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Last week, Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault fired a sort of shot heard around the country when he told a transportation conference that Canada will no longer invest in road megaprojects.
He went on to say electric vehicles are not a silver bullet for climate change and the government will focus its investments in “active and public transit” to “achieve our goals of economic, social and human development,” according to reporting by the Montreal Gazette that started the furor.
Guilbeault’s remarks ignited a countrywide frenzy among premiers and media commentators angry over a perceived threat to the dominance of cars in Canadian society.
The transit versus car culture war is not new. Listen to any driver speak about cyclists jockeying for road space or pro-active transport municipal politicians vying for votes. Regardless of which side you are on, the backlash from opponents comes fast and furious.
Take, for example, Catherine McKenney, who in her 2022 campaign to be Ottawa’s mayor proposed a major bicycle infrastructure project that an independent economist approved as essentially paying for itself. McKenney lost the election to Mark Sutcliffe, who told voters he would not “declare a war on cars.”
Meanwhile, in Edmonton, urban planners and politicians proposed a 15-minute city model that would ensure residents have all essentials within walking distance of their homes. The model was red meat for conspiracy theorists, who argued that freedom would be restricted and community members would be imprisoned in their section of the city.
It’s no surprise then that Guilbeault would be dragged through premier anger, media flurries and public backlash.
Culture war skirmishes erupt every time a city or town considers ways to lower greenhouse gas emissions and promote other forms of transportation not predicated on cars, which rely on massive amounts of physical space, investment, energy and natural resource extraction.
Moving Canadians out of cars and into different forms of transportation will never be straightforward, said Raktim Mitra, an associate professor of urban and regional planning at Toronto Metropolitan University. For decades, car-centric infrastructure in North America has embedded the car as symbols of “comfort” and “independence,” he explained.
“As soon as you do something beyond this, it’s almost seen as a counterculture, right?” Mitra told Canada’s National Observer.
The problem with cars
Canada’s National Observer recently reported that arguably the largest source of Canada’s emissions is released from tailpipes — approximately 120 million tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) per year, higher than emissions from the oil and gas industry.
And yet, the number of cars in Canada continues to rise. In 2000, there were 18 million combustion-engine vehicles on the road. Now there are 26 million. It is part of the reason why Canada is the only G7 country whose emissions have risen from 1990 levels.
It also doesn’t help that the automobiles Canadians drive are the most polluting types that often more resemble tanks than Toyotas.
But it’s not just combustion-engine vehicles that can become a problem. Canada’s National Observer has also reported that electric SUVs require up to 75 per cent more raw minerals for their batteries than smaller EVs. Today, there are 40 per cent more electric SUV models than four years ago, pointing to increasing demand.
Electric vehicles and green colonialism
It’s a concern for Eriel Tchekwie Deranger, director of Indigenous Climate Action, who is raising the red flag on green capitalism and colonialism emerging from an economic system predicated on growth and consumption — just electrified.
Natural resource extraction has increased 400 per cent since the 1970s, with no signs of slowing down in Canada. Take the proposed development in northern Ontario’s Ring of Fire mining region that sits on carbon-intensive peatlands. Deranger points to the emissions that will be released from developing road and mine infrastructure, which would contribute to millions of tonnes of carbon emissions just from digging up the carbon-rich moss. It’s why, for Deranger, a green economy founded on critical minerals will still not be without its dangerous climate risks.
It’s also a similar story being retold for Deranger, just with a greener mask. It’s Indigenous Peoples and their ancestral territories that continue to be the “sacrifice zones” for economic growth, power and profit, which is now increasingly concentrated in the hands of corporations and nation-states, she explained.
“There's nothing that is new about this, absolutely nothing,” she said, pointing to the rhetoric around the energy transition and the mining rush for critical minerals and to the still unknown environmental and health risks associated with large-scale mining.
For example, extraction of raw materials for the energy transition is set to increase by 60 per cent, with catastrophic consequences for the climate, according to reporting from The Guardian.
The calculation emerged from an unpublished UN report that notes economies predicated on well-being not just the growth and the gross domestic product ought to be the solution rather than “simply increasing green production.”
The unpublished report also points to more low-carbon transport options such as bikes and trains rather than EVs, which take 10 times the amount of raw materials than combustion-engine cars.
Car dependency and the challenge of an alternative model
Amsterdam is often seen as the poster child for an alternative model to car-centric cities, but it wasn’t always that way. In the 1970s, Amsterdam was completely different. “It was no different to Toronto, where everyone would drive,” Mitra said.
Things changed because of grassroots advocacy, creating the conditions that made it easier to travel by bike than car. When that tipping point comes, it creates a shift in culture.
But Canada is not Europe, and does not have the benefit of significant infrastructure developed prior to the era of Henry Ford, Mitra said.
Suburban and rural life is still car-dependent and difficult to shift. Even within cities, shifting to public transit and active transportation is tough, particularly when an entire city council is asked to vote on development that might only serve the city core. For example, a bike lane in an urban centre may not be well-received by rural and suburban councillors.
Mitra believes a well-connected and efficient bike or public transit network emanating from a city or town’s core is needed for residents to see another alternative to cars.
