Urb Pharm

The Harbinger

2011-05-13T15:44:00.001-07:00

Dear readers of Urb Pharm (all three of you):

The Harbinger is a new blog that I started to work in tandem with local ecology movements in Fredericton and the Green Party of New Brunswick and Canada. I am going to put the bulk of my publishing efforts into The Harbinger because it is more than just my opinion, it is coordinated with real, on the ground activist movements. However, I may still publish stuff here on Urb Pharm from time to time, when I feel like saying something that is strictly "my humble opinion" and doesn't have a place in The Harbinger.

Meanwhile, Urb Pharm, as a concept, is also becoming my personal consulting firm, as you can see from my Linked-In profile.

The Greenhouse Parliament—2018

2011-02-19T14:05:00.000-08:00

The Canadian Parliament will be moved into a greenhouse structure, attached to the original Parliament building, in 2018. They will deliberate and conduct business in the greenhouse while the old building is renovated and asbestos is removed. The Parliament is scheduled to remain there for several years while the renovations are completed. Subsequently, the greenhouse will continue to be used for committee meetings and other business.

As they deliberate in the greenhouse, MPs would watch the sun and clouds move overhead. They would listen to the thunder and patter of raindrops of a passing thunder storm. They would see the snow fall and the hear the wind blow in winter. They would see the rising of the moon as they vote in the evening. They would hear the patter of squirrels and pigeons as they run across the roof. Perhaps a sparrow or two would make its way into the glass structure and fly over their heads. MPs might take advantage of the bountiful sunlight and put potted plants on their desks. A dwarf maple tree might grace one end of the glass hall, producing living reminders of the symbol of Canada's flag.

Is it possible that by simply exposing government leaders to the power and beauty of nature as they deliberate that they might enact environmentally conscious legislation? Might they take some real, substantial action on climate change if they had daily exposure to the climate? Is it possible that being surrounded by plants and animals, trees, clouds, sun, rain and snow that they might start to think about the impact of their legislative acts on the environment? Would it become painfully clear how much they have failed to act? Would they moved by the beauty and power of nature herself to protect the earth and its people?

Perhaps it is hoping for too much, and perhaps my already greened-imagination is running away with me, but I can't help but think that this could be a model for governments in the 21st century. Instead of constructing fortresses that seal off governments from the natural environment and all its inhabitants—humans, animals and plants—we should build government greenhouses where leaders are reminded as they work every day just what it is they are charged with protecting.

8 Arms Bakery: A CSA Bakery

2011-02-06T16:34:00.000-08:00

8 Arms Community Bakery: A Community Supported Bakery

Jen Ownbey started a bakery service based on the share model of Community Supported Agriculture. Businesses and households buy shares in her bakery and receive a pre-set range of baked goods, including slicing bread, specialty bread, cookies, cakes and pies. This is a great way to expand the range of locally produced goods, and especially finished food products.

I would love to do something like this in Marysville, which is a food desert. We really lack basic staples like cereal grains and finished baked goods.

The Green Panther Movement

2011-01-31T11:17:00.001-08:00

For the last decade or so, the goal of the urban green movement has been to reduce carbon emissions and energy waste and to increase food and energy security. It has done so by establishing local gardens and food production, by undertaking energy conservation and energy retrofit programs, and by advocating for public, low-energy (bicycles) and shared transportation. This was a worthy goal in itself. However, once accomplished, the movement seemed to lack any further justification or momentum. Once you have installed your solar panels and started your community garden, there is little left to work towards. Transition Towns is a perfect example of this kind of movement. It becomes a kind of green middle class self-justification: a de-politicized, privatized, individualistic DIY response to a global economic and political problem. Years ago I called it the "Martha Stewart" answer to peak oil and global warming.

The problem with the Transition Towns-type movement is that it lacks any popular urgency. It addresses issues of energy scarcity and food security, and it address global warming, but those scarcities and issues are too distant and intermittent in developed countries. We keep waiting for the price of oil to reach some peak, after which it becomes too costly to drive a car or buy expensive consumer goods. We keep waiting for the price to go up, and it does, but never so far to the point where people feel compelled to act and change their behaviours. And then the price falls again, after some kind of market correction, and people go back to buying SUVs.

Global warming is an even more intractable problem because the most serious, irreversible effects are 50 years down the road, yet our actions today guarantee and hasten their eventuality: storms, floods, droughts, crop failure and food scarcity, and sea level rise. These are all too abstract, too intermittent or too far in the future to work as a correction on people's current behaviour.

The limits of the Transition Town-type movement quickly become apparent when one actually gets involved in organizing a Transition group. There is a period of a year or so when people get really excited and ready for action. During this year people go through a period of intense self-education where they learn about these issues and their impacts. There may be a period of extreme anxiety or even existential fear: we really have wrecked the planet and we really are going to lack the energy required to run this crazy, over-heated civilization. That sort of urgency is enough to get people started on a number of projects: the local gardens, the waste recycling, the energy conservation and retrofitting, the walking busses, the bicycle lanes and ride-share programs. But then something happens: the movement starts to lose steam. Once it becomes clear how difficult and expensive it is to retrofit buildings with solar panels, or to build small hydro projects, the whole project comes to a screeching halt. The momentum stops. People stop going to meetings. They put in their annual gardens but they don't want to take on any more complicated projects that involve a lot of money, time and work. Worst of all, they stop trying to educate themselves about the issues and making the ideological connections to both current and future social conditions. Or they retreat into a private world of internet blogs where they try to assure themselves that at least they are personally ready for the energy apocalypse.

What Transition Town lacks is a social and political relevance that connects to people's lives in the here and now, though it is not entirely lacking. One of its most salient aspects is its ability to connect people socially, to rebuild community ties that have been lost through commodification and privatization. And that's the next goal the movement has to work towards: political solidarity and mobilization.

There are many ways that Transition-type movements could mirror the Black Panther and Latino urban movements of the 60s and 70s. Those movements mobilized black, latino and poor urban residents by helping them develop economic, cultural and political autonomy. They organized local food programs, shelter programs, job programs, social-assistance programs. They mobilized people to challenge policies in city governments that were pro-economic growth but anti-neighborhood, policies that would displace people, cultures and the resources of the poor, policies that would degrade the environments they lived in. And when a real crisis struck, when people lost jobs, lost homes, went hungry, people turned to those organizations to help them survive, get back on their feet. Moreover, urban movements mobilized people for their political rights and economic resources. The Black Panther and Latino urban movements became the leading organizations for political mobilization against corporate exploitation, government corruption, for civil rights, democracy and social justice.

The problem with the Transition Towns movement has always been that it is de-politicized. But it's critics have failed to come up with a compelling political agenda. The Camp for Climate Justice movement is politically mobilized against the Corporate State, but directed entirely towards climate change issues. While I am a great fan of the Climate Justice movement, I don't think that just focusing on climate change is enough to mobilize people. Another group of critics advocates for a "deep ecology" transition: that Transition move people toward a fundamental change in their relationship to nature and to each other, a fundamental, almost spiritual change.

But I contend that this has not been enough. An eco-spiritual agenda is also not sufficient to keep people moving toward a significant transition. It has to become a movement away from dependence on the Corporate State and towards economic autonomy and self-governance. It has to be a movement against global capitalism that is causing the degradation of the environment, suppressioin of local economies, our disempowerment, impoverishment, hunger, homelessness, consumer bankruptcy and labor exploitation, that is literally robbing us of democracy and civil rights.

What really brought this home to me is the recent uprisings in Greece, Jordon and Egypt. Those uprisings and rebellions are secured at their base by local neighbourhood movements that have supplied people with food, shelter, water, security, and medical aid during the revolutionary period. These are movements against increasing food and energy prices and scarcity, joblessness, hunger and homelessness. These are movements against political corruption, totalitarianism, and exploitation by the Corporate State; for democracy and social justice; for economic equality and security; for food, shelter, education and health care: movements to secure people's most urgent needs.

These are also movements that also mobilize people during the crisis of failed states. When governments can no longer be propped up by US military intervention, when they are hollowed out and cave in under the austerity policies of the IMF and World Bank, when crops fail and millions go hungry, when floods destroy critical infrastructure, these local on-the-ground movements mobilize people towards self-preservation and against the failed state. We are going to see more Egypts, Tunisias, and Greeces in the future. As Lester Brown has often said, failed states will become more frequent as oil depletes, crops fail and drinking water dries up. We will see more failed states as jobs are lost, as more people become depleted by debt, hunger and homelessness. What we need is a Green Panther movement to mobilize people in the event of collapsing economies and failed states, whether that is a failed food system, a failed job or housing market, a failed city government, province or nation state.

We don't have to change what we are doing in Transition-type movements; we have to change why are are doing it. Transition Towns has recently identified and begun to work with urban poor people's movements in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro and the ghettos of Mexico City, to learn from their example. They are using these examples to direct the Transition movement toward meeting people's immediate needs as a means of local and political mobilization. In so doing, the movement creates a critical relevance to people's daily lives. The real transition has to be a systemic transition away from the model of liberal market democracies that support the Corporate State and towards autonomous, communitarian systems that support self-employment through local economies, low-energy technology, and economic and social equality. We have to establish a system that moves away from economic growth as a goal and towards the goal of social development, with adequate health care, education and shared cultural experiences.

