I am curious to know what definition people have of "sustainability". I would suggest that because of the myriad number of definitions, most of which assume continued economic growth.

I believe that "we" will not have "real" sustainability until we have been weaned, or forced off of our fossil fuel addiction.

Will this new development generate its own power, grow its own food, handle its own waste?

I look forwars to seeing what people think.

I am curious to know what definition people have of "sustainability". I would suggest that because of the myriad number of definitions, most of which assume continued economic growth, the term sustainability has no real meaning. Case in point, BC's MInister of Energy and Mines speaks of oil and gas development as sustainable!

I believe that "we" will not have "real" sustainability until we have been weaned, or forced off of our fossil fuel addiction.

Will this new development generate its own power, grow its own food, handle its own waste?

I look forward to seeing what people think.

I am curious to know what definition people have of "sustainability"

easy enough:

sustain ability

sus·tain
1. To keep in existence; maintain.

a·bil·i·ty
1. The quality of being able to do something, especially the physical, mental, financial, or legal power to accomplish something.

It is very important that we do not allow those in powerful positions to co-opt our language. When words such as sustainability, freedom or objectivity are abused by them we must insist that we continue to use and understand them correctly. Otherwise they do in fact risk becoming meaninless. This redefinition process is the canary in the coalmine of a culture. For example, if the word 'freedom' becomes meaningless, freedom itself is lost barring the arrival of a new word to embody its meaning/value ( a la 'Solidarity' in Poland)...

It is actaully an important role of the media to protect meaning in our society, unfortuately they have largly joined in this game rather than resisting it. In the case mentioned above, a properly trained reporter should have immediatly seen through that statement and reaffirmed the meaning of 'sustainability' with the obvious 'Sir, how can an industry based on a non-renewable resource be classified as sustainable?', instead the reporter probably asked a softball quesiton like: 'How many jobs does your government think this will create for economically depressed communities on the North Coast?', a question that he probably wrote in the car on the way to the interview...

As for this project, I think that it is wonderful.

Deja:

I absolutely agree that language has become misused and I agree with your definition, though I would add aspects of renewal and re-sourcing.

My thoughts on the reported project are coloured by my pessimism with regards to people and society really making a change for the better (the common good).
I also get frustrated when people say that the kids/children/next generation will solve the problems we face-it is us and past generations who have "set the table" .

freebar:

pessimism: lacking hope
hope: wishing that things will get better

I think that society breeds a sense of powerlessness that leads to a lot of people feeling hopeless, and thus eventually pessimistic. But hope is not what will save us, only constructive _action_ will get us out of this mess. So I feel sad for passimists in our society, because it seems to me that they are doubly lost. They feel as though they need hope to keep acting, but hope iself little more than _wishing_ that somehow (through some kind of devine intervention) things will go right and 'goodness' will prevail.

A good example is someone hoping that you will have a good day. Why not do something that will make thier day? At least hen you _know_ that they will. Hope is a cop-out for inaction, losing hope in that sense is sort of a good thing. Assuming that everything is going to go to shit and that people are not going to get the message till it is too late is a motivator for me. So, pessimism will only drag you down if you are hoping for a sign of hope.

Every moment that is spent hoping or losing hope that things will turn themselves around is wasted. To paraphrase one of the newer cliches : Abandon ye all hope and just be the change that you want to see in the world.

That, and supporting others who are at least attempting to demonstrate the alternatives is all that we can really do.

Just my ramlbing thoughts on the futility of hope as a path to effective social change.

Deja:

Actually, I am waiting for peak oil (and natural gas) to arrive, because then it will become obviuos that we must change.

Until then people will continue to delude themselves that our way of life is sustainable.

As to being a pessimist, you can only bang against the denial wall so long, eventually your head hurts!

So I have stopped banging, perhaps until a few more people get bruised heads! Only then might I become an optimist again.

Sustainability in an urban setting is a myth; a myth created buy professors and bureaucrats that are so incompetent that can not do real work elsewhere. They live in a world full of grants and government money and have learned how to feed off the educational pork barrel.

Greeways for cycling are another overblown urban myth; as bicycles need a paved route. In Europe most light rail and/or tram lines are lawned over giving a greenway effect, in fact most European greenways are on rail routes.

