Global Warming's Threat to BC: Seeking Solutions
Floods and droughts on the radar. Can we adapt?
Creative approaches in demand.
[Editor's note: "Rough Weather Ahead," Chris Wood's series on B.C. water and what we can expect from global warming, is funded by a Tyee Investigative Reporting Fellowship. Today we publish the fifth and final of his reports. To learn more about Wood, his series and Tyee fellowships, go here.]
I find groundwater engineer Scott Schillereff on the patio at Joey's, a popular lunch spot in Kelowna. The evening before, he had been to see An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's movie about global warming. Scott describes it as a "life-altering experience." As if to drive the experience home, today temperature records are melting all across southern B.C. We sit in the blazing sun but the air around us is pleasantly cool -- thanks to the fine spray of water puffing every few seconds from a device somewhere overhead that appears to be modelled on the ones supermarkets use to keep produce fresh. Beyond a leafy hedge, SUVs and pickup trucks weave among the RVs travelling through town on Highway 97.
For me, the scene captures perfectly the reality, the irony and the reasons for optimism wrapped up in our conflicting and conflicted responses to climate change. We are a fortunate lot in British Columbia, so spoiled by earlier generations' modifications of nature that today we can afford to indulge in the illusion of a special relationship to the environment even as we squander its most essential gift -- clean, fresh water -- with an extravagance that ought to shame us.
The heat, however, is on. It is becoming harder to ignore the change in the weather. Soon it will be impossible as, in one way or another, events compel even the most somnolent among us to respond. As I have reported in previous articles in this series, that wake-up call may be a spring flood that overtops dikes defending Vancouver's suburbs. Or perhaps it will be a killing drought that pits neighbour against thirsty neighbour in the Okanagan. Or it may come invisibly, as unregulated wells pump countless litres of water out of the ground until they suck it dry.
Or perhaps, and more hopefully, more of us will have the kind of experience Scott Schillereff has had, and embrace not only the urgent need to act differently, but the numerous ways we can do so. Climate change presents a complex problem -- in its nature and in what it asks of us by way of response. But despite the doomsday scripts some have taken to calling "climate porn," the climate threat to our water is not insoluble. Indeed, promising countermeasures are being modelled all across British Columbia. Others are on the menu of possibilities -- if we can summon the nerve to try them.
And paradoxically, our very extravagance may be an asset of sorts. "The myth of the abundance of water is in our psyche," Scott observes. Immersed in that myth, British Columbians waste water at rates far "higher than the Canadian average," he notes. "And the Canadian average is multiples higher than the world average." In our profligacy, however, lie enormous opportunities to make water go further without sacrificing either comfort or wealth. And one stunningly simple key could unlock those opportunities: a little more realism about what water is worth at the tap.
Too much and too little
Our problem, to recap, is one of extremes: far too much water at some times and places, far too little at others. And because water is involved in everything -- everything -- else that we do, our response must be similarly comprehensive. We must attack the challenge both up-stream and down, as well as at mid-stream: considering where our water comes from, how we use it and how we dispose of it, as related parts of the same puzzle.
The most effective solutions will often not be dramatic ones -- nor require the heavy engineering and environmental disruption associated with "big pipe" projects of the past. Instead, they will be creative, often subtle and integrated with other goals, including aesthetic ones. And they are as likely to come from innovations in the marketplace as from massive investments in public works.
Most visitors to a new Maple Ridge subdivision, for instance, probably miss its many special features designed to help torrential rain soak into the ground rather than overflow drains, run off into nearby creeks or wash pollutants into environmentally sensitive Blaney Bog. Pocket gardens along narrow roads (narrow both to slow traffic and reduce impervious "hard" surfaces) are planted with attractive native shrubs and flowers; they also contain hollows where rainwater can collect and seep safely into the earth. Lawns conceal extra absorbent topsoil and buried, rock-filled pits where rainwater is retained to "infiltrate" slowly, instead of rushing downhill.
Such details, designed into the development at the blueprint stage, were considered radical when they were pioneered a few years ago at Surrey's East Clayton subdivision. Their latest successful application -- phase one of the "Silver Ridge" project quickly sold out -- is an encouraging sign that what was then "experimental" may soon be "business as usual."
'Private sector will jump on this'
Forward-thinking Vancity Credit Union is one of the investors sinking $600 million into an even more ambitious development in Victoria.
Under construction on a former industrial site across the Gorge waterway from downtown, Dockside Green's 26 planned buildings will incorporate super-efficient appliances and bathroom fixtures that cut water needs by nearly half compared to conventional suites. Twinned plumbing will distribute potable water to taps, but carry recycled waste-water to flush toilets, irrigate landscaping and maintain the ornamental stream that will run down the centre of the project; any recycled water left over will be sold to local industry. By treating residents' sewage on-site, the development expects to save $81,000 a year in city charges -- and generate space heat.
If other builders take up the same ideas, the project's sales materials hint, the capital might be able to postpone spending an anticipated $100 million to develop new water supplies by the early 2020s.
Purchasers who snapped up 80 of 95 units in the first four Dockside buildings in one day like what Joe van Bellingham, the project's promoter and lead cheerleader, calls its "future-proofing" quality. "It was a way of distinguishing the product in the marketplace," Joe candidly admits. At the same time, by designing to a "triple bottom line" of economic, social and environmental returns, Joe slashed his usual costs of securing community approvals and marketing, more than offsetting the modest extra expense of adding innovative features. In fact, the chartered accountant has become a bottom-line fan of designs that spare water and other environmental values: "The more we understand, the better we get at it, the more money we're going to make," he enthuses. "I really think the private sector is going to jump on this and lead the market."