Down2Earth: First Nations on the Environment

2011-01-03T01:38:00.000-08:00

I started watching the APTN show Down2Earth about First Nations initiatives on the environment. It's fantastically well-done and very inspiring. I plan to watch the whole series.

A Reasonably Good Facsimile of a Future with Less Carbon

2010-12-27T11:05:00.000-08:00

Bill McKibben suggested in Deep Economy that America could cut its carbon emissions in half, not by going back to primitive village life and donning hair shirts, but by becoming more like Europe, which has half the carbon emissions of the US (and per capita, Canada, for that matter).

An article by George Marshall in New Internationalist Magazine makes the case that Britains could cut their carbon emissions by 80% by living the way they did back in 1972. He seasons personal anecdotes of his life as a boy with statistics that offer proof that we had a pretty decent life back in 1972. We lacked nothing but excess consumption and we had more time together as families and communities, which Robert D. Putnam says in Bowling Alone is the one thing that will really make us happy.

"What will life be like if wealthy countries reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent or more? George Marshall finds a trip down memory lane can teach us plenty about a low-carbon future.

Imagine reducing emissions by 80 per cent. It seems huge and daunting without a technological revolution. But imagine achieving that target just by turning the clock back to the time when emissions were still at that level. For example, how far back would you have to go to reduce by 80 per cent the amount that British people fly?

1972. Yes, 1972. It really isn’t so long ago – and if it does seem a long time, consider that to halve flights you only have to go back to 1993.

When we try to envision a low-carbon society we often forget that one is still alive in our collective memories. Nearly half the current population of Britain was alive in 1972 and it was hardly the dark ages. People lived, laughed, and loved just as much as now.

The early 1970s marked the first time in Britain when people’s basic needs were largely met. Yes, there were still pockets of absolute poverty, but by and large, people were housed, fed, clothed, and in work. They had weekends off, annual holidays and spare cash for entertainment and leisure. It was not a time of great plenty – but of ample sufficiency.

For every sector, the figures tell the same story – had we chosen to keep that standard of living and applied our ingenuity to making it better, fairer and more efficient, we would not now be facing catastrophic climate change. I feel a deep sadness that we did not make that choice, but some hope in the knowledge that a potentially sustainable society has occurred within my lifetime.

With this in mind I have been re-examining my own memories of 1972, supplemented by the statistical evidence.1 I want to know how it felt to live with lower consumption and lower expectations. What lessons can we learn, and can we move forward in a way that is intelligently informed by our own recent past?"

* * * * * * *

I have my own recollections of 1972, minus the snazzy statistics. My own memories of 1972 bring me back to when I was 11 years old, the year before I turned 12 years old and my teenage life went completely off the rails. Eleven was a blissful age. I could have ridden my shiny new red 10-speed bike that I got for my birthday, were I not too afraid to ride it on the enormous stretch of highway that passed our house out in "the country", otherwise known as suburbia. I walked instead. I felt safer with my own two feet touching the ground and I could jump out of the way if a truck speeding at 70 miles an hour suddenly threatened my demise. But I walked everywhere. I could walk to the next town and back in an afternoon, which explains why I was so skinny back then.

Our house sat on a treed one acre lot, which back then was considered bucolic. We had apple trees and a vegetable garden and lots of lawn to mow. Behind our house was an old potato farm and behind that was a huge stretch of federally protected forest. The only trouble was there was no people around, no kids my age to play with, which is why I walked huge distances just to find friends. Most of the time I didn't have friends so I spent many hours walking in the woods by myself, getting close to nature. Ever since then, I have actually hated nature, or at least the sort of artificially isolated and cordoned off nature that is arranged for suburbanites.

When I turned 14 I vowed to get the hell out of "the country" and go to the City where most sane and sophisticated people lived. I convinced my parents to send me to an all-girls high school in downtown Providence. I had to walk two miles to the bus stop every day to get the public bus to school, but it was worth it. I skipped school and ran around the streets of Providence and did all the wild and crazy things that any feral teenager would do in a capital city. I loved urban life; I would later spend my 20s in Providence, and my 30s in Boston and Brooklyn, NY. Only in my 40s did I return to "the country" out in western Massachusetts. Western Mass was bucolic as well, lots of cows and corn fields, but not as isolated as my childhood home. At least there was people there and plenty of interesting things to do.

I got interested in sociology as a freshman in college, I think, because I so lacked any sense of society growing up that I needed to educate myself: "so what exactly is this thing called "civilization"?

But back to carbon emissions. We lived out in rural isolation with my Mother, who went slowly insane, while my Dad went to work everyday at a Ford dealership. I never saw my Dad but a couple hours a day. He would come home for supper and slurp down a plate of spaghetti and then immediately rush off to his second job to pay the ticket for our bucolic life out in "the country." My three brothers disappeared as often as they could, leaving me to do the household chores and take care of Mom. So much for the idea that we had all this family togetherness back then.

Since Dad drove an hour to and from work every day, and worked a second job at night selling jewelry, Mom had to have a second car, usually a reliable beater. Mom went shopping for a living. Dad always had the latest boat because he sold cars; he was a great salesman. The last ocean liner I remember he had (before the divorce) was a Ford Country Squire wagon with a souped up V-8 engine and electric windows. In an age of cranked car windows it was practically space age technology. The Ford Country Squire was a pimped-out suburban gas guzzler that would rival any SUV today. But gas was cheap back then, 80 cents a gallon, and no one was worried about carbon emissions. Cigarettes were cheap, too, which explains my Dad's untimely death of lung cancer at 58 years old.

To escape the dreary isolation of "the country", and the heat and humidity, we would pack up our stuff in June and move out to the dreary isolation of "the beach" on Narragansett Bay. We lived there for the whole summer while my Dad drove two hours to work and back everyday. I had nothing to do but walk around the shore for hours, observing aquaticnature, doing my best to avoid being mauled by teenage boys and snag whatever booze or pot I could find.

So we had two of everything: two houses, two cars, two sets of washer/dryers, two TV sets (one for each household; I guess that's frugal by today's standards), two refrigerators, two dish washers, etc. etc., a lifestyle not quite exemplary from a carbon emissions standpoint. I was minus one Dad who worked to pay for it all and minus any sort of social life that might have made it enjoyable.

We had suburbia, we had excess consumption, we had extravagant Christmasses, we had all the conveniences of modern life. We were living the American dream. My parents got divorced. My Dad run off to Aruba with his girlfriend and gambled away our inheritance. After the divorce, my mother went completely insane and became a born-again Christian. Because of our fabulous meat-heavy, fat and sugar-heavy, processed American diet, Mom died of cancer and diabetes at age 56. My older brother joined the Mafia. My two younger brother settled on career variously as a computer programmer and digital media tech.I struggled with alcoholism but beat that and became an urban lesbian eco-zealot to escape the zombie death march to suburbia. Yes, people, it was the 80s and it was morning in America. Climate catastrophe was a long way off in the next century.

Please, folks, take my advice. Don't go back to 1972. It wasn't all that great.

Sacrilege: Selling Our Provincial Parks

2010-12-25T09:57:00.000-08:00

As usual, while we're trying to put the good things back up, like the Carleton St. Bridge, Mayor Brad Woodside and Premier David Alward want to tear down and trash more green space by selling it to real estate developers. This story made me so outraged I could hardly bring myself to deal with it.

What's slowing the whole process down is that the parcels have to be rezoned in order to be use for residential/retail development. Public outcry was so huge that the City has placed a moratorium on the sale of City parks.

From the Daily Gleaner, June 2010:

"It will likely take close to a year for the City of Fredericton to work its way through a list of 41 pieces of parkland, all but one located in city wards, and hold public meetings on the fate of each before it's sealed.

Community services director Wayne Tallon said his department has a detailed plan on how to handle the touchy topic of disposing of green spaces that may end up being declared surplus and that process will include two public meetings with residents in each neighbourhood.

In some cases, because of development on the green spaces or because of their topography, some park areas will never be suited for anything else but green space, Tallon said.

He said he regrets the way the process of rationalizing parks has unfolded.

Angry residents who want public green spaces protected have deluged city hall with opposition to any rezoning that would rob their neighbourhoods of parkland.

City council responded to those concerns by passing a one-year moratorium on the sale of land designated as parkland.

Tallon said the moratorium will allow his department to push the reset button and start afresh park by park and neighbourhood by neighbourhood, including meetings with residents.

Tallon said the reason the three green spaces were en route to the planning advisory committee is that the city realized it couldn't dispose of parkland - even to sell it to a neighbouring landowner - unless the zoning designation matched the zoning on the neighbouring residential land holdings."

Since then, the Province has jumped on the bandwagon of "lowering the budget deficit" by selling Provincial parklands. From the Daily Gleaner, December 2010:

"The Progressive Conservative government is looking for new sources of revenue, but some New Brunswickers say selling provincial parks to help balance the budget isn't an option.

The Tories said they are only seeking public opinion on a wide range of possibilities in preparation for their first budget in March.

David Coon, executive director of the Conservation Council of New Brunswick, said selling any of the nine provincial parks shouldn't even be considered.

