From the November/December 2007 issue of E The Environment Magazine, Volume XVIII, Number 6, www.emagazine.com, page 12:
THE GREENING OF LAS VEGAS
Las Vegas is all about the "experience." In a city focused on spontaneous and gluttonous consumption, the trick is to keep the tourists entertained and the green innovation transparent, or the city will undermine its sole reason for being. But, with environmental concerns now looming large, even Las Vegas is looking to replace the Luxor beam with compact fluorescents.
"The bigger question is, do we even need a Luxor beam?" says Steve Rypka, president of GreenDream Enterprises, a Las Vegas green living consulting firm." Las Vegas has worldwide recognition. How wonderful it would be for the city to be seen as a leader in green."
From a building perspective, the multibillion-dollar Project City Center by MGM Mirage slated to open in 2009 has applied to become a LEED-certified development, the largest of its kind in the U.S.
"MGM Mirage has a commitment to sustainability but our sheer size requires examining the world of possibilities," said Gordon Absher, an MGM Mirage spokesperson. "The company overall is focused on three key areas for becoming greener: new resort construction, existing resort renovations and maintenance and general sustainable opportunities."
Taxis are a staple on the Strip, and Lucky Cab Company of Nevada introduced Toyota Prius hybrid taxis in 2005. Desiree Dante, vice president of Lucky Cab, says, "We're expecting that 20 per cent of our fleet will be Prius by the end of 2007. We save about $5,000 per vehicle annually with the hybrid cars." Other taxi companies in town are now testing hybrid vehicles in their fleets.
Las Vegas is also the first city in the West to put hydrogen-powered buses on the road to transport tourists from downtown to the Las Vegas Premium Outlets. Meanwhile, Nevada Solar One, a solar thermal installation in the desert outside Las Vegas, is producing 64 megawatts of power.
"We're stewards of the planet," says Rypka. "We now have a tremendous opportunity to use our intelligence to make a difference. There's currently no green solution for long-distance rapid transportation like air travel, yet Las Vegas is dependent upon tourism. We need to be more creative, to bring people in and lessen the environmental impact."
The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau slogan is "What happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas." But, when it comes to green living, everybody is affected.
CONTACTS: Green Dream Enterprises (702) 285-6845, www.green-dream.biz; Project CityCenter,(866) 722-7171,www.citycenter.com.
-Cindi R. Maciolek
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label environment. Show all posts
Thursday, January 17, 2008
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
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Amazon Deforestation
From the October 15, 2007, Environment section of Maclean's magazine, pages 86-88:
Environment
FIRE IN THE AMAZON
Brazil says less rainforest is disappearing, but deforestation is continuing at an alarming rate
by Isabel Vincent
When Brazil's President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva addressed the United Nations General Assembly last month, he certainly wanted to come across as one of the world's "green" leaders. He pushed biofuels, and pledged Rio de Janeiro as a venue for a global environmental conference in 2012. Near the top of his agenda was trying to end deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. To this end, he said, his government was working hard, and in the last three years the rate of deforestation in the Amazon region has been cut in half.
Taken on its own, the figure may seem to be a tremendous accomplishment for Lula's centre-left Workers Party government, which had made ecology one of its cornerstones during this first term in office, beginning in October 2002. But when you consider that, under the Lula government, deforestation in the Amazon reached its highest level ever, the Workers Party ecological records starts to look incredibly grim. "What Lula is saying now that after deforestation reached a peak in his first three years of government, it is slowing down," says Roberto Smeraldi, director of Friends of the Earth's Sao Paulo chapter, which focuses its efforts on the Amazon. "You have to read this in context, because during his time in office it went up higher than it ever had, and on average it is still higher than at any other time in the past."
Already, fully 20 per cent of the Amazon rainforest has been lost to deforestation, experts say. Between July 2005 and July 2006, 14,000 square km of forest disappeared as ranchers and others slashed and burned vegetation in order to make way for agribusiness ventures, such as cattle raising and soy bean production (in the Amazon, the cattle population is increasing by more than two million head per year - a huge threat). The year before, 21,000 square km of rainforest were lost. In 2005, parts of the Amazon also experienced the worst drought the forest has seen in a century. Scientists say that if the trend continues, the Amazon rainforest will start to die.
