Adrian in PG

Comment for Cross-Country Check-up: What do Canadians want and expect from a political leader?

2011-08-28T14:10:00.000-07:00

Thought I'd add my two cents to this. What makes a great political leader?

I can't speak for other Canadians, but I have several things that I look for in a political leader, and I hope that others agree. I have seen some great comments here about charisma, honesty and integrity, and particularly about us demanding more of ourselves so that we can do the same for our leaders.

I wanted to add the following things that I'm looking for in a leader:

- A political leader is a manager of the most important organization there is in this country, a decision-maker, and a communicator (and I don't mean just someone who's good at sound bites, but actually listening to others and accepting good ideas).

- Someone who encourages others to collect the best available evidence, and will make decisions based on this evidence;
- Someone who listens to and engages with their colleagues and their constituents; and
- Someone who is willing to take tough and sometimes unpopular decisions and explain their reasons.

I hear about people who hate people who change their mind. I see no problem with changing a decision, especially if the evidence shows that the previous choice was less beneficial to their constituents than the new direction.

More on Germany and the nuclear shut-down

2011-06-10T08:00:00.001-07:00

Another chance to comment on the decision in Germany to shut down nuclear power, prompted by an article in Der Spiegel about "The Downside of Germany's Nuclear Phaseout".

Germany produced 46% of its electricity from coal in 2008 (and another 14% from natural gas). Nuclear is 23%. While I agree that there are a lot of problems with nuclear power - how many lives have been lost from it in operation in Germany? In the three accidents that have happened in the industry in Germany - the number is zero. Now how many people are killed annually from coal mining? From the pollution from coal power plants? What about the climate impacts of coal? Oddly, I can't find this (maybe I would if my German was better...) - but premature deaths from air pollution in Germany are estimated at 65,000.

While I agree that nuclear waste is not good, I think that the very real risks and impacts of coal must be the first thing tackled. Once coal is phased out, and gas, then nuclear should be addressed.

Germany's decision to close nuclear power plants

2011-05-30T20:51:00.000-07:00

I am finding myself torn about the German government's decision to shutter all of their nuclear plants by 2021. Actually, no I'm not. I think it's the wrong decision. Here's why, as I posted on the http://www.350.org Facebook page.

Even if Germany replaces all of the nuclear with renewables, the nuclear that needn't have been shut down could provided the baseload power that could have lead to shutting coal. In 2008, Germany produced 46% of its electricity from coal - and 23% from nuclear (also, 14% natural gas, 6% wind, 4% hydro, 3% biomass, 2% waste and 1% solar PV).

So... what will replace the 23% of its electricity demand? And what of shutting the coal power down? Coal is the worst, most dangerous option (and not just on climate, but on a per MWh scale, too). The world and the environmental movement should be clamouring for coal to be shuttered first. Once we've done that, then we can target nuclear.

Thoughts? I'm aware that I'm courting controversy here.

Comment on a blog on: What’s car ownership really costing you?

2011-04-25T14:42:00.000-07:00

I forget how I got there - probably through Twitter - but I found this good blog posting about the costs of car ownership. Had to make the following comment, particularly after a slightly misguided comment post.

Great article. Though I couldn’t get the edmunds.com link to work for my car (a Focus 2008 SE).

I’m 34 and bought my first car last year, for a move and a new job where I was told I need a car (on occasion, I do). I bought it with my savings from not owning a car before this. Prior to this, I lived in Ottawa, using a Vrtucar (a local version of Zipcar) for personal errands, because I had taxi chits for work travel, and got to work via public transit or bicycle. Now I’m in a smaller city with limited public transit (the closest drop point is about 800 yards from my office), no car share (density’s too low to create a business case for one) and much poorer snow clearing, so winter saw much more car usage – I think I drove 800 miles from November to March!!! My car has been a massive expense, but hopefully I can resell at a reasonable price when the opportunity presents itself.

Peter could not be more different from the other people writing on this. As someone who’s travelled a fair bit through the world (about 24 countries) there is much to learn and experience from other places. The variety of the USA provides opportunities to learn as well, but there’s much to gain from going to places like Amsterdam, Berlin, Delhi, Bangkok, Johannesburg, etc. as well. Peter – I didn’t get the sense Matthew’s a worrier, especially since he’s got a 7 year old that he hauls around on the bus or by foot. I’m sure you both believe in protecting your family – it’s just that you see different sources of risk (the car is one of our greatest sources of risk in day-to-day life – both in terms of health and finances). I also had a great community that I lived in while in downtown Ottawa, with terrific friends close by. In a more dense city, you’ve got a lot more people living close to you; it’s easier build your own community based on mutual interests as well as on geographic proximity, since there’s just more of you.

