Stephen Rees’s blog

Delta Council decided this evening to refer back to staff recommendations to extend the environmental review process and delay the port expansion by five years. There was some discussion at the beginning of the meeting which I missed. According to Ben West, a lot of people left at that point, but more trickled in later. But even so I find it hard to accept that the hall would have been filled.

The mood was depressing. The process of the SFPR was left on the agenda and when they got to that I sat down in the public section. About thirty people were distributed about these seats.

Mayor Jackson said that several years ago Delta made its preference for an upgrade of Highway #17 rather than the SFPR. That was ignored. Since that time the Council has done its best to work within the process since the province has been determined to build what it wants, and there is no discussion of other ways to achieve the project’s objectives. Delta has therefore tried its best to ensure that local concerns are addressed. While some progress has been achieved, much remains to be done yet the draft EA report is now presented in near final form with only two weeks to provide final comments. A final report will then be submitted to the Minister who has 45 days for a review. An environmental certificate is expected to be issued in June.

The comments and requests made by Delta are summarised in the report. All the information is also on the municipal web page. It is expected that the EA working group will continue to meet after the certificate has been issued. There are at least 17 different plans in various stages of development to mitigate some of the impacts of the project.

Councillor Robert Campbell described the alignemnt near Burns Bog as a tug of war between environment and agriculture - and either way it was a major loss. It could have been avoided if the recommendations of the McAlhenny Report on an upgraded HIghway #17 had been accepted. It was achievable and with minimal impact.

Mayor Jackson responded that the Province chose to ignore that report. The GVRD and the BC Truckers Association both supported the Highway #17 proposal. The staff also produced a compelling report. She felt that both documents should be “brought forward” - which presumably means included in the Delta comments on the EA .

The staff pointed out that they only had two weeks to respond. Moreover they have not “been privy to discussions between the Gateway and Environment Canada”.

Councillor Krista Engelland asked what was the role of the EAO after the certificate is issued.

The staff response was that the EAO has an obligation to see that the conditions imposed on the project are upheld, but the regulatory agencies have the lead.

Councillor George Hawksworth spoke at length about the process pointing out that it was designed to make the project work, “not to kill the project”. He emphasized: “At no time were we in a position to kill the project. For a lot of people it is not satisfactory.” Staff responded that Council took every step possible, and was supported by the GVRD in its attempt to ensure that the OCP would be respected. The province ignored it.

Mayor Jackson shared the frustration: “We have no leverage.”

Councillor Vicki Huntington said that the EA had been a frustrating porcess. “It is unprecented and unconscionable to have to chose between the bog or the farmers. For five years we have been tearing our hair out. The process has nothing to do with the legislation.” The EAO cannot look at alternatives, only the project as proposed. “The whole process is designed to mitigate, not say yea or nay. We know this is wrong.” The province’s commitment to the ALR is worthless. Both the Council and the public worked hard to develop viable alternatives that would have worked but they were never considered. Alternatives did not matter. “We did not say ‘you can’t build this project’ but we did say there was a way to do it properly that would not destroy the community. And what value is this ‘monitoring’? Does that mean that something will stop? The ‘responsible authorities’ turn out to be bureaucrats in the DFO and Transport Canada. It is unbelievable that it is not the Minister.”

Councillor Huntington is also Chair of the Heritage Advisory Commission. “95% of the built heritage is impacted by the Gateway. It will irreparably change North Delta. “

She went on that there is public dissappointment. The public is not yet ready to give up. “We needed leadership. Sadly that has not happened. We did the best we could. I am heartbroken.”

Mayor Jackson pointed out that many times Delta had tried to speak to the ministers, “but we could not get Victoria to listen”. She also pointed out that the Holger Naas route would not have worked “the trucks don’t go there.” And the impact on farms along Ladner trunk Road would have been signifivant.

It occurred to me afterwards that Holger and Naas had taken the proponents at their word, that the trucks were headed for the border or the TransCanada. In fact, as we now know, that movement is insignificant. The trucks are simply moving containers around within the region. The long haul is on rail. In other words, the entire justification of the roads component of the Gateway is based on a lie. The Holger Naas alternative makes sense only if the Gateway was really going to increase truck travel to the the rest of North America. And with the rising price of fuel, and rail’s significant advantage in fuel economy, that is simply not going to happen.

Councillor Jeanie Kanakos said that they should request a meeting with Falcon and Emerson and make a presentation on all the outstanding issues which the EA has not resolved. While this was generally accepted as a useful idea it seemed unlikely to happen. As the Mayor said: “They don’t want to meet with us.”

