For the Children
LEADING BY EXAMPLE
Small changes can yield big results, especially when the goal is healing. You can learn from friends whose reusuable shopping bags and energy-efficient lightbulbs inspire green living. Pick up a few eco-friendly habits and feel good for passing yours along. Saving the environment can be easier than you think.
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The following is an article by Dr. David Suzuki, in the Toronto Star, Saturday, October 6, 2007, "Living Green," page U1. Dr. Suzuki is a scientist, author, professor, lecturer, and Canada's leading environmentalist:
What does it mean to live green? Unless we live under a rock, we are all part of a way of life that is unsustainable because it is undermining the life support systems of the planet -- air, water, soil, energy and biodiversity.
Globalization conceals much of the ecological cost of our way of life. From the moment I wake up in cotton sheets under wool blankets, I benefit from materials grown, shipped and manufactured all over the world.
Think of the source of the coffee, sugar, newsprint and ink, porcelain dishes and metal cutlery that help us start the day. By the time we get to all the components of our radios, or TVs, cars, phones and computers, you realize we are invisibly plugged in to the rest of the world and if 6.5 billion people aspire to our standard of living, the burden on the planet will be overwhelming.
'Carbon neutral is not a licence to pollute. So this year I have cut my flying in half.' David Suzuki
But 30 million Canadians making small changes in our lives -- rejecting disposability, consuming less and more judiciously, driving less, etc. -- can nevertheless be very significant with no diminution in the quality of our lives.
Can we change to a society that covets clean air, clean water, clean soil, clean energy and a diversity of other species as our highest priority, or will be choose to carry on with business as usual because we are unwilling to jeopardize the economy or sacrifice our hyper-consumption?
Whatever we choose, nature will ultimately impose the final limits and conditions on our survival and well-being.
We all live with contradictions. In 2000, I purchased the first Prius sold in Canada. I bicycle around Vancouver, and I take the bus or walk even more.
But I fly, and as George Monbiot's book Heat points out, air travel is the one major activity that cannot be changed to meet the large reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions necessary if we are to keep global temperature from rising more than 2C this century.
To bring human-generated GHGs into balance with the biosphere's capacity to absorb them, Monbiot asserts we must reduce our annual output of GHGs to an average of one tonne per person on the planet. At present, the average Canadian generates 20 tonnes and, according to Monbiot, a round-trip flight from Toronto to London produces one tonne per passenger.
To move toward balance with our surroundings, we have to spread information and knowledge, and that has been my rationale for continuing to fly. But it's not a satisfying one because I know people can rationalize just about anything.
For more than three years, I have been flying gold-standard "carbon neutral" -- that is, for the energy used on my behalf when I fly, I invest in putting 1 1/2 times as much green energy (solar and wind) onto the grid in developing countries like China and India.
The atmosphere is a single entity, and what happens there affects us all. By investing in such countries, we reduce their incentive to build polluting coal-burning plants.
But "carbon neutral" is not a licence to pollute. So this year I have cut my flying in half. I lumped commitments to fulfill several speaking engagements and television work on one trip.
Monbiot points out that short flights produce a disproportionate amount of GHGs because takeoff and landing are the times of greatest energy use. So I take trains between Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa and, although they take longer, I can work and relax and travel from downtown to downtown.
I have declined several invitations to speak abroad. And now I am offering to give speeches to various places but on condition that they be by teleconference. This month, I do my first two teleconference speeches to Australia and I hope that next year, most of my speeches will be from the comfort of a studio in Vancouver where I live.
It means I'll be better off psychically and physically, my family and friends will be pleased and, I hope, Mother Earth will have a slightly reduced burden.
David Suzuki is a broadcaster, scientist and founder of the David Suzuki Foundation: davidsuzuki.org
2 comments:
I appreciate David Suzuki's article, and agree that we have to lead by example. I've read George Monbiot's book, Heat: how to stop the planet from burning, and regularly read his Guardian columns on the Web. I'm willing to believe that, in order to keep the global temperature from rising 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, we Canadians need to reduce our carbon footprint by 90-95%, ie., from 20 tons a year to one ton a year. But as I try to visualize that, I wonder, "What would that look like?"
