Category Archives: public policy

Water Footprint and the bottled water debate

As many of you know, I’m not a huge fan of campaigns to ban bottled water for reasons I’ve outlined here and here (the short version is, bottled water is a healthier choice than coke or even OJ, so why no ban those?).

Those who wish to ban bottled water usually fall into two camps. There are those who believe that water should never be sold, under any circumstances. Here, there is simply an ideological difference. Frankly, I’m glad that someone is selling water so that on the rare occasion I’m on the move and want to buy something to drink I have a healthy option such as water and don’t have to buy pop or juice. Moreover, I’m not sure what a ban on selling water would look like. I can imagine that Dasani would start selling “containers” with water included for “free”.

The second camp are those who worry about the carbon impact of shipping and selling water. I completely agree with this groups concerns. I believe all products (water, coke, orange juice) should have to fully account for the environmental impact of their product. I too find water shipped in from Fiji offensive. Indeed, this is why I proposed that cities sell bottled water themselves – to lower the carbon footprint, mandate recycling, and radically under-price the established multinationals.

A reader found the chart below in the economist and sent it to me. It uses data from Waterfootprint.org and adds more complexity to the debate:

water footprint

My main disagreement with an outright ban is that it removes a healthy choice for consumers from store shelves. Now I see that it does something else as well, it removes a choice that has the lowest water footprint. From a water conservation perspective, we shouldn’t ban bottled water, we should ban coffee.

My fear is that this debate is now more about symbols than it is about good public health, water and environmental policy. Again, this is what drove my initial proposal at the bottom of this post. How do we make a healthy choice convenient and portable but balance that against the legitimate environmental and water concerns?

Job in public policy and the environment

Hello everyone, highly reliable sources tell me that the Sustainable Prosperity is good people. Looks like they are looking to hire an Research Director and so I wanted to pass the word along…

SP is hiring a Research Director. This is a senior position based at the University of Ottawa’s Institute of the Environment, with the possibility of an academic appointment for qualified candidates.  See attached job posting for full details.

As a senior member of the SP team, the Research Director will lead the organization’s research initiatives and oversee the academic research network, working with the network coordinator. The Research Director will work collaboratively with other SP associates, steering committee and staff to identify policy-relevant research priorities, generate the research and reports, and direct their dissemination.

The Research Director will also be responsible for: fostering strong links between academics and research users; overseeing research competitions; and promoting SP concepts across academic and policy communities in Canada. S/he will be expected to establish new links with external partners, and build upon existing relationships in order to establish SP as a leading centre of policy-relevant, evidence based research on the environment and economy. The director will also be carrying out his/her own research, as part of this agenda… more on their webpage.

How GCPEDIA will save the public service

31 Replies

GCPediaGCPEDIA (also check out this link) is one of the most exciting projects going on in the public service. If you don’t know what GCPEDIA is – check out the links. It is a massive wiki where public servants can share knowledge, publish their current work, or collaborate on projects. I think it is one of two revolutionary changes going on that will transform how the public service works (more on this another time).

I know some supporters out there fear that GCPEDIA – if it becomes too successful – will be shut down by senior executives. These supporters fear the idea of public servants sharing information with one another will simply prove to be too threatening to some entrenched interests. I recognize the concern, but I think it is ultimately flawed for two reasons.

The less important reason is that it appears a growing number of senior public servants “get it.” They understand that this technology – and more importantly the social changes in how people work and organize themselves that come along with them – are here to stay. Moreover, killing this type of project would simply send the worst possible message about public service sector renewal – it would be an admission that any real efforts at modernizing the public service are nothing more than window dressing. Good news for GCPEDIA supporters – but also not really the key determinant.

The second, and pivotal reason, is that GCPEDIA is going to save the public service.

I’m not joking.

