“Peak oil is really a metaphor for peak everything.” Rex Weyler

VancouverIAM.com is the destination for people who want to know what’s going on in Vancouver. It gives you the tools and support to become a video journalist, internet TV and film producer and an active commentator on local politics and everyday issues about life in Vancouver. Rex was recently interviewed with some great video visuals about peak oil by Ian MacKenzie.

Check out the video here

May 11, 2008By Charlie Smith

This weekend, the Globe and Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson wrote yet another column praising Premier Gordon Campbell’s carbon tax.

To Simpson, it sometimes seems that B.C.’s premier can do no wrong.

Simpson never demonstrated a great deal of interest in climate change until the past couple of years—most notably, when he hooked up with SFU professor Mark Jaccard and researcher Nic Rivers to coauthor Hot Air: Meeting Canada’s Climate Change Challenge.

The authors advocated a carbon tax, long a favourite of Jaccard, a former chairman of the British Columbia Utilities Commission.

In the mid-1990s, Jaccard promoted integrated resource planning, which means full social and environmental costing of electricity generation. More than a decade ago, Jaccard was talking about a $25 per tonne tax on carbon—which demonstrates how far ahead he was of everyone else on climate change.

Read full article here

Come and meet author, economist, activist, Mike Nickerson

Join us Sat. June 28, 2008 7pm-9pm
North Shore Unitarian Church – downstairs
370 Mathers Avenue
West Vancouver, BC V7S 1H3

Mike’s latest book, “Life, Money & Illusion: Living on Earth as if we want to stay,” outlines many practical ways for restructuring our current economic model for mutual provision to accommodate our “full” Earth. “It will take widespread popular assertion before sustainability is adopted as society’s goal.” http://www.flora.org/sustain/LMI/lmisummary.html

Join us. Admission is FREE. Everyone is welcome.

Brought to you by the team at Vancouver Peak Oil.
For further information contact: info@vancouverpeakoil.org

Projecting Change Film Festival 2008 will feature:

• Four days of film screenings
• Interactive discussions after each film by select filmmakers and industry leaders
• Special events and activities

URL: http://projectingchange.ca/

Each day’s films will focus on specific themes: Food & Agriculture, Sustainable Energy Sources, Building Methods, Consumer Goods, Kids & the Environment. Allowing for a structured and focused insight into the issues that matter.

Utopian dreams aside, the suburbs are here to stay

Vancouver architect’s futurist vision ignores population projections

Pete McMartin, Vancouver Sun

Published: Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Ah me. Suburbanites . . . we can’t get no respect.

That the deep thinkers in the inner city characterize the suburbs as sterile wastelands of wife-swapping, Hummer-driving environmental criminals is something I can live with. I don’t drive a Hummer.

That the Death of Suburbia is so accepted a fact among urbanistas that a whole literature has grown up around it I can also abide. Like Twain, I believe the reports of that death to be exaggerated, if not wishful thinking.

Full article

Summary

As usual, poorly researched commentary froths from the mouth of the cynical. Commiting the usual fraud of lumping an entire area of expertise and nuanced analysis into a condescending label of a “gloomy bunch…that believe when the tank runs dry the wheels stop turning and things get ugly — starvation, mass migration, economic collapse, fire raining down from heaven, cats and dogs living together, etc., etc.” Pigeonholed statements like, “They ignore factors like the effects of technological change, and they take a dim and pessimistic view of human nature” indicate a lack of depth and understanding of the research that has been put into the topic. Is it too much to ask to have some informed and nuanced commentary? Mr. McMartin fails to understand the distinction between long term vision/planning that may be necessary in “The new normal” and the untenable proposition of cobbling along with business as usual. Of course, if Rick had merely attempted to paint a picture of the current quagmire then he would have been criticized as an alarmist and chastised for not offering any solutions. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. My hat goes off to Rick Balfour for his tireless work all the while being compensated only by the knowledge that “its the right thing to do.”

Our very own Rick Balfour scores again in the Vancouver Sun!  Does he ever sleep?

City of Swiss-style hill villages envisioned here

Doug Ward, Vancouver Sun

Published: Tuesday, May 06, 2008

METRO VANCOUVER - Sky-high fuel and food prices will eventually make Metro Vancouver’s current planning model of suburban communities linked by gas-guzzling highways economically obsolete.

So says Vancouver architect Richard Balfour who believes the region’s future should resemble Switzerland rather than Los Angeles.

