Tempest

Back to the land: organic farming returns to roots

2007-04-23T09:27:00.000-05:00

Wendy Smith
Tempest

Organic started out as a more environmentally friendly way of eating. So why has the industry become equally as culpable as conventional agriculture when it comes to climate change, and how can ecologically conscious foodies minimize their impact on carbon emissions? Wendy Smith investigates.

It began as what you might call fringe food or niche nosh, the cuisine of the counterculture. But nowadays, eating organic is going mainstream.

Once associated with worm-infested apples and lumpy, misshapen peppers, the organic label has shed its frumpy image, and has become, along with its sister stamps “eco-friendly,” “sustainable,” and “green,” the consumer trend du jour. A recent Environics survey reports that almost three quarters of Canadians have tried organic food. About forty percent buy it fairly often, even though it costs twenty to two hundred percent more. At the Java U on Concordia’s Hall Building mezzanine, students regularly fork over four and five dollars for 100 per cent organic spelt cakes, cookies, and muffins to dip in their fair trade lattes. At the Atwater Market, stalls abound with crates of peppers and squash boasting the “Produits Biologiques Certifies” label.

Organic food certainly sounds environmentally benign enough. No endocrine-disrupting chemical pesticides, no inorganic nitrogen fertilizer, no DNA-kinking growth hormones or antibiotics or genetically modified organisms.

It’s been proven that organic agriculture is better for the soil: a 15-year study from the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania showed a drastic increase in soil fertility when it was fertilized with manure instead of industrial fertilizer. It’s also better for the water. The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization concluded in 2000 that “Organic farming can help reduce ground and surface water contamination and can safeguard drinking water supplies.”

More and more organic produce is shipped halfway around the world before reaching our plates.(Photo credit: Wendy Smith.)

But as consumer demand for organics peaks, the gap between farm and fork continues to widen, and organic food is shipped across further distances. While the organic food market in Canada is worth an estimated $650 million, 80 per cent of this food is imported. According to a recent study completed by Canadian Organic Growers (COG) and sponsored by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, the 3,618 certified growers in Canada in 2005 comprised just one and a half per cent of total Canadian farming operations. While acreage has increased five per cent between 2004 and 2005, Quebec has actually seen a decline in its number of organic farmers.

Organic paradox

The big boys go organic. (Photo collage: Wendy Smith.)

Once upon a time, “going organic” was synonymous with eating locally grown produce while it was in season. The distance from field to plate was negligible, the ecological footprint small. But as organic caught on as a consumer trend, local farms couldn’t keep up with the demand from a growing base of consumers who wanted their organic strawberry-rhubarb pie in January, their hothouse tomatoes shipped by refrigerated truck in November. Then a funny thing happened: the philosophical underpinnings of the organic food industry collapsed underneath the weight of its own success. The agribusinesses gobbled up the smaller outfits, outsourcing production to gigantic overseas farms. In the past five years companies such as Nestle, Kellogg, Heinz, Dole and Chiquita have all bought or created organic brands. And now, Kraft, the multinational that brought you shrink-wrapped processed cheese and macaroni in a box, has thrown its hat into the organic ring.

The result? Organically labelled yoghurt and bananas fly off supermarket shelves and into the shopping carts of environmentally conscious consumers, even though such products travel the same number of kilometres in refrigerated trucks, spewing the same amount of fossil fuels from their exhaust pipes as their “non-organic” counterparts - - sometimes even more, if they’ve been grown in gas-powered greenhouses. Bill McKibben was one of the first authors to sound the alarm about global warming when he wrote The End of Nature back in 1989. In his newest book, Deep Economy, he writes that the average bite of organic food travels even farther than the average bite of non-organic food. Geneva Rae, a policy analyst for the Canada West Foundation, has pegged the average number of food miles for one kilogram of organic chocolate at 8,598 kilometres. That’s the equivalent of 1.3 kilograms of greenhouse gas emissions.

It costs 1.3 kg of GHGs to ship 1 kg of organic chocolate.(Photo collage: Wendy Smith.)

Canadian regulators are trying to encourage homegrown consumption by introducing the “Canada Organic” label. But agribusinesses south of the border – which export $2.6 billion worth of organic produce - are unfazed. “The introduction of Canadian organic regulations is not expected to change the degree of dependence on U.S. product over the medium term,” reports the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service's Global Agricultural Information Network. “It is expected that the major share of the anticipated increase in demand will continue to be met via increased imports of U.S. organic product.”

If that does turn out to be the case, then consumption of organic food will continue to contribute to global warming through the existing infrastructure of long distance food distribution.

It takes a village to raise a crop

In search of greener, more environmentally benign pastures, I pulled on my rubbers and headed out to Senneville, a tiny village of 960 people on the westernmost tip of the Island of Montreal, nestled along the shores of Lake of Two Mountains. Here, the street signs are printed in scrolling Old English script. Haughty mansions half-hidden by trees line the narrow dirt road. The median annual income, more than $100,000 per family, is the highest on the West Island. It’s the unlikely nucleus of urban ferment, where a grassroots swell toward locally grown crops is taking place.

Inside a CSA farm. Clockwise from top left: The fields in March, a wood storage shed, moving a building on the 100-year-old property, farmer Alison Hackney aboard the tractor.(Photo credit: Wendy Smith.)

Follow Senneville Road right to the end and you’ll come across La Ferme du Fort. It's a fairly nondescript clump of land in the middle of March; the sixty acres' worth of fields are still blanketed with snow and mud. The farm’s owner, Alison Hackney, approaches on her tractor. It’s the only piece of heavy machinery on the farm. The engine shudders to a halt as she outstretches her hand, grinning. “We’re moving a house today,” she says apologetically, after the round of introductions. “It might take awhile. But you can go in the greenhouse while you’re waiting and sample some of the spinach.”

The “house” about to be dismantled and moved is a small white building with green trim that used to be a summer playhouse for Hackney when she was a girl. The land the farm sits on has been in her family for almost one hundred years, and she wanted to build an organic farm to honour a living family heirloom while protecting the area's biodiversity.

No more than twenty minutes after we arrive, the overcast skies begin to pour. We seek refuge in Hackney’s (unheated) greenhouse, where spinach, arugula and corn salad – hardier species that can grow during the winter months – are sprouting in neat rows.

“I think it's a lot better than anything you could find in a supermarket,” she says, crunching into a sprig of spinach. And, unlike the organic kumquats from Spain, none of Hackney’s produce travels any farther than the community in which it was originally grown.

La Ferme du Fort Senneville is one of about 1400 farms in Canada and the United States that practices Community-supported Agriculture (CSA). With CSA, people in the community buy shares in each yearly harvest, the same way an investor might take out shares in a company. “They’re sharing the risk with the farmer, so it’s more equitable that way,” Hackney explains.

The farm’s partners pay up front at the beginning of the season - $545 or $285, depending on the size of the family. This gives Hackney enough start-up capital to invest in the seeding and planting of the crops. Once a week from late spring until late autumn, the partners are guaranteed a basket of fresh fruit and vegetables.

As with all organic farming, getting each year’s crop up and running is an intensive process that requires ingenuity and elbow grease. To keep flea beetles off her cucumber and melons, Hackney covers the crops with heavy agricultural fleece rows. She’ll use other species of crop to repel pests from the plant they want or allure crops to attract them to a “decoy” plant instead. She sets out cardboard envelopes containing eggs that hatch into wasps that feed on corn earworms but don’t bother humans.

Many hands make short work of the initial planting.(Photo credit: Wendy Smith.)

But despite the best of precautions, the pests sometimes get the better of the crops. Regardless, when Hackney surveyed the farm’s partners, she found the majority would prefer to have some insect damage to their food instead of cosmetically superior produce that had been chemically sprayed.

And in addition to being pesticide-free, the impact of CSA on global warming is considerably less compared to conventional practices. A 2005 report conducted by Toronto’s Food Share, a non-profit organization, compares the CO2 emissions from imported and locally grown food. Not surprisingly, it found that the imported food, which travelled an average of 5,000 kilometres from farm to shopping cart, emitted 100 times more CO2 than the local stuff, which travelled an average of 100 kilometres. A similar study conducted by Region of Waterloo Public Health found the city of Guelph could reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 47,000 tonnes if it produced the food it currently imports – the equivalent of taking 16,191 cars off the road.

Locally-supported agriculture is “a win-win scenario,” points out Ryan Young, a Montreal environmental activist and radio host who produced a documentary for the NFB about another organic farm on the West Island. “I think local food production is especially an issue now with climate change concerns being so high on everyone’s list and the distance that you transport food creating a lot of greenhouse gases.”

For La Ferme's partners who come by the farm once a week to help turn the soil and scatter the seeds, like Joyce Dennison, local agriculture is also about reconnecting with the land while making friends. “When you’re working in your garden, you’re working by yourself, and here, it’s like a community. We always have a nice lunch together under the shade tree after a hard morning of work. And it gives you a chance to play in the dirt,” she adds with a chuckle.

So is CSA going to move the agricultural industry toward more sustainable, carbon neutral practices? Hackney would like to think so. Her business is booming: 56 people signed up to receive her weekly baskets last summer, and she’s already got 80 on board for this season.

Lori Stahlbrand, president of Local Flavour Plus, spoke at this winter's Guelph Organic Conference. Though LFP, which fosters various locally-supported agricultural programs, is theoretically national in scope, it is currently only operating in the Greater Toronto Area. Stahlbrand, who graduated from McGill University in 1981 and grew up in Montreal, would love to bring LFP to Montreal universities. "We need someone who really believes in this and knows the food service at least somewhat and help us to get started on campus," she says.

"We need a champion."

Behind the Greenpeace door

2007-04-12T16:33:00.000-05:00

A big part of Greenpeace's strategy to protect the environment has always been showing up where they're not wanted: nuclear testing sites, off the bows of whaling ships, on people's front porches.

"People are relieved it's not a Jehovah's Witness or a salesperson," says François Corignon. "I think we get a better response than anybody who goes door to door."

He is one of about a dozen Montrealers whose job it is to go door to door for Greenpeace. He speaks to up to one hundred people in a given evening in order to create awareness about the environment, sign up members for the organization and collect money.

Aggressive dogs, uncomfortable weather and unwelcoming people can all be part of a day's work.

And this is not made any easier by the fact that, in order to connect with people when they're at home, Greenpeace hits the turf between 5pm and 9pm, when people are most likely to either be recovering after a difficult day at work, in the process of making dinner, or halfway through eating it.

"Negative feedback is part of the job," says Vic Thibeault, Greenpeace's Development Outreach manager who is in charge of the door to door canvassing in the province of Quebec.

But so is positive re-enforcement.

Over the past three decades, the organization has employed a combination of direct action, political lobbying and public relations to spearhead some of the worlds most high profile environmental victories. While criticism of the organization and its tactics has been fierce, sometimes coming from former Greenpeace activists themselves, the organization has grown into an international force funded entirely by individual donors.

And it's never been more common to be an environmentalist than it is now. The once fringe movement has gone mainstream.

"It's now easier to engage on a topic than it used to be," says Greenpeace canvasser David Rancourt.

Climate change has gotten the public's attention in a way that acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer never did. The environment, according to a November Ipsos poll, is the issue that the largest number of Canadians want the government to address. In the current media atmosphere, IPCC reports and inconvenient truths are a regular staple of the public’s information diet.

"Six years ago, when I started working for Greenpeace, you were starting to hear about Kyoto and whether or not Canada was going to ratify it" says Rancourt, "but a lot of people did not really understand what the protocol was."

Herbert-François Rochons has been going door to door for the organization for 5 years and has also observed an evolution in public perception.

"It's not the level of concern but the comprehension that has changed," he says. "People are starting to get a clear idea of the science behind climate change."

But while the environment has raised its profile as an issue of concern, it cannot be said that Greenpeace as an organization has followed suit.

The organization that crashed the international stage with its highly successful Save the Whales campaign of the 70s and 80s is no longer the dominant voice on the environment that it used to be.

Today it shares a crowded stage with other environmental groups, political parties, and corporations, all of whom are trying to out green each other.

According to Rochons, people who he speaks to are largely cynical about this. While a sense of urgency is growing, there is little optimism that anything is actually being done.

"There is a lot of political disillusionment and we're feeling that much more now than before," he says.

Matthu Kawa points to the lack of activity on the part of the Canadian government as a reason why people are willing to open their arms and their wallets to an organization that takes action to for the environment.

"The fact that the Conservatives are against the Kyoto protocol and that they don't have a plan for the environment gives us more leverage. It makes our job a little easier," says the canvasser of three years.

So will the summer.

The warmer, more predictable weather makes going door to door easier and more efficient and leads to people being a lot more willing to chat for a few minutes in the doorway. Across Canada, Greenpeace will be expanding the number canvassers at it's main offices in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, and opening seasonal satellite offices around the country.

"It's still the best way to get the message out," says Thibeault, who will be running the summer office in Quebec city. "With any other type of fundraising you end up connecting with a certain type of person one way or the other. With door to door, you reach everybody equally."

One canvasser thinks that despite the growing public concern for the environment, the tipping point in the environmental movement has yet to arrive.

"Most people don't see the consequences of what's happening to the environment," says Corignon. "You can talk about deforestation but most people don't leave the city to see it with their eyes. It's the same thing with climate change, because even though the temperature has risen, it hasn't made a truly big difference to most people's lives."

"When that happens, then people will be really ready to act."
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See JOUR428 Teacher's edit here.

Green jobs on the rise

2007-04-11T20:23:00.000-05:00

By Julie Geffard

While the world is bracing itself to face the consequences of global warming, Quebec’s environmental industry is also getting hot. But this heat is of the good kind: the province is creating more green jobs than ever before.

Marie-Claude Blanchette remembers her first years in the environmental industry as difficult times. After graduating in applied ecology in 1987, the environmental project manager with the city of Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville in Montérégie spent three years looking for a permanent position that kept eluding her. “It was so hard at the time to find a job,” she says. “The population was preoccupied by the environment, but not so the various levels of government.”

In the absence of regulations, public and private organizations had no real incentives to hire environmental workers. So after three years marked by long spells of unemployment – up to nine months a year – and just a handful of contract jobs, she branched out of the environmental sector.

When she came back to it in 2001, everything had changed. Seeing that the environment was now a viable economic sector, and more interested than ever in a career in this field, she enrolled in the Master’s of Environmental Studies program at the University of Sherbooke. She hadn’t even completed the program when she was offered a full-time position at Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville, a small city of 25 000.

The Quebec government had started to care.

In the late nineties, as public awareness of environmental issues was increasing at a prodigious pace, the provincial authorities began elaborating various environmental laws and regulations. As the Waste Management Plan was implemented in 2000 and the Water Policy in 2002, introducing new requirements for private and public organizations, the environmental industry began taking off. ECO Canada, a federal organization making the link between employers and professionals in the environment,

The Gaudreau recycling center in Victoriaville has 250 employees, including sorters, truckers, machine operators and administrative staff. (Photo: Alain Provencal, © Le Québec en images, CCDMD)

conducted a vast study of the country’s environmental industry and labour in 2004. It came up with surprising results. With 30 000 more workers occupying environment-related positions than in 2000, putting the total at 250 000, the number of green jobs had expanded by 14% in those four years. They had grown 60% faster than the country’s total workforce over the same period.

Specialists agree that popular awareness of environmental issues has played a decisive role in the growth of the green economy, not only in pressuring governments into action, but also in creating a demand for green products and services.

The whole industrial cycle behind recycling needs to be staffed. (Photo: Hasemeister)

“People are increasingly worried about climate change,” says Patrick Béron, the director of the Master’s in Environmental Sciences at the Université du Québec à Montréal. “They wonder what’s going to happen.”

Until recently, media coverage of the environment was limited to a handful of issues that came and went – remember acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer? But climate change, a topic that surfaced decades ago, has recently become a daily news item.

And it’s creating new vocations every day.

Jean-François Comeau, the assistant director at the Centre universitaire de formation en environnement of the University of Sherbrooke – the department Blanchette graduated from – also remembers that studying in the field of environmental sciences as late as in the early nineties was anything but a guarantee that a job would be waiting for you at the end.

But today Comeau says the program’s job placement rate goes from 95% to 99% six months after graduation. “Our difficulty is actually to encourage our students to complete the program within the time limit,” Comeau says. Students must complete an internship halfway through the program, and the university must compete with employers who try to lure students away from the classroom by offering them part-time work after the end of their internships.

The university is currently compiling more recent data – the figures above date back three years – but there’s no indication the numbers went down.

With such excellent employment prospects, and because younger generations feel particularly concerned by environmental issues, students are enrolling in the province’s environmental programs in droves. The University of Sherbrooke used to take in between 50 and 60 new students each year. Today, this number has doubled.

While these students might have a much easier time finding a job than before, the complexity of green jobs has also increased exponentially. “Fifteen years ago, the courses [in environmental studies] were mainly associated with hard sciences,” says Comeau. But our comprehension of the planet’s ecology is rapidly changing, expanding and being refined, and solving environmental issues has become a complex science that calls for a wide, diversified range of knowledge.

That forces many green workers to multi-task. As an environmental project manager, Blanchette must deal with issues as varied as pesticides, residential mould, water protection or waste management. As a result, she works with many of the municipal departments of Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville.

“The tasks of a dental hygienist are pretty clear,” Béron says. “But an environmental specialist can cover environmental communications, solid waste management, pollution or environmental education, or all of that.”

Everybody in the field is doing their best to keep up. The centre of environmental sciences of the University of Sherbrooke adds one new course to the curriculum each year, and the professors all sit on various committees to keep in touch with the rapidly changing needs, practices and technologies.

The industry’s structural environment is also adapting fast.

While students now have more job opportunities, finding these jobs can be a difficult task. It’s estimated that 60% of all green jobs can be found in non-environmental industries.

“Nortel, for example, offers environmental positions, and so does Purolator,” says Dominique Dodier, the general director of Enviro-Compétences, a Montreal-based agency that for decades has been serving as a link between environmental workers and organizations that need them. “And it’s unlikely that a graduate in environmental sciences who’s looking for a job in the field will find those names in any list of organizations hiring environmental specialists.”

The agency is now working towards building that list, and the group will also work to promote green jobs in the next two years. “Young people must know that environmental jobs are booming, and that they can offer an exceptional professional context,” Dodier says. “In addition to being paid, these workers help save the world.”

Or at least, she adds, they help make it better.

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See JOUR428 teacher's edit here.

When fashion becomes environmentally friendly

2007-04-11T18:55:00.000-05:00

By Debbie Bourne

Global warming is the newest trend.

It’s everywhere. On the television, in the papers, on the internet, in our heads, in our clothes.

Yes -- global warming is now influencing fashion and not in the sense that skirts are getting shorter, shorts are becoming more popular and t-shirts are the craze.

Rather, or at least some sectors of the fashion industry are turning green.

“More and more people are becoming aware of the choices they can make to be more environmentally and socially responsible, so there is an ever-growing demand for eco-friendly and fair-trade products,” says Eartha Dupuis, Director of Public Relations at Grace&Cello,

Grace & Cello is a Montreal-based company that designs, makes and sells its clothing to boutiques across Canada and the United States.

Most of the factories that provide cheap clothing for North American and European markets are located in Asia and Africa and the clothing is transported by boat. Clothing and textile represents only 2% of total employment in the US.

That means it barely represents 1% of the 90% of goods being carried around the world by boat, the carbon dioxide emission from boats is double the amount created by planes. Oil superpower BP says that annual CO2 emission from boats range between 600 and 800 million tonnes, which represents 5% of the global total. Even though boat-generated emissions are predicted to rise by as much as 75% over the next 15 years, they are not covered by the Kyoto accord.

To limit the carbon dioxide output coming from ships, eco-fashionistas propose making clothes in the same country as they are sold to avoid more carbon dioxide emission and using more natural products to design clothes.

“The closer to home that our clothes are made, the less pollution we are causing by shipping back and forth overseas,” says Dupuis, adding that by producing Grace & Cello's clothes in Montreal the company can also guarantee that its workers are paid liveable wages and don't work in sweatshops.

Grace & Cello, whose 2006 Fall/Winter season collection was its first, sell their clothes at two stores in Montreal -- Rien a Cacher on St.Denis and Simons on St. Catherine. Dupuis says, “All our clothes are made of eco-fabrics. We focus mainly on organic cotton, bamboo-organic cotton blends, tencel ( a natural, plant-derived fibre), organic wool, recycled wool and linen.”
These materials require fewer pesticides and fertilizers to grow.

The processing of organic cotton began in Turkey in the 1980s. Because less pesticide is used, organic cotton crops yield 14% less then conventional cotton crops yields. Nonetheless, income is 6% higher because production costs less.

So, who's wearing organic cotton? “Our target woman is a 25-40 year old professional who needs clothes to go to work in, but also a wardrobe for going out. But we’ve had women from 15 years to 77 years that like our line very much,” says Dupuis.

Dupuis is hoping that with word of mouth and media coverage her concept will catch on.

“We are constantly hearing from people regarding our clothing because the demand for sustainable and fashionable clothing is growing very fast. I am sure that this concept will continue to expand.”
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This article was edited by JOUR 428 Teacher. The original can be found here.

Drive Better, Drive Cleaner, Drive Cheaper

2007-04-11T12:23:00.000-05:00

Sikander Z. Hashmi

Since I got my 2006 Honda Civic as a wedding gift last year, I’ve become bad. Or so I think.

Back in the bachelor (and pre-Civic days), I would walk – or more often jog since I was almost always running late – to the train station on my way to school. I would extol the virtues of taking the train: it keeps me out of traffic, I get more time to sleep or study (on the train), it costs less.

Nowadays, with the Civic, I’m walking less and driving more. I’ve barely taken the train this year – I even drove to school in a snowstorm – and I’m gaining weight. In other words, the car is bad for the environment and bad for my health.

Even with gas at over $1.03 a liter, I still continue to drive. It offers me more flexibility, I get home quicker and strangely, I find being stuck in traffic somewhat relaxing.

So how can I go from being bad to better, at least on the driving front?

Ian Rowberry, Manager of the Ecology Action Centre’s Steer Clean Program down in Halifax, directed me to a web site called Drive Wiser packed with tips for drivers like myself and offered some advice of his own: “Try to avoid driving at peak-traffic times, so that you don't get stuck in go-slows and jams that raise your stress level and your fuel-consumption.”

I try but when I’m rushing to make it to a 9:15 a.m. class, I can’t really avoid rush hour. So that doesn’t really work all the time. Sorry, Ian.

The Drive Wiser site tells drivers they can “add to the life of a tank of gas with a few simple adjustments to driving habits and auto maintenance.”

A chart suggests that driving with dirty motor oil, a dirty air filter, speeding over 100 km/h and idling for an hour a week can increase gas consumption by 42 per cent. I’m pretty punctual with my oil and filter changes and I don’t idle much, but I can definitely work on speeding. I haven’t made any calculations, but on recent trip to the in-laws in New York, I tried to stay under 110 km/h and there appeared to be more gas in the tank on arrival than usual.

In fact, Drive Wise says gas consumption at 110 km/h goes up by 21 per cent, while consumption at 120 km/h is 44 per cent more than at 100 km/h.

