Category Archives: Environmentalism

Be green and save Calgary money! Throw your glass in the garbage!

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Yesterday while listening to the Rutherford show, I was reminded of one of our many examples of Calgary City Hall putting the cart before the horse in their pursuit of high density city where people ride bikes to work and recycle damn near everything. What I am on about today is glass.

While the city of Calgary is asking us to spend time and water washing and separating our glass products so that they can be put into our blue bins for recycling, they really have utterly no idea what to do with the glass once they get it. Glass is really a generally unrealistic product to recycle at this time. It is hard to work with and clean and there is no cost effective use for the end product. Glass is relatively cheap to produce new and used glass is simply too impure and expensive to try and form into new glass products.

While Calgarians have been diligently washing their old jam jars and setting them aside in their blue bins, unfortunately all they have been doing is participating in one of our more expensive and egregious forms of greenwashing.

Calgary’s sorted, cleaned, crushed and transported glass has been sitting in a 10,000 tonne mountain at the Spyhill landfill!.

It is one thing to make a recycled product, it is a whole other ballpark to create a demand for it.

The energy, water and labor involved in recycling our glass in Calgary brings us a near useless end product at a cost of $29 per tonne which now is languishing at the dump. A good make work project I guess but I would rather that labor had been dedicated to patching potholes.

But wait!! In a brainstorm city engineers have found a use for all this glass!! They are going to bury it!

Um, isn’t that what would have happened had we simply put the glass in the garbage in the first place? Tell me again why we are spending all this money, water and energy to clean and sort the stuff?

Yes, the city is going to use the pile of glass as aggregate for roads within the city dump (in other words, burying the glass at the dump). While they do speak of using the glass for other aggregate projects, it really means little as 10,000 tonnes is actually a relatively small volume in the aggregate world. What is not small about 10,000 tonnes of crushed and cleaned glass is the cost.

Gravel which is typically used as road base aggregate can run around $6 per tonne as compared to the $29 per tonne for cleaned crushed glass. This means our mountain of recycled glass is worth about $60,000 but came at a cost of around $290,000. That is an expenditure of $230,000 of taxpayers dollars for actions that used extra water and energy for utterly no use thus making it actually more environmentally damaging than simply tossing the glass in the trash in the first place.

It is very simple to see what is worth recycling. Just look for whatever the private market is willing to pay money for. Metals are well worth recycling thus many businesses that buy scrap metal. Bottles and cans have deposits on them that fund the recycling. Only the cans are really viable on their own. The bottles just make more crushed glass. Some paper products are worth recycling into shingles and such. Plastics are pretty much better in the landfill with the glass.

If we are truly interested in being “green” let’s start to focus on reality with what we are doing then.

Calgary’s (and many other cities) mountain of glass is simply an embarrassment and a testament to people in power who have let their ideals override reality.

 

If you plow it, they still won’t come.

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In remaining consistent with their anti-car mandate and in ignoring the real utilization rates of roads by Calgary commuters, our wizards at city hall have hit new heights in idealistic idiocy in making all roads with bike lanes priority 1 zones for snow plowing.

We do not have the resources to keep a plow on every corner and it does not snow every day. It makes perfect sense that we prioritize which streets we plow first in order to get our main traffic arteries clear and safely moving during our frequent winter storms. Calgary has some simply formulas on estimated vehicular road use that serve well in making a snowplowing plans. All those formulas are now out the window as bike lanes now take top priority for snowplowing despite their utter lack of need or use in winter in Calgary.

At best, how many people are commuting to work on bikes in Calgary in February? Perhaps 1000 people are willing to bundle up daily and make a miserable ride to work through snow in temperatures reaching well into the -20s. Of that bunch, how many or actually using bike lane routes anyway?  Aside from those hearty masochists, we have hundreds of thousands of people who commute in vehicles in Calgary. What we have here is an element of people who make up not even a fraction of 1% of commuters who’s needs have been moved to the very top of traffic-flow priority list.

While plows are wasting hours plowing minor roadways such as Cambrian Drive NW or back industrial roads like 11 st SE (pictured here & never seen a bike using it) we can expect tens of thousands of cars to be mired that much longer on real priority streets such as Macleod Trail or Crowchild. We only have so many plows and when we divert them to relatively lightly traveled routes for these bike lanes, the traffic flow on the real arteries in the city must suffer.

Maybe this is all part of a deeper strategy. As I recently posted here, the city has even idiotically contemplated removing a lane of Macleod Trail in order to make bike lanes. Maybe a selling point for this traffic throttling plan will be to point out that Macleod will be plowed more quickly if it has bike lanes.

This almost fanatical push to socially engineer Calgary into a city of bike commuters is getting outright ridiculous. The majority of our commuters are coming from distant suburbs and they will not decide to jump on a bike and pedal two hours a day in winter in a business suit to get to work and back. Never have a seen a tail wagging the dog example better than the success of the Calgary bike cult in influencing city planning decisions. Despite a microscopic amount of real demand, a hugely disproportional amount of attention and resources are being dedicated to choking vehicular traffic and planning for a surge of bike riders that will never materialize. 

As you sit mired in unplowed snow in a traffic jam caused by an unsanded intersection this winter, you will have plenty of time on your hands. I strongly suggest that you spend some of that time thinking of who your city councilor is and whether or not they are one of those who are constantly front and center in pushing this bike garbage. Take part in the next civic election and toss these clowns out on their idealistic butts already.

 

OMG! OMG! Oh Noooes!! Danielle Smith is going to sell our water!!

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One of the laziest yet most common fearmongering tactics that come from the shallow-left is to raise the boogyman of the USA coming up to take Canada’s water somehow.

In finding nothing else to really be critical about with Danielle Smith’s trip to the USA, union activist blogger David Climenhaga decided to clip out a part of Smith’s release where she dared utter the word “water”. Climenhaga then had to add emphasis and speak of how it makes his blood run cold as quoted below.

David Climenhaga:

This led Ms. Smith, whom the party news release was also careful to note leads Alberta’s “government in waiting,” to enthuse: “This is an important opportunity to represent Alberta and discuss three major areas of bilateral interaction: energy, agriculture and water. These issues are critical for Alberta’s future and are an important part in building relationships with our American friends.” (Emphasis added.)

