As we slide toward Fall, out of the shimmering mirage days of summer, there is a lot of talk out there about housing prices in Canada – and none of it is real good. Interestingly, there is less of an attempt to put a positive spin on things from the Real Estate sector, I’m wondering if this is because they are hoping that everyone is just too busy with preparing for school, or purchasing an iPhone 4 to care about what their home price might be doing.
On a more serious note though, it does raise the question of whether property is the sound investment it has been considered to be for years, and down at the household level, this sort of news should prompt home owners to determine exactly why they live where they live and whether they would live there if the house was no longer an investment.The days of speculation purchasing probably have not disappeared entirely, there will always be a reason for people to have unrealistic beliefs in the market – and some people will make money off of it, but others will lose.
One thing’s for sure, the days of the McMansion are over, average new house sizes are shrinking as developers and builders struggle to market to cost and energy conscious buyers. However, the price of gas as it stands has not been a huge deterrent to families purchasing in the middle of a suburban development where it is impossible to walk to any schools, services or stores, or for people to consider that they really don’t need a 5.7 litre diesel truck to run errands.
Nothing is guaranteed except the unexpected as society moves toward The Long Emergency – do you have a Plan B or Plan C if things don’t turn out as you’d hoped?
Technorati Tags: Business, Canada, House, Investing, investment, long emergency, McMansion, real estate, Real estate pricing
The community had always just assumed that there would be a college in town. It had been a feature of the local economy since its construction and grand opening in 1967 with many of the local kids starting or completing their studies in the institution, and many more young adults travelling from far and wide to study in the Kootenays.
The college was still a destination for people travelling long distances, however the reasons had changed. No longer were students experiencing the dichotomy of social freedom and pressing academic deadlines that is common in tertiary institutions, rather the facility had become a waypoint and distribution centre for migrants seeking employment and a new life in the Kootenays. Situated at the confluence of the Kootenay and Columbia Rivers, the location has been an important meeting place for generations, since the First Nations enjoyed the infamous salmon runs up the mighty Columbia, through the lumber and mining heydays, to the Doukabour settlements that brought agriculture to this land, the confluence has been an ideal location for parties meeting or working to change the course of history.
The academic programs first faltered, with the province claiming cutbacks and staff reductions were as a result of enrollment declines – everyone knew the truth, a town of several thousand can hardly support a “big city” institution, and even those big city universities and colleges were struggling to stem the tide of rapidly declining enrolments as fees skyrocketed and job placements for graduates declined. The local politicians of course made every effort to shame the province into propping up the college and the local economy for another year, as they had with the school districts, pulp mill and forestry jobs over the previous decades.
When the paychecks stopped coming, it didn’t take long for the building to fall into disrepair, and being isolated from the rest of the community, it became a haven for the homeless and vagrants. Interestingly there was a sort of homegrown law and order that developed between the new occupants of this land, there were no police to speak of, certainly none that regularly made it across the river in those days. [click to continue…]
Technorati Tags: Castlegar, Education, futurism, Kootenays, peak oil, Selkirk College, tertiary education, urban farming
The bear came last night. A sow, a big momma, a big hungry momma. Even though we’d hidden the bin, she tore the critter-proof lid off and devoured the remnants of human meals past.
This was the first bear we’d seen in the backyard. There had been signs before, but never a face-to-face encounter. Bang. She lumbered off at my prompting, down the hill to the orchard, away from the ripped open garbage to the ripe apples. Dessert. Away from the humans.
This morning I inspected our fence line and the orchard. Just like a human, the greed of one generation destroys the sustainability for future ones. She snapped the last remaining branch on a wizened apple tree, and ate all the apples. Hoover. Footprints through the vegetable patch.
The other trees in the orchard are not ready yet, but soon. Will the bear come back for more?
Technorati Tags: agriculture, apples, bear, bears, black bear, Castlegar, farming, gardening, orchard
There is a story to these pictures, if you are wondering what the growth is called, it is referred to as “pipe tuberculation” or “insoluble corrosion residue buildup” and the main issue is that it increases pipe friction losses thus reducing fire flows, but can also ultimately lead to pipe failure. The infrastructure in many of Canada’s cities is failing. This is an example of a pipe that until yesterday was still in service eighty years after it was installed, it has spent it’s life providing water to thousands of residents and aside from annual hydrant flushing, would have received no special treatment – much like every other watermain in every other city in North America. It is interesting to note that some of the technologies that are available to postpone the replacement of pipes in this condition, such as watermain pigging, are still considered relatively novel, and when a pipe is in this condition, money spent on pigging it may be better spent on funding the replacement of it, depending on other factors such as the condition of the road surface and the adequacy of the watermain size.
There is a lot to say about how the infrastructure of North America got to this point and what it will take to fix it, but that is for another post.
If you are interested in the chemical processes that cause this type of corrosion, check out this page on the Fire Protection Engineering Archives.
Technorati Tags: Business, Canada, Corrosion, pipe tuberculation, Rossland, Site Construction, tuberculation, Water, water pipe, Water supply network, water utility, watermain
Clean water is something that most of my readers probably quite happily take for granted. Despite the fact that in most Cities the systems we use to clean and transport water are among some of the most decrepit parts of the infrastructure of the communities we live in, we assume that when we turn on the tap, clean water will be available immediately.
Watch the 10 minute video below and learn something about the economic and health realities of dirty water. While the bulk of the video presentation is about the third world applications of this invention, disaster applications are mentioned, including the issues after Hurricane Katrina.
