Happy Thanksgiving! As we head toward a long weekend and one of my favourite Canadian feasts, it is a time to reflect on what we are thankful for.

I am thankful that I have the right to vote, and I exercise that right each chance I get. I am thankful that I have the power to effect change.

Noam Chomsky, linguist, scientist, author and one of the United States most outspoken political activists said in an interview in October 2006, “…it’s new in my experience, which goes back 60 years: a feeling of hopelessness. I mean, we have every possible opportunity, and an incomparable legacy of freedom, of privilege, of opportunity, and there’s numbers that I’ve never seen involved, engaged, and concerned. But they feel they can’t do anything. They feel hopeless.”

Although he is speaking of the United States, Canadians exercising their right to vote has decreased from 75.3% in 1988 to 60.5% in 2000. In research done by Elections Canada in 2003 and based on nonvoters in the 2000 election, the top five reasons Canadians didn’t vote were

• Just not interested
• Didn’t like parties/candidates
• Vote wouldn’t matter
• Didn’t care about issues
• Busy at work

I am thankful that Canadians seem to have shaken their sense of hopelessness, disinterest and disdain. Many people are working tirelessly to make this election about the environment. I am thankful to all of the individuals and organizations that have been actively working to keep the environment on the table this Thanksgiving.

Here is a short list of websites to visit to get more information about this election, each with their own flavour and presentation style. No matter which one suits your tastes, walk off your Thanksgiving meal and vote next Tuesday.

www.voteforenvironment.ca

www.voteenvironment2008.ca

www.democraticspace.com

www.new.facebook.com/group.php?sid=81fe0781cc713c942680bc066bb795c5&gid=25808609138
Vote swapping ends tonight at midnight for this Facebook group.

www.vtacc.org

www.avaaz.ca/ca/stop_harper_pledge

The United Nations has designated the first Monday of October each year as World Habitat Day. The idea is to have us reflect on the basic right for each human being to have adequate shelter. As more and more people move into cities looking for work, shelter, food and health care and cities grow and spread into agricultural land and then into animal habitats, each of us needs to think about our own actions. Do your actions contribute to adequate habitats for all plants and animals (including humans) or do your actions contribute to the decimation of these habitats?

Today the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has published its 2008 Red List, which assesses the conservation status of animal species, subspecies, and varieties in order to bring our attention to those that are threatened with extinction and to promote their conservation. I have heard the argument in the past about how we should be thinking about the needs of people, not the needs of animals, but today with World Habitat Day and the publication of the most recent Red List, I invite you to consider the undeniable link between the two.

Without the variety of plants and animals we have, we would not be able to survive on this planet. From plants and animals we derive our food and much of our medicine. One example is pollination, without the birds, bees, butterflies and bats that pollinate our crops, one-third of our food sources would become extinct. That represents about $10 billion in the United States alone. The Salmon Forest Project, out of the University of Victoria, has found a  connection between the size of the salmon run and the growth of trees, which can be measured by the tree rings. We need the plants and animals.

I have heard the argument that species extinction and the evolution of new species is a natural phenomena. So true. And there have been mass extinctions in the past similar to the one we are facing now. The difference comes when we look at the reasons for the mass extinction and the consequences. In the past, mass extinctions were the result of non human behaviours since we weren’t here yet. According to Endangered Species International, the mass extinction we face now is largely due to habitat destruction, human overpopulation, invasive species (usually brought by humans), pollution, and over-harvesting.

We need to reduce our population through access to education, opportunity, health care, shelter, food and water. We need to take care of the water, land, animals and plants; not because they are ours to rule over but because we need them to survive and we have no God-like rights to destroy them.

So today, when you think about World Habitat Day, think about the Red list and the link between the two. Think about the link between your personal behaviour and how you can make a difference now that will be reflected for generations to come.

Here is a list of just a few animals those future generations may never know.

