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2008 03 18
Bear Stearns: This Just May Change Things
If you find yesterday’s bailout of Bear Stearns by U.S. regulators to be more than a little hypocritical, well, join the rest of us. The so-called free market once again showed how it is anything but free, and that any absolute power—in this case the power of greed—corrupts absolutely. But where is the lesson that should be learned by an investment sector that ignored the need for risk management? By its actions, the U.S. government is showing that there is no lesson to be learned, or no penalty to be given. It also shows that in spite of its right-wing rhetoric, the “freest” world economy can and does interfere with the marketplace. Ironically, that’s good news for environmentalists. Now that the U.S. government has set this precedent, the right’s self-serving arguments about non-interference in free markets no longer apply. And now everyone knows it. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that the financial market place should be done away with or should be allowed to meltdown. What I am saying is that this week’s events clearly illustrate the role regulatory controls play in a complex world. There is a lesson here, but it is not, unfortunately to the free markets whose actions precipitated this crisis—they’ve been spared that rod. The lesson is to people and governments everywhere. We are reminded by the Bear Stearns fiasco that they do have the obligation, power, and right to use whatever regulatory levers exist to both save the economy, and save the environment. After all, what is more important, the financial health of rule-breaking investment firms that benefit the few, or the long-term health of the environment that benefits everyone?
2008 03 14
Oil Earth: Why The Energy Crisis Can Be Good
 With oil reaching the formerly unimaginable price of $110 a barrel yesterday, and the U.S. dollar sliding into global irrelevance, some Canadians of the political persuasion think this country is headed into a golden age of prosperity. Why? Oil sands of course. We have them, they don’t. Our leadership in Ottawa seems all too ready to dig up half of Alberta, pump billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, and happily perpetuate the oil gluttony that is part of the American way of life. Oil revenues at these levels mean power—lots of it. Power buys access to the political theatre in Ottawa. And absolute power, as the old saying goes, corrupts absolutely. Innovative energy use, on the other hand, is not even a second thought in this environment. It is the last thing we consider, and only then when the Canadian public comes out of its slumber to say wait a second, don’t we need clean water to drink and fresh air to breath? Isn’t this the land of glaciers, and pristine watersheds? Not for much longer if we end our stewardship of local resources. Given the greed of the oil marketplace, I’m afraid things will get far worse for us before they get better. Our one hope is that escalating prices for post-peak oil will fuel the rise of alternative energy sources. If that happens, and if they are successful, market forces driven by efficient use of resources, may just disrupt the oil patch mentality we’ve embraced in Canada. But don’t hold your breath. Well, maybe you should.
2008 03 12
Businesses Want Green Payback
You have to understand the way businesses work. Any project a company engages in must benefit the financial bottom line of the company—even when that project helps save the planet. That’s what businesses do. Make money. The Globe and Mail ran a story yesterday on how Canadian firms are trailing behind Asian firms in their pursuit to green the workplace. It turns out that about 75% of those foreign firms want or expect to receive some return on investment this year as a result of shrinking their carbon footprint. They want to make money doing the right thing. For North American companies, on the other hand, that figure drops to 35%. Let’s face it. For more than a century now we’ve lived and worked a life based on conspicuous consumption of every resource available to us. Now we are paying the price for our environmental obesity by being slow in the uptake of new, green processes. Our loss.
2008 03 04
Great Lakes Water Protector: The Sierra Club
The Great Lakes are a precious legacy preserved in geologic time. Formed by glacial ice over millennia, the lakes contain enough fresh water that if emptied, they’d cover the entire Untied States to a depth of nine and a half feet (and there are certain groups who like that, and would make it happen a few million litres at a time). Not surprisingly, names for this liquid treasure range from the obvious “Great Lakes” to the more poetic “sweet water” and the explorer-daunting, “inland sea.” No matter what their name, the lakes have no equal anywhere on earth. That’s why they are such an attraction, and such a target. In a recent interview Canada’s Maude Barlow commented
The Sierra Club of Canada is a active protector of this precious resource. In partnership with other North American environmental groups, the club is acting to ensure our politicians do everything they can to preserve the lakes. But, as the Ontario chapter of the club writes, the fresh water is challenged by:
In spite of these threats, as a species we seem to think that if we can see a thing in its entirety we also understand it. The overarching view from space shown above gives such an impression. We control this thing is its unstated subtext. Yet, we know that the idea is absurd. The lakes are in many ways an expression of the complexity found in each one of us because, as some speculate, water molecules from, say, Georgian Bay, at some time have been part of everyone—no matter where on earth. This visceral relationship between water and humans cannot be understood simply in a means and ends way, as a resource to be commodified and sold off. There are mythic truths about our evolution wetting Ontario’s shores every day. Those truths are beyond priceless, they are worth protecting anyway we can.