As it is, the burning of the Amazon in Brazil has made the country the third-largest source for carbon emissions in the world, after China and the United States. Moreover, scientists say that information on the reduction of deforestation is still very partial and unclear, and they are waiting for satellite images scheduled to be released at the end of the year, in order to make up their minds on whether deforestation has indeed dipped by 50 per cent. But what remains clear, Smeraldi says, is that "a huge area of forest is being converted every year in the Amazon, beyond any social and economic rationale."
Globally, that is a huge concern. Recently, diplomat Hans Blix, the former head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and inspection Commission, called global warming "a greater long-term threat to mankind than weapons of mass destruction.' He said that "a vital part of tackling the problem is to halt the destruction of tropical rainforests as a matter of urgency." Scientists and environmentalists around the world agree, and consider the preservation of the Amazon of vital importance. Recently, a group of them began the Forests Now Declaration from Brazil to Bali, an initiative that calls on governments to take urgent action on deforestation in the tropics, which contributes up to 25 per cent of global carbon emissions, second only to the use of fossil fuels. The declaration, which is being signed by leaders and environmentalists around the world, will be presented to the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bali in December.
But the destruction of the Amazon also has a very direct regional environmental impact. "We're all obsessed with carbon emissions, but if I were Lula, i would be concerned about rainfall l and the disruption in trade winds that are resulting from Amazon deforestation," says Hilton Philipson, a trustee of the Global Canopy Program and a force behind the Forests Now Declaration in London. "If you take away the moderating influence of the forest, you get stronger upswellings of hotter air, rains are more powerful, and there will be more violent weather patterns originating in the Amazon basin." Already, scientists have blamed an upsurge in hurricanes in the Caribbean on deforestation in the Amazon. The strong force of hurricanes such as Katrina are also blamed on problems originating in the Amazon rainforest, they say.
But what to do about an area that environmentalists are lobbying to keep untouched - and which many Brazilian administrations have seemed eager to develop and exploit? As lula himself noted during his first year in office, "This region cannot be treated like it was something from another world, untouchable, in which the people don't have the right to the benefits." Ever the pragmatist, Lula set about pledging to complete work on such projects as the BR-163, a highway connecting the central farming state of Mato Grosso with the Amazon region, so that soy beans can be easily transported for export to the iver port of Santarem. Also under development is the Transoceanic Highway, a continuation of the TransAmazon Highway, which will link the town of Rio Branco in the deep Amazon to Perus' Pacific ports. Environmentalists fear that in two years, when the road is scheduled to be completed, there will be an asphalted connection linking the Amazon region to the Pacific and China, which is keen to improve its access to the forest.
"I'm not in the game of blame, but it seems to be that the structure of the world economy is not giving Brazil a chance," says Philipson. Favourable world-market grain and beef prices actually increase deforestation in the Amazon as ranchers seek to expand their productivity and burn more forest to accommodate more cattle. Last week, Lula also announced plans to plant sugar cane in devastated forest areas in order to increase Brazil's production of ethanol (the country's vehicles have been running on ethanol for more than 30 years and Brazil is a world leader in the production of biofuels). It was a move that brought further criticism. "Lula is presenting himself to the world as a mascot for biofuels rather than as a statesmen for ecology," said Marcelo Leite, a political columnist writing in the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.
Environmental critics fear that farming and infrastructure projects will only bring more development to the Amazon, as speculators occupy land when it is still cheap, before highways are paved or other projects such as dams are built. But Philipson notes that Lula has done some good in the Amazon, especially by demarcating the 17,000-square-km Raposa Serra do Sol native reservation in the Amazon state of Roraima in 2005. And he says the answer to the preservation of rainforests around the world is simple: money. If you want to save the rainforest, pay the Brazilian government for "environmental services," and treat the forest as "a giant utility." Insurance companies, for example, ubiquitous around the world, could be taxed and the money sent to governments to administer tropical forests. "There is a whole new industry there in the export of environmental services to the world," says Philipson. "The only way we are going to save the forest is money, and the recognition that the forest delivers environmental services to mankind."
