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2007 03 12
Economists Weigh in on Carbon Tax
Excerpts from TD Economics Special Report
http://www.td.com/economics/special/bc0307_env.pdf
Many of the world’s leading economics favour a carbon tax is the preferred policy for tackling greenhouse gases.
Here is a blog by Harvard economist Greg Mankiw who From 2003 to 2005, was the chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors: http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/09/rogoff-joins-pigou-club.html
2007 03 09
What Is “Big” Really?
 Stephen Harper and the Conservative Cabinet Federal Money for the Environment is just a drop in the bucket compared to the $100 billion investment needed to close the Kyoto Gap. KYOTO GAP REALITY CHECK SHOWS HOW BIG RECENT GOVERNMENT CLIMATE ANNOUNCEMENTS REALLY ARE . . . "Pollution must have a price tag. Currently it is too cheap to pollute, and too expensive not to."Over the past few months, the federal government has rolled out a steady stream of multi-million dollar announcements to battle climate change. The steady drumbeat of climate goodies may leave some people with the impression that the government is getting things down on the climate-change file. But this is a gross misconception for two reasons: one, what may sound like a lot of money to the average Canadian is actually a drop in the bucket compared to the $100 billion* investment required to put Canada on a low-carbon path to Kyoto and beyond; and two, without a price on carbon it is a wasted drop in the bucket because it goes against the grain of economic forces. Below is a catalogue of climate announcements the federal government has made in the past few months. Every time a new announcement is made, the Corporate Knights Forum blog (http://www.corporateknightsforum.com) will show how much closer the announcement gets Canada to filling in the Kyoto Gap and update the size of the shortfall remaining. *The simplified rule of thumb used is to take the $ value of the announcement and divide it by the $ 100 billion investment required to go the Kyoto low-carbon path. This still presents the announcement in a more rosy light then reality, as whatever money is announced will likely be less effective because it will be working against the grain of economic forces until a price on carbon gases is put in place. The Federal Government's Recent Climate Change-Related Announcements
2007 03 08
Can Designers Save Our Cities?
 Request For Proposal by Arlene Gould, for Corporate Knights Magazine, Urbanization and Investment issue. Can designers save our cities? Building and landscape architects, along with industrial, interior, and graphic designers and artists can all play a pivotal role. Most of the 91,000 designers in Canada, including architects, landscape architects, industrial, interior, graphic and fashion designers, live and work in cities. With 25,000, Toronto is third in North America (behind New York and Boston) in the number of designers the city employs [DIAC Design Industry Study, 2004]. With so much creative brainpower at their disposal, you would expect Canadian cities to be at the forefront of urban innovation. Yes they have LEED-certified buildings and iconic architecture—but is that all it takes? Are designers really making an impact on sustainable city-building when it comes to economic competitiveness, social equality, public safety, an aging population, and reducing environmental impacts? Most of our cities are led by utilitarian bureaucrats rather than design thinkers. We can also lay some of the blame at the feet of a design community whose members have failed to deliver a consolidated protest against the lack of representation of their profession at city hall, or the mean-spirited RFPs that don’t allow the scope, time or money designers need to deliver breakthrough results. Design works on a grand scale, but its most profound benefits are experienced on a human level: beauty, accessibility, functionality and cohesiveness, to name a few. Our cities are missing design-led innovation in the public realm. A growing number of Canadian buildings are energy-efficient and environmentally designed. But when it comes to public space, we are still design-deprived. Most of our major cities lack the infrastructure and master plans that would inspire and enable design-led change at every level. In a humble attempt to fill the void, here are five relatively low-cost ways we can use design to enrich the fabric of our cities. Sidewalks Sidewalks are the cornerstones of city building. Urban visionaries from Jane Jacobs to Kevin Lynch have extolled the virtues of the sidewalk as an instrument of civic engagement and safety; a place for play, economic enterprise and social convergence. Well-designed streetscapes can even help reduce violent crime. But tragically, our sidewalks are being debased and ignored. Industrial and lighting designers could define our urban walkways with customized, user-friendly street furniture and theatrical lighting to establish touch points with residents. Seasoned Quebec designer Michel Dallaire provides a good model with his multiple awarding-winning urban furniture scheme for the Montreal International District (Quartier International), the vast urban development between the central business district and Old Montreal, which was designed by Daoust Lestage Architects and completed in 2003. Working with aluminum as the base material, Dallaire used advanced technological processes to fashion street and park benches, tandem lighting fixtures and posts, bicycle stands and garbage receptacles. The furniture and fixtures help extend the vision of the architects’ master plan to the street. Stories and Spaces Half of the 40,000 designers in Ontario specialize in graphic arts or visual communications. The corporate world relies on their ability to engage, inform and persuade, but they are underutilized by the public sector, particularly in public city spaces. Graphic designers combine typography, colours, symbols and pictographs to produce signage systems and environmental graphics that improve spatial orientation. These elements can also be used to characterize and brand public space, and to deliver key messages about the history and culture of specific geographic locations. Our cities could use graphic designers to create cognitive maps that would connect with various target audiences, and illustrate our cities’ unique personalities. Urban Ecology Designers and landscape (...read more...)