New wave of water recycling
Admittedly the idea of "recycling" water carries a certain, what shall we call it, odour? Yet in truth, every drop of rainwater that falls from the sky is "recycled" -- evaporated from salty (and increasingly soiled) oceans, condensed in the atmosphere and returned to the ground in what amounts to a planetary-scale distillery. But as human demands exceed the global still's local deliveries, a growing number of cities are doing the job themselves. In San Diego, recycled water is returned directly to the mains; Las Vegas pumps cleaned-up sewage into Lake Mead to blend with nature's product before it gets served back to tourists on the Strip.
Dockside Green isn't the first to pioneer the idea in B.C. Amid the vast domed digesters and settling ponds of the GVRD's 126-acre Annacis Island sewage treatment facility, the pilot recycling plant commissioned earlier this month looks like a diminutive school science project. Nonetheless, its open hopper tank and metre-wide U-shaped horizontal tube are big enough to accommodate one per cent of the larger facility's treated effluent. Already as clear as most mountain streams, the effluent is filtered further through sand (in the hopper), then disinfected with chlorine (in the U-tube).
What flows out the other end will replace half the drinking-quality water the Annacis facility now buys from Delta, saving more than $200,000 a year. (No, it won't be served up at water coolers; it's destined for various "process" needs and landscaping.) If everything checks out, the recycler may be expanded and its product sold to neighbouring industries that include metal-platers and a film-processor as well as a dairy and candy maker.
Desert landscaping
In the increasingly water-stressed Okanagan, the towns of Vernon and Oliver have been recycling sewage for a while. The water sparkling in the sun as it sprays across the infield grass surrounding Oliver's municipal airstrip is recycled -- as is the water in fire hydrants identified with special purple paint.
But using water twice may not be as important as using it sensibly once. Kelowna's residents consume some 25 million litres of water a day in the winter. Come summer, that amount nearly quadruples to 95 million litres. "The difference is what's going on grass," says city WaterSmart co-ordinator Neil Klassen. A few "radical" residents, he says, are replacing bluegrass with hardier varieties or cutting back on fertilizer to slash the thirst of even ordinary grass by 25 to 30 per cent. Their innovations may become compulsory before the decade is out. The city is revamping its landscaping codes.
"We're not looking at the Lower Mainland [for guidance]," Klassen says. "It's not relevant to Kelowna. Our models are cities like Tucson and Irvine, California." His bottom line? "The type of landscaping that's going on now can't continue. It can't. We don't have the water."
'We're in crisis now'
Water sustainability campaigner Kim Stephens hopes the same insight sinks in across British Columbia. He leads an initiative funded by government and industry to bring good examples like these to the attention of municipal planners and local governments. His goal is to see the innovative become the standard.
"A lot of the [development] standards we brought in 25 years ago, nobody thought them through," Kim argues.
Now, the waste embedded into building and plumbing codes, development guidelines and landscape habits, magnified by ever-growing populations, are crashing into the new reality of extreme weather. Despite B.C.'s rainy reputation, "we're in crisis now." Leaving the future to business-as-usual, he fears, will put us squarely in the crosshairs of devastating water shortages alternating with downpours that overwhelm creeks, drains and dikes.
Still, Kim remains a guarded optimist. "If we act now, we'll never have to know what the alternative future would have been like." Action is up to all of us: each of us makes daily decisions about what appliance to buy, garden to plant or tap to leave on. Businesses, civic activists and citizens choose what investments to make, causes to promote or oppose, parties and programs to vote for or against.
Where's government's strategy?
But government can also help. Sources tell me that the provincial bureaucracy has been tasked to draft a "comprehensive water management strategy" laying out "the role of government, industry and citizens in how to interact in a way that preserves and protects, and still uses, our water resource." The mission is to cover as much as possible, from energy and fish to public health and flood safety.
It's a tall order—and could be a hopeful development. But after Environment Minister Barry Penner's office declined to respond to more than half a dozen requests for more information about the rumoured strategy -- the most recent in just the last few days -- I'm left to wonder how serious the government's intentions really are.
If a new B.C. water strategy is in the works, the more than 30 experts I interviewed for this series hold a unanimous view of what should be its top priority: changing the economic signal attached to water from what amounts to a green light to "waste at will" to something closer to a flashing red, "wake up: danger ahead!" Our choices, after all, are ruled more powerfully by price than almost anything else. And right now in British Columbia we pay a pittance for water from the tap, its real cost of water hidden under layers of financial and environmental subsidy. We can hardly help making bad decisions. As the University of Victoria's POLIS Project on Ecological Governance put it in a recent report: "Low pricing encourages people to think of water as relatively free and…strengthens the myth of superabundance."
Pay the true cost
It's a myth we need to dispel. Sitting in the heat of Kelowna's hottest July on record, cooled by puffs of gentle, nearly free water, Scott Schillereff points out the obvious: our decisions must "be based on the true value of water. If water you get through your tap cost closer to what it cost to produce, people would use it better."
