The Enviro Boys Finale

It has been two years and eleven months of blogging for Enviro Boys. This blogging experience, to which Chris FM called a “blogospheric experiment” was a real delight. Over the past two years, we have written over 480 blogs posts on topics as diverse as transportation, water policy, renewable energy, waste management, climate change, environmental politics, bottled water, and the joys of blogging itself.

When we first started this blog, it was an opportunity to share what Chris and I were learning in our classes - from environmental policy to the more theoretical concepts in resource management, economics and geography (a combination of what we studied). Sharing this material in a more accessible and engaging way was exactly what the blogosphere enabled us to do. We have written posts specifically on why we enjoy blogging as a hobby in and of itself. You can read a few here and here.

Over the years, we have had 57,000 page views from over 11 countries around the world. This includes over 15,000 views from the U.S., 14,700 from Canada, 2,300 from Germany and 1,600 from China, to name a few. It's been special for us to see readership grow across the world.

This is our last chance to thank all of our esteemed readers, followers, guest post authors and everyone else who has made this a worthwhile experience. It has been fun, memorable, and something we have enjoyed so much since our third 3rd year of undergrad. I remain grateful to this day to Chris, who approached me three years ago to ask if I was interested in joining him with this side project.

To conclude, I will leave you with two links: one is my favourite blog post that I wrote for Enviro Boys, the other is my favourite post that Chris wrote.

Please use this website as an archive of knowledge and information. The google search bar at the top of the page will allow you to search our site (internally) for the various topics we have written about over the years.You can also view all of the topics we have blogged about on the right side of page below our blog list.

My enthusiasm for blogging will continue for years to come. Indeed, I am starting a blog with a friend in January. The blog will focus on cities - their economic rise, ability to attract talented and industrious people, their impressive public transportation networks, and their role in the coming years as the world becomes more urbanized. As the blog will be written by a planning student (me) and my friend (urban geographer), it will naturally have an urban spin. Once the blog is created, it will be advertised on Facebook and Twitter.

Thank you, once again.

Tim and Chris

What is water's dollar value to the Canadian economy?

Image credit: http://blue-economy.ca/

The question above was partially answered by a research project called the Blue Economy Initiative involving a team of authors from the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation, Canadian Water Network and RBC Blue Water Project.

Among the impressive list of authors is Professor Steven Renzetti, an environmental economist and one of Canada's biggest thinkers on the economics of water. You can read a summary here, which features an interview between Water Canada and Professor Renzetti. The report finds that water is responsible for a contribution to Canada's economy of between $7.8 and $22.9 billion.

Here is an excerpt from the interview:

"We just don’t know what the value of water is in Canada today. That’s the biggest concern. We’re making decisions on public capital and infrastructure and improving water quality, but we don’t have enough information to determine whether these decisions are sound. As usual, it’s a typical academic result in that we don’t know enough and we should.

To promote dialogue about how water contributes to the economy, people need to understand the wide range of ways from which we derive benefits from it. We need to have more experience and knowledge on measuring these values so we can incorporate them into decision making and protect the resource. Another worry is that we’re falling behind. When you look at places such as the European Union and China, they have large research programs aimed at informing decision makers about biodiversity and ecosystems. Here, we have lots of scientists worrying about the chemical and physical natures of water, but we don’t know about its economical nature. It means we’re not going to make good decisions".

Read the full interview here.

Traffic congestion in the GTHA

We all know that traffic congestion is a mounting problem for the Greater Toronto Area. Alas, the traffic woes are not confined to the GTA but extend to the Hamilton Area as well. This region is known as the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area (GTHA).

While we are generally aware that traffic congestion is getting worse -- exacerbated by population growth  and a poor response in transit supply to demand -- do we really know the true costs of congestion in our urban areas? A recent article citing U of T Professor Eric Miller, offers a number of statistics and facts about the traffic congestion problem that any resident of the GTHA should know about:

"The average commute time in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area will jump by a third in 20 years without a major injection into transit, according to expert calculations."

This amounts to: "an extra 27 minutes a day, 2.25 hours more a week, 4.6 full days a year, that local commuters will spend in their cars battling congestion as the region adds an expected 2.6 million people".

"Studies have shown that GTHA congestion costs an estimated $6 billion in unrealized GDP each year. Gridlock also results in 26,000 fewer jobs created in the region".

I blogged about this topic a number of months ago discussing the importance of transit alternatives like high-speed rail to help alleviate traffic congestion on highway 401.