Experts and observers of the Public Service has been talking for the last decade about the demographic tsunami that is going to hit the public service. The tsunami has to do with age. In short, a lot of people are going to retire. In 2006 52% of public servants are 44-65. in 1981 it was 38%, in 1991 it was 32%. Among executives the average ages are higher still. EX-1’s (the most junior executive level) has an average age of 50, Ex 2’s are at 51.9, Ex 3’s at 52.7 and Ex 4’s at 54.1. (numbers from David Zussman – link is a powerpoint deck)

Remember these are average ages.

In short, there are a lot of people who, at some point in the next 10 years, are going to leave the public service. Indeed, in the nightmare scenario, they all leave within a short period of time – say 1-2 years, and suddenly an enormous amount of knowledge and institutional memory walks out the door with them. Such a loss would have staggering implications. Some will be good – new ways of thinking may become easier. But most will be negative, the amount of work and knowledge that will have to be redone to regain the lost institutional memory and knowledge cannot be underestimated.

GCPEDIA is the public service’s best, and perhaps only, effective way to capture the social capital of an entire generation in an indexed and searchable database that future generations can leverage and add to. 10’s of millions of man-hours, and possible far more, are at stake.

This is why GCPEDIA will survive. We can’t afford for it not to.

As an aside, this has one dramatic implication. People are already leaving so we need to populate GCPEDIA faster. Indeed, if I were a Deputy Minister I would immediately create a 5 person communications team whose sole purpose was two fold. First to spread the word about the existence of GCPEDIA as well as help and encourage people to contribute to it. Second, this team would actually interview key boomers who may not be comfortable with the technology and transcribe their work for them onto the wiki. Every department has a legend who is an ES-6 and who will retire an ES-6 but everybody knows that they know everything about everything that ever happened, why it happened and why it matters. It’s that person everybody wants to consult with in the cafeteria. Get that person, and find a way to get their knowledge into the wiki, before their pension vests.

the misguided bottled water debate

The debate over bottled water continues… with those who dislike bottled water continuing to miss the point.

Just over a year ago I wrote this piece on why bottled water haters have it wrong. Today, anti-bottled water activists press on, trying to get municipalities to ban bottled water sales. This quote in the Globe and Mail by Joe Cressy, the Polaris Institute’s drinking-water campaign coordinator again shows the problematic thinking behind the campaign.

“(This) resolution is a resounding victory and the latest indication that bottled water’s 15 minutes are up and the tap is back.”

“In the same way that Coca-Cola doesn’t sell Pepsi in its buildings, we’re very pleased to see the FCM encouraging municipalities not to provide bottled water on city property.”

So three comments on this quote.

First, there are all sorts of other drinks that will continue to be sold on city properties: Coke, Orange Juice, Fruitopia all of which contain a lot more sugar and are generally less healthy for you than… water. Banning water may be seen as a victory, unless it means someone is going to buy something else, something that is less healthy and will increase health costs over the long term.

Second, the line about Coca-Cola not selling pepsi in their building reveals a lot about the flawed logic. Anti-bottle water activists will claim that people should be drinking tap water, not bottled water, because it is just as good. But this usually isn’t why people drink bottled water. People don’t just drink it for the flavour or safety (if they do at all) but because it is convenient. I always drink water from the tap if a restaurant provides me a glass, but what if I want to head out around town? Or am in my car? I’m now essentially being told I should make a less healthy choice – since I can’t buy water, I’ll have to buy pop or juice. Not everyone wants to, or will, carry around a water bottle everywhere they go and fill it up with tap water. Many (if not most) people simply prefer not to. If you try to force them, most will probably end up making a worse choice, like buying a Coke.

Finally, those opposed to bottled water are part of two distinct camps. The first are those who are opposed to someone charging for water under any circumstances. I’ve already noted that people aren’t buying the water, they are buying convenience. The second group of people are those who are concerned about the waste generated by bottled water. I am squarely in this camp – deeply concerned about the environmental impact of these containers. Here, however, we have lots of models that are less radical than an outright ban. Legislating, or simply encouraging, bottled water manufacturers to create a deposit system for their bottles would be a good first start. I suspect that if 100% of water bottles were recycled (as they should be) support for bottled water bans would dry up pretty fast.