I don’t know about you, but it makes my blood run cold when I hear a committed market fundamentalist like Ms. Smith musing about the need to chat about water with our American cousins.

To put it simply, what a load of crap. There is nothing to fear nor not even a hint of something to make one’s “blood run cold”.

To begin with, water is already a commodity. Companies pay to bottle it and sell it to us whether pure or mixed with food and chemical products. Water is purchased to use in irrigation by farms and it is purchased to use in energy extraction. Laundromats purchase water and cities sell me metered water to water my lawn. The best means we have in responsible utilization of our water is in fact to treat it as a commodity. I didn’t buy low flow toilets because I like the weak sound of the flush, I did it to save myself money. As long as treated and transported water are commodities, the end user will be motivated to limit the use of that water to their needs. I am saying this now before the Council of Canadian Kooks start barking about it being evil to sell water. It is a non-issue. We already do so and we always will.

There is an awesome little writing tool we all have heard of called “W5”. Whether in an essay or even writing a community flier, as long as you cover the “who”, “what”, “where”, “when” and “why” of something, you pretty much have it covered.

There is something that the w5 rule does not cover though and through utilizing it’s omission the lazy-left fearmongers about a looming crisis with bulk sales of our precious fresh water to the United States that will leave no water here for us. The word that the left refuses to address is:

HOW?

 Back in 2008 I wrote about this on another forum so rather than rewrite I may as well just paste it here verbatim. As I say in the beginning of the piece, this non-issue keeps coming up over and over again and Climenhaga has demonstrated that. There is no need to change the response.

What I wrote in Project Alberta in April 2008:

I get so tired of this issue coming up year after year whether through groups like the Council of Canadians or lately the Polaris Institute with their report here:  http://www.polarisinstitute.org/files/t … ada’s%20ta.pdf

It was refreshing to hear Rob Breakenridge on QR77 take the author of the Polaris report to task and expose him rather well on the bunk that he is pushing. Tony Clarke with the Polaris Institute was constantly stuttering and dodging as Breckenridge challenged him with the most effective tactic available in the countering of anti-trade, leftist, fearmongering; he used facts.

Clarke began by asserting the constant myth about how Canada would be compelled to sell it’s water in bulk due to conditions in NAFTA. Unlike many who Clarke has spewed at, Breakenridge had done his homework and actually read the agreement. NAFTA expressly states that water (aside from bottled and tanked water) is not to be considered a trade-good under the agreement. If anything, NAFTA actually protects us from the mythical draining of the nation by the United States. Clark stuttered, had no case to make and eventually mumbled about having to agree to disagree on the interpretation. (it is difficult to have many interpretations of such a clear statement)

Next Clarke rambled about how the USA could just ignore agreements anyway and force trade as they have done many times before.    Breakenridge challenged him to name one single such case. Clarke sidetracked and kept rambling but Breakenridge continued to push. Clarke finally had to shamefully admit there was no such case.

This Tony Clarke is a classic example of those who continue to push this myth about the threat to Canada’s fresh water supplies. These people have an agenda of anti-American and anti-trade goals and they will not hesitate to fabricate issues in order to make their case. This “ends justifies the means” ideal is rather prevalent on the left particularly in trade and environmental issues where actual facts would undercut their entire case. Sadly, these people are not exposed to the light of reality as Breakenridge did so masterfully often enough.

Getting back to the Polaris Institute report, the document begins with a map of Canada with a depiction of a tap on it draining our water into the USA. Very cute depiction and gives a nice visual. Going farther down in the document, we see a nice picture of some dry cracked dirt. You know, the kind of thing that we see in our back yard if we forget to water during a dry couple weeks in August.  Through pictures we can now already see the terrifying prospect of the desertification of Canada through the mass draining of our fresh water into the United States. A terrifying thought indeed.

To begin with, they begin to lay out how this threat has existed for decades and trot out the tired old “Grand Canal” concept of the 60s. They forget to mention that the reason this Grand Canal has never even had ground broken on it is that it is and always has been an unviable pie-in-the-sky project that never could realistically come into being. What bringing this up does illustrate though is that the anti-trade folks can’t find any better examples of bulk threats to Canada’s water (perhaps because there are none).

Next they move on to pointing out some stats and facts about how many American cities and regions are facing shortages of fresh water supplies. This is true and urban populations throughout the world are facing this as their population grows. Rather than dedicate time to the issue of more responsible water management in urban settings though, these people have preferred to use this issue to imply that their is a growing threat to Canada’s water due to this.

Next, they move on to Canada’s water supplies and call us “the Great Green Sponge of the North”. Now they play some interesting stat games here in which they try to understate just how much water we have. In their rather creative accounting they determine that the United States actually has more renewable water resources than Canada. While their goal here was to portray Canada as being short on fresh water, does this not beg the question “In this case, is Canada’s demand not a threat to American supplies?”. Apparently the USA has more but I guess they are coming after ours due to simple greed.

Next, we have a picture of a reservoir next to a desert. Kinda cute, but it really means nothing. Water retention in arid regions has been done since prior to Roman times.

The report now moves on to one of their weakest points. The logistics of how this water will be transported.  This I have to post verbatim as it is simply too loony to be believed.

Western Corridor: Originally, the North American Water and Power Alliance [NAWAPA] was designed to bring bulk water from Alaska and northern British Columbia for delivery to 35 U.S. States. By building a series of large dams, the northward flow of the Yukon, Peace, Liard and a host of other rivers would be reversed to move southward and pumped into the Rocky Mountain Trench where the water would be trapped in a giant reservoir and then pumped through a canal transporting the water southward into Washington state and 34 other states.

Good heavens! A trench 1000s of kilometers long is going to be created and will drain the Great White North!!!!
Now lets get a little perspective here. One of the largest water diversion projects undertaken by man was the Panama Canal. This project took decades and the participation of multiple nations. 27,500 workers died in the construction.

What is the length of the Panama Canal? A total of 77km. The canal itself moves about as much water as the Bow river in Calgary (a tiny river in the scheme of things).

