Action: it's about time

I t's easy to be dismissive of the small changes. I suppose they show people are thinking, or beginning to.

By all means start with some small actions, but don't feel you have played your part by recycling plastic bags. If a 90% cut in CO₂ emissions is needed to survive, then we need to increase our actions, not only in number but in the strength of their CO₂ cuts.

The three first sections give you some examples in three levels of engagement.

The Vancouver and Canadian specific section (Vancouver being where I currently live) looks at some local opportunities for change.

Everyone's list of actions will be different. Our current habits and addictions are personal. For some giving up their car will seem impossible. For others, who haven't become addicted in their use of a car, this will easy.

Most of us will fight some required changes in behaviour. We will bluster that we 'need' to fly or drive or have homes heated to 22 celsius.

This withdrawal response is human, and an integral part of the process. Take the bluster as a sign that you know somewhere inside that this change is required but you are nervous about being able to achieve it.

Starting

Examine the real meaning behind these words:

• Worth

• Value

• Cost

• Free

• Expense

• Moral

• Courage

• Need

• Want

Progress

Some ideas due to return

• Home delivery

• Mending

• Making

A recent interview with Sherri from Make magazine told of a survey of home garages. 20 years ago almost all contained a workbench where repairs were made to household goods, and things were created. Now almost none have a workbench; the free space in most is taken up with plastic storage boxes of surplus 'stuff'.

Make Magazine - technology on your time

'Make Do and Mend' was a phrase in World War 2 Britain which turned into a movement with its own literature.

Everything old is new again; November 2007

Lewes District Council on the south coast of the UK has resurrected the phrase - fix/ mend things instead of throwing them out and buying new products. They have produced a directory which includes recommending buying items which can be repaired.

Lewes District Council Make Do and Mend Directory

Intermediate Actions

• Join local branches of the organizations which are genuinely doing something more than tokenism.

• Once you've joined attend the meetings, volunteer to recruit, spread the word.

• Present radical approaches in person.Email is a last resort.

• Talk about the changes you make.

• Enable school age children to walk or bus to school. Not only does this save hundreds of journeys and increase exercise rates, but it also gives a clear lesson in taking steps (sorry) to change.

• Any child over 10 who ever requires being driven to school is being given every wrong message about energy, independence, exercise and more.

• Read the label on everything - where from, made of what? Do you need to buy something made so far away - why?

• If you really think you 'need' a car, buy the smallest manual transmission diesel you can find. Then use it as little as possible. Don't fall for the I-have-an-energy-efficient-car-so-I-can-drive-it-farther trick.

• Really look at your housing and travel needs. Realize the connection between them. In twenty years we will all be living closer to where we work or working closer to where we live.

• Don't buy a vehicle or house with space for occasional needs. If once a year you need to put up Aunt Amy in a bed and breafast that's fine. Don't buy or rent a house with this extra capacity for occasional 'need'. If you rent a small coach to take the soccer team to the finals, this makes far more sense than driving around the huge surplus capacity present in most private vehicles.

• Don't buy synthetic clothing - most 'fleece' comes from oil. Look for the original fleece - from sheep - wool, and cotton and linen and rayon.

• Buy darker colour clothing - it needs to be washed less, and at cooler temperatures.

• Don't use disposable cups - buy a good quality travel mug and take it with you all the time.

• Don't buy bottled water. If you want water with you buy a Sigg bottle 9see the 'Forever' page) and take it with you all the time. Same goes for a travel mug. If you can remember your keys, cellphone (why?!) and other essentials each day it's only a matter of adding these durable items.

• Don't use plastic bags.Well you can if wish, it really is unimportant in the grand, global, scheme of things. Not doing so shows willing but overall does nothing. If you drive to the shopping centre/ mall and then refuse the plastic bag at the store/ shop you are just playing.......

• Don't buy a cloth bag to advertise for free the supermarket chain with its name on - don't you own a backpack/ rucksack?

• A rucksack/ backpack is better for the back, when used with a waist strap as they should be.

• Change to compact fluourescent lightbulbs.

• Turn off lights when you are not using their light.

• Use lids when cooking.

• Invest in weighty cookware (see the 'Forever' page)

• Buy a good steamer, with a well fitting lid - the two vegetables you may often cook can then be cooked on one ring.

