Post Carbon Red Deer

Red Deer, Alberta, Canada -- perhaps the global capital of Hummers and urban sprawl -- has an upcoming election (October, 2007), and I plan to run on a platform of peak natural gas sanity. Since we in North America have less than a decade of proven reserves left, I figure that this would be the only way to break through the complacency on other related issues (eg, climate change and peak oil).

I know pretty much what I'm going to say on the natural gas issue. There are lots of graphs and maps that I've taken off the internet (see some of them at www3.telus.net/awareness/actionplan.htm). And I know that I'm fairly limited on the prescription front. I can easily say that one platform plank will be the insistance that any new buildings must be at least R-2000 compliant.

But after that, the prescriptions get a bit hazy. The New Urbanism paradigm would probably be desirable. The world class Drake Landing suburb in Okotoks would also be a desirable example (either as a new suburb or as a neighbourhood retrofit). There are all sorts of transportation issues that would need to come to the fore.

But these are all issues that require a lot of outside expertise, stakeholder dialogue and community buy-in. So I'm currently trying to figure out the best organizational proposal to put in my electoral platform. My theory is that unless we in North America build up our social capital (ie, community ties) a heck of a lot more, then all the technofixes on the planet won't help us. The survivalist faction will survive (for a while), but eventually the whole thing will resemble a Darwinian nightmare.

Accordingly, I've been doing a lot of research into Deliberative Democracy and a subset called Future Search conferences. However, there's no clear road map on how to involve a city of 80,000 in something a complex as its energy future.

My proposal at this point looks like the following:

Initially, get the experts involved. This would include everyone from New Urbanist planners to geothermal engineers. They would make presentations that would be available online (sort of like our own Youtube website), on freely available DVD's and on the local community cable station.

Then, the major stakeholders (including everyone from chamber of commerce representatives to environmental groups) would get involved in a series of Future Search conferences (see http://futuresearch.net to get an idea of what these would be like). Broadcasts of the plenary sessions from the conferences would occur again on the aforementioned website, DVD's, and community cable station.

Finally, if consensus is lacking, we may need to resort to something like a deliberative poll or a citizen's assembly (such as BC had a couple of years ago to determine their voting system and that Ontario is now copying).

There would be three main advantages to doing things this way:

First is that it would be a much more legitimate process than how things have been done in the past (ie, politicians, city planners, and developers doing everything behind closed doors).

Second, it would most certainly result in better outcomes, since all strata of society would be involved in coming up with suggestions and solutions.

The third advantage would be an offshoot from the second. The stakeholder conferences are known to be instrumental in fostering dialogue between disparate sectors of society. This would build up our social capital (ie, community spirit). The result would be less cocooning in front of the boob tube (ie, fascination with Hollywood and pro mega-sports) and more interest in the important trends that are going on in Red Deer and the wider world. Joe/Jane Lunchbox might be less inclined to spend their extra dollars on a new plasma TV and more inclined to improve the insulation in their house.

Any thoughts?