A piecemeal approach, such as bike lanes that lead to nowhere and take away space from cars without any real utility, is destined to fail, he said.
“Or the city is failing to communicate the long-term implications of the short-term actions,” Mitra said, nodding to a failed bike lane in Scarborough, a suburb of Toronto, that was removed a few years after it was constructed.
For Mitra, you cannot separate the culture and the infrastructure development because both go hand in hand.
If an option is available and it works well, then a culture will be created to use that option, like biking in Amsterdam, Mitra explained.
However, in Canada’s car culture war, it’s still unclear how long the war of attrition will last as the clock ticks on the climate crisis.
— With files from Barry Saxifrage and Cloe Logan
Matteo Cimellaro / Canada’s National Observer / Local Journalism Initiative
Comments
Thank you for this piece with many excellent points. Any politician who hints at an anti-growth agenda is bound to get slammed, hard. It's political suicide. This is the essential problem: how can we stop the economic growth imperative that is destroying our planet when politicians can't talk about it.
Simple. Stop pontificating about stopping everything (economic growth, capitalism...) and start promoting stuff that is actually possible and reasonable.
E.g. build out public transit, build affordable housing, electrify everthing and recycle everything.
Calling for shifting spending from highway expansion which makes traffic worse and increases greenhouse gas pollution to public transit, walking, rolling and cycling is not "political suicide". It is a winnable issue, if your 'friends and allies' don't keep declaring defeat.
Delightful climate action can be very popular, if you are strategic about it and celebrate the victories. e.g. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/03/25/news/climate-emergency-dema…
It has been decades since taking swift climate action has been imperative, yet Canadians have made all of the wrong decisions and acted as though they're entitled to do as much harm to the world as they like. They don't even do this for their own good, since the unbelievably polluting Canadian lifestyle is also unbelievably expensive, and once Canadians drown themselves and their municipalities in debt, they complain that they can't afford to take climate action. Many will claim that politics has failed to solve the problem, and it could be a lot better, but it's the culture that's to blame. It's one that was founded on the wanton destruction of nature and human life in the pursuit of greed, and that hasn't changed very much.
I absolutely agree that degrowth is needed; Jason Hickel and others are excellent on this. I don't understand the claim that EVs take 10x the raw materials as combustion engine cars. Do you mean the total material moved to mine the ore? I would be very careful making people think that ICEs are somehow better than EVs. While EVs are not a magical solution, in any conceivable future, they'll play a role.
Good comment, such a shame that magical solutions are the only ones that sell, and the only ones most want to buy.
Speaking of, got a low-input carbon capture machine for sale, any takers?
Good point paul, i gagged on the 10x raw materials statement also. I have driven a ford lightning for the last eight months and it is no where near 10 times the materials of the same year ford 150 which it is a copy of. The only difference being the battery and undercarrige to hold it. My previous vehicle was a 2014 Nissan frontier which was quite economical for a 4x4 truck. Here's some comparison's for similar kilometers of driving for an ice versus ev. I have now driven 18,000 km on the lightning and have spent $50 on bought energy the rest coming from my grid tied solar panels for which i generate a surplus so you could say that sunshine and water(bc hydro) make my ford go. To drive those same kilometers with my nissan I would have burnt 3000 liters of gas at a cost of $5250 which is all non recyclable. Since 99% of BCs gas come from alberta's tar sands 84 tons of tar sands had to be mined to produce those 3000 liters of gas. Ford guarantees my battery for 70% of function at the end of 8 years or 160,000 km at which time all that lithium and other metals should be fully recyclable where as the thousands of tons of tar sands used to produce the gas that a an ice vehicle would burn over that time is not recyclable in the least.
Spot on Craig. There are more materials required for an EV battery than the container we call a gas tank, but a battery lasts for the life of the car. That gas tank needs to be filled every week or two and every time that fuel has to be produced through drilling or oil sands mining. Over the life of the vehicle, an ICE requires hundreds of times more resources.
Very astute comment! THX.
There is so much nuance required in discussions of policy changes needed to meet the moment. Unfortunately, nuance can’t get a word in edgewise these days. Why is that?
Welcome to the age of vaguely-disguised vested interests (and truly clueless leadership).
Having said that, I give two thumbs up to the author for the various perspectives in this article. The problems are multi-faceted and interconnected. The only effective way forward, I think, is to look at things comprehensively and this article is an example.
First off, I appreciate Minister Guilbeault personally jumping into the ring while other players -- premiers, say -- wear masks of populist concern to disguise the leashes they happily wear that are held by provincial (either geographically or perspectively speaking) captors.
At the municipal level, I’ll briefly address the Sutcliffe/ McKenney contest for Ottawa mayor.
I forget who I voted for but I’m no fan of the winner in the mayoralty race – primarily for his apparent animus towards transport other than private vehicles. (I also haven’t heard from him anything of a useful, ecologically sane vision for the city’s urban form moving forward). On the other hand, Catherine McKenney’s infrastructure plan was to obtain a $250M city-issues bond then find ways to spend it on active transport infrastructure. In one term. I went back-and-forth a few times with their campaign office during the election. I have no problem with the city investing in sane transportation infrastructure but they had no a priori, shovel-ready plan for how the bond money would actually be used.
