New Media

Better late than never, right? This time out, the Vancouver Blogger Meetup was a purely social event. No workshops. No seminars. Just some catching up with friends and meeting newcomers over some beer.

A few highlights:

1. For the first 15 minutes of the meetup, I didn’t get to talk very much because I was too busy chewing and wiping tremendous gobs of barbecue sauce from my face and fingers. Next time, I might just order something besides chicken wings.

2. Jan Karlsberg was taking notes and later produced an excellent roundup of the VBM here. Thanks, man! You really are a Great Dane.

Jan also quite correctly dissuaded me from elaborating too deeply in a podcast about the size and quality of my private parts. Vancouver Blogger Meetups: nuttin’ but claaaaass.

3. I got a free copy of John Chow’s Make Money Online. Now I have to write a review or else John’s going to charge me $20 for the thing.

So far, I’m liking it. As my colleague Shane Birley noted the next day, it’s written in a pretty informal yet informative style.

There are good tips covering the essentials, such as maintaining focus in your blog. For instance, on the road to blogging success, don’t follow the path of another type of failed enterprise:

“Restaurants that try to be all things to all people, offering a wide-ranging menu with a whole bunch of mediocre dishes, ultimately fail. This lack of focus means that no single item on your menu is getting the attention it deserves, and nothing will ever stand out as the superstar.”

Exactly. Which is why my personal blog at jnarvey.com, about politics, social media, sustainability, Afghanistan, technology, Israel, Vancouver events and whatever happens to grab my attention in my Google Reader, will never take off with hundreds of thousands of fans. But I figured that out years ago, so no hard feelings.

4. I drank two St. Augustine’s Pilsners. I know, I know. Not up to my usual impressive tally, but what the hell. Everyone else was drinking diet coke. F**kers.

5. I did record some non-disgusting podcasts which should be online in the near future. Will let you know when they’re up.

To all those who came out to the VBM, thanks for dropping by. It was nice chatting with y’all.

Peace out.

What will Vancouver look like in 2050? Will we serve as a model of sustainability to be emulated around the world? It’s going to take more than just good ideas and innovations in technology; as I report in my latest Granville article, Vancouver in 2050, it may require a redefinition of citizenship in this country.

“Our competitiveness and prosperity are at stake,” said Holland. “This dynamic will have us change the story.”

This is going to take discipline and rewriting of public interests assumptions, he said, suggesting that the capitalist model of our society will not be able to deliver long-term solutions to issues like food supply, transportation, energy and livability.

“We are going to have to redefine citizenship” with a changed focus on obligations and responsibilities, he said.

If cities have to become more sustainable to cope with population growth, we need to be looking at solutions that solve four or five different problems, Johnston says.

Looking at how the city of Chicago has led innovation in this area, he pointed to things like using photovoltaic sidewalks and green roofs that can eat smog, reducing need for lighting, minimizing heat sinks that cause health problems and provide spaces for urban agriculture to improve access to local food supplies.

“We’re not looking for a silver bullet. We need silver buckshot.”

Commentary on the City in 2050: Creating Blueprints for Change

As the world witnesses the completion of the latest heaven-scraping tower to grace the skyline of a city of golden dreams, a tiny, niggling question arises: why isn’t Dubai getting raked over the coals by the same eco-warriors that like to trash Canada for environmental crimes against humanity?

To illustrate the paradox, just imagine that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper takes a break from — well, whatever he is doing while parliament is prorogued — in order to make an unexpected announcement: “We will build a city of the future in Yellowknife!” he shouts with a wild look in his eye. The hastily-assembled reporters move as a unit towards the back of the room and look to the exits.

“Now, I know the Al Gore crowd won’t like this, but the oil sands development in Alberta will double its production capacity to fund this gleaming northern metropolis. Not to worry, taxpayers — to ensure that this city is built as fast as possible while getting the best value for your money, Yellowknife will be designated as a special economic zone. The developers will be able to employ slave, er, ah, inexpensive foreign workers not subject to Canadian labor laws. Oh, and did I mention we’re going to build a commercial and residential tower more than twice the size of the Empire State Building?”

