Archive for Ecology & sustainability

I think I need a new category.  This post isn’t exactly scaremongering, it’s more like guilt-tripping.  I discovered this post from George Monbiot while looking up background information for my previous post, which was also one massive guilt trip.  Guilt-tripping is not what I like to do, and clearly it’s not something Mr. Monbiot feels entirely comfortable with, either.  In this video, he repeats what he articulated to a Toronto audience in 2006:     Read more »

I saw this article a while ago and wanted to report on it, but got side tracked with other things.

It makes it clear that the wealthiest nations and the wealthiest people are overwhelmingly responsible for climate change, but that the costs will be borne overwhelmingly by the poorest people in developing nations.  As one researcher finds, “the world’s rich countries owe the world’s poor $2.3 trillion — an amount that easily eclipses the total of Third World debt ($1.8 trillion)”.  At a personal level, one study the article refers to “showed that people in the U.S. who earned more than $75,000 emitted nearly four times as much C02 as those who earned less than $10,000”.

In fact, Stephen Pacala, the director of the Princeton Environmental Institute, said “the world’s 500 million richest people were responsible for a breathtaking 50 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions”.     Read more »

This is a good article in the Globe and Mail about the problems in AECL (Atomic Energy of Canada Limited) and the relationship between the federal government and the nuclear regulator.  What’s missing is a critical observation.  If we accept the AECL is hobbling and must cut corners on safety measures despite enormous government subsidies, what is the true cost of nuclear power?

A new U.N. report predicts the imminent collapse of the world’s fishing stocks due to climate change, according to this Associated Press report.

PARIS (AP) — Major world commercial fish stocks could collapse within decades as global warming compounds damage from pollution and overfishing, U.N. officials said Friday.

A U.N. Environment Program report details new research on how rising ocean surface temperature and other climate changes are affecting the fishing industry. It says that more than 2.6 billion people get most of their protein from fish.

“You overlay all of this and you are potentially putting a death nail in the coffin of the world fisheries,” Achim Steiner, head of the program, said in a telephone news conference from Monaco.

Come to this non-partisan talk I’ve organized:

Tuesday, 2008 March 4, 7 pm
OISE room 5250
252 Bloor Street  West

The world we’re moving into will be radically different from the one  we move in today. So different that it’s hard to imagine. It’s even harder to  imagine the transition.

Global warming demands that we stop using oil.  The age of cheap plentiful oil is ending anyway. We’ve built up a society where  we drive everywhere, and most of what we buy, including almost all of our food,  is now brought from long distances. Hybrid cars and other incremental efficiency  measures have their place, but are not nearly enough to get us where we need to  go.

What will future transport look like and how can we make the  transition with the least disruption?

Anthony Perl and Richard  Gilbert have worked through the details of a carbon-free future for  transportation, including such innovations as wind-assisted shipping and  personal rapid transit. They’ve done the math to show that their vision is  workable, and they’ve plotted out a practical step-by-step process to get our  society to where it needs to be.

Based on their book Transport  Revolutions, Anthony will present where we are now, the challenges we face,  and what potential exists for the future. Richard will then lead a discussion of  the issues.

Dr. Anthony Perl is the Director of the Urban Studies  Program at Simon Fraser University. His work has focused on public policy,  transportation and the environment. Transport Revolutions is his fourth  book.

Dr. Richard Gilbert is an independent consultant, popular  and academic author, and teacher at various universities. He  served as a Toronto City Councillor for 15 years.

Sponsored by Post Carbon Toronto and the Coalition for a Green Economy