By ROBERT BOTT

Friday, July 15, 2005 Updated at 12:13 AM EDT

According to Transport Canada, chartered buses in Canada carry an
average of 33 passengers, and the average bus consumes 32.5 litres of
diesel fuel per 100 kilometres. At one litre per 100
passenger-kilometres, chartered buses appear to be our most
energy-efficient motorized people movers. The only more efficient option
is a bicycle. I once calculated that the calories to propel my bike 100
km were roughly equivalent to the energy in one-seventh of a litre of
gasoline (unfortunately, my personal fuel cost as much as 12 litres of
gasoline).

Air travel averages about 3.5 litres of jet fuel per 100
passenger-kilometres. By contrast, the average private motor vehicle in
Canada uses 11.3 litres of gasoline per 100 kilometres and carries 1.6
people, for average consumption of seven litres per 100
passenger-kilometres.

The averages conceal huge variations. A gasoline-electric hybrid car,
with all four seats occupied, could be as fuel-efficient per
passenger-kilometre as the average chartered bus. Single-occupant
pickups, SUVs and vans in urban traffic can consume as much as 30 times
that much fuel per kilometre. Near-empty planes and trains are wasteful
too.

Why do we put up with so much inefficiency?

Air pollution should be sufficient reason to spur change. Yet somehow,
collective concerns fade into the background when individuals make
choices - where to live and work, what vehicle to buy, when and how much
to drive, which politicians to elect. The average cost of owning and
operating a motor vehicle is about $8,000 a year in Canada, but fuel
accounts for just one-fifth of this, so higher gasoline and diesel
prices have a relatively small impact. The huge costs of building,
maintaining and policing roads are hidden in taxes from all levels of
government. Other costs are dispersed and incremental: health impacts of
vehicles' pollution and accidents (more than 10 times as many deaths per
passenger-kilometre compared to bus, train or air travel), the decline
in exercise and fitness, the time spent in traffic and no longer
available for family and community activities. The full costs are seldom
weighed objectively against the allure of seemingly unfettered mobility.

As a result, we continue to sell, buy and license vehicles that can go
more than twice the maximum legal speed limit. Some cities actually
welcome the noise, pollution and mayhem of auto racing. Vehicle
manufacturers, advertising agencies and the media continually promote
unsafe, illegal and wasteful behaviour (just read the reviews of the
latest 400-horsepower speedster). Yet if horsepower in car engines had
stayed at 1990 levels, the current models would be at least 33 per cent
more fuel-efficient than they are.

Although four out of five Canadians now live in towns and cities, our
geography, climate, economy and current urban design suggest that
personal motor vehicles will be with us for a long time. The good news
is that our existing vehicles and related systems are so inefficient, we
could comfortably make big reductions in fuel consumption and emissions
when we are forced to change or decide to do so.

In the search for greener alternatives, gasoline-electric hybrid
vehicles get most of the attention and seem certain to continue gaining
market share. The current hybrid technologies reduce fuel consumption
10-25 per cent. Volkswagen has built an ultralight prototype vehicle
that sips just one litre of diesel per 100 kilometres.

Ethanol and biodiesel fuels meanwhile can help to reduce both petroleum
dependence and emissions. In polluted cities, clean-burning natural gas
is an attractive option for high-use vehicles that can be refuelled
frequently. Electricity could play a bigger role in future too,
especially in places such as Quebec, Manitoba and British Columbia with
lots of renewable hydro. Off-peak electricity from renewable or nuclear
sources could, for example, be used to recharge all-electric vehicles or
plug-in hybrids and to run compressors for refuelling natural gas
vehicles. One innovative car design (see www.theaircar.com ) uses
compressed air to store energy. If hydrogen fuel cells prove feasible
for vehicular use, electricity will be needed to produce and compress
the gas.

It is a mistake, however, to focus too much on vehicles and energy
sources.

It takes years for a new technology to prove its merit, and more years
to build the necessary manufacturing facilities and support systems. The
average vehicle stays on the road for 15 years, so even if a
breakthrough technology were in the showrooms today and everyone bought
it, we would have to wait seven or eight years before half the fleet
would be converted.

