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2006 12 29
Losing The Ayles Ice Shelf
NASA’s www.visibleearth.nasa.gov web site has some good supplemental information and satellite images on the Ayles Ice Shelf. Just in case you have been too busy with family this holiday season, it was reported yesterday that a large section of this shelf broke off 16 months ago. NASA writes:
The fracturing of Canada’s ice shelves is blamed on global warming. A quick review of the world’s press illustrates that an event that takes place in Canada’s north is of interest to other nations too. Even Australia picked up the story:
Events like this are so far removed from our every day lives that they are quickly forgotten in spite of the “canary in a coal mine” message they send. Our job is to make the systemic changes required to reduce global warming and stop these dramatic changes to the environment.
2006 12 28
Who Killed The Electric Car?
We watched the movie and became indignant. Why hadn’t we ever heard of a car this remarkable - and good looking? It turns out that the car companies wanted it to fail.
The car was not without some problems. When first released its lead-acid batteries were prone to failure. That problem was fixed. The battery technology of the day allowed for trips of about 60 miles before recharging. It turns out that most people drive about 25 miles per day. OK. No issue there: Zip around all day, plug in at night when electricity is cheaper, then back to work again. Still, consumers wanted a car with about a 300 mile range. New, more efficient batteries with a longer range were developed in the state that Ford and GM built - Michigan. Turns out that a local inventor in Michael Moore’s home town of Flint, Michigan had a patent on a great new battery storage technology that could change the world. GM bought a controlling interest in the company. Then they did something that seems counter-intuitive: they sold that interest to Texaco. You don’t have to be a business game-theorists to figure out what comes next. The owners of the efficient-battery patent who are the world’s biggest supplier of gasoline sue any auto company who uses their technology to build long-range, electric cars. This is where our economic system fails the needs of the many. Call it the tragedy of the commons or just an inefficient use of non-renewable resources. However it is described, when a private company can suppress a technology that can benefit the well-being of the many then the system is failing. (There is an informed paper on the macro-economic underpinnings of this issue here) A few years ago Toronto suffered through 50 smog crisis days. 50. That air pollution was caused by cars and by coal-fired power generation. Would the availability of electric cars change the quality of our air? You bet it would. The problem that prevents us from achieving clean air is a regulatory one. If our government decrees that 10% of cars sold in Canada have to be electric by 2015, then the auto market will respond. However, do you think a our current federal government will create such a policy? WIll any? Ultimately, this is a consumer issue. If enough people demand environmentally responsible cars then we will get them. Waiting for the auto industries to do what is right won’t work. Waiting for government to make the policy changes needed to protect our health in the log-term won’t happen unless consumers (also known as voters) make it happen.
The last word in today’s post goes to the film’s producers and PBS:
2006 12 22
Sustainable Table
If you have read Micahel Pollan’s book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” you know that industrialized food production is precipitating ethical and environmental disasters. Alice Outwater, an author I mention in yesterday’s post, argues that the biggest polluter of North America waters is not the manufacturing or chemical industries, it is agribusiness.