Let’s hope a sensible solution for the challenge of bottled water waste emerges. One that doesn’t drive consumers to purchasing the diabetes-inducing sugar drinks that are the real competition.

Why the government of canada needs bloggers

blogJust got back from a week on the road and have given 4 out of 5 of my lectures on the future of the public service. Best part of the lectures? The Q&A, always lots of smart comments, critiques, ideas and thoughts coming out of the audience.

One theme that came up was that public servants feel they are suffering from information overload. There is simply so much going on around them and it is impossible to keep up with it all. This is especially true of those in the senior ranks.

This is why the public service needs bloggers. Not to communicate with the public but to help public servants manage and understand all that internal knowledge and information.

The simplest way of explaining this is to refer to one of my favourite authors – David Weinberger – who noticed that (outside government and on the internet) we already have a solution to the problem of too much information. As he states in his 2008 Bertha Bassam Lecture at the University of Toronto – the solution is to create more information:

In the early 1900s we faced the challenge. We were told over and over again in alarmist books and articles that we were going to drown in the ocean of information. Watch out! There’s an information Tsunami coming… fell everybody! We are all going to die…!

And it turns out there was way more information than anybody expected. Orders of magnitude more. We can’t even imagine the amount of information that there is. And yet we are doing pretty well. I’m not drowning. You drowning? I’m not drowning… we are doing pretty well.

And the reason we are doing pretty well is that the solution to the information overload problem is to simply generate still more information. That is information about the information, or as we like to say meta-data. And so that is what we’ve been doing. And by doing that, by generating this information about the information we are able to manage and find and build and collect and make our way through it.

This is what blogs often are: meta-data. They sift through the information that is out there and tease out what is important and what is relevant and write it up in a readable and accessible fashion.

So if public servants feel overwhelmed by information one of the main reasons is that they have no filters. There are few, if any bloggers within departments that are writing about what they think is important and what is going on around them. What is actually happening versus what is simply smoke and mirrors. I suspect that if you allowed public servants to blog, you could cut down on email traffic and, more importantly, meetings (which are a drain on everybody’s time) by at least 25%. Want to know what my team is up to? Don’t schedule a meeting. First, read my blog. Oh, and search the tags to find what is relevant to you. (you can do that on my blog too, if you are still reading this piece it probably means you are interested in this tag.)

Still more interesting would be that some people in a department would start to blog about what is going on, on the ground. An ADM wants to know what really matters to those on the front line of program? Reading the blog of a front line officer might give him or her more insights, more quickly than simply asking their DG.

And, of course, what happens in the real world would happen in government to. Some people, who write well and on topics others care about, would have more people read there posts. Others, who were more niche, or who wrote on things that were less relevant, would get less traffic. Reputation and merit would guide information rather than authority or, worse, access to the ministry’s email list.

In this world, the relevant information finds you and you it, rather than the information that someone else thinks you should know. That is how you solve the information overload problem in government. So let the bloggers run free.

Wedding Open Source to Government Service Delivery

One of the challenges I’m most interested in is how we can wed “open” systems to government hierarchies. In a lecture series I’ve developed for Health Canada I’ve developed a way of explaining how we do this already with our 911 service.

To begin, I like using 911 as an example because people are familiar and comfortable with it. More importantly, virtually everyone agrees that it is not only an essential piece of modern government service but also among the most effective.

What is interesting is that 911, unlike many government programs, relies on constant citizen input.  It is a system that has been architected to be participatory. Indeed it only works because it is participatory – without citizen input the system falls apart. Specifically, it aggregates, very effectively, the long-tail 0f knowledge within a community to deliver, with pin point accuracy, an essential service to the location it is needed at a time it is needed.