"It's just lunacy," he said, comparing it to the previous government's idea of selling NB Power to Quebec.

"I think people will be appalled. People feel quite strongly about the little bit of nature that the province is actually preserving in the parks."

The Department of Finance is asking people to fill out an online questionnaire to gather ideas about how spending should be adjusted in the face of a $820-million deficit.

Amongst other ideas, it asks if they would support "evaluating the sale of government assets," naming the province's provincial parks and tourist destinations as examples.

Coon said the government is simply testing the waters at this point, not asking people if they should sell any assets. However, he pointed to recent cases in Fredericton and Saint John where local politicians backed away from ideas of selling and developing parks.

"It would be just a huge blow to how we see ourselves in this province," he said, suggesting the government look at increasing the revenue it gains from the extraction of natural resources like timber and minerals instead.

"It's just a bad idea. I think New Brunswickers would not be impressed."

Liberal MLA Donald Arseneault said the Tories' election promises have painted themselves into a corner and now they're using the survey to shift the blame to the public."

The Department of Finance survey is still online. Link here.

Since the story on the Provincial sales came out over a week ago, I've finally come to grips with it. I can't just sit here and let the Province immolate our beautiful and fertile green spaces just to solve a financial problem. It won't work anyway: selling land is a temporary solution to a permanent problem. Our western economies are in permanent decline and blown budgets are going to be a regular feature of decline. Selling public lands is not going to solve that problem for even the short term. If anything, we need to preserve our green space for localized food production.

Carleton Street: A Good and Beautiful Bridge

2010-12-10T06:33:00.001-08:00

Last February I attended the Fredericton Social Innovation Forum. One of the afternoon sessions was a proposal by a local architect, Ian Robertson, to rebuild the Carleton Street Bridge in downtown Fredericton as a walking bridge. Moon Joyce and I were the only ones at the Forum who thought this was a really keen idea. But that was enough for Ian to take on the project.

Six months later, Ian has finished guiding a group of civil engineering students at UNB in the design of the new Carleton Street Bridge. I attended the students' presentation of the Bridge design, called A Good and Beautiful Bridge. It was spectacular. Moon Joyce was there; she had met with Mayor Woodside and discussed the bridge design. Mayor Woodside and some City Counselors want to see the new Bridge design. The students are nervous but excited. Things are moving forward. . .

Ian asked me to start a Facebook page for the Carleton Street Bridge Project.

Fredericton residents and UNB Engineering students are working together to design and rebuild the Carleton Street Bridge. The proposed bridge replaces what was torn down in 1982; the original piers remain. The proposed Carleton Street Bridge spans the St. John River from Cliffe Street on the City's North Side to Carleton Street, in the City's core Downtown District on the South Side. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Carleton-St-Bridge-Project-Fredericton-NB/143088475741691?v=info

We got images of the bridge design and posted them there. We also got a copy of the students report, which I am posting here.

Here's the report of the UNB Civil Engineering students, called "A Good and Beautiful Bridge".

Queering the City

2010-12-10T05:34:00.000-08:00

I haven't been posting much here (when did I ever) and I probably won't until we start planning and digging the community garden at the Cotton Mill/Provincial building in Marysville.

But meanwhile, there are other critical things that I am working on. Queering the City of Fredericton has become a major undertaking in my life. My friends and I launched the Queer Theory Collective, a queer arts and culture organization, and FQ: Fredericton Queery, news and information on the queer scene in Fredericton.

Urban Agtivist

2010-08-25T08:35:00.000-07:00

You gotta love this stuff. The new word is that urban agriculture is spreading to major cities across the US (and Canada too). The leaders of this movement call themselves the New Agtivists. Now this, my friends, is a revolution.

The New Agtivist: Urban farmer Annie Novak aims sky high Paula Crossfield, Grist In our New Agtivist interviews, we talk to people who are working to change this country's f'ed- up food system in inspiring ways. For the next few weeks, as part of the Feeding the City series, we'll be focusing on urban agtivists.

Urban farmer Annie Novak is on a mission to inspire New Yorkers to grow, cook, and eat good food -- and to nurture the relationships that make it all possible.

Born in Chicago, she is the oldest daughter of an artist mother and a father who worked for the Chicago Board of Trade, where he dealt with corn and soybean futures in the marketplace. After college, farming became central for Novak, 27, who is now a passionate advocate for sustainable practices. She helped start Eagle Street Rooftop Farm in Brooklyn, New York -- a test farm utilizing green roofing materials for growing vegetables. In its second growing season, the farm has become a center of community, with a weekly market, a popular volunteer program, and farm talks on subjects like composting, artisanal food businesses, and chicken-raising. It has also already inspired similar projects. (See Grist's previous coverage.)

Somehow, Novak finds time to run an education program she also cofounded, called Growing Chefs and work as the Children's Gardening Program Coordinator at the New York Botanical Gardens. She participates in triathlons, and can be seen zipping around town on a bike that she built herself.

One Block Away. . .

2010-08-04T10:13:00.000-07:00

Tuesday evening I got home around 6 PM to cook dinner. I grabbed a shopping bag and opened the front door of my Marysville townhouse and crossed over to Downing Street. I walked one block and arrived at Joseph's Urban organics. Johnnie, aka "Joseph", leases a house lot-sized plot of ground on the property of another townhouse dweller. Johnnie grows a stupendous amount of vegetables on this 1/4 acre lot, all organic, all beautifully formed, all fresh, nutritious and delicious. I got some zucchini (broccoli sold out), kale, garlic and basil, paid his wife at the table and walked one block home. Once home, I made a dinner of zucchini and peppers with spaghetti ali-olio, with the zucchini, garlic and basil that I had just bought. My next door neighbours Sarah and Jason gave me some of their homegrown oregano, which I also added to the zucchini. The house filled with the aroma of fresh herbs and garlic. It was so good, I had a second plateful.

New Brunswick: the Vermont of Canada?

2010-07-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

In this blog, I have alternately praised and whined about life in the Province of New Brunswick. New Brunswick has a distressingly high rate of illiteracy (almost 60%) and too few adults who complete secondary school or enter university. Because of its small rural population, entrenched poverty and resource-based economy, New Brunswick is the West Virginia of Canada. I would like to see it become the Vermont of Canada, which also has a very small, mostly rural population living in small towns, but whose citizens are highly educated, cosmopolitan and politically progressive.

The Province doesn't need a huge population and sprawling metropolises (like Ontario) to have a high quality of life and decent jobs. In fact, I prefer that New Brunswick's population is small and hope it remains that way. "More for me," that's the way I look at it. New Brunswick is by and large undeveloped, with millions of acres of pristine rural areas, wetlands, forests and shoreline. It's so-called "lack of development" is actually its greatest asset because there is enough fertile green space to feed its small population. It just needs a better-educated citizenry that can make wise choices about the use of its resources and the compassionate treatment of its people. Social development, not economic growth, should be the guiding principle, with higher education and health care being the top priorities. That would make New Brunswick the Vermont of Canada.

In particular, New Brunswick, as in Vermont, could become a rural mecca of "smart farming': small, organic and locally-marketed farm production led by highly-educated and ecologically aware farmers.

All that takes is more education, which is why, I guess, I'm glad to be in the education business. It's the one thing we really need to change this place.

Transition Times Hits the Air waves!

2010-07-30T13:37:00.000-07:00

I almost can't believe it, but the first Transition Times radio show finally hit the air on Friday, July 30 at 3 PM on CHSR. 97.9 Fredericton, NB. It was Hazel Richardson's show, and it was a stunner. At least it was to me, from the point of view of someone who had worked for months to launch the show. For those of you who might be a little confused, Hazel and I recorded the show on April 1, 2010. It didn't get on the air until July 30, but that's what it took to get this baby finally out the door.

The next three shows will be rebroadcasts from Radio Ecoshock, done by Alex Smith in Vancouver, BC. Most of Alex's shows focus on climate change as a North American and global issue. He features the top scientists from around the world, sharing their research and expertise on climate change and related ecological issues. It's really important for us to have the scientific background to understand what is driving complex issues like climate change, oil and water depletion, and the practical science of agriculture and energy technology.

But it's also really important to know that local citizens matter. We can't always defer to the "experts." That's what Transition Times radio is all about. The core of our show is local. If you are a local resident doing something about an ecology issue in your neighbourhood, in your town, we want to know about it. What you are doing is important, even in the global fight against climate change.

Steve' Helle's show on Transition Woodstock should air on Friday, August 20, or thereabouts.

I also just recorded a show with Edee Klee on Fredericton Community Gardens Initiative, which I hope will air by the end of September. I'm only doing one interview show per month because it takes a huge amount of editing to get an interview ready for broadcast. Meanwhile, the Radio Ecoshock shows fill in the other three Fridays' in the month with critical information on climate change.

Urb Pharm Hosts Transition Times Radio

2010-07-26T09:31:00.000-07:00

Rather than start a whole new blog that I have to manage on top of three others (Urb Pharm, EcoSoc and Alice in Canada), I'm going to post info about my radio show, Transition Times, on this blog. Besides, it's about time this blog served a bigger purpose than repostings of stuff on my other blogs. My work on re-localization in Fredericton and St. George (the southwest Fundy coast) is really taking off, getting bigger and taking more of my time. And hooray for that.

