Shame in Cancun

It look like the best outcome for Canada in Cancun would be to avoid wasting tax payers money and make sure our new anti-environment minister, John Baird, stays home. Recent article confirmed what many were fearing: the Harper government is not only fighting against any ghg's regulations in Canada, they also fight in other countries, like the US, to protect the tar sand industry interests.

In Cancun, things look really bad, our government seems to be trying to kill any new internationally binding agreement. Just hope that one day, we can sue Steven Harper under criminal law for refusing to take necessary steps to protect populations against climate change.

James Cameron shaking up the oil sands industry

Something "magical" happened last week. The giant and powerful oil sands industry and its political supporters seemed deeply shaken by an unwanted visitor: the famous Titanic & Avatar director James Cameron.

Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach flew in a private jet to meet with Mr. Cameron and try to do damage control with the press. Meanwhile, in Ottawa, Steven Harper and Jim Prentice unveiled an independent panel of leading scientists to review environmental monitoring of the oil sands. The panel seems legitimate; Dr. Schindler, a water ecologist who did a study about the high levels of deformed fish from the Athabasca river (warning, pictures are really disturbing), said that “the technical people on the panel are very strong”.

The tragic part of this story is that First Nations, once again, are being impacted the most negatively. Downstream of the oil sands plant, the small community of Fort Chipewyan are experiencing extremely high levels of cancer. Concerns raised by the Canadian Medical Association didn't seems to shake our politicians too much, but now that James Cameron knows about it, it is becoming a real issue.

It probably takes a lot of energy for a community member of Fort Chipewyan to fight for their right to clean air, water & fish. When oil sands companies provide jobs and money to a community embattled with poverty, drugs, violence and many other problems so often present in first nation communities, maybe I would accept the check as well.

HST, why we need it!

Everybody hates paying taxes, but can I argue that continuing the fight against HST will be shooting ourself into our feet.

Let me explain on this controversial statement...

Since the birth of British Columbia, we have been blessed by natural resources. As our population increases, expenses increases accordingly. For years, we could cope with these increases in expenditures by cutting down more trees, extracting more coal and pumping out more natural gas. You can see the latest province revenues break down here (look at page 12).

We have been relying on the golden hens for too long! Would it be possible that, Bill Vander Zalm, a former BC premier, who is fighting vigorously HST, might not see that our province can't apply the same strategy as before?

In 2010, we have to deal with climate change, ecosystem collapsing like the pine beetle epidemic. Our government is so desperate for source of revenues that he is approving projects like Fish Lake, transforming a healthy trout lake into a toxic tailing ponds, in order to produce gold and copper for 20 years only. After, that period, we will have no lake, no fish, no jobs and no revenues for the province, until we find the next project to continue our auto-destruction.

I agree that there were a lot of hypocrisy with how the Liberals brought the new taxes. HST magically just appeared after the election at the same time that our finance suddenly collapsed. Furthermore, I recognize that I don't see any indication that our BC government has the intention to transition away from a resource based economy in the short term.

Nevertheless, killing the HST right now will make it impossible to come back in the future, as we almost lost the carbon tax in the last election. I believe that it is a painful but necessary step towards a transition away from a resource based economy. In Québec, we paid for years an extra 7-9% on top of GST and this started in 1992. If you have the chance to visit this province, you will probably notice that small restaurants are still opened and people still buy bicycles.

Since July 1st, we have to pay more for dinning out and other services. I prefer that the BC government receives money from "Alfredo pasta" than relying a royalties from coal extraction to pay for my education and health care.

The Future of Transportation at UBC

Two weeks ago, Campus & Community planning hold a contest "Ideas Fair" to discuss the future of transportation at UBC. I teamed up with Rebecca Beaton to put down our ideas. We were pleased to win one of the top prize. The Uyssey asked us a series of questions about our ideas . I am copying below what might end up in the newspaper this Thursday.

