasonable voices in Harper’s cabinet, one of the few Progressive Conservatives who had not been driven out or dragged down by the PMO, there was room for cautious optimism. And a few good things did manage to get done under Prentice. He made progress on water quality on first Nations reserves, made some useful changes of the CEAA, and even managed to kill the proposal to replace Fish Lake with a tailings pond.

Unfortunately, his failure to secure funding for the CFCAS will be part of his legacy, and was probably part of the reason he found greener pastures in the Private Sector. Anyone with a conscience cannot continue to serve in that portfolio under this Prime Minister, which brings us to John Baird…

Here is the notice I got today from John Baird, as part of his regular press missives. It is a stunning example of cognitive dissonance. In it, he has three points to make:

“We are committed to working with our partners in preventing and preparing for marine environmental emergencies.”

This in the day that the person responsible for evaluating the Government’s preparedness for maritime oil spills blasted the Ministry for being woefully unprepared, This is not some Eco-terrorist suggesting that the government has it’s head in the sand, or even the opposition passing a private members bill to protect the coast from being devastated by Alberta’s economic interests, it is the guy the government hired to perform an audit of the very practice he is commenting upon. This is, in effect, John Baird’s employee. For once, pointing a finger at HIM.

What else does John say:

“We are proud of the concrete and measurable action we are taking to implement a strong and comprehensive approach to protect Canada’s waters. This past year alone, Environment Canada has spent more than $140 million on water related programs and science.”

This sounds impressive, but is one quarter of what the US government is spending on water monitoring and protection in the Great Lakes alone, and orders of magnitude less than the subsidies being given to Tar Sands industries that are turning most of Northen Alberta water into emulsion. A fact he might be concerned about if only a single doller of that sampling money was spent measuring for potential Tar Sands impacts on the Athabaska River. But he don’t want to go there.

Finally, the mud in the eye to the few still reading:

“The Government of Canada is also taking action to help Canadians adapt to a changing climate and we are working towards developing a Government-wide adaptation framework.”

So Baird has decided to stop denying climate change, and has decided to think about adapting to it. Mr Baird is sunning his not-unsubstantial buns in Cancun right now, at the UN climate conference. And he is there with, apparently, a purpose.
And that is his power, with a stright face (and ever straighter finger), John Baird, overseer of environmental responsibility in a Country that has made the least progress (actually, the most negative progress) of any nation since Kyoto, the country that in the last 10 years has gone from a world leader in reductions to a global pariah, is going to show up at Cancun and slam his shoe on his desk. I can’t help but see Baird’s approach to this conference as eerily similar to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s rants to the UN. Both are separated from reality, both show a complete lack of self-awareness, and both completely lack in credibility. These are desperate, distracting rants being delivered by persons who the sane people in the debate have stopped listening to years ago. But he is now Stephen Harper’s closest ally in the house. And even worse, he is Canada’s representive on a world stage.

I ascribe to Hanlon’s Razor: I try not to assume malice when incompetence will suffice. But I think Baird is too smart to be so utterly hopeless. I am left to interpret only evil. 

argumentum al Gorium

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 2 Comments.

There is a meme from the old days of the Usenet that will be familiar to people who frequent blogs and boards. It is known as Godwin’s Law. Follow the link for details, but it essentially says that as any online discussion thread increases in size, the probability of someone making a comparison to Hitler or Nazis approaches 1. Since initially invented, the meme has expanded somewhat to include the proviso that the point where Hitler is first mentioned, all further discussion becomes irrelevant and the person who raised Hitler is immediately considered to have lost the debate. argumentum ad Hitlerum.

May I humbly suggest it is time to suggest a new Corollary?

Anyone in the least bit interested in the science and politics behind Anthropogenic Global Warming will recognize this. Any online discussion about AGW inevitably results in someone raising the spectre of Al Gore, usually as a purportedly stunning rebuke against an actual rational point. At that point, any further discussion becomes irrelevant.

…argumentum al Gorium.

I couldn’t vote for Kodos

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

I try not to get too involved in American Politics. It isn’t my country, I can’t vote there, why worry about something you have no control over? However, when I think I have given it up, when I start to think I really don’t care: they drag me back in. It is a gong show, it is a child’s playground, it is a drunken brawl of stupidity, but I can’t stop paying attention.

One reason, of course is that we currently have a Federal Government who can’t seem to do anything without marching orders from below. This has always irritated the “left”, but now even the “right” is starting to get worried about the rudderless ship (or about who‘s hands are on the rudder).

Climate change is too big an issue for this guy to be deciding Canada’s energy policy:

Ironic that, once again, the Onion proves to be America’s Greatest News Source, as it actually get this story more right than most of the real media.

Happy Carl Sagan Day.

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. 1 Comment.

Science is not very good at promoting their saints. Although we have holidays and annual marketing exercises dedicated to someone who allegedly got nailed up for saying let’s all be nice to each other , ran snakes out of Ireland, or lost his head after a life dedicated to watersports , where is the single national holiday dedicated to science or scientists?

Newton Day? Einstein day, Medeleev-fest?

If we were to pick one contributor to science who deserves his own day, it would be Carl Sagan. Some people are (not surprisingly) ahead of me on this. Carl is a hero of mine, because he excelled at “real science” (so many of his early informed speculations about conditions on Mars, Venus, and the moons of the gas giants were proven to be true), at “applied science” (with his contributions to the unmanned exploration of space with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory), and most importantly, at the popularisation of science and scientific thinking. He also wrote great fiction.

