endless growth disguised as sustainability

[John Zeger]

dmgr said:

I don't know how long you have lived here, Rick, but I do know approximately how long John has been here. I have lived here my whole life, and I have seen some of the benefits that growth has brought. The educational facilities are better ( a college and a highly recognized university), the hospital performs a wider variety of procedures (spend one night with a broken arm with no cast because the hospital was too small for a 24hr cast room and you will be greatfull that the hospital is now bigger), we now have a cancer clinic, we have a ballet company and more live theater, a city wide recycling program, and an unemployment rate that is finally well below 10%.........are any of these things bad?......They must be, because they are the result of growth.........

I agree that Kelowna has benefited a lot from growth and have never advocated turning the clock back to the time when Kelowna was a small town. However, the marginal costs of growing larger are exceeding the marginal benefits. (If you studied economics, I'm sure you are familiar with the Law of Marginal Utility.) For each incremental increase in the number of people we add our urban problems increase more than the benefits of that growth for the average person. In that regard urbanologist Wendell Cox proferred that the ideal city size is somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000, a population range where you have a good variety of urban services but escape most big city problems. We already have a good variety of retail stores and public services here, but for the small amount of benefits that the extra growth brings we are experiencing significantly more crime, traffic congestion, and a decrease in our overall quality of life.

[Rick Shea]

dmgr said:

... even if we had no limits on growth we would never reach the populations those cities have." because there is absolutely no chance Kelowna will ever reach the level of population that LA, Tokyo, Soeul, or HongKong in the near future or even in our lifetime. It took Kelowna over 100years to hit 100,000 so do I really need to explain why I don't believe we'd hit 10 million or more???

This does bring up an interesting concept related to sustainability: the fact that many people do not understand the concept of exponential growth.

So, give us a ballpark figure. If it was possible, and if we continued to grow at the present rate (so the population next year at this time would be about 3.4% more than it is now), how long do you think it would take the population of Kelowna (currently about 110,000) to reach 10,000,000?

[Rick Shea]

Sent to the Capital News today:

Dear Sir:

Page A4 of your November 24th edition contains a buffet of the current thinking about sustainability in Kelowna. Unfortunately, this is a buffet full of sugar and empty calories.

One of the headlines contains the meaningless phrase “sustainable growth.” In a finite world, growth is not sustainable. We are clearly at the point where we are depleting resources faster than they are replaced, environmental consequences of our practices are coming back to bite us in the butt, and even that so-called saviour, “technological innovation,” has yet to re-establish any of the enormous number of species which are now extinct due to human activity. Biodiversity and a healthy environment are critical for our survival, yet we diminish them every day, and every minute.

Another headline implies that we are somehow “looking after our water.” Kelowna’s water manager reports that we are working toward a net reduction of 35 percent in our per capita water use. Unfortunately, that only requires the population of Kelowna to grow about 50 percent to take us back to square one. At a growth rate of 3 percent (less than the rate last year), that growth will happen in about 14 years, then the net water consumption in Kelowna will increase from there, as will the amount of treated sewage that we dump into Okanagan Lake. The current financial plan calls for doubling of the capacity of the sewage treatment plant by 2020, and the projection is that we will require the construction of a second plant somewhere around 2025. We must also be mindful of the fact that we share this watershed with other communities, and that other communities are also dumping effluent into Okanagan Lake.

If all that growth over the next 14 years is in 26 storey highrises similar to the one just approved by council, that will require construction of 117 such highrises in Kelowna. Even with the reduced per capita automobile use claimed for such densities, that will still mean at least 38 percent more automobile trips in Kelowna, with accompanying pollution, congestion, and delays. The conclusion is that, in less than 20 years, we must increase the capacity of every road in Kelowna by at least 50 percent, and even then congestion will be at least as bad as it is now.

It is farcical then that we are being urged to conserve water and implement so-called “smart growth” policies. “Smart growth” will leave us with a crowded and polluted urban core where no one will wish to live, and will only delay slightly the further destruction of green space and agricultural land as our population continues to grow. “Smart growth” will generally do nothing to change the patterns of consumption which, according to some studies, would require the equivalent of 4 planets like our Earth in order for everyone on this planet to reach our present rate of consumption in Canada.