“We need protected bike lanes that make more people feel safe and comfortable getting around this city on a bike. Bikes are good for our health, and for our environment. They give people the option to step out of their cars, to help them explore a whole new side of our city," they said.
Good infrastructure neither starts, nor ends, with bike lanes overlaid upon/ carved out of the existing road network; it starts with the urban form and making alterations to the rules of development (and the basic definitions of “what is good” that are their foundation) that support a desired transportation network. What remains the clearly dominant desire in the halls of power, still, is private vehicle domination.
For example, the west side of Ottawa has three main east/west arteries – Carling Ave, Baseline Rd, Hunt Club Rd. Carling and Baseline are completely unsafe for cycling (Carling even for walking, I’d argue). Hunt Club has wide shoulders (except where it doesn’t), which offer a modicum of assurance when cycling alongside 80 (90, 100…) kmh traffic.
As for 15 minute city conspiracies (if only they took heed and flamed out after 15 minutes), stupidity knows no bounds. But, then, one has to try to understand what vested interests may well be fanning such flames and what had changed in society, if anything, that causes people to look for bizarre reasons to explain policy options.
I recommend a current book as often as I am able, because it addresses the ideas and history of European colonialism, globally, and how it has shaped our current societies, resulted in our current ecological polycrisis, and its legacy of path dependency going forward. It’s a fascinating read and very useful backstory for planning where we go from here.
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22The+Nutmeg%27s+Curse%22+review
In a related juxtaposition (the book opens with an example of Dutch colonialist genocide resulting from… nutmeg), I recently made the connection between, on the one hand, Ottawa’s annual “Canadian Tulip Festival” which celebrates both Canada’s hosting of members of the Dutch royal family during WW2 and the efforts of members of Canada’s military in liberating Holland from the Nazis while, on the other hand, realizing that immediately following the war, Indonesian citizens launched a war, lasting 4 years, to liberate its islands from Dutch colonial rule.
Talk about an “A ha!” moment.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/15/end-fossil-fuel-era-to-ad…
Interesting.
On "nuance," the Dutch/tulip thing is a good example from the past, but an even more complicated, current one is the war in Gaza where many are rallying indignantly around the undeniable victims. The common denominator is the rallying part and the over-simplification of a situation which is a bit of uniquely human stupidity in itself. (This is also the essence of religion as well, which adds even more nuance to the Indonesian example because the country can also be seen to have been "colonized" by Islam, like Gaza.)
I read that Guardian article and thought the best idea was to move on from dwelling on the "colonization" of the past to the colonization in the present, because it's what "big business" is currently doing, as per the definition: "the action of appropriating a place or domain for one's own use."
Since the "colonized" are currently having a moment, and deserved though it is for an under appreciated and often abused minority to finally be appreciated, it also needs to be pointed out that this has always been the natural domain of women world-wide, and they're no minority. So to the indigenous in this country, and all the other minorities I'd like to insert the reminder on women's behalf that for us, "reconciliation" is STILL underway, and unlike any of you, a statistic I heard recently is that one of us STILL gets murdered every 6 days in Canada. So domestic violence is STILL of "epidemic" proportions.
But what we ALL have in common above all else is being victims, either of male hegemony generally (white males in particular with colonization) or climate change, the ultimate.
It's like the screaming lack of nuance is guy guys waging war against their mothers, wives AND Mother Nature herself in a final bid for continued dominance.
"EVs take 10 times the amount of raw materials than combustion-engine cars"
Pay attention, EV boosters.
One more reason why EV subsidies are a terrible way to spend public climate dollars.
EVs may make some environmental and health problems even worse: traffic injuries and deaths, particulate pollution, and upstream mineral mining impacts. EVs merely shift extraction from petroleum to metals.
Same mayhem and carnage on the roads, different energy source. Same injustice, different engine. Not a solution.
Does not matter what is under the hood. Does not matter what makes the wheels turn. Cars are an environmental scourge, period.
In North America, cars and car culture exercise the same tyranny over transportation as oil and gas do over energy. Standard Oil, Exxon-Mobil, Chevron, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler share the same mindset.
Guilbeault is fighting the good fight. The necessary fight.
Environmental realities will eventually prevail. Either we choose to live within our means, or nature will force us to.
Clean Energy Canada published a well-referenced report listing nine myths about EVs. Myth No. 2 examines critical mineral supply.
Note the paragraph on the importance and benefits of recycling all the materials found in EVs, with particular focus on battery metals like lithium, which, like steel and aluminum, can be recycled over and over. The EU is now requiring all EV minerals to be recycled right back into the product lineup thus displacing new mines and keeping the supply chains reasonable. Moreover, recycling metals there is now moving into using low emission electricity as yhe primary energy source.
It may be informative to look at the other eight Myths too and check out some of the many references. Sorry, unable to supply the link from my phone.
In addition, battery tech is moving very quickly into materials like sodium and silicon which are some of the most abundant and cheapest materials on the planet. Like, you know, salt from the ocean.
Too many critics of the transition rely on data from a decade ago in their analysis, and therein their conclusions are too easily undermined in the inevitablw rebuttals. For example, cobalt and nickel are being very quickly replaced (or greatly diminished in hybrid batteries) by iron and phosphate, and changing the physical structure between the cathode, anode and electrolite.
