Tapping Our Wild Rivers Can't Fix Climate Change
Veteran enviro says no to Tzeporah Berman's 'PowerUp' logic.
M'Gonigle of UVic: 'Power down!'
A week into the provincial election the person grabbing headlines is not a politician but an environmentalist. Tzeporah Berman helped lead the Clayoquot protests of '93 and then protect the Great Bear Rainforest but lately she's been slamming the NDP for opposing the carbon tax while throwing her weight behind a huge new energy strategy embraced by the Liberals: run-of-river (RoR) power production.
And she's pulling a lot of others with her -- while getting many others fired up in disbelief and anger.
Berman and her influential allies want us to believe that only by harnessing renewable "green" energy can we reduce global warming. And that the time for debate is past; now we must just do it.
I'm one long-time environmentalist who couldn't disagree more.
As one of the founders of Greenpeace International, EcoJustice, Smart Growth BC, the Dogwood Initiative, and other B.C. groups, I embrace real solutions to our environmental challenges, including climate change, and the movement to make them happen.
But in pressing for run-of-river, Berman and allies are only accelerating us down a doomed path that will destroy precious natural ecologies in British Columbia without making any significant dent in global warming, and undermine the work of many environmentalists in the process.
There is a far better course of action, however, that would not divide environmentalists but excite them and motivate the larger citizenry. Let me explain.
Climate myopia
At first glance, run-of-river power seems pretty benign. Without recourse to large dams, RoR diverts stream water into turbines, and then returns it to the river downstream. In many rural areas, such projects have been in operation as small-scale sources of power for generations.
But as proposed in B.C., RoR is on a far larger scale. And its numerous side effects are now well known: Destructive construction in wild rivers and intact habitats, new roads and penstocks carved through wilderness areas, long transmission lines.
The list of concerns for RoR in B.C. goes on: the potential privatization of up to 500 streams and rivers, the realization that the systems will work well only during spring run-off, the gold rush mentality that has identified some thousands of potential sites across the province, the industrial scale of most of the projects, and the government/industry push that eschews careful planning by removing local decision-making authority.
Recently Berman's new organization, PowerUp, held a well-attended meeting in Vancouver to promote RoR on a massive scale in B.C. Berman gets lots of support from power companies, political leaders and climate scientists, including UVic's Andrew Weaver who, in a Vancouver Sun article, attacked "so-called environmentalists" (like me, I guess) who don't agree with "what science shows to be necessary." He dismisses as "outlandish" and "insidious" our concerns for protecting wilderness rivers and aesthetic viewscapes. We haven't done "the math"; proposed policies "are very well understood."
I would call this state of mind climate myopia -- where climate change is essentially treated as the only environmental issue we face that, if we could somehow solve it, would allow us to get back to business as usual. Old growth forests, overfishing, fish farms, wild rivers? Back burner issues. We have to focus on climate change or else it's all over.
All right then, let's focus on really solving climate change -- and why Berman and her allies are dead wrong.
Don't raise supply, lower demand
As a "solution," an important distinction must be made here, for RoR is a so-called supply-side solution, one to produce more energy. And even here, B.C.'s green energy won't displace existing local sources of carbon-emitting energy because the power is destined for export to California. Despite this, a group of high profile environmentalists wrote in The Sun of the need for this new power because "our electric cars are going to have to get juice from somewhere." These advocates do acknowledge the need to promote solutions on the demand side by conserving energy. They note approvingly that the province plans to meet "more than half of BC's new electricity demand with efficiency."
Supporters of "alternative energy" also argue that it will create new "green jobs." But what jobs? Construction workers in remote camps blasting rights-of-way through grizzly habitat to build RoR facilities on undeveloped rivers to provide seasonal power for export to Los Angelites who can now crawl in their electric cars guilt free along the freeway?
Environmentalists have long been fond of saying that the economy is a subset of the ecology. But not Berman's brigade whose RoR strategies take the economic growth trajectory (and its accompanying energy trajectory) as a given. At best, Berman calls for "more sustainable development."
But wait. Is "more sustainable development" about new electric cars, new power supplies, new energy exports, efficiency to meet new demand? Is there not a problem here? In a country with some of the highest per capita energy usage levels on the planet, where is the discussion of seriously reducing energy demand overall and doing it for the long term?
Increasing efficiency and generating new "alternative" sources of supply will never get us past the climate crunch because they confront a central contradiction: continuous economic growth that will just swallow up whatever gains are made, all the while upping the environmental impacts.
Can someone please explain how we can get past this contradiction except by reducing total energy demand, and developing economic strategies that will allow us to do so permanently?
Naming the problem
Taking the problem of economic growth seriously will not make you popular with the mainstream. But doing so actually offers tangible lessons. Here are three obvious ones:
1) We should not embark on destructive new supplies until demand reductions have been exhausted -- to death.
2) We should not look at just simple efficiency gains in existing processes but at whole new ways of designing our economy that inherently reduce energy flows.
3) We should consider new sources of supply only later and only where each renewable watt is directly tied to retiring an old carbon-based one.
So the climate emergency may not be about building more river utilities after all. Maybe we would do better to work together to stop new infrastructure investments like the new 10-lane Port Mann Bridge, a bridge for more cars, and without light rail. And to do this as part of a full-on campaign to refashion the whole face of urban transportation not just in the Lower Mainland but worldwide.
But this doesn't fit with the one truth that all political leaders agree on: we must keep the growth machine on stimulants.
