Abuse Your Friend's Toilets

Abue Your Friend's Toilets

Today, as my first post on Rethos, I give you a very earth friendly tip that I just learned about last night from the plumber that was here fixing a leak in the bathroom.

This is my most recent post from one of my blogs, http://earththreat.org.

Do you feel like saving bazillions of gallons of fresh water? I will now tell you how.

No, this is not the pop bottle full of water or rocks in the toilet tank. That does not always work that great. The bottle can get in the way of your toilets moving parts. This method does not involve any bottles, rocks, water, or tools.

If you have ever taken the lid off of a toilet, you know that there is a float ball in there that attached to a thin metal rod. This float balls level determines the water level within the toilets tank. Get in there, grab that rod, and bend it downward a little. Next time the toilet is flushed and the tank refills the water level is forever lowered (unless it is bent back of course).

Think about all of the water that could be saved with this trick. Toilets get flushed a hell of a lot. If one gallon of water is saved per flush, and that toilet is flushed six times a day, you will be responsible for saving over 2,000 gallons of water per year. Abuse five of your friend’s toilets and you will save close to 11,000 gallons with a six flush daily average.

Let’s start abusing shall we? We should have a contest or something. Thanks for reading.

Call Out Litter Bugs

If you care about this planet, you do not litter. Tossing your trash aside instead of holding on to it until you find a garbage can is simply laziness.

Littering is obviously the most commonly broken law, but it is probably also the offense that most often goes unpunished. You see the signs, ‘Do Not Litter, Minimum fine $300′. These signs obviously don’t change a thing, but I guess it is some sign of effort from the authorities.

The police don’t do much about the problem, so I guess it’s about time you became an Earth Friendly Vigilante! If a person is walking the sidewalk in front of you and you see them toss an empty bottle to the side, return it to them.

Bring them back their trash, and say something like, “Excuse me, I think you dropped this”. An outed litter bug will most commonly feel embarrassed, take their trash back, and run.

If they act like an @*@ and say they dropped it on purpose, put them down with a verbal low blow. “Get the f%$# off my planet litter bug!!”, should work just fine.

This earth is truly here for the people that care for and protect it. Fight for your right to live in cleanliness.

Al Gore Isn't Vegetarian

I’m in a bit of shock right now after stumbling over this video on youtube. Yes, Glen Beck is a *##* head, but this video is worth watching. I have always assumed that Gore was a vegetarian or vegan. Silly me. How can he preach to the world about global warming when he is not making the most important and effective step himself? With his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth”, and the speeches he has made world wide, how can this be? Oh yeah, don’t forgot about Live Earth. Live Earth was/is Gore’s brain child. Watch this video, and leave your thoughts if you wish.

rethos.com/celsias ranked 3rd global blog for climate change

Celsias website ranked third in world Thursday, 6 September 2007, 10:28 am Press Release: Celsias MEDIA RELEASE

5 September 2007

Celsias climate change website ranked third in world

Wellington-based Celsias (www.celsias.com) is now ranked third among dozens of climate change websites worldwide, according to “Authority” ranking data on Technorati.com, a leading website ranking company.

According to the Technorati website:

“Authority is the number of blogs linking to a website in the last six months, and the higher the number, the more Authority the blog has.”

Technorati has assigned Celsias an overall Authority ranking of 5,389 from over 55 million websites it monitors.

Visitors from over 120 countries come to Celsias to read climate change articles written by more than thirty writers from New Zealand, Australia, US, Canada, Europe, the Middle East, India and China.

Nick Lewis, Celsias’ CEO, says, “We are now receiving between five and ten requests per day to write for Celsias, so we appear to have become one of the leading ‘go to’ sites on climate change.”

Celsias has three series of articles underway or about to start: Ride to Sustain – Colin Davis is riding his bicycle from San Francisco to Boston interviewing climate change leaders and filing posts with Celsias as he goes. He is currently crossing Iowa, about halfway into his adventure. Planet Friendly Home (planned) – A writer and her husband are planning to re-do their home in a planet-friendly way, and will keep a diary on Celsias. Letters from Antarctica (planned) – A writer has been assigned to Antarctica for six months where she will interview scientists who are measuring the effects of climate change on ice, local fauna, snow temperatures, and so on. Celsias has just released its beta version where it is compiling one of the world’s first registers of projects that combat global warming. “Our website is about ordinary people doing extraordinary things in their own quiet way,” says Lewis. “Through the power of the Internet we can multiply their impact to show what a community of millions can do to address a global issue like climate change. It’s all about individuals each making a difference.”

Project leaders will also be able to raise the visibility of their projects, recruit volunteers, attract resources and solicit funding.

Option 13 - Corporate Kinghts

An article forwarded to me from Corporate Knights for posting on rethos.com…

Option: 13 Three choices for 2013 and beyond in the face of climate change

We can’t meet global goals without a global mechanism.

We need the same price on carbon everywhere or it won’t work anywhere.

Most of the world believes that humans have played a role in climate change and can play a role reining it in. Regardless of the degree to which one blames or empowers humans for climate change, the prospects for what we do about it as a race are limited to three options:

