‘Our dear departed’: guest speaker Maureen Hambrecht

Posted on October 5, 2002 by urbanrenaissanceinst

Ron Pullan

October 5, 2002

Wakefield and District Family History Society

How society has dealt with mortal remains in the past: as the nineteenth century progressed it was becoming obvious that the local churchyards could no longer cope in the growing towns and cities.

A meeting was held on Saturday the 5th October when the guest speaker was Maureen Hambrecht. Her topic “Our dear departed” dealt with death and how our society dealt with the mortals remains of those who had died in the past.

Churchyard headstones abound with euphemisms for death such as “passed on; passed away or passed through.”

Reasons for death were described in language that we would find strange today. For example parish registers might indicate that the deceased had “decayed by nature” or “decayed by evil.” Accidental deaths were “visitations by God.” While laudanum was sometimes used with disastrous consequences when used in order to keep babies quiet and not with the intention of killing a child.

The main causes of death, according to a Leeds Health Report in the nineteenth century, were from small pox, measles, scarlatina, typhus, cholera, tuberculosis, convulsions, pneumonia and bronchitis.

Last words or supposed last words of the dying often have an amusing ring to them. Lord Palmerston “Die, my dear doctor, that’s the last thing I want to do.” Or George VI “How is the Empire?” A general in the American civil war was told to keep his head below the parapet to which he responded “Nonsense they couldn’t hit an elephant from this dis……”

Churchyards have been used for burials for over a thousand years. The church being in the middle so that those entering the church would be for ever reminded of their own mortality.

The south side near to the church was first used then the east, the west and then the north. [The latter being in the shadow of the church was where the devil lurked].

Suicides, however, were often buried at crossroads for it was thought that suicides walked after death and so being buried in such a place would confuse the spirit of the the deceased so that they wouldn’t know the way home.

Coffins became more commonly used by the 1800’s before that a woollen shroud would be used. The body would be rested at the lychgate where it was inspected to ensure wool was used and not other material or a fine of £5 could be levied. [Protection of the wool trade?].

Funerals for the rich would often be sumptuous affairs but for the poor a paupers or a common grave was the result. A plot could hold ten or more bodies in order to economise. As recent as 1911 in Leeds a report noted how the insurance taken out by the deceased was 1s 9d short of the overall cost and that members of the family had to pay the difference and went short of food for the next two weeks.

As the nineteenth century progressed it was becoming obvious that the local churchyards could no longer cope in the growing towns and cities. Private cemetaries and then corporation ones were created.

Headstones are often a valuable source for family and local historians. The earliest that might exist are from the seventeenth century and could be highly decorative and have verses that were often sad but often humourous. For example one such “Opened my eyes to take a peak, didn’t like it so went to sleep.”

Scottish headstones are often informative carrying several names of women with their maiden names. Occupations are also sometimes given along with the address of the deceased.

The growing popularity of cremations has meant that headstones will become fewer although churchyards and cemetaries will carry small memorial stones.

Once again Maureen Hambrecht delivered a very enjoyable talk that informed as well as entertained.

Posted in Cities, Culture | Leave a comment

Health and the city

Posted on October 2, 2002 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
October 2, 2002

The farther we live from cities, the sicker we are and the sooner we die, Statistics Canada revealed in a series of recently released reports. The closer we live to cities, the healthier we are. Those who live in large urban areas – whether metropolitan areas such as Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, or urban centres with populations of 500,000 or more – tend to be the healthiest of all.

In part, these bigger-city residents are healthier than small town and country folk due to clean living. Statscan placed different parts of Canada into one of 10 geographic groups, two of them citified (metro and large urban) and eight of them more rural in character, such as Maritime and Northern (see chart). Citified people are less likely to be smokers and drinkers, and less likely to be obese, than any of the other eight groups.

But clean living explains little of the salutary result of city living, let alone why some people get sick and others remain healthy. Neither does the availability of doctors, specialists, and hospitals in major centres explain the urban health effect. Says Statscan: “The variations between regions in the availability of these health-care services do not appear to play a role in accounting for individual health status differences.”