The reason: the higher the speed, the higher the force related to air resistance. As speed goes up, the power required to push the car through the air increases.

Drive Wise gives the example of swimming: “The faster you want to swim, the more force it takes your body to move through the water. This is the same with your car. For this reason, time saved by speeding doesn't save you in fuel at the end of the day.”

Andrew Netherton, of Waterloo, Ontario, wishes he could eliminate the need to drive to work, but he can’t. So he started acting on some clean driving tips, such as driving slower, which he says is easy “so long as you can adopt the mindset that you are going for better fuel economy and not just driving slow.”

But it can be a bit bothersome at times, he says.

“Sometimes when traffic is behind me, and impatient with the fact that I'm driving 85 in an 80 zone, it can make driving slow slightly anxious. I don't want to anger other drivers,” says Netherton.

Drive Wiser also says that accelerating slowly and maintaining a steady speed, especially with cruise control on longer trips, is the most fuel-efficient way to drive.

“It takes energy to get a vehicle up to cruising speed, and that energy is lost every time the vehicle is forced to slow down unnecessarily – for example, if you approach other vehicles too quickly.”

The techniques really do work, says Netherton. He had been averaging about 8.3L/100km on his commute, but now, with only a few round trips under his belt, he says he has managed to get his round-trip fuel consumption to 6.5L/100km in mixed rural and city driving.

“Each liter of fuel saved translates into 2.5 kg of CO2 equivalent less in greenhouse gas emissions,” wrote Environment Canada’s Quebec air quality chief Pierre Sylvestre in an email.

I’ll be using Netherton’s example as an inspiration. And according to Drive Wiser, I should really “curb my enthusiasm.”

“Aggressive driving – ‘jackrabbit’ starts from traffic lights and hard braking – reduced travel time by only 4% (the equivalent of 2½ minutes out of a 60–minute trip). However, fuel consumption increased by 37%, and some toxic emissions were more than five times higher.”

So all I have to do to drive cleaner is slow down, drive more gently, and keep my car well maintained. It won’t get me more exercise, but at least it’ll help me minimize the damage to the environment and eventually, help us all stay healthy by breathing cleaner air.

Weekly News Round-Up: April 4-10, 2007

2007-04-08T16:25:00.000-05:00

Following in Al Gore's footsteps

First he loses a presidential election to George Bush, now John Kerry is taking up the fight against climate change. Kerry was in Washington on Tuesday debating republican Newt Gingrich in a friendly exchange. Both Kerry and Gingrich were promoting new books that they have written on climate change.

My question to Kerry: What ever happened to hunting down and punishing the terrorists?

by Graham French

Flying high...

Two European airlines are letting passengers choose whether or not they want to help out with global warming reports the San Francisco Chronicle.
British Airways and Scandinavian Airlines System give passengers the opportunity to pay carbon-offset fees to fund clean technology projects.
The programs give travelers a chance to calculate the amount of carbon dioxide created per person per trip, assign a money value and pay via the airlines website. The fees are not included in the airline fares.
So far only 7 to 8 percent of web users have paid the fee, and it is not sure how the program will evolve.

By Debbie

Toronto Kills BikeShare Program

This magazine has reported several times on the impact cycling can have on global warming. Individuals who choose to ride their bikes for commuting or training purposes choose not to operate a vehicle and therefore reduce their emissions.

Sadly, the City of Toronto is killing off the Community Bicycle Network's BikeShare program. The non-profit group supplied bikes to individuals to commute as part of a lending network. They relied on grants and private donations to fund their operation.

The group was looking for $80,000 to keep the program running, but the city said it was too much and cited their own financial hardships as reason to not help BikeShare continue.

Posted by Adam Klevinas

IPCC Report Paints Grim Picture for Canada

As part of last week's IPCC report, Canadians can expect to see the part that focuses on North American released in the coming days. The Globe and Mail received a preview of what the report will entail and highlighted some of the crucial areas in an article in today's paper.

The report has painted Canada has having a hot, polluted, pollen filled future. Canadian cities can expect to go through even hotter, muggier summers while winters will also see the reduction of snowfall amounts.

There is also the threat of an impact on the baby boom generation as more deaths are expected as a result of the heat waves.

The article further outlines threats to crops, animal species, insects and winter recreation activities.

Posted by Adam Klevinas

Three steps to climate change action

Improving global warming in three steps? sounds easy according to this site.

1) make an effort in reducing your personal carbon emission
2) ask world leaders to take charge and enforce serious carbon reduction policies
3) communicate the devastating impact to others around you

Sounds very easy. These steps were written down after a number of comments written on the Global-Greenhouse-Warming.com web site.

But will simplifying what we already know have any effects?
will people even take the initiative to change what they can on their own?

By Debbie

IPCC predicts Asia to be badly hit by climate change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported at a press conference in Brussels, Belgium, last Friday that Asia will be sorely tested by global warming. The Manila Bulletin recounts that the IPCC warns of major flooding, sea-level rise, and storm surges in Asian megadeltas. The U.N. body predicts that from tens of millions to billions of Asians could be affected by water scarcity by 2050.

The Manila Bulletin reports that Greenpeace's Southeast Asia campaigns director Von Hernandez feels that the Philippines is one of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Hernandez predicts that the Southeast Asian island-nation is particularly at risk to the effects of sea-level rise. He has urged the Philippines' government to act now by choosing an environmentally-friendly energy development plan.

Posted by Nick Say

China soon to become world's biggest polluter

A coal power plant in the People's Republic of China.

China might become the world’s top polluter as soon as this year, while it was thought this would happen ten years later, Le Monde reported yesterday. China’s coal-burning plants are the main source of pollution, accounting for three quarters of the country's CO2 emissions.
The Chinese seem to have no intention of slowing down on coal as it reduces their dependence on oil. While they have begun experimenting with cleaner alternatives to coal-burning, it might be a long time before this processes become profitable, as Peter Fairley reported last January in the Technology Review.

Posted by Julie Geffard

Concordia goes green

During this year's CSU election, Concordia students voted in favour of making the University "greener." Over 4,000 students voted in favour of the fee levy, which will require all 42,000 students to contribute 75 cents more per course. This initiative will add $185,000 towards making Concordia's campus one of the greenest in the world. Organizers hope the provincial government will match this quota.

By Stephanie

Lake Superior at a boil

A study conducted by the American Geophysical Union, reports that Lake Superior is warming faster than its surrounding climate. The lake's summer surface temperature has increased by 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1979 and its "summer season" is starting two weeks earlier than normal. On the other hand, the annual average air temperature has increased by 2.7 degrees. One of the leading scientists says the increase in temperature is "a symptom of climate change." He's worried that Lake Superior could be completely ice-free by 2040 if the current trend continues.

By Stephanie

Kyoto critics Australia & U.S. target deforestation in developing world

The only two developed countries who have refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol are discussing a deforestation initiative to combat global warming. Australia's ABC News reports that officials from the Antipodean country are in contact with Washington over a plan to reduce forest logging in developing countries. Given that both countries refusal to sign the 1997 protocol has its roots in the treaty's lack of binding emissions targets for developing countries, their new plan reflects the U.S. and Australia's view that poorer countries must also make a commitment. Avoiding questions of equity - considering the history of industrialization - it should be noted that a fifth of global emissions stem from deforestation.

Posted by Nick Say

Climate change report passes after all-nighter and modifications

That report Adam talked about earlier was finally passed after all-night session during which key sections were deleted from the draft and scientists angrily confronted government negotiators who they feared were watering down their findings, reports the CBC. Several scientists objected to the editing of the final draft by government negotiators but in the end agreed to compromises, but some vowed never to take part in the process again. Who was causing the problems? The U.S., China and Saudi Arabia, raising many of the objections to the phrasing. They were looking to tone down the certainty of some of the more dire projections.

Read more at CBC.ca.

The big yellow bus gets greener

A Florida school board is the first in the US to begin using hybrid plug-in school buses. The first 19 buses will each cost twice the amount of a regular school bus but will use up to 50% less fuel. It is likely that the buses will soon drop in price and that they will become a cost effective, as well as environmentally responsible alternative, as they will pay for themselves in fuel savings.

posted by Graham French

Don't drop that cup! Montreal takes hard stance on littering.

Montreal mayor Gérald Tremblay is putting on a tough face against the city's filth. He announced yesterday that people caught littering will now be fined between $60 and $1000, depending on the severity of the offense.

Tremblay finally admitted the city is very dirty, an about-face from his previous stance last fall when he called for the resignation of Charles Lapointe.

Posted by Adam Klevinas

Thousands of Species Threatened by Global Warming

Thousands of species could be wiped out by the effects of global warming, according to the latest report by the IPCC.

An article in this morning's Globe and Mail describes the flooding of coastal cities and the water shortages billions of people could face.

The report is set to deal with the effects that will be had on a large portion of the world's eco-systems, but already said there is a 90 per cent chance that global warming has already impacted the northward migration of many plant and animal species.

The report will be released this Friday.

Posted by Adam Klevinas

Recycling in Montreal: by-laws, waste & worms

2007-04-08T16:21:00.000-05:00

By Nick Say

Carolle Clément, Éco-quartier coordinator for Villeray, feels that the only way to get Montreal residents and businesses to really recycle is to introduce a law punishing those who refuse to dispose of their waste ecologically.

“Recycling has to be made obligatory. There should be a clear law that people are forced to obey,” says the head of the Éco-quartier for the north Montreal neighborhood.

Clément, 58, wants the City of Montreal to institute a by-law that will fine Montrealers who choose not to place their recyclable waste in the green boxes that are a symbol of Quebec’s largest city.

While the Éco-quartier coordinator has seen an increasing interest in recycling from the residents of her neighborhood in the last few years, she feels that it’s reached a plateau. Clément believes that firmer action is required: “If you don’t force people to recycle, they’ll stop doing it,” she says.

Clément reserves a particular ire for local businesses, pointing out that they are more relcacitrant when it comes to recycling than residents. She says that Tim Hortons coffee shops and Couche Tard dépanneurs in Villeray don’t bother to recycle. Clément also indicates that she’s had difficulty persuading the many independent restaurants on St. Hubert St. to adopt a greener approach to their garbage.

Clément emphasizes that it’s vital for businesses, especially restaurants, to recycle. She points out that they produce far greater quantities of waste than residents.

The coordinator of the Éco-quartier for Villeray has started a campaign urging Montrealers in the neighborhood to boycott businesses who don’t recycle. She feels that this is unlikely to be entirely successful, and that only a by-law will have the required effect.

Clément’s views may appear radical, but a by-law on recycling is something the City of Montreal is considering.

“Implementing a by-law to punish those who don’t recycle is definitely something we’re looking into,” says Alan DeSousa, City of Montreal Executive Committee Member for Sustainable Development.

DeSousa points out, however, that a by-law on recycling can’t be introduced at the moment: “Not everyone on the island of Montreal has access to recycling facilities. We could only have a recycling by-law if everyone was able to recycle,” he says.

There are still over 7,000 homes in Montreal that aren’t served by recycling services, according to DeSousa. He says that by the end of the year, the City intends to provide every Montrealer with the means to recycle. DeSousa, who is also the mayor of St. Laurent, notes that his borough recently achieved its goal of providing the service to all residents.

DeSousa feels that once the whole city is served, the City will be able to start introducing stronger measures to encourage Montrealers to recycle. He admits that there is a real need to increase recycling on the island. The Quebec government’s Quebec Residual Materials Management Policy (1998-2008) set Montreal the target of recycling 60 per cent of its waste. The City’s most recent statistics (for 2004) show that only 34 per cent of Montreal’s garbage is being recycled.

If more of Montreal’s waste were recycled it would have an impact on greenhouse gas emissions. The recycling of paper results in less trees being cut down. Growing trees act as carbon sinks, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for photosynthesis.

Waste sent to Montreal landfills produces the greenhouse gas methane as the garbage decomposes. Methane is not emitted by the decomposition of materials like paper and aluminuium that can be recycled by the City’s services. The greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide is produced by the decay of organic waste – essentially discarded food scraps.

Food scraps can be recycled through composting. While the City of Montreal is yet to start a door-to-door service to pick-up food waste for composting, a number of groups are encouraging Montrealers to stop throwing their unused scraps into the garbage.

Members of McGill University’s Gorilla Compost turn their wasted food into organic fertilizer. Members pay $5 to join and can then drop their food scraps in buckets behind Gorilla Compost’s office on University Street. The waste, along with scraps from the university’s cafeterias, is transferred to a holding container, which is then transported to Quinn Farms on Ile-Perrot. When the waste has decomposed, the farm has organic fertilizer.

Gorilla Compost spokesperson Julia Winters says the organization has grown in popularity since its inception in 2004. Winters reveals that the group now has over 200 members.

The organization has an ecological foundation: “We wanted to decrease the negative environmental impact we have here,” says Winters.

The 20-year-old student reveals admits, however, that the Gorilla Compost operation is not completely environmentally-friendly: “The climate change motivation is debatable, considering we’re trucking the compost to Ile Perrot,” says Winters of the carbon dioxide emitted driving the organic waste to Quinn Farms.

Even if the compost process took place on McGill’s campus, the quantities of methane produced by the decomposing waste would be the same as if it was left to rot in a landfill site. The only way to compost and reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas is by using a vermicompost – composting with the aid of ‘red wiggler’ worms (Eisenia foetida). The worms are able to consume their weight in organic matter each day.

Santropol Roulant, an organization that provides meals-on-wheels for seniors, uses vermicomposting to turn their kitchen’s food scraps into fertilizer for their rooftop garden. The group’s worm compost is in the basement of their St. Urbain St. headquarters. Three large green barrels contain hundreds of ‘red wigglers’, all working away to devour the vegetable scraps produced by the kitchen upstairs. Surprisingly, there is no smell.

“If there’s a smell, then you’re doing something wrong,” says Tim Murphy, Sanropol Roulant’s PR representative.

Murphy reveals that their vermicompost, set up in April 2006, was prompted by the group’s environmental concerns: “It was all about creating a closed food-cycle,” he says.

The group’s vermicompost not only reduces the methane emissions produced by Santropol Roulant’s kitchen waste, it also helps the organization grow their own vegetables in their Henri-Julien St. rooftop garden. The garden provides about a third of the organization’s vegetables in summer.

Murphy points out that anyone can set up their own vermicompost. “It’s really fairly simple stuff,” he says.

Santropol Roulant held a vermicompost workshop open to the public last autumn. While Gorilla Composting may not be directly involved in worm composting, they too carried out a presentation on this method of decreasing your waste. Vermicompost kits, bought from the Pousse Menu farm, were also sold at the McGill group’s workshop last October.

It’s not only private enterprises like Pousse Menu that are selling worm-composting equipment. Villeray’s Éco-quartier coordinator Carole Clément also sells the kits. She emphasizes that as her worm-composting boxes and ‘red wigglers’ are subsidized by the City of Montreal, they are cheaper than those sold by organic farms like Pousse Menu. Clément says the kits can be bought from many of the city’s Éco-quartiers.

She has noticed that interest in vermicomposting is rising: “I’m getting more and more orders for the kits,” says Clément, who worm composts herself.

While Clément is impressed by Montrealers' efforts to recycle their organic waste, she doesn't see a complete solution to the city's garbage problem in recycling - whether it involves 'red wiggler' worms or green boxes: "The best thing is not to produce so much waste. We have a consumption problem in our society," she says.

-------------------

See JOUR428 teacher's edit here.

Composting - an organic solution to a human problem

2007-04-04T16:23:00.000-05:00

This is a video report prepared by Paul Malcolm and me about institutional, community and household composting programs in Montreal. It doesn’t deal directly with climate change, but does touch on the mantra for our times – sustainable development.

It’s easy to declare the need to strike a balance between a healthy economy, a clean environment and a just society.

But how do we do that?

Even one of these three feats on it own is impressive. The problem of climate change adds a blindfold and couple of spins to the already tough balancing act.

After the piece was produced, I was able to confirm through Darren Becker, press agent for the Mayor of Montreal and the Executive Committee, that a waste management “master plan” – including composting - for the island of Montreal will be announced sometime this spring.

-----

Originally this story was going to be about recycling, but none of the sorting plants would let us film their operations so we gave that up. One of the things I learned along the way is that reduction, the first of the three Rs, has largely been a failure here in Quebec. As time goes by and the economy grows so does the amount of waste we produce.

A Recyc-Quebec audit done three years ago suggests that 2004 was the first year that waste was reduced at the source. (This is the 2004 audit in PDF format.)

-----

I think the highlight of doing this package was interviewing/hanging out with the home composters as they picked through their compost after work on a Friday afternoon. They weren’t strident advocates, they were just doing their part, separating the worms from the manure.

In spite of the odd smug comment about token environmental acts, I admire those acting on the conviction that things can be done better.

Elizabeth May Speech: Part 2

2007-04-04T09:35:00.000-05:00

During Elizabeth May’s speech at Concordia University, it became obvious that May is passionate about two things: the environment and increasing the number of women in politics. The following excerpts were chosen in order to display May’s feelings on these specific subject matters.

Look out for these interesting quotes:

"Harper is still trying to convince the majority of Canadians that he's not scary." - (5:30) - This quote speaks for itself.

"Latch on to an NGO, or find credible scientists and latch on to them." - (3:30) - May's advice for aspiring environmental journalists.

"Chemicals are innocent until proven guilty." - (2:11) - Part of May's rant on the need to eliminate chemicals from the environment.

"I'm running against Peter Mackay because I can win there." - (0:10) - May's goodbye quote.

Now here's Part 2 of Elizabeth May's speech.

Elizabeth May Speech: Part 1

2007-04-04T09:30:00.000-05:00

Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada, spoke to Concordia Journalism students on Friday, March 23rd. A veteran environmental organizer, activist, lawyer and politician, May spent over an hour speaking to graduate and undergraduate students.

May worked for 17 years as Executive Director of the Sierra Club of Canada and in 2006, she entered the Green Party of Canada's leadership race. She also announced last month that she will be running against Conservative Peter Mackay in the Nova Scotia riding of Central Nova. On the other hand, the Liberals have decided not to run a candidate against her in the next federal election.

Look out for these interesting quotes:

"Politicians are single-celled organisms susceptible only to heat, pressure and pain." - (4:00) - May quoting Warner Troyer, investigative reporter and environmentalist.

"Once somebody is in power they will do anything to stay in power." - (3:50) - May referring to Stephen Harper's newly-developed environmental stance.

"If we believe that we have the power and democracy - we can change anything." - (3:48) - May referring to her new book, How to save the world in your spare time.

"You can't expect that every reporter you talk to is going to be Woodward and Bernstein." - (2:55) - May talking about the need for politicians to better understand journalists.

Here's some footage I shot and edited. Check out Part 1 of Elizabeth May's speech.

Some Green in Your Coffee?

2007-04-03T18:47:00.001-05:00

By Adam Klevinas

A routine part of many people's day involves grabbing a cup of coffee on the way to work or school, or sitting leisurely at a café reading the newspaper.

But most people don’t take the time to stop and think of the environmental consequences that stem from their coffee consumption. The cup from their large double-double Tim Horton’s coffee or the grande half-caf, skim, no foam latté from Starbucks often gets pitched in the garbage, or worse, onto the street.

In an equally wasteful way, many coffee shop patrons opt for a to go cup instead of a regular mug, even if they are staying on site.

At Concordia University in downtown Montreal, an environmental audit taken in 2006 concluded that the school used 250,000 coffee cups that year. At just under 31, 000 students, each person was responsible for 8 cups thrown into the garbage. This number does not include coffee brought into the school from the exterior.

Although it isn't likely that every person in Canada consumes this much to go coffee, this routine task of satisfying one’s caffeine needs can be accomplished in an environmentally correct way. It’s just a question of where you buy your favourite java.

Le Frigo Vert in downtown Montreal forces its customers to make an environmentally friendly decision the moment they walk through the door.

Customers can only get their coffee to go if they bring a travel mug- they don't provide disposable cups.

Rachel Tremblay, a collective member of Le Frigo Vert, said customers who show up without a travel mug but want to take their coffee to go anyway often resort to old juice containers to carry their beverage away.

“We really try to discourage the ‘to go’ option,” said Tremblay. “We encourage customers to bring their own cup or stay in our backroom café and borrow a regular cup.”

For someone in a rush, this may seem like a hassle, but at $0.50 a cup, many of Le Frigo Vert’s patrons from nearby Concordia, don’t argue.

Le Frigo Vert is an exception. Most coffee shops don’t put such harsh restrictions on their customers and are focused on sales instead.

Java U, a café inside one of Concordia's main buildings, tries to encourage its customers to bring their own mugs, but their efforts haven’t had much success.

For customers who show up with their own mug, the café offers a 10 per cent discount, but Mike Sterle-Contala, a Java U employee, said 95 per cent of the time, people take their coffee to go in a cardboard cup.

“We always ask people if it is for here or to go,” he said, “We never assume and give a cardboard cup first.”

“But a lot of people take a cardboard cup because they aren’t sure they will finish their drink before they have to leave,” he added.

Sterle-Contana said Java U also benefits from customers bringing in their own mug.

“Their 10 per cent discount saves us the exact same amount in terms of the price of the cup, lid and sleeve,” he said, “ It’s a win-win situation, really.”

The problem is that the discount isn’t obvious to customers. Sterle-Contana said Java U tries to advertise, but in the coffee shop, only one poster, slightly bigger than a normal sheet of paper and hung awkwardly on the door, promotes the university’s Lug-a-Mug campaign.

Christina Allen, an undergraduate philosophy student at Concordia and a Java U regular, wasn’t aware of the discount, but can’t be bothered to bring her own mug.

“It’s too inconvenient,” she said. “I don’t have time to think about bringing a mug. I don’t want to think about it. I’m too stressed with other things.”

Allen said it would require a lot of extra effort to throw a travel mug into her purse every morning on the way to school.

Not all customers see things the same way as Allen. Meriel Fletcher, studying just two tables over from Allen, was drinking out of a mug she brought from home.

“It sucks to get paper cups,” said Fletcher, a liberal arts college undergrad student at Concordia.

Fletcher hails from British Columbia where she said it feels like there is a social pressure to recycle and minimize waste.

“Growing up, my mom really influenced me to recycle everything,” she said. “We never used to get take out food because of the waste. I guess that has carried over into my coffee drinking.”

“Besides, it’s not an inconvenience. You just rinse it out and stick it in your bag,” she added.

Fletcher uses her mug a majority of the time, but on the rare occasion she forgets, she always asks for her coffee in a ceramic, washable mug. Although, she admitted without her travel mug in hand, sometimes the Java U employees assume her coffee is to go and give her a cardboard cup.

Patrons who end up with a cardboard cup can recycle them, according to Sterle-Contana. And since Java U goes through roughly 500 cardboard cups per day and only 50 regular mugs, it is a practice he hopes customers undertake.

At a Starbucks location just outside the university’s downtown campus, recycling cardboard cups is not an option.

Melissa Castron, the locale's shift manager, said individual employees tried to recycle the cups in the past, but couldn’t because of company protocol.

Although, she said Starbucks does its part for the environment by giving a $0.10 discount if customers bring in their own mug. The discount, however, is not advertised anywhere in the store.