The bicycle lobby certainly has planners in their pocket, really, unlike most European cities, Vancouver is hilly and vast. The urban elites, instead of making real changes like building tramways, fiddle around with feel-good solutions which are ignored by the masses.

You want a sustainable city? Then make sure every household has a market garden and chicken coops; a quality transit system that actually takes you where you want to go; and single familly dwellings.

There is an Australian planning professor who has made quite uproar by writing a paper "Have we done everything wrong?" He has been censored and been sent to Coventry by the educational elites in the country. Could he be right? Are we doing everything wrong just because the higher purpose persons refuse to admit they are wrong? Thin about it!

The Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability could have potential.

After, of course, it loses the self-destructive acronym, CURSE. (Or is it pronounced with a more sexist, even studly, soft C -- SIRES?)

There's plenty of time -- in the 20 to 120 years before global warming raises the ocean enough to flood the new campus -- to develop an extensive ground-floor irony lab.

A little more positively:
Here's an opportunity for the Gears to get in and engineer a test channel -- along the waterway that connected False Creek with Burrard Inlet until the railway filled and polluted it -- for experiments in tidal flow electricity generation methods. Has this ever been proposed before? How about the real estate values of creating a Little Venice on all those unused lands?)

Thanks, Grumpy,

A transit system built for "commuters" instead of people will be ignored by the majority who have lives (daycares, dentists, friends, etc.)

Over and above car-industry demand-creation, if folks require good transportation in the rain beyond bankers' hours and between places not on a route to or from downtown, they'll buy a car. And then they won't walk to the bus on the days they're just going to and from work.

Of course, until we get out there and block all parking within a few blocks whenever there's a GVRD or BC Transit meetings, expect no improvement.

Quick question, if it's not too off topic:
Why single-family housing? What's especially not sustainable about multi-family or community housing?

Slated for Vancouver: the ultimate 'Sustainability Lab'

Does sustainability happen in a laboratory? Downtown?

I don't think so. I'd like to see in situ projects supported where real people are working to save a forest, save the salmon fishery, build a better building.

News coverage is often shaped, I think, by convenience. A downtown story about Belinda Stronach or Tod Bertuzzi or even Karla H., get heavy scrutiny. Why?Because it's cheaper if the journalist gets to go home every evening.

The small clusters of real folks doing good things out in the boonies (the basis of the economy)get little if any column inches.

Because why? Well, I think it's about media's notion of its own sustainability: why send a journalist and photographer out on full expense accounts, to do a serious story about accountability, when it's more cost-effective to keep a journalist at home whipping up a big dumb story about somebody's back porch.

Imagine the CanWest uproar if the New Democrats had launched Railway Acres ... dang, we've missed out on a summer of fun there, all right.

A quick answer for a quick question. Why single familly homes? By packaging everyone in shoe-box sized condo's or cramped apartments has made child rearing almost impossible. We need space to work, garden, and play.

Our planners have forgotton about children and their needs. Now look what we created - consumer automotons, who can not go out without a designer label, etc. We now have a generation of kids fixated on game cube, who can only get their jollies, street racing, extreme sports or shooting somebody.

We will pay a big price for our so-called sustainability planning, I think we already have!

Sustainability. Say it again, “Sustainability”. It rolls off the tongue so easily, doesn’t it? In fact it’s so easy to say it has become downright prepositional, apparently as prepositional as the word ‘competition’. And its “real” meaning (as freebear notes) is glossed over in the same manner as that of the word competition. This has resulted in a whole new language of paradoxical phrases being accepted without question: sustainable growth, sustainable logging, mining, fishing, hotbeds of sustainability, urban sustainability, sustainability precincts, etc., and the list goes on, ad nauseam.

Reading this piece brings Orwell’s ‘B vocabulary’ of ‘Newspeak’ to mind: “words which [have] been deliberately constructed for political purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a political implication, but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them.”

Dr. John Robinson pretty much sums up the purpose of the “Ultimate Sustainability Lab” when he says, “We want to put into the building the most advanced technologies really working anywhere.” What he is saying is that this lab, by focusing on building better mousetraps, hopes to find techno solutions to change and contain human behaviour. It should really be named The Ultimate Technology Lab.

