Subsidized Rain Barrels in the GVRD

Having grown up in and around Britain’s allotment culture, water butts (rain barrels) were part of my existence right from when I was knee-high to a nematode. Indeed, some of my earliest gardening experiences involved watching the members of this aforementioned phylum wriggle through the algae soup that languished alongside my grandfather’s greenhouse.

Whether you see yourself as the quintessential “doomsteader” or, on the up-side, an Urban Utopian Agronomist, rainwater harvesting has a lot to offer to everyone. Saving rainwater for personal use is the ultimate in practical sustainability.

Primarily, a water barrel will enable you to side-step the usual summer hose-pipe restrictions. What’s more, you will be giving your vegetable garden the bountiful gift of un-chlorinated and oxygen-rich water. I have witnessed the difference rain-water makes first-hand; I guarantee your seedlings will grow with an increased vigour.

I had been in the market for a good rain barrel for some months; I made several reconnaissance trips to the Home De[s]pot ilk of store and, to be frank, I was most disappointed with what I encountered thereabouts. Aesthetic choice was rather limited. Yes, there are those drab round barrels; for as little as $40.00* + taxes you may procure a container whose form I have, unfortunately, come to associate with toxic-waste containment. However, on the other end of the price-spectrum, there are those units that come replete with wooden casings and heavy-duty brass faucets. So, if you want a barrel that would not look out of place in the PNE showhome, you can expect to shell out a tidy sum – ordinarily, upwards of $180.00 (+ taxes.)

By far the best option is the Flexahopper barrel (see above image) offered up by Burnaby City Council. It holds 345 litres of rainwater and is made of industrial strength plastic. The good news is that Burnaby residents may buy this as a subsidized item for a very competitive $70.00 (+ taxes.) What’s more, an extra five bucks is all it takes to make one magically materialize outside your residence. They may be obtained from the City’s Yard Waste Depot located at 4800 Still Creek Avenue (west of Douglas Road). Call 604.294.7460 for more details.

Other pilot schemes that offer the Flexahopper are in place across the GVRD. Vancouver residents may pick up one for $75.00 (+ taxes) at the Vancouver South Transfer Station, located at 377 West North Kent Avenue. For those in Coquitlam, call 604-927-3500.

*A subsidized ‘radioactive-plasma container’ is available for West Van residents at the aforementioned price. Call 604 925-7101. The same deal for Port Moody residents: call 604-469-4572.

Finally, my barrel-of-choice is also sold at source by Flexahopper Plastics, 604-946-8783 – located at #12 - 7151 Honeyman in Delta (for a pricier $170.00.)

Knowing your landbase ensures your best ability to survive.

The first organizer of the Vancouver Peak Oil Citizens Group, Max - a highly like-able young permaculturist and eco-activist - renounced the post allegedly, because he foresaw our powering-down and transitional efforts going to s***. I remember hearing this information from my predecessor, Steve. I was told that he was off, ‘walking the land,’ trying to find out ‘where it is at.’ As I began to Contemplate Max’s life-path, I also began to question more of my own plans for the future. Put it this way, if I am to use the folks at LATOC as a yardstick, I am woefully unprepared, ripe for the die-off. A secure home with crate-loads of ammo is the de rigeur minimum - or so the message boards would have us believe.


I have about a month’s worth of food and some basic emergency supplies. The usual suspects: the fresh, bottled water, the excess propane, the Katadyn water filters and purification tablets. Oh, and next years’ seeds are in cold storage.

And when I plan it comes down to this: I plan to plant more beans next year. I will double the potato plot to make room for some early and mid-season varieties. Other than that I plan to to take a last trip to the Old Country - preferably before my Grandmother dies and before the civilian air-fleet is permanently grounded.

I find it so hard to make contingency plans for my existence when I am so bloody caught up in living that self-same existence. And, despite being the son of a farmer, I am also a former quasi-urbane metro-sexual. I am the product of the eighties and the British Education combined - probably not what you would call true survivor material. To this end, I hope it is not all Mad Max hair-do’s and pointy sticks anytime too soon!

Ultimately, wheresoever I am now, is exactly where I am connecting with my landbase. Presently that is Burnaby. Often I project into ‘A Long Emergency’ scenario. Often, during walking meditation along the perimeter of my immediate landbase, a voice will percolate upwardly through my being:

“The H.Y. Louie Distribution Warehouse is the best place for food reconnaissance raids (as it is hidden.) The war zone will be on the other side of Lougheed, about the Costco loading bay. Yes, that is where the gun-fire will be…”

Knowing your immediate landbase ensures your best ability to survive.

