And that's where most environmentalists go wrong. Their back-to-nature ethos actually encourages sprawl. Even the most environmentally sensitive house on Saltspring Island is a hugely inefficient place to live. They may eat local goat cheese over there, but they've got to drive a long way to get it. The trouble is that when people decide to escape the big city, they drag an entire energy-heavy infrastructure after them. When you move to the country, you basically move into your car.
“The environmental movement is deeply stained with a sort of Malthusian current,” Mr. Owen says. “It's anti-urban, anti-industrial, agrarian, primitivist.” Locavorism (a movement that Mr. Suzuki fervently promotes) is inherently anti-environmental too. Locavores are a sprawl generator. If we all decided to eat local, we'd have to plow up all our remaining green space just to feed ourselves.
My biggest environmental sin is not that I still own an SUV. It's that I drive it to the country every weekend so we can get back to nature. Once we're there, we drive another six or seven miles to the farmer's market and back, and another 10 or 20 miles to visit all our nature-loving friends. Our winter heating bill is enormous. We make our own honey and grow some of our own vegetables, at an approximate cost (including mortgage payments) of $12.98 per tomato. It's nice to get back to the land, but I have new respect for the remarkable efficiencies of agribiz.
The world's population will grow by another 2 billion before long. Where will we put them? Not on Saltspring Island. The most energy-efficient answer is to multiply and intensify our dense urban spaces. The efficiencies of big cities are built in, and don't depend on a sudden transformation of human nature. As David Owen puts it, the most altered landscapes in the world are probably the most planet-friendly.
And if we really want Toronto, for instance, to be more green, we should forget about feel-good stuff like banning plastic bags and coffee-cup lids. We should ban right turns on red lights. We should get rid of high-occupancy lanes and encourage pedestrians to jaywalk. Anything to make driving more difficult. Next, we need to roll right over the NIMBYs who don't want condos in their backyard, and build more of them. We should encourage all the things (culture, restaurants, and vibrant mixed-use neighbourhoods) that make people want to live downtown. Those things make me love being green. And besides, I've lost weight.
