The elephant in the room

Katherine Palmer Gordon
FOCUS Magazine
28 August 2009

There’s a finite amount of oil and gas on the planet and by most credible accounts, we’re about half way through our supply of the stuff. At the same time, governments are starting to get it that to avoid catastrophic climate change, we’ll have to shift our energy and transportation infrastructure away from an almost complete reliance on burning fossil fuels to burning virtually none. But fossil fuels have made it possible for humankind to leap from the dark and dreary discomfort of our agrarian ancestors into the dazzling light of modern urban living.

Without fossil fuels, we might have to give up a whole lot of comfort and convenience. Is there any way to avoid going backwards? Who wants to talk about that?

A round of applause, everyone: after years of stonewalling on the global warming file, the government of Canada finally (if reluctantly) joined other G8 countries in mid-July to set the kind of meaningful emissions reductions targets for developed countries that climate change scientists have been pleading for: 80 percent by 2050.

The G8 summit also agreed that in order to prevent calamitous environmental change, global average temperature must not rise more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. This collective agreement followed decisive action by the new Obama government in the United States, with the passing in June of the American Clean Energy and Security Act by the House of Representatives.

The Waxman-Markey Bill, as it is known, is the first legislation in America to tackle climate change so dramatically: it introduces a cap and trade system, and sets targets of a 17 percent reduction in emissions from 2005 levels by 2020 and a whopping 83 percent by 2050. The Waxman-Markey Bill has yet to navigate the treacherous waters of the US Senate (expected this fall), and the G8 agreement is “aspirational” rather than obligatory.

Nonetheless, both initiatives signal a potentially fundamental shift in attitude of the governments of some of the nations having the highest greenhouse gas emissions on the planet

For the first time, there seems to be more than a dim glimmer of light at the end of the global warming tunnel. If the G8 countries can achieve these targets - assuming the targets are high enough - perhaps there is hope that the worst impacts of the climate change catastrophe we have wrought on the planet can be averted.

Can we do it?

The answer to that question is not an Obama-esque “Yes, we can,” says Dogwood Initiative Executive Director Will Horter, but an unequivocal “We must.”

“We’re in a bus going over a cliff,” says Horter of the devastating potential of global warming.

That includes temperatures rising by as much as six degrees by the end of this century, let alone two, with disastrous environmental and social consequences and severely endangering human life in many parts of the planet. The truth is more than inconvenient, says Horter: “It’s terrifying.”

To slow the bus in time, says Horter, we need to focus on five top priorities: “Conservation, conservation, conservation, conservation and conservation.” He doesn’t mean just switching off the light when leaving the room: Horter means energy conservation on a scale far beyond anything currently on the agenda in British Columbia. He doesn’t think even 80 percent reductions are enough: “BC needs to reduce its emissions by 99.7 percent by 2050,” says Horter.

But that’s not even on the radar for most of us.

According to BC Hydro, British Columbians are among the highest per capita energy users on the planet. Any conservation consciousness we do have remains completely overshadowed by a culture of unconstrained consumerism dependent on the abundant availability of cheap energy. We don’t think it’s necessary to even switch off the lights, let alone forgo cars, clothes dryers and winter trips to Mexico. Far from falling, therefore, BC’s emissions just keep going up.

What limited conservation and energy efficiency initiatives the federal government has introduced to date have done nothing to reduce emissions: between 1990 and 2006, Canada’s overall emissions increased by 26 percent. The provincial government’s 2007 energy plan doesn’t come close either. It prioritizes “a secure and reliable energy supply for years to come.” It has a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 33 percent by 2020, but even that seems doomed to fail. Despite containing some conservation and efficiency incentives, the plan is entirely predicated on greater efficiency in meeting our growing energy demand rather than including any tough measures to reduce use significantly.

We are engaged in a hopeful courtship with renewable energy - wind, sun, geothermal, biomass and run-of-river sourced power - in the belief that it can one day replace fossil fuels in maintaining our current lifestyle. But Robert Bryce wrote in the Wall Street Journal in March 2009 that the entire energy output in the United States from solar and wind sources is equivalent to that of one average-sized coal mine. American peak oil analyst James Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency, says: “No combination of alternative fuel systems currently known will allow us to run what we are running, the way we’re running it, or even a substantial fraction of it.”

