Letter to the editor of the Sun Times, a daily newspaper in Owen Sound, Ontario in reference to a column by Dennis Thomsett.

“Apathy is the glove into which evil slips its hand”~Bodie Thoene

After a full day promoting projects that strengthen communities and address the reality of our changing world, I finally had time to read the Sun Times. For the second time in a few weeks, I was surprised by the ignorance and depressing message that some of your writers are sending to our children.

Since I was young, while organizing environmental programs that caused me to win OSCVI’s Citizenship award, I knew that global warming, the greenhouse effect, and climate change, are real and accelerated by humans; we need to be responsible and turn this around. Since the 70s, climate change science has been strong, and now even our esteemed CBC no longer has discussions about the reality of the science because the only debate is how bad it will get and how fast.

I’ve always believed that by educating people, we can make our communities a better place for ourselves, other living creatures, and leave a legacy of a beautiful world for future generations.

Instead of sending powerful, positive community-building messages like this to your readership, your paper has been publishing some sad, uneducated, unscientific and destructive articles spreading misinformation about what the educated world knows is the reality of climate change. The March 10 column from Dennis Thompsett is just one sad and awful example, and if I were the publisher, I would never print another word from him. I could easily win any argument about the reality and seriousness of climate change with your misguided authors, but it’s a waste of time. No wonder people are comparing this type of ridiculous spin to the 70s argument that smoking doesn’t cause cancer.

“We can’t change anything important and we certainly can’t make much of a lasting difference on God’s green earth, for good or ill.” If this is the kind of message you want to send, then put your head in the sand, stay home and do nothing more destructive than you’ve already done. Maybe then those of us who care enough about the world can be allowed to create a brighter future for our grandchildren without that kind of interference and negativity. Making more money selling controversial content should not be more important than ethics, truth and good journalism.

My 13-year-old daughter Corrina has spoken about addressing climate change to over 25,000 people around the province, will be receiving one of the Ontario Junior Citizens of the Year Awards from the Lieutenant Governor, and will be speaking on Earth Week to over 5500 students. Most people would want her to feel empowered, to know she is making a difference, but not Dennis. She read the article, and her response was: “He probably still smokes too.”

I find it extremely sad that your publishers, editors and writers are promoting disempowerment and taking so lightly the future of our planet. What is the world coming to?

Bill McKibben, the organizer of the fabulous international movement 350.org of International Day of Action on Climate Change fame, has written a great article called: Climate change skeptics present their case too well. In it, he talks about how the science showing the human causes of climate change are varied and solid, but the deniers have been able to create more doubt in people's minds. James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore wrote a great book called Climate Cover Up: the Crusade to Deny Global Warming and have shown how the spin doctors have shifted the debate from how bad global warming is to whether it is real.

It's really too bad that all our citizens don't  read enough to really understand these important issues: we could save our world if we all took the time to educate ourselves enough to make informed decisions and act accordingly.

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?

WWF has a great blog Miracle in your pocket by Zoë Caron (co-author of Global Warming for Dummies with Elizabeth May): It seems that iPhone has come out with another application that makes me drool, this one from Skeptical Science (getting skeptical about global warming skepticism).  It allows you to look at the main arguments from the denier camp and shares the real science in an easy, accessible way. They're asking people to download it and give them feedback, so the next version will be even better!

Maybe now my husband will give in and let me buy an iPhone! Maybe if I beg? Say it's for ClimateSphere (of course I might enjoy it a little)? Please, if I can help to save the world?

Every day, landfills across the country receive truckloads of things that are perfectly good but just not needed anymore.  It’s an inglorious end for stuff that still has useful service to offer.

But there’s a better way.  If you’re looking to get rid of perfectly good stuff that’s cluttering up your basement, garage or office, consider freecycling it.  Freecycling is making it available (via the internet) it at no cost to someone in your community who could use it. 

Check out www.freecycle.org; there’s a good chance you’ll find a local on-line group you can join.  If there’s no Freecycle group in your community, you can ‘be the change’ and start one!

You won’t get rich freecycling, but you can unclutter your life and you’ll do a good thing by keeping stuff out of the landfill before its time.  And maybe, you’ll discover that someone’s giving away something YOU want…

(If you prefer, there are plenty of charities across Canada that can use your used goods: http://www.charityvillage.com/cv/charityvillage/donate.asp.)

In the news:

"It's happening much faster than our most pessimistic projections," said University of Manitoba Professor David Barber last week, releasing the results of an extensive new study of Arctic ice disappearance.

Arg!!  Guess where global warming ranked in a Pew Research Center survey asking people to prioritize 21 social and economic issues... 

Mais oui - bilingual signs for your paper towel and soap dispensers are now available for download here.  (Thanks to subscriber Mariet van Groenewoud for the suggestion!)

For many people, climate change is about a few degrees of warming.  But wait – there’s more, much more!

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!