The article offers much more. A natural alternative is to expand transit services. Fortunately, Metrolinx, has a $50-billion, 25-year "Big Move" plan which will involve a conglomeration of 100 projects ranging from bike lanes to 1,150 kilometres of new transit lines. Eric Miller, who continues to caution that traffic congestion is a huge impediment to economic growth, thinks the Big Move is an “excellent start” but it won’t be the entire answer. The GTHA is competing with the world’s biggest metro areas — places like New York, London, Shanghai — which have very sophisticated transit systems.

To read the full story, see here.

The return of the e-waste discussion

Image credit: veracitystew.com

It has been a while since Enviro Boys has written about the topic of e-waste, or waste management more generally. Like all environmental problems, this one is complicated.

Elisabeth Rosenthal from the NY Times Green Blog reports:

"When Americans turn in their old car batteries for recycling, they probably think they are doing good for the planet. And done well, recycling batteries is certainly environmentally responsible, since lead mining and processing cause far greater emissions of carbon dioxide than extracting lead from old car batteries for re-use."

More:

"But my article from Mexico should remind us that recycling can be “green” or not, depending on how it is done. That is particularly true of electronic waste, including batteries, where one goal of the recycling process is to extract precious metals. In much of the world, recycling is a big business with ties to gangs and organized crime. That is often the case with lead battery recycling plants in Mexico, that country’s officials told me".

I wrote about this topic of couple of years ago. E-waste is electronic waste in the form of batteries, computers and other electronics that are exported from one country to another for informal recycling processes.

My quick assessment pointed to how the US has not signed the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal. Worse yet, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of the US gives the country authority and control over hazardous and toxic wastes.

E-waste is simply a part of the US's waste disposal strategy. These policies surreptitiously cover up their inherent problems, because they appear to be designed to promote E-waste but in actuality, such waste can end up countries such as Mexico (as reported by Elisabeth Rosenthal). E-waste is also a problem within southeast and east Asia causing pollution and serious ecological harm. See here for the article. While the US is guilty, I am sure Canada is just as bad but alas, the lack of transparency with its waste disposal, make it difficult to know where our car batteries end up, for example.

E-waste is a tricky problem. There have been many recommendations made to nation states on how to deal with this problem. Rosenthal concludes with:

"The government could simply ban used battery exports, as Slab Watchdog suggests. Or it could require that Mexican factories processing used batteries from the United States meet our environmental standards and undergo inspections. The Food and Drug Administration inspects foreign factories that make drugs imported into the United States. The Environmental Protection Agency could take on a similar role for battery recycling plants".

You can read the full story of recycling American car batteries in Mexico here.

Carbon emissions on the rise: a time for adaptation?

The NY Times reports that:

"Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by the largest amount on record last year, upending the notion that the brief decline during the recession might persist through the recovery".

What's more:

"Emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, according to an analysis released Sunday by the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists tracking the numbers. Scientists with the group said the increase, a half-billion extra tons of carbon pumped into the air, was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003".

Over the next few days, leaders from around the world are attending the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 7th Session of the Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties (CMP7) to the Kyoto Protocol, in Durban, South Africa. Other climate change conferences such as Copenhagen (2009) and Bali (2007) have had tremendous challenges in putting forward meaningful actions on mitigating climate emissions. Finding consensus on mitigating emissions is too difficult with the rising giants of India and China along with several developing countries.

Despite my cynicism, something positive may emerge from Durban. However, after working an internship with SFU for the past 6 months and learning about the many benefits of climate change adaptation, I feel more more inclined to support policies that address ways to respond and prepare for climate change impacts. I have blogged about this extensively. In short, adaptation is far more productive than climate change mitigation because people can begin to understand the potential impacts of climate on their lives and what sort of incentives are available to respond to this.

Matt Kahn at UCLA is famous for his work on the economics of climate change adaptation.  Take some of points with a grain of salt, but I think he's on to something that policymakers in the deveoped and developing world alike ought to pay attention to.

More on adaptation soon.

Water auctions and participatory water management

An excellent article by Abraham Abhishek on innovative ways to improve water management. Some highlights from the post:

"The Umatilla County Critical Groundwater Solutions Taskforce in Oregon, United States is a body that represents government officials, scientists and (perhaps most importantly) various communities and native tribes in the county. It was formed in response to a dual crisis - rapidly depleting groundwater, and impending conflict amongst various users in the county and neighbouring areas. The taskforce enabled water users and technocrats to work together, which resulted in comprehensive planning and effective implementation of groundwater management activities".

