If you won't do it for the planet, do it for the money

A few days ago I took a call from a polling company hired by the City of Red Deer to gauge public awareness of ecological issues and City Council's new master plan on the environment.

I'm happy to oblige these kinds of requests; it's like having an extra vote that non-responders don't get. And it got me thinking about why we live the way we do.

In Canada, the majority of people say that human-assisted climate change is a real thing — and a real threat. That is opposed to the United States, where belief in climate change polls at less than 50 per cent.

But the majority of Canadians do not act significantly on the their science-based beliefs. They continue to drive big vehicles (trucks still far and away the top seller in new vehicles) and build big houses to live in. They live in neighbourhoods where you have to drive to pick up a loaf of bread or a litre of milk.

We just had Earth Hour last month. Bike to Work Day is May 11 and International Car-Free Day is Sept. 22. All of these events are OK, but they are honoured far more in the mentioning than in the participating. Who is being changed by having these days on the calendar? Hardly anyone.

I recently read an essay about how science-driven policy is a good idea for governments, even though most individuals reject that in practice for themselves.

The article put forth various theories as to why people persist in a lifestyle they know is driving calamitous climate change. It seems the end of the world as we know it does not resonate enough to cause a change in behaviour.

So I propose another angle to the issue that may persuade some people to change lifestyle. If the prospect of mass starvation for our grandchildren will not work to change our behaviour, why not settle on greed?

There's another day Canadians mark every year: Tax Freedom Day. Last year it was June 7, the day Canadians had worked enough hours to pay all their taxes for the full year, leaving the rest of the year to work for themselves.

Except that's not the end of it.

If we work until early June to pay our taxes, the average Canadian works almost until Car-Free Day to pay for vehicle ownership after that.

The Canadian Auto Association has a calculator to determine the full and true cost of owning a car. If you buy a mid-sized car, you'll need $9,946 of after-tax income to own it. The average SUV needs $11,947 a year for your trips to work plus bread and milk far from your home. A pickup truck runs on money; $12,940 a year.

How many hours do you work every year to cover those costs, after taxes?

Government figures put the average after-tax net for a Canadian at $53,775, which for our discussion is very close to $25 an hour. That's after taxes.

So how do you rank? The question is important, because though all our salaries differ, the cost of a vehicle type is rather static. If you're not making the average, you are working a whole lot more hours a year, just to drive your car to work.

How many hours does that come to? For the average Canadian with an average mid-sized car, it's about 10 weeks a year. Add a week to own an SUV. You'll work 13 weeks a year to run your pickup.

That's after Tax-Free Day, remember.

So if the thought of huge storms, prolonged droughts, destructive flooding or rising tides destroying cities doesn't get you to thinking about leaving the car at home more often (or perhaps not even buying one), think about the money.

Paul Tranter of the University of New South Wales wants people to think of “effective speed” when they think about transportation. That calculation includes not just the time spent on your journeys, but the time you also spend working to pay the full cost of each journey.

Long calculations made short, the bike wins by many miles, followed by walking. And the faster, more expensive the car, the slower your “effective speed.”

Sure climate change is real, but so is money, and the hours you spend to earn it.

Is having up to $10,000 a year or so, tax-free, in your pocket worth the price of a good bike?

I've always thought so, even though I don't do Earth Hour, Car-Free Day, or Bike To Work Day.

Follow Greg Neiman's blog at Readersadvocate.blogspot.ca

Time to call out the airlines on their policy of bumping passengers

The issue of air travellers being denied their contractual right to passage that they paid for — and which has been approved right through the boarding process — has been in the news a lot these days. As it should be.

I happen to have family travelling abroad right now, and I'd like to see them arrive home safely and on time, considering the rather hefty cash layout we made for their tickets. So the issue is top-of-mind for me, too.

It's rather odd that journalists have been so willing to accept the airlines' assertion that their policies of overselling seats on air flights should be normal. For every story of weeping passengers being pushed out the door of jetliners, we read the obligatory paragraphs explaining that overselling is a normal business practice, and that overall it helps keep ticket prices down.

That, of course, is pure baloney.

Every oversold seat has already been paid for. And some of them twice. Where is the financial loss to the airline when a fully-paid-for seat is left empty at the last minute because a passenger hasn't shown up for their fight?

The airline already has its money, in full. Unless there has been a cancellation within the rules of issuing the ticket, the airline keeps it money. In fact, airline profits would go through the roof if entire flights could take off empty, with no fuel costs, baggage or service costs incurred for actual passengers.