1. Do Nothing. Or do nothing of substance (i.e. what is happening now) and move on to focus the international community’s attention and resources toward other pressing problems such as access to potable water and eradicating infectious diseases. 2. Many national targets, varying prices. Asynchronous Carbon Pricing entails one country, (such as the US, post-2008) or one region (such as the EU) adopting substantive carbon pricing schemes (through taxes, or cap-and-trade ), while other major economic competitors (such as China) do not. The present Kyoto architecture envisions such a system premised on quantitative national caps, although its implementation has yet to result in substantive carbon pricing. The trouble is that carbon—unlike CFCs—pervades our economies like no other substance, and the 21st century economy is hyper-globalized. Carbon-intensive industries in countries with a meaningful carbon price will have a powerful incentive to do two things: a.) lobby for their home government to levy tariffs on imports from other countries that do not enforce a similar carbon price; or b.) simply relocate to the no- or low-carbon-price countries, which would do nothing to reduce emissions. A massive relocation of carbon intensive industries to carbon-havens would saddle developing countries with the same dirty and inefficient development model pursued by the west. This would constitute a lost opportunity to leapfrog to cleaner and more efficient low-carbon technologies, much the same way as large parts of Africa have jumped the queue of archaic fixed lines to embrace mobile telephony. The other risk to developing and developed countries alike from this unilateral approach is the danger of staggering layoffs in developed countries which would pummel the public’s already shaky faith in globalization , likely resulting in a backlash against trade. Some of the groundwork is already being laid for this tariff-riddled path toward trade anarchy. The German Parliament has recently commissioned a report on how it might apply carbon import tariffs. Diverse actors ranging from French President Nicholas Sarkozy to oil patch legend and EnCana Corp. executive chairman, Gwyn Morgan, have publicly supported the use of carbon import tariffs. The danger of this approach is that there is massive scope for misapplying tariffs (trade anarchy), especially in the US-China context where there already exists significant protectionist US forces vying to erect import barriers for products from low-wage countries.

3. One climate. One price. One hope. A Synchronized Global Climate Architecture that adopts the principle of one price on carbon from large point sources everywhere with independent auditing and strong enforcement mechanisms including prompt and incrementally severe penalties for non-compliance, such as trade tariffs. To respect the sovereignty of nations, the carbon price would necessarily be collected, held and spent as per the wishes of each individual nation, whether to reduce income and corporate taxes, or to innovate and apply low-carbon technologies and invest in infrastructure, or both.

A Synchronized Global Climate Architecture is different from the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol in two crucial ways.

Difference 1: A. There is no delay or exemption for developing countries to avoid geographic relocation of emissions-intensive industries. This would not preclude a phased-in harmonization of carbon prices with developed nations acting first, and developing nations quickly following suit to achieve parity carbon pricing inside of a three-year timescale. Any timescale that prevented parity pricing for more than three years would risk substantial geographic relocation of carbon intensive industries. Morally, this raises important questions, as rich polluting countries are responsible for about three-quarters of the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Although it doesn’t minimize rich nations’ responsibility, most of the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere were pumped out by present-day rich nations prior to the solidifying scientific consensus that human-induced climate change imperils civilization. Regardless of the moral culpability of rich nations for human-induced climate change, the gathering and sheer scale of developing country investments in energy (a 750-MW coal-fired generator every week-and-half in China) and other infrastructure will be with us for many decades. If we fail to influence the energy and other investment decisions being made in developing countries today, it will be extremely difficult to avoid the worst-case scenario ranges of dangerous climate change identified in the IPCC reports and the Stern Review .

The global economy will not decarbonize by itself. It will require reallocating hundreds of billions of dollars of capital each year to low- or no-carbon alternatives. Managing a project of this scale from a centralized platform or with Clean Development Mechanism credits that measure in the hundreds of millions or low billions is as futile as trying to prevent billions of snowflakes from hitting the ground by deploying snowflake catchers. Developing countries can be expected to initially oppose a global climate architecture that imposes equal responsibility and in the end, as with any significant diplomatic success, broaching a consensus will require carrots and sticks. Once a significant region adopts the principles of a global carbon price, there will be substantial motivation for large trading partners to adopt domestic carbon pricing regimes consistent with the principles set out in the global climate architecture. The choice will be either you collect or we collect: you can choose to do nothing, and let your trading partner collect and spend carbon tariffs levied on products imported from your country, or you can implement domestic carbon pricing that leaves the carbon revenues in your country.

Difference 2: B. There is no system of multiple national caps or global trading in carbon credits. While the net effect of a cap-and-trade system delivers certainty of absolute reductions in the most efficient way in theory, reality harbours serious flaws. The overriding flaw is that in a globalized economy where nations are at different stages of development, it is not tenable. There is no national cap that, to use a proxy for the developed and developing worlds, China and the US could agree upon. Developing countries like China will not accept a cap on domestic emissions, which they see as a cap on growth. Developed countries like the US will not be able to sustain a more stringent cap on US-operating companies than major trade partners, because it would put the US at a competitive disadvantage by encouraging US-based companies to export their greenhouse gas emissions by relocating to low-price or no price carbon jurisdictions. The advantage of one price on all large point sources of greenhouse gases everywhere is that it allows for firms to optimize across the global economy. One drawback of a set global carbon price is that it doesn’t guarantee emissions reductions of any level. That’s because carbon pricing is only a mechanism, but we can’t meet global goals without a global mechanism.

Determining the Global Price for Carbon

In order to ensure that the global carbon price delivers the intended reductions, there is an absolute need for countries to establish the global targets and quantitative goals to determine at which level a carbon price is set. This requires that a critical mass of countries must first agree on:

1. An acceptable temperature increase range (i.e. less than 2 degrees Celsius); 2. The corresponding maximum atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide equivalent (i.e 450 ppmv provides an about 50 per cent likelihood of staying below 2 degree Celsius of warming); 3. The annual rate of absolute emissions decline needed to ensure that that concentration is not exceeded (2 per cent per year global reduction between 2010 to 2030); 4. The modeled price on large point sources of carbon expected to deliver those annual global absolute reductions of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions ($50/CO2e phased in over 5 years).

It would be necessary to review the price at regular intervals (i.e. every three years) and adjust it accordingly to steer emissions levels toward the desired outcome.

Bottom Line: The process to get to a global price for carbon will eventually have to be put in place if we are to efficiently manage and reduce carbon emissions. The choice is whether it happens in an orderly way or in a messy and complicated manner.

