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By Scott de Lange Boom

The climate news is grim. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report is clear: humanity has to reduce global emissions, and quickly, if we are to avoid a catastrophe. Vancouver likes to think of itself as an environmentally progressive city, but we fall short of taking the action we need to. Vancouver needs to move beyond straw bans and change how Vancouver is built.

Every year the region emits 14.7 million tonnes of CO 2e greenhouse gases, including 2.6 million tonnes in the City of Vancouver. Vancouver needs to focus its attention on the two main sources, buildings and transportation.

Metro Vancouver is projected to grow by a million people over the next two decades. How and where those people settle will be the decisive factor in whether we meet our affordability and climate goals. If we continue the pattern that sees significant growth pushed to the car-dependent suburbs, the result will be increasing congestion and carbon emissions.

When we don't build homes here in the city, the people don't disappear, they merely get displaced to the suburbs, increasing congestion and emissions as they are forced to drive longer distances.

Growth should rather be accommodated in the region’s core, the City of Vancouver. By building compact, walkable neighbourhoods, where people can live, work, and play within walking distance, we can reduce car use and therefore emissions.

So few West Enders drive, not because they are somehow more enlightened about the environment, but because the West End is one of the few places in the Lower Mainland where walking is more convenient and enjoyable than driving. For Vancouver to foster more environmentally friendly transportation, the successes of the West End will have to be replicated across the city, by creating the critical mass of people, shops, and amenities within a compact, walkable area.

Building more walkable neighborhoods is currently stymied by an outdated zoning bylaw banning apartments and other low-rise buildings in 75 percent of residential land in Vancouver. As long most of the city is held back by a 90-year-old mandate for suburban style homes, Vancouver can't become a green city.

Discussion about green building tends to focus on a few aspects of individual buildings—whether they have green roofs, solar panels, or are built of mass timber. These items of “green bling” are nice, but aren’t a substitute for a truly sustainable built form: efficient, multifamily housing built in walkable and cyclable neighborhoods.

With a changing climate, low-lying areas are becoming more prone to flooding. The two remaining sites in Vancouver, where new neighbourhoods can be build are near sea level: Northeast False Creek and Fraserlands. To build climate-resilient housing for the growing population, we need to be looking to infill existing residential areas.

Many may take comfort in the ascendancy of the Green Party of Vancouver, which elected three councillors who have branded themselves as champions of the environment. They will likely be a key swing vote on the divided council.

Unfortunately rhetoric and actions haven’t always aligned. Returning Green party councillor Adriane Carr has a mixed voting record on housing and neighborhood change. She has often sided with Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) voices opposed to change. However to prevent a rising sea from swallowing our backyards, we can ill afford to simply defer to the loudest, often unrepresentative, voices at public hearings.

It is hard to appreciate neighbourhood character if you can barely see the other side of the street through wildfire smoke. Character is not the slope of a roof or the number of doors on a building, it is the people in a neighbourhood. If we are to protect the people that give our neighbourhoods character, by ensuring they have clean air and unflooded streets, we are going to have to welcome new and larger buildings in those neighbourhoods.

The hope is that the two new Green councillors, Pete Fry and Michael Wiebe, will help reorient the Greens away from being a party that reflexively opposes change to one that will push for real, meaningful climate action, even if it means upsetting the Coalition of Vancouver Neighbourhoods.

If we are going to be a green city, we have to move beyond the latest sustainability fad and make real changes. Vancouver needs to show climate leadership and leaders must be willing to rock the boat, for we cannot consult our way to a sustainable city. Now is the time for our elected officials to turn rhetoric into action.