Lots more great things to read this issue, including Will Braun‘s cover story on the coming boom in new hydroelectric projects in Canada. Hydro providers will invest billions in new dams in the coming decade, but energy experts, environmentalists, and aboriginal groups are skeptical of hydro’s green reputation—especially since much of this new electricity infrastructure is being built to satisfy the insatiable appetite of the U.S. power grid. On Marshall McLuhan’s 100th birthday, David Hayes offers a short history of the iconic media theorist’s rise, beginning with a curious Globe and Mail reporter’s 1963 profile. And we mark the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Afghanistan with a special roundtable discussion between Amir Attaran, John Duncan, and Graeme Smith.

Plenty more, of course: Katie Hyslop introduces us to Dechinta Bush University, the culmination of the 50-year dream of a university by and for the North; Katherine Laidlaw talks to the activists who are trying to cut sky-high smoking rates in Nunavut with a new public awareness campaign; Jason Tushinski investigates the “Suspicious Incident Reporting System,” a snitch line for CSIS and the RCMP that has privacy and civil rights experts concerned; Kaitlin Fontana spends eight hours watching Sun News Network so you don’t have to; Daniel Wilson argues for the abolition of the Indian Act; and Jackie Wong profiles photographer Roberta Holden, whose impressionistic images of the arctic capture the changing moods of the landscape.

Plus: Paul McLaughlin interviews Canada’s Nieman Journalism Fellow, David Skok; Teresa Goff on the constitutional right to a healthy environment; Joe Rayment on the rebirth of the company town; Lauren McKeon on Canada’s nudity laws throughout history; Graham F. Scott on the Tories’ tough-on-crime stance; Brigitte Noël on non-hormonal birth control; Heather Stilwell sends a postcard from newly independent Southern Sudan; Stephen Sharpe on origami and papercraft artist Drew Nelson; Navneet Alang on Big Brother in the age of the smartphone; Christina Palassio on Book Madam & Associates; and reviews of Kristyn Dunnion‘s The Dirt Chronicles, Hal Niedzviecki‘s Look Down, This is Where it Must Have Happened, Sam Cheuk‘s Love Figures, and Rebecca Rosenblum‘s The Big Dream.

With new fiction by Pasha Malla, and new poetry by Elena E. Johnson and Carolyn Smart.

Canada is a nation of wild, legendary rivers. The Mackenzie, the Fraser, the Churchill, and dozens more all empty into our national identity. They flow through our landscape, history, and imagination. They are vital to any history textbook, Group of Seven exhibit, or gift-shop postcard rack.

Canada is also a nation of river-tamers. We revere our waterways—but we also dam them. Trudeau canoed the epic Nahanni and two years later presided over the opening of the mammoth Churchill Falls hydroelectric dam in Labrador. We are, as the Canadian Hydropower Association says, a “hydro superpower.” Almost 60 percent of our electricity supply comes from dams—compared to just 16 percent globally—and only China squeezes more electricity out of its rivers than we do.

The heyday of big dam construction in Canada began around the late 1950s. What followed was an exhibition of progress in the raw. Surveyors and bulldozers headed to the frontier. Mighty men tamed mighty rivers. Engineering prowess replaced natural grandeur.

As rock was blasted and cement poured, legacies were forged, both geographical and political. In Manitoba, the two largest rivers and three of the five largest lakes were dramatically re-engineered. In Quebec, 571 dams and control structures have altered the flow of 74 rivers.

The construction phase lasted through the ’80s, then slowed, even though the country’s hydro potential had only been half tapped. Now, after two decades of limited construction—with the exception of Hydro-Québec, which kept on building—the dam-builders are rumbling to life again.

In the next 10 to 15 years, Canadian utilities will spend $55 to $70 billion on new hydroelectric projects. This would add 14,500 megawatts to Canada’s existing 71,000 megawatts of hydroelectric capacity. Most new projects are in Quebec (4,570 MW), B.C. (3,341 MW), Labrador (3,074 MW), and Manitoba (2,380 MW). The largest of these, Labrador’s 2,250 MW Gull Island project, will produce as much power as 750 train locomotives.

The extent and cost of construction will vary over time, but one thing is certain: the push for more hydro is on.

Most of these projects are driven in large part by the prospect of exporting power to the U.S. American interest in hydropower is linked, in part, to its low cost and its low greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In this context, the push for more hydro is also a push by the industry to position its product as an answer to climate change.

Jacob Irving heads the Canadian Hydropower Association, which represents the interests of the hydro industry. He says hydropower is “a very strong climate change solution,” because it can displace the use of coal and natural gas to generate electricity. The argument is simple and compelling: use more hydropower, use less fossil fuel. The industry especially touts exports of hydro to the U.S., where 600 coal-fired plants produce 45 percent of the nation’s electricity, with another 24 percent fuelled by natural gas. The CHA says hydro exports already reduce continental emissions by half a million tons a year. They want that number to grow.

Given the dire climate prognosis—emissions in Canada, the U.S., and everywhere else are well above levels in 1990, the year used as a benchmark in the Kyoto Accord—the urgency of reducing fossil-fuel consumption is great. Perhaps Canada’s wild rivers, if harnessed, can be our gift to a warming world. Maybe a concrete edifice nestled in a river valley is just as quintessentially Canadian as a lone paddler on a pristine river.

This presents a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too scenario for Canadian utilities. They can build more dams—obviously still a cornerstone of the corporate culture—cash in on lucrative exports, and enjoy eco-hero status. But is damming more of our rivers an optimal strategy for addressing climate change?

Despite the virtues of hydro power, dams can only reduce emissions indirectly. Their climate value hinges in part on the extent to which they substitute for fossilfuel-fired generation, as opposed to displacing nuclear, wind, or other sources. Though displacement is hard to prove, Irving reasons that “were we not to be sending that electricity down to the United States, the next most logical source of generation to meet their load requirements would generally be natural gas and/or coal.” The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) actually predicts that over the next 25 years, 11 percent of new generation in the U.S. will be coal-fired and 60 percent natural gas (which is roughly half as bad as coal in terms of emissions).

In Canada, most new hydro projects are located in provinces with minimal fossil-fuel-fired generation, so limited displacement will happen here. Exceptions are Ontario, Labrador (where 102 MW will be displaced), Nova Scotia (which will import from Labrador), and possibly Saskatchewan, which could use hydro from Manitoba.

While the fossil-fuel displacement argument has obvious merit, it also has weaknesses. Utilities can argue that hydro exports help save the planet, but critics can say these exports just keep the most wasteful society on earth air-conditioned and recharged. They can say that hydro exports just feed an addiction with more and more cheap power, every kilowatt of which reduces the imperative to curb consumption. The basic argument is that reducing demand must be the obvious and dominant priority in energy policy, rather than endlessly ramping up supply.

Government agencies predict electricity demand in Canada will grow almost 10 percent between now and 2020, and in the U.S. by approximately 30 percent between now and 2035. Ralph Torrie says we can and must go in the opposite direction. “We could double the efficiency with which we use fuel and electricity in Canada,” he says. If you want to see how it’s done, he adds, “just take a vacation to Europe.” Torrie, whose energy expertise is internationally recognized, serves as managing director of the Vancouver-based Trottier Energy Futures Project. In contrast to Irving, who accepts that demand for electricity will grow, Torrie advocates a “new way of thinking about the energy future.”

“There is no demand for electricity,” he says. “Nobody wants a kilowatt hour in their living room.” We want the services that electricity can provide, and we must “focus on how we can best meet the underlying needs for amenity with less rather than more fuel and electricity.” That, he says, is the only hope for “anything we might call a sustainable energy future.”

“We waste half the hydro we produce,” says John Bennett, who heads the Sierra Club of Canada. The solution to climate change is “to use less energy,” he says. “That’s where the major investment should be.”

Torrie says large hydro is environmentally preferable to many forms of energy supply, but still, reducing demand can achieve the same thing at a lower cost, and without the decade-long turnaround time for planning and construction. He views conservation as a resource. “There’s almost always a kilowatt of electricity that can be saved for a smaller cost than building the ability to generate a new kilowatt.” Plus, the resource gets bigger with every new innovation in efficiency. As Torrie puts it, “The size of the resource goes up every time somebody has a bright idea.”