Hopefully the technology-solves-all mentality will soon recognize that, until they look closer at the cognitive/learning reasons for human behaviour, instead of trying to contain it, techno fixes will simply demand more techno fixes. Until they do we will never get past square one. The irony is over powering: Is that’s what they mean when they say “sustainable”?

Why single family homes? Grumpy got the duck excited when he said the secret words "consumer automotons". If the captains of commerce had their way we would actually have greater focus on and demand for single person homes. Just think of the market expansion (helping sustainable growth no doubt) if everyone had to buy their own personal supply of techno-gadgetry.

The greatest threat to capitalism is communal living, and as a result, the extended family in the industrialized world is now history.

"Hotbed of sustainability?"...what a conflict in terminology....sustainability is the coldest, most overly manipulated and overly propagandized word to be used oh so cleverly in the English language of late. Something about this article gives me the creeps...starting with the phrase deifying "the idea of a building..."

Not a hotbed at all... more like a frigid petri dish in which the elite may play, far removed from the messy mud puddles of the world where they might have to get down and dirty with real life.

Sustainability ideas must be practical. If you are looking to reduce carbon emissions, its not just about using recycled vegetable oil, (a novelty item, expensive, and with no real benefit when you think about distribution and others), its about reducing the amount we need to use vehicles.

I believe our city planners our finally realizating, that mixed used buildings and smart communities are better than single purpose zoned areas, where people have to drive from suburban real estate, to commerce zones, to big box retail zones.

Some of the problems have to do with a not in my neighbourhood approach where they've pushed big boxes out of town, without realizing people will go there anyways. Others, have to do with the lack of proper development of transit and long term planning.

A question and I think it fits: I always thought that all houses should have solar power. Now I know that this would not power fridges and such, but power secondary items like radios, clocks, etc. I wonder what the the total saving in generated power would be it this were so?

My what a hotbed of negativity :-\

We're not going to get anywhere with these kinds of attitudes...

I agree with kenmo.

Sustainability is something that needs to be thought about and practiced everywhere. Downtown, in the suburbs and rurally. On campus, in single and multi-family homes. I'm sure that the backers of this project would like to do everything, unfortunatly they can only do thier part.

Some of the so called pundits on this site seem to think that there is no point to even trying to be sustainable unless you plan on building the 'sustainability mothership', to hover above cities (using no fuel at all) and carefully but immedatly making them %100 sustainable.

Others seem to think that it is a 'fad'. How sad for you.

Get with the program people. And you wonder why your party has lost the Green vote!?!?

A nice plum for academia but what will it REALLY return to society? While research and development are usually paired, the latter tends to be a miniscule trickle while the research appears all-too-often a taxpayer-funded boondoggle.

I don't have the figures at hand but I recall an amount of about $18million government funding for research and developement to do with the conversion of diesel engines to burn gaseous fuels. I believe 600 jobs were referred to in this "research". Diesel conversion to natural gas was accomplished many years ago. Why this regurgitation? The same might be asked of much of the fuel-cell research which has appeared to some to be more about stock promotion.

If the product has merit and is fairly priced, it should sell itself without the need of the industry to receive a gift of taxpayer funding.

On my last point, those successful in their research may have to fight SUPPRESSION - so powerful are market forces. Mere reference to such a possibility may cause one to be branded paranoid, even as accusers daily fight built-in obsolescence.

The stakes are high:

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No additions or corrections have been made to this downloaded file.

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The War Against Cold Fusion
What's really behind it?
Hal Plotkin, Special to SF Gate
Monday, May 17, 1999

URL: http://www.sfgate.com/technology/beat/

Two months ago, I reported that Dr. Michael McKubre, an electrochemist at Menlo Park-based SRI, was, like other researchers, generating unaccounted-for heat in a carefully-controlled cold fusion experiment.

McKubre presented his findings at the centennial meeting of the American Physical Society, the nation's premier gathering of physicists. Close to 100 scientists attended McKubre's talk, a sizable audience for a technical session. Despite the crowd, and the importance of the subject, no major news stories have been published about the event. According to McKubre, there was only one journalist present.

