Earthfuture

Nuclear – Hope or Hype?

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 22:32:00 +0000

In the light of the Japanese earthquake, tsunami, and disasters at the Fukushima plants, I am posting this excerpt from my recent book, arguing that nuclear power is not a safe solution to global warming.

Extract from The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming

www.theclimatechallenge.ca

by Guy Dauncey, November 2009

Faced with the climate emergency, some look to nuclear power as a clean, safe, cost-effective solution. Unfortunately, it is none of these.

It makes no economic sense

The nuclear industry argues that nuclear power is cheaper than coal-fired power or wind power - but an assessment in Ontario, based on the actual performance of existing reactors and the required return of capital, suggested that the realistic life-time price of new nuclear power would be 20 cents/kWh, more than two and a half times the price of wind or microhydro.[i]

The nuclear industry wants to build 1000 new plants – but nuclear plants almost always come in over budget and over time, and we need solutions now. The average construction time is 15 years (8 years in France), and the last US plant took 23 years to complete. Ontario’s five nuclear plants all had cost overruns ranging from 40% to 270%.

There are also big hidden costs the taxpayer has to cover, such as the cost of handling a nuclear disaster, which could cost $600 billion in damages and claims. The nuclear industry’s liability is limited to $9.1 billion in the US, $700 million in Europe, and just $75 million in Canada, with the taxpayer picking up the rest. If the nuclear industry had to buy insurance for all its liability costs, it would never get financed.

There’s also the problem of radioactive wastes, which have to be stored for up to 250,000 years, twice as long as since modern humans left Africa. In Canada, taxpayers are on the hook for $24 billion to cover just the first 300 years.[ii] At then the end of a reactor’s life it has to be decommissioned, at a cost of $325 million per reactor[iii]. In Britain the total estimated cost is £70 billion, 70% of which will be covered by the taxpayer.

As a result of these realities, the private sector won’t touch nuclear power unless there is firm government support. In the US since 1948 the nuclear industry has received $74 billion in subsidies, with an additional $13 billion in 2007 and $50 billion in loan guarantees, and an average subsidy of $13 billion per new nuclear plant – roughly its entire cost.[iv] In Canada, it has received $20 billion in subsidies since 1952.

If we are going to use public money, we should do so intelligently. In 2008, Architecture 2030 reported that compared to nuclear energy, a $21.6 billion investment in building efficiency would produce three times greater CO2 reductions, create 216,000 new jobs, and produce new energy for a fifth of the cost clean coal or nuclear power.[v] Because such options exist, public investments in nuclear power, as opposed to building efficiency, will actually slow down the path to climate solutions.[vi]

The world has a limited supply of uranium

The world’s 440 nuclear reactors, with a combined capacity of 363 GW, use 67,000 tonnes of uranium a year, averaging 146 tonnes per reactor. At this rate, the world’s uranium reserves of around 4.5 million tonnes will last for 70 years. If we build 1,000 new nuclear plants with a combined capacity of 1500 GW, as widely proposed, they will need an additional 277,000 tonnes a year.

By 2025, when the new reactors might begin to operate, the reserves will have fallen to 3.5 million tonnes, and the demand will now be 344,000 tonnes a year.[vii] At this rate, the uranium will be exhausted in 10 years. Some propose that we build fast breeder reactors fueled by their own fissile wastes, but these have been a technical and economic failure. Others argue that higher uranium prices will cause new reserves to be found – but even if reserves doubled, they would be exhausted in 20 years.

More problems

Nuclear power plants need cooling, but in the summer of 2003 France had to close a quarter of its 58 plants because the river-water used to cool them was too warm – because of global warming. If we locate them by the sea, they will be vulnerable to sea-level rise. They are also vulnerable to earthquakes, as the 2007 Japanese earthquake demonstrated.

There is also the concern that nuclear technology allows nuclear weapons proliferation, and the use of stolen plutonium to make dirty bombs; or that terrorists might fly a hijacked plane into a nuclear reactor.

Nuclear power also poses grave health risks. Uranium mining and nuclear power plants contribute to greater rates of breast cancer, lung cancer, and childhood leukemia. Following the Chernobyl nuclear accident, there has been a 90-fold increase in thyroid cancer, and thousands of deaths.[viii]

Nuclear power produces less CO2 that coal-fired power, but 24 times more than wind[ix] – and why take such risks when there are cheaper, safer ways to generate the energy we need? Those who promote nuclear power as a solution to climate change have simply not done their homework.

Nuclear power has died of an incurable attack of market forces and is way beyond any hope of revival, because the competitors are several-fold cheaper and are getting rapidly more so.

- Amory Lovins

Millions Against Nuclear: www.million-against-nuclear.net

Nuclear Power: Climate Fix or Folly? http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E09-01_NuclearPowerClimateFixOrFolly

Nuclear Power: The Energy Balance: www.stormsmith.nl

World Information Service on Nuclear: www10.antenna.nl/wise

[i] Ontario Clean Air Alliance, “High Cost Energy: The Economics of Nuclear Power,” Air Quality Issues

Fact Sheet #20 (March 2006).

[ii] Nuclear Waste Management Organization. Final Study: Choosing a Way Forward. www.nwmo.ca

[iii] Decommissioning Nuclear Facilities. Australian Uranium Association Nuclear Issues Briefing Paper 13 June 2007

[iv] Why expanding nuclear power would reduce and retard climate protection and energy security… but can’t survive free-market capitalism. Invited testimony to the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming United States House of Representatives, Washington, DC Hearing on “Nuclear Power in a Warming World: Solution or Illusion?” 12 March 2008, by Amory Lovins, Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute.

[v] The 2030 Blueprint. Architecture 2030, April 7, 2008.

[vi] Amory Lovins, as above.

[vii] The calculation assumes the need for 184.5 tonnes of uranium per GW of capacity.

[viii] For more evidence, see Cancer: 101 Solutions to a Preventable Epidemic, by Liz Armstrong, Guy Dauncey and Anne Wordsworth. (New Society, 2007)

[ix] Nuclear Power - the Energy Balance. See www.stormsmith.nl. In Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security (Energy & Environmental Science, December 1^st 2008), Stanford’s Mark Jacobson finds that when you combine a life-cycle analysis and opportunity cost CO2 emissions due to delays in nuclear construction compared to wind energy, nuclear power produces 68-180 grams of CO2 per kWh.

Yawn - Just Another Climate Emergency

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 01:12:00 +0000

by Guy Dauncey

If the climate-denying leaders of the oil and coal industries think they can bribe, sponsor or advertise their way out of the problem, they should think again.

Wake up! There’s a climate emergency!!! We’re heading for catastrophe!

By almost every standard of scientific diligence, the warnings are accurate and real, but the world turns over, checks that the trees are still green, and goes back to sleep.

Emergency! is a hard word to use. If you over-use it, no-one pays attention. The guy stands sadly on the street corner with his sign saying, The end of the world is nigh!, and people pass quietly by.

Thanks to our long evolutionary past, we humans are first visceral, then emotional, and only finally are we rational.

Three kinds of emergency

v When a saber-tooth tiger attacks, it’s fight or flee! There’s no moment of choice - your instinct takes over, primed by millions of years of genetic selection. It’s a visceral emergency.

v When the enemy is coming and you’ve only got a day to prepare, your instinct to protect and survive kicks in and there’s a rapid fusion of analysis, planning and action, primed once again by millions of years of genetic selection. It’s an emotional emergency.

v When your scientific analysts tell you there’s an emergency coming, however, but your senses give you no evidence of it, you have all the time in the world to think about it, and to decide on balance that it would be much more convenient if the warning was false. It’s a supposed emergency, not a real emergency, so it can be ignored.

A rational emergency is an emotional emergency for which we have advance warning.

You’d have thought we’d be grateful for our ability to think ahead, and take advantage of the lead-time this gives us, but judging by historical precedent, our ability to act in advance of a rational emergency is almost zero. Our desire to enjoy comfort now seems to be far stronger than our desire to ensure comfort in some vague theoretical future, especially if it requires getting up out of our comfort-zones, and doing something.

Did we ever heed the advance warnings of a rational emergency?

v In the 3^rd century BC Mesopotamian civilization, they failed to realize that their irrigation systems were salting the soil, making the land unfarmable.

v In 16^th century Spain, they failed to realize that the massive influx of gold from the Americas would cause inflation and ruin their economy.

v In 1930s Europe, they failed to heed the warnings that Hitler’s Germany was re-arming.

In all our long human history, did we ever heed the advance warnings of a rational emergency, and act appropriately? The Great Wall of China was built after the arrival of nomadic hordes from the north. Canada’s moratorium on Atlantic cod fishing was put in place after the cod collapsed. On the other hand, Alaska is managing to protect its ocean fisheries before they collapse, so there’s reason to believe that wisdom can sometimes prevail.

If our ability to respond to a rational emergency really is very small, however, is the likelihood that we will prevent the looming climate emergency by acting now to phase out fossil fuels, protect our forests, and cut back on meat also very small?

Emotional resistance

“Cut back on meat”… did you feel the emotional resistance kick in? Scientific analysis tells us that the global livestock industry is causing 20% of global warming - but wouldn’t it be more convenient if it wasn’t? Maybe the data’s wrong. Maybe this whole climate thing is wrong. This is where emotional denial kicks in. Even in the heart of the environmental movement, among activists who swear off flying since it causes 2.5% of global warming, meat is still often on the menu at potlucks and barbeques. Being an environmentalist does not grant immunity to the experience of denial.

It’s not as if there weren’t people who warned us of looming rational emergencies, as Churchill did in the 1930s, and anti-nuclear activists did in the 1970s. But the message seems not to get through until it’s too late, or until the rational emergency is sufficiently close to be upgraded to an emotional emergency.

How many light bulbs?

There’s a second problem, too. Even when individuals are motivated to act by long-distance warnings - the last time the global temperature was 3°C higher, the global sea level was 25 metres higher - they quickly realize that it’s no use acting on their own.

How many light bulbs do you have to change to prevent the looming climate emergency? Even ten million will make no difference if that’s all that happens - but ten might be enough if the world’s top leaders all changed them simultaneously on TV, while pledging to achieve a rapid transition off fossil fuels.

