Tag Archives: Port Alberni

Live Blogging the Public Forum on Climate Change in Port Alberni

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Echo Center 7PM tonight is the Public Forum on Climate Change in Port Alberni…

I didn’t realise they had Internet in here until now… I’ve missed the 1st speaker, who was amazing… but he will be back for QA and i will start with the second speaker who is talking right now.

The current speaker is talking about a 100 Year plan that was done for Greater Vancouver… for the “Plus Network”. She is a psychologist….

She is part of the Sustainable Cities Network, which is a network of 300 cities including Vancouver and Port Alberni.

A City needs a Plan… for 5 years with financial plan…. a Strategy for 30 years… a Vision for 50-100 years.

Cities Copy each other… large Cities (Calgary) learn from medium cities that learn from small cities… smaller cities can implement change faster because there is less complexity and more attachment to the ground-level.

Lighthouse projects… that might not be economically feasible, like the Million dollar solar bus “Tindo” in Adelaide Australia, “shine a light” for others to follow. Someone has to make a prototype… there needs to be a leader to follow.

Talking about going to Iqualuit… talking to the Elders who are seeing things they have never seen before. Robins, bumblebees. Never seen before that far north, were there in 2007.

……. Now it’s question period…. here are just my notes from the previous speaker, who was incredibly good if a little disjointed due to time.

Bruce Sampson former BC Hydro :

Growth with less Impact…

With worst case (mst likely scenario) Cedar growth on VI is wiped out by 2080.

He just explained Peak Oil in a nutshell

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Report

Largest basekine study of the pplanet ever done

Over 60% of the planets ecosystems are not sustainable
Among the outstanding problems-dire state of many of the worlds fish stocks; the intense vulnerability of the 2 billion people living in the dry regions.

Put a price on carbon:

We abuse the Earths Natural Capital because we don’t price it

Carbon Offsets —–> Ecosystem Offsets

………………………..

QA: From Ken Whiteman (Councillor). How do we reconcile Canadian carbon emissions in the world (2%) which 50% comes from tar sands… with China where they are building a coal plant “every day”.

Answer: Burning up natural gas to produce tar sands is like “turning gold to lead”. There has to be a leader in transition coming from Canada. We have to move away from Tar Sand, which is larlgely impossible to due the momemtum, so our only hope is carbon sequestration.

As far as China… we have to be the leader… we can give our technology to China. But the challenge is gigantic. Youre looking at a massive switch to coal as fossil fuels decline…. there has to be a switch in mentality or CO2 will take off in emissions.

One comment from “the psychologist”… Refer to Tar Sands as “Tar” sands.. not oil. It is not Oil. It is a powerful psychological attachment to those words..

BOOK RECOMMENDATION: Agenda for a new Economy – by David Corten… only just published

Mike Carter: Brought up Transition Towns and how Bruce Sampsons talk very much mimics what Transition Towns is all about…. we need to act locally.. we need to act holistically and help everyone through it as well. This is a gigantic change, and it is goin to hurt, economically, socially, and psychologically.

Jen Fisher Bradley: How do we internalize the externalized costs that are manifest in a market based eonomy. (Whoa!)

Bruce Sampson: It comes down to Natural Capital and putting a cost on our effect on ecosystems. Until that is built into our economy by having companies understanding thier impact, and valueing their impact on natural capital. Not just carbon offsets. It is full, natural, ecosystems offsets. Companies have to pay for the impact they have. Not as a penalty, but simply as a matter of doing business.

Group conversation……..

Ken McRae Closing Comments:

- Councils Next Step will be to appoint a Sustainability Committee.

Energy Independance model for Vancouver Island to Follow

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The BBC has a video here… WIth the Wind, Tidal, Run-of-River, and yes, even Solar potential available on and around Vancouver Island, there is no reason we could not do the same as El Hierro in the Canaries and be completely self-sufficient in power generation not only for electricity for our homes and businesses, but for fuel for transport as well.

It has taken them 10 years of planning.

If we start now we could do it in 10 years and maybe avoid the worst of the oil shocks that are ahead.

We’re not going to do it with *either* of our current political parties…

This is an Island of 10,000. What if a City or Region like Port Alberni, Tofino, Ucluelet and Bamfield joined forces to implement a vision for their residents? 30,000 working together to end dependance on fossil fuels.