Instead, Statscan and the medical world agree, a dominant factor behind good health involves our social status. After adjusting for lifestyle factors such as eating and smoking, the health of the poor fares worst, followed by that of blue- and white-collar workers, followed by doctors, lawyers and other professionals. Even these professionals aren’t as healthy, and don’t live as long, as those who occupy higher-still rungs on the socio-economic ladder.

Why would highly educated, affluent professionals like doctors and lawyers fare worse than their socio-economic superiors? The best answer lies in the health effects of being in control. Study after study has shown that those who have most control over their lives are likeliest to live free and healthy. Thus individual empowerment, rather than the money, education or social status that tends to be empowering, may be the elixir that leads to a long and healthy life.

Statscan’s recent health studies support the empowerment hypothesis. The data describing small town and rural folk often paints an unflattering, devil-may-care portrait. Maritimers outside big centres are disproportionately big-time drinkers and smokers who are obese and rarely exercise. They’re also poorly educated and less likely to be employed. But while this live-for-today lifestyle harms their physical health, their mental health shows little sign of strain. Rural Maritimers are relatively stress free and unlikely to suffer from depression. Rural folk in other parts of Canada also broadly share these come-what-may characteristics.

In contrast, although urban residents tend to live high-stress lives, they’re more motivated to become well educated, they’re less likely to be dependent on government transfers, and they are much, much healthier. In the culturally diverse and commercially oriented city, even poor residents – the bottom 40% – outlive rural residents in most of the country, and the very poorest urbanites – the bottom 20% – outlive residents in Northern communities. Statscan doesn’t say why poor urbanites fare so well – they tend to be ill-educated and suffer from high unemployment – but the answer may well lie in empowerment. In the city, even the poor can be motivated by optimism, and have realistic prospects for a better life. In the more traditional countryside, change comes more slowly, and people are more often resigned to their lot in life.

Governments respond to the plight of rural residents with compassion, by providing rural residents with superior social safety nets. These safety nets have their benefits, but they also have their drawbacks. They encourage rural folk to stay put, preventing their horizons from straying from their fishing villages or logging towns, quashing thoughts that they may have of venturing out into the commercial world, with all its risks and rewards. In the rural areas, mother bird forces her young to leave the nest, knowing it’s ultimately best for her brood. Benevolent government, meanwhile, kills rural Canadians with its kindness.

Life Expectancy:
In yearsCanadian average: 78.3
Large cities (500,000+): 79.6
Metropolitan areas: 78.8
Smaller cities: 78.8
Ontario rural commuters: 78.3
Prairies (rural well-off): 77.9
Prairies (rural low-income): 77.8
Quebec rural: 77.7
Maritime rural: 77.0
Northern: 76.7
Northern aboriginal: 71.8
Source: Statistics Canada
Posted in Culture, Regulation | Leave a comment

The facts on immigration

Posted on October 2, 2002 by Other News Sources

Andrew Coyne
National Post
October 2, 2002

Martin Collacott proceeds apace. From the alarmism and selective quotation of his recent anti-immigration tract for the Fraser Institute, he has graduated to insults. Thus, for the crime of having provided what he professes most to crave, a debate, he responds by calling me “poorly informed” and decrying my “profound ignorance.”

Readers who wish to judge the depths of my ignorance for themselves will find a fuller statement of my views as they appeared in The Next City magazine. But let me just make a few points in the space I have here.

I noted previously that immigration is not especially high at present, as Mr. Collacott and his fellow restrictionists seem to believe, but rather is well below our historic average – about 1% of the population per year. In reply, Mr. Collacott claims I had “to reach back almost 100 years” to find the last time immigration crossed the 1% threshold. Wrong: In 1967, we admitted 223,000 immigrants, about the same as currently, into a population of little more than 20 million. Similar or higher numbers were admitted through much of the 1950s.

In addition to exaggerating the scale of current immigration, Mr. Collacott places heavy emphasis on the supposed steep decline in quality of recent immigrants, which he attributes to a politically motivated shift in favour of family-class immigrants, rather than economic-class. Worse, he claims, is the tendency of immigrants to use this provision to bring in their aged parents. Far from ameliorating the problem of an aging population, he points out, immigrants make up a higher proportion of those over 65 (18%) than do the native-born (10%).

