Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Protecting nature in our neighbourhoods saves us money
By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola
©Secondarywaltz
Last winter, as the federal Finance Department was preparing to spend billions of dollars to stimulate the economy in the face of a global economic meltdown, the David Suzuki Foundation offered its ideas on how to spend the money.
We recommended increased and sustained funding for public transit, subsidies for renewable energy, and cash for research and development to green Canada’s auto sector. We also suggested that the government should take a closer look at the economic benefits of protecting our terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems.
We argued that protecting nature results in cost savings for governments, because natural areas provide many direct ecological benefits that sustain the health and wellbeing of our communities at little or no cost. These include services like clean air, clean water, wildlife habitat, and flood control. All of these are costly to replace if they are degraded or lost due to mismanagement, assuming they can be replaced at all.
The financial benefits of protecting nature have long been understood. Many ambitious policy solutions have come about not because government leaders were motivated to protect wildlife habitat but rather because they were looking for ways to save a buck. For example, in the early 1990s, New York City chose to protect its watershed through land purchase, pollution control, and conservation easements, rather than build new infrastructure to filter its water. In doing so, the city has saved billions of dollars in engineering costs.
©Urban
Providing clean water at an affordable cost is a challenge in many Canadian cities because few draw their drinking water from protected watersheds. Cities like Toronto and Montreal must rely on expensive treatment systems, because the ecosystems from which the water is drawn are already degraded
or are tainted by pollution from industrial and agricultural activities and urban runoff. In comparison, Vancouver’s drinking water comes from protected watersheds in the North Shore Mountains. These mature forests filter, store, and regulate Vancouver’s drinking water at no cost to the taxpayer, thereby providing beneficial natural services that complement engineered solutions like water filtration.
Studies suggest that a strong fiscal incentive exists to protect and grow the urban forest cover in cities like Vancouver in the face of development pressures.A recent joint study by municipal, provincial, and federal agencies in B.C. estimated that Vancouver and surrounding communities could save about $1.1 million annually in storm-water infrastructure costs if they significantly increase urban forest cover.
The economic benefits of nature conservation were also recently profiled in a groundbreaking United Nations report. It found that protecting natural ecosystems and biodiversity is worth trillions of dollars in annual economic benefits globally. The lead author of the report, Pavan Sukhdev, told
the media that investments to protect ecosystems can return 25 to 100 times more in benefits from the natural services they provide.
This sort of research is important, because policy-makers often ignore the full economic costs of degrading land and the ecological services it provides when making development decisions. For example, in 1973, British Columbia designated good quality farmland in the province as “agricultural land reserve” where non-agricultural land use would be strictly controlled. Today this critical bank of farms, fields, forests, and other ecosystems represents more than 60,000 hectares in and around Vancouver alone.
©Irish Typepad
But the ALR has consistently been degraded by development, under the watch of government, despite the fact that its rich agricultural lands offer so much more to society than just blueberries and broccoli. The ALR’s planted crops and agricultural soils sequester and store millions of tonnes of atmospheric carbon, thereby acting as a “hedge” or offset against carbon pollution.
The ALR also offers outdoor recreational opportunities. And these working farmlands provide important habitat for wildlife, especially migratory birds. Yet, successive governments have allowed more than 6,000 hectares of land to be removed for development from the ALR in and around the Vancouver region. A paltry 277 hectares have been added as compensation. A David Suzuki Foundation report found that a lot of ALR land has also been removed in other prime agricultural regions of B.C.
It’s time we started looking at the true value of our forests, fields, farmlands, and other natural and managed ecosystems beyond just the resources that we take from them.
Learn more at
www.davidsuzuki.org.
NY Watershed
Metro Vancouver urban forest study
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Green Tip from the Sierra Club : Go Meatless for Thanksgiving
©Curt Gibbs
It's almost time for Americans to visit with loved ones, express gratitude, and eat a really, really big meal. This year, we're providing tips to help you celebrate Thanksgiving with less impact.
Tip #2: Buy a Heritage Bird or Go Meatless
Want to celebrate "Turkey Day" without supporting environmentally destructive factory farms? You can help preserve species diversity by purchasing a free-range
heritage turkey from a
local farm. If meat isn't a must-have, consider skipping the bird altogether and building a hearty meal around vegetarian dishes such as
autumn tempeh salad or
butternut squash enchiladas.