While a significant number of my fellow activists are eye-balling Nelson as a agrarian utopia, I pose the question: Can the Kootenay landbase accommodate a post-postmodern diaspora of this kind? I fear it may not be able. Moreover, how will the indigenous population feel about any prospective exodus?

If it all goes to hell-in-a handbasket, I will evanesce into the woods like the best of you. Until that time I am going to more intimately connect with my locale. I am going to find the mythical spot where the best blackberries grow on the borders of Lake City; where the most reliable natural water-source is in late August.

I will prove to you that chantrelles grow here. Once I find them.

Beware the "Resource Transitionists"

I was reading an article about, guess what, peak oil, and I read the following paragraph:

"The current [energy] debate represents a significant twist on an older, often-derided notion known as the peak-oil theory. Traditional peak-oil theorists, many of whom are industry outsiders or retired geologists, have argued that global oil production will soon peak and enter an irreversible decline because nearly half the available oil in the world has been pumped. They've been proved wrong so often that their theory has become debased."

Debased. Mmm.

This irked me a little. OK, a lot. That was until I remembered Derrick Jensen's words about most writers being propagandists (myself included.)
In its defence, the entire P.O. "notion" was based on the correct assumption of M. King Hubbert - namely that the U.S. would peak its production about 1970. (His later predictions about the timing of the world Peak were, indeed, more premature than Ken Deffeyes' - but unlike the latter, it did not embrace the OPEC oil shocks of the '70's.)

Still, it is important that we stand by what we believe and always have believed. Peak light sweet crude has happened. Oil is now nudging $100 a barrel. (Just a few months ago, I remember doom-saying that this would be a reality by Christmas-time and people just gave me blank stares!)

In the final analysis, Peak Oil is beset by the pitfalls and the mists, of futurism. Our track record, however is largely impressive. Recent energy reports bear witness to this - yea, even the aforementioned article.

Indeed, the paradoxical affirmation/denial of the aforementioned article may presage an entirely new phenomenon.

I am being led to believe that, in the next few years, we are going to be nudged aside by an opportune bunch of technocrati who will call themselves "resource transitionalists" (or something similar). They will say that "they always had the view that oil was a non-renewable resource and that they had always been planning for crunch scenarios, etc."

Bull.

We must not let them steal our thunder. NOT ONE IOTA! I say this as they are doubtless going to be part of that hydra-headed beast that will seek only to further degrade our land-base. We, as Peak Oil activists, are more than Cassandras. Much more. We stand for environmental integrity and re localization efforts. We stand against the needless violence and exploitation of the planet, the poor and the non-civilized. We are the sane in an insane world.

Watch: the "resource transitionalists" will use our research, quote our luminaries and deride us at the same time. They will use us as a bulwark by which they will spring onto the world's stage. Doubtless, among their ranks you will find former A-list actors turned politicos, spineless, Smirnoff-soaked (then to be) ex-premiers....

Indeed, if you see any of these creatures, feel free to "out" them here.

Tomatoes as a metaphor.

As a kid, I hated tomatoes. It was a dislike compounded by the fact that the tomato, in its ketchup-guise, seemed overly blood-like (and that the English would apply the unctuous condiment, gorily, to their food at every opportunity.) Often it would take a day and a half of Heimlich-style coaxing to get it out of the bottle; and when you did, it would invariably squirt sideways out of your 'chip butty'* and come to land on your prized new jeans. Too much work by half.

But still, like them or loathe them, tomatoes were red. You Know, red: a good British colour, like the Routemaster bus or the Giles Gilbert telephone box. Yes, a dependable colour: it was an unspoken credo: a tomato should be ripe, ruddy and round.

I am almost ashamed to say that two years ago I knew next to nothing of heirloom tomatoes (let alone the term seed-saving or the name of Vandana Shive.) Sure, a friend of mine was locking horns with Monsanto over in London and I would occasionally festoon our telephone conversations with the odd 'good for you, mate!', but I did not fully comprehend the absolute horror of terminator seed technology.

Boy, have I have come a long way in a short space of time. I still am rather astonished á propos my former denial/ignorance. Indeed, I now wonder if tomatoes are really a metaphor for us as a people. Maybe secretly, those among us who think that tomatoes should be only one hue also secretly feel the same about politics, party allegiances, even people's skin colour.

Heirloom tomatoes speak openly of the diversity of culture, of the panoply of race. Like people, heirloom tomatoes have oral histories linking them to their ancestry. For example, the intense, sweet purple-green flesh of the Black Krims were brought to us from the "Island of Krim" in the Ukraine; in that self-same flesh is contained the hardship of the pioneer life and the many inclement prairie winters they faced.