There's a straightforward way to get "real" about our water: support local and provincial politicians who have the courage to raise the price of tap water to its actual cost, and to institute universal water metering to make sure each us pays our fair share of that price. In this, if only this, we British Columbians need to shake off our infamous 'lotus-land' detachment from inconvenient truths -- before we're either carried away by the flood, or left out to dry.
Veteran journalist Chris Wood is recipient of a Tyee Fellowship for Investigative Reporting, which provided the funds necessary to do the in-depth reporting in this series. Tyee Fellowships for Investigative and Solutions-oriented Reporting are supported by donations from Tyee readers and intended to support independent journalism to educate the public about critical issues facing British Columbia. If you are interested in making a tax-deductible donation, please go here. If you are interested in applying for a fellowship, please go here.
Wood is working on a book, Dry Spring: When the Water Runs Out, forthcoming from Raincoast Books.
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mjf
5 years ago
Comments on "Global Warming's Threat to BC: Seeking Solutio
Paying the true cost for water or any other service (such as hydro or garbage collection) is a fine idea except that at any given level of consumption the low income users pay a greater fraction of their income than the well-off. A flat rate is not really sufficient to discourage excessive consumption and lacks in fairness.
I would suggest something like graduated metering: a basic level of consumption per capita is allowed for basic lifestyle needs at a reasonable cost. Then amounts over that are charged at increasingly higher rates to discourage wasteful use.
Alcibiades
5 years ago
Absolutely right mjf. Hardly seems equitable that the hot tub and pool users pay the same rate per litre as the basic user who has one bathroom and a kitchen sink. First step is universal metering.
Jeffrey J.
5 years ago
An outstanding article! Thank you Mr. Wood and the Tyee yet again. As Mr. Wood points out, the solutions to the proper shepherding of this and other vital resources need not be expensive nor intrusive. However, so long as significant decision makers like our provincial and federal government refuse to acknowledge these issues, citizens will be hard pressed to solve the problem. Which is nothing new: central governments were created to address public infrastructure issues and from time immemorial, this collective has been able to harness and direct solutions far more effectively than an individual can. Thus it become doubly frustrating when everyone else in society understands the need for change, yet our democratically elected bodies refuse to participate.
However, with publications, reviews and opinions like those in the Tyee and other thoughtful publications, there is the ability to keep this matter in the forefront of public opinion.
jwstewart
5 years ago
Firstly, doesn't everyone have a water meter in their house ? Mine has one.
Secondly, what is the true cost of water ? How do you calculate something like that ?
And finally, once you have determined the cost of water, and a method for metering it, do you privatize the operation and then move on to pricing and metering air ?
Alcibiades
5 years ago
jwstewart
No. Not everyone has a meter - not by a long shot.
I'll leave the pricing to Ed Deak, I'm sure he'd be able to come up with a figure that represented the true cost of replacement -
which is what we'd all have to bear if and when it's gone.
climber
5 years ago
There is no shortage of water on the B.C. coast or Vancouver Island, this is a myth. The problem in Tofino is simply because the demand for the water exceeds the size of thier resevoir. Vancouver has a big resevoir, sounds like Tofino needs a bigger one as well. The water on the coast can all be supplied by snowmelt or rainwater, there is no need to pump out aquifers. It is just plumbing, on a grand scale. The Okanagan is another matter, but the population in the southwest U.S. exceeds ours greatly, they have water. Conserve, reduce, be thoughtfull, but don't panic and get hysterical.
G West
5 years ago
There's something to what you say climber but only superficially and in the short run.
My actual understanding of the situation in Tofino is that the permanent rate-payers in the town/village whatever it is turned down, in a recent referendum, the 'opportunity' to increase the size of their reservoir.
They did that, again this is only what I've heard and read, at least partly because they feel the added capacity would only benefit (and in fact encourage) outside commercial interests to increase the kind of seasonal tourist-trap crap business and hotel/resort customers (not to mention part-time rich plutocrats building on the foreshore) that were spoiling the kind of life-style they had (and loved).
Apparently the provincial government is now prepared to truck in water for the tourist operations to get them through the crisis this weekend.
Do the local ratepayers have a stake in determining the kind of community they want to have and the sort of development they want to see encouraged?
I'd say yes. Without some brakes on the growth in the area it will soon be another Banff.
My view.
I used to love it there…Tofino I mean (Banff too for that matter) - Now, not so much - I keep running into the same kind of people who are complaining about the homeless guys sleeping on Government Street.
snert
5 years ago
The water is free, it falls from the sky for nothing. In SW BC a lot of it. The true cost of water is nothing. Why should it be metered?
On the other hand the cost of the infrastructure to deliver it is for the most part fixed, costly but fixed. That's what we have taxes for, to cover the cost of supply. You can't meter that.
climber
5 years ago
Superficially and in the short run, could you explain that, like is the rain going to stop?
G West
5 years ago
All right climber here goes. Ed would do this a lot better and in shorter order.
In the short run it's clear that additional reservoir capacity is the answer to the current water woes. But, as the Tofino story points out, there are other values involved so its not just a question of catching more water and then using in when it's needed. Dams and reservoirs create downstream problems, affect wetlands and habitat and create or modify micro-climates. This is where you have to look more closely at situations like California where the Imperial Valley irrigation and the increasing urban demand is drying up the Ogallala aquifer and affecting the upstream rivers. Or, you can look at the great lakes - another example is what happened in Russia in the area around the Aral Sea.