Flu Season is Here: Are Antibacterial Soaps and Hand Sanitizers Good for us?
By simplegreenaction.ca
© Malinaccier
With H1N1 on everyone’s mind, antibacterial soap and hand sanitizers have been flying off the shelves. Prevention is key, we are told, so wash your hands frequently and dry them using hand towels to prevent acquiring or spreading infection and flu…
But should you use regular soap or antibacterial soap? Should you skip the soap all together and use hand sanitizer? What’s safest? Most effective? What are the environmental health implications?
Antibacterial products (and soaps) are intended to kill germs that cause sickness…but did you know that the American Environmental Protection Agency considers them pesticides?
Read more at
www.simplegreenaction.ca
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Green Tip from the Sierra Club :Greener Thanksgiving
©Ben Franske
«It's almost time for Americans to visit with loved ones, express gratitude, and eat a really, really big meal. This year, we'll provide tips to help you celebrate Thanksgiving with less impact.
Tip #1: Try Regional Recipes
Traditional Thanksgiving meals tend to favor fall produce, so it's a great time to focus on
locally-grown fruits and veggies. Consider adapting time-honored recipes to reflect your region's growing season and local history. For a fun challenge, plan either one dish or the entire meal with ingredients grown or produced
within 100 miles of your home. Check out the Daily Green's 100-mile Thanksgiving meal plans for five different U.S. cities to find examples of
creative, local solutions.
Share your tips: Do you make a Thanksgiving dish that's unique to your region? »
Friday, November 13, 2009
All life depends on the oceans
By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola
©Dave Friedel
It’s often said that we know as much about Mars and the moon as we do about our oceans. Considering that Earth is 71 per cent ocean, this should be cause for concern. At the very least, we should be doing more to protect our oceans from the negative effects of human activities, even if we don’t fully understand all that is happening under the seas.
One thing we do know is that oceans are changing – and the changes aren’t for the best. For centuries, we’ve thought of our oceans as stable. But ocean currents, upwellings, oxygen levels, acidity, and temperature are changing in ways we haven’t seen before. Assumptions we once held about the seas are no longer valid.
We’ve always assumed that oceans would provide us with an endless bounty of food. We rely on our oceans for transportation, recreation, and numerous resources.And oceans provide almost half the oxygen we breathe.
The collapse of Canada’s Atlantic cod stocks was just one of many warnings we should have heeded. Many West Coast salmon stocks have also disappeared and many are returning in increasingly lower numbers. Even the survival of the very base of the marine food chain, plankton, is being threatened.
Some threats to our oceans are easier to pinpoint than others. Swirling masses of plastic garbage in the oceans – one of them in the North Pacific estimated to be bigger than Quebec – are obvious artifacts of our disposable societies. “Dead zones” are showing up in our oceans around the globe. These are areas where oceans are starved of oxygen because of a nitrogen overdose from agricultural runoff.
Many fish stocks are dwindling, in part because of our appetite for seafood. This is spurring more development in aquaculture – but most fish-farming practices are putting added pressure on oceans and wild fish.
On top of the many direct threats to ocean health we also have climate change to contend with. We know that global warming is causing the oceans to become more acidic. This is a worrisome trend.
As with our atmosphere, too much carbon is resulting in dangerous effects. Carbon dioxide is necessary for photosynthesis, which is how plants grow and develop. But when we burn fossil fuels or clear-cut forests, we release too much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, upsetting the balance. This creates a heat-trapping blanket around the Earth, which contributes to global warming.
©swamibu
The oceans absorb carbon dioxide, keeping some of it from the atmosphere. But while oceans help slow the pace of global warming, they too are absorbing too much carbon dioxide, resulting in disruption of the ocean’s pH balance. This increasing acidity causes calcium carbonate to dissolve, affecting life forms including corals, shellfish, and several species of plankton that rely on calcium for their very structure.