Now in light of that, try to picture what exactly it would take to move mass quanties of water more than 3000 km from the North to the USA. This means crossing numerous mountain ranges in the Rockies and somehow crossing all those pesky (and giant) river valleys along the way that would try to drain all that water back into the Pacific. This concept would take 1000s of times the resources of the Panama Canal if indeed it is even humanly possible.

We will have colonized Venus before such a project comes about. Despite this, kooky groups like this have no qualms about spreading such scenarios in hopes of spreading fears of the big bad USA. Even more sad is watching our mainstream media treat these guys like they have even a shred of credibility.

So, the crazy canal idea is out, what else have they got?

Ahh, I see they mention how a series of supertankers may drain water and take it south.   Just how many millions of supertankers would we have to line up at the mouth of the Fraser River just to capture and take what naturally comes out of there and flows into the Pacific Ocean? How many billions of tankers to cover all of the Canadian outlets to the Oceans? Why… this project could very well employ the entire planet by having them work on supertankers alone.

Next they touch briefly on pipelines. I suspect that they remain brief as even these folks realize that any massive pipeline constructed that would move a significant amount of water is really rather unviable. The Alliance Pipeline that transfers gas from NE BC costed billions and took years to build. Even if the trillion or so it would take to add the compression and pumping capability to that pipe in order to get it to move water that huge distance were invested, the pipeline would only move about the same volume of water as a small creek. It would take thousands of such pipes hundreds of years to drain even one of our smaller northern lakes dry and we would long have run out of the energy sources we would need in order to pump that water before we ran out of water.

The kooky ideas go on and on from multiple groups claiming everything from towing portions of the polar ice-cap south to large undersea bladders.

There is a very good reason that none of these projects have come about or are even in the works; water is tough to move in bulk. Water does not compress like gas. Water is heavy. While water is indeed a precious commodity, it still is not worth nearly enough per-gallon to try and move on the scales proposed.

The basis of the entire water fearmongering case is this; American cities are low on water (and some agricultural land), thus the Americans will force us to give them ours. The first part is fact, the second part is sheer baloney.

Desalination is an expensive process that makes for rather gross drinking water. That being said, desalinization is growing in leaps and bounds as the cost of the process is dropping and strides are being made in viable short-transfer of water processed this way. New plants are being built and water shortages down south are being addressed through it.

North America is indeed bounded by oceans on all sides. While desalinization remains expensive, it still costs a fraction of a fraction of the amount that would be required in order to come up with any of the loony water extraction schemes taking water from Canada and moving it to the USA. A person really has to ask themselves: “Why would the Americans spend 1000s of times the amount, plus pay Canada (or steal it ) in order to do what they can for far less on any of their coastlines?” The answer simply is that they will not.

Where is the demand for this water? Why do we not see companies lining up for the chance to extract and sell this precious part of life?
I do not want to see water export bans. We may indeed get fortunate enough to find some client crazy enough to purchase water from one of our river outlets to the ocean (unlikely as it is). It would be a great form of revenue for the nation all the same. I suspect though that these potential client-countries would probably just retain their own water before it hits their own coastline.

While this is a non-issue as I said, I still felt compelled to post this rather long rant addressing it. Sadly while being a non-issue, this issue does indeed gain some traction with many people who like to get scared by the headlines without looking more deeply into the story. This issue is being used to foster anti-Americanism by the leftist groups that thrive on that and people’s fears from this may impact trade-agreements on real commodities.

The fear of the loss of Canada’s fresh water can cost us all in itself and this myth needs to be countered vigorously whenever it pops up. Facts turn this issue into the non-starter that it is, but these facts need to be brought up and discussed often.

Real water issues such as pollution and urban over consumption need to be addressed. These can often end up sidelined as people jump on the fearful hysteria bandwagon being created by the anti-trade groups. This should not happen.

This report from the Polaris Institute was issued in collaboration with: The Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, the Sierra Club and the Canadian Labor Congress.

I think the list of supporters kind of says it all.

Follow the money!!!

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We have all encountered the statement in the title of this post. Usually the statement comes when discussing something of substance with a person lacking in substance. The aforementioned person will often wink and smirk conspiratorially while stating: “Follow the money.” and then act as if the discussion is now at a close. That statement alone apparently says it all. Read into it what you will.

Now the use of that statement is usually meant to imply that there is an individual or small group of them secretly in control of whatever was the subject of the conversation whether that be in politics, religion, economics or the leadership of the local geranium growing society. Apparently if you follow the money, you will eventually get to the head of whatever nefarious conspiracy is at hand.

When something is difficult to examine or explain, many people simply like to explain it away with a pithy statement rather than explore the issue more deeply. Much like those who love saying “God works in mysterious ways”, many try to close discussion by demanding that one follow the money. Unfortunately these people rarely if ever take their own council and actually follow the path of money or they likely would not fire out that vapid statement so often.

I am going to “follow the money” in a few examples where these statements are common.

The left loves to imply that conservative leaning parties are secretly and massively funded and controlled by evil faceless corporations. Well, if one begins to follow the money through looking at the means of federal political contributions, they will first find that corporations have not been able to donate since 2004. While individuals may contribute up to $1,100 per year federally, it makes it rather tough for an individual to control a national party on that scale does it not?

The entire breakdown for federal contributions can be found here and with only cursory examination it will be found that the federal conservatives are being funded by thousands and thousands of small individual donors. No hidden shadowy figure in control of the party or gross corporate influence. It took me about 3 minutes to google that information though, that is indeed much more effort than would be required in simply saying “follow the money” in a cryptic manner.

Ahh, but what about provincial parties particularly in capitalist Alberta? Corporations can contribute up to $15,000 in Alberta so surely that collection of corporate lackeys within the Wildrose Party is terribly beholden to those faceless organizations! Alas, in following the money it has been found that while the Wildrose Party has been setting new records in fundraising; 75% of those funds still come from individual donors. Assuming that a party acts solely based on where they can raise funds the Wildrose Party is clearly beholden to a large number of individual Albertans rather than those dark-souled corporate interests. People can find all the financial political information in detail here. It is not tough to follow the money in Alberta if a person wants to dedicate a little time to it.

