November 22, 2012

Remembering “Clouds of Change”

I’ve found that the longer you’re out of office, the better memories are of your political career – as Daniel Fontaine’s column in 24 Hours nicely illustrates:

If you want to find a group of civic politicians and citizens committed to saving the planet from its human inhabitants, you need to go back more than two decades. Well before Robertson launched his greenest city brand, a group of Vancouver civic politicians were actually doing the real policy legwork.

Their efforts are well documented in a visionary report titled “The Clouds of Change” published in June 1990. Sadly, the document is now deeply buried on Vancouver’s archived website.

The report was authored by the city’s Task Force on Atmospheric Change and included 35 bold policy recommendations. The depth of its analysis was a stark contrast to the endless “green” photo ops spoon fed to us each week by the mayor’s office.

Former Non-Partisan Association city councillor and environmentalist Gordon Price played an instrumental role in drafting the report. When it came to greening Vancouver, Price helped his NPA colleagues go where no council had gone before.

Twenty-two years ago, the NPA’s vision for a greener city kick-started a series of policy initiatives to reduce Vancouver’s carbon footprint. It included everything from advocating for new mandatory vehicle emissions testing to providing transit passes for all university students.

Price and the NPA even supported the controversial idea of a “regional tax on carbon dioxide emissions to fund transportation initiatives and development of clean-burning fuels.” Does this all sound familiar?

Good for Daniel for (a) remembering the report, and (b) giving credit to the remarkable group of citizens who made up the task force:

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The group met throughout 1989 on Saturday mornings in the City Manager’s office, thinking through the issues of what is now known as climate change, engaging in a lively debate and coming up with a comprehensive set of recommendations – likely the first of any municipality in North America.

We were perhaps ahead of our time, and I doubt we anticipated the degree of denialism which continues to infect the highest levels of leadership.  But the report nonetheless established a policy framework and particular initiatives (notably a commitment to sustainability in southeast False Creek) that moved the city forward, faster than would have otherwise occurred.

You can see the documents (in a form that shows how they were amended from the task force’s original draft) here (vol 1) and here (vol 2).

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