Well.. after almost two years since the last time I considered doing this… on June 9, 2008, I’m planning on presenting to Port Alberni City Council on Peak Oil.

This comes on the heels of last nights Council meeting where the Cities’ Climate Change Committee, of which I am a member, presented their report. It was well received, but what really floored me was the Peak Oil awareness, and concern shown quite unexpectedly from one of our Councillors. His comments spurred me to go through with the presentation right now.

My presentation focuses on a recommendation for Council to endorse becoming a Transition Town. Transition Towns were born in the UK as a grassroots initiative by citizens to propel their respective towns to address the twin challenges of Climate Change and Peak Oil by participating in community wide educational, informational and transitional events, and completing “Energy Descent Action Plans (click for one towns Plan)” for their City to follow.

I’ll be presenting a slideshow to Port Alberni City Council. You can see it below. I will also be giving them this Transition Town Primer to peruse and get to know the initiative.

I think the time is now.. oil supply fears have finally come to a head, and I think we’re on a tipping point.

And so.. I will be presenting this to Council on June 9th. Please do leave any comments you might have.

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This is a followup to my previous post:

Calculating Commuting Costs on Vancouver Island.

You can read the reasoning behind it, the methods and what not at the last post… this is simply a continuation showing costs of commuting to Victoria. Again, given the rapidity of the rise happening, and going to happen in the future… the only realistic option is to get people out of their cars altogether and onto transit. And that means renewed rail on the E&N.

Please, show your support, and go to OurCorridor.ca … push senior levels of government to invest in the E&N and make it a viable alternative for people, and for industry and business.

Click on the images below to see the movies of rising gas prices. First is the “High Mileage”, 4.2L/100KM (55mpg) scenario. Second is the “Low Mileage” 10.7L/100KM (22mpg, which is also the US national average).

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This will be the first post in a series as I work through this data.
First, full disclosure, I work at Malaspina (Vancouver Island University) in Nanaimo and live 80KM away in Port Alberni. It’s a 1 hour drive morning and night, so yes, I have a vested interest in this topic. I am also a volunteer with the Corridor Coalition, which is trying to convince government to restore the E&N to a state where it could take a large chunk of the economic and environmental load of off residents, business, and industry on Vancouver Island.

The reason i started this, what I saw this post here at the theoildrum.com doing a similar study of commuting costs from the suburbs of Sydney, Australia.

The general premise being, that those in Australia, and in North America, have very much become used to very cheap gasoline (petrol). And this has created the ever expanding suburbia and exurbia with very little investment into Public Transport (rail, bus, or otherwise) by any of the governments in question.

As fuel prices rise rapidly, this is having a serious affect on the ability of households to cope… especially since wages are not keeping up with inflation over the past 30 years, let alone rising costs of the past 5.

So, I’ve created my own version of the Sydney example. I’ve used StatsCan data on Median Household Income Updated now: After Taxes and calculated the annual cost of fuel for transport based on 225 work days (42 weeks) a year, 2 different mileage constraints (“average” 22mpg or 10.7L/100K and 55mpg or 4.2L/100KM) broken down the percentages, and plotted them by distance on a map.

The first case I’ve tried is commuters to Nanaimo. So I’m using Nanaimos Median Household Income of $42,000 to calculate the percentages.

First is the Low Mileage Case. Second is the High Mileage Case. The Slideshow will walk you through $1.20, $1.50, $2.00, $3.00 and $8.00

Click the images and you will be taken to short slideshows showing the effect of rising prices. (Quicktime/iTunes required)

The $1.50 scenario could happen by May long weekend.

The $2 and $3 scenario could easily happen due to a major disruption/attack/hurricane/etc… and the $8 scenario is what they currently have in Europe.

The question we must start to ask, is, if oil prices are going to stay high, or go higher… how will that affect working people. People who *must* live outside the City due to high mortgage/rent will be forced to pay more and more just to get to work. When is the point that we should start investing in alternatives to get people from their home, to their work. Or better yet, start bringing their home and work closer together.

Personally, i don’t think we can wait for markets and economies to force down prices in urban areas in order to shift people back in from the suburbs. The prices are simply rising too fast. Right now, what we need to do is look at our medium range options. And on Vancouver Island, that means the E&N and Island Corridor Foundation. Sign up at OurCorridor.ca to show your support.

Next I will be doing commuters to Victoria.

UPDATE: I’ve updated the images and movies. Two changes:
#1: I am now using Median Household Income AFTER TAX to better reflect the effect on disposable income.

#2: They now include a $1/L scenario which is close to $4/Gallon US since that price point is creeping up on our neighbours to the South.

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Hi everyone.

I’ve had lots of discussions lately on www.alberni.ca about TFL44 and all the terrible forest practices going on on lands that have been deleted from the TFL. This is what I’ve found.

What I’m trying to find out is… are the lands granted to Robert Dunsmuir for the E&N the “private” lands and were those incorporated into TFL44?

The answer is yes. And as they were under TFL44… they were then under the management guidelines of all TFLs, which is the crux of the Hupacasath argument on consultation with stakeholders. Whether they were originally public or private lands is irrevelant at that point as all lands under TFLs were treated the same… the lawsuit now brought forward deals with a possible Conflict of Interest when the BC Government deleted the lands from the TFL and they were taken by companies part owned by BC Pension Plan investments.

Here is a current map of the South Island Forest District (PDF, 4MB, locallink, original)

This is a big link/PDF… so I have taken a screenshot of the relevant part, Port Alberni is roughly in the Center, you can see Sproat and Great Central to the East of it, and Cowichan Lake down at bottom.

You can clearly see the white/brown demarcation… that’s where Dunsmuir/Crown lands start and end… what appears to have happened is that all of the private, Dunsmuir land once under TFL44, has now been returned to private control.

For confirmation… this online book, “The Great Land Grab” (PDF, 1MB, locallink, original) has a map of the Dunsmuir lands as of 1884.

Here is a screenshot of the relevant map.

And finally… you can find a map on page 1 of TFL44 as it was in 2001 in this filing by M&B. (PDF, 600K, locallink, original)

If you compare the current and M&B maps, you can clearly see that all of the North and Eastern sectors of both Sproat and Franklin Divisions were on Dunsmuir land… which are precisely the lands in question by Judith Sayers and the Hupacasath FN.

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