Mayor Robertson claims Vancouver is "living up to our Kyoto Commitments"
Channel: Randy Chatterjee
Date: 2011-10-05

In December 2009, Vancouver's Mayor Gregor Robertson flew to the Copenhagen Climate Change Summit (COP15), where he declared to world media that Vancouver, as a city, was Kyoto compliant.  That is to say, he asserted that Vancouver's total greenhouse gas emissions were at or below 1990 levels.  

From 1990 to 2009, the City of Vancouver's population grew 35%, with the vast majority housed in newly-constructed high-rise glass, concrete, and steel towers, one of the building industry's least energy efficient, least resilient or adaptable, and most carbon-intensive designs.  Recent evidence is emerging that the building envelope technology employed is the least durable of all and that these buildings may only have design lives of 40 years before a complete re-skin or full demolition are necessary.

How is it possible that such a city is Kyoto-compliant?  

The staggering population growth alone would require every citizen of the city to cut his or her emissions by 50% in order that a 35% population increase would be fully offset.   Vancouver's wealth has meanwhile greatly increased, and it has it long been shown that increases in personal wealth correlate highly with increased carbon emissions.  The increasing number of Vancouver residents with second homes, largely in the American South West, supports this observation.  Vancouver's airport itself has seen both flights and passenger seat traffic growing far above the global average.

Has Vancouver's commercial or heavy industry perhaps collapsed so completely that its residential growth was offset by sharp declines in other economic sectors? 

Or have the books simply been cooked?  

Why is Vancouver not counting its large port or heavy rail operations--little of which is even electrified? Why aren't the concrete, steel, glass, and other highly-carbon-intensive building materials that have fueled Vancouver's growth being counted?  Does Vancouver count the emissions from these or its millions of tons of other annual imported goods, including over 90% of its food consumption?

Does Vancouver need an audit of its Kyoto claims?  And if so, what does it say about a claimant to the world's "greenest city" mantle that it cannot get past the first of the Twelve Step Program to stop anthropogenic global warming, admitting we have a problem?