Castron, an art history undergraduate student at Concordia, also said Starbucks employees always ask customers if their drink is to go before they serve it. But by the number of customers drinking out of cardboard cups in the nearly packed café and a full rack of clean ceramic mugs behind the counter, their efforts don’t seem to be getting through to customers.

The to go coffee phenomenon has boomed with the massive growth of global chains like Starbucks and domestic chains such as Second Cup and Tim Horton's. Although these corporations claim to be environmentally responsible, their efforts have a long way to go before they will have an impact on the fight against global warming.

Individuals who truly want to make a difference can start by something as easy as drinking their coffee in the most environmentally correct manner.

Weekly News Roundup: March 28 - April 3

2007-03-28T11:18:00.000-05:00

Urban air pollution more dangerous than Chernobyl

A study conducted by the Royal Commission of Environmental Pollution in London reports that urban air pollution is more dangerous than the radiation exposure suffered by thousands during the Chernobyl explosion in 1986. The study suggests that over 24,000 people die in Britain every year because of air pollution. The Chernobyl accident is estimated to have cost 16,000 lives.

Posted by Stephanie

American courts rule on greenhouse gases

On Monday, all nine judges of the United States Supreme Court ruled on whether or not carbon dioxide is an air pollutant. If the greenhouse gas is a pollutant then it is the Environmental Protection Agency’s job to regulate it under the U.S. Clean Air Act. The decision was split 5 – 4 in favor of adding CO2 to the list.

The day before, a California judge ruled that the government can be sued for using U.S. investors’ money to finance overseas projects responsible for greenhouse gas emissions.

Ryan Bergen

And another bicycle plan for Montreal...

Vélocité shoveled a bike path last February to support their demand that the paths be open year-round.

La Presse reported today that Montreal might have a plan to open up new bike paths in the city’s thoroughfares. The City didn’t name any street names so far. This should be revealed next month when the Transports Plan is unveiled.
The City’s plan might also include an extension of the open season for bike paths. The 2007 season begins tomorrow. For those who didn’t know there was such as thing as an opening seasons for these paths, what it means is that they’re maintained and parking restrictions apply for cars.

This might make life easier for the city’s road warriors.

Posted by Julie Geffard

Look who's suffering...

All this talk about global warming. How the bigger countries need to limit their CO2 emission, how they need to save energy, etc.

And yet, it will be the poor countries in Africa and Asia that will have to deal with the most consequences... that they are not responsible for.
Rich countries, will not only have less consequences from global warming, but they will also be better prepared to deal with it.

Sounds fair? Not really, but do you think anyone will REALLY do anything about it?

By Debbie

Sydney goes green by going black

For the first time, many of Sydney's icons turned off their lights for an hour.

On March 31st, the city plunged into darkness in an effort to raise awareness on global warming. Between 7:30 pm and 8:30 pm, the city supported "Earth Hour" in order to show that it does not take much to save energy.

By Debbie

Australia's opposition party to push China to limit emissions

Given Australia's laissez-faire attitude towards climate change and the Kyoto Protocol, it would seem somewhat hypocritical for the country's politicians to start lecturing other countries on their emissions. It should be pointed out that the party pushing for a climate change conference with China this year is the Australian Labor Party. Unlike the ruling Liberal party (in power since 1996), Labor supports a significant reduction in Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.

The Herald Sun reports that Labor leader Ken Rudd will travel to China later this year. The Labor delegation will try to persuade China's leaders to limit their emissions. Rudd is also calling for an Australian version of Britain's Stern Report, which examined the economic impacts of climate change.

Rudd made his announcement at a Labor summit on climate change, held March 31 in Australia's capital, Canberra. The conference included a pre-recorded message from Al Gore, who praised Labor's efforts.

Posted by Nick Say

Concordia University presents Al Gore with honorary doctorate

Belated climate change news from within Concordia University itself: on March 22, Concordia awarded an honorary doctorate to Al Gore. Concordia principal Claude Lajeunesse presented the doctorate to Al Gore after the former U.S. Vice-President's speech at Montreal's Palais des Congrès.

From now on, Tempest contributors should refer to the star of An Inconvenient Truth as Dr. Gore (even if this sounds like the name of a Norwegian death metal band). The university administrators may not tolerate Tempest's use of "Al Gore", and are certain to have a problem with the informal "Al".

Posted by Nick Say

Look who's talking: frequent-flyer John Travolta speaks out on climate change

Global warming is currently in vogue in Hollywood. Movie stars like Leonardo Dicaprio are trying to raise the public's awareness of climate change. Anyone cynical about the carbon footprints of jet-setting green celebrities will probably be paralyzed with incredulity when they learn that John Travolta has been lecturing the public on climate change.

Travolta takes the term frequent flyer to a whole new altitude: the star of Saturday Night Fever and Grease owns not one but five - yes, five - private jets; his Florida home is also equipped with its own runway. Travolta flies his own planes. According to London's Evening Standard, the 53-year-old actor flew at least 30,000 miles in the last 12 months, which is the equivalent of 800 tonnes of carbon emissions. The Evening Standard notes that this alone is a 100 times the total yearly emissions of the average Briton.

Travolta's Bigfoot-like carbon footprint didn't stop him lecturing the British public on global warming. Travolta was in London for the premiere of his film Wild Hogs, which appears, even more incongruously, to be a paean to motorbikes. He told fans that "alternative methods of fuel" had to be sought to help the environment. Travolta made his comments after driving up the red carpet in London's Leicester Square on a Harley Davidson. Travolta didn't mention whether the Harley was powered by the alternative fuels he advocates.

Travolta, a Scientologist, believes that a solution to climate change can be found in space. The Broken Arrow star, it seems, is already there: lost in space.

Posted by Nick Say

Canadian Magazine Readership Drops

Competition from the Internet has caused Canadian magazine readership to drop, according to data released today from the Print Measurement Bureau.

The Globe and Mail article looks at the fragmented media industry and analyzes how radio, newspapers and television are also battling to keep their audiences as people gravitate toward the Internet.

Magazines such as Reader's Digest saw subscription rates fall, while surprisingly, Canadian Geographic's numbers rose.

Posted by Adam Klevinas (and yes, I know this isn't about global warming, but it is about magazines and the Internet!)

Ontario Steps Up Funds for Green Automakers

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has announced a $500-million boost to fund Ontario automakers' development to build more environmentally friendly cars. The province is attempting to maintain its stronghold on the automotive sector.

McGuinty's plan is to allow automakers to continue building large automobiles, but in a more environmentally friendly way. He says Ontarians aren't ready to give up their large SUVs for smaller cars.

The Premier also hopes to take advantage of a market that he thinks will be profitable in the future.

Further, this article in today's Globe and Mail talks about how companies that convert to green technologies stand to benefit.

Posted by Adam Klevinas

Heat Waves Pose Threat to North American Cities

A scientist with intimate knowledge of next month's report by the IPCC has indicated that the report will contain a warning concerning heat waves. Gordon McBean says thousands of people in North American cities could be killed unless governments put in better warning systems and take other, precautionary protective measures.

The report is said to detail specific regions that are specifically vulnerable and suggest adaptation strategies. Those strategies could include: warning systems, architectural changes, protection of green space and community programs to monitor the well-being of people living alone.

To find out more, read the report from this morning's Globe and Mail.

Posted By Adam Klevinas

Major cities at risk from rising sea levels: scientists

Cities such as New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, Mumbai, Dhaka and Jakarta are vulnerable to global warming and rising sea levels, according to a peer-reviewed scientific study said to be the first to look at such areas.

The study, which was which was published in the journal Environment and Urbanization, says 634 million people around the world live in areas lying at less than 10.05 metres above sea level, which are considered to be threatened coastal areas, and the numbers are rising.

More than 180 countries have populations in low lying coastal zones, it says, and about 70 per cent of those have urban areas with populations of over five million people that are under threat.

Poor nations in Asia are most at risk. The study gives no time frame for potential rising and flooding.

Details: CBC.ca

Posted by SH

Missing: Two made-in-Canada websites

2007-03-25T21:54:00.001-05:00

Today, the top three results on Google for the search term “environment canada climate change” lead to dead ends. The governing Conservative Party had the websites emptied of content last year. Canada’s Environment Minister John Baird, however, says he is about ready to let the country know how the current government plans to help cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Since last year, Environment Canada and the Government of Canada’s climate change home pages have not had any material other than a brief message about an “effective” and “realistic” “made-in-Canada plan for reducing greenhouse gases.”

This Friday, Canada’s “Fourth National Report on Climate Change” (4NR) pledging absolute emissions reductions in 2050 was added to the above message along with “Canada’s Intial Report Under the Kyoto Protocol,” both in PDF format at Environment Canada’s climate change website.

In the past, the two sites were good sources for understanding the issue. The user-friendly HTML content on the websites disappeared sometime last year.

Responding to an email about the uncertain status of one of the websites last October, Sylvain Boutot, a “Meteorological Inquiry Specialist” wrote:

"The Government of Canada is putting in place a made-in-Canada plan for reducing greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and ensuring clean air, water, land and energy for Canadians.
On April 13 of this year (2006), as part of developing the made-in-Canada approach, 15 programs that have completed their work or which required a different approach have been wound down. These programs' web presence was amended accordingly.”

Mr. Boutot included a link to the new Clear Air Act-inspired “Clean Air Online.” There, climate change is bundled with other “air-related issues.” The hyperlink for more information on climate change leads back to the empty page that has been “wound down.”

The information available on climate change at “Clean Air Online” is relatively limited. Damon Matthews, an assistant professor in the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment at Concordia University, reviewed the content on the website. He says the basic information is sound, but he takes exception to the claim on the site that "the effects or benefits of taking action today may not be seen for many to hundreds of years."

Matthews argues, “that strong action taken now could see direct benefit (in terms of reduced negative impacts) within the next few decades. Though it is true that no action will see immediate benefit.”

Clicking on the hyperlinks to other issues that fall under the clean air canopy like acid rain or smog, though, does not lead to sites that refer to a “made in Canada” approach, nor does it confront you with formidable government documents. Any useful information to be found in the 4NR has to be culled from its 318 pages. The other sites address a specific environmental problem, but do not go into detail about how exactly the government is approaching the issue.

It is not as though information on climate change is scarce across the network of the government’s websites. There are plenty of informative sites to which those working within the ministry will quickly refer interested people. It is not clear why the decommissioned website does not refer to these resources.

Last November, the Liberal Party of Canada got access to emails inside Canada's Natural Resources Ministry, the Globe and Mail reported. The internal correspondence revealed that federal employees were asked to remove references to the Kyoto Protocol from web material. (There is still work to be done. According to the department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, “Canada is a strong supporter of the Kyoto Protocol.”)

Workers who had developed the award-winning "One-Tonne Challenge," among other environmental programs, watched those initiatives get cancelled. The climate change website was one of those cut.

The office of the environment minister did not respond to email and telephone requests for comment on their peculiar approach to the climate change website and the ministry's future plans.

The telephone number for Caitlin Horrall, who, according to a government communications officer, was the webmaster for the climate change site leads to an inoperative voice mail box.
----------
There are ample Government of Canada resources on climate change available. Matthews recommends the Meteorological Service of Canada website “Understanding the Science of Climate Change” for a comprehensive overview of the subject.

Other federal sources of information include:

Health Canada: "Climate Change and Health"

Natural Resources Canada: "Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Program"

Meteorological Service of Canada: "Science of Climate Change"

Environmental Gladiators Challenge Montreal

2007-03-24T12:45:00.000-05:00

By Adam Klevinas

There was a sense of urgency in the air this past Thursday as nearly 5,000 people packed Montreal’s Palais des Congrès for the Youth Action Montreal summit on climate change.

The highlight of the afternoon came when Canadian environmental guru Dr. David Suzuki delivered an insightful keynote address, as he drove home the message that now was the time to make a decision to act on climate change. Suzuki's powerful performance, which lasted a mere thirty minutes, roused up far more enthusiasm than the nearly two hour slide show presentation given by former American vice-president Al Gore.

But together, their message was abundantly clear: humanity’s chance to save the planet is now and no one can afford to miss this opportunity to act.

But before Suzuki and Gore made their appearances, the afternoon kicked off with a musical performance by the event’s hosts, Juno award winning artists Sarah Harmer and Montreal’s own Sam Roberts.

The duo teamed up to sing one of Roberts’ latest hits, Bridge to Nowhere, a song about hope.

In their opening remarks, the pair put a strong emphasis on the ability of individuals to make a difference.

Roberts especially caught the crowd 's attention when he admitted that he currently drives a muscle car.

After a few laughs, Roberts looked out on the crowd with a serious face and said “I’m here to learn exactly what I have to do to make a difference.”

The day was all about change and taking action. Youth Action Montreal’s slogan, “Less talk, more action,” was a constant theme throughout the conference.

No one conveyed that message better than Suzuki, who, upon his introduction, received an affectionate standing ovation from the crowd. Once the room settled, he enthralled the room with the urgency of climate change.

“It will inevitably define our future. This is the moment,” bellowed Suzuki. “We are heading down a dangerous path.”

Suzuki emphasized that the environment has recently become the top concern for Canadians, but that it isn’t the first time.

He recounted the Canadian government’s chance to take on global warming when Brian Mulroney was re-elected to his second term as Prime Minister in 1988.

“We didn’t act,” said Suzuki. “We ignored becoming a conserver society.”

“Our challenge now is to not let this moment disappear,” he said, as the crowd rose for another long, standing ovation.

“Our actions will determine the future of our species,” concluded Suzuki, before introducing Gore.

Gore continued with Suzuki’s message to challenge individuals to make changes in their lives. Although, his presentation was interrupted twice by hecklers who were swiftly removed by event security.

“Climate change is our moral challenge,” said Gore. “We must retain the moral authority to act on this problem.”

“This may be our greatest crisis,” he said, “but it’s also our greatest opportunity.”

Like Suzuki, Gore emphasized that this was an opportunity that could not be missed. He put the onus on indivduals to make changes to the way they live. Then, he dove into his renowned slide presentation, made famous by his Academy Award winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

For those who had seen already seen the film, there wasn't a lot of new information. Gore made some updates, but largely ignored the most recently released IPCC report.

Although many of the conference attendees appeared star struck by the likes of Gore and Suzuki, and concerned with getting free coffee mugs and water bottles, perhaps something beneficial will be taken away after hearing moving speeches from some of the world’s biggest climate change gladiators. Reducing consumption levels, one of the afternoon’s themes, will hopefully be one message that makes an impact.

However, for those in attendance who have been fighting for action on climate change for years, moving speeches from the likes of Greenpeace’s Steven Guilbeault only drove the point deeper that every small step we take into action will make a difference.

One can only hope all the talk that afternoon will in fact lead to more action.

Weekly News Roundup: March 21 - 27

2007-03-21T11:52:00.000-05:00

Composting towards a greener space

You can stop throwing out so much garbage - because composting is one of the simplest ways to cut down waste in your kitchen. Compost makes for great fertilizer, and reduces your garbage output. All you need is a wooden composter, which can be bought at a hardware store. Instead of throwing away unwanted food, throw it in the composter and wait for the nutrients to break down (eventually, everything turns into mud - hence, the great fertilizer). Most compost systems can break down fruits, vegetables, coffee grounds, teabags, eggshells, lint, sawdust, etc. This is definitely one small step towards a greener space.

Posted by Stephanie

Opposition Gives Conservative Environmental Plan Good Spring Cleaning

The House of Commons environment committee has revamped the Conservatives' Clean Air Act so much it is practically unrecognizable from its original form.

In an article from this morning's Globe and Mail, the new version of the act, produced by the majority based opposition committee, calls for a commitment to carbon trading as was the case under the Kyoto Protocol.

It has been well known for some time that Prime Minister Harper strictly opposes carbon trading and speculation has begun as to whether he will use the revised act to trigger an election call or have it passed in the House.

The final version of Bill C-30 should be finished by the end of the week.

Posted by Adam Klevinas

How much carbon do you produce?

With all the talk about carbon dioxide emission, I thought it would be fun to try and figure out how much each of us produce.

When I calculated my own carbon count, it amounted to 11.8 tonnes of CO2. It said that if everyone in the world lived like me, we would need 2.9 planets to support global consumption. Scary isn't it?? What's your carbon count??

By Debbie

The California of Canada?

A Throne Speech delivered yesterday at the British Colombia legislature, described by the Globe and mail as "electifying," pledged to reduce greenhouse emissions to %10 below 1990 levels by 2020. This, despite the fact that BC's energy industry and booming economy have resulted in emissions soaring by %35 since 1990. Critic Ian Bruce, of the David Suzuki foundation, has pointed out that in order to do this, BC will need to set market based targets for the oil and gas industry, something the Campbell government seems reluctant to do.

In comparison to BC's ambitious new targets, California aims to cap emissions in 2020 at the same levels that they were at in 1990.

posted by Graham French

The California of Canada? Pt. 2

Watching political parties and governments reinvent themselves as ecologically sound problem solvers with a keen international audience and a cantankerous electorate is worth a look.

Vancouver is proud of itself these days. It has the Olympics coming soon, and is being touted as a singular achievement in urban planning. The buzzword is ‘eco-density’ – people living and working downtown.

British Columbia’s Premier Gordon Campbell has made some bold statements about limiting emissions and becoming an environmental leader in Canada. (If you can find a leader with platform that promises the opposite please let us know.)

For those interested in what is happening out West, the Globe and Mail is doing a series on British Columbia and its environmental ambitions, including a discussion with reporter Mark Hume.

Back from a visit to my home city after a couple years away, I can attest to how shiny and new it will look for the 2010 Olympic opening ceremonies. Naturally, there are plenty of things about Vancouver’s achievements that do not show so well.

Ryan Bergen

Ad trucks getting fancier

It seems that the ad trucks Wendy mentions in her article are not planning on going a way any time soon. Instead, they're getting fancier and fancier. Check out Go Mobile Media whose clients are certainly more upscale than the typical ad truck client here in Montreal. Is it just a coincidence the trucks are green?

Posted by JOUR428 Teacher

Lights out: Sydney to express concern over climate change

Residents and businesses in Australia's largest city, Sydney, will demonstrate their concern over climate change by turning off their lights at the end of this month. The Hindu reports that on 31 March at 7:30p.m. (that's 4:30a.m EST), many Sydneysiders, as those who live in the city are known, and iconic landmarks like the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge will turn out their lights for an hour to express fears about global warming. The city-wide lights-out (bar, for obvious reasons, the airport) is also meant to send a message to Australians that every individual can make their own effort to lighten their carbon footprint.

Wags who might suggest that by March 31 sunset could be later than 7:30p.m. should note that it's currently autumn in Australia, with the sun predicted to go down over Sydney before 6p.m. on 31 March.

Posted by Nick Say

General Motors Automobiles Qualify For Flaherty's Environmental Tax Credit

With a fuel consumption of just 4.1 litres per 100 kilometres, the Toyota Hybrid qualifies for the biggest tax rebate- $2,000- in the federal government's new, 'environmentally friendly' budget.

The Chevrolet Impala, with a fuel consumption of 12.3 litres per 100 kilometres doesn't do too badly either. Buyers will receive a $1000 credit. However, if you were to buy a Nissan Pathfinder that consumes 13.1 litres per 100 kiloemtres, you would have to pay a $1000 surcharge.

Upon first reading this, I was a bit surprised. It seems the Impala runs on 85% ethanol fuel, so the government could justify putting it on the list of 'green' cars.

However, an article in today's Globe and Mail has found another reason why General Motors automobiles made the cut. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty added the GM cars onto the list just one week before the budget was released. And it wasn't departments with policy expertise in the environment that suggested the addition- it was the Department of Finance.

Jim Flaherty's riding is Whitby-Oshawa and not surprisingly, Oshawa is where GM cars are made. The Conservatives have just narrowly won this riding in the past two elections and it seems Mr. Flaherty didn't want to affect his constituents who depend on the local economy for jobs, either directly or spun off from the industry.

Flaherty's reasoning behind, as mentioned above, is that the Impala and Monte Carlo run on 85% ethanol. However, as the Globe reports, the federal government isn't aware of a gas station in Canada that carries that sort of fuel.

Interestingly enough, the federal government has come under fire from GM, Ford and Chrysler because they feel the penalties will hurt the already ailing American car industry.

Posted By Adam Klevinas

Tracking and Mapping North American Carbon Emissions

Reuters recently reported that the United States is in the process of creating a system that will track atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide. According to a government researcher, the Carbon Tracker will measure carbon dioxide levels across North America and produce an internet-based map. Areas that emit a high level of carbons such as urban centres will be indicated in red and carbon sinks such as forests will be highlighted in blue.

One of the benefits that the tracker presents is that it could help researchers verify their climate models. In addition, the system could also make the process of trading carbon credits easier by keeping track of whether industries are actually cutting emissions.

In the near future, the tracker will draw on more data from diverse sources including monitors in airplanes and other countries, in order to make a more detailed map.

Canada's federal environment office, Environment Canada, provided a quarter of the data for the project. The carbon tracker team is also working with researchers from China and India.

Although the US does not currently regulate greenhouse gases, banks and carbon trading firms created when the European Union started trading carbon credits in 2005 are preparing for the US to get in on the trading game soon.

By Plan B

Australian green party bill wilts

Australia's green party, known as the Greens, has failed to introduce a bill to make the country's federal government drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Age reports that Greens senator Christine Milne tried to put through a private member's bill that, as well as decreasing emissions, would have forced the Australian government to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

While Australia signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, it has not ratified it. In fact, Australia and the U.S. remain the only developed nations who have decided to ignore the UNFCCC's protocol. Like the U.S., the Australian government decided to eschew ratification for economic reasons. The Liberal government's position has not changed since it announced in 2002 that Australia would not be ratifying Kyoto. Indeed, The Age article quotes a Liberal senator, Alan Eggleston, who indicates that the Australian government opposed Milne's Kyoto-friendly bill due to its negative implications for the Australian economy.

Posted by Nick Say

Montreal buses to go green

72 000 rides are done on the city’s buses on an average day. (Photo: Michiel2005.)

The Société de transport de Montréal (STM) announced the launch of an initiative today that will soon allow commuters to ride greener buses.
Eight hybrid buses fuelled by a mix of electricity and biodiesel will be tested on a few selected routes beginning next January. Also in January, the STM will begin fuelling its entire bus fleet with biodiesel.
According to the STM, the two initiatives could ultimately reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 7 500 tons annually, which represents 40% of all greenhouse gases emitted by the STM's 1 600 vehicles.
Both projects are the result of tests conducted on 150 buses that ran on biodiesel for a year in 2002-2003. Close to 50% of this biodiesel was made of used cooking oil - as they do in Kyoto.

Posted by Julie Geffard

IBM heeds climate change message

Contrary to the commonly-held assumption that large corporations have no interest in environmental issues, The Globe & Mail reports that IBM has today (March 22) promised to substantially decrease its greenhouse gas emissions. The technology corporation has pledged to reduce its 2005 emissions by seven per cent by 2012. Those of a cynical disposition may feel that the real emission IBM should focus on reducing is hot air. In fact, this is not IBM's first pledge to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions: in 2002, the corporation promised to reduce its emissions by four per cent by 2005; IBM actually managed to achieve a 6.2 per cent reduction.

IBM and more than a 100 other companies are involved in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's voluntary “Climate Leaders” programme.