Brazilian scientists Antonio Bonato Nobre agrees. A federal researcher with the National Institute for Amazon Research, he says every hectare that is currently being used for agri-business in the Amazon yields US$22 per year. "If we could find a way of ascribing more than $22, we don't have to worry about anything, the forest will be protected," he said, adding that at least one Amazon governor is behind the plan and has already started telling other politicians they could earn more money under a scheme to leave the forest alone. "What is happening to the Amazon is not the fault of the Brazilian government, but of the international economic system," says Nobre. "Money talks because people are selfish. Everything else is hypocrisy,and it won't protect the standing forests."
Environment
FIRE IN THE AMAZON
Brazil says less rainforest is disappearing, but deforestation is continuing at an alarming rate
by Isabel Vincent
When Brazil's President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva addressed the United Nations General Assembly last month, he certainly wanted to come across as one of the world's "green" leaders. He pushed biofuels, and pledged Rio de Janeiro as a venue for a global environmental conference in 2012. Near the top of his agenda was trying to end deforestation in the Amazon rainforest. To this end, he said, his government was working hard, and in the last three years the rate of deforestation in the Amazon region has been cut in half.
Taken on its own, the figure may seem to be a tremendous accomplishment for Lula's centre-left Workers Party government, which had made ecology one of its cornerstones during this first term in office, beginning in October 2002. But when you consider that, under the Lula government, deforestation in the Amazon reached its highest level ever, the Workers Party ecological records starts to look incredibly grim. "What Lula is saying now that after deforestation reached a peak in his first three years of government, it is slowing down," says Roberto Smeraldi, director of Friends of the Earth's Sao Paulo chapter, which focuses its efforts on the Amazon. "You have to read this in context, because during his time in office it went up higher than it ever had, and on average it is still higher than at any other time in the past."
Already, fully 20 per cent of the Amazon rainforest has been lost to deforestation, experts say. Between July 2005 and July 2006, 14,000 square km of forest disappeared as ranchers and others slashed and burned vegetation in order to make way for agribusiness ventures, such as cattle raising and soy bean production (in the Amazon, the cattle population is increasing by more than two million head per year - a huge threat). The year before, 21,000 square km of rainforest were lost. In 2005, parts of the Amazon also experienced the worst drought the forest has seen in a century. Scientists say that if the trend continues, the Amazon rainforest will start to die.
As it is, the burning of the Amazon in Brazil has made the country the third-largest source for carbon emissions in the world, after China and the United States. Moreover, scientists say that information on the reduction of deforestation is still very partial and unclear, and they are waiting for satellite images scheduled to be released at the end of the year, in order to make up their minds on whether deforestation has indeed dipped by 50 per cent. But what remains clear, Smeraldi says, is that "a huge area of forest is being converted every year in the Amazon, beyond any social and economic rationale."
Globally, that is a huge concern. Recently, diplomat Hans Blix, the former head of the UN Monitoring, Verification and inspection Commission, called global warming "a greater long-term threat to mankind than weapons of mass destruction.' He said that "a vital part of tackling the problem is to halt the destruction of tropical rainforests as a matter of urgency." Scientists and environmentalists around the world agree, and consider the preservation of the Amazon of vital importance. Recently, a group of them began the Forests Now Declaration from Brazil to Bali, an initiative that calls on governments to take urgent action on deforestation in the tropics, which contributes up to 25 per cent of global carbon emissions, second only to the use of fossil fuels. The declaration, which is being signed by leaders and environmentalists around the world, will be presented to the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bali in December.
But the destruction of the Amazon also has a very direct regional environmental impact. "We're all obsessed with carbon emissions, but if I were Lula, i would be concerned about rainfall l and the disruption in trade winds that are resulting from Amazon deforestation," says Hilton Philipson, a trustee of the Global Canopy Program and a force behind the Forests Now Declaration in London. "If you take away the moderating influence of the forest, you get stronger upswellings of hotter air, rains are more powerful, and there will be more violent weather patterns originating in the Amazon basin." Already, scientists have blamed an upsurge in hurricanes in the Caribbean on deforestation in the Amazon. The strong force of hurricanes such as Katrina are also blamed on problems originating in the Amazon rainforest, they say.