It is not as if we don’t know what to do. We do know what we need to do - many books and papers have spelt it out - but there are forces at work with deep pockets and well paid lobbyists who are actively insisting that climate science is junk-science, and solar energy will never replace fossil fuels.

“Climate prosperity”

A Canadian government body - the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy - has just created an initiative called “climate prosperity”, sponsored by the oil giant Suncor Energy, putting colour posters in every school making out that Canada could be a happy prosperous land when temperatures are warmer, even if things are a bit difficult elsewhere.

Does this make for a hopeless situation? Is Suncor right, with its sponsored message “don’t worry, be happy, and enjoy the rising temperature”?

Absolutely not. The climate emergency is getting closer every day, whether or not people have registered, and the only rational response is to persist with public education, persist with political lobbying, persist with the warnings, and persist with the vision of a world that can flourish without fossil fuels, air pollution, tar-sands, and oil-fuelled terrorism.

The 10:10:10 global work party

This weekend, people in 188 countries - myself included - will participate in over 7,000 practical climate actions as part of 350.org’s 10:10:10 global work party, including in every US state and 47 European nations. We are all focused on the need to reduce the CO₂ in Earth’s atmosphere from the current dangerous level of 390 (and rising) to 350 parts per million.

No-one pretends that these symbolic actions are enough - but equally, no-one pretends that standing on the sidelines shouting Emergency! is enough. We have to go on sounding the alarm bells, so that we may finally awaken the emotional response that makes people take the word “emergency” seriously, and we have to go on promoting, building and lobbying for the solutions, showing people that a world without fossil fuels, deforestation and excessive meat consumption will be a better, healthier, happier, and more peaceful place for everyone.

For many, the climate emergency is already very emotional: we can see the future for our children and grandchildren slipping away before us. So if the climate-denying leaders of the oil and coal industries think they can bribe, sponsor or advertise their way out of the problem, they should think again. This movement to head off the climate emergency and build a prosperous world without fossil fuels has hardly begun.

Guy Dauncey is author of the double award-winning book The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming (New Society Publishers, 2009), which lays out the solutions in considerable detail for every sector of society. See www.earthfuture.com. He is President of the BC Sustainable Energy Association, which welcomes your membership.

Twitter: http://bit.ly/9alNcm

The Climate Solutions Dividend

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:38:00 +0000

An extract from The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming by Guy Dauncey

New Society Publishers, November 2009 www.theclimatechallenge.ca

If we succeed in this great undertaking, the next generation will thank us not only for preventing a disaster but also for the many benefits that will flow from our success.

The ecological benefits are clear, but no one has calculated the full economic benefits. These are the climate solutions dividends, the enticing rewards for success.

We get to avoid the desperate scenarios laid out in Mark Lynas’ book Six Degrees, and keep human civilization intact, including many species that would otherwise face extinction. What price should we put on the ability of our children to continue the journey of evolution? The avoided costs are known: 5-20% of the US’s GDP of $14 trillion is $700 billion to $2.8 trillion a year. In Canada, it is $63 to $254 billion a year. The gains are priceless.

We enjoy a managed transition through what would otherwise be the economic trauma of peak oil, avoiding the relentless waves of bankruptcies, evictions, unemployment, poverty and hunger that will be caused by peak oil’s sudden arrival, for which – at present - our societies are completely unprepared.

We enjoy permanent energy security and the end of dependence on oil from the Middle East and other countries. This means we can bring the troops home, stop irritating the Islamic terrorists, stop being obsessed with security and stop exporting $300 million a day to the oil-rich states of the Middle East. These gains have been costed out by a team led by Milton Copulos, president of the National Defense Council Foundation, which spent 18 months undertaking the most comprehensive analysis of the subject ever conducted, which was “rigorously peer-reviewed”.[i] For the US, the gains come to $825 billion a year, which will be available every year as a free economic stimulus package.

We protect the world’s forests, which would otherwise face being logged or burned. Under the business-as-usual scenario, the Amazon rainforest starts dying by 2050 and turns into savannah by 2100, because of a combination of drought and fire. Because tackling climate change requires that we preserve the forests’ carbon, our children will continue to be enchanted by their magnificence. We will also benefit from the forests’ ecosystem services, as a continued contribution to our economy. Globally, their 1200 Gt of stored carbon, priced at $13.60 a tonne, has a $16 trillion value. If we assume a 200 year forest carbon lifecycle, that’s $80 billion a year. For the US, with 5% of the world’s forest, that’s a $4 billion a year contribution. For Canada (10% of the world’s forests) it’s $8 billion.

We enjoy a more secure global food supply by embracing organic farming, which stores more carbon in the soil, reduces farming emissions by up to 30% and increases yields in developing countries – where the food is needed - by up to fourfold. We also remove the threat to crops from smog, air-pollution and the increasing heatwaves, which reduce the yields.

We eliminate smog and pollution, which cause asthma, lung disease, cancer, disability and premature death. For Los Angeles alone, this has been assessed at a $10 billion annual cost. Air pollution and smog also cause crop losses and damage buildings and forests. For Ontario, Canada, the full economic costs have been estimated at $8 billion a year, rising to $250 billion by 2030 as rising temperatures cause more smog.[ii] For the US, the full economic savings are up to $690 billion a year.[iii] In California, smog and air pollution cause 9,300 deaths, 16,000 hospital visits, 600,000 asthma attacks and five million lost work days every year.

We enjoy cheaper driving, more cycling routes, more public transport, more high-speed rail and more friendly walkable communities, which build neighborhood strength. These benefits have not been costed out.

Thanks to our investments in efficiency, we enjoy lower heating and power bills. The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy has calculated that a 15% increase in efficiency will produce annual savings worth $169 billion a year. By increasing efficiency by 30%, this could rise to $338 billion.

We get to end most warfare. This may sound unbelievable, but most modern conflicts are fought over scarce energy supplies. When nations become self-sufficient in renewable energy, we can eliminate 80% of our military expenditures. The US military budget is around $1 trillion a year,[iv] of which $138 billion has been included in #3 above. This leaves $850 billion a year, which, trimmed by 80%, produces a peace dividend of $680 billion a year. When all these numbers are totaled, they come to a “free” annual climate solutions dividend of $1.5 to $2 trillion a year, which never has to be approved by the Senate or Congress.

Finally, we enjoy our first proper experience of working together as a world, and we restore hope to our children. What more can we ask?

The Yearly Climate Solutions Dividend	Low range ($ billion)	High range ($ billion)
End of Persian Gulf oil dependence	$825	$825
End smog and air pollution	$59	$690
Peace dividend	$680	$680
Improved efficiency	$338	$338
Total	$1,900	$2,500

[i] The Hidden Cost of Oil, 2003, updated January 8, 2007. National Defense Council Foundation. Peer review comment from The Hidden Cost of Our Oil Dependence. Milton Copulos interview with Bill Moore, EV World, April 23, 2006.

[ii] The Illness Costs of Air Pollution in Ontario. Ontario Medical Association, 2005.

[iii] See Lives per Gallon: The True Cost of Our Oil Addiction, by Terry Taminen (Island Press, 2006). Chapter 3 summarizes the various studies and references their sources.

[iv] The Trillion-Dollar Defense Budget Is Already Here. Robert Higgs, The Independent Institute, March 15, 2007.

It's Time to Stop the Pesticides

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 00:23:00 +0000

Over millions of years of evolution, every kind of insect and bacterium has evolved, seeking its niche in the world. There are over a million insect species - and sometimes a gardener may think that they’re all eating the roses at once.

No problem, however - we are clever. We can reach for the pesticides!

Spray, spray, spray away, gently with the breeze,

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, spray away disease.

At first blush, the magic works. The bugs disappear. Your lawn is so immaculate you could invite the Queen to dine on it. Isn’t it amazing what modern science can achieve?

But then the dogs start dying. They don’t know you’ve sprayed the lawn, and they romp and roll, finishing with a good licking to clean their paws.

Between 1975 and 1995 the incidence of bladder cancer in dogs examined at veterinary teaching schools in North America increased six-fold, with Scottish terriers, Shetland sheepdogs, wirehaired fox terriers and West Highland white terriers having a higher risk than mixed breeds.

When researchers interviewed the owners of Scottish terriers with bladder cancer, they found that dogs whose owners had used phenoxy acid herbicides on their lawns were four to seven times more likely to have cancer than dogs whose owners had not.

And then the children start getting cancer. A 1995 study by Jack Leiss and David Savitz published in the American Journal of Public Health found that children whose yards were treated with pesticides were four times more likely to have soft-tissue sarcomas.

Another study, by R. Lowengart, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 1987, found that the parents’ use of pesticides during pregnancy was linked to a 3 to 9-fold increase in childhood leukemia.

And then there are the golf courses. When the 10-year-old Jean-Dominique Levesque-Reneé of Montreal was in hospital with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1994, with only a 50% chance of surviving, he did some homework.

First he discovered that half the area where he had grown up on L'Île-Bizard had golf courses that were routinely sprayed with pesticides. Then he learned that the herbicide 2,4-D, linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, had been sprayed on their lawn every summer since he was a toddler.

While in hospital, he met other children with childhood cancer, and built up a map of Quebec showing where they lived. 22 came from L'Île-Bizard, where the golf courses were, and their rate of childhood cancer was 37 times higher than normal. When he left hospital, he became a persistent activist for by-laws to ban the cosmetic use of pesticides.

And this is where we come in. Quebec, Newfoundland, PEI, New Brunswick and Ontario all have legislation that bans the cosmetic use of pesticides and herbicides, and right now - but only until February 15^th - British Columbia is gathering public feedback on its own proposed legislation.

The proposed legislation as it stands is not strong enough, however. The Canadian Cancer Society has joined with a number of health and environmental organizations to call for legislation that will prohibit the use, sale, and retail display of chemical pesticides for lawns, gardens, and non-agricultural landscaping. Their ideal legislation would allow exemptions only to protect public health; provide public education about the ban and alternatives to chemical pesticides; include effective mechanisms for enforcement; exclude the use of Integrated Pest Management (IPM), which allows the use of pesticides as a last resort to deal with weeds and insects; and be passed in 2010 and fully implemented by 2012.