I’ve visualized in this slide below (explanation below the fold)

long tail public policy

Imagine the white curve represents all of the police, fire and ambulance interventions in a city. Many of the most critical interventions are ones the police force and ambulance service determine themselves (shaded blue). For example, the police are involved in an investigation that results in a big arrest, or the ambulance parks outside an Eagles reunion concert knowing that some of the boomers in attendance will be “over-served” and will suffer a heart attack.

However, while investigations and predictable events may account for some police/fire/ambulatory actions (and possibly those that receive the most press attention) the vast majority of arrests, fire fights and medical interventions result from plain old 911 calls made by ordinary citizens (shaded red). True, many of these are false alarms, or are resolved with minimal effort (a fire extinguisher deals with the problem, or minor amount of drugs are confiscated but no arrests made). But the sheer quantity of these calls means that while the average quality may be low, they still account for the bulk of successful (however defined) interventions. Viewed in this light 911 is a knowledge aggregator, collecting knowledge from citizens to determine where police cars, fire trucks and ambulances need to go.

Thus to find a system that leverages citizens knowledge and is architected for participation we don’t need to invent something new – there are existing systems, like 911, that we can learn from.

With this in mind, two important lessons about 911 leap out at me:

1) It is a self-interested system: While many 911 callers are concerned citizens calling about someone else I suspect the majority of calls – and the most accurate calls – are initiated by those directly or immediately impacted by a situation. People who have been robbed, are suffering from a heart attack, or who have a fire in their kitchen are highly incented to call 911. Consequently, the system leverages our self interest, although it also allows for good Samaritans to contribute as well.

2) It is narrowly focused in its construct: 911 doesn’t ask callers or permit callers to talk about the nature of justice, the history of fire, or the research evidence supporting a given medical condition. It seeks a very narrow set of data points: the nature of the problem and its location. This is helpful to both emergency response officials and citizens. It limits the quantity of data for the former and helps minimize the demands on the latter.

These, I believe, are the secret ingredients to citizen engagement of the future. A passive type of engagement that seeks specific, painless information/preferences/knoweldge from citizens to augment or redistribute services more effectively.

It isn’t sexy, but it works. Indeed we have 20 years of evidence showing us how well it works with regards to one of our most important services.

broadcast artists in a communication world

Just a brief follow up on yesterday’s piece. One reader yesterday pointed out that the CRTC did “get the internet” and that it was the interveners – The Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) that “didn’t get it.” I think there is lots to dive into about the CRTC but part of his point is well taken. Check out this problematic quote from ACTRA:

“The Internet is just another media-distribution platform like any other that we’ve had,” said Stephen Waddell, executive director of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists. “And in our view, if the CRTC doesn’t give some opportunity to Canadian content to have a place on that platform, we’re going to be immersed in non-Canadian content.”

The number of problems with this statement are almost overwhelming. Building on some of the reasons I discussed yesterday the internet is not like any other distribution platform. Rather than analyze it line by line, I thought I would hand things over to Clay Shirky, who in Here Comes Everybody explains how our  friends at ACTRA are caught in the same dilemma as scribes at the end of the 15th century:

Consider the position of a scribe in the early 1400s. The ability to write, one of the crowning achievements of human inventiveness, was difficult to attain and, as a result, rare. Only a tiny fraction of the populace could actually write… In this environment a small band of scribes performed the essential service of refreshing cultural memory. By hand-copying new editions of existing manuscripts, they performed a task that could be preformed no other way. The scribe was the bulwark against great intellectual loss…

…Now consider the position of the scribe at the end of the 1400s. Johannes Guttenburg’s invention of movable type in the middle of the century created a sudden and massive reduction in the difficulty of reproducing a written work… a scribe, someone who has given his life over to literacy as a cardinal virtue, would be conflicted about the meaning of movable type. After all, if books are good, then surely more books are better. But at the same time the very scarcity of literacy was what gave scribal efforts its primacy, and the scribal way of life was based on this scarcity…

…The spread of literacy after the invention of movable type ensured not the success of the scribal profession but its end. Instead of mass professionalization, the spread of literacy was a process of mass amateurization. The term “scribe” didn’t get extended to everyone who could read and write. Instead it simply disappeared, as it no longer denoted a professional class.