With modern resources, disclosure and transparency it is becoming easier than ever to follow the money indeed. Environmentalist conspiracy theorists often demand that we follow the money when decrying the actions of the productive in industry. What is fun though is turning the gun around and following the money flowing towards our green little friends. When thinking of environmental extremists, the Greenpeace corporation is the first and largest one that comes to mind. Yes, in following the money, it can be found that Greenpeace is a $350 million per year multinational corporation that provides some pretty massive perks to line the pockets of their senior management teams. I mean hey, power to them. Greenpeace need only be accountable to it’s donors. Let’s not try to live under the illusion that Greenpeace is some sort of altruistic organization though. Even the founders of Greenpeace are pointing out how the organization is little more than a well funded corporation with an extreme left-wing agenda (seems almost counter intuitive).

Let’s face it, when we follow the money we find that there are big bucks to be made in the environmentalist industry. Thanks to people following the money, it has been found that Tides Canada has been laundering and filtering some pretty big foreign bucks to some extreme Canadian activist groups. Some of those patchouli scented punks you see at virtually every protest are actually rather well paid to be there. Due to listening to them and following the money though, Tides may (rightly) lose it’s charitable status soon.

Thanks must be given to Vivian Krause who has worked so hard to follow the money and has exposed so many of the rather well heeled fiscal shell games going on under the guise of environmental activism.

But what about those evil corporations in themselves? Who is benefiting from those boardroom monsters? Who are those suited villains really serving? Who really owns those megacorporations?

The answer to the above questions once we follow the money is: ALL OF US!!!!

It is frustrating how quickly people jump up to decry corporations when they won’t actually follow the money and see at least the basics of how these places work. Sure there are some individuals who we read about who have unimaginable amounts of money and assets. These people when added up still only make up a tiny portion of the ownership of large corporations. When looking into corporate ownership, banks, mutual fund groups, financial management, insurance companies and capital companies tend to be predominant. Where do those companies get their money? Well these companies get their funds from pension plans, insurance premiums and private RRSP type investments. Government pension plans are heavily invested in these corporations too.

Do you pay any kind of insurance premium? Well, it is the money made through the investments of your premiums that keeps the premiums within affordability. Do you plan to collect from the Canada Pension Plan when you retire? Well, the CPP is a huge corporate owner (in other words you are). If you are a part of any kind of private pension or savings plan, you are a corporate owner and are benefiting from corporate profits. Do you enjoy the lack of sales tax in Alberta? Well the revenues from investments by the Alberta Heritage Fund are much of what helps keep our taxes low (though there certainly is room to improve there).

So many people howl about corporations yet never give a second thought to how their investments grow. What makes your RRSP (hopefully) get bigger? It is not a magical fairy out there that makes your money grow when it is out of your hands, it is corporate profits and you are a beneficiary of them.

Just for a little more fun in following the money, I always love exposing union hypocrisy. While unions love to claim solidarity forever and supposedly support each other, that goes out the window when it comes to padding their own pockets. Follow the money to the Ontario Teacher’s Union pension plan.  Worth over $117 billion dollars, the OTPP is a major corporate player. The Ontario Teacher’s Union plan investments read like a who’s who of apparent evil corporate interests. The union invests billions in oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, banks and some very anti-union type organizations.

When one has over $100 billion in leverage, one could very easily control the actions of the company that one invests in. Why does the Ontario Teacher’s Union not wield that power for good? Why won’t the union come down on those vile corporations and make them clean up their ethical act? The answer is very simple; to do so would impact return on their investment. To put it in one word: hypocrisy

Yes, I finally listened to the left and followed the money. I think they may not like the conclusions. The next time somebody tells you to follow the money, may I suggest that you respond with another overused cliche: Be careful what you wish for…..

 

This looks like a must read book.

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Last month I broke down a loopy food policy document that is tied in with Calgary city hall here.

The simple fact that tax dollars are going towards these un-viable, navel-gazing exercises and that our city hall spends time discussing and even implementing the sorts of vapid suggestions that are in that food policy document demonstrates that this “foodie” fad of organics and “local diets” is gaining some steam to a degree. Economic reality will win in the end (it always does), but the question will be how much will be wasted in time and resources on this foolish notions in food provision? How hard will it be to turn back legislation even once it is well proven to be detrimental to us in economics and food safety? Remember people, Calgary has a city hall that feels their task is to literally legally regulate what kind of soup we can legally eat. The capacity of our council of nannies to come up with stupid legislation is infinite.

The book “The Locavore’s Dilemma” appears to look more deeply into the issue of food safety and security while cutting through the simplistic “100 mile” diet proposals and such. The real numbers are presented and as expected the foodie movement is nothing less than a flight of fancy by hipsters and urbanites that would lead to a true food catastrophe if we really did turn the clock back to the methods of farming used 200 years ago.

 Macleans magazine covered the book and the issue itself well here. If you can’t get the book, I do strongly recommend reading the article at least.

If we truly want a safe and secure food supply, we need to look to modern production techniques rather than going backwards. Like the anti-vaccination crowd, the self-styled urban “foodies” would cause nothing less than a catastrophe if they ever got their unreasonable way.

So many people cling to an ideal to the point where they refuse to let themselves see the actual outcome. Milton Friedman said it excellently (as he has with so many things): “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”.

We can’t underestimate how determined some folks get when it comes to food issues and how they want to implement their preferences upon others. There is the old joke: “How can you tell if somebody is a vegetarian? Don’t worry, they will tell you.” We all have met the militant vegetarian types. These people live for their martyrdom in foregoing meat and they not only want to let the world know that they have personally chosen to ignore their natural diet, they want the rest of the world to do the same. The fervor and zeal of these types is striking (though their energy levels are often low due to lack of protein). There are many vegetarians who keep that to themselves of course but that subculture of the militant ones is annoying and surprisingly effective in their lobbying.

If a person wants to live on backyard grown organic peanuts fertilized by their own feces, I say power to them. The second these people start to try to legislate what we may produce or eat though we must stand up and tell them to jam their lentils in a dark place. Is is sad that so many forget how rampant starvation & food poisoning was when it was all organic and local a couple hundred years ago. I am not too eager to go back to those 35 year life expectancies that were the norm back then either.

