The Futurology Exchange by Okanagan Life Magazine

Big Ideas We Need Now — #5 & 6

Inspired by This Magazine's feature "40 ideas We Need Now," we invited some of Okanagan Life's regular contributors, along with other notable Valley residents to give us a big idea whose time has come, for the Okanagan and for the world. Sadly, more than 90 per cent of those we invited said they were simply too busy. Perhaps, then, the first big idea is that we should all slow down so that we actually have the time to contemplate how to collectively make a better future. Still, we managed to receive a diverse array of ideas that are sure to make you think, make you laugh, make you angry or even make you want to put in your own two cents. Well, here's your chance. Comment on these ideas, or add your own by emailing us. In the meantime…

Knowing Discretionary Spending and Priming the Elements of Discernment
by Don Elzer

Discretionary spending is the amount of money we spend as consumers after we have paid for our staples such as housing. Collectively in the Okanagan we spend about $4.5 billion per year, however, we don’t know a lot about our discretionary spending habits.

Such spending is at the core of knowing and understanding how to shift consumer behaviour and ultimately what drives our local economy. A shift in such local spending patterns can retain millions of dollars locally, and conversely, can mean millions of dollars leaving the community.

We must turn our community economic development agencies into local knowledge centres that understand the details of local discretionary spending patterns. Local initiatives should help compete against big box retailing and the global marketplace in order to retain local spending within the community economy.
Promoting efforts to buy locally grown food, locally made goods and purchase services owned and operated within the community could add 30 per cent value to our economy in the Okanagan and create a formula of sustainability.

Big Ideas We Need Now — #9

Inspired by This Magazine's feature "40 ideas We Need Now," we invited some of Okanagan Life's regular contributors, along with other notable Valley residents to give us a big idea whose time has come, for the Okanagan and for the world. Sadly, more than 90 per cent of those we invited said they were simply too busy. Perhaps, then, the first big idea is that we should all slow down so that we actually have the time to contemplate how to collectively make a better future. Still, we managed to receive a diverse array of ideas that are sure to make you think, make you laugh, make you angry or even make you want to put in your own two cents. Well, here's your chance. Comment on these ideas, or add your own by emailing us. In the meantime…

Cooperation: A 21st-Century Manifesto
by Karin Wilson

There are two occasions in life when we are directed to turn inward. One is when tragedy hits  — divorce, the death of a loved one, even a transition at work. At the macro level this becomes economic recession or environmental disaster like the Okanagan Mountain Park fire. These events force us to look inside to see what needs to be fixed and determine how to move forward.

The other occasion is when we presumably have everything  — enough food, adequate shelter, clean water. Our families are thriving; we have sufficient education. We feel fulfilled. The temptation here is to let that moment for reflection slip past, yet this is exactly when we have the opportunity to realize something far larger than ourselves. This is when we have the chance to push beyond the obvious to create something new.

Big Ideas We Need Now — #15

Inspired by This Magazine's feature "40 ideas We Need Now," we invited some of Okanagan Life's regular contributors, along with other notable Valley residents to give us a big idea whose time has come, for the Okanagan and for the world. Sadly, more than 90 per cent of those we invited said they were simply too busy. Perhaps, then, the first big idea is that we should all slow down so that we actually have the time to contemplate how to collectively make a better future. Still, we managed to receive a diverse array of ideas that are sure to make you think, make you laugh, make you angry or even make you want to put in your own two cents. Well, here's your chance. Comment on these ideas, or add your own by emailing us. In the meantime…

Give Small Biz a Break
by “Don Quixote”

My one idea that the Okanagan, and indeed the province, needs now is a small business property tax break. I maintain that local small businesses (drug store, local pub, local radio station or locksmith) should be taxed at a different rate than big businesses (banks, Walmart, Staples etc.).

I was told that this was not allowed by provincial regulation. On closer examination I discovered that the big businesses were already paying at a higher effective rate than the smaller ones and had been doing so since 1984 when the provincial government passed legislation allowing a $10,000 exemption for improvements on a business property assessment. 

When Community Growth Causes Personal Pain

This past Friday (February 8) I attended a forum in Kelowna co-sponsored by the City of Kelowna and the John Howard Society of the Central Okanagan. The program was titled: Crime Prevention and Sustaining Healthy Communities.