2007 03 07
Canada’s Top Five Sustainable Cities
The Corporate Knights team just finished ranking Canada’s cities by their sustainability index. Here are the top five cities--number five might surprise you:
2. OTTAWA
3. KINGSTON
4. KITCHENER
2007 03 05
Distributing The Future: Designing Sustainable Cities
 (This story was first published in the New York Institute of Urban Design Newsletter. It is an overview of the United Nation's "Sustainable Cities" Conference held in October of 2006. CKF's Editor, Robert Ouellette, was a respondent at that event.) William Gibson’s phrase, "The future is here, it is just not evenly distributed," is a worthy introduction to the "Sustainable Cities: Urban Design,” conference held recently at the United Nations in New York. Audience members discovered that the future is here - at least in terms of sustainable development - and Architects, Landscape Architects, Urban Designers, and even Politicians are creating it. The task ahead is to distribute that future and make the systemic changes needed to preserve the environment. What are designers doing to create sustainable cities in a market the Economist calls the greatest wealth-generating activity the 21st Century will offer? Some, like Mario Schjetnan, of Mexico, are re-imagining the role parks play in a livable city. Anyone who has traveled to Mexico City knows that it faces population and pollution problems U.S. cities hope never to encounter. Officially, it is home to 20,000,000 people. Unofficial counts add as many as 10,000,000 to that number. In spite of near overwhelming challenges – Schjetnan says that the worlds of Cortez and Montezuma constantly clash here – his parks provide a retreat from the city’s chaos. From a sustainability perspective, the parks are also waste-processing systems that cleanse local water and air. Imagine a modern version of Olmstead's Central Park. Now combine it with integrated water purification systems and you have an idea of how important Schjetnan's designs are. They improve the quality of life for the inhabitants of Mexico City. Dr. Suha Ozkan, past Secretary General of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture, has spent much of his career exploring how tradition can inform architectural innovation. To Dr. Ozkan, today’s sustainable development techniques echo architectural practices of the past. He sites Saudi Arabia's "Tuwaiq Palace," as an example. There, in a hot and arid environment, traditional forms improve the energy efficiency of a complex, modern building. Sustainability is not only for big budget projects though. The Aga Khan Award has also gone to relatively simple designs that save lives in the world’s poorer communities. Examples of that work include Nadar Khalili’s “Sandbag Shelters.” Khalili designs emergency habitations that do not require costly materials to build. Instead, they use simple cotton bags filled with sand. The sandbags are the basic building modules for traditional single and double curved walls held in place by wire mesh. The resulting shelters resist hurricane force winds, earthquakes, and floods. Simple. Cheap. Effective. Professors Tomonori Matsu and Junichrio Okata of Tokyo University showed what Tokyo, the world’s biggest urban aggregation at some 35,000,000 inhabitants, is doing to reduce the city’s environmental impact. Appropriating sports arena roofs to capture rainwater is one effort and redesigning typical Tokyo neighbourhoods so they are more sustainable is another. One fact about the country they shared had a profound effect on the assembled audience: Japan has retained about 67% of its original forest coverage for the past 200 years. Take a moment to comprehend this. Two centuries ago, the Japanese decided to preserve their forests as a legacy for future generations. Since then, the percentage of the land’s original forests has remained constant. How many other nations can make that claim? Closer to home, Mayor Christopher Coleman of St. Paul, Minnesota, is leading an initiative to green that city. He described something that I call the St. Paul paradox: Making that city more urban has also made it more natural. For (...read more...)