Had Mr. Collacott taken greater care with his use of statistics, however, he would have noticed that this is entirely a function of a previous generation of immigrants, those who came here 40 years ago or more. Among recent arrivals, the proportion aged 65 and over is just 5%, less than half the proportion among the native-born. Oops.

That distinction, between recent immigrants and earlier cohorts, is critical. Mr. Collacott is greatly exercised that recent arrivals should make such a poor showing in economic terms compared to the native-born population. Indeed, immigrants in the 1991-96 cohort have higher rates of unemployment (18.6% versus 9.9%) and lower average incomes ($15,000 versus $25,000) than native-born Canadians. But that was always true. New immigrants, whether because of language difficulties, lack of contacts, or problems getting their credentials accepted, always underperform the average. Within about 12 years, however, they have caught up with the native-born population, eventually surpassing them by a wide margin.

Research by Professor Ather Akbari of St. Mary’s University shows that the average immigrant household pays more than twice as much in taxes as it consumes in public services. In 1990, he calculates that family would have made an annual net transfer to the native-born population of $1,813, or almost $100 per current resident.

It’s probable the size of that transfer would be less now – it does seem that today’s immigrants are taking longer to catch up than previously – but not its direction. For it isn’t only that immigrants, once established, tend to earn more than the average. They are also less inclined to be a drain on the public purse. They are less likely to be in jail, for one, as Mr. Collacott concedes. They are more likely to hold a university degree, to be self-employed, or to own their own home; less likely to be divorced, to have a chronic condition like cancer or to suffer from alcoholism.

Ah, but what about all those settlement costs, for language training and the like? Mr. Collacott again quotes from the Economic Council of Canada’s 1991 report on immigration, which he continues to misrepresent as supporting his position. In fact, the Council estimated those costs at just $20 per capita annually. By comparison, just the scale-economy effects of higher immigration would, according to the Council’s figures, add about $70 to the incomes of current residents for every million people admitted. At a population of 100 million, the Council estimated per capita incomes would be 7% higher than at present.

Mr. Collacott neglects to mention that, just as he overlooks the Council’s meticulous empirical proof of what economic theory predicts: that immigration has no impact on unemployment. Neither does he include the Council’s finding that, far from raising social tensions, attitudes to immigrants tend to improve the higher the proportion of immigrants in a given community. Rates of ethnic intermarriage, to take just one indicator, have been climbing steadily for decades.

One final point. Mr. Collacott seems most offended that I should have compared him to Enoch Powell, for raising the spectre of race riots if immigration is not severely cut back. But where’s the offence? Powell foretold scenes of bloody violence following from the admission of large numbers of black and Asian immigrants, and sure enough they followed – 30 years later, sporadically, for any number of reasons, but still, violence is violence. I’d have thought Mr. Collacott would hold him up as a prophet.

Posted in History, Immigration, Sprawl | Leave a comment

Immigration debate, unstifled

Posted on September 28, 2002 by Other News Sources

Andrew Coyne
National Post
September 28, 2002

For the record, I don’t think Martin Collacott is a racist. The Fraser Institute analyst complains in his recent paper (Canada’s Immigration Policy: The Need for Major Reform) that critics of current immigration policy are often accused of racism, thus stifling what he believes is a much needed debate. The National Post, taking up his cause in an admiring editorial, urged “proponents of mass immigration” to “debate the subject substantively rather than resorting to slurs and questioning motives.”

Quite right. So let me say again: I don’t think Mr. Collacott is a racist. I do, however, think his economics are shaky, that his paper is riddled with dubious assumptions and unsupported assertions, and that he quotes selectively from the literature to support conclusions already found in his voluminous previous scratchings on the subject. It is, all in all, a shoddy piece of work.

The argument may be summarized as follows. Canada is currently experiencing “large-scale,” indeed “massive” immigration. This is imposing a heavy burden on the native-born population, whether in terms of increased unemployment, lower wages, higher crime and social tensions, or simply in the direct costs of resettlement programs. Yet no corresponding economic benefit has been shown. Indeed, he complains, the government has “no comprehensive plan” as to “how large a population Canada should have.” He suggests throttling immigration back to levels in keeping with the country’s “absorptive capacity.”