It is equally farcical that we are being urged to “conserve” water in Kelowna, somehow “saving” it for future generations. Any thinking person knows that any water we don’t use either evaporates, or simply flows south across the border and out to the ocean. And any savings associated with reducing the per capita amount of water supplied and treated per will soon be made up for by population growth.

A cynic might quite justifiably observe that the hidden agenda here is simply to allow developers to continue making profits, while leaving the rest of us to pay for and clean up the mess left behind. The Canadian Policy Research Network's report "Social Sustainability in Vancouver" details this exact consequence in Vancouver over a decade of rapid development, as the wealthiest 5 percent increased their wealth, while the rest of the population demonstrated a decrease -- and a significant decrease for many.

So, unless and until we are serious about addressing the real issue of population growth, when we are urged to conserve water and implement “smart growth” policies, it is more than appropriate to ask “Why? What’s the point?”

Sincerely,

Rick Shea

[John Zeger]

And while you are pondering on Rick's questions, dmgr, I would like to ask you one of my own. Please tell me how it is possible to have infinite growth in a finite environment? I consider that to be the most radical and extreme point of view of all. If you don't support growth controls especially population caps, you must hold this viewpoint and as such you are an extremist.

[John Zeger]

"Sustainable cities tend to see development as a means to an end, a means to achieving a particular type and level of quality of life, locally defined but potentially including a wide variety of quality of life characteristics. Unlike many cities, where economic growth is the imperative for its own sake, or where quality of life is itself defined just in terms of the quality of employment and average family incomes, or where there is merely an assumed relationship between economic growth and quality of life (i.e., more growth means a better quality of life), sustainable cities seek to manage economic growth and development to be more consistent with their visions of what kind of community they desire to achieve. ... When city leaders perceive that there is a single imperative for local politics, and that imperative is to maximize growth, then the idea of sustainability becomes almost an anathema." --Kent E. Portney, Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously

[John Zeger]

I had to chuckle reading of consultant Mark Holland’s recent address to the Urban Development Institute in Kelowna (“Going green can make green – consultant,” Capital News, May 25) where Holland instructed them to embrace the concept of sustainable development and to build as much density as they could “get away with” because this strategy would increase their profits. This is akin to instructing a cat to pounce on a bird because the cat might find it tasty.

Putting aside the question of whether or not the term “sustainable development” is an oxymoron as it is impossible to have endless physical growth in a finite environment, it should be pointed out that developers have been fast off the mark (no pun intended) to support the so-called “smart growth” movement as it promised greater profits through increasing densities.

It has always been the goal of developers to maximize the use intensity of land as it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that creating 50 residential units on a one acre parcel will be more profitable than creating only 2 units. Although densification (“smart growth” or “eco-density”) is promoted as putting the needs of the environment first, in reality it is a carefully concocted scheme designed to maximize profits for developers. So for Holland to tell developers to shoot for the moon in seeking maximum densities, he is only telling them to do what comes naturally.

[Rick Shea]

Sent to the local media today.

Reporter: What do you think of western civilization?

Mahatma Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

Dear Sir:

In common usage, the word “progress” implies improvement and betterment, especially in social and environmental terms. The word is often misapplied to describe an increase in economic activity, which most often leads to a decline in environmental quality, social capital, and a sense of community. And economic activity and wellbeing are most often erroneously equated with population growth and with crowding more people into less space, despite the examples from around the world and from our history which demonstrate that these are actually antithetical to sustainable economic wellbeing

But we’re told that we “can’t stop progress,” usually by those who control, and have the most to gain from, economic activity. That means that we are supposed to fatalistically accept the accompanying environmental degradation, crowding, pollution, scarcity of resources, social inequities, crime, and so on as some sort of inevitable cost of doing business.

What’s happening in Kelowna, and in much of the Western world, is most definitely not progress. Instead, it is an incessant progression down the spiral of greed. Many past civilizations lie at the bottom of that spiral, yet we seem incapable of learning the lessons that they too missed.

A few voices have already been raised in protest, and the vested interests immediately jump in to silence them. But, as more and more voices are heard daily, and as more and more people respond to the horrendous negative effects of population growth and the need to service it, it is clear that the derogatory term NIMBY, which so-called developers love because it tends to silence dissent, is evolving into NIMBI (Now I Must Become Involved). Although this activism often begins because “developer” is a one word oxymoron, it can lead to meaningful change, and to true social and environmental progress.