The simple and unpalatable truth, say people like Kunstler and Horter, is that to reach even a 33 percent reduction in emissions, let alone 80 percent or Horter’s 99.7 percent target, our lifestyles will have to change. Victoria University law lecturer Dr Michael M’Gonigle puts it this way: “We have to fundamentally change our consumer culture now, and reverse our insatiable demand for energy, before we can even begin to address the climate crisis.”

Natural Resources Canada (NRC) and the provincial Ministry of Environment both cite a litany of climate change impacts that have been experienced in BC. NRC spells them out bluntly: “Windstorms, forest fires, storm surges, coastal erosion, landslides, snowstorms, hail, droughts and floods [already] have major economic impacts on BC’s communities, industries and environment, with the risks magnified in low-lying coastal areas.” BC’s transportation and energy infrastructure is identified as being at significant risk: “In many places in BC, pipelines, power and telecommunications transmission lines and transportation networks are geographically confined to narrow valleys and coastal stretches and therefore vulnerable to disruption from landslides, coastal storms and surges, flooding and forest fires.”

A brief refresher on climate change impacts

It’s rare these days to see the phrase “climate change impacts” unaccompanied by words like “catastrophic,” “devastating,” and “disastrous.”

But why would a six degree temperature increase be so bad?

Scientists believe that at uncertain thresholds of temperature rise, feedback mechanisms will kick in that will accelerate greenhouse gas emissions from natural sources of stored carbon and create runaway heating of the planet. For example, deeper levels of permafrost in the Arctic would begin to melt (near surface permafrost has already begun to melt) and release to the atmosphere immense quantities of carbon dioxide and methane—an extremely potent greenhouse gas-causing even more warming. If that threshold is passed humanity will have relinquished any possibility of reversing the buildup of greenhouse gases and preserving our current climate.

By the end of the 21st century the melting of glaciers and ice sheets around the planet, combined with warmer and therefore expanding ocean water, could result in significant sea level rise. Low-lying coastal areas, often highly populated, would experience perennial flooding or permanent submergence. Many of the planet’s great coastal cities, including London, New York, Shanghai and Vancouver would be at risk. Forests are also under threat from the mountain pine beetle, spreading north as fast as the temperature rises. Last, but not least, there is increasing competition among farmers, homeowners, industries and power companies for less and less water. NRC also states that there will be “implications for trans-border agreements.” Read: the United States, suffering from the same impacts, will be casting an ever more covetous eye on Canada’s water and energy sources.

Humans depend on the oceans for our existence.

Through condensation and evaporation they provide most of our fresh water, while our oxygen supply depends on the constant circulation of world currents. But human-generated greenhouse gases are continuing to be absorbed by the oceans at an increasing rate. Increased acidification of the water and slowing of the currents caused by melting of the Arctic ice may lead to a complete collapse of fish stocks and an “oceanic anoxic event” causing mass extinctions of land species - including us.

With all of these accumulating impacts, we can also expect to see already unacceptable levels of global poverty rise as governments of developed countries struggle to meet the costs of mitigating their own challenges, let alone contribute to poorer nations. The ability to grow food in hotter regions may become severely constrained, putting billions of people at risk of starvation. More fortunate places - such as Canada, where increasing temperatures may expand the food-growing opportunities in some areas - may find themselves facing a massive influx of refugees fleeing uninhabitable regions.

These are not speculative ideas. We have already witnessed some of these events over the last several decades. Thirty years ago American climatologist James Hansen, now the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, created one of the first climate change models, predicting much of what has already happened.

Hansen was profiled in The New Yorker magazine in June this year and stated that he now considers the threat of global warming to be far greater than even he had initially suspected, saying that carbon dioxide is being pumped into the air some ten thousand times faster than nature can process it and that we have already passed the maximum safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The only answer, Hansen told journalist Elizabeth Kolbert, is to cut annual global emissions by a minimum of 75 percent.

Peak oil considerations

A fundamental reconsideration of our consumer culture is also necessitated by peak oil, which seems likely to take us to zero emissions eventually whether we like it or not.