It could happen… it will happen… it must happen.

UBC Researchers propose Metro Vancouver wide Transit system

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This is really incredible:

Want One Port Mann Bridge, or a Light Rail Metropolis?

The provincial government now intends to go it alone, spending $3.1 billion to erect a new 10-lane bridge and widen the road on either end.

…..

What other transportation infrastructure, they asked, could we instead have for $3.1 billion?

By the time Prof. Patrick Condon and researcher Kari Dow at the UBC Design Centre for Sustainability finished punching in the numbers and mapped their results, they produced a startling alternative vision. For the same money, concluded the team, the government could finance a 200-kilometre light rail network that would place a modern, European-style tram within a 10-minute walk for 80 per cent of all residents in Surrey, White Rock, Langley and the Scott Road district of Delta, while providing a rail connection from Surrey to the new Evergreen line and connecting Pitt Meadows and Maple Ridge into the regional rail system.

This is what our reliance on the Single Occupancy Vehicle has done to us. We (myself included) have been conditioned to think that our one-person cars are the ideal. So instead of investing in mass transit that would benefit all whether they owned a vehicle or not, we spend gigantic amounts of money to replace aging infrastructure that is under stress from the amount of traffic we demand of it.

Now that’s not to say that we shouldn’t replace bridges and things that are in need of renovation or replacement. But clearly rather than expanding these modes of transportation which only further encourage greater volume and gridlock and increased CO2 emissions, we could be building a vast metropolitan network that would actually bring Vancouver into the 21st Century.

Compared to the 200 km grid of light rail, the Port Mann Bridge, including approach spans, is a mere 2,093 metres long, though the entire project actually extends 37 km and includes widening Highway 1, adding two lanes each way on the east side of the bridge and an extra lane in both directions on the west side.

Dow and Condon factored in the cost of tearing down the original Port Mann Bridge and erecting a brand new one, as current plans dictate. They based their comparative figures on proven costs per kilometre for building a type of high-speed light rail tram widely used in places like Alicante, Spain; Budapest, Hungary; and Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Much the same can be said for projects like the $32 Million Langford Interchange in Victoria. For the same price as this one “cloverleaf” to Bear Mountain which, thanks to the economic crisis, has ground to a halt in terms of further house/condo building, we could have completely upgraded the nearly 40KM stretch of railway from Parksville to Port Alberni.(Investment Casebook-PDF) Or upgraded the Cowichan to Victoria portion and put in a commuter service to relieve the stress on the Malahat.

Especially in these times of economic hardship, why aren’t we looking for ways to get the most for our money?

Global Warming in Port Alberni

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A little while ago I found an Environment Canada page where you could find daily EC weather reports in or near Port Alberni… including one from Beaver Creek that went back as far as 1901 (for temperatures).

Here’s that EC page. Just type Alberni into the search field and hit Search and it will give you all the stations.

It also gives the exact location of each station when you select it.

Anyway, I wanted to consolidate all of it and stick it on a graph to see if “Global Warming” is happening here.

So after more than a few hours of work… here it is:
Century Climate Record in Port Alberni
The coloured lines are the actual data from the different stations… they are all in different locations, so [B]small[/B] variations should be expected.

I drew the black line manually overtop as a sort of best fit to see the trend trying to keep it as true as possible…

One thing I noticed immediately was the station from 1901 was very extreme… as were the other early stations… after 1950 or so, the data starts to agree with itself a lot better as well as be much less extreme which I think speaks to better instruments and/or measuring standards.

Oh, and please ignore the colours of the lines… Excel is a real PITA when it comes to multiple series in a graph so it didn’t layer them the way I wanted. But the order of the names in the legend are roughly the order of the earliest recording stations from left to right and top to bottom.

Transition Town Course

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I just had an incredible 2 day experience at a course on the Transition Town Totnes movement and how to get something like it off the ground here in Port Alberni. There were people there from all over North America as well as some from New Zealand. I will have more to say once my mind is able to digest it all but for now I wanted to put a link to the resources for those of the people that were not able to get the digital files at the Course.

Here they are.

Chris