Archive for Ecology & sustainability

A BBC poll of people in 21 countries reveals that most are ready to make significant lifestyle changes to combat global warming.

Four out of five people indicated they were prepared to change their lifestyle – even in the US and China, the world’s two biggest emitters of carbon dioxide.

Also, most favor the Green Party policy of tax shifting: increasing taxes on climate-changing carbon while reducing personal taxes by the same amount.

And when those opposed to higher taxes were asked whether they would change their minds if other taxes were reduced in order to keep their total tax burden the same, the survey again discovered large majorities in every country in favoured of higher green taxes.

Yesterday, I received two links that suggest that global warming is a lot more frightening even than I had imagined, suggesting that at this point not only is it imperative to stop burning carbon, but that human survival may depend on the much more difficult job of actually removing it from our atmosphere and putting it back in the ground.     Read more »

The Yes, In My Backyard! festival returns for a second year.  And Magdalena Olszanowski wants you to come.  It’s easy to say Not in my backyard! — let’s think about what we do want.

Second Annual YIMBY Festival
Saturday, 2007 October 27, 11 am – 5 pm
Gladstone Hotel, 2nd floor, 1214 Queen St West
Family-friendly event.  Free.

The Priorities for Ontario Coalition is comprised of thirteen leading environmental groups in Ontario, including the Sierra Club of Canada (Ontario), Greenpeace and the Pembina Institute.  It advocates for policy changes in six policy areas loosely related to the environment.  Their site charts the parties stand in meeting its objectives in all six of the policy areas identified.  It should be no surprise that the Green Party looks very good from this perspective.

Please come to the debate sponsored by the Priorities for Ontario Coalition.  Victoria Serda will be representing the Green Party of Ontario.

Priorities for Ontario Debate
Wednesday, 2007 October 3, 7pm
(doors open at 6:30)
Isabel Bader Theatre
93 Charles Street West
(1 block south of Bloor, just east of the ROM)
free

I’d like everyone to look into the Vote for Clean Energy campaign.   The energy issue is strangely missing from most of the dialogue in this election.   Actually, it feels surreal when I see that Dalton McGuinty has somehow managed to take the moral high ground by arguing that only Catholics deserve special treatment in school funding.

Whereas the Province intends to spend over $100 billion dollars rebuilding our nuclear fleet, expensive natural gas plants and associated transmission lines and nobody says a word.   I believe this is the single most expensive plan the Province has ever tabled.   If implemented it will have profound influences on the way we live for decades to come.   There is no Environmental Assessment, no meaningful public consultation and the plan doesn’t even attempt to meet any emissions targets.   It certainly won’t meet Kyoto levels in the foreseeable future.   We’re about to be hammered with this, and we seem to be in a daze, staring off in the opposite direction.     Read more »