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TABLE OF CONTENTSPRELIMINARY REPORT FROM THE MACKENZIE BASIN IMPACT STUDY (MBIS) FINAL WORKSHOP BIODIVERSITY -- WHY SHOULD WE CARE? ENVIRONMENTAL ASSESSMENT PROJECT IS GLOBAL WARMING STILL WORTH A BLIP? THE IAI INTITIAL SCIENCE PROGRAM AND THE IAI START-UP GRANTS HUMAN DIMENSIONS STUDENTSHIP AWARDED BY ROYAL CANADIAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY CCP INFO
START OFFERS FELLOWSHIP AND VISITING LECTURER PROGRAMES CANADIAN ASSOCIATION OF PHYSICIANS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT ROYAL SOCIETY MEDAL AWARDED FOR NEW WASTE MANAGEMENT PROCESS |
OECD SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTSExcerpted by Karen Mortimer, Canadian Global Change Program, from a report written by James P. Bruce, Canadian Climate Program.James Bruce presented a paper on transportation and climate change at the international Towards Sustainable Transportation conference organized by the OECD(Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), which took place in Vancouver from March 25-27, 1996. The aim of the conference was to assess long-term goals for transportation that are consistent with sustainable development. Some 400 participants registered at the conference, mostly from North America, Asia, and the Pacific. Ministerial Presentations The first day of the conference was opened by B.C. Environment Minister Moe Sihota and the second day by Canadian Environment Minister, Sergio Marchi. The Federal Minister of Transport, David Anderson, was not able to attend. In his speech, Minister Sihota noted that B.C. residents have a powerful environmental ethic and that their prosperity increasingly rests on a high quality environment. He cited the Air Care program, which has reduced vehicle pollution by 20% and is now being expanded to heavy duty vehicles. To reduce health problems and costs, B.C. is enacting efficiency and emission standards similar to those of New England and California. The Minister challenged the federal government to follow B.C.’s lead, and not let the rest of the country be subject to second class vehicles. Sihota went on to praise the Ballard fuel cell-battery technology for buses and claimed that it would be the basis for a major additional B.C. industry. On the second day Minister Marchi made a number of points about the need to reduce transportation emissions. He indicated that estimated Canadian urban health costs attributable to smog and other kinds of atmospheric pollution are $30 billion year and that there are great opportunities in the development of sustainable transportation. Technical Program On the first day of the technical program, a session titled the "End of the Road" was given on the general problem. It was followed by a session on "Drivers for Change", and another one on technological and planning options — "Looking Down the Road". The End of the Road — Jim Mackenzie of the World Resources Institute took the title literally and predicted that, at growing use rates, the world’s readily accessible oil supply would begin to decline in the period 2010-2020. The serious flaw in his argument, as pointed out by International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) representatives, is that he did not include the oil sands and oil shales which, at somewhat higher prices than today’s, could delay the decline substantially. Laurie Michaelis (OECD), the convening lead author of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II’s chapter on transportation, summarized the main options from the chapter. A number of approaches must be used together to achieve anything like the 30%-50% reduction from the rapidly rising trend to stabilize emissions at the 1990 level. These include fee-bates, full-cost pricing, fuel efficiency, public transit and change in freight modes. Lee Schipper of the International Energy Agency (IEA) pointed out that 80% of car trips are less than 20 km, but that cars are basically designed for highway trips. He also noted that it costs 35% less to drive 1 km in the U.S. now than it did 20 years ago: a change in price signals is essential. Drivers Of Change — In addition to the author’s paper focusing on transportation and climate change, Dan Sperling of the University of California argued that the benefits of cars outweigh the costs. This provoked a great deal of discussion, but the author suggested that this was the wrong thing to argue about. The real question is how to get personal transportation benefits with much less adverse environmental and social impacts. The other two speakers, from OECD and the U.S. Health Effects Institute presented the depressing evidence of illness and disease due to vehicle emissions. An average of 50% of carcinogenic pollutants in outdoor air are from vehicles. Looking Down The Road — This session had a series of generally optimistic views of technological and planning fixes. Amery Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute led off. He pointed out that present cars are only 15-20% efficient in use of fuel and only 1% of fuel goes to moving the driver. He described a hybrid (small gas engine/electric) "hypercar" which could go 100 km on 0.6 to 1.6 litres of fuel. A prototype is made of much lighter material (carbon fibre) than cars on the road today. It is also much more aerodynamically slippery, reduces much of the friction losses with the road and recovers 70% of its braking energy. Lovins says that several manufacturers, such as Ford, GM and Honda, are half way towards achieving such results with prototype and production vehicles. Such a car would have 100 times less emissions than present cars and, with flexible light material, would be safer. Peter Newman of Murdoch University, Australia, spoke on "winning back the cities". He has developed city indices on dependency on automobiles. U.S. cities are the worst, Europeans the best, with Toronto in between. Tokyo, Hong Kong and Singapore have done well, but Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur are disasters. In discussing how best to modify all cities as well as influence growing ones, Newman said that major changes in outlook are necessary towards "walking" and "transit" cities, and away from automobile cities. In downtown Toronto, 150 000 people live without cars and emit only 38% as much greenhouse gas as Newman’s city per capita average. He claims that the U.S. now has a dismal view of human potential and has essentially given up on social change (the number of pessimistic presentations from U.S. speakers tended to support this). Deborah Blevis of the U.S. Department of Energy was upbeat, however, and said that we should focus on not just reducing environmental effects but on much more efficient transport systems, with equity of access and greater safety (currently, about 700 000 people are killed and 10 million injured a year in road accidents globally). Aviation Contributions The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) has been studying the greenhouse gas emissions issue. Major problems are CO2 emissions and NOx which affects the O3 layer. However, there is much to be learned about aircraft impacts depending on altitude flown, etc., and ICAO has asked IPCC’s Working Group I to help. The Dutch have been pushing with European Union support within ICAO for a 16% reduction in NOx emissions, but the U.S., Canada and Russia have not supported this so far. Principles And Strategic Directions A paper on this topic by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy was extensively debated on the second morning of the conference. The general statements were accepted by most conference participants — although industry representatives indicated that they wanted much more attention paid to the costs of change. The organizers of the conference resisted attempts to establish goals (e.g. stabilization of transportation emissions at 1990 levels), as this would have gone beyond their intent, to formulate principles only. This attendee’s impression from the conference was that there are major opportunities for contributing towards Canada’s greenhouse gas emission limitation goals, and reducing other serious pollution problems, by taking vigorous action now in the transportation sector. In other words, the rest of Canada should follow British Columbia’s example.
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