Here’s a nicely-edited interview I did with Leila Lemghalef of watchmojo.com about DRIVE. Too bad I forgot to brush my hair.
Foreign Policy offers five reasons to love high gas prices: a boom in mass transit usage, lower obesity rates, fewer collisions, shorter commutes and more biofuels.
Toyota claims 13-year-old boys now lust after a Prius.
The always excellent John Barber writes about the inevitability of road tolls in his Globe and Mail column today and says: “Our highways today are like Communist supermarkets, with huge lineups for artificially cheap food that is rarely available.”
As I point out in DRIVE, before the environmentalists and lefties adopted the cause, road pricing was touted by conservative economists such as Milton Friedman, the economist who was so influential in the rise of neo-conservatism in the 1980s and Alan Walters, who went on to be chief economic advisor to Margaret Thatcher.
Congrats to Igor Larionov and Glenn Anderson, two deserving additions to the Hockey Hall of Fame. But once again the Hall has overlooked Rick “Nifty” Middleton, who scored 448 goals and 988 points in 1005 NHL games. He also won the Lady Byng Memorial Trophy in 1981-82. Best of all, he was a delight to watch.
Tim Hortons does 40 to 50 percent of its business at the drive-thru window, according to this Toronto Star story. Good for the company, bad for the environment — and with the high price of gas, bad for the pocketbooks of the company’s customers. Markham developer Dave de Sylva is leading a battle against drive-thrus and calculated that “the cars lined up at Markham’s 29 drive-through establishments uselessly burn 435,185 litres of gasoline a year.”
Meanwhile, Mississauga councillor George Carlson notes, “I think drive-throughs tend to make suburban life even more isolated and less interactive with your neighbours.”
I wish I’d known this when I was writing DRIVE: “People who customize their cars with stickers and other adornments are more prone to road rage than other people, according to researchers in Colorado.”
Here’s Phil Preville’s take on what the idea of road tolls in Toronto mean for Rob Ford’s chances to become mayor: “The issue undoubtedly gives a big boost to Ford’s mayoral prospects, as it rolls his two pet peeves into a single, politically explosive package: taxes and the persecution of drivers.”
I’m pretty sure Phil is having some fun here, but I’ll bet that Mayor Rob Ford would chase more people from Toronto than road tolls would. And I would be leading the exodus. (Fortunately, the guy doesn’t have a hope.)
As usual, Paul Wells has an amusing and original take on Stephane Dion’s carbon tax proposal. The comments are pretty funny too, though certainly less original.
One of the remarkable activists I wrote about in Watchdogs and Gadflies was Martha Kostuch so I was sad to see her obituary in the Globe and Mail this morning. Here’s what I wrote about her:
As activists navigate the dangers of coalitions, they also seek to wield more power with governments — and, increasingly, corporations — through tactics such as legal challenges. While not new, the courts have, especially since the introduction of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, become one of the most useful tools for people who want to change the world. Surprisingly, the best person to talk to about this subject is not a lawyer but a veterinarian in small-town Alberta. Rocky Mountain House is a two-and-a-half hour drive from either Calgary or Edmonton. Nestled on the edge of the Rockies, the town has a lovely setting, but is otherwise unremarkable. Just off a strip of fast-food joints and chain stores, a little way down a gravel road, is the Rocky Animal Hospital, a veterinary clinic in a house built in what may best be described as 1970s hippie aesthetic.
As I read the two Gandhi quotes on the wall of the clinic’s lobby, Martha Kostuch came out, shook my hand and lead me upstairs to her home. A small 52-year-old woman, she has long sandy hair with bangs, wire-rim glasses, freckles and pale blue eyes. After growing up on a farm in Minnesota, she became a vet and moved to Alberta in 1975 to be close to the mountains and the forests. Immediately, Kostuch, who had never been environmentally active, saw things she hadn’t seen in Minnesota cattle herds: widespread postpartum uterine infections, long calving intervals and an unusually high number of miscarriages and stillbirths. She became convinced that sour gas emissions were the culprit. Government and industry brushed off her concerns so, in 1977, she went public by speaking at meetings and conferences. She didn’t know enough to call the media, but they soon called her.
Meanwhile, Kostuch joined a fight against a huge resort development planned for the Kootenay Plains, about 80 miles west of Rocky Mountain House. Environmentalism was far from a widespread movement at the time — even Greenpeace was just six years old — so the group, called the Alberta League for Environmentally Responsible Tourism (ALERT), learned from scratch, developing an action plan and paddling eight canoes from Rocky Mountain House to the legislature in Edmonton to deliver a petition. The media lapped it up; one reporter joined Kostuch in her canoe and thirty-five more waited on the banks of the river in the provincial capital.
