Okay, it's pretty friggin' ballsy of me to jump in with a post about how green Canada is becoming, when Dawn, our resident eco-design guru, is actually, well, Canadian and has forgotten more than I'll ever know about the topic and all, but well, these are too cool to hoard:
British Columbia adopts Leadership in Energy and Design (LEED) green building standards: "In July, the Canadian province of British Columbia became the first non-American licensee of the LEED system, to be known as LEED-BC."
Indeed, the new Southeast False Creek model sustainable community -- the latest bloom of ultra-dense, high-quality-of-life urbanism to grow out of downtown Vancouver -- will have a minimum LEED silver standard for all new development.
If you hurry, you can still go see the Sustainable Condo in Vancouver, which interjects "substantial reductions in environmental impacts, energy and resource consumption into the urban residential condominium market without any significant cost increase..." And it was built using EcoSmart concrete.
Heck, those gentle snow people (well, rain people in Vancouver) even have a brand-spanking-new sustainable building pub, Green Space. They're teaching the kids to design green roofs and create ecological fashions, greening the UBC campus and paying nonprofits to do green retrofits of their buildings. And, of course, they're claiming they'll green the 2010 Olympics
Now, all that said, a world of Vancouvers would still be a world headed to ecological collapse in a handbasket. And I'm sure I'll get email telling me how stupid, overhyped or disappointing at least one these developments is.
But that said, if you're paying attention to the future, better keep an eye on Vancouver. They're at the bright green forefront up there. (Although they may be getting a little cocky about it).