Do you see a disconnect here? If it is mine, I'd like a real journalist to explain that to me. If it is not, I can suggest the means for airlines to keep ticket prices low — or even reduce them. By replacing the policy of bumping passengers, with a policy of fully nonrefundable tickets.

Have you ever heard of people buying tickets well in advance to a concert or theatre performance, who then cannot attend for whatever reason — and then getting their money back? If you can't transfer the tickets to someone else, you kiss your money goodby. Happens all the time.

Airline tickets — for very good reasons — are not transferable. They should also be absolutely nonrefundable, except through an insurance policy, which pays the cost for you, if you choose to pay extra for flight insurance.

That being the case, airlines are well able to stop selling tickets to all flights the instant the last seat is paid for. No refunds, no transfers. Nobody gets bumped. 

An empty seat on a flight is therefore just extra profit for the airline on that flight.

We all know that some people buy tickets and don't show up for their flights. That's what standby tickets are for. It's also what some genius earning a seven-figure salary, plus bonuses, approved overbooking for.

Airlines don't want to expressly bump you off a flight you paid for. But they do want to sell your seat on the flight twice, ruin your travel plans — all for a time-limited nontransferable voucher for a discount to do it all over again.

Why has no one called them on this? This practice in any other industry would be called fraud, and court cases would rightly ensue.

I would like to see proof that an empty seat on an air flight represents a loss of income to the carrier. It can't. The carrier already has their money, and if there is any cash recovery to be made, it should be made to the passenger through an insurance company.

An oversold seat is just double-dipping. Full stop.

Canada already has some of the most expensive airline tickets in the world, mile for mile. That's because Canadian airport landing fees are among the highest in the world.

But there's no justification for airlines to oversell their flights. Simply stop selling tickets the moment the flight is fully booked — and paid for.

If mistakes are made and passengers need to be bumped, each passenger should get his or her money back and a free seat on the next available flight — by any airline — to their destination, plus a cash incentive to volunteer to be bumped.

Cost of doing business.

It is amazing that people pay big money to travel by air, and are expected to act like chumps at the poor planning and poor customer service of airlines.

It is likewise amazing that we all are expected to believe fraudulent double-dipping ticket sales should be accepted as a normal business practice.

To save the world, save the cyclists

A book review: 

Title: How Cycling Can Save the World

By Peter Walker

Published by TarcherPerigee

Of course cycling cannot save the world. The question of that is far more complex, involving getting past climate change denial, economic and social inequality, a looming cost-of-health-care crisis and the built-in resistance of city planners, traffic engineers and elected leaders.

Even so, respected Guardian columnist Peter Walker makes a convincing and easily-read case for leaving our collective salvation to billions of people worldwide riding bikes.

More than half of all people now live in cities, most of which are clogged with motor traffic and the pollution of motor traffic. Too many people spend too much time sitting at a desk, burning an ever-larger portion of their incomes supporting the vehicle they feel is needed to get them to work, and their children to school. And it is killing them early.

Walker opens his book with an exhaustive look at alarming studies into the cost of our modern sedentary lifestyle. He suggests health officials are not kept awake nights worrying about the cost of early deaths due to sitting around too much: obesity, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, kidney disease, Alzheimer's, etc. (these add up to roughly the combined populations of Alberta and Saskatchewan every year, about equal to global deaths caused by tobacco). Rather, they worry about the multi-trillion-dollar cost of morbidity from these diseases — the spending of health resources needed to keep these sick people alive.

Walker references the Barnet Graph of Doom, which was drawn to determine the date when health care costs in a county in northern England would consume every dollar of all taxes raised — in their case, 2022.

If these diseases could be cured and prevented in pill form, the inventor would gain an instant Nobel Prize, and reap billions instantly from selling it. Yet that “silver bullet” (as designated by the U.S. association of cardiac surgeons) already exists virtually for free, available to all, in the form of active transportation.

Cycling is, after all, active transportation in its most efficient form.

To bring that to a local perspective, read the letters and articles in the paper regarding the provincial government's denial of a cardiac unit for the Red Deer hospital. The argument could be made that if a tiny fraction of the cost of such a unit had been made in better street planning and cycling infrastructure in just the last decade, Red Deer might not need one. Ditto expanding our costly dialysis services.

From health, Walker moves to issues of social inclusion. The more opportunities that low-income people have for movement in cities, the more our cities become truly inclusive. When cycling moves from being a hobby for wealthy lycra-clad weirdos to a genuine alternative for people moving through their daily lives, the happier, more free and democratic a city becomes.