Jane Jacobs once said “The point of cities is multiplicity of choice.” I think that’s close – it may not be the ‘point’, but it’s definitely the outcome. And one of the best parts of that choice is the ability to choose your form of mobility. Suburbs (especially single-use suburbs) often aren’t designed to offer that.

Another rant

2011-03-03T21:56:00.000-08:00

A friend was goading me on Facebook. This is my reply to him, edited for a wider language:

Re: lying scientists - There are real people on all sides. Some of the scientists are jerks, and exaggerate, and that needs to be watched too. I won't pretend otherwise.

That said, the likes of Rex Murphy and Margaret Wente and Lorne Gunter are, in my mind, going well beyond the realm of good taste in their cynicism on climate change. We've already seen the first impacts of anthropogenic climate change, and we can't just shut our eyes when massive typhoons that are virtually unfamiliar are hitting Australia every three years, when Iqaluit spends the month of December at 21C above their average, when the lodgepole pine is receding from my new home and heading northward so that it can survive because those lousy beetles are destroying them because, even when I moan about the cold, it's no longer cold enough to kill the beetles... the balance of evidence shows that it's already here. They're wrong, and for knowingly spouting their falsehoods, they should be in front of a judge for lying in a public forum or whatever we call it in this country (and which was recently upheld, thankfully).

But you're right, I shouldn't worry about us Canadians, while the Chinese are gonna mess it up for all of us. Except they are getting pushed towards cleaning things up, because environmental destruction domestically is the greatest threat to the existence of the Communist Party. The scariest part is if, when we do get our act in gear, we'll be buying our things from China, because they'll have taken the lead on the green economy. What if their obstructive position is all a ruse for them to gain advantage, and when they say, you know, that climate change thing, it's kind of a big deal, we'll sign a serious treaty, and, oh, by the way, how much will you pay us for the technology that we've developed to avoid it?

Canadians are still, on average, four times more polluting than the average Chinese person when it comes to greenhouse gases, even without much of the coal they've got. So while I disagree with China's outward do-nothing position, there's the smallest bit of validity to it. Not much; they have to get going now because they emit more on average than the average person, and about 3 times what the planet is able to assimilate, but their long-term emission reduction commitment on a percentage base should be less than ours (70% vs. 90%).

The science is there. The evidence is there. The threat is there. It's not the day to day slight temperature increases globally we should worry about, and I won't pretend we should. It's not the polar bears, either, for me. It's the extremes and what they'll do to humans, and a still increasing number of humans (luckily, that trend will soon end, and it's one of the places I'm positive about). I worry about the refugees from flooding in low-lying places like Bangladesh, Egypt, the Netherlands, the Mississippi Delta. From the forest fires just south of here, and in Australia, and California, and in the Mediterranean. I'm worried about food prices going up. Doesn't bother me, but when you're spending 60-70% of your income on food, and it goes up, you might just say "take off" to your tyrant of 30 years (Go Egypt!) only to realize that what would replace him won't be able to solve the problems immediately either. Though it'll likely be better than the tyrant.

Anyhow, I don't want to think too much about the problems either. I'd rather be one of the ones who are working on the solutions. I wouldn't have moved here if it wasn't to work on solutions. I guess while I'm cynical about the PETA types, and the corporate types, I'm generally not cynical about finding solutions. I think we can do it if we get the brightest brains thinking about it and working towards it, instead of wasting their time on useless pursuits.

Running a city is not like running a business

2010-09-26T08:24:00.000-07:00

On the Ottawa Citizen's website, David Reevely touches on a topic, that is, running a city like a business, that came up early in the thesis that Kate Murray, Chidi Ogbuagu and I did last year (here's the version of the resource guide with working hyperlinks). We were trying to create a business case for sustainability for cities. Cities aren't businesses, and the motivations that drive cities are different - they need to build more than just economic capital. That's why we instead did a report on how building community capital (including economic, built, natural, social, cultural, human and political) to move towards sustainability.

The comments on this posting are also pretty intelligent!

Thorium - will it give nuclear energy a future?

2010-09-14T17:25:00.000-07:00

Just posted this on Facebook. Would like to hear the opinions of others.

Is there a place for nuclear energy in a sustainable energy system? What if its radioactive byproducts only needed 300 years of storage instead of tens of thousands years? And they couldn't be converted into nuclear weapons?

If we moved to thorium instead of uranium, maybe the threats posed by nuclear energy would be far smaller. I kept this in mind after Karl-Henrik Robèrt mentioned thorium in a session at Blekinge Tekniska Högskola last year. There may be a future for nuclear fission that is different from the past.

Your thoughts?