Simply catching or diverting water is not a zero-sum game and that's why snert's point about water being free is so naive. We're just not capable of calculating the costs accurately. Ed gave a good example here a few months ago relating to the cost of taking another bbl of oil out of the tar sands or from a deep reservoir and the real cost is hundreds of times what we're paying for oil now. Why, because you have to look at all the costs the that barrel of oil will entail, including infrastructure like highways, smog, suburban sprawl, health and accident costs as well as the cost of finding another barrel of oil to replace it etc. If you don't consider all the costs you don't have a real picture of the economic consequences of anything and you are just adding more costly problems to be solved and paid for in the future. In other words, the true economic cost of every litre of water or barrel of oil has to all of this into account. As Ed would say, it may well be cheaper to pay someone to stay home than to have him drive an hour a day to and from work.
Instead of building a bigger reservoir Tofino's rate payers may be doing the right thing by putting the brakes on development. In the long run, they are the permanent residents of that place and their views are not immaterial. Their values need to be taken into account in any decision. By catering to the commercial interests the way the government is doing it is making its position in the matter very clear. Commercial interests always trump community interests. That’s what’s wrong with our culture and I dare say it has a lot to do with why you moved to the Charlottes. You say you decided not to have kids because you don’t want to be part of contributing to an already overcrowded planet – looking at all the costs of all our decisions is a lot like that.
My view.
climber
5 years ago
What about the resevoir we already have, called Harrison Lake. I pointed this out in the water thread and the responses just got too retarded to continue. Anyways, the lake is long and deep, I said that if we take less water than flows out to the Fraser, the lake would not be lowered, apparently, according to some, it would be, G West, if you agree that the lake would not be lowered by drawing less than the rivers flow, say so. You don't have to approve of the Harrison being used this way, I just want to see if its worth talking to you. I would also like to hear someone comment on the damage caused by the Cleveland Damn, that supplies Vancouver with water. If there is any, or if it is enough to be a concern that is.
G West
5 years ago
climber
It's not that I'm avoiding the issue. I don't know - any more than that I can't say. It’s not my style – if you hadn’t gathered. There were benefits, for example, in Saskatchewan after the Gardiner Dam was built and Diefenbaker lake filled up. But there have been a lot of costs too and toting up the accounts just isn't possible before you actually bite the bullet.
My gut feeling is that we have to look a lot more closely at what we do before we do it. Three Gorges Dam in China is another example - a project so big that its effects aren't going to be measurable for years and years. Is the terrible flooding and the drought in China currently related to changes in microclimate or not?
We just don't know.
The big cases - the great lakes where draw down is happening and the Aral Sea where the land that was supposed to be green with irrigation now but is instead a desert - that's definite. Moreover, that's enough to make me ask the politicians and developers and engineers and builders who will be long gone before the real bills come due to be a little less sanguine about their predictions about how easily today's problems are going to be solved.
Ed says we need to measure ALL 'real' economic costs - I say we have to use a far more stringent application of the precautionary principle - do no harm - as well.
It’s like your debate about dredging the lower Fraser – on the surface the answer seems very simple. In reality it may not be. You have knowledge of the area around Harrison Lake that I just don’t have – I spent a couple of nights in the Hot Springs Hotel – one of their cheesy cabins actually – and walked along the lake in the rain; had a couple of bad meals at local restaurants. Sum total of my knowledge.
Lot of people who post here pretend to know a lot more than they do. One of the problems with the internet - the appearance of knowledge can be pretty easily feigned. By the way, I like that thing of yours where you call Bullshit - cuts the conversation short and gets down to brass tacks in a hurry. I've used it myself a couple of times - hope you don't mind.
G West
5 years ago
Reminds me a bit of the Coyote - what you see is what you get. I know you and he may not have been hitting it off all that well but I bet you'd have grown on each other. He called Bullshit on a lot of people too.
That's important, this day and age - my view!
Moat
5 years ago
G West,
Bang on. The idea of building larger reservoirs to address the problems is ridiculous. It is like how we as a society choose to deal with all our problems. Too much traffic on the road? Build more freeways.
I have friends who recently returned from Tofino. He says that they were using water "like there was no tomorrow". They would have reduced the amount of water they were using if the resort mentioned a shortage. Instead, they just fired up the hot tub.
Interesting how the "free" market works. Someone always pays in the end. I do feel sorry for all the conscientious business owners who conserve, but not everyone plays fair or thinks of the community as a whole.
RickW
5 years ago
Aswan High dam
http://www.ilec.or.jp/database/afr/afr-19.html
climber
5 years ago
Vancouver built reservoirs to supply water year round, now, do you not want anyone to expand thier water systems? Or, like Vancouver has done, repeatedly expand, is it alright to upgrade your resevoir system? Of course not, it all has to stop, now, I hear. I advocate conservation by all reasonable means, but more people, industry, tourism and other businesses that provide work need water as well. We are not running out of water on the coast, what cannot you understand about that? There is no water shortage, pretty soon the rainy season will begin, the endless days of depressing blackness and dread. And guess what, the resevoirs will fill back up again, like they always do. If you get out there with cats and hoes and start making a hole, it will fill up, with water, fuk, its back to the water is disapearing thread.
climber
5 years ago
RickW, answer me one question, where does your water come from?