Likewise, the Blaby Special cultivar comes to us, like a fresh-faced GI Bride, from Shoult's Tomato Farm in Leicestershire England.

Many colours. Many stories. It is, truly, a seed diaspora - redolent of the folk who, over time, nurtured and cultivated them.

And big Agriculture wants to silence those voices. It wants to expunge them and wipe them out forever. To them, tomatoes are hybrid and red: oftentimes, tasteless, ruddy and round. We must not let them obliterate this genetic diversity. To do so would be, literally, a crime against nature.

An Open Letter to Councillor Peter Ladner

Dear Mr. Ladner,

I have been asked by several of my associates in the fledgling Vancouver Peak Oil Group to contact you regarding the implementation of a peak oil resolution in Vancouver. It has been brought to my attention that you have - allegedly - sought to maintain an attitude of indifference towards an issue that may well be (in the short-term) be more egregious to the citizenry of the GVRD than climate change. Furthermore, to aid this missive, I will assume that this posture towards energy depletion is, indeed, your de facto stance. To this end, I look forward to being corrected; to being told that I am wrong; that the elephant in the room is under intense scrutiny so to speak.

Vancouver is striving to become a world class city. Politics notwithstanding, it is to play host to the Winter Olympic games in 2012. Yet, to occupy this echelon fully, it has to develop a top-notch strategy of concern towards epoch-defining issues such as peak oil (and the depletion of other energy sources such as natural gas.) Sadly, this is not happening. As such, Vancouver is truly being left behind; that is to say, as far as the metaphorical sprint is concerned, it risks being viewed as a "Cascadian Tortoise," outrun by the sprightly hares that are Portland and San Francisco - each of which have a working resolution already in place. Furthermore, Seattle is in the process of consolidating a proposal, as are Ashland, Oregon and Oakland, California. Even Burnaby, ordinarily in Vancouver's shadow, has nosed ahead.

A former Vancouver city councillor, Gordon Price ( now Director of the City Program for Simon Fraser University) writes succinctly in a blog entry of Burnaby's preeminence:

"In my 15 years on City Council in Vancouver, I read a lot of reports. Ninety percent of them were not exactly stimulating: lane pavings, grant approvals, appointment of the external auditor … all the things that keep a city going. Occasionally, a report would appear that grabbed your attention – and on a very rare occasion, would actually change your understanding of the world, or at least your city. I’d like to say that such a report recently appeared on the agenda of the City of Vancouver. But it didn’t. It appeared in Burnaby – the municipality just to the east."

On January 16th 2006 Burnaby released a council report on peak oil entitled "Global Peak in Oil Production: A Municipal Context." While the paper kowtowed to an overly optimistic timeline on peak oil production and sidelined itself with agencies such as the United States Geological Survey, it's writers did take a bold step forward. As Gordon Price so succinctly puts, it: "[...] the mere fact that a government body is opening the door to a subject that most leaders would prefer remain firmly shut off is a tangible action all on its own."

I do not write this in order to convince you of the validity of peak oil. We are not running out of oil any time soon. But we are bottoming out on the light, sweet crude, the most easily available oil. And here is where the black cloud begins to brew: all forms of energy are subject to the EROI equation (energy returned on investment.) When the easily obtained oil diminishes, we are left with the gloopy hard to get stuff. Stuff that has to be cooked, pressure washed, or brought up from the ocean depths. In a nutshell, EROI intensive. It therefore follows that transportation costs are going to rise to match energy expenditure - alongside petroleum-based fertilizers and pesticides ( a dual upsurge which has potentially devastating effects on agriculture and food security.) Finally, anything made from long chain hydrocarbon polymers (plastic) will become more expensive to produce.

I really do not want to get into the usual interminable debates of the hydrogen economy's being "an energy carrier and not a fuel source," or the EROI issues surrounding bio-fuels. If you wish to crunch through this material, I suggest you visit Matt Savinar's excellent - yet slightly alarming - website at: www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/

Any date or year that may be offered as being the zenith point of oil production will be, at best, hypothetical; to wit, the late Dr. M. King Hubbert's theory cannot be exact as all reserve data for the main OPEC countries are falsified (and some would say, wildly exaggerated.) One thing is for sure: oil is not a renewable resource. No amount of rhetorical spin can change that. IT IS FACT: elementary science. Whether (as the American Society of Peak Oil - ASPO - maintain) we are at peak, or we are on a post peak plateau, about to slip down an "Olduvai slope," we need to make preparations individually and collectively. Even if we have 20 years of carefree motoring left, we still have to plan ahead. (Incidentally, many experts maintain that two decades of proactive mitigation and preparation constitute the bare minimum of what is needed to adequately prepare for such a paradigm change.)