Climategate - a tale... full of sound and fury, signifying nothing

2010-01-02T17:56:00.000-08:00

Hi there,

I just put this on a friend's Facebook page, and wanted again to save it somewhere.

We're pretty sure that Phil Jones at the CRU lacks tact and common sense in a lot of areas. We're pretty sure he needs to learn how to write, and not be so flippant in his emails, and use proper language that doesn't make him look like an arse if someone does happen to illegally hack his account and find his language. The Associated Press has done a good assessment of what was found in the CRU emails.

That's an objective assessment of "Climategate" - a tale... full of sound and fury, signifying nothing - scientists behaving badly doesn't change the science. Another question - I wonder what we would find if Pat Michaels, Fred Singer, Anthony Watts, Steven McIntyre and the like had their emails hacked.

We're also about as sure as it's possible to be that climate change is happening now, temperatures continue to rise, the data points to a minor slowing in the rate of increase in the last decade, but no reversal or stoppage in the growth. So, to Mr. Lott's article, the answer is, the scientific community is about as sure about climate change as it is about the ozone layer, the link between smoking and lung cancer, and evolution. Which is to say about as sure as it can be.

At the IPCC Working Group I meeting, the authors wanted to say that it's 'virtually certain' that climate change is the result of human activity, because the data points that way. Who stopped them at the plenary, and got them down to 'very likely'? China.

The IPCC document, especially the Summary for Policy Makers (SPM), is a conservative assessment of climate change, because EVERY government in the room has to agree to the text. The SPM is agreed to word-by-word by governments. This includes the US under Bush, China, India and Saudi Arabia.

2009-12-16T07:58:00.000-08:00

A friend asked me about the Climate Interactive Scoreboard, and Bill McKibben's interpretation of its predictions that commitments made by countries will lead to 770 ppm (of CO2 or CO2e? That's not clear either).

I responded with this:

I think that we'll avoid those levels - or at least, if we reach those levels, it'll be because of positive feedback loops (e.g. release of methane from permafrost and gas hydrates), not because of anthropogenic emissions.

Here's why:

1) There aren't enough fossil fuels to get there. While natural gas reserves are up in North America, and quite dramatically, oil reserves show no sign of increasing sufficiently. The 10 billion barrels we've found in 2009 (highest this decade)? Humanity runs through that in four months. We're probably looking at only enough resources to get to doubling of CO2. If that.

2) The 770 ppm number is likely misleading, and I hope Bill McKibben would know better. I went to the site and see only their temperature target for the weakest targets - and perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but I think we'll do better than our weakest targets globally (except for maybe Canada, we're a bunch of climate knuckle draggers with our collective heads in the oil sands). It assumes nothing about the long-term targets. We won't get to 770 ppm.

3) Confusion between metrics. I don't know if their 770 ppm refers to CO2 or CO2e. Probably the latter. 350 refers to CO2. That is equal to about 445 ppm CO2e, given methane, nitrous oxide and other non-CO2 GHGs.

4) I really believe we're not that stupid. Except maybe in North America and China, and perhaps India (oops). But the impacts are being felt and they point to anthropogenic climate change. We know better. The costs are not high, and will largely come back to us, in a large measure. Just like it would likely be with health care - the costs of insuring all Americans is probably equal to the way the system works now, because it would drop insurance costs.

I think that, at some point, trade protectionism in the US will line up with climate protection. People will decide that, between spending $X dollars on importing fuel from Saudi Arabia, or Algeria, or those frozen bastards in Alberta (shit - a lot of those companies are based in the US, that might not be a good example), they'd rather spend it on American companies who build insulation, wind turbines, solar collectors and cells, and construction companies building more sustainable communities. All of these are domestic jobs that can be difficult (though not impossible) to outsource. The language of the Kerry-Boxer bill (Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act) might indicate that the discussion is shifting.

I hope.

Had to park this somewhere...

2009-12-11T08:47:00.000-08:00

I just wrote this on a friend's Facebook wall, but need a more permanent place to store it. Someone was badmouthing carbon taxes.

Here's what I was responding to:

"A carbon tax as a way for the government to enforce environmental policy is a bullshit idea.

Do we need a carbon tax or do we need more stringent environmental laws, enforcement of those laws and much stiffer penalties for companies that break the laws? I would think so.... See More

A carbon tax is the government attempting to create a new industry, new jobs and increase their own tax base. It does not solve the climate situation nor does it influence corporations to take real steps to build more sustainable business practices.

Carbon sequestration in underground cavities does not push businesses to create less carbon, now does it?

