March 08

There is an energy and soul of dreaming big and reaching farther than usual that permeates the Olympics. If we can use that energy to reach farther than usual in sustainability performance, to truly earn the title "sustainable games" I think we would all learn and benefit.

The second way is through multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder coordination, harnass the energy of projects and groups (public, private, academic and NGO) who are proceeding with projects, to work with VANOC's sustainability team to show Olympic level performance in many areas of development and business in our region, that are not directly connected to the Olympics. As my colleague Anita Burke said - "company's coming - lets clean up the house and put on some good clothes and show off a bit."

Let’s create rich visualizations of two scenarios of Greater Vancouver in 2010:

1. An image of a greater Vancouver in the year 2010 if we hadn’t been guided at all by the Livable Region Strategic Plan and other progressive policies over the last 40 years. For example what would the city be like in 2010 if we hadn’t promoted compact development, avoided the development of a Seattle-style freeway along the waterfront, established the ALR,…
2. And the compare that side by side with the Vancouver we did create through these policies.

Yes, many of you are likely thinking about how much better we could have done, but you’ll have to agree that we could have done far worse. Let’s celebrate what we were able to accomplish as a way to bolster commitment to continue the progress towards sustainability.

We could enhance these scenarios by looking decades into the future to see how different the future could be under different choices.

Envision facilities that will be completely disassembled and re-constructed at another Olympics, or better yet, in a rural community in need of the infrastructure. This allows for the land to be used for further densification of the downtown core, and prevents another Montreal Olympic stadium. Creating healthy cuisine to nourish athletes all transported from within our provincial boundaries. Expanding on Colin’s idea; a fossil fuel free, clean burning, Olympic flame.

The Games could provide an opportunity to expand the Sea-to-Sky highway directly through the sensitive ecosystem of Eagle Ridge bluffs.

My sarcastic point is that Vancouver has the rare opportunity to leverage international exposure garnered from the Games to showcase all its "Made in Vancouver" sustainable development successes (assuming everything is not contracted elsewhere). Not all its failures. In doing so, it can provide the region with a competitive business advantage ie. being leaders of technologies, transportation, education, science, production techniques, management, planning, community development initiatives, regulations, and principles that are all associated with sustainable development. Talk about a chance for long-term economic diversification! Or... Vancouver can screw it all up and not bother to walk the sustainability talk.

If we think of sustainability as series of short stories then 2010 becomes an opportunity to tell the those stories on a world stage. How well we tell them is up to the community. For instance there will be the story of how the power technology community helped reduce energy consumption at the games. That story is about the technology and the gains from using it. There will also be stories about how Canada enabled people with disabilities to participate in the games, how the first nations were partners etc. The challenge will be to organize and tell the stories in a way that sends a common message about Vancouver, BC and Canada. The job of the community will be to ensure that their stories are clear and easily articulated. Finally,  VANOC will need to entice the media that covering the story of the worker with a disability at the games is important and relevant--which is not a small task.   

Use the moment when the eyes of the world are on us to launch a plan to be free from oil by 2020 (Sweden has already launched its plan, which doesn't include new nuclear).

 In a perfect world, we would have made this announcement long before 2010 and during the Olympics we would be celebrating our achievements towards that goal...