Cutting electricity demand by half would include a range of technologies, including LED lighting, sensor-driven smart controls that reduce daytime lighting in buildings, and continued improvements to virtually every device that uses electricity.

But even if we as a continent cut our energy use by half, we still need some energy—and should not a maximum amount of that come from low-emission hydro? Can’t conservation and new hydro be dual priorities?

According to energy consultant Phillipe Dunsky, total spending on efficiency and conservation programs in Canada is only about $1 billion per year. Despite that, Jacob Irving says, “energy conservation has to be forefront of all decisions.” Then he adds a caveat: “There’s a lot of analysis that says energy consumption will grow, and so we need to be ready for that.” Whether demand shrinks or expands, the simple prohydro argument—more hydro equals less fossil fuel— still stands.

But for Tony Maas, who works for the Canadian branch of the World Wildlife Fund, it’s not that simple. He says new hydro projects must be part of an overarching plan for “net reduction in GHG emissions.” He cites Ontario’s Green Energy Act as an example of a plan that commits to overall GHG reduction.

But, as John Bennett points out, “we don’t have a North American plan to reduce emissions,” so new hydro projects “can’t be part of that plan.” The EIA predicts that without policy change, coal use as well as GHG emissions from electricity generation, will continue to increase over the next 25 years. Bennett says building more dams to meet increasing demand is like doubling the fuel efficiency of cars so that people can drive twice as much.

In a release this April, Hydro-Québec, Canada’s largest generator and exporter of hydropower, said, “The major environmental challenge facing North America is to replace coal to generate power and oil used in transportation.” While climate change may be the “major” environmental challenge of the day, it is not the only one. Just because hydro dams do not have highly visible carbon-spewing smoke stacks does not necessarily make them environmentally friendly. Behind the question of whether dams are a climate solution lies a more fundamental question: is hydro actually clean, as utilities and governments regularly assert?

Jacob Irving says, “When people refer to [hydro] as clean, it’s in the context of air emissions.” But rarely is this specified. The categorical use of the term by utilities, without caveat or qualification, is misleading. Tony Maas says he gets “nervous” when hydro is called clean because “it almost implies there are no impacts.” But dams harm the environment. A dam is not an environmental improvement or solution for a watershed.

One of the main impacts is the disruption of the natural “flow regime” in a waterway. Maas says the natural fluctuations in water levels are the “master variable in organizing a river ecosystem,” giving key “cues” to other species. Thus, a WWF report says, “Dams destroy the ecology of river systems by changing the volume, quality, and timing of water flows downstream.” The evidence of this is visible in dammed Canadian rivers, as it is in the hundreds of millions of dollars paid to mitigate and compensate for damages caused by dams. Manitoba Hydro alone has spent over $700 million to address damages from its “clean” hydro projects.

The WWF takes a more nuanced approach. It says some hydro projects can be built without unacceptable harm, but its 2011 global energy plan still “severely restrict[s] future growth of hydro power to reflect the need for an evolution that respects existing ecosystems and human rights.”

Similarly, a 2011 report about Canada’s boreal forests by the Pew Environment Group considers both pros and cons of hydro. In a section about hydro called “How Green Is It?”, the report says:

Although [hydro dams] are comparatively low carbon emitters in comparison to many conventional energy sources, hydropower projects have resulted in significant impacts to wildlife habitat, ecological processes and aboriginal communities.

In a later section, the report states:

While it is clear that allowing our societies to be powered by carbon fuels is not sustainable, this does not mean that alternative or renewable energy sources can simply be viewed as having no cost whatsoever.

The report, entitled “A Forest of Blue,” does not offer a simple verdict. Rather, it says, “We must understand as many of the implications and complexities of the issues as possible.” The candour and openness to complexity demonstrated in the report are exactly what is needed in the assessment of any climate-change strategy.

In keeping with the Pew report’s frank and thorough nature, it also discusses the role Aboriginal peoples play in hydro development. This is an essential part of any discussion of hydropower in Canada since virtually all hydro projects occupy lands to which First Nations have rights. In the past, Aboriginal people vehemently (and mostly unsuccessfully) opposed major dams. That has changed: in some cases Aboriginal opposition has succeeded. The $5 billion, 1,250 MW Slave River project in Alberta has been “deferred” after project proponents were unable to reach a deal with Smith’s Landing First Nation last year.

The proposed Site C Dam, a 1,100 MW, $7.9 billion project planned for the Peace River in B.C., faces resolute opposition from four First Nations in the area. But the outcome of that David-and-Goliath battle will not be know for some time.

Elsewhere, opposition has given way to participation—David and Goliath have become allies. Most recently, members of the Innu Nation in Labrador voted in June to allow the massive Lower Churchill River projects—Muskrat Falls (824 MW) and Gull Island (2,250 MW)—to proceed. In exchange, the 2,800 Innu receive $5 million per year to assist with their process costs during and prior to construction, up to $400 million in contracts during construction, and share of project profits thereafter (5 percent of “After Debt Net Cashflow”).

The broad Tshash Petapen (New Dawn) Agreement, in which these provisions are contained, also includes an agreement in principle on land claims and $2 million a year as compensation for damages related to the existing Upper Churchill Falls dam.

Meanwhile, the Inuit (distinct from the Innu), who are concerned about downstream impacts in their territory, say they have been largely left out of the process.

In Quebec, the James Bay Cree receive over $100 million a year in hydro, forestry, and mining royalties as a result of the 2002 Peace of the Braves agreement. In it they consented to the Eastmain-1-A/Sarcelle/Rupert Project (918 MW) while securing the permanent abandonment of the Nottaway-Broadback-Rupert project, which would have flooded 6,000 square kilometres.

First Nations near proposed dam sites in Manitoba have been offered lump-sum compensation packages, along with the opportunity to invest in projects. For instance, the Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation, with its 4,500 members, will be entitled to a third of the profits of the nearly completed Wuskwatim Dam if they can come up with a third of the $1.3 billion cost of the dam. They also benefit from $60 million of employment training.

In June, four other First Nations joined Manitoba Hydro in announcing the start of construction on the 695 MW, $5.6 billion Keeyask dam. Like Nisichawayasihk, they will be offered the chance to invest in the dam, as well as employment opportunities.

What’s clear in all these cases is that Canadian utilities cannot ignore Aboriginal demands. “We can stop development,” says Ovide Mercredi, former National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations and the recently retired Chief of the Misipawistik Cree Nation in northern Manitoba. His community sits right next to the 479 MW Grand Rapids Dam, which floods 115,700 hectares. In reference to the water flowing through that dam, Mercredi’s message to the province is simple: “That’s not your water, it belongs to our people and we want a share of that money.” The dam’s 50-year provincial licence expires in 2015 and Mercredi wants licence renewal to be contingent on public acknowledgement of the harm, increased mitigation of damages, and a revenue-sharing agreement. In part, the message is that if utilities do not deal with Aboriginal concerns now, they will have to later.

Whether First Nations are defiant or eager for new dams to power their economic future, the broader environmental questions remain. While Aboriginal influence has led to a reduction in the size of dams and increased environmental mitigation, and First Nations consent improves the general ethical perception of a project, there is still no tidy way to pour thousands of tons of cement into a river.

No matter who is involved, the merit of the case for hydro as a climate solution can be tested by the assumptions it rests on. These assumptions are that hydro is clean; that demand for electricity will grow; and that the primary alternative to more hydro is fossil-fuel generation. Are these solutions part of the solution or the problem?

Ultimately, the solution to climate change, as well as to watershed health, may never be found unless we move past these assumptions and replace them with better, more accurate premises.

First, dams are not green or clean in themselves. To disrupt the flow of a river and blaze a transmission corridor through kilometres of forest is, in itself, bad for the biosphere. To solve one environmental problem (global warming) with another (pouring hundreds of thousands of tonnes of cement in a free-flowing river) is counterintuitive. That said, desperate circumstances may require desperate measures.