It's in the nature of big business to find loopholes like that and they're most adept at finding loopholes in tax structures. In the end, a carbon tax will be passed on to the consumers anyway so why not just tax the end user on their income and use that to enforce environmental law? Go give someone in Ft Mac a billion dollar fine for dumping crude in the river and see how every producer all across Canada suddenly finds the money and energy to change how they produce oil.

A carbon tax will not give you that kind of result, if you get any result at all."

And here's my response:

'I disagree with your carbon tax assessments, however. Sweden has a carbon tax of $150/tonne. Biogas is now being used to fuel fleet vehicles and provide cooking fuel; waste products from the forestry industry and landfill gas have replaced oil in district heating systems. It's incredible the changes you'll see with the right incentives... The tax has made the local energy options cheaper (the carbon tax also keeps money inside the country, as Sweden doesn't have domestic fossil fuel reserves - kind of like us Eastern bastards ;) ).

Sweden's economy is up about 48% since 1990 while its emissions are down 9%.

Carbon taxes are not like income taxes - they dissuade consumption of polluting goods, which is soemthing I believe we all agree is something that we'd prefer to see less of, and they do it cheaply and efficiently. They don't drive CCS, because it's still too expensive a technology.

A carbon tax can't be done in isolation - it needs other policies to ensure there's also a cap on emissions- but it can change the way people look at technological options. Because money talks.

Finally, isn't creating the incentives to move an economy and society towards something better part of government's job? If not, what is government's job? One of the huge questions.'

I want to come back to these ideas. What's the role of government? What is the best way to constrain emissions? Which levels of government are best placed to achieve this, and how do we get them to collaborate?

Blogging on Climate Change

2009-10-15T18:33:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

It's been a while (pretty much 6 months, actually) since I've blogged, but today is Blog Action Day (See www.blogactionday.org), and it's on a subject that's near and dear to my heart, climate change. I could say so much about this topic, a lot of which has been said already.

I came to a pretty sad climate realization today. The time to act and really get serious was two years ago, in 2007, when we all had a lot of money and it was flowing fairly freely, and we had the information we needed in the form of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Why not take some of that cup that is running over and invest it in technologies and designs of all sorts that would make our societies much more resilient. Now, we're borrowing against our future (well, we would've probably have been doing that in 2007, but at least the debt would've been less), investing stimulus money in... to be honest, I'm not sure. I doubt, however, that what the Canadian government is spending on has sustainability and dealing with climate change written into it.

The International Energy Agency just published the climate change chapter for their World Energy Outlook for 2009. The cost to avert catastrophic climate change? About 1.1% of GDP in 2030 (or, $1.2 trillion). Less than what the IPCC said two years ago. They didn't look at the financial or other benefits that would come out of that investment, except for fuel costs (which would go down by about $8.6 trillion over the 20 years between 2010 and 2030; though it doesn't say how much in 2030, it's probably close to $1 trillion) and health costs (which would go down by about $100 billion). So - here we are - a chance to create a cleaner world, at a true long-term profit. A chance to save money now and into the future. A chance to create places that are really help people meet their fundamental human needs. This can really start at Copenhagen.

Are we ready to do it?

Job sprawl

2009-04-13T09:14:00.000-07:00

Recently, I've become really interested in Richard Florida's work on cities, what makes certain cities successful, and why some are more geared to one's personality than others. I found this article on his blog about the increasing suburbanization of the American work force.

I felt compelled to respond; it would take a lot longer to make a strong, coherent argument, but this is a start:

It’s interesting to note what jobs are moving out of the city centres. Transportation and warehousing, finance and insurance, utilities, and real estate and rental and leasing were mentioned. In some of these cases, there is a real interest in locating out of the centre. Transportation and warehousing is easier out there; not only is there more space, but traffic snarls from attempting to enter urban cores are avoided. The other positions follow people closer to their suburban homes. However, I wonder why positions in other fields have concentrated outside of the city centres, and why mining is the only industry to have concentrated towards the centre of cities. I’m not sure that their position categories capture all relevant forms of employment, and it seems that the most creative industries are less apt to have moved (health, education, arts, information), though professional and management positions have moved more than the average.

I think the authors nail the potential impacts of the increasing suburbanization of jobs on the prospects for economic development:

“The decentralization of employment, by lowering density and interaction among proximate firms and workers, may also lower the rate of innovation. Carlino and colleagues find that across metro areas patenting rates are strongly associated with employment densities in the urbanized portion of those metro areas.″

I don’t believe this bodes well for environmental sustainability, either.

A shift to nodal development, where there are centres of development outside of the city centre that act as clusters for employment, day-to-day needs, etc., that provide increased accessibility without dependence on private transport, could mitigate the environmental impact of the suburbanization of work. But would that be considered the creation of new city centres? Overall, this appears to be a worrying trend.

