From the Monday, December 24, 20007, Business section, Toronto Star, pages B, B4, an article about geothermal energy:
THERE'S STILL TIME TO GET INTO THERMAL GAME
Tyler Hamilton
The year 1984 is more than just a George Orwell novel. It's also when the federal government packed in its geothermal energy program, more or less taking one of Canada's best renewable resources off the radar screen of the public and investors.
In the 23 years that have passed, the world has become a different place. Drilling technologies have improved dramatically. The ability to detect geothermal hotspots to detect geothermal hotspots deep below the Earth's surface has also gotten better. Climate change concerns have drawn much-needed atention to development of renewable energies such as wind-solar, hydroelectric and even wave power.
Around the world, including the United States, a great deal of investment - and in some cases, reliance - has been placed on the ability to tap the Earth's emission-free geothermal resources. Canada, however, isn't even on the map.
We remain the only country in the Pacific Rim to not generate electricity from the intense heat deep underground, and the federal government remains somewhat ignorant and uninterested in the potential. One company, Western Geopower, is trying to give it a shot on a 100-megawatt project in British Columbia, but operating alone without federal support hasn't been an easy endeavour.
"We're so far out of the game," says Alison Thompson, vice-president of the Canadian Geothermal Energy Association, based out of Calgary.
The organization has existed for three decades, but you'd never know it. No funding and no program over the years has gutted its profile, and limited its function to an academic exercise.
Thompson, research and development manager with oil company Nexen Inc., hopes to change that. Calling herself a "concerned citizen," she volunteered for the association earlier this year and has been part of an effort to rejuvenate the industry's image and boost its public profile.
The association's website at www.geothermal.ca has been revamped. It even got singer Sarah McLachlan to volunteer her "World on Fire" single as the association's theme song. And because Thompson is associated with the oil industry, it brings some credibility to the organization when it comes to lobbying the government for help.
"I'm a composting, rain-barrel type of gal, so this is something I want to hang my hat on," says Thompson, adding that she wants to bring the same kind of mindshare to geothermal as what we currently see in the wind industry. "They really have marketed themselves well, and that's what geothermal hasn't done a good job of.
"I just think the future is enormous for this."
The association's immediate goal is to lobby the federal government to reinstate its geothermal program and start collecting up-to-date data, through the Geological Survey of Canada, on geothermal hotspots and potential across the country.
Thompson says existing data suggests that "easy" geothermal projects in British Columbia could amount to 3,000 megawatts, but figures the number is likely closer to 6,000 megawatts. Alberta and the Yukon also have tremendous potential, but a lack of data "makes it hard to pin down."
If you drill deep enough you can even find potential sites in Ontario and other parts of eastern Canada - at least according to a comprehensive study released this year from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - but Thompson says the focus at the moment is out west. Next year the association hopes to put out a white paper that will serve as a starting point for developing provincial and federal geothermal energy policy.
There are four potential types of geothermal energy Canada can tap. There are the clear-cut hotspots that are relatively shallow and provide enough heat - between 100 and 300 degreses Celsius - and the right geological conditions for building geothermal power plants. Such opportunities exist in B.C. and Alberta.
Then there's enhanced geothermal, which can tap similar temperatures but requires far deeper drilling and an attempt to engineer the right underground conditions for producing geothermal electricity.
The other two options involve medium-grade heat. For example, the fluid that comes out of conventional wells - a combination of oil and water - provides enough heat to run special micro turbines that can generate 250 kilowatts of power. There are hundreds of thousands of wells in B.C. and Alberta, "so put them all together and it's a sizable position on the grid," says Thompson.
There's also potential to find medium-grade heat from drilling relatively shallow holes at sites where you need it - what's called low enthalpy geothermal. "It's the lowest hanging fruit. Everyone knows that heat is there. Now the challenge is in finding technology that can use it on a massive scale in the oil sands," she adds.
Thompson firmly believes that Canada, while behind on geothermal, could leapfrog other countries by jumping into the game with the latest technologies. "Much like developing countries don't have land phone lines and skipped directly to cellular phones," she says.
She encourages individuals and companies interested in the technology to get involved, and give the association a stronger voice. "That grassroots ground swelling is what we're trying to create."
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label climate change. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Green Living
From the Wednesday, December 26, 2007, Canada section of the Toronto Star, page A36, an article about climate change and the need for environment friendly lifestyles:
IS NEW SOCIAL CLIMATE NEEDED FOR GREEN LIVING?
Eco-crusade gaining momentum, but rules, infrastructure lacking
Gregory Bonnell
The Canadian Press
It was the year of living environmentally, or at least being implored to go clean and green as politicians of all stripes took up the global-warming cause in the wake of Al Gore's climate-change crusade.
Amid messages of new technologies and altering lifestyles, Canadians looking to make a change in 2008 should take heart that it doesn't all have to be sacrifice.
Experts say an environmentally friendly lifestyle can mean not only lower household bills but also improved mental and physical health when forgoing the automobile.
Still, just how many people are willing to move beyond lip service is a pressing question.
"You have polls where people say, 'Yes, we're willing to pay more to be green.' I think this is a premise that has yet to be fully tested," said Clifford Maynes, executive director of Green Communities Canada.
Buying organic food, installing high-efficiency furnaces or going hybrid for the next vehicle purchase are all options that mean spending more than one would if they stuck with the status quo.
Ali Squire, 63, said she tries to live as green as possible, which has meant buying more expensive organic foods - something that wasn't always an option when her children were still at home.
Squire, who lives on her own in Advocate Harbour, N.S., buys organic, grows her own vegetables, reuses and recycles.
"Between myself and sharing other people's gardens ... in the summer, very much so, you really notice the different in the grocery bill," said Squire.
When recycling came to her tiny community several years ago, Squire said her efforts were buoyed. But the lack of public transportation in the area means she needs a car to get to work, which she says she feels guilty about.
The goal, said Chris Winter of the Conservation Council of Ontario, "is not to become perfect, just to become better."
The Toronto resident is launching a website, www.weconserve.ca, that asks Canadians to assess how green they're living and set a green resolution for 2008.
Winter, a married father of two young children who doesn't own a car, said nothing about his lifestyle leaves him wanting.
In the political realm, climate change went from a non-existent issue in the 2006 federal election campaign to seemingly the most pressing matter on Parliament Hill.
The Conservative government's performance, including its call for a 20 per cent emissions reduction by 2020, has not impressed activists.
"We also need Canadians to be taking the steps in their own lives that they possibly can," said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May. "It's not easy when all the signals are going in the wrong direction."
It's a point well taken by the environment movement - even if public will exists, fiscal and social infrastructure is sorely lacking.
"The whole ability to adopt a conserver lifestyle depends on having that support structure there," said Winter. "In Toronto, we have it in spades now and it's beginning to spread."
IS NEW SOCIAL CLIMATE NEEDED FOR GREEN LIVING?
Eco-crusade gaining momentum, but rules, infrastructure lacking
Gregory Bonnell
The Canadian Press
It was the year of living environmentally, or at least being implored to go clean and green as politicians of all stripes took up the global-warming cause in the wake of Al Gore's climate-change crusade.
Amid messages of new technologies and altering lifestyles, Canadians looking to make a change in 2008 should take heart that it doesn't all have to be sacrifice.
Experts say an environmentally friendly lifestyle can mean not only lower household bills but also improved mental and physical health when forgoing the automobile.
Still, just how many people are willing to move beyond lip service is a pressing question.
"You have polls where people say, 'Yes, we're willing to pay more to be green.' I think this is a premise that has yet to be fully tested," said Clifford Maynes, executive director of Green Communities Canada.
Buying organic food, installing high-efficiency furnaces or going hybrid for the next vehicle purchase are all options that mean spending more than one would if they stuck with the status quo.
Ali Squire, 63, said she tries to live as green as possible, which has meant buying more expensive organic foods - something that wasn't always an option when her children were still at home.
Squire, who lives on her own in Advocate Harbour, N.S., buys organic, grows her own vegetables, reuses and recycles.
"Between myself and sharing other people's gardens ... in the summer, very much so, you really notice the different in the grocery bill," said Squire.
When recycling came to her tiny community several years ago, Squire said her efforts were buoyed. But the lack of public transportation in the area means she needs a car to get to work, which she says she feels guilty about.
The goal, said Chris Winter of the Conservation Council of Ontario, "is not to become perfect, just to become better."
The Toronto resident is launching a website, www.weconserve.ca, that asks Canadians to assess how green they're living and set a green resolution for 2008.
Winter, a married father of two young children who doesn't own a car, said nothing about his lifestyle leaves him wanting.
In the political realm, climate change went from a non-existent issue in the 2006 federal election campaign to seemingly the most pressing matter on Parliament Hill.
The Conservative government's performance, including its call for a 20 per cent emissions reduction by 2020, has not impressed activists.
"We also need Canadians to be taking the steps in their own lives that they possibly can," said Green Party Leader Elizabeth May. "It's not easy when all the signals are going in the wrong direction."
It's a point well taken by the environment movement - even if public will exists, fiscal and social infrastructure is sorely lacking.
"The whole ability to adopt a conserver lifestyle depends on having that support structure there," said Winter. "In Toronto, we have it in spades now and it's beginning to spread."
Friday, December 21, 2007
Forest Industry Pledges to Clear the Air
From the Tuesday, October 30, 2007, Toronto Star, News section, page A3, the forest industry pledging to become carbon neutral:
CANADA'S FOREST INDUSTRY TO TURN OVER A NEW LEAF
Making plans to meet carbon-neutral pledge
Peter Gorrie
Environment Reporter
Canada's forest industry says it will be carbon neutral by 2015.
In what is likely the first such pledge by any major industry sector in the world, the forest companies say their logging, paper and pulp operations, and the products they produce, will, in effect, no longer be a source of greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
And they'll do it, they say, without resorting to offsets - the controversial practice in which polluters continue to spew emissions, but contribute to projects elsewhere that claim to reduce them.
The effort must extend beyond forests and mills to wood and paper consumers, such as construction sites, homes and offices, Avrim Lazar, president of the Forest Products Association of Canada, said.