2007 03 01
Corporate Knights’ $100 Billion Challenge
Tuesday, February 27, 2007 Climate change presents a unique challenge for economics: it is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen. The Investment Proposition: If we start investing 1 per cent of our annual global GDP today, we can avoid GDP losses of 5 to 20 percent tomorrow. “Everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it"—Commonly attributed to Mark Twain, 1897 That was true back in 1897, but not anymore, according to the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. The report, which is an expert-reviewed synthesis of the most up-to-date scientific research published on climate change from around the world, upped the ante. It concluded that it is “very likely” humans are causing global warming, or, in quantitative terms, more than 90 per cent certain (up from “likely,” or more than 66 per cent certain, in 2001). So now that we have proved Mark Twain wrong, what are we going to do to fix it? Most people, from the leader of the Green Party to the chief executive of the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, as well as our current Prime Minister, genuinely agree that it is time to pull back on the high-carbon throttle and carve out a new low-carbon path for our economy. Just after the IPCC report was released, Prime Minister Harper made clear which path Canada would take: “I think the first realistic step in any such plan will be to try over the next few years to stabilize emissions and obviously over the longer term to reduce them.” A few days later, the usually laissez-faire economist told an audience at the Canadian Club in Ottawa that he was going to crack down on industrial polluters and automakers with tough new regulations, concluding with the high-handed statement, “The era of voluntary compliance is over.” But when you ask “how fast and at what cost?” the consensus fades fast. Rhetoric enters. Reason leaves. The topic of greenhouse gases leads to vast expulsions of hot air from politicians and pundits. Meanwhile, the climate warms, as carbon dioxide spews out of smokestacks and human-generated toxic emissions singe the hallowed halls of parliament. On one side, you have the Conservative Minister of Environment John Baird, saying: Whoa, not so fast, “Canadians don’t want the country to face economic collapse.” On the other, you have Stephane Dion, the Liberal Leader of the Official Opposition, saying: “We will make megabucks by reducing megatonnes [of greenhouse gases].” They both sound delusional to me. This is a war, a fight against old wasteful lifestyles and carbon-intensive ways of doing business in order to avert catastrophe and make the world safe through clean economies. Winning this war against greenhouse gases is not about economic boom or bust. It is about re-engineering the DNA of our economy. And like any fundamental change, there will be winners and losers. Each one of us will have to give something up. We should not sugarcoat the nature of the existential challenge facing our planet. When Sir Winston Churchill rallied the English-speaking world to defeat the Nazis in WWII, he didn’t talk about seizing export markets and profit-making opportunities. He talked about the high stakes of preserving our civilization against dark forces and the high price, “blood, toil, tears and sweat,” he personally would pay to prevail. Or, as John F. Kennedy might put it, “Ask not what your climate can do for you, but what you can do for your climate.” It’s true that our economy might reap big dividends from early and accelerated action on implementing low-carbon technologies, efficiency improvements, and conservation (...read more...)
2007 02 27
Semi-live Blogging From The Toronto City Summit Day 2: Afternoon, Strong Neighbourhoods
One last workshop this afternoon… This time it is “Building Strong Neighbourhoods.” The questions are as follows: One, How can we achieve long-term funding and commitment from all orders of government for a problem that is complex and that may take years to turn around? What is the role of non-profits and the private sector? Two, How can we achieve transformational change in declining neighbourhoods that will outlast short-term and one-time funding? Three, How do we build awarenes and commitment without further stigmatizing affected neighbourhoods? Paul Brogan is the guest speaker for this session. He is from Boston, ex of Harvard where he taught in the business school, and is author of books on the revitalization of the city. He mentions that hypercapitalism is changing the authority of the city because power flows not locally but internationally. The problems cities face today are much smaller than the problems U.S. cities faced in the mid 70s. But, they were solved. Investment in cities changed what some predicted would be empty wastelands. The problems facing Toronto’s neighbourhoods can be halted but the most important is the concentration of poverty in certain neighbourhoods. They need strong local representation. One method is through Community Development Corporations. They keep capital in even the poorest of neighbourhoods. Michael Porter of Harvard has published on the phenomenon.
Semi-live Blogging From The Toronto City Summit Day 2: Afternoon With GTA Transit
We are now in the Transit and Transportation workshop with Adam Giambrone and Rob McIsaac, the two top politicos for transit in the GTA. We are having a brainstorming session again this afternoon. The three questions we will tackle are these: One, What dedicated funding mechanisms should be used to support the new Greater Toronto Transportation Authority? Two, Given the estimated funding shortfalls, what other funding sources could be explored? Three, Should GTA municipalities be prepared to share some power with the GTTA, such as planning/delivery of more transit-supportive land use around rapid transit stations? Our table is answering question three first. We need a new model maybe based on an old model. Maybe it looks more like the old Metro model. Whatever the mechanism, it must keep people close to where they work and work to intensify the City of Toronto. Make the transit system as effective as possible. (TTC Camp folks, note that Rob Brent is here and has a great depth of knowledge of the TTC).