More importantly, ALERT took advantage of a sympathetic lawyer and donations from supporters to fight the $40-million dollar project in court. It was not a common tactic at that time, but it worked. And Kostuch would use it again — and become something of a legend in environmental law circles in the process. Most famously, Kostoch and a group called Friends of the Oldman River Society, with the help of the Sierra Legal Defence Fund, shepherded the Oldman River Dam environmental assessment case to victory in the Supreme Court of Canada in 1992. In a second case over the Oldman River Dam, she tried to prosecute the Alberta government for destroying fish habitats without approval. That case rose through the system until she was denied leave to appeal by the Supreme Court. In a third case, Kostuch and the Friends of the West Country battled to stop Sunpine Forest Products from building a logging road and two bridges without a proper environmental assessment. Again with the help of the Sierra Legal, Kostuch won in both Federal Court and the Federal Court of Appeal. But she is awaiting leave to appeal from the Supreme Court because she was unhappy with some parts of the decision. She’s now something of a lay expert on environmental law. “I’ve had many calls — today, for example — from people asking for advice or help or direction,” she said. “I’m not a lawyer, but a lot of lawyers call me for advice since I’ve had a lot of experience.”
Kostuch, who spends thirty to forty hours a week working as a vet and the same amount of time on activism, excused herself for a few minutes to go downstairs. Returning several minutes later, she told me she’d just put a dog to sleep while the family watched; we talked about why it’s important for kids to learn about death. It doesn’t seem much of a jump when we start talking about tactics. Kostuch has developed a process for creating strategic plans and she uses it to help advocacy groups as well as for the workshops she gives in schools. Anything goes during brainstorming, but when they get to the planning stage, Kostuch insists all violence — including property damage — must be weeded out. But that doesn’t mean she shies away from conflict. “I think non-violent civil disobedience has a role to play. It has been an important tool for change throughout history,” said Kostuch, who has read a lot by and about Gandhi. “Look at the civil rights movement, which I grew up during, in the United States. Look at the women’s movement. Look at what happened in India. Look at what happened in South Africa. Most people now would not dispute that those were valid reasons for using civil disobedience.” Kostuch began to talk more quickly and passionately than when I first arrived. She looks so much like the prototypical earth mother that if someone hit the mute button, I thought to myself, he’d dismiss her as a flake. But she is tough-minded and smart. “Would I ever consider civil disobedience myself?” she continued. “Yes, I would, but only if I were prepared to accept the consequences. Would I advocate others doing it? No, because that is an offence. Would I tell them not to do it? No, that’s their choice, as long as they understand the consequences. But I will advocate against violence of any kind.”
Surprisingly, court challenges have proven almost as controversial as direct action. Canadian conservatives, sounding as though they want the legal system to be their own gated community, now complain bitterly when activists seek satisfaction in the courts. F. L. (Ted) Morton, a University of Calgary political-science professor and co-author of The Charter Revolution and the Court Party, believes that since 1982, when Canada adopted the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, there has been a dramatic change in the way the country is governed. “Cheered on by its academic supporters,” he argued, “the Supreme Court has consistently sacrificed claims of individual liberty on the altar of group equality.” Morton accused the judiciary of getting too cozy with what he calls the Court Party, defined as “the now familiar coalition of interest groups that regularly appear in our courtrooms using Charter litigation to pursue policy demands that elected governments have rejected: feminists, civil libertarians, gay rights activists, aboriginals, francophones outside Quebec, anglophones inside Quebec, environmentalists, immigration advocacy groups, prisoners’ rights groups, visible minority groups, and so on.” The University of Toronto’s Gregory Hein was so intrigued by Morton’s argument, he investigated. His study, Interest Group Litigation and Canadian Democracy, looked at court challenges from 1988 to 1998 and confirmed that activists — including social conservative groups that, curiously, didn’t make Morton’s enemies list — were frequently turning to the courts. But it also showed they weren’t alone. Professional organizations, unions and companies were doing the same; in fact, corporate interests launched a whopping 38 percent of the court challenges.
For her part, Kostuch makes no apologies. The Oldman River Dam case reaffirmed that the federal government shares jurisdiction for environmental protection in Canada and that the feds had an obligation to do an assessment because of that jurisdiction. “It was a turning point in a number of ways,” she said. “It was one of the first environmental cases to go to that level and with all the attention it got, a lot of others have followed and are now using the legal system as a tool.” On the other hand, by the time the case was finished, the Oldman River had a dam. “We lost but we won. We knew going into the fight that we had very little chance of stopping it, but we felt we had a moral obligation to try because if we didn’t, we would be condoning the destruction caused by the dam. The bigger win has been for the environment of Canada.”
While I sat on a stool on the other side of her kitchen counter, she boiled water in a kettle to make chicken soup from a package for John, her 31-year-old adopted native son. (Despite four of her own children, she adopted another two and took three more under her wing when they lost their mothers. “I collect kids,” she admitted.) “I believe the reason we have laws is so that people will obey them — including the government, including the corporations,” she said. “Our legal system is one of the best in the world so why should we be reluctant to use it? And why should we be criticized when we do use it? I’m often criticized because I go to the courts. Well, forgive me for using the legal system that exists for precisely that reason.”
Despite her success in the courts, Kostuch sees the legal route as just one option for activists. Most successful campaigns, she figures, combine lobbying politicians, generating media coverage and holding demonstrations because each action reinforces the other. “You don’t use a screwdriver when you need a hammer,” she says, “but if you need both a screwdriver and a hammer, you use them both. And often an array of tools, used together, works the best.”