Second, energy demand can and must be substantially reduced. The logical outcome of letting demand increase indefinitely and meeting that demand with ever more hydro and other renewables is to have every river dammed, the landscape saturated with wind and solar farms, and consumption still increasing. The ultimate, unavoidable solution is to use less energy. This must be the dominant priority.

Finally, dams do not reduce GHG emissions per se. They increase energy supply. Apart from a demonstrated continental commitment to dramatically reduce emissions (and energy demand), the case for hydro as a climate solution is, for the industry, a rather convenient truth. Hydropower can’t be part of the climate-change solution if there is no solution.

Climate change is one of humanity’s greatest challenges, and to address it we may need to conjure greater creativity than just reviving electricity generation megaprojects conceived of decades ago. Dan McDermott of the Sierra Club’s Ontario Chapters says, “The age of big dams is over.” According to him, hydro proponents “have their heads turned backwards attempting to mortgage the future to maintain the past.”

The large hydro projects currently in the works were envisioned before global warming concerned anyone, in an era summed up by former Manitoba premier Duff Roblin when he rose in the legislature in 1966 and prophesied a grandiose future for hydropower, saying, “We can have our cake, we can eat it and we can make a bigger cake, and sell part of that.”

Though hydro prospects are framed differently now, dam proponents still appear to share Roblin’s belief in limitless, consequence-free development. Now the question of whether taming more of our iconic rivers will help the climate becomes a question of whether Roblin was right.

The Earth Rangers Centre in Woodbridge, Ontario.

In 2001, when Earth Rangers was planning for its new facility, the mandate its members gave to the engineers and architects was that they wanted a building with the lowest environmental impact possible, a building on the cutting edge of eco-friendliness. Ten years later, the Earth Rangers Centre is one of the most energy efficient buildings in Canada and boasts some of the world’s leading architectural and technological innovations for reducing energy use.

Earth Rangers is a not-for-profit organization that works with children to “bring back the wild,” as their mission statement says. Rangers travel to schools, attend community events, and host 130,000 visitors at their Centre annually, working to educate kids on how they can coexist with the environment, protect animals and their habitats, and understand and preserve nature for years to come.

The Earth Rangers Centre features a theatre, interactive displays, and wildlife enclosures. But visitors to the Centre can learn almost as much about protecting the environment from the structure itself as they can from the demonstrations and workshops held there. Located at the Kortright Centre for Conservation in Woodbridge, Ontario, the Centre was designed to be as sustainable and energy efficient as possible. Windows are placed so as to let in the most natural light possible. The windows are also filled with argon gas, providing extra insulation, and there are several huge solar panels outside the building, which yield enough energy to power a third of the Centre’s electrical needs, the equivalent of 10 average Canadian homes.

Underground "Earth Tubes" at the Earth Rangers Centre. The network of conduits passively cools air in summer and heats it in winter.

But those are some of the building’s more pedestrian features. There is also a ventilation system comprised of a series of concrete tunnels, known as “earth tubes,” buried three metres underground. Fans are used to draw outdoor air into the building. The genius of the earth tubes is that, at their depth, ground temperature remains around a static 12 degrees Celsius, all year-round. This means that, while traveling the length of the tubes, hot summer air is gradually cooled, and cold winter air is warmed, before it reaches the Centre, reducing the need to heat or cool the building using generated energy. As the stale air inside the building heats up, it rises to the ceiling and is drawn back into the central exhaust system, where most of it is recycled into the Centre.

It’s innovations like these earth tubes — the largest of their kind in North America — that have won the Centre some acclaim in the building community.

The efforts of Earth Rangers were recognized in 2006, when the Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) awarded the Centre with LEED Gold status in the New Constructions category. Although the facility was not built with LEED in mind, the Earth Rangers Centre Manager, Andy Schonberger, explains that, upon the building’s completion, the Earth Rangers realized it met enough of the CaGBC’s criteria to score highly on the LEED scale. They also realized it was worth getting the added publicity of a LEED Gold designation, especially for a charity organization eager to reach more people.

Earth Rangers hasn’t stopped there, though. In the five years since the Centre’s LEED Gold achievement, many modifications have been made to the Centre’s infrastructure and maintenance, increasing its efficiency even further.

“We’ve had a lot of partners help us out with various technologies, and different ways of actually operating the building, sequences of operation, and hardware too [such as] new lighting technologies,” says Schonberger. “A little bit here, a little bit there, we’ve been able to conserve because we’ve continuously been tweaking systems.”

Rooftop solar panels provide about a third of the building's power.

This tweaking has amounted to a pretty hefty increase in efficiency. Originally built to be 67 percent more efficient than the minimum levels mandated by national building codes, the Centre has, in the past year, operated at 90 percent more efficiency than that minimum level. Encouraged by this increase, Earth Rangers has applied for LEED Platinum status for Existing Structures, the highest available ranking in that category.

One of the most significant additions to the Centre’s efficiency came in the form of its radiant heating and cooling system, comprised of 22 kilometres of tubes installed into the structure’s concrete floors and ceilings, and leading to underground wells outside. A mixture of water and glycol, warmed and cooled by the moderate ground temperature, is pumped through those tubes, radiating heat into the building in winter, and drawing heat away from the building in summer. There is also refrigeration equipment outside the Centre to supplement the heating and cooling as needed. The entire process is three times as energy efficient as a boiler would be at heating, and four times as efficient as a cooling tower for cooling.

Further reducing the amount of energy needed to heat and cool the Centre is the building’s thermal mass insulation, which is staggering both in its scale and its effectiveness. Behind the walls of the Earth Rangers Centre are 3,000 cubic metres of concrete, the immense volume of which makes heat transfer and temperature changes a very slow process.

Schoenberger remembers an incident two Christmasses ago when the Centre’s boiler, which was later replaced by the radiant heating tubes, went offline, leaving the building completely unheated. “The temperature [outside] was below zero,” says Schonberger. “But those three days that the boiler was off we only lost two degrees in temperature, just because there’s so much concrete mass. It’s a giant thermal battery, basically.”

The combination of earth tube ventilation, radiant heating, and thermal mass insulation is a prime example of what Schonberger credits with the Centre efficiency success: many different parts complementing each other. It is the integration of many different technologies and the efforts of many people, from designers, to engineers, to installers, that make the Centre so energy efficient. Not that energy efficiency is the only efficiency that concerns Earth Rangers. “It’s energy efficiency, it’s water efficiency. We really meant to minimize our environmental impact,” Schonberger says. Which is why there are also on-site waste water treatment facilities, which recycle between two thirds and three quarters of the water flushed down the Centre’s drains, cleaning it so it can be reused in irrigating the Earth Rangers’ gardens, cleaning out animal enclosures, and watering the plants on the centre’s green roof.

The green roof insulates the building, keeping it cooler in summer and warmer in winter.

It’s all part of Earth Rangers’ staff practicing what they preach which, for an organization whose mission is to teach and motivate kids to become the environmental stewards of Canada’s future, means doing everything possible to protect the environment. The members of Earth Rangers see their Centre as the embodiment of their eco-friendly values.

And while much of the Centre’s efficiency derives from complicated technologies and massive design innovations, Schonberger insists that anyone and everyone can do their part to be more energy efficient and help the environment.

“You can start with very, very simple things, just in what you buy, and how much you recycle, and what you compost. There’s a hundred different things you can do in your home,” he says. “[Energy efficiency] is not one simple thing. It’s every single action we do.”

All images some rights reserved by the Earth Rangers Centre. More available on Flickr.

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The cover story this issue is Elizabeth Wright‘s look at Canada’s broken drug approval process. The way that pharmaceuticals in this country get approved for medical use is needlessly secretive, rushed, and inefficient, many experts say, and its dysfunction puts everyone’s health at risk. And with Big Pharma in the driver’s seat—from the doctor’s office to the federal research labs, it’s increasingly clear that a more accountable, transparent, and independent drug approval process is necessary.

Also in this issue: Brad Badelt reports on the mystery of B.C.’s 2010 salmon run, which saw record-breaking numbers of fish returning to west-coast rivers. The fish-farming industry said it proved that Pacific salmon stocks are perfectly healthy and there’s no need to worry. But was last year’s boom a sign of resurgence—or a last gasp? Plus we bring you a special eight-page photo essay by Ian Willms from the dark heart of the tar sands. In Fort Chipewyan, 300 kilometres downstream from the world’s most environmentally destructive project, residents are living—and dying—amidst a skyrocketing cancer rate and deteriorating ecosystem.