Note that buses are moving toward batteries big time too. Any policy move to limit EVs will also affect their essential contribution to figjting climate change. Some cities like Vancouver wisely kept their electric trolley buses which tend to last far longer then diesel buses. But even so, buses require a viable road network.
Grid scale batteries have started moving away from lithium chemistries and have also found greater utility and affordability in things like iron, calcium, aluminum, zinc and soon, salt and silicon. Grid batteries are arguably far more essential to the transition than EVs, which to some folks like me are useful only on a temporary basis until -- hope of hopes -- our cities become filled with walkable neighbourhoods that are well- networked with a plethora of transit lines.
On that note and, as always, this tech talk is a side discussion to the real solution: Eroding car dependency in our cities. That will be possible only through public transit with a particular focus on rail, and through zoning policy.
Public investment in public goods, like transit and bike paths, beats investment in private automobiles, hands down.
Environmentally and economically, mass transit beats private vehicles on every possible score.
Our limited tax dollars should be invested in real solutions, not stop-gaps like EVs.
EV subsidies are an extremely expensive way to reduce emissions. Investment in public transit and cycling gives us far more bang for our climate buck
EV subsidies reinforce social inequity. Handing out EV subsidies to wealthy people who don't need them while ignoring the transportation needs of people who cannot afford cars or choose not to drive is unjust.
The decisions we make now about urban design set the blueprint for generations to come. Cars drive sprawl, and sprawl forces people to drive. Sprawl makes efficient public transit impossible. There is no road from more private cars and more sprawl to better public transit.
Doubling down on cars (EVs) makes already difficult problems intractable and puts solutions out of reach. Forever.
Once consumers with political power — middle- and upper class voters — are happily ensconced in their automobiles, there is no shifting them. There is no incentive for governments to invest in and improve transit if the vast majority vote for cars and EV subsidies.
We have a choice: the public good — or private benefits for the few, while perpetuating the same ills that car culture has inflicted on society for decades.
EVs may impede electrification and grid upgrading.
If rising demand for metals (e.g. copper, lithium, cobalt, rare earths for magnets) outstrips supply, that will slow the energy shift down. An insufficient supply of metals exacerbated by a rush to buy EVS will create a chokepoint for the entire energy shift.
Compared to doing nothing at all, EVs will speed up the energy shift. Compared to public transit, EVs will slow it down.
EVs require 2.5 times more copper than conventional ICE cars (Daniel Yergin, "The New Map, Energy, Climate, and the Clash of Nations", 2020). Per person per mile, the material inputs for cars are far higher than for public transit. Going the EV route increases requirements for (mining and processing of) metals, resources, and energy — potentially creating a large gap between supply and demand as well as multiplying environmental impacts.
"'The basic metal of electrification': Why famed energy analyst Daniel Yergin sees a copper crunch looming" (Financial Post, 2022)
The UN report indicating that "EVs take 10 times the amount of raw materials than combustion-engine cars" is to be published this year.
I agree that EVs consume some metals more than ICE vehicles, but that ignores the power of life cycle accountability that recycling provides. Copper is 100% recyclable, as is lithium and all the other materials short of some plastics.
EV battery tech development led straight to the grid. We are now seeing commitments by senior governments towards utility scale renewables (both centtalized big projects and distributed rooftop solar) which are quickly adopting large scale battery packs.
Concerns about EV-dominant electrification fall away as we adopt heat pumps and energy efficient buildings, and build out walkable, transit-connected communities. There will be peak EV sometime in the 2030s.
This is inevitable because public budgets cannot afford such high levels of car dependency. Sprawl is not economically sustainable no matter how addicted to cars consumers are, EV or not. There is no better way for a city to go bankrupt than to maintain 1970s levels of car addiction that has dictated city design itself for too long. Road infrastructure consumes too much land and money to sustain.
In my view we can afford to subsidize EVs as part of the electrify everything effort until a proper build out has been acheived sometime in the early 2030s, mainly because it will all but destroy the fossil fuel industry. But recycling all metals and appropriate materials must be a part of that effort.
@Alex: $5000 per household for EV subsidies seems like an extravagance. Not unlike Alberta's Prosperity Bonus, "nicknamed Ralph bucks after then-premier Ralph Klein, was a one-time $400 payment paid out to almost 3 million Albertan residents in 2006."
Aggregated, $5000 EV subsidies per household can move many more people on transit. Fiscal efficiency matters.
$5000 per household for EV subsidies is $5000 per household not funding transit, cycling infrastructure, and sidewalks.
97.7% of Canada's 24.1 million light-duty vehicles run on gas or diesel.
23,544,925 light-duty vehicles to be replaced with EVs = $118 billion in subsidies. Almost twice the Alberta Govt's entire budget. 22 times the City of Edmonton's budget.
Many people will never be able to afford a car. Why subsidize relatively well-off Canadians who don't need subsidies at the expense of low-income citizens, the marginalized, the elderly, the infirm, and those who choose not to drive?
$118 billion buys you 118 thousand electric buses.
At 60 passengers per bus, Canada could transport an extra 7 million passengers by bus by redirecting EV subsidies to public transit.