Barbara Kaminsky, CEO of the Canadian Cancer Society, writes: “A full 76% of British Columbians support the Canadian Cancer Society’s position that there should be provincial legislation to restrict cosmetic pesticide use. And so does the Union of British Columbia Municipalities. Over 25 municipalities have adopted cosmetic pesticide bylaws, and while this is good, it isn’t enough. The BC government must act so that these products aren’t for sale in retail stores, and so that all British Columbians are protected from exposure to cosmetic chemical pesticides.”

This is politics, however, and you can be sure that the companies that sell the pesticides are lobbying for legislation that is weak and woolly.

Please, for the sake of our children, our pets, and ourselves, go to www.advocate.ccsbcy.ca and send an email to reinforce the Canadian Cancer Society’s push. Five minutes, that’s all it needs.

Guy Dauncey

Guy Dauncey is co-author of the book Cancer: 101 Solutions to a Preventable Epidemic, from which some of this text has been taken.

Climate Action - Best Practices course

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 22:22:00 +0000

Climate Action:

Best Practices

What are the best ways that governments can tackle climate change?

with Guy Dauncey

Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC.

Thursday February 4th, 1-4:30pm. $55 +GST

This course will offer a guided tour of best practices in the areas of transport, buildings, energy, farming, food, wastes, carbon pricing, and community engagement, and provide an opportunity for participants to find solutions to the challenges they face.

AND .... What will it take for BC to achieve a 100% reduction in our GHGs by 2030?

This course should be of interest to everyone who is concerned about the growing climate emergency.

Guy Dauncey is author of the newly published book The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming, and President of the BC Sustainable Energy Association His personal website is www.earthfuture.com

To register, click here: http://bit.ly/4YZYzn

or call 250-391-2600 Ext 4801 Toll-free 1-866-890-0220

Feedback about Guy Dauncey's new book:

What an amazingly (insanely!) comprehensive and useful book. This is a joyous, hope-filled manual for facing the greatest crisis humanity has ever encountered. - Bill McKibben, 350.org

Guy Dauncey has created something unique in the current literature - if you wish to grasp the mind-boggling complexity of the climate challenge, read this book. -- John Shellnhuber, Chief Sustainability Scientist for the German Government

If you are wondering what to do about climate change, here is the answer. The Climate Challenge is not only interesting and informative, it is also exciting. –Lester R. Brown, author of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

Feedback from people who have attended this course:

“Fantastic, world-changing course. Must be turned into a 2-3 part documentary.”

"Guy is a tremendous speaker, teacher, and stimulator. More people need to hear him."

“Excellent presentation – should be made into a movie.”

Brokenhagen - So Let’s Try Something New

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 03:12:00 +0000

In the wake of Copenhagen, what are we to make of all the confusion and mutual blaming?

Der Spiegel’s editorial said “What a disaster. The climate summit in Copenhagen has failed because of the hardball politicking of the United States, China and several other countries - and because people just can't seem to fathom how catastrophic climate change will be.”

But let’s step back a minute, and consider the difficulty of obtaining a binding consensus from the leaders of 193 fractious nations, each of whom has to answer to his or her own voters, on a change so enormous that it calls for nothing less than retrofitting the entire planet for zero carbon operations within 40 years. There’s not a nation on Earth that manages to govern itself by consensus.

Can you imagine any kind of consensus agreement coming out of the USA, where very few Democrats deny the science of climate change, and very Republicans accept it?

Even if they had agreed, UN data published during the conference shows that the commitments on offer would have caused global temperatures to rise by 3°C, not the 2°C limit everyone agrees is needed, or the 1.5°C demanded by the Maldives and other vulnerable nations. And that’s bad news. The last time the world was 3°C warmer, the sea level was 25 metres higher.

So maybe it’s good news that the US, China, India, Brazil and other large nations that are responsible for 85% of the world’s carbon emissions got together and thrashed out their own agreement, without waiting for Saudi Arabia and a host of small nations to sign on. As Michael Levi points out in Slate, the 100 smallest emitters are producing less than 3% of the problem.

Ever since I started writing my new book on climate solutions I’ve also been thinking that the whole Kyoto process is steeped in the negative. It is framed in the mindset of limiting a problem, not winning a victory. If the 193 Kyoto nations were a football team, they’d all be playing defence, and losing 96-3 at half-time, with only the tiny Maldive Islands scoring 3 points for its commitment to build a 100% carbon neutral society by 2020.

If something’s broke, you’ve either have to fix it, or find a better way to design it. We’ve got to reframe the climate problem not only as reducing our emissions, complaining every tonne of the way, but also as building a zero carbon world that is so attractive and sustainable that why would we want to do otherwise? The oil’s about to hit its global production peak anyway, so the sooner we make the transition, the better.

Getting back to the football metaphor, no coach would last long who took such a negative approach. You’ve got to play offense as well as defense, and that means being able to visualize victory so clearly that it becomes a determined and resolute result long before it has been achieved - and that means visualizing a world powered and transported by 100% renewable energy, with green cities, zero waste, carbon-storing forestry, farming and ranching, and then going flat-out to score some goals.

So let’s have solar treaties, in which nations agree to aggressively ramp up the amount of solar PV that’s installed every year, driving down the price. Let’s have electric vehicle, wind energy, and bus rapid transit treaties, signaling to investors that they should press ahead and build new factories. Let’s have bicycling treaties, biochar treaties, and zero-net energy building treaties. If we depended on market forces to bring victory, Winston Churchill would have had to announce in World War II that “I’m afraid we can’t fight Hitler and his Nazis, because we’ve go to wait for the price of warships to fall.”

And while playing defense, where we’re doing such a lousy job, let’s try breaking out the various greenhouse gases instead of bundling them together, and find ways to tackle them separately. There are some aggressive players there who keep scoring touchdowns against us, and they’ve got to be targetted individually if we’re going to take them out.

This would allow us to create a specific plan to tackle black carbon, or soot, which comes from dirty diesel vehicles, traditional biofuel cooking stoves, residential coal fires, and open forest and savanna fires. It’s not a gas, so it’s not even on the Kyoto/Copenhagen table, but it’s scoring 21% of the global warming goals, and we urgently need to eliminate it. Since it only stays in the atmosphere for a few days or weeks, the response to our success would be immediate, which is precisely what we need.

We’ve also got to tackle methane, which is scoring 13% of the goals against us. Methane traps far more heat than CO2, but its life in the atmosphere is only 8.4 years, after which it breaks down into CO2 and other gases. Its official global warming potential (GWP) over 100 years is 25, but over its short life it traps 100 times more heat - and it’s the short term that’s so critical now. A deal to tackle methane would apply an urgent focus to fugitive emissions from fossil fuel extraction, livestock digestion, rice paddies, landfills, animal feedlot slurry, and open biomass burning.

And then there are the F gases, which are scoring goals against us while no-one’s even watching. The worst, HFC-134a, used in air conditioning, traps 5,000 times more heat than CO2 does over its short 14 years’ life in the atmosphere. Perfectly good CO2-based alternatives exist, so a side-deal to push it out of the game is urgently needed.

Before Copenhagen, bringing up new ideas like this would have been a troublesome distraction. But now that Copenhagen’s out of the way, and seen to have failed, we need to put everything on the table, and try to find a better approach.

There’s another new idea that concerns how we’re going to pay for the $100-$300 billion a year needed to help the world’s poorer nations deal with the impacts of climate change, and make their own journey to a zero-carbon future. Voluntary commitments won’t cut it, and a global carbon tax is unlikely to win support.

During Copenhagen, Ethiopia’s leader, Meles Zenawi, suggested raising the money by imposing new taxes on aviation and shipping, and on financial transactions (known as a "Tobin Tax"), which alone could raise up to $100bn a year. The idea has already won support from Britain, France, Brazil, and to some extent the whole European Union. The double merit of the proposal is that it can be targetted to foreign exchange and derivatives, where speculation has harmed the world’s economy so much over the past 30 years.

Copenhagen’s broken, and even if it had succeeded, with a temperature rise of 3°C it would still have guaranteed disaster, so let’s try something new.

Guy Dauncey is author of the newly released book The Climate Challenge - 101 Solutions to Global Warming (New Society Publishers, 2009). He is President of the BC Sustainable Energy Association.

The Twelve Days of Copenhagen

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 03:34:00 +0000

For singers everywhere!

The Twelve Days of Copenhagen

On the first day of Copenhagen, leaders gave to me, a really solid climate treaty.

On the second day of Copenhagen, leaders gave to me two turbines turning, and a really solid climate treaty.

Three transit choices

Four firm targets

No more dirty oil! (All sing)

Six solars sunning

Seven southern subsidies

Eight electric engines

Nine nations capping

Ten tides a-harnessed

Eleven leaders leading

Twelve coal-mines closing

With acknowledgements to the Canadian Youth Climate delegation.

Alternative words:

Six solar panels

Seven southern climate funds

Eight electric vehicles

Ten trains a-travelling

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:08:00 +0000

You are invited to the North American Launch of

The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions

to Global Warming

by Guy Dauncey

www.theclimatechallenge.ca

Tuesday November 3rd, 7:30pm

Vancouver Public Library, Alice McKay Room,

350 West Georgia St.

With an Introduction by Dr Mark Jaccard, Professor of Environmental Economics at Simon Fraser University; Presentation by Guy Dauncey; and a Special Honouring of 10 of Vancouver’s climate action heroes.

What an amazingly, insanely, comprehensive

and useful book.

This is a joyous, hope-filled manual for facing the greatest crisis humanity has ever encountered.

- Bill McKibben, 350.org

In his new book The Climate Challenge, Guy Dauncey shows how it is possible to reduce our global carbon footprint to almost zero by 2040, ushering in a new civilization that will be happier, healthier and more sustainable. Taken together, the Solutions represent an amazing blossoming of innovation that will change the world and create a host of new green collar jobs.

Guy Dauncey is an author, organizer and futurist who works to develop a positive vision of a sustainable future, and to translate that vision into action. He is President of the BC Sustainable Energy Association.

Signed copies of The Climate Challenge will be for sale at the event.

www.theclimatechallenge.ca

Organized by the Vancouver Chapter of the BC Sustainable Energy Association

and hosted by the Vancouver Public Library, with many thanks.