In his talk, McKubre detailed the results of SRI's nearly 10-year effort to replicate the work of Utah chemists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann. McKubre confirmed that, under the right, difficult-to-achieve conditions, sustained reactions are taking place in SRI's cold fusion cells. McKubre says the reaction appears to be nuclear in origin.

In addition to carefully measuring the excess heat being produced using a calorimeter precise to 1/1000th of a degree, McKubre has also detected elevated quantities of Helium-4, a known fusion by-product. McKubre's findings turn what is currently known about nuclear science on its head.

But that is only half the story.

Since writing my first report on McKubre's work two months ago, I've become convinced that the federal Department of Energy is responsible for a massive failure to serve the public interest. Rather than budget the funds needed to explore this new, emerging science, our top national energy science officials have adopted what might be called, at best, a policy of benign neglect. At worst, it's a policy of fraud and deceit.

How could this be happening?

The stakes in the debate about cold fusion are enormous. In this case, an unholy alliance seems to have come together. The principle players are the fossil fuel industry, which has no interest in seeing itself eclipsed by a new, non-polluting source of energy, and the mainstream physics community, which wants to protect, seemingly at all costs, the federal funding it relies on to continue its massively expensive hot fusion experiments.

I've seen how squirrelly even good people can get when a few of their bucks are in jeopardy. So it's not surprising that when several trillion dollars are on the table, there are signs of skullduggery.

Take, for starters, the Energy Resources Advisory Board (ERAB) panel appointed during the Bush administration to look into the cold fusion claims made by Pons and Fleischmann. That panel leaned heavily on an experiment done at MIT that found the field unworthy of financial support. Since then, however, Dr. Eugene Mallove, the chief science writer at MIT at the time, has come forward to denounce the MIT study, citing irregularities in the way MIT's results were presented.

Mallove contends MIT's researchers did generate excess heat in their cold fusion experiment, and then fudged that finding in their final report. As evidence, Mallove has produced a copy of the original heat-measurement graph used in the MIT experiment, which showed slight heat production above the expected level. That graph did not appear in the final MIT report. In its place, the MIT team published an "adjusted" graph that showed no production of excess heat.

cont. next post

Mallove resigned in protest and demanded an investigation.

In addressing Mallove's complaint, MIT did not dispute that the original graph had been altered. Instead, one of the 15 authors of the MIT report was permitted to take the unusual step of changing the description of the experiment's purpose *after* the paper describing it was published.

According to an appendix added to the report as a result of the investigation into Mallove's charges, the experiment was redefined to have been a search for a sudden onset of released energy, rather than to determine if unaccounted-for heat was being generated in cold fusion cells. No such claim was made at the time the report was originally published and presented to Congress. Mallove contends MIT's handling of the matter was fatally flawed. "In science, we don't usually allow anyone to redefine the purpose of an experiment to match the results," he says.

Since then, with funding from futurist Arthur C. Clarke, Mallove has been publishing Infinite Energy magazine, a publication devoted to spreading news about cold fusion experiments. Last month, Mallove released Fire From Water, a video documentary about cold fusion. Mallove is currently negotiating with several national networks interested in broadcasting the newly released video.

There are several incredible moments in Fire From Water. It contains, for example, the first video footage I've seen of sustained energy releases in cold fusion cells. It's easy to see why the scientists involved immediately assumed some kind of nuclear reaction was taking place. If it's a parlor trick, as some critics contend, it's one of the best I've seen.

The cells bubble with energy, looking like what you get when you poke a hot iron into a jar of water. But the water does not extinguish the heat. Instead, the cells bubble on and on, emitting steam, in amounts far greater than can be explained by the energy put into them. In some cases, the reactions go on for days, even weeks.

But there's more.

In a telling interview, former Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) executive Tom Passell says that at least some of those involved in the campaign to debunk cold fusion intentionally misled congressional investigators and the public.

EPRI is the Palo Alto-based consortium of utility companies that conducts research into power generation and distribution technologies. Besides his professional credentials, Passell has an excellent reputation as a longtime, well-known, Palo Alto civic volunteer.

