Now if we can just get the three levels of government to follow these 10 steps our taxes would go down. No more energy inefficient building like the PG Library or the PG Airport Terminal building, or the new jail Hilton on the Hill.

The public around PG is already going to feel enough pain as the green house gas regs kick in and puts an end to projects like the lime pit east of PG.

I don't think the public in the delta realize that their standard of living is going to be effected as well. The people around PG might loose a bunch of jobs that the lime pit would have produced, but the majority of the economic benefits from developments like this one have always been funneled into the purses of the people in the delta and Victoria.

So we will see.

Don't forget the new carbon tax.

Iam always amazed at the number of people who sit in their vehicles with them running "waiting" for someoen or something. We are our own wourts enemy and the attitdues of everyone have to chnage. Shutting your vehicles off when mot in use whould be 1 majour step forward by all of us...

"4. At home, caulk and weather-strip doors and windows to prevent heat from escaping."

Actually it is not heat that is escaping. It is heated air that is escaping. When that escapes, it is replaced by new air from the outside. The entire process is called ventilation.

In a “normal” house, there is generally sufficient air through the typical processes of opening and closing doors to the outside, the occasional opening of a window, combustion air intake for some furnaces, bathroom and kitchen exhaust fans, and so on to satisfy the requirement for providing fresh air.

Often, when closing some of the apparent leakage points, there are enough other openings to keep the “natural” ventilation going. At other times, especially in the case of more modern houses, the openings are limited and closing the remainder can begin to cause other problems unless air is brought in from the outside by more controlled methods. The easiest is to open the windows in the house for 10 15 minutes a day and air it out, as is traditionally done in some parts of the world. So, weather-stripping does not save any money in that case. The best method is to provide a heat exchanger which will bring in outside air and preheat it by passing it by warmer inside air as that is exhausted to the outside.

The worst one can do is live in a hermetically sealed house. It keeps germs inside and keeps moisture inside that can cause mildew, especially in bathrooms and unoccupied parts of basements, etc. Very unhealthy. Remember, however bad the air may be on some days and in some parts of PG, the air inside a house is typically worse unless it is properly ventilated.

http://www.pure-indoor-air.com

Note the recommended rate of air exchange per hour in a residential setting. Once every three hours or 8 times per day. The only way to prevent heating all that air with new energy from outside to inside temperatures is to provide a heat exchanger. For a few years in the early days of superinsulated houses, they were virtually the norm. Very few are installed these days.

YamaDooPolCat while I don't disagree that the people in the 'delta' as you put it are generally clueless to where the riches in this province are generated. I object to the folks who resist the change towards green by saying it will cost too much. Doing nothing will cost us far, far more.

I am too afraid to drive a small car around here because of all the idiots who HAVE to have a humongous SUV or pickup truck. The best thing that could happen is gas at $2 / Liter. Then people would actually respect the resource.

Idle at Tim, idle at Mac, that big V8 uses so
little Gas

"Choose locally grown, organic foods"

Locally grown? .... anyone ever been to the local farmers market. Anyone ever been to one in the Okanagan as well?

We can't even get locally grown potatoes and other root crops.

We should be promoting farming under glass. I wonder if someone has done a study of the environmental cost of that versus shipping fruits and vegies from distances.

"reuse containers"

we have 357 of those and it clutters up our house to the extent that we need an extra room just to house them. Please figure out how much that costs. We could move to a smaller house if we did not keep all that "stuff" that we may avoid buying sometime in the future as a result of being pack rats ...

;-)

"and ’disposable’ products (for example, wash and reuse plastic cutlery)"

Wait a minute. If I am not going to dispose of this stuff, why would I buy it in the first place. Do people realize how much "dirt" plastic clings onto compared to proper metal cutlery? I sure as tootin' don't want to know that I am being given pre-used plastic cutlery that has been at 5 bar-b-ques before and carries God knows how many germs.

"and recycle"

Tell that to the City Daddys and Mommies, especailly after the recent news story about the bin of recyclables going to the land fill instead of being recycled as was apparently promised.

Is it more environmentally friendly for each one of us to take a personal vehicle to some recycling depot, or for a city vehicle build for the purpose to come around to pick it up? Recycling needs others involved in the process to make it effective.