Let us first unbundle the assumptions hidden within these lines. Are current immigration levels, at roughly 0.8% of the population per year, “high”? Compared to what? Compared to the early 1980s, yes. Compared to the peak years, in the early 1900s, when immigrants were adding to our numbers at a rate of 3% per year, no. In fact, taking the whole of our history together, the average rate of immigration is about 1%. Current immigration levels are, by that standard, low.

What rate of immigration, second, would correspond with the country’s “absorptive capacity”? Mr. Collacott doesn’t say, and I’d love to know how he proposes to calculate it. All he will allow is that it is less than where it is now: the corollary to the idea that immigration is “high” because it is more than where it was before. I can only guess that something of the same methodology would guide the government in its determination of “how large a population Canada should have.”

But the most fundamental assumption underlying Mr. Collacott’s analysis is that it is up to the proponents of immigration to prove that it is of economic benefit to the host population – that the onus is on the immigrants to show why they should be admitted, rather than on the nativists to show why they should be kept out. This is not how we typically approach such questions. Generally, when it is proposed to restrict someone’s liberty, we say the burden of proof is on their detractors to show the harms that would otherwise result.

At that, the evidence is not so scanty as Mr. Collacott implies. He quotes from the Economic Council of Canada’s 1991 study, New Faces in the Crowd, to the effect that immigrants, no matter what wealth or skills they bring, do not “contribute” directly to the incomes of the host population, since whatever returns accrue to their human or financial capital are retained by them. That’s true, and it suggests that efforts to recruit “investor” immigrants are a waste of time.

But that’s not all the Council said. Immigration increases population, and larger populations reap the benefits of economies of scale. Mr. Collacott dismisses as “very small” the Council’s estimate of the scale-economy effects of immigration – an additional three-tenths of one per cent of GDP for every 1 million immigrants. But 0.3% of a $1.1-trillion economy is $3.3-billion, or $3,300 per immigrant. And not just as a one-time payment, but every year, indefinitely. So just by showing up, the average immigrant makes a lifetime contribution to the Canadian economy on the order of $100,000.

Indeed, the Council also debunked the notion that immigration, by adding to the supply of labour, increases unemployment: the “lump of labour” fallacy to which Mr. Collacott appears to be a fully paid subscriber. This same slapdash selectivity crops up throughout the paper. In some places he complains that immigrants lack skills, and so depress wages in labour-intensive industries. In others he warns that a “massive influx” of skilled professionals is “helping to create an on-going brain drain.”

Time and again Mr. Collacott runs up against the facts’ embarrassing refusal to support his thesis. Somehow this is turned into further proof. “Although Canada has not yet seen the emergence of full-fledged ethnic ghettoes,” he writes, “there are indications that these could develop.” And, “while there is no evidence that any Canadian communities are on the verge of experiencing the tensions and riots that have taken place in a number of British cities . . . it would be folly to assume that such events could never happen in Canada.”

Race riots? I’d say he sounds like Enoch Powell (“Like the Roman, I seem to see ‘the River Tiber foaming with much blood'”), but then I’d be accused of stifling the debate.

Andrew Coyne is a columnist with the National Post and a member of Energy Probe Research Foundation‘s (EPRF) board of directors. Urban Renaissance Institute is a division of EPRF.

Posted in Causes, Immigration, Sprawl | Leave a comment

The corn isn’t green

Posted on September 25, 2002 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
September 25, 2002

Alberta is an environmental pariah for its tar sands, which are just about the world’s worst emitters of greenhouse gases, but Alberta’s neighbours to the east – Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario – avidly promote a competing fuel with proportionately much greater emissions.

The federal government also has been promoting this souped-up greenhouse gas generator, ironically touting it as a Future Fuel that can help meet the country’s Kyoto targets. But this competitor can only make matters worse.

This worst-of-all-possible greenhouse fuels is called ethanol. Although it is produced from plentiful renewable crops such as corn and wheat, it is a glutton for our ever-diminishing non-renewable fossil fuels.