"the proposed water auction mechanism and the observed water management system—seem to make at least one common suggestion: that water security demands efficient water management, which should be based on decentralized decision making. All-in-auctions run counter to the more centralized processes of reallocating water rights, represented by quotas and subsidies. Umatilla-like participatory planning and outreach brings water governance a notch closer to the end users".

Full article here.

Public Perceptions on Water Issues in British Columbia

For the past two months I have been blogging for the Adaptation to Climate Change Team out of Simon Fraser University (SFU). As part of my internship with them, I have been blogging about Bob Sandford's cross-Canada tour where he has been presenting on the need for strong water governance and water policy reform in this country. Bob has been touring for almost two months now visiting the Prairies, Maritimes, Ontario, Quebec, BC, and Alberta. He is a water policy author for the Adaptation to Climate Change Team.

You can read my blog posts on the tour stops in Vancouver (summary of the presentation here, reactions from the audience here). And for Victoria (summary of the presentation here and reactions from the crowd here).

In short, the presentations in Vancouver and Victoria focused on a number of issues in water management centred on BC's Water Act Modernization Process and the exemplary water strategy in the Northwest Territories that should act as a resource for cities across the country.

Happy reading.

Edward Glaeser interviewed with The Economist

This 10 minute video is an interview with Edward Glaeser, Professor of Economics at Harvard about his book "Triumph of the City". I have made reference to Glaeser's work countless times on this blog. I read his book in the spring and blogged about it here.

If you are interested in getting a snapshot of his book, check out the interview above. At the end of the interview, he mentions how technology such as real-time information for buses is only going to make our cities more manageable, efficient and pleasant to live in. I couldn't agree more and wrote a paper on this very topic for an urban transit class which you can view here.

I think Glaeser has a number of good ideas; some are vehemently rejected by the planning community. Some are embraced. But for anyone interested in cities (from an academic perspective or other) his work is highly informative and edifying.

Canada's leadership on the environment: dwindling or non-existent?

Among many of the articles I have read of late, along with hearing from prominent Canadian scientists and environmentalists, the state of Canada's commitment to the environment is eroding very quickly. An article from the Guardian provides some cogent facts:

-Canada's Stephen Harper government is spending more than 60 billion dollars on new military jets and warships while slashing more than 200 million dollars in funding for research and monitoring of the environment

-Some 776 Environment Canada employees have been told their jobs may be terminated. That's 11 percent of the current staff in a government department that has been a favourite target for budget and staff cuts for the past decade, to the point where it was barely functional

-For 34 years, the non-partisan Canadian Environmental Network (RCEN) successfully walked the line between the needs of government and the needs of its more than 650 civil society members. But on Oct. 13, after waiting more than six months for its expected 536,000 dollars in annual funding, the group was informed by letter it would not be coming. Ever.

-If there is a need to reduce the federal budget deficit, why is Canada continuing to give the oil and gas industry 1.4 billion dollars (1.3 billion U.S.) in subsidies every year?

My intention here is not to solely seek out facts that make the federal government look bad; but instead, raise some issues that I feel are quite salient. Making cuts to environmental and climatic research in 2011 sounds absurd to me. Moreover, the continuation of subsidizing an industry -- highly destructive to ecosystems and water supplies to say the least -- will lead Canada to become the world's most heavy GHG emitter. Sounds more backwards than economically productive to me.

Juliet Schor on the politics of consumption

Juliet Schor's E. F. Schumacher Lecture from New Economics Institute on Vimeo.


Juliet Schor is Professor of Sociology at Boston College. The video above is a lecture she delivered at the Thirty-First Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures, New York City, November 5th, 2011.

Here is a summary of one of her ideas:

"2. Quality of life rather than quantity of stuff. Twenty-five years ago quality-of-life indicators began moving in an opposite direction from our measures of income, or Gross Domestic Product, a striking divergence from historic trends. Moreover, the accumulating evidence on well-being, at least its subjective measures (and to some extent objective measures, such as health), suggests that above the poverty line, income is relatively unimportant in affecting well-being. This may be because what people care about is relative, not absolute income. Or it may be because increases in output undermine precisely those factors which do yield welfare. Here I have in mind the growing worktime requirements of the market economy, and the concomitant decline in family, leisure, and community time; the adverse impacts of growth on the natural environment; and the potential link between growth and social capital".

More here.

Is local food production inefficient?

