Environment

May 13, 2007

Friendly for The Environment: A New Bulb Is On The Block

Being the environmentally conscious sort of people that we are, during the course of this past week, VanRamblings installed a low flow shower head in the bathroom, and visited our local Home Hardware to purchase a surfeit of compact fluorescents, this time for the living room, bathroom, bedroom, dining room and kitchen. All and all, we're feeling pretty good about ourselves.

Seems, though, that with Canada banning incandescent bulbs by 2012 — in Ontario alone, replacing the 87 million incandescent bulbs in that province with more efficient bulbs will save six million megawatt hours every year, enough to power 600,000 homes — the hunt is on for an alternative, other than compact fluorescents, to the traditional incandescent bulb.

The knocks on compact fluorescents are few, but for some significant. Initially, concern was expressed about the tube design of CFs, but now that you can purchase a CF in the traditional incandescent bulb shape, for any room in the house, that concern would appear to have been dealt with. For some, the fact that CFs take awhile to "warm up", that the lights can't be placed on a dimmer, and many consumers believe the light seems a little harsh and unforgiving (VanRamblings believes we're still gorgeous, though, when we look in our mirrors) are barriers to switching to more efficient lighting. Is there an alternative to compact fluorescents, then?

Seems that there is, or soon will be. In this Associated Press story, destined to be the next big thing in the lighting market, we will see the emergence of the LED "bulb". According to the AP story, at the recent Lightfair Trade Show, in New York, the Dallas-based Lighting Science Group Corp. showed an LED "bulb" that screws into a standard medium-sized socket, producing a warm light equivalent to that of a 25-watt incandescent bulb, consuming just 5.8 watts. Although the bulb currently costs $50 — let's face it, kinda pricey when we can purchase a 4-pack of standard bulbs for only a couple of dollars at our local grocery store — word out of New York was that "by the middle of next year, they'll be priced for consumers."

August 20, 2005

Turn Up the Quiet: Moving Toward a Noise Free World
The Quest for Sonic Bliss and a Good Night’s Sleep

It’s an epidemic, and it’s all around us. It’s in our bedrooms, in our rec rooms and living rooms, in our cars and even in our baby’s crib. It causes stress, isolation, sleep deprivation and increases our blood pressure. And it is literally making us deaf.

What is this monster? It’s noise. Noise is responsible for more than one-third of all cases of hearing loss, a life-altering disability that is eminently preventable. Hearing loss is Canada’s third leading chronic disability, affecting more than 3 million people — and the leading cause is noise, responsible for more than one third of cases.

According to a recently published study conducted by Timothy C. Hain, a Professor of Neurology and Otolaryngology at Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago, Illinois ...

We are steadily losing our hearing due to over-exposure to noise at an earlier age than ever before. The number of people with hearing loss who are between the ages 18 and 44 increased 17 per cent. The greatest loss in hearing is found in people 45 to 64 — 20 years younger than expected and the reason: over exposure to noise.

Children are also feeling the effects of living in a noisier world and are especially vulnerable. According to the study, 15% of school children have hearing loss, increasing to 30% in young adults entering the work force.

In this month’s issue of Utne Magazine, writer David Schimke explores our quest for the creative and natural soundscape all around us — the music of nature, the laughter of friends and neighbours, and our own inner voice.

I didn’t know that cheaper housing was statistically linked to mind-numbing noise pollution: that city planners insensitive to the needs of lower-middle-class citizens typically build two-lane highways through neighbourhoods designed for the horse and buggy, or that airport runways literally begin and end in people’s backyards. When I first moved to the city, I didn’t expect that construction crews and street sweepers would rattle and hum before sunup, while schoolchildren and working families tried in vain to rest.

According to the U.S. 2001 Census Survey, 11.6 million households reported that street or traffic noise was bothersome, and an additional 4.5 million said it was so bad they wanted to move.

Schimke reports that there are 40 million cases of hearing loss in the United States, with 10 million cases attributable to excess noise. Besides contributing to deafness, at just 85 decibels (a human voice averages 65 decibels, while a hair dryer clocks in at 95), high sound levels lead to stress (the human pain threshold is 120 decibels), indigestion, high blood pressure, weakening of the immune system, and hypertension.

