Yet unlike with religious days of observance there is a real hell, a stiff and ultimate price to pay by ignoring the environment. One example of this chilling fact is the Canadian Medical Association's 2008 report No Breathing Room: National Illness Costs of Air Pollution that revealed that many as 21,000 Canadians will have died prematurely that year alone from air pollution, with some 3,000 from acute, short-term exposure. That number will escalate to almost 90,000 by 2031. The financial costs? A staggering $8 billion in 2008, leaping to having accumulated over $250 billion by 2031.
And that's in Canada: a country with 34 million residents or 1/9th the U.S's 309 million population. Do the math from the above statistics and you begin to wonder how come we are killing each other this way and at what cost?
Scarier still, those figures are for airborne pollutants alone. There are then illnesses and deaths, at enormous costs from fouled water and solid waste. Urban sprawl is an insidious contributor to all three. It promotes high auto use and autos are both directly through burning fuels and indirectly via road construction and maintenance and from fuel extraction, refining and transportation big air, water and land pollution sources. Human and pet liquid and solid waste, garbage (like e-waste) and lawn fertilizer and pesticides make for toxic stews. Factor on top of these impacts the climate-changing heat islands, fouling freshwater sources (and requiring dangerous chlorine for purification) added erosion and flooding and the costs of pollution literally shoot into the sky.
The environment, to use the famous quote of economists "ain't a free lunch." Unfortunately right now there are few mechanisms that make polluters pay for the meal. Nothing to prod someone from thinking twice about building and buying sprawling offices and houses on wetlands, served by hulking SUVs, chucking out enormous amounts of trash yet whose acts require the rest of us to pay for the damage--including with our lives and that of our loved ones.
If we truly want to make Earth Day and Earth Week significant--and actionable--then we need to devise polluter (and sprawler)-pay laws and offset that by lower general taxes resulting from less expense-creating waste, i.e. enabling the power of the marketplace to efficiently allocate resources. The more you crap up the air, land and water the bigger the bill. If you want to reduce the costs then find new solutions that enable you to do just that. Can it be any fairer?
Yes, there will be higher costs, such as gas prices and house and lease prices will go up, but roads, office parks and single-family housing has been subsidized for years, at the expense of more efficient rail, city center offices and multifamily homes, thereby distorting the real estate and transportation marketplaces. So why should the rest of us have to fork over our money, directly and indirectly, leading to injuries and premature and painful deaths, for others to "enjoy" these choices?
We can no longer afford to treat Earth Day/Earth Week like an article of faith: if we hope to have a future for ourselves and for future generations.
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The only way people and organizations will truly go green, and saving the earth and in turn boosting the market for green products and practices is by making them i.e. us pay the full costs i.e. environmental and related healthcare and other expenses for the damage we incur both directly and indirectly and add that to the prices of what we buy.
And then let the marketplace works its magic to efficiently allocate resources...
In other words if you want to telecommute from an insulated-up-the tailfeathers townhouse that relies on solar energy for cooling and heating, supplemented by fans and hot-water bottles respectively...and if you want to drive a tank to your office park from a mansion whose A/C is at 60 and the heat at 75...both of which is your right...then you pay accordingly for the Earth you use. What can be fairer, and more effective?