A new model of development
These leaders have successfully exported this ideology to places like China, the most populous place on earth. With China's commitment to a coal-fired future of ever increasing production and consumption, exports and trade, a car for every household, one must ask: What have we unleashed here? Is there any vision of development that is both as universal and as inappropriate to the survival of the planet as this?
Talking about how we might get past this ideology and its contradictions is a taboo. But no one was talking about Wall Street's duplicity a year ago either. It took a collapse for that.
For B.C., this contradiction has a very specific import: given China's growth trajectory, what sense could it make to compromise one of the great river regions on the planet for minimal practical effect? It IS one atmosphere after all.
Climate scientists do not like to think about this. But when you do, you see the second, and more difficult, "inconvenient truth" of climate change -- the limits of a model of development that depends on always more growth, and more energy to fuel it. That is to say, the PowerUp strategy.
Just as global warming was until recently marked by widespread denial, so too denial of the problematic of growth economics is omnipresent today.
Confronting the tough truth of economic limits by actually trying to think and work past the growth paradigm opens up great possibilities. Call it the strategy of "growing into no-growth."
Instead of blasting in new supply projects to fuel electric cars, why not talk about how to build "car-free" cities? Here we might start to save the earth, and save money too. After all, if a car costs about $10,000 per year to own and run, a "demand reduction" strategy could reduce not only energy needs, but financial burdens on people. A strategy with a "double dividend," long term.
Instead of seeking more profits from power exports to California, why not work like crazy to reduce our food imports from that distant state with a massive commitment to enhance local food production right here? The same energy reduction benefits would result, and creating a true green economy (literally).
Who's being 'realistic'?
The retort, of course, is that such ideas aren't politically realistic.
Not so, says one of the gurus of energy planning, Vaclav Smil of the University of Manitoba. On the contrary, he argues that the history of creating new energy supply systems has shown that the challenges are so enormous that "none of the promises for greatly accelerated energy transitions will be realized." Message: it's the renewable energy folks who aren't realistic.
Meanwhile, the distinguished American geographer David Harvey points out in an April 2 interview in DemocracyNow! that the global economy was worth $4 trillion in 1950 and is now at $56 trillion. With all hands on deck to stimulate it way past even that, and to do so for as far into the future as anyone can contemplate, we are hitting the "limits environmentally, socially, politically…. In other words, we have to think about a zero-growth economy." Message: it's the whole economistic agenda that's unrealistic.
In the competition of unrealities, I will throw my lot in with those who would create new political possibilities. At least we would be working with the feedback we are getting from nature, not continuing to work against it.
Environmental politics for this century
To ensure the success of avowedly green energy projects, governments in British Columbia and Ontario now promise to pay big subsidies for more power, and they have rewritten provincial legislation to prevent local communities from deciding whether they want these development proposals. In contrast, in the United States, the federal government is looking at new forms of neighbourhood governance that might refashion all forms of resource and energy use at the community level.
Actually empowering citizens to try out new things where they live entails a form of what Harvard law professor Roberto Unger calls "democratic experimentalism." DemocracyNow! calls it "deep democracy." Not here.
For citizens in this province, a choice presents itself. Does climate change demand an impossible technological response to "power up" new sources of energy to fuel an impossibly expanding political economy?
Or does it demand an active democratic response that can inspire a new movement to "power down" into a calmer economy, and a livable future?
When you push past our collective denial, most people know the answer here. But they don't know how to do it. As the climate clock ticks, this is the real work to be done.
PowerUp? No thanks.
PowerDown? Sign me up!
Related Tyee stories:
- BC's Clashing Shades of Green
How 'run of river' and global warming are splitting enviros this election. - Private River Power Draws Diverse Foes
'Green' claims disputed. - War over River Power Escalates
Industry, foes clash over massive private Bute Inlet project.
![[Tyee]](http://thetyee.cachefly.net/ui/img/ico_fishie.png){kind=small}
AI
20-04-2009
Michael M'Gonigle
I don't want to make too big a deal about this article, but basically I love you.
seth
20-04-2009
Hi tech electric cars
Charge them up late in the spring when the rivers are running - batteries will just be running down a year later. Its that type of artsie environmentalist thought process that makes these folks so dangerous.
The best and cheapest alternatives to gateway, carbon taxes, energy and transit builds, alternatives that actually save instead of costing money are telecommuting and 3 day work weeks. Unfortunately until government/corporate execs are forced out their dinosaur butts in a seat mentality little will change.
We need to force our government organizations to institute mandatory telecommuting plans then add corporate carrot/stick incentives later. To illustrate the effect on energy/traffic/. US GTA has marked 40% of US federal civilian employee jobs are telecommutable that includes us forest and postal services I would assume the BC government is more or less the same. A Carlton university survey found 60% of those surveyed would telecommute if they could. Stats Can has it that that institutions under the control/purview of the BC Government ie hydro ferries municipals control more than 350,000 employees. Gordo could end rush hour almost overnight.
On the energy side only nuclear power has the cost and greenhouse gas reduction potential to make any difference to global warming. Only when the environmental movement finally recognizes that fact, will we be able to do something to shut global warming down.
beavertoad
20-04-2009
put them back
well put... but I think this fundamental solution has been floating for a while and it seems no one is taking it seriously essentially because it means we would have to give up our beloved plasmas or computer. I say turn the externalities back in and start teaching in all economic theory.
funniously
20-04-2009
I agree and disagree
He's right; building RoR generation systems could cause more ecological damage than they're worth in CO2 reductions. However, looking for ways to curb economic growth is to effectively ask people in the developing world, like China, to accept poverty and subsistence living as unchangeable -not very likely. Better to find ways to encourage sustainable growth and concomitant power production such that they can avoid our mistaken dependence on fossil fuels for the past century.
