The 2005 G8 Summit will take place in Scotland from July 6-8. According to current G8 Chair, Britain's Tony Blair, the Summit will focus on Africa and Climate Change. Blair has already tried to twist President Bush's arm on the climate change issue, but was forced to back down in order to maintain US commitment to economic support for Africa.

This year the counter-culture of the G8 Summit is epitomized by Bob Geldof's Live 8 concert, part of the Long Walk to Justice campaign for relief of poverty in the Third World. As we go to press it looks like there will be a Live 8 concert in Toronto on July 2, one of eight concerts around the world on that day.

GL does not want to diminish the seriousness of the world poverty problem, though we do share with some international experts a concern about the effectiveness of the current aid model. Our bigger concern, however, is that the focus on aid to Africa is allowing governments, and especially the US, to wiggle out of their commitment to a multilateral solution to the climate problem.

Is Canada backing Blair's efforts to address climate change at the G8? Not judging by Canada's G8 website, where there is a Finance Minister Ralph Goodale speech about aid to Africa but nothing about climate change. How come we are not backing PM Blair in his effort to get climate change on the G8 agenda? Blair has already agreed not to mention Kyoto and the US is a signatory to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Surely pressure from Canada and the rest of the G8 nations could at least get the US to say something at the G8 about the need to address climate change.

But our biggest blast is reserved for the NGOs. Climate change will almost certainly enhance poverty in Africa and in many other parts of the world. By focussing on aid for relief of poverty and by ignoring desertification, one of the most serious causes of poverty in Africa, and other climate related factors, the global NGO community is assisting the G8 to escape its responsibility to address the climate change issue.

Gallon Environment Letter urges NGOs to boycott the Geldof Live 8 movement unless that movement starts to give some attention to prevention of poverty caused by climate change.

Colin Isaacs Editor

DRIVERS CAN'T STAND IDLY BY 3 MINUTES OF POLLUTING TO COST MOTORISTS $130

TORONTO WILL launch an enforcement blitz of its anti-idling bylaw during the week of June 13.
Bylaw inspectors will be out to hit drivers who allow their vehicles to idle for more than three minutes with $130 tickets during the blitz which runs June 13-17, said Angie Antoniou, of the city's transportation department.

The three-minute time limit does not apply when temperatures are below 5C and above 27C.
In cases where the temperature-related exemptions kick in, inspectors speak to idling drivers about the rules.
"Not that we can enforce it, but at least we make them aware that even though they are exempt because of the temperature, we would very much want them to sort of comply and turn off their engine," she said yesterday.

Ironically, the bylaw, designed to improve air quality, cannot be enforced on most smog days because hot temperatures exceeding 27C usually accompany air pollution alerts.

The temperature exemptions allow people to run their cars to operate heaters or air conditioning. Inspectors have handed out 1,000 warnings and 240 tickets for violations of the idling bylaw during the last five years.

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PUBLICATION: The Daily Courier (Kelowna)
DATE: 2005.06.02
EDITION: Final
SECTION: City
PAGE: A3
SOURCE: The Daily Courier

City buys hybrid car to help meet One-Tonne Challenge

The city has a new, environmentally friendly staff pool car to help it meet the federal government's One-Tonne Challenge.

The Honda Civic hybrid, which is powered by a gasoline engine and electric motor, is adorned with bright maple leaves and One-Tonne Challenge decals, signifying the city's new partnership with the senior level of government.

The hybrid was officially unveiled at the Mayor's Environmental Expo last week.
A large battery pack which powers the electric motor is recharged either by the engine or from energy captured while braking. It never needs to be plugged in.

The electric motor provides extra power when the gas engine is performing a more energy-intensive activity, such as accelerating. The combination reduces greenhouse gas emissions by about 20 per cent.

The One-Tonne Challenge is national campaign to encourage Canadians to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by one tonne, or 20 per cent.

Kelowna is one of 16 communities across Canada chosen as a partner and will use its $150,000 to help promote the challenge through the transportation department, which has organized Bike to Work Week, the Environmental Expo, the upcoming Commuter Challenge and the Walk and Roll Car-Free Day.