Moreover, just improving the vehicles does not address the social costs.
A hybrid stuck in traffic may not be polluting but it is still wasting
the occupants' time and energy, exposing them to safety hazards, and
taking up valuable space in the urban landscape.

Three options with more immediate payoffs are carsharing, carpooling and
telework. Carsharing reduces the number of vehicles on the street and
encourages users to plan trips carefully and to consider alternatives
such as walking, biking or transit.

Carpooling increases vehicle occupancy and per-passenger fuel efficiency
and reduces rush-hour congestion and pollution.

Even one or two days a week of telework can have a significant impact on
cumulative fuel use and emissions. I estimate that I have reduced my
transportation fuel use and related emissions more than 50 per cent
since 1994 by using a combination of these three methods. I save about
$3,000 a year and get a lot of healthy exercise from walking and biking.

Not everyone can or will take advantage of such options, though, and it
is entirely possible that real energy shortages, unbearable traffic
congestion or pollution crises will soon require more draconian
measures. In that case, attention will focus on one simple fact, i.e.
that motor vehicles operate most efficiently at a speed of 80-90 km per
hour. Above that speed, more than half of the engine's power goes to
overcoming air resistance, which increases with the square of velocity,
and at lower speeds disproportionate energy goes into internal friction
and operating systems such as lights, stereo, heating or air
conditioning.

Our present situation seems almost designed for inefficiency - vehicles
alternately roaring along at more than 110 kph or inching along under 20
kph, and either way using far more fuel per kilometre than at 90 kph.
Continual accelerations and decelerations also shorten the life of
brakes, tires and engines, and add to the safety hazards of motoring.

The first response to a real crisis could and should be to lower speed
limits and make widespread use of photo radar. When speed limits were
lowered during the perceived energy crises in the 1970s, fuel
consumption dropped 10 per cent.

The converse challenge, preventing the 20 kph crawls and gridlocks, is
difficult but not impossible to address. Demand-rationing measures
include downtown entry fees, parking restrictions,
high-occupancy-vehicle lanes, and road tolls.

A downtown entry fee or congestion charge in London, England, imposed
amid great trepidation, seems to have eased congestion there
considerably. Peak-smoothing options include flexible or staggered work
hours and better electronic traffic control (e.g., signage and
broadcasts directing motorists onto less-congested routes). Making these
measures responsive in real time - a $20 toll if the road is
overcrowded, $1 if empty - could make them much more effective.

Another way to improve efficiency - one that should please motorists,
truckers and cyclists - is to better maintain our roads. A rough, bumpy
or potholed road can easily increase fuel consumption 10 per cent or
more compared to a smooth, hard surface. (The low rolling resistance of
steel on steel is the key to the freight-hauling efficiency of
railways.) And there are lots of simple little things an individual
motorist can do - keeping tires properly inflated, turning off the
engine when stopped in traffic, regular tuneups and lubrication - that
can add up to significant savings.

One of these days, we might actually start to design cities for people
rather than cars. The turning point will probably come when
municipalities and developers take a hard look at the way parking spots
are mandated, priced and sold. At present, commercial and residential
developers are usually required to provide a certain number of parking
spaces for each unit. The cost, which can easily reach $35,000 per space
in larger cities, is then incorporated into the selling price or rent.
If this requirement were relaxed and the parking spaces were sold or
rented separately from the unit, many buyers or tenants might decide
they would sooner rely on public transit, carsharing and/or carpooling.

Carsharing is well-established in our three biggest cities and gaining
momentum in smaller centres. The advantage of carsharing is that it
reverses the relationship between fixed and variable vehicle costs. In
conventional vehicle ownership, most of the costs are fixed (vehicle
purchase, finance, insurance, licence, etc.), while the per-kilometre
costs of fuel, lubrication, tires and incremental maintenance are fairly
low (about 10 or 15 cents per km for most vehicles in Canada today). In
other words, the more you drive, the less each kilometre costs on
average. A carsharer's costs, by contrast, are directly proportional to
usage.