This is what the internet has done to radio, television and cinema professionals. It has radically lowered the barriers for the creation of Canadian content.

So do we lament the loss of scribes? Not at all – we are liberated because today we can all write. Has the acerage quality declined? Possibly, we aren’t all writing Dante’s Inferno. But the best writing is way, way better (and better paying as well).

Will we lament the loss of television, cinema and radio (I doubt they will disappear completely) no. Something new and more interesting will arise to replace it. With the end of scribes we didn’t writers, instead we gained something far more valuable, the growth of contemporary authors! (who in 1350 could have imagined a world of authors, book stores, top 10 best seller lists?)

Now, imagine if there had been a tax on every printing press to pay for scribes to continue copying books… that would have just made books more expensive and less accessible.

We must acknowledge ACTRA fear of the new world. However self-serving, it is rational and genuine. Everything is going to be unpredictable for a while. But the future also the opportunity for something new an amazing – unimaginable ways for new types artists and mediums to describe the human condition and touch our souls. Just because it won’t be the way it has been done – through the broadcast mediums of radio, television, and cinema – doesn’t mean that it won’t be good. Indeed, I predict, that once the dust has settled, there will be more artists, producers, actors, and creatives in general, many of who will continue to get paid well. It’s just that the line between amateur and professional will be more blurred. There may even be a role for a professional association – although I imagine it will look, much, much different. Scary, yes. But also unavoidable.

The CRTC’s broadcast nationalism won’t matter in a networked world

nocrtcWoke up today was confronted by yet another headline demonstrating why the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) must go.

For those who’ve never heard of the CRTC, it is the government agency that regulates Canadian broadcasting and telecommunications activities, the best-known of which is probably the Canadian content rules.

At the core of the proposal is a fundamental misunderstanding of the internet. The CRTC wishes to treat it like a broadcast medium – one where there are distinct roles of creators and consumers. Happily for us, this is not what the internet is. Instead it is what Clay Shirky describes as a communications medium – one where we are all talking to one another and where the distinction between creator and consumer has broken down.

So with that lens in mind, I encourage you to read the article. Below is my analysis:

Amid fears that Canada’s culture is being drowned in a sea of online video from around the world, federal regulators are looking at setting up a $100-million fund to support homegrown programming on the Internet… under a scenario proposed yesterday, Internet service providers could be asked to surrender 3 per cent of their subscriber revenue – roughly $100-million – to a fund that would help produce Canadian programs for the Web.

Is Canadian content being drowned out in a sea of online videos? I suppose. But so is everybody’s. It is the nature of the medium. What % of content on the internet is American, Indian, Chinese? Does it matter? Not really. Because people don’t surf the internet like they surf the radio or television – most often the seek out content. But the CRTC is used to a certain % of content being Canadian on the radio and television because it controlled how much content ended up on those mediums. This is their frame and why they can’t understand the internet.

Ironically, even though we don’t know what % of online content is Canadian what the CRTC cannot grasp is that since the advent of the internet ordinary Canadian both produced more content and – I’ll wager – consumed more Canadian content than ever before. Think of all the blogs, videos, podcasts made by ordinary Canadians that are sharing Canadian stories over the web. Think of this blog. Ensuring Canadian stories get shared is core to the CRTC’s mandate. And yet, for all their discussion about Canadian content the CRTC does not include content created by all those Canadians who’ve previously could never tell their stories.

Why? Because none of us have title of “producer” or “writer” or “actor” in the CRTC’s eyes. We (Canadians) don’t count as culture.

More ironically, the one thing you often can’t find online (and/or has been slow to get online) is the very media the CRTC does count as culture and that it seeks to protect – the Canadian TV and radio shows broadcast on CTV, CBC and Global. These artifacts of the broadcast era have fought or denied the existence if the internet, who have been the slowest to make their content available to us, now want us to foot the bill for creating their content.