A post-carbon world will be one of diminishing energy returns, of powering down and making do with less. Granted, it is not something a politician can easily contemplate as, ordinarily, anything that runs counter to economic growth is anathema. Not exactly a vote-winner. Nevertheless, I write this as a concerned activist and father, and I implore you: please do not to push aside energy depletion so lightly. It is very much something to be concerned about. As a father yourself, I urge you to look at that aforementioned pachyderm, right in the eye. Do it for your children. For their future security. I leave the rest up to your conscience.

However, let me make one thing clear: I intend this as an open letter. It will be recorded, historically as a primary source. So, consider this: how would you like to be remembered? As an individual who looked the other way, or as the stalwart luminary who helped the City of Vancouver pass a peak oil resolution?

I do so hope it will be the latter.

Yours sincerely,

Neil Westlake

Satori: The Kick In The Eye

There comes a point when the fear gets so intense that, if you are lucky, you can enter the eye of the hurricane - so to speak. I was at a friend's house last week and he was going on about the prospective millitary campaign against Iran. We are both Father's and he posed this question AT me: "If the US bomb Iran, it is gonna be nukes, dude. What kind of future is that gonna present for us, for our kids? What do you think?

Suddenly the fear was on me. I had smoked a couple of puffs on a doob which made it a lot worse (I am Englishman and do not have the Canadian constitution for weed.) My heart was pounding: I got a vision of a world spinning off kilter towards a huge chain of mushroom clouds. I thought about my two boys. Radiation. Sickness. Violence. Darkness. Chaos. Then, in the core of my being, a very soft voice said: Breathe. Make yourself the beacon of love you want to see in the world. Right now. This second. There is no future. None to speak of. Just love, now. Yes, you are afraid right now. Love yourself enough to not want to feel this afraid. Give yourself a break. Love your friend enough to want to put your hand on his shoulder. Look into his eyes. Smile.

I gave a truthful answer to his question. I said, quietly: "Probably for the first time in my life, I really do not know what to think. I just have to feel love. I don't know what is going to happen with the world. We may all die horribly. I really, really hope not. Still, the thought of that scenario is too burdensome for me right now." Suddenly, I was in a place of perfect peace, where nothing bad could reach me. A buffer zone wrapped itself around me against ideologies, ideologues and other universal forms.

My guess it is what enlightenment is like. Actually, I know that is exactly what it is like. It is satori - the "kick in the eye" that the Zen masters speak of.

Incidentally, the feeling lasted most of the day. It outlasted the THC. Nevertheless, slowly, the old egoic voices returned. As I write, the fear is right here on my shoulder. Back on its perch. And with it comes the doubt. All the bad stuff. But take heart, all is not lost: I now have an inner conviction that I want to do something about my egoic and pain-body negativity. To keep working on it. To strive for that "buffer zone" of prescence.

Right now.

A Question of Priorities

Lordy! Another day, another 'cause du jour.' First it was: "We need to save our park and the poor trees therein." Now it is: "We need to set up a fireworks fund; we cannot seem to find a corporation generous enough to fund our roman candle habit!" What's next? "The Bard on the Beach wants to restore a few long lost rhyming couplets. Please give generously!?"

I cannot help but feel all this is a case of "fiddling while Vancouver is burning..." In the Downtown Eastside there are vulnerable, dually diagnosed people sleeping beside dumpsters in the freezing cold. Yes, the selfsame neighbourhood that is also recognized as Canada's poorest. A neighbourhood that sports some of the highest HIV infection rates in North America.

Let that often psychopathological entity - the corporation - pick up the tab for the godforsaken gunpowder. If they cannot shell out for a few Catherine Wheels then maybe the fireworks are not meant to be. Sure, don't get me wrong, the seasonal son et lumière in the sky over English Bay is a beautiful thing, but we live in a world where a child dies every 5 seconds of hunger. The U.S. is contemplating using nuclear weapons for the first time since 1945. The biosphere is getting hotter every day and the doomsday clock is at 11.55pm. More than ever, we need to stop fixing and fiddling with mere "things." Human hearts need mending.

I am sorry to seem didactic, but I cannot help following my heart; cannot help feeling that there are better ways to spend our hard earned money.