Plan

1. Decision Maker Component

Est. Cost: Travel and Materials ($8000)

A. Goal is to get one developed and one developing country to support a Synchronized Global Climate Architecture in Bali. B. Goal is to provide a reality check to leading policy makers, who are just coasting without confronting hard implications for the most part at present.

Compile Global 25 Top Govt. Influencers (lead climate policy advisors to heads of state from G-8 plus 5 countries plus Norway (which has pledged to become carbon neutral) Time: Aug 1 – Aug. 30

Deliver PPT Briefing to G-8 plus 5 plus Norway Key Advisors Time: Aug. 27-Nov. 10

Deliver PPT Briefing at UN (Sept 24-25) and DC (Sept 26-27) Summits in September Time: Sept 24-Sept 27

Compile Global 10 Top Grassroots Influencers (FoE, IISD, WWF, IUCN) Deliver PPT Briefing Time: Aug. 27-Nov. 10

Deliver PPT Briefing at Bali (December) Time: December 3-14

2. Grassroots Component

Est. Cost: Content, design and hosting ($10,000)

A. Goal is to tap the common sense of grassroots community to create groundswell around a common ask for a global climate architecture B. Goal is to facilitate direct lines of communication for grassroots to contact their main national representatives and deliver their ask.

Design Flash Animation Web Show Depicting Three Options that allows users to see how three scenarios affect developed nations, developing nations, and large corporate emitters. Allow users to vote on which of the three scenarios they support. Allow users to see the range of low or no-carbon solutions that have particular potential in each specific G-8 plus 5 country. Enable users to engage country-specific Bali climate negotiators with their suggestions.

Time: Sept 1 – Sept 20

Advertising and Polling Est. Cost: $882,000 for Media Buying and $100,000 for Polling

Engage leading global polling firm (such as Globescan) to interview leading political, business and civil society decision makers on their preference between the three options

Engage leading global advertising firm (such as JWT) to design compelling education campaign

Plot out media buying strategy to hit New York Sept. 24th, DC (Sept 26-27) and Bali in December.

Global Dimming

I just watched the Nova show on Global Dimming. This is very interesting. I had not heard of this concept before. For those that also have not heard of this, basically to sum it up as I understood it, is the man-made increase of particulates in the air contributing to artificial cloud formation (including contrails from planes and jets – see photo). Clouds reflect some solar energy back from the sun, thus resulting in lowered temperatures on Earth. Some scientists think that this has resulted in a masking of the true effects of global warming in past years.

Breathing Earth dot net

Breathing Earth dot net is a site I recently stumbled upon and it’s worth checking out. It is just a simulation, but it is an accurate one. The numbers begin when you start you visit and climb rapidly. Births, deaths, and co2 emitted. It’s pretty interesting and a bit shocking how fast the numbers can climb.

Since this present visit began, 560 people have been born, 220 have died, and over one million tonnes of co2 have been emitted into the atmosphere. TOO MANY HUMANS!!!

Patriarch Bartholomew & Global Warming

One of the under-reported heroes of the environmental cause is Patriarch Bartholomew I of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The story below reflects his efforts.

Before turning to the story, I’d like to quote some words of the Patriarch from his visit to the US ten years ago:

To commit a crime against the natural world is a sin. For humans to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God’s creation, for humans to degrade the integrity of the Earth by causing changes in its climate, stripping the Earth of its natural forests, or destroying its wetlands … for humans to contaminate the Earth’s waters, its land, its air, and its life with poisonous substances — these are sins.1

Melting ice cap triggering earthquakes

Paul Brown in Ilulissat The Guardian Saturday September 8 2007 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/sep/08/climatechange

The Greenland ice cap is melting so quickly that it is triggering earthquakes as pieces of ice several cubic kilometres in size break off.

Scientists monitoring events this summer say the acceleration could be catastrophic in terms of sea-level rise and make predictions this February by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change far too low.

The glacier at Ilulissat, which supposedly spawned the iceberg that sank the Titantic, is now flowing three times faster into the sea than it was 10 years ago.

Robert Corell, chairman of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, said in Ilulissat yesterday: “We have seen a massive acceleration of the speed with which these glaciers are moving into the sea. The ice is moving at 2 metres an hour on a front 5km [3 miles] long and 1,500 metres deep. That means that this one glacier puts enough fresh water into the sea in one year to provide drinking water for a city the size of London for a year.”

He is visiting Greenland as part of a symposium of religious, scientific, and political leaders to look at the problems of the island, which has an ice cap 3km thick containing enough water to raise worldwide sea levels by seven metres.

Yesterday Christian, Shia, Sunni, Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist and Jewish religious leaders took a boat to the tongue of the glacier for a silent prayer for the planet. They were invited by Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of 250 million Orthodox Christians worldwide.

Dr Corell, director of the global change programme at the Heinz Centre in Washington, said the estimates of sea level rise in the IPCC report were based on data two years old. The predicted rise this century was 20-60cm (about 8-24ins) , but it would be at the upper end of this range at a minimum, he said, and some believed it could be two metres. This would be catastrophic for European coastlines.

He had flown over the Ilulissat glacier and “seen gigantic holes in it through which swirling masses of melt water were falling. I first looked at this glacier in the 1960s and there were no holes. These so-called moulins, 10 to 15 metres across, have opened up all over the place. There are hundreds of them.”

This melt water was pouring through to the bottom of the glacier creating a lake 500 metres deep which was causing the glacier “to float on land. These melt-water rivers are lubricating the glacier, like applying oil to a surface and causing it to slide into the sea. It is causing a massive acceleration which could be catastrophic.”

The glacier is now moving at 15km a year into the sea although in surges it moves even faster. He measured one surge at 5km in 90 minutes – an extraordinary event.

Veli Kallio, a Finnish scientist, said the quakes were triggered because ice had broken away after being fused to the rock for hundreds of years. The quakes were not vast – on a magnitude of 1 to 3 – but had never happened before in north-west Greenland and showed potential for the entire ice sheet to collapse.