So now you can listen to my radio show on Fridays from 3 to 4 PM on 97.9 FM CHSR, Fredericton. I will be posting info about the shows with links to other resources.

Hopefully this will work, but if not I'll reconsider at a later date.

Marysville Resilience Initiative

2010-07-25T10:41:00.000-07:00

I wanted to start a local food program in Marysville because I thought there was no local food here. Boy was I wrong. There’s a whole lot of local food up here in Marysville. We have Joseph’s Urban Organics who grows all his vegetables on Downing Street. He’s growing a huge amount of food one block from my house. I thought he only sold his vegetables at the Farmer's Market on Saturdays, but he sells it in Marysville too.

Today I went down to the Marysville Heritage Centre and there was a church group meeting there on Sunday mornings, Hope Café church. They told me Joe’s Urban Organics has an ‘open garden’ on Tuesday evenings from 4 to 8 PM. Anybody can buy on Tuesdays and you can buy all the vegetables you want. I’m going down there on Tuesday nights to find out who’s buying at his garden, and meet people with my interests.

The Marysville Heritage Centre is mostly vacant during the week. It has a full kitchen and is in excellent condition. I’m going to call the manager and find out what it costs to rent by the day.

So I went back to Hope Café church and found out I could buy organic fair trade coffee from them. They sell it to support their ministry. The coffee company is called Amos 5, it’s roasted in Halifax and it’s totally awesome! It’s $16 a pound, which is a little expensive, but it’s sold locally at least.

And there’s a young woman at their church who works at Aura Foods who bakes for their store. She might be interested in selling her baked goods up in Marysville as well.

So I figured what we need in this neighbourhood is a bakery and granary, for bread, oats, rice, flour, dry goods and the like. And they told me there's a Shiloh Peterson who works for the Province in the Gibson Factory, who’s interested in local and organic food as well. It’s all coming together. We’re going to have a local food coop in Marysville.

Please pass this message on to your Fredericton Community Garden Initiative. And please let me know if there's anyone in your group who lives in Fredericton North, Canada Street and north of there, who would be interested in starting a local food committee. There's so much more work to do and so many opportunities right outside our doorstep.

Downsized Detroit Becomes Beacon of Urban Farming

2010-07-12T16:55:00.000-07:00

One-third of Detroit's land area has been depopulated, leaving "abandoned houses, vacant lots and vacant factories," according to a story in the Guardian UK. Swaths of razed house lots are being taken over by city residents and farmed in small plots for vegetables, fruits and bee-keeping. There's even a million-dollar 40-acre commercial farm near the downtown that has begun operations. Most of the food is grown cooperatively and is available to neighbourhood residents for free at harvest time. The coop gardeners are worried about the takeover of their plots by commercial farming and have formed their own coalition of cooperative gardens to protect their right to farm. Thus far the two business models are doing well side-by-side.

A short video by the Guardian interviews a cooperative farmer and a bee-keeper. The video is interesting because it encapsulates the growth and decline cycle of what was once a sprawling metropolis, and it shows that people can survive both ends of the cycle. Interestingly, Los Angeles has begun a Transition movement that is doing the same kind of work. While LA has not experienced the same kind of decline as Motor City, Detroit has become a model for dealing with urban de-growth and decline which some expect to be a common occurrence in other large US cities.

The resurgence of urban farming in Detroit was the one of the central solutions put forward at the US Social Forum which was held in Detroit in June, 2010.

Hippies in St. George: A Photo Essay

2010-07-06T16:03:00.000-07:00

For my birthday on May 22, I attended the annual Hippy Clambake in St. George. It's put on by Harry and Martha Bryan, a couple of generous ex-pat hippies who left the US during the Viet Nam War 40 years ago. They live completely off the grid in St. George, NB. As you might expect, they are considered the local gurus of sustainability.

Harry and Martha built this piece of paradise on the Mascarene literally with their own bare hands. Harry is a boat-builder who hand-builds his boats from wood that he cuts in his own bicycle-powered saw mill, a truly astonishing achievement. Likewise, Harry and Martha built every structure on their property themselves. And there is nothing "backwoods" about the house, woodshop, boat launch, and other buildings on their property. Like his boats, everything is finely crafted and a beautiful place to spend time in.

The annual clambake is open to anyone in St. George, but most of the clambakers were friends of Harry and Martha from the States. The photos reveal a rainbow of elder hippies and young ecologists. Many of the younger party-goers came from Nova Scotia and other parts of New Brunswick to see the first ever Clambake Concert, featuring Old Man Luedecke from Halifax and Mary Katherine from PEI, both folk artists. Speaking of rainbows, Harry and Martha graciously announced and celebrated the 40th anniversary of a lesbian couple at the evening's concert.

I met Harry personally and introduced myself as a neighbour from down the road on the Mascarene. He very kindly welcomed me, despite being incredibly busy with his guests all day, and said "we'll be getting to know you better over the years," I never felt more welcomed anywhere I've lived.

For the rest of the photo esssay, please go to my Facebook photo album "Hippy Clambake St. George."

EcoJustice People's Summit-Detroit 2010

2010-07-02T11:50:00.000-07:00

“We support the conclusion that only by “living well,” in harmony with each other and with Mother Earth, rather than “living better,” based on an economic system of unlimited growth, dominance and exploitation, will the people of this planet not only survive but thrive.”

Detroit is a window into the future. Through this window we see an inspiring site of deeply grassroots and living visions of a just and democratic community. Community resistance to corporate polluters in Detroit, including oil refineries, coal power plants and the world’s largest waste incinerator, continue to hold the frontline against the destruction of the planet. Meanwhile resistance to such corporatization strategies such as predatory lending, water privatization, prisons and police brutality are matched with equally powerful models of resilience; such as community gardens, cooperative economics, freedom schools and transformative justice. Detroit can be a model of the Just Transition to sustainable communities that we require; one in which exploitive jobs that cause ecological devastation and compromised health are replaced with meaningful work in our own interests; restoring our labor and our resources to the web of life.

In standing with the people of Detroit today, we stand in solidarity with other frontline communities around North America and the World. As we gather here at this US Social Forum, in solidarity with protestors at the G20 summit in Toronto, estimates of the oil gushing from a gaping wound inflicted on the Earth’s sea floor by BP in the Gulf of Mexico continue to escalate — now possibly over 1 million gallons per day. Gulf Coast communities are forced to survive the fossil fuel economy’s devastating effects. From Indigenous communities on the frontlines of tar sands oil extraction in Canada to Laotian, Latino and African American communities fighting Chevron’s refineries in Richmond, California to poor White communities in Appalachia fighting mountaintop removal coal mining and others fighting hydro-fracking for natural gas extraction — we stand in solidarity with the people of the Gulf Coast in reclaiming control over our land, air, water, and livelihoods.

We call for an end to all climate pollution and false corporate solutions! And we call for the rights of the survivors of Hurricane Katrina to return, to reconstruction of communities, and to restoration of healthy wetlands. So many of us, migrants — old and new — were stolen or forcibly displaced by socio-economic forces, ecological impacts, or imperialist wars to leave our homelands and migrate to North America while the Indigenous Peoples of this land were systematically massacred. Immigrant communities are facing increasing criminalization as manifested by SB 1070 in Arizona, police-ICE collaboration around the U.S., and increased border militarization, as well as exploitation by unscrupulous employers. Immigrant communities are frontline communities, both in our home countries and in the US and Canada, who face devastating ecological adversities from historic and future effects of climate destabilization

for the rest of the statement, go to the Energy Bulletin.

Transition Towns and Climate Camp come together in Heathrow

2010-06-30T16:23:00.001-07:00

Heathrow was the site of the first big Climate Camp protest in England, which stopped the expansion of the Heathrow airport. But there is also Heathrow, the village, and the locals who live there have started their own Transition Towns group called Transition Heathrow. Transition Towns is normally not an activist movement, but focuses on creating practical solutions to climate change and peak oil in the form of locally grown food, energy conservation and green transportation. And Climate Camp usually focuses on large-scale regional campaigns to shut down coal-fired power plants. It is not normally focused on local development issues. But in the Grow Heathrow project, these two movements have come together in an extraordinary way. On the land that was supposed to be turned into the expanded airport, there was a large greenhouse that had been abandoned. Transition Heathrow and Climate Camp got together to clean up the greenhouse and begin to grow food there. The video they made of their initial efforts is wonderful.

LAUNCHED! St. George Creative Arts

2010-06-29T17:43:00.000-07:00

The project I am currently working on is making St. George, NB a centre of local innovation and creative expression on the southwestern shore.

VOILA! St. George Creative Arts Association, NB

Next ideas are setting up a produce coop/farmer's market in town, and . . . eventually. . . a café!.

How to turn a Mess into a Masterpiece

2010-06-22T03:33:00.000-07:00

I'm going to strip down my Orbea, which never worked as a road bike, and turn it into a single speed. At least it will work good leaning against the wall of a café. Then I'm going to take all those juicy euro components and put them on a really good frame that actually works as a road bike.

Whad'a'ya know: I found the perfect frame to turn my mess into a masterpiece: the Civia Linden. What a beauty.