What I can be certain of is that the $100 million raised by the CRTC will not go towards Canadians telling their story on the web. My blog, your blog, your podcast, or your video of the play you wrote, none of these will never see the CRTC’s money. Instead a public servant somewhere in Ottawa will determine what is “Canadian” not so we can promote Canadians stories, but so that we can prop the old and dying business model of broadcast media – the expensive production facilities, the hierarchies of managers and staffers that are necessary to produce older media like television.

Nor is this is not about protecting artists – writers, actors, singers – they all thrived before the advent of television, and they will thrive after its demise in ways we cannot imagine. Again, this is not about them. It is about an industry trying to prop up a dying broadcast medium and a government agency trying to assert control over what can be defined as Canadian.

Both are problematic and have no place in a networked world. As a closing counter factual, imagine a tax on your phone designed to raised funds to ensure a certain % of all phone calls in the world were being conducted by Canadians. A fund designed to pay people to make “Canadian” phone calls. That is what this is. At the very time when we need the internet to be free and as cheap as possible so those with the fewest resources can make use of it to tell their stories, organize protests, create a new business or just find a job, we are going to try to make it more expensive.

In short. Are Canadians lost in a sea of content? Yes. And they are thriving in it. More Canadian stories are being told than ever before. Moreover, I never watched Canadian content on television, but today I read numerous Canadian blogs, and listen to the occasional podcast. I never consumed so much Canadian media in my life.  Moreover, never has Canadian content been so widely viewed. Readers of even this small blog come from around the world.

What we don’t need is a tax that makes it more expensive for ordinary Canadians to tell their stories. We don’t need a levy that props up a dying business model. We don’t need a government agency that defines what is “Canadian culture.” Arguing against this proposal is not the most important battle of our time, but it is worth fighting against. Today Canadian culture is a free culture, increasingly defined and created by Canadians. That’s the promise of the internet, why would we fight that?

Articles I'm digesting – Feb 13 2009

New Planets & an Unknown Object Discovered Beyond the Solar System

Future telescopes such as NASA’s Kepler, set for launch in 2009, would be able to discover dozens or hundreds of Earth-like worlds. The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), to be launched early in the next decade, consists of multiple telescopes placed along a 30 foot structure. With an unprecedented resolution approaching the physical limits of optics, the SIM is so sensitive that it almost defies belief: orbiting the earth, it can detect the motion of a lantern being waved by an astronaut on Mars.

The last sentence says it all. My mind = blown.

Fareed Zakaria – Worthwhile Canadian Initiative (via Sameer Vasta)

Canada has done more than survive this financial crisis. The country is positively thriving in it. Canadian banks are well capitalized and poised to take advantage of opportunities that American and European banks cannot seize. The Toronto Dominion Bank, for example, was the 15th-largest bank in North America one year ago. Now it is the fifth-largest. It hasn’t grown in size; the others have all shrunk.

So what accounts for the genius of the Canadians? Common sense. Over the past 15 years, as the United States and Europe loosened regulations on their financial industries, the Canadians refused to follow suit, seeing the old rules as useful shock absorbers. Canadian banks are typically leveraged at 18 to 1—compared with U.S. banks at 26 to 1 and European banks at a frightening 61 to 1. Partly this reflects Canada’s more risk-averse business culture, but it is also a product of old-fashioned rules on banking.

I’ve always thought Zakaria was one of the smartest commentators in the US. I’ve unbelievably excited he has his own show on CNN. Finally a show where real ideas are discussed not by pundits but by actual wonks. His show single-handedly elevates the entire CNN brand. Now he’s saying nice things about us. Hopefully we won’t let it go to our heads.

How the Crash Will Reshape America: The Last Crisis of the Factory Towns by Richard Florida.

When work disappears, city populations don’t always decline as fast as you might expect. Detroit, astonishingly, is still the 11th-largest city in the U.S. “If you no longer can sell your property, how can you move elsewhere?” said Robin Boyle, an urban-planning professor at Wayne State University, in a December Associated Press article. But then he answered his own question: “Some people just switch out the lights and leave—property values have gone so low, walking away is no longer such a difficult option.”