Wild Horse, Hawaiian Monk Seal, Bawean Deer, Mountain Pygmy, Possum, Dingiso, Tenkile, Northern Glider, Telefomin Cuscus, Black-spotted Cuscus, Woylie, Celebes Crested Macaque, Grey-shanked Douc Langur, Black Crested Gibbon, Cozumel Harvest Mouse, Alcorn’s Pocket Gopher, Poncelet’s Giant Rat, Vancouver Island Marmot, Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Reunion Cuckooshrike, Mariana Crow, Akekee, Floreana Mockingbird, Tristan Albatross, Cuban Crocodile, Madagascar Big-headed Turtle, Radiated Tortoise, Plaoughshare Tortoise, Spider Tortoise, Flat-tailed Tortoise.

Grey-shanked Douc Langur

Way to go Premier Danny Williams. Boy, you tapped into a major find there with that off-shore oil field. I read that it contains between 400 and 700 million barrels. Let’s put this situation into perspective.

Starting in 2017 and for about 25 years, your province will be pumping out about 700 million barrels of oil in total. That’s enough oil to last the entire population of the planet for about 9 days if we use 2005 figures put out by the CIA. (And why would they lie?) By 2017, it might be enough for a whole week worth of oil.

For $20 billion and no more than 9 days of oil, you are willing to change Newfoundland and Labrador from this

Beautiful Newfoundland

to this?

Oil Spill

What are you going to do with the $20 billion? I would suggest putting a large chunk of it away to clean up the mess that the oil companies leave behind because they certainly aren’t going to stick around to clean up. How about putting some of it into sustainable industries, such as renewable energy that could take your province to sustainable economic prosperity (lasting more than 25 years), and preserve the beauty of your province?

I understand that you want to jump on the oil bandwagon and who wouldn’t with oil consumption on the rise, production on the decline and the price of a barrel set to go up and up and up. Just like hot air.

If you think about it, you will go down in history as someone who contributed to the oil age, even if for only one week. How far into history will that take you? Here’s what the oil age looks like in the bigger picture.

And your contribution is really more than one week. It is also 3,000 jobs over 25 years and generations of environmental devastation. Good on ya.

Can you hear that drip? That’s oil.

After reading an article about a recent U.S. study on the toxic chemicals in scented laundry detergent and room fresheners I was left wanting for more…information that is. I don’t live in one of those beautiful, large, ever clean houses in the commercials that advertise the many cleaning products we see in the stores. I don’t aspire to that level of clean.

If you read the same story and would like to read more complete coverage, then I suggest reading Toxic chemicals found in common scented laundry products, air fresheners published by University of Washington (U of W) news. Or if you would like every little detail and don’t mind slogging through the study, then read the original: Fragranced consumer products and undisclosed ingredients.

Either way the bottom line is that many of the products on the shelves contain toxic chemicals that should not enter our bodies or even be in our homes. As stated in the U of W news story,

“I was surprised by both the number and the potential toxicity of the chemicals that were found,” Steinemann said. Chemicals included acetone, the active ingredient in paint thinner and nail-polish remover; limonene, a molecule with a citrus scent; as well as acetaldehyde, chloromethane and 1,4-dioxane.

“Nearly 100 volatile organic compounds were emitted from these six products, and none were listed on any product label. Plus, five of the six products emitted one or more carcinogenic ‘hazardous air pollutants,’ which are considered by the Environmental Protection Agency to have no safe exposure level,” Steinemann said.

Now this was an American study, but I would imagine that the same could be said of the products on our shelves as well. Do you need toxic chemicals to clean your clothes, your house, and keep it all smelling fresh?

At my house we buy some and we make some. For example, to clean the mirrors and windows good old newspaper and vinegar will do. Vinegar is also good for eliminating odors left by pets. Laundry soap I can find in my local farmer’s market or at other local businesses, as I don’t make my own. If you are not one to make cleaning products, safe cleaning supplies of all sorts exist and you can find some fabulous Canadian companies and products at http://www.ethicalconsumer.ca/Category/home_and_garden/cleaningsupplies/. If you are still using eye burning, nose hair eliminating, cough inducing products, I suggest you take a look.