Urb Pharm is Evolving

2010-06-20T17:45:00.001-07:00

Urb Pharm started from an ecological concern with developing local resources: food, transportation, energy and green urban environments. But, as often happens in life, my real work went in a very different direction. For the last ten years, I have found myself focused on building local communities through the expressive arts and promoting local innovation.

So with my usual gift for naming things and writing mission statements, here is Urb Pharm's new direction:

'Urb Pharm cultivates resilience by instigating cultural change and multiplying diversity that will spark the transition to a fertile, innovative and ecologically mindful community..'

My day-to-day practice will focus on communication, teaching and creative expression.

Transition Fredericton on Facebook

2010-05-20T12:25:00.000-07:00

Google's Ning Network is going 'pay only' July 1, so we're letting our Ning TF site shut down. Please find all information about Transition Fredericton at our Facebook page. Thanks.

It's All About Food

2010-01-31T08:54:00.000-08:00

It keeps coming back to me in so many ways. The way to bring our group together, and to transform our city, is through food. It's not just about peak oil and the rising cost of food. It's not just about growing food locally to create food security. It's about what food does for our relationships, the way it brings people together to care for one another, to strengthen our ties and our common goals. THAT's what local food production is about. It's called social resilience.

Network with Transition Fredericton

2010-01-29T16:29:00.000-08:00

Get into our network with Transition Fredericton ning network site. We're getting serious now—and fun!

Ice-Biking the Nashwaak Trail

2010-01-17T16:52:00.000-08:00

Ice-biked the Nashwaak Trail today at -12 Celsius, 8 kms from Marysville to UNB. It was totally doable with lots of layers. I was not cold, and in fact I was sweating by the time I got to the library. Much thanks to the snowmobilers who flattened the trail for us, making it a cinch to bike on. I biked in my snow boots, proving it can be done. I didn't need studded tyres; my Maxxis Locust trail tyres worked fine on the snow. I wore thick wool socks, long johns under corduroys, three shirt layers, a wool scarf, a balaclava, and a wool cap. Over the layers I wore a insulated vest and an insulated windbreaker. And my super-mega winter biking gloves. The whole outfit was generally lightweight but very warm. Next time I might put on a pair of loose-fitting biker shorts under my long johns--my ass got kind of cold. But other than that I was fine. How cold was it? I packed a lunch and it was frozen by the time I got there. Pros: it was sunny and there was no breeze, making for very pleasant conditions. Cons: boot-flattened trails are too lumpy to ride on. I had to divert to the road after I went over the bridge. It was a challenge but I thoroughly enjoyed it. I generally don't bike in the dead of winter, but there's no bus on Sundays and the taxis are too expensive. So I had no choice but to bike. That's the beauty of giving up your car—you find ways to cope.

Transition Fredericton

2009-12-08T03:01:00.000-08:00

Can Fredericton become a transition town? My PhD dissertation at UNB is on the Transition Towns movement. I'll be studying TTM groups in southeastern Ontario, in both urban and rural municipalities. Green Matters is greenwashing--it's not going to effect a real transition to a post-carbon way of life in Fredericton. We have to stop relying on the PR machine in City Hall and create our own transformation to a resilient city. Join us for Transition Fredericton on Facebook and around town!

Climate Justice Action-Climate Camp New Brunswick

2009-12-08T02:39:00.000-08:00

It's official! Climate Justice Action-Climate Camp has arrived in New Brunswick. We are going beyond signing petitions and photo ops in front of City Hall. Direct action for the human social and planetary environment is our raison d'etre. We have a particular focus on Urban Resilience in Fredericton New Brunswick.

Join Climate Justice Action-Climate Camp New Brunswick on Facebook and in the streets, in the woods and on our shores.

The Ebenezer Scrooge Carbon Reduction Plan

2009-11-14T10:38:00.000-08:00

The Ebenezer Scrooge Carbon Reduction Plan

1. Am I obliged to give you a day off every 15th of December so you can go to Copenhagen to protest at the climate change conference? I suppose if I didn’t you would think yourself ill used.

2. The Middling Classes should buy as much stuff as possible so the Rich will be rich enough to afford all that expensive technology, like carbon capture and storage. So get back to work, you ungrateful slug.

3. Shut down the coal-fired power plants? Are you mad? Coal-fired power plants spew millions of tons of sulphur dioxide and ash into the air, which everybody knows causes global dimming. We should build as many coal-fired power plants as possible, at least one a week.

4. The poor should stay as poor as possible so the Rich can continue to be industrious. Any increase in consumption by the poor would only turn the rest of us into toasted Welsh Rabbit.

5. Climate change is caused by overpopulation. There are simply too many people on this planet, billions too many. Mass starvation is Mankind’s best Natural defence. If they are going die, they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.

6. There is nothing more to be done about the mass migrations of Unfortunates driven from their homes by climate change. Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

7.. Binding reductions? Bah, humbug!

Copyleft 2009 Shaun Bartone

The Big Three for the Planet

2009-09-26T15:28:00.000-07:00

There are three things you must do to significantly reduce your personal and household climate emissions:

1. Don't drive a car (not petrol, electric, nat. gas, ethanol, or biodiesel)

2. Don't eat meat

3. Shut stuff off (that includes water).

If you do those three things, you will, for one, radically transform your whole lifestyle, and secondly, make a significant personal contribution to reducing climate change.

The first one is the biggest but the most necessary. Not only will you stop spewing noxious gases out your car's back end, but you will inevitably buy less stuff. If you have to walk, bike, or bus everywhere, you can only buy what you can carry, and you can't carry much. No more shopping trips to the big box discount store to carry home bags and bags of useless junk. If you can't carry it for more than a half a mile, you're not going to buy it.

The second is also very hard because it means a radical change in diet, taste, and cooking skills. But think of it this way: if you don't eat meat, not only will you stop being the cause of thousands of tons of carbon emissions, but the life you save may be your own. Research by Dr. T. Collin Cambell shows that a plant-based diet reduces the risk of cancer.

The third is a matter of habit, but you may find that you are more addicted to electricity than oil. The biggie: shut down the computer when you're not using it. End your excessive "screen life." Then go to the library, get a library card, and read a book.

But there is one more thing you must do to stop global warming globally: become a planetary citizen to stop the destruction of the environment and the human poverty, sickness and injustice that it causes all over the world.

State of the Future: Collapse of Civilization

2009-07-13T12:36:00.000-07:00

The State of the Future report, which will be released next month, warns that "billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilisation will collapse". The report is backed by UNESCO, the US Army, the World Bank, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

Collapse of Civilization

"Although the future has been looking better for most of the world over the past 20 years, the global recession has lowered the State of the Future Index for the next 10 years. Half the world could face violence and unrest due to severe unemployment combined with scarce water, food and energy supplies and the cumulative effects of climate change."

Fredericton: Biker's Paradise

2009-05-21T05:47:00.000-07:00

I've never been in a place as wonderful for biking as Fredericton. From my house on the north side of the River, if I go south on the trail 15 minutes, I'm in downtown Fredericton. If I go north on the trail 15 minutes, I'm in the wilderness. Not the suburbs, not urban parks--the backcountry. I've never been in such a diverse environment as this. I doubt there's many places in all of Canada where you have this combination of city life right next to wilderness.

350 - Global Climate Action

2009-05-15T19:54:00.001-07:00

DO SOMETHING IN YOUR AREA FOR 24 OCTOBER 2009 INTERNATIONAL DAY OF CLIMATE ACTION. CHECK THE WEBSITE. IF THERE'S NO EVENT IN YOUR AREA--ORGANIZE ONE!

Life without Cars in Vauban, Germany

2009-05-14T18:13:00.000-07:00

Vauban, Germany is a model suburban community that was designed to exclude cars. Connected to Freiberg by rail, the only roads that cars can use are one road through the center of town and a couple around the town's edge. Homeowners are allowed to have cars, but they can only park them in garages that cost $40,000 each, located on the outskirts of town. Cars are not allowed in the residential streets, which are for cyclists and pedestrians. Seventy percent of Vauban's households do not own cars. The development was completed in 2006.

Af-Pak + Iran-Iraq = Pipelineistan

2009-05-14T18:09:00.000-07:00

Asia Times Online published Pepe Escobar's article on building "Pipelinestan", or the integration of oil and natural gas resources in Central Asia into a network that serves Russia, China and South Asia. (Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War.)

"Every time I've visited Iran, energy analysts stress the total "interdependence of Asia and Persian Gulf geo-ecopolitics". What they mean is the ultimate importance to various great and regional powers of Asian integration via a sprawling mass of energy pipelines that will someday, somehow, link the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, South Asia, Russia and China.. . .

As much as Washington may live in perpetual denial, Russia and Iran together control roughly 20% of the world's oil reserves and nearly 50% of its gas reserves. Think about that for a moment. It's little wonder that, for the leadership of both countries as well as China's, the idea of Asian integration, of the Grid, is sacrosanct.

If it ever gets built, a major node on that Grid will surely be the prospective US$7.6 billion Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, also known as the "peace pipeline". After years of wrangling, a nearly miraculous agreement for its construction was initialed in 2008. At least in this rare case, both Pakistan and India stood shoulder to shoulder in rejecting relentless pressure from the Bush administration to scotch the deal."