The city will also add a Smart Car to its fleet of pool vehicles in October. This vehicle has a three-cylinder, high-efficiency diesel engine, which will reduce emissions even more than the hybrid.

Kelowna Regional Transit is also adding three hybrid diesel/electric buses, which should be in service this month.
The hybrid technology converts energy normally wasted in braking into electricity and uses it to help accelerate the bus, resulting in a significant reduction in emissions.

Kelowna Regional Transit is the first system in Canada to incorporate hybrid technology in its fleet.
Next week's 2005 Go Green Commuter Challenge will encourage people to take a bus, carpool, cycle, walk or run to work.
The Central Okanagan has placed first for participation across Canada for three consecutive years. You can sign up on the regional transportation demand website, www.i-go.ca.

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PUBLICATION: Prince George Citizen
DATE: 2005.06.02
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Second Front
PAGE: 3
SOURCE: The Citizen

Clean air effort aims to cut pollution from vehicles

The City of Prince George will be getting behind a campaign to encourage motorists to reduce idling and lower air pollution from cars and trucks in the process.

Set to launch June 8 to coincide with Clean Air Day, the city has budgeted $18,500 for the campaign's brochures, promotional materials and signs to be posted at "idling hot spots" around the city.

The areas in front of schools where parents wait to pick up their children is prime among those locations, Scott Bone, the city's supply and fleet services manager told city council on Monday.

Residents are also being encouraged to participate in the nationwide commuter challenge, meant to promote carpooling, walking, biking and taking the bus to work.

Those interested in helping Prince George's cause can sign up at www.commuterchallenge.com or call Jocelyn Campbell at city hall, 561-7600.

City employees will also be encouraged to keep vehicle idling down to a minimum and trained on how to reduce fuel consumption and emissions.

So-called bio-diesel will also be used in the city's fleet of garbage collection trucks in a six-month pilot project in cooperation with some municipalities in the Lower Mainland.

Bio-diesel is a fuel made from vegetable oil or animal fats that can be used alone or blended with petroleum-based diesel and used in diesel engines.

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PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2005.06.02
EDITION: National
SECTION: Canada
PAGE: A5
BYLINE: Cathy Gulli
SOURCE: National Post
ILLUSTRATION: Colour Photo: David Clark, CanWest News Service / Welcome tothe reverse commute. More Canadians are driving from cities to the suburbs to get to work.; Graphic/Diagram: National Post, Statistics Canada / REDEFINING COMMUTING: (See print copy for complete graphic/diagram.)
NOTE: cgulli@nationalpost.com

The big job in the suburbs: Driving out to work: Traffic congestion growing on cities' outskirts

The pastoral appeal of suburban life is giving way to industrial development and traffic congestion now that more people and jobs are locating on the outskirts of city centres across the country, a Statistics Canada report shows.

The 68-page document reveals that the traditional commute to work from home has mutated from a suburb-to-downtown route to suburb-to-suburb one, because employment growth has been highest in these areas.

"The city is expanding geographically and that means that not only the jobs are moving to the suburbs but people are also moving to the suburbs," said Sebastien LaRochelle-Cote, co-author of the report released yesterday.

"It is reflective of a trend that we see in all [major cities] and that may be indicative of what we'll be seeing in the future," he said.

According to Statistics Canada, the average distance of jobs from the downtown core rose in nearly every major city across the country, from an average of 10.4 kilometres in 1996 to 11 km in 2001.

Jobs farthest from downtown were found in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, at 17.2 km, 12.6 km, and 11.8 km, respectively.

As more people have moved to the suburbs to live and work, the largest increase in traffic congestion in major metropolitan areas has taken place in the suburbs rather than the traditionally trafficked city centre, Mr. LaRochelle-Cote said.

What's more, the report shows that commuters rely on public transit less often as job locations move farther out of the city centre, because originally public transit was built for and still serves the downtown core more readily than the suburbs.

In Calgary, 57% of public transit users are headed to the downtown core, compared with 46% in Vancouver, 45% in Edmonton, 43% in Toronto, 41% in Ottawa, 37% in Montreal, and 35% in Winnipeg.

"It's important to no longer think of the traditional commute from the suburb to the city centre. We have to, more and more, consider the increasing alternative commutes as well."