Councillor Scott Hamilton said they had played into the government’s hands. They had had to fight many battles at once, but they could not turn their backs on the need to mitigate a project that was going to proceed anyway. “We can’t just fight the project. And we can’t stop them”. He also pointed out that no-one is conducting an assessment of the cumulative impact of all the Gateway projects taken together.

It seemed clear to me that the high turn out on Saturday in Tsawwassen had impressed Council. It was clearly not just about power lines (and by the way the CBC is reporting that Campbell has announced they will proceed). Building a large port on the Pacific Flyway is grossly irresponsible. Building a large port that is not likely to be needed, given the way that trans-pacific trade is going to change is short sighted. Deciding to add new port facilities in Vancouver, when there are under utilised facilities in Prince Rupert which desperately needs more work, while Vancouver continues to be over-heated, just seems like willful stupidity. This is a provincial government that seems to have abandoned any pretence of caring about what it used to like to call “the heartland”. Come to think of it, I don’t think they have used that word lately. It is also very blinkered when it comes to the environment. Climate change is very au courant, so they go for that, but salmon, sandpipers and bogs do not rate at all. The ALR is for building things on and trading to get treaties. As are regional parks. This is a government entirely devoid of principle. And since it is a one man show, just one man should get the blame.

– It’s Dusk on Planet Earth

By Bill McKibben, Tomdispatch.com. Posted May 12, 2008.

Alternet has a trenchant piece for Americans. It applies to us too. Especially in the Greater Vancouver area.

There’s a number — a new number — that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A few weeks ago, our foremost climatologist, NASA’s Jim Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several co-authors. The abstract attached to it argued — and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper — “if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm.” Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points — massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them — that we’ll pass if we don’t get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer’s insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.

No we don’t burn coal to generate electricity here. Yet. The way that BC Hydro has been dismantled almost guarantees that some of our huge coal reserves will be used in this way soon. Of course it will be claimed to be clean coal - which as far as I am concerned is about as convincing as the claims made by those who want more nukes. Of course we are very happy to export our coal - and whatever it is used for, combustion is the only use that it will find.

But just look around around you - at the Dodge Ram Supercab with its massive engine - that takes a suburban commuter to work on his own, and might carry his golf clubs or a skill saw at weekends. At the gas leaf blowers. At the gas heaters on the patios. At the swimming pools with electric heaters that get their owners a review by the grow-op police. And our provincial government - which says it wants to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - is actually facilitating an increase in Vehicle Kilometres Travelled with massive road building projects either underway or planned. And tells us, with a straight face, that this will help reduce congestion and thus emissions.

And in the suburbs people who would like to stop driving and take transit find they cannot. There is just no service for them, since, as usual, the vast majority of spending is going to Vancouver - which already has the best transit service in the region. Langley will not get better transit service any time soon, but it will get a wider freeway. So it will not get Transit Oriented Development either, so it will remain locked in car dependancy. As will the new residents who move to Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge in response to the Golden Ears Bridge opening. The current policy is that transit will get to these communities over the Pitt River Bridge in some far distant future. So once again we can only expected more development designed for a car driving populace.

At the same time as all this is going on - and the Pitt River Bridge and the Golden Ears Bridge are under construction - Metro Vancouver continues to hold meetings on what it calls a “Sustainable Region Initiative” - with Gateway promoters on the platform. Orwell would be proud. Doublespeak lives.

Neither the province nor the municipal governments have any understanding of the urgency of this issue. We do not have the luxury of prevarication. We have already lost the pine trees and the salmon. Yes lousy management played a part in both, but so did denial of the effects of climate change. If the port expansion goes ahead its curtains for the sandpipers too. The SFPR will alter the hydology of Burns Bog - and once that has gone you cannot get it back.

The most worrying aspect of all this is that despite the protests, and the rocketing price of gas and food, our inability to deal with major social problems, our escalating health care costs and no realistic strategy to deal with any of this, the polls predict a third term for this government - which means as far as they are concerned they do not have to change. They think they can continue as they are because holding on to power is all that matters. The fact that the planet is becoming uninhabitable by humans is incidental. The fact that much of BC is suffering is of little concern. They and their friends are doing ok for now, and they can always slap another coat of greenwash on the agenda - they don’t actually have to mean it.