The aim is to protect both the environment and the industry's bottom line, said Lazar, who was to announce the pledge this morning at a conference in Ottawa.
Global demand for wood products is soaring, he said, "If people continue to do it the old way... it won't be very good for the planet."
The devastating spread of pine beetles in British Columbia - partly because winters are no longer cold enough to kill the insects - is a wake-up call, he said.
"We got a lesson in the impact of climate change before most of the rest of Canada."
As well, global buyers increasingly demand products from "sustainable" operations. That can be an edge for Canadian firms, which face fierce competition from China, Brazil and other places where trees grow faster, costs are lower, and environment rules can be lax.
The Canadian industry has reduced its greenhouse emissions 44 per cent since 1990, when its output increased by 20 per cent.
That puts it far ahead of Canada's Kyoto Protocol target - a 6 per cent cut.
Most of the industry's reductions have been at pulp and paper mills, which have become more efficient and, in many cases, converted from oil and gas to renewable fuels. But much of the effort will involve keeping wood and paper out of landfills where, as it decomposes, it releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
About half the paper used in Canada is recycled, Lazar said. To improve that figure, the industry will use publicity to target consumers in offices and apartment buildings, where recycling rates are low.
Another focus will be recycling wood waste at construction sites. The aim is to have it recycled into plywood, particleboard or paper; or sent to high-tech plants that burn wood for heat and electricity.
"We hope other industries will rise to the challenge" of doing the same, or better, said Lorne Johnson of World Wildlife Fund Canada, which is working with the association. Other green groups are on an advisory panel.
Johnson added the odds are good the industry will meet the target. "They're already doing a good job."
Shifting Into Neutral
How the Canadian forestry industry plans to meet its 2015 target:
* Become energy self-sufficient - switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
* Adopt energy-efficient technologies.
* Increase diversion of used forest products from landfills.
* Cap more landfills to prevent methane leaks.
* Increase cogeneration - using waste heat to generate electricity.
* Increase potential of forests and wood products to store carbon.
* Maximize recycling of paper and wood products.
CANADA'S FOREST INDUSTRY TO TURN OVER A NEW LEAF
Making plans to meet carbon-neutral pledge
Peter Gorrie
Environment Reporter
Canada's forest industry says it will be carbon neutral by 2015.
In what is likely the first such pledge by any major industry sector in the world, the forest companies say their logging, paper and pulp operations, and the products they produce, will, in effect, no longer be a source of greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.
And they'll do it, they say, without resorting to offsets - the controversial practice in which polluters continue to spew emissions, but contribute to projects elsewhere that claim to reduce them.
The effort must extend beyond forests and mills to wood and paper consumers, such as construction sites, homes and offices, Avrim Lazar, president of the Forest Products Association of Canada, said.
The aim is to protect both the environment and the industry's bottom line, said Lazar, who was to announce the pledge this morning at a conference in Ottawa.
Global demand for wood products is soaring, he said, "If people continue to do it the old way... it won't be very good for the planet."
The devastating spread of pine beetles in British Columbia - partly because winters are no longer cold enough to kill the insects - is a wake-up call, he said.
"We got a lesson in the impact of climate change before most of the rest of Canada."
As well, global buyers increasingly demand products from "sustainable" operations. That can be an edge for Canadian firms, which face fierce competition from China, Brazil and other places where trees grow faster, costs are lower, and environment rules can be lax.
The Canadian industry has reduced its greenhouse emissions 44 per cent since 1990, when its output increased by 20 per cent.
That puts it far ahead of Canada's Kyoto Protocol target - a 6 per cent cut.
Most of the industry's reductions have been at pulp and paper mills, which have become more efficient and, in many cases, converted from oil and gas to renewable fuels. But much of the effort will involve keeping wood and paper out of landfills where, as it decomposes, it releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
About half the paper used in Canada is recycled, Lazar said. To improve that figure, the industry will use publicity to target consumers in offices and apartment buildings, where recycling rates are low.
Another focus will be recycling wood waste at construction sites. The aim is to have it recycled into plywood, particleboard or paper; or sent to high-tech plants that burn wood for heat and electricity.
"We hope other industries will rise to the challenge" of doing the same, or better, said Lorne Johnson of World Wildlife Fund Canada, which is working with the association. Other green groups are on an advisory panel.
Johnson added the odds are good the industry will meet the target. "They're already doing a good job."
Shifting Into Neutral
How the Canadian forestry industry plans to meet its 2015 target:
* Become energy self-sufficient - switch from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
* Adopt energy-efficient technologies.
* Increase diversion of used forest products from landfills.
* Cap more landfills to prevent methane leaks.
* Increase cogeneration - using waste heat to generate electricity.
* Increase potential of forests and wood products to store carbon.
* Maximize recycling of paper and wood products.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
British Business Group & Climate Change Commitment
From the Business section of the Toronto Star, Tuesday, November 27, 2007, page B4:
U.K. EMPLOYER GROUP VOWS TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE
London - Britain's top employer's organization pledged yesterday to help combat climate change, saying the issue is an urgent priority for business, government and consumers alike.
The Confederation of British Industry has placed global warming at the heart ofits agenda at the start of its annual two-day conference in London.
Reporting the findings of its climate change task force, the federation called for fundamental change in British business and issued a series of pledges to help companies adopt greener practices.
Firms must "change their business models to meet consumers' and society's needs in an era of climate change," it said.
One key pledge was to "develop new products and services that will empoyer households to halve their emissions by 2020."
Another vow was to save an extra 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
Federation director-general Richard Lambert added: "This report makes clear that in the future, businesses will have to be green to grow."
The task force comprises top executives from 18 well-known companies, such as BP, Royal Dutch Shell and steel maker Corus, which employ some two million people.
"Today the ... task force has demonstrated its commitment to tackling climate change," said chair Ben Verwaayen, who is also head of telecommunications group BT.
Meanwhile, the federation has questioned the British government's ambitious targets to slash carbon emissions by 26 per cent to 32 per cent by 2020 and 60 per cent by 2050.
"The U.K.'s carbon reduction targets for 2020 are likely to be missed , but that 2050 goal, whilst stretching, can be achieved at a manageable cost - provided a greater sense of urgency is now adopted, " it said, citing analysis by McKinsey consultants.
Agence France-Presse
U.K. EMPLOYER GROUP VOWS TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE
London - Britain's top employer's organization pledged yesterday to help combat climate change, saying the issue is an urgent priority for business, government and consumers alike.
The Confederation of British Industry has placed global warming at the heart ofits agenda at the start of its annual two-day conference in London.
Reporting the findings of its climate change task force, the federation called for fundamental change in British business and issued a series of pledges to help companies adopt greener practices.
Firms must "change their business models to meet consumers' and society's needs in an era of climate change," it said.
One key pledge was to "develop new products and services that will empoyer households to halve their emissions by 2020."
Another vow was to save an extra 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.
Federation director-general Richard Lambert added: "This report makes clear that in the future, businesses will have to be green to grow."
The task force comprises top executives from 18 well-known companies, such as BP, Royal Dutch Shell and steel maker Corus, which employ some two million people.
"Today the ... task force has demonstrated its commitment to tackling climate change," said chair Ben Verwaayen, who is also head of telecommunications group BT.
Meanwhile, the federation has questioned the British government's ambitious targets to slash carbon emissions by 26 per cent to 32 per cent by 2020 and 60 per cent by 2050.
"The U.K.'s carbon reduction targets for 2020 are likely to be missed , but that 2050 goal, whilst stretching, can be achieved at a manageable cost - provided a greater sense of urgency is now adopted, " it said, citing analysis by McKinsey consultants.
Agence France-Presse
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Climate Change Affects Poor the Most
From 24 hours, Wednesday, November 28, 2007, page 3, an article about the impacts of climate change that will unduly affect the poor:
CLIMATE CHANGE
Poor will suffer: UN
Rich countries must provide some $86 billion by 2015 to help the world's poor adapt to global warming, an expert United Nations panel warned yesterday.
The nearly 400-page Human Development Report comes just a week before a major new world conference convenes in Indonesia to negotiate a successor climate treaty to the 1997 Kyoto Accord.
It adds a dire economic perspective to previous UN scientific findings that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions must be stabilized by 2015 and then reduced.
Without the money, a warmer world "could stall and then reverse human development" in the countries where 2.6 billion people live on $2 a day or less, according to the UN Development Program panel.
Scientists have reported that temperatures have risen an average 0.7 degrees Celsius over the last 100 years, bringing the prospect of a century of extreme weather, rising seas, widening drought and disease and harm to fisheries, forests and farmland.
According to development officials, the consequences include women and young girls walking further to collect water in the Horn of Africa, people erecting bamboo flood shelters on stilts in the delta of the Ganges River in India.
"These impacts ... go unnoticed in financial markets and in the measurement of world gross domestic product (GDP)," the panel's report said.
"But increased exposure to drought, to more intense storms, to floods and environmental stress is holding back the efforts of the world's poor to build a better life for themselves and their children."
The Associated Press
CLIMATE CHANGE
Poor will suffer: UN
Rich countries must provide some $86 billion by 2015 to help the world's poor adapt to global warming, an expert United Nations panel warned yesterday.
The nearly 400-page Human Development Report comes just a week before a major new world conference convenes in Indonesia to negotiate a successor climate treaty to the 1997 Kyoto Accord.
It adds a dire economic perspective to previous UN scientific findings that carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions must be stabilized by 2015 and then reduced.
Without the money, a warmer world "could stall and then reverse human development" in the countries where 2.6 billion people live on $2 a day or less, according to the UN Development Program panel.
Scientists have reported that temperatures have risen an average 0.7 degrees Celsius over the last 100 years, bringing the prospect of a century of extreme weather, rising seas, widening drought and disease and harm to fisheries, forests and farmland.
According to development officials, the consequences include women and young girls walking further to collect water in the Horn of Africa, people erecting bamboo flood shelters on stilts in the delta of the Ganges River in India.
"These impacts ... go unnoticed in financial markets and in the measurement of world gross domestic product (GDP)," the panel's report said.
"But increased exposure to drought, to more intense storms, to floods and environmental stress is holding back the efforts of the world's poor to build a better life for themselves and their children."