BTW, NASA and a variety of corporate interests are already examining solar panels in low space orbit as a serious option (the electricty would be microwaved down to receptors on the Earth). Richard Branson and Virgin aren't really interested in "space tourism", eh. Something to keep an eye on...
Urbanismo
20-04-2009
RoR
"Don't raise supply, lower demand"
Oh yes, oh yes oh yes . . . God Bless you Michael M'Gonigle
Hughes
20-04-2009
Climate Change Hysteria
I'm disappointed in the climate change hysteria that Berman and others use for political gain. Of course it's the right thing to do develop alternative sources of energy; however, I'm not convinced CO2 is soley the culprit (check out the following URL: http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/)
Regardless, run of the river, private power is an ineffective give-a-way of this provinces' rivers and streams for the benefit of a few of Gordo's corporate buddies at this time. A few years back it was the NDP giving away our rivers to private interests. Shame on them both. Anything for a buck. Ever wonder how much $ these corporations have donated to both parties over the years? Would be an interesting number to know.
Grumpy
20-04-2009
Want to reduce CO2, pollution.............
....... the 300 km. solution - for the same cost as the Gateway highways and bridge project.
http://railforthevalley.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/the-300-km-solution-an-affordable-way-to-reduce-gridlock-and-pollution/
Berman is a legend in her own mind and her stand for run-of-river power is puzzling, so puzzling in fact, I wonder what she gets out of it!
Gary
20-04-2009
Homework
Looks like someone here is doing their homework. And it's not Berman. And surprisingly not Suzuki.
The new home I am building will be totally powered by Solar and/or wind. But in the planning stages I have discovered that the "grid tie" system is apparently only for city folks. the grid system is where you feed your excess solar, or wind,power back into the grid that is feeding high energy users. And in some cases it could even reverse your meter. It's fairly costly to install but if you eliminate your hydro bill it could only take 3 or 4 years to pay for itself.
At any rate I am doing this because I forsee a huge increase in my hydro bill. If the Liberals get in again I'm pretty confident that the lower of the two rates on our hydro bills will be scrapped. That's how they will get around jacking the prices through the roof.
Gary
20-04-2009
Correction
should read "it is Berman"
van_man
20-04-2009
Hydro rates
"If the Liberals get in again I'm pretty confident that the lower of the two rates on our hydro bills will be scrapped."
Government does not normally choose rates for BC Hydro: these are set in a process between the BC Utilities Commission and BC Hydro. In terms of the stepped rate for residential customers: everyone commenting here appears to support more conservation rather than investments in new supply. What better way to achieve that than stepped rates for residential customers, in which the first block of energy is low cost, and for a larger amount of consumption the price goes up (this is the system that was recently implemented in BC). Without price signals (like this new BC Hydro rate or the carbon tax), people will talk about conserving but not actually make any changes. Yet - a paradox I find funny - even those who support conservation seem to dislike this type of pricing measure.
NicS
20-04-2009
"Berman's" choice, Run of Rivers not Tar Sands
It seems that Berman in her haste to save the world has chosen to support the Run or Rivers projects over the Tar Sands. A calculated gamble and one she might well lose.
The saying, "only fools rush in", comes to mind.
telus employee
20-04-2009
Andrew Weaver and Tzeborah Berman
I think Andrew Weaver and Tzeborah Berman have been drinking the 'free-market' and 'corporate' Kool-Aid.
Berman says that everyone against IPPs is against green energy.
Weaver says that we should build private power for export while ignoring the huge ghg contribution that exporting oil/gas/coal.
Doesn't even make sense. Neither want to cut back on the unprecedented extraction of carbon in BC (since the BC Liberals took over) but both want to export private (not public) 'green energy' to address GHGs production elsewhere.
My dog has more critical thinking skills than these two combined. (and is more of an environmentalist)
Joan Russow
20-04-2009
tapping our wild
Michael McGonigle is seriously addressing the issue of myopia and the failure to advocate limits to growth.
At the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), in 1992, every member state of the United Nations, thus including Canada, recognized that the global problem was the over-consumptive model of development.
The emphasis at UNCED was on conservation and prevention of harm.
At UNCED, every state adopted the precautionary principle which states that where there is the threat of irreversible damage to the environment the lack of full scientific certainty should not be used as a reason to postpone measures to prevent the threat. The so-called run- of – rivers project will be creating irreversible environmental damage. Also at UNCED, Canada signed and subsequently ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity, whose objective was to conserve biodiversity. Concurrently, Canada signed and subsequently ratified the Framework Convention on Climate Change. It was absolutely evident that the two Conventions were to be seen as complementary and not to be used in any way to undermine the other. The BC government, under the NDP, endorsed both Conventions, at the Cabinet level, and even placed on the floor, of the meeting of the ministers of the environment in Alymer Quebec, a resolution calling for the Federal Government to ratify both Conventions. Thus the BC government is bound by both conventions, and bound not to compromise one of them for the sake of the other. In 1992, the Conservative government under Mulroney, issued a report on an environmental assessment of NAFTA. In this assessment, Canada stated that all international agreements would take precedence over NAFTA. Even under NAFTA, there is a clear statement that states should not relax environmental standards to attract industry. Canada cannot be compelled to relax environmental standards to attract industry and serve US wants. Rather than sacrifice principle, and compromise, all environmentalist should apply for an injunction to prevent the run of the rivers project, and to support the important principle, of limits to growth, as advocated by Michael McGongile, and by Bill Rees who initiated the principle, of reducing the ecological footprint -- adopted by all member states of the United Nations in 1996 at the Habitat II Conference.