If we had infinite tax dollars to play with, I could see a subsidize everything effort — but that is not the case.
People are free to buy an EV if they want one. Just don't ask taxpayers to help pay for it.
A $5000 EV subsidy enables the materials in an EV battery to be recycled over and over, not unlike aluminum pop cans and scrap steel. But there is also an additional layer of recycling now becoming commonplace when an EV battery is "spent" then removed and delivered directly for a second life in an electrical grid battery pack. Once it's utility in stationary storage is diminished, the metals are removed then recycled over again into new batteries, crearing new jobs and returning economic multipliers into the GDP.
As Rob Miller pointed out above, a gas tank is the opposite of a battery pack. Gasoline and diesel cannot be recycled. They do not have a second useful life except as horrible noxious gases floating for a century in the atmosphere, crossing boundaries at will. Once a litre of gas is burned it's gone forever, and requires replacement with more oil drilling and refinery activity as long as gas tanks exist.
We both agree on better urbanism and car free environments. My biggest concern is the decades it will take to get there. EVs, transit and better zoning and urban design need to work together, even though they have widely different realization times.
Electrification of a part of the car fleet has a more immediate effect to remove demand for oil, but it will eventually be superseded by a build out of transit oriented communities where cars don't really matter any more.
Believe me, it will take at least 30 years to rebuild suburbia even with a major effort, but the Doug Fords are waiting to defeat the effort with more Autotopia. A really tough situation.
Rob Miller et al. miss the point. The unpublished UN report "EVs take 10 times the amount of raw materials than combustion-engine cars" presumably refers to the manufacturing stage only. EVs start out with a huge footprint. The fact that ICE cars eventually eclipse that footprint through petroleum extraction is relevant only if your comparison is between EVs and ICE cars. Not my argument. My comparison is between the car and transit.
The footprint of both EVs and ICE cars is hopelessly unsustainable. Cars, car culture, and sprawl are the problem. EVs exacerbate these problems, while endless sprawl further sabotages the solutions (transit). In these respects, what makes the wheels go round makes no difference.
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Alex wrote: "A $5000 EV subsidy enables the materials in an EV battery to be recycled over and over, not unlike aluminum pop cans and scrap steel."
Non sequitur. EV batteries can be recycled with or without initial purchase subsidies.
Batteries in electric buses can be recycled just as well as car batteries.
Ergo, battery recycling is not an argument for either EVs or EV subsidies.
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Alex wrote: "We both agree on better urbanism and car free environments. My biggest concern is the decades it will take to get there."
In the meantime, EVs make the problem (sprawl) worse, and make efficient transit impossible. The decisions we make now about urban design set the blueprint for generations to come. Delay makes the challenge even harder. Kicking the can down the road puts solutions out of reach.
The time to invest in transit — and switch over to transit — is now. Not decades hence, when our cities are even more sprawled. Sprawl is next to impossible to unwind.
Decades down the road, why would car drivers living in super-sprawled cities switch to transit? What makes decades down the road a better opportunity for transit than now? Makes no sense.
There is no better time to start on urban design and public transit than now. Why wait? Why make the problem worse?
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Alex wrote: "No vehicle owner escapes multiple layers of public subsidy, from road repair to hospital and court costs resulting from accidental death and injury on the road. Thar is unsustainable from every angle, from municipal finances to environmental."
Exactly. Why continue to subsidize and perpetuate that grossly unsustainable model when the real solution is already at hand?
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Alex wrote: "Electrification of a part of the car fleet has a more immediate effect to remove demand for oil"
Another non sequitur. Whether you shift 60 ICE car drivers into an electric bus ($1 million), light-rail car, or the subway — or into 60 EVs at $40,000 — $75,000 a pop (plus road costs) — that reduces oil demand by the same amount (ignoring the huge GHG footprint of EV production). We can move far more people on transit for less cost.
Alex wrote: "Believe me, it will take at least 30 years to rebuild suburbia even with a major effort, but the Doug Fords are waiting to defeat the effort with more Autotopia."
EV boosters and apologists will also defeat the effort with more Autotopia. In that respect, they are no "greener" than Doug Ford.
The best decade to stop car culture and sprawl was the 1920s, when automobile ownership boomed.
The next best decade to stop car culture and sprawl was the 1930s.
The next best decade to stop car culture and sprawl was the 1940s.
The next best decade to stop car culture and sprawl was the 1950s.
The next best decade to stop car culture and sprawl was the 1960s.
The next best decade to stop car culture and sprawl was the 1970s.
The next best decade to stop car culture and sprawl was the 1980s.
The next best decade to stop car culture and sprawl was the 1990s.
The next best decade to stop car culture and sprawl was the 2000s.
The next best decade to stop car culture and sprawl was the 2010s.
The next best decade to stop car culture and sprawl is … ?
Alex would have us believe that the next best decade to stop car culture and sprawl is not the 2020s, but the 2060s, the 2080s, or God knows when.
What is the logic?
Well, Geoffrey, you are a committed armchair critic, I'll give you that. But you also take other's words and twist them into intentions and meanings that were never spoken.