• Get good at one pot meals. Many working class meals around the world were developed to use little heat.

• The Chinese stir fry was created with low fuel use in mind.Use a wok or large frying pan.

• The food of most cultures remember dishes which either cook quickly at high temerature or slowly at low temperature. These reflect the fuel originally available.

• Buy food in season.

• Purchased frozen food uses up to 10 times the amount of energy (freezing, packaging, transporting and displaying it frozen etc) than its local, fresh alternative.

• Buy little frozen food.

• Turn off all appliances at the wall - standby and other states of 'off but not off' can use as much as 40% of the power used when the appliance is actually being used.

• Invest in a bicycle. Learn how to maintain it yourself. Consider a hand made frame with parts you can maintain not simply replace.(See the 'Forever' page.)

• Buy in bulk the foods you use most. Beans and rice and other grains store well. Buying in larger quantities reduces packaging, and journeys to purchase it.

• Move your fridge to a cooler spot and your washing machine and water heater to a warm one. In Canada this is almost always backwards, with the water heater habitually in the unheated basement and the fridge in the centre of the overheated kitchen for example.

Real

• Give up your car - just get it off the road.

• Don't fly. If you 'need' to make a flight or even a few to what they call in the travel businees 'reposition' yourself to be with the people you need to be with, so be it. But make clear that's what you are doing.

• Live in a smaller space. In the west this means about 400 square feet per person. More is surplus and requires heating, lighting and building (concrete etc).

• Buy less meat and dairy.

• Organic (actually 'organically grown') food will have used less energy in its production.

• Refuse to buy food that has been flown in - strawberries in January and so on.

• Wear winter clothes in winter and turn down the heat.

• Have this done in your place of work too.

• Speak to local supermarket manager about the level of heat in their store, and the mall/ shopping centre manager about the temperature there too.

• Open windows in summer - turn off the cooling centre first.

• Use a clothes line for drying laundry in summer.

• Dry towels in summer by hanging them inside your house - they will cool the air as they dry.

Vancouver, Canada

Canada Line, Airport Expansion, Trade and Convention Centre, Sea to Sky 'improvements' for the Olympics and The Gateway Project

These are the big, bad current projects, which unfortunately contradict both the spirit and the science inherant in the recent good Campbell initiatives.

Canada Line

An extension of the extremely low emission Skytrain system; this has to be good. Except a big chunk of the money for the new line comes from the Vancouver Airport Authority as a huge percentage of the journeys will be to and from the airport. Just like taking your trendy cloth bag with you as you drive your SUV to the shopping mall, this completely misses the point. With air travel such a prominent producer of CO₂and other greenhouse gasses, and delightfully delivering them at altitudes which triple their damaging effects, this is 'greenwashing' at its worst. Be green on your journey to the airport, even leaving your car at home, and then up, up and away. Do you know that international flights aren't even counted in a country's CO₂ totals? As George Monbiot says a child of five could work out that the departure country takes half of the responsibility, the arrival country the other half.

Airport Expansion

This myopic mess from an official airport press release

No airport includes the CO₂ emissions from international flights. So the environmental report below includes take off and landings but that's it. The focus on reducing single car occupancy trips to and from the airport just terribly misses the point.

Below are links to the airport and reports it produces to appear 'green'. Write to them and ask them to justify the growth in flying they are building for.

Vancouver Airport ('YVR') 'Environment' page PDF of the Vancouver Airport ('YVR') 2005 Environment report

Trade and Convention Centre

Not only way over the budgetted expenditure, but a real dinosaur of a project. It's not called the Video Conference centre is it? So in awful collaboration with the above items on the Canada Line and the Airport it's promoting travel (read paid junkets) to attend conferences in Vancouver.

Sea to Sky 'improvements' for the Olympics

Pave over the railway line to create extra lanes for traffic. Part of the 'hydrogen highway'

From the Vanoc 2010 Commerce Centre site: After suggesting boat and train options in the bid book, VANOC has opted to go with a less-ambitious bus system to shuttle people to venues and villages. Rocky Mountaineer Railtours has offered use of its trains to VANOC, though a short section of the railbed on the Sea-to-Sky corridor will be paved temporarily for use as an express bus lane.