In a letter I recently wrote to a top Metro Vancouver, B.C. planning official I explored 'full cost analysis' (FCA) to enable such a pricing system for transportation, land use and municipal services. I cited evidence such as:
(a) The Canadian Medical Association report, No Breathing Room: National Illness Costs of Air Pollution which reports that the economic costs of air pollution in 2008 will top $8 billion. By 2031, they will have accumulated to over $250 billion. Vehicle emissions account for 1/3 that
(b) A Smartrisk report that says almost 3,000 people die and another 200,000 are injured every year in road crashes in Canada. Transportation injuries (chiefly motor vehicle accidents) cost $3.7 billion directly and indirectly in 2004
(c) The David Suzuki Foundation estimates that the impacts in erosion, loss of wildlife habitat, and degraded water quality when such land is paved over range per hectare/year from $12,000 for farmland to $30,000 for wetland
(d) The C.D. Howe Institute calculation that development costs over the next 25 years in the Greater Toronto Area (road, sewer, water networks) under sprawl would reach $55 billion, plus $14 billion in operating expenditures whereas with compact development the same pricetag is: $42.8 billion (or 22 percent less)
(e) Fiscal Cost of Sprawl: How Sprawl Contributes to Local Governments' Budget Woes, by Environment Colorado Research and Policy Center, research by Colorado State University, published 2003 calculated that for $1 in revenues from sprawl, $1.65 is spent in service expenditures
These costs are not assigned, I said, which distorts commercial and residential real estate markets and municipal finances. If they were, builders and buyers would develop and locate smarter and municipalities would not have to 'outsprawl' each other in trying to attract commercial development especially.
I suggested that Metro Vancouver undertake a study into applying FCA. Here are some suggestions that I had presented:
(a) Employer and college/post-secondary institution user-taxes based on the size of footprint i.e. land and transportation mode choice of employees and students, with allowance for brownfield i.e. existing serviced excluding just-built [past 15 years, to reflect commercial payback periods] /build-to-suit properties on formerly open space.
In this transportation mode costs would be assigned on the basis of the average capital, upkeep and impact cost of each mode used by employees/students either actual (X per km [miles] multiplied by number of kms [miles] commuted) or the average distance commuted by each mode in the municipalities the businesses or schools located in.
In exchange for this shift to a user-pay system commercial taxes would be reduced. Employers and schools would be incentivized to locate on high-transit-frequency routes, employ telework, densify and stay in and make better use of present buildings. The dividend is cleaner air, less traffic, fewer accidents, more open space and lower total costs to businesses and schools, enabling them to be more competitive and to offer more.
(b) 'Service fees' imposed on new build/just-built commercial and residential property based on their initial and ongoing direct and indirect environmental and services costs and gradually extended to existing properties. In other words treat land user like other service: sewer/water and garbage. Garbage fees should rise to reflect the total environmental (including transportation and their related costs) of handling it.
In exchange residential property taxes would be lowered and business taxes cut. The net effect would be increased densification and brownfield redevelopment. More retail businesses would be attracted to downtowns and town centres while existing retail space and industrial lands would be redeveloped. There would be a shift to apartments and townhouses both owner-and tenant-occupied. Going to a user-pay system will result in keeping more money in the pockets of owners.
Yes, businesses, and influential groups and citizens will squawk with a marketplace-based full cost approach, citing all matter of damage to their livelihoods. Tough. Why should the rest of us subsidize your enterprise and your practices and your lifestyle on our dime? If you can't afford to do it, change, live without or go kaput. No one forced you to go into business or use those methods or select the housing, appliances and transportation methods that you've used.
Yet the absence of the full-cost approach has forced others to follow suit, such as by making publicly-subsidized sprawl and car use the dominant housing and mobility means, and landfilling and dumping rather than recycling the chief means of handling waste.
It will take courage to go full-cost. Yet in view of increasing environmental costs, healthcare expenses and climate change we don't have an alternative if we are to survive as a species.
]]>And in anticipation of the latter, on British Airways (BA), Tandberg has wisely capitalized the opportunity to market its videoconferencing and telepresence solutions by offering TANDBERG FlyFree, a program that gives companies an easy and risk-free way of experiencing the power of high-definition video conferencing and telepresence.
By adopting Tandberg's technology, it says employees "can still make critical meetings, avoid unnecessary business travel and benefit from a better work-life balance by working around personal schedules. In turn, the technology can deliver serious business advantages and consistent return on investment, regardless of the BA strikes, as well as help companies make great CO2, time and cost savings."
