Tag Archives: transportation

Fifty Ways to Bring More Urgency to BC’s Climate Action Plans

Climate, Democracy, Economy, Education, energy, Nature, , , , , , , , ,

For a printable PDF of this paper, click Download

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“We are facing a disaster of unspoken suffering for enormous amounts of people, so please, treat the climate crisis like the acute crisis it is, and give us a future.” – Greta Thunberg

For years, Guy Dauncey has tirelessly warned of the urgency of tackling the climate crisis and provided practical ways to achieve reductions in our emissions.  While the crisis has only worsened, the window of opportunity to shift direction has shortened.  Here is a blueprint for concrete action.  Read it and act! – David Suzuki

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Ten Green New Deals – How Do They Compare?

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Ten GNDs

By Guy Dauncey, Revised September 29th 2019

Guy Dauncey is founder of the BC Sustainable Energy Association, co-founder of the Victoria Car Share Cooperative, and the author or co-author of ten books, including The Climate Challenge: 101 Solutions to Global Warming and Journey to the Future: A Better World Is Possible. He is currently completing The Economics of Kindness: A Ten-Year Transition to a Green Cooperative Economy. He lives in Yellow Point, on Vancouver Island, Canada. His website is www.thepracticalutopian.ca.

I premise my analysis on five statements:

  • The climate emergency is real.
  • The ecological emergency is real.
  • The inequality, household debt and affordable housing crises are real.
  • A new global financial crisis is lurking, caused by excessive corporate and private debt and banking deregulation.
  • We need a ten-year mobilization to achieve a rapid transition to a green cooperative economy that is human-friendly, community-friendly, climate-friendly and nature-friendly, leaving self-interested capitalism behind us.

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Six Green New Deals: How Do They Compare?

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This blog was updated on September 27th 2019 to TEN Green New Deals – see here.

 

 

 

The Climate and Ecological Emergencies – What Can We Do?

Climate, Nature, , , , , , , , ,

Emergency

By Guy Dauncey

There are massive forest fires in Siberia. Greenland’s melting is accelerating. Record heatwaves are roasting Europe. The world’s insects are dying off. The scary news keeps accumulating.

We are living on the edge of an emergency that is just getting started, and climate is only the half of it. There’s also an ecological emergency. How are we to respond? It’s easy to slip into complacency, or to be overcome by fear, followed by a sense of impotence. You know the crises are real, but the children are coming to visit, there’s a holiday to plan, and don’t get me started on the problems we’re having at work.

The first step to end complacency and neutralize fear is to put the crisis on your weekly to-do list:

  • Weed the garden
  • Visit your friend in hospital
  • Sign the kids up for karate/soccer/piano/dancing lessons
  • Do something to tackle the climate and ecological crises

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BC’s Climate Intentions Papers: A Timid Response – and the Twelve Solutions We Really Need

Climate, Economy, energy, , , , , , , , ,

Timid Response

August 20, 2018

I wish I didn’t have to write this. I count myself a friend of the NDP/Green Alliance, and I had high hopes for the government’s new climate action plans. [1]  

BC’s Ministry of Environment has published a series of Clean Growth Intentions Papers, with a deadline for public feedback of August 24th, in the heart of this fire and smoke-filled summer. In my head, I can see that they have been framed in a very positive way, emphasizing the multiple economic benefits of engaging in climate action, reframed as clean growth.

But the policies floated contain little that is new. They are really timid. And by downplaying the climate crisis almost to a state of mental non-existence, they have written the urgency out of the picture. In my heart, I feel as if they have been written by a holiday season policy-drone operating on auto-pilot. Hard words, but that’s what I feel.

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The Birth of a New Cooperative Economy

Economy, , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

They say we are self-interested, we’re always out to win.
Always individualistic, though it used to be a sin.
They say we need free markets, the better to compete,
and the economy will flourish if we only think of greed.

This is Economics 101, the way it’s taught today. Not a word about nature, community, caring, sharing, or cooperation.

During the mid 19th century, advances in science, democracy, education, literacy, public healthcare, labour unions, technological breakthroughs, banking, and the power of fossil fuels to generate rapid economic growth certainly made it seem that after ten thousand years of economic stagnation the competitive pursuit of profit was improving life for all. In the 1760s it took eighteen hours of human labour to transform a pound of cotton into cloth. By the 1860s it took one and a half hours. Today, it probably takes five seconds.

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A Bold New Climate Vision: If I was Prime Minister of Canada, How Would I Tackle The Climate Crisis?

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Bold

By Guy Dauncey

New Scientist magazine reported in June that five meters of future sea-level rise is already locked in, due to the steady collapse of the West Antarctic Ice-Sheet. If we don’t act rapidly, their staff reported, it will be twenty metres.

The full extent of the flooding will not happen for several thousand years, but “locked-in” is the phrase they used.[1] Venice, New York, Miami, San Francisco, Vancouver, London, Mumbai, Kolkata; large parts of Holland; a large part of Bangladesh and many cities in China—all will be under water.[2]

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