But what to do about an area that environmentalists are lobbying to keep untouched - and which many Brazilian administrations have seemed eager to develop and exploit? As lula himself noted during his first year in office, "This region cannot be treated like it was something from another world, untouchable, in which the people don't have the right to the benefits." Ever the pragmatist, Lula set about pledging to complete work on such projects as the BR-163, a highway connecting the central farming state of Mato Grosso with the Amazon region, so that soy beans can be easily transported for export to the iver port of Santarem. Also under development is the Transoceanic Highway, a continuation of the TransAmazon Highway, which will link the town of Rio Branco in the deep Amazon to Perus' Pacific ports. Environmentalists fear that in two years, when the road is scheduled to be completed, there will be an asphalted connection linking the Amazon region to the Pacific and China, which is keen to improve its access to the forest.
"I'm not in the game of blame, but it seems to be that the structure of the world economy is not giving Brazil a chance," says Philipson. Favourable world-market grain and beef prices actually increase deforestation in the Amazon as ranchers seek to expand their productivity and burn more forest to accommodate more cattle. Last week, Lula also announced plans to plant sugar cane in devastated forest areas in order to increase Brazil's production of ethanol (the country's vehicles have been running on ethanol for more than 30 years and Brazil is a world leader in the production of biofuels). It was a move that brought further criticism. "Lula is presenting himself to the world as a mascot for biofuels rather than as a statesmen for ecology," said Marcelo Leite, a political columnist writing in the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.
Environmental critics fear that farming and infrastructure projects will only bring more development to the Amazon, as speculators occupy land when it is still cheap, before highways are paved or other projects such as dams are built. But Philipson notes that Lula has done some good in the Amazon, especially by demarcating the 17,000-square-km Raposa Serra do Sol native reservation in the Amazon state of Roraima in 2005. And he says the answer to the preservation of rainforests around the world is simple: money. If you want to save the rainforest, pay the Brazilian government for "environmental services," and treat the forest as "a giant utility." Insurance companies, for example, ubiquitous around the world, could be taxed and the money sent to governments to administer tropical forests. "There is a whole new industry there in the export of environmental services to the world," says Philipson. "The only way we are going to save the forest is money, and the recognition that the forest delivers environmental services to mankind."
Brazilian scientists Antonio Bonato Nobre agrees. A federal researcher with the National Institute for Amazon Research, he says every hectare that is currently being used for agri-business in the Amazon yields US$22 per year. "If we could find a way of ascribing more than $22, we don't have to worry about anything, the forest will be protected," he said, adding that at least one Amazon governor is behind the plan and has already started telling other politicians they could earn more money under a scheme to leave the forest alone. "What is happening to the Amazon is not the fault of the Brazilian government, but of the international economic system," says Nobre. "Money talks because people are selfish. Everything else is hypocrisy,and it won't protect the standing forests."
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Fishing and Organic Standards
From the September/October 2007 issue of E: The Environmental Magazine, www.emagazine.com, an article about the difficulties in getting organic standards for the fishing industry:
FISHING FOR CERTIFICATION
The Struggle to Bring Organic Standards to the Fishing Industry
With the organic meat and produce sector fattening into a $17 billion cash cow and expanding into retail giants like Wal-Mart, it's no wonder the fishing industry feels left out. Aquatic animals were excluded from organics when U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) standards were set in 2002.
The National Organics Standard Board (NOSB) - the panel responsible for creating organic guidelines - decided this past March to defer recommendations on the use of fish meal, fish oil, and open net-cages, delaying aquatic certification until a future meeting. Fish producers eager to take advantage of the higher price tags the label typically fetches have been frustrated by the delay.
"This is a lost opportunity," says Anthony Sims, president of Kona Blue Water Farms - a Hawaii-based company that raises Kona Kampachi fish using self-described sustainable techniques. "This decision means that fish farmers will not yet have the prospect of an organic premium as an incentive to improve their farming methods."
The problem facing organic hopefuls and the NOSB has been how to control and standardize what fish come in contact with in the water and in their food supply. It's especially troubling for wild-caught fish, since fishing companies can't demonstrate the purity of their catch.
Even the diets of farmed fish are difficult to control. While herbivores such as catfish and tilapia respond well to closed ponds and plant-based organic feed, carnivores like salmon aren't so easy to manage.