An often-overlooked major player in transportation, the insurance
industry, could helpfully advance the user-pay principle much further.
Usage-based auto insurance, currently being tested in Minnesota, offers
drivers discounts of as much as 25 per cent based on data from an
onboard "black box" that records how much, how fast and at what times
the vehicle is driven. This might be the first step in a real
revolution.

Some commercial fleet operators already use geographic positioning and
information systems so accurate that they can tell if a driver speeds in
a school zone. Insurance based on such data could have far-reaching
impacts on highway safety and health costs as well as on fuel
efficiency.

From there, it is not a big leap to integrated systems that assess and
display the full economic, social and environmental costs of vehicle use
as they are incurred. The mellow androgynous voice emerges from the
dash: "Sorry, sir or madam, that last acceleration exceeded your credit
limit. Please pull over before your vehicle is disabled. A bus will be
along shortly."

Motor vehicles are going to change, perhaps in ways we cannot foresee,
but the bigger changes may turn out to be in how, where and when we use
them.

Robert Bott, a Calgary-based communications consultant specializing in
energy, is co-chair of the Calgary Alternative Transportation
Co-operative (CATCO) and author of Our Petroleum Challenge (Canadian
Centre for Energy Information, 2004).

by Wes “Scoop” Nisker

Crazy wisdom always tries to tell the truth, so I’ll begin by saying that I don’t know what is going on here, in this life and in this world. I don’t know any more than anyone else about why we -humans are here, or what we are supposed to be doing while we’re here, and I have no clue as to why we seem to be screwing things up so badly on our planet.

My intuition is that we are being tested by the universe (some god or goddess, mother nature, the great scientist in the sky, whoever or whatever) to see if we have the ability to override our instinctual programming and survive our own desires and fears. Maybe we are competing with the conscious life on other planets to see who can survive the longest, and the winner gets a big prize. If our earth team is going to win, or if we simply want to survive for a little while longer, we humans had better wake up and smell the CO2. The wolf is now at the door, stopping by on its way to extinction.

We are living in the middle of a biological disaster, the consequences of which make our current economic struggles and nationalist wars seem like petty diversions. When trying to convey the gravitas of the situation, I usually cite research that says we are in the middle of the fifth- or sixth-largest species die-off in evolutionary history. The naturalists call it an “extinction spasm,” which conjures an image of the earth itself shivering and convulsing from serious infection.

Recently I read an article in the back pages of the San Francisco Chronicle under the headline “Humans’ Basic Needs Destroying Planet Rapidly.” (The front page of that day’s Chronicle was devoted to more important stories.) The article cites the results of a four-year United Nations study, “The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment,” which found that humans have “ruined approximately 60 per cent of the earth’s ecological systems to meet our demands for food, fresh water, timber and fuel.” We have discovered a problem, and it is us.

When I reflect on our predicament, I think, “We have to do everything in our power to stop the destruction of the earth’s life support systems.” At the same time, part of me says, “We have to learn to let it all go.” It sounds paradoxical, but I live with that dilemma, just as I assume others do in this post-post-modern world. We are aware of the disaster that is taking place on Earth, and at the same time we have knowledge of hundreds of billions of solar systems like our own. Are we over-dramatizing our human existence?

The discoveries of Western science reveal that we are at the mercy of massive streams of cosmic and biological evolution, forces that couldn’t care less about our desire to survive as a species, let alone our hope of creating justice and peace. Can we expect to have any significant influence on the length of time that life will continue to evolve on this tiny little rock hurtling through space? As the Taoist sage Chuang Tzu once asked, “Do you really think you can take over the universe and improve it?”

What resolves the dilemma for us is Mother Nature herself, who boldly writes out directions for us in our DNA, the primary command being: “Survive!” We are built to struggle for survival, however we come to envision the necessary action, because that’s just the way we are built. You must try to save the world! Ironically, for all of previous human history our survival instinct had us spending our time and energy trying to protect ourselves from nature, and now suddenly we are called on to protect nature from us. (But then, we are nature, so who’s leading in this dance anyway?)