The relationship between noise and the natural soundscape is similar to the relationship between litter and the landscape. We need to get people to understand that, to create a new aural ethic. Dissonance is not inherent in the human condition. Noise induced hearing loss doesn’t have to happen to you. For now, practice safe listening — turn it down and use protection.

August 13, 2005

Sustainable Communities: A Bright Future And A Glowing Past

One Day is a City of Vancouver initiative dedicated to making incremental changes in energy consumption that can be sustained over time.

Whether it’s for personal fitness, to be part of the solution for future generations, or to help Vancouver become recognized as a world model for how an urban centre can manage energy consumption, the folks at onedayvancouver.ca are there to help you find ways to take that first step.

For instance, in your home you can ...

• Install compact fluorescent light bulbs
  
• Install low-flow showerheads
  
• Set back your thermostat at night
  
• Look for the EnergyStar label when purchasing new appliances
  
• Take advantage of BC Hydro Power Smart programmes and incentives
  
• Turn the lights out when you leave the room

On the road, you can cut down on your energy consumption by ...

• Leaving your car at home, just one day a week
  
• Walking or cycling to work or school
  
• Taking transit
  
• Joining a car co-op

Cities are for people (not cars). John Naisbitt (author of High Tech/High Touch: Technology and Our Search for Meaning) had it right: the more technology distances us (telecommuting, distance education, e-mail, videoconferencing), the more we crave human contact. Today, walkable communities, stroll districts, green transit, multi-modal transportation, urban density ... all point in the direction of people-centered planning.

Cities are for all people. For cities of the future, tolerance is passé; inclusion is critical. Young people are moving to cities where people ‘mix’: in clubs, at church, and in neighbourhoods. In Paris, housing projects require a set-aside of several units only for artists. Other cities (such as Vancouver) require that 10 to 15 perecent of all new residential buildings are affordable housing. When integration occurs, it can be transformative and magical.

Healthy cities are important, too: cities that are committed to diesel-hydrogen transit buses, more bike racks on the front of buses, more walking and biking trails within cities (not just outside them) and greater commitment to green / open spaces contribute to sustainability.

Much of our future, and our children’s future, depends on making our cities ‘sustainable’. The time is here to enable even greater access to community services and recreation; to enhance our social prosperity; to minimize our need to travel across broad stretches of the Lower Mainland in our daily commute, and to build sustainable and affordable mass transit for all; to ensure safety within our communities; to provide a clear city centre focus in each of our communities; and to protect and preserve the key features of our city environment — our historic buildings, nature conservation, and the parks, beaches and woods of our city’s natural landscape.

February 27, 2005

An Idea On The Shelf: Cancer Prevention In Canada

In 2005, why isn’t addressing the environmental causes of cancer in the Canadian government’s official cancer control strategy? Andrea Smith, writing in The Dominion, reminds us that in 2002 the federal government announced it had devised the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control, a federal initiative designed to improve the co-ordination and delivery of treatment, prevention, palliative services and research in Canada.

To date, though, the federal agency developed to implement the Canadian Strategy for Cancer Control has yet to put into place any sort of co-ordinated cancer control strategy, and the work of the National Cancer Leadership Forum (NCLF) — an organization representing cancer care and advocacy agencies across the country — remains an idea left forgotten on a dusty shelf somewhere in Ottawa, deep within the bowels of government.

While Paul Martin’s federal Liberal government dithers, this year alone approximately 68,000 Canadians will die from cancer.

July 23, 2004

Cruise Control? Cruise Ship Industry Pollution In Canada

Alaska-bound cruise ships in dock, at Vancouver's harbourfront Canada Place terminal

What images spring to mind when you imagine a northern cruise vacation? Crystal clear water, teaming with sea life; humpback whales frolicking for your viewing pleasure; or perhaps just the vastness of British Columbia’s pristine coast, and a wild azure blue ocean untouched by human pollution.