What people are saying about the book:

This is a terrific labor. Nowhere will readers find a more exhaustive, yet accessible, treatment of the climate challenge.

- Gary Gardner, Senior Researcher, Worldwatch Institute

Guy Dauncey has created something unique in the current literature - if you wish to grasp the mind-boggling complexity of the climate challenge, read this book.

- John Shellnhuber, Chief Sustainability Scientist for the German Government

A real cracker. Hugely informative, hard-hitting and very upbeat about the solutions.

- Sir Jonathon Porritt, past Chair of the UK Sustainable Development Commission

If you are wondering what to do about climate change, here is the answer. The Climate Challenge is not only interesting and informative, it is also exciting.

– Lester R. Brown, author of Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

Very timely and persuasive - an essential owner’s manual for our planet.

- Terry Tamminen, former Secretary of California EPA

This book is marvelous! The Climate Challenge is an elegant, insightful and comprehensive examination of the dominant global challenge we face. This attractive work belongs on the desk of every investor, entrepreneur, citizen and policy maker.

- Paul R. Epstein, M.D., M.P.H., Associate Director, Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School

It's as if Whole Earth Catalog had been reborn 40 years later. Guy Dauncey is deeply, urgently persuasive.

- Felix Kramer, founder of CalCars.org

www.theclimatechallenge.ca

This is our call to action

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 00:48:00 +0000

The message, so firmly, is – don’t give up. Don’t hang with the cynics, the angry-hearted, the whiners, the blamers, the negative minded. Hang with those who believe in love, hope, and beauty – and then work with them to make this a reality. This is our planet. This is our time. This is our call to action.

- Guy Dauncey

Blog Climate Action Day October 15th

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 21:12:00 +0000

Bill McKibben writes: October 24th will be a day unlike any other in history. But what about October 15th?

Nine days before the 350 Day of International Climate Action, thousands of bloggers will be spreading one message across the internet to millions of people as part of Blog Action Day 2009. That message will be…

...well, it's not decided yet, and that's what this is all about. We need YOU to vote for 'climate change' to be the issue those bloggers talk about on Blog Action Day, October 15th.

[The link is at the bottom of this message if you want to skip ahead and vote already]

Blog Action Day is a global internet campaign for change - their tagline is "Changing the global conversation every year on October 15." Sound familiar? In 2008 Blog Action Day reached 13,498,280 people and this year will be even bigger. Imagine all those people being energized to support 350!

With your help it will be a creative, 21st-century invitation to participate in the 350 International Day of Climate Action in October -- an invitation to help build a movement united by three digits that can change the world.

HOW TO VOTE:
1) Go to the Blog Action Day survey (the deadline is Friday!)
2) Vote for "Climate Change" to be the topic of Blog Action Day 2009
3) In the comments section, leave a message about 350 and the International Day of Action on October 24th.
4) Send this to your friends and ask them to vote as well

That's it! Show your support for 350 and vote. Last year Blog Action Day mobilized 12,800 Bloggers to write 14,053 Blog Posts that were read by 13,498,280 Readers.

The Seven Wonders of the 21st Century

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 16:34:00 +0000

by Guy Dauncey

Common Ground Magazine, July 2009

THE NEW CENTURY is only nine years old and already our prospects for the future have become a full-blown montage of hopelessness and despair. It is true that if we continue with business-as-usual we face a worse-than-dire future. I follow the climate science, so I know. But enough already! The human spirit is perennially strong and our global immune system is fighting back by creating new thought forms to fight the virus of negativity.

In previous centuries, we replaced ignorance with widespread literacy. We opened new horizons through science, technology and exploration. We ended slavery, created democracy and overthrew fascism. We organized labour, liberated women and won civil rights for all. What might we achieve in this century? Here are seven possibilities that are totally within our reach if we have the vision and courage of our ancestors.

First Wonder: 100% renewable energy. Energy efficiency, solar PV, solar thermal in the world’s deserts, wind, geothermal, tidal, wave, hydropower and bio-energy offer us far more energy than we need, and once we have made the shift, this energy will be available forever. No more wars over oil. No more air pollution. And much less climate chaos.

Second Wonder: A global economy that respects Nature. In Canada’s last federal election, if only those younger than 25 had voted, the Green Party would now be running the country. There is a growing recognition that we can no longer treat Earth’s myriad ecosystems as "negative externalities," following the blind stupidity of mainstream economics. If our younger people have their way, this century will see a sweeping green revolution that uses legislation, green taxation and global treaties to liberate Nature from oppression.

Third Wonder: The end of poverty. Muhammad Yunus, who created the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, has shown how microlending can lift the world’s poorest out of poverty, while Peru’s Hernando de Soto has demonstrated how granting legal title can enable them to turn their assets into liquid capital and participate with their enterprise. This will take a prolonged effort, but the dream that future generations will have to visit a museum to learn what poverty was is still very much alive.

Fourth Wonder: The end of war. This is not a fantasy. By removing oil from the equation of global conflict, we remove the major cause of war. The second major cause – nationalism – is already dying, as more and more people find a solid identity as citizens of our shared planet, rather than of their nation alone. Global peacemaking, peacekeeping and conflict resolution are expanding their reach every year. After millennia of bloodshed, we can finally eliminate war.

Fifth Wonder: The end of cruelty to animals. This may be the hardest wonder to achieve, yet all that’s needed is widespread understanding of the atrocious ways we treat animals in factory farms, puppy mills, veal crates, bear bile cages, and so on. We already know from our love of pets that the bond with animals can be enormously strong. With persistence, we can end the suffering we cause.

Sixth Wonder: World government. Can any advanced planet operate without world government? It is only the dying embers of national pride that prevent us from embracing workable global treaties and a democratically elected global assembly. Future generations will wonder what the fuss was all about.

Seventh Wonder: One spirituality. When the world’s religions were created, it was out of a realization that one supreme God would end the bloodshed between followers of rival tribal gods. Today, the same thing is happening as more and more people realize that they can draw on the deep spirituality of any religion without embracing its fundamentalist trappings. Science itself is on the verge of a breakthrough to a unified field theory that will merge matter and consciousness.

The only things that hold us distant from these wonders are negativity and hopelessness, the sad pillars of tired minds. We ourselves could be the Eighth Wonder of the 21st century, if we cooperate with others to realize the dream.

Guy Dauncey is president of the BC Sustainable Energy Association (www.bcsea.org), which welcomes your membership, and the publisher of EcoNews (www.earthfuture.com)

World's first floating wind turbine

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 18:12:00 +0000

Right now, the world's first floating wind turbine is being towed out to sea off the coast of Norway. It's a 2.3 MW machine, the Hywind, made by Statoil Hydro, and it can be moored in waters up to 700 metres deep.

Just imagine the global potential, if this works out well....

Here's the BBC story: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8085551.stm

New Kyoto text includes Option for "below 350 ppm" and "more than 95% by 2050"

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Thu, 21 May 2009 22:36:00 +0000

The UNFCCC has released the negotiating text for Copenhagen, which is the first time this has been done.

It's a 52 page document, which is fully available here:

http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/awglca6/eng/08.pdf

and

http://maindb.unfccc.int/library/view_pdf.pl?url=http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/awglca6/eng/08.pdf

I have extracted some of the key text below, which shows the many options that are on the table.

These include (Para 12, Option 2) "Stabilization of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere well below 350 ppm CO2eq and a temperature increase limited to below 1.5oC above the pre-industrial level. For for this purpose, the Parties {shall}{should} collectively reduce global emissions by {81-71}{more than 85} per cent from 1990 levels by 2050."

If this is what we collectively want to push for, we can now refer to our desire outcome as "Paragraph 12, Option 2"

Paragraph 14 also opens the door to up to a 45% cut by 2020, and more than 95% by 2050.

11. The shared vision includes a long-term aspirational global goal for emission reductions that is based on science and provides direction to long-term cooperative action, making it sufficiently effective to bring about the deep cuts in global emissions required to achieve the ultimate objective of the Convention {and minimize further climate change impacts on vulnerable developing countries}.

12. The long-term global goal for emission reductions {shall}{should} be set

Option 1 as a stabilization of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere at {400}{450 or lower}{not more than 450}{450} ppm carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2 eq) and a temperature increase limited to 2oC above the pre-industrial level. For this purpose, the Parties {shall}{should} collectively reduce global emissions by at least 50 per cent {from 1990} levels by 2050.

Option 2 as a stabilization of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere well below 350 ppm CO2eq and a temperature increase limited to below 1.5oC above the pre-industrial level. For for this purpose, the Parties {shall}{should} collectively reduce global emissions by {81-71}{more than 85} per cent from 1990 levels by 2050.

Option 3 as a global temperature increase limited to 2oC above the pre-industrial level.

Option 4 as a reduction in global average GHG emissions per capita to about 2 t CO2.

Option 5 on the basis of:

Option 5.1 historical responsibility.

Option 5.2 emissions debt.

Option 5.3 per capita accumulative emission convergence.

Option 5.4 an equitable allocation of the global atmospheric resources.

13. Emission pathways towards the long-term global goal for emission reductions require that global GHG emissions peak {between 2010 and 2013}{by 2015}{by 2020 at the latest}{in the next 10-15 years}{in the next 10-20 years} and decrease thereafter.

14. To this end, {developed country Parties} {Parties included in Annex I to the Convention (Annex I Parties)} {developed country Parties included in Annex II to the Convention (Annex II Parties)}, as a group, {shall}{should} reduce their GHG emissions:

(a) {By at least 25-40}{By 25-40}{By more than 25-40}{In the order of 30}{By at least 40}{by 45}{by at least 45} per cent from 1990 levels by 2020, {with further reductions to be achieved through policies and measures that promote sustainable lifestyles};

(b) {And {by more than 95}{in the range of 75-85} per cent by 2050}.