Dr Corell said: “These earthquakes are not dangerous in themselves but the fact that they are happening shows that events are happening far faster than we ever anticipated.”

Endnotes

1. Larry B. Stammer, “Harming the Environment is Sinful, Prelate Says,” Los Angeles Times, November 9, 1997, p. A3.

By Peter Kinder

Welcome to Rethos and thanks to the great folks that conspired to make it happen!

Welcome to Rethos and thanks to the great folks that conspired to make it happen!

I’d like to introduce myself and propose that we help one another in every way we can.

My name is Philip McMaster, and I was introduced to Rethos by one of the founders, Pablo Saltzman.

After many years, travels and meetings, I have classified people of the world in two “camps”... – You’re either part of the SOLUTION or you are the problem. Pablo and the people invoved in Rethos are definitely part of the SOLUTION.

It’s impossible for any of us to be perfect, (with regard to acting responsibly toward SOCIETY, the ENVIRONMENT and our participation in the ECONOMY) but our ATTITUDE and THINKING ENERGY makes all the difference.

Back in February, I had the priviledge of introducing a new development emerging from the Dragonpreneur ethical entrepreneurship program – DragonTHINK – to the Enviromental Protection Association (EPA) of Hong Kong, and later to the International Conference on Climate Change.

(there are Audio clips on the website)

DragonTHINK is fun, social, and will spread around the world like wildfire... it's a game, it's a TEST, it's simple and it encourages us to SHARE and THINK.

At the time of this email, only halfway through the first month of Rethos, I have over 60 listed allies, and probably more in total…

Now I’m asking you… (as I have asked the hundreds of people who appear on the slideshow of www.DragonTHINK.com) .. to perform the DragonTHINK test on three (3) other people…

---

The test is simple -

here it is: Find a friend, or even someone you just met.

Make a “V” symbol with your fingers and ask: “What’s this?” (usually the response is: “Peace”, “Victory” or “two fingers”)

Next hold up three fingers spread apart like the photos at www.DragonTHINK.com and ask: “what’s this?” (usually the response is, “I don’t know”)

(BTW – Any answer is correct, and there are NO wrong answers to the TEST… only an opportunity for you to pass along a SUSTAINABILITY THINKING TOOL to a friend)

When someone answers: “I don’t know”, they are now open and hungry for the answer.. and you have the opportunity to be the teacher/professor – you count off your three fingers, and say: “Society, Environment, Economy”.

If you want to explain what is expected by thinking responsibly about Society, the Environment and the Economy – you are welcome to do so – but all that is necessary is that they learn what the three finger symbol represents, and that they pass those instructions along to three (3) other people.

So finally, you say: ”...now that you know what DragonTHINK represents, pass it along to 3 other people, and ask them to teach three others, etc.

---

The DragonTHINK sustainability TEST takes less than a minute to complete, can be done anywhere in the world, in any language, with anyone who has three fingers and a brain.

Imagine how the world will change when more and more of us share the encouragement to BALANCE our personal decisions, and constantly remind ourselves to consider SOCIETY, ENVIRONMENT and the ECONOMY showing the three finger symbol.

As an ally, I offer you DragonTHINK as one of the tools to experiment with in our fight against Social, Environmental and Economic problems around the planet.

Let’s help each other to show the diversity of solutions to the world’s problems. Wealth, Wisdom and Wellness,

Cheers,

Professor P! (Philip McMaster)

The Climate-Cost of Coffee

If you’re like me, you need a cup (or two) of coffee before the engines fire up in the morning. And, if you’re like me you’re always amazed at how empty your pockets are after a week of buying the coffee. But have you ever thought about the actual cost of that cup?

Coffee is the world’s second most traded commodity after petroleum. Among the problems associated with coffee production are: land use for production, deforestation to gain additional land, and mistreatment of coffee plantation workers. Not to mention transporting it from the tropical regions it grows in to North America where nearly half of it is consumed, and serving it in disposable cups.

Traditionally, coffee plants were grown under the protection of the rainforest canopy, but in the last half century, a variety of coffee plant yielding 3 times the product but requiring sun has become dominant, in some countries making up 70% of production.

The simple switch to this variety has meant that where coffee production and rainforest biodiversity used to go hand in hand, they’re now at odds. And odds are, the $10 Billion dollar crop will win.

With deforestation in the tropics comes soil erosion, and with erosion come contaminated rivers and streams. What’s more, monoculture practices promote the spread of diseases and pests, whose movement from one coffee plant to the next used to be blocked by the now missing trees. The result is widespread pesticide application and, ironically, a need for new varieties bred or genetically modified to resist the diseases that they would not have succumbed to had the previous “new variety” not been introduced.

The tally so far? My morning coffee has cost millions of hectares of our planet’s most effective natural carbon sink, the introduction of nasty chemicals to biologically sensitive areas and 25 Million workers, and a loss in biodiversity estimated s high as 90% of species. And I haven’t even started on the human rights issues.

By now, thanks in part to efforts by celebrities like Cold Play, most of us are at least aware of the issue of Fair Trade, even if we don’t actively seek Fair Trade goods. In a nutshell, Fair Trade organizations strive to ensure that workers’ basic human rights are maintained; that they’re paid enough to develop some self-sufficiency, and that their cultivation practices are relatively safe and sustainable. Here in the west, being guaranteed minimum wage seems like a given, but for coffee farmers, that’s not at all the case. The assurances provided by Fair Trade make an enormous difference to the coffee farmers’ well-being.