In that context it was a comfort to discover a web site that discusses issues relating to our food supply. www.sustainabletable.com’s mission is outlined here:
2006 12 21
Beavering The Canadian Landscape
Photo from www.timna.mines.com When I think of the forces that formed the Canadian landscape, I think of glaciers carving away billions of tons of precambrian rock. Georgian Bay’s serpent-like islands of orange and red stone remind us of the sculpting power of ice and water. Surprisingly, though, the forces that gave Canada its unique forests and water-created landscape not only include glacial ice: they include the innocuous beaver—or, at least, 200 million beavers. This insight comes from a remarkable book titled, “Water: A Natural History,” by Alice Outwater. The author makes a compelling case for the subtle, natural ecosystems that shape the landscape. A cornerstone of that natural system was Castor canadensis, or, for the rest of us, the beaver. When Europeans first arrived in North America there were more than 200 million beavers living here. Take a look at the above picture. This dam and the small lake it creates are the work of one small clan of beavers. Say it is the effort of ten beavers. That means there probably were at least some 20 million similar ponds and streams across the land. While that is impressive, the real impact of the beaver’s skilled hydro-engineering is the ecosystem it created. According to Outwater, a beaver family can build a 35 foot dam in one week. Some dams extended up to 4,000 feet in length. As interesting as that is, the real importance of the beaver’s work is its profound impact on the ecosystem. Their work creates a transition between two diverse conditions: water and land. In environmental terms this is known as an ecotone. Ecotones are home to organisms native to each environment - land or water - as well as organisms native to the ecotone itself. That in-between zone is called the “edge effect.” What is remarkable about the ecotone is that it creates habitats for a diverse array of wildlife from frogs, to herons, to raccoons. From the micro ecosystem perspective, the wetland creates millions of organisms many of which are microscopic in size. Planktonic communities abound here. They, in turn, provide food for organisms higher up the food chain. Wetlands made this way are remarkably effective water filtration systems. They also even out the highs and lows of the water supply, keeping water available during droughts and slowing down potential floods. Also critical to this eco-chain is that the beaver ponds allow water to filter down into the local water table. That means more clean water is available in the form of springs. The market-driven demand for beaver pelts to make hats in Europe almost eradicated the beaver. Now they are considered a novelty or a pest. In fact, they were an engine of our ecosystem. Their loss will, according to Outwater, have ramifications we are only now beginning to understand.
2006 12 20
Ontario Awarded For Anti-Sprawl Planning
 The American Planning Association awarded Ontario for its commitment to reduce urban sprawl. Why were we awarded this honour? Here is some history: Scaling Back OMB Powers a Good Start
The beginning of Toronto's long-needed urban design and architectural renaissance is at hand, if announced changes to the Ontario Municipal Board have the desired effect. Do not expect changes to happen soon, though -- unless city council proves itself up to its new powers. The OMB is a government body often loathed by municipalities and loved by developers. “People don’t always agree on how their communities should grow. When people can’t resolve their differences . . . the OMB provides a public forum for resolving disputes.” says the OMB web site With a dispute resolution mechanism skewed towards developer’s interests, many found the workings of the OMB to be overly complex. Neighbourhood groups complained that OMB members from Sudbury and London would overturn Toronto decisions in spite of having no first hand knowledge of the city’s communities. “The OMB is a planning casino where only developers win.” said provincial M.P.P. Mike Collie. For years, the OMB made city councilors apoplectic when it overturned local decisions. In time, developers learned where the real power lay. For example, after having his Sapphire Tower plan turned down by council a few weeks ago, Harry Stinson’s reaction was to go to the OMB because it would be, “more objective.” Affronts to city council aside, what precipitated the much-needed changes to the OMB’s powers announced by Minister Gerretsen? After all, changes to the OMB affect all municipalities in Ontario, not just Toronto. When development on Ontario’s environmentally critical Oak Ridge Moraine seemed out of control a few years ago, the Ontario Municipal Board made a decision that precipitated today’s announced erosion of its powers: it approved more moraine development in the face of well-informed opposition from almost every side of the social spectrum. With the support of nearly 90% of the public, the Liberals campaigned with a pledge to stop development on the moraine. In the end, the newly elected Premier halted construction for about a week before having to acknowledge there were limits to his powers. To the embarrassment of the new government, 6,000 additional houses went up on the moraine. This signaled to all Ontarians that Toronto’s sprawling suburbs threatened to permanently destroy environmentally crucial lands. The government answered with the sprawl stopping Green Belt Act. Reforms to the planning act and to the OMB have followed. Monday’s announced changes to the OMB return responsibility for municipal development to the hands of elected officials who know their communities. Are they ready to use this power or will myopic local interests rule our development choices? Don Schmidt of Diamond and Schmidt, a local architecture firm, says that council will have to take urban design and planning issues much more seriously than they have in the past when their decisions could be overturned. Paul Bedford, former chief planner of the city agrees saying returning development approval power to the city is long overdue and allows Toronto to have a much greater hand in its own future. “Councilors will have new freedom but they’ll have to know how to use it,” Bedford offers. “They’ll be limited by their creativity and their will.” Is our City Council ready for the task? Bedford thinks there is hope now that the mayor is making changes to the city’s governance structure. The Governing Toronto Advisory Panel recommended 11 changes that will provide mayor Miller with the tools he needs to lead while also strengthening community representation. The panel’s chair, Anne Buller, (...read more...)