Here is part of the Summit’s media release this morning:
Semi-live Blogging From The Toronto City Summit Day 2: Afternoon With Dion
Stephane Dion gave the afternoon’s keynote talk and is now sitting with the CBC’s Andy Barry. The keynote was more a stump speech than a talk. It did not address the three questions I mentioned in this morning’s post. Still, I have to admit that I am impressed with the man. I have never met him in person and I can see why he won the Liberal leadership. His is an unpolitician politician.
Andy Barry is asking about the waterfront. Would Dion give the waterfront back to the city? Dion hedges his answer: yes, if the city doesn’t come back asking for more money.
If Toronto becomes sustainable it will become the economic engine for the entire country including Alberta says Dion. Barry says we have to declare war on greenhouse gas. What will Dion do to make that happen? He will go after the Kyoto targets for 2012 and if we try to reach them great things will happen.
Update: I’m reflecting on Dion’s speech. While it really didn’t say anything new it did allow me to understand the effect Dion has on a crowd and may explain his success as a politician. He is a genuine person—a bit geekish—but definitely informed with a quick wit. More importantly, he is honest about his commitment to a green economy and to a united country that includes, he joked, Toronto.
Semi-live Blogging From The Toronto City Summit Day 2: Morning Session
Louise Comeau is giving the morning workshop keynote. Comeau is Director of the Sage Climate Project. The question we ask is “Should Toronto become “The Greenest big city in North America”? In her preamble, Comeau is equating the environmental threat to that of a global nuclear war. It is the world’s greatest policy issue. back in the 1980s, the City of Toronto made a tentative commitment to reduce greenhouse gasses by 20%. Of course, those targets were forgotten. Kyoto offered new targets but they too have failed to curb the escalation of greenhouse gas generation. The U.K. Stern Report states the economic impact global warming will have. There is no longer a doubt that this is a real phenomenon. We must take every step we can to get to our Kyoto targets. Toronto, as Canada’s leading city, must have a target to be the continent’s leading green city by 2015. City decision-making has to form itself to make these objectives possible. We have to fast-track, says Comeau, the approval of green building construction as buildings are the key to our reaching those goals. The assembled group here is asked to tackle the following questions:
2007 02 26
Semi-live Blogging From The Toronto City Summit Day 1: Afternoon Keynote
The afternoon sessions are done. While interesting they lacked the vitality of BarCamp or TTC Camp or any of the other camp forums that have taken place in the last few months here in Toronto. The brainstorming was subdued to say the least. What is it about the “Camp” forum that makes it so energized? Not sure. One possible answer here might be the demographic. This group of policy makers is part of the early baby-boomer generation, is mostly white and male, and is looking towards the end of their careers. OK, that might be a bit harsh. More after or during this afternoon’s keynote by Jack Layton, leader of the NDP Party of Canada. Layton speaks well but this came across as a stump speech. Lots about how well the NDP has served the country. We won’t debate that point. Certainly Layton argued that the minority government has resulted in many new policies relating to the environment. Layton said that change comes from the local level. Look, for example, at Toronto’s Blue Box program. It started as a prototype in Toronto but finally grew to a national movement. Layton says we have to tackle big issues like childhood poverty as well as the environment. He alluded to some type of equalization policy that would reallocate or “remobalize” economic activities going on in our country.
Semi-live Blogging From The Toronto City Summit Day 1: Afternoon
Mayor Miller is in a press scrum and there are so many video cameras in such a tight space no one else can see. I’ve escaped to the waterfront session that includes Matt Blackett of Spacing as well as John Campbell, CEO of TWRC, Bruce Kuwabara of KPMB Architects, Bill Boyle, CEO of Harbourfront Centre, and Ken Greenberg Urban Designer.
John Campbell starts off with his talk… says that after two centuries of delays the next year will bring many changes to the waterfront. Still, what is most important is attracting employers to the district. Matt Blackett is now speaking—he is saying that to his knowledge people in the city don’t carer about plans, they want to see shovels in the ground. We have to attract today’s ten year olds because by the time the overall project is done they will be 40 years old. Bill Boyle says that the Harbourfront Centre get 12.5 million visitors per year. Operate on 75% private sector investment. Public, according to Boyle, wants authenticity—it tells our stories. They want ownership of the waterfront. They want a variety of attractions. Keep content changing. Mostly, they want the waterfront to have passion and soul. Boyle puts up a challenge: He wants to have the world’s largest design exhibition to take place on fifty acres. ke Greenberg, “The retreat of the industrial glacier,” is what he describes the phenomenon behind the evolving waterfront. This is where city’s are redefining themselves. It is a huge undertaking that goes on over decades. Landscape architecture is the first step in rebuilding the waterfront. He has three suggestions for going forward: One, is kick off train ing wheel, Two, is the small leads to the big, and three is connecting the dots. ken worries that there are too many teams in the field. He thinks it is time to change that because an enormous amount of energy is wasted. Bringing together issues of design elements is critical.
