Currents

I’m still astounded and disappointed by the defensiveness of some Canadian Conservatives whenever someone mentions global warming. After all, Conservatives ought to be embracing green issues, if only for crass political advantage.

Mind you, most BC-based Conservatives seem to get it, but east of the Rockies, environmentalists’ popularity is inversely proportional to the amount of revenue Alberta extracts from its tar sands.

Vancouver technology blogger David Drucker touches on the issues of sustainability in fascinating post on one of Isaac Asimov’s early influences, science fiction writer Lawrence Manning. The description of the 1933 story “The Man Who Awoke” is a reminder that long before the words greenhouse gases were even part of our vocabulary, North Americans were well aware of the environmentally-unsustainable nature of their lifestyles.

You don’t have to be green to save the ice caps. Just maintaining some fair measure of our own quite comfortable modern lifestyle within a paradigm of sustainability seems like a good enough reason to go green.

We may be closer to nature in Canada’s green jewel on the west coast, but the latest numbers just don’t back up all of our environmentally-friendly pretensions.

Just 23 per cent of Vancouver homes compost, 4 per cent less than the national average and a whopping 17 per cent less than in Victoria (yeah, island dwellers have even more reason to manage their environment carefully, but still…). The numbers on switching over to lower-energy light bulbs is comparatively better.

The City of Vancouver has a great website and community engagement vehicle for tips about how to make little changes to your lifestyle to help save the planet. Planet huggers can check out One Day for more information.

Keep it clean, keep it green.

(The video above shows Lois of Family Guy cartoon fame stumbling on a fabulous idea for generating financial support for environmental initiatives)

Conservatives just can’t seem to leverage their early successes and lacklustre opposition into political gains.

That’s one way of looking at it. Another is that Canadians pretty much like what they’ve seen so far from our current political balance and see no reason to change it up. As soon as Conservatives started edging up in the polls, voters smack them back down.

It doesn’t even matter that Conservatives have tried to take over the center by developing an environmental plan far more detailed and visionary than their supposedly green competitors. The media and righteous pundits hoping to score some easy points are having a field day bashing the Tories with their own plan. Clearly, Canadians don’t want to change things up.

That doesn’t mean the opposition parties can start feeling entitled. None of the other parties are getting much love from the voters either. It just means we don’t want an election right when we’re getting ready for summer barbecue season.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktLG5Iw_kC8]
Congratulations are in order for Leaf Rapids, the first North American community to order retailers to stop giving away or selling single-use plastic bags as of today (Stores that break the law face a C$1,000 ($865) fine).

I’ve recycled plastic bags for as long as I can remember.

Still, re-using a Safeway bag a couple of times for lunch until it inevitably tears or gets covered in leftover grease still leaves a hundred bags or so per year in the landfill (or the recycling box at the liquor store, after which it will eventually end up in the landfill anyway).

That’s about 5,000 bags over my lifetime that might get stuck in some poor bird’s stomach. They take a thousand years to break down, so it’s quite plausible that I might just choke a few birds with the same bag. Not a pleasant thought. Besides, these bags are made from oil, which we seem to be running out of faster than us consumeristic Westerners would like.

Since I’ve been on a bit of an environmental crusade of late, it’s time to up the ante: no more plastic bags. From now on, it’s canvas all the way, baby.

Alberta is spending $396 million into oil sands production hub Fort McMurray to relieve social ills caused by the breakneck pace of development.

That’s just poor strategic planning. Alberta is already debt free and making money hand over fist from its energy sector. It’s citizens have some of the highest wages and lowest tax regime in the country.

But the goose that laid the golden egg is also the source of huge environmental damage. The amount of water waste alone that is necessary to extract oil from the oil sands is already in the process of turning Alberta into a desert. Very soon, Alberta could have a lot more in common with Saudi Arabia than just it’s main export product.

If anything, development needs to slow down, not triple (as the oil companies have planned).

But slowing it down requires no government intervention of the kind that turned Liberal into a dirty word in the oil patch. All government needs to do is lay off and let market factors determine production. If the market can’t sustain itself at its current levels, then it will have to slow down - or at least force the oil companies to pony up for social services and environmental protections, instead of forcing taxpayers to cover their unsustainable practices.

Canada’s House of Commons has voted to force the Conservative minority government to create a plan over the next 60 days for Canada to meet it’s commitments to Kyoto.

This isn’t a bad thing. The Conservatives have been reluctant to embrace the new environmental dogma of Kyoto for fear of putting Canadians out of work with Soviet-style economic management.

But now they can - and should.

The Conservatives ought to include in the plan draconian measures like shutting down the Albertan oil sand projects without delay and closing any factories in Ontario that don’t meet newly-drafted environmental standards.

Such a plan will of course have no chance of actually being made into legislation. But it will force Canadians and our elected representatives to think about what kinds of sacrifices they truly are prepared to make. When Conservatives force Liberals and NDP partisans on to the defensive, it might just swing public policy back into realism.

It’s time to get past the rhetoric and partisanship. Per capita, Canadians are the worst offenders to Mother Nature on the planet. It’s time to turn ideas into action.

Vancouver environmental educator and Canadian icon David Suzuki has challenged Canadians to give their input about how they would help the country to deal with global warming if they were Prime Minister.

Calling Vancouver my home town as well, I could hardly ignore the voice of Canada’s leading environmental scientist. My contribution to the dialogue is posted above. Enjoy.