Those other commuting patterns include suburban commutes and "reverse commutes," which occur when a person lives within 10 km of the city centre but travels to a job farther away than that, usually in the suburbs.

In Ottawa-Hull, the number of reverse commuters grew by nearly 40% between 1996 and 2001, reflecting the job growth seen in the west suburb of Kanata.

Similarly, Calgary experienced a 41.5% reverse commute increase.
Toronto saw a mere 2.7% boost, but shows a 17% rise in suburb-to-suburb commutes.
"Toronto is a very good example of the suburbanization of employment. Two-thirds of all employment creation took place 20 km away from the city centre. And almost 90% of these new commuters are taking their car to go to work. That is putting pressure on infrastructure and air quality," Mr. LaRochelle-Cote said.

The challenge facing urban planners is to provide sufficient public transit and good quality roads, said David Flewelling, president of the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA).

While public transit is useful in busy city streets, "when you try to serve places of work that are scattered all over the countryside in the suburbs, that's very hard for transit because [it involves] a whole bunch of low density corridors," said Neal Irwin of IBI Group, a Toronto-based consulting firm specializing in urban development and transportation.

His firm is working to create additional rapid transit services in the north end of Toronto.
"We need to have a balance, to use mass transit for what it excels at, and allow people to use their private motor vehicle where mass transit simply doesn't do the job," Mr. Flewelling said.

"We hope this is going to help policy-makers to find solutions and provide the public with a sense of what is going on," said Mr. LaRochelle-Cote of the Statistics Canada report, which was derived from 2001 census material.

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PUBLICATION: Vancouver Sun
DATE: 2005.06.02
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Queue
PAGE: C26
SOURCE: Vancouver Sun
ILLUSTRATION: Colour Photo: Will Burgess, Reuters / Building, then riding,"velomutation" bicycles are two of the many events planned to mark June as Bike Month.

Extra: Bike Month

June is Bike Month and to get us thinking pedal power 24/7, the folks at Better Environmentally Sound Transportation (BEST) have organized almost daily events, ranging from attention-grabbers such as the Naked Bike Ride to cool kids' activities.

Here's a list of highlights (for details call 604-669-2860, or log on to www.best.bc.ca): Ride on, two-wheeler!
- Musical Lantern Ride Cruise along the seawall and through forest paths of Stanley Park. As the night darkens, the bushes will glow with colourful lanterns and ring with pedal-power minstrels. June 4, meet at David Lam Park, 7:30 p.m. to make lamps and decorations; bring a flashlight or bike light and a plastic jug. No flames, please.

- Chopper-building workshop Pre-register to learn metal-working and bike mechanic skills as you build the bike of your dreams. Pedal Metal Studies, 1132 Powell, June 4-5, 12-6 p.m., 604-916-BIKE or www.pedalpower.org.

- Wacky Helmet Rally Decorate your bike helmet in the wackiest way you can, with prizes. Nat Bailey Stadium, Ontario and 30th, June 5, 9:30 a.m. sign-in, 10 a.m. departure, 604-418-0093 or www.wigoutevents.com.

- Commuter Challenge A fun, one-day competition between workplaces in the GVRD to see who can get the highest percentage of employees using a sustainable mode of transportation, such as transit, carpooling, cycling or walking, to get to work on Clean Air Day. June 8, registration: 604-689-4467.

- Margaret Charles Chopper Collective (MC3) Ride Vancouver's freak art bike collective invites you to take a ride with them. Science World, June 10, 6:30 p.m.

- Fraser Valley Grape Escape Two-day, all-inclusive wine tour raises funds for MS Society. June 11-12.
- Stanley Park Bike Festival Grand celebration of the bicycle in its many forms: Racing, art, leisure and transportation. Brockton Point in Stanley Park, June 11, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

- World Naked Bike Ride Participate with citizens from 54 cities around the world in a naked bike ride to protest car culture. Sunset Beach, east of English Bay, June 11, 3 p.m.

- Car-free Commercial Drive Festival Play in the street: Features performance stages, art jams, merchant tables, Kidzone, street hockey and more. The Drive closes to all traffic, June 19, 12-6 pm.

- Bike Shorts: International Cycling Cinema Check out flicks from Canada, US, Japan, Europe, Cuba. Pacific Cinematheque, 7:30 pm, $10.

