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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:
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 (...read 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) (...read more...)
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 (...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.”
2007 12 24
Happy Holidays
2007 12 20
Greening Manhattan
A year ago I was invited to New York to take part in a discussion about the future redevelopment of Governors Island. If you have never heard of it don’t be surprised-most New Yorkers don’t know it exists either despite the fact it is just 500 metres or so from Manhattan. Well it turns out that a decision was made yesterday to enlist Toronto’s Waterfront redesign team “West 8" to work on the redesign of Governors Island. The selected vision is much the same as the one I described last year.
After my visit to Governors Island, I wrote this opinion piece for the New York Society of Urban Designers—I hope it influenced in some small way the choice of West 8’s scheme: When the Dutch came to Governors Island, they saw a land green with promise. To them, America’s pristine forests breathed opportunity. We wonder though, has Governors Island lost its symbolic promise of a better life based on the natural richness of the land? Has America? The pilgrims moved on to Manhattan but the island’s strategic location at the mouth of New York’s harbor made it an ideal military stronghold. The Coast Guard left Governors Island in 1996. Their move ended a string of military stewardships going back to before the British. In fact, the island helped save George Washington and his revolution. The old military buildings here smell of history. They became a national monument in 2001. In 2003, ownership of the Island transferred to the people of the State of New York. It awaits its next great purpose. A few hundred yards away, alone in an occasional drifting fog, stands the Statue of Liberty. Governor Island’s old flint battlements guard this symbolic gateway to America where the poor of the world came in search of opportunity. Instead (...read more...) |
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