2006 12 19
Aviation’s Impact On Global Warming
 Image from www.air-and-space.com The Globe and Mail had a somewhat laudatory story this weekend on the early days of Porter Airlines based on Toronto's Island Airport. After much hand-wringing on the part of Mayor David Miller - a staunch opponent of the airport - it seems that Porter Airlines is now a fact of life on the waterfront. While the marketplace seems to think that having more convenient access to short-hop flights is a good thing, the downtown airport does not reduce the need for a faster, more environmentally efficient link from downtown to Pearson Airport in Malton. That a so-called "world class" city like Toronto has not figured this out says much about our ability to hold that designation into the 21st Century. Effective cities make this connection from the business district to the major airport with modern solutions. Why can't we? What does it matter? The Oil Drum web site has a sobering story today on the impact of aviation on global warming. Aircraft use about 1,800 million (1,800,000,000) barrels of oil per year moving people around the globe. Aviation is one of the fastest growing industry sectors in the world, growing at 2.4 times the rate of world GDP. The industry consumes over 5 million barrels of oil per day worldwide, almost one tenth of all the oil used for transportation. In the UK, according to the Department for Transport, the UK aviation industry is growing at approximately 5% per year while its fuel consumption is growing at 3% per year.
2006 12 18
Greening Newspapers With Plastic Logic
 For years now the holy grail of the digital media industry as it related to sustainability was in reducing the need for paper-based media. We have all heard how computers would make for paperless offices. The truth turned out to be different. We now used much more paper than ever as a result of computers. That may change. The Plastic Logic company is closing the gap between paper and reusable, paper-like digital displays. That's important because it is hard to immerse yourself in a morning coffee and the Globe and Mail using a 17 inch digital monitor. When catching up on the day's news nothing works quite so well as newsprint. Plus, spilling your coffee on the day's paper is much more forgiving than doing the same thing on your sexy new MacBook. The ease of use and comfort of the morning rag may have met its match though: Manufactured on its Prototype Line in Cambridge, this is the latest advance in a long line of technical successes which the company has achieved within the last twelve months, including the fabrication of the largest plastic flexible active-matrix display in November 2005. The displays utilise E Ink Imaging FilmTM. If Plastic Logic is successful with its 2008 rollout, say goodbye to carrying that newspaper laden recycling bin to the curb every week. More importantly, the promise of paperless offices may finally be upon us.
2006 12 15
Truth Movie Party
Al Gore’s web site http://www.algore.com is promoting a U.S.-wide “Truth Movie Party" around his film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” The idea is to have people host a viewing in their homes of the newly released DVD version of the film. Good idea? It seems like it, but is there a Canadian version of the event? If you try to enter a Canadian postal code on the site—to see want events are available within 30 miles of your home—it is rejected. Does anyone know of a similar Canadian event?
Green Party Wants Major-Party Nod
Elizabeth May, leader of Canada’s “Green Party,“ wants that party recognized as a major political contender. Right now, the Greens are seen as Canada’s fifth party after the Bloc, NDP, Liberals, and the Conservatives. That means May does not have access to the public stage during, for example, debates among the top political parties.
May contends that recent polls show her party is gaining popularity and it should be included in debates. May ran for a position in the House of Parliament during a recent by-election in London, Ontario. She came in second ahead of a well-known Conservative candidate—the city’s former mayor. May stresses in a Globe and Mail interview:
All of this happens as Stephen Harper’s Conservatives lose ground on the environmental front and former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney criticizes the party for its anaemic environmental performance. Conservative lightweight Rona Ambrose—Harper’s answer to Canada’s environmental concerns—may be on the way out as the party wakes up to the fact that it needs more than a pretty face on the environmental front. One wonders what they were thinking about when they made this choice for Environmental Minister.