And there’s plenty more: Paul McLaughlin interviews Silicone Diaries playwright-performer Nina Arsenault; Jason Brown explains how Canada is losing the global race for geothermal energy; Ellen Russell asks why we can’t have more muscular banking reforms; Lisa Xing sends a postcard from Jeju Island, South Korea, where the last of the pacific “mermaids” live; Dylan C. Robertson explains how the Canada-European Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement will change our world; Kapil Khatter shows why that “organic farmed fish” you buy may be anything but; Daniel Wilson untangles the right wing’s curious fixation on aboriginal tax exemptions; and Emily Landau sneaks a peek at the next genre-bending project from KENK publisher Pop Sandbox.

PLUS: Christina Palassio on poetry in schools; Navneet Alang on Wikileaks; Jackie Wong on painter Michael Lewis; Flavie Halais on the West Coast’s greenest city; Victoria Salvas on criminalizing HIV-AIDS; Denise Deby on the fight to save Ottawa’s South March Highlands; and reviews of new books by Renee Rodin, Lorna Goodison, David Collier, and David Lester.

This issue also includes debut fiction by Christine Miscione and new poetry by Jim Smith.

Illustration by Dave Donald

In the world of green power, enhanced geothermal systems technology has big potential. How big? Like enough potential to provide 2,000 times the United States’ annual energy consumption kind of big.

The premise of EGS is simple: use recently developed drilling technology to bore a hole four to six kilometres deep into the earth. Pump in water, let it pick up the heat at that depth (150°C or so), then draw it back to the surface to drive electricity-producing turbines. Unlike solar, wind, hydro, or conventional geothermal technology, EGS can be implemented virtually anywhere; it generates big, steady and reliable power; and it produces negligible pollution. No wonder many countries, including Australia, Japan, and Iceland, have ponied up investment in EGS.

But where is Canada in all of this? “Absolutely nowhere,” says Brian Toohey, board director of the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association. According to Toohey, Canada is one of the few developed nations in the world without a single conventional geothermal plant (which foregoes expensive drilling by exploiting rare plumes of the earth’s natural heat at or near the surface), let alone an EGS plant. There are a number of reasons for the absence of interest here, he adds, including lack of public familiarity with EGS and high front-end set-up costs. But, really, it boils down to support, says Toohey. There isn’t any. Neither the federal nor provincial government is offering the funding kick start R&D needs for any EGS industry to take hold.

Tom Rand, a clean technology analyst at the Toronto-based MaRS Discovery District, shares Toohey’s enthusiasm for EGS, calling it “low hanging fruit” in the search for fossil fuel alternatives. Rand has another explanation for why EGS isn’t taking wing in Canada: green-energy fatigue. “There are already a lot of proven alternative energy technologies,” he says, “So a newcomer is like: ‘Why EGS?’ Which makes it very unlikely for EGS to get funding.” Even so, says Rand, the technique’s unique advantages position it perfectly to replace coal plants on a one-to-one basis. That alone, he says, makes it something “that absolutely must be considered.”

Both men also blame Canada’s historic abundance of cheap energy resources for the government’s short-sighted energy policy. Yet while carbon sequestration—a means of slowing the buildup of greenhouse gases released by burning fossil fuels—receives huge amounts of funding, EGS is ignored. One of these methods represents a way of putting a green face on the already lucrative fossil-fuel industry; the other, a potential way of escaping its clutches. Guess which way the research money is flowing?

Artist's rendering of a Masdar public square. Click to enlarge.

Looking out over the site of Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, it takes some imagination to consider that this slice of hardscrabble desert will soon contain the world’s first carbon-neutral, zero-waste city. A six-metre sign at Masdar’s entrance is the only confirmation that my cab driver and I have arrived at the right place. Despite its ambitious nature, Masdar—the Arabic word for “source,” a reference to the sun—is not a household name in the region, and for the moment its seven square kilometres, demarcated by a corrugated white plastic fence, is home to little more than shrubs and debris.

It’s early December, and one of the last hot days of the year before the mild winter begins. Even at 30 degrees Celsius, today’s temperature is nothing compared to the heat of summer. Migrant labourers dressed in white lay paving stones over the sand. Some of the men wear turbans while others are in baseball caps.

Workers in boots, alternating with workers in suits, come and go from the development’s temporary headquarters, a series of white, two-level portables shaded by circus-sized canopies the colour of desert. Inside, an image framed on the wall projects the future HQ, a wavy steel and glass structure that produces more energy than it consumes.

Once complete, Masdar is supposed to be home to 50,000 residents and 1,500 companies with 40,000 people commuting daily from Abu Dhabi. At its centre is the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, a sustainable-research hub, which as of today is the only building that has started to sprout. By 2018, Masdar is meant to contain two city squares housing day-to-day activity, outside of which will lie all the infrastructure required to sustain an eco-city in a desert: solar-power plants, a waste-to-power plant, an algae farm for biofuel, a solar desalination facility, a tree nursery, and a water-treatment plant.

The form of the city—itself an experiment in sustainable design—will mirror its function, which is to develop a completely new economic sector. Masdar City is the planned home of the Masdar Initiative, a foreign direct-investment fund for renewable energy technology. The end result, its leaders hope, will be Abu Dhabi’s own version of Silicon Valley.

The irony, of course, is that the United Arab Emirates is both a massive oil exporter and produces more carbon per capita than any other nation on Earth. The Abu Dhabi government’s rhetoric is lofty—Masdar will be a “testing ground for the future of humanity,” its purpose to create “a manifesto for sustainable life”—but it’s not empty: there is money behind it. Lots of money, even with Abu Dhabi now feeling the effect of the recession that has been devastating its neighbour Dubai. Oil brought wealth to the tiny emirate only a generation ago, and leaders know the supply is limited. Masdar is an attempt to ensure future security for a newly rich people.

The timing is canny. As the scientific and political consensus has shifted from if there is a climate crisis to how severe it will be, governments, industries, and citizens are increasingly looking for action to take. While change threatens to disrupt many traditional businesses, others see the transition to a post-fossil-fuel economy as a gold rush in the making. In 2008, for the first time, investments in renewables outpaced those in traditional energy: $140 billion was invested in wind, solar, and others, compared with $110 billion for fossil fuel and nuclear. What was once the marginal turf of environmentalists is now fought over by titans of industry. (The UN predicts renewable energy could create as many as 20 million new jobs over the next decade.)

Despite the economic potential, Canadian government policy—fixated on the tar sands—has not kept pace with science. Short-term thinking, buttressed by entrenched industrial interests, has stunted innovation here. Abu Dhabi, by contrast, has kept a long view, developing a vision for a fossil-fuel-free future, and is working to realize it. The motive is self-interest, but the results have the potential to be world-changing.

Political will, of course, is easy to mobilize in a wealthy monarchy unconstrained by democracy, election cycles, or budgets. But still, in striving to wean its prosperous economy off ever-scarcer fossil fuels, the tiny Muslim territory can be seen as a microcosm for the rest of the world, and one we would do well to take a lesson from. Whether it succeeds or fails—and there are bets placed on both outcomes— the emirate knows something that Canada doesn’t seem to: you can’t build a sustainable future without a blueprint.

Arriving in Abu Dhabi, the 20-kilometre drive from the airport to the city’s centre is quick in time more than distance. People in the UAE drive fast: traffic accidents are the number one cause of death here. Brand new SUVs hurl themselves down a 10-lane desert highway that not too long ago was desert itself. The drive to Dubai takes about an hour, but anyone over 50 will recall when the trip could be made only by camel, taking three or four days.