While, Berman attempts to distinguish herself from Patrick Moore by saying she does not work with industry, she must acknowledge that her support for the Liberals is indirectly if not directly working with industry.
michael maser
20-04-2009
Thx Michael - & Tidal (current) Energy
Bravo, Michael - very well defined and thoughtful essay. Berman and others' arguments for RoR is essentially a license to 'plunder and party on!'. That she and her organization have staked this out under the guise of 'green energy' is mendacious-to-the-max.
Massive RoR power projects, as planned, are utterly repugnant to me - a long-time advocate for conservation, public stewardship of resources, and Tidal (current) energy.
I understand our energy calculus very well, and especially the regrettable impetus to (now) 're-start the party', characterized by myopic obsession with profligate economic development. The party demands electricity and the sooner we implement means of creating this electricity that don't contribute to increased GHG emissions, the better, certainly. But trading off GHG emissions for trashing precious habitat (and other serious issues with RoR) is NOT part of the solution. Degrading biodiversity to save a few tonnes of carbon emissions is lousy trading, period.
Tidal (current) energy offers much promise of large-scale, emission-free energy generation for many countries, worldwide. In BC we have our 'Alberta Miracle' flowing through Discovery Passage nearby to Campbell River and the transmission grid each and every day. That we are not tapping this energy source - which has been endorsed by Greenpeace UK and the Sierra Club of BC - is a travesty.
To learn more about marine energy options, check out 'Ocean Renewable Energy Group' [OREG], based in Nanaimo, at www.oreg.ca.
- Michael Maser
Blue Energy Canada
www.bluenergy.com
puppyg
20-04-2009
Clear at last
I see the fog lifting. Thank you for this.
Too many Campbell's "babies" (Province-backed private enterprises) simply add up to:
"Hey-it-may-wreck-BC-but-investors-will-make-scads-of-money".
Expanded fish-farming might destroy wild salmon, but investors will make scads...
A liquified natural gas terminal (LNG) on Texada Island might blow up communities across Georgia Straight, but investors will make scads...
Run-of-river projects might shoot roads and power-lines across the BC wilderness and begin the kind of incremental destruction we see all around us, but investors will make scads...
Enough, Folks. Enough, Mr. Campbell.
Most of the power generated by run-of-river will go south to power-hungry California while we, in BC, get stuck with the environmental consequences.
The proposed LNG terminal for Texada would also serve southern markets while dumping all the risk on local communities.
We are suckers here in BC if we give Gordon Campbell any more time in office.
VivianLea Doubt
20-04-2009
Saving our souls
The concept of the ecosystem and systems thinking in general reminds one of the multi-layered complexity, fragility, and interweaving of all life on earth. And as a native of British Columbia, I have lived to see rivers where many happy childhood hours were spent dammed and profoundly changed, an incalculable personal loss. Perhaps it is the bias towards the poetic and a sense of wonder that most seriously impairs my ability to look upon the works of humankind with an undiluted fervour of enthusiasm. The words of Eileen Delehanty Pearkes may illustrate this point:
"I knew I was standing not only at a drainage divide in a narrow valley along an abandoned rail line at the origin of a minor river called the Salmo, but also as a witness to one of the Earth’s central landscape functions: the movement of melted snow or rainwater into a welcoming, but distant ocean. Like a point on a gothic arch, this branch of the vast Columbia River watershed begins at a precise point, representing the apex of twin drainage systems that drop with great elegance and complexity from the mountains to the plateaus and then to the ocean. Unlike a gothic arch, this river locus had no pretences, no heavenly aspirations. It was on the ground, placed as such to remind me that authenticity has its source in the Earth, the personal terrain, the place of truth." (The Inner Green)
In a very real way, run of river projects also threaten this “central landscape function”, threaten to alter the workings and works of the watersheds in their job of carrying silt and nutrients downriver, threaten to allow humans to meddle in the very creation of the metaphorical bedrock of the province.
It seems to me that when we destroy the authenticity of the earth, the very place of truth for all humankind, that we are, indeed, destroying our own souls. Somehow, I fail to see that driving an electric car will comfort me for that loss.Thank you, Michael M'Gonigle, for pointing out the clear and obvious road not taken...mapping the way is the starting place.
southdeltawalker
20-04-2009
B. C. Liberal "plants" sprouting up.
We had a "Save Our Rivers" event here in Ladner Friday night.
There were there two Liberal "plants" in the audience.
One was very disruptive and wouldn't shut up until many in the the audience of over 100 were calling out for her to sit down and shut up.
The other "plant" had a clip board of misinformation that he was trying to spout off.
Ms Berman is just another Liberal "plant".
She is not the environmental movement-she is just one person.
She has discredited herself-just like the two "plants" Friday night.