The news of the evil of ethanol comes to us from Cornell University, where a study by agricultural scientist David Pimentel found that producing a U.S. gallon of ethanol consumes 131,000 BTUs in planting, growing and harvesting corn, then crushing, fermenting and distilling it. That same gallon contains only 77,000 BTUs. “Put another way, about 70% more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that is actually in ethanol,” explains Mr. Pimentel, who formerly chaired a U.S. Department of Energy panel that investigated the efficiency of ethanol production, and whose recent ethanol findings have been published in the authoritative Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences and Technology. “Every time you make one gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTUs.”

The more ethanol you produce, the less energy you have, and that applies in spades to Canada, where the yield per acre is typically lower. That makes the fuel – which is blended with gasoline and sold as “gasohol” or “E10” in over 1,000 Canadian gas stations – as much of a gas guzzler as the vehicles it’s pumped into. If ethanol visionaries have their way and government policy vastly increases ethanol production, the upshot will be more tar sands plants to produce the energy needed to feed ethanol’s insatiable maw.

Ethanol consumes so much oil and other fossil fuels because the growers and processors who swear by it can’t afford to burn ethanol to make ethanol – it costs almost twice as much to make as gasoline. Neither would any of us buy this Kyoto killer at gas stations – Sunoco is the country’s leading gasohol marketer – without pumped-up government subsidies that cheapen its cost.

Some, like the National Corn Growers’ Association in the United States, dispute Mr. Pimentel’s study. They say that U.S. corn yields have improved by 10% in the last decade, among other improvements, making ethanol a net producer of energy. Whether ethanol produces any net energy, in fact, depends on a host of factors, such as the amount of petrochemicals required to grow a particular crop, the weather, and the proximity to market. But even if ethanol did eke out a modest net energy gain in some locations at some times, why run so hard to end up at more or less the same spot? Oil fields typically produce 30 to 50 times the energy that they consume, and even tar sands, which are preposterously inefficient, manage two units out for every unit in. Ethanol, which under good conditions may net one-fifth of one unit for every unit in, makes tar sands appear a paragon of efficiency and environmental sense.

Ethanol suffers from other environmental defects, despite its renewable cachet. Corn production erodes soil 12 times faster than it can be reformed, and irrigating corn depletes groundwater 25% faster than its natural recharge rate, apart from being a big-time water polluter because of fertilizers.

The poor also suffer from ethanol, which draws corn away from farmers’ fields that would otherwise produce corn for human or animal consumption. The resulting shortfall raises the cost of feeding chickens and livestock, in turn raising the cost of basic foods such as meat, milk, and eggs.

With losers all round, who backs the government programs that feed ethanol? Not surprisingly, the funding comes from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, a federal department that answers to farmers and food processors, and to no one else.

Responses

I am advisor to the board of directors of Integrated Grain Processors Cooperative, an Ontario-based farmer-owned cooperative exploring the construction of an ethanol production facility in the province. As someone who has been involved in the fuel ethanol industry for over 20 years, I felt compelled to respond to Mr. Solomon’s article. The article is so riddled with misinformation it is difficult to know where to begin.

There are four points that I would like to make. First, ethanol is the only liquid automotive fuel that has a net positive greenhouse gas reduction benefit. There have been numerous studies conducted that demonstrate the uptake of C02 by the corn plant is greater than the amount of C02 generated by the production of ethanol. Of course, we all know that fossil fuels of any kind cannot make that claim. We can provide a number of credible studies from the U.S. Federal Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy and others, that substantiate ethanol’s greenhouse gas reduction benefits.Second, it’s unfortunate that the writer chose to use only a study done by David Pimentel of Cornell as his major reference. That report has literally been ignored as biased, inaccurate and without merit by much of the scientific community. The assumptions were inaccurate, the data used were grossly outdated and the methodology was flawed. The only ones who have given any credit to the report are those who are trying desperately to build a case against ethanol, which is why the report was produced in the first place.Third, there have been at least 10 separate studies done by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, the internationally recognized environmental watchdog organization the Institute for Local Self Reliance, and several national laboratories. All have demonstrated that ethanol has a net energy gain from field to fuel tank of over 20%.Finally, the food vs. fuel issue was addressed 20 years ago. Ethanol does not use food to make fuel. In fact, it enhances the food value of the corn. Only the starch is used to make ethanol, the balance is a high-protein, high-fibre feed supplement for dairy, beef, poultry and swine. It’s not more expensive than corn, it is only more concentrated than whole corn. It does not drive up the price of beef or chicken or any other livestock it is fed to. That is a totally false and misleading statement.Farmers are not growing more corn because of ethanol; they are simply creating a new value-added market for the corn that they already grow. Fertilizer and chemical use have been dramatically reduced in the past 20 years. Farmers have depended on the land for their livelihood for generations and hope their heirs will have to opportunity to follow in their footsteps. As a result, they are keenly aware of the importance of responsible land stewardship and work hard to minimize the use of chemicals and fertilizers.For Mr. Solomon to take a widely discredited study, and use it to spread false and misleading information about an environmentally sound, renewable fuel like ethanol is troublesome to say the least.