"Businesses cannot afford to be slowed down by the impact of international travel disruption, especially at this time when continuity is so critical to success," says Simon Egan, Vice President, Western Europe & Sub-Saharan Africa, Tandberg. "By accepting our FlyFree offer, businesses can still make important face-to-face meetings while maintaining productivity among employees. Our standards based solutions enable our customers to communicate with their partners, clients and suppliers so its business as usual even when working conditions are disrupted."
Tandberg is onto something here. It should have similar offers with the green pitches launched in key seasons when North American air travel reliability goes into the toilet, like July-August and December-February and in specific markets like Atlanta, Chicago and New York/New Jersey. It should also buy billboard and monitor space in waiting lounges at LAX, Logan, Kennedy, O'Hare and in Canada, Pearson, to name a few, with images of relaxed business people in a meeting room or better yet on a home office desktop conference application with the catchline: 'Wouldn't You Rather Be Here?" The firm should also buy outside advertising on the Harbor Freeway, I-93, the Van Wyck, I-94 and the 401 respectively with the same message.
If more people went 'fly free' we could also breathe a little easier, and in more ways than one.
My wife and I live in the Metro Vancouver. We park-and-rode into the downtown yesterday to get a feel of the crowds, the activities and the excitement just before the Opening Ceremonies on Friday. One of our stops was at the big downtown Hudson's Bay department store that had a half a floor dedicated to Olympics merchandise; 'The Bay' is a sponsor. I saw a Vancouver 2010 umbrella and cracked to my wife "you'll need this on Cypress" and she laughed. With even more rain and high temperatures forecast this weekend spectators and the athletes' retinues will need them.
The Orange County Register has called it right with a Feb.8/9 story 'Global warming a threat for the Olympics?'
"One morning last week, environmentalist David Suzuki looked across English Bay from his Vancouver home to Cypress Mountain, usually covered in snow this time of year but now left all but bare by a warm winter.
"I've watched in horror as the snow has just melted away from Cypress Mountain," Suzuki said, referring to the 2010 Olympic Games snowboarding and freestyle skiing venue.
"The view from Vancouver, Suzuki and others say, provides a glimpse into the future for the Winter Olympics.
"It's certainly an early warning sign and I think and a wake up call to the Olympic movement," said Ian Bruce,
"Global warming has placed the future of the Winter Olympics and winter sports from the Sierras to the Alps in peril, according to interviews with environmental scientists, Olympic officials, historians and athletes in recent weeks.
"As the 2010 Olympic Games open this week in Vancouver and Whistler, there is a growing concern within the Olympic and environmental movements that the Winter Games are in jeopardy of being significantly diminished if not eliminated all together by climate change.
"The tenuousness of the Winter Olympics has become increasingly more obvious with global warming," said Derick L. Hulme, an Olympic historian at Michigan's Alma College. "It (the International Olympic Committee) should be very concerned about the Winter Olympics. I think many people look out 20, 30 years from now and are concerned about whether the Winter Olympics will still be viable."
The culprits are in the mirrors. The SUVs, the monster homes, sprawling subdivisions, the office parks, big box stores, and expressways we drive and select and with this the destruction of farmland, forests, open space and wetlands and the air, water and land that we depend on. The treating of the environment as a free lunch whose price is now becoming due but no one wants to pay, and the amount owed is climbing rapidly.
Ultimately the human species, as well as that of every other life form is doomed, as is our planet and solar system and the universe. There is the fatalism that 'in the long run we're all dead' that has created greenlighted wanton materialist, environment-be-d**ned attitude as evidenced in the bumper sticker 'The one who dies with the most toys wins'. The Algeria-born French philosopher Albert Camus summed it up nicely: "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide" and we're quickly collectively doing in ourselves before the sun going red giant, the collision between the Milky Way with Andromeda and heat death does us in.
So is there a reason to go green, to try and save the planet, when ultimately it is a futile exercise? The answer lies whether each of us has a reason to go on living, or to kill oneself, as Camus posits. We can decide not to look after ourselves and choose to ingest dangerous substances to oblivion too.