The Associated Press
Friday, December 14, 2007
Heat Waves: Say Goodbye to Real Winters
I have never seen as many articles on global warming as I have this year. The media has finally realized the skeptics have been leading them down the garden path for years and they were too lazy to look into the issues to know what the consensus of real scientists had to say about it.
An Inconvenient Truth was an eye opener not just to people but also to journalists and others in the media. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report and/or the Nobel Prize won in connection with Al Gore on climate change helped put the nail in the coffin (except among ultra-right wing conservative think tanks funded by the dirty industries - oil, agribusiness, cars, and so on) that there wasn't enough certainty about the science on climate change.
The over-the-top weather events have worried some and given others first-hand experience of what climate change means. The mayor of Atlanta sure "gets" climate change this year after the long drought and effect on the city's water supply and that of the state's and adjoining states.
The increased media coverage of the the sea ice or ice shelves or glacier melts in Arctic or Antarctic or Greenland also underline the climate change probably dramatically.
From the Ideas section of the Toronto Star, Sunday, September 9, 2007, page ID2, here is an article under a picture of people moving a small boat from open water over ice.
A PICTURE AND A THOUSAND WORDS
Tempted to whinge about summer's latest (and maybe last) heat wave? Just remember this
Bill Taylor
Feature Writer
Lest we forget, now that our driest summer in 50 years has given us a valedictory blast of heat, this is what February was like. February in Quebec, but not a whole lot removed from what February was like on Queens' Quay, staring out across the lake to Centre Island.
It's painful just to look at this picture. It was even more painful to shoot it from the breezy deck of a ferry butting through the ice-choked St. Lawrence between Quebec City and Levis. The temperature? Minus way-too-much.
Nothing the five-person crew - so out of place on a river that, even in the depths of winter, is a perilously busy seaway - was wearing could possibly keep them properly warm or dry. The current was fast enough to make scrambling out of the boat and on to the harsh, unforgiving ice doubly perilous. An ice floe is really just a small iceberg with 90 per cent of its mass below the surface. Bigger and more dangerous than you might think, especially when it's careening along like a bus with no brakes.
In the distance, a small, blue-hulled tanker moved slowly upriver in the direction of Montreal. It's bridge was emblazoned with a huge "No Smoking" sign. A few minutes earlier, a big grey freighter had passed going the other way, heading for the ocean.
There was a tug bustling about its business, too, and two ferries criss-crossing. This was surely no place for cockleshell heroes to play, but the little green boat darted about like a demented water beetle, everyone having an uproarious time.
Local lore has it that in pre-ferry days, the mail-delivery contract went to the crew who could get across the river fastest, rowing between ice floes and dragging the boat over them. A highly competitive business. Now it's a highly competitive sport, a mainstay of Quebec's annual Winter Carnival; possibly the sport I most don't ever want to try. Alligator wrestling? Sure, bring it on.
Winter carnivals could become an endangered species. As could Canadian winters. Shovelling the walk. Weekend ski trips. Backyard shinny. Ontario icewine. Frostbite and snowboarding compound fractures. Ah, memories.
The UN World Meteorological Organization says this past winter was the warmest since record-keeping began in 1880. (Who, one wonders, first had the brainwave: "Hey let's write down the temperature today. And tomorrow and ..." And someone else must have said, "Wow, yeah, awesome!" Or words to that effect.)
According to New Scientist magazine, Britain's records go back to 1659, and last year was its warmest since then. That was the year, incidentally, that Richard Cromwell dissolved the English parliament and later resigned as the country's Lord Protector. And there was a drought in India.
Climatologists say this year could be even hotter, with a "very active" hurricane season. The ferry between St. Barbe, Nfld., and Blanc Sablon, Labrador, resumed service last spring earlier than ever before.
Last year, hardly any place in the world escaped without some weather aberration, New Scientist reports. Heat waves in Europe, the United States, Latin America and Australia (I was in Sydney on New Year's Day, 2006; the temperature hit 45 and the bush north of the city went up in flames); a crippling drought in China and its worst cyclones in years; floods in Europe, the United States and Africa, including the Sahara Desert.
In November, Vancouver had almost twice its normal average rainfall. Meanwhile, Arctic ice continues to melt at an ever-increasing rate. The U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research predicted last year that by 2040 - only 33 years from now - the Arctic Ocean could be devoid of ice.
Tourism's doing better and better, though. The European Union's recent embrace of an "open skies" policy will lower transatlantic fares, add planes and give travellers far more credit-card-friendly choices. U.S. and European airlines will be able to fly between any EU city and any American city.
As U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters put it: "Tearing down regulatory barriers allows us to foster more affordable and convenient air travel and gives our airline industry more opportunities to compete, innovate and thrive."
And pollute the hell out of the upper atmosphere.
It's expected to put tickets in to the hands of more than 26 additional people over the next five years. Airlines are scrambling to grab chunks of the new action.
This includes Virgin, whose founder, Sir Richard Branson, last year pledged the next 10 years' profits from his planes and trains - an estimated $3.5 billion - to fight global warming. More passengers, more planes, more profit, more pollution . . . That noise you hear is the jangle of irony.
We seem to be going to hell, not so much in a hand basket as in a cut-price seat on a jetliner leaving a destructive vapour trail across the more-crowded, less-friendly skies. Brown becomes the new blue and the seagulls turn tubercular and fall coughing from the air.
The diesel fashion label was quick to mount a footwear ad campaign showing such things as the Great Wall of China crossing a desert and parrots rather than pigeons in a city square, with the slogan, "Global warming ready." Cute.
One day, perhaps in our children's lifetime if not our own, winter might just be a word instead of a season. Songs about warm, woollen mittens and snowflakes that stay on your nose and eyelashes will be an incomprehensible as "Sumer is icomen in, Lhude sing cucco" to anyone who hasn't studied Chaucerian English. The cuckoo will be sweating too much to sing, anyway, loudly or not.
When Vermont has lost its maple-sugar industry to Quebec. When New York is under water, an archipelago of skyscraper tips and the Statue of Liberty's bedraggled arm, not waving but drowning. When the grapevines flourish along the St. Lawrence and we're sitting on the upturned hulls of obsolete ice-boats sipping our Chateau Frontenac or Cotes du Heights of Abraham, all we'll have left will be fading pictures like this.
An Inconvenient Truth was an eye opener not just to people but also to journalists and others in the media. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report and/or the Nobel Prize won in connection with Al Gore on climate change helped put the nail in the coffin (except among ultra-right wing conservative think tanks funded by the dirty industries - oil, agribusiness, cars, and so on) that there wasn't enough certainty about the science on climate change.
The over-the-top weather events have worried some and given others first-hand experience of what climate change means. The mayor of Atlanta sure "gets" climate change this year after the long drought and effect on the city's water supply and that of the state's and adjoining states.
The increased media coverage of the the sea ice or ice shelves or glacier melts in Arctic or Antarctic or Greenland also underline the climate change probably dramatically.
From the Ideas section of the Toronto Star, Sunday, September 9, 2007, page ID2, here is an article under a picture of people moving a small boat from open water over ice.
A PICTURE AND A THOUSAND WORDS
Tempted to whinge about summer's latest (and maybe last) heat wave? Just remember this
Bill Taylor
Feature Writer
Lest we forget, now that our driest summer in 50 years has given us a valedictory blast of heat, this is what February was like. February in Quebec, but not a whole lot removed from what February was like on Queens' Quay, staring out across the lake to Centre Island.
It's painful just to look at this picture. It was even more painful to shoot it from the breezy deck of a ferry butting through the ice-choked St. Lawrence between Quebec City and Levis. The temperature? Minus way-too-much.
Nothing the five-person crew - so out of place on a river that, even in the depths of winter, is a perilously busy seaway - was wearing could possibly keep them properly warm or dry. The current was fast enough to make scrambling out of the boat and on to the harsh, unforgiving ice doubly perilous. An ice floe is really just a small iceberg with 90 per cent of its mass below the surface. Bigger and more dangerous than you might think, especially when it's careening along like a bus with no brakes.
In the distance, a small, blue-hulled tanker moved slowly upriver in the direction of Montreal. It's bridge was emblazoned with a huge "No Smoking" sign. A few minutes earlier, a big grey freighter had passed going the other way, heading for the ocean.
There was a tug bustling about its business, too, and two ferries criss-crossing. This was surely no place for cockleshell heroes to play, but the little green boat darted about like a demented water beetle, everyone having an uproarious time.
Local lore has it that in pre-ferry days, the mail-delivery contract went to the crew who could get across the river fastest, rowing between ice floes and dragging the boat over them. A highly competitive business. Now it's a highly competitive sport, a mainstay of Quebec's annual Winter Carnival; possibly the sport I most don't ever want to try. Alligator wrestling? Sure, bring it on.
Winter carnivals could become an endangered species. As could Canadian winters. Shovelling the walk. Weekend ski trips. Backyard shinny. Ontario icewine. Frostbite and snowboarding compound fractures. Ah, memories.
The UN World Meteorological Organization says this past winter was the warmest since record-keeping began in 1880. (Who, one wonders, first had the brainwave: "Hey let's write down the temperature today. And tomorrow and ..." And someone else must have said, "Wow, yeah, awesome!" Or words to that effect.)
According to New Scientist magazine, Britain's records go back to 1659, and last year was its warmest since then. That was the year, incidentally, that Richard Cromwell dissolved the English parliament and later resigned as the country's Lord Protector. And there was a drought in India.
Climatologists say this year could be even hotter, with a "very active" hurricane season. The ferry between St. Barbe, Nfld., and Blanc Sablon, Labrador, resumed service last spring earlier than ever before.
Last year, hardly any place in the world escaped without some weather aberration, New Scientist reports. Heat waves in Europe, the United States, Latin America and Australia (I was in Sydney on New Year's Day, 2006; the temperature hit 45 and the bush north of the city went up in flames); a crippling drought in China and its worst cyclones in years; floods in Europe, the United States and Africa, including the Sahara Desert.
In November, Vancouver had almost twice its normal average rainfall. Meanwhile, Arctic ice continues to melt at an ever-increasing rate. The U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research predicted last year that by 2040 - only 33 years from now - the Arctic Ocean could be devoid of ice.