15. Supported and enabled by technology, financing and capacity-building from developed country Parties, the GHG emissions of {developing country Parties}{Parties not included in Annex I to the Convention (non-Annex I Parties)}, as a group, {shall}{should}:

(a) {{Significantly deviate from the baseline by 2020} {Deviate in the order of 15-30 per cent below the baseline by 2020}};

(b) {And be reduced by 25 per cent from 2000 levels by 2050}

16. Option 1 The Parties shall periodically review the overall progress towards the ultimate objective of the Convention and actions related to mitigation, adaptation and means of implementation, in the light of {the best available scientific information}{an assessment of climate change and its impacts} {intergovernmental scientific} as well as relevant technical, social and economic information, and taking account of observed impacts and efforts made to adapt to climate change, including a comprehensive review not later than 2016, incorporating consideration of future emission reduction requirements and targets in the light of the Fifth Assessment Report of the IPCC.

17. Option 2 (in the case of a long-term global goal as defined in para. 12, option 3, above) The long-term global goal for emission reductions {shall}{should} be updated to reflect progress in scientific knowledge. To allow for these updates, the 2oC goal {shall}{should} be broken down into partial targets: initially, a 0.2oC temperature increase per decade over 10 decades. Every 10 years, the partial target {shall}{should} be evaluated, with a view to possibly redefining it, taking into account advances in scientific knowledge and the reduction of uncertainties.

Does your business wear a Green Climate Logo?

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Thu, 21 May 2009 00:42:00 +0000

It is the summer of 2010, and consumers across North America are on the lookout for a new green logo in shop windows and retailers’ catalogues. It’s a large 12 inch high circular sticker containing the words “Climate Change. YES - We’re Part of the Solution” – you can’t miss it, once you’ve seen it.

To win the right to display the sticker, a business must demonstrate that it has measured its carbon footprint; developed a strategy to reduce it; engaged its staff; informed its customers; and made measurable progress towards its goal.

The stickers include a small white circle that says “7%”, or “48%”, depending on the level of carbon reduction a business has achieved compared to its initial baseline. The race is on to reach 100%. Carbon offsets are not allowed – it must be a real reduction, including the transport used to ship goods.

Is this fantasy, or a realistic insight into what’s coming? My personal hunch is that it’s only a matter of time before it’s a reality.

In 2007, a business-supported initiative called Climate Counts launched a sophisticated scorecard that ranks 56 of the world’s top corporations for their contribution to climate change solutions, indicating whether they are Stuck, Starting, or Striding.

In the first year, Burger King and Wendy’s scored “Stuck”, with zero points out of 100. Amazon and CBS also scored absolute zeros. Levi Strauss managed just 1, while the best that Apple and eBay could muster was 2. Canon came top with 77, followed by Nike on 73, Unilever 71, and IBM 70. As well as actual carbon reduction, the scoring includes points for whether the companies have supported progressive climate legislation.

In the 2008 Scorecard, Burger King still scored 0, along with Wendy’s and the Jones Apparel Group (Anna Klein, Nine West, and many other brands). Amazon and eBay improved to 5, Apple to 11, CBS to 15, and Levi Strauss to 22. At the top end, Nike moved into the lead with a score of 82, followed by Stonyfield Farm 78, IBM 77, and Canon 74.

Overall, the corporations’ scores improved by an average of 22%, which speaks either to a deep commitment to change, or to the power of public shaming and reward, available for the whole world to see at www.climatecounts.org.

This begs the question - do consumers care whether a business is taking action on climate change, or are they just looking for a bargain?

In May, Havas Media asked this very question in a global market study with 11,000 participants in nine countries around the world. They found that 79% of those surveyed would rather spend their money with companies and brands that are working to reduce their environmental impact, and 89% would actively seek to do just this in the year ahead. Over 80% of the respondents said that they would buy more green goods if they were on offer, and 35% said they would be willing to pay more for them.

The big surprise in the survey, apart from the high level of consumer desire to see action, was that consumers in Brazil, Mexico, India and China were more alarmed by climate change, and more willing to pay more for climate-friendly products than consumers in the USA, Britain, and Germany. (Canada was not included in the survey). For any company with aspirations towards global trade, this should serve as a wake-up call.

The other surprise (or maybe not) was that only 11% of those surveyed thought their governments were doing enough to tackle climate change. The flipside of this is a strong desire for business to step up to the plate and show that it is taking the lead.

Most companies are still asleep at the switch, however. In Britain, in 2006, a survey by The Carbon Trust found that 74% of people thought businesses were not doing enough to cut their carbon emissions and tackle climate change.

What kind of initiative are companies taking?

In Vancouver, the courier company Novex has changed 30% of its fleet to ultra-low emission vehicles, and is aiming to reach 100% by 2012.

Small Potatoes Urban Delivery, Vancouver and Calgary’s organic food home delivery company, is sourcing over 50% of its products locally, and delivering by bicycle where possible. Since each delivery van carrying 100 orders saves 200 car trips, it is reducing overall fuel use by 40%.

In Britain, the telecoms giant BT has set a goal to reduce its carbon emissions by 80% by 2016 – and has already achieved a 60% reduction. When they launched their company-wide initiative, their staff formed 28 carbon-busting clubs within three weeks.

The British retail giant M&S has pledged to reduce its CO₂ emissions by 80%, to double its regional food sourcing, and is running Carbon Challenge for its customers with the Women’s Institute.

Nike found a way to remove SF₆ – a powerful greenhouse gas – from the process it uses to fill the air pockets in its running shoes.

Hyperion, a business management software company, is paying a $5,000 a year bonus to employees who drive a car that averages 45 mpg or more.

Smaller companies can contribute just as much as larger ones. In Philadelphia, where the owner of the AOK Auto Body Shop changed light bulbs, installed motion sensors, put timers on equipment, switched to Energy Star appliances, and trained his staff to turn the lights off, he is reducing his emissions while saving $5,577 a year on a $7,832 investment.

The days of voluntary action may soon be over. In Britain, starting in 2010, all quoted companies will be obliged to disclose their carbon emissions in their annual reports, and their performances will be compared in an annual league table summarizing the best and worst performers. It is only a matter of time before this becomes normal practice – and before those bright green stickers begin appearing in shop windows.

Guy Dauncey is President of the BC Sustainable Energy Association, and author of the award-winning book Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change. He lives in Victoria.

First Published in Business in Vancouver, June 2008

Cycling to Planetary Happiness

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 18:52:00 +0000

Two wheels on the road, the summer air in your face - it’s a wonderful way to travel!

When we look at the urgent need to eliminate our carbon emissions, plus the end of cheap oil and the benefits of being healthy and fit, cycling has to be one of the most important transport initiatives we should be investing in.

Coaches, transit, light rail, electric vehicles, ride-sharing, walking – these are all part of the answer.

But cycling should have a special place on the list, because it brings so many benefits. In Copenhagen, where 36% of the population commutes to work by bike, cycling has become such a style that they have invented a verb, “Copenhagenize”, to capture what’s happening. (www.copenhagenize.com)

And just look at the economics of it. They know from their health statistics that physically active people live five years longer and have four fewer years of lengthy illness than those who are non-active.

They know that cycling for four hours a week – 10 km a day, a typical Copenhagen bike ride – makes a person physically active.

They know that if Copenhageners cycled 10% more kilometres each year, their health system would save $12 million a year, and their economy would benefit from $32 million a year of production not lost to illness. There would be 57,000 fewer sick days in the workplace each year, 61,000 more person-years enjoyed, and 46,000 fewer person-years lost to lengthy illness.

They know that each additional kilometre of bike lane attracts 170,000 more cycle-kilometres a year, 19% more bikes on that stretch of road, a 9-10% drop in the number of cars, accidents and injuries, $51,000 in saved health care costs, and $134,000 in saved production costs. For every dollar they invest in the bike lane, they save 5 dollars. Knowing this, Copenhagen has set a goal that 50% of all work trips should be by bicycle by 2015.

Copenhagen has a 36% rate of bicycle-commuting, while Victoria has a 6% rate - and we boast that we are the cycling capital of Canada. And yes, it rains just as much as in Victoria. They get 71 cm a year; we get 66.5 cm. So what would it take for Victoria – and other North American cities - to reach a 36% level of cycling, with all the multiple benefits it brings?

If I was the Premier – a game we all love to play – I would first ask all my Ministries to adopt integrated long-term co-budgeting, so that a $100 million investment in cycling that was known to generate long-term savings of $500 million in health care and business costs would win immediate approval from the Treasury Board mandarins.

Secondly, I would ask every municipality to prepare a long-term plan to increase the commuter cycling rate to 25% by 2020, drawing on the best examples from around the world.

What would such a future look like? Every major road would have a cycle lane, separated from traffic by a yellow rumble strip, like the ones that we have on highways to tell you when you’re veering off the road. Throughout the city, there would be a network of safe cycle routes where most traffic was not allowed, using a mixture of railway rights of way, back lanes, and quiet residential streets.

At every major intersection, cyclists would be allowed to gather in front of the traffic, and given 30 seconds to advance with all lights on red, before cars were allowed to go. All over the city, there would be safe, sheltered, bicycle parking places.

As in Paris, where 24,000 VeLib bikes were placed on the city streets last year, there would be city-bikes bikes for rent by the half-hour, using a smartcard. To guard against theft, you would lose a $150 deposit if you didn’t return the bike to a bike station after use.

Every community would hire bicycle planners. Davis, California, which has a 17% cycle-commute rate, has two full-time cycling staff for a population of 64,000. A region of 300,000 people would employ ten full-time cycling staff.

For those not fit enough yet, or who can’t make the hills, electric bikes would become the norm, costing only one cent per 20 kilometres.

Every school would have its Safe Routes to School, and all parents would be strongly encouraged to stop driving their kids to school.

The magic of this is that the more cycling there is, the safer it becomes, because – from Denmark’s experience - when more motorists are also cyclists, they are better able to understand the cyclist’s needs.

And not just here, but all over the planet. When such a simple technology already exists with so many benefits, how foolish could we be not to make the most of it?

First published in EcoNews: A monthly newsletter funded by your donations that dreams of a world blessed by the harmony of nature, the pleasures of community, and the joys of personal fulfillment, guided and protected by our active citizenship.

Our Journey to Zero Carbon

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 23:09:00 +0000

March, 2020.

It’s a beautiful sunny afternoon, and all the better because BC’s annual progress report on The Road to Zero Carbon has just shown that we have achieved a 50% reduction in our carbon emissions since 2008.