These images contradict the current reality of the cruise industry.

A single cruise ship discharges approximately 1.3 million litres of waste water per day, more than the port city of Haines, Alaska.

In an article published in The Dominion, writers Yuill Herbert and Karen Gorecki report that:

• The American environmental group, the Blue Water Network, estimates that 77% of all ship waste comes from cruise ships

• Two billion pounds of trash is dumped into the world’s oceans each year and 24% of that waste comes from cruise ships

• 14 million kilograms of waste was produced in 2000 on the Alaska-Canada route alone

• Cruise ships have accrued over $60 million in environmental fines over the last five years in the U.S. Yet, in Canada, due to a lack of monitoring and enforcement there have been no fines, despite the fact that these same ships visit our waters

• Greenhouse gas emissions of international ships are excluded from the national emissions inventories, a loophole in the Kyoto Accord which benefits cruise ship lines

The Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group’s report, Ripple Effects: The Need to Assess the Impacts of Cruise Ships in Victoria B.C. not only serves to reinforce the points made by Herbert and Gorecki, among other findings the report’s authors learned that cruise “ships burn fuel that has sulphur content 90% higher than that used by cars.”

July 5, 2004

Aviation Growth 'Risk To The Planet'

The rise in demand for air travel is one of the most serious environmental threats facing the world, according to a British report issued this past weekend. The report says that government plans for expansion of airport facilities are in direct conflict with targets to reduce greenhouse gases, stating that as polluting gases from aircraft exhaust fumes increase further, rapid degradation of the environment will take place.

Friends of the Earth claim this will push up the aviation contribution to carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) emissions to 10-12% by 2020 — from the current 5%.

“We are at war with the Earth itself,” says Cambridge University Professor James Lovelock. “Our goal should be the cessation of fossil fuel consumption as quickly as possible.”

In a BBC report (RealPlayer required) on aviation greenhouse gases, the Stockholm Institute is quoted as saying ...

“For too long, airlines have been largely exempt from efforts to combat global warming. The world’s airlines currently create 300 million tonnes of greenhouse gases each year, and that figure is rising fast. By the middle of the century, airlines will account for 15% of the total contribution to global warming.”

The head of one of the world’s biggest oil giants — Ron Oxburgh, Chairman of Shell Oil — in an interview with The Guardian, has said unless carbon dioxide emissions are dealt with, he sees “very little hope for the world.”

“No one can be comfortable at the prospect of continuing to pump out the amounts of carbon dioxide that we are at present,” Lord Oxburgh told the Guardian. “People are going to go on allowing this atmospheric carbon dioxide to build up, with consequences that we really can't predict, but are probably not good.”

The Kyoto Treaty was drawn up in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 to implement the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change. It legally binds industrialized nations to reduce worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases by an average of 5.2% below their 1990 levels over the next decade.

After the U.S. pulled out in March 2001, the treaty was left shattered. A compromise was reached four months later, with nearly 180 nations (including Canada) opting for a scaled-down version of the treaty, but President Bush has stated that the U.S. will never sign it, in spite of dire warnings from within his own government.

July 4, 2004

Minority Government Bodes Well for Kyoto

Canada’s first minority government in 25 years will have to ensure it acts on environmental and sustainable development issues if it is to maintain support from the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois.

According to International Institute for Sustainable Development Board Member Mary Simon — also a former Canadian Ambassador for Circumpolar Affairs — climate change should be at the top of the Liberal government’s environmental priority list. As someone with close connections to Canada’s north she is well aware of climate change’s “profound implications for the social, cultural and economic well-being of the 50,000 aboriginal people who live in the Canadian Arctic.”

Ms. Simon’s compellingly readable two-page report (Adobe Acrobat required) is available here.

May 10, 2004

World Food Prices Set to Rise

At the same time we're being hit by increased prices for gas at the pump, the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute (EPI) reports that world food prices are set for a dramatic jump in the coming year.

According to the group’s calculations, four successive shortfalls in annual grain harvests have reduced the world’s carry-over stocks to their lowest level in 30 years, amounting to only 59 days of consumption. That is 11 days short of the 70-day level that is traditionally considered the minimum needed for food security.

