Energy System Change Not Climate Change

An Occupy Vancouver Environmental Justice Group Discussion Paper – An evolving vision to guide action – Version 2.1 Feb 22, 2012

The growing resistance to tar sands pipeline expansion, and to the very idea of continuing our dependence on fossil fuels—is a last stand—we cannot “progress” one more step down the road the 1% and Big Oil want to lead us down. The species of this earth—including the human species—cannot survive it. It is up to us, the 99%, to change our energy and economic system. We are inspired by and in solidarity with the Indigenous Nations who in the Save the Fraser Declaration state they “will not allow the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipelines, or similar Tar Sands projects” to proceed. We are also inspired by indigenous leadership on the climate crisis, including the recent Declaration of the Indigenous Peoples of the World to the UNFCCC COP 17 International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change:

“For decades, Indigenous Peoples have warned that climate change confirms that the harmonic relationship between humans and Mother Earth has been ruptured, endangering the future of humanity in its entirety. . . The alternative is to change the system, not the climate, based on a new paradigm for civilization, Living Well with harmony between the peoples and Mother Earth.”

To Live Well in harmony with Mother Earth, we must transform the unequal, unfair, and growing disparity in the distribution of power and wealth in our city and around the globe. To successfully deal with the climate crisis requires challenging corporate greed, corruption, and the collusion between corporate power and government. The protection of our environment requires economic security and genuine equality. As David Suzuki emphasized while speaking to Occupy Vancouver, we must learn to live within the “limits imposed by nature [and] put the eco back into economics”. We also acknowledge that unlimited growth on our finite planet is impossible, so we must find a path to prosper and Live Well without growing material and energy consumption.

Reports such as Prosperity Without Growth and The Spirit Level outline how our wellbeing could be enhanced with the move away from economic growth and consumerism to a focus on meeting human needs and improving quality of life through increased equality.

Our automobile-dominated transportation system was created to do more than move people and goods; it was created largely to spur on the consumption of materials and energy to keep our economy growing. Therefore, changing to a system much more reliant on electric trains, public transit, bicycles, and walking is an essential part of the system change needed to Live Well without tar sands oil.

Many Indigenous Peoples have made their position clear: new pipelines will not pass over their unceded territories, nor will they stand any longer for an unsustainable abuse of this planet. We must now stand with them.

We say NO to
• The proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline
• The expansion of the Trans Mountain pipeline and its terminus, Vancouver’s Kinder Morgan oil port on Burrard Inlet
• New or expanded Tar Sands extraction facilities, ‘natural’ gas pipelines, or coal mines in BC
• Public spending that worsens our dependence on tar sands oil, including airport and urban roadway expansion

We say YES to
• Protecting Burrard Inlet, and the coast of BC, from tar sands bitumen tankers and spills.
• Living Well in harmony with Mother Earth
• Investing in electric passenger rail, public transit, bicycles, and walking to reduce the use of tar sand oil and reduce vulnerability to volatile oil prices
• Phasing out fossil fuels through energy conservation and the careful development of renewable energy that respects the rights of indigenous peoples
• Non violent mass action by the 99% to protect Mother Earth from the 1%

As Jared Diamond writes in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, the “world’s environmental problems will get solved, in one way or another, within the lifetimes of the children and young adults alive today. The only question is whether they will become resolved in pleasant ways of our own choice, or in unpleasant ways not of our choice” (p 498).

The measures of prosperity can no longer be the destructive arithmetic of GDP, markets, barrels of oil, and bank accounts. The measures of prosperity need to be the measures of justice, community, ecological balance, and careful and measured consumption. We find true wealth when we build ways to Live Well together, as a community and an ecology.

Pipelines, Tankers and Climate Chaos...Or System Change? An Occupy Vancouver Environmental Justice Work Group Workshop

Saturday February 25, 4 – 6 pm (After the Occupy Vancouver General Assembly) W2 – Woodwards, 111 W Hastings Street, Vancouver, Unceded Coast Salish Territory

The global 1% and the big oil corporations they control want to expand Tar Sands extraction and the pipelines that serve it, including the tar sands export terminal on Burrard Inlet in Burnaby. The threat to our local environment from oil spills is huge, and we are at a strategic location to keep the 1% from cooking our planet. Join the uprising by the 99% to stop pipelines, tankers and climate chaos!

Learn about
• System Change Not Climate Change and the systemchange.ca project
• Pipeline and tanker proposals and resistance in BC
• Energy and Transportation System Change

Discuss the issues. Help shape Occupy Vancouver’s work on pipelines, tankers and system change. Get involved!

For more information contact: environmentaljustice@occupyvancouver.com

By Eric Doherty, January 26, 2012

On Wednesday (January 25), B.C. transportation minister Blair Lekstrom once again announced the Evergreen SkyTrain line to Coquitlam and the Tri-Cities area. This time he announced the start of work after more than a decade of delays—well sort of. Only minor preparatory work is starting. No contracts for the actual transit line have been signed, and further delays are possible. The numerous delays to the Evergreen Line stand in marked contrast to the rapidly progressing work on the massive new Cape Horn freeway interchange connecting to the Tri-Cities.

The new Cape Horn Interchange and expanded Highway 1 freeway will provide a toll-free route for Coquitlam residents heading into Burnaby and Vancouver. Effectively, the B.C. government has spent $3.1 billion to convince people to drive instead of riding the $1.4 billion Evergreen Line. . . .

See full text and comments at http://www.straight.com/article-593651/vancouver/eric-doherty-transit-delays-and-fare-hikes-drive-tar-sands-expansion

Well here we go. Another Gateway megaproject, $1.8 billion for airport expansion. http://www.vancouversun.com/travel/Hike+Vancouver+airport+help+billion+expansion/6051326/story.html This is about the same cost as the South Fraser Perimeter Road, and is even more of a climate crime.