Those that are against taxes should keep in mind that services need to be paid for somehow. Creative taxation solutions might work better, though. This, however, doesn’t seem like the right forum to discuss taxation solutions to encourage the return to urban centres (and I don’t have the expertise to discuss taxation, either!).

Ottawa Senators and the .500 mark

2009-03-22T02:57:00.000-07:00

I read an article today about the Sens, and that the team went over the .500 mark, which to me, means they've won more games than they've lost. Others interpret it as the team having taken more than 50% of the points available to them. I don't agree with this interpretation, because in the old NHL, there were only twice as many points available as games played. In a season of 30 teams playing 82 games, this would translate to 2460 points. Today, there is no specific ceiling to the number of points teams can get. But, it is more than 2460. It could be as high as 3690; but that would require EVERY game going to at least overtime, if not shoot-outs.

Anyhow, in the current system, the Senators have 31 wins, 30 losses, and 10 overtime/shoot-out losses. So they've won 31 games, and lost 40 games. While they have 72 points out of 142 points, they have lost nine more games than they've won.

On top of that, they wouldn't have necessarily won 31 games in the old system. Three of those wins are shoot-out wins, and they have five shoot-out losses to date (this data will change as the last 11 games are completed).

Those games, under the old system, would've been ties. Overtime losses would have fit into the loss category - the Sens have lost five overtime games prior to the shout-out, so those would've fit into the old "loss" category.

So, under the old system, they'd have 28 wins, 35 losses and 8 ties - 7 games below .500. They would've had 64 points, 8 points fewer than they have now.

Sweden and Sustainability

2009-03-21T01:08:00.000-07:00

Hey,

This was an email I put together, but this is probably a better place to put it.

So, I've been living in Sweden for almost 7 months now. I've been able to see some of the incredible work going on in leading Sweden towards sustainability.

I live in Karlskrona, which is a kind of unremarkable town on the road towards sustainability, other than having the first university in Sweden to declare that it would be climate neutral. Karlskrona does has a biomass-fired district heating plant, and the house I live in on an island (Långö, which translates to Long Island) half way between school and downtown has a ground-source heat pump, because the district heating network's pipes are just being laid down here now. Karlskrona also has some pretty good density in the town centre. However, it is fairly sprawled and has a power centre, not unlike those of Canadian cities. On the other hand, it has good public transport and bicycle paths to get there.

Karlskrona is 90 km south of Kalmar and 115 km southeast of Växjö. These two cities are doing much better on their road to sustainability.

I completed a project on looking at how Växjö, which has the slogan "The Greenest City in Europe" (originally given to it by The Independent in August 2007, could make future developments as sustainable as possible. Växjö is a pseudo-success story. They set a target to reduce fossil carbon emissions by 50% from 1993 levels by 2010, and have made a 32% reduction so far (as of 2007), mostly through shifting their combined heat and power plant from oil to biomass (largely locally-sourced wood residues, given its location in Småland, which is one of the leading lumber regions in Sweden). However, transportation emissions remain intractable, and have gone up 15% over the 15 year period.

Interestingly, Kalmar has started to steal some of the thunder from Växjö. The Smålandsposten, which is the regional newspaper for the area covering both Kalmar and Växjö, has been criticizing Växjö Kommun (somewhat unjustly) for not buying new biodiesel buses and instead getting older ones from Kalmar. However, Växjö plans on using biogas from their wastewater treatment in new buses starting in 2010.

It is interesting to note how Swedes have very similar conditions to Canadians and yet are so much further ahead. I still haven't nailed down exactly what it is, but there is no doubt culture plays a large part in it. How often have we heard Swedish companies say that they're moving towards sustainability because "it's the right thing to do"? More than once...

There is one thing, however, that really changes things. For all taxes collected up to the 30% tax bracket, 2/3 are directed straight to the municipalities. The other 1/3 goes to the county. Beyond that, the national government gets to collect taxes, e.g. the exorbitant 25% sales taxes on goods as well as gambling and alcohol revenues, and carbon taxes which will raise about SEK28 billion (CDN$4.5 billion) in Sweden this year, at about $150/tonne (I can't find the actual rate by searching through the Swedish government website in either Swedish or English, since carbon taxes and energy taxes are lumped together).

That may explain why Swedes are more willing to pay taxes - because they see the benefit at the local level. To me, this is a much better system than the property tax system in Canada (i.e. municipalities can only collect from transfers and property taxes). I don't pretend to have a strong grip on tax systems, and am welcome to comments on what I've written here.

Communication skills really are learned...

2009-01-20T14:33:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone,

Back for the first time in a while. Some down time (well, not really... but making it anyway).