He was also a vocal advocate for rational thought. Not a nebbish lab geek or aloof scientific theorist, he was always concerned about the human condition. He warned about the (at the time) poorly understood risks of nuclear war. He was outspoken about the impacts humans were having on the Earth, he was, amongst other things, a vocal, informed, and active environmentalist.

And he lived his life full of wonder. Never satisfied to say “just because” he always asked why, knowing there must be a reason. And always suggested others do the same. He wasthe personification of Douglas Adams’ quote: “I’d take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.”

My favourite quote of Carl’s:
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe”
–which is just his way of saying all science is Physics.

Put to music here:

More on transportation

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

My letter in Today’s New Westminster News Leader (with some links added, for internetty reasons):

It was interesting to read the recent discussions in the NewsLeader about Tenth Avenue and the Stormont Connector, the routing of the planned Pattullo Bridge replacement, and the impacts of these regional transportation projects on our neighbourhoods.

I couldn’t help but note that the compelling arguments Mr. Crosty made for “encapsulating” McBride Boulevard (reduced traffic and safer communities, reduced pollution, reclaiming valuable land while bringing our divided community together) could equally be made for completely removing McBride Boulevard.

Instead of spending billions burying a problem soon to be made worse by expensive expanded bridges and new connectors, perhaps we should take a fresh look at what the alternatives are to building more roads.

Are we still labouring under the illusion that building roads is a solution to traffic?

This topic and others will be the basis for an open forum on transportation planning that the New Westminster Environmental Partners will be holding as part of its annual general meeting.

We will be bringing together transportation experts and sustainable transportation advocates to discuss the future of the regional transportation system and how this will impact New Westminster.

If you have questions, concerns, or ideas about the Pattullo Bridge, the Stormont Connector, the ongoing TransLink “funding gap,” or other aspects of the local and regional transportation puzzle, please come by the Douglas College Student Union Lounge on Tuesday, Nov. 9, at 7 p.m., and join the discussion.

For more information, see the NWEP website for details: www.nwep.ca.

For those in need of inspiration that sustainable transportations work in the real world, I suggest showing up to see Jerry Dobrovolny talk about the transportation plan for the Olympics, and how it really, actually, in reality, no shit, worked.

Another really inspiring story is that of Cheonggyecheon, and some more examples of Braess in action.

See you next week.

I’m a Eco Geek

Posted on . by Patrick Johnstone. Leave a comment.

At work, I’m an environmental coordinator; as a volunteer, I help run a grassroots environmental non-profit. On vacation: I tour recycling plants in far-off locales.

OK, it might have been a one-off. An old friend I was visiting in Illinois happened to be teaching and Environmental Science course, and invited me to tag along on a field trip she had organized for her class. The destination was the Scott Area Recycling Centre and associated Electronic Demanufacturing Facility:

Scott County and the City of Davenport, Iowa, are trying to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill (for all the environmental and economic reasons one would expect), and their curbside blue box materials come here. In Davenport, they do “commingled” recycling, and this facility is where the waste is separated and compressed for shipping to whoever will buy the recycled materials. They receive mixed paper, newsprint, plastics #1 and #2, and metal and glass containers. There are a series of magnets, air-blown density sorters and other equipment, but the majority of the actual sort is done by hand.

The facility runs as a non-profit, but is reliant on near-by markets for the recycled materials. In this case, that means at least three solid markets within a 300-mile radius, or the economics just don’t work out. They closely track the commodity value of their incoming products, just to break even. $150/ton for aluminium cans, $75/ton for first-use plastic #1, $12/ton for mixed paper. Since there is no break-even market nearby for plastics other than the first two, they are not accepted. Glass is a real money loser at $2/ton, but they receive it for two reasons: it is heavy, and therefore boosts diversion numbers, and as a marketing tool for recycling, it would be silly to not collect the one material (beer and other bottles) that people associate most with recycling. Perception matters with Community Based Social Marketing.

The results? A County-wide diversion rate approaching 25%. This is good compared to no diversion at all, and adds to the lifespan of the local landfill, but pales in comparison to areas with aggressive diversion targets, such as Metro Vancouver (Currently 55%, aiming for 70%). Scott County is not aiming for a specific number when it comes to diversion, only “continuous improvement”. Still, for semi-rural Iowa, any diversion is a success.

One interesting difference between here and there is tipping fees, what garbage collecting companies or municipalities pay to dump materials at the recycling yard and the landfill. At the Scott County landfill, mixed household waste is $24/Tonne. At the recycling centre, it is $23/Tonne. I’m sure the small difference is significant to large-scale waste collectors, but compare the numbers in MetroVancouver : $82/Tonne for mixed garbage, $59/Tonne for “Green Waste” that can be made into compost. Before you think this is another example of the Government Screwing you becasue you are Canadian, the tipping fee does not reflect the $130/Tonne it costs to manage Vancouver’s waste. The fact our recycling programs generate a modest profit creates the incentive that has led to our >50% diversion rate. and the reason we are aiming to improve it:

Which leads me to a conversation I had last month with one of our esteemed members of Council. During a discussion on waste diversion goals and incentives, I suggested that the cost differential between landfill and recycling (resulting in part from our choice to export our garbage more than 300 kilometres), is the main reasons we have achieved such remarkable diversion rates. He called me “cynical”.

I don’t think that suggesting regional governments make decisions based on economics, and the sound fiscal management of the Taxpayer’s assets is “cynical”. I would think it is “responsible”. We don’t divert because it is the right thing to do, we do it because we simply cannot afford not to.

More later on how Scott County manages e-waste, and the death of the CRT display.