Tourism's doing better and better, though. The European Union's recent embrace of an "open skies" policy will lower transatlantic fares, add planes and give travellers far more credit-card-friendly choices. U.S. and European airlines will be able to fly between any EU city and any American city.
As U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters put it: "Tearing down regulatory barriers allows us to foster more affordable and convenient air travel and gives our airline industry more opportunities to compete, innovate and thrive."
And pollute the hell out of the upper atmosphere.
It's expected to put tickets in to the hands of more than 26 additional people over the next five years. Airlines are scrambling to grab chunks of the new action.
This includes Virgin, whose founder, Sir Richard Branson, last year pledged the next 10 years' profits from his planes and trains - an estimated $3.5 billion - to fight global warming. More passengers, more planes, more profit, more pollution . . . That noise you hear is the jangle of irony.
We seem to be going to hell, not so much in a hand basket as in a cut-price seat on a jetliner leaving a destructive vapour trail across the more-crowded, less-friendly skies. Brown becomes the new blue and the seagulls turn tubercular and fall coughing from the air.
The diesel fashion label was quick to mount a footwear ad campaign showing such things as the Great Wall of China crossing a desert and parrots rather than pigeons in a city square, with the slogan, "Global warming ready." Cute.
One day, perhaps in our children's lifetime if not our own, winter might just be a word instead of a season. Songs about warm, woollen mittens and snowflakes that stay on your nose and eyelashes will be an incomprehensible as "Sumer is icomen in, Lhude sing cucco" to anyone who hasn't studied Chaucerian English. The cuckoo will be sweating too much to sing, anyway, loudly or not.
When Vermont has lost its maple-sugar industry to Quebec. When New York is under water, an archipelago of skyscraper tips and the Statue of Liberty's bedraggled arm, not waving but drowning. When the grapevines flourish along the St. Lawrence and we're sitting on the upturned hulls of obsolete ice-boats sipping our Chateau Frontenac or Cotes du Heights of Abraham, all we'll have left will be fading pictures like this.
Friday, December 7, 2007
Climate Change Affects Children More
This article about the adverse affects global warming will have on children is from the Stop Global Warming website, http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/sgw_read.asp?id=12391410292007:
Global warming may hit kids harder, pediatrics group says
by: Marilyn Elias 29 October 2007
Global warming is likely to disproportionately harm the health of children, and politicians should launch "aggressive policies" to curb climate change, the American Academy of Pediatrics said today.
In the first major report about the unique effects of global warming on kids, U.S. pediatricians also were advised to "educate" elected officials about the coming dangers.
There's evidence that children are likely to suffer more than adults from climate change, says the report's lead author, Katherine Shea, a pediatrician and adjunct public health professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
"We already have change, and certain bad things are going to happen no matter what we do," Shea says. "But we can prevent things from getting even worse. We don't have the luxury of waiting."
More greenhouse gases and a warming Earth will leave children particularly vulnerable in several ways, the report says:
•Air pollution does more damage to children's lungs, causing asthma and respiratory ailments, because their lungs are still developing, they breathe at a higher rate than adults and are outdoors more.
•Waterborne infections, such as diarrhea and other gastrointestinal problems, hit children especially hard. These infections rise sharply with more rain, which is expected as the climate warms.
•As mosquitoes are able to move to higher ground, the malaria zone is expanding. Kids are especially vulnerable; 75% of malaria deaths occur in children younger than 5.
The report briefly mentions that mass migrations are expected as regions become uninhabitable. "Children fare very poorly in these major population shifts," says Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University and president of the Children's Health Fund. "They're more fragile medically and nutritionally," says Redlener, who wasn't involved with the report. "They're less resilient, less likely to survive."
No matter what the risks, the pediatrics academy shouldn't be sending its members out to lobby, argues Janice Crouse, director of a think tank affiliated with Concerned Women for America, a conservative public policy group. "Let them issue a scientific report, and people can judge whether it has validity. For a scientific group to use children as a means of advancing a political agenda is beyond the pale," she says.
Julie Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, briefed a Senate committee on the health risks of global warming last week. She mentioned increasing asthma, malaria and waterborne diseases but not children's vulnerability.
The Associated Press reported that Gerberding's speech was "eviscerated" by the White House, but CDC spokesman Tom Skinner denied it, adding that Gerberding said everything she wanted to say without constraint.
"This is not a political issue, it's a public health issue," Shea says. "If we know the health of children and future children is threatened, we have an obligation to act."
Global warming may hit kids harder, pediatrics group says
by: Marilyn Elias 29 October 2007
Global warming is likely to disproportionately harm the health of children, and politicians should launch "aggressive policies" to curb climate change, the American Academy of Pediatrics said today.
In the first major report about the unique effects of global warming on kids, U.S. pediatricians also were advised to "educate" elected officials about the coming dangers.
There's evidence that children are likely to suffer more than adults from climate change, says the report's lead author, Katherine Shea, a pediatrician and adjunct public health professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
"We already have change, and certain bad things are going to happen no matter what we do," Shea says. "But we can prevent things from getting even worse. We don't have the luxury of waiting."
More greenhouse gases and a warming Earth will leave children particularly vulnerable in several ways, the report says:
•Air pollution does more damage to children's lungs, causing asthma and respiratory ailments, because their lungs are still developing, they breathe at a higher rate than adults and are outdoors more.
•Waterborne infections, such as diarrhea and other gastrointestinal problems, hit children especially hard. These infections rise sharply with more rain, which is expected as the climate warms.
•As mosquitoes are able to move to higher ground, the malaria zone is expanding. Kids are especially vulnerable; 75% of malaria deaths occur in children younger than 5.
The report briefly mentions that mass migrations are expected as regions become uninhabitable. "Children fare very poorly in these major population shifts," says Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University and president of the Children's Health Fund. "They're more fragile medically and nutritionally," says Redlener, who wasn't involved with the report. "They're less resilient, less likely to survive."
No matter what the risks, the pediatrics academy shouldn't be sending its members out to lobby, argues Janice Crouse, director of a think tank affiliated with Concerned Women for America, a conservative public policy group. "Let them issue a scientific report, and people can judge whether it has validity. For a scientific group to use children as a means of advancing a political agenda is beyond the pale," she says.
Julie Gerberding, director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, briefed a Senate committee on the health risks of global warming last week. She mentioned increasing asthma, malaria and waterborne diseases but not children's vulnerability.
The Associated Press reported that Gerberding's speech was "eviscerated" by the White House, but CDC spokesman Tom Skinner denied it, adding that Gerberding said everything she wanted to say without constraint.
"This is not a political issue, it's a public health issue," Shea says. "If we know the health of children and future children is threatened, we have an obligation to act."
Wednesday, December 5, 2007
Permafrost Scientists
Global warming means lots of things happening for the permafrost scientists. Here is an article from the Saturday, November 24, 2007, Ideas section, Toronto Star, page ID5:
COLD COMFORT: THIS SCIENCE IS A NOT-SO-HOT CAREER CHOICE
Permafrost scientists are a rare breed in Canada. The modest pay has something to do with that. So does the nature of the work. When not drilling holes in intense cold, permafrost scientists are drilling holes in stifling heat that excites blackflies and mosquitoes.
Permafrost scientists are such brutes for punishment that Peter Kershaw of the University of Alberta recently was named to Popular Science magazine's "Ten Worst Jobs in Science" list.
He finished just ahead of the orangutan pee collector in Borneo and two places behind the human semen washer in Los Angeles.
The honours aren't all dubious. Kershaw was also named Earthwatch's Principal Investigator of the Year in 2005 for his research on permafrost in the Mackenzie Mountains and on the Hudson Bay coast of northern Manitoba. He was up against 130 scientists from around the world.
Steve Blasco, a marine geophysicist with the Geological Survey, has also won accolades from his work. He was named chief scientist on a joint Canada, U.S. and Russian scientific/commercial expedition to film the Titanic.
Blasco says it helps to be a little crazy to do what he and his colleagues do.
In an effort to maintain their sanity in difficult work conditions some permafrost scientists have invented unusual field games. In Page Watch, for example, the goal is to kill as many mosquitoes and blackflies as possible by slamming shut a book. Although Blasco personally loves the heat, his work sends him to the western Arctic where he identifies and maps mud volcanoes and ice scour lines along possible shipping and pipeline routes. It's not easy trying to figure out what the ocean floor looks like when you're legally blind - as Blasco is.
"But then again," he quips, "no one knew what it looked like when I started in this business, so I was no worse off."
Ed Struzik
Atkinson Fellow
COLD COMFORT: THIS SCIENCE IS A NOT-SO-HOT CAREER CHOICE
Permafrost scientists are a rare breed in Canada. The modest pay has something to do with that. So does the nature of the work. When not drilling holes in intense cold, permafrost scientists are drilling holes in stifling heat that excites blackflies and mosquitoes.
Permafrost scientists are such brutes for punishment that Peter Kershaw of the University of Alberta recently was named to Popular Science magazine's "Ten Worst Jobs in Science" list.
He finished just ahead of the orangutan pee collector in Borneo and two places behind the human semen washer in Los Angeles.
The honours aren't all dubious. Kershaw was also named Earthwatch's Principal Investigator of the Year in 2005 for his research on permafrost in the Mackenzie Mountains and on the Hudson Bay coast of northern Manitoba. He was up against 130 scientists from around the world.
Steve Blasco, a marine geophysicist with the Geological Survey, has also won accolades from his work. He was named chief scientist on a joint Canada, U.S. and Russian scientific/commercial expedition to film the Titanic.
Blasco says it helps to be a little crazy to do what he and his colleagues do.
In an effort to maintain their sanity in difficult work conditions some permafrost scientists have invented unusual field games. In Page Watch, for example, the goal is to kill as many mosquitoes and blackflies as possible by slamming shut a book. Although Blasco personally loves the heat, his work sends him to the western Arctic where he identifies and maps mud volcanoes and ice scour lines along possible shipping and pipeline routes. It's not easy trying to figure out what the ocean floor looks like when you're legally blind - as Blasco is.
"But then again," he quips, "no one knew what it looked like when I started in this business, so I was no worse off."