I have been enjoying my time biking around in the not-so-cold of Karlskrona, not having to depend on the bus system, but having it as an option. Neither can be said of Ottawa these days, and I feel for those stuck because of the transit strike. It is my belief that transit should be considered an essential service, and this strike should've lasted all of three or four days before mediators and an independent arbitrator brought it to a close. Both sides are making Ottawans suffer.

One of my contacts back home recently made his views on the strike known to many people; he sent them out to all of the city councillors, the mayor and a mailing list. His approach was, well... undiplomatic? Let's just say that I could picture throbbing veins either in his neck or his forehead while writing it.

There's an approach we learn here which I had learned before (I remember discussing it in Gr. 11 gym class) but never had a name for - our program calls it non-violent communication (to me, it's a form of diplomacy). Not rocket-science, but so often forgotten when trying to win others over. Basically, framing arguments from the "I think that..." or "I feel that..." perspective, so the other side of the argument isn't as defensive.

It wouldn't be fair or right for me to post his message or say his name. But I can probably explain a bit more about communication skills and non-violent communication (and my own opinion of the bus strike, and my current, early perspective on the state of cities and municipalities in Sweden) through my response to my contact. See the message I sent him below (in almost its entirety; only pleasantries and statements superfluous to the argument have been removed).

______________________________________

Hey,

I am impressed with the amount of time you have taken on this issue. We need more people to hold city council to task, especially when they have been in the wrong, as they have been on the strike.

In Sweden, municipalities are really strong and own loads of stuff - district heating plants, transit companies, etc. They are really good at making money outside of tax revenue! Different model, and I think there's a lot more trust in government here (as is evidenced by your message).

While I agree with your assessments, I don't think that your approach has been the most productive means of getting your point across. Were I sitting in the seat of the councillors, particularly those suburban/rural councillors that are on Larry's side, I would probably react by not responding to your message, and perhaps not reading it beyond where the anger and the insults begin. I don't think the councillors are retarded monkeys; I think that those that agree with Mayor O'Brien (shudder - still can't believe Ottawans did that) are making a huge mistake, and making the citizens of Ottawa suffer unnecessarily. They may be doing it out of malice, or poor social skills and poor political skills and acumen, but idiocy isn't the problem. Even if this is the case, name calling will not change things - they're far more likely to go on the defensive and defend their actions, no matter how ridiculous those actions are. No doubt they have many people calling them out on this, and they're especially stressed at this time - that enough should get them back to the table.

Politics and diplomacy is about telling people their idiots when they're being idiots, and doing it in a way that they may stop being a idiot and fix the problem because you give them a way out of their dumb move. Good politicians do this. Some of city council includes good politicians. OK, maybe just Alex Cullen and Clive Doucet (he stepped back and apologized for speaking out against the mayor last week, and I respect him for it, even though he was in the right at that time). Still, they are out there.

Here's good news I just found out today - the Natural Step, an organization closely linked to the Master's I'm doing here, is working with the City of Ottawa on an Integrated Community Sustainability Plan. If they're successful, the city will see the value of public transit and how integral it is to sustainability, and another strike won't happen.

Anyhow, I hope the strike ends soon. All the best,

Adrian

National Sustainable Development Strategies

2008-11-13T13:54:00.000-08:00

Last semester, our class was asked to review national sustainable development strategies in Europe. This piqued my interest. I had known about the departmental sustainable development strategies (e.g. the one at Natural Resources Canada), but was not sure if there had been a Canadian one. There hadn't been one developed on a national level, but Bill C-474, the Federal Sustainable Development Act, passed the House of Commons on June 13, 2008. I was glad to see that all MPs in Canada who were present at Second Reading (in February 2008) voted for the Federal Sustainable Development Act - except Bradley Trost of Saskatoon-Humboldt, who voted against even all other Conservative MPs. I sent Mr. Trost the following message about this, and encourage you to do the same.

If you do email him, include your address; he is more likely to respond to you directly if you do so.

Dear Mr. Trost,

I was recently asked to study National Sustainable Development Strategies in Europe. Piqued by this request, I decided to analyse Canada's progress on developing a National Sustainable Development Strategy. I discovered that Bill C-474, "An Act to require the development and implementation of a Federal Sustainable Development Strategy and the development of goals and targets with respect to sustainable development in Canada, and to make consequential amendments to another Act", was passed on June 13, 2008. I was pleased to find out that all Members of Parliament had voted in favour of this act, save yourself. I am writing this message to ask for an explanation as to why you voted against this Act. Could you please provide your reasoning behind this decision?

Thank you very much.

First update!

