Environment, resources & sustainability

Victoria’s billion dollar P3 decision

Mar 16, 2010
On March 24th the Victoria area’s Capital Regional District (CRD) is going to make a billion dollar decision.  The province has ordered the CRD to end its controversial practice of pumping raw sewage into the ocean.  But it has also ordered the CRD to consider using a public private partnership (P3) for the project. Regardless… View Article

About that Copenhagen award

Feb 5, 2010
Back in December, during the Copenhagen negotiations, a group of environmentalists provided BC Premier Gordon Campbell with an award for climate leadership. Based primarily on the creation of a BC carbon tax two years ago, the Premier has gotten a lot of brownie points from the greens – in spite of the fact that there… View Article

BC’s Urban Housing (Un)affordability

Jan 25, 2010
A new study published today by the Frontier Institute for Public Policy finds that Vancouver has the most unaffordable urban housing market not just in Canada, but in all of Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. This conclusion is based on a very simple, yet effective measure of housing affordability:… View Article

A Modest Proposal

Jan 23, 2010
At some point before long, Haiti is going to be rebuilt. It occurs to me that we in BC have available wood to help in the effort. Most things are built of concrete there because there simply isn’t any wood. Rebuilding out of concrete will be massively expensive and massively polluting. And, as Premier Campbell… View Article

Thinking about zero

Jan 21, 2010
I’m still coming out of my malaise following the Copenhagen climate conference in December. It’s easy to think that the stupid political brinksmanship is never going to end, and the focus of attention will shift to adaptive measures. But what is more likely is a few more Katrina scale disasters that will serve to spur… View Article

The business elite’s parking tax backlash

Jan 8, 2010
The media is reporting a “backlash” against the new parking tax in Vancouver.  The Vancouver Sun reports it is a “slickly organized” backlash being run by Vancouver’s business elite.  This is apparently a 30 member business coalition including the Board of Trade. This is not the first time Vancouver’s business elite has gotten organized around… View Article

Copenhagen and carbon budgets

Dec 14, 2009
As Copenhagen heads into week two, most of the talk has shifted to targets and timelines, typically something like X% of emissions by 2020 or 2050, relative to 1990 levels. This dating is a legacy of the German delegation in the lead-up to the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, who wanted a base year of 1990… View Article

Every revolution is about power

Dec 3, 2009
So what does a sustainable economy really look like, and how do we get there? Climate change essentially means a huge mitigation effort on greenhouse gases culminating in something close to zero emissions by mid-century at the latest. This means phasing out fossil fuels entirely; or minimally, if it comes out of the ground emissions… View Article

Property taxes: are major industries suffering?

Nov 3, 2009
Businesses across Canada have been complaining about what they pay in property taxes, well, since there were property taxes.  But the issue in BC came into sharper definition in July when Catalyst Paper hand-delivered cheques to four municipalities that only covered 25% of their property tax bill.  Timberwest, Celgar and West Fraser Timber joined Catalyst… View Article