It's no wonder the US is in two and a half wars and it seems like its never going to end.

A Tragedy in the Making--Stealing Africa's Lands

2009-05-14T07:08:00.000-07:00

The Oil Drum posted an article stating that rich countries, including Europe, China, India and the Gulf states, are buying up or leasing agricultural land in Africa, Russia and the Ukraine to grow food for their own countries, as well as biofuels.

This is a tragedy in the making. Africans are on the brink of starvation most of the time, and now their lands are being stolen to grow food for others. Having been pushed off the land by IMF and World Bank policies, and international agribusiness, they will be slowly (or quickly?) exterminated as they lose what little access they have to agricultural land.

This is just a continuation of previous policies that have robbed indigenous people of their lands, and has been going on for decades, centuries even. But as climate change makes water and arable lands more scarce, arable land is now a "zero sum game," and the poor lose this game by starving to death.

It's Never a Done Deal

2009-05-10T00:34:00.000-07:00

Ben West, who blogs and organizes against the BC Gateway project and other on other environmental issues, said this about the project:

Myth 10: Gateway is a “Done Deal”

The Vancouver Sun reported Transportation Minister Falcon said the Gateway project “will go ahead, whatever the outcome of consultations with the public and local governments”. (28) It’s never a done deal. The Wilderness Committee has worked with many community groups and environmental organizations and many harmful projects have been stopped usually after contracts were signed and politicians have claimed they were a done deal. Some projects are stopped even after construction is under way. For example, the construction of the Georgia Viaduct which was the beginning of a proposed highway to connect downtown and Highway 1. The viaduct was built in the 1971, but the highway system was stopped because of public outcry. Citizens successfully stopped the demolishing of buildings in Strathcona, the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown, which stopped highway development throughout the region. We can still turn this plan around before our farmland, Burns Bog and so much more is more seriously threatened. We don’t need to spend billions of dollars on building a bigger Port Mann parking lot. It’s our money. Let’s spend it wisely.

So regardless of what Mayor Woodside says about "getting shovels in the ground as soon as possible" for the CostCo/Woodlot project, it's not irreversible. So far. all CostCo has done is lots of studies and the only official document it has issued is a "letter of intent" to build.

My Tiny Urb Pharm

2009-05-09T12:28:00.001-07:00

Sprouting my heirloom San Marzano tomatoes on my windowsill. The very beginning of Urb Pharm.

No Profit from Gasoline?

2009-05-07T16:52:00.000-07:00

An article in GAM reports a study which shows that retail profits from selling gasoline at gas stations are so low that "gas bars" are going out of business at a rate of 2% per year. While there were 20,000 gas stations in Canada in 1989, there are only about 12,600 across Canada today. Consequently, Canadians will have to drive further to buy gas.

Just more proof that the car-as-a-way-of-life is on it's last legs.

It's Not the Technology, Stupid

2009-05-05T23:58:00.000-07:00

Seattle has spent a year using a fleet of Toyota Prius PHEVs, plug-in-electric hybrids. These vehicles were supposed to average 100+ mpg. And the results are that they are only averaging 51 mpg. That's about the same as a conventional Prius. What's the problem? Human behavior of course—driving habits. You only get to 100 mpg by driving 35 mph or less in the city, which should also be the bulk of your driving.

Nobody in North America drives 35 mph. I have trouble driving 50 kmh in the City of Fredericton (32 mph) in my Honda Fit, and it's so frustrating at that speed, I'd rather not drive at all. Heck, the bus system is faster. At that rate you could go just a bit slower and ride a bicycle and burn no gas whatsoever, burn lots of excess calories, and have more fun. And it wouldn't set you back $40,000.

Moreover, people aren't bothering to plug-in and keep the battery charged. One study showed that PHEV drivers were driving around with dead batteries more than a third of the time. Why? Is it because they're too stupid to know how to run a PHEV? No, it's because driving takes so much time out of your life already, especially at 35 mph, you don't have time to plug-in when you should.

It's not the technology, stupid. And I bet they haven't factored in land use and the design of the urban transportation system, which is all designed, nowadays, to make you stay in your car and drive as much as possible. We need to redesign cities to dramatically cut down time behind the wheel, cut down distance, as well as average speed travelled. People sprawled out in the suburbs will never get 100 mpg because they drive at least 60 mph all the time on the freeway just to guy groceries. But motorheads will never get that.

Measuring Big Box Emissions

2009-04-19T16:49:00.000-07:00

Stacy Mitchell of The New Rules Project has an article on the carbon emissions caused by big box retail stores. Since 1990, the number of miles that Americans drive to do their shopping has increased by 40 percent.

Stacy Mitchell writes:

"Altogether, by 2001, Americans logged over 330 billion miles going to and from the store, generating more than 140 million metric tons of CO2. If we conservatively estimate that shopping-related driving over the last five years grew at only half the rate of the 1990s, that means Americans are now driving more than 365 billion miles each year and producing 154 million metric tons of CO2 in the process.

Since Wal-Mart accounts for 10 percent of U.S. retail sales, the company's share of these emissions is at least 15.4 million metric tons -- and likely higher, because Wal-Mart has led the way in auto- oriented store formats and locations. This amounts to more than all of its other domestic CO2 output combined.

Land-use consultant Kennedy Smith notes that another way to estimate these emissions is to start with the 100 million shoppers Wal-Mart says its stores attract each week, generously assume two shoppers per car, and then multiply by the average length of a shopping trip. This produces an almost identical result: over 15 million metric tons of CO2."

Stacy Mitchell is the author The Big-Box Swindle

You can watch a round-table discussion on "buying local" with Stacy Mitchell, Bill McKibben and Michael Shuman at the American Booksellers Association conference of Winter, 2008. Navigate to the bottom of the page to see the correct video.

NOTE: Reflecting on these posts, I went back and looked at my post on WalMart's electric bicycles and pulled it. And I realized that I got totally sucked in by WalMart's own greenwashing campaign. Sure WalMart sells bikes, but, unlike a Local Bike Store, they don't fix them. If the electric bike breaks down, who's going to fix it? That's why these goods end up being consumer waste. You buy it cheap, you use it a few times, it breaks, and then since there's no service available, you stick it in your garage for a year or so and then throw it out.

That's why I didn't buy a bike at WalMart, even an electric bike that's not available elsewhere at that price. What WalMart doesn't put on the price tag is what it will cost you to fix this electric bike, or the fact that there is no service available to ensure that it is a safe and reliable means of transportation.

Cheap Brand Retail is Dead

2009-04-19T10:23:00.000-07:00

Karen Von Hahn, Globe Style editor, takes notice of a consumer trend away from what she calls "subprime retail", the era of big box discount sales of brand-named but cheaply manufactured consumer goods, a la CostCo. She asks the question: "Is our tendency to 'save' by gorging on ever more and cheaper part of why we have an economic crisis?" Karen notes that products bought in stores like CostCo may be brand names, but are nonetheless poorly manufactured of inferior materials, suitable only for impulse buying and throwing in a landfill when the "trend" changes.

Obama Extols High Speed Rail

2009-04-19T05:48:00.000-07:00

The Big 0 wants to jump start the construction of high speed rail in the US, with Chicago being the center of a national high speed rail network.

Absolutely fantastic, ecological, visionary and long overdue. Kudos to Obie for taking the lead on a system that could very well save the economic and cultural life of America.

And let's get this happening in Canada, shall we? New Brunswick desperately needs a high speed rail along the Fundy and Acadian Coasts, and between its major cities: Edmonton, Bathurst, Miramichi, Fredericton, Moncton and St. John.

Meet the Planners, Pt. 2

2009-04-11T12:27:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I was focusing so much on our differences with the City Planners that I neglected to discuss what we had in common, and there was much that we agreed on.

First of all, they absolutely support the idea of a Greenbelt around Fredericton. They see the greenbelt idea, and other related policies, as critical to stopping the growth of sprawl outside the city limits. Not only did they verbally agree with us, but greenbelts are specifically mentioned in the subsequent planning documents they shared with us, "greenbelts . . . as they have been used in the western Provinces."

Much to our shock and dismay, they complained that there is NO ZONING LAW of any kind in the Province outside of an incorporated municipality and it's particular bylaws. There are no zoning laws, no building codes or environmental laws or guidelines, no planning. NOTHING. Outside of specific planning exercises conducted by departments, such as Transportation, New Brunswick does not have a provincial planning body.

Thus, development is allowed to occur outside of incorporated districts and municipalities with almost no regulation at all. The planners pointed out that there are subdivisions on the east side of the city that don't even have a water supply. They were allowed to build without guaranteeing an adequate water supply, so now residents have no water.

Industrial zones located outside the city boundaries in Hanwelll are dumping huge amounts of toxic waste into the surround area, with no regulations to stop them. Furthermore, these toxic wastes are uphill from the subdivisions in New Maryland, so these toxins are flowing downstream with the underground water flow to the subdivisions in New Maryland. Another disaster waiting to happen.

The Planners would like to work with us, with the Conservation Council, to enact Provincial Legislation to establish Province-wide zoning, building and environmental regulations. Part of this package could include legislation for the greenbelt. All of these laws are badly needed before the sprawl and environmental disasters spread and get worse.