This is particularly true, Walker notes, for women, children and the elderly.

From there Walker moves to issues of safety. There is that radioactive issue of helmet laws — as one city councillor noted, touch it and you die. But Walker's research contends that if you think helmets and high-visibility clothing are the answer to a perceived (and erroneous) view that cycling is dangerous, you have asked the wrong question.

The safest place on earth to ride is in Amsterdam, where you will see very little high-viz lycra, and very few helmets. Check that against Australia and New Zealand where strict helmet laws exist simply to keep people off their bikes.

Helmets do not make a mass cycling culture safe. Separation from cars, properly planned intersections and thoroughly connected bike routes do.

How safe is safe? In places where this has been studied the most, basically, safe is safe where you can let an eight-year-old ride to school and back, unaccompanied.

And where these are built, even their most ardent champions were amazed at how quickly cycling as a portion of total commutes exploded. As in trips doubling twice or four times over in a few years.

Walker noted boroughs where cyclists daily lifted bikes over barriers on uncompleted sections of bike routes still under construction. That phenomenon is happening today in Red Deer on 55^th Street east, where the paved bike lane ends 20 metres short of its intersection with the new bike route heading south on 20^th Ave. Dozens of bike tracks can be seen in the mud, and were there even when a barrier was set up last summer closing the last kilometre of finished pavement, short as it ended up being.

I'm a biased reviewer, and I'm not sure cycling can save the world all by itself. But I am convinced the stubborn and short-sighted attitudes that raise barriers to people feeling safe in exercising their health and economic choices will probably doom it.

Follow Greg Neiman's blog at Readersadvocate.blogspot.ca

A tale of three budgets and the difficulty of hard decisions

One week, three budgets — and a lesson in how hard it is to be the grown-up in the room.

No government in Canada is enjoying an easy time of things these days, especially in the area of fiscal management. Budget decisions are never easy, but in a time when people expect top-level government services (at least for themselves) and when revenue resources seem to be near exhaustion, keeping civil society functioning and voters relatively happy gets near impossible.

That's why we expect leadership from the people we elect to government.

In Ottawa, leadership came in the form of extreme caution hidden beneath a lot of distracting words in last week's budget. Infrastructure spending was announced (again) but the actual money for those projects has been deferred — to a time closer to the next election, when they can be announced yet again.

But overall, the budget's tone was about holding the line amid concern about how the decisions of an irrational U.S. government will affect our economy. And, yes, there will be more deficits.

Alberta's NDP government worked very hard to please almost no one in their recent budget speech. Yes, there will be continued deficits — like just about every other jurisdiction in the land.

But the hard decisions were avoided. Incredibly, given the rhetoric of the NDP while they were in opposition, instead of attempting to wean the province off of near-total reliance on variable oil prices, they doubled down on them.

Like the Tory governments before them, the NDP employed wishful thinking that oil prices will soon magically rise and save the province from having to act like an adult. That's not going to happen, no matter how many new pipelines get built in the next decade or so. As soon as oil price benchmarks reach a certain point (most recently barely over $50 a barrel), shale producers in the U.S. open the taps and drive the price down.

Oh, but we are reminded that Alberta has the lowest tax rates in the country.

Fiscally conservative Saskatchewan took its time, but finally learned to read that writing on the wall. Their recent budget did the things Alberta should have looked at.

In their budget the province raised its sales tax rate from five to six per cent, and hiked the usual sin taxes on booze. Not only that, but items that have been exempt from the sales tax are to be included. Some pundits suggest that will raise the effective sales tax rate by an extra two points.

Where Alberta protected jobs and wages in the civil service, Saskatchewan will cut service costs (by various unannounced means) by 3.5 per cent. Trouble with the province's teachers union was already on the horizon, so expect school boards, teachers and students to suffer the consequences.

And yes, in conservative Saskatchewan, this is the fifth deficit budget in a row, with no relief coming soon. But at some point you eventually hit a wall of fiscal reality.

The point to be made here is that if you can't tax your way to prosperity again, neither can you get there without paying for what you demand from government.

Difficult times demand hard decisions. If Albertans can't accept taxing income like every other government in the developed world, you need to find substitute revenue to fill the gap. Or, you either get eternally mounting debt or severe cuts to services. Probably, you get both.

Oil revenues will not fill that gap. To believe so in the new higher-supply, lower-use global condition is just magical thinking.

Saskatchewan has realized that. Late, but they've arrived. Alberta is still dreaming.

