city of British Columbia aspires to become ''the greenest city in the world by 2020'' (City of Vancouver, 2012, pp. ii and 5). Vancouver is already set to bring . community-based greenhouse gas emissions [in 2012] down to 5% below 1990 levels, even as [the City's] population has grown by more than 27 per cent and jobs have increased by over 18% (City of Vancouver, 2012, p. 18).Meanwhile, 1000 kilometres to the northeast, in many parts of the state of Alberta, mining companies are actively extracting as many fossil fuels as the domestic and international markets can bear from the huge provincial reserves of bituminous coal and oil sands, making the latter ''the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada'' according to Greenpeace. 2 Hence, while more and more cities and regions around the world, like Vancouver, boast very ambitious low carbon strategies, pointing to hopeful ''soft energy paths'' of more sustainable and peaceful energy and urban futures, current global economic, geopolitical and indeed geological trends generate quite different tendencies towards a prioritising of industrial profits and national energy autonomy/self-sufficiency.

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