G West
5 years ago
RickW
another good example - thanks!
climber
5 years ago
http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/engsvcs/watersewers/water/history.htm Here is a history of water supply in a place we can all relate to, not fukin Egypt. It has been working for 120 years, explain how this system has caused harm, has not worked well and so on. Now RickW is here, I fear that logic will go for a walk. This is the man who insisted that Harrison Lake would be lowered by pumping less water out of it than flows out anyways through the Harrison River.
G West
5 years ago
climber
I told you above quite clearly that I don't know enough about the Vancouver situation. I know there have been water shortages in Victoria and elsewhere in the Gulf Islands. The Gulf Islands is a well supply system for the most part; Victoria's reservoir has recently been raised and I believe it topped out, or nearly did this past year - I don't know what the levels are down to currently.
Most of what I said was pretty clear and I certainly defer to you as the expert on Harrison Lake - it may well be a potential source of more water for Greater Vancouver as it grows and morphs into a megalopolis. Maybe with no down side too. Who knows? On the other hand, no matter where the H20 comes from, wouldn’t it make sense to charge something for it commensurate with its value to encourage responsible use and discourage waste?
The Aswan High Dam was a Nasser era project and its harmful effects are being seen all over the Nile delta now. If things have worked well in Vancouver for 120 years that's great - lets hope the next 120 go as well.
G West
5 years ago
Anyway, you have the benefit of my admittedly limited knowledge and I leave the field to you.
alive
5 years ago
While this article is about water-shortages and why they happen, it has been mentioned that the residents of Tofino should have the right to oppose anything that takes away from their enjoyment of their land.
That statement makes me wonder aloud why it is not OK for residents of downtown Vancouver to oppose all the commercial happenings that certainly destroys any sense of enjoyment living there?
My business was located inside the barriers police set up about a dozen times a year, so they could control the crowd gathering for whatever event.
Some officers blankly refused me access to my own business address, just as my own home was in effect blocked from coming or going!
All in the name of entertainment of the masses, who probably never paid taxes to Vancouver to clean up the mess left behind.
Nobody ever asked the local residents if they want parades and party goers on their doorsteps, or for that matter the noise of that Indy road race!
So, why should we ask where we may vacation?
I fully agree that the local residents would face a heavy tax burden to upgrade in Tofino, and think that those who are enjoying the profits from the tourists should pay for the extra cost involved!
Perhaps that will not sit well with other business people, but maybe they should begin to realize that there are costs involved in operating a business?
Las Vegas did not happen because there was plenty of water in the desert, it happened because someone was prepared to pay what it takes to get into business!
woody
5 years ago
climber asked
Rick tell the climber, it comes from da same place as does holy water, the tap at da church,,so if your reading this in Tofino just run down to the local church with your bucket, and fill up on that holy water, course you should leave $ 1.15 per liter in da poor box. Only fair as that what you paid for da fuel to haul your sorry assess there.
IAMC
5 years ago
The Gorge project in China. Imagine it that happened here. Millions of people relocated so the Govt. could build a HUGE electrical generating operation.
It would take a hundred years for us to get by the envirofascists. Yet they just go out and do it.
Why do I never here from the left wing whiners about the environmental atrocities in the rest of the world?
Why do women decry our society as being exclusive, yet do not defend the women being stoned in the Islam ruled countries?
I have a hard time taking many of you regulars seriously.
Hypocrisy rules on this site.
climber
5 years ago
And so it does, while this is an excellent site in so many ways, some things are just forbidden.
G West
5 years ago
Still not actually reading hey Ron?
Check it out - the info is there. Roll back on up this thread and you'll find it. THe hypocrisy gets really thick evey night about the same time you arrive Ron.
The brain
5 years ago
Excellent posts with excellent points, G. Hope all is well on your end. Was thinking about dropping you some mail, surfed the sight, and well, got distracted and now I'm too pooped to do much else (5 am comes early).
How long did it take for socialist Bill Bennet (if you can call him that) to build Micca dam? Has it, in fact, taken a hundred years for any government, communist, democratic or otherwise to build anything?
When you are done kissing Con and Republican asses, you can check out Al Gore's latest flick. You would even know what its called, if you read the article. You might actually learn something valuable for a change.
Er, ah, you mean "inclusive", if I can be so bold as to correct you just one more time, and how common is it that women are stoned in Islam ruled countries? Care to offer some stats? Or maybe our prevalent treatment of female prostitutes in North America is fine with you and your "exclusivity"...
Sigh... who was it that said, 99% of the time, the accuser is the guilty one? And then, sometimes, we just got to call a spade a spade. You couldn't rule with a yardstick right in front of you. :-]
IAMC
5 years ago
I am not buying your response Brainless. How long did it take to build a proper arena in Victoria? How long to upgrade the Sea to Sky highway?
Things take a long time to do here. Maybe mot a hundred years, but far longer than in China. We are asleep at the wheel, and we better wake up.
Frank
5 years ago
Which one? When the environment is brought up its you that always tells me there isn't any problem.
They do Ron, ever read magazines? I've read many accounts of women here wanting to help women elsewhere.
Hmmm, so many ways to respond. I could say we fell the same way or I could ask you when in the last 2 years on the Tyee have you ever once criticised anyone on the right anywhere in the world? I already know the answer since I've read everything you have ever posted. You never have, not even once. So don't get all high and mighty calling hypocrtites, you know what they say about people that live in glass houses.