Ed Struzik
Atkinson Fellow
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Greener Gas and Cars
From the Spring & Summer 2007, Green Living, pages 45-48, an article on greener gas and cars, here is an excerpt about fuel choices:
FUEL FOR THOUGHT
A Guide to Greener Gas and Greener Cars
By Stuart Foxman
"The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit...weeds...almost anything. There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter than can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for 100 years."
The speaker? Not an environmental advocate but Henry Ford in 1925, assessing the potential of cellulose and crop-based ethyl alcohol fuel. However, as you stand at the pump, watching the gas prices roll by faster than the reels on a slot machine, it's easy to wonder if drivers will ever see the "fuel of the future." But a convergence of forces - rising cruide-oil costs, the call for energy security and concern over climate change - may be bringing that day closer."
"Our urgent national and international imperatives will require a shift in fuel choices," says Kory Teneycke, executive director of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association (DRFA), "Ethanol and biodiesel are at the point where you can make the case for commercialization and make them parts of our energy mix."
However, Jose Etcheverry, research and policy analyst, Climate Change Program at the David Suzuki Foundation, cautions that we shouldn't get seduced by the word "'alternative'. Among alternative fuels, there are better and worse options," he says. "If it takes more energy to produce the fuel than the energy you get out of it, it's not a logical idea."
That kind of criticism is often levelled at Alberta's oil sands, where the process of separating bitumen from the sands and turning it into fuel uses considerably more energy than conventional oil production. Similarly, says Etcheverry, with ethanol and biodiesel (see sidebars) you have to consider how energy-intensive the entire process is. If your main raw material is corn, for example, when you factor in the energy expended to grow and refine it, Etcheverry says the "return on your energy investment can be quite negative." he believes that ethanol made form cellulose (e.g. forest residue, straw) is far better, from an environmental standpoint, than ethanol made from corn. As for biodiesel, will supplies come from plant oil? Canola? How will crops be grown?
While biodiesel and ethanol are promising alternative fuels, there are more choices. An unusual possibility - and a particularly clean one, says Etcheverry - is "brown energy," That's where animal manure is turned into usuable biomethane through an anaerobic digester, with the gas then used as a transportation fuel or for electricity and residential heating. One Wisconsin dairy farm with a digester is powering 600 homes with 900 cows. In Sweden, meanwhile, over 8,000 vehicles are powered by a combination of natural gas and biomethane.
While Etcheverry calls the interest in alternative fuels "a step in the right direction," he says we should be asking other fundamental questions, such as how we can approach urban and suburban design to be less car-dependent. And how we can encourage wider use of public transit and other modes of transportation. "Even if you could run cars on water, you 'd still need highways and parking lots, and it takes a lot of resouces to make a car," says Etcheverry. "Are you going to live closer to where you work and play? Will you ride a bike? Take the train? That's what's truly revolutionary."
FUEL FOR THOUGHT
A Guide to Greener Gas and Greener Cars
By Stuart Foxman
"The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit...weeds...almost anything. There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter than can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for 100 years."
The speaker? Not an environmental advocate but Henry Ford in 1925, assessing the potential of cellulose and crop-based ethyl alcohol fuel. However, as you stand at the pump, watching the gas prices roll by faster than the reels on a slot machine, it's easy to wonder if drivers will ever see the "fuel of the future." But a convergence of forces - rising cruide-oil costs, the call for energy security and concern over climate change - may be bringing that day closer."
"Our urgent national and international imperatives will require a shift in fuel choices," says Kory Teneycke, executive director of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association (DRFA), "Ethanol and biodiesel are at the point where you can make the case for commercialization and make them parts of our energy mix."
However, Jose Etcheverry, research and policy analyst, Climate Change Program at the David Suzuki Foundation, cautions that we shouldn't get seduced by the word "'alternative'. Among alternative fuels, there are better and worse options," he says. "If it takes more energy to produce the fuel than the energy you get out of it, it's not a logical idea."
That kind of criticism is often levelled at Alberta's oil sands, where the process of separating bitumen from the sands and turning it into fuel uses considerably more energy than conventional oil production. Similarly, says Etcheverry, with ethanol and biodiesel (see sidebars) you have to consider how energy-intensive the entire process is. If your main raw material is corn, for example, when you factor in the energy expended to grow and refine it, Etcheverry says the "return on your energy investment can be quite negative." he believes that ethanol made form cellulose (e.g. forest residue, straw) is far better, from an environmental standpoint, than ethanol made from corn. As for biodiesel, will supplies come from plant oil? Canola? How will crops be grown?
While biodiesel and ethanol are promising alternative fuels, there are more choices. An unusual possibility - and a particularly clean one, says Etcheverry - is "brown energy," That's where animal manure is turned into usuable biomethane through an anaerobic digester, with the gas then used as a transportation fuel or for electricity and residential heating. One Wisconsin dairy farm with a digester is powering 600 homes with 900 cows. In Sweden, meanwhile, over 8,000 vehicles are powered by a combination of natural gas and biomethane.
While Etcheverry calls the interest in alternative fuels "a step in the right direction," he says we should be asking other fundamental questions, such as how we can approach urban and suburban design to be less car-dependent. And how we can encourage wider use of public transit and other modes of transportation. "Even if you could run cars on water, you 'd still need highways and parking lots, and it takes a lot of resouces to make a car," says Etcheverry. "Are you going to live closer to where you work and play? Will you ride a bike? Take the train? That's what's truly revolutionary."
Monday, November 19, 2007
Summary of Climate Change Report
From the StopGlobalWarming.org website, http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/sgw_read.asp?id=6385211172007, here is a brief summary of the “Synthesis Report” from the International Panel on Climate Change's Climate Change 2007 report.
The three other sections of the report are available online to read at the IPCC website, http://www.ipcc.ch/, or if you are a scientist or independently wealthy from Amazon.com, etc.; (1) The Physical Science Basis; (2) Impacts, Adaptation & Vulnerability; (3) Mitigation of Climate Change. I imagine copies will also find their way into libraries around the world, as they are available in many languages.
KEY FINDINGS OF UNITED NATIONS' SCIENTIFIC REPORT
by: Associated Press 17 November 2007
The following are some key findings in a report issued Saturday by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
The three other sections of the report are available online to read at the IPCC website, http://www.ipcc.ch/, or if you are a scientist or independently wealthy from Amazon.com, etc.; (1) The Physical Science Basis; (2) Impacts, Adaptation & Vulnerability; (3) Mitigation of Climate Change. I imagine copies will also find their way into libraries around the world, as they are available in many languages.
KEY FINDINGS OF UNITED NATIONS' SCIENTIFIC REPORT
by: Associated Press 17 November 2007
The following are some key findings in a report issued Saturday by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:
- Global warming is “unequivocal.” Temperatures have risen 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit in the last 100 years. Eleven of the last 12 years are among the warmest since 1850. Sea levels have gone up by an average seven-hundredths of an inch per year since 1961.
- About 20 percent to 30 percent of all plant and animal species face the risk of extinction if temperatures increase by 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit. If the thermometer rises by 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit, between 40 to 70 percent of species could disappear.
- Human activity is largely responsible for warming. Global emissions of greenhouse gases grew 70 percent from 1970 to 2004. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is far higher than the natural range over the last 650,000 years.
- Climate change will affect poor countries most, but will be felt everywhere. By 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's large cities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water.
- Extreme weather conditions will be more common. Tropical storms will be more frequent and intense. Heat waves and heavy rains will affect some areas, raising the risk of wildfires and the spread of diseases. Elsewhere, drought will degrade cropland and spoil the quality of water sources. Rising sea levels will increase flooding and salination of fresh water and threaten coastal cities.
- Even if greenhouse gases are stabilized, the Earth will keep warming and sea levels rising. More pollution could bring “abrupt and irreversible” changes, such as the loss of ice sheets in the poles, and a corresponding rise in sea levels by several yards.
- A wide array of tools exist, or will soon be available, to adapt to climate change and reduce its potential effects. One is to put a price on carbon emissions.
- By 2050, stabilizing emissions would slow the average annual global economic growth by less than 0.12 percent. The longer action is delayed, the more it will cost.
Thursday, November 8, 2007
Climate Change Warning From the United Nations
From the Friday, October 26, 2007, Toronto Star, World & Comment section, pages AA1, AA4, an urgent call for action on climate change from the United Nations:
Global Environment
HUMANITY'S SURVIVAL AT STAKE: UN
Report sends decision-makers 'urgent call for action' as climate and pollution crises intensify
Peter Gorrie
Environment Reporter
Earth's environment has tumbled downhill to the point where "humanity's very survival" is at stake, a branch of the United Nations said yesterday.
The response by governments, industries and individuals has been "woefully inadequate," states the latest Global Environment Outlook from the UN Environment Program.
World leaders must push the environment "to the core of decision-making" to tackle the worsening crisis, the outlook states.
"The need couldn't be more urgent and the time couldn't be more opportune, with our enhanced understanding of the challenges we face, to act now to safeguard our own survival and that of future generations."
The 572-page report was issued yesterday, 20 years after a commission headed by former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland published Our Common Culture, which urged a shift to "sustainable development."
During those two decades, progress has been achieved on a few "straightforward" problems such as local air and water pollution, the new outlook says.
But, "there are no major issues raised (in the 1987 document) for which the foreseeable trends are favourable. Failures include climate change, extinction of species, water shortages and destruction of ocean fish stocks."
Brundtland's commission recommended that, since they are so closely linked, the environment, economic and social issues must be integrated into any decisions about development, so it occurs in a way that protects the environment.
That hasn't happened, states the outlook, compiled by 390 experts from observations, studies and data gathered since 1987.
The result is not only that "in too many countries, environmental policy remains secondary to economic growth," but also that environmental degradation is undermining economic development and "threatens all aspects of human well-being."
"There have been enough wake-up calls since Brundtland. I sincerely hope (this) is the final one," UNEP executive director Achim Steiner said in London.
"The systematic destruction of the Earth's natural and nature-based resources has reached a point where the ... viability of economies is being challenged -- and where the bill we hand on to our children may prove impossible to pay."