Conventional salmon farms rely on fish meal and oil made from wild-caught seafood for feed ingredients - an inefficient process that some estimate requires three pounds of wild-caught fish to make one pound of farmed. On average, 70 percent of the salmon's diet comes from seafood sourced from overfished waters. Some in the industry are lobbying to allow future organic fish farmers to use the scraps from sustainably caught wild fish meant for human consumption as a feedstock. Caps would also limit the percentage of scrap-derived meal and oil used in salmon feed at 12 percent for each.
Critics at California's Monterey Bay Aquarium have protested using fish meal or oil from non-certified fish, arguing that to feed non-organic food to certified livestock would cheapen existing organic principles. "It's unclear if the use of open-net pens and the use of fish meal and fish oil are compatible with those principles," says Corey Peet, research analyst for the aquarium. "It's critical that the aquaculture industry adapt to the organic principles and not the other way around."
Open net-cages are also at issue. Opponents argue that the nets, which trap thousands of fish and hold them stationary along coastlines, would also compromise organic principles, since they cannot control effluents in ocean waters. And net-cages have other environmental consequences.
Dom Repta, spokesperson for the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform, cites British Columbia studies that show net-cage technology allows untreated waste release, transferring of sea lice to wild salmon and the escape of farmed fish - a potential threat to the genetics and territorial claims of native salmon species. Marine predators such as seals and sea lions also become trapped and die in the nets. "Open net-cages just don't fit under the organic umbrella," says Repta.
Most anti-net lobby groups have pushed for closed-containment units on farms - large tanks that keep fish separate from natural waterways.
"They have to develop a model that is both commercially and environmentally viable," says Richard Martin, chair of the National Fisheries Institute's Organic Seafood Committee.
Some experts wonder if organic certification should be the industry's goal at all. Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) favors performance goals for aquaculture over the prescribed practices of organics.
"What we want producers to do is to actually achieve a result on the ground," says Clay. "And we don't necessarily care how they do it."
CONTACTS: Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform, (604) 699-0065, www.farmedanddangerous.org; Kona Blue, (808)331-1188, www.kona-kampachi.com; National Fisheries Institute's Organic Seafood Committee. www.aboutseafood.com.
--Jon Farinelli
FISHING FOR CERTIFICATION
The Struggle to Bring Organic Standards to the Fishing Industry
With the organic meat and produce sector fattening into a $17 billion cash cow and expanding into retail giants like Wal-Mart, it's no wonder the fishing industry feels left out. Aquatic animals were excluded from organics when U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) standards were set in 2002.
The National Organics Standard Board (NOSB) - the panel responsible for creating organic guidelines - decided this past March to defer recommendations on the use of fish meal, fish oil, and open net-cages, delaying aquatic certification until a future meeting. Fish producers eager to take advantage of the higher price tags the label typically fetches have been frustrated by the delay.
"This is a lost opportunity," says Anthony Sims, president of Kona Blue Water Farms - a Hawaii-based company that raises Kona Kampachi fish using self-described sustainable techniques. "This decision means that fish farmers will not yet have the prospect of an organic premium as an incentive to improve their farming methods."
The problem facing organic hopefuls and the NOSB has been how to control and standardize what fish come in contact with in the water and in their food supply. It's especially troubling for wild-caught fish, since fishing companies can't demonstrate the purity of their catch.
Even the diets of farmed fish are difficult to control. While herbivores such as catfish and tilapia respond well to closed ponds and plant-based organic feed, carnivores like salmon aren't so easy to manage.
Conventional salmon farms rely on fish meal and oil made from wild-caught seafood for feed ingredients - an inefficient process that some estimate requires three pounds of wild-caught fish to make one pound of farmed. On average, 70 percent of the salmon's diet comes from seafood sourced from overfished waters. Some in the industry are lobbying to allow future organic fish farmers to use the scraps from sustainably caught wild fish meant for human consumption as a feedstock. Caps would also limit the percentage of scrap-derived meal and oil used in salmon feed at 12 percent for each.