So, to those of you who do become active in protecting your quality of life and the environment, take heart. You are not alone and your numbers are growing. Your activism is an indication that you have joined the ranks of the civilized and sane people who truly know that what we are doing is unsustainable. You know full well that “sustainable” means forever. That of course means that you are likely not economists, developers, local politicians, or their media apologists. You have every right to demand that your quality of life is not threatened any further. Indeed that is a duty and responsibility that you, and I, have to future generations.

We cannot give up in the war against greed, or we may as well give up right now on the future of the human race, countless endangered species and ecosystems, and perhaps the entire planet.

As for myself, I am most definitely not giving up on the war, but I am giving up on Kelowna. After living for almost 30 years in the area, after giving hundreds of hours of volunteer work to the community, after working very hard to try to effect change in the mindset that has seen us “progress” from a close-knit and pleasant community to what we are today, I’ve seen Kelowna move far too close to the event horizon of the black spiral of greed. I’m moving on to a much more pleasant place, for reasons that I’ve made abundantly clear in the past.

To those who stay on, good luck, and hopefully sanity will eventually prevail.

Most sincerely,

Rick Shea,
formerly of Kelowna

[John Zeger]

The recent article “Kelowna ahead of the pack on sustainability” (Daily Courier, Aug. 23) gives readers the false impression that our city is making significant strides in the area of sustainability when in fact it is not. Furthermore, it leaves one with the idea that Kelowna is receiving national and international acclaim for being a sustainable city, although I am not aware of any related honours having ever been bestowed upon it except for recognition for some minor projects such as the Ogogrow composting initiative.

All this undeserved attention and approbation is as a result of Kelowna city council recently accepting a report from staff on objectives and actions to make the City of Kelowna more sustainable in its own operations. It is all well and good that the city is putting its own house in order but city operations probably do not account for even one percent of the impacts on our environment and infrastructure resulting from the sum total of all individual, business, and government activities here.

In the meanwhile nothing is being done to address the rapid and uncontrolled population growth which is hurling Kelowna headlong towards unsustainability, the symptoms of which are already being felt in areas such as increased traffic congestion and a high crime rate. And the looming crisis of a lack of available water still awaits us and is not something that municipal politicians even want to think about. Therefore, to say that Kelowna is ahead of the pack on sustainability is to seriously exaggerate the importance of some relatively minor city actions while the major threats to the future viability of our community continue to be ignored.

[Rick Shea]

johnzeger said:

... to say that Kelowna is ahead of the pack on sustainability is to seriously exaggerate the importance of some relatively minor city actions while the major threats to the future viability of our community continue to be ignored.

I completely agree with your comments and, if Kelowna is truly "ahead of the pack on sustainability," then the rest of the world is in even worse shape than I had believed.

[John Zeger]

In Mayor Shepherd's speech to the Chamber of Commerce, she gave Kelowna high marks for sustainability. At the core of the idea of sustainability is leaving the better aspects of a community for future generations to enjoy. Sustainability can be broken down into four categories -- physical (infrastructure), social, economic, and environmental.

1. Physical (infrastructure) -- Most of the attention here is on our transportation system which is becoming more congested with cars all the time. The public transit system is getting better, but the percentage of people taking transit has remained constant.

2. Social -- We are losing social capital, the stuff it takes to form meaningful social connections, as the city grows bigger. Festivals are folding because of a lack of volunteers and some neighbourhood associations are struggling to stay viable. The last civic election had a pathetic voter turnout of 31% despite an exciting mayoralty contest. Residents just don't care. Our demographics are becoming very lopsided. We have more people over 65 here as a percentage of the total population than does Victoria. There aren't enough families with young children.

3. Economic -- The boom that we are currently enjoying is not sustainable as it is based mostly on construction activity. We can't keep building forever, especially at the recent pace. It would be better to grow more slowly, be less dependent on the construction sector, and have a more diversified economy.

4. Environmental -- More cars on the road means more air pollution. The Heart and Lung Foundation recently gave the BC Interior an "F" grade on air quality. More people in the city means more crap ending up in the lake. Large swaths of open space are being lost to residential subdivisions. Our natural beauty is being sacrificed in the name of growth and in 20 years you won't be able to see the mountains because of all of the highrises going up throughout the city.