Passell says that shortly after the ERAB panel persuasively denounced cold fusion as junk science in congressional testimony, some of the members of that panel quietly came to EPRI seeking money so they could study the phenomena themselves. Apparently, cold fusion research was only worthless if someone else was getting the money to do it.

If Passell's charge is true, it means some members of the ERAB panel intentionally lied to Congress, offering scientific testimony that cold fusion was unworthy of further study, testimony which they knew to be false. In non-scientific language, that's called perjury. "The search for money, for research funds, is a big thing," Passell says, "and sometimes takes precedence over the search for what we call truth."

Despite the federal government's ongoing obstruction, scientists around the world are continuing to investigate cold fusion. Several recent advances are worth noting.

Les Case, an MIT-trained chemical engineer with more than 20 patents under his belt, discovered that cold fusion reactions could be made more reliable by the addition of a carbon catalyst. Case used his own funds to support his work; his technique is the one now being replicated by SRI's McKubre.

Others have made similar observations, most notably Tom Claytor at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. (Interestingly, the current firestorm of controversy about the alleged leaking of nuclear secrets to the Chinese at Los Alamos may make it harder, in the future, to obtain information about the successful Los Alamos cold fusion experiments).

There are also tantalizing indications of possible breakthroughs on the theoretical level, as well. According to conventional nuclear theory, for example, the sun should be emitting a steady stream of neutrinos, particles that are produced in hot nuclear fusion reactions, as those reactions are currently understood. The only problem is, neutrinos coming from the sun have not been detected in the numbers current theory predicts.

In the parlance of the field, this is known as the "problem of the sun's missing neutrinos." For some reason, the same mainstream physicists who claim cold fusion can't exist because cold fusion cells don't produce all the expected nuclear by-products don't make the same claim about the sun. Instead, they maintain it is merely a problem of neutrino measurement. The sun's "missing neutrinos" are there, they say, we just can't measure them accurately enough.

But at least some cold fusion theorists are beginning to think the two phenomena might be related. They suspect that more than one type of fusion may be occurring within the sun, and that what is happening in the little Pons-Flieschmann cells might provide at least part of the explanation about what is going on.

Similar claims are being made by proponents of nuclear string theory, which has recently come to prominence much to the consternation of the particle theorists who still dominate the federal physics establishment.

Dr. McKubre, for example, discussed the matter with no less than Dr. Edward Teller. McKubre told Wired magazine, that Teller said he might be able to explain how cold fusion works.

The biggest slam against cold fusion researchers involves their inability to replicate the same results each time they conduct the experiment. But, as McKubre points out, the same could have been said about the first transistors.

Due to problems with material impurities, only one in a hundred or so of the first transistors worked. By studying those that did work, however, scientists were able to perfect the invention. The same thing happened with integrated circuits, which led to the clean rooms that carefully control the manufacturing environment now used to produce computer chips.

When it comes to cold fusion, however, the detractors in the Department of Energy say further scientific inquiry should be abandoned because, in as many as seven out of ten tries, cold fusion does not work. (Les Case is claiming he's got the failure rate down to just 10-20 percent. Recently, he visited McKubre's SRI lab to demonstrate his latest techniques).

It may be hard to believe that people with vested interests could have been responsible for dampening, and nearly killing, this field for the last 10 years. Until you realize how much money is involved.

We're not just talking about the $15 billion the U.S. has spent in the last few decades to support the work of hot fusion scientists, such as those who dominated the ERAB panel. Those scientists and their institutions would, of course, be forced to find a new paradigm, and new funds, to support themselves if cold fusion theories proved valid.

But that is just the tip of the financial iceberg. The foundation of the fossil fuel dependent international economy is also on the line, down to the last nuclear power plant, coal mine, and neighborhood gas station. It's no wonder some people are worried. It would be remarkable if they were not taking steps to stop advancements in this field.

Clearly, though, stepped up cold fusion research efforts are called for. Even if cold fusion claims are bogus, we'll undoubtedly learn a lot we don't know about material sciences and electrochemistry, two fields vital to future scientific progress.

It is not enough, though, to encourage the handful of scientists who, against all the obstacles, have secured funding to continue work on cold fusion.