May, however, offers damning praise for her Conservative counterpart:
Canadian politics needs another strong voice to join in the environmental debate in this country. It is time to acknowledge the political legitimacy of the Green Party.
2006 12 14
Bad Day For The Environment
This is the first extinction of a major mammal since the demise of the Caribbean Monk Seal in the 1950s.
Do you remember leaded gasoline? It has long been a thing of the past, right? It turns out that the U.S. EPA is contemplating bringing it back.
And there is a report out (sorry, I don’t have a link yet) that condemns the Ontario Government’s decision to build more nuclear power stations. More on this as it develops.
2006 12 13
Enviro-Tower Gets More Funding
When we talk to the investment community about the projects they feel are going to have a significant impact on the environment, they focus on the size of a market and then the proprietary nature of a new green technology to serve that market. That’s the way venture investors judge projects. Size, ownership, and return on investment. Investors go where there is money to be made. That’s why we were happy to read an announcement that Toronto’s own, Enviro-Tower, just received a new investment of $8 million from a consortium of Canadian and U.S. V.C. firms. If the venture capital community thinks there is an opportunity here then this product may well be on its way to helping save precious water everywhere there is a HVAC equipped building.
2006 12 12
Green Rooftops Of Toronto & Other Energy Saving News
 Did you know that the Royal York Hotel has a secret, chefs only herb garden fourteen or so storeys above the din of Bay Street? I didn't until this August. One of the city's overlooked but very worthwhile organizations is the Green Tourism Association. Leanne Minichillo, the media relations co-ordinator for the GTA (is that an in joke among the city's treehugging community?) brought us to the Royal York during an afternoon tour of some of the city's eco-friendly spots -- including those on rooftops. Another is the 10,000 square foot garden found at Mountain Equipment Co-Op on King Street West. Interested in exploring Toronto's hidden eco spaces? Toronto's Green Tourism Association can take you to them. On other green friendly news, a new car sharing company -- ZipCar -- is changing the way Torontonians drive: As the largest car sharing company in the nation, we have learned through extensive research, about the significant, positive environmental impact of sharing a car. There are three major effects:
2006 12 11
Designing The Future: Do We Have To Leave The Planet?
From an environmental policy perspective, the hope that there is a future for Homo sapiens beyond our planet is worrying. After all, why solve our problems here when we can go somewhere else? That is the history of our species and now that we’ve run out of room to expand on earth, well, let’s go somewhere else and continue the destructive process there. Now, I doubt that is what Hawking intended, but the people who influence government spending use this idea to promote research in the theoretical physics behind interstellar travel. While I’m not against advancing our knowledge of the universe, it is critical that we focus financial and intellectual resources to solve the environmental challenges we face here, today. The future may indeed include our travel to other worlds that can sustain us; however, given the urgency of our local problems the much bigger challenge is not a theoretical one. It is practical. We need to ameliorate existing environmental problems and prevent them from worsening. And that is not theory.
2006 12 08
Prevention and Offset: Two Approaches to Turning down the Thermometer
Making amends is as natural a human inclination as any. So it’s not surprising that as climate change concerns climb up the totem pole, enterprising organisations are selling cool escape clauses (offsets) that promise to help balance off our energy intensive lifestyles by planting new trees or replacing dirty power with solar power. This is a pretty cool new green market space as long as it is treated as the second layer, where the first layer is trying to reduce as much as possible.
*For easy ways to reduce our climate footprint, Prince Charles is keen on Global Cool.
Sustainable Businesses: Steve Mann’s Hydraulophone
 Playing in the water: Even on cold Fall and Winter days, people are still drawn to play in the water to experience the soulful call of the hydraulophone, a sound sculpture and musical instrument that you play by putting your fingers on water jets. Hydraulophones used as landscape architecture give aquatic play a sophisticated and spiritually uplifting artistic element that draws people of all ages, not just children, to play in the water. By Steve Mann "Urban Beaches" ("urbeaches") are spaces that cross or challenge the traditional boundaries that have existed between professional civic life and the more playful elements of recreational life.
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