2008-11-09T16:36:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone,

So, it has taken me a LOT longer than I expected to get around to this. I guess I had underestimated how much work a one-year Master's would be... Just to catch you up on school, I'm doing a Master's in Strategic Leadership Towards Sustainability (MSLS) at the Blekinge Institute of Technology (Blekinge Tekniska Högskola, or BTH). The program is divided into four semesters. We've just wrapped up the first semester. It was only one course during the first semester - the Introduction to Strategic Leadership Towards Sustainability course. Our exam was on Hallowe'en.

I've divided this message into a few sections to try to cover what it's been like living in Sweden over the first 2 1/2 months.

Karlskrona

Karlskrona is a fairly small city in southeastern Sweden. The Karlskrona Kommun has about 60,000 people, but the city itself is far smaller, around 33,000. One of my classmates compared it to Kingston. I feel that North Bay might be a more apt comparison at times - it definitely looks like it could be on the Canadian Shield. The surrounding area looks a LOT like Eastern Ontario and Western Quebec. Fall colours and the landscape definitely make this comparison stronger. The town was fairly depressed until about the late 1990's, when a technology area was set up. Ericsson and Telenor are in town, and BTH is growing and becoming more respected as an institution. It is a military centre, and the navy is important here. I have to admit a bit of ignorance on this point - I have not gotten to know Karlskrona as well as I expected to up to this point.

Weather

Well, autumn is not when we get the best weather in southeastern Sweden. It's the wettest time, and because I stream CBC Ottawa daily and hear the weather reports, I get jealous of the warm sunny fall days that those of you back home are having. That said, there have been enough nice days to enjoy (for those I have on Facebook, check out the pics of my bike rides), and it hasn't really started getting cold yet. The temperature dropped to 5C at night in mid-September, but it has kind of stayed around there. Temperatures right now range between daily lows of 6C and highs of 10C. The next few days are going to be lousy, windy rainy days...

I'm looking forward to winter, though, as the weather is about 10C warmer here on average than in Ottawa!

Transportation

I find getting around very easy here. I bike everywhere, and do it in lousier weather than I would've back home. That might have to do with the dedicated bike lanes that have curbs to separate bikes from car traffic on the road to school and into town, and, well, almost anywhere else I've gone. There is a shockingly good bus system for such a small town (probably as good as Ottawa's system, for 1/15th the population base). Space isn't as well planned here as I thought, however. The car-dependent suburbs still exist. But on the plus side, one has legitimate options for traveling around the city and to other towns – if not train, then buses.

Housing

Finding a place was a bigger stressor than I anticipated when I arrived. At the beginning, I was very jealous of those who had pre-arranged their accommodations. I didn't know where I was going to live or with whom, or if I'd be living alone, and the market looked really tight (and was, well, in Swedish…). Well, things really worked out. I live about 15 minutes by foot from both downtown and from school, on an island called Långö, just off of the main route between school and downtown. There's a grocery store about 5 minutes away by foot. It's a gorgeous spot in an 80 year old brown brick house that is distinct from the other houses on the island. I have two incredible flatmates – Josefin, who is from Norrköping, about 300 km north of here, and Carlo, who is from Melbourne. The house dynamic is incredible. I am lucky that this worked out as it did.

Shopping

This will be a short section. Stores in the centre of the town aren't open much – until 6 in the evenings on week-days, and 2 on Saturdays and not at all on Sundays. What a great way to save money and keep you from buying too much! My shopping tends to be geared towards food more than anything else. A little message for Tammy and others who noticed my wine collection in Ottawa – it gets hard to stock up wine bottles when the liquor store keeps those hours. ;) There are slightly better hours out at the power centre (yeah, they have power centres here – groan; but they're bike accessible and even have bike parking, which is nice), but even out there, week-end hours extend all the way to 4 p.m.

Travel

On of the nicest things about Karlskrona is that the train to Copenhagen runs every hour. :) This plays on a joke told about Stockholm in Gothenburg – what is the one good thing about Stockholm? There's a train to Gothenburg from there.

There are plenty of local buses to get us to all of the closest towns. I took advantage of this in September to go up to Kalmar to watch a football match with a couple of friends (which turned out to be the Swedish Cup Final). I haven't been out of Karlskrona nearly as much as I thought I would, though; other than Kalmar, I've only travelled to Denmark on a school trip. We stayed near Roskilde for the class workshop, about 40 km west of Copenhagen, and stopped in Copenhagen for the week-end. This may change soon, though – Germany is too close to go untouched. Poland is next door - there's a direct ferry from here to Gdynia, and Poland beckons at some point, as does Stockholm, Oslo, England, the Netherlands, France…

Class and Classmates

Classes are not what I expected! While there is a fair amount of technical discussion in some courses, it is as much about the strategic and leadership parts of the program's title as it is about sustainability. This is what I probably needed, without knowing so before I got here. I'll benefit most from learning how to have the discussion on sustainability, why we need to move towards it as a society, and how we can get there.

