Campbell's expansion plans at odds with going green
The Globe and Mail
GARY MASON
May 8, 2007
VANCOUVER -- Only a few short months ago, he was the toast of tree huggers everywhere.
Gordon Campbell had pledged to do his bit to save the planet, and even British Columbia's notoriously skeptical greenies felt compelled to raise a glass of carrot juice in his honour.
But that was February, this is May. Now some of the country's leading voices on climate change are coming out against the Liberal Premier. The shift in wind direction has been astonishing.
Behind the mood change is the provincial government's Pacific Gateway initiative. Under the $3-billion plan, highways in the Lower Mainland will be expanded and a bridge twinned to alleviate the worst traffic congestion in the country.
TURNING FARMING ON ITS EAR It's a proposal that's been in the works for some time. It seemed to be forgotten, however, when in February Mr. Campbell announced measures to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in the province by 33 per cent below current levels. It was a planet-saving declaration even more ambitious in scope than that set out by California's green-caped crusader, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Today some are wondering how the premier squares his green dreams with the Gateway project. Critics say it will simply open up the roads for more cars. UBC professor William Rees, a world-leading expert on climate change, has called the plan "ludicrous." And Simon Fraser University's Mark Jaccard, whose work on global warming is increasingly being referred to by governments around the planet, has also come out against the project.
Do I even need to say what David Suzuki thinks?
Mr. Campbell has suddenly lost his street cred with the greenies.
In fact, the Gateway project is a brilliant example of just how complicated and difficult the problem of solving global warming truly is. Getting the public to change the type of light bulbs it uses is easy.
Finding ways to make meaningful cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions while attempting to keep your economy flourishing and your voters happy is really where the rubber meets the road.
The Gateway project is key to British Columbia's bid to become a major trade portal to vast and lucrative Asian markets. Container volumes in B.C. ports are expected to quadruple by 2020. However, that will depend largely on the efficient and easy movement of goods to market.
Fifty per cent of containerized goods are transported to and from terminals in Greater Vancouver by trucks. The B.C. Trucking Association estimates gridlock in the Lower Mainland costs roughly $500-million a year with the movement of goods slowed or at a complete standstill 75 per cent of the time.
Meantime, truck volumes are forecast to nearly triple between now and 2031. That is the economic imperative behind the Gateway project.
There is also a voter imperative. Commuters in the eastern suburbs are also sick of the gridlock. A fender bender on the Port Mann Bridge, the one destined to be twinned, can make a 90-minute commute from outlying eastern suburbs like Surrey and Langley to downtown Vancouver two hours or more.
The government's latest estimates say the road and bridge expansions could shave 30 per cent off travel times.
Ask drivers who use the roads and bridges targeted by Gateway what they think of the project and most will say they're all for it.
This is exactly why Mr. Campbell's former friends in the environmental movement are so upset. Shaving time off commutes only encourages people to drive instead of taking transit, they insist.
B.C.'s current annual greenhouse-gas output is about 66 million tonnes.
To meet the targets set out in February, the government needs to find a way to cut 22 million tonnes a year while accommodating one of the fastest-growing populations in the country.
The transportation sector, meanwhile, accounts for 41 per cent of the province's greenhouse-gas total.
You can see why environmentalists are scratching their beards. The math doesn't work.
Unless the provincial government is going to pass a law stating that all cars driven in B.C. have to be electric, it's going to have a hard time meeting its ambitious targets.
Opponents of the Gateway project are comparing it to the fight against freeways back in the 1960s. In retrospect, the decision to say no to a road system most major cities in North America were embracing at the time was inspired. It became the foundation upon which Vancouver built one of the most livable big cities on the planet.
Whether detractors of Gateway have as much success as their ban-the-freeway forebears remains to be seen. But the debate around the project will certainly highlight just how thorny an issue global warming is to handle. In the end, it may tell us just how much we're prepared to sacrifice in the name of preserving Mother Earth.
Or whether we want to have our cake and eat it too?