Simplistic solutions will result in disastrous outcomes

 “Build up, not out.” I could train a parrot to say that because it really doesn’t take much intelligence to spout that kind of simplistic rhetoric. Yet if you asked the parrot how high or dense, he wouldn’t be able to answer because that requires a lot more gray matter. Like our parrot, Michael Pitwirny of the Okanagan Sustainability Insitute (Kelowna Capital News, Oct. 17, 2008) also has a simplistic reason for advocating highrises — they save land. Yes, indeed they do, but what about all the other resources consumed by the occupants of those towers like water, energy, and the additional resources that support the high consumptive North American lifestyle? Will the occupants use less of those? Not likely. (Pitwirny should check his facts if he thinks that highrises units consume less energy than other housing types because they don’t!). Our ecological footprint includes all of the resources we consume and not just land.  With or without increased density it continues to grow beyond the capability of the environment to support our numbers  moving us further down the road to an environmental collapse; and the higher the density, the greater the size of our ecological footprint.

People like Pitwirny with their simplistic reasoning are really very dangerous types. They lull us into a false sense of security that all we have to do is densify and, voila, we will become sustainable while they distract us from the real cause of our unsustainability which is population growth. Simply put, the more people we have locally or globally, the more resources we consume, the more pollution we emit, and the more unsustainable we become. Densifying just reduces the consumption of one resource — land, and that’s all, and we pay a heavy price for that in terms of a decline in our livability. As Al Bartlett put it, densifying is like buying a first class ticket on the Titanic — the trip may be better but the outcome is still the same. And I’m sure that those first class passengers on the Titanic were also feeling very secure at the onset.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Smart growth” advocates have their heads in the sand

 

It’s only April and Graeme James is already running hard for city council. But instead of running against the incumbents, he seems to be running against me even though I have not yet decided if I will run myself. One campaign tactic that James appears ready to use is hyperbole, referring in a recent letter to my advocacy of keeping our growth within the limits of our environmental carrying capacity as “development [grinding] to a halt while we bury our heads in the sand and hope no more people move to Kelowna .” James then goes on to say “We must be prepared for our future,” but seems to have no idea of the kind of future that we face.  

 

The problem with people like James is that they are totally ignorant — frequently by choice — of the seriousness of the environmental challenges that we will encounter in the 21^st century. He and others like him think that it will be business as usual with just a few adjustments to make which can be neatly accomplished with band-aid techniques like developing to higher densities with “green” buildings.

 

I regret to inform James and others that this century will see unprecedented challenges posed by a scarcity of resources such as energy, water, food, and many important metals and minerals in the face of continuing population growth. Signs of such shortages are already beginning to appear and are reflected in recent price increases in oil and some grains. On top of that, these challenges will be compounded by the environmental threats resulting from global warming. To think that problems of such magnitude can be successfully dealt with by even more growth, albeit “smart growth,” is truly living with one’s head in the sand.