We all know that the climate is changing. The debate is pretty much settled among the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN body who issued yet another alarming report in 2001. Soon to come: environmental refugees, the displacement of our local ecosystem, the extinction of our favourite species, havoc on the farm, and our holiday destination cancelled due to floods. Unless, of course, we decide to act.
Much of the problem lies in our wasteful habits. We’ve opted for the suburban family home, complete with air-conditioning, an SUV (and its bedroom, the garage), a grid- locked expressway, and, oh don’t forget, the kid’s asthma. Nowadays, some of us even drive military vehicles to Starbucks. Mr. Bush says our lifestyle is non-negotiable. I say: perhaps we should emphasize quality over quantity.
It is about time that someone tackle the issue of urban sprawl and liberate us from the automobile. “We would very much like to put urban sprawl on the political agenda of everyone running for office this fall, those at the provincial and municipal level,” says Edmund Fowler (nicknamed Terry), professor of political science at York University and co-organizer of a conference entitled “Kyoto and Sprawl,” held this weekend at Glendon College in Toronto. “We are not just trying to connect the dots intellectually. The idea is to put together a political coalition.” It’s so refreshing to attend a conference that goes beyond academic chit-chat.
Elizabeth May, executive director of the Sierra Club, is undaunted by the mammoth enterprise. “The essence of a citizens-based campaign is that you don’t give up because the odds are impossible, in fact you’re encouraged by that. Over and over again, citizen activist groups accomplish the impossible, as in the case of the Spadina expressway,” she says. The heroes of the successful 1960s campaign who attended the event received a standing ovation.
A series of intense workshops squeezed a number of policy recommendations out of the participants. Suggestions included setting hard urban boundaries, funnelling part of the gasoline tax to public transit, restricting donations to municipal politics and reforming or abolishing the Ontario Municipal Board. The OMB is the defacto un-elected provincial planning body and the cause of much of the trouble.
Meanwhile, as I cycled from home to the conference and back through the Don Valley and Sunnybrook park, my eyes were beginning to open. I realized how splendid it would be to interconnect all the green spaces in our city in a network of trails. And in my world, the kids were not just rollerblading, they were swimming in the creeks, too.
“For years we’ve had an excellent theoretical understanding about how sprawl is bad for the environment. We’ve understood this for decades. And yet it is happening more rapidly now than ever before. Why is it that we are not moving?” asks Jack Layton, leader of the federal New Democratic Party.
Well I’m thinking, perhaps it’s something to do with the Tory slogan: “The road ahead.”