Freaknomics blog author Steve Sexton writes:

"implicit in the argument that local farming is better for the environment than industrial agriculture is an assumption that a “relocalized” food system can be just as efficient as today’s modern farming. That assumption is simply wrong. Today’s high crop yields and low costs reflect gains from specialization and trade, as well as scale and scope economies that would be forsaken under the food system that locavores endorse".

He argues that specialization and trade, economies of scale and even the health implications of local food do not make sense.

I disagree with a number of his points and feel that he has not adequately captured the local economic benefits of farmers' markets, the immense potential urban farmers have in helping contribute to our growing and vibrant cities and the educational possibilities associated with localizing our food choices. I understand he is arguing from an economics perspective but local food production is beyond just an economics discussion.  I will let my colleagues who work in this area respond to this article.

To refresh, Harvard economics professor Ed Glaeser (who I admire very much) is also against local food production. My friend wrote a critique of his article back in July which you can view here.

Read the Freakonomics article by Steve Sexton. Some of you will agree, some will disagree. This is a critical issue of our time especially as food prices continue to rise and our nations continue to urbanize.

Green lifestyle choices won’t solve the climate problem

Check out this article by Gar Lipow on why individual choices to be green may not help in the long run. He argues that sustainability is a collective affair requiring collective solutions. Further, he posits that governments (especially the U.S.) do not spend enough on public goods:

"Setting an example by doing some simple, logical things to reduce an individual environmental footprint is wonderful. But ultimately, we will not make up, through private spending or lifestyle changes, for the fact that we currently don't invest enough in public goods. Nor will we privately make up for the fact that much of our public spending is directed to the wrong public goods".

He uses the example of railways versus highways in the U.S. to illustrate his point:

"The road to our current predicament was long, and built on public policy and public investment. Take the gradual reduction of freight rail in this country, for example. We have less than half the miles of freight-rail track we had at the peak of freight-rail shipping; that is a result of a massive public investment in public highways -- which do not in fact pay for themselves [PDF]. In our system, rail pays property tax and highways don't, much of the so-called gas tax is really diverted sales tax, and railroads also pay fuel taxes but don't get fuel tax money back the way highways do".

While I agree with many of the points raised in this article, I still believe that individual actions (i.e. using less water, using public transit over driving, for example) can go a long way insofar as we have the communication channels to support these activities. Investment in public goods has been declining, no doubt, but we live in an era where communication via social media and public events can at least harness and shift those "individual actions" into a more collaborative and collective effort.

The age of information is a powerful one and the more individuals arguing for their green choices -- via the web, telling their friends and peers and sharing in schools and workplaces -- the more weight these arguments will have when presented to politicians.

Once the information sharing begins along with collectively arguing for the benefits we can indeed derive from public goods, people may become less apathetic and more vocal to their politicians. These collective efforts can demand change and lead to benefits for all.

The Gated City by Ryan Avent

For you urbanites out there, check out this podcast with Ryan Avent, author of The Gated City.

Avent's central thesis is that cities in the United States such as Boston, NYC, San Francisco and Washington D.C. are all very desirable places to live but are very expensive to live in. There are many reasons for this including limited and restrictive housing construction which drives up housing costs. Thus, they have not seen the same levels of population growth and housing stock construction as places like Houston, Las Vegas and Phoenix, for example.

Is this a bad thing? Depends on which question you are asking. Avent suggests that the coastal cities that have not seen a growing housing stock and are pricing out a lot of people (including middle class families and skilled labour). These are the people we need to keep our cities productive. As cities become more and more attractive places, demand for housing will inevitably increase.

But if housing supply does not respond to this demand, then how are they suppose to grow? And if one of our goals is to foster vibrant and productive cities by providing skilled jobs for people who cannot even afford to live there (hint hint,Vancouver) then we fail at achieving our main goal.

Avent talks about how self-interested people living in high dense and highly desirably places (like San Francisco) can fight against housing development in their neighbourhoods (classic NIMBYism) which pushes that development away to other places that are more open to housing development such as Houston. Sound familiar? It should be. Ed Glaeser discusses the environmental implications of this at length.

Some statistics and facts from the podcast:

"The median owner-occupied home in Houston in 2009 was just about $130,000 in value. And in San Jose it was over $600,000. And that just dwarfs the difference in wages. And it's not associated with the difference in construction costs. There is a difference in construction costs but it's very small relative to the premium due to the difficulty in building in those areas in the country".

"From 2001-2009, the housing stock in Boston, NY, and the Silicon Valley area, each of those, it grew by a little over 5%. And then you look at a city like Las Vegas, the housing stock grew by almost 40%. And in places like Phoenix and Charlotte it grew by 25%. So it's just a huge difference in growth in the housing stock, which really has nothing to do with demand but has entirely to do with the ease of building in those places".

