Even something as simple as the way you park your vehicle can have an impact on the environment.  Here are small ways you can make a difference:

 

1. most important: pick the first available spot you come to instead of driving around looking for a closer spot.

 

2. choose a ‘drive-through’ parking spot if possible, so you can pull out without having to reverse

 

3. turn off your engine and coast those last few meters into your parking spot (easier with a standard than an automatic).  For safety’s sake, be sure the area is clear first, keep your foot ready on the brake, and remember that the steering wheel can lock if you turn the key too far and then try to straighten out the wheel!! 

 

In the news 

A new study shows Canada CAN reduce emissions significantly while growing jobs and the economy. http://www.cftktv.com/news/16/1014342 

Nepal's Cabinet will hold a meeting on Mount Everest to highlight the threat from global warming, which is causing glaciers to melt in the Himalayas.  http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jfY-HAhhnjCmbcDBufRy84xY3VlgD9BNAK380 

The world needs many voices to speak in the in the run-up to Copenhagen - are you ready to be the change on climate change? http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/magazine/article/843540

I had to take this photograph on the weekend - http://www.greennexxus.com/photo.aspx?id=3981.

The sad humour of a Prius parked beside a Hummer wasn't lost on me.

 

 

Many are looking forward to this film making it to the local theaters! The documentary provides more information and insight about our country's use and misuse of fuel resources. It also presents more sustainable ways to fuel the country's needs with alternative fuels.

The Fuel Film was a Sundance Film award winner for "Best Documentary". Watch the video below as well as check out the film's website.

Then, check your local theater listings and if you can't find it on their calendar, call or email them and tell them you're waiting to see it!

The Choice is Ours!

A few months ago I took a picture of a Toyota Prius taxi in Saint John, New Brunswick, thinking, hey, this is cool. I just spent a few days in Vancouver, only to discover that every other taxi in that city is a Prius. As such, I had a chat with my taxi driver on the way to the airport about the performance of his car.

First of all, as you can imagine, taxis travel tens of thousands of miles per year, so not only do they consume more gasoline than an average vehicle, but they would naturally save more over time.

My taxi driver told me that they save about $15 per 12 hour shift relative to a typical six cylinder taxi (then again, the rest of the cabs in Vancouver seem to be Corolla’s anyway). That means $30 per day and about $10,000 per year. You read that right – about $10,000 per year!

So I asked my buddy what kind of things go wrong with the car and his answer, quite frankly, surprised me. He told me that most of them need to have the electronic instrument panel changed every 200,000 kilometres – who knew. Not bad.

He also told me that there are quite a few Prius taxis in Vancouver with over 1,000,000 km on them – that is impressive.

So, back to me taxi in Saint John, New Brunswick – next time I won’t be as impressed. In fact, I would love to see more!

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

If you’re a Canadian taxpayer, you’re now the proud part owner of a failing automobile company, thanks to the federal and Ontario governments. They’re generously giving General Motors $10.5 billion of your money for an 11.7 per cent share in the company.

Former CIBC World Markets chief economist Jeff Rubin calls it an “investment in obsolescence.” The author of Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization, recently told the Tyee news website, “We should be investing in the future, not the past, making a huge capital investment to build buses and public transit.”

He’s not alone in his thinking. South of the border, where the U.S. government is giving GM a whopping $50 billion for a 60 per cent share of the company, filmmaker Michael Moore wrote, “The only way to save GM is to kill GM.”

He goes onto say that doesn’t mean killing the infrastructure. “If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need,” he writes. “And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?”

How indeed? One thing is certain: We don’t want GM to go back to “business as usual”. This is a company that has fought every progressive move to improve safety and reduce the environmental impact of vehicles, from seat belts and air bags to fuel-efficiency standards. The usual argument has been that any progressive move would drive the price of cars up to the point where the company would go out of business. Well, guess what? Maybe if GM had spent more money on keeping up with the times than on lobbying and court challenges and building SUVS and Hummers, it wouldn’t be facing bankruptcy today.

GM executives have also argued in the past that the markets should dictate their actions and governments should stay out of the way, but they now seem to have made a u-turn when it comes to government involvement!

Well, we now own part of GM. Shouldn’t we have some say in what becomes of it?  Will the U.S. and Canadian governments show some imagination and foresight and turn this crisis into an opportunity?

Mr. Rubin and Mr. Moore are right: Our future is in fuel-efficient cars, buses, and trains, and in green energy. (And even private automobiles may eventually be a thing of the past; the idea of using of a tonne of metal and many litres of fossil fuel to get one person to the grocery store or work is more than a bit absurd.)

