Came across a couple of articles today that, combined with the gas prices we’re seeing at the pumps, has me thinking about the importance of Transition Town and a Green perspective.

Today, the UN issued a report that food prices have reached an all-time high after eight straight months of increases. The basket includes a number of commodities including cereals, dairy and meat. The high prices are attributed to a combination of rising oil prices, declining cereal production and other global changes.

As well, I came across an article talking about the growing political unrest in Saudi Arabia. As one of the key sources of oil for the West, if Saudi oil production becomes unpredictable, or stops during a regime change, oil prices will skyrocket leading to shortages and/or high prices at the pump.

These two issues make it even more important that we begin to focus on our local economies – making them diverse and resilient. Do you have community gardens and orchards? Are you allowed to have small livestock within your Town boundaries? Is there adequate local food/energy/water production? Are there solid community networks to ensure that the most vulnerable don’t fall through the cracks?

The answers for Newmarket and Aurora right now are, sadly, no. We have a lot of work to do to prepare for a changing global situation.

The good news is that, thanks to the hard work of Transition York Region, things are beginning to change. Slowly but surely we are strengthening our community linkages and resilience.

We have to hope that it will be enough.

Thanks to the ever-informative Jim Harris for the link to this article in the OilDrum today about global oil production in 2010 and the likelihood that we are seeing Peak Oil.

In the article, Nate Hagens points out that “what has happened in Canada the past decade is that cheap conventional barrels of oil have been replaced with expensive tar sands barrels of oil. The result? Running in place in terms of supply, but at a much higher cost structure.” As oil becomes more expensive to produce we ought to see a higher price per barrel. And that is not even counting the damage to the ecosystem and indigenous peoples near and downstream of the tar sands. This higher price, when passed along to consumers, will change our habits. We’ll buy more fuel-efficient vehicles and demand that our government provide better transit.

Hagens also points out that Canada, and the International Energy Agency, have been engaging in “channel stuffing” which means we’ve been lumping tar sands production, biofuels and natural gas liquids in with conventional crude production. They are not the same thing and mixing them together means only that we continue to delude ourselves for a little longer about global oil supplies.

If we are at Peak Oil, or have already passed it, the smart question becomes what do we do now? So far, our government has followed the U.S. lead of attempting to control as much global supply as possible, building infrastructure to ensure that whatever crude remains continues to flow in a favourable direction. This leads to increasing conflict, increasing deficits and a citizen base that is treated like children for as long as possible.

Of course, if you happen to be part of Transition Town, or the Green Party (or any number of other groups that are calling on consumers to wake up and become citizens), the choice you are faced with is, not how do I protect myself as long as possible so that I can continue to consume with wanton lust, but, instead, how do I lighten my impact on the planet and build local resiliency so that the coming changes don’t decimate my ability to survive and take the rest of humanity down with them.

And change is coming. Any politician who tells you that you can continue with your present standard of living indefinitely is lying to you.

We are already facing the largest income gap in Canada since 1929. The very richest among us, we’re talking the top 10%, continue to get richer, at accelerating rates. But the normal people like you and me, we’re slipping. Our real wages, those that account for inflation, have not increased since the early 80s.

What that means is that the average Canadian is working harder to make ends meet, or even worse, watching the ends fray and fall apart.

This while our governments continue to tell us that they have a handle on things. And that they’ll take care of us.

They don’t. And they can’t.

While in my more cynical moments I wonder if they even care that the average Canadian is slipping slowly out of the middle class, and won’t be able to retire, in general I am more optimistic. I figure they just don’t see a solution.

With their ideology, that of infinite growth, total globalization, and infinite resources, there is no solution. That’s because the neoliberal/neoconservative ideology can’t think small. They can’t look at a community and ask, “How can we make this work?”, or “What resources and genius do we have right here, at the municipal level?” And those are the questions that need to be asked.

The other Parties would ask, “How can we get bigger to get out of this mess?” while I’m asking, “How can we get smarter to get out of this?” The answers are very different and their way isn’t working.

And my way is more fun.

March 22nd is World Water Day and it seems like an excellent time to muse over the current state of our water resources. Canada is so truly blessed with abundant fresh water and some of the healthiest tap water in the world and perhaps that is why we have been able to keep our per capita consumption rates down (though it has been steadily increasing).

This article from the Huffington Post is an excellent introduction to a few of the issues surrounding bottled water – peak oil, leaching chemicals, and corporatisation. “According to the UN, by the year 2020, two-thirds of the world will lack access to clean drinking water,” and there are many political observers who believe that the wars of the 21st century will be about water. Actually, these wars are already happening – the Golan Heights has been a constant issue between Israel and Syria and its main benefit is significant fresh water resources, providing over half of Israel’s fresh water.

The Council of Canadians has been fighting the privatization of Canada’s water resources for years, with fairly good success. It is also a solid Green Party of Canada platform plank that we support a public trust for water and enshrining the right to water in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. By contrast, our current governments (and by that I mean the NDP, Liberals, and Conservatives) have done little to promote public, safe water and with each free trade agreement we make we move a little closer to losing our ability to maintain our common right to safe water.

Check out the new documentary, Tapped. Maybe we’ll have to have a GPC movie night…

This issue has recently gained the spotlight in Ontario with Bill-237 which would create corporations and implement full cost recovery and metering of municipal water supplies. This Bill was killed when McGuinty prorogued the Ontario Legislature but these seemingly innocuous steps have often been precursors to water privatization. While the Green Party supports full cost accounting it must be done in the context of preserving public access and management of this vital resource.

My family recently had the conversation about whether or not to continue using plastic water bottles. I confess that as a Personal Trainer I used my fair share of water bottles when I worked at the gym. Generally I would buy a bottle and then refill it from the water fountain for a few weeks and then replace it with a new one, but, still, that was a lot of plastic. I even remember buying a case one summer and carrying it around in my trunk – by the end of that case the water had taken on a distinctly funky taste, who knows how many pseudo-estrogens I ingested that summer from the heated plastic. My plastic water bottle usage is almost nothing now, thankfully.

Anyway, my partner’s three kids get a packed lunch every day, and as part of that they each receive a water bottle. Every school day. Finally, I couldn’t take it and after serious debate about practicality, health, taste (only one likes the taste of Brita water, the other two prefer tap water), and political image (after all it looks pretty bad to have the GPC candidate using that much plastic) – my partner went out and bought metal water bottles for all of us. Now the kids have ample water and our plastic recycling rate has dropped immensely. And everyone seems happy.

It makes me wonder what it would be like if Newmarket and Aurora went plastic water bottle-free?