For the real story of the river destruction from these projects, please visit the Save Our Rivers site: http://saveourrivers.ca/
Fiat lux
20-04-2009
Nobody seems to mention that
Nobody seems to mention that the vast majority of that increased energy demand is not going into houses, but to industry to replace 1/2 hp of human energy with huge increases of electric and oil energy, counted as GDP and Growth, not to mention "increased efficiency" and "cost cutting".
This is the price we have to pay for fraudulent monetary economic calculations.
Human labour doesn't cost anything to an economy, but outside energy costs scads in environmental damage, exploitation, depletion and other automatic reactions caused by increased energy inputs.
All this has been licenced by deregulated money creation that permitted an international special interest mafia to take control of the world's resources and economic distribution sectors through artificial overcapitalization.
Our mills are now controlled by about a half dozen of the corporate mafia. The human labour in the mills and mines has been reduced to half, or one third of what it was 30 years ago, while the investment and energy consumption skyrocketed into 60-70 wage years per job and thousands of horsepower of outside electric
and oil energy to replace workers.
So why doesn't somebody mention this obvious crime wave against the Earth and humanity at large? Why don't our so called "economists" and "environmentalist" start
accounting real physical economic costs, instead of the infinitely variable and fraudulent monetary costs that mean absolutely nothing on the long run, except leading the world from one disaster into another?
Ed Deak.
HydroGreen
20-04-2009
IPP Facts
Independent Power Producer (IPP) Run-of-the-River Technology FACTs:
IPPs using run-of-the-river technology can produce green renewable electrical energy at about half the cost of BC Hydro.
IPPs generate power at about $50 to $85 a MWh. Ashlu Creek IPP is selling its power to BC Hydro for $55 for the next 40 years (term of the BC Hydro contract). IPPs pay $25 a MWh in taxes, water license rental fees, and first nation royalty to governments – mostly to the local government. BC Hydro pays only $8 a MWh in dividend and taxes to the government.
On the other hand, BC Hydro is a very high cost producer - $110 a MWh, from its own Aberfeldie run-of-the-river project that it has just completed. The cost of production at the proposed Site C mega-dam on the Peace River will be about $160 a MWh.
BC Hydro has extremely high internal overhead and costs. Although BC Hydro can produce some power at less than $6 a MWh from our gigantic heritage dams paid by BC citizens (in the 1960s) with no interest expense remaining – BC Hydro then sells this power at 13 times the cost ($80 a MWh) to BC citizens who own these dams. The average salary and benefits at BC Hydro is $100,000 per employee per year. This is 2.5 times the average private salary in the province of $40,000. The average salary at BCTC, a unit of BC Hydro is $130,000 per employee.
BC Hydro charges the ratepayers and taxpayers $1.4 million per GWh in costs to produce non-green power (Site C). Due to high costs, BC Hydro is unable to produce power if the project is less than 50 MW.
On the other hand, private power IPPs can produce green and clean power at $0.6 million per GWh, none of that charged to ratepayers - and less than half the cost that BC Hydro charges ratepayers. Private power producers can produce power from projects as small as 5 MW by using local talent and labour.
The cost saving by IPPs is passed on to the consumer when large number of IPPs compete for the few power purchase contracts offered by BC Hydro. 17,000 GWh of power is being offered by about 150 competing IPP projects to a single buyer, BC Hydro – which will only purchase 3,000 GWh. BC Hydro offers on the average only 3 buildable power purchase agreements a year and no more than 2 or 3 IPP projects can be built in a year. Without a power purchase agreement from BC Hydro, no IPP run-of-river project can get built. There are 12,000 major streams and 280,000 minor streams and creeks in BC and only 40 IPP plants in all of BC (10 under construction). The water license held by an IPP terminates in about 25 years and it is up to the government of the day to renew it.
It is not possible to export power to the US without the authorization of BC Hydro. And BC Hydro and BCTC demand a cut of at least 25% of the sales to allow exports. The price of power in Washington State is generally same as in BC, and the transmission lines to California are all congested.
Colleen Fuller
20-04-2009
Tapping Our Rivers
Wow, that is a great article, thanks so much.
I have been wondering where PowerUp is getting its money to organize a high-powered conference and launch itself so vigourously in the limelight. It acts like a prototypical astroturf group - groups that claim to advocate for the public interest but whose positions serve a corporate master. PowerUp doesn't have a single disclosure on its website -- but it's a legitimate question: who funds them? They are getting money -- and lots of it -- from somewhere.
Astroturf groups are common in the pharmaceutical arena where many patient advocacy organizations are funded by drug manufacturers. There is a lot of criticism of this type of advocacy because it can lead to the inappropriate use of very profitable drugs that can lead to harmful side effects.
PowerUp should let people know whose paying its tab. Are there financial links between PowerUp and private power producers who will benefit from the "solutions" being pushed? Editors of medical journals in Canada and around the world now demand disclosure of any potential conflicts of interest before they publish articles. It's a simple step that lets everyone evaluate the independence of the information they're receiving.
bikesarefun
20-04-2009
Are you trying to change the world or something?
Calling Berman on her sell-out is easy and much needed (and done in a respectful non-personal fashion - thanks for that!).
But calling most of us on our blinders approach to living on this planet is really dangerous. And nothing less will save humans from extinction.
Guess how Berman and all the others named in this article primarily get around?
As Daniel Quinn (www.ishmael.org) points out, if something doesn't work this year (climate change, economics, I could go on...and on), only lunatics [my word] do more of it the following year instead of trying something different.