The best decade to unhinge my own car dependency was back in 1989 when we lived car free for a decade. Work, home and shopping was all within a 5-minute walk.
Getting a better job changed that, but according to Geoffrey's diatribe I should have stuck with a job that required 24-hour work to meet artificial deadlines imposed by terrible clients under threat if getting fired ... just to maintain the 5-minute car free commute.
The compromise was ownership of a small econobox due to inadequate transit and moving to another neighbourhood with a high walk score, except for the job.
You missed the central point, Geoffrey. The choice is between:
A. Polyzoning, transit, pedestrianization of cities, and urbanizing the suburbs. Timescale: decades, perhaps generations depending on politics.
B. EV and grid battery packs, renewables, decarbonization, mass electrification, recycling recycling recycling. Timescale: one decade.
C. All of the above.
My choice has always been and always will be C.
C. All of the above.
@Alex: Where did I say or imply that anyone should stick with a lousy job to maintain a car-free commute to work?
Citizens must demand better transit, instead of passively accepting the status quo and buying a car. Adding yet another automobile to our already clogged streets.
Not everybody can drive or afford a car — so the personal automobile solution does not work for everybody.
If you do decide to buy a car so you can drive to the job you want, that is your choice. You are absolutely free to make that choice — but it is your responsibility to pay for it.
Do not demand that society subsidize your car ride while low-income citizens, the marginalized, the elderly, the infirm, and those who choose not to drive are left with lousy options or no options.
"A. Polyzoning, transit, pedestrianization of cities, and urbanizing the suburbs. Timescale: decades, perhaps generations depending on politics."
Timescale: decades, perhaps generations — or forever if we do not make a start.
Options A and B conflict. EVs enable sprawl, and both make efficient transit impossible.
EVs/sprawl and efficient transit/social equity are incompatible. Exclusive options. Choose one or the other. Not both.
If you choose efficient transit, start investing in and building it now. Keep your investment and subsidies for transit, not the personal automobile that defeats efficient transit.
You said it yourself in your comment below:
"Most Western Canadian cities do not have geographic constraints or the planning wisdom needed to deal with it, and treat farmland as useless cheap open space ripe for freeway-fed SPRAWLING MONO-ZONED SUBDIVISIONS THAT ARE NOT VIABLE FOR TRANSIT. … I really can't fathom LIVING IN THE SUBURBS WITH TORTUOUS COMMUTES and FAMILY BUDGETS CRIMPED BY MULTIPLE CAR PAYMENTS."
But that is precisely what you are committing to by trading in our ICE cars for EVs and endless sprawl — while still neglecting public transit and non-drivers.
C'est tout.
Alex, first an observation that common transport vehicles need a right of way, rather than a "viable road network". That difference may seem pedantic but I think discussing possible solutions at a more abstract level better avoids becoming path dependent too early. Elevated or subterranean ROWs, for example, don't require road networks. Nor would a squadron of hot air balloons. :)
As much as I appreciate past programs I participated in at the Wosk Centre 20 years ago, it behooves us all to look at such organizations as Clean Energy Canada (or other university-affilliated organizations) with clear eyes. My starting point is the list of partners/ funders.
https://cleanenergycanada.org/partners-2/
Amongst their partners, how many do you think suggest we reduce our consumption of electricity? Do you think Electric Mobility Canada will be advocating to reduce car ownership or champion urban design that reduces the need for car ownership even if such reductions would likely provide more benefits overall vis-a-vis the continuing viability of the biosphere, as we know it?
Personally, I stopped paying attention to CEC a couple of years back, because I viewed them as a part of the larger problem even while they advocate for a shift away from fossil fuels. I recall some of their output being nothing more than over-the-top marketing pablum which maligned both SFU and the Wosk Centre, in my eyes.
But, maybe that's just me.
I'm all for looking at full life cycle analysis of potential solutions, but those analyses must not give a pass to either sacred cows or vested interests.
Okay. Point taken. My viewing perch is rooted more in community planning and urbansim than energy-related policy, knowing that both are joined at the hip.
I live in a walkable inner city neighbourhood with decent transit connections. I see great potential to go farther and make some key streets pedestrian-only and to build out major transit lines a lot sooner than planned.
Though our need for a car has been diminished by about 90%, that last 10% is currently necessary for essential family reasons as well as practicality (e.g. hauling cargo).
My situation is far from common. The suburban experience dominates all our cities and it will take a moon shot effort to change that by 2035, let alone 2050.
Enter EVs to immediately reduce oil demand. But concurrently enter the tremendous energy conservation and efficiency advantages of Passive House level architecture, walkable urbanism and the powerful induced demand of frequent transit networks.
The city of Vancouver (but not the Metro) acheived over 50% transit, bike and walking commuter mode share before the pandemic. Much of that was from a build out of high density housing in the 90s and oughts. TransLink couldn't build rail rapid transit fast enough, the demand was that high. Today transit ridership has recovered 90% of its pre-pandemic level. The Broadway Subway and rapid trabsit expansion in Surrey are concurrently well underway. Battery buses and new trolleys are being ordered. And several cities in the Metro are building up at transit hub stations.
I believe all of these efforts will lower our per capita energy consumption and emission levels, which is the crucial measure wexneed to pay attention to.
