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Eagle Island

Idea acf4122:

Bright Future Project

Posted November 16, 2009


A Bright Future for everyone - a chance to start something that could take flight...through all communities.

The escalating symptoms of a breakdown in the world’s eco-structure are startling: droughts, floods, ice storms, wind storms, melting glaciers, disease and wildfires. A majority of scientists believe that we have limited time to reverse the destruction. It’s daunting, but we had a thought: if we can imagine the world a better place – then, we should be able to actually make it one. We want to do our part. One small community, an island in fact, but it could be anyone’s neighborhood. The hope is: start here and help it spread. This is a great opportunity that we have been given – the chance to make the world a better place, a chance for a Bright Future.

Eagle Island, therefore, proposes to embark on a joint long-term project in search of ways of living that address the issue of sustainability through physical demonstration of viable solutions. In other words, we wish to look at how we are living and change it: not to create a community of sacrifice but rather to find a way to demonstrate that it is possible to create a modern and better community where people still have regular jobs, go to dinner parties, take their kids to soccer practice and yet, are able to leave a much smaller carbon footprint behind and therein perhaps encourage the tipping process towards a real, sustainable future for us all.

We wish to do this in concert with our neighbors, our city, our province and our country. As well, we want to enlist every bit of help that we can beg, borrow or negotiate from every expert, corporate entity and government body that we can. We believe that this willingness to do anything that it takes to set up and demonstrate a viable choice is the only way that a change of this magnitude can begin to be envisioned and put into action.

To this end, Eagle Island, a small community, just 90 ft off shore, with approx 80 residents on 15 acres, has decided to embark upon a project in which, for all intents and purposes, the island will reduce its footprint on the earth by as much as is humanly possible and more importantly, act as, not only a test case but a model for urban sustainability. We can film the transformation and build a web site – a how-to for other communities.”

We approached our city: if we can put our plan together, what better opportunity than when the Olympics are in town to announce it – the world will be here: our idea, our test community could really take off. The district got behind us and are talking about how we might be used to show other communities that it is possible and how they might be able to help that come to fruition.

"As a community, we have quantified our carbon footprint and have put together a working group of citizens to help us reduce our corporate and individual carbon footprints. As a Venue City for the 2010 Olympics, we are leading with the other host communities Project Blue Sky, the athlete-championed initiative to produce less carbon. I completely support Eagle Island's effort to become a low carbon community. They would exemplify the possible with your support." - Pam Goldsmith-Jones, Mayor, District of West Vancouver

We’ll start with an energy audit – homes and passenger barges, as well as the public utilities ($5000-$7000). The local utility companies are actively pursuing GHG reduction strategies and we plan to work with them. Once we know where we stand we’ll look at the best method for reducing the carbon output of our homes ($128,000–$180,000). Our average home emits 9 tonnes of CO2/year. Heat pumps, geo-thermal, alternative energy - we'll be able to go down to approx. 4.6 tonnes. For 32 homes that is 173 tonnes/year no longer being emitted. The next step would be the island’s barges ($45,000-$50,000): gas motors emit approx 1 tonne of CO2/year. With alternative energy that figure could be reduced to next to nothing – 35 tonnes eliminated. All of these steps will make a difference, but then we have other ideas: rain-barrels and vertical organic growing platforms (1/3 of the world’s GHG’s are from the growing, packing, transporting and storing of food) and a biomass-processing unit. Perhaps some solar and some VAWT’s, a local recycling website for items that could be eliminated from the dump – the sky’s the limit!

This project has the potential to generate significant impact not only locally but also nationally. 
We know that this is an ambitious project for a small community, but we are nothing, if not progressive in terms of addressing challenges in innovative ways.

We started with 2 people: a mother of 3 and a grandmother of 5. It seems that we looked at our children and grandchildren one day and suddenly woke up. We have decided that this isn’t a choice; it is our only choice – we are going to take this first step, for us, to make a brighter future a reality for everyone.


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