I had lunch today at Isaac's Way in my hometown of Fredericton, New Brunswick. It is my favourite restaurant in town for three reasons:

1) The food is great.

2) They are a member of the Fredericton Green Shops Program - a great program the city developed to recognize local business. Every community should duplicate this program.

3) They are currently running a silent art auction to raise money for community programs - how cool is that!

How does it work?

-  Paintings by local artists hang in the restaurant from January to May.

- Customers write down their bids in a binder that circulates around the restaurant (click here to see the book)

-  Winning bidders are contacted in early May - they pick up the paintings and the proceeds go to local charities. In this case, it is dance (my daughter is a dancer), but it could easily be for environmental programs.

If I recall correctly, the owner said they have raised over $14,000 since they started the private auctions.

What a great concept - perhaps you can entice restaurants and artists in your home town to do the same thing!

I buy a new computer every two years. Because I work on it every day it is somewhat of a necessity. That said, that means there is a trail of slightly used computers in my wake.

They still work well if the user doesn't need the latest and greatest software. However, I don't see the value in having three, four or five computers in our home at any given point in time. So, what to do?

We now limit the number of computers in our home to two - my laptop and the most recent hand-me-down for our family's use. And the rest of the computers?

Yard sales work well, so does http://www.kijiji.com/. I recently sold my four year old Dell for $150 on Kijiji to an enterprising gentleman. He cleans up the computers (hard-drive, operating system, etc) and flips them to recent immigrants for a modest margin of $30 or $50. Works well for me, works well for him and works well for the new computer owner!

However, I have simply delayed the eventual e-waste that the computer will become - someday it will end up somewhere after life, hopefully somewhere of value and safety. Check out the documentary Manufactured Landscapes sometime - wow!

So, what to do?

Perhaps computer companies should take a closer look at at Xerox and printer cartridges? Xerox save millions by leasing photocopiers then taking them back at end of life, recycling many components - smart. By leasing them, they know exactly what photocopiers are where. Many retail outlets now facilitate easy recycling of printer cartridges (the ones that cost more than the printer!) - smart.

Perhaps rather than delaying the e-waste graveyard, computer manufacturers should 'take-back' three or four year old computers, recycle appropriately and hook customers for life.

Thoughts?

I just spent a few days in New York City with my family - we had a wonderful trip. While there, I had a great conversation with a New Yorker about 'being in touch with nature'. Something struck me during the conversation that made me realize something about the challenges humanity faces as more people migrate to large cities around the world.

It is generally accepted that well planned and clean urban areas are 'green' for a couple of big picture reasons - 1) millions of people travel shorter distances between work, home and play, and 2) less infrastructure is needed per capita. However, for as much as those benefits are apparent, the benefits of human contact with nature dwindles - a connection that is necessary for us to collectively remind us that we are stewards of this planet.

Enter Central Park, and all of the other parks of New York City. Trees are a plenty, and it is even possible in some areas to almost forget you are in a city of 8.6 million people (except for the noise of course). There, in the midst of one of the largest and most vibrant cities in the world, you can remember the value of nature, of a tree, of a garden.

So, I say to the people of New York of who had the in insight to open the 843 acre park in 1859 - good on 'ya. May it stay there forever as a constant reminder of how connected we must be with nature.

Yes, I am a proud Canadian. Sidney Crosby and his teammates just won Canada our 14th Winter Olympics gold medal - a record for most gold medals in the Winter Games by any country ever. Not bad for a country with only 32 million people and lots of snow and ice!

And of that snow and ice?

As was evident early in the games, the planet is warming, Vancouver was the warmest city to ever host the games. Even Whistler was balmy. Even my backyard. We used to build a backyard rink - not so in the last three years - it has been to warm. This year it would have been a backyard slushfest.

So where is the hope in this note? From medals to a slushy backyard?

If Canada can do what we did in these games, then I am hopeful that the global community can do what has to be done for this planet and humanity. Getting there will be no different, but the way in which we reflect on success will be much different.

What do I mean?

We, as spectators, enjoy the MOMENT of the overtime goal, the MOMENT of a skier crosses the finish line or the MOMENT the last curling stone is thrown. What we do not see as spectators is the thousands of hours those athletes spend honing their skills, of perfecting their game and overcoming injuries and challenges along the way. Years of preparation are invested for one moment in time - the moment of victory.

That is where doing right for the planet differs from 'The Games'. For every slap shot or every curling stone thrown there one light bulb turned off and piece of litter picked up. But the reality is that we will never collectively pause as humanes and congratulate each other on saving the planet.

Sure, we may reduce our collective carbon footprint by 80% in the next 40 years, but will be gather as eight or nine billion people and celebrate our success? Probably not, but you know what? I hope so.

Stranger things have happened, like Canadian cleaning up on gold medals. Not bad, eh?