– Mike Bryan, president and CEO, BBI International_____

Mr. Solomon’s objections to ethanol are based almost completely on arguments provided by Dr. Pimentel, well-known adversary of the renewable fuels movement, whose 1998 study draws primarily on old data and completely dismisses the energy value of ethanol’s primary co-products. Dr. Pimentel’s work has been widely refuted by a diverse group of academic and agricultural experts.

In recent years, tremendous gains in efficiency have been achieved in both crop and ethanol production processing. In August of this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released a new study showing that ethanol production yields 34% more energy than is used in growing and harvesting grain and distilling it into ethanol. Significantly increased energy gains over findings from their 1995 study are attributed to higher corn yields, lower energy use in the fertilizer industry and advances in fuel conversion technologies. Ethanol also provides other significant environmental and social benefits, including improved air quality, reduced reliance on non-renewable energy sources, diversification of agricultural markets and rural economic development. Co-products that result from the ethanol production process include a high-protein feed that helps to keep livestock feed costs low. Contrary to Mr. Solomon’s allegations, corn farmers in Ontario have implemented a number of initiatives to reduce the environmental impact of corn production, including reduced tillage or no-till production to protect soil integrity, reduced pesticide use and the implementation of nutrient management plans to ensure that corn crops receive only the nutrients and protection that they need to thrive and that our water sources are protected. Since farmers do not irrigate field corn in Ontario, Mr. Solomon’s attack on corn-based ethanol on the basis of the resultant groundwater depletion and fertilizer pollution are somewhat curious. Even more so is his suggestion that increased ethanol production results in higher costs for livestock feed (and hence for consumer food products). That comes as quite a surprise to corn farmers: Despite increasing costs, and with no adjustments for inflation, corn prices are lower now than they were in 1980.

– Dennis Jack, president, Ontario Corn Producers’ Association_____

I thought Mr. Solomon made some interesting points in his article, but was very much off base in his assessment and valuation.

When we think about oil stocks being depleted in 70 to 80 years, (seems like a long time, but really is not) we need to seriously work on alternatives. Ethanol from corn is one option – probably not that economical today but getting more efficient. Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada may support this program, however they have a significant research arm that focuses on many aspects of alternatives for petroleum. Recently, the city of Saskatoon commissioned two buses to test out a biodiesel from canola (more efficient, less polluting), researched by AAFC and the Saskatoon research community. It is being commercialized by a group of farmers.Mr. Solomon may be concerned about the ethanol of today, but if so, he should be talking about other alternatives – petroleum will not be around forever if we keep using it at the rates we do today.Surprisingly, this is one area where Canada can be a global leader – improved alternative green fuels from Biomass, part of the bio-based economy. I think our agricultural research community should be commended for taking these initiatives that will lead to a better environment.

-Dr. Murray McLaughlin, Guelph, Ont. _____This article was excellent and timely.