The new report's authors state that their aim "is not to present a dark and gloomy scenario, but an urgent call for action."
But because the main environmental concerns are complex and there's little appetite for anything that upsets the status quo, solutions will be hard to come by, they say.
"The scale of the challenge is huge."
The report also calls for environmental justice -- "perhaps the greatest moral question emerging in relation to environmental change and sustainable development.
"Growing evidence indicates that the burden of environmental change is falling far from the greatest consumers of environmental resources, who experience the benefits of development."
Meanwhile, "people living in poverty in the developing world, suffer the negative effects of environmental degradation."
As well: "Costs of environmental degradation will be experienced by ... future generations."
Action is urgently required on all these issues, the report states. "Determined action now is cheaper than waiting for better solutions to emerge."
A major obstacle is resistance by governments and polluting industries, the outlook states.
"We appear to be living in an era in which the severity of environmental problems is increasing faster than our policy responses. To avoid the threat of catastrophic consequences in the future, we need new policy approaches."
It's crucial to move environmental concerns to the centre of decision-making. Instead of trying to clean up environmental damage, the focus should be on reducing the causes, including economic and population growth, ravenous resource consumption and social values, the report says.
That can be done through measures such as "green" taxes and economic measures that, unlike now, assign values to Earth's resources and the costs of pollution and other damage.
Environment Minister John Baird was not available for comment, but said in a statement that the report "confirms that Canada's government is on the right track as it identifies that climate change, energy usage and clean accessible water ware some of the key challenges facing North America."
With files from the Star's wire services
Global Environment
HUMANITY'S SURVIVAL AT STAKE: UN
Report sends decision-makers 'urgent call for action' as climate and pollution crises intensify
Peter Gorrie
Environment Reporter
Earth's environment has tumbled downhill to the point where "humanity's very survival" is at stake, a branch of the United Nations said yesterday.
The response by governments, industries and individuals has been "woefully inadequate," states the latest Global Environment Outlook from the UN Environment Program.
World leaders must push the environment "to the core of decision-making" to tackle the worsening crisis, the outlook states.
"The need couldn't be more urgent and the time couldn't be more opportune, with our enhanced understanding of the challenges we face, to act now to safeguard our own survival and that of future generations."
The 572-page report was issued yesterday, 20 years after a commission headed by former Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland published Our Common Culture, which urged a shift to "sustainable development."
During those two decades, progress has been achieved on a few "straightforward" problems such as local air and water pollution, the new outlook says.
But, "there are no major issues raised (in the 1987 document) for which the foreseeable trends are favourable. Failures include climate change, extinction of species, water shortages and destruction of ocean fish stocks."
Brundtland's commission recommended that, since they are so closely linked, the environment, economic and social issues must be integrated into any decisions about development, so it occurs in a way that protects the environment.
That hasn't happened, states the outlook, compiled by 390 experts from observations, studies and data gathered since 1987.
The result is not only that "in too many countries, environmental policy remains secondary to economic growth," but also that environmental degradation is undermining economic development and "threatens all aspects of human well-being."
"There have been enough wake-up calls since Brundtland. I sincerely hope (this) is the final one," UNEP executive director Achim Steiner said in London.
"The systematic destruction of the Earth's natural and nature-based resources has reached a point where the ... viability of economies is being challenged -- and where the bill we hand on to our children may prove impossible to pay."
The new report's authors state that their aim "is not to present a dark and gloomy scenario, but an urgent call for action."
But because the main environmental concerns are complex and there's little appetite for anything that upsets the status quo, solutions will be hard to come by, they say.
"The scale of the challenge is huge."
The report also calls for environmental justice -- "perhaps the greatest moral question emerging in relation to environmental change and sustainable development.
"Growing evidence indicates that the burden of environmental change is falling far from the greatest consumers of environmental resources, who experience the benefits of development."
Meanwhile, "people living in poverty in the developing world, suffer the negative effects of environmental degradation."
As well: "Costs of environmental degradation will be experienced by ... future generations."
Action is urgently required on all these issues, the report states. "Determined action now is cheaper than waiting for better solutions to emerge."
A major obstacle is resistance by governments and polluting industries, the outlook states.
"We appear to be living in an era in which the severity of environmental problems is increasing faster than our policy responses. To avoid the threat of catastrophic consequences in the future, we need new policy approaches."
It's crucial to move environmental concerns to the centre of decision-making. Instead of trying to clean up environmental damage, the focus should be on reducing the causes, including economic and population growth, ravenous resource consumption and social values, the report says.
That can be done through measures such as "green" taxes and economic measures that, unlike now, assign values to Earth's resources and the costs of pollution and other damage.
Environment Minister John Baird was not available for comment, but said in a statement that the report "confirms that Canada's government is on the right track as it identifies that climate change, energy usage and clean accessible water ware some of the key challenges facing North America."
With files from the Star's wire services
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Looking for a green event to participate in? Then check the calendar on ZeroFootPrint: http://www.zerofootprint.net/events . Events for November 10th, 2007, are listed below as an example of the worldwide listings.
2007-11-10
Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art
Greencastle, Indiana, United States
Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art explores how this design philosophy resonates with an emerging generation of international artists who combine a fresh aesthetic sensibility with a constructively critical approach to the production, dissemination, and display of art.
Organizer: Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University
Venue: Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University
2007-11-10
Wind Power Systems
Machynlleth, Powys, United Kingdom
This course is suitable for those interested in buying and installing an aerogenerator as well as for those with a general interest in the subject.
Organizer: Centre for Alternative Technology
Venue: Centre for Alternative Technology
2007-11-10
Les Respirations
Enghien-les-Bains, France
Speakers will debate around the theme of air quality, both indoor and outdoor at this event.
2007-11-10
Landscape Functions and People: Applying Strategic Planning Approaches for Good Natural Resource Governance
Bangkok, Thailand
The course offers participants an opportunity to familiarise themselves with current practices for landscape-level planning approaches.
Organizer: Wageningen International and Recoft
2007-11-10
PV Design Online
United States
This course is for the person who is interested in learning how to produce their own electricity from the sun.
Organizer: Solar Energy International
Venue: Online
2007-11-10
Forty-third Session of the International Tropical Timber Council and Associated Sessions of the Committees
Yokohama, Japan
Come and join the Forty-third Session of the International Tropical Timber Council and Associated Sessions of the Committees.
Organizer: International Tropical Timber Organization
2007-11-10
Advanced PV Online
United States
This course is designed to follow the PV Design & Installation workshop or the PV Design Online course with the next level of design criteria and maintenance issues.
Organizer: Solar Energy International
Venue: Online
2007-11-10
Celebrating Women & the Spirit of the Cranes
Delta, British Columbia, Canada
Nominate a women who represents the qualities associated with women and cranes-industriousness, loyalty, longevity, good fortune and gifted in handiwork. Nominations open in the Arts, Business, Community Spirit, Education, Science & Technology, and Fledgling Chick (women 30 or younger).
Organizer: Burns Bog Conservation Society
2007-11-10
Third International Conference on Rural Development
Kaunas City, Lithuania
Third international scientific conference on RURAL DEVELOPMENT 2007 This Conference is dedicated to the presentation of results in research of economical, managerial, social,technological, ecological, environmental aspects.
Organizer: Lithuanian University of Agriculture
2007-11-10
Ecomondo 2007
Rimini, Italy
Ecomondo has strengthened the original project - Ricicla - by in-depth coverage of the numerous issues linked with the concept of ‘environmental sustainability'.
Organizer: RiminiFiera
Venue: Expo Centre
2007-11-10
Euromoney and Ernst & Young Global Renewable Energy Awards
London, England
Now in its fourth year, the awards were established to recognise the projects, companies and individuals who contributed the most to take the industry forward and demonstrated best practice in renewable energy finance and development.
Organizer: Euromoney Energy Events
Venue: Riverbank Plaza
2007-11-10
San Francisco Green Festival
San Francisco, California, United States
What will you find at the Green Festival? Tasty food, great music, and 300 green businesses as well as films, workshops, yoga and other types of movement classes.
Organizer: Global Exchange and Co-op America
Venue: San Francisco Concourse Exhibition Center
2007-11-10
Sustainable Innovation Summit
Glendale, Arizona, United States
The Thunderbird Sustainable Innovation Summit is pleased to host global thought leaders from academia, Fortune 500 companies, and sustainable development organizations to shape the future of sustainable innovation.
Organizer: Thunderbird School of Global Management
2007-11-10
Califia Sketchbook Design Competition
United States
The purpose of developing the Califia Sketchbook Design Competition is to express to a wide variety of people what life will be like in Califia, a proposed next generation eco-city.
Organizer: Green Century Institute
2007-11-10
Off-Grid Systems for Professionals
Hopland, California, United States
This two-day advanced class in off-grid PV covers the complex world of hybrid power systems, which integrate multiple energy sources (PV, wind power, small hydro, and generators) to satisfy the electrical demand of off-grid sites.
Organizer: Solar Living Institute
Venue: Solar Living Center
2007-11-10
Black Creek Pioneer Village is Open
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Activities and events take place all year long at the historic village.
Organizer: Black Creek Pioneer Village
Venue: Black Creek Pioneer Village
2007-11-10
University District Farmers Market
Seattle, Washington, United States
The University District Farmers Market is Seattle's oldest and largest "farmers-only" neighborhood market. Founded in 1993, this Saturday market offers a place for more than 50 Washington State farmers to sell their fresh produce and quality products each week.
Organizer: Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance
Venue: University District Farmers Market
2007-11-10
HomeStreet Bank Tree Challenge
Puget Sound, WA, US
The HomeStreet Bank Tree Challenge is a program to plant trees in the Puget Sound region.
Organizer: HomeStreet Bank, Cascade Land Conservancy, Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, Capitol Land Trust and Friends of the Hylebos
2007-11-10
Launch of Kerr Village Organic Farmer's Market
Oakville, ON, CA
Launch of new Oakville market! An open-air market featuring fresh in-season produce from sustainable farms, all within 150 km, prepared artisanal meats, & cheeses,holitics, arts & crafts, speakers and info tables on sustainable living, food preparation, preservation & nutrition, social issues and plety of children's activities.