1) Briefly describe 3 main points of your presentation

a) Make the car the alternative:

Design our campus for people, not cars. This sounds obvious, but at UBC, nearly 50% of commuters use their cars and we have a parking lot right at the middle of the campus. Rather than being a central mode of transportation for commuters, cars need to become the alternative, and UBC needs to facilitate this shift.

b) Creating a 2030 vision (and using backcasting to achieve this vision). Here is our 2030 vision:

We envision a pedestrian & cyclist only zone for the "academic heart" of the campus. Cars would not be allowed between East and West Mall, and between Agronomy road (Forestry building) and Crescent Road (Chan Center). Filling up ground-level parking lots, new student housing will be double, allowing near 30% of students to live on campus and avoid peak transit times. Public bike sharing stations, such as the Montreal's Bixi, would be implemented across the campuses. In partnership with Translink, Tramway lines will run through West Mall and Wesbrook, from the Museum of Anthropology to Wesbrook place, to give residents and the near 60,000 people that work and study on campus better access to services (Wesbrook place), and distant attractions and amenities. A rapid light train will have replaced the B-line and other buses will unload their passengers near the new SUB. The parking lot near the bookstore will be a public green space and the health science parkade would be converted into an urban vertical farm, which can be used for research as well as providing local produce for UBC residents. Parkade fees will be increased dramatically, but financial incentive will be given for carpooling. Staff and faculty will work at home at least 1 day per week, and many commuter students will be enrolled in distance education courses.

c) Keep the diesel bus loop where it is, and move the B-line to University Boulevard to reduce congestion:

UBC intends to move the diesel bus loop, either to a non-central location out at Wesbrook Place, or to disperse bus stations throughout campus where ground-level parking lots currently exist. UBC would like to build student housing at the current diesel bus loop. We thought the bus loop should stay where it is because 1- Bus terminals are located near the center of the "academic heart", optimizing the walking distance for most of students. 2- A single, central location for the bus loop gives students many route options to reach a final destination. The B-line at University Boulevard would free up a significant amount of space at the busy bus loop, as well as provide a location for a Subway or light rail train station for one coming down Broadway in the future.

2) What prize did you win:

We won one of the two $1000 prizes

3) How did you feel

We are quite pleased to see that UBC could be opened minded to our ideas, even though they are somewhat radical. However, it is disappointing that they are not committed to implementing any of our ideas, and that we can not get involved in UBC’s transportation planning process in any concrete way. Time will tell if the Ideas Fair was simply a way to humour us, or if our ideas will actually be taken seriously.

4) What will you do now in terms of helping make transportation better at UBC?

Here’s one idea: many bus routes are at capacity during peak hours. In order to reduce the amount of congestion in the short term, we plan to encourage UBC to offer more, and further promote online education courses, where students and staff can work from home. We would also like to see more classes in the evening to distribute bus traffic.

5) What are you going to do with the money?

Alex: pay the bills. Rebecca: save the world.

6) What is the biggest problem with transit at UBC currently?

Besides the crowded buses, the biggest problem is that UBC is considering moving the diesel bus loop to other locations. They are talking about a new bus loop at Wesbrook place, and another one near the Thunderbird parkade, or else dispersing bus stations throughout campus. These options are not very convenient for UBC commuters, and might involve bus transfers and/or a longer walk to campus destinations, making the car a more attractive option. UBC said that they must move the loop because they have an agreement with the University Endowment Land (UEL) residents. UEL residents often find buses noisy, stinky and non aesthetic... The UBC community must stand up for itself and the interests of 50 000 commuters, which should prevail over few tens of UEL residents. In the future, replacing the B-line fleet by a light train and adding tramway lines should win the hearts of the UEL residents.

Finally, we hope that the the AMS, UBC campus & communiy planing and other stake holders sit down together. With the construction of a new SUB and the implementation of the campus plan and others, it will be great to have a unified vision for the center of our campus and not 4-5 plans that will make no sense once all built side-by-side.

Olympic green effect

On Monday, Vancouver airport was going to experience its busiest day in

history with 39,000 travelers. If we assumed an average flight distance of

5,000 km per passenger (conservative estimate), yesterday flights would be

the equivalent of 7,000 cars on the road for a year...

So what can be green about the Olympic?

The green effect could be more a local one. Vancouver Olympic Committee made

the car drivers life hard during the past two weeks in downtown Vancouver.