A cursory look at IBM's website reveals that the corporation is hardly being coy about its environmental efforts. One wonders whether the corporation has an altruistic interest in environmental protection or, more likely, its chief interest is in public relations. The Globe mentions that it could be more of a pragmatic move, as many industry leaders predict government regulations on carbon in the future.

Posted by Nick Say

Tyranny of the random sample

Polling company Angus Reid asked 3698 Canadians whether they think global warming is a real threat. More than three-quarter seem to think it is. Not so many were sure whether it was them who are threatened by global warming.

Ryan Bergen

Climate Change Legislation Stalls

Conservative MPs shut down talks on new climate change legislation after opposition parties insisted on including Kyoto Protocol targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In an article from today's Globe and Mail, it appears that the Conservative government may forgo any legislation to fight climate change if an agreement cannot be made. Instead, they would focus on programs and regulations that do not require Parliament's approval.

Amendments from the opposition include setting Canada's climate-change targets at Kyoto levels in 2012, then 25 per cent below 1990 levels in the years 2018 to 2022 and 80 per cent below 1990 levels in the years 2048 and 2052.

Posted by Adam Klevinas

Al Gore testifies before House

Al Gore has just addressed lawmakers on Capitol Hill, urging them to deal with the "planetary emergency" by passing legislation to cut emissions.

Read more: AP, Bloomberg.

Gore will be at it again, testifying during a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on climate change. Watch it here live on C-Span at 2:30 p.m. ET today.

Posted by SH

The city behind climate change

2007-03-21T11:50:00.000-05:00

Sikander Z. Hashmi
Tempest

Ever think used cooking oil could power garbage trucks instead of being dumped into the back? It’s happening in the city that has become synonymous with climate change and global warming -- and where residents eat a lot of tempura.

Kyoto, better known as the protocol (officially know as the Kyoto Protocol to United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), is Japan’s seventh largest city with a population of close to 1.5 million. It is the country's former imperial capital and was supposed to be bombed (the atomic type) by the United States in World War II, but was spared because of its historical and religious significance to the Japanese and was instead replaced by Nagasaki.

In 1997, fifty-two years after Kyoto was saved from becoming known for death and destruction, Kyoto rose to the world stage as the host city for the United Nations climate change conference that led to the protocol.

I called up the City of Kyoto to find out how the rise to prominence has been received at home. I managed to get a hold of Makoto Suganuma, the International Cooperation Manager of the city’s climate change policy division.

Suganuma told me that while the city’s fame hasn’t translated into major tourist yens (although tourism is up from just under 39 million visitors in 1998 to over 42 million in 2002), Kyotans are “very proud” about the fact that their city is the birthplace of the protocol, and as such, they feel the burden of environmental responsibility.

“We often say that as the birthplace of the Kyoto protocol we must make an effort to practice the 3 Rs, reduce, recycle and reuse,” Suganuma explained. And citizens appear to be trying. The average daily garbage per resident dropped from just above 1.52 kg in 2000 to under 1.46 kg in 2001. Canadians fare better though, producing about 1.05 kg of household garbage, per person per day in 2002 .

In April 2005, Kyoto became the first city in Japan to enact a local global warming countermeasure plan. The goal is to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the city.

Suganuma cites the city’s biodiesel project as an example of measures taken by the city to battle global warming. 220 Kyoto garbage trucks and 95 city buses are powered by biodiesel made from recycled cooking oil. Tempura, made by frying shrimp, vegetables, and other foods in cooking oil, is popular in Japan and getting rid of all that cooking oil can be an issue. Pouring it down the drain creates a burden for sewage processing plants, so the city has set up around 1,000 collection points for used cooking oil. Residents drop off the oil, which is then refined at a fuel conversion plant. The city estimates the project is putting a dent in carbon dioxide emissions by the tune of approximately 4,000 tons annually.

Kyoto has also come up with a neat way of encouraging the use of solar energy. The city’s residential garbage incineration facilities use the heat they create to generate electricity, which is sold to electric power companies. The income: about $4 million US per year, part of which is used to encourage the installation of solar electric generation systems in residential homes.

In an attempt to champion the cause on a global level, Kyoto mayor Masumoto Yorikane formed the World Mayors Council on Climate Change. The group’s first meeting, in December 2005, was held in Montreal. The second meeting was held last month in Kyoto, which Mayors Gérald Tremblay and David Miller, of Montreal and Toronto respectively, attended.

The Japanese government is also stepping up to the challenge, promising to lead the search for a post-2012 pact on global warming when it hosts the G8 summit next year.

Ad trucks leave trail of exhaust - and controversy - in their wake

2007-03-21T11:25:00.000-05:00

Wendy Smith
Tempest

A number of Montreal activists oppose the proliferation of ad trucks. (Photo: Wendy Smith.)

It carries no cargo but a message, actually prefers to go where the gridlock is, and spews a litre of carbon dioxide gas for every 2.75 km it travels.

It's a marketing phenomenon known in industry terms as a “mobile billboard.”

Concordia grad student Erik Chevrier refers to these drive-by advertisements, unequivocally, as "[b]ad trucks."

“Out of all the forms of advertising, this is one that causes more problems than the advertising itself,” he says.

"Billy the Bad Truck" is überculture's [b]ad trucks campaign mascot.(Photo: Wendy Smith.)

Chevrier has been fighting to get ad trucks off the streets of Montreal since 2004, teaming up with activists from Concordia's überculture collective and presenting petitions to city council.

But despite his efforts, the flatbed trucks are multiplying in Montreal's downtown core. The Quebec city-based Association québécoise de lutte contre la pollution atmosphérique (AQLPA) counted thirty mobile billboard trucks circulating in the city in 2003, and estimates that number has at least doubled and possibly even tripled since then. Using calculations based on a standard GMC-3500 truck, the ad trucks guzzle more than 400,000 litres of gas and emit more than 940,000 kg of carbon dioxide each year.

And with spring just around the corner, heralding the beginning of Montreal's world-famous festival season, ad trucks will once again snake through the city's hotspots, bearing ten foot tall billboards advertising mobile phones, fast food and strip joints.

More congestion

According to the World Carfree Network, an international association of organizations focused on sustainable transport, road transport accounts for as much as 40 percent of the gases that contribute to climate change. When the City of Montreal unveiled its Sustainable Development plan in November 2005, days before the city hosted the United Nations International Conference on Climate Change, it called for a 20 percent reduction of the city’s vehicular emissions by 2012. One of its key points was the introduction of an anti-idling bylaw making it illegal to idle for more than three minutes. Drivers who violate the bylaw are subject to fines of up to $400.

After a yearlong "awareness campaign," the city says it's ready to begin cracking down on idling offenders. But despite prodding from activist groups, there is still no plan in place to deal with ad trucks - which, Chevrier points out, are only in the business of delivering advertising messages to eyeballs, not people to destinations.

And since they travel in high density areas to reach the most pairs of eyeballs possible, ad trucks worsen traffic congestion, which means cars spend more time on the road trying to get to their destinations. In the mathematics of climate change, more traffic congestion equals more carbon dioxide emissions.

Chevrier at Plateau-Mont Royal council meeting March 5. (Photo: Wendy Smith.)

”I find it very hypocritical of the city of Montreal to put in these bylaws when in fact they’re not regulating ad truck use, which is causing cars to idle and causing more traffic,” says Chevrier.

David and Goliath

In überculture's cramped Mackay Street headquarters, Chevrier pulls out a file fat with dog-eared clippings he's collected over the past four years. He thumbs through photocopies of newspaper articles, court documents, and pages of painstakingly highlighted city bylaws.

It was after first combing through these bylaws that he thought he'd hit pay dirt. "There are two clauses which state that ad trucks should not be circulating on the streets," he says. He points to Article 8.1 of bylaw R.R.V.M. c.P-1, adopted by the city of Montreal on May 16, 1994, which states, "No person may place a vehicle on public property to offer it for sale or rental or draw attention to an advertisement."

The situation became more complicated after the amalgamation of Montreal. Both Ville Marie and the Plateau adopted their own bylaws, which read: “No advertisement may be placed on a vehicle unless it is on a bus”. On September 29, 2004 the Ville Marie borough fined ad truck company Media Rolling Inc. The company contested the suit and the City dropped the charges last September, after a city lawyer called the bylaw “unconstitutional.”

Plateau-Mont Royal mayor Helen Fotopulos, who has been working closely with the Ville Marie borough council on the ad trucks issue, says the city dropped its suit against Media Rolling Inc. because “under the bylaws we have, we would not have won.”

Calls and emails to two mobile billboard companies known to operate in Montreal's downtown core were not returned.

Taking it to the streets

Brandon You, CEO of Brand Everything, preaches the merits of a branded culture in front of the Mile End Cultural Centre.(Photo: Wendy Smith.)

Brandishing a hand painted banner with the words "Your ad here" emblazoned on a baby's forehead, a ragtag group of culture jammers dressed as corporate shills huddle in front of the Mile End Cultural Centre. It’s a frigid evening in early March, and these “executives” from the (fictional) marketing company “Brand Everything” are greeting the attendees of tonight’s Plateau-Mont Royal council meeting.

The group’s ringleader, dressed in a thin polyester shirt and tie, thrusts a pamphlet into one puzzled citizen’s hands. “Good evening, sir, my name is Brandon You, and I am the CEO of Pub Partout-Brand Everything. This is Niche Marquette – Niche is from our European division. You’re from, like, Yugoslavia or something?”

“Copenhagen.”

”Copenhagen. Right. That’s in Finland?”

”Denmark.”

”Denmark! Danish! I like Danish.” A crowd of curious onlookers begins to swell.

"We’re here because we heard somebody by the name of Erik Chevrolet wants to ban ad trucks on the streets of Montreal,” says Brandon You. “We here at Pub Partout believe billboard trucks are the natural progression of branding everything! Mr. Chevrolet is poisoning the well of marketing!”

The group breaks into a spontaneous, rousing chant. “AD TRUCKS, THEY’RE OUR RIGHT! WE WANT MORE AND WE WILL FIGHT!”

Brandon You is not a corporate shill after all but one Jason McLean, member of Reclaim the Main and street theatre troupe Optative Theatrical Laboratories. His group opposes the proliferation of ad trucks for public space and cultural reasons, and tonight they’ve come out in support of Chevrier, who is presenting his latest research to council.

Chevrier and McLean’s groups are not the first to take on the ad truck giants: in 2002, a direct-action group paint-bombed the trucks and threw spiked boards under their wheels. The AQLPA has been petitioning city hall for four years.

The Montreal activists are bolstered by the outcome of the fight against ad trucks in other cities. In 2003, Vancouver’s city council was successful in fending off Motomedia Inc. A report written by the city’s General Manager of Engineering Services cited the trucks’ contributions to environmental and visual pollution as grounds for keeping them out of the city.

As for Chevrier, he’s hoping that Plateau mayor Helen Fotopolus will take matters into her own hands after he presents his findings at tonight’s council meeting.

”These trucks cause atmospheric pollution in a time when global warming is quite a concern,” he tells council during Question Period.

Fotopulos: ad trucks not her jurisdiction. (Photo: Wendy Smith.)

But for the moment, Chevrier appears to have hit a brick wall. While Fotopulos says she’d like to see mobile billboards banned in the Plateau and has even written to Montreal’s Director General asking the city to take action, not much can be done at the municipal level. “Given that there is an upcoming provincial election, it could be taken up. It is in the jurisdiction of the other levels of government,” she suggests.

Chevrier maintains it’s up to the city of Montreal to tighten up its existing bylaws.

“I call on the city of Montreal to actually enforce [the ad truck] bylaw if they’re going to call on the citizens to enforce a bylaw about idling as well.

”They should take some responsibility.”

More Housekeeping

2007-03-18T19:56:00.000-05:00

Update: Another article on online magazines for you to read.

For next class, plz check out Assignment Zero and have a look at this description of the project by its creator, Jay Rosen. It builds on the Wired/Wiki stuff we have looked at.

Plz also poke around Barista.net, an example of "hyperlocal" or "place" blogging.

If you have any other specific Citizen's journalism initiatives or hyperlocal examples, plz let me know in the comments.

Online Story Meeting

2007-03-15T17:19:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone. I hope it's alright that I start this post. I figured many people would be in the same boat as I am for their next story. That is, not really sure in what direction to head. So, I'm proposing a little online story meeting where we can make suggestions to each other's ideas. I'd appreciate any input for my ideas and would be happy to make comments to others.

I had an idea to do a story that contrasted businesses that 'practiced green' and businesses that don't. Then I got thinking, after seeing a Green Mountain Coffee Roasters sign that it would be a good idea to narrow it down to coffee shops. I'm not sure how environmentally friendly GMCR are, but it was what sparked my idea. I was thinking of comparing the big chains like Tim Hortons, Starbucks and Second Cup with the smaller, one man show places like le café creme, Java U, le frigo vert, etc.

I know at that if you bring your own mug to Java U they give you a discount and an extra stamp on your coffee card. I think the extra stamp is part of it, but I'm not sure. And I also think Starbucks gives you a discount for bringing your own cup. I also found it interesting to read on the side of a Tim Horton's cup something about keeping the environment clean. But in Tim Horton's, there's no recycling bins! You can recycle coffee cups, can't you? And aren't wood stir sticks better than plastic? What about foam cups vs paper?

Does anyone have any ideas that could help this story? Ann, what do you think?

By the way, if this post is annoying or goes against keeping our magazine looking classy, please let me know. Anyone with administrator status can delete it if they want, but let me know if that is going to be the case.

So, with that in mind, I hope we can take the time to bounce some story ideas around. The end of the semester is coming quickly.

JOUR428 TEACHER SAYS: A reminder to people looking for ideas. There have been a number suggested in different Tempest threads. Some that come to mind are fluorescent bulb testing, a personal consumption diary (with extensive research), daylight saving time, why the government of Canada's climate change website is the way it is. If you are stuck, go back into the archives and read, and please everyone get working.
Snapshot taken March 16

JULIE GEFFARD says: I like the story idea about Canada's climate change website, and I'd be very interested to find out why. Has anybody started working on that yet, or can I work on it?

News roundup reminder

2007-03-14T06:30:00.000-05:00

You must post at least one item weekly in the news roundup. Pictures and links (as in Julie's post) are always appreciated. Also, if you're writing on a controversy, look for what's being said about it elsewhere. Don't forget to comment either.

Julie Geffard says: I'd ike to stress that apart from making posts look better, pictures also bring us readers through the Google image search.

Weekly News Roundup: March 13 - 20

2007-03-13T07:26:00.000-05:00

Water and Climate Change: NFB kicks off cross-country screenings

Want to see what a waterless Montreal of the future might look like? Now you can, courtesy of the NFB's CITIZENshift. In anticipation of World Water Day March 22, the NFB unveiled yesterday its online lineup of 11 films that will be screened across Canada this week to spark discussions about water privatization, pollution, and of course, global warming.

Posted by Wendy Smith

Climate Change Solutions May Be Worse than Problem

Geoengineering scientists are concerned that tinkering with air, water or sunlight to fight global warming may cause bigger problems than climate change currently presents.

An article from the Globe and Mail online talks about scientists who have been looking at solutions to fight global warming as a last resort is humans cannot reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and the situation becomes dire.

However, many are warning that some solutions may lead to bigger problems down the road. Consequently, the scientists are making any suggested solutions with a high degree of nervousness.

They say the biggest emphasis should remain on reducing carbon dioxide.

Posted by Adam Klevinas

The three W's: World's Warmest Winter

Yesterday, a U.S. report announced that this is the warmest winter on record - no surprise. Scientists attribute the rise in temperatures to greenhouse gases and El Nino. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says land and ocean temperatures were 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit above the average from December until February. The Administration began recording temperatures in 1880.

Posted by Stephanie

Harper Puts the Muzzle on Green Groups

Interest groups such as Friends of the Earth and Climate Action Network will not be allowed a sneak preview of this Monday's coming federal budget. Stephen Harper's Conservative government has taken preview privileges away from interest groups that have been critical of his stance on climate change.

Normally, interest groups get a chance to preview the budget prior to its release in order to familiarize with themselves to make knowledgeable public commentary.

Posted by Adam Klevinas

Richard Lindzen and Michael Crichton clash lecterns with concerned scientists

Earlier this week, The Rosenkranz Foundation and New York Public Radio station WNYC put on an “oxford-style” debate and subsequent vote on the motion, “Global warming is not a crisis.” Arguing the ‘for’ side were physicist Richard Lindzen, Philip Stott, a biogeographer, and author Michael Crichton.

Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists, Gavin Schmidt, a regular contributor to RealClimate.org, and climate modeler Richard Somerville disputed the motion.

The debate belongs to a series called IQ2 US, the goal of which

“is to raise the level of public discourse on our most challenging issues. To provide a new forum for intelligent discussion, grounded in facts and informed by reasoned analysis. To transcend the toxically emotional and the reflexively ideological. To encourage recognition that the opposing side has intellectually respectable views. To engage the live audience as active participants who will ask questions and decide which speakers have carried the day by voting on the motions both before and after the debate.”

National Public Radio has the podcast and video so you can decide for yourself.The results might come as a surprise.

Posted by Ryan Bergen

International climate change conference underway in Germany
The environment ministers of developed and emerging countries are meeting in Potsdam, Germany, to discuss climate change, Libération reported today. The conference, which opened yesterday, is the first to bring together the G8 countries and the biggest developing countries - including China, India, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil - on the topic of climate change.

According to Libération, the German environment minister said no agreement would likely be signed. Instead, the conference is expected to pave the way for the next international conference on climate change, which will be held in Bali in November.

The objective is to reach an agreement by 2009. The last such agreement was the Kyoto accord, which the U.S. never signed.

Together, the countries meeting in Potsdam are responsible for two thirds of all greenhouse gas emissions.

Posted by Julie Geffard

Dion Takes a Swing at Climate Change

Liberal leader Stephane Dion unleashed a plan today to fight climate change by imposing hard caps on industry.

The plan, reported on the Globe and Mail online, would have industry deposit $20 for every tonne of excess carbon dioxide it emits into a green investment account. The amount would rise to $30 per tonne by 2011.

From this green investment account, corporations would be able to withdraw money and put it toward green technology.

Although critics are saying it is very similar to the plan the Liberals had in during the last time in office, Dion says he is ready to impose the hard caps.

Further, Dion said such a scheme would benefit Alberta's oil industry. There is a caveat that requires for corporations to invest at least 80 per cent of their green savings money back into the industry's home province. The plan would force American and other foreign oil companies working out of Alberta to reinvest locally.

Posted by Adam Klevinas

The perfect solution to climate change: a man-made volcano

The Globe and Mail reports that NASA is currently producing a report analyzing the concept of placing trillions of reflectors between the sun and the earth, therefore deflecting some of the sun's rays. NASA are apparently not alone: the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research is researching the idea of a man-made volcano, which will pump massive amounts of sulphur into the atmosphere - the sulphate particles will reflect some sunlight.

Apparently, this isn't an early April Fool's joke by the Globe, and the rest of their stories today seem less indicative of the paper's deciding to rebrand itself as a daily version of The Onion. So...perhaps it's true.

Climatologist and IPCC Lead Author Stephen Schneider believes that it's evidence of the science community's desperation to find a solution to the climate crisis.

Posted by Nick Say

Global warming becomes Italian fashion

The world famous Italian brand Diesel is getting involved in global warming... and not in a bad way. While more and more public figures are talking about the effects of global warming and how to try and reduce it, Diesel takes one step further.

Their new ad campaigns show their trademark clothing, but their models are in various recognizable cities around the world, which have dramatically changed.

New York is underwater, Paris is in a jungle (seen in the picture) and China is in the desert.
The company is also promoting stopglobalwarming.org .

by Debbie Bourne

The Great Global Warming Swindle

A film aired last week on Britain's Channel 4 says it brings together a group of naysayers who have emerged to "slay the whole premise of global warming." The guy behind The Great Global Warming Swindle (click to watch on YouTube)is filmmaker Martin Durkin, who is no stranger to controversy. Hated by enviromentalists, Durkin's previous series on the environment, called Against Nature, was censured by the country's Independent Television Commission for "misleading contributors on the purpose of the programmes, and for editing four interviewees in a way that 'distorted or mispresented their known views,'" according to the Independent. Channel 4 was forced to issue an apology which has been described as "humiliating."

Here's an excerpt from the film:

"But in this film, it will be shown that the earth's climate is always changing; that there is nothing unusual about the current temperature, and that the scientific evidence does not support the notion that climate is driven by carbon dioxide, man-made or otherwise."

Posted by SH

Surprise, Surprise... Alberta is Canada's Biggest Polluter

An article in today's Globe and Mail has identified Alberta as Canada's biggest polluter. This should come as no surprise, given the massive production of the Alberta tar sands.

Alberta produced 40 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions thrown into the air by industry in 2005. Ontario came in second at 28 per cent and Saskatchewan took third place with 8 per cent.

As a result, if the federal government imposes regulation on industry, it is clear Alberta will be affected the most.

Will Mr. Harper alienate his home base and home province?

Environment minister John Baird said this morning on CBC Newsworld that he wants to see Canada as a world leader in the fight against climate change. Will he get tough on Alberta and risk alienating the Conservative stronghold?

Posted by Adam Klevinas

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Bureaucrats are becoming frustrated by measures taken by the Harper government concerning environmental policy. Sun Media reports that Environment Canada received a memo that the department responsible for making climate change policy, the Climate Change Policy Directorate, is being completely dissolved. Bureaucrats also claim that many of the climate change initiatives that Harper has announced recently are in fact measures that were already in place by the previous government. Stephane Dion says that Wednesday's $225 million pledge to protect ecologically sensitive lands is in fact something that was once called the Perre Eliot Trudeau Conservation Foundation.

Perhaps a strategy is begining to emerge as Canada's New Governement continues its efforts to redefine itself as environmentally sound.

Posted by Graham

Blair's climate change law

The Belfast Telegraph reports that British Prime Minister Tony Blair yesterday (March 13) launched a draft bill on climate change. If the bill is enacted, the U.K. will become the first country in the world with legally-binding emissions reduction targets. The legislation would therefore surpass the Kyoto Protocol, which has no power to punish nations not meeting their emissions reduction targets. However, before anyone envisages British environment secretaries and prime ministers being sent to south London's Brixton Prison for life, it should be pointed out that the punishment for environmental transgessors has yet to be clarified. The Belfast Telegraph mentions vaguely that judges can "name and shame" politicians who fail to meet targets.

The draft bill sets the following emissions reduction targets for the U.K.: by 2020, the British government will have to reduce the country's emissions by between 26 and 32 per cent; by 2050, emissions will have to be 60 per cent below their current levels.

Posted by Nick Say

Green Groups Weigh in on Québec Election

A coalition of eight ecological groups in Québec are putting pressure on provincial party leaders to add a little more green to their policy platforms.

The group says campaigning politicians are ignoring what they consider to be Québecers main priority, the environment.

While some parties, like the Parti Québecois, have tried to show signs of green, the coalition says there is a lack of political will to take action on the environment.

Posted by Adam Klevinas

Your bike is a weapon...

