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The federal government’s conservative-minded (surprise!) budget aims merely to avoid spending more than last year on programs without any deep cuts to try to tame the deficit. There will be those who criticize this sleep-walking sort of economic policy for lack of courage or ideas. Then again, “stay the course” is not necessarily a bad thing when it comes to an economy that outperformed almost every other developed nation last year. We could have done a worse — a lot worse.

A few examples of boondoggles our boring fiscal policy has managed to avoid spending on recently:

* Ninety-two upgraded T-72M1M main battle tanks for a bargain-basement price of four billion dollars. As Venezuela’s economy implodes under the rule of strongman Hugo Chavez and the people face food and power shortages, it’s nice to know that the Venezuelan people are safe from… who, again?

* Bailing out Greece for $6.5 billion. Whatever it takes to make sure sclerotic Greek unions and their olive-scented bureaucrats can keep raking in bloated salaries for serving the public with traditional incompetence. Oh, wait. Since we contribute to the IMF, taxpayers may be on the hook for this after all.

* Three gold medals for $120 million over four years. Russia may have spent more on their athletes than we did, but their return on investment was dismal. Better luck in Sochi, comrades.

* $1.5 billion for a Babel-sized skyscraper in Dubai — basically, in the middle of nowhere. It closed a month after it opened due to technical problems.

* $85 million for bomb detectors for Iraqi security forces. This sounds like an essential investment for a nation that routinely suffers mass casualties from terrorist attacks. That is, until you realize that you could get the same level of effectiveness at half the price by simply waving $42.5 million worth of stacks of cash at security checkpoints.

Of course we have our own share of stupid spending priorities. The millions spent on HRCs that seem to spend far too much time protecting such important values as the “human right” of not washing your hands before serving food to customers is just one example. That said, maybe we’re not so badly off in the big picture.

Screw You, Taxpayer!

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

I’ll state for the record that I consider myself to be a “green”. I’m utterly convinced that human beings have thoroughly mismanaged their environment, much to the chagrin of every other species we’ve managed to wipe out or endanger in the process. Even in Vancouver, considered by some metrics to be the most sustainable city in North America, that’s still just a relative measure; we don’t have a sustainable society here on the coast and things get worse in virtually every big city away from here. I further believe that much can be done to create more sustainable societies at the local level, through something as simple as changing habits.

That said, I’m struck by the panicked reaction of world leaders, media and protesters of the Copenhagen summit. At this point, it’s not even about getting a good deal that makes sense for all stakeholders. It’s about getting a deal, any deal. That’s not democracy in action. That’s a farce.

Damn the torpedoes, or the strangeness of debt-choked developed nations handing over billions of dollars to the developing world, no strings attached, with which nations can in turn fund eco-friendly initiatives or machete-wielding armies that employ rape as a general policy against their enemies. (Instead of using the West as middle-men, wouldn’t it make more sense for these climate-change endangered nations to simply go directly to Saudi Arabia or China hat-in-hand?)

It’s certainly clear that people, particularly the youth, in a great number of countries are concerned about environmental degradation and the possible effects of climate change. Reducing carbon output seems to be the clear goal. So on that level, it would seem to make perfect sense for world leaders to meet and discuss general principles for meeting this challenge.

But there is no such general agreement on the specific solutions for lowering carbon emissions. Carbon caps on paper? Gasoline taxes? Subsidies and investment in bio-fuels? Electric cars? Tree-planting? Stowing of carbon underground? In concrete? Paying Third World villagers to sit around, not chopping down the lungs of the world? Shutting down the tar sands project by government fiat? All of these solutions have pluses and minuses.

Canada is not unique in hosting disagreement over what sorts of solutions would work best. Every country in the world is asking the same questions. While it might sound more manageable to just get world leaders in the same room to hammer out an agreement, it hasn’t worked in practice. World leaders can’t put forth concrete and robust proposals because they largely have not been able to work out these plans even towards their domestic audience. World leaders literally don’t know what they can offer at these summits.

Canadians were never asked for input on what the government would offer at Copenhagen. There were no town hall meetings. There was no referrendum. No intense national debate. You can’t even say that the Conservatives already had a mandate for specific environmental policies vis a vis Copenhagen from the last election. The summit certainly wasn’t on anyone’s radar back then. And even if Canadian voters had been aware of an upcoming summit, there’s no way they could have voted for a particular party on the basis of its support for specific proposals — even shortly before the end of this summit, there still aren’t any.