Frank
5 years ago
climber, you never answered GWest's question and its such a good one I'm going to bring it up again. What makes you wanna live in the Charlottes instead of the Lower Mainland since you constantly support resource extraction and environmental damage to feed the Lower Mainland's needs while at the same time calling us hypocrites?
Certainly you aren't telling me that you prefer areas less covered with glass and concrete?
G West
5 years ago
On the Victoria arena question Ron, just to start with. I don't know, we still don't have a proper arena - just a lame P3 grab called the Save on Foods Memorial Centre.
On the other point - the length of time it takes to do things in China; we'll you're off base there too. The 3 gorges dam will have taken 17 years to build by the time it's done in 2009. Any other bright remarks?
Actually, I don't think you're asleep at the wheel, I think you're drunk.
giantartificial...
5 years ago
So China is the standard for us now? The reason things like massive dams don't take a long time to build there is the complete lack of value placed on human life by the Chinese government. Millions of people "relocated", as you say. That makes me shudder.
It sounds as if you're just frustrated at the pace of progress in Canada, IAMC. Sure, I want a healthy economy too, but not at the expense of our quality of life.
Moat
5 years ago
Most energy know is going to deal with the rankings and distracting posts by IAMC aka Ron.
This is what always happens to us. And the real message gets lost in the confusion. That is why the Tim Ball's of the world are able to exist.
Interesting point about about lawns and water recycling. The focus that people have on lawns is madness. I can accept golf courses, as they do generate capital. However residential lawns and huge lawns like the one in front of New Westminster city hall grate on me.
Because we know better.
Umslopogaas
5 years ago
The problem is not water it is population. Too many fuedal religions telling their followers to breed for God's sake.
climber
5 years ago
Frank, GWest-I came here for the higher pay, but stayed because I like it. I want resource extraction to continue because it provides jobs which support communities. About calling Vancouverites hypocrites when they speak out against logging, mining or in this case water. Vancouver and its suburbs are a huge clearcut that will never grow again, unlike the clearcuts out in the bush. Secondly, the buildings and infrastructure there are made from metals, that were mined somewhere. Third, the water used there is because of damns and resevoirs along with a frequently upgraded water sytem. Vancouver has what is has, now it has to all stop?
G West
5 years ago
No. Don't think Frank and I ever said that.
Busy today.
Frank
5 years ago
climber, you've misunderstood me. My point is, I bet a lot of people here in Vancouver would love to live where you're living. They live here because of jobs not because they like concrete and asthma.
The thing is, you don't want to live here either. Maybe people here would love the same opportunity as you, be able to leave the nest when its soiled. But they can't because unlike you they're tied down here with jobs, kids etc. They're not hypocrites they just want to be able to live in a place less likely to give them cancer and asthma and maybe provide a view of nice trees and a stream instead of pavement.
climber
5 years ago
That may be so, but why do they feel that they have the right to insist on what others in the province do?. In Van. I know I can get a job doing a variety of things, no problem, but in many small communities of B.C. the choices are very limited. I think that many Vancouverites are so disconnected about reality they have no clue, like they call for an end to clearcutting but have no knowledge of logging. And don't understand that if logging stops small towns will die. Of course there is more to it, but I hope you understand where I'm coming from.
Moat
5 years ago
climber wrote:
Yeah, you are right, but I think more would be outraged if they actually got out in the bush. Most who call for an end to clear-cutting have spent some time in the bush, BUT obviously they don't rely on clear-cutting to sustain their way of life.
If more people got out of the city, they would spend less time complaining about a few trees being cut down in Stanley Park or some second growth in Eagle Ridge bluffs.
In fact, they would be outraged at the carelessness that some industry has directed towards our natural resources.
Frank
5 years ago
I can't speak for everyone else of course but I don't think I'd be too far off to say the following: I don't want the rest of the province torn up for my lifestyle in the Lower Mainland. Its not worth it. There's nothing great about the Lower Mainland, its ugly, the air is getting worse, congestion etc. So don't flood all the valleys and chop down every tree for me. Don't dam the last river and catch the last salmon all to support further development in the Lower Mainland because this place shouldn't be conisdered an end in itself. Paradise it isn't. Most of us I'm sure are pro-jobs but anti- further development and population growth. If the people of the Lower Mainland were asked if they wanted to pave the entire valley from Point Grey to Hope and bring 5 million more people into the city to cheer for the Canucks I doubt too many would support the idea.
Development is not doing us any favours, we're already here, development is to bring more people here. Yet we're already having to fight to protect Stanley Park and every other small piece of green space.
So if you guys in the Charlottes need to chop down trees or develop whatever for your own good go ahead just don't do it for ours. I know I'd rather see the Lower Mainland shrink, not grow. I'd happily move myself and a million other people of similar mind and our jobs to the small towns of the province, closer to where our resources come from, if that was an option. Yet I know they would just bring in another million to replace us.
When the long weekends come the population of the Lower Mainland heads down the road. Most go to places that aren't covered in pavement. They go up country, or to the islands, or to a multitude of campsites etc. And they sit there thinking how nice it would be to move the whole family to the places they like to go on long weekends. But its not an option. The only course of action should not be the destruction of those nice places to feed lifestyles in the Lower Mainland they'd like to escape from.