Sea to Sky 'improvements' even has its own website

The Sea-to-Sky Highway Improvement Project has a multi disciplinary team of qualified environmental specialists responsible for managing and monitoring all environmental issues associated with the Project. 'Click here' to read about these responsibilities.

Seraching the site finds a 'Table of Committments' (quote:) dealing with the mitigation of all environmental issues (endquote). A search for the phrase 'global warming' or 'CO₂ finds no mention of either.......

Have to love 'creating more consistent driving speeds and shorter travel times' which of course means speed....

Some of the many benefits the Sea-to-Sky Highway Improvement Project will provide include: * A straighter highway and improved sightlines, creating more consistent driving speeds and shorter travel times * 80 kilometres of new passing lanes between Horseshoe Bay and Whistler * Highly reflective pavement markings along the entire route, making the Sea-to-Sky Highway easier to navigate, particularly during times of poor visibility * Shoulder and centreline rumble strips and additional median barriers * Safer, more effective intersections * Wider shoulders for improved safety and accommodation for cyclists and disabled vehicles * Better pullouts and opportunities for police enforcement along the highway * Stronger bridges to withstand potential damage from debris when water levels are high * Enhanced monitoring of road conditions by electronic weather stations to improve highway maintenance response during winter weather * 6,000 new jobs throughout the province as a result of economic activity generated along the corridor * Provincial GDP increased by $300 million over the period of 2010 to 2025

The Gateway Project

The Project is a massive old-school highway-expansion plan being launched by the BC Government, spearheaded by Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon.Key points of the scheme are -twinning of the Port Mann Bridge -Expansion of Highway One to eight lanes between Langley and East Vancouver -construction of North and South Perimeter Roads through Delta, Langley, Richmond and Surrey -massive reconstruction and enlargement of the Delta shipping port

Gateway Sucks for the region, the economy, the planet...just plain sucks

Personally I find the very worst aspect of this project is that it is being partly justified as a 'gateway' to the port expansion. The port expansion is largely driven by imports. Mostly unneccessary trinkets and substandard non-durables which we will simply have to give up if we begin to change our behaviours as we have to. The exports largely consist of raw resources - coal to China for example - which shouldn't be sold to anyone who is going to use them irresponsibly. In fact, as George Monbiot has suggested, the best thing to doo with these resources is to leave them in the ground. ('Value added Products' - say furniture made from local wood - make up less than 10% of the Wood Products exports in the last 10 years. At least when items are produced here we have a chnace of controlling the environmental effects of their manufacture.)

Exports of BC origin - 1997 to 2006 - PDF format

We know we should shop locally - this is not buying imported goods from a shop near where you live.

We know that coal and gas exports are going to be burnt ways that are dangerous to the world and its people - why do we think these exports are moral in any way?

BC is so well placed to be a world demonstration project in cutting CO₂ emissions and yet............

Look at this chart. It shows how BC with its hydroelectricity production is so much cleaner in its production of electricity. (A word of caution has to be introduced, however, sice the rest of Canada is so bad in its production that it makes BC look better than it should...).

What this means is that a 20% cut in electricity use in BC will create an electricity supply that is almost without any CO₂ emissions. The current situation is that the additional 20% which has to be imported comes mainly from the extremely bad Albertan sources. Coal sands, coal and oil all of which are the very worst ways of producing electricity.

BC Sustainable Energy Association

The BC Sustainable Energy Association is a non-profit society of citizens, professionals and practitioners committed to promoting the understanding, development and adoption of sustainable energy, energy efficiency and conservation in British Columbia.

Source of information about climate change, sustainability; join and/or become a 'Energizer'

BC Sustainable Energy Association

Winter Olympics in 2010

The Olympic games should be in the same place every four years, one set of facilities for the summer games (Athens would seem approriate) and one for the winter. We should then watch the athletes, who often seem forgotten in the hoopla, compete on TV. This avoids the local feeding frenzy, the crazy CO₂ emissions from the concrete, machinery, developement and the travel (most by air) which is seen as part of the 'spirit' of the event, and puts the emphasis back on the games.

Source of information about the real stories, impacts, greed and mismangement behind the 'games'.

2010 Olympics Watch

Site credits and sources

Stephen Hill, currently in Vancouver, BC, Canada, can be reached at: info (at) mobilizingmouse.com