We live in the Great White North (yes, Canada). It gets cold in Canada in the winter. That said, the last few winters have been depressingly mild - for those of us who like to build backyard ice rinks. And who said climate change is happening?!

Anyway, I digress.

Our home was built in 1983 and was heated until last Fall by a combination electric/wood forced air furnace. We replaced the old furnace last Fall with a heat pump (check out a short video on the heat pump here - video taken with a Flip Camera - very cool!).

A few months later we are pleased to report that it was a good call.

We have equal billing with our electric utility, meaning that we pay the same amount every month and it gets adjusted once a year for the new year. This year's adjustment happened this month. What a pleasant surprise (well, not too much of a surprise)! Our equal billing has dropped enough for our next two and a half months of electricity to be free.

Big picture, I figure we will end up saving just over $1,000 per year, granted the payback is around 12 years, but, hey, it also increases the value of our home.

The moral of the story? Heat pumps rock!

I am fortunate in my position to talk about environmental issues, and what to do about them, with a broad range of people from various backgrounds and experience, ranging from scientists to engineers to politicians to entertainers to athletes. All have a different perspective on the problems we face and different solutions.

It reminds me of the joke about four engineers in a car that breaks down (Ok, I am one so I can get away with telling this joke). Joke copied from http://tinyurl.com/yk8c2zo.

Four engineers were travelling by car to a seminar, when unfortunately, the vehicle broke down.

The chemical engineer said "Obviously, some constituent of the fuel has caused this failure to occur."

The mechanical engineer replied "I disagree, I would surmise that an engine component has suffered a catastrophic structural failure."

The electrical engineer also had a theory. "I believe an electrical component has ceased to function, thereby causing an ignition malfunction."

The software engineer thought for some time. When at last he spoke he said "What would happen if we all got out and then got back in again?"

Ok, back to reality…

A colleague this week made an analogy between doing an act of green and voting that is so true.

Picking up one piece of garbage or changing on light bulb or riding your bike to the store may not seem like much, but collectively, they add up in a big way. In that respect, I would venture to state that, as citizens, we are able to do numerous acts of green daily, where we can only vote once in any given election. To take that even one step further, one of our acts of green can even be voting for the best ‘green’ candidate.

So, please exercise not only your right to vote, but exercise your right to do many acts of green, our future needs it. Visit www.onemillionactsofgreen.com today to log your acts of green.

My wife and I made a conscientious decision a couple of months ago to up our intake of locally grown, organic food and cut back on the grocery store stuff. I now make the weekly trek to the local Boyce Farmers’ Market and pick up a variety of locally grown food, including a dozen of the killer samosas!

Even the kids prefer the locally grown food – gotta like that!

But guess what else we noticed? Our curbside waste has gone down – go figure! For as much as we do to go green I was amazed that there is even a correlation between buying local and store bought products – packaging.

Try it yourself – see if you notice a difference. Your local economy will thank you.

I read a lot of books about a lot of stuff, especially environment and climate change issues. From time to time, I share quotes from those books, but not usually as long as the extract you are about to read. Joe Laur (an author himself – check out this must read book for business, only one of his pieces of work) suggested I read Whole Earth Discipline by Stewart Brand. At the time of this writing I am only a few pages into it, but the following excerpt struck me as a bit of a revelation with respect to the need for change, and quite frankly, the economic opportunity that lies ahead in being part of the change. The following is copied from Chapter 1 entitled Scale, Scope, Stakes and Speed:

“It is not accurate to say, “We can stop climate change.’ We are now working to stop worse climate change or much-worse-than-worse climate change.”

The most common statement of an achievable goal for dealing with climate change these days is levelling off at 450 ppm (ppm) of CO₂ in the atmosphere, so Griffith build his analysis around that outcome. We are currently at about 387 ppm and rising fast – each year it goes up more than 2 ppm. Griffith reminds everyone that the hope with the 450 ppm goal is that it will involve a global temperature rise of only 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit), and that is expected to mean “large loss of species, more severe storms, floods and droughts, refugees from sea level rise, and other unpalatable, expensive and inhumane consequences.”

A convenient measure of energy generation is the gigawatt: a billion watts. A large cola fired plant generates a gigawatt of electricity in a year; so does the Hoover Dam, so does a nuclear reactor. Multiply that times a thousand, and you have a terawatt – a trillion watts. Humanity currently runs on about 16 terawatts of power, most of it from the burning of fossil fuels. It’s like leaving 160 billion 100-watt light bulbs on all of the time. That’s what is loading the atmosphere with lethal quantities of carbon dioxide.

Griffith calculates that, in order to keep the atmospheric concentration of CO₂ at no more than 450 ppm, humanity has to do something that is almost unimaginably difficult. We have to cut our fossil fuel use to around 3 terawatts a year, which means we have to produce all the rest of our power from non-fossil-fuel sources, and we have to do it in about twenty-five years or it will be too late to level off at 450 ppm.