It is crucial that we protect the environment and maximize our resources to do so. This requires us to take a comprehensive approach, use all the facts and avoid junk science. Mr. Solomon’s article helps to promote that mentality.Several years ago when I was mayor of Waterloo, Ont., we had a different experience where “the corn wasn’t green.” Thanks to a large grant from the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources, a group of interested parties led by the city of Waterloo and the Grand River Conservation Authority started watershed planning in Ontario with the Laurel Creek Watershed Study.After the baseline data was gathered and assessed, the researchers advised us that the environment was at risk and the water quality of Laurel Creek was “on the edge” because of the high adverse impact of the corn fields: rapid runoff, erosion, siltation and pollution from pesticides. The consultants made the point that by allowing urban development, with very strong provisos, we would actually be improving the water quality and the environment. The provisos included aggressive and creative water quality requirements, wide buffers along the creeks, very sizeable nature preserves and a comprehensive system of storm water management.Measurable criteria were put in the Official Plan with the policy that, if the developers did not meet them, the next approvals would be withheld. This is a sustainable development approach which balances the environment with the economy.The city of Waterloo has both a high rate of growth and a strong environmental ethic and I found that this sustainable development approach was very valuable in helping to achieve that balance.

-Brian Turnbull, Waterloo, Ont.

Corn-based fuel. . . or cornball critics

There are four points that I would like to make. First, ethanol is the only liquid automotive fuel that has a net positive greenhouse gas reduction benefit. There have been numerous studies conducted that demonstrate the uptake of C02 by the corn plant is greater than the amount of C02 generated by the production of ethanol. Of course, we all know that fossil fuels of any kind cannot make that claim. We can provide a number of credible studies from the U.S. Federal Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy and others, that substantiate ethanol’s greenhouse gas reduction benefits.Second, it’s unfortunate that the writer chose to use only a study done by David Pimentel of Cornell as his major reference. That report has literally been ignored as biased, inaccurate and without merit by much of the scientific community. The assumptions were inaccurate, the data used were grossly outdated and the methodology was flawed. The only ones who have given any credit to the report are those who are trying desperately to build a case against ethanol, which is why the report was produced in the first place.Third, there have been at least 10 separate studies done by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Department of Energy, the internationally recognized environmental watchdog organization the Institute for Local Self Reliance, and several national laboratories. All have demonstrated that ethanol has a net energy gain from field to fuel tank of over 20%.Finally, the food vs. fuel issue was addressed 20 years ago. Ethanol does not use food to make fuel. In fact, it enhances the food value of the corn. Only the starch is used to make ethanol, the balance is a high-protein, high-fibre feed supplement for dairy, beef, poultry and swine. It’s not more expensive than corn, it is only more concentrated than whole corn. It does not drive up the price of beef or chicken or any other livestock it is fed to. That is a totally false and misleading statement.Farmers are not growing more corn because of ethanol; they are simply creating a new value-added market for the corn that they already grow. Fertilizer and chemical use have been dramatically reduced in the past 20 years. Farmers have depended on the land for their livelihood for generations and hope their heirs will have to opportunity to follow in their footsteps. As a result, they are keenly aware of the importance of responsible land stewardship and work hard to minimize the use of chemicals and fertilizers.For Mr. Solomon to take a widely discredited study, and use it to spread false and misleading information about an environmentally sound, renewable fuel like ethanol is troublesome to say the least.

– Mike Bryan, president and CEO, BBI International_____

Mr. Solomon’s objections to ethanol are based almost completely on arguments provided by Dr. Pimentel, well-known adversary of the renewable fuels movement, whose 1998 study draws primarily on old data and completely dismisses the energy value of ethanol’s primary co-products. Dr. Pimentel’s work has been widely refuted by a diverse group of academic and agricultural experts.

by Lawrence Solomon, National Post, October 9, 2003

Two decades ago, David Pimentel released a startling study for the United States Department of Energy showing that making ethanol consumes far more energy than the ethanol contains. The agency – to confirm his findings – had 26 of its top scientists review his study before its release, but that didn’t satisfy Dr. Pimentel’s critics.

The United States Department of Agriculture, food giant Archer-Daniel-Midlands and others in the corn lobby vilified him, and congressmen from corn states demanded that the federal government’s watchdog, the General Accounting Office, thoroughly investigate his findings. The GAO spent 20 times as much money reviewing Dr. Pimentel’s work as Dr. Pimentel’s own team did in creating the original study. After dissecting his methodology and scrutinizing every figure, the GAO, too, endorsed Dr. Pimentel’s findings.

