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By Matthew Burrows
Georgia Straight 12/2/7/08
Original Article

VPO NOTE: VPO has been pushing for a peak oil task force for over a year, and now Councilor Andrea Reimer is answering the call. Time is short - please write in to city hall and voice support for this task force. Much of the work has already been done by the proposed members individually and is waiting to be taken off the shelf. We need to move into implementation immediately.

Mayor Gregor Robertson and Coun. Andrea Reimer are promising they will make Vancouver ready for peak oil.

“We have to address peak oil,” Robertson told the Georgia Straight at City Hall. “That’s a hard reality.…I think it could end up compounding the looming challenges we face with oil supply and an economy that’s totally dependent on cheap energy right now.”

Peak oil refers to the point at which the rate of global oil production maxes out, sending the supply of the resource into an inevitable decline.

In October, the U.K. Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security released a 43-page report entitled The Oil Crunch. The report anticipates peak-oil-related problems hitting the U.K. starting in 2011 and says the threat posed by peak oil is greater than that of terrorism.

Robertson and Reimer both say that lower oil prices don’t mean that action on peak oil should wait. Read the complete Post.

The decision on Richmond’s Garden City Lands will have far-reaching implications for agricultural lands

Wendy Holm
Special to the Sun
Original article

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Several weeks ago, the process for public comment on the Agricultural Land Reserve exclusion application for Richmond’s Garden City Lands drew to a close.

This Monday, almost two years to the day after rejecting it for the first time, an Agricultural Land Commission panel convened to re-evaluate whether this 55-hectare parcel of land in the heart of Richmond should be removed from the ALR and slated for development.

Haven’t heard about it? Doesn’t affect you? Think again. Read the complete Post.

Climate change will dramatically affect rainfall patterns in the Lower Mainland in coming years. But as Metro Vancouver engineers like Stan Woods prepare our water infrastructure for the future, will it be enough?

Michael McCarthy
Vancouver Courier
Wednesday, September 10, 2008

A heavy rain hammers down on tiny Rogers Lake. High above, a spectacular waterfall plunges hundreds of feet down from Palisades Lake at the peak of the Capilano Watershed. Far below, down at the Cleveland Dam, the floodgates stand ready to open. With late summer rains, the reservoirs are already filling, and with winter coming soon Vancouver is perched on the edge of a precipice. Global warming is changing world weather patterns in ways nobody dreamed about. Heavy storms and flash floods are sweeping the planet.

According to those in the know, Vancouver won’t escape unscathed. Our rainfall may increase as much as one-third, all of it coming down during the very wet winter months. And Vancouver’s water infrastructure isn’t prepared for the coming deluge. Read the complete Post.

Opposition to the provincial government’s Gateway Project is heating up. But it may be too late.

Michael McCarthy
Vancouver Courier
Original article
Friday, September 26, 2008

From Anthony Perl’s condo in Coal Harbour you can see small commuter planes, cruise ships, freighters loaded with containers and the Seabus trundling towards North Vancouver. At writer Richard Gilbert’s Gastown apartment, you can view the CPR yards, the West Coast Express, a helipad, tourist buses, a car rental company and heavy trucks working the port. What they all have in common is their dependence on fossil fuels, a resource rapidly escalating in price as it diminishes in supply. It’s also a resource that the B.C. government has picked as the backbone of its multi-billion dollar Gateway Project.

Perl, professor of political science and director of the urban studies program at Simon Fraser University, predicts the days of fossil-fuelled transportation are coming to an end. In his new book Transport Revolutions: Moving People and Freight without Oil, co-authored with Gilbert, Perl says that any urban planning centred around the use of fossil fuels is extremely shortsighted and bound to fail. Many other local urban planners, neighbourhood groups and activists also see Gateway as a politically motivated quick fix that is bound to have negative ramifications on the Lower Mainland in the future.

“I’m not suggesting any sort of conspiracy,” says Perl, “or that selected people are getting together in back rooms to plan this, but obviously some people stand to make an awful lot of money from building low-density, unclustered, single-family developments throughout the Fraser Valley.” Read the complete Post.

The Vancouverpeakoil.org panel discussion from July 12th is now available for download, courtest of Alex Smith at Radio Ecoshock.

The CD quality version (56 MB) is at:
http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock08/ES_080829_Show.mp3

The lower quality Lo-Fi version (mono, faster download, 14 MB) is at:
http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock08/ES_080829_Show_LoFi.mp3

There is no copyright on this work, feel free to use it as you like.

Here are excerpts from Harvey’s article today in the Vancouver Sun:

“…there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about the supply of oil. For a start, output from some of the world’s conventional fields is indeed declining…”

“…in-place resources of bitumen, oilsands and oil shale could yield roughly 10 trillion barrels or equivalent, most of it in friendly hands. However, it will be expensive to extract and process.”