I only hope it's done while improving the quality of life with attention to the human scale in our neighbourhoods.
Spoiler: it must be Doomer Thursday! :)
Hi Alex. I fully agree with your observation that urban form and energy-related policy are joined at the hip, which is why there is such value in deep dive into that connection. However, I’d extend that nexus of concern to include all facets of life for ourselves as well as our fellow travelers (i.e. everything else in the biosphere as we know it).
I’m curious which neighbourhood you live in; I assume it is somewhere in Vancouver proper? (I grew up in Point Grey, up the hill from Locarno Beach, but well before that lovely neighbourhood became Beverly Hills North – recent assessments of my childhood home are 200X -- not inflation-adjusted -- what my parents paid 60 years ago). I was also recently back for a month and am very familiar with what my hometown has become.
“And several cities in the Metro are building up at transit hub stations.”
Some people love the groves of tall towers that sprout within a ~300m radius of SkyTrain stations, none more than the developers, I assume. Personally, I think they’re an abomination, and (as I understand it) the “Broadway Plan” of towers sprouting, willy nilly, throughout low-rise W Broadway neighbourhoods beggars belief. That “love” of height – i.e. love of $$ returns per sq metre of land -- is, sadly, a virus extending elsewhere and a portion of the populace has be1en convinced (drunk the Kool Aid) that “tall buildings” equals “quality city”.
To wit, is one's idyl exemplified by Hong Kong and Lower Manhattan, or Stockholm and Copenhagen? Mine is definitely the latter (in case that's not obvious!).
“Enter EVs to immediately reduce oil demand.”
I have a decent understanding of the benefits of swapping out an ICE for an electric motor and a battery; the benefits, however, only go so far. You have stated that EVs are not a silver bullet (I’m paraphrasing); others, however, do appear to see EVs as salvation, where salvation means that we don’t actually have to make fundamental changes to how we live.
“I believe all of these efforts will lower our per capita energy consumption and emission levels, which is the crucial measure we need to pay attention to.”
I absolutely agree that we (in western industrialized countries) must reduce both our energy consumption and [GHG] emissions – both vitally important. [Aside: we must concurrently admit that developing countries have a moral right to equal per capita levels of consumption (of whatever goods) and effluents (e.g. GHGs) as we enjoy.] When considering the future of our species and the biosphere, focusing on energy and emissions, alone, will likely/ indisputably exacerbate other equally important crises.
I refer you to the work on planetary boundaries ( Rockström 2009 and many others since https://www.google.com/search?q=Planetary+boundaries ), and even the original Limits to Growth. If we continue to blinker ourselves to such an extent that we believe that GHG emissions are the only thing we need to worry about, then we will be just as dead and maybe just as quickly. It's not clear which would be the less painful.
There is more than one route to extinction; we are in the enviable position of being able to choose our poison.
I live in the Mid-Main Street area. The advantage was to be able to walk everywhere with work being one exception (13 km commute, poor transit connection but perfect for 25 years of car share with colleagues).
The neighbourhood also offered a unique blend of tiny lots and character houses, which required 18 years of renovations. Yes, the land value escalated to the sky, but to us it's only conceptual number on a piece of paper because we built a home, not a commodity.
Small lots are one of many viable solutions to keeping neighbourhood character while accommodating demographic growth, especially with basement suite rentals in the house, something most suburbs stupidly outlaw.
Sprawl has many causes, and it's not just about cars. Protected big lots on limited urban land already under demographic pressure while constrained by geography is one of the primary causes of property value inflation and unaffordable housing.
The Metro Vancouver planners saw the constraints and wisely responded with the Livable Regions Strategic Plan in 1992 which sought to manage growth differently than most other cities which expanded outwards. Rapid transit was the key, and they identified seven hub station locations to designate as official regional town centres to build up. It worked, and it saved BC's most productive and scarce food producing land in the Fraser Valley from being consumed by subdivisions.
Most Western Canadian cities do not have geographic constraints or the planning wisdom needed to deal with it, and treat farmland as useless cheap open space ripe for freeway-fed sprawling mono-zoned subdivisions that are not viable for transit.
Metro Vancouver in the 90s and the BC government of the early 70s enacted some of the wisest policies on the continent with the Agricultural Land Reserve and the LRSP mentioned above. That was macro land use planning at its best, and the results are bearing fruit 30-50 years later.
Without them we'd be a little LA or Atlanta. Sixty storey towers at the hub stations made developers happy, but that only shows that a more nuanced finer planning and urban design detail is required at the local level along with senior government initiatives to build enough affordable rentals to act as a counterweight to the overheated market.
Then there is the part many urbanists like me dream of: the Missing Middle in housing and development and the missing human scale in tower communities and the suburbs. Why do we need to look at Copenhagen. Stockholm and Amsterdam -- as ideal they may be -- when we have our own version of walkable, modern density with the Olympic Village and South False Creek? I lived there for 11 years and traded it for another walkable community from the 19th Century, one of the original streetcar neighbourhoods.
Towering up saved the Fraser Valley and offered one of the best walkable downtowns in North America that saw traffic and emissions go down by double digits while the population doubled, mainly through high density zoning and new rapid transit lines built out over 30 years.