RoR is NOT different. The packaging is, especially with the GBR defender tying the knot, but the substance, as clearly outlined in this article is more of the same, "technology/civilization will fix whatever problems it creates." This is just unlikely, it has been proven for centuries, if not millenia, to fail.
Thank you for a refreshing and profound article.
PS. I can't help but refer readers that have gotten this far to another, albeit interim (i.e., probably decades long), approach to reducing energy use: Fare-Free Transit. The Tyee ran a series called NoFares in July 2007 and can be found here:
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2007/07/05/NoFares/
lynn
20-04-2009
thanks
Thanks Michael M'Gonigle for a well -researched and deeply thoughtful article.
Quote:
"For citizens in this province, a choice presents itself. Does climate change demand an impossible technological response to "power up" new sources of energy to fuel an impossibly expanding political economy?
Or does it demand an active democratic response that can inspire a new movement to "power down" into a calmer economy, and a livable future?"
That is the heart of the matter, especially the three well-chosen words posed within it: "a livable future". It delineates the real environmentalists from the pretenders.
Our task, that is if we want to continue to live on this planet, is to create that "livable" future. One that most closely mimics the wondrous workings of nature itself....the best textbook for survival on this planet.
Ms. Berman simply has not done her homework.
Her "power-up" response to the challenge before us is an earth bursting at the veins with corporate-bought, growth-inducing steroids.... merely causing us to spin faster and faster, before the final collapse.
KWD
20-04-2009
a tough sell
The “demand reduction” kite (by extension; zero growth strategy) has been hoisted into the political wind many times in the past, and never seems to gain the altitude it needs to be seen clearly by those who would acknowledge and promote its benefits.
Surprisingly it is shot down, not by economists, politicians or the church, but by the average working man on the street. There are a number of reasons: When push comes to shove, everyone wants to see those double-digit gains on their investments; and that’s really difficult where natural energy (wealth) replacement is occurring at much smaller rate. No one wants to be the first to WILLINGLY accept less and live a more frugal lifestyle. And any politician that tries to build a platform around living with less and zero growth will be laughed out of town.
Overcoming the “growth is good” strategy is going to be a tough sell. The impetus for such change will likely not come from a sudden eco-awakening of the masses but will be spun off from the spread of conflict and violence that is starting to show with increasing frequency and severity around the globe. Marches, street riots and sabotaging sour gas facilities are just the beginning.
Wilfred Laurier
20-04-2009
Personal Sacrafice
"Don't raise supply, lower demand"
This is a great idea, especially if means no personal sacrifice to me. What we can do is just go tell them pesky Murricans to stop burning coal to light their homes. And they'd better listen, too, cuz I'm gettin' fed up.
The latest seat projections call for a Liberal landslide. Something is really not getting trough. Picking a fight with Greenies is not a way to win elections. Carole may have "agreed to disagree" but the Greenies have not.
This piece is partisan cherry picking.
HydroGreen
20-04-2009
People deserve a decent lifestyle
This article is a sham. Like - we wish (or is it force) BC citizens to cut down on their power consumption so to save a few pennies a month - and as result, have a miserable lifestyle.
One must be quite arrogant and shameless to demand others to live miserably because then a few giga watt hours of electricity can be saved and a few less tons of coal can be burnt. Why are the extremist enviro-fanatics such an unethical and disrespectful bunch to the rest of us?
The answer to coal is green energy and not miserable lifestyle.
dave49
20-04-2009
Great opinion piece
Thanks Micheal,
I'm glad somebody with both academic and intellectual clout, but not hampered by their various consulting and contracting activities, weighed in and said it so well. Bravo!
Dermot
20-04-2009
What about the carbon tax?
It's a bit ironic that the article fails to mention the carbon tax, the other piece of the current NDP dust up with environmentalists. The tax aims to achieve the precise goal of deep ecologists: to reduce the economic impacts of consumption. Ironically, the cap and trade proposal is based entirely on facilitating economic growth within a regulated limit.
G West
20-04-2009
Hydro use = Lifestyle
YOU MUST BE KIDDING hydrogreen.
No one's demanding anyone live miserably - except Gordon Campbell - and he demands it of everyone outside of a small circle of friends.
The Campbell Tax is a complete farce - the enviros who promte it are ignoring its actual terms.
I suggest you read the bill.. and then learn something about the concept of inelastic demand.
HydroGreen
20-04-2009
@G West
Dont change the subject. Climate change is far bigger than Gordon Campbell.
Yes, the demand is inelastic at 7 cents a kwh. So why do the fanatics demand that we reduce consumption? Why dont they reduce their own consumption and get off our backs? Why are the enviro-fanatics against green renewable energy?
Frank
20-04-2009
enviro-fanatic
That's funny hydro-green since you're the one declaring that its "green" to push for privatization of BC rivers to feed the US appetite for electricity.
Frank
20-04-2009
Dermot
And when exactly will the carbon tax start reducing the absolute amount of actual emissions?
I guess that depends on how many poor the Liberals can drive out of their cars to make the roads less crowded for the rest of us while calling the whole process "green" eh?
G West
20-04-2009
I'm not changing the subject
Conservation is a perfectly valid approach to reducing demand for Hydro power, which, in fact, we have more than enough of to meet BC's own needs for at least the next 20 - 30 years.
You're the one who said it would affect folk's lifestyles and complained about it here:
This article is a sham. Like - we wish (or is it force) BC citizens to cut down on their power consumption so to save a few pennies a month - and as result, have a miserable lifestyle.