The Arctic is still melting, the sea-level is set for an ominous rise by 2100, and the impact of climate change on agriculture and ecosystems gets worse each year, but it’s good to know we are on the path, and that BC is demonstrating how life is both possible and enjoyable in a low carbon world. At this rate, we’ll hit the 99% reduction by 2030 the climate scientists are insistent we achieve.

Throughout Victoria, people are busy in their gardens, harvesting winter vegetables and planting seeds that will bring bounteous crops this summer. With food prices so high, it’s Victory Gardens all over again, along with rooftop gardens, community gardens, and boulevards thick with nuts, fruits and berries.

The changes have brought a wave of excitement. The roads are thick with bicycles, and many quieter roads have been turned into car-free bicycle routes where grannies and children alike feel safe to ride. Small electric batteries have turned hills into music, eliminating one of the biggest barriers to cycling.

It was certainly a shock in 2010 when the BC government went into partnership with a small Vancouver electric vehicle company, raised $500 million in public shares and started to produce 100,000 electric vehicles a year. Being attractive, colourful, tax free, cheap to run and immune from the carbon taxes and road tolls other vehicles had to pay, they were an instant hit with the consumer. And so quiet! Combined with streetlights being turned off after midnight, the solar panels that people use to light their homes and charge their cars in summer, and the home delivery of local food by bicycle, they are adding a definite je ne sais quoi to our fast evolving cityscape.

The new ferries are smaller now, since more people travel by bus, and Victoria has an amazing holographic teleconference centre that brings us closer together across the country, without having to leave home.

www.titanica.no/Love

Finding the electricity to run the cars was not a problem. Most owners charge up at night when the power is cheaper because there’s less demand on the grid, and BC’s rapidly expanding wind, solar, tidal and carefully selected number of small hydro projects produce far more power than we need, allowing us to sell the surplus to Alberta and California where it earns us good money, while enabling the important closure of coal-fired power plants.

BC’s first “deep rocks” geothermal power plant is due to open this summer in the Kootenays, drilling 8km down for the heat. They’re planning to develop 10,000 MW of capacity, enough to power an astonishing 80 million small electric vehicles, assuming each uses 1 MWh to drive 10,000 km a year, and a geothermal plant produces 8,000 MWh a year per MW.

The old habit of spending hours commuting to work has been quite transformed by carbon taxes and road tolls. With the income being poured into rapid transit and luxury commuter coaches, the journey to work has become a chance to catch up on emails and get a head start on the day’s work; some companies are even paying their staff for work done on the coach.

It’s the older, retired baby-boomers who have found it hardest to adjust. The global carbon taxes on international flights and shipping kicked in just when they were hoping to visit their “100 Places to See Before You Die”, causing the cost of flying to rise dramatically. As a result, close to home holidays have become more creative with bicycle and horseback tours substituting for Mexican beaches and Mayan ruins.

Some of BC’s industrial companies did a lot of complaining in the early years of carbon constraint. As the carbon taxes and cap and trade requirements went up, however, and incentives for green energy grew, their engineers found ways to be vastly more efficient, and to substitute with power from biomass, biogas, and air, earth, sewer and ocean heat exchange. As the prices of oil and gas increased, they watched their competitors struggle with rising costs, while congratulating themselves for being ahead of the curve.

And there is music in the air. When it began, I do not know. I think it was as people began to spend more time in their neighbourhoods, digging their gardens, upgrading their homes, and brewing their own beer and blackberry wine. Out of greater friendships came more music, and more song.

Some still complain, but most people realize that something very profound is taking place – and while we are all still very worried about the future, we are also deeply glad.

The Climate Solutions Dividend

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:59:00 +0000

Let me start at the beginning: the global climate crisis is far more serious than most people understand.

If we carry on with business as usual, our continued use of fossil fuels will destroy all human civilization as we know it, and take most species and ecosystems with it. As things stand, we are heading for a temperature rise of 4, 5, or 6 degrees by the end of the century. Today's Arctic meltdown and the current increase in forest fires, floods, and beetle infestations comes from a 0.7C increase.

"Do politicians understand just how difficult it could be, just how devastating rises of 4C, 5C or 6C could be? I think, not yet."
- Lord Nicholas Stern, Britain's top climate economist, March 2009.

"How far can it go? The last time the world was three degrees warmer than today which is what we expect later this century sea levels were 25 metres higher. So that is what we can look forward to if we don't act soon."
- James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Feb 2006.

Business as usual is really grim, folks. We don't want to go there.

"The only certainty is that we have to act. How could I look my grandchildren in the eye and say I knew about this and I did nothing?"
- David Attenborough.

Next, let's look at the resistance. Some comes from elderly, well-educated men whose heads are firmly in the sand. Some comes from the coal and oil industry, which doesn't want to change what it's doing; and some comes from economists and bureaucrats who argue that we can't afford to act because it would harm the economy.

So let's look at the economy - the same one that the world's leaders are so desperate to revive so that we can get back to business as usual.

If we do nothing, the cost of future climate-caused floods, fires, droughts, hurricanes, and other disasters; the need to build sea walls two metres high around every port in the world; and the need to relocate 500 million refugees from low-lying lands will make today's recession look like a tea party. Not a pretty sight, by any accounting standard.

We also know that as soon as the economy gets back on its feet the global demand for oil will surge again, and prices will rise past $200 a barrel ($2 a litre, $6 a gallon) as we pass peak oil, with natural gas following. With the global oil supply in terminal decline, the speculative markets will drive the price ever higher.

Not a pretty sight either, from an economic perspective.

But now let us turn this around, and assume that we act on all the known solutions. Let's assume that we successfully eliminate all use of fossil fuels, and create a world in which:

All our buildings are super-efficient, and heated or cooled by solar, bioenergy, and heat-pump technologies;
All our transport uses electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles, combined with far more walking, cycling, transit, ridesharing, and railways;
All trucking, shipping, and aviation is powered by algae-biofuel grown on marginal and desert lands;
All electricity is renewable and most come from efficiency, wind, solar PV, solar thermal, geothermal, and hydro;
All of the world's farms, grasslands, and forests are managed holistically and organically, without need for chemical fertilizers.
Our whole economy operates on the principle of zero waste, recycling and re-using 100% of the materials we use.

What would such a world look like, financially? Shockingly, no-one has done such a study, but some numbers are available for the US to give us a start:

By eliminating the need to buy oil from the Middle East, and defend the oil-exporting nations, the National Defence Council Foundation has calculated in its report The Hidden Cost of Imported Oil (2007) that the US will enjoy an annual dividend of $825 billion. This includes a $138 billion military saving.
By eliminating the air pollution and smog caused by fossil-fuelled vehicles and coal-fired power plants, Terry Tamminen, past Secretary of the California EPA, has shown in his book Lives per Gallon: The True Cost of our Oil Addiction that the US will save up to $690 billion a year.
By reducing energy use by 15%, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy has calculated that the US will enjoy annual savings of $169 billion. If efficiency is increased to 30%, this could rise to $338 billion.

This comes to $1.7 trillion a year, which would arrive in the US economy every year as a free stimulus package, without needing approval by Congress.

It also stands to reason that since 80% of the worlds wars are fought over oil and gas supplies, if we no longer need them we could disarm 80% of the world's militaries. For the US, with a $1 trillion annual military budget, this allows a peace dividend of $680 billion a year (excluding the $138 billion counted above). If we include this, the annual stimulus rises to $2.38 trillion.

This is the annual Climate Solutions Dividend - which must be contrasted with a 20% loss of annual GDP if we fail to end our use of fossil fuels, which would cost the US $2.8 trillion a year.

Will someone now please stand up and tell me we can't afford to tackle global warming because it will hurt the economy? I don't think so.

Guy Dauncey

You can read the rest of April's EcoNews, and sign up to receive EcoNews free every month www.earthfuture.com/econews

No More Bottled Water

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 22:07:00 +0000

Don’t drink bottled water – and don’t let your children drink it. If you’re a city councillor or official, don’t waste taxpayers’ money buying it. If you‘re a restaurant, don’t serve it. If you work at a school or college, stop using it. Why?

#1: Using bottled water sends the totally false message that municipal tap water is unsafe. More than a quarter of bottled water comes from municipal sources, anyway.

#2: It takes oil to make those bottles. According to the California-based Pacific Institute, the energy required to make one bottle is the equivalent of filling it ¼ full of oil. In Canada, the 2.1 billion litres we bought in 2006 needed 1.1 million barrels of oil to make them.

#3: Most bottles are not recycled, and end up in the landfill.

#4: It takes more energy to ship and truck them around.

#5. It’s stupid. Why pay 1,000 times more for bottled water when it costs a penny a gallon from your tap, giving money to the water corporations as if it was Christmas?

#6. Drinking bottled water is making our children grow up with the habit.

#7. Can we really trust the bottles not to leach their chemicals?

The City of Los Angeles has not allowed the use of city funds to buy bottled water since 1987.
San Francisco and Seattle have just banned its purchase by city departments and agencies.
Chicago has placed a 5 cent tax on every bottle to discourage its use. All Illinois state agencies have been banned from buying it. Berkeley School District has stopped providing it. And now students on campuses across Canada are creating bottled-water-free zones – see www.insidethebottle.org.

It’s OK for emergencies – but otherwise, let’s junk it.

Fair Trade

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 19:24:00 +0000

Free trade encourages the unfettered exploitation of people and the planet. Fairtrade started to be recognized in the 1960s, with Fairtrade coffee and tea. The principle has always been great – fair trade growers and craftspeople receive a guaranteed price above the world market, plus a “Fairtrade premium” that is used to fund community projects and schools.

Over the last decade, Fairtrade has really taken off, with $3.6 billion in trade organized by over 700 registered Fairtrade organizations in 58 developing countries.

In Britain, the sugar giant Tate & Lyle switched all of its sugar production to fair trade; Sainsbury’s only sells Fairtrade bananas, and the Coo-op and M&S (huge retail chains) only sell Fairtrade tea and coffee - no other brands.

UK sale of Fairtrade goods increased by 72% in 2007, and Britain now buys almost 30% of the world’s total value. In Sweden, it grew by 116%.

The message is “Buy Fairtrade – and have faith!” It is totally reasonable to continue to visualize a world where all trade is Fairtrade, and “free trade” is seen as akin to slavery.