...in the oil wars, according to CUTV. It's putting together a series of bike repar instructional videos and looking for students willing to donate their time and skills. CUTV wants people for almost every aspect of production be it shooting, coordinating, hosting, editing and more. Sign up by e-mailing your contact info. to arf_boi at hotmail. More details here.

Posted by JOUR428 Teacher

Politics Gets in the Way of Profit

A report out yesterday by UBS Securities Canada Inc. is saying that Alberta oil sands production could have its profit margins erode as well as slowed development if the federal or provincial government imposes strict regulations to fight greenhouse gas emissions.

The province of Alberta has already mapped out its greenhouse gas reduction plans, but many fear the federal government will come down much harder. The current Alberta plan is to have industry reduce 'production of carbon dioxide by 12 per cent when measured as a percentage of their output of crude oil or electricity.' In other words, intensity targets.

The additional cost per barrel of oil would be a mere $0.18 U.S.

Many expect Stephen Harper's Conservative government to impose a 25 per cent reduction in the same manner, resulting in an additional cost of between $1.18 and $1.44 per barrel of oil.

Posted by Adam Klevinas

Conservatives Anger Enviro Group Over Name Spat

A west coast based environmental group is angry that the federal Conservative government has stolen the name 'Eco-Trust' from them and used it to brand their new environmental funding program.

In an article in this morning's Globe and Mail, Ecotrust Canada president Ian Gill is asking Stephen Harper's government for his name back. Gill says the confusion is detrimental to his group's brand.

Ecotrust Canada was founded in 1994.

Posted by Adam Klevinas

Sub-Zero Cyclists

2007-03-11T17:35:00.000-05:00

By Adam Klevinas

When the mercury dips below zero, it is hard to imagine getting on a bike for any reason.

By the time the first snowfall hits, most people’s bicycles have already been tucked away in their basement or garage for the winter, letting them collect dust over the long, cold months.

But for many cyclists, a cold, harsh winter is no excuse to stop riding. Some use their bikes to commute while other diehards find it unbearable to take their training routine indoors.

Lorenzo Caterini of Halifax is one cyclist who braves the winter on two wheels for training purposes. As a serious athlete, he rides year round to maintain form for the upcoming racing season.

Caterini can’t justify riding an indoor trainer and often switches between his road and mountain bike depending on the conditions.

In mid-February, Caterini and 12 of his training partners set out on a typical 115-kilometre training ride on a blustery Sunday morning. Aside from the sub zero temperatures, thirty kilometre per hour winds added an extra bite to the cold.

“The biggest problem is the wind and blowing snow across the roads near lakes,” said Caterini, an Aliant Digital Switch Maintenance Center employee. “There are stretches where the snow can be about 5 centimetres deep across the entire road.”

In such conditions, many cyclists would have long packed their bag for the gym or set out for the local cross-country ski trail. But for training, Caterini doesn’t think the winter is an excuse to stop riding.

“The best way for a cyclist to train is to ride outdoors,” said Caterini, “ Some people are just very serious about their training and racing.”

Caterini, like all winter cyclists, converts his bike into a machine capable of handling all weather conditions.

He takes mountain bike tires, drills holes in the rubber studs and inserts metal car studs from the inside out to keep his grip on the road and snow. He then inserts a cut-up road tire as a liner between the tube and the rim to prevent the studs from causing punctures.

Once that is complete, “you can carve up any icy surface,” according to Caterini.

Caterini also uses front and rear fenders over his tires that extend almost all the way to the ground. Aside from keeping the individual dry, it also prevents snow and slush from spraying up onto his training partners.

To keep his feet warm and dry, Caterini uses special winter cycling shoes and inserts Toasters, a heated rechargeable insole he can control with a remote.

Caterini may be an exception among his fellow winter cyclists. Most people who ride through the winter use their bike to commute.

John Burke, a civil engineering student at McGill University, is one of many cyclists who use their bike to get around Montreal throughout the year.

Burke feels his bike is a more convenient method of commuting than Montreal's public transportation system, even in the winter.

“The bus doesn’t come often enough where I live,” said Burke, 20, “Riding my bike is just easier and cheaper. I don’t have to buy a bus pass and wait around wasting my time.”

“Besides, it saves gas and is much better for the environment,” acknowledged Burke, as he locked his bike to a rack during a blizzard that left Montreal beneath thirty-five centimetres of snow.

Although much of Canada has seen very little snow this winter, big snowfalls make cycling difficult, but not impossible according to Burke.

“You absolutely can’t go fast in the snow,” said Burke, a mechanic at Martin Swiss Bicycles, a local bike shop, “You have to take turns really slow. If you want to go fast, you have to be on a long straightaway with lots of time to apply your brakes slowly.”

To bike safely in the winter, riders have to take very specific precautions.

Burke wears a downhill ski helmet with ski goggles on really snowy, cold days to protect his head and maintain visibility. But on typical days, a regular bike helmet with a balaclava underneath is sufficient.

Burke’s bike is outfitted with cyclocross tires- a tire of road width but with rubber studs like a mountain bike tire- to maintain grip on the road.

Over top of his tires, he has installed fenders to stay dry. Behind his seat, flashing red lights allow him to stay visible to cars on the busy city streets.

All winter cyclists have to take especially good care maintaining their bikes throughout the season. On warmer days, Burke hoses his bike down to remove salt from the components and applies bike grease or WD-40 to keep things running smoothly.

Like Burke, Stephen Bowman, a civil servant with the Canada Border Services Agency in Ottawa sees his bike as a cheaper, more convenient method of transportation.

Bowman, a year round cyclist, also uses his daily commute for training purposes, adding, “not polluting is a nice, secondary benefit.”

He also cautioned that riding in the winter requires extra vigilance on the cyclist’s part.

“You just have to ride with a bit more care and reduce your speeds,” said Bowman, 34.

"Fat winter bike tires and poor snow removal on Ottawa’s city streets automatically reduce speed anyway," he added.

Bowman resorts to a fixed, single gear bike, which he says helps generate more power to push through the snow and slush as a result of the lower gear ratio.

The key to fighting the cold is layers, according to Bowman. He wears a wind proof jacket, tights and polypropylene top and bottom underwear as a base layer to stay warm.

Winter cycling requires a lot of extra effort and care on the part of the cyclist. And while reasons for riding may range from commuting to training, cyclists, consciously or not, and regardless of the season, are contributing to the fight against global warming by being one less car on the road.

Aaron Derfel, 40, a journalist at the Montreal Gazette daily newspaper, realizes that by riding his bike year round on his daily commute to the office, he is contributing toward keeping the air clean.

But Derfel finds that reason a bit sanctimonious. His main reason for cycling in the winter is that he enjoys the freedom and welcomes the challenge.

Design Team Update

2007-03-08T17:37:00.000-05:00

Brendan and I have reorganized the links along the right side of the homepage. Please add to the list. We have also added a link on the left side for the weekly news roundups, it'll just make it easier to post. Feedback is welcome.

Forgive us our emissions....

2007-03-07T15:35:00.000-05:00

"As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs"

This glib couplet had a part in inspiring Martin Luther to post his 95 theses. He was fed up with the Catholic Church selling indulgences – offsetting sins with money.

A similar frustration has surfaced in our times where environmental groups are challenging the spirit behind carbon offsets that have become a booming industry in Europe. Carbon offsetting, a scheme designed to limit inevitable greenhouse gas emissions, is an industry just getting underway in Canada, but the ‘social enterprise’ designed to combat global warming is feeling a chill.

Carbon offsets are meant to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by investing in initiatives designed to capture carbon or reduce fossil fuel use. For example, air travel is a fact of modern life that creates a great deal of GHG emissions. If people or businesses can’t give up flying they can put some money toward renewable energy projects or treeplanting schemes aimed at neutralizing their carbon emissions.

Sam Chase of the British environmental activist group Rising Tide explained the problem with the practice. "[Carbon offsetting] lets us continue with our absurd high emission lifestyle, and lets politicians tell the public they are finding solutions to climate change when in fact they are sweeping the issue under the carpet," Chase told the BBC.

Nick Garrison of zerofootprint.net, a non-profit branch of a larger enterprise designed to raise the profile of sustainable commerce, believes that voluntary carbon offsetting has a role to play in Canada and he thinks this objection to offsetting is misguided - “it assumes that instead of offsetting that someone would go and change their lifestyle…. A more realistic appraisal is the choice between offsetting and doing nothing at all.”

On Tuesday a British parliamentary environmental auditing committee heard criticism of that country’s unregulated offsetting schemes.

The testimony in British parliament was followed by direct action yesterday when Rising Tide occupied the office of the Carbon Neutral Company.

Unlike in Europe where GHGs are subject to regulation, Canada has no emissions cap in place. Here, offset enterprises are just getting established and the industry is keeping a close eye on what is developing in England.

Zerofootprint focuses on reforestation in Canada. “We are in love with trees,” says Garrison. The company contracts an environmental restoration company in B.C. to replant clear cut areas, who in turn are audited by a certified forestry consultant.

It all seems of the best intentions and scrupulously managed. The problem is it may not do much good in the fight against global warming.

Last month the New York Times ran an editorial by Ken Caldeira, a scientist in the global ecology department of the Carnegie Institution. Caldeira states the problem this way:
"While preserving and restoring forests is unquestionably good for the natural environment, new scientific studies are concluding that preservation and restoration of forests outside the tropics will do little or nothing to help slow climate change. And some projects intended to slow the heating of the planet may be accelerating it instead."

Replacing deforested areas with trees in higher latitudes, in theory, would absorb more heat than would a snowy area, which reflects most solar radiation back into space.

CarbonZero, a Canadian for-profit company abandoned treeplanting as an offsetting mechanism when the studies appeared. “We want to make sure that people trust our offsets. Based on several studies we have been reading here, we simply decided there wasn’t really a scientific basis for trees scrubbing the right amount of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere,” says Howie Chong of CarbonZero.

Garrison at Zerofootprint argues that the studies questioning the effectiveness of treeplanting are not relevant to the projects they have in the temperate rainforests of coastal B.C. that do not get much snow cover.

The environmental group, the David Suzuki Foundation, does not support treeplanting as a solid offsetting practice. It says that money would be better-spent developing renewable energy sources.

CarbonZero takes the same position. “We try to focus our clients money into projects that will actually help change the energy matrix.” Chong also believes that pre-existing innovation should be rewarded. To this end CarbonZero buys offsets from an existing wind-power generating facility in Alberta that has “already cut emissions with the expectations that they could sell off emissions credits as offsets.”

Garrison insists that treeplanting is not irrelevant. “We believe that at least some of that revenue should be used to clean up the atmospheric carbon already out there, and trees are the only way to do that.”

Both Chong and Garrison agree that carbon offsetting is not an ideal approach, but has a role as the thin edge of the carbon-cutting wedge. “By putting a price on a ton of carbon people begin to realize there is another part to the bottom line. As soon as people start paying that bill they are thinking about the world differently,” says Garrison.

Chong says he doesn’t think for-profit "social enterprises" like CarbonZero or those who use such services voluntarily should be targeted by environmental groups. “We’re just starting to figure out how this works, and so some criticism is expected,…but I think people should be commended if they feel like they can spend extra money on neutralizing their emissions.”

The city behind climate change action

2007-03-07T14:33:00.000-05:00

Sikander Z. Hashmi
Tempest

Which word starts with K, has a Y and two Os, and shows up on Google over 41 million times?

Kyoto has become synonymous with climate change and global warming. In Canada, it’s also known as a dog. Her Majesty’s Official Opposition’s dog.

All this attention on Kyoto, the protocol (officially know as the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), left me wondering. What about Kyoto, the city?

Kyoto is Japan’s seventh largest city with a population of close to 1.5 million. It was supposed to be bombed (the atomic type) by the United States in World War II, but was spared because of its historical and religious significance to the Japanese and was instead replaced by Nagasaki.

In 1997, fifty-two years after Kyoto was saved from becoming known for death and destruction, Kyoto rose to the world stage as the host city for the United Nations climate change conference that led to the protocol.

I called up the City of Kyoto to find out how the rise to prominence has been received at home. I managed to get a hold of Makoto Suganuma, the International Cooperation Manager of the city’s climate change policy division.

Suganuma told me that while the city’s fame hasn’t translated into major tourist yens (although tourism is up from just under 39 million visitors in 1998 to over 42 million in 2002), Kyotans are “very proud” about the fact that their city is the birthplace of the protocol, and as such, they feel the burden of environmental responsibility.

“We often say that as the birthplace of the Kyoto protocol we must make an effort to practice the 3 Rs, reduce, recycle and reuse,” Suganuma explained. And citizens appear to be trying. The average daily garbage per resident dropped from just above 1.52 kg in 2000 to under 1.46 kg in 2001. Canadians fare better though, producing about 1.05 kg of household garbage, per person per day in 2002. SH, I am suspicious of these garbage figures, can we get a link? ab

In April 2005, Kyoto became the first city in Japan to enact a local global warming countermeasure plan. The goal is to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the city.

Suganuma cites the city’s biodiesel project as an example of measures taken by the city to battle global warming. 220 Kyoto garbage trucks and 95 city buses are powered by biodiesel made from recycled cooking oil. Tempura, made by frying shrimp, vegetables, and other foods in cooking oil, is popular in Japan and getting rid of all that cooking oil can be an issue. Pouring it down the drain creates a burden for sewage processing plants, so the city has set up around 1,000 collection points for used cooking oil. Residents drop off the oil, which is then refined at a fuel conversion plant. The city estimates the project is putting a dent in carbon dioxide emissions by the tune of approximately 4,000 tons annually.

Kyoto has also come up with a neat way of encouraging the use of solar energy. The city’s residential garbage incineration facilities use the heat they create to generate electricity, which is sold to electric power companies. The income: about $4 million US (plz double check this number - ed) per year, part of which is used to encourage the installation of solar electric generation systems in residential homes.

In an attempt to champion the cause on a global level, Kyoto mayor Masumoto Yorikane formed the World Mayors Council on Climate Change. The group’s first meeting, in December 2005, was held in Montreal. The second meeting was held last month in Kyoto, which Mayors Gérald Tremblay and David Miller, of Montreal and Toronto respectively, attended.

With all this activity in Kyoto, I asked Suganuma if Kyoto saw itself as a climate change action leader in Japan and Asia.

“Well, I hope so,” he replied, “but there are many, many opinions...so I am not sure about that.”

Reducing Montreal's transport emissions

2007-03-07T10:58:00.000-05:00

By Nick Say

Montreal cycling enthusiast Marek Potapowicz feels that Canada and the U.S. have an unhealthy obsession with the automobile, and that it’s an addiction the two countries’ citizens need to quit by using public transport and – yes – the humble bicycle.

“In North America, what we have is a car-oriented society,” says Potapowicz, one of the mechanics at Right To Move, a Montreal organization that teaches cyclists how to repair their own bikes.

Potapowicz admits to being frustrated when he sees cars carrying just one person – the driver: “It blows my mind – I find it so selfish of them. They’re not even thinking about what they’re doing,” he says.

The 27-year-old urban planning student first began thinking about what he was doing ten years ago. Concerned by climate change, Potapowicz chose to travel as much as possible by bike, a form of transport with zero greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2003, transport in Quebec produced more greenhouse gas emissions than any other sector, accounting for over 37 per cent of the province’s emissions. Transports Québec indicates that emissions produced by this sector have increased by nearly 20 per cent since 1990.

Transports Québec has predicted that transportation could account for 45 per cent of total emissions in the province by 2021 if nothing is done.

The City of Montreal is currently trying to reduce emissions associated with transportation.

“Climate change is an issue we take very seriously,” says Alan DeSousa, City of Montreal Executive Committee Member for Sustainable Development.

DeSousa was behind Montreal’s Sustainable Development Plan, launched in April 2006. The plan called for the extension of the city’s cycling paths by 14 k.m. and the installation of 448 new bicycle parking spaces.

In 2005, the City started a programme to fine drivers who leave their cars idling. Sixteen out of 19 boroughs have adopted the scheme.

DeSousa points to Montreal’s Pedestrian Charter, launched last year, as evidence of the City’s greener approach to transport. The Charter indicates that Montreal’s development used to be based on the needs of the car, but that development now needs to focus on the requirements of pedestrians.

In April, the City will launch its new Transport Plan. Although the details of the plan have yet to be released, DeSousa indicates that the City will expand the public transport system: “We’re looking into alternative forms of public transport – trolley buses and trams,” he says.

DeSousa does admit that there is one serious limitation on the City's plans - money: “At the present time there’s the problem of funding,” he says.

Environmental organization Équiterre’s transport spokesperson, Marilène Bergeron, acknowledges the constraints the City faces: “They’re dependent financially on the provincial government, and they have a really limited amount of money to expand the public transport system,” she says. Bergeron points out that the Société de Transport de Montreal is currently running a deficit.

With a provincial election looming, Bergeron advises Montrealers concerned about transport’s impact on the environment to vote for political parties willing to invest in the city’s public transport network.

Aside from the responsibilities of elected officials, Bergeron feels that Montrealers have their own responsibility to look at how they’re traveling: “Everyone needs to rethink their transport habits,” she says.

Équiterre’s Transport Cocktail campaign, launched in 2003, encourages citizens to do just that. It aims to make Montrealers less dependent on cars, encouraging them to use other forms of transport.

“We can travel with a combination of bicycles, the metro and walking, instead of just driving everywhere,” says Bergeron.

For those Montrealers whose public transport options are limited – she points to residents of the West Island and east Montreal – Bergeron advises that they take a responsible approach to driving and cars in general. “People can share cars to get to work. Also, if they’re buying a car, they need to think about their choice of vehicle – some people buy cars that are much bigger than they need,” she says.

Bergeron also suggests that Montrealers who only need a car occasionally should join car-share schemes like Communauto, rather than investing in their own vehicle.

Marilène Bergeron practices what she preaches: although she has a driving licence, she doesn't own a car, and, like Marek Poptapowicz, even in winter, she gets around the city by two forms of transport that produce no greenhouse gas emissions - cycling and walking.

Concentrating on Solar Power

2007-03-06T22:51:00.000-05:00

By Stephanie Tsirgiotis

The sun’s ultraviolet rays can do damage to your skin, but wonders for the environment. The idea behind solar power dates back to the 7th century; making one wonder why more research and funds haven’t been pumped into the technology. But according to Concordia University professor Dr. Andreas Athienitis, concentrating solar power (CSP) is easier said than done.

“Concentrated solar power is not very popular these days,” he says. “It’s expensive, but it’s more cost effective in the long run.”

Even though Canada has a limited amount of solar energy power plants, Athienitis thinks that this will change over the next five years. Menova Energy Inc., a Canadian owned and operated company based out of Ottawa, is making strides in the development of concentrated solar power stations. Menova says that they’re “committed to providing affordable energy solutions for the industrial, commercial and institutional markets.” The company has invented a new CSP technology known as the Power-Spar® system designed to work in both hot and cold climates and it's also engineered to perform under the most extreme weather conditions.

A similar idea was sought out last year at a solar plant in Boulder City, Nevada. In 2006, Nevada Solar One was built across 350 square acres of land and it’s scheduled to begin producing electricity this month. Nevada Solar One hopes to help the American Southwest meet its energy demands and it's one of the largest CSP systems in the United States.

Interestingly, solar electricity has the highest power density among renewable energies, making it the most cost-effective. Having a high power density means that it can store more energy over longer periods of time. Theoretically, covering only 9% of Nevada with a solar power system can generate enough electricity for all of the U.S.

In effect, the idea behind concentrated solar power is quite simple. CSP plants create electricity by altering the sun’s energy into heat by using mirrors. The power plants are broken into two parts; one collects solar energy and converts it into heat and the other changes heat energy into electricity.

Athienitis says that you can produce solar energy in a number of ways. The most developed CSP technology is the trough system – the same technology used at Nevada Solar One. The trough system concentrates energy along a single axis – making it the strongest form of CSP. Concentrated solar power can be used for businesses and for personal homes. Currently, CSP plants are able to produce enough energy to accommodate big businesses and consumers. Presently, if home owners want their houses to be powered by solar concentration they have to invest in personal solar technology systems. If Canada decides to increase the number of solar powered systems, home owners would be able to buy energy along the same lines as buying electricity from Hydro-Quebec.

“There has been a lot of research done recently,” says Athienitis. “There have been a lot of little advances, but when put together they make a big difference.”

Athienitis thinks that there will be major advancements in the technology behind CSP in the near future and countries like Japan and Germany are at the forefront. As of 2004, Japan had already installed 1200 MWe, also known as megawatts. To put it into perspective, a single lightbulb has 150 watts and one megawatt makes up one million watts.

Even places like Alaska, where certain regions cope with two months of complete darkness, can use concentrated solar power. Athienitis says that energy can in fact be stored.

“Places like Alaska can take energy from other states [who receive direct sunlight],” he says. “California is really looking into this technology.”

However, in order to create enough energy for an entire country a large number of mirrors and transmission lines need to be purchased. Inevitably, this increases the cost of the technology and requires a large piece of land. But, operating costs are extremely low compared to existing technologies. In fact, CSP facilities can operate with little maintenance. Athienitis says that solar power is more economically viable in comparison to current fossil fuel technologies.

Another bonus, is that CSP plants use the same technology and equipment as conventional fossil fuel plants. Therefore, converting a power plant into a solar plant should be straightforward and changing the sun’s rays into energy is easier than turning fossil fuels into electricity. Simplicity aside, CSP is also better for the environment, plus the sun will never run out. In fact, the amount of solar energy used by the Earth every minute is more than the amount of energy used by the entire world in fossil fuels each year.

In the end, CSP is more cost-effective and environmentally-friendly. With gas ranking at 110.4/liter, CSP should definitely be on the federal government’s priority list. After all, solar energy is the most abundant energy resource in Canada.

What happened to the hole?

2007-03-06T20:38:00.000-05:00

By Julie Geffard

Readers of the French newspaper Libération might have been taken aback when they came upon this headline in the paper’s Environment section last October:

Antarctica: Ozone Hole Reaches Record Size

It is safe to assume that most readers hadn’t heard one word about the hole in the ozone layer in years. Throughout the nineties, the hole was all over the news. It threatened us with skin cancer. Children were not to be sent out to play between two and five in the afternoon. You had to cover yourself with total sunscreen from head to toe at all times, and keep a watchful eye out for suspicious moles.

The media had taken a long time to pick up on the issue. Ozone depletion had first been discovered in the 1970s, but it wasn’t until the hole over the Antarctic was discovered in 1985, forcing countries around the world to take concerted action, that the media began to take notice.

The Antarctic hole in Sept. 2000.
Photo: Nasa.

A quick research in the databases of the Montreal Gazette, the Globe & Mail, the New York Times and La Presse shows that ozone coverage for these publications first peaked in 1989, when the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer came into force for its 47 signatory states. It peaked a second time in 1992, when the Montreal Protocol was reinforced, the ozone level in the stratosphere reached a record low, and Canada developed its now familiar UV Index.

The ozone hole was the issue du jour until the mid-nineties. It was all downhill from there. Yet, the hole has continued breaking records, like it did last October.

Evolution of the Antarctic hole throughout 2006. Animation: Nasa.

So how come Libération, a major national paper, decided that all this deserved was 64 words?