“Sustainable”: code for massive municipal social engineering.

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There are many terms and words that are overused and abused by many in the political world. In Calgary municipal politics there is no doubt that sustainable/sustainability top the list. The definition of the word is open to broad interpretation which gives license to people to utilize the term to encapsulate and hide a broader agenda. The word is used in a way to stifle debate often as we see politicos state: “We must be sustainable”. We see virtually every report and plan coming from city hall in Calgary noting sustainability as a goal yet often never defining just what makes an issue, plan, process, industry, practice or product “sustainable”.

Today I am locked into a motel room due to some rather nasty thunderstorms making my workplan for the day unsustainable. This has provided me with some time to read and review some of the pap and reports that have been commissioned and released by our city. Rest assured, when trying to read, absorb and stomach much of these terribly expensive reports a person needs a good deal of free time without distractions. Gravol helps too.

This morning I punished myself by reading the:  “CALGARY FOOD SYSTEM ASSESSMENT & ACTION PLAN”.

The terms of reference for this dog can be found here along with cost estimates but nothing solid.

The above document was produced by the “Calgary Food Committee” which was formed by  “The Office of Sustainability” (yes there really is a city hall office dedicated to this). This office is modelled through the “ImagineCalgary” Which has a vague mandate of coming up with a 100 year plan for the city that will be presumably sustainable.

The above mess is tied in with “Plan it” which is a city hall division that routinely churns out reports and studies further seeking means of planning to live in a sustainable environment.  The proposals of “Plan it Calgary” are routinely rejected as they simply are not fiscally viable.  Despite this, the pointy heads slaving away in that department will continue to roll out more reports, plans and propositions at great expense to taxpayers.

It is outright overwhelming when one begins to dig through the City of Calgary website and sees just how many committees and groups are spawned and funded to look into and report on damn near everything. There is clearly a huge cottage industry in creating reports for the City of Calgary and while Mayor Nenshi has often spoken of streamlining City Hall, I don’t recall him trying to touch the report/study generation department. I suspect it is because that department makes for such a great employment program for old school chums who have tired of working in the barista field. While it is easy to find all these departments, reports and committees; it is damned tough finding the costs of these things (unsurprisingly).

Need, viability or even a fragment of realism are not required in generating these reports. Lack of all of the aforementioned are all present in the “Calgary Food System Assessment & Action Plan”.  This thing is so horrible I am outright compelled to break it up and tear it apart piece by piece.

Let’s start with need. Is there a food sustainability crisis in Calgary by any measure that demands a huge report and insanely intrusive “action plan”? Do we see mass or even minor starvation in Calgary? Is it difficult to find sources of food in Calgary? Is food in Calgary more expensive than other jurisdictions? Are we at risk of starvation or even rationing of food within Calgary? The answer to all of the questions is a resounding NO! 

Canada and Calgary within it have some of the lowest prices for consumer products (including food) as a ratio to income in the entire world. We have a vast variety of food products from the inexpensive & healthy basics to delicacies and specialty foods. We are by far a net exporter of agricultural products and are not at any risk of running out of domestically produced food.  There are countless big-bag grocery stores within the city and thousands of smaller stores whether Mom & Pop shops, butchers or even large gas stations for small purchases. We have a transit system and good roadways for access to food suppliers. There simply is no food crisis in Calgary nor a looming one by any measure.

One does have to wonder what the reasoning is behind producing a large and expensive report on a non-issue is aside from employing it’s authors. In reading the entire report though it is easy to see the underlying agenda. There are an element of people who want to go back in time to the days when people lived on small farms where they often did live in food independent environments. Never mind that the life expectancies of these folks was 40 back then or that there was mass starvation on those farms as recently as the 30s due to drought. With some highly rose-colored glasses some report generating idealists have determined that this organic and independent lifestyle is attainable and desirable to most people if they simply would embrace going back in time. There is of course a general feeling of loathing of large scale and corporate agriculture throughout the report despite those things being what actually have made food affordable and plentiful to large urban populations.

Lets have a look at what that report lists as it’s goals from the imagineCalgary targets:

By 2036, Calgarians support local food production.

OK so apparently Calgarians need to be trained/convinced/mandated or something to support food production. Does this mean polling in a majority or every single Calgarian? In support does this mean participating? Will there be mandated home gardens? Mandated hours dedicated to working in collective gardens and urban ranches?

There is some polling in the report that indicates that Calgarians are generally supportive of the vague concept of local food production. Does that fill the 2036 quota or is their definition of “support” indeed something more? If that is indeed what is considered support, then what is this goal even trying to accomplish? We are already there.

The above speculations sound absurd on the surface but in reading the entire report I put little beyond these people. What I suspect would happen though is that all Calgarians would find themselves mandated through taxation to support local food production through punitive taxes added to imported foods and massive subsidies to local foods (as local/urban production is not fully sustainable).

The statement itself is as broad broad beyond reason and is a ridiculous goal for a report/action plan.

By 2036, Calgary maintains access to reliable and quality food sources.

Well that certainly does indeed sound like a nice goal. Of course I had not realized that such a threat to access actually existed. I suspect that access to food will be maintained simply due to supply and demand. Hungry people are not prone to closing roads, railways and farms. There is no exclusive access to food. We do not have people being denied food due to race or religion. Access simply is not an issue.

This statement goes a little deeper when one reads the report though. On page 90 the apparent issue is broken down.

The authors of this report feel that it is catastrophic that many Calgarians live more than 1km from a major grocery store. Keep in mind this is “major” stores such as Safeway or Superstore. Convenience stores have been categorized strangely as eating establishments and thus are not considered secure sources of food purchasing.

Now lets look at the makeup of our city. The majority of areas where one could find themselves more than 1km from a large grocery store are suburban and are middle class areas. These areas are predominantly populated by people who are mobile and have chosen to live in areas that are predominantly residential and have limited retail facilities. I bolded “chosen” because individual choice is so often ignored by city planning social engineers.