That said, Fair Trade certification does not guarantee that the coffee is shade grown. For a true sustainability assurance, consumers need to seek Rainforest Alliance-certified (RAC) coffee. So far, that’s not an easy task, with RAC making up less than 5% of world coffee to date. But a new $94 million UN-sponsored project seeks to more than double the market share of sustainable coffee by 2013. And it looks set to meet its target with companies like (I hate to say it) McDonald’s stepping up, and committing to switch all of its UK and Ireland locations to RAC coffee. So what then IS the cost of your coffee? Well, no one really knows: no one that will admit the number publicly, at least. What I can tell you is that in 2003, Starbucks commissioned CH2M Hill to audit their carbon emissions from shipping of the product and facility management, but ignoring those from the production of the coffee (ie deforestation) because, apparently, they have no control over those operations. The result? 376 000 tons.

Final Tally: A venti dark roast costs about $2.50, 0.5lbs CO2, and 45 square feet of rainforest.

First Audio from the Institute for Sustainablility Education and Action

First in a series of audio interviews between Margery Moore of the Institute for Sustainablility Education and Action in Salt Spring Island, (Near Victoria, B.C. Canada) and Philip McMaster, McMaster Institute of Sustainable Commerce.

This unedited interview was recorded at the offices of the Institute for Sustainability Education and Action on September 20th 2007.

We are looking for someone who is expert in audio editing, to make these raw interviews into something tighter and shorter.

This is the first of 6 segments, of 5-10 minutes in length.

http://www.dragonpreneur.com/audio/RawSSI/saltspringA.mp3

If there are requests in the comment area for the additional segements, they will be posted in series as requested.

UN Climate Change Meeting: Who Shone, Who Shirked

The UN dedicated an entire day yesterday to Climate Change talks prior to its General Assembly’s Annual Debate in New York. The world’s leaders took the opportunity to say absolutely nothing new.

My own Prime Minister for instance, Mr Harper, continued his record of telling us only that Kyoto won’t work, rather than telling us what will. He claimed that Canada is taking a balanced approach to acting about climate change. We Canadians would call it a non-approach, as it seems to be based on stalling any real action by blaming the previous government for their lack of action.

Mr Harper said that our priority must be to “find cleaner and more efficient ways to convert hydrocarbons into energy.” But he continues to back away from actually implementing these technologies which are readily available. At a talk I attended recently by Dr. David Keith, a world expert on the topic of Carbon Capture and Sequestration, Dr. Keith expressed his frustration with the Harper administration for repeatedly making promises of action that he never keeps.

Furthermore, shortly after the UN meeting, the Prime Minister announced that Canada will be joining the Asia Pacific Partnership, comprised of the six nations responsible for half of the world’s GHG emissions, and more than half of its coal production. I wonder which end of the equation will weigh more heavily in their plans? Aside from the fact that the partnership has no actual targets, their goal, as stated on their website, is to address the partnering nations’ increasing energy needs, air pollution, energy security, and GHG emissions intensities. In that order.

So it seems that Mr. Harper is taking his domestic strategy systematically disassembled any of the real (but admittedly few) climate change policies left to him by his predecessors in favour of legislation with no real targets or consequences, and repeating on the global scale. Well done.

Governor Schwarzenegger, on the other hand, appeared to be the grown-up of the group, urging other leaders to stop playing the blame game, and just get something done for a change. And the Governor can say that, because California has been getting the job done. Among other things, they lead the US in car fuel efficiency standards. So much so, in fact, that George W. has actually lobbied against them.

And while we’re on the topic of the President of the United States – where the hell was he?? Bush’s absence from the meetings shows once again that he thinks himself above international governments. He has not only withdrawn outright from Kyoto, but he’s now trying to appoint himself the world’s policeman of nuclear resources with his Global Nuclear Energy Partnership. So, the tally? Schwarzenegger proved himself once again to be not just a movie star, but also a political star. The other two proved themselves once again shirkers of global (and globally embarrassing) proportions. Hopefully we have better luck in Bali.

Scientists observe major climate changes in Arctic

St. Petersburg, Oct 4 (RIA Novosti) Scientists have reported substantial changes in the climate of the Arctic Region, a senior official at the Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute (AARI) said Thursday.

‘We have observed global climate changes in the Polar Ocean,’ said Igor Ashik, acting head of the AARI ocean science department.

He said the ocean was clearing itself of drifting ice ‘for the first time in decades of Polar research’.

The researcher said temperatures on the ocean surface had also increased by five to seven degrees centigrade. ‘Never before have the temperatures in the (ocean) water risen this high,’ Ashik said.

However, he said scientists could not for the time being forecast the consequences of the phenomena, which could be serious if the process proves irrevocable.

‘The de-icing of the ocean currently poses no threat, but if Arctic and Antarctic ice starts melting, we could be speaking about a significant rise in the level of the world oceans and an impact on the lives of people inhabiting coastal areas,’ scientist said.

(c) Indo-Asian News Service

Indonesia to Plant 79 Million Trees in One Day

JAKARTA – Indonesia, which has destroyed vast tracts of forest, will plant 79 million trees in a single day ahead of the U.N. climate change summit in Bali in December, an official said on Thursday.

The event, scheduled for November 28, is part of a global campaign to plant one billion trees launched at U.N. climate change talks in Nairobi last year, said Ahmad Fauzi Masud, spokesman for the forestry ministry.

“Everybody, residents and officials from the lowest unit of the government to the president, will take part in this movement,” he said. “It will be a national record and, possibly, a world record.”

Indonesia currently holds a far less flattering world record: according to Greenpeace, it had the fastest pace of deforestation in the world between 2000-2005, with an area of forest equivalent to 300 soccer pitches destroyed every hour.

Southeast Asia’s biggest economy is also among the world’s top three greenhouse gas emitters because of deforestation, peatland degradation, and forest fires, according to a recent report sponsored by the World Bank and Britain’s development arm.

Environmental groups are concerned that rapidly expanding palm oil plantations, partly driven by ambitious plans for biofuels, are damaging the country’s rainforests.