Would you spend $180 for the security of having access to up to 6000L of clean potable water for your family in an emergency? The device has a shelf life of 3 years unopened and can be used for up to 5 years after that if maintained properly. At $5 a month for three years, it is a pretty good insurance investment against disaster.
In our house we have several gallon jugs of water down in the cold room for an emergency, but aside from that, we are almost entirely dependent on the continuity of the City water supply for all of our water needs and wants.
These guys do have a US distributor, (who does ship to Canada for phone orders).
Technorati Tags: clean water, dirty water, disaster management, disease, engineering, Hurrucane Katrina, lifesaver bottle, pollution, third world, Water, water purification, water security, Water Supply
If you want to get a picture of the last twenty or thirty years of the oil industry, then Oil – Money, Politics, and Power in the 21st Century by Tom Bower is a must read.
Released in June 2010, it just missed out on recording one of the biggest oil related disasters, the Deep Water Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico under BPs watch, but paints a clear picture of the forces behind this catastrophic events from trading squeezes, nationalization of oil companies, interference from western governments, taxes, and the personalities of the men (because it has been an almost exclusive club of men) that run the big oil companies.
Pitched as a sequel to The Prize by Daniel Yurgin, “Oil” follows the lives of the biggest players in oil on all sides of the industry. A mix between current affairs and history, it is obvious that Bower has some excellent sources within the oil companies, telling the story from as many sides as possible. The details of deals, politics and price-fixing make you wonder if we will ever again see a realistic price for oil and it’s products.
But that leads me to my one complaint, the discussions about Peak Oil have a fairly patronizing tone. This would be acceptable if the premise of Peak Oil had absolutely no merit, but whether a peak is today or in 100 years time, the issue is not one that is just going to disappear. And if this is the case, should we be attempting to conserve oil rather than waste it, and what would a conservation pricing structure look like?
The Canadian tar sands are given a brief discussion, as is the Exxon Valdez spill among other disasters, Interestingly, the book showed me that investing in oil is a fickle game, challenging the idea that the price of oil will always go up, so investing in it is a no-lose proposition. Overall the book provides an insight into a world that most people have little knowledge about, and for that I’d strongly recommend it as a resource for those wishing to learn more about it, but beyond that it provides little hope for the future in terms of climate change, peak oil or resource wars – it really just shows how excessively greedy man is and how ignorant of the long-term consequences all of us are of our actions.
Reviewed from an Advanced Reading Copy provided by Hachette Book Group (thanks!)
Technorati Tags: Business, climate change, Energy, environment, Gulf of Mexico, Oil and Gas, peak oil, Petroleum industry
Fresh peas are one of the joys of gardening. For the past two seasons we have grown a variety of pea called “Paladio”, available through West Coast Seeds. These pods have up to 10 large sweet peas in them and are quite prolific.
This year we have, in addition to eating lots of peas, harvested peas for seed saving. Traditional advice on saving peas is that you should leave them on the vine to dry, however, my experience with the Paladio, as it is a short growing bush type vine and does not require staking we picked and shelled the peas as they reached maturity so that the summer rains, insects, birds and humidity do not take their toll. I’m not sure it matters either way, but it means we can clear up a row in the garden quicker to get a planting of Oriental Greens in.
At the moment, we have about 650 peas drying on a tray in our kitchen, some of which will likely be available for sale for planting in 2011.
Humans have the remarkable ability to ignore almost every sign pointing to anything but the most favourable outcome. For somethings, (think global warming), it is the status quo that is most appealing, and as a society, we will do almost anything to convince ourselves that any other option is so far removed from the realms of possible that it simply cannot happen. For others, (think economics or housing prices), it is the inexorable push for growth, which, although not linear in itself, there is often the assumption that the rate of growth is linear, or that because we have seen it happen in the immediate past and can plan for such an eventuality, in the short term it will just happen. The straight line frames our world-view. Unfortunately, straight lines are little more than a convenient fiction, one that we are happy to embrace, because it simplifies the messiness of real life, and people in technocratic positions (such as mine as a City Engineer) are often the most guilty of this error, it is really easy to imagine, or even draw a relationship, often linear between two events.
T
his year, the Minister for the Environment in BC made some drought predictions based on the snow pillow data from across the province, these predictions may turn out to be true, but more likely, it will just be a slightly drier than normal year in most parts of the province. Soon after the prediction was made, we had one of the wettest coldest months of June – proving that drawing a linear relationship between a cause (low snow pack in April) and effect (drought in Summer) is too simplistic. But it will continue to happen, because we have little capacity as a society to account for all of the variables and interactions that may impact any outcome.
The interaction between the Economic Situation, Global Warming and Peak Oil situations is extremely complex, and influenced by many external factors that are unpredictable by their very nature. So instead of accounting for the possibility of any interaction between the economy, the climate and a potential energy crisis, policy makers opt to ignore as much of the unknown as possible – a climate policy that ignores energy supplies or the economy, an economic policy that ignores climate change and availability of energy supplies. The linear assumptions work on paper, but are rarely proven in real life. The most ridiculous is the assumption that infinite growth can occur on a finite planet.
While we are looking forward and up, believing that the path is straight and predictable, we fail to see the challenges that we are about to stumble on. Our societal attitudes to change tell us a lot about our ability to adapt in the face of an imperative to change. There is little benefit (other than possibly in short term happiness) in assuming and planning for a linear existence.
Technorati Tags: assumptions, BC, future, futurism, linear, predictions, relationship, Sustainability, unpredictable
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