Science is confirming that our old assumptions are no longer valid, and we find ourselves in a situation of escalating risk. As a result, we need to look at our oceans in an entirely new way. We can’t continue to exploit ocean resources on false assumptions. We need to know more about what’s going on. That means investing in science that will help explain the interactions between changing ocean conditions and the species that depend on the seas.
We need a new way to manage our oceans in the face of uncertainty and elevated risk facing marine life. A comprehensive marine-planning initiative that considers new and evolving science and the evidence of what is actually happening to marine ecosystems would be a good start. This process must be based on a precautionary approach that recognizes increased uncertainty and the fact that our oceans will continue to change as global warming and other human-induced factors continue to affect them.
We can’t rely on governments alone to protect the health of our oceans. Industry, nongovernmental organizations, First Nations, coastal communities, and governments at all levels must come together to plan and monitor conservation efforts based on science and local community knowledge.
After all, one thing we’ve learned about Mars and the moon is that we can’t move there if we destroy our home on this beautiful and generous planet – in part because they don’t have oceans. Neglecting the health of our oceans, where all known life began, is a risk we cannot afford to take.
Learn more at
www.davidsuzuki.org.
Pacific Garbage Patch
Dead Zones
Fish Farming
A new way to manage our oceans
Marine Planning
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Newsletter: It’s time for a change…tck tck tck!
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Inaction on climate change
It is up to Canadians to decide what to do. Do we plug our ears and close our eyes and go about business as usual while the world strains under the damage we are inflicting? Do we leave our children and grandchildren a world of misery?
Read Suzuki's article.
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The World Solar Challenge 2009
The world’s most ecological automobile race started two weeks ago, October 25th, in Australia. From Darwin to Adelaide, 38 participants drove for almost eight days over 3, 000km across the Australian desert during the World Solar Challenge 2009. This trial takes place during the Global Green Challenge.
Read more about the event.
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The World Solar Challenge 2009
Crossing the Australian desert in a solar vehicle
The world’s most ecologic automobile race started two weeks ago, October 25th, in Australia. From Darwin to Adelaide, 38 participants drove for almost eight days over 3, 000km across the Australian desert during the World Solar Challenge 2009. This trial takes place during the Global Green Challenge, an event that promotes the latest advances and experiments in hybrid, electric and solar vehicles such as the Tesla Roadster and the Toyota Prius.
The legendary World Solar Challenge was created by Danish Hans Thostrup in 1987 and takes place every two year. Its goal: promote research in sustainable transport and electric vehicle energy. This challenge gives the opportunity to university and engineer students to create their own solar vehicle.
“The significant support from the South Australian Government is tangible evidence of its commitment to change for the betterment of the environment and mankind’’ relates Roger Cook, Chairman of the South Australian Motor Sport Board. The Global Green Challenge offers to its contestants the opportunity to position and adapt themselves at the forefront of the newest technologies. From another perspective, the audience can get a glance on future’s sustainable vehicles.
Among the participants was a team from Montreal’s Polytechnic School, consisted of one girl and nine of her male colleagues. The Montreal team created Esteban V, a yellow engine as bright as the sun. During the first day, the team encountered a battery problem which led them behind the other teams. All participants had to respect the time constraint of the sun’s luminescence. They could only run between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Esteban’s team arrived in the 14th position. The race officially ended on October 31st. The team from Tokai University in Japan won first place yesterday with its engine able to reach a maximum speed of 150km per hour.
Inaction on climate change comes with a huge price tag
By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola
©woodleywonderworks
It’s interesting to see the reaction to a report just released by our foundation and the Pembina Institute. The Globe and Mail called our analysis of the costs of fighting climate change “unsaleable and dangerous”.
But the Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson wrote that “The Pembina Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation have had the courage to uncover and to tell us the truth. Now Canadians must decide what to do.”
Yes, it is up to Canadians to decide what to do. Do we plug our ears and close our eyes and go about business as usual while the world strains under the damage we are inflicting? Do we leave our children and grandchildren a world of misery? Or do we pull together to confront this challenge, as we have with other major threats the world has faced?
©alicepopkorn on flikr.com
Keep in mind that the report, Climate Leadership, Economic Prosperity, while pointing out that reducing the impact of climate change will come with some costs, also concludes that our economy will remain healthy. In fact, the analysis, conducted by M.K. Jaccard and Associates, says that Canada’s gross domestic product would continue to grow even if we adopted the stronger measures that environmental organizations are calling for rather than the weak measures the federal government has proposed.