Critics at California's Monterey Bay Aquarium have protested using fish meal or oil from non-certified fish, arguing that to feed non-organic food to certified livestock would cheapen existing organic principles. "It's unclear if the use of open-net pens and the use of fish meal and fish oil are compatible with those principles," says Corey Peet, research analyst for the aquarium. "It's critical that the aquaculture industry adapt to the organic principles and not the other way around."
Open net-cages are also at issue. Opponents argue that the nets, which trap thousands of fish and hold them stationary along coastlines, would also compromise organic principles, since they cannot control effluents in ocean waters. And net-cages have other environmental consequences.
Dom Repta, spokesperson for the Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform, cites British Columbia studies that show net-cage technology allows untreated waste release, transferring of sea lice to wild salmon and the escape of farmed fish - a potential threat to the genetics and territorial claims of native salmon species. Marine predators such as seals and sea lions also become trapped and die in the nets. "Open net-cages just don't fit under the organic umbrella," says Repta.
Most anti-net lobby groups have pushed for closed-containment units on farms - large tanks that keep fish separate from natural waterways.
"They have to develop a model that is both commercially and environmentally viable," says Richard Martin, chair of the National Fisheries Institute's Organic Seafood Committee.
Some experts wonder if organic certification should be the industry's goal at all. Jason Clay of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) favors performance goals for aquaculture over the prescribed practices of organics.
"What we want producers to do is to actually achieve a result on the ground," says Clay. "And we don't necessarily care how they do it."
CONTACTS: Coastal Alliance for Aquaculture Reform, (604) 699-0065, www.farmedanddangerous.org; Kona Blue, (808)331-1188, www.kona-kampachi.com; National Fisheries Institute's Organic Seafood Committee. www.aboutseafood.com.
--Jon Farinelli
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.
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Federal Government's "Lip Service" to Going Green
We all know that Prime Minister Harper and his government are less than enthusiastic about making significant changes in order to meet targets set in the Kyoto agreement. So it is hardly surprising that although there are some (I would disagree with the following article calling them "tough") weak measures in place for industry to clean up the environment, apparently they are being called out in an audit for not having greened itself.
From the News section of the Wednesday, October 31, 2007, Toronto Star, page A5:
GOVERNMENT PAYING ONLY LIP SERVICE TO GOING GREEN
Environmental tool 'simply is not working,' commissioner says
Allan Woods
Ottawa Bureau
Ottawa - The federal government has put tough rules in place to make industry and individuals clean up the environment, but it has shirked its own commitment to go green, a new audit has found.
The federal environment commissioner says Ottawa has been promising to put in place a sustainable development strategy to clean up the actions of its departments since 1992 but has little to show for it 15 years later.
"It's one of the many tools that the government introduced ... to manage environmentally sustainable development well," commissioner Ron Thompson said, "It's a matter of great concern to us that that tool simply is not working."
Auditor General Sheila Fraser adds that the government's continued neglect of this plan to factor the environment into departments' decision-making process is a "major disappointment."
The goals that have been laid out by the government provide little in the way of expectations for departments to help clean up the air and water, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make more intelligent use of natural resources.
"Nor does it provide baselines or targets against which departments could monitor or report on their progress," says the report, which puts the blame on the shoulders of Environment Canada, the department responsible for the sustainable development strategy.
"We expected Environment Canada to have managed this issue more consistently and proactively."
Government departments have been producing sustainable development strategies every three years since 1997 and the environment commissioner has written 10 reports so far on the substandard progress that has been made.
But despite consistent promises to take "appropriate action," little improvement has occurred.
Part of the problem, the audit suggests, is the poor attitude of officials who view government plans to go green as a "compliance requirement" rather than a new way of doing business. "It is apparent to us that departments are working to satisfy the statutory requirements set out in the Auditor General Act. We are concerned that they are working to meet the letter of the law rather than the spirit of it."
Environment Canada responded to the audit with a promise to "improve the government's approach" by October 2008.
"There will never be a better time to carry out this review." Thompson said.
From the News section of the Wednesday, October 31, 2007, Toronto Star, page A5:
GOVERNMENT PAYING ONLY LIP SERVICE TO GOING GREEN
Environmental tool 'simply is not working,' commissioner says
Allan Woods
Ottawa Bureau
Ottawa - The federal government has put tough rules in place to make industry and individuals clean up the environment, but it has shirked its own commitment to go green, a new audit has found.
