Montreal City Weblog

Kate 12:55 on 2019-09-23 Permalink Reply  

• Faiz Imam 22:04 on 2019-09-23 Permalink

  Color me skeptical. I think the city, other levels of government, the private sector are doing a lot of things to promote sustainable living, but at the same time we are NOT disinsentivising the types of behavior that are unsuitable. Especially outside the urban core.

  Until we can shift behavior in the most unsustainable corners of the city, something like a 55% decrease in emissions is tough.

  Though, I suspect one goal will be extreme electrification of the auto fleet, which will go a long way to solve the issue without dealing with the underlying auto-dependency of our built environment.

  Which is fine, I guess, but absolutely a half measure.

• ant6n 23:33 on 2019-09-23 Permalink

  Faiz, skeptical?!
  …All the unsustainable parts of the city demerged or are suburbs anyway, so aren’t the city of Montreal’s responsibility.

• Chris 08:59 on 2019-09-24 Permalink

  ant6n, and you’re not skeptical? Montreal can’t even recycle glass FFS, you think they’re gonna reduce GHGs by half in a decade? I’ll take that bet.

• JaneyB 09:40 on 2019-09-24 Permalink

  Isn’t there some discussion of expanding the consignment program? Something’s happening at the NA level and heated discussion at the local level too. I’d like to see a glass container standardization law while they’re at it. I take mine to be reused at various places but that’s nothing.

• Kate 10:10 on 2019-09-24 Permalink

  The SAQ has been resisting consignment for years, but I can see why. Wine bottles are different shapes and sizes, and liquor bottles even more so. The SAQ can’t unilaterally standardize on a few formats because it’s not the producer of the products it sells.

• Kevin 10:08 on 2019-09-24 Permalink

  If we as a people really want to cut down on GHGs, we need to be radical.
  1) Give away our hydro electricity to nearby states and provinces on the condition our neighbours stop using GHG-burning electrical plants. They can build nuclear plants.
  2) Stop having all those diesel-burning trucks stuck in traffic. Set up ‘trucks only’ hours — so the trucks can get in and out efficiently (i.e. using less fuel) without having to deal with unskilled car drivers creating crashes and traffic jams.
  3) Ban bitcoin and the like, since farming just burns energy and does nothing useful. Make using them for any transaction subject to a life sentence in prison.
  4) Limit the number of airplane trips people are allowed to take. Flying south to a resort where you’ll use a dozen disposable plastic cups and straws a day?! How wasteful.

• Jack 10:17 on 2019-09-24 Permalink

  The problem is also in St Colomban a 73 km commute. I was up there a few weeks ago and saw this everywhere…..
  https://www.centris.ca/en/houses~for-sale~saint-colomban?view=Thumbnail

• CE 10:28 on 2019-09-24 Permalink

  The bottle thing could be solved pretty easily. For all beverages, impose a few standards and if any producer wants to use a custom bottle, require them to deal with them themselves. Beer used to be pretty good for this. There’s a standard 341ml bottle and they get passed around to different breweries all over Canada (the Boreal blonde you drink today could have held Molson Export 20 years ago). I worked at a brewery that used a non standard bottle We had to pick up the empties but because we didn’t have enough space to store 10 or so pallets to them (the minimum that the company that washes them would take), we just had to send them out to be crushed and melted. Other provinces have central depots where you can take back your bottles and cans and under that system, I don’t think individual producers have to take them back to deal with them (good for small producers without the facilities to do the cleaning and reusing themselves).

  The deposits also need to go up. I see glass bottles with deposits on them in the recycling all the time because it’s not worth lugging them to the dep for a few cents. The other day, in Lafontaine park, I had a six pack that a can collector refused to take. I’d never seen that happen before but I don’t blame him, why lug around 30 cents of bottles when two tall cans will get you 40 cents?

• Mark Côté 12:07 on 2019-09-24 Permalink

  The LCBO has been accepting container returns on almost everything they sell, including wine & spirit bottles, and even Tetra-Paks. It’s been going on for over 12 years. http://www.bagitback.ca/en/residential/eligible_items_return_rates.shtml

• ant6n 14:06 on 2019-09-24 Permalink

  @Chris
  I’m always skeptical. I’m also perhaps being a bit facetious when pointing out that the most unsustainable areas of the metro area are outside the Metro area.

  One thing: I’d say the issue of recycling is nearly independent of the issue of CHG emissions. They both represent environmental issues, but they shouldn’t be conflated. And it seems recycling is often a sort of compensation-action people engage in to shave of the impending feeling of climate panic: Oh I drive an SUV, and so does my wife, and we fly 4 times a year across the ocean, but we recycle!

• qatzelok 15:05 on 2019-09-24 Permalink

  Most of the comments on the CBC article look like they were written by Tar Sands workers on a break from processing the dilbit. Or paid social media agents (trolls) working for same.

• Hamza 15:12 on 2019-09-24 Permalink

  How about we just make a car-free zone in centre-ville, make Bixi more accessible to people without credit cards, slash public transit costs by 50% (didn’t somebody promise that in an election?) while upping federal spending, and of course ,

  The Pink Line

• Dhomas 20:05 on 2019-09-24 Permalink

  One thing I think the governments (both provincial and federal) have backwards is their approach to incentivizing vehicle electrification. The subsidies are not making a dent in ICE vehicle sales. I say, when the carrot doesn’t work, time to reach for the stick. Instead of giving a subsidy on electric vehicle, put a tax on non zero emission vehicles. Any new vehicle sold in Quebec (or better yet, Canada-wide) must be a ZEV, and all others have a 30% tax (or more). Start it next year, none of this “by 2045, all vehicles will be electric” bull. By then, it will be too late. Give a 1-2 year break to businesses that require semis. Tesla, Nikola, and Daimler will all have options available by then.

• walkerp 22:01 on 2019-09-24 Permalink

  Lots of great ideas here.

• Kevin 00:00 on 2019-09-25 Permalink

  Dhomas

  There is a significant production chokehold.

  Tesla made about 200,000 vehicles last year, to sell in the US, and around the world.

  Quebecers alone bought 200,000 vehicles in less than five months.

  The EV manufacturers cannot keep up. A Six month waiting list for any kind of EV is normal.