Still, comments in the news, and from people who post their reaction to news sites, show that many people aren’t willing to make tough decisions for the sake of our collective future – for the sake of our children and grandchildren.
Let’s be clear. Resolving a global problem like climate change will cost money. But doing nothing will cost much more. The very survival of people, not to mention many other plants and animals that we share this small planet with, may well be at stake.
Former World Bank chief economist Lord Stern has estimated that to keep heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions below levels that would cause catastrophic climate change would cost up to two per cent of global GDP, but failure to act could cost from five to 20 per cent of global GDP.
And those are just numbers. In the real world, runaway climate change could have devastating impacts on our water and food supplies, could lead to waves of refugees escaping uninhabitable drought-stricken areas or vanishing islands, and could wreak havoc on the world’s oceans and cause major extinctions of plants and animals. Some of this is already happening.
And consider what will become of our economy if we continue to fuel it with nonrenewable resources like oil and coal while the rest of the world switches to renewable energy. The demand for fossil fuels will dry up as the reserves become depleted. Where will that lead us?
©DVIDSHUB on flikr.com
And yet, we still have people saying it would cause too much hardship to act, or that it would be dangerous or divisive. Are we really that selfish? Well, not everyone is. It’s been heartening to see so many people, especially young people, taking to the streets and Parliament Hill, writing to MPs and prime ministers, and joining campaigns to urge governments to be part of the solution to global warming.
Millions of people turned out recently for more than 5,000 International Day of Climate Change events in 180 countries. The message was loud and clear: We expect our political leaders to work for the benefit and security of all of the world’s people when they meet in Copenhagen in December to work on a climate change agreement to continue and strengthen the Kyoto Protocol.
What these people realize is that the price we will pay to fight climate change is a good investment in a healthy and prosperous future. Some of the costs include investments in public transit and renewable energy, in programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in other parts of the world, and in helping people cope with higher transportation and home-heating costs during the time of transition.
The Globe and Mail, and others, may think all of this is “unsaleable and dangerous”, but it’s only dangerous to those who insist on staking their future on polluting, unsustainable non-renewable resources, and it’s only unsaleable to those who don’t care about the future. We can’t afford not to take action. We can’t afford to let our leaders let us down. We must continue to tell them that we expect them to work for us in Copenhagen.
Learn more at
www.davidsuzuki.org.
Climate Leadership, Economic Prosperity report
Copenhagen Climate Summit (December 2009)
International Day of Climate Action
Globe & Mail coverage
Monday, November 09, 2009
ReThink Toilet Paper
By simplegreenaction.ca
© Tracy Hunter
Even if you’ve given up paper towels and paper napkins you may be unwilling to part with toilet paper and tissues (at least when you have a bad cold). I don’t blame you! I am not in a big rush for reusable toilet paper myself. The toilet paper industry has one of the greatest industrial pressures on forests. A lot of the toilet paper we use is not made of recycled fibres but from felled trees — often from North America’s virgin forests, which are as rare as they are rich in wildlife.
Read more at
www.simplegreenaction.ca
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Green Guerrillas Youth Media Tech Collective: Sustainable Storytellers Who Change the Status Quo
Green Guerrillas Youth Media Tech Collective are young film makers, community activists, environmental enthusiasts and traveling intellectuals who get their “hands dirty” learning about renewable energy. They analyze important social, political, economic and environmental issues that affect our lives in a way youth can relate and get involved.
In April 2009, they embarked on a new project 16-month tour with a veggie diesel bus to create their fourth feature film—Green Guerrillas Blockumentary v.3 HD—showcases stories of sustainability from under-represented communities in the current environmental movement. They are fighting to empower marginalized youth and adults and to identify issues which adversely impact their lives and actively challenge institutional imbalances which threaten their futures.
This September, they finished V2.5 Green Grease Guzzlers. It's a film showcasing their Collective on a move to make our transportation more sustainable with the conversion of their 1990 Ford Econoline Diesel Bus. The film calls attention to the impact of carbon emissions.