2008 02 21
Superlinear Cities And The Future Of Urban Design
It turns out that city’s are not like organisms. Instead of slowing down as they get bigger, cities speed up—at least as far as their ability to create new wealth—not to mention their improved environmental efficiency. In this way they are not linear systems where a standard input of energy or capital results in a predicted output of productivity. They are superlinear entities. At least that’s what a group of researchers at Arizona’s State University suggest in a study released in 2007.
With half the world’s population now living in cities, traditional urban design methodologies are being rendered as obsolete as, say, using a slide rule to calculate the dynamics of weather systems. There are too many critical, non-linear relationships taking place.
Most urban designers have no idea about the superlinear forces shaping modern cities. Their limited toolkits include poorly quantified ideas about densities, and zoning . . . principles that while useful in some ways no longer are reliably predictable in their contemporary applications. Tomorrow’s “superlinear cities,” if I can call them that, will have to be designed using a mixture of quantitative and qualitative strategies that don’t exist today. Existing city design pedagogy is driven more by fashion than by information-driven research. That’s not surprising given the complexity involved. Still, we expect more from our urban design and architecture schools given the historically important changes facing the modern city. Where is the school that brings together information technology, macroeconomics, and design? If we are to create productive, sustainable cities of the future, urban designers will need all those skills and more.
2008 02 15
Green City Rankings
Want to know which Canadian city is the most environmentally friendly? Corporate Knights magazine released its latest rankings this week, and here are the results. Surprised that Toronto ranks number one?
2008 02 08
More Evidence Against Biofuels
Corporate Knights Forum is against biofuels. We’ve already written about how they replace one bad energy habit with another. Still, people argued that even if corn based fuels do compete with people for diminishing food supplies, at least they are cleaner. Or not. Turns out that researchers are skeptical about those claims. Here is what the International Herald Tribune has to say on the topic:
The cause of this environmental rethink? Turns out that in the environmental ledger someone forgot about the line item titled, “Land Use Change.”
2008 01 31
WalMart: Agent Of Green?
The New York Times ran an article January 24th on the The chief executive of Wal-Mart Stores, H. Lee Scott Jr., said that “we live in a time when people are losing confidence in the ability of government to solve problems.” But Wal-Mart, he said, “does not wait for someone else to solve problems.”WalMart promises to reduce the energy used by its products by 25%, and will force its suppliers to be more ethical in their treatment of workers. blockquote>Mr. Scott also said he would press for suppliers in China, which are known for flouting environmental rules, to comply with that country’s environmental regulations and would require them to certify that they meet industry standards.
2008 01 29
Iraq Votes For Kyoto Protocol
In what seems the biggest irony of modern green politics, the Iraqi government voted last week to endorse the Kyoto Protocol. Mike Niza of the New York Times blog, “The Lede” has this to say:
2008 01 27
The Story Of Stuff
The “Story of Stuff” goes something like this.... We strip the earth to provide materials to make things that, in their making, produce toxins that kill us while allowing us to be endless consumers. Come to think of it, maybe Annie Leonard tells it better:
Want to see more? Go to the “Story of Stuff“ web site.
2008 01 21
Will Technology Lead Us Away From Environmental Doom?
"Lies, damn lies, and statistics” goes the often quoted phrase, and it is never more appropriate than when used as a rough description of the battle for the environmental high ground. Statistics are used by both sides in the struggle for public opinion to persuade, cajole, and even intimidate. Recently though, Arik Levinson of Georgetown University released a study showing that American manufacturers increased production by 70% while, simultaneously, reducing the production of primary pollutants by 58%. For advocates of free market responses to the environmental crisis, this study is becoming the holy grail—an illustration that markets can change without wholesale government intervention.