Meeting with City Planners

2009-04-02T19:01:00.000-07:00

Julie Michaud, Shaun Bartone and Meghan met with Chris McPherson, a city planner, and Frank Flanagan, a planner in charge of economic development, at City Hall. The meeting was a lively discussion that went on for two and a half hours. We viewed several maps of the city and plans for development.

We discussed the impact of land use on climate change, deforestation, flooding and water management issues, and then moved into devlopment of the Woodlot, CostCo, and the expansion of big box retail on the North and South perimeters of the city.

The two planners shared many of our concerns about sprawl, but they were more concerned about the classic (and disastrous) cases of sprawl that have resulted in one-acre subdivisions like New Maryland and Hanwell, and the east side of the city. They did not share, or could not grasp, our concerns about the sprawl development within the city limits. Instead of planning for mixed-used neighborhoods that place small retail side by side with single and multi-family dwellings, their plans for "mixed use" were blocks of Big Box next to blocks of residential areas and recreational facilities. They simply refused to define Big Box development as sprawl, so long as it was located within the city limits.

In a recent survey done during the last round of planning in the city, 80-85% of residents said their chief concerns were health and education, and only 16% said they were concerned with economic development. Yet the planners failed to hear our concerns about the health impacts of sprawl on city dwellers and instead focused their planning around retail and economic development. They just aren't listening to city residents; it's leading to corporate driven development rather than being focused on the needs of people living in the city.

The planners showed areas near the North and South big box sectors where housing is supposed to be built, but currently no developer has plans to build housing in either zone. It appears that big box retail is built first, bringing all the traffic, but the housing never follows. This induces more traffic to the big box stores while not providing enough residential density to support public transportation.

And remarkably, it's not because the cost of housing in the city is more expensive than outside. In fact, both housing lots and commercial lots outside the city cost tow to three times as much. It's that outside the city, developers are not subject to the kind of zoning and environmental regulations that the city requires, so it reduces the developers' costs, enabling higher profits--but not cheaper housing.

The planners said that 65% of the city's daily population lives inside the city, and 35% live outside it. The percentage of exurban dwellers is growing as sprawl escalates. These exurbanites work in the city, use city resources like schools and recreation, yet do not pay taxes to the city. The average household income of exurbanites is $70-80,000 per year, while the income of city dwellers is $30-50,000 per year. So the city dwellers who earn less are paying the taxes for services for the exurbanites who earn more.

There's a huge contradiction here. The two planners complained loudly about the 35% of the population who live outside the city in expensive 1-acre suburbs, then come into the city for shopping, recreation, entertainment, etc. But the whole development on the Southside, especially the newer places like Home Depot/Winners and now CostCo, is totally designed to cater to these suburbs. Most of Prospect, Hanwell Rd., the Regent Mall, and now the Woodlot area, is all designed for people who drive in from the 'burbs in their SUV's, load up on a ton of stuff, and drive it back home.

In fact, the new access roads that Flanagan took such great pains to describe, are, as he said repeatedly, designed to flow traffic from New Maryland and Hanwell to these shopping areas, and get them off Regent Street. Not only that, but the new school, the new Recreation Center, and related commercial developments (jobs) in the Woodlot, are really designed for these exburbanites. These shoppers probably won't bother to come downtown if there's not enough parking. In order to induce them to come downtown for entertainment, more parking has to be built, inducing more car traffic.

All this development is just feeding this cancerous suburban development outside the city. They're the people that have the cars and trucks and disposable income to buy this stuff. And when you think about the lack of zoning and the environmental nightmares these suburbs are spawning--the sewage "lagoons" (same structures used on factory farms for cattle), the industrial waste, the lack of clean water, it's pretty scary.

CostCo and Home Depot could have built outside the city in New Maryland and Hanwell (where there are no zoning restrictions), but they wouldn't have the access to city water, sewer and service roads that they need for their huge complexes. Most important, they wouldn't have access to the cheap labor pool that lives within the city limits.

Exurbanites also don't want CostCo or Home Depot near them, because it wrecks their fantasy of living in a "rural" area. They want to drive into the city and go to these shopping areas specifically designed for their convenience, while the city dwellers are stuck with the traffic, the noise, the pollution, the trucks all hours of the day and night, and the dead-end, low-paying jobs. We're being used as a low-cost labor pool to supply their wants. Meanwhile, our environment within the city, which we pay high taxes for, is being eroded and destroyed.

*********************

CostCo is an interesting company. I've been doing some cursory research on the web. They haven't been as heavily researched as WalMart, so it's hard to find the dirt on them.

But I did find a few interesting points. CostCo's main strategy is "diversion buying." That is, they buy brand name goods on the secondary market, not from the manufacturer or the corporate "owner" of the product, but from dealers who couldn't sell them in regular retail. Corporations that own brand name products license their stuff to be sold by certain exclusive retailers. CostCo never has a license to sell these products. So they buy them on the secondary market from retailers or wholesalers who couldn't sell them. Then CostCo sells them way below the brand-name premium price.

That's why CostCo is so popular with "upscale" shoppers. They want those brands. CostCo boasts that shoppers rarely spend less then $100 per shopping trip. People go in to buy a couple items, and walk out with carloads of stuff, because they keep finding these "bargain" brand items. Folks in New Maryland and Hanwell will love that too.

Unfortunately, CostCo has a winning strategy right now, even during the economic downturn and retail crash. CostCo cannibalizes name brands that don't sell. So CostCo will pick up all those products there were contracted for certain retailers in the US that aren't going to sell and sell them at a huge discount in Canada. In other words, CostCo is to some extent recession proof.

**************

None of these places, including the Woodlot development, are being designed for inner city dwellers. These aren't neighborhoods with small mom-and-pop retail mixed in--side by side--with mixed single and multi-family residential. It's almost impossible to build that kind of mixed use in these "suburban buying zones" It doesn't serve the development scheme of corporate retailers, like WalMart, who build spaces for and lease to their larger corporate allies. They have no interest in supporting small mom-and-pop stores. In fact, they cannibalize mom-and-pop stores, as we all know

How Toronto Got Their Green

2009-03-25T17:02:00.000-07:00

Rick Smith, Executive Director of Environmental Defense Toronto, spoke with me today about their organizing efforts to establish the Toronto Greenbelt. He said they were able to enact the Greenbelt because they had the support of the Province of Ontario. Ontario had been run by a Conservative government for eight years when the Liberals took office in 2003. The Liberals had promised to enact the Greenbelt plan within two years, and it was in fact established in 2005. Rick said they supported the Greenbelt in part because the prior government had made major mistakes with other environmental and land use issues and environmental groups were able to make a public issue of those errors. The Liberal government supported the Greenbelt plan as a way to make up for those prior mistakes. i related to Rick that UNB and the City of Fredericton had make serious errors regarding the UNB Woodlot, allowing big box development, and that we might be able to use the public's outrage over the Woodlot to negotiate a similar plan.

Surprisingly, Rick disagreed with Friends of the Greenbelt's statement that the Greenbelt plan was paired with the "Places to Grow" Act as a counterbalancing plan. Rick said that the Greenbelt plan was not linked to it, that the growth plan came afterward, perhaps in response to the Greenbelt plan. He also cautioned that "greenbelts don't stop bad development from happening" and that it may be wise to include a growth plan with the greenbelt plan in order to fully control development.

I relayed to Rick some of the advice that I had heard from Moncton Planner's Tim Moerman regarding Greenbelts, that it has to be big enough and well defended. He agreed and added that it should be far enough outside the growth ring of the city that it won't be overcome by sprawl. He said "you have to push it far enough out so that it takes a long time for sprawl to reach it." He added that the Toronto Greenbelt was successful because it was well outside the metropolitan area. He cited the older Parkway plan as an example of a "miserable failure" because it was too narrow and too close to the city. As a result, it was sliced through with highways and developments that only encouraged sprawl.

Rick said that, if we paid for the flight, he was willing to send someone from the Outeach team to a workshop in Fredericton. March 25, 2009

Make it Big Enough, Make it Stick

2009-03-24T18:08:00.001-07:00

Tim Moerman, a planner for the City of Moncton, gave a fabulous talk on peak oil at the Wilser Room on Queen Street on Tuesday evening, March 24. His talk, "Peak Oil: Are We There Yet?" gave a background in peak oil, and then focused on transportation. Tim said that the debate over whether we have reached global peak oil is over: "It's here, and we need to start dealing with it now." He said that his job as a planner is all about car management, though he himself refuses to own a car. He demonstrated that there are no near-term energy sources that can power automobiles the way gas and diesel can, so there's no point to keep planning around their continued use. Instead, he said, it was better to focus planning on compact, walkable cities, public transportation and trains.

I was able to ask him what he thought, from a planner's perspective, about putting a greenbelt around Fredericton. I asked him whether he thought a greenbelt was a good fit with regard to peak oil issues. Tim said that he had grown up in Ottawa in the first suburb to "leapfrog" the greenbelt. He said to do it well, "make it big enough, so that you don't encourage people to drive even longer distances into the city, through the greenbelt. Make it big enough to keep people where they are. Second, make it stick. Don't allow developers to sweet talk city councils into giving away pieces of it." Tim also said that while the greenbelt around Ottawa preserved farmland around the city, "you're not going to feed Ottawa with just what you can grow in the greenbelt. It takes a lot more food than that. But you can keep people from starving. It's the difference between starvation or being really hungry."