Participants from 189 countries are expected to gather in Bali in December to discuss a new deal to fight global warming. The existing pact, the Kyoto Protocol, runs out in 2012.

Under Kyoto, about 35 rich nations are obliged to cut emissions by 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

Big Banks Are Selling Us Out on Climate Change - Whether we avert catastrophe with climate change may actually be decided by Citibank and Bank of America

(October 6) By Tara Lohan – We’re nearing the end of the window of opportunity we have to avert the catastrophic effects predicted from the earth’s changing climate. We’re either going to sink or swim. Our best hope at this time is to drastically reduce our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, like carbon dioxide.

Global leaders are putting their heads together to come up with solutions. Across the world, countries and municipalities are passing legislation to limit GHG emissions; people are cutting consumption; new technologies are being developed to further alternative energy sources. And yet, in the United States, the coal industry has us poised to move in the absolute wrong direction. Right now, there are about 150 new coal-fired power plants on the drawing board. The amount of polluting emissions they will release is staggering—between 600 million and 1.1 billion tons of CO2 emissions every year, for the next 50 years. And this, according to Rainforest Action Network (RAN), will basically negate every other effort currently being considered to fight climate change.

Over the last 20 years since Bill McKibben wrote the first global warming book for a general audience, only a few things have changed: Scientists have realized the problem is worse than they thought, and the crisis is coming on faster than predicted.

“The final question as to whether we can address it in serious fashion is whether the coal that is in the ground stays in the ground,” said McKibben. “We already know that we are going to burn all the oil we can get our hands on because we have gotten our hands on most of it and it is intensely valuable. Coal, on the other hand, is the question. If the 150 power plants get built, there is no use talking about compact fluorescent light bulbs or mass transit or any of those other things … we’ll have no hope of averting climate change short of catastrophic proportions.”

And what’s the quickest way to halt those plants? Follow the money.

Without funding from banks, companies don’t have the resources to front the $140 billion necessary to construct all those new dirty power plants. Rainforest Action Network learned that the money trail is not so complicated; it leads to two main banks—Citi and Bank of America.

The Case Against Citi

Citi currently holds the title as the world’s largest bank and biggest company. A few years ago, they also were leading the way in addressing environmental and human rights concerns in their industry. As RAN details in their new report “Banks, Climate Change and the New Coal Rush”: In May 2007, Citi pledged to “direct $50 billion over the next 10 years to address global climate change through investments …” Financing for renewable energy, energy efficiency and improvements in energy infrastructure amount to $31 billion spread across 10 years. While this may seem like a significant commitment, it amounts to less than 0.2 percent of the company’s $2.2 trillion in assets. What is Citi doing with the other 99.8 percent? The answer to that question is that Citi has been busy funding dirty energy. Last year they gave 200 times more money for dirty energy than for clean. In the process they’ve helped underwrite some of the world’s worst environmental and human rights offenders. Here’s a sample:

• In 2006 they gave $4 billion to Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal mining company, which has been ravaging Dine and Hopi lands for 40 years, taking 2.5 million gallons of water out of their desert watershed each day and leaving behind a trail of toxic waste.
• In 2006 they gave $400 million to Drummond, a mining company, which is facing repercussions for allegedly hiring paramilitary groups to kill Colombian coal miners trying to unionize.
• They’ve given billions of dollars to Massey Energy, Arch Coal, Alpha Natural Resources, and other coal companies that practice mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining that involves blowing the tops off of Appalachian mountains, filling valleys, burying streams, poisoning waterways and impoverishing communities.
• Citi helps finance American Electric Power (to the tune of $12 billion), which is working to maintain its designation as the single biggest GHG polluter in the country by building five new dirty coal plants, adding another 21 million tons of CO2 to their annual emissions of 163 million tons.
• Citi is also the top underwriter of scandal-tainted Dynegy (involved in the Enron debacle and price manipulations in California) that is leading the industries’ coal rush and plans to build eight new plants, increasing their CO2 emissions by 200 percent.

The case against Bank of America

Bank of America is not far behind Citi. It has also pledged to become an environmentally sustainable business, but it doesn’t seem to walk its talk. Last year it spent 100 times more on dirty than clean energy, and it gives less than 0.2 percent to helping fight climate change.

Like Citi, BOA is making friends with some of the world’s worst companies.

• They’ve given big money to companies that are devastating Appalachia with MTR mining. Arch Coal got $700 million and long-repudiated Massey Energy scored $175 million.
• The disastrous Peabody Energy got $4 billion last year from BOA, which should help them on their way to building new plants in New Mexico, Illinois and Kentucky.
• Alpha Natural Resources also got $525 million to help its 27 surfaces mines in Appalachia.

The stupidity factor

The reasons for moving away from coal are overwhelming. Scientists tell us we have about a decade to stabilize CO2 emissions and the easiest way to do that is to cut down on coal consumption—the number one contributor to climate change.

Each year, the American Lung Association reports, an estimated 24,000 people in the United States die prematurely from pollution emitted by coal-fired power plants. And it is not just the burning of coal that is dangerous—extraction, especially practices like MTR coal mining that blow the tops off mountains, are devastating to the land and the people.

“The banks are funding this war on Appalachia, and they are funding domestic terrorism,” said Judy Bonds, a 10th generation mountaineer in West Virginia who is the founder of Coal River Mountain Watch and the winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize.

“We are being bombed every day by three and a half million pounds of explosives. We can smell and taste explosives. They damage our homes, shake our nerves and poison our air,” she said. “The banks are helping coal to take the wealth from us, to steal us blind and leave us in poverty, and leave us in poison.” Despite the overwhelming environmental and humanitarian concerns, even from an investment standpoint, putting your chips on coal is a sure loss.

