Green Reno Inside Guide March/April 2009 Newstand Price $4.50 Environmental News from BC and the World MEGA PROBLEMS - MEGA FIX? – Changing the Vote – Bute Battle – Saving Caribou – Free Trade with Colombia? Vol 19 No 2 ISSN 1188-360X May 20th-22nd, 2009 A Better Future: Whistler, British Columbia Adapting to Early Registration Now On! Register by Monday March 16th and save! Change www.bclandsummit.com PRESENTS: The 2009 BC Land Summit promises to be an exciting interdisciplinary conference Major Funding Partner: organized by six professional organizations, all of whom share ties to land use in British Columbia and have combined their 2009 annual conferences into this joint venture. The preliminary program is now available, and includes an extensive, diverse range of keynote speakers, workshops, sessions, mobile workshop tours, social activities and more. Early registration is now on. The early registration deadline is March 16th, 2009, and is fast approaching so be sure to Conference Partners: register today and save! www.bclandsummit.com KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Four prominent and diverse keynote speakers will lead off and close each of the two main days of programming. The 2009 BC Land Summit is pleased to present the following exciting, diverse keynote speakers: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Thomas Berger Leading global environmental Lawyer and former British Columbia activist and lawyer. Supreme Court Justice. Sherry Kafka-Wagner Dr. Richard Hebda Urban design and public place Curator, botany and earth history, development consultant. Royal B.C. Museum. PLANNING PIBC INSTITUTE OF BRITISH COLUMBIA WATERSHED SENTINEL MARCH-APRIL 2009 Watershed Sentinel March-April 2009 Society & Technology Water 4 Voting Reform Made in BC 12 Using the Activist’s The most important outcome of the May 12th BC Toolkit provincial election will not be which party forms Saving Hudson Bay Mountain in the government, but the results of BC’s second Smithers by asking questions referendum on changing to a proportional voting system 24 Fish Lake is Not a Tailings Pond 14 From ‘Know How’ to ‘Do Now’ For the Tsilhgot’in, the lake is Herman Daly on the growth economy sacred 26 Playing the Party Game News and Regular Election coverage: A comparison of key environmental elements in the three main BC 6 Letters political parties 3,7 News Briefs, also 15 28 Free Trade with Colombia The free trade deal is opposed by the Colombian 21 Wild Times people and benefits Alberta oil companies, not Joe Foy on the BC Energy democracy Plan and wild streams 32 Renovating the Green Way 23 MillWatch on liabilities in A short guide to the many resources available the pulp industry Energy & Climate Printed on 100% recycled process chlorine- free paper, (minimum 40% post consumer) 8 Massive Bute Project Sparks Conflict with vegetable inks. Cover printed on 100% post-consumer recycled process chlorine Can a mega-project solve a mega-problem? That free coated paper. seminal question underlies the raucous debate about Plutonic Power’s sprawling hydro project in Bute Inlet Not a 20 Upnit Power Subscriber Chief Judith Sayers describes the Run of River Yet? Look micro hydro project on China Creek for the 30 To Mexico by Bus Subscription Form Inserted Just because Carrie Saxifrage has given up high- carbon flying doesn’t mean she wants to give up for your travel, so she took the bus to Mexico convenience! 8 The Land & Forests 8 Saving Caribou Cover: Biologist Maggie Paquet examines the ins and outs of the many BC caribou plans, and wonders by Ester Strijbos if the current one is any different than the others over the last three decades 21 MARCH-APRIL 2009 EDITORIAL Watershed Slow Learners In the period between 1920 and 1933, the manufacture, transportation, sale, and possession of alcoholic beverages was prohibited in the United States. Sentinel Looking back on the pages of history, it appears that the prohibition had lit- Editor Delores Broten tle affect on the imbibing habits of that country’s population, except, perhaps, Publisher Watershed Sentinel Educational Society to quicken the thirst of the many who enjoyed the sweet euphoria awakened Associate Editor Don Malcolm by the consumption of distilled liquor. Many Americans who lived near the Graphic Design Ester Strijbos northern border of the United States made regular trips into Canada to obtain Circulation Susan MacVittie their alcohol, thereby fattening the coffers of business on the southern edge of Special Thanks to Horizon Publica- Canada. In fact, some of Canada’s major corporations sprang from the sale of tions, Damien Gillis, Arthur Caldicott, alcohol to thirsty Americans. Many Americans ran into trouble with American Hugh McNab, Gloria Jorg, Anicca De officials, while trying to smuggle alcohol back into the United States. Accord- Trey, Norberto Rodriguez de la Vega, ing to songs, moving pictures, and literature of that period lives were lost in Anna Tilman, Mike Morrell, Maggie shoot-outs with authorities. Meanwhile, in