The federal environment commissioner says Ottawa has been promising to put in place a sustainable development strategy to clean up the actions of its departments since 1992 but has little to show for it 15 years later.
"It's one of the many tools that the government introduced ... to manage environmentally sustainable development well," commissioner Ron Thompson said, "It's a matter of great concern to us that that tool simply is not working."
Auditor General Sheila Fraser adds that the government's continued neglect of this plan to factor the environment into departments' decision-making process is a "major disappointment."
The goals that have been laid out by the government provide little in the way of expectations for departments to help clean up the air and water, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and make more intelligent use of natural resources.
"Nor does it provide baselines or targets against which departments could monitor or report on their progress," says the report, which puts the blame on the shoulders of Environment Canada, the department responsible for the sustainable development strategy.
"We expected Environment Canada to have managed this issue more consistently and proactively."
Government departments have been producing sustainable development strategies every three years since 1997 and the environment commissioner has written 10 reports so far on the substandard progress that has been made.
But despite consistent promises to take "appropriate action," little improvement has occurred.
Part of the problem, the audit suggests, is the poor attitude of officials who view government plans to go green as a "compliance requirement" rather than a new way of doing business. "It is apparent to us that departments are working to satisfy the statutory requirements set out in the Auditor General Act. We are concerned that they are working to meet the letter of the law rather than the spirit of it."
Environment Canada responded to the audit with a promise to "improve the government's approach" by October 2008.
"There will never be a better time to carry out this review." Thompson said.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Don't Wash Car in Your Driveway: Use Car Wash or Rain
Now I thought leaving the rain to wash your car was the most eco-friendly thing to do, but if you must have a shiny car, the following article encourages you to go to a car wash, as it is an environmentally more friendly thing to do. This is from the Saturday, September 15, 2007, Living Section of the Toronto Star, page L13:
Enlightened Shopper
GO GREEN -- PAY FOR YOUR CAR WASH
Driveway hosing contaminates waterways, experts say
David Rider
Toronto Star
In the coming season, aptly named because half of nature suddenly falls down upon us, a car parked outside can quickly take on the appearance of a giant rolling chia pet.
The options are either clear leaves off the windows and pretend you're driving one of those vegetation-sprouting "art cars" or get the thing washed.
With nature literally staring you in the face, you're doing it a favour by running a hose on the driveway instead of putting your vehicle through one of those big commercial car washes, right?
Not so, say the Canadian Car Wash Association, environmental groups and the City of Toronto. While driveway washing may be cheap and, for many, a relaxing weekend ritual, it can unleash a nasty brew of gasoline, oil, exhaust residue and traces of heavy metals into storm sewers that discharge directly into Lake Ontario and other waterways.
Also, car wash equipment is carefully designed to use as little water as possible, typically about a quarter of the amount used in a driveway wash, experts say.
"There's no comparison -- washing a car at home is terrible for the environment, especially if you're doing it on a hard surface like a driveway where significant discharge runs right into storm sewers," says Kevin Mercer, a volunteer with Riversides Stewardship Alliance (riversides, org, 4116-868-1983), a Toronto-based group that fights water pollution.
Detritus from cars, including engine fluids and bits of brake pad, pollute water bodies and pose a risk to aquatic life, as do soapy detergents, Mercer says.
If commercial car washes got rid of their waste water the same way, they'be charged under city and provincial regulations. They must separate out solids, as well as grease and oil, for proper landfill disposal. The water left over goes down sanitation sewers that flow, like the ones in your home, to a city facility for treatment.
Mercer says community groups should find ways to raise funds other than holding charity car washes, unless they enlist the help of a commercial car wash or get use of a Latimat system (http://www.latimat.com/) that puts a pad under the vehicle to contain and collect the runoff.
Michael D'Andrea, the city's director of infrastructure management, says a multi-year plan to clean up waterways and the waterfront includes educating people not to put dirt and chemicals down storm drains -- so don't wash your car on a driveway.
If for some reason you have to wash it at home, he says, do it on a porous surface, such as your lawn, so runoff doesn't go into a storm sewer. When you're done, put the soapy water down your basement or laundry drain so it gets treated.