Kenny Yum (a talented former student of mine) kindly fixed my name on the National Post’s review of DRIVE and I am Tim again.
Spacing Wire offers this post about a report called “Major US City Preparedness for an Oil Crisis” by an organization called Common Current. The study “ranked the largest 50 US cities by their readiness for $4+ a gallon gas and $100+ a barrel oil prices.”
The most prepared cities are:
1. San Francisco
2. New York
3. Chicago
4. Washington, DC
5. Seattle
6. Portland
7. Boston
8. Oakland
9. Philadelphia
10. Denver
I hit three of the five worst cities — Indianapolis (46th), Tulsa (49th) and Oklahoma City (50th) — on my road trip.
George A. MacLean, acting head of political studies at the University of Manitoba — and someone who has been a car enthusiast since he first saw his brother’s Matchbox collection — reviewed DRIVE for the Winnipeg Free Press.
“This is a fun book about a serious topic… It’s written in an accessible, breezy style, giving the reader more than enough time to check out the scenery as the topics roll by: sex, music, literature, film, brand loyalty, safety, pop culture, racing, city planning, the freedom of the road, road rage and the entrapment of our car culture,” he writes. “For car lovers, there’s lots of torque, tail fins, and transmissions. And there’s plenty here for urban planners, public transportation types, road trip buffs, and even car loathers. Falconer presents the cases but casts no judgment. It’s up to the reader to decide who’s partially right and who’s kind of wrong.”
Stay Positive, the forthcoming release from The Hold Steady won’t be out for a month, but it’s streaming on the band’s myspace page and I’ve listened to it countless times over the last few days. Unfortunately, some of the songs — including the title track — are no longer up, but check out “Sequestered in Memphis.” An instant classic.
Let’s just say it’s going to be a great summer. Now if only the band would add Toronto to its tour.
Tom Brokaw will host a special edition of Meet the Press tomorrow, but after that watching TV on Sunday mornings won’t be the same after the death of Tim Russert. Even as a Canadian, I’ve found MTP essential (and excellent) viewing since the primaries started.
My thought as I watched the coverage last night: given that the US may elect a black man as president for the first time — something I never thought possible in my lifetime — it’s truly a shame that Russert won’t be around to see it, let alone cover it.
This post on the Reinventing Urban Transport blog is an excellent analysis of drawbacks and opportunities high fuel prices offer those hoping for less car-focused transit policies. Among the great points Paul Barter makes are:
* “In the longer term, more fuel-efficient vehicles may make driving cheap again, so that traffic starts increasing again.”
* “Motorist anger over high fuel prices might make politicians too frightened to follow through on important pricing reforms aimed at reducing real impacts of traffic (such as carbon taxes or such like, congestion pricing, pricing parking rationally, distance-weight charges for heavy vehicles, and shifting fixed costs such as insurance to ‘pay-as-you-drive’, etc).”
Here in Canada, opposition leader Stephane Dion wants to make a carbon tax the central plank in the Liberal’s platform for the next election. But according to this column by the Globe and Mail’s Lawrence Martin, Dion “has promised there will be no additional tax on a litre of gasoline.”
The Los Angeles Times is running a series on car-related issues. This story on how commuters are resistant to changing their habits includes a look at how road pricing and an end to free parking could help and suggests that high gas prices alone won’t do the trick: “But Rand Corp. transportation expert Martin Wachs thinks it will take more. Even if fuel hits $5 a gallon, he said, congestion will merely thin at the margins — meaning shorter rush hours — rather than evaporate. ‘I think the price at which people will stop driving is much higher,’ he said.”
Meanwhile, this piece looks at Donald Shoup’s ideas about the high cost of free parking.
I’m a newbie blogger and so far I’ve tried to stick to topics related to my new book (car culture, urban planning and sprawl, the impact of high gas prices, for example), except for occasionally straying into music. But sometimes I won’t be able to contain myself and I will be writing about hockey, politics and other matters.
Tonight, I read this post on Inkless Wells and it reminded me why Paul Wells might just be the best blogger out there: trenchant, funny and often right. That’s a rare combination, isn’t it?
The Toronto Star’s David Olive considers the rise and fall of the SUV.
The Star’s Tyler Hamilton drives a plug-in hybrid for a week, finds it very economical and says he’s sold on the technology for city driving.
The Calgary Herald’s driving section gave big play to an interview with me. It’s not up on the Herald site yet, but writer Greg Williams has the piece on his blog.
A weird review of DRIVE: A Road Trip through Our Complicated Affair with the Automobile in the Financial Post. Bizarrely, the writer refers to me as Timothy. So much for the “as long as they spell your name right” theory of publicity. (For the record: my friends call me Tim; my enemies call me Timothy.)
I make the point in DRIVE that popular culture — literature, music and movies (and, now, video games) — have helped sell car culture. But here’s a weird piece from the National Post that looks at movies and television shows that feature buses. Let’s just say the list is not filled with classics, though it doesn’t include The Graduate with its famous final scene on a bus.