We definitely need to stress the fun and practical side of taking a sustainable approach instead of focussing entirely on guilt trips and fear.

The 1940s line-drawing of cyclists is a good example of outdated graphics. Here's a link to a much more fun and contemporary graphic of a 3-wheel recumbent called the Coyote.

http://www.primepedalkarts.com/resources/2004picJeffCoyote.jpeg

Cycling as transportation can be a hard sell (literally) partly because ordinary bike seats are horribly uncomfortable for even reasonably fit adults. Ordinary bike seats can compress the pubic nerve. Not good. Recumbents are far more comfortable. They're basically a lawnchair on wheels.

After using a recumbent, I'd never go back to an ordinary cycle. I always get lots of comments from kids about how cool my recumbent cycle looks. But that's not my main motivator for riding it.

I mostly got back into cycling as a form of exercise and recreation. After a while I started using cycling as transportation again - the way it was before I got my driver's license. People are supposed to get an hour of exercise per day. Combining exercise with transportation is more time-efficient than treating exercise and transportation as separate issues.

Another motivator was the fact that the average Canadian spends $10,000 per year running an automobile. There are other things I would rather spend a quarter million dollars on over the next 25 years. The average Canadian's income is about $35,000 per year. When $10,000 of that is consumed by an automobile, you have to wonder if people own their cars or their cars own them. It's even worse for car owners with below average incomes.

The Twike (http://www.twike.ca) is an attractive alternative for those who want long-distance, fully-enclosed transportation. This Swiss-made 2-seater vehicle has an electric motor that can achieve freeway speeds. It also has pedals to provide an opportunity for exercise along the way while reducing electricity consumption by about 25%. Drivers who don't have shower facilities at work can skip the pedalling part in the morning, get their daily exercise on the way home, then jump into the shower at home. I saw a used Twike sell for around $11,000 on eBay a while ago.

Want to know why cycling is not an important factor in Vancouver - hills! Cycling will never be a transit alternative in Vancouver as people live quite far away from where they work. Even in Holland, people who use bikes, only do so if they live within 3 km. from work or tram/train station.

If it wasn't Gordon Price (another ledgend in his own mind) pushing the bike agenda, it would be off the radar screen.

Diappointing article. I was at the Oct 21 event and found it very enlightning - not all the speaches were dull. Also, I saw quite a range in the demographic of attendees - most were, in my opinion, over 30. Anyway, the world forum. if you take such a cynical view of sustainability ("it's too popular and trendy; ergo, let's mock it"), then yeah, you've probably never heard of it. Thank goodness that this article is under the "views" section - it's just too bad that it's an uninformed one.

Grumpy:

Gears make short work of hills.

Not sure where you get your ideas about Holland, but I'd love to see your sources cited.

Not everyone lives far from their work. Some of us are smarter than that.

The amount of people riding a bike for transportation is on the increase. That trend is likely to continue. Thankfully.

How could the name of Ronald B. Wright not be mentioned in a story on sustainability and the cost of eating, burning, wasting more than the planet can provide?

Did nobody hear the Massey Lectures last year? Did nobody read his book, "A Short History of Progress?"

Guess not. And this uneasy silence is created by a corporate media which thinks that the free marketplace will find a solution for every problem.

Stump - I lived there for 6 months and guess what, we drove everywhere!

Certainly Holland has the most civilized cycling routes of anywhere I have been, but guess what - the damn place is flat, there is no effort needed to cycle small distances.

The tram (LRT) and busses were the favoured modes. Trains were deemed too expensive.

What struck me was how few people biked there, especially on a rainy day! Maybe in the 50's, 60's and 70's, bicycles were used more but holland is an affluent country and people drive!

Grumpy:

Although you disagree with Mr Harcourt on RAV, he has become a very knowledgable proponent of sustainable cities. He was the chair of Paul Martin's External Advisory Committee on Cities, and has been promoting approaches to sustainable city planning world-wide over the last number of years. I had the pleasure of studying with him at the UBC Planning school in the late 90's and found him to be very knowledgeable and approachable.

The author notes that much of the crowd was under 30. This comes as no surprise to me. Young people and students tend to be great champions of sustainability, especially since it is a central topic on campus these days.

Although I think it is very important to get young people on side (without them there is no future to the movement), I think it would be a greater success if the forum attracted people with money and power -- then something might actually be accomplished.