While homeowners who let soap and other runoff go down storm sewers could technically be fined under a city bylaw, officials opt for education, D'Andrea says.
He advises consumers to ask at their car wash if they recycle their water, reducing the amount they use while also decreasing the level of contaminants.
One self-serve car wash in Etobicoke, Wash N' Go (4000 Dundas St. W.), uses solar power to heat its water, though it is augmented by a boiler in winter.
"The biggest trend in our industry is really a green trend," says owner Vito Cosentino, who is also president of the industry's national association.
"Solar is great for us -- we reduce utility costs and use it as a tool to market the business."
Asked about other industry trends, Cosentino mentions one that's about cleaning up another type of environment.
"We have a fragrance machine to get smells out of cars and we get an incredible amount of traffic from teenagers at 1 a.m. trying to mask the smell of cigarette or pot smoke from dad's car."
David Rider is an editor at the Star. Reach him at drider@thestar.ca .
Enlightened Shopper
GO GREEN -- PAY FOR YOUR CAR WASH
Driveway hosing contaminates waterways, experts say
David Rider
Toronto Star
In the coming season, aptly named because half of nature suddenly falls down upon us, a car parked outside can quickly take on the appearance of a giant rolling chia pet.
The options are either clear leaves off the windows and pretend you're driving one of those vegetation-sprouting "art cars" or get the thing washed.
With nature literally staring you in the face, you're doing it a favour by running a hose on the driveway instead of putting your vehicle through one of those big commercial car washes, right?
Not so, say the Canadian Car Wash Association, environmental groups and the City of Toronto. While driveway washing may be cheap and, for many, a relaxing weekend ritual, it can unleash a nasty brew of gasoline, oil, exhaust residue and traces of heavy metals into storm sewers that discharge directly into Lake Ontario and other waterways.
Also, car wash equipment is carefully designed to use as little water as possible, typically about a quarter of the amount used in a driveway wash, experts say.
"There's no comparison -- washing a car at home is terrible for the environment, especially if you're doing it on a hard surface like a driveway where significant discharge runs right into storm sewers," says Kevin Mercer, a volunteer with Riversides Stewardship Alliance (riversides, org, 4116-868-1983), a Toronto-based group that fights water pollution.
Detritus from cars, including engine fluids and bits of brake pad, pollute water bodies and pose a risk to aquatic life, as do soapy detergents, Mercer says.
If commercial car washes got rid of their waste water the same way, they'be charged under city and provincial regulations. They must separate out solids, as well as grease and oil, for proper landfill disposal. The water left over goes down sanitation sewers that flow, like the ones in your home, to a city facility for treatment.
Mercer says community groups should find ways to raise funds other than holding charity car washes, unless they enlist the help of a commercial car wash or get use of a Latimat system (http://www.latimat.com/) that puts a pad under the vehicle to contain and collect the runoff.
Michael D'Andrea, the city's director of infrastructure management, says a multi-year plan to clean up waterways and the waterfront includes educating people not to put dirt and chemicals down storm drains -- so don't wash your car on a driveway.
If for some reason you have to wash it at home, he says, do it on a porous surface, such as your lawn, so runoff doesn't go into a storm sewer. When you're done, put the soapy water down your basement or laundry drain so it gets treated.
While homeowners who let soap and other runoff go down storm sewers could technically be fined under a city bylaw, officials opt for education, D'Andrea says.
He advises consumers to ask at their car wash if they recycle their water, reducing the amount they use while also decreasing the level of contaminants.
One self-serve car wash in Etobicoke, Wash N' Go (4000 Dundas St. W.), uses solar power to heat its water, though it is augmented by a boiler in winter.
"The biggest trend in our industry is really a green trend," says owner Vito Cosentino, who is also president of the industry's national association.
"Solar is great for us -- we reduce utility costs and use it as a tool to market the business."
Asked about other industry trends, Cosentino mentions one that's about cleaning up another type of environment.
"We have a fragrance machine to get smells out of cars and we get an incredible amount of traffic from teenagers at 1 a.m. trying to mask the smell of cigarette or pot smoke from dad's car."
David Rider is an editor at the Star. Reach him at drider@thestar.ca .
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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