Two decades later, the corn and ethanol lobby is still at it. The critics that appear elsewhere on this page state that Dr. Pimentel, apart from being dead wrong, is biased, grossly outdated, incompetent, and devoid of credibility in the scientific community. Instead of putting our trust in this sham of a scientist – just about the only person in the universe who seems to find ethanol lacking, they imply – believe the bushel of counterstudies produced by the real experts.

The critics protest too much and their studies, like many things available by the bushel, aren’t worth that much. The critics fault Dr. Pimentel’s methodology while they ignore data – such as corn yields from less productive states – that doesn’t serve their interests. The critics fault him for using out-of-date data in his recent study, which relied primarily on year 2000 data, while the studies his critics cite use primarily older data – a commonly cited Department of Agriculture study, for example, uses 1990 to 1993 data. The critics accuse Dr. Pimentel of having a vested interest in his recent criticisms of ethanol, when the results of his research, which was funded by the College of Agriculture at Cornell University, came as a blow to the many pro-ethanol interests associated with agricultural colleges. Meanwhile, the ethanol studies that refute Dr. Pimentel’s findings have been conducted by government departments, farm interests and ethanol industries, all of which have a vested interest in converting corn to ethanol. None of their studies count all the energy costs associated with ethanol, as Dr. Pimentel has.

Many of the ethanol industry’s consultants, scientists and other experts are doubtless competent, as are the government scientists that have taken runs at Dr. Pimentel’s findings. The Oxford, MIT and Cornell-educated Dr. Pimentel, however, is in another league. He produced his initial study as chairman of the Gasohol Study Group, a task force convened by the Reagan Administration in 1980 to investigate the efficiency of ethanol production. Formerly a White House advisor to president Nixon, he helped establish the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Dr. Pimentel, far from being a widely discredited scientist, has been chairman of the Environmental Studies Board in the National Academy of Sciences, he has served on 12 of their distinguished panels, and he is internationally renowned as one of the best in his field. Last October, his ethanol findings were published in the 2001 edition of the Encyclopedia for Physical Sciences and Technology, a peer-reviewed publication. The criticisms from his opponents are as outrageous as they are self-serving.

Dr. Pimentel’s critics also tout ethanol’s benefits in combatting air pollution. While ethanol does have some beneficial attributes – it replaces potentially harmful agents such as MMT and MTBE, and reduces carbon monoxide emissions – ethanol’s environmental drawbacks may entirely counter the benefits. Ethanol produces suspected carcinogens such as aldehydes and just as many nitrous oxides as its competitors. Last week, in a settlement with the Environmental Protection Agency for violations of the Clean Air Act, 12 ethanol plants agreed to pay fines and install devices called thermal oxidizers to reduce emissions. Ironically, the energy these oxidizers will burn will make ethanol an even greater energy glutton, and an even greater economic boondoggle.

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Re: Corn-based Fuel or Cornball Critics
As a student of energy politics, I believe there is no question that the benefits of ethanol manufacturing follow the path of the money trail and not the science of energy production. U.S. tax dollars subsidize both ethanol factories and the farmers’ corn production in order to maintain the consumer cost price. So Mr. Solomon’s article proves what we already know.
My purpose in writing is to suggest that corn ethanol is not a legitimate subject for evaluation because corn could never amount to more than 2% volume offset to gasoline. The conversion of garbage biomass to ethanol would have been more appropriate to the energy question. Authors James Woolsey (former CIA director, Clinton Administration) and former senator Richard Lugar have made the garbage biomass-to-ethanol case in their book The New Petroleum. The primary purpose of their proposal is to make a quick conversion of vehicular fuels to 85% ethanol/15% gasoline. Some cars and trucks on the road now are dual-fuel capable and can burn this mixture. All cars on the road can be easily and inexpensively converted to dual-fuel capability with some fuel line and fuel pump replacement. This would enable the United States to have a fast track to independence from OPEC oil imports. The money saved from oil purchases could subsidize a high priority fast track.Neither the authors nor I mean to suggest that garbage biomass-to-ethanol is the ultimate alternative, but it would bail us out for the next 20 years.
– Bill Grazier, Duluth, Minn.
-Claudette Fortier, chair, Canadian Private Copying Collective

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