My attitude is that each of us are born without being asked into this world, a gift as it were, and we have an obligation to repay the givers if you like by making the best of it in the brief times we are here. Like Zen art just because life, like the planet and the cosmos is not permanent does not mean it is not worth while to create and maintain for it has a unique beauty that is to be cherished for that instant there is.
And that means looking after ourselves and our planet.
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And in contrast the East Coast has been hit with rainy weather that is the norm here, except that the rains are harder. I joked in an e-mail to someone there about shipping umbrellas from my part of the world.
Then again I and others shouldn't be surprised that this is happening. When you or let greedmongerers mine the forests, pave open land and wetlands to plant sprawling homes and 'office parks' that you then buy or lease, and you pour tons of emissions into the atmosphere from vehicle, power plant, and factory exhausts, you wouldn't think there would be consequences?
To quote Walt Kelly, creator of the brilliant, incisive comic or more accurately commentary strip Pogo: "we have met the enemy and he is us."
The solution lies in the words of late pop star Michael Jackson in certainly my favorite song of his in, "the man in the mirror".
One can't do much better than what Mr. Jackson recommended, to change your ways to "make the World A Better Place".
Here's how:
--Don't buy homes or lease property on new subdivisions or office park unless they are re-uses of brownfield sites. Buying only encourages more sprawl.
Instead purchase/rent and renovate i.e. reuse existing space. And when doing so use the latest green methods for energy conservation
--Locate on well-used transit routes, where there are sidewalks and paths, and where there is excellent broadband connectivity
--Demand and vote for elected officials who not only promise but do act green. For insurance find out who contributes to their campaign sto discover who really has their ears.
--Take transit, cycle, walk, telework and enable and encourage your staff to do likewise. Charge them for parking to get the message
--Take buses, trains, and video/web conference instead of driving and flying, fly only for medium to long distances, and when flying access airports on mass transit. If you are in coastal areas walk-on--not drive--when using ferries
--When driving drive used, lifecycle-economical in vehicles made to last, and get the most out of every trip
Enjoy the weekend
And for the most part it is a beautiful one that, still worth waxing poetic about, but which I will leave to more accomplished scribes except to say everyone should travel by land from coast to coast at least once in their lives.
The sights that one is familiar with only on screen come alive when you are surrounded it by them...the spectacular architecture of Chicago: its downtown and its neighborhoods, the rugged scenery amidst the charming-in-their-own-right tourist traps around the Wisconsin Dells...the Rhine-like setting of the Mississippi Valley...the wide open spaces in central South Dakota...the amazing transition from grasslands to lush forests west of Rapid City in the Black Hills...and how the Rockies loom above the barren mounds west of Gillette, Wyoming...
There are amidst this green shoots: downtown revitalization in Port Huron, an amazingly high quality South Shore Railroad electric commuter/former interurban line, and the endless fields of wind turbines fenced in by HV lines parallel to I-90 in southern Minnesota, though in the case of the latter on can understand the visual pollution concerns (though my wife calls them beautiful).
Yet there is also endless (and mindless) low-density car-friendly but walking/cycling/transit hostile sprawl stretching out west of Toronto, southern Michigan, and Chicago amidst huge swaths of already-serviced vacant industrial land and rundown cities and neighborhoods. There is sadly more greenwash than green.
Why would anyone in their right mind allow building on greenfields amidst a housing and commercial market glut, when homeowners are desperate to sell and businesses want to get out from under leases other than small-minded greed amongst local politicians and their developer campaign contributors, is beyond common sense.
There is nothing wrong per se in living in large homes on treeless lots and locating businesses in 'office parks' and 'power centers'. It is that this development has been getting free ride on the environment, land use, and transportation, which distorts the residential and commercial real estate marketplace and fosters waste and destruction whose pricetag that has to be paid by all of us.
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The Canadian Medical Association released a literally devastating report earlier this month titled: "No Breathing Room: National Illness Costs of Air Pollution" that bears out the brilliance, prescience, and unfortunate timelessness of Mr. Lehrer's musical satire.
