Rooted in the Greek word ‘oikos,’ meaning living place, are the two words economics and ecology.

Rooted in the Greek word ‘oikos,’ meaning living place, are the two words economics and ecology.

We have got to understand that the earth is a closed environment system, with what we do in Alberta affecting what happens elsewhere in the world.

Our current government’s myopic view of the world is quickly sending us down the wrong path.

We cannot treat our environment as if it can clean itself of all the things that humans throw in it.

Most people I know that earn their living from the earth they walk on will tell you that their pay-checks are directly related to how they take care of the environment around them.

In his book ‘Seven Generations’[1], Mike Nickerson uses the illustration of wine making and the ecology. He says that the limitation of toleration is shown by the fact that when the yeast eats enough of the sugars in the fruit juices used for wine making, alcohol is excreted as a by-product. When the level of alcohol reaches 14 percent, the yeast can no longer tolerate that environment and dies.

The fact is that Alberta can turn the nozzle down on the current economic growth with virtually no change in the growth of the province's economy, while the growth becomes manageable.

As the two major centres of Alberta, Calgary and Edmonton, expand at unsustainable rates, parallel to the Oil Sands expansion, it is time to take a look at the way the provincial government looks at our water.

Water in this province is looked at as a renewable resource that will always be there, has the capacity to provide us with all that we need.

Our current governing party in Alberta can only see to the borders of the province, and the short-term benefits of the booming economy, and can be given away free to the oil and gas industries.

The Deserted Village, A Poem

A time there was, ere England's griefs began,
When every rood of ground maintain'd its man;
For him light labour spread her wholesome store,
Just gave what life requir'd, but gave no more:
His best companions, innocence and health;
And his best riches, ignorance of wealth.

Oliver Goldsmith (1730?-1774)

Is Alberta destined to follow its craving for the luxuries that another oil and gas boom has to offer at the expense of our environment? Our environment tomorrow or next century?

It would seem the provincial governments only reason to be, is to encourage and foster more and more growth in the energy sector, with no attention paid to the real costs we will incur in other areas of our lives and society, such as the environment.

One solution to the above problem is to redesign democracy in Alberta.

This would involve not only how we elect our provincial governments but also how and where they work. It would involve rearranging the administration of provincial government as well as the laws, regulations, and the divisions of both the counties and electoral districts.

It would involve setting a province wide set of environmental, planning, and business development laws and regulations – in the open and available for input from all Albertans and those that live downstream from us.

It would involve folding many regulatory agencies, boards, and departments into one focus, providing all Albertan’s with one point of contact. This being whether they are applying to build a hog processing plant, a pulp mill, oil or gas processing facility, drill a well, bury a pipeline, take arable farm land out of agricultural production and use it for industrial purposes, or build homes on it.

This also includes any and all by-laws and land use decisions contemplated by the large urban centres.

It will mean that the EUB, municipal planning boards, county planning boards, renewable resources development authorities would be forced to start doing business in a new way.

One small way will be to start using the Triple Bottom Line accounting system, that takes into consideration economic, social and environmental factors when deliberating.

No longer can we have quasi-judicial boards like the EUB with its members appointed by the sitting government behind closed doors, with the power to exclude whomever they want.

Today we see that it is usually the critics of the oil and gas industry being the ones to be excluded that the EUB excludes and needs more in it’s mandate than, ‘the discovery, development, and delivery of Alberta’s resources and utilities.’

What I am talking about here is, dividing the province up into a bioregional management boards, based on the watersheds. It means rearranging the county and municipal districts so their boundaries coincide with the boundaries of the watersheds, and not straddle them.

For too long industrial development organizations or companies have known they can play one county or town off another to see who will relax their planning and land zoning by-laws the most.

We forget in this province that when a pulp mill or oil refinery discharges its waste water, or takes its water from a river system, that both the upstream and downstream communities and environs are affected.

For too long we have seen politicians in one area of the province lure industry by making decisions that they think only affect their little piece of the earth. In fact we are seeing the affects of the decisions made on the oil sands developments poisoning people far away, down stream and away from the eyes and ears of the local politicians. We cannot continue this policy of, ‘out of sight, out of the way,’ of planning.

Not only is it the water we can see, but also those that which we cannot see, can be affected for miles, if not hundreds of miles around us, positively or negatively, for decades if not centuries into the future.

This new concept of how we govern ourselves would fold all stakeholders in the various watersheds, or bioregions into management boards. It means that the residents can elect their own people to sit on the boards, to deliberate and approve any and all development in the watershed. There would be fixed terms, lobbyist legislation, and a whole list of conflict and ethical rules to be followed by all elected to the boards.

This would mean oil and gas activity, logging, residential, industrial and recreational development, will have to conform to the environmental, planning, and development laws and regulations. There would be no meddling by the minister. If the decision is made based on the deliberations of the management board, and it conforms to the standards set by the legislature, then the minister could not intervene.

This set of policies, laws, and regulations would be deliberated, discussed, and proposed through a new system of committees of the Legislature, and sit in public, with their proceedings open to public view via television, the internet, or attendance in person. Behind these policies, laws and regulations must be a set of substantial penalties to be used when the carrot does not.

The set of policies, laws, and regulations would conform to or exceed the set of national standards. It is not only Albertans that are affected by our decisions, but people far downstream or downwind, alive now and in the future that are affected.

Unlike Shelly Willson’s recent comments in an op/ed piece in the Calgary Herald on Jun 9, 2006, our ways of living and how our forests and environmental concerns are managed are not about land use by-laws and some sort of, ‘hierarchy of land uses taken in isolation,’ by the stakeholders in one area of a watershed, or bioregion.

Our thinking must be about the actions taken in an area such as the area west of Bragg Creek that Spray Lakes Sawmills wants to clear cut and what that will do to the entire watershed, as well as the next seven generations from the headwaters of Bragg Creek to where it ends up, the Hudson Bay.

The decision on a situation like the clear cutting of a forest should not just focus on the hikers and their ability to see a, ‘pristine forest,’ or ‘glimpses of moose.’

The decision should be focusing on the bigger picture.

The big picture lies further downstream, and much further in the future.
[1] published by Guideposts for a Sustainable Future, P.O. Box 374, Merrickville, Ontario K0G 1N0 @ $4.95