No time for a long post today, but this is the letter I just wrote to the Vancouver Sun:

Re. Hike in Vancouver airport fee to help pay for $1.8-billion expansion (January 26). Short haul flights are the most carbon intensive way to travel, and electric trains are the most efficient. There is a much better investment for the $1.8 billion – phase out the short flights that cause airport overcrowding and use the money to create an electric passenger rail system for the whole province. Otherwise YVR will end up under rising seas caused by all the oil sands fuel burned in trips better served by bus and rail.

Please consider writing your own letter, and get going on the tweets facecrack posts etc. Plane Stupid in the UK has lots of resources. This is what they are about:

Plane Stupid is a network of grassroots groups that take non violent direct action against aviation expansion.

We have three demands:

End to short haul flights and airport expansion
Stop aviation advertising
A just transition to sustainable jobs and transport

We came together in 2005 to oppose an aviation industry conference and have been taking action ever since.

http://www.planestupid.com/aboutus

"Meanwhile, greens still think that they can stop Big Oil without first having an open conversation with oil's highly distracted consumers. When the greens eventually focus on consumption instead of production and recognize the limits of renewables, they'll become truly dangerous to the status quo."

I disagree with the idea of focusing on "consumption instead of production", but completely agree that it is time to go on the offensive regarding oil consumption. We need to link the campaigns against the tar sands to campaigns for decisive measures to reduce oil consumption.

The fact is that, scary as it may be, we need to challenge the automobile and airline industries that lie at the end of the tar sands pipelines. Thats right, the tar sands pipelines end in the tank of your car and feed the airplanes so many Canadians fly on frequently and frivolously.

So lets get that conversation rolling . . .

http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2012/01/19/Keystone/

Later on in the interview Chomsky elaborates on how fracking for oil and gas is leading us towards a climate catastrophe, suggesting that a sharp peak in oil and gas production would be a very good thing.

It is well worthwhile to listen to the full WORT-FM interview with James Howard Kunstler, Nicole Foss, Dmitri Orlov and Noam Chomsky at http://www.energybulletin.net/media/2012-01-06/heinberg-kunstler-foss-orlov-chomsky-public-affair

32:48

We pour a huge amount of money into maximizing the use of energy. This goes back very far. So you go back to right after the Second World War for example. There were major efforts to shift the entire economy to highly wasteful hydrocarbon use. Eisenhower's national highway program, for example--it was called National Defense Highway because you had to throw the word defense in to justify expenditures--but it was basically part of a general program of undermining efficient, lower cost transportation. Rail, in particular, and to replace it by government-subsidized, high fuel use systems like highways, airpots and so on. That actually followed on a literal conspiracy, a conspiracy judged so by the courts, between several major producers... actually it was General Motors, Standard Oil of California, Firestone Rubber, who got together to buy up the quite efficient electric rail system in Los Angeles and elsewhere in California and to replace it by busses, trucks, and roads and so on. They actually were brought to court for conspiracy and I think fined about enough to pay for their victory dinner or something like that. That was a part of an extensive program of suburbanization, shifting the economy to roads, trucks, airplanes, high fuel use and that continues right up to the present.

In fact, some of the programs that were carried are kind of almost surreal. For example, in the late Eisenhower years, must have been '58 or so, there was a government decision to use up our Texas oil resources, instead of using much cheaper Middle East, mostly Saudi, resources. The reason was basically a gift to Texas oil producers, and it went on for about 15 years I think. In effect, the government policy was to use up domestic resources and then later when that's proceeded, to build big holes in the ground and fill it with imports--that's called the strategic reserve. It was very conscious. There were actually quite conservative critics, like Adelman, who's an oil specialist at MIT, who was bitterly critical of this on national security grounds as well as economic grounds. But it's part of the way these programs continue and it continues right now.

For example, there's now a lot excitement and hype even in places where I wouldn't expect to see it, like the London Financial Times, a mostly sensible newspaper, about the claim that the United States might have oil independence for a hundred years and therefore be able to maintain its global hegemony, I'm virtually quoting, by high tech methods of accessing shale oil, sand oil, and so on, fracking, all the rest of it. They think all that's wonderful. What's going to happen to the world, if the United States goes on for a hundred years, maximizing the use of hydrocarbons? Well, that question doesn't come up but we know the answer. In fact, it would be a very good thing if we were approaching something like peak oil. Unfortunately, it's being deferred for a long time, which is a disaster for the world.

52:02

For example, there's a recent book that just came out from the Economic Policy Institute, called "Failure by Design," which is a review of their studies of the last 30 years on the policies that have led to the situation that the Occupy Movements are now beginning to confront--very narrow concentration of wealth, incredible concentration at the top 1/10th of one percent of the population, mostly in the financial sector--hedge fund managers, corporate executives, and so on. Along with pretty much stagnation for the majority. People have been getting by, by heavier workloads, much higher than Europe; by debt, which is of course unsustainable; and by the bubbles that have been created ever since the Reagan years, largely through deregulation. Concentration of wealth leads to concentration of political power which leads to legislation that carries the vicious cycle forward. Going back to their book, it's called "Failure by Design" and the stress is on the word design. These policies are designed. They don't happen by the laws of nature or for economic reasons, any more than the highway program and the destruction of the electric rail and regular rail system did. These are choices and they're choices that aren't made by the population. They're very harmful to the general welfare but with the deterioration of the functioning democratic system--which is no secret to the population, just look at the poll results on popularity of congress--with that, policy is designed and carried out in a way in which the public interest doesn't matter. The same is true going back to fossil fuels--of the efforts to try to maximize fossil fuel use with it's destructive consequences.