The contents should make you gasp, think about saving energy, think again about locating in car-oriented 'greenfields' no matter 'green' the buildings are, ...and consider instead strategies like teleworking and situating offices and homes in higher-density, walkable, transit-accessible, and healthier truly green communities.
Among the key and very disturbing data:
* In 2008, 21,000 Canadians will die from the effects of air pollution. While most of these deaths will be due to chronic exposure over a number of years, 2,682 will be the result of acute short term exposure
* By 2031, almost 90,000 people will have died from the acute effects of air pollution. The number of deaths due to long-term exposure to air pollution will be 710,000
* The number of premature deaths associated with chronic exposure to air pollution is expected to rise 83 percent between 2008 and 2031
* In 2008, almost 11,000 hospital admissions will result from exposure to air pollution
By 2031, close to 18,000 people will be admitted because of air pollution: a 62 percent increase during that period
* Over 92,000 emergency department visits associated with air pollution exposure are expected in 2008 increasing to nearly 152,000 by 2031
* It is estimated that there will be over 620,000 doctor's office visits in 2008 because of air pollution. This total is expected to rise to over 940,000 visits in 2031 if air quality does not improve.
With these impacts there are huge pricetags: The economic costs: healthcare expenses, loss of productivity and destruction of quality of life resulting from air pollution will top $8 billion in 2008. By 2031, they will have accumulated to over $250 billion.
The numbers get uglier when translated to the US by multiplying by 10 to reflect Canada's smaller population. US employers can apply on top of that about 70 percent of the healthcare losses to their bottom lines given Canada's taxpayer-supported medical systems.
So who is the key culprit of air pollution, and the resulting medical visits and deaths? Look no further than your parking lot.
Private vehicles account for over 60 percent of air pollution from transportation sources, and a significant share of total emissions.
To illustrate, a report published by Hydro-Quebec, the province's electric utility, compared greenhouse gases from different transportation modes. A single-occupant--and most commuting trips are just that despite futile efforts to get people to carpool--SUV pumps out 405 grams per passenger-kilometre while a compact car releases 214 grams per passenger-km.
In contrast, even a half-full diesel bus spews out 56 grams. An electric light rail or subway car is responsible for much less, even zero if the electricity is derived solely from renewable sources such as hydroelectric dams, solar, and wind.
These reports understate the emissions because they do not take into account the pollution created from road construction and maintenance, and from delays caused by the work, no matter how fuel efficient some vehicles may be.
The heavier cars and truck are the more road capacity and wear-and-tear on pavement and surfaces they incur, requiring more trucks and equipment to repair this infrastructure. Rail vehicles, because they have a lower friction coefficient that cuts energy demand, causes less wear-and-tear, and delays are more easily managed because trains operate in a controlled environment.
There is another set of health kickers: one that makes locating in 'greenfield' commercial and housing developments deadly, no matter how 'LEEDing edge' they are in energy consumption...and these are accident rates and lifestyle illnesses and deaths resulting from car-oriented sprawl.
* A research review by the Ontario College of Family Physicians demonstrated that suburban areas have a higher incidence of cardiovascular and lung diseases including asthma in children, cancer, obesity, diabetes, traffic injuries and deaths.
The report concluded that air pollution, gridlock, traffic accidents, lack of physical activity, and negative social impacts such as road rage lead to a variety of these health problems
* A study in The American Journal of Health Promotion and the American Journal of Public Health reported that Americans living in sprawling developments are 6 lbs heavier and are at greater risk for diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure
* The nonprofit group Smartrisk reported in 2006 that motor vehicle collisions were the second most costly source of injuries in Ontario, at more than $1.1 billion
* Todd Litman, of the Victoria Transport Policy Institute reported that the number of traffic fatalities were 26.3 per 100,000 people in the most sprawled cities as compared with just 5.6 per 100,000 in the least sprawled metropolitan areas
Such data makes the decision to locate even green office buildings in sprawl, surrounded by acres of free parking even more unsustainable healthwise as well as for other environmental plus energy and traffic congestion reasons.