Semi-live Blogging From The Toronto City Summit
I’m at the Toronto City Summit (2007) today absorbing the big policy issues that will influence the city over the next decades. The intro this morning was from David Pecault of the Boston Consulting Group. The morning’s keynote was from Ric Young of E-Y-E. Young is a remarkable person who long ago embraced the power complexity theory has to effect social change. More about Young’s talk later. Update: I’m at the discussion about Toronto’s Cultural Renaissance. Speakers are Sara Diamond of OCAD, Meric Gertier, Vice-Dean, U of Toronto, Catherine Hernandez, Writer, and Tim Jones, CEO, Toronto Artscape. Meric Gertier says that Toronto is a leader in the “Creative City” movement. Great work going on in the city with Marg Zeidler, for example. Recent OMB decisions around Active 18 illustrates that there is work to be done. Tim Jones is speaking about “Culture led regeneration” versus gentrification. Artscape has worked with some of the great thinkers on city building. We have to get serious about building communities for artists and for creative enterprises. We need policies that track the effectiveness of creative city initiatives. Art Scape is part of an arts collective that just has received funding for implementing the plan. Jones thinks we can stand out internationally in our creative endeavours. If we don’t, however, we will decline. Sara Diamond is now speaking about the culture of innovation. Her theme is how we need to nurture design innovation. We need to be able to navigate complexity. Other nations are implementing design strategies—we are not. Some areas research could address in our city are energy efficiency, hospital design, systems to support aging populations, making the transit system more engaged . . . She argues that we need to put money into workshops - charrettes—does she know about the DesignCamps? The cultural sector can help solve some of the major problems facing or city. They are breaking for table-based workshops.
2007 02 23
Goring Toronto
 Al Gore hit Toronto the other day, and scalpers were selling tickets at$ 200 a pop. The Globe and Mail, Canada's version of the New York Times (too left for some, too right for others) covered it with an article titled Eco-pilgrims gather to 'heed the Goracle' When you google the words "environmentalism" and "religion" John Kay in the Financial Times We are not Green Moonies. It is time to push back. When normally sensible writers think the idea of Al Gore as tent revivalist is original and cute, we should complain. We should adopt David Roberts' idea that " environmentalism is in our self-interest - "Living in accord with nature, reducing our waste, using energy more efficiently, preserving ecosystem services like clean water and air, preventing climate disruption, etc.: These things will will make us happier and more prosperous. They are things people do in service of other people. People who don't do them are causing harm to other people." We should go all Ayn Rand objectivist on their butts and say that I am doing this for me and my kids- we want fresh air, clean water and working ecosystems. After all, "Ayn Rand characterized Objectivism as a philosophy "for living on earth," grounded in reality and aimed at achieving knowledge about the natural world and harmonious, mutually beneficial interactions between human beings" and "that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or "rational self-interest." which sound like perfectly good reasons to fight climate change. We should become the new conservatives, the defenders of the status quo. We like things the way they are- cold winters, tolerable summers, stable water levels, cute polar bears. We are fundamentally against change, and things that cause it (like coal plants, low density suburbs and big SUV's). Most of the people I see going (...read more...)
2007 02 21
Hybrid Fever
Back in 2000, the Prius Pioneers bought the first Toyota hybrids online, sight unseen. By 2005, Toyota had sold 100,000 of these uniquely shaped cars. Honda was in second place with Insight and Accord. Ford was blazing trails, if not sales, with the first hybrid SUV. Then Katrina hit. In a matter of weeks, fuel efficiency topped the charts for new car buyers with 30 percent saying they would ‘strongly’ consider a hybrid. By the Frankfurt auto show in October, hybrid fever was in full swing. With Toyota and Honda hybrids achieving record sales in the North American car market, the big automakers were feeling the heat. With a lot of fanfare, GM, Ford, BMW and even Porsche announced they would be greening their fleets. So what are the most fuel-efficient cars on the road today? Corporate Knights and zerofootprint joined forces to find out. We’ve rated over 1,000 cars in seven categories in the mid to lower price range. But if the green stuff is no object, you can order a custom, fuel-efficient and very fast car like the one on the cover for $140,000 U.S. from L3Research in California. For the rest of us, here are the top seven fuel–efficient vehicles in our first of a series of green buying guides. |
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