“You know what the ozone layer issue was? It was easily fixed,” says David Sachsman, a George R. West Jr. Chair of Excellence in Communication and Public Affairs at the University of Tennesse in Chattanooga. Sachsman researched the role of the mass media in relation to environmental issues to great extent. “There was no determined lobby against fixing the ozone layer. There was no economic interest in ignoring the ozone layer,” he says.

Sachsman admits he’s not a scientist and can’t tell if the problem was, in fact, fixed. But Michel Bourqui, an assistant professor in McGill’s Departments of Chemistry and Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, confirms that the ozone depletion problem has, for the most part, been fixed. He says this is “regarded as an excellent result” considering it took only 15 years to get there. “The Montreal Protocol was a very quick response,” he says.

How CFCs destroy the ozone layer. (Click for larger view)
Source: Geocities.

The hole is still growing because CFCs, the chemical compounds responsible for ozone depletion, are inert and insoluble, Bourqui says. This stability explains why CFCs were so popular for making aerosols, refrigerants, and foams for some 50 years. It also explains why, after 15 years of efficient action, after more than 120 countries signed the Montreal Protocol, these compounds are still lingering in the stratosphere, still destroying the ozone and widening the hole over the Antarctic every winter.

Having now reached a plateau, the amount of CFCs can only decrease, along with the hole.

Which might be why we’re not hearing about it.

“When you get close to a solution, the media don’t want to cover what’s being done in any detail. People don’t care,” says Shelly Ungar, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto. He explains that people tend to get interested in issues that represent a threat. When the threat fades away, watch them look elsewhere. There are also what pundits call “issue attention cycles”. Ungar quotes an expression that compares issues to white bread. “It’s only good for a couple of days, and then it gets stale,” he says.

Another, perhaps crucial question follows: is global warming going to get stale, too?

Like Sachsman, Ungar is one of few researchers to have extensively studied media coverage on both environmental issues. In a paper he presented for the 2000 Climate Change Communication Conference, Ungar recalled previous findings he had made. “The greater public understanding and response to ozone depletion requires explanation,” he wrote. “One obvious explanatory candidate – the amount of media coverage – is not decisive here. In direct contrast with the agenda-setting hypothesis, data reviewed by Ungar [in a 1998 paper] reveal that over the peak of their overlapping issue attention cycles (1987-1991), climate change secured significantly more media stories, Congressional hearings, and public statements by prominent scientists and scientific organizations than did the ozone problem.”

Rays penetrating a shield: an easy concept to understand. (Click for larger view)
Illustration: Environment Canada.

In the same paper, he explained that one particular reason the hole had benefited from extensive coverage was that the public was culturally accustomed to the science behind ozone layer depletion. “The idea of rays penetrating a damaged “shield” meshes nicely with abiding and resonant cultural motifs, including ‘Hollywood affinities’ ranging from the shields on the Starship Enterprise to Star Wars,” he wrote. Ungar also compares it to a hole in an umbrella. If you walk down a street and it’s pouring rain, you’re going to get soaked.

Climate change, on the other hand, doesn’t support such analogies. Not only does a greenhouse brings up pleasant imagery, Ungar explains, but the greenhouse effect is also something we need, whereas a hole is clearly a problem.

Considering the most recent conclusions drawn by the IPCC in its last report, the absence of an easily identifiable model with which to gauge the issue of climate change could lead to an unfortunate apathy in the public.

Today though, climate change as a media concern is still alive and well. There’s even been a surge of renewed interest in the past couple of years. Sachsman says that George Bush’s denial that climate change exists actually increased the issue’s media coverage, since the phenomenon’s existence was not controversial before. For Ungar, Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth probably helped too, as well as a surge of “strange weather” in recent times.

Even though, he underlines, scientists don’t believe that there’s a link between these events and climate change.

Whether or not this interest is going to be sustained remains to be seen.

******************************************

Evolution of the Antarctic hole: Current predictions

2015 The hole has shrunk by 1 million m² out of 25 million m².

2024 "Detectable and statistically significant recovery" occurs.

2060 Ozone levels are back to their 1980s levels.

Weekly news roundup (March 5th to 11th)

2007-03-05T13:16:00.000-05:00

Iraq, Iran and now...climate change?

The Times reports that after dragging supposed rogue nations in front of the U.N. Security Council, Britain now wants to do the same with the rogue state of the climate. Britain will take control of the Presidency of the New York-based Security Council next month.

For an issue to be brought before the council, it must represent a serious threat to global peace and security. Britain's case was bolstered by comments made recently by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. “The danger posed by war to all of humanity, and to our planet, is at least matched by the climate crisis and global warming,” said Ban in a speech to school children earlier this week.

For an issue to be discussed by the council, all 15 of the Security Council's permanent and non-permanent members must be in agreement. At present, unsurprisingly, permanent council members China and the U.S. are voicing skepticism about Britain's proposal.

If the Security Council does agree to discuss climate change, it will not be the first time it has dealt with an issue rather than a country. In 2000, the Security Council looked at AIDS, as a result of a U.S. proposal.

Posted by Nick Say

Carbon Capture Technology Encouraged

A recent suggestion by a University of Calgary Professor says Ottawa needs to sink more money into carbon capture technology. David Keith, in a Globe and Mail online article, suggested the measures Ottawa and the Alberta government have recently announced are inadequate. He says the problem far outweighs the magnitude of the action.

Posted by Adam Klevinas

Drought, Starvation and Disease: The Impact of Climate Change

The Globe and Mail is reporting a preview to the second of four releases by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that asserts that drought, starvation and disease will be a result of climate change. Although these consequences are over the long term (some will only be seen around 2050 and as late as 2080), the report does indicate that there is still time to act.

The report is set to be released in April in Brussels in early April, but a draft was obtained by the Associated Press. Although this is just a draft, it has been said that little content will change by the time the report is officially issued.

Posted by Adam Klevinas

What Would Jesus Drive?

A Toyota Prius, of course. Well, we don't know that for sure, but evangelical minister and environmental gladiator Jim Ball has posed that question to the American people. (It is in fact Ball that drives the Prius, with a big green sticker on the side that reads, 'What would Jesus drive?')

Ball preaches about the environment from his position as the executive director of the Evangelical Environmental Network. He has been meeting with fellow pastors, climate scientists and corporate executives who share his faith for the past seven years to talk about efforts to reduce pollution.
This recent New York Times article talks about the effort Ball and his wife are making to get the climate change message out of their environmental pulpit.

Posted by Adam Klevinas (originally on Friday March 9, 2007, and again on Sunday March 11, 2007)

JOUR28 Teacher adds: I've hear people say Jesus would likely drive a pickup truck given that he ws a carpenter and all that. He'd have stuff to transport and also what if the apostles were joining him?

Washington changes time

For the first time ever, Washington has decided to change Standard Time into Daylight Time three weeks earlier in order to help conserve energy. But Canadian analysts say any savings will only be marginal. Either way, time sprung forward one hour at 2 a-m local time overnight. Standard Time returns November 4th - one week later than it used to.

Posted by Stephanie

Environmentalists reward automaker for first French SUVs

The 2005 Palme Tuvalu went to German automaker Volkswagen.

French environmentalists Agir pour l’environnement and Réseau Action Climat have awarded their Palme d’Or 2007 du Prix Tuvalu to French automaker PSA for the expected release of the first two made-in-France SUVs, Libération reports. One of the vehicle, the 4007, will release 250g of carbon per km. That’s twice the limit the European commission is expected to impose on recreational vehicles by 2012.

Nota: For non-French speakers, a palme in French can be this, this, and that.

Posted by Julie Geffard

Global warming: a nightmare forced onto children?

Remember when we thought that children would only speak the truth? What if the truth was now being forced onto them by their own schools?

In an article published today by Canada Free Press, Tom DeWeese mentions receiving a letter from an Elementary school student asking him why he does not believe in global warming.

It now seems that global warming is not only affecting our generation, but it may also affect future generations in more ways then we originally thought.

Posted by Debbie

Climate Change Tops EU's Agenda

European Union leaders introduced a new climate change strategy today. The target aims at cutting CO2 and other greenhouse gases by 20% before 2020. Germany - which currently holds the EU presidency - is also pushing for renewable energy sources, like solar and wind. Surprisingly, 14 out of 27 countries oppose this binding target. The debate will be reopened tomorrow.

By Stephanie

CEOs take on GHGs

Shove over environmentalists, thinktanks, and politicians, Canada’s captains of industry are cutting through the b.s., and taking on climate change themselves. Earlier this week this country’s chief executive officers announced a task force to develop a strategy (are you still with me) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, spur innovation and keep making money.

Yes, many of the CEOs involved are from the oil and gas industry, but ex-Environment Minister David Anderson says we shouldn't dismiss them out of hand.

Posted by Ryan Bergen

Capitalism to the rescue

The New York Times reports that investors are now seeing alternative energy as a potential goldmine, reminiscent of dot-com boom of a decade ago. According to one energy consultant, investments into alternative energy have now reached the "critical mass" that will allow these technologies to be developed to their full potential. And from algae to waves to landfills, there is no shortage of potential sources for green fuel.

posted by Graham

Hello everyone,

As discussed in class, we will now try to keep all our blog posts (reviews) in one weekly roundup post. To access the post, please use the jour428 student profile. Password details can be found in the posts section of the blog.

I (jour428 teacher) will start:

Fluorescent bulbs burn bright

The Globe has a good article on the new energy-saving fluorescent bulbs this morning. I have to admit, as someone who has become more light-sensitive in recent years, that the concept scares me. Has anyone tried the new bulbs and want to tell us about the light quality?

Livestock worse than cars?!

I (jour428 teacher) can't help but feel there must be something wrong with these stats from the UN's Food and Agriculture organization:

According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 percent – than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation.

The Carbon Tax: Revisited

2007-03-01T17:15:00.000-05:00

The carbon tax is back in the minds of parliamentarians.

Opposition MPs from the NDP and Liberals are considering making a major shift in their environmental platform to make room for a controversial carbon tax. Neither party has officially endorsed the tax.

(Update: March 2, 2007. Today, Stephane Dion's Liberals said they will be revising their platform over the next two weeks. Dion admitted yesterday, after an exchange in the House of Commons with Conservative environment minister John Baird, that he is seriously considering a carbon tax as part of his plan to fight greenhouse gas emissions.)

The proposal to implement a carbon tax would amount to roughly $20-billion dollars in revenue to help Canada reach its Kyoto targets.

Included in the tax would be a $0.10 increase per litre of gas to help offset a tax credit for consumers who purchase hybrid cars.

A carbon tax would be a significant shift from Liberal leader Stephane Dion's position during his days as environment minister. It could, however, cause a divide in the Liberal party as failed leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff supports a carbon tax.

Current environment minister John Baird has adamantly refused to implement a carbon tax, saying it would cause economic ruin in Canada.

Friends of Earth Canada, an environmental group, is encouraging that the tax be implemented. The group says it would only cost Canadians $25 per week, or, to steal their analogy, the price of a large pizza each week.

Consumers would also be charged extra for products and practices that contribute toward greenhouse gas emissions.

The key to the carbon tax is that corporations who pay into it will have the money credited right back to them if they use the funds toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Lower income citizens would not bear the same tax burden as those with higher incomes.

The carbon tax is a scary concept for any political party. On the one hand, the Conservatives don't want to risk the slight lead they have taken on the Liberals in recent polls.

The Liberals, on the other hand, don't want that gap to increase nor do they want to appear unfavourable to the Canadian electorate if a spring election was called.

Canadian citizens are likely to look upon a carbon tax negatively. Most Canadians applaud tax cuts when governments release budgets, regardless if they are aware of the true consequences.

Greening the campaign -- literally

2007-02-28T13:57:00.000-05:00

The Liberal election posters in my riding (and I'm sure others) were up soon after the provincial election call. But I just noticed the first PQ signs on Monday.

The thing that stood out for me were the colours. I always thought the Liberals and the PQ (and the ADQ) all had the same colours. (What a colour-challenged society we live in!) But lo and behold, there's been a change and that's what I noticed on the PQ signs.

Now it seems this:

has become:

And the PQ posters feature even more green. But that's not the only part flashing green this election. There are the really green greens.

In fact, the Quebec Greens say the PQ is stealing their ideas, but that's fine. They're proud of it.

"The fact that the PQ is also using the colour green on their signs is of no concern to [party leader] McKay, who said he is proud the PQ is stealing his party’s ideas." - The Gazette, Feb, 22, 2007

But do the colours really make a difference? Do voters think the PQ is more serious about the environment (than the others) because they have green in their posters? I don't.

Ask not what you can do for Al Gore, ask what Al Gore can do for you

2007-02-28T13:28:00.000-05:00

First Suzuki, now Gore, caught red handed emitting unnecessarily large quantities of greenhouse gases.

Common sense tells me that the ultra-wealthy probably consume more, pollute more and emit more greenhouse gases than the rest of us, and that it's not just from transportation in order to make speeches to inspire the rest of us to reduce our emissions.

The current justification by these high-profile/high-emission environmentalists is that they offset their carbon by buying green credits. Maybe those green credits will swallow some that carbon, but if the problem is as out of control as these people suggest, if the bathtub is truly about to overflow, wouldn't it make sense for them to cut their emissions and buy green credits anyway?

The problem with the buying green credits justification is that, when money is not an option, (and for Al Gore and many others, it's not,) then buying those credits doesn't amount to a sacrifice. So asking others to make real sacrifices that amount to using less energy is the equivalent of a wealthy person who shops at Ogilvy's telling a less wealthy person who shops at Walmart to find other alternatives because of Walmart's questionable labor policies.

I think that we have to listen to people's ideas about how we can make the world a better place without getting all dolly-eyed in admiration for the person delivering the message. Otherwise, we're devastated when we find out that, despite the person's dedication to a noble cause, their success is no accident and it comes with all the perks and luxuries of being rich and famous.

Greenpeace storms into coal mine

2007-02-28T13:26:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, the Greenpeace climate rescue team in Auckland, New Zealand, stormed into the Huntly coal-fired power plant - one of the largest climate polluters in New Zealand.

Protesters say that New Zealand has ignored warnings about climate change for 20 years - and they've had enough.

After the IPCC report was released last month, the team decided to take matters into their own hands. They believe that they can still control the worst effects of climate change but it will require an international effort. They're trying to pressure countries like New Zealand to lead the way towards cleaner sources of energy.

On a side note, the Greenpeace climate rescue team has also released a report called New Zealand Energy Revolution: How to prevent climate chaos. The report examines how New Zealand can restructure its energy system by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

There has not been an update since yesterday.

Mud and Gore - The Oscar party ends badly

2007-02-28T13:15:00.000-05:00

The dewy-eyed tributes at this year’s Academy Awards to Al Gore and his inconvenient truthtelling, it seems, has piqued one conservative think-tank into taking the man to task for his own energy-consumption habits.

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research bills itself as “an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization committed to achieving a freer, more prosperous Tennessee through free market policy solutions” so, it’s safe to say that the center is not keen on regulators finding the political will Gore says is necessary to act against global warming. Nevertheless, the questions it raises seem reasonable.

Gore’s people responded to the think-tank’s press release that quickly got picked up by the media.

Now the Economist has joined the fun, and offered its commentary on Gore’s defense.

And you, what do you think?

An Inconvenient Truth: free copies cont'd

2007-02-28T13:11:00.000-05:00

Germany's decision to send free copies of An Inconvenient Truth to 6 000 German schools wasn't the first of its kind. It turns out the British government had announced its intention to do exactly that a few days before. Scottish children will also see the movie, although, this time, the initiative is financed by Scottish Executive and ScottishPower, an energy giant that's involved in several clean-energy projects and also "owns the massive coal-fired Longannet station."

As for American science teachers, they had to ask for their free copies themselves after their association rejected an offer by the movie's producers.

By the way, if you live in Quebec and still haven't seen An Inconvenient Truth, now's the time to do it: The movie is available free of charge at Superclub Viedotron rental stores accross the province.

Spring forward forward

2007-02-27T19:31:00.000-05:00

With all the talks about spring and global warming, it seems people forgot about our clocks changing. But this time, it may be sooner then we thought.

It has been warmer then usual everywhere around the world, but in the United States, citizens will be allowed to enjoy more sunlight earlier. In 2005, the US passed the Energy Policy Act which will take effect this year. More precisely, on March 11. This law was passed hoping it would translate into more energy savings for the country.

There may be some technical difficulties with our computers as the service is set to change time on the first sunday of April... not mid-March. However several technical engineers have explained a way to avoid headaches with the system.

Playing the Numbers

2007-02-27T16:08:00.000-05:00

Stephen Harper's Conservative government has come under fire for their plans to deal with climate change.

Former Environment Commissioner Johanne Gélinas has accused the Conservatives of not taking any solid action after her damning report last September. She says the Conservative promise to come up with a 'Made in Canada' plan has failed to produce anything meaningful.

In fact, critics, including Gélinas, are accusing the Conservatives of taking the old plan proposed by the previous Liberal government, manipulating the numbers and trying to convince the Canadian electorate that the new plan is better.

The main issue arising once again is intensity targets. In the old Liberal plan, intensity based targets also existed but this time around, the Conservatives are using a different set of numbers. The Conservatives appear to be using the year 2000 as their baseline to implement intensity targets instead of the 1990 baseline the Liberals used in their plan and under which they signed onto the Kyoto accord.

In terms of reducing overall emissions, the Conservatives have even gone as far as using the year 2003 as their baseline to reduce emissions by 45 to 65 per cent by the year 2050.

So, what does this all mean? Well, for one, Canada will never get close to achieving its Kyoto targets. What is even worse is that by using a later year as the base number combined with the adverse overall effect of intensity targets, emissions will continue to rise. The only thing that can be accomplished from intensity based targets is that emissions won't rise as fast as they had been.

Further, the Conservative plan for intensity based targets wouldn't start until 2010, giving the oil industry plenty of time to increase emissions even higher.

This may or may not be good news for the oil sands workers in Fort McMurray, Alberta. The mayor of Regional Municipality of Buffalo Wood which includes Fort McMurray is worried about the environmental and developmental consequences of continuing, unbridled development in the oil rich tar sands.

Mayor Melissa Blake is concerned that the intended $100-billion development will negatively impact the area's inhabitants, let alone the environmental impact.

After yesterday's announcement to increase funding to the area by $396 million, Blake considers it a step in the right direction, but still recognizes the need to put 'the brakes on the boom.'

Not only has the development of Alberta's tar sands caused environmental havoc, it has also worried some residents of the area that they will be physically displaced from their homes.

The question remains, which side will Minister Harper step in to save if push comes to shove?

The future of newspapers

2007-02-27T11:27:00.000-05:00

Please read Get Me Rewrite! and this critique of on-line book reviewing for tomorrow.

Definitely worth a click

2007-02-25T11:42:00.000-05:00

"Reading" Week is winding down, but if you're just DYING to cram even more literature into your schedule during these twilight hours, may I suggest the Journal of Environmental Health Perspectives.

Don't let the rather sombre title put you off. It's chock full of long, breezily-written features with glossy photos.

And, yes, there's even a special climate change section.

Here's a feature on biodiesel from the February '07 issue.

And here's a really interesting look at how Africa stands to lose the most from climate change, despite the fact that it contributes just four per cent of the world's total carbon dioxide emissions (as opposed to the U.S.' 23 per cent.)

Here's one on how tiny island nations are coping with changing climate, and, for something a little closer to home, a feature about the Great Lakes that includes a few grafs on how climate change is affecting the region.

And finally, a primer on some of the nasty health effects of climate change. It's a bit dated (May 1994) but perhaps some of the worrying implications it outlines are worth revisiting, especially given recent events.

Goldenberg's flap

2007-02-23T10:30:00.000-05:00

Ottawa is all a-titter after Eddie Goldenberg, former policy advisor to Jean Chretien, admitted yesterday that Chretien signed onto Kyoto while knowing full well Canada wouldn't be able to meet the targets.

Of course, the Conservatives are lapping it up. As for the Liberals, they're quick to point out that Goldenberg now shills for TransCanada Pipelines and thus has ulterior motives in making those kinds of statements.

Whatever your opinion of Goldenberg, I think this was the most telling and honest comment to emerge from all the hyperbole:
"It might be easy political rhetoric but it ignores one fundamental reality, namely that Canada for a long time to come will need oil sands production and lots of it. Our economy and our standard of living depend on it."

This speaks directly to the crux of what is happening in Fort Mac right now. And it's something we need to address in our coverage of climate change.

How much are people going to care, really, about something as incremental and not as directly tangible in their everyday lives as global warming, when their daily reality is that they need jobs to be able to put food on the table for their kids and the economic productivity of the oil boom has such an immediate and tangible payoff? (Of course Fort McMurray comes with a long list of other, more immediate environmental problems - but even then the magnetic lure of sky-high prosperity is hard for a lot of people to resist.)

Something to keep in mind, anyway.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

2007-02-21T18:42:00.000-05:00

European Union ministers are proposing to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent if other major countries come on board.
The EU is calling on the United States and other G8 members (hey, that includes you Canada!) to match their 30 per cent target.

The EU move to cut emissions by 30 percent by 2020 comes after a pledge was already made to cut emission levels by 20 per cent. Germany, the most powerful EU economy, is wiling to go further after already passing a 40 per cent cut in their legislature.

While the EU ministers have met resistance from countries like Finland, Poland and Hungary, they are looking to an upcoming G8 meeting to encourage China and India, two of the world's fastest growing economies to make significant efforts. They are also two of the biggest polluters.

Will Canada jump on board? Don't hold your breath.

There are others like us!

2007-02-21T17:26:00.000-05:00

I was going to simply add this to the list of Important Links at right, but I think it merits its own post.

EJ Magazine is [EDIT: one of the few] student-produced magazines about environmental issues in the U.S. That's right - the reporters are undergrads and grad students like ourselves. They're studying at the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University.

Take a look. What do you think? What do you like/not like about the reporting? What do they do that we can do better?

I particularly enjoyed this feature on renewable energy for churches.

Flogging Eric the Red's dead horse

2007-02-21T09:33:00.000-05:00

Today in the Wall Street Journal's "Opinion Journal," former Delaware Governor and current policy strategist Pete du Pont used the good old "Vikings in Greenland" gambit to do his part in steering American policy away from international agreements that would "shut down our industries and power plants, and limit our economic growth."

Du Pont works for the National Center for Policy Analysis based in Texas, a think tank that, according to sourcewatch.org, is funded in part by ExxonMobil.

But playing the Exxon card feels like the green knee-jerk equivalent of the medieval warming period.

The writers at "Tempest" can do, and have done, better than that.

We have already had our turn with the medieval warming period and its proponent cited by du Pont, Lord Christopher Monckton.

Du Pont says "while global temperatures are now slightly up, in some areas they are dramatically down," citing research conducted by his NCPA. Unfortunately, at the bottom of the page there is no helpful table to quantify his adjectives like the diligent folks at the IPCC.

With this laxness as the model it is safe to say that du Pont is being relatively disingenuous when he respects the authority of the IPCC's more modest revised predictions about sea-level rise, but ignores completely a central conclusion in the IPCC's fourth assessment report - "Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very
likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations."

In his column du Pont also refers to the work of Bjorn Lomborg, "an environmental scholar," whose stance on climate change policy is much clearer than his scientific credentials.