This gets top billing in today’s Province news section, although it concentrates on the power lines issue. There is also no coverage of anything that was actually said at the rally itself. However a turnout of 2,000 people is not to be disregarded lightly.

The big feature in that paper today is on housing affordability.

The thing that caught my eye in the Delta Optimist was the design charrette for the Southlands run by Andres Duany and an opinion piece on the development that is not against Smart Growth so much as the removal of the land from the ALR twenty years ago.

Of course people who live next to open land are against its development. That is always true in the suburbs. Not so much “after me, no more” but “don’t spoil the view I now have”. If you are lucky enough to own a home that had all the advantages of an urban area but you can kid yourself you live in the country, naturally you do not want that illusion spoiled. And much of the opposition to growth or density in the suburbs is fear of the growth of traffic, although traffic has been growing rapidly in areas which have seen very little development. More trips are being made, and those trips are getting longer - so the VKT increases would happen anyway even if the population wasn’t growing. And of course those terribly expensive large single family homes often have stay at home kids, or grannies in the basement, if not mortgage helpers in “secondary suites” (see Province article cited above). And those big houses have multiple car garages, and plenty of parking spaces too.

But what get people really out of sorts is that not only is transit in this area poor but it is going to get worse, not better, as a result of Translink’s expansion program.

It seems to me that all this is the inevitable result of allowing the region to be developed not in accordance with a well organised, up to date regional strategy that is designed to create a sustainable region (in other words what should have grown out of the LRSP long ago but still hasn’t) but rather in reaction to all kinds of business interests - ports, developers, private sector power providers, private sector transportation companies - who are more concerned about making money than anything else. The people of Delta are upset because no-one is listening to their concerns, and all that is happening in their community seems to be for the benefit of someone else. The consultation and environmental assessment processes are now a very obvious sham - merely a PR exercise to make it look as though someone is consulting and listening, when actually it’s always a Done Deal.

Scientific American

There was a story last night on Global TV News about Richmond’s proposal that from next year all new large commercial and industrial buildings will have to have green roofs. (By the way that link will probably not work after this evening’s news replaces what is there as I write)

What really got to me was the sight of Ken Cameron, formerly head of Planning at the GVRD now with the insurance industry group that provides homeowner’s insurance throwing doubt on the idea.

If StumbleUpon had not thrown up this page I doubt I would have thought about it again, but there is a wealth of information in SciAm article and no doubt you could find more with a Google search. I wonder if Ken did?

He was also the co-author of the City Making in Paradise book. But he seems to me to have lost some of his credibility with his new job. First of all, there is no proposal to make people’s houses have green roofs. The proposed Richmond by law does not apply to homes - so his locus in this bit is tenuous to say the least. But what on earth did he think he would achieve? Or maybe they have got all gun shy after the leaky condo affair. The insurers did not cover themselves in glory over that one - but it was fairly well established I thought that CMHC should bear the greatest responsibility for imposing standards designed to work in Winnipeg on the wet coast.

I am not going to pretend to be an expert, but I certainly applaud Harold Steves and his concern with rainwater absorption which is a real issue on our Island. I also wonder why the attention was focussed on the under construction Convention Centre and not one of the many successful green roofs that have been in place for some time - like the one on the Vancouver Public Library?

Guardian

In 2007 Sweden topped the list of countries that did the most to save the planet - for the second year running - according to German environmental group, Germanwatch.  Between 1990 and 2006 Sweden cut its carbon emissions by 9%, largely exceeding the target set by the Kyoto Protocol, while enjoying economic growth of 44% in fixed prices.

It has not even got started here yet, but we are being flooded with tales about how terrible our tiny carbon tax is going to be.

Sweden can lay claim to the world’s first train running solely on biogas.

Photograph: Jeppe Gustafsson/AFP

Well, we can expect some teething troubles, and nowhere does a policy translate directly. Bit I think Canada and Sweden have a bit in common. They just don’t have the space, oil and gas that we do. Which is why they pursued this initiative with such vigour. They realised early on that reliance on imported oil was not a good idea. The ghg reductions were kind of a bonus.

I know a lot of environmentalists - and others - now regard “growth” as a dirty word, but the Swedes have shown you do not necessarily need to trade off the environment against the economy.

Anyway, I thought it was about time for something positive for a change.

Canadian Geographic

Canada’s first modern, urban treaty gives the Tsawwassen First Nation control of its land and the chance at a prosperous future

The hat tip goes to Damien Gillis who alerted me to this in depth analysis which includes his video of Bertha Williams, which I linked to some time ago.