There is a fascinating discussion in this podcast about city politics, urban planning, how zoning can be problematic, the consequences of distorting public policy and much more.

If you want a more condensed version of this, check out this 10 minute video via The Economist.

Here is a short review of the book.

Keystone XL Pipeline and its discontents

From the New York Times' Green blog:

"Thousands turned out on Sunday at the White House for a protest against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta some 1,700 miles to Texas. Opponents say that oil sands processing contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, and that the pipeline itself could threaten a precious aquifer".

More here from the Winnipeg Free Press.

Bicycle friendly cities

The Copenhagen Index for the World's most bike-friendly cities has been released for 2011. Here is a bit context about the index:

Image Credit: mindbodygreen.com

"Early in 2011 a discussion arose at Copenhagenize Consulting about what cities really are the best cities for urban cycling. Over a period of six months our team has gathered information and statistics and developed an index with which we could rate cities for bicycle friendliness. It was originally meant to be a tool for internal use in the company but after a period of time we realised that the index was perhaps worth releasing on the internet".

The index is based on 13 criteria including bicycle culture, infrastructure, bike facilities, bike share programs, gender split, perception and safety and more.

Amsterdam took 1st place followed by Copenhagen and Barcelona. For North American cities, Montreal took first followed by Portland. Way to go Montreal!

Here is more information about how the index was created.

David Suzuki on moving forward

Last night, I had the pleasure of hearing David Suzuki speak at a public lecture at UBC. I heard Dr. Suzuki speak four years ago at Trent when his messages then were slightly more pessimistic (and that was pre-global financial crisis).

This time around, the messages, I think, were far more positive and inspiring. I came out of the Chan Centre at UBC feeling optimistic and telling myself that as a planner, a lot of work needs to be done on the ecological, social and political front to advance sustainability in our society.

But it's not just planners that will have a role in this, it's everyone in society who has a vested interest in preserving the ecological systems that support our economies, and those who care about the welfare of future generations. It is the responsibility of everyone in society as this is a collective task. As Marshall Mcluhan put it "There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew".

Here are a few messages from Dr. Suzuki's lecture that I want to share:

1) This time around, he was highly critical of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Among many of his critiques, he focused on Harper's anti-environmental science mentality as evidenced by the downsizing of Environment Canada through laying off scientists. David thinks this is absurd given the hitherto, well established science on climate change and its impacts to Canada. We need all of the scientists we can at this point to relay the information needed to bring about policies that help Canada adapt to climate change while concomitantly mitigating our emissions.

2)  Being tough on carbon emissions means shrinking economic growth? Suzuki was particularly vocal about this one. He criticized Harper for making claims that taking action on climate change will reduce Canada's economic competitiveness. Scandinavian countries, particularly Sweden, have been very effective at cutting down emissions and growing their economy.

Suzuki made note of Sweden's introduction of a carbon tax in the 1990s which helped reduce the country's Co2 emissions by 9% below 1990 levels (thus meeting the Kyoto targets) while growing their economy by over 30%. Thus, there are examples out there of success, political will is the problem.

He argued that developed countries like Canada are so fixated and obsessed with "GDP" that we miss other important aspects of life such as belonging to a community to build relationships, going for walks to enjoy nature, getting to know our neighbours, volunteering, taking time away from work to appreciate other parts of life such as spending time with family. All of these activities are part of our human nature yet GDP does not capture them and thus they become trivial from a economic growth perspective.

3) We need to think about future generations! David was very clear on this one and I found this part of his lecture to be the most inspiring. As a 75 year old with grandchildren, he remarked that it is his grandchildren that keep him going everyday. Thinking about our future children, our future planet and the world they inherit is something that First Nations discuss through the 7 generations model. David told stories about his dad being the most important figure in his life in terms of wisdom, understanding the importance of family and thinking about the next generation.

He talked about living at his same house in Kitsilano for over 30 years and making space for his grandchildren. We need to step back and think about what we really need and want as a society. Do we really need that extra car, Iphone, large television set etc. David challenges us to think carefully about our consumption in light of succeeding generations.

4)

My only criticism of his talk was his rant about cities putting us out of touch with nature. He does have a point about how we used to be farming societies that generally lived within our means and did not consume like the urbanites we are today. However, cities are the future and whether we acknowledge this or not, they are the engines of creativity, talent, opportunity and innovation. As Jane Jacobs put it "the point of cities are multiplicity of choice".