Mr. Levinson concludes:
What the study does not show, however, is the impact governmental intervention (yes, at one time not long ago government did demand industry clean up its act) and social change pressured manufacturers to clean up their act. Reading this analysis one would be forgiven for thinking the market spontaneously self-corrected because that’s what markets do. Nothing could be further from the truth. Big markets tend to be juggernauts that once on a chosen path take heroic efforts to change. People, on the other hand, know when their environment is collapsing, and can make faster, finer tuned course corrections. We would argue that the reduction in America’s pollution is the result of societal pressure for change driven by the Rachel Carsons and Sierra Clubs of the world, and not the result of some previously unrecognized function of technological determinancy.
2008 01 11
Oil Sands Projects Are Planet Killers
The Pembina Institute and World Wildlife Fund announced yesterday that Canada’s multi-billion dollar oil sands projects rank less than F minus on their environmental scorecards.
Jeffery Jones of the Guardian writes:
With oil sands refining already responsible for Canada’s abysmal Kyoto record, the thought that production will increase threefold indicates that governments have abdicated any responsibility for the fate of the planet. One day--not long from now--all Canadians will have to pay a price for our lack of environmental stewardship today.
2008 01 09
“America Is Addicted To Oil” and Canada Will Pay The Price
In case you wondered why Canada has been so far off in its Kyoto carbon reduction plans:
2008 01 07
Toby Heaps & Karen Kun Interview Preston Manning
 With just an idea and some burning passion rooted in feelings of western alienation and opposition to big government, Preston Manning started up a marginal grassroots political movement in Alberta that gathered momentum, grew its base into a national profile, and has now morphed into the Government of Canada. His new passion: the environment. He calls himself “a green conservative rather than a blue environmentalist,” and wants to install a water metre in his house that is connected to his home computer, so he can track his water use in real time. Corporate Knights caught up with the reinvigorated statesman on September 11 at the Manning Centre for Building Democracy’s Calgary office. --- Most people didn’t associate your old party with environmental leadership. How did you get green? The Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance—you had to pick your issues. We were brought into being with the fiscal responsibility issue in the days when they were running $50-billion deficits, and that was our main focus and we had to stick to that—we had pretty limited resources. Then the Quebec secession referendum came up quickly; it made these constitutional issues huge. So that was our focus. [My interest in the environment] came mostly from my association with younger people. I’m a small ”D” democrat probably before I’m a conservative. When I see the younger generation whose participation in the democratic process is not heavy, I keep asking myself: well, these people are interested in something; they’re just not interested in what the parties in power are doing. When I got out of Parliament I spent time at the University of Calgary and the University of Toronto. I found the two issues that would engage young people. One was the international stuff, but the other was the environment. I have an interest in that issue myself. Seeing this gave me a political interest as well. My oldest son is quite interested in and concerned with the environment. He did his Master’s degree at Louisiana State University and he believes that people’s attitudes towards the environment are shaped more by culture and their sense of history and place. His studies have been on how we can use literature to get a stronger environmental ethic. His influence on me has been a big one. And our grandkids—we’ve got nine grandkids under 10. I was helping one of them clean his teeth the other night and when I turned the tap on, he said, “You’re wasting water” [laughs]. This from a seven-year-old! This reflects into the next generation. A lot of messages coming through: you’d better pay more attention to these issues. Why is the Green Party so popular in Alberta? Because the environmental ethic is so high here. And Albertans will do something. Albertans are not afraid of supporting a new party. That’s more the culture here than in the older parts of the country—Alberta is willing to try something new. If you were a consultant to the Green Party, what tips would you give them? First, decide whether you’re going to be a political party or whether you’re going to be an interest group. A political party that aspires to govern—and I think that should be the aspiration of any party—can’t settle for “We’ll have a position on this and we’ll have a crusade on this but we’ll never have to do it.” I think that makes a party irresponsible. Then, start doing the things you have to do to be a governing party. One of those things is to be really strong on the issue that’s brought you into being, which is the (...read more...)
2008 01 04
People Oriented Cities—A Short Film
Want to know what a people oriented city looks like? Watch this film and find out. Here is a quote: “In a country where the average income is higher than that of the United States, many citizens have chosen the bicycle as their means of transportation because they live better that way.”
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