Many park meters were shut down, fees were increased and public parking were

charging up to $100/day. Some roads and viaduct were closed. Olympic ticket

holders had free access to public transportation. The number of buses were

boosted. A tramway was shipped from Europe to link the Canada line to

Granville Island. The end results was that buses, sky train, subway were

jammed packed with people. Robson Street and Granville street were vibrant

and packed with pedestrians. Vancouverites, athletes and tourists

experiences something amazing, Vancouver was truly a live city!

Would this past two weeks give the taste to Vancouverites of what could be a

world not dominate by car and parking lot? I hope so. Some c*ouncillors* in

the City of Vancouver are trying to make some of the changes permanent!

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/02/22/bc-dowtown-viaducts-meggs.html#socialcomments

http://everyoneforever.org/blogger/2010/03/transit-is-fun.html

Chruch and Climate Change, part II

Religion and behavior: closely related

Look at the differences with people driving in Québec, France or Italy compared to the rest of Canada. Catholicism is the main religion in Québec and many latin country. Catholic religion told us that the priest is responsible for communication with God and if you do anything bad, you must ask forgiveness to the priest on Sunday. Somewhat, we are then not in power of our own destiny, but the priest is. Protestantism, more present in the rest of Canada, taught a more direct communication with God, which help empowering people to be more responsible in their life and on the road... France, Quebec are much more structure in their law system than the rest of Canada. Quebec a civil code, while the rest of Canada relies on past court decision, or the common law, or "common sense"...

I often think that one of the reason why we are not respecting our planet is that we think we are superior to it. We are the intelligent species on Earth that can control all others. By saying, "you can stop progress", we became so good in controlling nature that we are now killing it and we will be the next species at risk if we continue the current curse. All of this false superiority, I believed is linked to our foundations of our society, which is rooted into the Genesis and Christianity.

The other point that I would make, is that we designed our factories, our economy, our education, with the straight line model that look likes our conception of life. We extract ressources (give birth), manufacture (being raise), use (strive for success and being parent as well) and dispose or them (die). It seems to be the normal thing to do and that was how my engineering courses at universities were designed.

There is no linear process in nature and there is no way we wan solve climate change (achieve 95% emissions reduction by 2050) if we don't start doing like nature and recycle absolutely everything. This concept in engineering is called industrial ecology. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_ecology

I don't know much about Eastern culture much and their conception of life (I also have no clue about Islam), but I believe there is much more "recycling loop" in the Eastern culture. Hindism, buddism believe in reincarnation and it seems that their society was not in race of extraction natural resources, until they saw what we were doing and find it cool. Some tibetans culture cut their deaths and feed back fishes and birds ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_burial ) They are part of nature. When you live in a society where people have multiple lifes, maybe there is no need to rush...

First nation cultures in America have a drastic different relationship with Earth. They are part of the ecosystem. Hunters used to visit Shaman to ask permission to kill an animal and feed their families. Western culture made hunting a sport game.

Finally, for centuries, Catholic Church have been the most powerful and wealthy institution in the world. If our society was dominated then by building covered with gold, maybe we wanted to achieve the same.

If we want to move away from catastrophic climate changes consequences and declines in ecosystems, we need to redefine our deep notion of what are we living for, what we are striving for. I think that philosophy and spirituality and maybe a fresh way of looking at religion can help us achieving this.

Church and Climate Change

Part 1:
The world model today, like it or not, is the Unites States. Many felt with the Obama election that Americans were electing not only their president, but the president for the entire world. China, India and many Middle-East countries are now racing to look like the US and the rest of the western world. Why is it so important to look like us?

I am not too sure why developing countries are racing to be like the western world, but I have a good idea why we are the dominant culture today. Jared Diamond, in "Guns, Germs and Steel" explained this conquest in a bright manner. (Free video on the internet: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4008293090480628280# ) Wikipedia has a great summary of the book http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel

Assuming that we agreed on the western culture is dominating today and our life style, linked to our ecological footprint, is totally unsustainable, what is the the link with churches?

My catholic educations taught me few things outside universal values:
- as human, we are creature of God and superior to any living thing; (Genesis 1)
- our life is a linear process: birth, raised, become parents ourself, the sky become the limit until we die and actually go there. The next stage is heaven, purgatory or hell. We have only one chance, we won't come back.

Even though many of us, including me, are not going to Church anymore, those religious teaching are deeply rooted in our behavior. Sceptical?