- Yaletown Grand Prix International, national, and regional champs hit speeds in excess of 60-km in a tight technical course, around Lower Mainland, July 1, 604-328-7370.

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PUBLICATION: Edmonton Journal
DATE: 2005.06.02
EDITION: Final
SECTION: News
PAGE: A8
BYLINE: Simon Doyle
SOURCE: CanWest News Service
DATELINE: GATINEAU, Que.

Ottawa gives $800M boost to Canada's public transit

GATINEAU, Que. - Infrastructure and Communities Minister John Godfrey on Wednesday invited NDP Leader Jack Layton to a hotel to announce the details of the amended Liberal budget which provides $800 million for public transit.

In May, the minority Liberal government amended its 2005 budget, providing $4.5 billion in new social spending in exchange for the support of the NDP in the House of Commons on confidence votes.

Layton played down his relationship with the Liberal government, however.
"We're not supporting a government, we're supporting a budget," Layton said. "I appreciate that the minister had us here, and I think that it's probably a bit of a historic first."

The amended budget earmarked $900 million for transit and retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency, and on Wednesday, Godfrey specified if both budget bills pass, $800 million of that will go to urban transit over the next two years.

The funds would be distributed to the provinces on a per-capita basis, with Ontario receiving $310 million, Quebec $189 million and British Columbia $105 million. Each province would then distribute the funds to cities according to transit ridership, Godfrey said.

The $800 million would be used to replace fleets, upgrade terminals and garages and invest in light rail, subway and rabid bus systems, Godfrey said.

The new funding would come in addition to the gas tax in the original 2005 budget, which promised $5 billion over five years for urban transit, waste, water and energy systems.

Michael Roschlau, president of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, welcomed the money and said the federal and provincial governments are close to meeting a $21-billion need for investment in transit over the next five years.

Both budgets have passed first reading in the House of Commons and now rest in the hands of the Commons finance committee, where the Conservatives and the Bloc Quebecois outnumber the NDP and the Liberals. The Conservatives say they support the government's original budget bill, but they oppose the NDP amendments and may attempt to stall them in committee.

"This funding will get us farther along the road," Godfrey said.
Better transit is needed to reduce greenhouse gases, bypassing traffic congestion and providing mobility for those who can't afford cars, he said.

"Economic growth depends on urban transit."
Godfrey made the announcement on the final day of a three-day conference of the Canadian Urban Transit Association.
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PUBLICATION: Times Colonist (Victoria)
DATE: 2005.06.02
EDITION: Final
SECTION: Go!
PAGE: D12
BYLINE: Joseph Blake
SOURCE: Times Colonist

Museum puts sustainable energy on show

As politicians argue about climate change and the Kyoto Accord, B.C. citizens are creating energy and protecting the environment with some exciting, new projects.

This weekend at the Royal B.C. Museum, Sustainable Energy Now! celebrates ways to improve household energy efficiency while building ecologically sane communities.

Through displays, demonstrations and hands-on activities, experts will show how we can meet our energy needs without compromising the environment.

Brentwood Bay's Don Goodeve has run his VW Passat on homemade biodiesel for the last 5,000 km. Goodeve produces biodiesel, which powers any regular diesel engine, from vegetable oils that come from deep fryers of local restaurants.

Oak Bay's Dave Egles owns the first urban residence in B.C. with its own solar, green power generating system synchronized with B.C. Hydro, feeding excess power back to other customers on Hydro's grid.

Chris Riddell is superintendent at Hartland Landfill, where he oversees a green power project that captures problematic waste methane and converts it into enough power for 1,800 homes.

The plant will soon double its methane generating capacity.
These and other designs for wind, tidal and large- and small-scale power generation will be on display at Sustainable Energy Now!

The Smart Car, Prius and other hybrid cars will be on display, as will the Royal B.C. Museum's hydrogen-powered model car.

Hours for the show this Saturday and Sunday are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission to Sustainable Energy Now! is free with regular admission to the Museum. Regular admission is $12.50, $8.70 for students and seniors, children five and under are free. Family tickets (two adults and two dependent children) are $33.70. For more information call 356-7226.