Some would say we are lucky to have a planetary crisis like this on our watch. As my eco-Buddhist activist friend Joanna Macy says, “Rejoice! Opportunities to become a bodhisattva (a Buddhist saint of compassion) are extremely plentiful right now!” I draw on a more mundane motivation, which concludes, “What else is there to do?” You can either try to keep yourself stimulated with the latest toys of the empire, or work to thwart the idiots in power and undermine the juggernaut of destruction, the self-consumption economy. The latter activity is much more satisfying, because in the process you get to exercise your heart and learn how to love beyond the small circumference of self and family.

So here’s what you should do to help save the world—something! Each of us has our own temperament and talent and has to decide how best to use them, but everybody can do something. Just thinking subversive thoughts is a good start. Try to imagine other ways to organize an economy. Some might decide to picket in front of an oil company of your choice, while others will want to go to the ocean (the primal amniotic fluid) and chain themselves to an endangered coral reef. Since part of our challenge is to bring the divine back home again, you might want to get involved in some regular pagan ritual. Go ahead and hug a tree, or bow down and kiss the earth. The age of cynicism is dead!

I have a practical suggestion for the politicians in Washington, D.C. Over the past year or two they have tried to create a new intelligence agency, with a “czar” who would coordinate whatever intelligence their agencies manage to find. But what the United States really needs is a department of wisdom, a government agency that would be staffed by philosophers, anthropologists, historians, some jesters, and even a few mystics; people who see the world in a different way than that of economists, generals, and senators. Although the political right may currently be in charge, the real oppressor is the left-brain government. A department of wisdom just might provide some critical balance of powers.

If I were in the department of wisdom, I would call for an immediate moratorium on progress, to last at least a half-century. We had a whole lot of progress in the last couple of centuries, and although it brought us pain-killing drugs, space-telescopes, and Velcro, it appears that we can no longer keep up with our own ingenuity. We now race madly around in our individual boxes of steel, chasing after satisfaction, and in the process we are throwing the atmosphere out of whack by burning up two or three geological epochs worth of the sun’s stored energy in one great choking bonfire of the vanities.

We spent the better part of our genius figuring out new ways to blow each other up or learning how to go faster, and in our fear and haste we forgot about who we are and where we are going. We need to relax, deeply, and let our hearts and minds catch up with our tool-making ability, which has gotten way out of hand. What we need is a century of less doing and more “being.” The next revolution is a big slowdown.

I also have some broad suggestions on how we might help heal our sick civilization and the ailing planet, based on the understanding of crazy wisdom, a long-running tradition of tricksters, saints, self-proclaimed fools, and other disreputable characters. Rather than practical solutions, crazy wisdom offers a stance, an attitude to carry with us as we proceed through these ominous days. (When the revolution comes, I am angling for a seat on the ambiance committee.)

First and foremost, keep a big perspective in your pocket, ready to be unfurled in your head at a moment’s notice. The big perspective reminds us that nature is one tough mother, and that life has so far survived the collision of continents, mountain ranges erupting in volcanoes, murderously cold ice ages, the plague, Attila the Hun, and even Henry Kissinger. So there is reason for optimism. I also took heart the other day when a friend who is an expert on Hindu prophecy told me that there are only 470,000 years left in the Kali Yuga, the era of destruction. Whew! We’ve turned the corner.

The big perspective also carries your intuitive understanding that you are part of it all, and so are they, the people who the Dalai Lama calls “my friends, the enemy.” If your big picture does not talk about the big love then it won’t transform anything.

My favorite big perspective is the epic of evolution, which offers us all forgiveness by revealing that we are a baby species, just getting started on our history. There were 100 million generations of dinosaurs, at least 10 million generations of mammals before humans came along, but there have only been 20 or 30 thousand generations of modern homo sapiens. We only recently acquired these big brains and still don’t know how to use them very well. From the perspective of biological evolution it is clear: humans should not be tried as adults.

The story of evolution is also a good place to discover self-liberation. Contemporary biology tells us that we are all cells in a single living organism which is life on Earth: the Greeks called that being “Gaia,” the goddess. Your life is not about you so much as it is about life itself, and when we feel ourselves to be part of this grand earthbound experiment then we can find meaning and purpose in working for its preservation.