Although I agree with Littlejohn's point, why slag "white guys"? If somebody is boring, they are boring no matter what their skin colour or gender is. I'm growing tired of double-standards when it comes to bigotry, especially in so-called progressive circles. White guys are commonly portrayed as subhuman, rather than "regular folks".

I think the underlying point about sustainability and is missed by the article and discussion is that sustainability means limits.

Until this is acknowledged the term is meaningless. I mean for darn sakes, when the oil industry speaks about sustainable development of oil and gas!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ahem ... freebear ... my post, above, talks about the cost of eating, burning, wasting more than the planet can provide ... and about Ronald B. Wright who sounds the warning of environmental collapse.

[Hangs head, scuffs toe.] I kinda wish you had noticed. [Sob.]

Sorry Mary, the majority of the posts and the article do not mention or even hint at actual limits.

I did not mean your post, though I would encourage the use of the word limits in your posts.

I know most do not want to acknowledge limits as it flies in the face of captitalism and profit, not too mention accumulating stuff!

Just look at the oil armagedden article by Rafe Mair.

I was at the opening. Bill Rees gave a very enlightening speech which had some people on their feet. But other than him, it was pretty boring. There was a interesting video regarding aboriginal poverty, but I don't know what it really had to do with sustainablitity.

Rees made an excellent point. Sustainability is not the same as Livability. Vancouver is very livable, but it's not sustainable at all.

We don't have toxic, smoke and lead-polluting factories here because we farm out all our manufacturing to places like China and make them pollute their villages for us. Our economy can afford $1000 bicycles because we cut down trees and dig out coal. Then we pat ourselves on the back for painting bike lanes on the same roads we ship all this stuff.

Ok, I'm getting boring now too. Here's a link for more info from Rees:
http://www.straight.com/content.cfm?id=13787

Steve P., Harcourt is just another ex-politician, sucking up to the public trough. So bloody Canadian! His arrogance and his ignornace on the the most important sustainability issue, transit, ia appalling.

With so much information on the subject available, he continually embarasses himself and us, with his ignorance. He should go back to being a storefront lawyer, what he was trained to be.

Grumpy almost got me off track from what I originally wanted to write about this article, but there's no point bickering so I'll just get to it:

I'm a bit disappointed in The Tyee for publishing such a substanceless article. I really think the author should have spoken to someone who actually did sit through the whole forum and listened to what he or she had to say instead of jumping on one person's comment.

I was there, and I know why someone would have walked out midway through--and I know what the author's talking about when she mentions old cronies patting themselves on the back. BUT there actually was more to it than that--Bill Reese was passionate, inspiring, vigorous and critical. The crowd rose to their feet for him.

Native youth leader Stan Williams delivered an incredibly moving presentation. I was practically in tears by the end. And Nola-Kate Seymore was totally humble, and delivered what was perhaps the most important message of the night--that if we truly care about sustainability, we'll listen to each other instead of senselessly criticizing. It's a message Dorothy Bartoszewski could stand to listen to.

In my world, sex is already sustainable.

Sorry Grumpy, but I'm going to have to go with the wealth of data that shows Holland as having one of the highest modal splits for cycling in the world over your six months of anecdotal evidence.

i love the graphic... anyway,

for anyone who thinks cycling is a dead issue.. hang out on a bike route for a while.

hills... bosh. ride them more.. they get much easier! i'd say the weather is more of a problem if anything, although there are much worse things than riding in slush @ 2 degrees (like say, car dependance).

If you are still think cycling is a dead, hang around downtown the last friday of the month... in June (Bike MONTH) especially... 1000 is a lot of bikes. and the cost of most those bikes is closer to 100 than 1000...

Grumpy:

I think you are calling someone ignorant, when you really mean to say you disagree with him. There are plenty of good arguments to support rapid transit solutions like RAV Skytrain. If you don't believe them, fine -- but that doesn't make someone ignorant.

Bill Reese is a great speaker and critic -- I studied under him at planning school. What he doesn't do is take his criticism to the next step and craft implementable policy solutions. I suppose that leaves plenty of work for the rest of us =^)

Actually, ecological economists (like Bill Reese, who taught me this concept) argue that there is a way to sustainably exploit oil and gas: the concept of "Hicksian income".

In this model, a revenue stream is generated through exploitation of oil & gas. A significant portion of this revenue stream is invested in other, (perhaps more green) economic enterprises. When the oil & gas is gone, the investment that was made in the other revenue stream is still there, providing continued income.