To summarize it, we have four basic rules that can be considered scientifically accepted principles for sustainability:

There are no systematic increases:

1) in materials moving from the Earth's crust to the biosphere;
2) in manmade compounds in the biosphere;
3) in physical degradation of ecosystems; and

4) there should be no degradation of people's abilities to meet their needs.

This does not mean that a sustainable world will be perfect. There will still be crime, there will still be occasional extinctions, and there will be occasional changes in the amount of material moved to the biosphere from the crust, and the amount of manmade compounds added to the biosphere. But, what it does mean is that these levels will no longer systematically increase in concentration. They will reach a steady-state, and so will society.

We have had some incredible speakers already. Karl-Henrik Robèrt, the founder of The Natural Step and co-founder of the program, has given several lectures to us. His first lecture convinced me that I had made the right choice in doing this. Göran Carstedt, formerly head of Volvo and IKEA North America, also came and spoke to us about leadership and organizational change for 1 ½ days. We've had other great guest speakers, and the roll call will only get better over the next two months. Our Engineering for a Sustainable Society course will be going to Gothenburg in three weeks to meet with Leif Johansson, the current CEO of Volvo. As you can guess, our program and The Natural Step both have a close connection with Volvo. The teaching staff is very knowledgeable. I think that all of them either had a hand in creating the MSLS program or are graduates of the program. BTW – let me know if I sound a bit cultish – it's been one of my worries.

There is a variety of backgrounds in the class. However, almost half of the class is Canadian and American – ten Canadians (though three of them are Canadians with other links) and thirteen Americans. Other countries represented include China (6), Pakistan (5), Brazil (3), Australia (3), Sweden (3), France (2), Mexico, Bangladesh, Nigeria, the UK, Greece, Taiwan and South Korea. They have a lot of different academic and professional backgrounds. Some of my classmates are fresh out of school (with about 2 to 3 years of experience); others have as much as 15-20 years of experience in the work world. The group is not as science and engineering heavy as I'd expected – which is good! I am learning as much from them as I am from the courses. I won't get into a detailed discussion about the people in the class, but I have become fast friends with a few of them, and know that I will be in touch with many of them once we're finished off here.

Language

So… Swedish is a bit harder than I thought. I still can't make heads or tails out of what I hear, and what things look like on paper still don't correlate to me to what they sound like.

I had applied for the Swedish class offered at school about 5 days before it started. Unfortunately it was full. After sitting in on it last week, though, I realized I should've been sitting in the whole time – the class is, at best, half full. Anyhow, having a Swedish flatmate has helped, but my Swedish is still at the level where my typical answer when asked anything is "Jag förstår inte Svenska." (I don't understand Swedish.) I've at least finally learned the numbers… I'm starting to learn more, but I need to work more at it, if the time presents itself.

Wrap-up

I haven't gone into everything here. I haven't talked about what I miss the most from home (the answer is 'the people in my life'), and I probably haven't hit on what I like and dislike about here directly (indirectly, there is a picture painted).

So, that's a bit of an idea of my impressions of my first 2 1/2 months in Sweden. Thanks for reading this!

Hello!

2008-08-12T13:00:00.000-07:00

Hi, and thanks for stopping by to read this. I haven't had a chance to get to this as yet; there will hopefully be plenty of time for this upon arrival. I plan on using this blog to let those who are interested stay on top of what's happening to me while I'm in Sweden.

In the next posting, I'll start going through some of the reasons I've decided to head over to Karlskrona, Sweden, to do a Master's in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability at the Blekinge Institute of Technology. There are both professional and personal reasons for this voyage.

I debated about whether I should stay in my well-paying, secure, and occasionally high-profile position. But I felt that this would not have been the right decision for me for now - there is a professional path I wish to follow, one that leads me to a sustainable design field. At present, I'm not sure which sustainable design path, exactly; I could do product, industrial or urban design, though my heart is pulling me towards urban design. I feel this path is best served by taking this challenge on at this point. I feel that my location in southern Sweden environment will be an excellent jumping point to see what is being done to move towards sustainability in the countries that are leading the charge towards sustainability (Sweden as well as Denmark, Norway and Germany).

Personally, I would regret not taking this opportunity. One of my former bosses has written, on his Facebook page, "Sixty years old, now trying to do all the things I should have done thirty years ago!" I want to do those things now, before I'm tied down by a mortgage, car payments, screaming child(ren)...

Anyhow, I'll go into greater detail in the next post - planning on a top five reasons in both realms.