It takes a grown-up to say so, but Alberta needs a sales tax. Or we'll be closing schools and hospitals, and leaving our lower income generations in a much colder province.

Daylight time and twice-changed clocks: The snooze you lose

One Edmonton NDP MLA and one PC party leadership hopeful both want to scrap Alberta's practice of switching the clocks twice a year to daylight time and back again to standard time for four months of the year.

I'm with them. The twice-yearly changing of our clocks to theoretically make the best of our daylight hours in winter and in summer has more drawbacks than gains. The question today should be about whether we really need to be on standard time at all anymore.

In the deepest winter months, it's dark when you rise and getting dark when you get home from work or school anyway. Being on standard time for two of the four months we still use it doesn't allow us any special access to having sun in our eyes. In winter, we need to “save” all the daylight we can, so why not access that time in the afternoon?

Businesses seem to like daylight time; the theory goes that we have an extra hour to spend money while the sun shines at the end of the day.

But the studies on that issue I was able to find suggest that any increases in consumer spending as a result of daylight time are not that great, except for gasoline sales, for people hitting the big box stores outside of town.

A proposal to increase daylight time adoption in the U.S. in 2005 suggested energy savings would accrue, as people wouldn't need to turn the lights on as much. But when they checked actual experience, researchers found that if there was a bit less power used for lighting with daylight time, there was more use of air conditioning, which is much more energy-intensive.

So leave aside the consumer and energy efficiency arguments; people just want to see more of the sun. In our social order, the best time for that is in the afternoon and evening. All year.

That's part of the argument of Vermillion-Lloydminster MLA Richard Stark, who is also in the running for leadership of the Alberta Progressive Conservatives.

He claims there is strong support in the province for the notion of just adopting one time scheme, and not switching back and forth.

But, being a politician and not a leader, Stark wants to consult deeply and hold an actual referendum before acting on his convictions. So forget the ability to change things.

A gripe: Can't a leader just make the call, and do what he or she considers best? (Well, yes, we have that south of the border, and this is probably not the best opportunity to make this point, but there you are.)

Thomas Dang, NDP MLA for Edmonton-Southwest, is more hip. He's set up an online survey.

I've contributed to the survey, and you can, too. Go online at albertandpcaucus.ca/daylight-saving-time-survey.

It's a far better survey that the doomed online study the federal Liberals did on electoral reform. It actually allows you to state a preference.

It also comes with a time chart that is quite helpful. You will learn that if we stuck ourselves on daylight time year-round, on Dec. 21, we wouldn't get sunrise until 9:38 in the morning, (I'm using Edmonton time here) but kids would have sun in the sky on the way home from school, and we all would be spared dark-to-work and dark-to-home commutes.

There are plenty of places in Alberta that have less sun in the winter than us. In Fort McMurray, in December there's no sun for morning or evening commutes to work or to school, in either format. So why not select the format that accommodates most people?

Farmers who have animals under their care don't like the twice-yearly switch. Truth be told, neither do most of us. You never really get that lost sleep back.

News stories abound about the increased rate of traffic accidents and heart attacks in the days just following a switch from standard time to daylight time. That seems to wipe out any purported benefits to society from consumer spending or energy use.

So why switch? Find one format that works, stick with it and let our bodies (and our farm animals' bodies) adapt just once.

My vote is for daylight time all year round. Go online if you like, and get your two cents worth registered in the online survey.

And when you get to retire like me, you could just grab an afternoon nap before some late-day activity — out in the sun.

Take that, millennials, your culture is already old

My university days go back to a time when almost all classes were taught by real, tenured, professors with real PhDs, and not sessionals working for the hourly wages of a fast-food cook while also completing their own doctorates.

We were expected to disagree with our instructors in class — let's say it was in the interests of critical thought and the discovery of truth.

I recall my favourite poli-sci prof at one point declaiming against the music of our time. He suggested that in 30 years nobody would remember Three Dog Night, for instance, but that Beethoven would live forever. Let the protests begin.

Well, with CBC 2 radio playing Beethoven in the background in my living room I can claim today my prof was wrong. See? There's Three Dog Night, right there, in Wikipedia.

I relate this as it was brought to mind by the release of a trailer for the new live-action movie Beauty and the Beast. Could that be Emma Watson — our little Hermione from Hogwarts — as Belle? Well, haven't we grown up.

I'm going to suggest — obviously without having seen the movie with my grandkids yet — that by the end of this year Watson will be more famous worldwide for her performance as Belle, than as the precocious witch in the earthshaking Harry Potter movie series.