The Hirsch Report on peak oil issued by the US Department of Energy in 2005 states that when the oil supply reaches maximum production capability and then starts declining, there will be “abrupt and revolutionary” changes in energy usage. We rely on oil for the production and delivery to our doorsteps of the majority of our food, water, medical supplies, transportation, and heat, let alone luxury goods. “Without timely management,” the Hirsch Report states, “the economic, social and political costs of peak oil will be unprecedented.”

When peak oil does occur, say pundits, post-peak production decline and severe increases in the price of oil are bound to have negative implications for the global economy. James Kunstler is blunt: “The implications of a permanent worldwide energy crisis are enormous.

Industrial societies will never again enjoy the two to seven percent annual economic growth considered healthy. This amounts to finding ourselves in a permanent depression. It could put us out of business as a society.” The supply to ordinary citizens will be abruptly constrained as states start to control remaining supplies.

Countries with remaining oil reserves will begin hoarding those reserves. The war in Iraq, motivated by the urgent American desire to supplement its oil resources, may be just one sign of things to come.

Jeff Rubin is the former chief economist of CIBC World Markets and author of the recently-released Why Your World Is about to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization. In a CBC Radio interview in May he stated: “Cheap oil is a thing of the past.” Rubin’s basic premise is that with rising energy prices brought on by a shrinking supply, we are about to see a reversal of globalization. “Almost everything we see around us has been carried here from the other side of the world,” he told the CBC. “What’s made that work is cheap oil. But as oil rises to over $140 a barrel, that no longer makes any economic sense.”

Rubin also says that to see evidence of the impact of oil depletion and consequential rising prices we just have to look at the current economic recession—caused not by the collapse of sub-prime mortgages in the United States, but by $147/barrel oil. “The recession was already occurring in other countries well before it hit the US,” says Rubin, “as a result of the cost of oil.”

The Hirsch Report states that viable peak oil mitigation options exist, but they will take extraordinary efforts from governments, industry and consumers. A 20-year transition to a global society not based on fossil fuels is required to avoid the worst potential impacts of economic meltdown as the world’s oil-reliant industries collapse.

A snapshot of a future without fossil fuels

In The Long Emergency, Kunstler writes: “We are faced with the necessity to downscale, re-scale, right-size and reorganize all the fundamental activities of daily life: the way we grow food, the way we conduct commerce and the manufacture of things we need, the way we school our children and the size, shape and scale of our towns and cities.”

In Kunstler’s view we may be able to utilize renewable energy to provide limited power on a seasonal and intermittent micro-scale. But in doing so, we will have to be prepared to live without a consistent or abundant supply of power on a daily basis. In the meantime, we will have to return to a society based on a labour-intensive local farming economy with cottage industries supplying our basic needs, no commercial aviation, and no long-distance commercial transportation network.

Rubin says we won’t be able to import billions of dollars of food from China and California: “We’ll have to grow food in our own backyards and eat it seasonally. We’ll be moving into dense downtown housing instead of commuting 50 kilometres each way to work and converting our abandoned subdivisions into farmland. Our children will be farmers rather than baristas.”

If Kunstler and Rubin are correct, we are looking at a not-too-distant future that is far more similar to our great-grandparents’ way of life than ours. We will be walking everywhere. We won’t have guaranteed power at the flick of a switch. We certainly won’t be eating Californian strawberries in January.

Renewable energy—pipedream or solution?

The Suzuki Foundation and Pembina Institute claim that renewable technology could supply all of Canada’s energy needs. Guy Dauncey agrees. “The price for solar is becoming competitive. Run of river power is sustainable if it is done correctly. Wind is available in ample quantities in BC and there is no downside except noise,” he says.

But despite Dauncey’s enthusiasm, there are many flies in the ointment of renewable energy technology. BC Hydro isn’t counting on more than 15 percent of its supply coming from smaller-scale renewable energy, admitting that while it may contribute significantly: “[It] will not be enough if demand for electricity continues to grow.” In other words, we need to keep the large hydro dams running.

Technically, of course, hydro as we currently know it in BC is also renewable energy. But even large-scale hydro is a debatable proposition in the face of global warming and peak oil. In a 2008 planning study the Pacific Institute on Climate Change called BC’s energy production and distribution infrastructure “highly vulnerable.”