Treat Your Children Well

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 21:31:00 +0000

Here's some bad news – which becomes good news if we take the opportunity to act on it. There are things we’ve been doing over the past 20 years which seem harmless enough, but which are really bad news for our children’s health. Here are five that have crossed my desk in just the last month.

1. Call them Air Toxifiers
Those things you plug into the wall and suddenly everyone looks like they’ve eaten a pot brownie. What do we imagine they contain - fairy dust?

The Natural Resources Defence Council found that 12 out of 14 air fresheners contained phthalates that can cause hormonal abnormalities, birth defects, and reproductive problems – including those marketed as “all natural” and “unscented”. They may also contain allergens and cancer-causing chemicals such as benzene and formaldehyde.

It is atrocious that they are sold at all, let alone as “all natural.” If you see them in a house with children or young mothers, please warn the parents not to use them.

2. Call them Brain Retardants
When the US-based Environmental Working Group tested 20 mothers and toddlers for hormone-disrupting fire retardant chemicals PDBEs in their blood, they found that small children had three times more than their mothers, and far more than newborns.

The chemicals are sprayed into couches, chairs, and laptops at a rate ten times higher than in Europe, where the measure of fire risk is a smoldering cigarette. In North America, it’s a blowtorch.

PDBEs are toxic to the developing brain and reproductive system – and the reason why small children are more exposed is simply that they like to put their hands in their mouths. Once again, the chemicals should be banned. See www.ewg.org/reports/pbdesintoddlers

3. Call it Chemically-Induced Obesity
There’s also evidence that a baby’s exposure to hormone-disrupting chemicals in the womb increases its risk of obesity.

The suspect chemicals include fire retardants (as above), Bisphenol A (used to soften plastics and line canned foods), and pesticides – a Spanish study found that babies born with high levels of the pesticide hexachlorobenzene in their umbilical cords were more than twice as likely to be obese six years later as children with lower levels.

It’s just another reason why we need to ban the use of pesticides, without any further delay.

4. Call it Television Surplus Disorder
There are way too many kids being diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), and placed on Ritalin for much of their childhoods. Something’s clearly wrong – but what?

One of the strongest clues comes from studies that show that TV exposure in children aged 1-3 is associated with attention problems at age 7 – so much so that the American Academy of Pediatrics has called for children under two to watch no TV or videos at all, and older kids to watch no more than 2 hours a day.

It’s logical – a child’s brain is still growing for the first two years of life, and TV images are several times faster than regular life. So the brain gets wired to think “this is normal”.

Another study in the journal Pediatrics found that the more TV children watch when aged 5-11, they more likely they are to have attention problems when aged 13-15. No TVs in children’s bedrooms. No TV whatsoever for children under 2.

5. Call it a Mobile Cancer Phone
Strong language? No.

In September 2008, analysis from one of the biggest studies into the risks of radiation, headed by one of the world’s most prestigious cancer researchers, Professor Lennart Hardell from the University Hospital in Orebro, Sweden, found that children and teenagers under 20 who use cell phones are 500% times more likely to get cancer of the glioma, the cells that support the central nervous system. Those who use cordless phones have a 400% greater risk.

Children who start using cell phones when young are also 500% more likely to get acoustic neuromas, benign but often disabling tumours of the auditory nerve which usually cause deafness.

Professor Hardell believes that children under 12 should not use cell phones at all except in emergencies, and teenagers should only use hands-free devices or headsets, and concentrate on texting. After age 20, the danger diminishes because the brain is fully developed.

A month earlier, the director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute sent a memo to all his staff with the same warning – children to use cell phones only in emergencies, as their brains are still developing. In July 2008, Toronto Public Health issued the same warning, as has Britain’s chief medical health officer.

Now that the evidence is becoming more solid, the prospect of a future epidemic in which our children and grandchildren get cancer and lose their hearing is – well, extremely alarming. We need to take immediate steps to stop the growing trend for teenagers to talk forever on their cell phones, and the mobile phone companies had better take out big-time insurance to cover the lawsuits that will be coming their way.

The German government has also warned everyone to stop using Wi-Fi because of the radiation risks it may pose, and the lack of research into its health effects. Schools, in particular, should take immediate steps to unplug their Wi-Fi systems because of the greater risk to children.

A Time of Wonders

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 17:50:00 +0000

First published in Common Ground Magazine

This is a time of wonders. That statement may seem totally counter-intuitive and blind to the enormous troubles ahead, but I can’t ignore the perpetual voice that sings within me of the incredible possibilities at our fingertips.

If I look one way, I can see that we are racing towards the greatest ecological meltdown since the last great extinction event – the cretaceous – that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Time moves slowly and a human lifetime is long and yet we are so close to winning the collective Darwin Award, given every year to those individuals who do such stupid things that they do us the favour of removing their genes from the gene pool. I write these words on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, who I am sure would never have contemplated the possibility of the entire human race winning such an award one day.

Yet, if I look the other way, I see the road to the solar age, shining with promise and hope. I see the successful elimination of fossil fuels, children learning ecological literacy in every school, Earth’s cities becoming urban paradises. I see farms the world over adopting organic, butterfly-loving methods of cultivation and Earth’s working forests being treated like the temples they are, with reverence and love.

I have held this vision for more than 40 years and yet I have never felt it so close, so totally within our reach. My hopefulness does not stem from any recent intimacy with BC bud, but from my knowledge of communities around the world that are making it happen. It stems from Copenhagen where 36 percent of commuter trips are by bicycle; from San Francisco, well on the way to achieving 100 percent zero waste by 2020; from the small town of Güssing, in eastern Austria, whose people have eliminated 93 percent of their carbon footprint by building a variety of solar, biomass and other energy systems. I have just finished writing my new book on global climate solutions and I can feel the vibrancy of so much innovation and effort all around the world.

So what do we need to turn away from the dark path of cynicism, negativity and defeat and embrace instead the brilliance of hope? We need three things and they are all within our grasp.

The first is the willingness to act. By acting, we switch on our motivation, which releases a cascade of possibilities. One phone call asking, “How can I help?” is enough – perhaps to a local non-profit society; perhaps to the BC-STV campaign office (campaigning for the Single Transferable Vote in the May 12 referendum); perhaps to the office of the greenest, local candidate in the forthcoming provincial election.

The second is the willingness to persist. If at first you don’t succeed, try again. Nothing of any worth was achieved without persistence. Persistence means learning, training, practising. You may have a vision that takes five or 10 years to fulfill, such as turning the street where you live into a community of sharing people, growing food, installing solar panels and planting trees. Alternatively, it might be kick-started with one rousing street party, organized with neighbours with a few weeks’ notice.

The third is the determination to stay positive and not be defeated by the apparent hopelessness of larger problems, such as the need to transform global capitalism, the domination of the US military industrial complex or the ecological collapse of the world’s oceans. Millions share your hopes, confident that success is possible.

What we need is faith at a deeper level, which does not require evidence at every step. Faith that humans have the ability to succeed in this challenge, just as we succeeded in ending slavery, winning the right of working people to form a labour union, defeating fascism and so much more.

The love that so many people feel for our troubled planet comes from that same deep place and it’s not going away. Our task is to hold onto it and act on it – now.

The Carbon Years - Then Lift-Off!

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:09:00 +0000

First published in Common Ground Magazine

What is happening to our civilization? Report after report is warning us that climate change, driven by our use of fossil fuels, is pushing us towards the cliff.

Ever since the 1970s, the framing of environmental problems has often been “Good Earth, bad humans”. Humans are sometimes said to be like a cancer, exhausting Earth’s resources and polluting Nature’s body until it’s all over. Some suggest that it might be better if humans did kill themselves off, leaving Nature to recover without us.

I am appalled by this way of thinking. I believe deeply in the beauty of the human spirit. We have the ability to achieve incredible things – as well as to be totally stupid. I love the fact that we are 100% part of Nature, that the same genes which create flippers in fish create fingers and toes in us.

I like to view our existence through the lens of time, stretching millions of years into both the past and the future. Like all species, we learn as we go along, starting from a place of total ignorance about the Universe.

We have been asking serious questions for at least 10,000 years. With the development of written language we were able to formalize our thoughts, enabling new generations to build on the intellectual capital of their ancestors.

Hindu and Babylonian thinkers created organized philosophies 5,000 years ago. When the Greek and Roman civilizations collapsed, the torch of enquiry was carried forward in the Muslim world, and rediscovered in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages.

The spirit of enquiry has often sought to break free from the blanket of tradition that was passed from one generation to the next. It is the same impulse that causes a young salmon to try a new river, a wolf to seek new territory. It is by this spirit that we learnt how to make fire by burning wood, how to make steam by burning coal.

From 1500 to 1800 AD developments in Europe enabled the spirit of enquiry to break free, leading us to establish the organized systems of science, democracy and human rights.

Hand-in-hand with the spirit of inquiry we released the spirit of freedom that wanted desperately to escape from poverty and serfdom, kings and aristocrats. When Prince Albert organized The Great Exhibition in London in 1851, six million people came to marvel at the promise of a new world. Using the concentrated power of ancient fossil fuels, we developed the technologies our world is based on today.

Looking back, are we to say all this was wrong? Was it the spirit of inquiry itself that was wrong? I hardly think so.

So let us think our way through this crisis. We are burning fossil fuels that were laid down over 200 million years. Every year, we burn a million years of stored ancient sunlight. We are certainly using this one-time gift from the past to indulge our whims – but we are also using it to build intellectual capital.

We could not have developed a solar cell, LED light bulb, or plug-in hybrid electric car in 1750. We needed this one-time burst of ancient energy to lift us to a position where we could power our world with renewable energy without further need for fossil fuels.

Seen this way, the age of fossil fuels is the ramp of intellectual capital that enables us to take off into a permanent post-carbon world. Thanks to coal, oil and gas, we have been able to build the scientific and engineering skills we need to do without them.

The climate crisis is extremely urgent. The scientists are warning that if we are to avoid 450 ppm of CO2, bringing a 2 Cº temperature rise, the melt-down of Greenland and a 6 metre rise in sea level, we must cease our global yearly increase in emissions within ten years and then move to a carbon neutral world as rapidly as possible. The sooner we achieve lift-off, the less will be the chance of collapse and foul landing.