So, I agree with David that nature is often restricted in cities and that's why we need to make more conscious efforts to preserve and promote nature within them (as done masterfully by Vancouver's Stanley Park). Losing connection to nature is what fuels consumption with completel disregard for ecological systems.

I was very happy when I left his lecture - inspired and feeling challenged on how I am going to confront these issues in my lifetime.

Here are some other links about David's life, his ideas and his leadership on such an important topic of our time.

The story of the future has yet to be told

Environmentalism's mistakes and where to go from here

On green energy

Ontario's leadership in Water Conservation

For the past month I have been blogging for the Adaptation to Climate Change Team out of Simon Fraser University (SFU). As part of my internship with them, I have been blogging about Bob Sandford's cross-Canada tour on Canadian water governance. Bob has been touring for a month now visiting the Prairies, Maritimes, Ontario and now BC. He is a water policy author for the Adaptation to Climate Change Team.

Here is the first post on Saskatchewan. Here is the latest post on Ontario.

Happy reading.

Cap and trade in California

A recent article by James Tansey from the Tyee reports that:

"The ARB (California Air Resources Board) voted unanimously on Friday to approve the final regulations that will create the second largest carbon market in the world, beginning in 2013. While the U.S. Federal government's interest in climate policy has declined, California, still the world's seventh largest economy, will implement a cap and trade scheme that represents the most significant issue in U.S. climate policy since the Kyoto Protocol".

This evidently puts pressure on British Columbia to be more committed to the Western Climate Initiative.

"While British Columbia's interest in climate policy was affirmed by the premier earlier in 2011, the government's commitment to the WCI is currently subject to an economic impacts review; often in government this kind of study is the earliest sign of a retreat from a policy position".

This bold move by California (a state that has had tremendous financial hardship through its budget crisis), marks a sense of commitment and leadership to climate policy. Whether other U.S. states follow in a time when the economy dominates every political discussion is unlikely. However, BC has and should consider its commitment to the WCI, not least for a province that ostensibly prides itself on green initiatives like the carbon tax (which I think needs to be reformed) but for a great opportunity to harness the enthusiasm from down south to move forward on climate policy.

Localizing climate change to move forward

This article by Anna Fahey summarizes how talking about climate impacts on “socially distant groups” (and probably vulnerable species like polar bears) is likely to amplify polarization about the issue. This statement is complimented by the following elaboration:

"Climate change campaigns in the United States that focus on the risks to people in foreign countries or even other regions of the U.S. are likely to inadvertently increase polarization among Americans rather than build consensus and support for policy action".

The writer offers some insights by a recent study which argues that "when information about the risks of climate change are localized, connected closely to values such as public health, and communicated in terms of co-benefits to the community, these campaign efforts are likely to be more successful at transcending ideological differences and building support for action.”

I think this piece is relevant to all discussions that pertain to climate change. Indeed, climate change is so poorly communicated and politically driven that peoples' perceptions constantly shift along political and ideological lines. This is dangerous, I think, as it does not offer citizens a chance to digest the information and to think about the issues and risks themselves and produce their own logical conclusions.

Communication in the climate change arena needs to be ameliorated. There are some positive examples within the British Columbia context of communicating the local impacts of climate change, but more needs to happen. In an era of social media, we could use YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other tools to build a dialogue about what kind of action we can take right now to help us understand and adapt to climate change. No doubt, this is already happening, but it gets diluted with political sentiment.

Planners have a role here, but so do politicians, climate scientists and our leaders.

Bill Rees on the disconnect between economics and ecology

In my first year as an undergraduate student, I took a course called Environmental Science 101. It was a fascinating and comprehensive overview of both the arts and science dimensions of the discipline (e.g. environmental toxicology, energy systems, air pollution, environmental law, politics, planning, public policy and economics, to name a few).

In the first few weeks of class, our wonderful professor exposed us to the ecological footprint analysis, a concept that was co-created by William Rees, a professor in my grad program at UBC. I studied his ecological footprint analysis in my undergrad and explained it (or attempted to) numerous times to my friends in other areas of the academy.

5 years later, I am now taking a class with Prof. Rees on ecological economics. Bill is passionate and his ecological footprint analysis has been widely used, discussed and studied all over the world. The video above is a just a taste of a professor who has done so much in arguing for the importance of ecology in our society and why planning and economic systems must account for ecological dimensions first, before we can begin to even think about sustainbility.

Bill is retiring this year from UBC and I feel quite privileged and honoured to have taken a course with him.