Sounds utterly ridiculous, right? The only question is which group would tear Harper apart with their bare hands first: the David Suzuki Foundation, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, or his own caucus. The environmental damage alone for building a huge city in a fragile and largely frozen ecosystem would be obvious to a small child. Add robust oil sands development into the mix and there’s a good chance the United Nations Security Council would authorize military intervention to topple the Harper regime.

A Cautionary Tale for Urban Planners
So why is this scenario actually playing out in Dubai with so little attention paid to the environmental damage it is doing to the planet? Just so we’re clear about the scale of the problem in the world’s least sustainable city:

Dubai consumes more resources per capita than any other country in the world, including the US. The city is a monument to indulgence, luxury, and, thus far, utter disregard for ecological footprint or sustainability: for example, Dubai currently consumes a whopping 250 million gallons of water per day (around 97% of which is desalinated sea water) to sustain a city of less than 1.5 million people.

Of course, all those seawater desalination plants require tremendous amounts of energy, which comes from the burning of fossil fuel, namely oil. One would think that a desert kingdom with such challenges would try to conserve some of its precious resources. Instead, the scorching hot desert city plans to literally evaporate its wealth by building the world’s biggest water fountain:

The fountains, which has yet to be named, will be capable of shooting water over 150 metres into the air – the height of a 50-storey building – and stretch over 275 metres – the length of two football fields. The $218 million project will be 25 percent larger than the iconic fountains at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas.

The 828 meter-tall Burj Dubai building will only add to the city’s troubles. It essentially added a city on top of the existing city. All the Vancouver city planners in the world — and Dubai certainly tried to get all of them — won’t be able to fix the basic problem: they built a decadent, modern city in a place that lacked enough natural resources to properly provide for a small medieval town.

Sour Grapes and Sweet Crude
Some will characterize my analysis as a bitter, sour-grapes rant of a patriotic Canuck motivated by the demotion of the CN Tower to second-best status. Others will point out that cities in North American are filled with skyscrapers — why can’t the Middle East aspire to this kind of prosperity and engineering feats?

But let’s remember that the West built up most of it’s cities at a time of cheap energy and no general consensus on the threat of global warming. We may have developed and achieved high levels of prosperity at a high cost to our environment. But until the last few decades (and for most of the population, until the last few years), our society did not understand the potential link between our industrial development and environmental degradation. Now that most of us are clear on the connection (and the dangers), we now aspire to incorporate environmental sustainability into everything we do. We are horrified by urban nightmares of places like Los Angeles and Atlanta. Freeways are out, bike paths are in. We may still fail most of the time in achieving sustainable cities — even Vancouver doesn’t yet come close to being carbon-neutral — but at least we’re aiming for a greener future.

As for Dubai, they have access to exactly the same data on environmental degradation and climate change that we’ve got, but the simple fact is that they don’t care. To oil shiekdoms like the United Arab Emirates, phrases like “peak oil” don’t frighten. They conjure dollar signs in their eyes. All the better to help them get rich and have some fun.

Prosperity and fun are are not intrinsically terrible things. But when unaccompanied by sustainable planning (which at this point, would entail massive forced depopulation of Dubai and other parts of the UAE), these all-encompassing aims are terribly irresponsible. They’re bad for Dubai citizens. They’re also potentially dangerous for the rest of the world.

In the absence of a technology revolution involving renewable resources like solar energy, places like Dubai will be overtaken by the desert, probably sooner than later. The difference is that when Las Vegas finally goes down, the citizens of that doomed mirage will be able to take haven in other parts of the USA. When Alberta dries up, parched cowboys will flee to the rainy west coast.

But when Dubai goes down? Will their people run to the other sun-blasted parts of the Arab world when their own ecosystem has been used up? Or will they come here? This brings up the bigger picture problem: is the West destined (and obligated) to become a life raft for cities and nations that destroyed their own ecosystems?