For Canada’s government — or any government, for that matter — to take a strong position on any of the Copenhagen proposals would be extremely challenging when these issues haven’t been resolved at home. They can’t represent their constituents when they don’t know what they’re representing.

This failing was not inevitable, by the way — if all national governments paid as much attention to defining environmental policy as they do with foreign policy and defense, leaders would be able to represent their nations with a mandate even to make policy based on strict guidelines on the fly. But that hasn’t happened. So governments at Copenhagen, even if they have strong popular support at home, can’t act democratically at this summit.

That said, the issues being discussed at Copenhagen are too dire to ignore.

Given the limitations of what can really happen at these summits, we ought to go back to using them to discuss general principles. When it comes to hard figures, technical solutions and economic intervention, these general principles can be a guide for bilateral or regional international solutions. That seems to be the best we can do for us and the planet.

Recommended Reading
The Copenhagen Shakedown Con
Copenhagen and ridiculousness
Bad Boy of Copenhagen

The news on Canada’s economy is not looking good. But what do the experts really know? Time for a poll.

Sad to say, I know a lot of people affected by this recession who have lost their job or their business and are going through some very tough times. I’m grateful for my good fortune in avoiding the worst effects of this economic tsunami in my own life and work and send my best wishes to those friends and family members who have been affected directly or indirectly.

This too shall pass.

It’s pretty clear that BC is trailing the pack when it comes to minimum wage. At $8 per hour, we’re dead last across Canada. That’s a shame and it needs to change. But ideally, BC’s business class and political leadership will be able to set a foundation where it’s essentially irrelevant.

BC Federation of Labour’s Jim Sinclair calls the minimum wage situation a disgrace. It’s hard to argue the point.

Given our cost of living, minimum wage in Vancouver should at least be higher than in my original home town of Winnipeg. In Manitoba, minimum wage is set at $9 per hour. My fellow Vancouverites will howl in disbelief as I inform them that a friend of mine in Winnipeg bought a four-bedroom house there a few years back for about $70,000. That’s not a typo — there’s really not a zero missing. Sure, my friend’s spacious place is a bit of a fixer-upper, and it’s not exactly central, but try buying a four-bedroom house on the boundary of Vancouver and Burnaby for ten-times that purchase price. Good luck. That’s just one indication, but Metro Vancouver also has the highest rental rate in Canada. The point is, it’s expensive to live here.

Should someone flipping burgers or delivering pizzas naturally have the scratch for a down-payment on a house virtually anywhere in the country? Probably not. No one is “entitled” to live in Vancouver’s west end or Toronto’s ritzier burbs. Sure, some low-wage earners have to work two or three jobs to pay the rent and put food on the table for their growing families. Well, that’s life. We don’t have a caste system in Canada. The class system here is arguably even more permeable than in the USA, so-called land of opportunity. And there are certainly government programs making it easier for anyone to get the education and training they need to do what they want with their life. Given that, what is a fair minimum wage?

I don’t want to argue the merits of a particular level of minimum wage, somewhere between “enough for someone living with their parents to buy comic books and cigarettes” to “enough to support a small family and keep the fridge stocked with beer”. Frankly, I have no idea what constitutes fair in a society where the top level-CEOs make as much in the first 15 minutes of the year as I do all year.

But frankly, I don’t really want our politicians and business leaders in BC to spend all that much time on minimum wage. Top it up by a buck or two and be done with it until the coffee servers in Osborne Village once again start looking uppity.

Instead, I’d like to hear more about how this province is going to be positioned to train and produce the knowledge workers required to boost our fortunes in coming years. The recession is a temporary bump in the global process of a flattening international economy. North Americans need to become much better at building and sustaining a knowledge economy based on technological innovation, since we know where all the manufacturing and low-skilled labor has moved over the past decades.

If BC is successful in promoting this kind of success to augment its traditional resource-extraction based industries, minimum wage will become irrelevant. It seems natural that the so-called “green economy” will be a big part of this, as there are already plenty of companies in BC building capacity in the fields of alternative energy and more sustainable products. When the economy is roaring again, minimum wage will once more be the preserve of high school students and ambitious but unskilled laborers training at night for future opportunities.

Jim Sinclair calling for an increase from BC’s $8 minimum wage — in 2006