If everyone in Canada committed mass suicide tomorrow, would the temperature of planet Earth change 1 degree? How about all of North America? Would that be enough to cool off the world, so we won't all melt from global warming? And the polar bears won't all drown in an ice-free Arctic? Not that we'll be around to care.

Look at the nonsense these proposals really are in face of what's actually happening.

How much of the 'junk' we've just acquired or given as Christmas presents will be in the landfill before this time next year?

What would happen if it wasn't? If everything bought was beautiful, and functional, and lasted? Why we wouldn't be able to have 'full employment' any more, that's what! There'd be a massive amount of job loss. And Heaven forbid anyone should ever get a living and be made comfortable unless he's been made to slave and be uncomfortable first. Our whole society would just fall to pieces, wouldn't it?

How much of this 'junk' was 'made in Canada', versus being made from resources sourced in Canada? And hauled halfway around the Earth to be processed, (in a factory that doesn't even have the most elemental form of emission control on it's coal fired smokestack, even if it's burning 'our'coal), and then hauled halfway back again to be sold? Because that's supposed to be 'cheaper'?

Does our Ministry of the Environment have some 'guidelines' to rectify that? Or does that silver haired bonehead we call a Premier just take another trade mission to peddle more of the same?

How many will be wringing their hands over unemployment when another batch of pulp and paper workers, chip truck drivers, loggers, etc. etc. will be out in the cold because there's reduced use and demand for paper? Because we're all following the new 'guidelines'?

How many MORE hours will we all have to work to buy those new fangled light bulbs, and fund all this other nonsense? And pay the new carbon tax? What will be the result of our working those MORE hours? Could it be MORE pollution? What else COULD it be?

When the Hell are we ever going to look at the REAL problem, instead of overpaying a bunch of functionally useless parasites in the Ministry of the Environment to make our increasingly miserble lives even more miserable than they've already made them?

"read documents on your computer screen whenever possible instead of printing them"

I find that whenever I do that and highlight words and sentences, that my monitor gets all covered in yellow. On top of that, the next time I read the document, the highlighting is never in the same place and those I send the highlighted copy to tell me they can't see the highlighting.

;-)

"Drive less. Make a point of using public transportation, walking, carpooling or biking to work or school at least once a week"

Avoid commuting, consider a home-based business.

"Turn off the lights in empty rooms"

Get rid of empty rooms, buy a smaller house. Imagine how much a house that is too large costs!!!

Three key things that are missed in the above list that are HUGE users of energy and resources and money:

1. Houses that are too large - we continue to build larger houses even though family sizes are going down. Demographics alone dictate that they will likely become liabilities in the future which could equal the current problem faced in housing construction and financing. Within the next 10 to 15 years we will see these houses being converted to flats similar to the larger houses in our major urban downtown areas.

2. Houses that are separated from others instead of being attached to reduce heat loss through external walls and to reduce the size of property required (8 feet between each house is a waste- that is about 15% of the average lot width which means one could build 15% more housing for the same length of road)

3. Buy smaller and fewer cars, for similar reasons given for houses. Use taxis and public transit if you need a car when there is not one in the garage or driveway. It increased the efficiency of use of the vehicle. Of course, if everyone would do that it would mean some of the new car show rooms will have to downsize, car manufacturers will cry foul the same as house builders now, etc. etc.

Let’s face it, our society is based on total gluttony. We eat too much, we use too many products, we underutilize too many of those products. If we were really to be environmentally sound we would have to design a new economic system to accommodate that over time since the western world would otherwise be in crisis from the looks of it.

So, let’s all just putter along as we have been and maybe over the next 20 to 30 years we will have re-educated society to a new concept of what “growth” is actually all about … and it ain’t about more, more, more …. it is about quality, quality, quality ….

I think we should be charged 5 times as much for Hydro power as we currently are....maybe then some of the people who keep lights on 24/7 would get the idea. We ALL need to do our part.

opion1
I agree totally. We are spoiled in North America with cheap energy. Goto Europe where gas is 4 bucks a litre and you see 50% are small diesels that get bet fuel economy that some over hyped hybrid in north america.

And just HOW would we PAY five times as much for Hydro power? If we used one fifth as much of it the water would just go over the spillway and down the river without generating one kilowatt that it might've generated had it gone through the turbine.