From that, I was inclined to expect something on the theme of law and order, so the message I heard was quite a surprise.

The keynote speaker Craig Jones, a Phd, criminologist, researcher and executive director of the John Howard Society of Canada, worked from the premise that "rapid economic growth does not benefit everyone equally. Some people - for a complex variety of reasons - suffer severe psycho-social dislocation. Traditional criminal justice responses usually exacerbate such situations."

Well then, certainly Kelowna qualifies under the heading of rapid economic growth. And according to statistics presented in a pre-session handout by the Poverty and Homelessness Action Team of the Central Okanagan, nearly 300 people – men, women, families with children and seniors – sleep outside and in shelters; last year the Kelowna food bank distributed nearly 30,000 hampers to low income families helping nearly 10,000 children; close to 40 per cent of the city’s homeless people are over 50 years of age; and surprisingly, 27 per cent of homeless people work full or part time.

In a city where housing prices have doubled in the last five years, the action team’s figures indicate that 5,000 households spend more than half their income on housing and 22,000 people are at risk of becoming homeless. With a zero rental vacancy rate, the city needs an additional 8,000 affordable housing units.

So I could easily buy a case for severe psycho-social dislocation.

The Future of the Okanagan: A Round Table Discussion Worth Responding To

Compelling conversations don't get much better than this one (available as a text transcript or audio recording), held at the Rotary Centre for the Arts this past November. Okanagan Life Magazine invited some of the Okanagan's best minds and important players to sit down and talk about the Valley's future, as well as options for its sustainability. What we heard at this discussion left us determined to learn more about the issues and with a new mandate to help get the Okanagan's residents involved and participating in a broad exchange of ideas.

Listening to this discussion, it becomes very clear that our shared future is being shaped right now, and if we all go along with the status quo, we may be in for a great deal of unpleasant consequences. Now is not the time to be apathetic.

Hear what a development manager, a wine industry consultant, an organic farmer, an aquatic biologist, a technology expert, a registered architect, a business consultant to First Nations, and three UBC-O professors (from the schools of economics, engineering and sociology) have to say on issues such as the impacts of global factors on the Okanagan, growth and development questions, and the impacts that absentee homeowners have on our communities.

This blog has been set up to share news, views, reviews and interviews on the subject of the Okanagan's future and it's sustainability. I encourage everyone to make comments on anything we post here, beginning with your thoughts and reactions to this round table discussion. Don't leave the important ideas and debates to back room meetings. Get involved and voice your opinions so that our leaders cannot ignore you.

Stuff: 101

Here's a fast, entertaining primer on the lifecycle and impacts of the products we all consume. The Story of Stuff is a website with a 20-minute enhanced video that breaks down the complexities of our modern system of production and consumption into a message that is very easy to understand. It's focus in on the United States, but it applies equally to Canada. Look around at all the stuff you have after you watch this and it will become apparent very quickly just how much one person's impact can be.

Inspired Ideas for a Sustainable Future

Alex Steffen, founder of WorldChanging.com, gives an upbeat presentation of possible solutions to global challenges. Check out the straw that purifies water as you drink it, or my favourite — flowers that change colours where landmines are present below them. He also offers up Vancouver as a city that is implementing some progressive ideas. While some of the answers in his presentation seem irrelevant to us in the Okanagan, I think the message is clear. We need to think differently about how we approach living here. And, we should be very capable of finding innovative solutions to the issues we are facing in this region if we have the willingness to do so.

Cradle to Cradle Design: An Idea Whose Time Has Come

William McDonough, co-author of Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, gives a humourous presentation about the need for, and very real capabilities of, designing the products we consume to be fully sustainable and ecologically-friendly — without ending up in a landfill or a "slow motion waste" recycling stream in which the material recycled cannot be used to re-create a product of the same quality as the original.

McDonough also presents plans for an entire sustainable city to be built in China (yes — China!). It's an amazing concept, and should it be pulled off, will give the rest of the world a great template to build on or use as inspiration.

This presentation offers some reasons to remain optimistic about the possibilities for our future. Wouldn't it be great if the Okanagan's new economy could be built with companies and practices with these ideas at their core?

I must give credit to Ethan Andrews, my good friend from Denver, Colorado for passing McDonough's book on to me as a gift. Ethan does some amazing work in the way of environmental art and design with his company Leap Year.