Vancouver’s greenhouse gas inventory recently completed by the sustainability office. Notwithstanding the methodological complexities that are inherent to this kind of work, it’s a nicely done project (very comparable to the good work done in Seattle’s recent inventory). Vancouver’s headline message:
Vancouver is proof that cities can be vibrant, growing and prosperous while also taking meaningful action on climate change. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have already been reduced to 1990 levels and Vancouver is on track to meeting the Kyoto target (6% below 1990 levels by 2012). At the same time population has grown by 27% and jobs by 18%.
(Read the summary and the full report.)
Managing BC’s Forests For a Cooler Planet by Ben Parfitt at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. The subtitle sort of says it all—“carbon storage, sustainable jobs, and conservation”—but here’s the top line from the summary anyway:
Climate change has hit BC forests hard. A billion or more pine trees are now dead in the interior of the province, the result of an insect attack of unprecedented proportions, made worse by warmer than average winter temperatures. Meanwhile, due to unusually dry conditions, forest fires burn with increasing intensity.
As greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the Earth’s atmosphere, there is a pressing need to manage our forests in new ways. Properly done, management techniques that maximize carbon storage both in our forests and forest products can go a considerable way to counteracting greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere in society. Such efforts can also create a stronger, more diversified and more sustainable forest economy.
(Read the summary and the full report.)
Efficiency Works, a new website launched by Northwest Energy Coalition. I’m usually underwhelmed by website launches, but this is genuinely useful: an accessible yet detailed treatment of energy efficiency.
I realize that most folks don’t get worked up into a lather about energy efficiency, but they should! Efficiency is more important than living buildings or algae-based biofuels or hyper-cars or whatever the latest sensation is. (No disrespect to those things, seriously, it’s just that efficiency is better.)
Efficiency puts money in our pockets and it puts people to work. And we can actually, really, truly do it right now. So, in particular, go check out the section called Solving the Energy Efficiency Puzzle—a treatment of how to overcome the economic and institutional barriers to making smarter decisions about efficiency. And if you love efficiency as much as I do, you’ll probably want to check out the case studies too.
