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Time to de-carbonize society: Kennedy

Environmental lawyer says electric cars are closer than we think
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It's time for Canada and the U.S. to cut off their dependency on fossil-based fuels, which produce polluting carbons Robert Kennedy Jr. told a receptive audience at a Whistler conference on land use.

But before this happens the U.S. and Canada must invest billions of dollars in creating a grid to carry electricity from alternate sources of power, such as wind and solar, from one part of the continent to another.

The Obama administration is already looking at America's energy plan for the future said Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and resolute defender of habitat.

"We have enough wind in Montana, North Dakota, and Texas to provide 100 per cent of the energy needs of all North America, even if every North American owned an electric car," he told hundreds packed into a conference room at the 2009 B.C. Land Summit last week.

"We have a government today that is intent on harnessing these new forms of energy..."

Right now the electric grid for the U.S. cannot transport energy from alternative sources of power to the rest of the country.

There are farmers across North Dakota who want to build wind farms to save the family plot, but with no way to get the energy to market construction is stalled, said Kennedy.

He went on to the tell the packed conference room that building the grid for the North American continent will be one of the greatest challenges for land use planning.

But that while it may seem an enormous task it will happen just as telecommunications and Internet grids have been put in place, said Kennedy.

Many have argued that "decarbonizing" society will cost money and jobs but Kennedy argued the opposite is true. He pointed to Iceland as an example. In the 1970s the government of the day decided that it had to stop its dependence on foreign energy, coal and oil, as it was beggaring the country. Within 15 years 90 per cent of its power came from thermal and it was considered one of the richest counties in the world by GDP.

(Since then Iceland's economic status has plummeted after its investments were crushed by the global economic slump).

Sweden decided to do much the same thing in the late 1990s, and today it is the sixth richest nation in the world by GDP said Kennedy.

The U.S. spends $1 billion a day on oil. It also pays $1.3 trillion a day in direct and indirect subsidies to the incumbent energy producers.

"...This export of $700 billion a year in American wealth has beggared a nation that when I was a little boy owned half the wealth on the face of the earth," said Kennedy.

These numbers don't include the $4.3 trillion it is expected to cost the U.S. for the Iraq war over 20 years, nor the trillion dollar subsidies to the coal companies and half trillion subsidy to nuclear power producers.

"These huge rafts of subsidies to the incumbents have formed the principal impediment to much more efficient and indigenous forms of energy from entering the market place," argued Kennedy.

He also told the land use planners and other attendees that electric cars would be here faster than people realize. He is involved in a plan that will see citizens in Israel drive an electric car given to them by the government in return for the purchase of energy it takes to run it.

Under the plan the utility company owns the car batteries, each of which cost about $20,000. When your car battery is dead you drive into a transfer station, like a gas stations, and a computerized system uses robots to remove the old battery for recharging and the driver goes off with a fully charged one, thus eliminating the problem of only being able to go short distances on electricity.

The idea is the brainchild of Better Place, a venture-backed company based in Palo Alto, California that aims to reduce global dependency on petroleum through the creation of a market-based transportation infrastructure that supports electric vehicles , providing consumers with a cheaper, cleaner, sustainable, personal transportation alternative.

"We have thirty other nations lined up," said Kennedy of the electric car plan.

Those interested include Denmark, Hawaii, Australia and the UK.

Kennedy challenged the audient to stop pigeon-holing environmental issues to just saving tees, or just working toward carbon neutrality. He said the attitude must be global and inclusive - a real challenge as 50 per cent of Americans don't buy into the arguments around global warming.

"We are not protecting the environment for the sake of the fish and the birds we are protecting it because we recognize that nature enriches us," said Kennedy.

"It enriches us economically, yes, as the basis of our economy and we ignore that at our peril.

"But the economy is a whole subsidiary of the environment which also enriches us aesthetically, recreationally, culturally historically and spiritually.

"When we destroy nature we diminish ourselves, we impoverish our children."

The B.C. Land Summit conference is an interdisciplinary summit organized by six professional organizations all of which share ties to land use in B.C.

Former Supreme Court Justice Thomas Berger also spoke on issues relating to the protection of the northern environment and its peoples.

"In the excitement about issues of Canada's sovereignty we should not allow ourselves to overlook the important issues related to northern environment and the future of the aboriginal people in the north," said Berger, who led the MacKenzie Valley Pipeline Inquiry in the 1970s and acted as Conciliator, in 2005-2006 with respect to a series of disputes between the Government of Canada and the Government of Nunavut.