Abu Dhabi’s history reads like a rags-to-riches screenplay: the largest of the seven independent sheikdoms that comprise the United Arab Emirates, it was a poor pearl-farming outpost for the first 60 years of the 20th century, watching from the sidelines as oil strikes elsewhere in the Persian Gulf made its neighbours rich. When Abu Dhabi’s own huge oil reserves were discovered in 1959, residents expected the new wealth would bring long-awaited modernization, but nothing happened. Crown prince Sheik Shakhbut had grown paranoid from decades of dealing with the British, who maintained a presence in the region, and hoarded the wealth in case he should need it to fight off a military threat. By the mid-1960s, the problem was obvious to all, and Shakhbut was overthrown by his youngest brother, Zayed, kicking off an overnight transformation into a modern petrocracy. The nomadic population traded palm huts for air-conditioned villas, camels were swapped for cars (though there were few roads to drive them on), and high rises sprouted. Each Abu Dhabian received at least two plots of land—one for home, another for business—and a lump-sum cash payment. For most, it was a bewildering windfall: it was not uncommon at the time to see residents unaccustomed to keeping bank accounts leaving banks with cardboard boxes full of cash on their heads.

In 1968, when Britain announced its plan to withdraw from all territories east of the Suez, Zayed—fearing the prospect of being swallowed by a larger neighbour—successfully united the region’s quarreling sheiks under the flag of a federated UAE in 1971. Abu Dhabi is the largest and richest of the emirates, holding 90 percent of the country’s oil, about 10 percent of total global reserves. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, the notoriously secretive sovereign wealth fund tasked with keeping the country rich, is thought to be worth about US$350 billion.

Headquarters of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Click to enlarge.

ADIA, as the investment authority is commonly called, makes its home in a 36-storey black skyscraper with rounded edges that wouldn’t look out of place in a Star Wars movie—and it dominates the view from where I am staying. My friends’ Abu Dhabi home is a four-bedroom, four-bathroom apartment, palatial, with marble floors and high ceilings. It rents for US$50,000 per year—a bargain by Abu Dhabi standards. With the influx of Western expatriates seeking large, tax-free incomes here, demand for housing outpaces the supply.

Our 14th floor balcony looks directly onto ADIA’s five-storey, airconditioned parking garage, which is topped by a gym featuring a pool that looks like it should be filled with dollar bills—which, in a way, it is. Water in the UAE is desalinated from the Gulf: nine million tonnes of oil are used each year to turn salty water sweet. (Even so, the UAE is number three in water consumption globally— behind the U.S. and Canada.)

I pour a smaller version of the ADIA pool in my en suite bathtub and think about what’s on the other end of the water pipe. In my imagination, it’s sinister machines belching black smoke while men in robes sit around lighting shisha pipes with dollar bills—but at least they are talking about wind farms.

The truth is the sheiks are talking about oil and wind farms—and Formula One racetracks and branches of the Guggenheim designed by Frank Gehry. Along with the new economic sector represented by Masdar, Abu Dhabi is focusing on tourism, aiming to make itself the cultural centre of the Middle East. Call it bet-hedging. The emirate has a lot to lose. If Masdar is successful, it may just happen that Abu Dhabi, a latecomer to the industrial age, will be among the first out the other side.

Nicholas Parker knows something about trying to move past fossil fuel dependence. The Canadian coined the term “cleantech” eight years ago when he founded Cleantech Group, a venture capital company that specializes in technology and knowledge related to the mitigation of ecological crises. Cleantech as an investment category includes everything from energy production to wastewater management to compliance management, and today, it’s the fastest growing sector there is.

Parker sits in the backyard of his home in Toronto’s High Park neighbourhood on a sunny June day. In a sweatshirt, sandals and socks and khaki pants, he looks much more at home than in the suits his business dealings often demand. Parker comes across as generous, gregarious, and as something of a rebel.

To me, he represents the convergence of environmentalism and business that has become our best hope for progress. “I’ve always had a passion for two things: entrepreneurship—I really celebrate that—and sustainable development, social justice, the environment,” he says. “Most of my life I felt schizophrenic; my lefty friends think I’m a right-winger and my right-wing friends think I’m a hardcore revolutionary.”

Parker says he founded Cleantech to “bring the radical disruptive mentality that exists in Silicon Valley and put it at service of the major sustainability challenges of our time.” That, and he claims to be unemployable. It’s true Parker is hard to pin down. He’s a venture capitalist who hasn’t owned a car for 23 years, a lifelong Liberal—but for a dalliance with the Green Party—and a Zen Buddhist.

In his business, the stakes here are high, both financially and environmentally. “If we’re focusing on energy, this is a $6-trillion-a year industry,” says Parker, adding that no other industry gets measured with numbers close to those for power generation. By now, most people know generally what is at stake with global warming. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that Earth’s average temperature will rise somewhere in the range of 1.1 to 6.4 degrees over pre-industrial times by the end of the century. The IPCC’s overall veracity was called into question last year with the exposure of emails suggesting it used questionable sources to advance questionable claims in its groundbreaking 2007 report, but “Emailgate” aside, these warming estimates are widely believed to be conservative, as actual increases have so far outpaced projections.

Beyond two degrees Celsius, the scenarios become apocalyptic: polar ice caps melt, three-quarters of the world’s species face extinction, and rising sea levels threaten coastal settlements. As it is, we’re 0.7 degrees above pre-industrial temperatures and the carbon we’ve emitted so far has us committed to at least another 0.2 degrees. To avoid the worst, environmental scientists believe we must reduce emissions by 80 percent before 2050. The numbers don’t leave a lot of room for optimism.

Parker’s company is at the forefront of innovation in trying to keep us away from the precipice, and he says he spends a lot of time spurring competition in the race toward a greener future. “My job is to run around telling everyone they’re behind everyone else,” he explains with enthusiasm.

When it comes to the environment, Canada has chosen to lag in pretty much every way. Our Kyoto commitment was a six percent reduction below 1990 levels, but we’ve increased emissions by 22 percent since signing on. Environment Canada attributes this trend primarily to increases in fuel production for export (specifically, the Alberta tar sands), as well as new vehicles on the road and our continued reliance on coal-fired power plants. In keeping with its demonstrated priorities, government spending on clean technologies has been almost entirely earmarked for non-renewable nuclear as well as carbon capture and storage, in which emissions are captured at the source and injected into the ground—at best a technological stop-gap. The Tories’ 2010 budget committed Canada to becoming “a leader in green job creation,” but failed to back the pledge with investment in renewable energy technologies.

Canada’s approach to climate change, or lack thereof, became hard to ignore in the weeks leading up to December’s UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, and during the proceedings, where the Canadian government’s disregard for emissions reduction led to loud international scorn. (For the third year running, Canada won the “Fossil of the Year” award, presented by the Climate Change Action Network to the country that has done the most to obstruct progress on climate change.)

This country’s regressive stance means Parker doesn’t do a lot of business close to home. “Canada doesn’t have a top 10 company in any cleantech category,” he says. “That’s why I live here, and I don’t work here.”

Parker is hopeful about the future, but not convinced we will make enough progress to avoid catastrophe. “I think this is an experiment,” he says, “and it’s quite possible we’ll fail. It’s incredible to be smart enough to know we’re fucking it up and stupid enough to still be doing it—it’s an amazing thing to be a human being.”

José Etcheverry is trying to make sure we succeed. A member of the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University and president of the Canadian Renewable Energy Alliance, Etcheverry argues that a future in which all energy is derived from renewable sources is possible, if only government would wield policy to stoke innovation—not to mention the jobs it would create. “What we need to do is implement policies that make it possible for project developers to do what they do best,” says Etcheverry. “Entrepreneurs are by definition very creative and what we are missing is the political will to open market possibilities and create policies that give people the will to invest.”

This is what Abu Dhabi is trying to do, and it’s hardly a new idea. Denmark currently derives 19 percent of its energy from wind, thanks to an aggressive policy of government incentives implemented in the 1970s, spurred by the energy crisis. The windswept nation used to get 90 percent of its energy from petroleum sources, and the transition was pure self-defence. Today, Denmark is an energy exporter, and has reduced its carbon emissions by 13 percent since 1990.

John M. R. Stone is an adjunct research professor at Carleton University and until recently was on the bureau of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Opportunities here are abundant, he says, but Canada has not stepped up. “We’ve got a prime minister who doesn’t want to tackle this issue, who would prefer if it simply went away,” says Stone. “And the main reason is because he doesn’t know how to square it with the development in the tar sands. It’s unimaginative.”