In the last few years, a political upswing has occurred in the fight against climate change. Al Gore’s film and the success of grassroots movements like Step It Up, which organized 1,400 rallies in all 50 states, has garnered momentum.

Other countries have already begun regulating carbon, and the United States will follow suit. Currently there are a handful of bills in Congress to cap emissions and establish a carbon-trading program in the United States, making polluters pay.

“Coal looks cheap at the moment because we charge it nothing for its environmental damage,” said Bill McKibben. “But when we do, you need to be a real sucker for wanting anything to do with new coal.”

Coal, he added, “is about to become as expensive fiscally as it is environmentally.”

Laying out money for dirty energy just doesn’t make good business sense. When investors look at the proposition of financing coal plants, they have to look at future returns, and when you look at banks like Citi and BOA, said Leslie Lowe of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, “you have ask, ‘what are they thinking?’ It is clear we will have a cost for carbon in this country, so every coal plant that emits more CO2 will be a liability long-term.”

Funding the future

Fortunately, we have the choice to move this country in the right direction by pressuring Citi and BOA to fund clean, instead of dirty, energy.

If those banks took the $141 billion they plan to spend on building new coal plants, and instead invested it in energy efficient measures, they could reduce electricity demand by 19 percent by 2025.

RAN reports that, “By 2020, the U.S. could meet 20 percent of its electricity needs from renewable sources. This would avert the need for 975 new power plants, allow for the closing of 180 old coal plants and 14 existing nuclear plants, and save consumers $440 billion.” The push for no new coal is being echoed across the country. Step It Up and 1 Sky Campaign are both calling for a moratorium on new coal power plants, as well as an 80 percent carbon reduction by 2050 and the creation of 5 million green jobs to help us conserve 20 percent of our energy by 2015.

“By transitioning to a clean energy future that prioritizes energy efficiency - and clean renewable sources like solar and wind power - we can meet our future energy needs, build a stronger economy, keep our communities healthy and curb climate change,” RAN’s report advises. “Tell Citi and Bank of America to stop funding dirty coal projects and to redirect their resources and investments toward clean energy. Don’t let your money be used to fund climate change.”

Tara Lohan is a managing editor at AlterNet. © 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/64470/

Tofino - Canada's Westernmost bastion of Sustainability

Today we saw the reasons why the Sustainability Symbol and DragonTHINK are so important.

Whales

Sea Lions

1,000 year old trees

Storms

We are on the West coast of British Columbia’s Vancouver Island, witnessing the omnipotent power of nature.

Humans are truly so insignificant on the Earth – we’re only ONE species – and it’s only our numbers, our multiple horsepower machines and selfish, uncooperative ways that leverage our impact in such devastating ways.

Tofino is a beautiful place that has “changed its ways” from the early days of whaling to its current attitude of trying to live in harmony with nature and profit from observing nature.

Seeing untouched nature the way it has thrived for millenia is a humbling experience – enormous still living trees that were alive when Captain Vancouver first visited, mountains that have no signs of human interference, oceans boiling with sealife… that was here before we were, and will be here long after humans are gone.

The Sustainability Symbol and DragonTHINK are a “drop in the ocean” of the effort to make amends with the planet, and beg permission to share it a little longer. But the more of us that share the Sustainability TEST and attitudes that go with understanding the relationships between Society, Environment and Economy – the more we’ll secure a future on the planet.

Don’t come to Tofino – discover the wonders of your own region, town, backyard and respect and treasure what supports you, feeds you, and provides you with a home.

Discover your carbon footprint!

Use The Nature Conservancy’s online carbon footprint calculator to measure your – or your household’s – climate impact. The calculator will estimate how many tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases your choices create each year.

Do you know where you get your wood?

Sorry if that title sounds a little dirty but it’s a dirty problem that needs your attention. I’m talking about Illegally Harvested Timber. I’m sure most people just assume that the wood in our desk, chairs, tables, houses etc. are from some forest up in Canada, and, like fools, those Canadians are shipping it off and for pennies and buying back finished goods for hundreds of dollars. While that is true there is a growing concern about wood that isn’t being “forested” properly or legally.

Why is this an issue? Wood is wood, trees are trees and they can grow back right. Well yes and no. · They won’t grow back unless they are being replanted. Illegally harvested timber is not being replanted. So then maybe you thing, who cares it just wood, if people are dumb enough to devastate a forest and ruin their lively hood, its there own fault and their own problem. · Wrong again. A lot of the timber that is being cut illegally is coming from areas that have many endangers wildlife species. Need an example? Sure: Ramin forests, Ramin is a hardwood that grows Indonesian. This forest is one of the last natural habits for the endangered orangutan.

Now I’m not saying stop using wood that would be a little too much of a stretch. Luckily for us wood is a resources that can be replenished and used in a sustainable manner if the right steps are taken.

I encourage you to read more about this subject and ways that you can help avoid purchasing illegally harvested timber and slow this black market trade by checking out the following articles.

Global Timber Smugglers—and How You Can Stop Them How Technology and Purchasing Power Can Slow Timber Smuggling Forest Certification Resource Center

Down with EcoElitism

About four months ago, I started my blog. Determined to subject the public to my rantings, rather than keeping it a personal journal type of blog, I’ve been promoting it rather vigorously, partly by participating in conversations on other blogs and forums. And in doing so, I’ve noticed a very disturbing trend: militant and elitist environmentalism.

I have yet to come across a forum that doesn’t have a thread to the effect of “What did you do for the environment today,” and invariably these threads go something like this:

“I put a water saver in my toilet.”

“I decided only to flush (my already low-flow toilet) when I do a number two.”

“I do my number two right in the compost pile.”

“I haven’t bought a new shirt in 10 years.”

“I haven’t washed my shirt in 10 years.”

“I haven’t washed myself in 10 years.”

Seriously? Come on people. Does anyone think this one-upmanship really gets us anywhere? It is possible to be an EcoCrusader without subjecting one’s neighbours to body-odour.