You still have 50 and 60 ft lots in the weathiest parts of Vancouver and the suburbs. The $6 million detached houses on humungous lots on Vancouver's West Side are infamously out of reach of anyone but the richest. Likewise, I really can't fathom living in the suburbs with tortuous commutes and family budgets crimped by multiple car payments.
Tower living or sprawl? None! We chose in between.
Article: "Canada’s National Observer recently reported that arguably the largest source of Canada’s emissions is released from tailpipes — approximately 120 MtCO2 per year, higher than emissions from the oil and gas industry."
Barry Saxifrage ("Fill ’er up. Burn it down") can reach that conclusion only by dividing O&G into two categories: "oil sands" and "other oil and gas".
As if the oil sands, which consumes natural gas and produces low-quality crude oil and dilbit, is not a part of the oil and gas industry. An artificial distinction no one else, including Environment and Climate Change Canada, makes.
Canada's O&G industry also grossly under-reports its emissions. O&G emissions are fiction, which renders comparisons with other sectors extremely doubtful.
That should read: "O&G emissions stats are fiction, which renders comparisons with other sectors extremely doubtful."
I have to note that this article presents a dog's breakfast of anecdotes that really don't drill down into the real issue: Urbanism.
Many people use bikes as one of the primary signs of a mature city that is addressing climate change. Amsterdam is often cited. But what made Amsterdam and the wider Netherlands so bike friendly started with building out multiple permutations of passenger rail first and foremost.
Amsterdam has a very good metro, tram and fast intercity commuter rail network which obviously succeded in draining cars off the roads, thereby freeing up space for bikes and walking human beings.
Ditto Copenhagen and other bike-famous cities. Worldwide car dependency peaked in 2015-2017 (Newman Kenworthy) mainly due to the build out of mass transit in Asia and Europe. That had very little to do with bikes which are a remarkably visible aftereffect.
Every oil well has several tonnes of steel pipe, per kilometre drilled downward. 25% of the bulk-transport shipping is fossil fuels.
I don't know where you're getting the notion that an eV takes ten times as much mining as an ICE vehicle, but even then, you have to subtract all the resources we will stop using when we stop extracting fossil fuels, and shipping them across the planet in ships and pipes.
Exactly.
I have driven a ford lightning for the last eight months and there is no where near 10x times the materials of the same year ford 150 which the lightning is a copy of. Aside from the battery and infrastructure to hold it and the electric motors the vehicles are identical. My previous vehicle was a 2014 Nissan frontier which was quite economical for a 4x4 truck. Here's some comparison's for similar kilometers of driving for an ice versus ev. I have now driven 18,000 km on the lightning and have spent $50 on bought energy the rest coming from my grid tied solar panels for which i generate a surplus so you could say that sunshine and water(bc hydro) make my ford go. To drive those same kilometers with my nissan I would have burnt 3000 liters of gas at a cost of $5250 which is all non recyclable. Since 99% of BCs gas comes from alberta's tar sands 84 tons of tar sands had to be mined to produce those 3000 liters of gas. Ford guarantees my battery for 70% of function at the end of 8 years or 160,000 km at which time all that lithium and other metals should be fully recyclable where as the thousands of tons of tar sands used to produce the gas that a an ice vehicle would burn over that time is not recyclable in the least.
Some interesting comparisons to burner F150s.
However, most truck owners do not use them for their intended purpose, hauling a half tonne of cargo. Some critics suggest all light trucks should be taxed according to their size and weight, with registeted commercial licenses excepted.
They take up a helluva lot of paved, drained and maintained road surface usually for free when parked on public streets. No vehicle owner escapes multiple layers of public subsidy, from road repair to hospital and court costs resulting from accidental death and injury on the road. Thar is unsustainable from every angle, from municipal finances to environmental.
That costly dependency MUST be addressed sometime this century. But going EV does have an immediate effect on oil demand, thougj it is not a magic bullet to fix our cities and bring sanity to our public accounts.
How comparable to Amsterdam is Ottawa's or even Toronto's winter climate? Unploughed roads or roads with big snowpiles narrowing the lane - or slippery icy road surfaces make me deeply wary of bicyclists sharing the road with big metal cars and trucks. I'd love to see larger, winter-tire equipped bicycles with mandatory lights front and rear to create a safer world for bikers. Anybody out there ready to design them?
Marie, just do a search for "fat bikes winter" to find options for a steed.
Some good points. But this does not cover the diversity of Canada, or what is happening outside of wealthy suburbs. The cultural shifts have already happened in places like Vancouver, Victoria, Montreal, Edmonton, urban Toronto and Halifax. Middle class suburban climate delayers who never ride public transit are not the majority of the population, and never have been.
For a broader view, read what the Union of BC Indian Chiefs have to say about the need for better bus service to indigenous communities and rural areas (yes, they have endorsed the call for shifting highway expansion money to public transit). Rural residents have been demanding better public transit service for decades. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/03/27/news/will-bc-shift-clean-tr… (yes, in the National Observer).
Also check out the articles I have written for the National Observer - https://www.nationalobserver.com/u/eric-doherty The majority of Canadians are ready for the shift from highway expansion boondoggles to public transit, walking, rolling and cycling.