We don't want to hurt small towns, most people I meet would rather live in places like Osoyoos, Vernon, Cranbrook, Trail, Prince Rupert, Quesnel, Campbell River etc than here.
Its very difficult to try and articulate what I'm trying to say here, I'm only scratching the surface.
But to directly address your question about what gives us the right, we don't have any right except that if we're the beneficiaries of the extracted resources and some of the resultant wealth it produces then that does give us some right to complain. Just as if we're the ones buying the Nike shoes then we have the right to complain about how the labour they're made with is treated. Same with Starbuck's coffee or a number of other things. If something is being done in our name and we don't agree with it and we're prepared to suffer the consequences the decision to do so should be ours.
After all, would there be a global warming problem if everyone lived close to where their food and resources came from? So why adopt the worst possible plan for the planet, big cities served by a huge footprint in the countryside based on cheap oil, and say there's no alternative?
rkewen
5 years ago
Chris, your series is a breath of fresh air. It is wonderful to occasionally read something that points to some of the good things that can be done and/or are even happening to solve some of the complex problems we all face. I agee that:
Maybe we should think about the Greeks (who kicked butt on the USA hoopsters) and their heaven of many gods. It's a fact that there are other gods today than just the bottom line, unless of course all the real costs are factored into the equation, short term and down the road.
davidex
5 years ago
You guys seem to have missed one of the more interesting solutions to all of our water problems proposed by Parsons Engineering of Los Angeles back in the '60's but alive today... well maybe not OUR problems, but it might have a small impact on our lives in this province...
Can you say NAWAPA?
Go ahead and Google it or check this out:
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=11874
While we're all worrying about dividing up the local water supplies, some Americans have been working for years on a scheme to take it all (and remove a few pesky communities like Revelstoke and Prince George in the process.)
Back in the 70's when I was in school, it was a hot topic in our Geography class, but it seems to have risen it's ugly head again. It was publicily dismissed, but the diversions are already in place in Alberta. Wonder what's happening here in BC?
Makes the Chinese project look tiny!
rkewen
5 years ago
davidex, did you go to school in the Columbia Trench, like Cranbrook or Invemere? NAWPA has a place for them too!
This could come back, they don't have any water of their own to fight over anymore and they've already got most of Mexico's. From Tucson or L.A. NAWPA looks more like a solution than a problem and the only obstacle is cost which becomes less inhibiting as the desperation grows.
Alcibiades
5 years ago
Was that part of Robert Bourassa's, Grand Canal vision rkewen - remember the one wherein water from the James Bay drainage basin would end up in the central US?
http://72.14.203.104/search?q=cache:PyNT3bMOJl0J:www.nextcity.com/uri/issues/econom/fpnov3099.html+Robert+Bourassa+and+the+Grand+Canal&hl=en&gl=ca&ct=clnk&cd=1
rkewen
5 years ago
Alci, I don't know about the James Bay, that might be another Yankee dream. In NAWAPA they would divert water from the McKenzie etc (Peace River et. al.) and use the Rocky Mountain Trench from north of McBride to south of the line (think and inland sea behind a super-sized Kuscanoosa Dam (by Libby Montana)for storage. Scuba divers could tour Invermere, Ft. Steele and Cranbrook etc. while the waters of the Fraser, Columbia and rivers headed to Inuvik could be stored in the super sized resovoir until needed in Malibu or Phoenix.
The US Corp of Engineers (of New Orleans levee and Garrison Project Fame) had this all mapped out by the late forties but it was considered way to costly and wild eyed at the time. It is a bigger version of diverting part of the Kootenay into the Columbia as they pass within a mile or so of each other, headed in the oppposite directions (near Canal Flats). Here in the Kootenays all these grandiose water redirection schemes seem to resurface and be analyzed by current cont/benefit comparison from time to time. Baille- Grohman was a proponent of this around the turn of the century (18 to 19) if I have my cast of characters straight in me brain. It was for him a way to get more use (for BC and Canada) out of Kootenay River water, before it ever got to the US. Naturally it enters Montana and flows through Idaho before coming into Kootenay Lake from the south.
Most local folks think water should continue to go where it was originally intended to go, unless you are selling major power or water, and think it is yours to sell for some insane reason.
If God didn't want certain water to go to the Artic Ocean he would have drained it into the Fraser or Skeena.
G West
5 years ago
rkewen
Thanks for that, I think I do remember reading something about it in the past. Look to see more of these crazy schemes if pee wee rambo manages to win a majority government in the next election. I think he and stocky day would be prepared to pull the plug on Canada and wash the whole thing down the drain. In some ways it'd be better to let him hang on for a couple of years so more Canadians will wise up to his program - if the Republicans get what they so richly deserve this fall things may soon start to change for the better in the US.
Not that I don't want rid of him now. The only thing that worries me is the fact that people haven't really had enough opportunity to get the scent of his spoor yet. And the media is so hopeless of course.
What did you think of Bourassa's grandiloquent scheme?
Fiat lux
5 years ago
Global warming is one of the transferred costs of wealth creation.
There ain't no free lunch, or free, so called "wealth". Somebody, somewhere, some time will have to pay the full real, not monetary, costs.
Ed Deak.
