This post is meant to serve as a means for posting feedback and questions concerning the Creating Wealth in the Created World conference that was held at Regent College, Vancouver, BC on November 2-3, 2007. If you have any comments you would like to share regarding your experience of the conference, or questions arising from the discussion, or simply suggestions for improvement of subsequent conferences please reply to this post. We will endeavour to post speaker responses to questions/comments raised.
December 2, 2007 at 6:06 pm
I attended the conference and found it most invigorating. I want to offer the following BLOG entry.
While we were exceptionally well served by the keynote speakers Christian perspectives on business, politics and the environment, I did feel that an environmental technologist – a Christian aware of the most recent technology advances in this particularly fast moving field would have been a great addition to the panel. Mr. Mather, in particular, I thought, was altogether too comfortable in his assumptions re: the prominent role of hydro carbons in our future, with no real reference to or accommodation of wind, tidal, solar, geo-thermal or air exchange. The advancements in these areas alone, in the last short while, have been staggering.
I make this observation from some experience. I lead a professional group designing a major build-to-lease commercial structure (160k sq ft) to be constructed on the west coast. It will be heated and cooled exclusively by air-to-air exchange, with geo-thermal exchange as back-up, powered with solar energy etc. It is a design that will, on occupancy, produce GHG that will be less than those produced from the site when it was a mixed coniferous forest prior to European occupation of the coast. The projected cost of construction is 2% LESS than that assumed for traditional design and construction and the operating costs will, too, be much less than traditional – ‘no’ energy costs etc. The traditional financial community, banks in particular, has been both quick and generous in offers of construction and mortgage support. Dockside Green in Victoria is another example. Buildings and other civil developments such as these protend a very different future from the one imagined by Mr. Mather, I believe. They are, at the least, fodder for fruitful debate.
That having been said, there were two aspects of Mr. Manning’s and Mr. Mather’s views that I would like to address.
Clive Mather seems to believe it is governments’ responsibility to fund the research into appropriate environmental response/protection technologies that can be used to mitigate the environmental damage that may be represented by oil sands extraction (and other extraction opportunities I presume). Preston Manning seemed to imply that it is government’s responsibility to detail the environmental protection policies and programs that might give us some assurance that our environment and hence our society can survive the onslaught of extraction.
I am of a much different view.
I don’t think we are served well by elaborate government policy initiatives – initiatives that seem invariably to be prescriptive rather than performance based and structured by people – well, meaning and otherwise – who have little or no real understanding of the markedly complex and inter-related economic and environmental systems for which they presume to dictate manage frameworks. Need we look any further than the Cod and Pacific Salmon fisheries or the recent Royalty package in Alberta?
Contrary to both Mather and Manning (both of whom I hold in very high regard), I believe our best hope is to be found in a simple performance-based approach. That is to say,
“Of course you can extract from our oil sands. Just allow us to share as a simple licensor, (shall we say 5% of gross sales?) and put the territory, that is our terrain, our lakes, our boreal forests etc. back the way you found them!
“Come to me first with your ecological review, both surface and sub-surface. That will define your base line. (We will, of course, employ a peer review process that will help use judge the worth of your approach.) Then present your reclamation plan which also demonstrates that you will do no irreparable harm in the interim, that is to say ‘no net addition to Green House Gasses’ etc.
“Let us be clear, it’s your responsibility exclusively to develop and prove the means of your approach. If $100/barrel oil won’t support your ambitions then please feel free to wait until an economic climate emerges that will. You can be assured that we will wait upon your return.
“Did I mention that this is a ‘first come first served’ opportunity?”
In the mean time we can all rest assured that our collective desire for energy HAS and WILL continue to produce alternatives at market acceptable prices. In short I believe there need be no fear that we will freeze in the dark.
For instance, we presently, daily, flare – that is burn off in a manner that contributes markedly to GHG – enough methane i.e., excess natural gas, to satisfy 2/3 of the energy budget of Great Britain. I believe it fair to say that our energy sector is presently one of the least efficient energy ‘managers’ within our economy. (My politeness nearly overwhelms me!)
The technology exists (small scale methane to LNG conversion is available ‘off the shelf’) to capture the flared/discarded/squandered methane energy, at significant profit even at the current deflated market prices for natural gas. (The capital payback for this approach, at current prices, is less that 30 months and all of the equipment could be manufactured in Alberta – lest we be too concerned for the fate of the AB economy.)
Because we, as a country, subsidize oil (e.g., rapid right downs, lucrative R&D tax treatment etc) and we induce gas companies to drill stranded wells for tax write-offs (see Husky’s drilling program for instance), none of the oil or gas companies that I have spoken with are inclined to take on methane recapture. It does involve (proven) technology that is beyond their immediate experience, I admit, but they are in business to make money from energy supply.
I am inclined to believe that if we stop distorting and subsidizing their priorities, within days they would find their way to the wasted opportunities in their own FRONT yard.
In other realms, the Japanese have perfected and make commercially available Air-to-Air heat exchangers that can eliminate the need for external fuel supplies to heat and cool commercial buildings… geothermal exchange at both home and commercial scale is being deployed daily in BC and elsewhere… the list goes on.
But I ramble… I mean simply to say that the market which has acted as the principal mechanism to facilitate the creation of wealth in our western economies can also be employed to act as a principal mechanism in support of the creation of solutions to our environmental dilemmas. It is after all performance based.
ps Lest this all sound too terribly right wing, I do believe there is a prominent role for governments to play in defining performance standards and providing very broadly defined social safety nets that defend our right to health, shelter and education.
gdb