This is not a time for hand-wringing and despair. This is a time for courage, passion and excitement about the next great energy revolution.

This is a time for determination, when we work together as families, schools, businesses, colleges, cities, governments and the whole world to embrace and adopt the solutions. This is the moment of lift-off, which can lead us to a healthy, ecologically sustainable world, and a host of future promises.

My Beliefs

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 17:53:00 +0000

First published in Common Ground Magazine

I feel it appropriate to share some of my core beliefs, as they inform my writing and my understanding of what is happening in the world.

First, I believe that All is One, and the whole Universe is a unity, including both material and spiritual realms. How could it be otherwise? If there were two, they would relate to each other and be part of a whole.

Next, I believe there is a spiritual realm which is as real as the material realm. I know this from personal experience of grief, surrender, prayer, and deep healing, and from extensive reading of the literature of paranormal and psychic experience.

I believe the spiritual realm is the foundation of all that exists. There is just one singularity, of which the material realm is one expression.

I use the term spiritual to describe what I believe to be the foundation of all existence. I believe that our existence is built on this foundation, which sometimes we can catch maybe a glimpse of through acts of kindness, prayer, meditation, surrender, music or art, when our ego-shells take a back seat. We can also experience a deceptive sense of union when we link with a false whole that excludes others, such as Nazism, fundamentalism or nationalism.

I see consciousness as a doorway through which we perceive reality. I believe that everything has consciousness - every atom, mountain and tree; every bacterium that lives under your fingernails; every cell in your body.

This has implications for my understanding of evolution. I love the Darwinian explanation, since it demonstrates our deep biological unity, but I don’t think it is complete enough. I believe that evolution is a spiritual as well as a biological journey.

I believe that the Universe is connected by attraction, and that all life seeks unity at a higher level. When atoms are attracted to each other, they fall in love, creating molecules. When molecules fall in love, they create organisms. When we humans fall in love, we find loving co-existence, transcending our ego-shells, until we try to dominate each other, pushing us back into our ego-shells and making us wonder where the love went.

I believe that evolution expresses itself through a deep movement towards wholeness. This both gives us genetic change, and drives all life to seek to seek wholeness, and to maximize its opportunity to flourish. This is the impulse that makes people work for peace, justice, and peace with Nature. I call it syntropy, the universal drive towards fulfillment and wholeness, the balancing principle of entropy that says all material systems tend towards disorganization and collapse. Entropy may simply be the absence of syntropy, when the desire to live disappears.

I believe we are tantalizingly close to reaching global union and putting an end to war. Throughout history, people have attached their identities to a tribe or clan. When they find community with members of another tribe, they eventually cease trying to dominate them and attach their identities to a nation. When this happens by conquest, it usually takes a generation or two for the anger to wear off, before the larger union is accepted.

When the process is repeated, driven by the deep syntropic quest for unity, it leads to international union. Despite terrorism and other conflicts, we are very close to this final goal. When the majority of Americans abandon their belief that they have a God-given right to dominate the world and join the rest of the world as equal partners, we will finally put an end to war.

I believe that this progressive widening of our consciousness is a fundamental evolutionary drive, and that we are deeply pre-programmed not only to discover unity between all peoples, but also to end injustice, to live in harmony with Nature, to seek personal fulfillment – and to go on to discover amazing things.

Finally, I believe that the crisis we face today, as we stand on the threshold of both global union and global ecological catastrophe, is so enormous and yet so exciting that it calls every one of us to stand up, and say “Count me in”.

If it’s not Fun, it’s not Sustainable

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 20:58:00 +0000

First published in Common Ground Magazine

It’s a serious business, living. And all these environmental woes can really spoil a good day. How’s an earnest activist to keep cheerful when everything seems to be such a mess?

My advice comes in two parts. The first is serious and deep, so I’ll keep it brief. It’s this: we’re just beginners. As a species on this planet, we’re like rambunctious two-year olds who have just discovered the delights of running, talking, grabbing, and eating, and who are determined to have things their way.

Dear patient Mama Earth is trying her hardest to teach us to put things back where they belong, to clean up our mess after us, to learn to share, not to take things that aren’t ours, not to hit people, and to say sorry when you hurt somebody. Like most two-year olds, however, we don’t want to listen. If our oil happens to be in someone else’s country, we’ll send in the Tonka trucks and grab it.

So alas we’re heading towards a mighty confrontation with Mama, and we’re about to learn that in the forthcoming battle of wills, tantrums won’t get us far. It therefore behooves us to think beyond the two-year old stage to the wonderful childhood that a calm, cooperative relationship with Mother Earth and Father Sky might promise. Wouldn’t it be good? Golden playdays when we can develop our intelligence and work with the miracles of Nature, instead of trying to impose our will on her. We have all sorts of miracles in store once we learn to clean up our mess and cooperate.

My second piece of advice is to remember the Fifth Law of Sustainability. Four laws were formulated by the physicist and ecologist Barry Commoner: (1) Everything is connected to everything else; (2) Everything must go somewhere; (3) Nature knows best; and (  4) There’s no such thing as a free lunch. The Fifth Law, formulated by yours truly, says (5) If it’s not fun, it’s not sustainable.

This is not just whimsy. It is an expression of the fundamental joy that all beings take in living, when they’re not being beaten up by a selfish two-year old. You don’t have to scratch far for a human come alive when fun enters the picture. I’m pretty sure the parrots, elephants and chimpanzees also have fun when they’re feeling relaxed and free.

Having fun is also motivating. People want to come out of a meeting feeling better, not worse. No matter how bad things look, there’s no excuse for being constantly angry, cynical or miserable. So while you’re busy changing the world, remember to hug, tease, laugh, dance and sing.

In that spirit of fun, here are some treasures from the web. So take an hour, get yourself a good cup of tea, and settle down with your computer.

For openers, go to video.google.ca and type in The Galaxy Song for a modern remix of the Monty Python classic.

Next, go to www.littleanimation4kids.com and play around until you find Rosie’s songs, and The Little Earth Charter for Kids, sung by Rosie Emery (who lives in Victoria). Children need to have fun, too.

It’s the adults’ turn now – go to www.rudefood.org, from the Vegetarian Society. They’re veggies, so they must be good – right?

The Wombat has more good learning for the adults in Earth’s kindergarten, very similar to Rosie’s, so go to www.globalcommunity.org, click on multi-media, and then on the Wombat.

Now for the big one. Robert Newman’s History of Oil is a London comic’s take on history, oil, warfare and Iraq. It’s 45 minutes, but well worth the time. Go to video.google.ca, and type in History of Oil.

Next go to www.youtube.com, type in “Asylum + ribbon”, and watch Stick Magnet Ribbons on Your SUV (version most viewed), paying good heed to the words. It is priceless.

Finally, go to video.google.ca and type in “bliss +juggling” for the Amazing Juggling Finale. As Paul McCartney sings, with good understanding of the Fifth Law: And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

A New Earth Curriculum

noreply@blogger.com (Guy Dauncey) — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 00:18:00 +0000

First published in Common Ground Magazine

Let me think aloud about our schools. I was told recently that when a group of children was shown ten vegetables, they could only identify one – a tomato. When they were shown ten corporate logos, they identified all ten. It makes you worried.

If we are to stop outstripping our planet’s resources, and navigate a way to a sustainable, low carbon world, it is critical that our children learn what it means to live on this crowded Earth, with its growing forests, vast oceans, and tiny creeks. So let me cast my thoughts ahead to the year 2015, and imagine that our teachers, parents, school boards, and staff at the Ministry of Education have realized the urgency of what’s needed.

Every school now has a garden where children learn to care for the soil, make compost, gather seeds, and cultivate the fruits and vegetables they later eat at their own table.

By the time they leave school, they have all learnt the harsh lessons of Easter Island, that when humans over-consume their resources, the result can be hunger, cultural collapse, and death.

Every school is instilling its students with a passion for solutions. There are solar systems on the roofs, hybrid electric vehicles being charged from the sun, and buildings are being refashioned to make them a model of clean air, daylight, comfort, and efficiency, with a green building budget to pay for the changes.

All children are learning about the Earth’s carbon cycle, what fossil fuels are, and why their use is causing Earth’s temperature to rise. Every spring they calculate their personal carbon footprints, and work with their schools to become carbon neutral.

Children are no longer ferried to school by their parents, learning lazy habits. Every student who lives within three kilometers or so of school either walks or cycles, using Safe Routes to School or a walking school bus, while the rest travel by biodiesel-powered school buses.

By the time they leave school, every student has spent a week in the wilderness, learning the rhythms of nature, the wisdom of the aboriginal elders, and the resilience to live without email, instant messaging, and cell phones.

They have also learnt to appreciate Earth’s oceans, and the fragility of life within its waters. We are the generation that is driving every commercial fish stock to extinction by 2050, and if our children do not learn otherwise, they will inherit a world without fish.

They are learning to appreciate water, how it cycles through the drains, into the ocean and back through the sky as rain. Schools are collecting rainwater, and using it to flush their toilets and irrigate their gardens.

By the time they leave school, every child has also visited a landfill where they have seen the mountains of garbage, connected it to their own behaviour, and learnt that there is no place called “away”.

The lessons of all this are being integrated into the curriculum as solar calculations in math, carbon cycles in geography, bicycle efficiency in physics, toxics reduction in chemistry.

How could we trigger this to happen? It could start with a contest in which one school challenged another to score more points for waste reduction, toxics reduction, trip reduction, energy efficiency, water efficiency, sustainable energy production, food production, and healthy catering. Will one school step forward to issue the challenge? There are many skilled people within the environmental movement who could help you design the contest.

Now imagine a college announcing that starting in September 2008, every entry student would be required to pass a test called Earth Literacy 101. This would require local schools to integrate eco-literacy into the curriculum, which would get the ball rolling. Reading and writing are fine, but if we lack Earth Literacy, we’ll have no civilization to practice them in.

Teachers – will you write to your Principals and school boards, and to the Ministry of Education, asking them to help you make this a reality? Together, we can build a movement for Earth Literacy that will change the face of education.

PS: Here are some useful resources - www.greenteacher.com, www.greenlearning.ca, www.bcsea.org/learn, www.re-energy.ca, www.walkingthetalk.bc.ca.