Or probably the best example I have is from a blog called “How do I Recycle This?” One woman wrote in that she was out for dinner with some friends and someone at the table ordered mussels. When they were finished, there was a bowl full of shells, and she was wondering if there was a way to reuse them, if she was ever in that situation again. One oh so helpful “eco-elitist” replied that, if she actually cared about the environment, she wouldn’t have eaten them in the first place.

Now, what did he think he was going to accomplish with this attitude? Here was a person who had not only considered recycling something that most people wouldn’t look at twice, she had actually followed up the thought by actively researching a solution to the problem. She was being proactive. She deserved a big fat high-five. Not a snarky ‘you-should-be-doing-more’ reply.

Because really, we could all be doing more. We could all forsake electricity entirely. We could move to caves and eat the organic lichen off the walls. We could hold in our farts to save the methane. We could do many things. But the one thing we absolutely MUST do, is support each other.

Being the eco-minded woman that I am, I love to imagine waking up in the morning to a world with six billion people who choose smaller cars, eat only in-season food, buy wind power, and keep a composter. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen until the physical evidence of what is happening to our planet blatantly stares all six billion of its inhabitants in the face. And that might not happen until it’s too late.

In the mean time, the future of the world essentially rests on our shoulders. It rests with those of us who educate ourselves, share our knowledge with others, and make better choices every day. But some (in fact, I fear many) of us, are determined to be EcoZealots, and in so being are systematically destroying the work the others do.

This behaviour accomplishes nothing but to guarantee that environmentalism never truly gains mainstream status. It guarantees the continuation of the “crazy hippie” stereotype. It guarantees the alienation of anyone not yet committed to mitigating the dangerous changes that our planet is undergoing.

Until my dreams come true and all six billion of us are on board, we can’t afford to lose anyone who signs up; no matter how small a registration fee they pay. We have to applaud every CFL, every roll of recycled toilet paper, every mussel shell recycled, because we have an infinitely better chance of getting this planet back in shape with millions making these meager changes, than if a select few of us move back to the lichen caves, live methane-neutral and lament the others not following.

Let’s not forget, it’s about the planet, not bragging rights. Down with EcoElitism!

U.N. Warns of Environmental Threats

PARIS, Oct. 25 — The human population is living far beyond its means and inflicting damage to the environment that could pass points of no return, according to a major report being issued today by the United Nations.

Climate change, the rate of extinction of species, and the challenge of feeding a growing population are among the threats putting humanity at risk, according to the United Nations Environment Program in its fourth Global Environmental Outlook since 1997.

“The human population is now so large that the amount of resources needed to sustain it exceeds what is available at current consumption patterns,” Achim Steiner, the executive director of the Environment Program, said in a telephone interview. Efficient use of resources and reducing waste now are “among the greatest challenges at the beginning in of 21st century,” he said.

The program described its report, which is prepared by 388 experts and scientists, as the broadest and deepest of those the United Nations has issued on the environment and called it “the final wake-up call to the international community.” Many biologists and climate scientists have concluded recently that human activities have become a dominant influence on the planet’s climate and ecosystems. The recent award of the Nobel Peace Prize to former vice president Al Gore and to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations network of scientists, for their work in developing and publicizing information about climate change underscores the depth of concerns about the issue. But there is still a range of views on whether it could result in a catastrophic unraveling of natural resources as the human population heads toward 9 billion by midcentury, or more of a steady diminution in diversity.

Over the last two decades the world population has already increased by almost 34 percent, to 6.7 billion from 5 billion. But the land available to each person is shrinking, from 19.5 acres in 1900 to 5 acres by 2005, and is projected to drop to 4 acres by 2050, the report said.

Population growth combined with unsustainable consumption has resulted in an increasingly stressed planet where natural disasters and environmental degradation endanger millions of human beings as well as plant and animal species, the report said.

Persistent problems identified by the report include a rapid rise of so-called dead zones, where marine life no longer can be supported because of depleted oxygen levels from pollutants such as fertilizers, as well as the resurgence of diseases linked with environmental degradation.

The report comes two decades after a commission chaired by the former Norwegian prime minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland, warned that the survival of humanity was at stake from unsustainable development.

Mr. Steiner said many of the problems the Brundtland Commission identified were even more acute now because not enough had been done to stop environmental degradation while flows of goods, services, people, technologies and workers has expanded, even to isolated populations.

He did, however, identify pockets of hope, noting that Western European governments had taken effective measures to reduce air pollutants and that Brazil had made efforts to roll back some deforestation in the Amazon. He said an international treaty to tackle the hole in the earth’s ozone layer had led to the phasing out of 95 percent of ozone-damaging chemicals.

“Life would be easier if we didn’t have the kind of population growth rates that we have at the moment,” Mr. Steiner said, “But to force people to stop having children would be simplistic answer. The more realistic, ethical and practical issue is to accelerate human well being and make more rational use of the resources we have on this planet.”

Mr. Steiner said parts of Africa could reach an environmental tipping point if changing rainfall patterns stemming from climate change turned semi-arid zones into arid zones and made the agriculture that sustains millions of people much harder.

Mr. Steiner said another tipping point could occur in India and China if Himalayan glaciers shrink so much that they no longer supply adequate amounts of water to populations in those countries.

He also warned of a global collapse of all species being fished by 2050, if fishing around the world continued at its present pace.

The report said 250 percent more fish are being caught than the oceans can produce in a sustainable manner, and that the level of global fish stocks classed as collapsed had roughly doubled to 30 percent over the past 20 years.

The report said that current changes in biodiversity were the fastest in human history, with species becoming extinct a hundred times faster than the rate in the fossil record. It said 12 percent of birds are threatened with extinction; for mammals the figure is 23 percent and for amphibians it is more than 30 percent.