The study warns that decreasing snow packs and increasing drought will limit the availability of water for hydroelectric production. There will be higher costs to maintain pipeline infrastructure, let alone expand it. The increasing frequency of storms poses threats to power delivery, especially to remote communities.

Renewable energy - whether large-scale hydro, wind or run-of-river - also requires significant amounts of fossil fuels just to construct and maintain its infrastructure, including access roads and delivery grids. Matt Horne, director of the Pembina Institute’s BC Energy Solutions portfolio, tosses another spanner in the works:

“We need infrastructural investment to upgrade the main grid to feed alternative energy sources into it.”

The main power grid in BC wasn’t designed for the integration of renewable energy sources and can’t absorb more than 20 percent of its power from local intermittent sources like solar and wind.

“If we can’t change the grid,” says Horne, “it’s going to be very challenging.” Changing the grid would be hugely expensive—and again require vast consumption of fossil fuels.

Feasibility studies indicate that large scale storage technology for intermittent sources like solar, wind and waves may be impossible, and to replace our current use of fossil fuels, biomass would have to be deployed on a scale beyond our production capability. James Kunstler points out that ethanol and biodiesel, now being used experimentally in vehicles and aircraft, require more energy to produce than they return (and notes that the ethanol craze sparked severe food shortages in some parts of the world in 2008 as prices rose dramatically in response to the demand for corn).

The Pembina Institute admits that while geothermal energy is readily available in Canada (via heat pumps), it is also anything but cheap, and not cost effective for individual homes.

Solar panels and small-scale wind systems provide only fluctuating supply: when the sun’s not shining or wind not blowing, there’s no power.

They also can’t compete with current cheap electric rates. As for hydrogen power, Matt Horne notes that, “With the technology available today most hydrogen is taken from natural gas, so it still requires use of fossil fuels and produces greenhouse gases. That’s not sustainable.” The alternative, he says, “is to extract it [from water] using electrolysis, but that is very costly and to date no-one has come even close to producing hydrogen in a zero-emission system that can compete with other energy options.”

What about the nuclear option?

Nuclear energy relies on the mining of uranium, a non-renewable resource, but that uranium could be converted into plutonium (the same material used in the creation of nuclear bombs), exponentially increasing the supply of nuclear fuel to almost infinite levels.

The production and output of nuclear energy is also much more efficient than traditional fossil-fuelled energy, on a scale Cambridge physics professor David J.C. MacKay says is massive: “The amounts of fuel and waste that must be dealt with at a nuclear reactor can be up to one million times smaller than the amounts of fuel and waste at an equivalent fossil-fuel power station.” MacKay also points out the average Briton produces 30 kilograms of carbon dioxide a day from conventional sources; the same amount of nuclear energy consumed would produce a mere two grams of waste.

But, while the amount of waste is small, it remains a dangerous toxic substance with a shelf life of thousands of years. In his online book Sustainable Energy - without the hot air, MacKay notes that most of the world’s uranium supply is buried deep beneath the oceans and extremely difficult - and costly - to get to.

Even if nuclear energy were a truly renewable clean source of energy, BC’s energy plan also states unequivocally: “No nuclear power.” While it might be more efficient at meeting our energy needs than, say, coal, it carries significant risks associated with any failure of the reactor, and is far from emissions-free.

Mark Winfield, director of the Pembina Institute’s environmental governance portfolio, says that each stage of the nuclear energy production process, from uranium mining to plant operation, is fraught with potential environmental problems, adding that existing Canadian plants have had routine accidental releases of radionuclides, classified by Health Canada and Environment Canada as toxic substances.

“Significant releases of hazardous air pollutants, radionuclides and smog and acid rain-causing pollutants occur throughout the process of mining and producing uranium fuel,” says Winfield, “and greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, are produced during the construction of reactors, as a result of the operation of equipment in the uranium mining process, the milling of uranium ore, mill tailings management activities, refining and conversion operations and the transportation of uranium between milling, refining and conversion facilities and transportation required in the management of radioactive waste.”