DPL
5 years ago
Seems a guy was getting worried about loss of business in Tofino. Part of the problem was , he just happens to own a few businesses there that use a lot of water. so he comes up with 50,000 dollars to start things rolling along. Goodness of his heart and noticing the bottom line would be getting smaller. The town has gotten quite a bit larger due to those touristy places but nobody wanted to increase the water supply locally. Mike Smythe is worth reading in the province today. Lets talk global warming and maybe we could check the rainfall history around Tofino over the last 40 years or so while we are at it.
rkewen
5 years ago
We might just have to get used to avocado and orange groves in the Okanagan and oyster beds in Richmond!
Fish-counter
5 years ago
Creative stormwater engineering is exciting stuff, but in 13 years living on Vancouver Island, I have yet to see one good appliaction. In Nanaimo, we are still in the mid-20th century.
Latarnik
5 years ago
I do not doubt that there are changes in climate time to time. The whole civilizations disappeared in Central America about 1000 years ago because of the long periods of hot weather.
I seriously doubt whether anything which humans do or neglect to do has any influence on it. UN "experts" — the best scientists money can buy — produce "made to order" reports, which are further doctored by corrupted officials, to stuff the coffers of bankers and Russian oligarchs. Even Japan withdrew from Kyoto accord and the worst polluters — China, India and Middle Eastern oil producers did not even want to hear about it. Let's be sensible, do what we have to do, but do not panic. UN officials can not plug underwater volcanos with their fat bodies. They tell Canadians to stop driving and heating houses. If that is true, I propose to evacuate Canada, to lower world pollution by half of one percent. Where would we go? Let's invade Mexico! No Frost there.
Oceans are warming up. Moisture in the atmosphere freezes and we can have an Ice Age within a year. That what some other scientists tell us.
I would lock them up in one room without food until they agree; are we getting warmer or colder? Cmon, use your brains experts, you will get food once you settle your silly arguments!
hannibal
5 years ago
Yea, no such thing as global warming it is a myth created by hippy enviornmentalists .
And now the TIME BOMB
Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- New research is raising concerns that global warming may be triggering a self-perpetuating climate time bomb trapped in once-frozen permafrost.
As the Earth warms, greenhouse gases once stuck in the long-frozen soil are bubbling into the atmosphere in much larger amounts than previously anticipated, according to a study in Thursday's journal Nature.
Methane trapped in a special type of permafrost is bubbling up at a rate five times faster than originally measured, the journal said.
Scientists are fretting about a global warming vicious cycle that had not been part of their already gloomy climate forecasts: Warming already under way thaws permafrost, soil that had been continuously frozen for thousands of years.
Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases reach the atmosphere and help trap heat on Earth in the greenhouse effect. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost, and so on.
"The higher the temperature gets, the more permafrost we melt, the more tendency it is to become a more vicious cycle," said Chris Field, director of global ecology at the Carnegie Institution of Washington. "That's the thing that is scary about this whole thing. There are lots of mechanisms that tend to be self-perpetuating and relatively few that tends to shut it off."
The effect reported in Nature is seen mostly in Siberia, but also elsewhere, in a type of carbon-rich permafrost, flash frozen about 40,000 years ago. A new more accurate measuring technique was used on the bubbling methane, which is 23 times more powerful a greenhouse gas than the more prevalent carbon dioxide.
"The effects can be huge," said lead author Katey Walter of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks. "It's coming out a lot and there's a lot more to come out."
Another study earlier this summer in the journal Science found that the amount of carbon trapped in this type of permafrost - called yedoma - is much more prevalent than originally thought and may be 100 times the amount of carbon released into the air each year by the burning of fossil fuels.
It won't all come out at once or even over several decades, but the methane and carbon dioxide will escape the soil if temperatures increase, scientists say.
The issue of methane and carbon dioxide released from permafrost has caused concern this summer among climate scientists and geologists. Specialists in Arctic climate are coming up with research plans to study the effect, which is not well understood or observed, said Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, a group of 300 scientists.
"It's kind of like a slow-motion time bomb," said Ted Schuur, a professor of ecosystem ecology at the University of Florida and co-author of the Science study. "There's these big surprises out there that we don't even know about."
Most of this yedoma is in north and eastern Siberia, areas that until recently had not been studied at length by scientists.
hannibal
5 years ago
PArt 2 TIME BOMB
What makes this permafrost special is that during a rapid onset ice age, carbon-rich plants were trapped in the permafrost. As the permafrost thaws, the carbon is released as methane if it's underwater in lakes, like much of the parts of Siberia that Walter studied. If it's dry, it's released into the air as carbon dioxide.
Scientists aren't quite sure which is worse. Methane is far more powerful in trapping heat, but only lasts about a decade before it dissipates into carbon dioxide and other chemicals. Carbon dioxide traps heat for about a century.
"The bottom line is it's better if it stays frozen in the ground," Schuur said. "But we're getting to the point where it's going more and more into the atmosphere."
Vladimir Romanovsky, geophysics professor at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, said he thinks the big methane or carbon dioxide release hasn't started yet, but it's coming. It's closer in Alaska and Canada, which only has a few hundred square miles of yedoma, he said.
In Siberia, the many lakes of melted water make matters worse because the water, although cold, helps warm and thaw the permafrost, Walter said.
hannibal
5 years ago
Escuse me! Please provide the link that says Japan has optedout of Kyoto .
I don't believe that for a second .