Category Archives: Environment

Sustainable Communities: A Bright Future And A Glowing Past

Environment, Vancouver

ONE-DAY-VANCOUVER

One Day is a City of Vancouver initiative dedicated to making incremental changes in energy consumption that can be sustained over time.
Whether it’s for personal fitness, to be part of the solution for future generations, or to help Vancouver become recognized as a world model for how an urban centre can manage energy consumption, the folks at onedayvancouver.ca are there to help you find ways to take that first step.
For instance, in your home you can …

  • Install compact fluorescent light bulbs
  • Install low-flow showerheads
  • Set back your thermostat at night
  • Look for the EnergyStar label when purchasing new appliances
  • Take advantage of BC Hydro Power Smart programmes and incentives
  • Turn the lights out when you leave the room

On the road, you can cut down on your energy consumption by …

  • Leaving your car at home, just one day a week
  • Walking or cycling to work or school
  • Taking transit
  • Joining a car co-op

Cities are for people (not cars). John Naisbitt (author of High Tech/High Touch: Technology and Our Search for Meaning) had it right: the more technology distances us (telecommuting, distance education, e-mail, videoconferencing), the more we crave human contact. Today, walkable communities, stroll districts, green transit, multi-modal transportation, urban density … all point in the direction of people-centered planning.
Cities are for all people. For cities of the future, tolerance is passé; inclusion is critical. Young people are moving to cities where people ‘mix’: in clubs, at church, and in neighbourhoods. In Paris, housing projects require a set-aside of several units only for artists. Other cities (such as Vancouver) require that 10 to 15 perecent of all new residential buildings are affordable housing. When integration occurs, it can be transformative and magical.
Healthy cities are important, too: cities that are committed to diesel-hydrogen transit buses, more bike racks on the front of buses, more walking and biking trails within cities (not just outside them) and greater commitment to green / open spaces contribute to sustainability.
Much of our future, and our children’s future, depends on making our cities ‘sustainable’. The time is here to enable even greater access to community services and recreation; to enhance our social prosperity; to minimize our need to travel across broad stretches of the Lower Mainland in our daily commute, and to build sustainable and affordable mass transit for all; to ensure safety within our communities; to provide a clear city centre focus in each of our communities; and to protect and preserve the key features of our city environment — our historic buildings, nature conservation, and the parks, beaches and woods of our city’s natural landscape.

An Idea On The Shelf: Cancer Prevention In Canada

Environment

CANCER-IN-CANADA

In 2005, why isn’t addressing the environmental causes of cancer in the Canadian government’s official cancer control strategy? Andrea Smith, writing in The Dominion, reminds us that in 2002 the federal government announced it had devised the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control, a federal initiative designed to improve the co-ordination and delivery of treatment, prevention, palliative services and research in Canada.
To date, though, the federal agency developed to implement the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control has yet to put into place any sort of co-ordinated cancer control strategy, and the work of the National Cancer Leadership Forum (NCLF) — an organization representing cancer care and advocacy agencies across the country — remains an idea left forgotten on a dusty shelf somewhere in Ottawa, deep within the bowels of government.
While Paul Martin’s federal Liberal government dithers, this year alone approximately 68,000 Canadians will die from cancer.

Cruise Control? Cruise Ship Industry Pollution In Canada

BC Politics, Canada, Environment

CRUISE-SHIP-POLLUTION
Alaska-bound cruise ships in dock, at Vancouver’s harbourfront Canada Place terminal

What images spring to mind when you imagine a northern cruise vacation? Crystal clear water, teaming with sea life; humpback whales frolicking for your viewing pleasure; or perhaps just the vastness of British Columbia’s pristine coast, and a wild azure blue ocean untouched by human pollution.
These images contradict the current reality of the cruise industry.
A single cruise ship discharges approximately 1.3 million litres of waste water per day, more than the port city of Haines, Alaska.
In an article published in The Dominion, writers Yuill Herbert and Karen Gorecki report that:

  • The American environmental group, the Blue Water Network, estimates that 77% of all ship waste comes from cruise ships
  • Two billion pounds of trash is dumped into the world’s oceans each year and 24% of that waste comes from cruise ships
  • 14 million kilograms of waste was produced in 2000 on the Alaska-Canada route alone
  • Cruise ships have accrued over $60 million in environmental fines over the last five years in the U.S. Yet, in Canada, due to a lack of monitoring and enforcement there have been no fines, despite the fact that these same ships visit our waters
  • Greenhouse gas emissions of international ships are excluded from the national emissions inventories, a loophole in the Kyoto Accord which benefits cruise ship lines

The Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group’s report, Ripple Effects: The Need to Assess the Impacts of Cruise Ships in Victoria B.C. not only serves to reinforce the points made by Herbert and Gorecki, among other findings the report’s authors learned that cruise “ships burn fuel that has sulphur content 90% higher than that used by cars.”

Aviation Growth ‘Risk To The Planet’

Environment

AIRCRAFT-KYOTO

The rise in demand for air travel is one of the most serious environmental threats facing the world, according to a British report issued this past weekend. The report says that government plans for expansion of airport facilities are in direct conflict with targets to reduce greenhouse gases, stating that as polluting gases from aircraft exhaust fumes increase further, rapid degradation of the environment will take place.
Friends of the Earth claim this will push up the aviation contribution to carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) emissions to 10-12% by 2020 — from the current 5%.

“We are at war with the Earth itself,” says Cambridge University Professor James Lovelock. “Our goal should be the cessation of fossil fuel consumption as quickly as possible.”


In a BBC report (RealPlayer required) on aviation greenhouse gases, the Stockholm Institute is quoted as saying …

“For too long, airlines have been largely exempt from efforts to combat global warming. The world’s airlines currently create 300 million tonnes of greenhouse gases each year, and that figure is rising fast. By the middle of the century, airlines will account for 15% of the total contribution to global warming.”


The head of one of the world’s biggest oil giants — Ron Oxburgh, Chairman of Shell Oil — in an interview with The Guardian, has said unless carbon dioxide emissions are dealt with, he sees “very little hope for the world.”

“No one can be comfortable at the prospect of continuing to pump out the amounts of carbon dioxide that we are at present,” Lord Oxburgh told the Guardian. “People are going to go on allowing this atmospheric carbon dioxide to build up, with consequences that we really can’t predict, but are probably not good.”


The Kyoto Treaty was drawn up in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 to implement the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change. It legally binds industrialized nations to reduce worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases by an average of 5.2% below their 1990 levels over the next decade.
After the U.S. pulled out in March 2001, the treaty was left shattered. A compromise was reached four months later, with nearly 180 nations (including Canada) opting for a scaled-down version of the treaty, but President Bush has stated that the U.S. will never sign it, in spite of dire warnings from within his own government.