So, Griffith says, “Imagine someone said you need 2 terawatts of wind, 2 terawatts of photovoltaic solar, 2 terawatts of solar thermal, 2 terawatts of geothermal, 2 terawatts of biofuel and 3 terawatts of nuclear to give you 13 new clean terawatts. You add the existing 1.5 terawatts of biofuel and nuclear that we already use. You can also get 3 terawatts from coal and oil. That would give humanity about 17.5 terawatts – that allows for a little growth over the 16 terawatts we currently use. What would it take to do all of that in 25 years?”

Here’s the answer: “Two terawatts of photovoltaic would require installing 100 square metres of 15% efficient solar cells every second, second after second, for the next 35 years. (That’s about 1,200 square miles of solar cells a year, times 25 equals 30,000 square miles of photovoltaic cells – about the size of South Carolina). Two terawatts of solar thermal? If it’s 30% efficient all told, we’ll need 50 square metres of highly reflective mirrors every second (some 600 square miles per year). Two terawatts of biofuels? Something like 4 Olympic swimming pools of genetically engineered algae, installed every second. (about 61,000 square miles per year, times 25 = over 5 times the size of Texas). Two terawatts of wind? That’s a 300 foot diameter wind turbine every 5 minutes (Install 105,000 turbines a year in good wind locations, times 25). Two terawatts of geothermal? Build three 100-megawatt steam turbines every day – 1,095 a year, times 25. Three terawatts of new nuclear? That’s a 3-reactor, 3-gigawatt plant every week – 52 a year, times 25.”

Add it up, and when you’re done, you’ve got an area about the size of America – “Call it Renewistan,” says Griffith – covered with stuff dedicated to generating humanity’s energy. That’s not counting transmission lines, energy storage, materials, and support infrastructure, plus the costs of shutting down all of the coal plants, oil refineries, etc. I asked Saul Griffith if he thinks we can really do it. “Technically,” he said, “it is possible. Industrially, humanity has the collective capacity. But politically, I don’t see how.” Then he added, “But we have to try. Why else bother to be a human and be in this game?”

End of excerpt.

That is a lot of change that is needed. We can all play a role by being more energy efficient. We can all play a role by exploring renewable energy for our homes. We can all play a role by encouraging our politicians to develop policies that make renewable energy a reality for homeowners, small business, large business, renewable energy research and development and renewable energy investment at the utility level.

What can you do today?

There are hundreds of ways to address climate change and other environmental issues. They range from adopting global agreements on reducing greenhouse gases (ok, fingers crossed) to countries committing to reducing greenhouse gas emissions (oops, fingers crossed there too) to students taking action (yes, those who will be most affected by climate change in the decades to come).

Congratulations to students, and in particular to students involved in the Green Schools Alliance Green Cup Challenge.

The Green Schools Alliance (GSA) is a proactive non-profit organization in the U.S. that engages students from about 2,000 schools. They are inclusive and offer a number of levels of commitment from K-12 schools, including an annual student conference, resource fairs and the Green Cup Challenge.

Created by schools for schools, the Green Cup Challenge is the original student-driven inter-school energy challenge. The GCC invites all schools to measure and reduce electricity use and Greenhouse Gas emissions, and supports greening efforts including recycling and water conservation. The Challenge empowers students and builds community, while raising awareness about climate change and the importance of resource conservation. (Paragraph copied with pride from http://www.greencupchallenge.net/).

Please check them out and if you are in school or have an environmentally proactive child please encourage them to talk to their teachers about GSA.

In the meantime, check out some of the videos (bottom of the page) that students have produced – I see one or two future Steven Spielberg’s or James Cameron’s in the videos!

Keep it up GSA!

One Million Acts of Green participants have saved over 200,000 Tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions since the campaign started in 2008. In many cases, that means money saved too! Imagine if everyone who has logged Acts of Green volunteered to donate $5 per Tonne to efforts in Haiti?

That would total over $1,000,000 to help our friends in Haiti.

Now imagine if we all continued to do that over time and raise millions more for rebuilding Haiti, perhaps helping fund sustainable focused projects for the people of Haiti once they get back on their feet. What better way to put that money to use!

I am making a pledge today to do exactly that - $80 (OK, I have reduced my carbon footprint substantially in the last few years!). On quick scan, the average reductions are in the two to four tonne range or $10 to $20 - not much relative to its value in Haiti right now.

Here are a couple sites you can visit to donate:
- Canadian Red Cross
- Hope For Haiti Now (p.s. the album is available in ITunes - incredible music and cause!)

Once you have made a donation, please let us know in the comment box located at http://www.greennexxus.com/viewproject.aspx?projectID=1126.

Thank you!