Now, what was it you said about 'changing the subject?
As to the inelasticity of demand for gasoline, perhaps you've forgotten how high the price for gas was - and yet consumption through that period (which included the farcical Campbell tax) was actually up 4% over the previous period.
I suspect you also believe that the only thing that has reduced smoking in this country is the high price of cigarettes...
To my way of thinking, you're the one who sounds fanatical my friend.
carfreed
20-04-2009
conservation
Carbon tax or no carbon tax, cosumers need to DECIDE if they want to contribute to a world gone mad with the over use of automobiles. Even if Climate Change wasnot a threat: what kind of conservative action is it to get in an automobile along with millions of others, make a tremendous amount of noise, poison the air, dirty the streets, kill and injure thousands, vie for parking spaces and spend so much money from individual as well as public funds to use these things?
Hybrids miht help with emissions but not with all the other problems.
The only thing Ms. Tzepo Berman has done is: create bad feelings and alienate people.
The silver lining is that we made get a better more informed discussion and resolution about the picture as a whole.
kepstein
20-04-2009
Come on HydroGreen
"...to save a few pennies a month - and as result, have a miserable lifestyle....'
"...to live miserably because then a few giga watt hours of electricity can be saved..."
I don't know about other people's families but my grandparents weren't miserable and they lived in a way that saved more than a few pennies and more than a few giga watt hours of electricity.
Wilfred Laurier
20-04-2009
Gigawatts?
Your grandparents saved gigawatts of electricity? Do have any idea of how huge a sum this is? It is a TRILLION watt/hours, or a THOUSAND megawatt/hours or a MILLION kilowatt hours.
Over a 12 month period, I average 41 kw/h a day. This in a year, I use 1.4 mw/h. To use a gigawatt hour, I would have to live for approximately 600 years. Did your grandparents live for 600 years? Granted, I conserve electricity any way I can. Maybe your grandparents would have to live only 300 years to save a gigawatt of power
Blue Camas
20-04-2009
BC-STV
What's a tree-hugger to do?
Vote for the NDP's cynical Carbon Tax opposition?
Vote for the Liberal plan - save the environment by plundering rivers and wildlife? (and making lots of money!)
Can I please vote Green now?
And lets make those Green votes count for more - direct some votes to those CO2 lovin' Conservatives as well!
All we need is, um... BC-STV!!
Unless we can convince Professor M'Gonigle to just agree to become our Premier...
North of Hope
20-04-2009
Energy and food sustainability
This is a great article.
Recently there has been a lot of talk about Global Warming and Climate Change. These are worthy of a lot of thought and action but they are only the beginning of the process to take care of the environment. We must remember plants, as well as animals and people, are part of the environment.
We need to be concerned about environmental alteration, not just climate change. We must be concerned about all pollutants, not just green house gases (GHG’s.) No chemicals should be used unless they are studied and tested for damage to animals, plants and the environment. These studies must be made public.
Three things we all need are housing, food and energy. We must get these without damaging the environment too much. Any activity we do will alter the environment. We must be able to get these in such a way so all forms of life can continue to live. We must become sustainable in obtaining all of these three things. We may want more things than the big 3 but sustainability is the key. If we are not sustainable in these, then we will run out of them and we may perish.
To reduce energy wrt food, we should use local foods as much as possible. We must grow them without harmful chemicals. BC and Canada should be self-sufficient wrt food. We may import food from other places but at no net cost to the environment.
BC and Canada should be self sufficient and sustainable in energy as well. We have to look at how we are going to get our energy. We must do a complete and thorough study of all ways we can generate energy, whether it be hydro, coal, solar, geothermal, wind, nuclear, wood, biofuels, gas or any other source of energy. All methods must be examined and these results must be public. Only after such a study can we use an energy source. We must do this so our energy sources are sustainable and not harmful to the environment.
For example, with the Site C Dam project, we would look at the need, if any, the costs to the environment, people displaced, farmland lost, water use downstream and the generation of energy without producing GHG’s.
No undertaking such as mining, housing developments, highways, etc. can be done without an environmental and sustainability analysis. We must be careful not to remove too many plants or trees, as we need them to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Other wastes must be recycled rather than thrown into landfills or oceans. Recycling must become a major activity in our sustainable culture.
We must develop a national and provincial energy and food plans so we can look forward and know we can have a healthy life for future generations.
KWD
20-04-2009
Berman a deep green? Make me laugh.
The deep ecology movement does NOT seek to reduce the economic impacts of consumption, it seeks to oppose economic growth and, by default, reduce environmental destruction. There’s a world of difference.
Tzeporah Berman’s PowerUp strategy is as far from left biocentrisim or deep ecology as you can get. Deep ecologists that think in terms of carbon taxes and cap and trade are pseudogreens.
The following is sniped from "Left Biocentrism" by David Orton.
“Left bios believe that the Earth belongs to no one and should be a
non-privatized Commons. They call for a global redistribution of wealth, oppose economic growth and consumerism, and practice voluntary simplicity. There is a bioregional not a global focus. Social ecology, eco-Marxism, and eco-feminism have important insights, left bios believe, but are nevertheless seen as unduly human-centered in orientation.