Now there are some lower income people who do not have access to a vehicle and for whom getting to a large grocery store could be more troublesome. The maps and charts in this report show where we have most of our low income people however and the vast bulk of them live in older, denser and more developed areas that have many retail options including large grocery stores. The number of people who live more than a kilometer from a large grocery store and who can’t actually get to one is microscopic. It certainly does not warrant rezoning the entire city.

Oh but wait! Zoning is exactly what is being proposed. Yes, below I will quote exactly what this report recommends to address this non-crisis of access to large food retailers:

Work with Land Use Planning and Policy to analyze the physical accessibility to grocery stores in the established areas and in the development of future policy in local area plans.
Explore potential programs and initiatives to encourage the location of food retail outlets in areas of
need. Collaboration with Family and Community Support Services, Land Use Planning and Policy, Federation of Calgary Communities and Business Revitalization Zones.

Note that with all of these calls for “collaboration” that developers and retailers are left off the list. Retailers base their locations on where they find the most demand. It is as simple as that. How does this group plan to “encourage” retailers to set up shop where business is not viable? Will the encouragement be punitive or through massive subsidies (yes us the taxpayers again)? Aside from existing districts, what will happen in new suburbs where large tracts have been zoned for large grocery retailers if no retailers want to move in? Will we force businesses to open? Will we have large city owned grocery stores? I toured the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Rest assured people, government is not who you want in charge of food production and retailing. They really are not very good at it.

Mandating a major grocery provider so that every person in the city is within a kilometer of one is simply impossible and stupid in it’s proposal.

By 2036, 100% of Calgary’s food supply derives from sources that practice sustainable food production.

The above proposal is dipping right into the realm of  insanity. How intrusive would policy have to be in order to do this? They are not even saying “most”, they are proposing nothing less than 100% of our supply would be provided by sources that they determine to practice sustainable food production.

How the hell do they think they will do this? Will imported foods be banned? Will certain farms be allowed to sell to Calgary while others are not based on what this committee feels is “sustainable”?

Is this even possible under a municipal government? If not, what the hell business do these guys have in even proposing it as a goal?

Now the word “sustainable” appears 88 times in the report and is applied to damn near everything so it is tough to determine which context is in mind whenever it appears. With this crappy statement though it is expanded on later on in the document on page 110:

Environmental sustainability has been defined as the protection of air, land and water, critical for
achieving healthy ecosystems by minimising green house gas emissions, potable water use and waste
and maximising efficient use of land, air quality, water quality and biodiversity. In addition, the food
system should support community development and action taken locally to create economic
opportunities in the community on a sustainable and inclusive basis.

Quite the definition eh? So not only will these people somehow determine that 100% of Calgary’s food suppliers meet the above environmental criteria, they will somehow ensure that it is on an “inclusive” basis whatever that means.

Ahh but of course these fanatics do not stop there. On page 111 they go into a long diatribe about organic foods. You see, these people now want to expand into controlling exactly what you eat and they feel that they should somehow compel us all to eat organic food.

Now to each their own. If a person wants to pay a premium to purchase and consume organically produced food they of course have every right to. The same goes for producers. Of course I support the right of people to produce, consume and sell non-organic foods too and that is where I quickly part ways with our appointed, tax funded authors of this report.

If the goal of this food “sustainability” plan really is to ensure that healthy food is available to all at a reasonable price and with a limited footprint, then organics are the exact opposite way to go!

Let’s begin with nutritional content. Despite the perception of many, it has been outright proven that organic produce has no nutrional advantages over conventionally produced food (aside from increased protein gained through wormy organic apples).

Lets look at cost and environmental. Organic foods cost much more than conventional foods and cause a larger environmental footprint due to the much lower crop yields. In large scale farming one can’t simply pull weeds or apply a little detergent to aphids as we can in our gardens. No farmhouse will ever compost enough food scraps to fertilize a large operation. Due to this yields are consistenly lower in organic farming which in turn requires greater landuse at a greater cost to the environment and the consumer.

Personally I see it as cut and dry on the organics thing. Still though, some see it as debatable (everything is). There is simply no way that any benefits of organic food production can merit mandating that a percentage of it be a part of Calgary’s consumption despite that being an apparent goal on page 111 of the report.

By 2010, 100 % of Calgarians have access to nutritious foods.

Pure redundancy. 100% of Calgarians have access to nutritious foods already. Unless of course one wants to redefine what nutritious or access are. Get over it guys, food need not be organic in order to be nutritious. A person over 1km from a Superstore is not being denied access to food.

There are people in deep poverty who indeed have trouble getting to stores. Those are poverty issues rather than food ones however. The food bank and Meals on Wheels deal with this to some degree. There could be more work to be done on these issues but that really is not the part of a city-wide food mandate (or it sure shouldn’t be).

Some could claim that the cost alone of food is barring access for some from nutritional meals. That is simply a load of BS and this groups own report shows that.

On page 87 of the report, a piece is written on the role and successes of the Community Kitchen Program of Calgary. This is a great and proactive program that helps teach people how to shop efficiently and cost effectively. Menu planning is provided as well as direction to food specials. Now in their own statement they say: “The Community Kitchen Program can help you prepare delicious food for your family at an average cost of $1.85 per person per meal while saving you time and energy.” Yes, with effort a person can feed a family of four a healthy meal for less than $8.

We have no real food access issues in Calgary.

By 2036, sustainable urban food production increases to 5%.

Now by nature Calgary has a limited amount of urban food production. Calgary has a growing period of roughly 114 days which hugely limits the variety of foods that can be grown and the volume. Being surrounded by tens of thousands of square miles of agricultural land makes urban food production more than a little uncompetitive with major producers as a food source.

Many people garden and it is an excellent hobby. Good fresh food can be produced at home, it is nice to get outside and one can even save a few bucks. Gardening is not for everybody however. Many people simply do not have the time to plant and maintain a garden. Many people simply do not want to garden! I had to bold that because it is another one of those personal choices that social engineers despise.

This goal is where these planners start to tie themselves in knots a bit too in a few ways. While always pushing for a far denser urban environment, these people are also demanding that space be kept open for gardening whether community or personally. You simply can’t have it both ways people.