Besides the estimated $11 billion-a-pop construction cost of a nuclear plant today, Winfield points out the costs of cleanup of an accident could run into the trillions of dollars.

And he questions the reliability of nuclear energy: “The Ontario CANDU reactor fleet, for example, has been subject to severe performance and reliability problems. Some Ontario facilities have had average operating capacities below 40 percent rather than the expected 85 to 90 percent range. Reactors expected to have operational lifetimes of 40 years have turned out to require major refurbishments after 25 years of service.

Refurbishment projects themselves have run seriously over budget and behind schedule.”

In other words, don’t count on nuclear energy being the solution to renewable energy’s challenges.

The conversation we’re not having

Jeff Vail is a Colorado-based lawyer specializing in global energy infrastructure. Vail has undertaken extensive analysis of the net energy return on renewable sources of energy. He says this is a “critical measure of whether it is possible to transition on a large scale from a fossil fuel powered economy to one based on renewable energy, or whether a global ‘powerdown’ is inevitable.” If it is not realistic for society to make the transition, says Vail firmly, “then we must not waste what little surplus energy we have on a fools’ errand.”

Vail has concluded that the hype about the energy return on renewables (for example, that wind farms will pay back the energy required to build them within as little as one year) is significantly over-estimated. “I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that energy return on energy invested (EROEI) figures are more likely to be marketing copy intended to secure venture capital than the result of rigorous inquiry,” he says wryly. He uses wind again as an example. “If it’s so efficient,” he asks rhetorically, “why haven’t we already made the transition of the vast majority of our energy base to wind?”

Both Vail and Michael M’Gonigle feel we should be focussing efforts on powering down instead of maintaining our addiction to energy by looking for other sources. Says M’Gonigle, “There’s a place for renewable energy here, but looking for a technical fix to our problems is a typical 21st century distraction from the real issue. The renewable energy folks aren’t being realistic. Where is the discussion of seriously reducing energy demand for the long term?”

Our role in the equation

Vancouver lawyer Cheryl Slusarchuk is chair of the Climate Action Team, created by the provincial government in 2007. Slusarchuk says there is still time to avoid the worst impacts of global warming if we take strong action now: “It’s imperative that [we] begin to prepare for the realities of a global low-carbon economy as soon as possible.”

But she also says: “Our daily habits - as consumers and as members of communities—will have to change, [and] changing our ways is never easy. What we are driving at now is the largest and most significant shift in public attitudes ever.

We are attempting to alter, in the span of just a few years, behaviours that have been entrenched for generations.”

Matt Horne of the Pembina Institute agrees that a fundamental change has to take place. “We’re not even close to making the changes required from what are now slowly declining energy sources to steeply declining ones,” says Horne. Horter and M’Gonigle add that despite all the warning bells, a conversation about a transition away from fossil fuels is simply not occurring.

Horter says bluntly: “That requires sacrifice and neither the public nor politicians want to know about that.” M’Gonigle agrees: “We need an immediate and open discourse on changing to a conservation culture, including the hard facts.

But it’s not politically acceptable to send that kind of negative message. People don’t want to know the hard facts. They’ll just flip the channel if they don’t like what they hear. So politicians keep saying, ‘yes, we can’ instead of ‘no, we can’t,’ and the exact opposite of what needs to occur is happening.”

In denial on the big picture of out-of-control emissions and looming peak oil, we prefer to be distracted by details: fretting about banning drive-throughs in Vancouver, buying EnergyStar dryers, and arguing over the dinner table about which environmental group has their facts right about run-of-river projects and whether the carbon tax is better than cap and trade. Add the latest financial crisis into the mix, and we get even more distracted as we cross our fingers that the economy will soon recover.

Little wonder then that climate change mitigation has been far from the top of the political agenda to date. Until recently, the federal government was too busy fighting international agreements on emissions caps and bailing out failing auto manufacturers to consider anything beyond a token energy conservation strategy - a strategy that has been derided by the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change.

But the United States has upped the ante with the Waxman-Markey bill and Canada is under pressure to follow suit, as its agreement to the G8 targets demonstrates. As far back as May, Environment Minister Jim Prentice was forecasting emissions legislation for Canada, linking it to the American plan. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has openly admitted that Canada needs to match the US in its regulation of emissions or risk losing ground with its biggest trading partner.