The last time global stocks were so low in the early 1970s, wheat and rice prices doubled with disastrous consequences for millions of the world’s poor. A similar pattern may be asserting itself now, according to Lester Brown, EPI’s founder and president, as basic food and feed commodities are on the rise.

Brown says that the challenge of rebuilding the stocks to the 70-day consumption level will be very difficult to overcome, particularly if early indications for the winter wheat crop, which was planted last fall, are not hopeful.

April 22, 2004

Make Earth Day 2004 count

While some people may plant trees or pick up litter to honour Earth Day, Yahoo (by way of Debra Galant) points the way to how you might go about Saving the World in a Day.

As we read every day, and as we are aware, environmental crises abound as our own actions and those of industry pollute and degrade the fragile environment we all need to survive. What can we do? Well, certainly this provides some insight as answer to that question.

First launched as an environmental awareness event in the United States in 1970, Earth Day (April 22nd) is celebrated as the birth of the environmental movement. Spearheaded by Wisconsin Governor Gaylord Nelson and Harvard University student Denis Hayes, Earth Day has become a powerful catalyst for change, involving some 20 million participants each April 22nd, in teach-ins that address decades of environmental pollution.

In Canada in 1990, two million Canadians joined 200 million people in 141 nations across the globe in celebrating the first International Earth Day. Earth Day serves to put needed pressure on heads of nation states to address issues such as climate change and the world wide loss of species.

In many places, including Canada, Earth Day has grown into Earth Week and even Earth Month, when thousands of events take place, ranging from waterway clean-ups to engaging in a variety of other pollution solutions. This is Earth Day. Organize, volunteer, and learn what you can do to help make this a better world for all of us.

March 22, 2004

Stop the Bush Air Pollution Plan

Working in concert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Natural Resource Defense Council's Earth Action Center has released this flash cartoon which, in a somewhat less academic fashion than is true of the article just below, attacks the Bush administration's environmental policies, employing the services of everyone's favourite miscreant, Tommy Toxic.

The Global Environment: Restoring Scientific Integrity

"Science, like any field of endeavour, relies on freedom of inquiry; and one of the hallmarks of that freedom is objectivity. Now, more than ever, on issues ranging from climate change to AIDS research to genetic engineering to food additives, government relies on the impartial perspective of science for guidance."

— President George H. W. Bush, 1990

On a wide range of issues the current U.S. administration of George W. Bush has set about to suppress and distort scientific analysis from federal agencies, taking actions that have undermined the quality of scientific advisory panels. This misuse of science has serious consequences for the health and safety of the world's peoples, as well as the natural environment which provides life and sustenance to us all.

Across a broad range of issues — from childhood lead poisoning and mercury emissions to climate change, reproductive health, and nuclear weapons — the reactionary Bush administration (one of the most regressive governments in modern history) continues its destructive campaign of distortion and disinformation, censoring all independent scientific findings that contradict its pro-business policies.

As part of their mandate, Bushies' in-house scientific advisory panel has set about to manipulate underlying science research to align results with predetermined political decisions; to undermine the independence of university-community nominated science advisory panels, by subjecting panel nominees to political litmus tests that have little or no bearing on their expertise, nominating instead non-experts or underqualified individuals from outside the scientific community, who possess industry ties and interests that are demonstrably contrary to the common good.

In many cases, the Bush administration has disbanded science advisory committees altogether.

The Union of Concerned Scientists has this morning released a report titled Scientific Integrity in Policymaking (in PDF form), a damning indictment of the interventionist policies of the current Bush administration.

February 22, 2004

Bush Suppresses Report on Global Warming
· Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
· Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism

Mark Townsend and Paul Harris report in today's Guardian/Observer (reprinted in Z-Mag) on a secret Pentagon report about global warming.

Suppressed by US defence chiefs, the report obtained by The Observer warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020, and nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt a cross the world.

The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability eclipses that of terrorism, say the experts privy to its contents.