To see the
video
Timberland Earthkeeper Hero
Timberland Earthkeeper Hero
Sami Nerenberg uses design to combat social and environmental issues—two things close to her heart. As a San Francisco native, she grew up immersed in its beautiful natural surroundings and a couple blocks from the projects. Inherently, she’s always been interested in two things: the world’s limited resources and social inequalities.
The interconnectedness of social and environmental issues pushed to the forefront of Sami’s work at Rhode Island School of Design, both as a student and as its youngest faculty member. Her work, and the class she created Design for Social Entrepreneurship, focuses on using design to improve communities, create less waste, and designing for needs opposed to designing for wants. Her mission is to change the way people use products and how products are developed and created, specifically the ones in homes across the globe.
As a
Timberland Earthkeeper Hero, Sami is sharing her story about her “green makeovers” for urban housing as part of an inner city youth project. She’s teaching kids about products in their homes. For example, many items may contain lead paint, VOCs, vinyl in the furniture, mold, pest, toxic cleaning products and more. All these items can lead to things like brain damage, asthma, headaches and even cancer. Low-income, minority communities are more susceptible to using these types of products because they are inexpensive.
This past summer, Sami’s tackled these social and environmental problems in one by piloting a healthy home makeover TV show. She worked with a group of teens from low-income communities and taught them how to create affordable and healthy changes in their homes. Her work hasn’t stopped there. Sami continues to share her ongoing stories on
Changents.com.
Greener houses!
Sustainable Real Estate in 2009
The Real Estate and Co-Ownership Tradeshow 2009 will be held from November 13th to 15th at the Palais des Congrès de Montréal. This year’s theme,in sync with Copenhagen’s climate change conference is: sustainable real estate. The Real Estate Tradeshow is the only event intended for property owners, real estate investors and potential buyers in Quebec.
This discussion and exchange forum on real estate will gather more than 200 exhibitors, speakers and legal consultants. Workshops, symposiums and free consultations are on the program. International specialists will discuss about sustainable real estate and will explain the actual environmental challenges. They will also put forward solutions to remediate to this planetary quest.
Green homes, really?
Sustainable real estate experts will offer conferences regarding the possibilities and the advantages of renovating, maintaining and managing real estate property in a sociably responsible way. The visitors will discover the ecological, social and economical advantages of building in a sustainable way.
Energy service companies, financial institutions as well as real estate developers and builders will present symposiums on sustainable real estate. What is sustainable real estate? How do we contribute? What is Eco Construction? These are some of the questions international experts will tackle.
What about sustainable development?
Sustainable development is sometimes so close to us that we forget about it easily. Our consumption habits directly impact the environment and future generations. This is why the 2009 Tradeshow will exhibit real estate’s contribution and ongoing involvement in terms of sustainable development.
A word from…
For the event, Line Beauchamp, Minister of Sustainable Development, Environment and Parks granted us an exclusive interview on the eve of the international climate change conference in Copenhagen. According to Minister Beauchamp, “sustainable development takes into account environmental protection, but also economic and social development”. She believes that transport industry is the main cause of greenhouse gas emissions in Quebec and that territory and real estate development are both directly intertwined with this industry.
*Watch Line Beauchamp’s exclusive interview
As for the President and Spokesman of The Real Estate and Co-Ownership Tradeshow 2009, Mister Yves Joli-Coeur, the main objective of the Tradeshow is to increase public awareness on the necessity of participating in eco-construction andsustainable real estate initiatives. Yves Joli-Coeur gave us an interview on sustainable real estate as tomorrows driving force. Installation of solar panels on houses to heat water, for example, is the type of project Quebec should put together to take a green turn, suggests the spokesman.
*To watch his interview
About the Tradeshow
Founded in 2004 by Mr. Yves Joli-Coeur, expert attorney in co-ownership issues, the Real Estate and Co-Ownership Tradeshow enjoys the support of important partners, notably the Regroupement des gestionnaires et copropriétaires du Québec, the Conseil de l’immobilier du Québec, the Condolegal.com Website, the Barreau du Québec and many other organizations and firms.
For more information on scheduling, speakers or exhibitors visit
www.cestamontreal.com
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