When Kitsilano-based strategic planner, architect, and peak-oil proponent Richard Balfour talks about environmental refugees, he mentions his own speculation that “20 to 30 million people” could be living in the Georgia Basin in the next 15 to 20 years.

“They come in three waves,” Balfour told the Georgia Straight in an interview at his home. “The first is the one that is already happening, where people with money think they are going to find refuge up here. So they are buying up the coast of B.C. and the farmland of the Interior. The second wave is the middle class thinking they are going to move up to have a better place for their family, and that has started. And then starts the true wave, where you have the refugees arriving with nothing. How do you stop them?”

Environment Canada defines the Georgia Basin as an area made up of Puget Sound, the straits of Georgia and Juan de Fuca, and the lands around them. In the past 25 years, the Georgia Basin’s human population has more than doubled.

“If this rate of growth continues, the pressures on wildlife, migratory birds and fish, and the habitats these species require in order to survive, will need to be carefully managed to ensure the overall well-being of the ecosystem,” Environment Canada states on its Georgia Basin Action Plan Web site.

Balfour, coauthor of Sustainable Strategic Planning: A Civil Defense Manual for Cultural Survival (Old City Foundation Press, 2007), goes further: “I don’t think these communities are sustainable as they are. Especially when there is no oil and we are not growing enough food to satisfy the population that is here. So one of the things we are looking at is where can we provide [areas] for settlement?”

As the Straight went to press, Reuters reported that the price of oil hit an all-time high of more than US$118 per barrel. At one time on April 22, U.S. light crude for May delivery was up 97 cents at $118.45, before closing at $118.32. Surging demand from China, the world’s second-biggest energy consumer, is credited with much of the jump, along with concerns about supply and a weak U.S. dollar. The demand from the host of this year’s Olympic Games climbed eight percent in March from a year ago, the fastest increase in the past year and a half.

Earlier this month, Balfour gave a presentation to the Metro Vancouver land-use and transportation committee about applying strategic sustainable planning to the region. This would involve creating new towns in the mountains and partitioning farmland into self-governing areas so that municipalities cannot expand into them. He also urged regional politicians to develop more rail capacity, including high-speed rail, “because the highways will not be running. He also advocated using “run-of-the-river–powered villages for B.C. rather than for export
to California”.

Speaking at a climate-change roundtable discussion at the WISE Hall on April 16, UBC community and regional planning professor Bill Rees also raised the spectre of environmental refugees. According to Rees, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that sea levels will likely rise by one to two metres this century.

“If that happens, we will see millions of hectares of agricultural lands flooded, some of the best agricultural land on the planet, and tens of millions of people will be displaced from their homes and villages in the lifetimes of many of you in this room,” Rees told the 50-strong crowd. “More farmland therefore will go under, and we will have millions of refugees. Canada will undoubtedly be asked to take on millions of people as a result of climate change. As most of our cities are in prime farmland, they will occupy even more farmland.”

Speaking to the Straight outside the WISE Hall, Rees reiterated: “The refugee problem could be enormous.”

Burnaby did a report on peak oil in 2006. We asked mayoral candidates why Vancouver hasn’t done this.

Allan De Genova
Vision Vancouver

“When you say on peak oil, meaning?…That is a very good question. I don’t know. It’s been two years, has it? You know, I am not sure.…When we say peak oil, let’s be on the same track here. There was something done in early ’07, I thought, but I can’t remember and I have to check.”

Gregor Robertson
Vision Vancouver

“Our current mayor is asleep at the switch on this looming crisis. The era of cheap energy is over, and I don’t understand why the NPA council have not taken action. Vancouver needs to move urgently to being carbon-smart and self-sufficient, boosting local food, clean energy, and efficient transportation and water use and zero waste.”

Peter Ladner
NPA

“Burnaby did it for us. I don’t know.…There are a lot of topics. We could be issuing a climate-change report. We could be issuing a terrorism report.…I know peak oil has come up at the EcoDensity discussions. We can look at a lot of the EcoDensity measures as responses to peak oil.”

Betty Krawczyk
Work Less Party

“I think it’s probably because Vancouver mayor and council is just not on top of things.…They have their heads in the sand and they don’t want to look at the fact that peak oil is a reality and that there have to be drastic changes made, and not just tinkerings with the system of production and distribution and consumption.”

Sam Sullivan
NPA

“We did. It’s called Clouds of Change and it was written in 1990. It addressed all of these issues that people are aware of. It’s quite a remarkable document.…It was climate change, issues of sustainability and nonrenewable energy. The issue of EcoDensity has its genesis in a number of issues, and one of them is peak oil.”

Raymond Louie
Vision Vancouver

“Because [Mayor] Sam Sullivan’s leadership has failed us.…We are making adjustments in the city to green our fleet and make sure our facilities are as efficient as possible. I don’t think it was necessary for our city to write a report, because we are already trying to implement processes here at the city.”