Parker says there’s no shortage of imagination: researchers have shown that, theoretically, the planet’s total energy needs could be met with solar arrays covering around four percent of the world’s desert (if it were one plot of land, it would be about the size of the Gobi). “You can make deserts into valuable land,” says Parker, “leave the lights on all night, and it won’t matter, if we get this right. We’re five years, maybe 10, from solar being cost competitive from baseload fossil fuel power, so why aren’t we pursuing it?”

In a plush-seated auditorium in Abu Dhabi’s Chamber of Commerce, Masdar’s leaders are gathered for a specific, important purpose: to convince local businesspeople to sign up for the ecocity’s vision. They are having trouble sourcing materials and labour locally due to the stringent green standards inherent in the project. For local companies—providers of everything from lighting systems to floor finishings to roofs—to do business with Masdar, they must first green their own supply chains, rising to the same environmental and ethical standard Masdar has set for itself.

Masdar City is planned to be 99 percent carbon-free, with the remaining one percent (of what a comparably sized community would emit) offset or stored. The city is being constructed using the World Wildlife Fund’s One Planet Living principles, which include zero-carbon and zero waste, as well as sustainable transport, sustainable water and local food.

The WWF initiative began as a public relations campaign designed to communicate the ecological consequences of overconsumption. By 2035, the WWF figured, Earth’s residents would require a second planet, having exhausted the resources of the first. Its involvement in Masdar, however, goes beyond cheerleading. One Planet Living also acts as an accreditation system. Each principle of sustainability is a target that a project must meet in order to get WWF’s seal of approval. According to WWF, Masdar City goes beyond their expectations.

But even with all the political will and money in the world, people need to be convinced that the change is worth the risk.

At the chamber of commerce, a row of men in flowing white dishdashas take turns speaking, introducing Masdar and its aims in an effort to win the attendees to their view. There is interest—the 400-seat room is more than half full—but this is not an easy sell. Sultan Ahmed al Jaber, CEO of Masdar, lectures to the crowd, his talking points jargon-filled and clearly well-rehearsed. “We are going to direct you. But you must look for opportunities and solutions around the world. Contribute to the knowledge transfer, the making of a knowledge economy. You as the private sector have a major role to play. Don’t underestimate your contribution; the opportunity here is huge. The project we are working on now is a paradigm shift. You must be aggressive.”

But the people who have gathered here are still a few chapters back, and with good reason. This, after all, is a city that doesn’t even have a recycling program. “Why is Masdar next to the airport?” asks the first person to stand up. (He is reassured the development is not under any flight path.) Other questions range from how multicultural the city will be to how fast carbon neutrality can realistically be achieved. A cynical comment gets al Jaber back on his feet, full of fight. “We need to make a choice,” he says, fiercely. “We can do what we usually do—sit in the passenger seat and have others develop the technology and sell it to us. Or, we can take that pioneering and become owners of intellectual property and shop it around the world. Which one would you choose?”

As far as al Jaber is concerned, the choice is made, and the big-picture elements are well under way. The Masdar Initiative’s $250-million venture capital fund has invested in about a dozen early-stage companies around the world. One is Atlanta-based EnerTech, which does waste-to-energy conversion. Since coming on board with Masdar as a small shop, it’s signed a contract with the city of Los Angeles, and could end up meeting as much as 20 percent of L.A.’s energy needs through the conversion of septic sludge. (The process is called SlurryCarb, and it works by using heat and pressure to mimic the natural processes that turn once-living materials to fossil fuel.) Masdar also has high-profile investments in projects such as London Array, the world’s largest offshore wind farm.

As an idea, Masdar is irresistible. It’s compelling, the thought of a green utopia springing forth from the desert within the world’s biggest polluter, funded by the oil money of far-sighted sheiks trying to diversify away from a diminishing and damaging resource. And it’s still early enough that Masdar is a blank canvas on which everyone involved can project their fondest hopes.

Gerard Evanden sits overlooking the Thames at a small round table in the Foster and Partners London offices. Evenden, a stylish fortysomething with spiky salt-and-pepper hair, is lead architect for Masdar City. The architectural firm founded by celebrated British architect Lord Norman Foster is a pioneer in sustainable design—the firm renovated Germany’s Reichstag, the world’s first energy-positive parliament building—but Masdar is their biggest project yet, a chance to engineer a complete city from scratch.

Evenden shows me slides illustrating Foster’s vision: pedestrian walkways elevated seven metres off the ground, with driverless electric taxis bustling below and monorails gliding overhead. According to the plan, no resident will ever be more than 150 metres from emissions-free public transit.

“It’s not just about providing power for buildings and it’s not just about collecting energy,” Evenden says. “It’s about everything from the research through to the way people live, through to the way people move.” Evenden believes Masdar is the most important project in the world right now, and for this team of architects, it’s a dream come true.

Others, however, think of it more as a pipe dream. Christopher Davidson is a fellow at the Institute for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at Durham University in the U.K., who studies the UAE, and has published numerous books on the region. He points out the political dimensions to Abu Dhabi’s motives. As a monarchy, he says, Abu Dhabi continuously needs to prove itself legitimate. “Abu Dhabi in the past couple of years has hit on a fantastic new legitimacy resource, which is championing the environment,” says Davidson. “It’s political and economic. Anyone who claims that Abu Dhabi can diversify away from oil and all related industries is living in a dream cloud. That’s just not accurate.”

But that doesn’t mean its leaders can’t have it both ways. “Despite the titillation we may feel over Abu Dhabi, a massive oil exporter, doing this, once we get over that irony, I think what we can see is a great initiative,” Davidson continues. “They’ve seized on a great opportunity, and in the long term, they might become an international hub for environmental industry.”

When I reach John Stone on the phone, he has just come from a meeting at Parliament in Ottawa—a gathering of a conservation caucus that brings together MPs with scientists and members of NGOs to talk about environmental issues. “They even listened to me,” he jokes.

Stone points out that it’s possible now, with existing technology, to rapidly move to a low-carbon future, and questions why we in Canada are not doing just that. “We should be working as hard as we can toward a new energy system that is carbon free, if possible,” says Stone. “And we have the technologies that we need already: photovoltaics, solar thermal, wind and the like. We basically know what we need to do. We just need to go on and do it.”

Despite the federal government’s foot-dragging, there’s more hope at the regional level. Etcheverry calls Ontario’s energy legislation the most progressive on the continent: the Green Energy Act of May 2009 is the first in North America to mandate feed-in tariffs, compelling electricity utilities to pay renewable energy providers at a premium rate. The law makes it possible for every home, office building, or neighbourhood to produce renewable energy and guarantees a market to sell it. Such a system currently provides 12.5 percent of Germany’s electricity, and adds about $2.20 to the average German home’s monthly energy bill. Solar City, a development in Freiburg, Germany, produces all its own electricity from solar arrays (in one of the cloudiest spots in Europe) and sells the surplus into the grid. A combination energy plant in Kassel, Germany, sells wind and solar power, and switches on biogas combustion to meet peak demand. Based on the Combined Power Plant, German scientists believe that country could be powered entirely with renewables within 40 years.

“It’s very difficult to make a quantum leap if you’re stepping into the unknown,” says Etcheverry about imagining a different future. “For me it’s easy. I have solar power in my own house, and have seen what others have done, and what we could do if we got our collective act together.”

Currently, nearly 60 percent of Canada’s grid is powered by a renewable source: hydro. Other renewables are a tiny 0.5 percent, with the balance coming from coal, natural gas and nuclear. According to world average numbers from the Canadian Renewable Energy Alliance, coal is still the least expensive power source at four to seven cents per kilowatt hour. Wind comes in second at six to nine cents, followed by nuclear at 10 to 13 cents (CanREA factored building-cost overruns into its equation). Expensive carbon capture and storage facilities, which are key to “cleaner coal” schemes, will soon push the price of coal above 12 cents per kWh. The prices for solar and coal are expected to meet within the decade.