Perhaps Detroit has reached a tipping point, and will become a ghost town. I’d certainly expect it to shrink faster in the next few years than it has in the past few. But more than likely, many people will stay—those with no means and few obvious prospects elsewhere, those with close family ties nearby, some number of young professionals and creative types looking to take advantage of the city’s low housing prices. Still, as its population density dips further, the city’s struggle to provide services and prevent blight across an ever-emptier landscape will only intensify.

Many of the old industrial clusters are dying and we’ll have to manage this decline while helping figure out what the next wave will look like. This is part of the reason why think the federal government’s failure to invest in green technology/innovation will stand as one of the biggest lost opportunities of the century. At the peak of a financial crises and at the moment when our cities – particularly our mid-sized cities – need to think about what their economies will look like for the next 100 years (think renewable energy, green roofs/architecture, mobile computing, next-generation social services) we’ve plowed $30B into 20th century buildings and roads. Hopefully the good news of Zakaria will outweigh the bad news from Florida. I hope so, since it appears this crisis won’t be sufficiently significant to spur us to rethink our future.

I live on a green roof – and so should everyone

There has been an exploding interest in green roofs of late. During the recent Vision Vancouver fundraiser I was introduced to Erika Richmond who designed and built my friend Toby B.’s greenroof in the downtown east side. Walking away from the conversation I suddenly realized I may actually live on a green roof.

The building I live in has 4 floors of commercial real estate and a rooftop townhouse development built around a 20,000 sq ft garden and sidewalks. The “sidewalks” have ceders and trees planted along them, the main garden is a grass field and with over 14 decently sized wood garden plots.

Is it technically a green roof? I don’t know. But it does create a beautiful and relatively peaceful living space 25 meters above street in an increasingly busy part of town.

(I realize the photos do not look particularly green but you we are in the midst of what passes for winter here in Vancouver. I’ll try posting some new ones come spring/summer.)

But it turns out the beauty is the least important part of green roofs. For a policy geek like me there is a fascinating and increasing amount of research into the benefits of green roofs – some of the most interesting of which has been commissioned by the City of Toronto and available in a report it published in late 2005.

Savings to the city of Toronto, based the assumption that 100% of available green roof areas over 350 sq m. were retrofitted and that 75% of the roof area was made green, were:

Those are some large numbers.

What an enormous opportunity green roofs would have been for the federal budget. Buildings account for a significant amount of GHG emissions and the financial savings generated by such a plan are obviously enormous. Better still the greening of the aforementioned roofs would not require the equivalent planning of say building a highway, bridge or building and so could be undertaken relatively quickly. In short, they are shovel ready. Equally important, green roofs are probably more labour intensive (as opposed to capital intensive) than many of types of infrastructure projects. This means green roof projects might be better positioned to generate jobs and help lower our rising unemployment numbers. Massive year on year savings? Significant employment? Instant initial savings? An increase in property values? Sounds like a stimulus package winner to me.

Sadly, the trend appears to be catching on more in the United States than in Canada. A cursory exploration of the web reveals that New York City recently passed a city by-law that rewards building-owners who cover 50 percent of available rooftop space with a green roof with “a one-year property tax credit of up to $100,000. The credit would be equal to $4.50 per square-foot of roof area that is planted with vegetation, or approximately 25 percent of the typical costs associated with the materials, labor, installation and design of the green roof.” Philadelphia also has a tax credit (although it appears to be little used). Chicago however is an emerging capital of green roofs with over 200!

It is unclear whether Vancouver or Toronto have such a tax credit (it didn’t appear so, but please let me know if I’m wrong). That said, a growing number of Toronto public buildings now have green roofs and Vancouver will soon be host to Canada’s largest green roof. It’s a start, but given the size of the opportunity, we could be doing so much more.