This treaty was driven by the Gateway process - not any concern for the TFN. The collapse of the US dollar ought to be the danger signal that makes the port start to doubt its forecasts. The airport has a much more prgamatic approach - it does not start the next stage of expansion until the demand is clear, and is very reluctant to attach dates to projects in their plan. They expand at need, not on a whim.

I have also been noting here how the flawed environmental assessment and the cavalier rush to construction will have a dramatic effect on the Pacific Flyway and the feeding grounds of the sandpipers. Given this government’s shabby record on issues like farmed salmon and the Sea to Sky don’t expect much noise from our designated environmental agencies where the staff are more concerned with hanging on to their pay cheques than actually doing anything effective. At one time professional public servants acted in the best interests of the province. Now they are little better than lackeys to their political masters.

Well worth spending some time on the in depth coverage.

Those of you following the fortunes of the US and who read Chris Leinberger’s article will find the following somewhat familiar

A new analysis shows that high gas prices are not only implicated in the bursting of the housing bubble, but that the higher cost of commuting has already re-shaped the landscape of real estate value between cities and suburbs. Housing values are falling fastest in distant suburban and exurban neighborhoods where affordability depended directly on cheap gas.

Author Joe Cortright wrote to me “Our contribution is to use some current and very detailed data about real estate markets to flesh out that [Leinberger] story.”

Read the press release here.

Download the full study here.

Download File (PDF 107 KB)

Of course I do not expect that this will have any impact at all on Kevin Falcon - who will just stick his fingers in his ears and start singing the zoom zoom song

Oil $120m a barrel, gas $1.30 a litre - and we are going to widen a freeway and build the SFPR across Burns Bog

Callout to ALL citizens, artists, activists, performers, pranksters and funsters.

Car-Free Vancouver Day is less than two months away !! Get ready, to change EVERYTHING.

Sunday June 15th (Fathers Day) will see Car-Free Festivals going off all over the city. We expect 100,000 people to flood the streets to celebrate their neighbourhoods and re-imagine what a more sustainable, ecological, ethical and genuinely cultural city might look like.

Other cities around the world are already doing this, and car-free streets are the way of the future. Let’s start taking back our streets, NOW!

The City is listening, and they are on our side. This is a huge opportunity to show/tell them what we really want: car-free streets, no more highways, and support for authentic urban culture.

All four Festivals are all deep into their organizing and have great crews working hard, and we would welcome anyone who wants to get involved in any capacity: organizers, volunteers, performers, anything. Right now we are specifically calling out to all activists, artists, performers, organizations and creative trouble-makers, hoping you will all be coming out and causing a stir.

We encourage you to set up soapboxes, banners, art installations large or tiny, info tables, events, performances, games, gifting stations, interactive displays, parades, theatre pieces, interventions… pretty much whatever fun you can dream up. It’s your party so please do what you like best – we only ask that your activity be respectful (noise and spacewise), and FREE: free of charge, free of boring corporate stuff, free of cars.

There is tons of space for you to express yourself at Car Free Vancouver Day, so please get in touch and let us know what you have in mind. If you’re envisioning anything that may require a good chunk of space or a sound system of any sort, please check in with the Fest in question. This is an important courtesy and will help everything run harmoniously.

Car Free Vancouver Day – isn’t it about frickin’ time?! [Why is there no Car Free day in Metro outside of Vancouver?]

Check out www.carfreevancouver.org for more.

Richmond News

When Vancouver Airport’s Aeronautical Noise Management Committee was opened to the public in December, not one citizen showed up to complain about airport noise at the Dec. 12 meeting.

Doug Louth, who has plenty to complain about, isn’t a bit surprised.

“I wouldn’t go,” said Louth, who has been complaining about airport noise for eight years. “It was just too restrictive.”

When the committee meets — which it does quarterly — only one “selected citizen” gets to speak.

The delegate must apply 30 days ahead, must detail the exact nature of the complaint, must limit the presentation to a single issue and must sign a code of conduct.

He or she gets five minutes to speak, five minutes to listen, and then is “excused” once the committee has dealt with the complaint.

“I’m not surprised that no one showed up,” says Louth of the Dec. 12 meeting. “It was like a security check.”

Louth was thrilled Monday when city council decided to strike its own airport noise task force.

I don’t know why he should be. The City has absolutely no ability whatsoever to influence how the airport behaves. It is legally a federal body. The Airport Authority is in reality responsible to no-one. The feds just collect the rent.

