Climate change in Canada

Climate change is already creating serious problems in Canada. Here is a video of Elizabeth May addressing the Global Greens Conference in Sao Paulo earlier this month.



The text of the speech is here if you prefer.

Peak Soil

George Monbiot makes some good points about fuel sources.

He cites a recent report that Peak Oil is upon us, and although environmentalists and geologists have being warning of this for some time, this new report is written by capitalists, so perhaps now governments may start to pay attention.

Growing biofuels to replace fossil fuel seems to getting a lot of criticism, and Monbiot says that land clearance for biofuels causes a massive increase in emissions, and creates a carbon debt that takes between 17 and 840 years to recoup.

An alternative is to use agricultural 'waste', but Alice Friedemann points out that this will likely result in Peak Soil.

Give up carbon for Lent

Christians in Britain are being urged to give up carbon for Lent and they can even download a 40 day calendar to help.

It's not a bad idea, but why just do it for Lent? But I do hope that it encourages people who don't already take these actions to begin doing so, all year round.

Rethinking biofuels

I am pleased that the EU are rethinking their policy of encouraging biofuels.

The Royal Society has just published a report (Adobe PDF File, 788kb), which Professor John Pickett, Chair of the study discusses in this video:



Wikipedia has a lengthy article about Biofuel, and lots of links to references on the subject, so I won't go into all the details. But do beware of claims that biofuels are 'green'. The only real problems they solve are those of fuel security and peak oil. Their carbon neutrality is debatable, and certainly not all biofuels are created equal. Their other environmental consequences are very real, and a full field to forecourt analysis needs to be done for each fuel type.

The cost of wasted food

I just read an interesting news release from WRAP (Waste and Resources Action Programme, an organisation in the UK), Food Waste Set to Soar over Festive Season.

I find the figures rather hard to believe. It works out at 8.5 pounds per person. The article raises a lot of questions, such as how do they arrive at the statistics, how many days does the Festive Season include, and do the figures include waste from food retailers? Elsewhere on their website they look at annual waste and say:

In total food waste in the UK is around 18 - 20 million tonnes, with household food waste making the single largest contribution (6.7 million tonnes).

Retailers are believed to generate about 1.6 million tonnes of food waste, food manufacturers about 3.5 million tonnes, with food service and restaurants producing about another 3 million tonnes. The remainder comes from the agricultural and horticultural sector, and commercial food waste (e.g. from hospitals, schools, etc).

However accurate the figures are, it does make good points about the environmental impact of producing, storing and getting the food to our homes. They calculate it is equivalent to taking 1 in 5 cars off the road in the UK. Food is wasted because we either cook or prepare too much, and we let food go off. Love Food Hate Waste is their campaign to reduce waste.

WRAP have a number of other initiatives, including the Courtauld Commitment which aims to reduce waste from retail packaging, including looking at ways to extend shelf life of food products.

Alternative energy use in the UK

The British Government seem poised to start building more Nuclear power stations. Greenpeace UK has many reasons why this shouldn't be allowed to happen. Instead, they suggest The Convenient Solution, and offer this video:

Wind energy on the Great Lakes

The Gulf Stream has stopped before

One of the likely outcomes of global warming is that the Gulf Stream could stop, thereby dropping temperatures in Britain and Scandinavia. This thermohaline circulation would be shutdown by glaciers melting and thereby desalinating the ocean.

Researchers now claim that they have proof that when the glacial Lake Agassiz burst some 8000 years ago and dumped its fresh waters into the North Atlantic, the circulation of the Atlantic was shut down. Temperatures in Greenland fell by 8C at this time.

Harper Conservatives let us down.

Right now, a major UN summit in Bali has just a few days left to hammer out an agreement on stopping catastrophic climate change. But instead of helping out, Canada is actually sabotaging the talks! On Saturday, experts gave us the global "fossil" award for being the worst country in the world on climate change.

There's still a few days left to save Canada's reputation -- and the climate -- but we need a massive democratic roar to remind our Prime Minister what Canada is all about, and stop him from blocking the world at Bali. Sign the petition now, which will be advertised with the number of signatures in an ad campaign across Canada this week. The goal is to get 25,000 people to sign in the next 3 days -- before the ads run.

Prime Minister Harper's short-sighted, undemocratic and big oil-driven policy on climate change is damaging the world and destroying our image as a good country. We're supposed to be the nice guys, who try to do the right thing in the world.

The vast majority of Canadians are hopping mad on this issue -- we can win this. We just need to show Harper how serious we are that he change course. Sign up now and forward this email to everyone you know - we've got just 3 days to hit 25,000 signatures!

Thanks for your help!

PS - Here are links to some more info on this:

David Suzuki (the Nature of Things) calls the government's spin on climate change "humiliating" and "ludicrous" - www.thestar.com

The former editor-in-chief of CBC news discusses the damage done by Canada's climate policy to our international reputation - www.cbc.ca/news/