This is how time flies. When we first met Hermione on the big screen, the majority of the soon-to-be lifetime fans of Belle were not yet born. Not only that, but many of them may well need to wait a couple of years before being old enough to appreciate the action in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.

The inaugural Potter book that inspired the movie series is now 20 years old. We have the book series, scattered among family, and we will need to gather it all back for the next generation to enjoy — when they're old enough.

But they will be mighty surprised when we locate the movies, and they see Hermione being about their age, frizzy hair and all, doing magic. Is that Belle? they will say. Not the other way round.

They will know Watson from her dancing with Beast, not for trading barbs with Ron Weasley.

Generations X, Y and Millennials will learn a lesson I was warned of — but did not really learn — way back when, from my pol-sci prof: your time will end.

Harry Potter may well live for generations yet, but not the millions of youngsters who may have gotten their first “big reader” experience with his books. His image, engraved digitally on millions of DVDs, will not age, except in the 10 years it took to get from The Philosopher's Stone to The Deathly Hallows.

We Baby Boomers are often accused of not moving aside to give space to our future leaders. Not me. I am quite comfortable bequeathing them full control of the world. I fully believe they will do a more equitable, sustainable and compassionate job of it than we have.

I got old the evening I realized the NHL players I watched on the screen were just . . . kids.

My kids will realize their age, when they recognize that their own children know Emma Watson better as Belle, than as Hermione.

How about that, Millennials? How does that feel?

Reform is impossible in system at war with itself

It is unfortunate that the federal Liberals have broken their promise to change the way we would have elected our next government. Even though few Canadians seem to care that our current system of voting does not produce particularly representative governments, they do seem to care when signature campaign promises are broken.

Especially the unfortunate ones.

I myself was heartened to find a government that was elected to a majority of seats with a minority of voter support saying the right words about how change was needed.

Back in 2015, change for the better seemed so possible. But sunny ways have been darkened since then by clouds of extremist politics drifting in from the south. Doing what you believe is right has become more difficult; doing what is patently wrong has become the way to get attention and support.

I'm not ready to admit that proposing electoral change was a bad idea, but changes in the landscape since the last election show that developing a broad consensus for big changes has become pretty well impossible.

Consider the response of the critics when the decision to drop electoral reform was made by the government's new Minister of Democratic Institutions (yes, we have one of those; it was created to drive the promised electoral reform to completion). Karina Gould read her marching orders to a gathering of the press, and revealed that reforming our voting system was no longer part of her mandate.

NDP critic Nathan Cullen, generally a reasonable debater given to measured words, blew a gasket.

Prime minister Justin Trudeau proved himself a liar, the most cynical variety of politician, said Cullen. He charged that Trudeau would say anything to get elected, and then after the election use any weak excuse to justify all his lies.

Green Party leader Elizabeth May claimed she felt deeply betrayed over Trudeau's breaking faith with young voters.

The NDP and the Green Party have the most to gain through electoral reform, particularly in its most complicated form, proportional representation.

The Conservatives, not so much. They believe their greatest chances at winning a general election lay in there being no changes at all to our first-past-the-post voting system. So they demanded that any changes be sent to a national referendum where the waters could be sufficiently muddied to ensure no changes would ever be made. So the most invective their leader Rona Ambrose could raise was to warn Canadians against believing anything Justin Trudeau might say.

As May remarked about the dangers of cynicism in politics, it has enough to feed itself. But cynicism in politics does not just feed itself today, it is the total of all three courses of the meal.

This is a government at war with itself. There is no coming together to reach a reasonable agreement on anything.

Just reflect on what's changed since the last federal election in 2015. Canada has gone from repudiating cynical and divisive politics, to a full-blown adoption of the dark side.

Are we that much different anymore in our views and in our society than the ultra-polarized United States? Is there a comfortable centre still remaining where people can discuss things respectfully, recognize that the greater good stretches beyond personal gain and find rational compromises?

If there is such a place, it's being well hidden.

It's too bad that the Liberals didn't have a fleshed-out program of electoral reform to introduce immediately after the election, while goodwill still existed in this country. It's too bad all sides worked so immediately for the good for their party, and not the good of the nation.

As events have passed, it's a relief that Trudeau chose to take the hit for abandoning the idea, rather than trying to push electoral reform through the mud hole our politics have become, to the harm of all.

Trudeau may have broken a promise, but I say all the parties have broken faith with Canadians in this.