“Left biocentrists believe that, in order to try and turn around the ecological "Armageddon" and to prevent the coming social disaster, a profound transformation is required in our relationship to the Earth. This will include re-sacralizing Nature so that people come to see the Earth as alive and part of themselves. A future Earth-centered
society will need to be organized around an ecocentric morality that has an essential spiritual or sacred dimension and is not based on economics."
realisticman
20-04-2009
Naomi Klein
Naomi Klein is also a member of PowerUp because she too realizes the advantages of Green Power.
HydroGreen
20-04-2009
@Frank
"That's funny hydro-green since you're the one declaring that its "green" to push for privatization of BC rivers to feed the US appetite for electricity."
Wrong Frank - only BC Hydro is allowed to export power. IPPs dont have authorization to export. And IPPs can only sell power to BC Hydro and nobody else. Your knowledge on IPPs is short - but you are long on rhetoric and mythology.
HydroGreen
20-04-2009
More IPP Facts
Independent Power Producer (IPP) Run-of-the-River Technology FACTs:
Independent Power Producers pay 3 times more social benefits to government than BC Hydro does.
Private power IPPs pay $25 per MWh in taxes, water license rental fees, and community benefits to the government. About half of that is paid to the local government as property tax (while BC Hydro pays no local property taxes for 25 billion dollars of assets that it owns).
BC Hydro, on the other hand, pays only $8 per MWh as dividend and taxes to the government (2008) while most of that power is produced by dams that have permanently altered the Columbia River and Peace River basins with cumulative environmental impacts. To meet our current energy shortage, BC Hydro wants to build yet another dam (Site C) at 3 times the cost per MW, compared to low-cost low-impact private run-of-the-river technology.
A small 10 MW run of river IPP plant pays about $1,400,000 a year to various levels of government, most of it to the local government. BC Hydro pays only $420,000 for the same amount of power to the Province, including an infinitesimal “grant-in-lieu” to the local government.
No IPP run-of-the-river project is on a salmon bearing reach of a stream, and the environmental impact is minor and can be compensated. Run-of-the-river technology can co-exist and share the habitat with fish and other wildlife. IPPs do not build dams – but low weirs or taps on generally a steep stream that has little or no resident fish. The impact is far less than dams built by BC Hydro, logging, mining, oil and gas, coal, real estate development, transportation, pulp and paper, pipelines, utility telephone and cable poles, etc. And unlike mining, oil and gas, coal, transportation and real estate – run of river technology is sustainable, renewable, clean and significantly reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
IPPs using run-of-the-river technology can produce green renewable electrical energy at about half the cost of BC Hydro.
While a run-of-the-river plant is producing energy, BC Hydro fills up its gigantic dams, so that the energy production can be shifted to the winter. Run-of-the-river production complements BC Hydro's mega-dams. Energy is stored behind BC Hydro dams for low-water periods, and many IPPs also have lakes for winter storage. Furthermore, BC Hydro is not obliged to buy snowmelt power that exceeds 25% of the annual production.
Name
21-04-2009
Inconvenient but true
Thanks, Michael for injecting a healthy dose of of the truly harsh reality that we face.
Anyone who thinks we can merrily continue our current paradigm by just sticking on some "green" window dressing like new lightbulbs, the odd solar panel and an electric car/SUV in every garage, is promoting a truly dangerous delusion.
Even if we could achieve the miracle of cold fusion, the planet simply cannot support the other impacts of this model, no matter how efficient, if we add all of Asia, India and then Africa into the equation.
The incredible myopia of Berman, Suzuki, Weaver & co is doing the cause of environmental awareness a real disservice by encouraging political leaders and ordinary citizens to continue ducking these uncomfortable truths. The further down this road we go, the more of a crisis we will face in the inevitable adjustment to reality.
freebear
21-04-2009
Sustainable Growth?
On a finite planet?
The followers of the growth religion should be put on a smaller scale spaceship and told to grow sustainably!
And Berman calls for "more sustainable development."
Does she aslo call for dead people to be more dead?
And a great painting to be more great?
Suzuki pines for a steady stae economy but says nothing about supporting the Green Party?
I guess we have to wait for that new/undiscovered bacteria/plague; or resource wars, to cleanse the planet down to a sustainable population of 600 million?
ME2
21-04-2009
Our environental melt-down
I wonder if anyone here knows - or can give a reasnable estimate - what amount of CO2 production is prevented by BC's export of Hydro, and then how much is in turn actually produced by BC's exports of gas?
I know that concerning particulates etc gas is considered much cleaner than coal, but it seems to me that concerns re CO2 now override those.
Thus, it looks to me that supporters of Campbell's supposed "greening" and his crocodile tears re CO2 are more than a bit disingenuous when they turn a blind eye to his active subsidisation and promotion of the environentally destructive production of coal-bed methane, his gloating over the finding of new gas wells, and his subsidising of exploration for oil and gas in the North-West.
Hypocrisy? You bet. Have Suzuki, Berman and Co been bought off? You bet.
Their silence, or better yet their active cooperation, has allowed Campbell to get away with projecting the illusion that he is a prudent financial manager, whereas the truth is that he is just another resource exploiter, balancing the books by selling off one resource after another.
This continuing short-sightedness displayed by our reigning envirocrats makes me sick.
River Siddhartha
21-04-2009
Come and join The Paddlers Flotilla for Free Flowing BC Rivers
Momentum is building on the side of sanity!
Come down to Kits Beach on Saturday April 25th and join The Flotilla?
Details are on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=63583053757
or on the Upcoming Events section of
www.saveourrivers.ca
Hope to see you and your boat there!
Adam