For some perspective, the Wall Street Journal is notorious/courageous for its enduring rejection of the theory of anthropogenic global warming.

A postcard from Montreal

2007-02-21T09:27:00.001-05:00

Dear JOUR 428 class,

As I know some of you were lucky enough to escape to warmer, sexier, tan-friendly destinations for this week of spring break, I am writing this postcard from Montreal to bring you up to speed on developments here on the home front so that you won't be too disoriented upon your return to civilization.

Big news of the day - the province is waiting with bated breath for this morning's anticipated election call. CJAD's top story a few moments ago was about the campaign signs that are already cropping up on telephone poles and front lawns around the city.

Also, Finance Minister Michel Audet gave reporters a glimpse of the pre-election goodie bag last night.

Inside the bag - a lot of hot air. Literally. The provincial Liberals are promising to devote $6 billion to renewable energy initiatives - particularly wind power - if re-elected. Their goal is to become the North American leader in wind power development, according to Premier Jean Charest.

They're also promising $1.2 billion over six years to fight climate change ($350 million of which is supposed to come from Ottawa, but that'll only become a reality once federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty tables the federal budget March 19 - a week before the Quebec election.)

Finally, they're pledging to increase the tax credit refund on the purchase or lease of a hybrid car, to the tune of $2,000 from $1,000.

Having a wonderful time. Wish you were here. It's minus eight degrees Celsius!!!! Positively balmy. I think I'll fix myself one of those alcoholic mini-parfaits, the kind with a little parasol. I need it after seeing the front page of this morning's Gazette. Am I the only one who thinks the words "Charest" and "dangles" should never be in the same sentence, ever?

See you all soon,
Wendy

Quebec environmentalist blasts Harper, Baird

2007-02-20T15:48:00.000-05:00

By Nick Say

A Strategic Counsel survey reveals that the Conservatives would win a federal election if one were held today. The poll’s findings would undoubtedly fill Claude Martel, the Sierra Club’s Quebec Director, with a profound sense of gloom.

Climate change is one of the central concerns of the Quebec Chapter of the environmental group, and Martel feels that the Harper government has ignored the issue since assuming power in January 2006.

“I don’t think this government is of good faith – I think it’s wrapping itself in the green flag and it’s being dishonest about that,” says Martel.

Martel points to the Clean Air Act, tabled last October, as evidence that the Harper government is not serious about global warming: “It’s hot air. They’re closing the door on Kyoto and taking a step backwards,” he says.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, ratified by Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government in 2002, Canada agreed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by six per cent below 1990 levels by 2008 – 2012. By contrast, the Clean Air Act, which has yet to be approved by Parliament, would place no hard caps on emissions until at least 2020.

The Clean Air Act was introduced when Rona Ambrose was Environment Minister. Ambrose lost the Environment portfolio in January. Martel is not impressed by her replacement, John Baird: “I think John Baird is the Homer Simpson of environment ministers. The Conservatives have chosen a partisan, combative minister – it’s not the right signal to send,” he says.

Martel refers to recent cuts the federal government has made to the B.C. Chapter of the Sierra Club’s Climate Change Education Program, which informs school children in the province about global warming. Martel recounts that John Baird told the B.C. environmental group that its school program would no longer receive financial support.

While Martel is highly critical of the Conservatives, he is less pessimistic when he considers the opposition parties’ approach to global warming: “I think that [Liberal leader] Stéphane Dion has a good command of the issue, and I think the N.D.P. has always shown a good understanding of climate change,” he says.

Martel is also more positive when he assesses the Quebec government’s stance on global warming. He praises Premier Jean Charest’s Quebec and Climate Change (2006-2012) plan, launched last June. The initiative aims to reduce the province’s greenhouse gas emissions by 1.5 per cent by 2012, and is Quebec’s attempt to abide by Kyoto regardless of federal inaction.

Even so, as Martel acknowledges, Quebec is dependent on the Federal government financially, and requires cash to carry out the scheme: “The province has a great Kyoto plan but there’s no real implementation – it’s waiting for money from Ottawa,” he says.

The wait could soon be over. On February 12, an agreement was reached between Prime Minister Harper and Premier Charest for the federal government to provide Quebec with almost $350 million to carry out the plan.

Even if the plan is implemented, Martel is not enamored with all of its proposals. He objects to Charest’s intention to build more hydroelectric power stations in Quebec, arguing that other renewable energy sources with less environmental impact, like wind and wave power, would be preferable.

“When we look at potential locations for windmills, all of northern Quebec is basically the Saudi Arabia of wind power,” Martel says.

He also points to the Gaspésie coast as a possible location for wave power plants.

Aside from his concern with federal and provincial actions to combat climate change, Martel feels that ordinary Quebecers should be trying to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions.

“Try to buy a car with a smaller engine,” he advises.

“We’d also like to see people getting rid of their second car,” Martel says, urging Quebecers to use public transport more.

He also recommends that people go into their sheds and garages, and look at their tools and lawn mowers. He advises Quebecers to replace anything with a gasoline-powered engine with one that runs on electricity.

Despite Claude Martel’s cynicism about the Harper government’s policy on climate change, he remains sanguine about mankind’s relationship with fossil fuels: “We will eventually reach a society where combustion – to release carbon into the air – will be quite an extraordinary thing,” says Martel.

The Director of the Quebec Chapter of the Sierra Club is thinking in longer time-scales than the few years in which a government holds power: "It will take about 100 years," says Martel.

Moving Forward

2007-02-20T11:48:00.000-05:00

DeSmogBlog is reporting this morning that Australia will be the first country to ban incandescent light bulbs as part of their effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The bulbs will be phased out in the next three years.

An article today on the Globe and Mail's website talks about a discovery using corn cobs to store natural gas and essentially fuel methane powered cars. The technology is capable of replacing gasoline fuel tanks.

Housekeeping: the new design and how to handle it

2007-02-19T20:22:00.000-05:00

First, a few words about the photospread: could everybody check that their pictures and names link to the right profile page?
SH and Matt: I took the liberty to identify you to Christopher Columbus and William Shakespeare, respectively. If you're not happy with this, feel free to provide me with another image (either a picture of somebody or something, or a no avatar silhouette).

Second, if you'd like to modify the summaries of the two stories I put up in the Top Stories and Reviews box, provide me with your rewrites. If you want to put up another story or review, please give me its summary together with the URL of the post where the story was published (click on the title of the post to get the URL).
Or, if you want to do these things yourselves, you will need to click on the tools icon at the bottom of the Top Stories box. A pop-up window will open to edit the entries. Select the paragraph about the bird and copy-paste it as a third entry. Then, click on "Edit HTML." You will see only one paragraph of code. The text you just pasted is towards the end, in plain English, and it's followed by a URL. Replace the old text with the new one, and replace the URL with the one that corresponds to the story you want to link to.

I hope this is clear.

Comments and suggestions about the blog's design are welcome.

A 'Stern' Reminder

2007-02-19T14:23:00.000-05:00

Former World Bank economist Sir Nicolas Stern was in Toronto today speaking about the dire consequences of inaction on climate change. (Update: The Toronto Star has a more in depth article to Stern's 'green and grow' message-- February 20, 2007.)

Stern, who issued a report of his own late last fall, is trying to explain to Canadian business that there will be a cost associated with fighting climate change. He calculated that the costs of action would be approximately one per cent of gross domestic product whereas the cost of inaction could add up to anywhere between five and twenty per cent of the world's GDP.

CBC Online has a handy summary of the report.

Stephen Harper's Conservative government has said that if Canada tries to meet its Kyoto targets by 2012 it will result in economic ruin. However, a loss of five to twenty per cent of the world's GDP would likely have more dire consequences to the Canadian economy, especially given our ties (and economic dependence) with the United States.

A global recession would surely ensue.

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The Globe and Mail dedicated its weekend Focus section on developing a climate change almanac. Try to read it before it disappears in cyberspace or the Globe tucks it away for their subscribers only.

Gore's shameful behaviour

2007-02-18T22:07:00.000-05:00

And speaking of The Onion...They reveal that Al Gore single-handedly attempted to compound global warming to increase the profits of his documentary An Inconvenient Truth. I can't for the life of me understand why The New York Times and The Globe and Mail didn't cover this story. Perhaps someone should e-mail Margaret Wente or, indeed, Richard Lindzen.

the onion's two cents on climate change

2007-02-18T21:52:00.000-05:00

This little gem of a story is more than a year old - but still so relevant.

Nation's Snowmen March Against Global Warming

WASHINGTON, DC — Millions of scarfless snowmen gathered in Washington to protest global warming, which has caused many of them to melt before their time.

I guess you could say those snowmen were the carrot-nosed canaries in the climate change coal mine.

Quote of the day

2007-02-16T12:38:00.000-05:00

"In order to solve the climate crisis, we have to reach billions of people. We are launching SOS and Live Earth to begin a process of communication that will mobilize people all over the world to take action."

-Al Gore announcing "Live Earth", a 24 hour global concert for July 7 to promote action on climate change.

Quote of the day

2007-02-15T12:47:00.000-05:00

Within 60 days after this Act comes into force and not later than May 31 of every year thereafter until 2013, the Minister shall prepare a Climate Change Plan that includes

(a) a description of the measures to be taken to ensure that Canada meets its obligations under Article 3, paragraph 1, of the Kyoto Protocol, including measures respecting

(i) regulated emission limits and performance standards,

(ii) market-based mechanisms such as emissions trading or offsets,

(iii) spending or fiscal measures or incentives,

(iii.1) measures to provide for a just transition for workers affected by greenhouse gas emission reductions....

- an excerpt of bill C-288 that was passed in Canada's House of Commons yesterday evening

Quote of the day (part II)

2007-02-14T11:08:00.000-05:00

"Not only can we act, we must act. We can act as individuals, through simple daily actions, and we can also act collectively, by adopting measure or passing legislation that promotes positive and responsible environmental behaviour. That is what this bill seeks to do."

- Liberal MP Pablo Rodriguez, whose Kyoto implementation act is to have its final reading in the House of Commons today.

Quote of the day

2007-02-14T11:07:00.002-05:00

"When I go to the doctor, I don't accept his diagnosis unless it's something I like."

Stephen Colberg on the recent IPCC report.

JOUR428 teacher couldn't resist:

I like Stephen Colbert but "studies of autopsies have shown that doctors seriously misdiagnose fatal illnesses about 20 percent of the time. So millions of patients are being treated for the wrong disease." According to the New York times in "the richest country in the world — one where one-seventh of the economy is devoted to health care — ... misdiagnosis is killing thousands of Americans every year."

Billion-Dollar Corporation Taken to Task Over Toxic Waste

2007-02-14T11:07:00.001-05:00

IRINDSC_0900
Originally uploaded by thecoco.

After an extended legal battle, the Dutch-based oil trading group Trafigura has announced that it will pay the Ivorian government $198m for a clean-up and inquiry following a "toxic waste" incident in August 2006. Trafigura was adamant that the payment is not for "damages" and they are not liable in any way for any harmful effects caused by the waste.

This comes after ten people died and 1000s of others became sick after waste was shipped to Abidjan and left throughout the city.

According to the settlement the Ivory Coast government has agreed to drop any prosecutions or future claims against the firm. Trafigura's employees Claude Dauphin, Jean-Pierre Valentini and Nzi Kablan who have been held under the custody of the Ivory Coast authorities since the incident will now be released.

However, a British law firm representing victims of the toxic waste deposits says it will not halt its group action case against Trafigura. In addition, the law firm plans to bring a second case on behalf of businesses and individuals whose livelihoods were destroyed.

After the clean-up settlement was made, Eric de Turckheim, a Trafigura director, said: "Both the Ivorian government and Trafigura can now move forward together to act in the best interests of the people of Abidjan." He also said that Trafigura will continue to do business in the Ivory Coast.

The Trafigura website indicates that the company was founded in 1993. In thirteen years the Group has developed a large infrastructure specialized in the energy and base metals market. The Group equity is now in excess of US$1 billion. Trafigura maintains over 55 offices in 36 countries in Europe, North, Central and South America, Africa, Asia and Australia in order to provide global coverage.

You can read what the Trafigura spin doctors have to say about the toxic waste scandal and the settlement here.

It appears that Trafigura has often found it difficult to empty waste from its tankers. Last August the company tried to empty chemical slops from the Probo Koala (one of its tankers) in the Amsterdam port but the company that had agreed to take care of the waste decided to charge more than they expected. Trafigura decide that it was in their best interest to find a cheaper deal and headed to Nigeria. Once in Nigeria the company was unable to strike a bargain with local firms to offload the waste. Ultimately, the tanker ended up in an Ivory Coast port where Trafigura finally struck up a deal with a waste disposal company called Tommy in Abidjan on August 19. To date, Trafigura has not revealed how much Tommy was paid to dispose of the waste. In addition the media has pointed out that Compagnie Tommy was not created until after Probo Koala set sail from the Netherlands by Ivoirian businessmen. It did not obtain a licence to dispose of toxic waste until July 12 2006.

Instead of dealing with the waste in an appropriate and safe fashion, The Tommy Company disposed of the slops in 17 different sites all over the capital city, including open-air dumps within close proximity of peoples’ homes. Residents were soon exposed to the pungent odor of hydrogen sulfide emitted by the waste. Cases of headaches, nosebleeds, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea plagued the population.

Officials reported that 69 people were hospitalized as the result of the inhalation of the fumes. However, Charles Memel Kaoou, director of the Ivoirian environmental research institute IRSPE, argued that the number was closer to 300.

Kaoou said that the ten deaths that occurred were linked to respiratory complications from lack of oxygen due to hydrogen sulfide concentrations in the air.

Kacou also pointed out that the heavy concentration of chlorinated compounds in the waste could also be toxic and would remain in the environment for a significant period of time.

It remains difficult to predict what dangers these compounds will pose to the residents of Abidjan in the future. This is compounded by the fact that it is not all together clear what the exact hydrogen sulfate levels are in the wastes.

While Trafigura has stated that independent testing has shown that their slops contained no hydrogen sulfide and that the caustic sodas used for cleaning could not react to produce hydrogen sulfide, the Ivoirian government has argued that Dutch officials found hydrogen sulfide aboard the tanker to be more poisonous than normal oil slops.

The French company Tredi International was commissioned to clean up the waste. More than 9,000 tons of waste and surrounding soil has been removed and incinerated.

In addition to the myriad of health problems caused by the toxic waste, the incident also had a deleterious effect on Ivory Coast’s fragile political structure. Once touted as a model of stability, the past five years has seen Ivory Coast become a divided country forced to deal with many of the same problems of other African countries. In 2002 Ivorians took up arms against each other and the nation was split in two. As I write this, they have yet to find a political solution. In early September, the president Laurent Gbagbo named a new government after the toxic waste scandal forced the cabinet to resign.

View more pictures of toxic waste in Ivory Coast here.

A nice cold glass of (recycled sewage) water

2007-02-14T10:35:00.000-05:00

There's a lot of talk about recycled water in Australia these days. The state of Queensland has dropped plans to hold a vote on whether to put recycled sewage water into the drinking water system. Instead, it says it'll go ahead with the plan anyway to fight the worst drought ever in the region.

Although 78 per cent of Australians are ok with the idea of drinking recycled sewage water, the premier of New South Wales, where Sydney is located, has ruled out supplying the city with recycled water. Instead, he wants to build a desalination plant to treat sea water.

The PM, John Howard, supports the idea of recycling water and is on the record as saying he'd drink it.

Meanwhile, some are wondering if the recycled water debate will make global warming more real, for the public and the PM, who isn't seen as the best person to deal with climate change.

Is this a direct result of climate change? Would you drink recycled sewage water?

Green roses on Valentine's Day

2007-02-14T09:44:00.000-05:00

Happy Valentine's Day, but if you're going to say it with roses, where do those flowers come from? There has been a movement recently among environmentalists to buy locally-grown or produced food (see the 100 Mile Diet's website ). Local foodstuffs obviously require much less transportation than those imported from afar, and therefore less carbon dioxide emissions.

The Independent has taken this further and looked into an environmentally-responsible Valentine's Day. Although the article has a British context, its message is equally valid in Canada. So, if you're buying roses today, make sure you ask about their provenance.

2007-02-13T23:37:00.001-05:00

co.

A captive audience for Gore

2007-02-13T21:14:00.000-05:00

6 000 German schools are going to receive free copies of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, French newspaper Libération reported today. The initiative is financed in part by the government. The German minister of the Environment justified the decision by saying that the film doesn’t require any previous knowledge of the science, making it perfect for use in the classroom.

Don't quite know what to make of this...

Quote of the Day

2007-02-13T19:59:00.000-05:00

“That was the biggest most beautiful smoke ring you ever saw, and I ever saw too.”

- John Peter Funk on lighting the flare on the Leduc #1 well in Leduc, Alberta on this date in 1947. That strike was the beginning of the first oil rush in Alberta.

Germany leads the G8 into the greenhouse

2007-02-13T19:46:00.000-05:00

Germany holds the presidency of the G8 this year. Today, German Chancellor Angela Merkel met British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Berlin. After the meeting, Deutsche Welle reports, Merkel announced that she plans to make climate change one of the foci of the G8 meeting, which will be held in the German Baltic Sea resort of Heiligendamm in June.

Merkel's aim is to secure an agreement between the group of the eight richest nations to limit future warming to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius in the next few decades. Technology transfer to rapidly industrializing states like China and India will also be on the G8's agenda this summer.

Blair himself brought the issue of climate change onto the G8 conference table when the U.K. held the G8 presidency in 2005. Blair will retire as Prime Minister this summer, but, The Independent reports, he plans to continue his efforts to produce a genuinely international response to global warming. According to the British newspaper, Blair hopes to persuade the U.S., China and India to make a concerted effort to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Suzuki as Prime Minister

2007-02-13T18:11:00.000-05:00

Last night, David Suzuki and Stephen Lewis spoke to CBC's Eleanor Wachtel on climate change. Suzuki actually admits that he "sort of" ignored global warming in the 1980's because he thought of it as a "slow motion catastrophe." He believed the effects would be felt in 100 years - he didn't think he'd live to see the changes that are occuring today (he also mentions that the Globe and Mail reports that 4 out 5 Canadians report personally witnessing the effects of climate change.)

But during the Q&A session, an audience member asked if Suzuki would ever run for federal office. He dismissed the question but listed off what his three priorities would be "if he were made prime minister through some magical act against his will." He said he would:

1. End subsidies to the auto and fossil fuel sectors. These are often called "perverse subsidies," because they represent public money going towards public harm.

2. Create a carbon tax. Speak the language business will understand by sending the right price signals to the market.

3. Set targets and timelines for greenhouse gas reduction. Enshrine them in legislation so that the next government is forced to meet them too.

__________________

Do you think these are realistic alternatives?

Un plan vert, bleu et rouge

2007-02-13T11:48:00.000-05:00

If anyone is looking for a good laugh at Prime Minister Harper's environment money announcement yesterday, check out this cartoon by Serge Chapleau.

JOUR 428 Teacher responds to comments:

I'm with Ryan in finding this all a little bizarre -- and old too, as the above cartoon from post-Referendum day in 1980 indicates. I wish it were easier for you all to see Trudeau asking Levesque: "Did the earth move?" I remember finding it funny at the time. Now, not so much.

The Ultimate Solution or the Next Big Mistake?

2007-02-12T22:11:00.000-05:00

On no single human related cause of global warming is the world headed more in the wrong direction than with our use of coal fueled power plants.

In Canada, when people argue that we are not going to meet Kyoto targets under any circumstances, they often point to Canada's power plants, which will continue to burn coal until beyond 2112. In China, coal fueled power plants are popping up on a weekly basis. In certain US States, coal is again becoming the fuel of choice.

If there is any chance of overting a global environmental disaster we need a solution to the GHG's that are caused by burning coal. According the UN, the technology of carbon storage is part that solution. As of Saturday, it is now legal to store carbon under the seabed as well as under dry land.

As was pointed out in Saturday's Globe, (in an article which I cannot link to,) carbon storage is happening in Canada and it is being used to justify the development of the Alberta oil sands, because C02 is bieng stored in the oil sands' empty reservoirs. But there remain questions about the long term affects of this technology: Will it leak out over time? What affect will it have on ground water? Will it contaminate or errode rock structures?

Even if the technology is feasible, there are many details and costs that have yet to be worked out, both interms of the way coal is burned and the methodes used to store C02. But when governments do begin the hard work of implementing solutions to global warming, working out these details may very well be preferable to abandoning coal completely.

There's a lot on the line. If we put our eggs in the carbon storage basket, and it becomes unwoven, we could have a real mess on our hands. At the same time, just because C02 in the atmosphere leads to global warming doesn't necessarily mean it has to cause problems when compressed, and stored in tight spaces underground.

Maybe tucking away the problem really is the solution. Tucking it away and not thinking too much about it.

A credible skeptic

2007-02-12T18:42:00.000-05:00

Ringing in delegates' ears was the warning of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which said there was a more than 90 percent chance humans were behind most of the warming in the past 50 years. - Reuters

A 10% uncertainty in any theory is a wide open breach for any latterday Galileo or Einstein to storm through with a better idea. That is how science really works. -Nigel Calder, the former editor of the New Scientist

He also writes: "So one awkward question you can ask, when you’re forking out those extra taxes for climate change, is “Why is east Antarctica getting colder?” It makes no sense at all if carbon dioxide is driving global warming."

Why care about that bird

2007-02-12T12:54:00.000-05:00

Reading through Graham's article, Who's That Bird?, I thought to myself, "so what? The bird gets to see new places and people get to enjoy new birds."

But I have to admit I felt guilty about even having that thought.

Then Google came to the rescue and I found The Birdwatcher's Guide to Global Warming by the American Bird Conservancy. The section that stood out: Why Should We Care.

I was startled to learn that according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Americans spend upwards of $3.5 billion annually on birds (feeders, seeds, baths, houses) and that "birdwatchers spend an average of $100 million in each state which in turn supports more than 200,000 jobs and generates more than $1 billion in state and federal tax revenues."

Woah!

And money's not the only reason why birds are important, according to the ABC.

Birds also play an important role in nature by pollinating plants,
dispersing seeds, and eating insects.

In some parts of North America, the disappearance of insect-eating birds could potentially lead to the damaging of ecologically (and commercially) important forests.

Apparently, some birds are even crucial for plant reproduction.

"The long-distance migrating Rufous Hummingbird, for example, is the primary pollinator for the wild blueberry in southeast Alaska. Since many other wildlife species in the region depend on the blueberry for food, the hummingbird helps benefit the entire ecosystem."

The more I read about climate change, the more I'm amazed at nature's equilibrium and the consequences of messing around with it.

More Money, Wrong Direction

2007-02-12T12:25:00.000-05:00

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Quebec Premier Jean Charest made a favourable, timely announcement today that will see $1.5-billion pumped into the fight against climate change.

The money will be distributed to the provinces and used for projects promoting clean energy and curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

PM Harper has been looking for ways to solve the imaginary fiscal imbalance, take the environmental issue seriously and build a stronger base in Quebec in case of a snap spring election. Premier Charest is trying to hold his lead in the polls as a provincial election looms on the horizon. Both leaders appear to be wooing the electorate.

Is this just another announcement to win Canadian voters?