For a solution the heavy city hammer of zoning is proposed of course. Land is far too valuable (particularly in dense areas) to be set aside to grow veggies for 114 days per year. If we crunch space even further with mandated community gardens, we will an increase in property values again which of course leads to higher rents which of course leads to higher general cost of living which of course harms the low income people that these social engineers love to crow that they are protecting. Is there really a benefit in raising urban rent by say $50 per month on average so that land can be set aside to grow potatoes that for 5% of people that could have been purchased for 59 cents per pound at Safeway? These planners seem to think so.

Other means are proposed in the document. Rooftop gardens are a neat idea. They are rarely actually efficient and produce food that costs far more than simply purchasing it however. How would rooftop gardens be “encouraged”? Will owners have any say?

Now the foodie crowd wants to of course expand into further food production in suburban yards too. On page 40 of the report, it is suggested that people raise chickens, goats and bees in their yards! 

I do wish I was kidding here. Anybody who has spent time near goats knows that they are terribly smelly animals that make a racket and are prone to wandering. If I wanted to live next to a yard full of chickens and goats I would move to the damn country and I suggest the same to anybody who wants to raise livestock.

On page 40 the report speaks of wool and leather being produced in urban settings too. I guess sheep and cattle in backyards are not unreasonable to these people.

How about bees? Sure honey bees are generally non aggressive and they create a great benefit in their pollination efforts. Do you really want to live next to an amateur beekeeper though? How many stings will I get when my neighbor accidentally hits his beehive with the weedwhacker? What if myself or my kids are deathly allergic to bee stings as are so many people? Who will we sue? The city or my neighbor? Either way we will all pay in the end if such idiocy comes to pass.

Concepts of supply, demand and economies of scale are totally lost on the sorts who created this report and set these goals. If indeed we hit 5% urban food production it should only be because masses of citizens chose to do so on their own accord. We can’t force these things.

By 2036, the consumption of urban and regionally produced food by Calgarians increases to 30%.

This is the final little goal here. Now they have coupled urban and “regional” to come with a number of 30%. This goes back to the concept of the “100 mile diet” that eco-types have been pushing around the world. It is quite possible if a person lives in the tropics to have such a diet. Being in Calgary however, people would soon tire of the mass wheat and canola intakes and likely would miss citrus fruits and such.

Transportation of food goods does indeed add to consumption of fuels thus making an environmental impact. This does lead to increased costs though so typically supply and demand ensures that things remain in balance between local and imported foods (until social engineers meddle with the system. Look at Ukraine last century for example).

What really gets me in this report though is that they propose and encourage the use of “bio-fuels”  in transporting food in order to reduce environmental impact on page 60 and other parts of the report. Regulated minimum biofuel use actually caused food scarcity and pressured the poor in Mexico because corn was being burned as fuel rather than consumed as food!

Yes, the folks who want to feed the world are proposing that we switch to a fuel that burns food and has been proven to cause harm to the world’s hungriest and most vulnerable. Just brilliant.

To summarize, this report is nothing less than a pile of idealistic and unrealistic garbage produced in the name of some weird definition of “sustainability”. The City of Calgary blows millions on these idiotic reports and could cost us hundreds of millions if they actually tried to reach the goals of this one. The contents of the report are laughable but the cost and potential costs are unfortunately not.

“Food insecurity” is not what threatens the well being and prosperity of Calgarians. Bureaucratic and idealistic nuts who produce reports like this and the politicians who approve the intrusive legislation in applying the suggestions of these reports are a huge threat to the prosperity of us all. I know it is dull reading through these things, but Calgary voters really need to get a look at what their tax dollars are going towards and what they may be going towards in the future. This has to be reigned in and only the electorate can do it. Get up and vote to fire any city councilor who supports this trash in 2013.

Bike lane experiment failing. Calgary city hall responds with more bike lanes.

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I guess I really should not be all that shocked. The almost cult-like bike movement has carried a disproportionate weight in Calgary city hall for years. There is an obsessive desire to build a need and demand where it simply does not exist. No matter how much vehicle traffic gets choked and no matter how many lanes get closed for bikes, we will never see the bike utilization that is happening in dense cities with warm climates. Despite that reality, city council is determined to make commuting ever more intolerable and to waste even more millions in making bike lanes where we don’t need them.

10th Street NW Calgary had a bike lane made that is barely used by bikes. It has however helped lead to more crunch on residential parking in the area and backed up traffic due to a lost lane of course. Even worse was the 10th Avenue bike lane “experiment”. I put the word “experiment” in quotations as it is clear that the powers that be in city hall did not care if the lane was going to be effective or not. It was dropped on us with little warning or consultation and there really was never a will to potentially go back if the experiment should be deemed a failure.

Todd Babin at the Calgary Herald did an excellent summary of the 10th Avenue bike lane “experiment” and what appears to be it’s failure on his blog today. It is well worth the read.

So while supposed experiments in bike lanes are failing, what do we see coming out of city hall? Yup, more bike lanes.

The plan is to choke downtown Calgary’s traffic even further by closing vehicular traffic lanes on 6th and 7th streets in what looks like an effort to drive bike traffic into using that abomination that we call the “Peace Bridge”.

I am honestly becoming lost for words with this council and their almost irrational press to turn Calgary into something that it isn’t and never will be. We can close every lane in all of downtown to cars, we still will not see hundreds of thousands of people riding bikes to work from districts such as Sundance and Harvest Hills in January.

These backed up cars will idle for hours without need. How “green”.

Druh Farrell eager to leap into another tax-funded boondoggle.

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 While we still await the final costs for the still delayed disaster that some call the “peace” bridge, Druh Farrell the chief proponent of that embarrassment to the city is already trying to have more tax dollars potentially destroyed through fast-tracking a program where the city will compost our coffee grounds.

 The merit of having government take over composting for us is debatable at best and I will be posting some information on the myth of a landfill crisis and the benefits of recycling below.

 Calgary is to begin a $1.3 million pilot project with 8000 homes where a third bin will be added to their fast growing collection of waste bins. The new bin will be for organic waste that can theoretically be converted into a useful compost. I am happy at least that the city is doing a pilot program rather than jumping neck deep into this notion. This is a responsible way to see if the program needs adjustment or is even worthwhile to pursue as a whole.

