Currents

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Urban sprawl is going to kill us all.

Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic. But if a Globe and Mail report about urban sprawl in beautiful British Columbia is to be believed, our goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in this province by 10 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 is already being undermined by the phenomenon. Simply put, skyrocketing housing prices in the coastal metropolis of Vancouver is forcing ever-increasing numbers to seek shelter in outlying communities.

The resulting increase in automobile commuting (since not everyone moving out to the boonies is taking the train) is driving our greenhouse gas emissions up. Global warming, here we come.

This isn’t actually news. Urban sprawl has been an issue for decades. The solution is less than clear-cut, though. You can’t force people to pay insane prices for tiny condos in Vancouver when they can still get a mid-sized house for a slightly less insane price just outside the operational range of Skytrain. And until we put all private homes under the direct ownership of the state a la Cuba, there’s no way to keep prices down.

The only way to artificially lower the cost of real estate would be to build coal plants and prisons right in the middle of Vancouver and other big cities like some demented SimCity mayor and watch people start actually leaving this province. I don’t see Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan or his metropolitan counterparts going the route of political suicide, though.

Sullivan’s ideas about building density in our city isn’t getting the attention it deserves. We’ll have to see whether Vancouverites and other Canadians will be willing to give up their big house dreams for convenient apartment living - like most people in virtually every other part of the world already have.

Nuclear energy good, nukes bad.

Given the rising panic over global warming, that really ought to be a simple message to get across. The more nuclear reactors we build, the fewer carbon-pumping coal plants we’ll have to keep running. That could mean the difference between visiting Shanghai fifty years from now and swimming in it.

Canada is looking at building its first nuclear reactors in a quarter century. This is good news for those who want to keep their electricity bills down and have an ample supply of power for our use and export. We’d also be pumping less carbon into the atmosphere.

British Columbia just committed to becoming energy self-sufficient by 2016 and cutting greenhouse gas emissions 33 per cent by 2020. Unfortunately, provincial officials also ruled out nuclear power for helping to achieve those goals. That combination of announcements has the potential of making laudable goals laughable.

All the Conservatives, neocons and shills for the oil companies who are denying global warming can go suck on an exhaust pipe.

Frankly, I’m embarassed so many Conservatives in Canada are still shouting from the rooftops (or slightly less noisily on the Blogging Tories forum) that global warming is all just propaganda and junk science. The funny thing is that our Conservative Prime Minister has belatedly signed on to the cause, but far too many of the party membership seems stuck in a 2002-era time warp.

Get with the program, people. We’ve got a planet to save.

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.