Traditional problems with renewables—only being able to produce power when the sun shines or the wind blows—still pose challenges. The most compelling fix is to reconfigure the energy grid as a two-way, distributed system linking together many different types of generation facilities. The same redundancy and flexibility is what makes the internet possible: when one node fails, others pick up the slack. The electricity equivalent, advocates say, would be greener, more efficient, and more resilient.

But business as usual is tempting. It’s easier, for one, and there is still a lot of money to extract from the ground. North America is sitting on a lot of coal—probably enough to last at least 300 years, if we don’t mind tearing mountaintops off to get it. Oil has maybe 100 years; accessible uranium, 40. But climate change is the real catalyst for developing alternatives. From an ecological perspective, diminishing oil stocks are irrelevant. “The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones,” quips Stone, “and the oil age is not going to end because we’ve run out of oil.”

When it comes to energy and climate change, the path forward is as fundamentally uncomplicated as it is urgent. It’s last call for the oil age. The only question now is, how long until we kick the old drunk out of the bar?

Artist's rendering of the completed Masdar City development. Click to enlarge.

A sign at the entrance to the Masdar site dwarfs everything around it. At its top is an aerial illustration of what the city will look like on completion. The rest of it lists the various businesses that are partnering to make it happen.

Masdar’s associates undoubtedly feel good about the project’s noble cause, but the sign would be empty if these companies weren’t making money. The Masdar Initiative is a business: the city is intended to be a magnet for foreign investment, the eventual home of 1,500 companies looking to profit from clean technology. The physical city is one big carbon offset project, generating carbon credits that will be sold on international markets. There is no ambiguity: the motive here is financial; environmental benefits are a bonus. Regardless of the reason for its existence, the Masdar Initiative shows what clearly defined policy and political leadership can do.

Through its two facets, the city and the initiative, Masdar shows that climate change is both an individual problem and a macro one, and that the best tool for change is policy. The city, with its emphasis on living lightly, while retaining a high standard of living, shows what individuals—in intelligently planned surroundings—can do. The initiative is political and economic, creating an environment favourable to the pursuit of alternatives.

There are politicians in Canada who have attempted, in smaller ways, to use policy to fight climate change. Stéphane Dion wanted to put a price on carbon to reduce emissions, but his Green Shift plan—centred on a carbon tax—failed to connect with voters. Similarly, B.C. premier Gordon Campbell did not come away unscathed after implementing a revenue-neutral carbon tax. The public knee jerks at the mention of the word “tax,” but just as there is consensus among scientists that humans are changing the climate, economists are in agreement that carbon pricing is essential if we are serious about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Before the October 2008 federal election, 230 of Canada’s leading economists from universities across the country signed an open letter to the federal parties urging a coherent economic plan to combat climate change. “In the absence of policy, individuals generally don’t take the environmental consequences of their actions into account, and the result is a ‘market failure’ and excessive levels of pollution,” reads the letter, which goes on to warn: “Even those who are not convinced by today’s scientific evidence need to consider the costs of not acting now. Any action (including inaction) will have substantial economic consequences and, thus, economics lies at the heart of the debate on climate change.”

Industrialization produced the emissions that threaten the climate balance, and moving to a low-carbon society must also largely be driven by economics. Yale University economist William Nordhaus believes that all the conflict and contortions of 2009’s Copenhagen summit, and the next round of wrangling scheduled for November 2010 in Cancún, Mexico, could be avoided if the world could simply agree on a price for carbon. He told a pre-Copenhagen conference that “to bet the world’s climate system on the Kyoto approach is a reckless gamble. Taxation is a proven instrument. Taxes may be unpopular, but they work. The Kyoto model is largely untested and the experience we have tells us it will not meet our objective—to stabilize the world climate system.”

The threat to polar bears may not stir their consciences, but slashand-burn capitalists will respond to threats to their pocketbooks: Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, projected in 2006 that investing one percent of global GDP in emission-reduction measures would spare the world an economic contraction of as much as 20 percent this century. As an investment, that’s a winner. (Two years later, Stern has revised his figure to two percent because climate change is progressing more rapidly than anticipated.)

The first evacuations directly attributable to man-made climate change occurred in 2009 in the Carteret Islands in the South Pacific without much fanfare. If we were paying more attention to such evidence, we would be sprinting toward a clean energy future. Instead, we have been sauntering. As people have discovered there’s money to be made, it’s picked up to a jog. As Parker says, “We’re learning. But the problem is that the situation is deteriorating faster than we’re learning.” Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the economics favour action. “The longer we delay,” says Stone, “the graver the threat, and the more expensive it will be to address.”

There are lessons to be learned from the desert, and they are familiar ones. We’ve mustered political will for important things before. “Other prime ministers have said we will have railroads that will connect the country from coast to coast,” says Etcheverry. “We will have public health care, we will have a Canadian broadcasting corporation, and so on. The big 21st century Canadian project is making our country a generator of clean power, truly clean power. And it could make us rich in the process.”

Stormy weather: pro-wind campaigns suffer from a lack of good, freely available data.

Wind energy ought to be a shoo-in. Yes, the infrastructure costs a lot of money but the fuel is free and plentiful, turbines produce no emissions, and no mountaintops need to be removed. And unlike nuclear power, no long-term radioactive waste needs to be stored for millennia. Yet, bizarrely, small groups of committed neighbourhood activists continue to band together to save the environment from wind energy.

It’s perplexing, and for those involved in climate change activism, inordinately frustrating to see people who could be allies persistently turn themselves into enemies. I’d love to point my finger at some fossil-fuel funded meanie trying to kill public support for wind, but the picture is far more complex.

A small, cherry-picked, and often factually incorrect collection of data without context circulates on websites and in reports. Since most people have neither the time nor the technical education to tease out the realities from the misinformation, confusion over the health, economic, environmental and climate-related impacts of wind energy reigns just when we need clean energy sources most.

But shouldn’t it be obvious when people are using bad science? To someone without a technical background, no. The thicket of information available online both pro and con is bewildering and vast, a tangle of contradictory claims without end.

As Farhad Manjoo wrote in his 2008 book True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society, the inherent biases of human reasoning in an era of infinite information causes precisely this situation: instead of determining truth through examining methodology, testability, reproducibility, and peer review, the average person decides to trust the conclusions of whichever speaker appears to have the most impressive or trustworthy credentials.

“Calculating the Real Cost of Industrial Wind Power,” is a 2007 report by retired phytotherapist Keith Stelling that is routinely used to bolster anti-wind arguments. The claims he advances—that wind energy slaughters bats and birds, depresses property values, produces infrasound damaging to human health and destabilizes the grid while increasing carbon dioxide emissions—rest almost solely on the names of his sources. These include Audubon Society, American Bird Conservancy (both of whom support wind energy, contrary to his report), Renewable Energy Foundation and the National Research Council. Thanks to their borrowed credibility, Stelling’s report has played a role in municipal wind-energy moratoriums from Bruce County, Ontario to Austin, Texas.

But are his sources credible? For instance, despite their name, the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) is not on record as having supported a single renewable energy project, instead devoting their time and resources to discounting wind energy and mobilizing opposition. REF’s website contains only information about the downsides of wind energy, and until recently their mission statement included the necessity of “maintaining a non-confrontational relationship with fossil fuels.” Yet a single report by David White (former sales executive for Exxon and Esso Coal) for the REF is quoted in nine out of 27 pages in Stelling’s report.

A National Academy of Sciences report on wind energy is quoted in Stelling’s paper as having concluded that wind energy can “only” meet part of future American energy demand and is thus useless to combat climate change. The quote actually originated from a press release on the report by the Industrial Wind Action Group.

IWAG, for short, is a group “formed to counteract the misleading information promulgated by the wind energy industry and various environmental groups.” Their website contains mostly sympathetic newspaper stories and entirely lacks peer-reviewed or scientific research. When the American and Canadian Wind Energy Associations published last year a scientific review of the health impacts of wind turbine noise on human health, for example, IWAG ignored it. But when, earlier this year, the Society for Wind Vigilance (a small anti-wind advocacy group) published a rebuttal [PDF] including complaints about being labelled “detractors” and an insistence that a proper study should include non-peer-reviewed research, IWAG included it in their research database.