Organizer: Canadian Organic Growers, Slow Food Canada
Venue: Kerr Village Organic Farmer's Market
2007-11-10
Laughter Gone Wild!
Banff, Alberta, Canada
Laughter Gone Wild! is Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative's signature comedy night.
Organizer: Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
Venue: Eric Harvie Theatre and Banff Centre
2007-11-10
Whole Village Ecovillage Workbee
Caledon, Ontario, Canada
Work Bees are held monthly. All members, friends, guests and anyone interested in spending a day doing a variety of hands on work with genial forks in a gorgeous country setting are welcome to attend.
Organizer: Whole Village
Venue: Whole Village
2007-11-10
Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art
Greencastle, Indiana, United States
Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art explores how this design philosophy resonates with an emerging generation of international artists who combine a fresh aesthetic sensibility with a constructively critical approach to the production, dissemination, and display of art.
Organizer: Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University
Venue: Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University
2007-11-10
Wind Power Systems
Machynlleth, Powys, United Kingdom
This course is suitable for those interested in buying and installing an aerogenerator as well as for those with a general interest in the subject.
Organizer: Centre for Alternative Technology
Venue: Centre for Alternative Technology
2007-11-10
Les Respirations
Enghien-les-Bains, France
Speakers will debate around the theme of air quality, both indoor and outdoor at this event.
2007-11-10
Landscape Functions and People: Applying Strategic Planning Approaches for Good Natural Resource Governance
Bangkok, Thailand
The course offers participants an opportunity to familiarise themselves with current practices for landscape-level planning approaches.
Organizer: Wageningen International and Recoft
2007-11-10
PV Design Online
United States
This course is for the person who is interested in learning how to produce their own electricity from the sun.
Organizer: Solar Energy International
Venue: Online
2007-11-10
Forty-third Session of the International Tropical Timber Council and Associated Sessions of the Committees
Yokohama, Japan
Come and join the Forty-third Session of the International Tropical Timber Council and Associated Sessions of the Committees.
Organizer: International Tropical Timber Organization
2007-11-10
Advanced PV Online
United States
This course is designed to follow the PV Design & Installation workshop or the PV Design Online course with the next level of design criteria and maintenance issues.
Organizer: Solar Energy International
Venue: Online
2007-11-10
Celebrating Women & the Spirit of the Cranes
Delta, British Columbia, Canada
Nominate a women who represents the qualities associated with women and cranes-industriousness, loyalty, longevity, good fortune and gifted in handiwork. Nominations open in the Arts, Business, Community Spirit, Education, Science & Technology, and Fledgling Chick (women 30 or younger).
Organizer: Burns Bog Conservation Society
2007-11-10
Third International Conference on Rural Development
Kaunas City, Lithuania
Third international scientific conference on RURAL DEVELOPMENT 2007 This Conference is dedicated to the presentation of results in research of economical, managerial, social,technological, ecological, environmental aspects.
Organizer: Lithuanian University of Agriculture
2007-11-10
Ecomondo 2007
Rimini, Italy
Ecomondo has strengthened the original project - Ricicla - by in-depth coverage of the numerous issues linked with the concept of ‘environmental sustainability'.
Organizer: RiminiFiera
Venue: Expo Centre
2007-11-10
Euromoney and Ernst & Young Global Renewable Energy Awards
London, England
Now in its fourth year, the awards were established to recognise the projects, companies and individuals who contributed the most to take the industry forward and demonstrated best practice in renewable energy finance and development.
Organizer: Euromoney Energy Events
Venue: Riverbank Plaza
2007-11-10
San Francisco Green Festival
San Francisco, California, United States
What will you find at the Green Festival? Tasty food, great music, and 300 green businesses as well as films, workshops, yoga and other types of movement classes.
Organizer: Global Exchange and Co-op America
Venue: San Francisco Concourse Exhibition Center
2007-11-10
Sustainable Innovation Summit
Glendale, Arizona, United States
The Thunderbird Sustainable Innovation Summit is pleased to host global thought leaders from academia, Fortune 500 companies, and sustainable development organizations to shape the future of sustainable innovation.
Organizer: Thunderbird School of Global Management
2007-11-10
Califia Sketchbook Design Competition
United States
The purpose of developing the Califia Sketchbook Design Competition is to express to a wide variety of people what life will be like in Califia, a proposed next generation eco-city.
Organizer: Green Century Institute
2007-11-10
Off-Grid Systems for Professionals
Hopland, California, United States
This two-day advanced class in off-grid PV covers the complex world of hybrid power systems, which integrate multiple energy sources (PV, wind power, small hydro, and generators) to satisfy the electrical demand of off-grid sites.
Organizer: Solar Living Institute
Venue: Solar Living Center
2007-11-10
Black Creek Pioneer Village is Open
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Activities and events take place all year long at the historic village.
Organizer: Black Creek Pioneer Village
Venue: Black Creek Pioneer Village
2007-11-10
University District Farmers Market
Seattle, Washington, United States
The University District Farmers Market is Seattle's oldest and largest "farmers-only" neighborhood market. Founded in 1993, this Saturday market offers a place for more than 50 Washington State farmers to sell their fresh produce and quality products each week.
Organizer: Neighborhood Farmers Market Alliance
Venue: University District Farmers Market
2007-11-10
HomeStreet Bank Tree Challenge
Puget Sound, WA, US
The HomeStreet Bank Tree Challenge is a program to plant trees in the Puget Sound region.
Organizer: HomeStreet Bank, Cascade Land Conservancy, Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, Capitol Land Trust and Friends of the Hylebos
2007-11-10
Launch of Kerr Village Organic Farmer's Market
Oakville, ON, CA
Launch of new Oakville market! An open-air market featuring fresh in-season produce from sustainable farms, all within 150 km, prepared artisanal meats, & cheeses,holitics, arts & crafts, speakers and info tables on sustainable living, food preparation, preservation & nutrition, social issues and plety of children's activities.
Organizer: Canadian Organic Growers, Slow Food Canada
Venue: Kerr Village Organic Farmer's Market
2007-11-10
Laughter Gone Wild!
Banff, Alberta, Canada
Laughter Gone Wild! is Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative's signature comedy night.
Organizer: Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative
Venue: Eric Harvie Theatre and Banff Centre
2007-11-10
Whole Village Ecovillage Workbee
Caledon, Ontario, Canada
Work Bees are held monthly. All members, friends, guests and anyone interested in spending a day doing a variety of hands on work with genial forks in a gorgeous country setting are welcome to attend.
Organizer: Whole Village
Venue: Whole Village
Friday, November 2, 2007
Gas Prices Falling Equals Obesity Rates Higher
This article is in the Business section of the Friday, September 14, 2007, Toronto Star, page B3. It shows a correlation between obesity rates and falling gas prices. Though it may do nothing for our finances, higher gas prices may be better for our health and the health of the environment.
RESEARCHER LINKS GAS PRICE, OBESITY
Commuters more likely to walk, bike or take transit when costs rice
Michael Babad
Business Reporter
High gasoline prices may prompt people to tighten their belts in more ways than one, a U.S. economics researcher has found.
Studying average U.S. state fuel prices and U.S. government-reported health trends, Charles Courtemanche, a PhD student in health economics in his final year at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., found high pump prices can bring lower obesity rates.
"My finding is that when gas prices rise, there does seem to be some reduction in body weight and in obesity as a result," Courtemanche, 27, said from St. Louis. "Everyone's miserable about the high gas prices, so here's kind of a little silver lining in the story."
Courtemanche wrote in his study "that a $1 (U.S.) increase in gas prices would, after three years, reduce U.S. obesity by approximately 15 per cent, saving 16,000 lives and $17 billion per year."
The study, A Silver Living? The Connection Between Gasoline Prices and Obesity, also estimated that 13 per cent of the jump in obesity in the United States between 1979 and 2004 was attributable to a drop in real gas prices.
High gas prices, he said, may prompt people to switch from driving vehicles to walking, biking or using public transit, which involves walking to and from a bus or rail stop.
As well, higher gas prices may prompt more people to eat at home more, rather than at restaurants, and home meals tend to be healthier, his study said.
Courtemanche's findings were based on U.S. research. He has never been to Canada, but he would expect his results to be about the same.
"I would think generally, the magnitudes, might be slightly different," he said. "For example, if it's colder and snowier up there, walking might be a little less feasible, that sort of thing."
Courtemanche, whose commute is 30 minutes, got the idea when he was pumping gas, thinking he may need to consider switching to the Metro, the ground and elevated transit system in St. Louis.
Courtemanche's research has also sparked some chatter in the United States.
"I've already been getting hate mail from people thinking that I'm trying to call for further increases in gas prices or something like that, which is definitely not the case," he said.
RESEARCHER LINKS GAS PRICE, OBESITY
Commuters more likely to walk, bike or take transit when costs rice
Michael Babad
Business Reporter
High gasoline prices may prompt people to tighten their belts in more ways than one, a U.S. economics researcher has found.
Studying average U.S. state fuel prices and U.S. government-reported health trends, Charles Courtemanche, a PhD student in health economics in his final year at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., found high pump prices can bring lower obesity rates.
"My finding is that when gas prices rise, there does seem to be some reduction in body weight and in obesity as a result," Courtemanche, 27, said from St. Louis. "Everyone's miserable about the high gas prices, so here's kind of a little silver lining in the story."
Courtemanche wrote in his study "that a $1 (U.S.) increase in gas prices would, after three years, reduce U.S. obesity by approximately 15 per cent, saving 16,000 lives and $17 billion per year."
The study, A Silver Living? The Connection Between Gasoline Prices and Obesity, also estimated that 13 per cent of the jump in obesity in the United States between 1979 and 2004 was attributable to a drop in real gas prices.
High gas prices, he said, may prompt people to switch from driving vehicles to walking, biking or using public transit, which involves walking to and from a bus or rail stop.
As well, higher gas prices may prompt more people to eat at home more, rather than at restaurants, and home meals tend to be healthier, his study said.
Courtemanche's findings were based on U.S. research. He has never been to Canada, but he would expect his results to be about the same.
"I would think generally, the magnitudes, might be slightly different," he said. "For example, if it's colder and snowier up there, walking might be a little less feasible, that sort of thing."