“The second worrying trend is the rapid growth of oil-dependent China, India and other emerging economies, where energy demand is unlikely to decline appreciably…”

“One can’t rule out international belligerence as a culprit in the world’s oil woes. Many promising oil deposits are in hostile jurisdictions that limit, or even bar, foreign investment and activity, with the result that oil recovery, when there is any, is inefficient, intermittent and insecure. Frequent regional conflicts play havoc with oil exploration, extraction and delivery.”

“Another problem is that no one really knows the size of reserves in oil-rich states such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Russia. For instance, only Saudi officials know how much oil that country has and the estimates they make public may be fictions designed to yield political gain.”

“To complicate matters further, many countries have declared areas off-limits for oil and gas exploration and development…”

“The world economy is dependent on oil and all of us are vulnerable to disruptions in its production and delivery.”

“The price of oil is ruled by the laws of supply and demand, which are subject to geopolitical influences. Supply can be limited by cartels assigning production quotas to its members, or by boycotts or by wars. Demand can be stimulated by raising personal disposable income and depressed by a recession, as we see in the U.S. Indeed, the price of oil began to weaken as the global economy wound down and demand lessened. That’s the way markets are supposed to work. Nevertheless, it makes sense to diversify, to prepare and have on hand a full basket of energy options.”

“…there’s much to be gained by having a few more arrows in the quiver.”

The members of Vancouver Peak Oil - and all the scientists, geologists, oilmen, economists, investment bankers, urban planners, government agencies and others involved in preparing for global oil depletion - agree with all of the above, and welcome Harvey to the fold!

Barbara Yaffe, Vancouver SunPublished: Thursday, July 31, 2008

North American cities had better start adapting to a future characterized by climate change and depleting oil. Fewer parking lots. More condominiums. No more big highway upgrades. No further airport expansion. Emergency response and health care systems that can respond to the potential impacts of global warming and energy shocks.

The future is here, declares Bryn Davidson, a Vancouver engineer and architect who, with fellow planners Jonathan Frantz and Tom Lancaster, established the Dynamic Cities Project in 2005.

The project is a non-profit organization aimed at jolting designers and planners out of a torpor that has them carrying out business as usual.

To date, only the municipality of Burnaby has done any formal analysis of trends that are starting to hit North America.

A group of activists calling themselves the Vancouver Peak Oil Executive launched a petition recently urging Vancouver to strike a committee that would address the same issue.

Davidson’s Dynamic Cities Project website (www.dynamiccities.org) features a slide show detailing the ways in which climate change and declining petroleum reserves will drastically alter people’s behaviour.

Yet government planners have been fashioning civic infrastructure based on past trends.

The Pacific Gateway Strategy in B.C. — upgrading bridges, highways and road networks connecting ports, rail and the airport — is one example.

“A terrible idea,” Davidson says.

Indeed, planning documents for the $3-billion project, from 2005, predict Asia-Pacific air traffic would double at YVR by 2020. In 2008, already the outlook is quite different. Read the complete Post.

Why plague people with trash talk when they’ve got worries enough?
Derek Moscato, The Province
Monday, July 21, 2008

Forget about manicured front lawns, white picket fences and the sound of children at play. According to a growing legion of pundits and “peak oil” theorists, the tidy suburbs of today are the forsaken slums of tomorrow.

A recent article in The Atlantic Monthly by Christopher Leinberger argued that once-idyllic cul-de-sacs are about to become the domain of poverty, social disorder and physical rot.

More recently, Smart Growth B.C., the Vancouver-based not-for-profit with a focus on creating “more livable communities in British Columbia,” made the link between sprawling, auto-friendly suburbs and the grim spectre of childhood obesity.

Given sky-high gas prices, the new carbon tax and a growing number of “for sale” signs popping up in family subdivisions, there’s no doubt that B.C. suburban dwellers are facing a financial and psychological squeeze these days.

But writing them off as the doomed villains of the peak oil or global-warming stories is not only mean-spirited, it is also irresponsible.

Read the complete Post.

Michael McCarthy’ cover story Out of Gas for Friday, June 27, 2008 is a long overdue story. The issue of global oil peak has been spuriously overlooked, suppressed, ignored, and/or misunderstood for a long time.

McCarthy’s hypothesis that “EcoDensity may not be enough to save our oil-dependent society” is an understatement. EcoDensity targets middle to low-income earners and impacts in no substantial way the wealthiest of our society. The large homes in Shaughnessy are going to remain so, with relatively sparse occupancy in comparison to the density numbers EcoDensity proponents would like to see. EcoDensity principles will not apply to the wealthiest of neighbourhoods. (I’m convinced that proponents will argue the contrary.)

But EcoDensity in a world without the energy utility of petroleum will be one of the least of our social problems. By “us” I’m specifically referring to Canada and North America where we consume 25% of the world’s daily energy expenditure. Once our advantage is gone, we will plunge into a deep economic slump that will be difficult if not impossible to rectify.

There are many reasons this issue has been buried by government and media. Most importantly, the science behind oil-peak seems not only to elude the commoner, but confounds those charged with providing information. Peak Oil was not well explained by McCarthy.

Read the complete Post.