If we look at ourselves in evolutionary history, we also find hope, because we can see that we are currently acquiring a new level of consciousness. Lao Tzu, Socrates and the Buddha appeared only 2,500 years ago—a blink of an eye in biological time—and Darwin, Freud, Jung, Einstein, and Hubble are virtually our contemporaries. We are just now waking up to a radically different understanding of ourselves in the scheme of things, and it is exciting to be alive to witness it. Of course we are feeling the growing pains as we move through this transition , but maybe we will soon find a way to adapt to our latest story about human life. Maybe we will discover how to use our hearts and minds better, and finally learn how to be happy.

Along with your big perspective, I suggest that you cultivate a hearty sense of humour and always keep it handy. As Wavy Gravy says, “If you don’t have a sense of humour, it’s just not funny.” Remember that nobody really knows what’s going on here and that we are all at the mercy of the great mystery. So admit your basic foolishness, laugh as much as possible, and step lightly through this world. You will cause less damage that way.

In the end the most important thing is to learn to love yourself and to love life and the world, in all its fragile, fleeting, cruel beauty. If we don’t love it then we won’t be able to find the energy to heal it.

Finally, stay high but keep your priorities straight, and if you don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.

Wes “Scoop” Nisker is an author, radio commentator, Buddhist meditation teacher, and performer. His bestselling books include Essential Crazy Wisdom (Ten Speed Press), and The Big Bang, The Buddha, and the Baby Boom (HarperSanFrancisco). Nisker is the founder and co-editor of the international Buddhist journal “Inquiring Mind.”

A distinctive aspect of the Westin Resort Macaus energy management efforts is clearly its breadth, there is no single champion. Many hotel managers still think that their annual energy expense is adequately managed by glancing once a month at that confusing jumble of numbers called an electricity bill. But [China's] Westin Resort Macau ensures that a deep and thorough inspection of all energy data electricity, gas, fuel oil and vehicle fuel has been carried out once a week at the very least. Problems are identified, trends are analyzed, and effective changes are locked in. The nine department managers who need the largest amount of energy to accomplish their missions know each week how much their business unit consumed the previous week and can compare this with their targets, what they should have been able to achieve, given the weather and business volume that actually occurred. The best department is identified each week, and a league table shows who is ahead for the year. Although they also know the cost, the focus is squarely on quantity, since cost is largely out of the managers' hands. It is important to note that the resort has used energy management as a tool to achieve guest satisfaction, not as a tool simply to cut costs. Breadth, frequency and depthmany hotels in Asia and throughout the world now follow some elements set by the Westin Resort Macau. Hotel Asia Pacific, Nov/Dec 04, p 47, by Robert Allender

For the past several years China has been modernizing at a frightening, almost unfathomable, pace. Yet Architect William McDonough is cautiously optimistic on helping China realize an ecological future. McDonough is working with the China Housing Industry Association (CHIA) and a group of developers to create templates for cities based on the cradle-to-cradle protocol. What we do is examine sitessome of which are as big as 20 square kilometersthrough a different set of lenses. We look at them, for example, as if we were a migrating bird. What would we want to see there in terms of evolution? We also look at it from the ground: What am I doing here? That's one lens. Another lens would be hydrology. What if I'm groundwater or a raindrop? So we work from the sky, into the earth. We're the master planners for seven sites. And the basic point is that if you look at the world through a new let of lenses, suddenly the ecosystem becomes your infrastructure. The Chinese will house 400 million people in the next 12 years. It's the largest migration of humans in history. Essentially they're rebuilding the housing stock of two Americasin 12 years. McDonough is looking at developing planning templates that people can take and use for their own projects. We want to spread the word as fast as we can. CHIA did a mass-energy study on what would happen if all 400 million units were built with brick. Theyd lose all their soil and burn all their coal. You'd have cities, but you wouldnt have any food or energy. Thats how big this is. In fact, 174 jurisdictions have made brick illegal. McDonough is working with BASF, the world's largest chemical company, to develop a way of using toxin-free polystyrene foam. Wed put thin concrete skins on both sides. Itd be like big foam-core board, which we'd run on the outside of the house. That's the strategy to replace brick on the large technological scale. Metropolis, Feb 05, p 30 [More: http://www.mcdonoughpartners.com/ ]