Full article here

Summary

1. Metro Vancouver should begin creating Swiss-style hill villages linked by rail rather than towns on flood plains and valleys connected by pavement.
2. strategic sustainable planning to achieve a new workable pattern of community for a post-oil age
3. oil prices are going to soar to the point where it will become too expensive for Metro Vancouver to import food from southern regions.
4. Southwest B.C.’s low-lying farmland needs to be protected and turned into a “green commons” for food production to serve nearby urban areas
5. clawback of Agricultural Land Reserve land lost in the past two decades to urban development or industry
6. migration and population shifts mean that southwest B.C. and Washington state will have to absorb about another 20 million people

Fork in the Road: Cultivating Food and Community

Friday, June 13, 7 - 10 pm & Saturday, June 14, 9:30 am - 4:30 pm
@ Langara College, 100 W 49th Ave, Vancouver

Presented by:
Langara College Continuing Studies, Be’er Necessities Sustainable Solutions, Ecovillage Vancouver, NOWBC (Neighbours Organic Weekly Buying Clubs), Salon d’Elan Vital

* Learn how to eat, buy and grow food in a just and sustainable manner
* Understand the social justice and environmental issues related to food production, distribution and accessibility
* Join with your neighbours, friends, and local groups to take positive action to create a local, sustainable, just and equitable food system
* We invite you to engage with us in a fun and evocative popular theatre experience that will illuminate the key issues in our current food system, lead to a vision of what’s possible and inspire you to make meaningful change in your community.

For further information: Ross Moster: 604-742-9881/ rmoster@flash.net Leslie Kemp: 604-323-5981/ lkemp@langara.bc.ca

Registration
Fees (include lunch)
$40 (if registered by May 15)
$50 (registration after May 15)
Register by phone: 604-323-5322
In Person:
Langara College Continuing Studies
100 W. 49 Ave, Vancouver, BC V5Y 2Z6

Start: 05/07/2008 - 18:00

End: 05/07/2008 - 21:30

Where: UBC Robson Square- room C100

Details: Dr. Sheppard will be presenting on the Local Climate Change Visioning Project, which envisions alternative climate change futures in B.C. The project uses GIS and 3D visualization to engage local experts and decision-makers in envisioning four dramatic yet defensible local climate change futures. This project probes the possibilities to bring global climate science to people’s backyards to encourage local engagement for planning for responses and to motivate individual behavioural change.

more info

Our very own Jon Cooksey has done an incredible job putting together a peak-oil road map not unlike the ‘Candyland’ board game. He is currently shooting the much anticipated documentary How to boil a Frog. The documentary is an eco-comedy that mixes rapid-fire humor and hard-hitting facts to show the consequences of “overshoot” — too many people using up too little planet — and what it means for our future. With an upfront ‘Everyman’ approach, smart writing, world-class experts, and iconoclastic humor, How to Boil a Frog gives us the scoop on the imminent end of the world as we know it and 5 surprising ways you can save civilization – while laughing along the way. Because if were not having fun….then whats the point!

Check out some of these great shorts:

What is peak oil?

Peak oil - The bigger picture

What does energy returned on energy invested mean?

Ken Gray, The Ottawa Citizen

Published: Friday, May 02, 2008

You drive past the gas station in Orléans and the sign says your fill is going for $1.22 a litre. Blame it on Russia.

The world’s largest oil producer reported that its output decreased for the first time in 10 years. It delivered one per cent less oil than a year ago.

What’s disconcerting about this little-known fact, trumpeted recently on the front page of The Wall Street Journal but getting little play elsewhere, is that the scenario unfolding in Russia is being repeated the world over. Essentially, its Siberian oil fields are aging, becoming tired, the easy-to-reach oil declining.

read rest of article here

Main points

• The world’s great oil deposits …are seeing their production diminish despite astronomical demand.
• some experts are concerned that many countries have wildly over-estimated their reserves
• T. Boone Pickens thinks oil will reach $150 a barrel.
• What does this mean to the person driving past the gas station? Higher prices. A different lifestyle, maybe a radically different lifestyle someday.
• The suburbs could be hollowed out through demographics
• Ottawans will flock to transit (already, with $1.22-a-litre gas, ridership is up as much as 6.9 per cent year over year)
• City finances will be further battered by increased ridership on buses that are heavily subsidized by the municipality.
• City council needs to realize our transportation problems are now, not in some far-off fanciful date 20, 30 or 40 years in the future.
• Electric rail must be built quickly. If not, we’re in trouble