A brilliant recent article in The Montreal Gazette pointed out this contradiction between green PR and environmental reality, which the less charitable brand as 'greenwash'.
The story cited as one example Bell Canada's new campus-- the first new project in Montreal to follow green building LEED principles...
...which is located in a traffic hotspot, in a remote communitywise part of the city and a long way from the famed Metro underground and expanding commuter rail network...and has plenty of parking: 2,050 spaces or 1 for every 2 employees. Even though private vehicles generate 1/3 of the province's greenhouse gases.
"That's not so green," wrote Henry Aubin about the Bell project. "To get serious about global warming means building real estate projects that are not so dependent on car travel."
The same goes for getting serious about improving our health and controlling healthcare costs...
A 'green' building surrounded by a huge car-packed parking lot and a 'green house' on a cul-de-sac with a couple of SUVs in the driveway are the environmental equivalent of the fitness fanatic who jogs to the store to buy a pack of cigarettes.
For no matter how energy efficient these structures are the gains don't fully compensate for the environmental losses caused by (a) perpetuating transportation patterns that favor the private automobile, which consumes more resources and emits more pollutants both directly and indirectly than any other mode and (b) the loss of oxygen-generation, water supply, erosion control, food production capacity and other life-giving benefits when land is paved over.
That's why I placed single quotes around 'office parks' because their environmental consequences contradict what real parks should be about and that is rejuvenating one's own health rather than painting a pretty picture, like the billboards that hide the destruction in the film Brazil.
Both 'office parks' and their residential counterparts by their location and low-density design make transportation access by means other than the private automobile impractical and expensive to provide. While main line transit routes serving downtowns and high-density residential and commercial hubs do well financially, those that serve sprawling office and residential developments incur high operating costs and low demand, and are often the first to be cut during budget crunches.
The Victoria Transport Policy Institute (VTPI) based in Victoria, BC, Canada, is a leading authority on the direct and indirect costs of transportation, including land use. I've worked with VTPI's executive director Todd Litman and he knows his stuff.
For example the VTPI compared the land consumed by sprawl and compact development. For an office with 1,000 square feet and needing four parking spots, if it is sited in an 'office park' it would have an environmental footprint of 2,640 square feet while if it is placed in a three-story urban location with 1 on-street parking space it would leave a mark of just 580 square feet.
Similarly for a home with 1,250 square feet, one located in a sprawl development would have an environmental footprint of 2,580 square feet while one located in a compact urban area would consume just 1,040 square feet. http://www.vtpi.org/landuse.pdf
This last point illustrates one of the potential environmental downside of teleworking. Its benefit of reducing commuting, and emissions could be degraded if the teleworker decides to buy a larger home, like on a subdivision that once had been a field, and which removes public transit, cycling, or walking for non-commute trips.
To illustrate the total environmental impacts of sprawl especially transportation, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (Canada's better-heeled equivalent of Fannie Mae) and the Natural Resources Canada, a federal government department, published a report that shows that a family living in a low-density suburban type home in the outer suburbs emits 11,800 kilograms of CO2 annually. Instead if they lived in a medium-density inner suburban compact development they would emit just 6,100 kg, largely because public transit is more readily available. ftp://ftp.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/chic-ccdh/Research_Reports-Rapports_de_recherche/eng_bilingual/Green%20Gas%20EmissionsEN_FINAL.pdf
Therefore, if you truly want to go green in your office and home/home offices you need to:
* Select locations and buildings for offices and homes on long-existing already-serviced land including brownfields (i.e. recycle, reuse, renew), in mid-to higher-density areas, well served by transit, and with cycling and walking access. The one exception are new walkable transit-oriented developments at rail and bus stations and at ferry terminals;
* Develop and implement strategies to encourage driving alternatives i.e. no free parking, subsidized transit passes, bike rakes, and devising and expanding telework programs;
* When choosing homes for home offices maximize your existing space like basements, garages, and spare bedrooms or if not possible build a loft or an extension.
--BBR
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