the hardwood covered hills of north- Paquet, Clara Broten, Kathy Smail, eastern and southern United States, “hill-billys” established their own illegal Ray Woollam, the writers, advertisers, private stills and, in “fast cars,” delivered their “moonshine” product to secret distributors, and all who send informa- buyers. Fortunes were made, lives were lost. Eventually, America gave up, tion, photos, and ideas. legalized the production and sale of alcoholic beverages, and cashed in on the Published five times per year revenue. Subscriptions $25 one year, Now, in the United States and also in Canada, and other countries of the $40 two years Canada, $35 US one year world, another demon is occupying the attention of law-makers and ordinary Electronic only $15 a year citizens alike. So-called “street drugs” are finding their way into school-rooms, Distribution by subscription, and to even down to the pre-teen level. On city streets on the west coast of Canada, members of Friends of Cortes Island and other cities throughout the country, gunfights have become almost a com- and Reach for Unbleached! Free at Vancouver Island and Vancouver area mon occurrence. Territorial wars are putting at risk the lives of innocent citi- libraries, in BC colleges and universi- zens. Welcome to the nineteenth century. ties, and to sponsoring organizations. We are, indeed, slow learners. Member BC Association of Magazine If we legalized and controlled the production and sale of street drugs, the Publishers and Magazines Canada pusher would be out of business. We could, as with the legalization of alcohol, ISSN 1188-360X put the realized revenue to better use. For photocopy reproduction rights, contact Don Malcolm, Comox BC, March 2009 CANCOPY, 6 Adelaide St. E., Ste. 900, Toronto, Ontario M5C 1H6 Publication Mail Canada Post Agreement Notable Quotable PM 40012720 “The root of the problem is that our ecological overshoot is chang- ing much faster than our thinking about it. By various measures, we are in overshoot, meaning we are already consuming more resources than the Earth can sustain by any reasonable measure. The further we progress into overshoot, the more divorced our “solutions” to the ecological crisis become. Ever since the 1970s, we have been advocating for “alternative energy” and Return Undeliverable Canadian Addresses more efficiency. Let us extrapolate this trend into the future. Suppose cur- to: Watershed Sentinel rent trends continue (which is likely), and the consumer society goes through Box 1270, Comox various economic convulsions, but remains essentially intact. Meanwhile, BC, Canada V9M 7Z8 starvation across the world continues to grow. Are we going to continue Ph: 250-339-6117 to advocate plug-in hybrid cars and other expensive technologies as the “solution” to the environmental crises when two billion people are severely Email [email protected] malnourished? When there are three billion? Four? At what point do we rec- http://www.watershedsentinel.ca ognize that expensive technologies meant to maintain a “sustainable” con- Disclaimer: opinions published are not sumer society among the world’s wealthiest people are utterly divorced from necessarily those of the publisher, editor or other staff and volunteers of the magazine. any reasonable moral coherence?” —Silent Armageddon? Alexis Zeigler, www.culturechange.org WATERSHED SENTINEL MARCH-APRIL 2009 NEWS Around The World Carbon Emergency Compiled by Staff forest now is losing more carbon diox- EU Bans Pesticides ide than it is storing. In January, the European parlia- —The Guardian, March 10; ment voted by a sweeping majority Climate News Worsens Christian Science Monitor, March 10; to ban 22 pesticides – a decision that Leading climate experts sounded Vancouver Sun, March 11, 2009 critics say will have dire consequenc- a major alarm in March at the Interna- es. The farming lobby warned that the tional Scientific Congress on Climate California Drought restrictions would wipe out harvests Change, hosted by the University of A state of emergency in Califor- of winter vegetables and push up food Copenhagen. The 2000 research- nia has cut state and federal water prices. In response, the Soil Associa- ers and experts met to exchange the supplies to farmers down to 15% of tion ridiculed arguments that the pes- latest scientific data on various cli- demand, starting March 1. Three ticides were needed to maintain crop mate markers. Their work will then years of below-average rain and snow- yields. If turned into law, the tighter be handed to policy makers at the fall have forced farmers to fallow their rules would be phased in from next United Nations Climate Conference fields, and put thousands of agricul- year with the aim of halving toxic sub- being held in Copenhagen at the end stances on plants by 2013. Labour and of the year to negotiate a successor to A temperature rise of the Conservatives, who voted against the now stale-dated Kyoto Treaty on two degrees by the end the bans, are both calling for an im- carbon emissions.