As I read it, if the overall output of greenhouse gases for Canada is calculated as one ton per person, and individuals in our households account for, say, 40 of 50% of the emissions, then the other 50 or 60%, from commercial and industrial activities, also has to be accounted for within that per capita allotment. Is that it? So to get the national allotment down to size, each household has to reduce our carbon footprint by 90-95%, and each commercial and industrial activity has to reduce its carbon footprint by 90-95%, or the greater GHG producers need to reduce by more, and the lower producers by less, down to the global per capita allotment.
David Suzuki, in his article, uses the timeline "within this century." But Monbiot uses tighter figures, and estimates that we may only have until 2030 to make the necessary reductions before global temperatures could go into runaway, with completely unpredictable and possibly devastating results. Polar ice is melting faster than anticipated, reducing the amount of sunlight that is reflected, thus accelerating the process of melting in an increasing loop. And the northern seas (as they warm?)are able to absorb a decreasing amount of carbon dioxide, leaving an increasing proportion to accumulate in the atmosphere.
But we always get caught up in the dramatic climatic facts. What I want to know as a concerned citizen is, what will it look like? What are we actually having to ask of ourselves, person by person? What are we having to ask of our cities and towns, what are we having to ask of our politicians?
From what I understand of Green Party platform statements and the various movements toward green taxation, The use of non-renewable resources needs to be more heavily taxed, while taxes on labour need to be lowered. Energy needs to be a lot more expensive, compelling us as individuals to use less, and compelling industries to develop radical alternatives to their production methods.
Inescapably, as we propose higher energy prices, we have to address the realities that poorer people, smaller businesses and smaller farms are more vulnerable, have fewer options and have fewer backup resources to absorb significantly increased energy costs. Anathema to capitalists everywhere, the thorny issues of income distribution and poverty reduction, locally and nationally, have to be dealt with, as they are closely linked to the measures we must take to reduce our carbon footprint.
What are the practical implications of reducing our carbon footprint by 95%? I live in southwest Ontario where car manufacturing is a major industry. Someone who works within the industry told me that each car manufacturing plant in Canada needs to produce 250,000 cars a year to remain profitable. Car plants use enormous amounts of energy. So, presumably, do steel mills. So does the oil patch, especially the shale oil and tar sands projects. Cars, roads, the seemingly endless stream of trucks on the highways transporting goods, all dependent on fossil fuels. What would it all have to look like in order to reduce our national footprint from twenty down to one ton per person?
What kind of taxes are we looking at for our provincial and federal governments to be able to set timelines and assist every home, apartment, business, and industry to insulate and weatherproof up to genuinely protective standards?
If individual Canadians and our households accounted for half of our national emissions of greenhouse gases, with the other used by business and industry, then each person would have a budget of half a ton of greenhouse gas emissions per year, for all of our activities, including running our homes. According to Monbiot, the one ton per person for round trip air travel between Toronto and London only accounts for the carbon dioxide. Jet airplanes release other more potent GHGs into the high atmosphere, and our rationing has to account for those as well. With a half ton carbon allotment per household person per year, virtually no one in Canada could afford to take an airline holiday. What would that make of the travel industry?
That's what I mean by, "What will it look like?" It's not just changing to compact flourescent lightbulbs. What people living in what homes and working in what occupations in Canada create no more than half a ton of carbon emissions per year? Would David Suzuki and the folks who share his home in Vancouver, even if he never took another plane trip? And would he and everyone else in southwest B.C. commit to using an even lower proportion of their nataional allotment in order to help balance the greater needs of Canadians living in colder climatic regions?
I've been told that heating with wood is 'carbon neutral', because trees store carbon and the energy from trees is renewable. The best designed woodstoves use very little wood and produce very little ash. If wood heat is indeed carbon neutral, how would we design our homes so that they could be effectively heated with wood? How many woodlots would that take, and would we think differently about tree cover in and around every urban area?
What are the most important questions, how do we ask them, how do we as individuals enact our personal responsibility, and how to we compel our politicians to take the leadership necessary to accomplish these goals? Our economic industrial culture is based on the necessity of continual growth. Monbiot offers the case for converting to a culture of maintenance. What would that look like? If we Canadians are to reduce our carbon footprint from twenty to one ton per person per year, what will we be maintaining? I'd like to know. I'd like some help spelling it out and getting a good look at it. Can anybody help?
It's hard to get a clear sense of what I as a Canadian need to do with all of this Global Cllimate Change information if I can't see where I'm going. How are other people envisioning the big picture?
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