Regarding big box stores, Tim said that "We [Canada] have more retail per capita than any country in the world."

Tim agreed to be available for a workshop on Greenbelts in Fredericton, so long as it was organized before July, as he his leaving New Brunswick.

Related Blog: Realpolitik-Energy Matters

2009-03-24T07:53:00.000-07:00

Roy MacMullin, an author from the St. John area has a blog called Realpolitik-Energy Matters. He's writing on energy and politics in New Brunswick. He formerly worked with electric utilities and he's very knowledgeable. Give his blog a read.

UNB Students win $25,000 for NOT Developing Woodlot

2009-03-24T07:33:00.000-07:00

UNB students won one of four national grants from TD Canada's Go Green contest for proposing that the Woodlot not be developed, or to do ecologically sound development that don't involve big boxes like CostCo.

The Daily Gleaner is onto this now. I'll have to start a "Gleaner Watch."

CostCo Fights US Union Law

2009-03-23T12:00:00.000-07:00

Democracy Now reports that CostCo, along with Starbucks and Whole Foods, have launched a campaign to oppose passage of the Employee Free Choice Act in the US, an Obama initiative to enable more workers to organize unions.

Costco, Starbucks and Whole Foods Fight Proposed Labor Law

"In labor news, executives from Costco, Starbucks and Whole Foods have launched a campaign to block the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, which would make it easier for workers to form unions. The three retail giants have proposed a so-called compromise bill that strips the key portions of the legislation. The companies want to preserve the current law that allows employers to force workers to hold a secret ballot election before recognizing a union. Under the Employee Free Choice Act, workers would be able form a union if a majority of them signed a card or a petition."

What's so intriguing about this situation is that affluent eco-freaks who shop exclusively at Whole Foods (I used to be one; now I shop at the farmer's market) and gourmet coffee consumers are now in the same boat as the discount big boxer, CostCo. They all oppose worker's rights. I hope environmentally conscious eco-freaks and coffee lovers stand up to this crap and fight not just CostCo, but Whole Foods and Starbucks as well. Show us how really radical you are. Poetic justice, wouldn't you say?

UNB Students Pause Woodlot Development

2009-03-22T17:46:00.000-07:00

The Daily Gleaner reports that a group of UNB students gave a petition, with 650 names, to stop development of the Woodot to current President John McGlaughlin. The UNB students succeeded in achieving the following:

"He has pledged to include students in meaningful consultation by setting up a structure while he is still in his position as president to start to include students, faculty and community in the way the development is done, so we thank him for that," said Kerri Krawec.

The students have called for:

* a moratorium on development until the university and Fredericton communities can be included in meaningful consultations;

* faculty and student expertise tapped to create an innovative development process;

* a full environmental impact assessment for the entire UNB Woodlot;

* and adherence to a university promise to protect wetlands and 80-metre buffers.

A Real Urb Pharm

2009-03-05T15:36:00.000-08:00

Calling himself "at 61, a diehard homesteader turned urban revolutionary," Jules Dervaes is trying to share what he's learned over 20 years of urban homesteading with anyone who wants to learn. Please connect to his family's website that details the trials and triumphs of an urban gardener in Pasadena, California who produces over 6,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables on 1/10th of an acre of land, basically, his front and back yards. More earthy wisdom is available at Freedom Gardens and Urban Homestead Journal.

New UNB President Shrugs Shoulders on Woodlot

2009-02-26T22:21:00.000-08:00

I wrote to the incoming President of UNB, Eddy Campbell, to ask him his position on the development of the UNB Woodlot. (The set of questions follows.) He responded by saying, "what do you think I should do?" After checking with some friends at CCNB (Conservation Council) I found out that this is Eddy Campbell's usual MO--evasion disguised as "openness" and "democratic style." He just wants to avoid making a public statement that he knows many UNB constituents won't like.

I responded to that first email by saying that "I'm not the President of UNB; You are. You're the one who makes the final decision. So what is it?"

His response was "I don't have enough information to formulate a reply."

For more information about the development of the UNB Woodlot, please go to:

UNB Woodlot Watch

Hi Shaun

As I indicated in my first reply, I don't yet have enough information to formulate a reply. When I do, I'll be happy to renew this correspondence. Thanks for writing.

Regards,

H E A Eddy Campbell Acting President Memorial University 709-737-8212 (O) 709-737-2074 (F) president@mun.ca

-----Original Message----- From: Shaun Bartone [mailto:sbartone22@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 12:35 PM To: Campbell, Eddy Subject: Re: UNB Woodlot

Dear Dr. Campbell:

Thank you for responding to my email. With all due respect, sir, I do not accept "what do you think I should do" as an adequate answer. I''m not the President of UNB; You are. You're the one who is going to make the final decision on this issue, especially whether to "revisit" the issue.

Therefore, I will repeat my set of questions and ask that you provide your most considered answers at this point:

I know that the CostCo development has received initial approval, but I would like you to answer these questions from the perspective of a) possibly revisiting the decision to allow CostCo to develop on the Woodlot; and b) future development of the Woodlot.

1. Do you think that the Woodlot should be developed or left in its natural/recreational state? Entirely or in part?

2. Does leasing the site to CostCo, a big box discount retail chain, advance the mission of the University as the Provincial leader in the development of the Knowledge Economy?

3. Would you consider revisiting the decision to develop the Woodlot?

4. Would you consider revisiting the decision to allow CostCo to develop on the Woodlot?

I respectfully request that you provide some answer to these questions, and that if you choose not to answer, or defer to the notion that "it's already been decided", then I will consider your refusal to answer or to deference to the status quo as "your answer" to this vital issue.

Shaun Bartone MSW, JD MA (Sociology) PhD Environmental Sociology

City Planner Meeting

2009-02-25T05:47:00.000-08:00

CCNB to meet with City Planner March 24. Julie has arranged a meeting with Frank Flanagan, the city planner, to discuss problems of sprawl and unsustainable development in the city. The idea of co-sponsoring a workshop on greenbelts, sustainable cities, etc. will be pitched. Shaun will research potential speakers for this workshop. The meeting will occur on Tuesday, March 24 at 2:00 pm. If you could like to attend this meeting contact Julie at efficiency@conservationcouncil.ca

Toronto's Green Belt

2009-02-25T05:02:00.000-08:00

The Greater Toronto Area Greenbelt was successfully established in 2006. It incorporates 1.8 million acres of land encompassing dozens of small cities, towns and rural areas around the City of Toronto. The Friends of the Greenbelt have an extensive website that has a wealth of resources for learning about greenbelts, including historical studies of greenbelts around the world, evaluations of their project, maps and newsletters. Anyone who is interested in learning about greenbelts and the possibility of a Fredericton Greenbelt should explore this site: http://www.greenbelt.ca/home

Green Belt Go Ahead

2009-02-25T04:49:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, the Conservation Council of Fredericton, New Brunswick voted to explore the possibility of establishing a Greenbelt around the City of Fredericton. Members were particularly concerned about the UNB Woodlot and are hoping to incorporate it into a larger Greenbelt plan. Shaun Bartone reported that Ontario had just finished it's Greenbelt plan two years ago. He suggested that CCNB contact the Friends of the Greenbelt in Ontario for assistance with the project. Friends of the Greenbelt might be interested in helping CCNB put on a workshop to educate the members and the public about their successful Greenbelt project. Shaun agreed to contact the Friends and make initial inquiries.

Fredericton Green Belt

2009-02-21T09:39:00.000-08:00

My first organizing project is to initiate planning of a Fredericton Green Belt, which will place a firm border on development around the city, especially to stop the kind of Big Box development that is sprawling up the City's North and South hillsides. On the Southside, Home Depot and Costco are the latest invaders, while Walmart, Canadian Tire and Kent Hardware occupy huge swaths of land on the City's Northside at Two Nations Crossing. This has got to stop--now, while we still can. We must preserve green space around the perimeter of the City, not only North and Southsides, but east towards Lincoln and Oromocto and west towards Woodstock. A Green Belt Plan will also provide space for farmland and local food production, building local food security and resilience, and protect wildlife habitats and watersheds. Anyone who would like to put a moratorium on more sprawl development and preserve green space around the City, please join me in this effort. You can write to me via this blog.

Urb Pharm

2009-02-21T09:19:00.001-08:00

The Urban Resilience Movement is underway in Fredericton, NB, and this blog is the beginning, one of many beginnings. I'll be covering planning and development, energy, sustainability, transportation, the City's "Green Matters" program (and whether it lives up to its name), and independent local action to build eco-social resilience in the City. I will cover the City's monthly Planning Advisory Council meetings, and any other meetings related to development, land use, transportation, natural resources and energy issues, and reporting back here in this blog.

My hope and plan is that this will become a cooperative effort, that many more writers and activists will get involved in "reporting back" to City residents what is really happening. Furthermore, I hope that our collective efforts will lead to direct action for resilience and sustainability in Fredericton.

Urb Pharm is "a prescription for urban resilience."