All the same, there’s reason for caution. There is no concrete plan in place to back up these ambitious targets. Less than 24 hours after the G8 agreement, Prentice stated openly that the targets are aspirational and that Canada will not meet them. Industry Minister Tony Clement told newspaper reporters: “We want to do it, but in a way that ensures we don’t beggar ourselves.” In other words, if cutting emissions means slowing down economic growth, then forget it.

A plan for how to deal with energy constraints when peak oil hits also does not appear to be on the radar, for either the federal or provincial government.

The top priorities for the provincial government remain clear: aggressive industrial expansion, especially in the oil and gas sector, and the implementation of an economic stimulus package focussed on building highways and bridges.

The two faces of the provincial government

To its credit, British Columbia is the first jurisdiction in North America to introduce a carbon tax as an incentive to reduce fuel consumption. In terms of emissions mitigation, the energy plan also calls for clean electricity generation, high efficiency transportation and housing standards, best practices in resource extraction methodologies, and the establishment of a clean energy development fund.

BC Hydro’s strategic plan calls for meeting 50 percent of future electricity demand by conservation initiatives, including incentives for reducing current consumption and increasing technology efficiency, as “the first and best choice for managing the future supply gap.”

Two-tier electricity pricing has been adopted as a conservation strategy, and smart metering is on its way.

The trouble is that neither the government nor BC Hydro is working on reducing overall demand in any serious way. Jeff Rubin dismisses energy-efficiency initiatives as a “giant head-fake,” fooling people into thinking they are conserving power when they aren’t: “Efficiency just lowers the cost of what we’re using, so we simply consume more.” BC Hydro is investing millions of dollars in conservation promotion programs, but also plans to spend more than $3 billion to upgrade and expand its existing capital infrastructure to meet future demand. The David Suzuki Foundation has analyzed the likely impact of that expansion, and concluded that by 2015 emissions from electricity generation in BC will increase from 600,000 tonnes annually in 1990 to nearly 6 million tonnes.

As for the provincial government’s energy strategies, in 2004 energy policy analyst Dale Marshall wrote a damning report called Running on Empty. “BC’s energy sector is fundamentally unsustainable,” wrote Marshall. “We are giving up long term security to achieve short term goals. We have no plan for when oil and gas resources run out.”

Nothing appears to have changed in the last five years. The carbon tax has been criticized as grossly inadequate. The $25 million clean energy fund represents a fraction of the more than $300 million dollars the government is pouring into oil and gas subsidies (perhaps an indication that the government has no more faith in renewable technology than James Kunstler).

Running on Empty also points out that the plan contains many inconsistencies and contradictions.

“For example, it calls for a climate change plan that addresses greenhouse gas emissions, but that’s impossible when the province’s stated goals are to double oil and gas production. That puts in question the real motives of the provincial government,” wrote Marshall.

Matt Horne says that in 2009 there continue to be huge contradictions in BC’s approach. “There is no plan on how expansion of natural gas extraction fits with climate change mitigation, for example. It’s completely irresponsible on the part of the government.”

The contradictions go on from there: The government is supporting a trans-provincial pipeline to carry oil extracted from the Alberta tar sands to the west coast. The government wants a “thriving” offshore oil and gas industry up and running by 2010. Funding is being provided to research the economic viability of creating a new petroleum refinery and establishing a petrochemical industry in the province, and to foster the development of unconventional sources such as tight gas and coal bed methane. In late June, Energy Minister Blair Lekstrom announced that the province had sold an unexpectedly high number of new drilling licences, telling the newspapers: “We’re very happy.”

BC’s Energy Plan calls for zero emissions from coal-fired plants in BC, but it’s another empty goal in the face of statistics on BC’s coal production and its export volumes to countries like China, where no such constraints exist. Natural Resources Canada notes that more than 80 percent of Canada’s annual production of 70 million tonnes of coal comes from BC and Alberta.

More than 40 percent of that is exported: the Pembina Institute estimates that BC’s exported coal is responsible for 60 million tonnes of emissions annually. Notwithstanding such damning facts, the provincial government continues to actively support expansion of coal mining.