We need a full-scale investigation into the Department of Energy's ongoing campaign to discredit scientists working on understanding the unusual, and potentially useful, cold fusion effect. And the first person we should call on the carpet is the Secretary of Energy, Bill Richardson.

If Secretary Richardson could find time to visit Monica Lewinsky's apartment to offer her a job, he can surely find time to answer a few questions about his department's continuing role in retarding the progress of cold fusion investigations.

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Silicon Valley writer and broadcaster Hal [Hal Plotkin] Plotkin would not mind if you print out this column and mail it to your representative in Congress.

Kids don't care where they live Grumpy. As long as there's a swing and a slide nearby, they don't care if it's the backyard or the park. Even out here in dirty old East Van there's parks and playground equipment a couple of blocks away to the South, North, and West. I'd have to go 4 or 5 blocks to find one to the East. Further, there's community gardens for those with a green thumb. Transit just needs some real dollars for ground level solutions instead of elevated white elephants. And, like it or not we'll all be on bikes one day. Unfortunately, we'll probably use them to dodge the burnt out hulks of cars after the shit hits the fan rather than cruising along bike paths in a well-planned return to human scale solutions.

Don't be Grumpy think like Stumpy! :-)

Being a biker and a willing participant in the Sustainability Program launched a couple of years ago at UBC - I have to agree with Deja above and state that change begins at the individual level. The actual expanse of the program was just barely touched upon here - it includes organic farming (at UBC farms) practices, grants awarded to any department for the purpose of making their work more "sustainable" - which has companies serving the various university departments jumping on board. So such thinking does initiate a dominos effect. Small things like my initiating the pick-up of cold boxes and packaging in which local suppliers serve us for their reuse goes a long way when one considers the number of "labs" and the change in thinking taking place throughout. If this program can even achieve a change in mindset - an awareness if you will - of our ecological footprint - then we have moved one silent step forward. The main UBC campus aims to have its own organic "composter" in which all biodegradable waste from all food venues will be deposited - and made into organic fertilizer - to achieve such waste reduction initiatives on a large scale that ensures full participation by all is not at all an easy achievement, I've found out. Having sat on the public monitoring committee (a volunteer appointment) for the GVRD's Solid waste management program for the purpose of ensuring that proper waste management is constituted in our environs - the number of beaurocratic obstacles that stand in the way of "sustainability" being practiced on a large scale is unreal. This move by all involved in the sustainability program on BC campuses should be applauded rather than disdained - or else you have nothing but your own toxic muck to sit upon.

I agree with Stump!

Avicenna:

Of course there is resistance to real sustainability. Sustainability should include doing more with less.

Our way of life is predicated on creating, selling and buying more!

I may have invented and developed an environmnetally friendly something or other, using over 50% recycled materials; but each year I would want to produce and sell more (the mantra of growth!). So while using recycled material supposedly is good, my product need for new material will grow each year (sure the filling of landfills may slow down but eventually they will be full!).

Skeptikool, thanks for posting that wonderful update on the cold-fusion issue. Although I referred to the Pons-Fleischman experiments as a hoax in another thread, regarding Helium-4 super-fluid-like characteristics, I understand that if cold-fusion could be consistently shown to produce unaccounted-for energy, all of the engines of suppression would be put in place to attack it. "Free energy" is basically not only an attack on the entire wealth-producing institutions of modern civilization, but an actual reversal of the basic tenets of moder physics including the first and second law of thermodynamics and the law of the conservation of energy. More generally, it also makes a huge comedy of almost everything human beings have been struggling to accomplish in the last few thousand years. But who knows, eh?

I personally think the fact that the superfluid characteristics of helium-4 are only apparent about half of the time, and the fact that cold-fusion can only be apparently produced thirty percent or so of the time is just another application of the quantum exigencies of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which seems to be in place mostly to add a bit of fear and loathing to the lives of us poor, struggling human beings.

Just for your interest, here's my definition of sustainability:

“Sustainability is a condition of existence which enables the present generation of humans and other species to enjoy social wellbeing, a vibrant economy, and a healthy environment, and to experience fulfillment, beauty and joy, without compromising the ability of future generations of humans and other species to enjoy the same.”