David Crane, in this Toronto Star article, argues that is the case. He believes the Harper government should bring forward a feasible climate change plan instead of preparing for an election. Crane's article goes into the three necessary requirements for countries to fight global warming as suggested by Nicholas Stern in his December 2006 report. The Harper government continues to reject these solutions.

Crane further argues for the need and benefit of developing clean technologies and the role Canada should be playing in this field.

Jim Hoggan, from DeSmogBlog, talks about the Canadian policy vacuum concerning climate change. He also argues, with the support of a thoughtful report from the Richard Ivy School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, that Canada should be a technological leader in climate change and points out the benefits of an innovative tax policy.

Flower Power

2007-02-11T17:48:00.000-05:00

Research institutions and private companies are showing interest in a small shrub called jatropha. The shrub could potentially become a major source of biodiesel. Like for any other biodiesel, the carbon emissions resulting from the burning of jatropha oil is offset by the carbon intake of the plant itself. But what makes jatropha more interesting than colza or maize is that it grows in semi-arid conditions in Asia and Africa. In these regions' developping countries, jatropha culture could become a major source of revenue as its costs close to nothing and doesn’t use up precious arable land. The non-edible plant is also drought-resistant. Western companies are already rushing to buy land in countries like Zambia, Nigeria or Mozambique.
India is becoming a major research centre on jatropha. As Le Monde reports in this article (in French), The Energy and Resource Institute of New Delhi has launched a project of U.S$9.4 million to intensify jatropha culture. Also, a private pilot project has been launched in India to power rural India’s mobile networks with cotton and jatropha oils.

Peru On Thin Ice

2007-02-11T14:46:00.000-05:00

Coverage on receding glaciers tends to focus on Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro and the European Alps. An article in today's Globe & Mail, however, looks at glacial retreat in the Western hemisphere. The piece describes what's happening to the glaciers of Peru.

Peru's Cordillera Blanca mountain range, the largest glacier chain in the topics, is being affected by rising temperatures. Southern Peru's Quelccaya, the world's largest tropical ice cap, is retreating at the rate of 60 metres a year and this is exponential (in the 1960s, the rate was approximately six metres a year). According to the Peruvian government's Natural Resources Institute (known as INRENA), the areas of the Andes mountains in Peru have lost at least 22 per cent of their glacial cover since 1970.

Glacial retreat will have a direct impact on Peruvians as the country's water supply is intrinsically linked to its glaciers. Peru's glaciers feed its rivers, which, as well as providing drinking water for the cities, are also vital for the country's agriculture and electricity generation (70 per cent of which is hydroelectric).

Ohio State University glacier expert Lonnie Thompson is quoted in the article. You can check out his before-and-after photographs of the Quelccaya ice cap here.

One small step in Europe

2007-02-10T13:20:00.000-05:00

The European Commission announced plans last Thursday to criminalize environmental offences. Once adopted, these measures will allow cross-border actions against ecological crimes, and judges will be able to impose prison terms on offenders.

The commission had already put forth the idea in 2001, but the EU Council of Ministers had rejected it, proposing instead a close collaboration between the member states’ police and legal systems. In fact, the European Union already has an environmental legislation in place, but so far, criminal justice has been the exclusive jurisdiction of individual member states. With the union’s current identity crisis, European states are having a hard time relinquishing this kind of power.

The move will have the greatest impact on countries where serious ecological offences are not treated as crimes. But euroskeptic Britain, for example, has opposed the motion, even though the country's justice system already punishes such offences by criminal sentences. French European MP Patrick Louis also expressed his anguish toward the plan (link in French). "It's an act of judicial federalism!" he said.

If this plan will benefit the environment by bringing the less environmentally-conscious countries up to the standards of the greenest ones, critics say it won’t be much of a deterrent for potential offenders.

In fact, compared to commercial policies, the fines are minimal.

As the BBC reports, Katherine Mill, from Greenpeace, points out that “1.5m euros is the recommended starting fine for the release of radioactive material which causes death.”

Comparatively, in the legal fight between Microsoft and the European Commission, the computer giant has been fined – and has paid out – roughly 500 million euros to date for abusing its dominant position on the market.

I did the math. It’s 333 times more.

Virgin Earth Challenge

2007-02-09T17:55:00.000-05:00

Richard Branson, the chair of Virgin Group, is offering $25-million to the first person to come up with a feasible plan to remove billions of tonnes of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Branson made the announcement today along side Al Gore and several environmentalists.

This is interesting and sad at the same time. It reinforces the idea that money truly is the only thing people understand.

So, what are you waiting for? Go find a solution!

Canada Last Among G8

2007-02-09T07:43:00.000-05:00

In an embarrassing report out of the University of Toronto today, Canada ranked last among the G8 countries to keep a pledge made last year to fight climate change through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

The goal set by the G8 industrialized countries was made last year at the St. Petersburg summit. The article in today's Globe and Mail says "Canada was the only Group of Eight country deemed to have posted a complete lack of compliance with the greenhouse-gas reduction goal."

It goes on to say that Canada has "no plan for the short or long term" and the Conservatives' Clean Air Act could contribute to rising greenhouse gas emissions because it call for a cap on releases.

Canada, according to the report, is more prone to rhetoric than results. The U.K. and Germany have surpassed their greenhouse gas reduction goals and even Russia and Italy, countries with severe economic problems, outpaced Canada.

The analysis hardly mentions Canada's Kyoto commitments. But this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Canada is beyond its ability (now over 34% higher than 1990 levels) to reach its 2012 Kyoto targets unless we engage in serious carbon trading with the international community.

Credits could be obtained by doing something as minor as planting trees in a developing country.

While this plan is feasible, the Conservatives have repeatedly resisted any action. (Update: February 10, 2007--Although, this article in today's Toronto Star talks about Stephen Harper's about-face on the environment.)

Environment Minister John Baird appeared before the House of Commons committee studying the government's Clean Air Act yesterday showing no sign of solid action on the government's part. Mr. Baird refused to engage a carbon tax or international carbon trading. He wasn't even give a real number on his government's future environmental spending. While it is likely the Minister is keeping this under wraps for the contentious budget release in March that could spell his government's fate, it is once again a stall in action.

Mr. Baird is also in the news today confirming that any action on Canada's Kyoto targets would ruin the economy. That depends. Canada should be regulating industry, but in a way that wouldn't effect our economic output. The money spent on creating new technologies would in fact help our economy, a position that I, as well as many others, have maintained.

Interestingly, Canada's Premiers, in an article from yesterday's Globe, are attempting to band together to fight climate change. They are led by none other than Alberta Premier Ed Stelmach.

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Update: Neither CBC nor The Globe and Mail reported this, but the Toronto Star has a slightly different take on Mr. Baird's attitude toward Kyoto in this article posted on their website today.

Also, you may want to check out the Globe and Mail's climate change feature section online. It gets updated regularly and has good information, articles and opinion pieces.

China's Green Movement: Too Little Too Late?

2007-02-07T13:14:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday, a feature story on the Chi nese city of Linfen was plastered across the front page of the Globe and Mail. Linfen (you can see a slideshow of the city here) has been dubbed “one of the most polluted places on the planet.” A few years ago the World Bank weighed in with its study, concluding that in terms of pollution, the city is at the top of the coal pile.

While there is little doubt that China has not done enough to provide clean air and drinking water for its citizens, at times the media coverage of the country’s environmental problems has bordered on the sensationalistic. In addition, it often feels as if western media and politicians are using the People’s Republic as a scapegoat and refusing to acknowledge the severe environmental problems in their own countries. It is also worth asking whether or not China’s rapidly growing grassroots environmental movement has been given adequate attention within the debate.

Recently, I discussed some of these issues with André Laliberté, a professor of Political Science at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), who specializes in NGO'S and Social Policy in the People's Republic of China. The interview follows.

Tempest: In 1994 the government passed regulations, which for the first time granted legal status to independent NGOs. Environmental groups were the first to register and now form the largest sector of civil society groups in China. Why is it that environmental groups were the first groups to be given this status in China?

Laliberte: The environment in China is an acute problem that is really putting their legitimacy on the line. Issues of democracy are somewhat abstract and might appear quite removed from their day to day concern but the poisoning of their rivers literally, the fact that you have an increase in the number of people who are dying from Cancer, led poisoning and everything else is really something that hit them very hard and that’s something that’s effecting them on a daily basis and the regime cannot afford to look indifferent to that. They started to realize that just to treat the people affected by environmental disasters is costing an enormous amount of money. So they realize that in order to continue their economic growth, they will have to tackle environmental issues. They just are not well equipped enough so they really need to encourage empowerment for civil society for that particular thing.

T: Do you think that the western media coverage of environmental problems in China is exaggerated?

L:Frankly they could talk more about the environment and not less. I don’t think that it’s exaggerated. There is an exaggeration with the media when we are looking at the environmental problems to chastise the Chinese for not doing anything to help the Kyoto protocol be implemented. I think that this is unfair. The united states per capita is doing so much more and also in Canada per capita we’re doing so much worse than the Chinese so it’s unfair to criticize the Chinese for global warming. On the other hand, I think that it is important to see that the problem is already reaching critical levels in China and I think that the emphasis is more about public healthcare, it’s about safety, it’s about basic rights for a decent living in China and we can hope that that is something that the Chinese are going to look after themselves.

T: Is it likely that the Chinese will become leaders within the realm of green technology?

L: It’s very likely that the Chinese are going to encourage and nurture the development of less polluting cars and technology. But so far unfortunately many of the nouveau riche in China seem more interested in boasting their newly acquired wealth and buying their SUVs.

T: So you see the current level of mass consumption as a phase and predict that the Chinese are going to move on and to creating technology that is less harmful for the environment?

L: I think that that’s going to be necessary. People will eventually start to realize when their cities are clogged because there are too many cars. Already in Beijing, I was there last December and I couldn’t believe how much it was polluted. For the people who live there, it is a nightmare.

T: Some would argue that although there is certainly cause for concern when it comes to environment issues in China, the country is getting a bad rap. What is your take on this issue?

L: I see your point and it’s frankly annoying. The World Bank says that among the 20 most polluted cities on the planet 16 are in China. Well, you can look at different tables. There are also lots of cities in India, in Mexico and other countries. I’m not trying to diminish the importance of the problem, but how do you measure (pollution)? Do you measure the particles of dust? Do you measure nitrate? What do you measure to come to these kinds of conclusions? So these numbers are very impressionistic and they don’t tell us everything. You have to take that with a grain of salt.

T: In 2005, there were an estimated 2,000 officially registered environmental NGOs in China. What kind of impact has the grassroots environmental movement had in recent years?

L: It’s true that there is a grassroots movement but the grassroots movement consists mainly of isolated case studies. There’s also the case of local governments that don’t do anything or continue to abuse the local population for the sake of industrialization. Even if the central government wants to reduce the problem of industrialization, you have people in remote counties who seek promotion for themselves and are keen on attracting investment regardless of the environmental consequences.

T: In 2006, China had its first national assembly of student environmental groups. Given the growing environmental consciousness among Chinese students, is it likely that the next generation will pollute less?

L: Well I’m not sure. In the west, in the 1970s, you had the rise of environmental movements and green parties and I remember when I was young thinking that eventually everyone would give up their cars and we would live in societies where public transit would be the rule. Than I started seeing more and more of these horrible gas guzzling SUVs around and started to see that we’re going in the opposite direction. I have no reason to believe that the Chinese would some how be more enlightened and avoid the mistakes that we’ve been making. However, things might get so bad that they will have to do something drastic.

T: Some have argued that the emergence of environmental NGOs in China is a step towards democracy, while others have said that these groups are destined to remain under the control of an authoritarian regime. What is your opinion on this topic?

L: Right now the Chinese do not show the inclination to open up the political process. However, there are some people in the party, in the media and even in the central committee who think that they need to change. They may feel that if they want to encourage people to mobilize responsibly and to look after the environment, they need to give them more room.

428 Journal due Valentine's Day

2007-02-07T10:11:00.000-05:00

Your Journal due next class (Feb. 14) should include the following:

Print-outs of your weekly blog posts and comments including your profile (with photo) and your reading list
Print-outs of any original reporting done to date
A summary of the stories you plan to report on and any other work you will do for the on-line publication (eg design, class photos, quote of the day)
YOur posts and/or comments on what you look for in a website

-----------------------
As well, I have created the JOUR428 student profile for everyone to use for our weekly news roundup posts. Will disclose the top secret pass word in class. (By JOUR428 teacher)

Who's That Bird?

2007-02-07T00:09:00.000-05:00

On the 29th of October, a hummingbird arrived at Wayne Davis’s backyard feeder in Wakefield Rhode Island. This was unusual because the ruby-throated hummingbirds that occupy New England had already migrated south for the winter.

Except that this wasn’t a ruby-throat. It was a rufous hummingbird, a west coast species that normally summers in Alaska and winters in Mexico.

“It’s a big deal when out of range birds show up,” says Cynthia Drummond, a neighbor of Davis.

The bird stuck around and caught the attention of the local birding community.

Hummingbird expert Geoff Dennis came to photograph it and confirmed that it was a rufous. The bird’s photo was posted on New England Hummers website along with weekly updates about the bird’s behavior and well-being at its new home on the Eastern side of the continent.

As winter approached, heat lamps were installed next to the feeder to prevent the liquid nectar bird food from freezing.

A sudden cold snap would have spelled doom for the bird, but the unusually mild autumn persisted into winter, and then past New Years. In mid January, when the ground would normally have been covered in snow and the air freezing cold, winter had still not taken hold and the bird continued its blissful existence in the yard, nesting in a spruce tree and eating from the feeder.

“Everybody was pulling for that bird,” says Drummond.

Eventually, winter weather arrived. On January 25th, the temperature in Wakefield plummeted to minus 10 degrees Celsius and the rufous was seen no more.

The incident, however, is an example of what birders are seeing more and more frequently: migratory birds in unusual places at unusual times of year.

Pete Read is an Ontario biologist who keeps birding records for the American Birding Association. He reports that there were many rare sightings in Southern Ontario that coincided with the warmer than average temperatures this past autumn. But in his opinion, temperature has little to no affect on the behavior of the typical long range migratory bird.

“These birds that are turning up at unusual times of year are aberrations,” he says.

Neotropic migrants, such as the rufous hummingbird, travel between a few hundred and a few thousand kilometers each year. The timing of their migration is decided by photo period: the length of daylight tells them when to travel. As a result, even if the climate were to change so that migration became unnecessary, even hazardous to these birds’ survival, it wouldn’t affect their migratory behavior.

“There have likely always been birds that didn’t migrate normally for some reason, maybe because there is something wrong with their pituitary glands,” says Read. “But in the past these birds were dying off. The warmer temperatures are allowing them to survive longer and that’s why we’re noticing them.”

This is not the case with short term migrants, including many birds of pray and waterfowl. They move as a result of changes in weather conditions and to their food supply.

“The internet is buzzing right now in Southern Ontario because the Northern Harriers are finally coming through,” says Read. “They usually get pushed south by the snow in December, but this year, because of the weather, they’re over a month late.”

But as far as the long range migrants are concerned, warming temperatures might do little more than increase occasional sightings of lone birds that end up a few hundred or a few thousand kilometers off course.

That is, unless typical seasonal changes cease altogether.

“What could happen is that these birds that aren’t migrating could start to reproduce with one another. If that starts to happen then we could start to see permanent changes in the behavior of certain species of long range migrants,” says Read.

So while the unpredictable consequences that global warming will have on the planet are a source of great concern to most people, some in the birding community are taking it in stride -at least as it pertains to birds.

“If global warming is occurring, it’s not necessarily adverse to migratory birds,” says Read. “It’s easier for a bird to stay around in the same place. Migrating long distances takes a lot of energy and poses great risks.”

Easier perhaps, if the predictable four seasons of the past are replaced by something equally predictable in the future.

But as the rufous that showed up in Rhode Island discovered one day in late January, you can’t take much for granted when it comes to climate change.

In defence of China

2007-02-06T21:17:00.000-05:00

Regarding my earlier post on China, I didn't mean that China had particularly advanced in the fight against climate change, but rather that it was about to - possibly - release its first national plan to mitigate the problem.

As an aside, critics frequently fault Kyoto for neglecting to set emissions targets for rapidly- industrializing developing nations like China and India. It should be remembered that these two countries industrialization has been relatively recent - in the most part, during the second half of the 20th century. By contrast, Western Europe and North America's industrialization began in the 18th century. Historically, therefore, developed nations have emitted more greenhouse gases - hence the rationale behind Kyoto.

Also, China's huge population means that its per capita emissions are low in comparison to the U.S. and - yes - Canada. Take a look at this comparitive table of global emissions.

Yes, China and India have a responsibility to reduce their emissions, but I don't think their carbon burden is as heavy as that of developed nations.

If it seems to good to be true...

2007-02-06T17:10:00.000-05:00

... it probably is. Well, maybe not. You decide. This Guardian article, Kept in the dark, talks about concentrated solar power (CSP), an energy source that governments and the UN supposedly don't want the world to know about.

Mirrors essentially concentrate the sun's heat and provide a sustainable, renewable energy source. The technology works best in the desert, and as the author Katharine Hamnett writes, "There are hot deserts within 3,000 miles of 90% of the worlds population (eg North and South America, North and South Africa, Australia, India, Middle East etc.)"

Aside from being a cost effective technology, CSP can also be used to desalinate sea water and turn it into drinking water and still provide enough energy to pump it anywhere. It can be used for low tech solar cooking and water pasteurization. Imagine its implications for the developing world.

According to the Hamnett, "Most MPs and scientists are completely ignorant of its implications, energy security and cost effectiveness let alone its existence."

As Canada's Conservative government persists with "intensity targets" so they don't spoil the oil industry (despite what Stephen Harper said today about regulating industry), this is a technology that should be considered. Although Tony Blair seems to be taking more action on climate change than President Bush, as world leaders, they should both be looking at sustainable alternatives.

Maybe this is a miraculous technology that big business and governments want to hide. Hamnett thinks we're having the wool pulled over our eyes, but CSP may also have its drawbacks. Have a read and decide for yourself.

Greener snow

2007-02-05T14:58:00.000-05:00

The snow is not really green, or even greener. But environmentalists are trying to figure out what to do to make skiing "greener."

A first step is rating various ski clubs. The Green Resort Guide is aimed at both the consumers and a the resorts themselves. The guide looks at if resorts are environmentally friendly and how they try and keep it greener.
This article is formatted as a Q&A to explain what the guide is and who is in the lead.

In another article, the famous Sun Valley resort received a "D" grade for their impact on the environment, while Bogus Basin resort ranked first in the top 10.
Craig Barry, executive director of the Environmental Resource Centre in Ketchum says that there is no environmental initiative at Sun Valley hence the lost result.

Green group floats 'elegant' carbon tax

2007-02-05T01:25:00.000-05:00

Even after the latest IPCC report claimed it is “very likely” that the rise in global temperatures is due, at least in part, to our polluting ways, the government's environmental policy makers did not flinch. They still aren’t giving in to an absolute emissions cap. At least one Canadian environmental group is willing to surrender the fight for the Kyoto Protocol emission limits for now and try another strategy.

Last week, Friends of the Earth proposed a different approach to the problem of Canada’s steadily increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – a carbon tax.

“The possibility that this government was going to actually address in a meaningful way the Kyoto targets, that possibility is now just put aside,” said Beatrice Olivastri, co-founder of the environmental advocacy group, in response to Baird's insistence on intensity-based emissions targets last Friday. Intensity-based targets mean that this country's greenhouse gas emissions can continue to rise as long as the processes that create them become more efficient.

If each heavy emitter were taxed on its GHG emissions and compelled to contribute that money to its own innovation fund, government would not have to play a major administrative role in the process, says Olivastri.

She points out that around half of all of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions came from a few hundred industrial facilities. This means innovating at those relatively limited number of sites could have a major impact on overall emissions.

One problem for this scheme is that Baird was still saying 'no' to a carbon tax as of last week. Olivastri is not giving up on the idea. “They have reversed positions already on (the taxation of) the income trusts.”

Toby Heaps, a board member of Friends of the Earth, was in Ottawa last Friday touting the plan to legislators.

"A carbon tax is about as simple as it gets," Heaps argues. He believes the "elegance" of the carbon tax deserves attention from the Conservatives. The strategy that the government will likely propose next month is too cumbersome, says Heaps. “It will still have too much of that micromanaging stuff.” (That sounds like a challenge no self-respecting small ‘c’ conservative could ignore.)

Heaps also believes that an innovation oriented scheme will produce technology that can be exported to the major GHG emitters of the future like India and China.

If you can’t get enough of policy talk you may want to check out this dialogue on carbon taxes at Alternatives Journal.

Tempest

Back to the land: organic farming returns to roots

Behind the Greenpeace door

Green jobs on the rise

When fashion becomes environmentally friendly

Drive Better, Drive Cleaner, Drive Cheaper

Weekly News Round-Up: April 4-10, 2007

Recycling in Montreal: by-laws, waste & worms

Composting - an organic solution to a human problem

Elizabeth May Speech: Part 2

Elizabeth May Speech: Part 1

Some Green in Your Coffee?

Weekly News Roundup: March 28 - April 3

Missing: Two made-in-Canada websites

Environmental Gladiators Challenge Montreal

Weekly News Roundup: March 21 - 27

The city behind climate change

Ad trucks leave trail of exhaust - and controversy - in their wake

More Housekeeping

Online Story Meeting

News roundup reminder

Weekly News Roundup: March 13 - 20

Sub-Zero Cyclists

Design Team Update

Forgive us our emissions....

The city behind climate change action

Reducing Montreal's transport emissions

Concentrating on Solar Power

What happened to the hole?

Weekly news roundup (March 5th to 11th)

The Carbon Tax: Revisited

Greening the campaign -- literally

Ask not what you can do for Al Gore, ask what Al Gore can do for you

Greenpeace storms into coal mine

Mud and Gore - The Oscar party ends badly

An Inconvenient Truth: free copies cont'd

Spring forward forward

Playing the Numbers

The future of newspapers

Definitely worth a click

Goldenberg's flap

Monkey See, Monkey Do

There *are* others like us!

Flogging Eric the Red's dead horse

A postcard from Montreal

Quebec environmentalist blasts Harper, Baird

Moving Forward

Housekeeping: the new design and how to handle it

A 'Stern' Reminder

Gore's shameful behaviour

the onion's two cents on climate change

Quote of the day

Quote of the day

Quote of the day (part II)

Quote of the day

Billion-Dollar Corporation Taken to Task Over Toxic Waste

A nice cold glass of (recycled sewage) water

Green roses on Valentine's Day

A captive audience for Gore

Quote of the Day

Germany leads the G8 into the greenhouse

Suzuki as Prime Minister

Un plan vert, bleu et rouge

The Ultimate Solution or the Next Big Mistake?

A credible skeptic

Why care about that bird

More Money, Wrong Direction

Flower Power

Peru On Thin Ice

One small step in Europe

Virgin Earth Challenge

Canada Last Among G8

China's Green Movement: Too Little Too Late?

428 Journal due Valentine's Day

Who's That Bird?

In defence of China

If it seems to good to be true...

Greener snow

Green group floats 'elegant' carbon tax

There are others like us!