 Never one to be bound by responsible actions though, Druh Farrell is furious and is demanding that we fast-track the program into full implementation as soon as possible. Never mind the fact that we don’t even have the facility to deal with the waste (estimated to be $60 million or so). Never mind that we have not tested to see if citizens really like the notion of having a bin full of rotting organic waste sitting in July heat for two weeks at a time. Never mind seeing what a true and total cost estimation of a city-wide program may be. Full speed ahead says Druh!!

 I suspect that Druh realizes that the pilot may expose this program to be a waste and a failure thus her eagerness to rush right into it. I may of course be giving Druh too much credit there.

 We are in a city that constantly claims to be so broke that annual tax hikes are the norm yet our council can’t seem to run out of ways to waste our money. Let’s let this pilot project run it’s entire course, look at the outcomes, and then start to discuss if the entire city needs a third waste bin.

 We rushed into recycling in the first place and ended up with thousands of tonnes of glass that nobody wanted piled in our landfill after having been expensively collected and sorted. Do we have a place for a mountain of compost? How about this Druh, why don’t we store the rotting organics in the middle of your precious Kensington while we try to find a facility to process it. That may take some of the shine from the concept.

 Below is video from Penn and Teller’s series “Bullshit”. I do warn, as the title of the series indicates the show is loaded with expletives. Despite the colorful language, the show is packed with facts and realities of recycling including a live experiment of how gullible well meaning urbanites can be at times. I strongly recommend watching the show in full (not at work and not with kids around).

 

Voting with their feet and wallets, Canadians are heading to suburbia.

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The anti-“sprawl” crowd is a vocal group but in looking at our development patterns these people are clearly in a tiny minority. Despite efforts to stunt outward development and an almost cult-like subgroup of people screaming for and trying to shame people into dense downtown living, Canadians en masse are simply choosing to move away from the cores of cities.

Some recent number crunching has revealed that non-core areas have made up 97% of Calgary’s growth with similar numbers in cities accross Canada.  

It is not that hard to figure out why this is a trend. When I was in my early 20s, I lived in downtown Calgary and I loved it. I could walk to pretty much anything I needed and while Calgary is not known for it’s exciting downtown nightlife, the downtown still provided many bars and such to be patronized. I was shopping for food for one and didn’t mind walking a couple blocks with some grocery bags and riding an elevator with them. Of course, my needs and preferences changed as I grew older. The main thing was having kids.

Suddenly grocery loads are a bigger deal and the need for a car is becoming more acute. While I was comfortable walking downtown streets at night as a young man, I really did not like walking with my kids past the seedy elements that are drawn to city centers. I wanted space. I wanted a yard for the kids to play in. I wanted a spread out neighborhood where I knew who lived next door. I wanted family to be able to visit without paying $20 in parking. To summarize, I like over 90% of Calgarians chose to live in the suburbs and have utterly no regrets.

I understand that some people manage to live downtown with kids and enjoy it. Well good for them. It doesn’t need to mean that the rest of us should have to.

I am tired of the near scorn being directed at suburban commuters for daring to choose to live in a cost-efficient comfort with their families. Nobody should be ashamed for not wanting to live in a crowded dense area. We have the space to grow outward and we are doing so. Good.

Now that we have established that the vast vast majority of Calgarians do not want to live downtown, can we start to model policies based on that reality? We don’t need more damn bike lanes. There is no screaming need for more bikes, there simply is a loudly screaming minority of bike riders. We are refusing to recognize where our population really is and are choking traffic to accommodate a tiny minority. Never will a large number of middle-aged folks suddenly decide to start riding bikes 20km to work downtown in January so let’s quit with the idiotic planning under the assumption that they will.

Those who are tired of smog and idling should look at reality here too. Choking traffic will not reduce this. People will simply get up earlier and sit idling longer as they have lost lanes to a handful of bike riders in winter. You want to reduce fuel consumption and idling? Speed up traffic flow then.

Our mayor and council love to blow millions on endless studies of everything under the sun. Well we don’t need to spend a pile here to see the trend. We are a prairie city that is growing quickly and it won’t be stopped. Lets start planning based on that reality instead of some unrealistic utopia of a densely packed downtown. People simply do not want to live like that.

Really folks, the urban density pictured below is hardly a noble goal to pursue.

Just a quick note to the hysteric residents of Royal Oak Calgary.

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The eco-fearmongering is hitting fever pitch as it has been noticed that a sweet oil well is proposed to be drilled a quarter-mile from some residences in NW Calgary.

People are acting as if this sort of well is new or dangerous when it simply is neither of those things. Some are howling about air quality. Well, the local sewage manholes are emitting more foul and dangerous gas than a sweet oil well will. There are literally thousands of wells much closer to households in rural Alberta and people are not dropping like flies.

You bought a house on the edge of the city with a prison and a garbage dump for neighbors and you are complaining about a sweet oil well nearby? I bet most of the residents there derive their incomes from the energy industry. I am sure that complaints of the smells from neighboring livestock come in on a regular basis too.

To put things in perspective here are a couple shots of other wells.

The first picture is from Bradford PA and the well is literally over 100 years old. It is novel sitting in the drive though lineup while watching an active well operate 6 feet from you. May I suggest that the product from the McDonalds is more potentially harmful than the oil well. I spent a few months in Bradford a couple years ago. Besides that well and the Zippo factory, there is little else of note. Would you take that away from them?

The second picture is from Los Angeles where there are hundreds of local hazards that eclipse that posed by some wells in residential areas.

NIMBY syndrome never fails to rear it’s ugly head. Anti-energy people are whipping the residents of Northwest Calgary into a frenzy over what really is an utter non-issue. There are much more important things for growing communities to be focused on than completely safe oil wells being drilled in neighboring fields.

Oh and for those spreading fear because there is a slim chance that 1 pmm of hydrogen sulfide may possibly kinda sorta be present in the oil occasionally, keep in mind that our own flatulence carries as much H2S as this well could in the very unlikely event that it carries any. Yes, you are as dangerous as the Royal Oak oil well when you emit beer-farts.