We often hear arguments that a major shift in our manufacturing base is not possible – it will be too costly and take too much time. But, as Michael Moore points out, in 1942, GM quickly switched from building cars to producing planes, tanks, and weapons for the war effort. The emergency we face today is no less severe; in fact, it is more so. And we have better technology now.

Likewise, when the Soviet Union launched its first Sputnik satellite in 1957, the U.S. spared no amount of money or effort to get people into space and eventually onto the moon.

And despite arguments that we can’t afford green technologies, governments didn’t have much trouble finding billions – or trillions – of dollars to bail out banks and car companies that were largely the authors of their own problems. Where are our priorities?

The need for a cleaner future is here. The technology is here. The opportunity is here. All that’s required is some will and imagination from governments and corporations. We can no longer rely on diminishing fossil fuel supplies. Our very survival depends on developing more sustainable technologies, transportation, and products that don’t pollute the air, water, and soil.

We don’t need more Cadillacs and Hummers. We need a new way of looking at our world.

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Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and Dr. Faisal Moola is the Director of Science at the David Suzuki Foundation.

Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

I received a summary of the American Energy and Security Act last night from a colleague in the U.S. Here is one of the key bullet points:

"Reduce carbon emissions from major U.S. sources by 17% by 2020 and over 80% by 2050 compared to 2005 levels. Complementary measures in the legislation, such as investments in preventing tropical deforestation, will achieve significant additional reductions in carbon emissions."

Yes, you read that right, 80% by 2050, that is only 40 years away. Think back 40 years to put that time span into perspective.

Man landed on the moon on July 20, 1969, something that seemed to be only a dream only eight years earlier.The Beatles essentially called it quits in 1969, no-one had heard of the Beatles less than a decade earlier. Microwave ovens, cell phones and personal computers where only read about in magazines like Popular Science.

What's my point? Reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80% in 40 years seems like a distant dream, but it has to start somewhere, and it has to start now. Man on the Moon had John F. Kennedy, the Beatles had George Martin and the PC had Bill Gates (and a few others) to thank. We need a few more Kennedy's, Martin's and Gates' to hit 80%. Perhaps two of them are Sankar Das Gupta and Ian Clifford?

Dr. Das Gupta is the Chairman and CEO of Electrovaya, a Canadian based producer of lithium ion superpolymer battery technology. Electrovaya produce long lasting batteries for products such as laptops, lawnmowers and vehicles.

Ian Clifford is the CEO of Zenn Motor Company, another Canadian base company that manufacturers plug-in electric vehicles. Zenn is also moving into the retrofit game - imagine replacing your gas engine with an electric motor in a couple of years? If Ian gets his way, many people will be doing just that.

Competition and the need for change drive innovation. One hundred years ago, there where hundreds of automobile manufacturing companies, now there are just a few. A couple of decades ago there where thousands upon thousands of computer assemblers and retailers, now there are just a few. Every industry consolidates over time, some fast than others, as will the electric vehicle industry. The business question is, who will survive? Regardless, the good news is that we will all benefit.

Solving the climate crisis will not be easy, but then again, neither was putting man on the moon.

Most of us aren't exactly sure what our fuel mileage is - and that makes it hard to tell if changes to our driving habits are yielding results.  Here's an easy way to save 10-20% on your monthly gas bill:

1.the next time you fill up, make note of your odometer reading.  A glovebox notebook is best, but a slip of paper works too. For your next fill-up after that, note the odometer reading and the amount of fuel you bought. Then divide the distance you drove since the last fill-up by the amount of fuel it took to fill your tank, and you have your 'benchmark mileage', be it kilometers per liter or miles per gallon.

 

2. practice this one easy habit: drive as if you have an egg taped under the toe of your right foot, and your aim is to get where you're going without breaking the egg. Gentle on the gas, gentle on the brake, maximum coasting.

3. repeat step one to get your new mileage. If you're a typical driver, you'll see a 10-20% savings - just like that!

You can see your vehicle's official rating here (Canada) or here (US).

In the news

This week US President Obama announced aggressive new fuel economy standards for new vehicles that are projected to save 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the next five years.  Good for the wallet, good for energy independence, good for the planet!

Ontario has passed its Green Energy Act, committing that province to becoming a leader in renewable energy.

If you are in the US, please call your Congressman or Congresswoman to support passage of the Waxman/Markey Clean Energy and Security Act - it's a critical step to progress against climate change.

By David Suzuki with Faisal Moola

Imagine a Canada with an abundance of nature and wildlife, clean air and water, healthy citizens, and a prosperous economy. Sounds close to what we have, doesn’t it? But it may not be for long if we keep heading down the road we’re on.