This model doesn't address "externalities" (like pollution) & the need for alternative energy sources, but it does address how to create sustainable income out of non-renewable resources. Food for thought, anyway.

Holy Amak! Considering that our entire society is devoted to blatant consumerism and that so many of us define our success as the person who consumes the most...hang on a minute while I work out the details of my daughter's ten thousand dollar coming out party for her grad. And with our young grads coming out with the bigger better deal every year, I can honestly say...the environmental sustainability cause is lost. Thank you teachers. Thank you very kindly.

Eddy: are you nuts?

No Mary, I'm serious. Our schools teach people to consume with total disregard about the resources it took to make the product. Open your eyes. In our schools, a plain backpack will not cut it. It has to be a designer pack or the kid becomes a loser. Same goes with clothing fasions, stationary, or even the car their parents drive. Cool used to be all about doing your own thing. Now it's all about gettting the latest gimmick advertized on TV in an effort to impress your school buddies with somethig new. We carry those lessons around for life. That's called human nature. As long as teachers condone the increasing pressures to out-do last years grad with a bigger better deal each year...I'll consider them as a catalyst to the problem. Why? Because the kids are not educated about their consumption habits and what it takes to put a T-shirt on the shelf. Once again, this year's grads will release millions of helium filled balloons into the air. Some of those balloons will float into the oceans and sea turtles, dolphins, and other wildlife will eat them thinking it is food. They will die. What a WASTE!

Schools don't teach that stuff Eddie. Advertisers do. Which certainly raises the question of why we allow advertisers in our schools.

As to 'cool' being about doing your own thing, it never was like that. You might think the 60s were all about individuality, but the hippies mostly wore the same clothes and listened to the same music. So did the Beats, so did the Jazz age flappers, the punks, the new wavers, and so forth.

Cool is about being on the leading edge of a trend, just far enough ahead of the crowd to be a 'trend-setter' but not so far ahead that you're caught wearing bell-bottoms when boot cut is the profile du jour.

As to Mr. Harcourt, I have a lot of respect for the man. I hate the RAV and think it's the wrong tool in the wrong place at the wrong time, but I'm willing to believe that people with the same aims sometimes have different ideas about how to get there. He had the balls to take the blame over Bingogate, since it happened on his watch, even though he didn't participate or condone in the scam, IIRC. Gordo can't even take ownership of his own foibles let alone stand up and take the heat when his lackeys stick it to the public (and their purse).

Eddie, you are certainly on to part of the problem. No schools (as Stump says), "don't teach that stuff", but they sure as hell teach conformity.

Capitalist advertisers do the teaching.

Teachers, or more accurately, the school suystem does the conditioning and that, I would suggest, runs all the way up to those elites in education who sit in their ivory towers above Wreck Beach and glory in how brilliant they are in sharing the environmental sustainability stage with front men for polluters, clear cutters and others who profit from the damage our children inherit.

It actually makes UBC sound like some backwater campus whose (paid), inhabitants are just well, "awe shucks" plum excited to get all this attention so they deem it appropriate to get up and blather on about just how sustaintable and successful their pay cheques are.

BC Mary, you and Eddy seem on the same page. From here it just different accents.

The capitalists will never get on the sustaintability bandwagon until they lose political control or they start to lose money.
I've experienced neither yet.

However, I do note today some big corporate types are now telling Ottawa it has to develop a long range strategy to deal with global warming. I wonder where they got that radical idea.

Perhjaps in the years ahead, the link between global warming and sustainability will turn on light bulbs all over corporate Canada.
Til then my advice is hold your nose and don't swallow any snake oil pills.

As to schools teaching consumerism or conformity, check out a book bny Ivan Illich regarding education-quite enlightening.

School and the school environment does teach conformity and of course we are socialized to conform to our social system-captaitalism.

I think the future is f%$^&#ed and crisis will only bring about change and by then it will be too late for many, Sure the planet will survive but not 6 billion people.

I will still advocate and strive for change but will it really happen without a crisis?

Oops, sorry for the typos.

s to the point about a sustainable income from oil and gas. Perhaps but not at the rate we extract and sell.

What will Albertans say about King Ralph when the opil & gas revenues dwindle and disappear?

More typos!

I should slow down my typing speed to 20 words per minute!