The Wealth of Nations and the Movement of Peoples
As the Copenhagen summit demonstrated, the Third World wants the “rich and decadent” West to transfer massive amounts of wealth, no questions asked, so that they can keep running their countries into the ground. Many Westerners are quite happy to hand over these suitcases full of unmarked hundred-dollar bills out of a misplaced sense of guilt towards countries that have in most cases been the victim of their own internal corruption, political intransigence and fanaticism.

These wealth transfers will occur, likely starting in 2010, if the frenzied one-upping promises of politicians at Copenhagen is any indication. So we will continue to invest in the environmental degradation of what we might call rogue nations, ecologically speaking.

It’s unclear whether places like Dubai will be the eventual recipients of this climate change prevention fund. It’s hard to imagine Canadian taxpayers forking over millions so that Dubaians can keep their desalination plants running, so that they can keep operating their water slides. Then again, no one will be keeping track…

But that’s not where the story ends for places like Canada. Eventually, no amount of cash transfer will be enough to support artificial nations that have literally pissed away their wealth and built their cities on a foundation of sand. That’s when we will be asked to take in people from Dubai and other arid parts of the world — again, no questions asked, since that would be cruel and clearly racist. Will our society, already coping poorly with a stream of immigrants from certain parts of the world where “Canadian values” are poorly understood, be able to cope with the coming flood?

Can we simplify this problem? Imagine, in the course of gaining some temporary measure of prosperity, a man you know destroys his own house and damages the property of his neighbors. Are you ethically bound to give him shelter? Is your decision based on generosity, or the idea that if you deny him shelter and force him to sleep rough, he will instead attempt to break into your basement?

In the bigger picture, when it comes to dealing with the waves of climate refugees, these questions will not remain hypothetical for long.

Where Are the Eco-Warriors?
The well-heeled public relations squad for Dubai has certainly earned their keep. In all the coverage of the biggest building in the world, I saw no condemnation of this engineering monstrosity by the usual green pundits. In fact, the only criticism I’ve seen leveled at Burj Dubai is that owing to the economic downturn, it may not have been timed right in order to guarantee full occupancy.

Are the greens worried about “offending” certain ethnic sensibilities? Perhaps they don’t want to be tarring Dubai’s powers-that-be with the same brush as the one they use to smear colonial, or so called neo-colonial Western nations. Hitting Dubai over it’s big useless tower standing in the bleached desert just doesn’t give the same sense of satisfaction as beating up Canada over the oil sands, or even rising star China over building a new coal plant every week.

The Burj Dubai hides in plain site from environmentalists and gets a free pass this week. Meanwhile, we’ll see if a news cycle can go by without some environmental organization slamming Canada as the real planet killer.

Dubai’s Wild Wadi Water Slide. Dubai’s Vaunted Wealth Goes Down the Drain. So Much for Sustainability

Vancouver has not been spared the economic blow-up that has affected the rest of the planet. This week, budget realities came up against citizens fearful of losing city services — and for some, their jobs.

Vancouver residents come out in force to an emotionally charged public city budget meeting, begging the question, ‘what are our priorities?’

Some city services, like parks and libraries, are seen not just as services, but as essential to our civic space where citizens can gather and livability is defined. When the money tap gets cut off, watch out.

Read my complete article at Granville Magazine, Something’s Gotta Give.

For more insight on the budget debate at Vancouver City Hall, I highly recommend City Caucus’ coverage, Council budget meeting brings out hundreds, and high emotions.

So much for sticking to sewers and potholes. Vancouver’s activist city council is spending political capital on some big green challenges that lots of folks think are way beyond our politicos’ pay grade. We’re going to see a more big-government approach to these issues – and that’s a good thing if we’re going to fix them.

That sustainability challenges like climate change and resource depletion are global in nature doesn’t let local governments off the hook to focus on sidewalks and animal-control bylaws. Voters will demand local actions to prevent or diminish local symptoms of global problems.

Read my full article at Granville Magazine, Green Roads and Risky Paths