Author Andrew Nikiforuk has argued that Canada is becoming a petro-state. “Without long-term planning and policies, Canada and Alberta will fail to secure reliable energy supplies for Canadians, to develop alternative energy sources for the country, or to create valuable resource funds for the future,” he writes in his best-selling book Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent. Because of the response of Alberta to Pierre Trudeau's National Energy Plan, Canada doesn't even have a national energy plan.

The reality is that our government is putting all its eggs in one basket, relying on the tar sands to fuel the economy. And although the government has at least come around to acknowledging that global warming is a problem, it hasn’t acted as if it’s a problem worthy of much attention. Its energy and environmental policies show that it is willing to let the economics of the fossil fuel industry trump concern for our common future.

That was made clear with the release of an audit report by the federal environment and sustainable development commissioner on May 12. Scott Vaughan’s report found that the government has overstated expected reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, is unable to monitor actual reductions, lacks transparent plans, and is failing to meet its international obligations under the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act.

The audit also found that the government is failing to adequately protect fish habitat. Vaughan charged the government with not knowing much about fish habitat in Canada, failing to implement some parts of the 23-year-old policy, and failing to even identify what it must do to stop harmful pollutants from being discharged into waters where the fish live.

This ongoing failure on the part of those elected to serve our interests is bad from both an environmental and an economic standpoint. A briefing note prepared for Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt last fall and recently obtained by Canadian Press warns that a lack of clarity and certainty regarding the government’s climate change policies is jeopardizing investment in Canada’s energy sector. The government promised new regulations more than two years ago but now says it is “reworking” its plan.

The briefing note says the government should have policies that facilitate investment in green equipment, buildings, and infrastructure.

But it appears that the government is really only interested in facilitating the ability of the fossil fuel industry to squeeze every drop of oil out of the ground until we are left with depleted energy supplies, devastated landscapes and polluted waters, and an economy that can’t compete with those of nations that have invested in renewable energy.

Our policies around oil extraction aren’t even that good. Mr. Nikiforuk argues in Tar Sands that, “Neither Canada nor Alberta has a rational plan for the tar sands other than full-scale liquidation.” With a more rational policy, he argues, “the tar sands could fund Canada's transition to a low-carbon economy.” Instead, “Feeble fiscal regimes have enriched multinationals and given Canada a petrodollar that hides the inflationary pressures of peak oil,” making Canada “nothing more than a Third World energy supermarket.”

It really is a case of short-term gain for long-term pain – and even the gain is only for a few foreign multinationals and their friends, and not for Canadians who should have more say in our energy future and in how our resources are managed.

And what about the long-term pain? Well, a recent report from the Lancet and the University College of London, Managing the Health Effects of Climate Change, notes that climate change is the biggest global health threat we face. The consequences include increased spread of disease as malaria-carrying mosquitoes move to higher altitudes, declining crop yields leading to food shortages, water shortages and illness related to poor sanitation, housing shortages, more extreme weather events such as flooding, and increased population migration.

And those are just the health consequences. Mass extinctions of animals and plants, dying oceans, and ravaged economies are also in our future if we don’t smarten up.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. In Canada, especially, we can still turn things around if we move quickly. Citizens across the country have been showing they care, by making changes in their lives to reduce their carbon footprint. Now it’s time to let our elected leaders know that we expect at least as much from them.

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Dr. David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author, and chair of the David Suzuki Foundation and Dr. Faisal Moola is the Director of Science at the David Suzuki Foundation.

Take David Suzuki’s Nature Challenge and learn more at www.davidsuzuki.org.

Today Tata Motors of India, launched the Nano - The People's Car. At just under $2,000 USD for the base model, this car is sure to be a huge seller. The world can look forward to millions more gasoline powered vehicles touring the roads and improving the quality of life for millions of families.  

There is no question, CO2 production levels must be reduced. But how do we allocate this “resource” (CO2). CO2 and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) statistics often list production “per country”. Is this fair? If we support the idea that all people are created equal, then we must look at CO2 production on a per person basis. A person living in the Canada, USA, Europe, China, India or Russia.. each has the same “right” to the resources of the planet, including clean air to breath and a comfortable standard of living.

Looking at CO2 production “per person”, puts North Americans far ahead of the rest of the world. Yes the people of China and India are now producing huge, unsupportable levels of CO2. But at 2.4 BILLION people, do they not have the “right” to this current production level - to this current “Standard of Living” that is still 5 times below the standard of living for the average North American.

Something must be done and soon. But we must look at our own backyard first. It’s unlikely that the developed nations will ever reduce their standard of living to equal the remaining people of the world. We must however, start the equalization process. Technology can help us reduce our footprint, but can not get us there on it’s own. We must reduce our consumption!