So 'cool's all about being on the cutting edge of a new marketing trend. Thanks Stump! I always thought it was about the person and not the item.

I totally agree with this statement. Biking to work, buying organic veggies, etc. These are band-aids on a cancer.

Just take the issue of single-family houses. Put a bus stop on a block of single-family houses and 20 families can walk to it. Compare that to a bus stop in front of a 200 unit condo. And that's just transit. Now think schools, libraries, retail, roads, hydro, water, etc. Then there's the land-use, building materials, heating... No one wants to give up this lifestyle.

Another one is flying. One airplane flight to Europe puts out more greenhouse gases per passenger than an entire year of commuting in a Hummer. So, if you bike to work and then take a vacation to reward yourself, you did more damage than if you just drove all the time.
http://www.chooseclimate.org/flying/index.html

No one really wants to change though.

Suppose you make $100,000/year. There's a guy starving in Sudan making $100/year. To be globally fair, will you give him $50,000/year to even things out? But it's worst than that. There's actually 1000 guys starving in Sudan. Will you be willing to have your standard of living drop to $1000/year to be fair? Hell, we don't even like it when they hire people in India instead of Vancouver.

No one wants to hear this stuff though. We'd rather just keep living how we live, listening to our iPods and making "conscious" choices like buying organic tofu and phosphate free soap.

I am [sob!] so unappreciated. Didn't I say that the capitalist system is based upon eating, burning, and wasting more than the planet can produce? Didn't I say that this is why our society finds it almost unthinkable to stop using this economic model? Didn't I predict that this Civilization No. 5 will self-destruct in the same way and for the same reasons as the previous 4 civilizations did?

There, there, BC Mary. Don't weep. You are so appreciated around here.

You call it tomato, we call it tomato.

Still tastes like a tomato though, don't you agree?

Any chance of keeping those capitalists out of Civilization No.6?

I have some questions that go back to the article. I'm disappointed in the comment from the organizer. The place is packed, but he thinks negative feedback on the presentation means "public opinion still remains relatively uninterested in considering the requirements of sustainable development"? So why did all those people pack the house, because they are uninterested in sustainable development?

The feeling I get from that comment is that he thinks he and his panelists have all the answers, and his job is to bring the audience up to his level of consciousness, rather than engaging in meaningful dialogue -- he wants to get people involved in sustainability, but only on his terms. That's ivory tower mentality at it's worst, and it certainly is not going to engage a wide range of people.

Grumpy,

I'm getting to believe that really isn't a pseudonym.

Just as for the proponents of solar and wind power,there will be times when the sun and wind will not be available, so the bicycle will not answer, except in rarest instances, all the transit needs of the cyclist. Nonetheless, I cycled every day last month and used my car only seven times.

To try to paint cyclists as a flaky bunch attempting to impose cycling on all is a diversive tactic.

Sexy, fun and organic/sustainable. Nope - it's not an oxymoron. There is a whole group of young people out there who are like-minded and commited to environmental ideals. Meet some of them:

http://www.shared-vision.com/2005/sv1811/ballefashion1811.html

I lost all the respect for Harcourt, when he was planning to visit Soviet Union just after invasion on Afganistan, when all the contacts between Soviet Union and Canada were suspended. Second time when he claimed that he did not know that his Provincial Elections Campaign manager was paid by NDP Nanaimo "Commonwealth" Bingo Criminal Scam Society, but he pretended that he did know know who paid him. That reminds me a pianist performing in a brothel who claimed that he did not know what the ladies are doing upstairs. The same kind of behaviour which Prime Ministers Chretien and Martin are saying about stealing taxpayers money to enrich his gang members in Quebec with "sponsorship"
I can not wait for those gangsters to go to jail. It is too bad that in Canads there is no RICO law (like in US), which confiscates all illgotten assets of the convicted gangsters, their families and even their lawyers fees, as a proceeds of crime.
There is a "1984 new speak" devaluation of words to name crimes in a politically correct way. Theft is being called "sponsorship"

Grumpy:

Then I suppose the condos will have to be abandoned as unsustainable, and used as arbours for grapes, kiwis, and whatnot............ :~)

Maclean's featured an article about the sale of water to the Yankees. The underlying assumption is that US population will continue to grow, and further, it will continue to expand in areas that have always been deficient in water (ie. Las Vegas, the fastest growing city in the States).

How absurd to even discus sustainability with these assumptions controlling everything.