Courtemanche, whose commute is 30 minutes, got the idea when he was pumping gas, thinking he may need to consider switching to the Metro, the ground and elevated transit system in St. Louis.
Courtemanche's research has also sparked some chatter in the United States.
"I've already been getting hate mail from people thinking that I'm trying to call for further increases in gas prices or something like that, which is definitely not the case," he said.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Leadership Vancuum on Climate Change
From the "Ideas" section of the Toronto Star newspaper, Friday, September 28, 2007, section "Ideas", page AA8, comes the following article by Kathleen O'Hara about the provincial "leadership vacuum" on climate change.
LEADERS FUMBLE GREEN BALL
Kathleen O'Hara
Are we all living on the same planet, being exposed to the same frightening information about climate change? Based on the provincial election campaign so far, I wonder. You would think that the status quo is fundamentally fine, but just needs adjusting. Far from it.
There is no shortage of reminders about the crisis we face. Lester R. Brown of the Earth Policy Institute wrote: "Saving civilization means restructuring the economy -- and at wartime speed," Author Jeremy Rifkin states: "There are rare moments in history when a generation of human beings are given a new gift with which to rearrange their relationship to one another and the world around them. This is such a moment."
Yet, I detect no real appreciation of this "moment" from our provincial campaign, no sense of urgency, no vision of a relatively carbon-free future. During the leaders' debate, no one picked up the green ball and ran with it. The closest thing to inspiration was Howard Hampton saying we needed "leadership" on the issue of global warming.
This leadership vacuum is tragic because, in spite of the fact that many of us support the crucial transition to green, it isn't going as well as it could or should. Instead of confronting the Earth's crisis in a co-operative, enlightened way, some are using it to make a questionable buck. Take wind power. Who would have thought it could be controversial? Harvesting energy from thin air without drilling, refining, transporting. No need to exploit foreign resources, no wars or occupations. It sounded like a godsend.
But controversial it is -- from the islands near Kingston to Atlantic Canada to Australia, the U.K. and India. People are protesting against the turbine "monstrosities," "the juggernaut which runs roughshod, unchecked over some of our loveliest land," "the resources exploitation and industrial domination over our territory."
Over the summer, the proposed introduction of what one opponent called "industrial scale wind plants" on nearly Wolfe and Amherst Islands divided these quiet, rural communities. Some secretly leased their land to Canadian Hydro Developers Inc. so that the Calgary-based company could install more than 80 steel turbines on each island.
Dividing families and friends, the company's methodology was far from green. Anti-wind-plant protest groups were formed. On Wolfe Island, opponents were worried about the distance of the 90-metre-tall turbines from homes, a wetland and bird migratory routes. After taking a township bylaw to the Ontario Municipal Board, the setbacks were increased, much to the relief of many. The issue still festering on Amherst Island.
These controversies illustrate that our society hasn't learned anything about how we have reached today's crisis, how running roughshod over lives and resources just doesn't work. The fact is that we can't simply create new sources of energy; we must create a new kind of society -- by building and designing our new systems in humane, democratic ways with strict regulations and community input.
Rifkin warns that we can't allow our energy future to be hijacked by profit-driven corporations the way the Internet was. "The great promise of the Net . . . has been compromised, at every step of the way, by commercial interests determined to gain a foothold over the medium."
Yes, the world is getting off to a rocky start when it comes to "saving civilisation." Here in Ontario, it doesn't look like any person or party is going to lead us out of the increasingly hot wilderness -- no matter what the election outcome. That is a disgrace when so much is at stake.
Kathleen O'Hara is a Kingston-based journalist and writer.
LEADERS FUMBLE GREEN BALL
Kathleen O'Hara
Are we all living on the same planet, being exposed to the same frightening information about climate change? Based on the provincial election campaign so far, I wonder. You would think that the status quo is fundamentally fine, but just needs adjusting. Far from it.
There is no shortage of reminders about the crisis we face. Lester R. Brown of the Earth Policy Institute wrote: "Saving civilization means restructuring the economy -- and at wartime speed," Author Jeremy Rifkin states: "There are rare moments in history when a generation of human beings are given a new gift with which to rearrange their relationship to one another and the world around them. This is such a moment."
Yet, I detect no real appreciation of this "moment" from our provincial campaign, no sense of urgency, no vision of a relatively carbon-free future. During the leaders' debate, no one picked up the green ball and ran with it. The closest thing to inspiration was Howard Hampton saying we needed "leadership" on the issue of global warming.
This leadership vacuum is tragic because, in spite of the fact that many of us support the crucial transition to green, it isn't going as well as it could or should. Instead of confronting the Earth's crisis in a co-operative, enlightened way, some are using it to make a questionable buck. Take wind power. Who would have thought it could be controversial? Harvesting energy from thin air without drilling, refining, transporting. No need to exploit foreign resources, no wars or occupations. It sounded like a godsend.
But controversial it is -- from the islands near Kingston to Atlantic Canada to Australia, the U.K. and India. People are protesting against the turbine "monstrosities," "the juggernaut which runs roughshod, unchecked over some of our loveliest land," "the resources exploitation and industrial domination over our territory."
Over the summer, the proposed introduction of what one opponent called "industrial scale wind plants" on nearly Wolfe and Amherst Islands divided these quiet, rural communities. Some secretly leased their land to Canadian Hydro Developers Inc. so that the Calgary-based company could install more than 80 steel turbines on each island.
Dividing families and friends, the company's methodology was far from green. Anti-wind-plant protest groups were formed. On Wolfe Island, opponents were worried about the distance of the 90-metre-tall turbines from homes, a wetland and bird migratory routes. After taking a township bylaw to the Ontario Municipal Board, the setbacks were increased, much to the relief of many. The issue still festering on Amherst Island.
These controversies illustrate that our society hasn't learned anything about how we have reached today's crisis, how running roughshod over lives and resources just doesn't work. The fact is that we can't simply create new sources of energy; we must create a new kind of society -- by building and designing our new systems in humane, democratic ways with strict regulations and community input.
Rifkin warns that we can't allow our energy future to be hijacked by profit-driven corporations the way the Internet was. "The great promise of the Net . . . has been compromised, at every step of the way, by commercial interests determined to gain a foothold over the medium."
Yes, the world is getting off to a rocky start when it comes to "saving civilisation." Here in Ontario, it doesn't look like any person or party is going to lead us out of the increasingly hot wilderness -- no matter what the election outcome. That is a disgrace when so much is at stake.
Kathleen O'Hara is a Kingston-based journalist and writer.
Green Living
This article by Peter Gorrie is from the Toronto Star, Saturday, October 6, 2007, page U2:
NATURE
The art of reconnecting
Claudia Davila offers and "inconvenient truth" to those who believe they can buy their way to a small environmental footprint.
"That's the easy route, and it's just a start," says Davila, 34, an illustrator and designer of children's books and magazines.
Her message: we need to recognize that we're part of the natural world and reconnect with it.
"If we just keep shopping" -- for energy-efficient appliances and other "green" products -- "we miss the whole root of the problem."
Davila was born in Chile and came to Canada as an infant in 1973, after the overthrow of the elected government by General Augusto Pinochet.
"My whole life, I've really appreciated nature and tried to reconcile how humans interact with it," she says in the tiny College St. apartment she shares with her husband artist Michael Cho.
"It's just something inside of me. It tells me that humans are not separate from nature. We're part of it."
Davila's awareness started to turn into action when she was studying fine arts at York University and met up with like-minded people.
Her "beginning attempts at a smaller footprint" included biking to work and school, buying in bulk, producing as little waste as possible and delaying the purchase of a car.
Today, she buys as little as possible and second-hand whenever she can. She uses the library instead of bookstores. She and her husband share a car with her parents and married brother. She buys local foods, and uses found objects and scrap paper in some of her art.
One of her frustrations is that, since she lives on the second floor over a store, the city won't let her use a green bin for composting.
Davila is also focused on peak oil -- the realization that we're running out of fossil fuels. It's the subject of a book, Spoiled, that she has drawn and written, as well as Internet blogs she hosts.
In her optimistic moments, she sees the impending fuel shortage as a chance. "It's a symbol of a wake-up call for people. It's hopefully an opportunity to realize that we've fallen so far away from our relationship to nature . . . That we have to give back as much as we take."
-- Peter Gorrie
NATURE
The art of reconnecting
Claudia Davila offers and "inconvenient truth" to those who believe they can buy their way to a small environmental footprint.
"That's the easy route, and it's just a start," says Davila, 34, an illustrator and designer of children's books and magazines.
Her message: we need to recognize that we're part of the natural world and reconnect with it.
"If we just keep shopping" -- for energy-efficient appliances and other "green" products -- "we miss the whole root of the problem."
Davila was born in Chile and came to Canada as an infant in 1973, after the overthrow of the elected government by General Augusto Pinochet.
"My whole life, I've really appreciated nature and tried to reconcile how humans interact with it," she says in the tiny College St. apartment she shares with her husband artist Michael Cho.
"It's just something inside of me. It tells me that humans are not separate from nature. We're part of it."
Davila's awareness started to turn into action when she was studying fine arts at York University and met up with like-minded people.
Her "beginning attempts at a smaller footprint" included biking to work and school, buying in bulk, producing as little waste as possible and delaying the purchase of a car.
Today, she buys as little as possible and second-hand whenever she can. She uses the library instead of bookstores. She and her husband share a car with her parents and married brother. She buys local foods, and uses found objects and scrap paper in some of her art.
One of her frustrations is that, since she lives on the second floor over a store, the city won't let her use a green bin for composting.
Davila is also focused on peak oil -- the realization that we're running out of fossil fuels. It's the subject of a book, Spoiled, that she has drawn and written, as well as Internet blogs she hosts.
In her optimistic moments, she sees the impending fuel shortage as a chance. "It's a symbol of a wake-up call for people. It's hopefully an opportunity to realize that we've fallen so far away from our relationship to nature . . . That we have to give back as much as we take."
-- Peter Gorrie
Living Green & Leading by Example
Toronto Star, Sat., October 6, 2007, Section U, "Green Living".
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.
_____________________________________________________________________
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.
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
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.
_____________________________________________________________________
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
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