Such contradictions aren’t difficult to understand from a political perspective: in this culture, restricting access to cheap electricity, oil and gas is tantamount to political suicide.

Guy Dauncey, president of the BC Sustainable Energy Association, says he would prefer to see the government’s plan containing zero support for the oil and gas sector. “But you have to be realistic. The voter base is prioritizing health, education and roads over climate change and no government is going to risk losing billions of dollars in revenue from the oil and gas sector to pay for those things.” The same is true of the billions of dollars of revenue produced by the coal industry.

Raising prices to reduce consumption - the premise behind the carbon tax and BC Hydro’s two-tier pricing system - is also politically dicey. Raise them too high and you incur rates shock, followed by losing the next election. “Having said that, part of the problem in BC leading to our excessive consumption is we have some of the cheapest power in the world,” says Dauncey, who thinks the carbon tax should be significantly increased.

But Will Horter says that while price signals are good for reduction they don’t work when you need to reduce something effectively to zero, which is what’s required. “What you need for that is heavy regulation.” Matt Horne agrees: “Governments need to get comfortable with taking a role in constraining consumer activity. We absolutely need much stronger regulation around efficiency and conservation.”

In other words, it’s time for government to get tough. At the very least, it’s time to make some priority-shifting decisions: for the same amount of tax money used to bail out the Canadian automobile manufacturing industry, for instance, the federal government could have installed high-efficiency on-demand hot water heaters in every home in the country.

What needs to happen?

Michael M’Gonigle says we need to fundamentally change our carbon-based economy: “We need to make the economy based around walkable cities, public transportation and regional organic food production that doesn’t rely on petroleum-based fertilizers and long-distance truck delivery. We need to think about growing into an eco-economy instead of the kind of industrial growth we seem to think is so essential.”

M’Gonigle is enthusiastic about the potential that represents: “It opens up great possibilities,” he says. We don’t need to keep thinking in terms of fossil-fuelled economic growth, which is ultimately going to fail: “Call it the strategy of ‘growing into no growth.’

Instead of electric cars, for example, why not talk about how to build car-free cities? 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?”

But it’s a long leap to get to that point. Horter thinks that individuals need to join forces in getting government to start doing what needs to be done. The key strategy is to start having the conversation: “There’s huge collective power when you get people together to communicate this way.”

Horter says the Dogwood Initiative has tried to simplify its strategy into three approaches.

“First, let’s stop making it worse. Tell the government to stop subsidizing the oil and gas sector. Tell it not to lift the moratorium on offshore oil and gas exploration. Tell it to stop sending coal tankers to China. These steps are very tangible and easy to understand.”

Next, says Horter, the government needs to do its turn, and make individuals mitigate their existing footprint. Initiatives like BC Hydro’s Power Smart program fit here, as does increasing the efficiency of appliances, vehicles and buildings and investing in the liveable city concept. But far more could be done, including massively expanding the public transportation network, especially rail, and supporting regional organic food production. Regulation needs to be the dominant part of the equation. “Let’s undertake subsidized energy retrofits for existing buildings, carbon-zero codes for new construction, large investments in public transportation and tiered pricing for energy that really rewards conservation.”

Third and last, says Horter, by all means let’s look at renewable energy sources and where they can fit in. But, like Kunstler and Vail, that place will be in a “greatly reduced demand model.”

The problem is, of course, we in Canada have become overly dependent on cheap energy to support our way of life. Neither environmentally nor economically sustainable, some sort of crisis is looming on the horizon. While there may still be time to avert it, mostly we’ve been sitting on our hands instead of preparing for the future.

“There are many things we could be doing to make the transition to an energy-constrained future easier,” says Matt Horne. “We need to do it, because we are facing a crisis. I just hope an impending crisis is sufficient to make people make the changes necessary. If an actual crisis occurs, it is going to be too late.”

- Katherine Palmer Gordon is an award-winning author and freelance writer. Her best-selling fourth book, The Garden That You Are (Sono Nis Press, 2007) explores the culture of gardeners, the importance of growing food, and what connects each of us to our place on the Earth.

http://www.focusonline.ca