If we pass it through the turbine and 'export' the power elsewhere what do we do with the money? Buy a fifth of what we can buy with it now, because the cost of making anything that utilizes electricity is now five times as much?

Yeah, I suspect gas at 2-3 bucks per litre would have an impact.

Speaking of which, why the heck does the "standard" City of PG vehicle seem to be a 1/2 ton Dodge 4x4? I can see a handful of them for duties that REQUIRE a truck, but why the heck couldn't many of them be replaced with smaller fuel efficient cars? They would be cheaper on gas, cheaper on insurance, cheaper to maintain, etc. Could the City not "lead by example" a little bit here?

Socredible....your probaly one of the folks who thinks electric energy is "free". Soon we will have to look at other sources because we are outstripping what can be made. I guess you think burning coal would be a positive addition to our ever growing needs. How many more rivers can we dam up?. To my above point...if we can't vountarlily conserve, charge us the price so we have to conserve

About seven or eight months ago a nice young fellow at BC Hydro's head office phoned our business to tell us that Hydro would be increasing its rates, again, next April.

To do what they say to do to 'conserve' would cost our business more than we'd ever live long enough to get back. And there's no guarantee most of that would even work, even if we did it.

So whether we do anything or not, we'll have another cost increase to face. And either way it'll have to be passed on to our customers. It'll just make what we make that much more expensive, and harder to sell.

While I had him on the phone I had a chance to question him about the rationale behind this increase. You see, it was my understanding that when we retrieved the substantial 'downstream benefits' from the Columbia River Dams in the late 1990's, the ones that saw us have to peddle power to the USA for 30 years to get those dams built, "...for free, my friend, and there's nothing freer than free, " as old WAC Bennett so rightly told us, that power was ours.

For the benefit of British Columbians. We didn't need it 30 years ago, as WAC Bennett explained, but now, when we do, it was supposed to be available. Not "for free", but at a cost that reflected what those dams actually DID cost us. (And in the inflation they engendered when we built them, they were far from 'free'! We paid for them in consumer price increases several times over, even if the Yanks did put the dough up to build them.)

This power was to keep our industries competitive, and our houses lighted, and to enable us to "live better electrically". As those old BC Hydro promotions used to ceaselessly encourage us to do, and electrify everything we could. All at a cost we could afford. Not that we could waste it, but not that we should have to pay five times as much for it either. Or have to shiver in an unlit house, or quiver every time we turn an appliance on.

Well, seems things have changed. BC Hydro has become somewhat addicted to the 'benefits' of exporting power. Though the young fellow didn't hesitate to tell me that we also 'import' power, too. More he said, than we export.

I asked him on a dollar basis? Or on a kilowatt basis? He didn't answer. He didn't have to. For he'd already told me how that works.

Alberta's power is thermally generated. From burning coal. And to get peak efficiency from a thermal plant it has to run at its rated capacity, 24hrs. a day. A hydro-dam, on the other hand, can be shut down at night, when everyone's gone to bed, most of the lights are out and appliances are off, and demand falls off.

So we buy thermal power from Alberta and elsewhere, at night, when the rates for bulk power sales are low. Then in the daytime we bring the hydro back on stream and feed power back into the NA grid when rates for bulk power sales are high. And BC Hydro gets to tell us that we're short of power, because we're a net importer. But on a dollar basis? No comment.

It's a cozy little arrangement, tailor made for the kind of political patronage Gordo's group thrives on. For how better than to make all those 'private' power developments REALLY pay, (and keep the campaign contributions coming in from their promotors), than to create an artificial electricity shortage here, where there is none.

Electricity can be generated in many ways. Some is environmentally more benign that other.

In the right spot, hydro can have relatively low environmental impact.

Coal is certainly not the way to go.

Windmills should work in parts of the province, especially on the ocean.
http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=935752631&size=l

Photovoltaics are also great, with little tranmission losses due to the short distances.

Then there is geothermal .....

Im going "green" alright green in the face because i cant comprehend all the bullshit they are thinking of on their high hores in victoria and thinking it will work in the north.

I figure 9 of the 10 recommendations above could readily be utilized in the North, the only exception being the organic foods, which may present some challenges.