If you wrote a fictional story and used a procedure like the one outlined above, people would laugh - but they would not believe that is how a modern corporation, concerned about its public image, would behave. But YVR does not have to give anyone a hearing - and it certainly will not do anything about anyone complaining. The rerouting of aircraft recently was done by NavCanada. And they showed a similar disdain for the public. The public complained - quite rightly - but nothing happened. NavCanada is no longer held accountable. As long as it makes money, that is enough.

As the story notes it is never clear who is responsible - YVR, NavCanada or Transport Canada - and the three agencies can keep any complaint shuttling between the three of them for an indefinite period until the complainant gives up.

And why does the City of Richmond think they will be treated any better?

Abuse of power like this deserves some sanction. But there isn’t any. There is no recourse. And this is going to become a common experience as more and more functions of public agencies get shunted off to “professional boards” and “crown corporations” like BC Ferries and the new super duper “ram the freeways” through corporation currently being debated to almost no coverage at all in Victoria.

Harvey Enchin’s faith in free markets is touching: the invisible hand will sort out every problem for us. As long as we have no governments “interfering”.

He does acknowledge the finite nature of fossil fuels, but I see not one reference to climate change except for a personal attack on Al Gore. Which is not really a very convincing way to make a case. If King Abdullah is really protecting his reserves for future generations, he is a lot smarter than most observers give him credit for. The analysis I have seen has suggested that the reserves have always been a closely protected secret, but the suspicion is that is because there is a lot less there than they say.

Of course the size of the reserves anywhere is very much a function of the price of oil. When exploration found reserves off Newfoundland, a lot of energy economists that I knew were frankly sceptical that it would be worth exploiting, but back then $120 a barrel oil seemed far in the future. It also doesn’t help that we are trying to measure prices in terms of a declining currency. It is a bit like using a tape measure made of elastic.

But Harvey also does not mention that there can be very sound reasons for not developing oil reserves, and in the case of Canada’s west coast, it was not just the First Nations that raised concerns about the fragility of the ecosystem here. Indeed, everyone was affected by the Exxon Valdez - and many still are - and the credibility gap of the oil industry and its claims of being “scientifically sound and environmentally responsible”. Erm, no. Not on the present record they’re not. Denying climate change and funding bogus “scientific papers” supporting their financial benefit over the fate of millions of people is not sound science or responsible.

Yes some government policies are dumb. But what else do you expect when you let some large corporate interests put up a sock puppet for president, rig the election results and then start declaring war on trumped up reasons? Hopefully this will end shortly, and we can return to sanity. And the unwillingness of oil companies to invest in

Kazakhastan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan; Bolivia, Venezuela, Columbia and Ecuador; Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq and Kuwait

is understandable but then the ability of others to exploit these resources is also a distinct possibility. Certainly the Chinese do not lack the financial resources, although I bet now they wish they had diversified out of dollars some time ago.

On the whole I would rather that we leave the BC coast alone. It is going to be hard enough to mitigate the effects of the Deltaport, the loss of wild salmon and much of the migratory bird population and clean up the mess that Atlantic salmon farming will have left after that dumb policy is ended. If there are petroleum resources there, let us hold them against future needs for products that we are going to have a hard time making in future. There are a lot better things to do with oil and gas than burn it!

But mostly let us review the dumb policies and come up with smarter ones, which will make this place a better one to live in for everyone - not just us. A dumb policy is not just one that seems to block private investment. A dumb policy is one that continues to make the same mistakes and expects a different outcome. Reducing the size of our footprint is something we really do not have much choice about if we take a long term, broad view of the future. Now that may look disadvantageous to the fast buck crowd, but that is just tough. They will have to accept that we are entitled to expect more from them - in terms of environmental protection and restoration, and longer term sustainability.

The point of the peak oil argument is not the date - now, last year, next tear, twenty years away. It is inevitable. A dumb policy is to wait until we have absolute certainty that it is too late and then change behaviour. We have to make adjustments - we should have been making adjustments - our competitors have already made adjustments and have sounder economies as a result (the Euro is not getting stronger just on a whim).

And we also only have one planet. As far as we know this is the only planet that can support life as we understand it. We have yet to discover another - and any candidates are currently well beyond our reach. Looking after the one we have and ensuring it can continue to support us is not a dumb policy at all. Dumb is ignoring that reality and concentrating on fast profits and quick returns.