The statistics, claims and sources used by Stelling and the IWAG are widely recycled by anti-wind groups to further their cause. One often-repeated factoid states that “international property consultant Savills” claims that wind farms reduce farmhouse property values by 30 percent. Tracking the quote to its source reveals it originated in a single letter from a single real estate agent in Britain to one of his clients. In one of the greater ironies of the wind energy debate, Savills promotes wind energy and has a sideline of planning and conducting environmental assessments of wind projects. Anti-wind information is widely available for free online and relatively simplistic, while the science debunking these claims is complex and often hidden behind an academic journal’s pay-walls. Scientists need to be paid for their work, and academic journals need to earn money to function and publish—but this makes it very difficult to promote good information.

What is the solution? Barring destroying the internet, returning to a less-knowledgeable time and restructuring the education system by next Wednesday, who knows? Manjoo’s thesis suggests that trust is the crux of the issue. No doubt, local anti-wind organizers distrust consultants and experts perceived to be on the proponent’s side via the proponent’s payroll. This is because proponents are required to pay for the assessment of their projects.

A third party is needed: a group that stands to benefit in no way from the construction of any particular wind project yet that can access, translate and communicate scientific and academic findings to multiple audiences. It would put the NIMBYs and the YIMBYs on equal footing, allowing the benefits or drawbacks of a given wind development to be debated sensibly. As the climate change clock ticks down we need community organizers to mobilize as effectively for wind power as others mobilize against it.

On the cover of the May-June 2010 issue is Shawn Thompson‘s dispatch from Samboja Lestari, a controversial reforestation project in Borneo that aims to preserve orangutan populations, repair rainforests damaged by illegal logging, and support local farmers by fostering interdependence between the wildlife, forest, and people. Some say it could revolutionize conservation projects around the world; others aren’t convinced. Also in this issue: Lauren McKeon reports from Yellowknife on the shocking state of its prison, where lack of resources for psychiatric assessments has turned a whole wing of the facility into a de facto mental health ward. Stuck in legal limbo, the prisoners there wait—and then wait some more—for justice. And Patricia Bailey examines the work of a young crop of filmmakers who have come to be known as Quebec’s “new wave.” Eschewing the commercial, nostalgic hits of recent Quebec cinema, this new generation of directors and writers are embracing a stark aesthetic that illustrates the social alienation sweeping Canada’s Francophone province.

There’s lots more: Scott Weinstein calls out the  Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combaat Anti-Semitism; Andrea McDowell argues that we need better ways to counter misinformation about wind energy; Eva Salinas reports on the post-earthquake cleanup in Chile; Rob Thomas profiles a graffiti artist who ditched his toxic art supplies and started making his own eco-friendly paints; Darryl Whetter says Canadian Literature has become less feminist; Dorothy Woodend says the small size of Canada’s film community is hindering real criticism; and Dayanti Karunaratne investigates whether bamboo textiles  are really more environmentally friendly than their conventional counterparts.

PLUS: Gillian Bennett with tips on protesting the G20 in safety and style; Alex Consiglio on legendary pro-pot lawyer Alan Young; Lyndsie Bourgon on bike sharing programs; Anya Wassenberg on a U.S. Supreme Court battle between Ontario and Michigan over the future of the Great Lakes; Daniel Tseghay on the 50th anniversary of the “Year of Africa”; Graham F. Scott on the Harper government’s “women and children” agenda at the G8 and G20; Vivian Belik on minority governments; Jenn Hardy on Montreal band Po’ Girl; Chantaie Allick on Ottawa’s Snapdragon Gallery; Navneet Alang on how online communities throw together people who would never meet in real life, and more.

With a new short story by Jonathan Bennett and new poetry by Caroline Szpak.

Fleming College students constructing a green building.

“No one would think it’s possible to have students with no construction experience making an entire selfsustainable building from scratch,” says David Elfstrom, a graduate of Fleming College in Peterborough, Ontario. But that’s what he and 25 of his classmates in the sustainable building design and construction program did in 2006, erecting an eco-friendly outdoor-living centre in five months.

Since the program began in 2005, Fleming’s students have raised three structures around eastern Ontario, including a food bank and a performing arts centre. Its goal is to produce graduates who have the skills and knowledge to create truly green buildings, and some of the program’s grads have already formed their own sustainable-building companies.

While green construction is gaining momentum throughout the country, most sustainable construction focuses on individual parts, such as solar-energy collection or water conservation. In this unique-in-Canada program, students and two instructors design, build and decorate a sustainable building—using earthen plasters, earth-bag foundations, straw-bale walls and natural paints.

Chris Magwood pitched the program to Fleming College in 2004 after close to 100 people applied for an unpaid, unadvertised apprentice position at his green construction company. “It struck me that if this many people wanted to work with my company for a season, there were a lot of people who wanted to push sustainable building into the mainstream,” he says.

The school signed on. Within months, Magwood was developing an intensive 20-week, hands-on program. The students, many with no construction experience, spent nine-hour days, five days a week, on-site, their nights filled with theoretical readings. “No one said it would be easy,” Magwood says.

The program’s first project was in Haliburton, Ontario, where the local food bank and thrift shop resided in a dilapidated storage garage. The municipality provided a construction site and money for building materials, and the class set to work. Five months and $120,000 later, the 4Cs food bank and thrift store had a new home.

Thanks in large part to solar panels adorning the building’s roof, the annual operating cost for the new building is less than what the old space cost in a month. On sunny days, the panels suck in enough energy to both power the structure and send surplus energy to the grid, to be used by the neighbourhood. While the building uses some conventional power for heating and electricity, energy bills have been dramatically reduced because of the store’s solar panels and radiant-floor heating. Like all of Magwood’s projects, the 4Cs site uses at least 50 percent less energy than a conventional building.

Still, the project is special for more than its environmental benefit and cost savings. “The community takes a fair bit of pride in it,” says Ted Scholtes, who sits on the food bank’s board. “We point it out to people because we have something unique.”

This year, 92 candidates applied for 26 spots in the Fleming program, and the college received several proposals from business and homeowners looking to get a sustainable building. Despite the program’s popularity, Magwood doesn’t expect similar ones to start appearing across the country. “I go to conferences and people are interested, but the field is still so new,” he says. “We’re a little ahead of the curve, and I think it will be a few years before the others catch up.”

Program graduate Elfstrom is more hopeful. “The success [at Fleming] is making other colleges think twice about their own programs,” he says. “There should really be more of this.”

[Editor’s note: this article originally appeared in the July-August 2008 issue of This. There have since been two more buildings built by Fleming students—a summer camp environment centre and a Habitat for Humanity residence.]

Few issues require as much research as climate change science. You have to know a whole lot about the biosphere, about energy, about the politics of adapting to climate change and investing in mitigating tools. It’s a confusing, and daunting, mass of information. George Monbiot, however, appears to have done a good job getting through what appears to be all of it, and he shows it in his book, Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning.

In a chapter discussing the incredible damage done to the environment by our growing penchant for traveling by plane, Monbiot states the case—both for and against—for practically every alternative. He steers us through the pros and cons of planes using, say, hydrogen; of supersonic planes which travel in the stratosphere rather than the troposphere (apparently a very bad thing); and of taking trains across great distances instead. His conclusion: we have to dramatically—perhaps by about 96 percent—reduce our flights. There’s simply no alternative fuel and no way of making our current fleet, or any conceivable one, efficient enough to carry on the way we do.

And this recurs throughout this dense and informative book. Monbiot’s essential claim is that by 2030 we must reduce our carbon emissions by 90% if we hope to preserve something resembling our current ecosystem. This is possible, he says, if we can muster the political will. He even says it wouldn’t alter our lifestyles by very much. We can still enjoy comfortable, modern lives.

But, of course, it’s difficult to imagine the political will being there when it counts. His chapter “The Denial Industry” displays with great force the extent to which oil industries and others invested in making money off damaging the planet have gotten their foot in the door of the media and government in order to misinform the public about the seriousness of climate change. The task of getting our public officials to think beyond upcoming elections and towards the overarching responsibility to our environment is immense, but Monbiot believes it’s one we can still achieve.