It may be colder here, but then the southern United States burns through electricity like crazy for air conditioning, and we use comparatively little.
But yeah, the difference is that it’s colder here, and we’re more spread out which increases transportation costs. However, we also emit a lot of CO2 mining the tar sands, and in every other way we’re pretty much exactly like Americans. We drive the same cars, have the same hobbies, eat out as much, drive as far to work, work the same knids of jobs, and ignore CO2 limits just as much. The difference is that in Canada our government pretends to care while doing nothing, while the American government says they’re going to do nothing and does nothing.
In that, we’re all in good company. Despite all the talk of the Kyoto treaty in Europe, their energy use and CO2 consumption is going up as well.
Roof-mounted solar panels are available, but they’re expensive to install (it’s not just the panels, it’s wiring, batteries, etc.) Even a relatively cheap assembly’s going to cost you $5000 out of box, doesn’t come with batteries, and will be hard pressed to let you run your dryer and your air conditioner at the same time. And of course, you’re going to have a lot less energy potential in Barrie than you are in Bakersfield. Practically speaking, to install enough solar/battery p0ower to run even my little townhouse - and I’m very careful with energy, use only Suzuki-approved lightbulbs, new, efficient appliances, wash our clothes in cold water, etc. - I would have to expend as much money in up front costs as I would pay in electricity in twelve years. Accounting for the future value of money, it wouldn’t pay for itself in less than 20 years. And the simple reality is I don’t have the money. Most people don’t have ten big ones easily available.
In the long run, of course, it just seems absurd to not draw upon what is, essentially, free energy. At some point it may come to the point that it will be cost effective for the government to subsidize solar installations, esp. in new developments, to offset or delay the construction of more nuclear reactors. Both solutions are extremely heavy on the up front cost but solar is cheaper to run, so it could offset a lot of nuclear power for less running cost.
I’m convinced, as I’ve said elsewhere, that the solution to the energy crisis has to be through collective, not individual, effort. It’s just not fair to ask Joe McShmoe to cash in his kid’s education fund to install solar panels. I do think, however, that it would be fair to redirect some of Joe’s tax dollars towards investing in long term energy solutions.
The government pretends to care because this (global warming) is the new issue du jour with voters. Before this became such a cluster-fuck Harper and the Conservatives didn’t care much about it. And, quite frankly, I agree. Although we may be high consumers of energy, due to our climate and geographical isolation, we contribute less than 1% to global CO2 emissions. And now Dalton Fucking McGuinty wants to close all coal fired electricity plants in Ontario. What a fucking nimrod.
I dated a girl from Bristol once who was of French Canadian descent, there are tons of them there. Apparently alot of Quebecoise moved there for factory work during the mid 1900’s.
You guys already have a third column in place! The takeover should go quite smoothly.
To the best of my knowledge, there’s no Ministry Of Adding New Provinces. I’d suggest you have the governor take this offline and go directly to the Prime Minister, who can be reached at:
The Rt. Hon. Stephen Harper
Office of the Prime Minister
80 Wellington Street
Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
K1A 0A2
Bang on, Mr. Stone. I’ve lived in the US, Canada and Europe and it seems to me that Canadians have by far the best PR when it comes to being enviro-friendly.
I don’t know why, but everywhere you go in the world, people fawn over Canadians for their environmental awareness. I was in Costa Rica a few years ago, and on the eco front, they adored Canadians, while slagging off Americans. Americans were tree killers, while Canadians protected and nurtured forests and were as one with their leafy brethren. I had to laugh. I tried to explain there wasn’t a lot of difference between the two countries, but they weren’t having it.
I dunno. All you need to do is step out into a crisp January night in Quebec, only to choke on the smoke from the wood burning stoves* to realize that everyone in Canada loves being enviro-conscious, as long as it doesn’t put too much of a crimp in the ol’ lifestyle. Sit in traffic on Montreal’s Highway 20 each morning, one person per car, and you realize it’s mostly all PR. Sure, everyone’s buying CFLs, they’ve got the blue recycling box, and they perform other small measures of penance, but no wants to do the real stuff any more than Americans do.
(*Yes, I realize that some wood burning stoves are relatively efficient heat producers.)
Hmm. Not a bad start. How are you on complaining about the weather and the government, and drinking coffee and eating doughnuts?
RickJay, you’ve summed up the Catch-22 of energy efficiency admirably. I would love to put solar panels on our roof, but we can’t afford it. I would love to gut my (older) house and re-insulate and make it energy efficient, but we can’t afford it. The collective will to do what needs to be done to make a community like Calgary an energy efficient one is not there (and part of that will might be eliminating huge communities like Calgary - I suspect there is an optimal size for communities). The whole thing leaves me feeling quite frustrated and powerless.
And repeat after me…“At least it’s a dry cold. You can dress against it.”
I love Canada - and I love being a Canadian - putting my uniform on gives me a real rush of pride.
Well, it is. The cold down here kills me. Gets down to about zero and I’m in for the duration. I have turned into a weather pussy. Dave wants to go to Yellowknife in the winter - I will wave as his plane takes off. I’ve done my cold time (thanks, Amanda Marshall!).
Ditto, although I’m thinking I will somehow incorporate the Alberta Wild Rose and an inukshuk.
It’s less the size than the density. There’s no particular reason that Calgary should take up the same area as New York City, except that we have the space to expand to.
I mean that question seriously. What’s big about it? Sure. it’s bigger than Red Deer, but it’s not quite New York. People will live where they want to live; you can’t “eliminate” that. Were going to continue using more energy; the challenge is to find ways to generate it without pumping more carbon into the atmosphere (or, I guess, figure out a way to take carbon out of the atmosphere.)
Well, I can see that is something else I’m going to have to get used to. Whenever I’ve written a letter to the President of the U.S., I’ve addressed it to:
The Asshole in Chief
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
etc. …
I still maintain increasing efficiency is the most cost-effective thing we can do. There is so much inefficiency out there that we can probably cut our resource use way back with only minor changes to our living standards.
As for pulling carbon out of the atmosphere, what we really need is to find some use that will capture it and bind it back up by the millions of tonnes. The Diamond Age’s carbon-based structural nanotechnology would be ideal, but at this point I’d settle for just making concrete out of it. We could then sell the concrete to the Chinese…
Calgary, a city of over a million people (which apparently is physically the size of New York without the same population density), uses a lot of water and creates a lot of waste. I’m not sure if there is an optimal size for a community for things like water usage, waste production, heat creation, C02 production, infrastructure issues, supply issues, etc. Cities make a huge impression on the environment that they are in.
Being an Albertan, I will vouch for the absolutely stunning beauty of West Virginia and the bad driving. It’s pretty damned close to what we have at home, although Alberta’s coal mines were worked out years ago.