– Guy Dauncey, Victoria.
earthfuture.com

Guy Dauncy, congrats for using your real name, eh, but I think your definition is childish, tautologous and stupid.

"childish, tautologous and stupid" ... as opposed to the equally distortional judgments, like, adult, conscise and enlightened?

Trumanly helpful stuff; so long as you believe the judgments bear some connection to reality.

KWD, I know my comment seemed like a tourette's outburst but I have a long history with this kind of stuff. First, you might check out Werner Erhard's EST, Landmark Forum, Forum and his latest incarnation, the Hunger Project, which purports to exist in order to end starvation in poor countries. Throw in L.R. Hubbard's Scientology and his book dyanetics. Go to the website of the Portsmouth Herald, Sat. August 28, 2004,read about the couple there, then head back to Guy Dauncey's website.
Read through it inclucding the form where he asks for money. When you're finished all that get back here and I'll divulge my algorithm for picking up this kind of stuff. Don't forget to read Dauncey's payment schedule. eg.Patrons-$100.00, Individuals and families $35.00, Individuals on low income $10,00, Primary and Secondary School classes-free, Colleges $150.00, non-profit organizations $35.00($10.00 for low-income non-profits), municipalities $250.00, Business $100.00plus $5.00 per employee(full-time equivalent), institutions and agencies $500.00, Ministries and Crown Corporations-please call to discuss. Anyway, get going KWD, you've got a lot to learn.

Who would dare doubt that you have a long history with "childish, tautologous and stupid" algorithims? Certainly not uneducated folk like myself.

Dauncey's defender? Hardly. Drop the judgmental labeling (it exposes the distortional thinking which is truly unbecoming of an intellectual such as yourself) and you might have something worth reading.

What did you think of the Portsmouth Herald couple, one of whom returned to work at 80 to give money to the Hunger Project, Erhard's new EST reincarnation? Incidentally, if you're into synchronicity, Erhard, who was born Jack Rosenberg (and sold a lot of used cars before becoming a foundation founder) borrowed Werner Heisenberg's first name. (The guy I mentioned a couple of comments up who "invented" the uncertainty principle.)

This discussion wanders off into some very intellectual territory. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose, but if anyone following the thread is interested in looking at a low impact, nearly 100% energy self sufficient living space that utilizes 'off the shelf' technologies and a new pozzolanic Portland cement replacement called StoneHemp®, please visit:
http://users.uniserve.ca/~nozone/EarthShip.html

I feel compelled to respond to Truman Green's comments, since it shows the dangers that lurk in a public domain debate like this.

My personal website, earthfuture.com, contains no appeals for money at all, apart from a suggestion that people drop a penny into PayPal if they feel inspired, to cover the cost of my voluntary, fully self-employed efforts.

The rates that Truman quotes are for the BC Sustainable Energy Association, bcsea.org, of which I am the President, which is a fully functioning non-profit registered society, with 470 members and 7 Chapters around the province.

Truman, can I ask that you formally say "OK, I misunderstood things there"? Otherwise, I shall have to refrain from participating in discussions like this, except as an anonymous flamer who can say whatever he likes, slandering whomsover I like, knowing there will never be any come-back.

If we want to build a better worlld, we have to start with honesty, openness, and a willingness to fess up when we screw up.

If you want to check my site, and see if it's anything remotely like the things Truman suggests, then see earthfuture.com

Many thanks,
Guy

Mr. Dauncy. I got that list straight from your website yesterday which I found by clicking the link in your Tyee sustainability definition, although I checked a few minutes ago and I can't find it. So, even if it's not from your personal website, which I submit it was, you admit that it's from the BC Sustainable Energy Association, of which you are president. My opinion of you or your sustainability guruship has not changed. I think you're in it for the money and power, which wouldn't exactly put you in a class by yourself. I invite the editors of Tyee to delete my opinion and your price list, if they believe I have treated you unfairly. You have tried to toss in the red herring of whether the price list is from your personal website or your Sustainable Energy Association website. If readers think this is the issue, they can just go ahead and send you money and chaulk my opinions up to paranoid conspiricism. At least now they can figure out how much to send--depending upon whether they're an "individual on low income, a college student or a crown corporation," in which case you invite them to telephone and discuss how much you'll accept. Incidentally, what do you mean by "an anonymous flamer who can say anything he wants, slandering whomsoever I like, knowing there will never be any comeback." Are you referring to me? It is logical for me to assume that you are, because you certainly wouldn't be referring to yourself in those terms. Regardless, I'm certainly not anonymous. My name's Truman Green. It's in the phone book, on my birth certificate and I live on the King George Highway in Surrey near 80th Avenue. And wouldn't you call your rebuttal of my opinion a "comeback" of the kind you claim isn't possible? The Hunger Project, Erhard's new money machine, is also a, "fully functioning, non-profit, registered society," as you say, just like yours. They have a similar price list.

I just went back to Dauncey's personal website and found the price list by clicking on a link to his Sustainability association. Click on, "Make a Donation."

I think this is a truly bad dialogue, and it makes me wish I'd never posted anything to The Tyee. I am one individual person, and I have established a non-profit society, the BC Sustainable Energy Association. It is not "mine", and it receives memberships, and donations, just as every other non-profit society in BC does. That's absolutely normal. How else are we going to improve the world?

I fear that you may indeed be suffering from paranoid conspiricism, Truman, as you suggest. Please back off from these personal attacks.

best wishes,
Guy Dauncey

Yo Mr. Dauncey:

I was a student of yours back in my elementary school days. Open area classrooms, trips to Cortes Island, those were the days. I'd tell you my name, but perhaps you can understand why I won't, since my address and tel number are in the phone book... and who needs whack-jobs knowing where you live?

Anyway, glad to see you're doing what you can to be part of the solution. Some of it must of rubbed off way back when, cuz I do what I can as well. Ignore the haters.

I had hoped, signing up to this forum, that there would be dialogue which includes agreeing to disagree. Disparaging remarks should not be a part of the "stream" here.

I believe "we" need to change, if we are to become a long lived species on this planet.

Unfortunately, I do not have optimism that "we" will change, deciding instead to rely on the "techno fix" or foolhardedly believe that we can find more oil and gas to fuel our way of life, or that we can take (war) what we need to fuel our way of life.

As I have said earlier, I am hoping for the coming (if not here already) oil and gas shock to "WAKE" people up to need to change our ways of living. Until then, I look at varoius efforst as well-meaning band-aids and in some cases (the techno fix solution for example) as mis-guided efforts to address the issue of sustainability

Nothing new needs to be invented-everything needs to be rediscovered

For those seriously interested in sustainability I'd suggest you go see, "Darwin's Nightmare" at the Ridge on Arbutus before next Friday. It's a good primer for beginning to understand how world capitalism has been sustaining itself in East, not to mention West and Central Africa. No "beauty and joy" there, though.

Stump I just noticed your reason for not giving your name. Not to worry, I already know your real name, and I might add Mr.Dauncey's disenchantment with anonymity seems perfectly tailored for you. Mr. Dauncey, for clarification I should add that I was half way through your beauty and joy definition when I sensed the presence of an outstretched hand within minor clicking distance--not of Suzukian (another sustainability windbag)proportions, perhaps but still definitely self-promoting.

Interesting thread.

Another definition might be worth throwing in here and that is technology. it seems when we hear the word, we think next level.. something new, expensive and flashy but a revisit to the greek meaning and we find - a systematic treatment of an art or craft. Embrace it. And then outsmart it. I find great irony in reading the pessimist's opinions on the dangers of technology on an online forum.

My background is in industrial product design so I learn, systematically, how to make things for people in the 'hopes' of improving quality of life. This role is accompanied by a growing responsibility to question the established rightness of things and to challenge our behaviour as both a local and global society. Sustainability is such a broad concept on so many levels, and yet it is simple. The biggest lesson I am learning in developing my own understanding of sustainability is a necessary shift in perspective of both time and space, and a heightened awareness of where things come from and where they eventually return.

I have made the conscious decision to try to make a difference both in my work and in my own personal life. Living in an intentional community house where we reap the rewards of sharing what we can. We shop for eachother, share meals, stories and values, we compost and grow a lovely garden.

Keep it growing,
Sarah