The original article that I read can be found at Room fresheners, scented laundry products emit chemicals: study

After I woke this morning and grabbed a cornmeal muffin for breakfast, I sat down to discover there was more controversy surrounding biofuels. Does using biofuel necessitate taking food out of the mouths of the hungry? Is it a sustainable solution to our current need for new sources of energy?

The article I read referred to a report from the World Bank that stated the production of biofuels had driven up food prices by 75%. Later in the article, it stated that because Canada produces 70% of our own food, we have not been affected. Regardless of how safe Canadians might feel today, we do need to address the issue. People are being affected now, and they don’t earn what we earn.

I grew up on a farm and used to be responsible for collecting the eggs every morning. On the farm, nothing was wasted: we used every inch of land; composted leftovers; tapped trees; conserved water. Waste not, want not.

If we choose to use rich agricultural land to plant low-yield energy crops such as corn, then we are not choosing a sustainable energy source and we are taking a source of food from our food stores.

However, if we harvest the corn and take it to market to feed people and then use the waste to make ethanol, then we are being smart about food and energy production. The same could be done for wheat and other crops that have unused agriculture waste.

If we choose to cut down great swaths of rainforest to plant crops to develop biofuels then we are creating more problems. Those trees are our source of oxygen. They are great healers and we need them.

However, we can produce biofuel using high-yield energy crops such as sugar cane (OK, not in Canada) or switch grass planted on agricultural land that already exists and is not suitable for food crops. This would be a sustainable solution.

I learned a lot growing up on a farm. Should we put all our eggs in one basket and act like biofuel is the answer? No, but produced in a sustainable manner, it is part of the solution. So, let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Biofuel production boosts food prices by 75%, report suggests

According to a recent study, 45% of Canadian consumers refuse to give personal information to a retailer when asked, and 50% question why the retailer wants the information.

I am one of those consumers and actually have a hotmail address just for this purpose. Other retailers know exactly where to find me, and do send me updates and offers. I choose to receive this information. If they send out too much information too often or information that is irrelevant to me, I remove myself from their list.

The truth is we are no longer receptive to the messages that companies bombard us with. There is too much noise. Consumers are changing the landscape and we have decided that we are in control. The companies that will succeed in the future are the ones who are listening to consumers, creating dialogue with consumers and sending them only the information that is relevant to them. I know that if my favourite store is having a sale on my favourite products, I’d like to know. If a company asks me

• what information I want,
• how often I want it,
• when I want the information, and
• in what format,

and then respects my wishes, I will be receptive to the messages that they do send out. The company will not be wasting money on the wrong target market. I will have less marketing noise in my life. It is a win-win situation. How will this happen? I predict that social technologies will lead the way.

I encourage even more consumers to ask questions before giving out information. Find out what the information will be used for and how often you might hear from them. If you do give out information, make sure the company will use it to enhance your experience with that company, not to bombard you with useless offers for products you’ll never use.

The study also indicated that that 13% of consumers have provided false information. To the marketing team at Company ABC, contact me anytime at meowe@hotmail.com.

For the full CBC article…

45% of Canadians rebuff retailers’ requests for personal info: survey

We all seem to know by now that we should be using cloth bags instead of asking the stores to supply plastic bags for us. Being imperfect, I don’t always remember to have them when I pop into the grocery store to pick up those missing ingredients for that day’s dinner.

The other day when I told the clerk I had forgotten my cloth bag, she said, “That’s O.K. These bags are biodegradable.” She’s right. It may take up to 1000 years, but all plastic bags are biodegradable. Then just yesterday, I read a story that gave me hope for those bags I carried away that day.

Daniel Burd, a 17-year-old high school student from Waterloo, Ontario has earned top prize (and $10,000) at the 2008 Canada-wide Science Fair in Ottawa. What fabulous experiment did he do, and what discoveries did he make? He calls it: Plastic not Fantastic.

He decided to focus on the plastic bag problem. As he states in the background to his experiment, “Plastic bags are very popular in our daily lives and have a harsh environmental impact on our ecosystems. Every year, approximately 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide and billions of those are dumped into the oceans. Countless wildlife, including sea-lions, whales, birds and turtles ingest the plastic bags and die every year.”

His hypothesis was that since polyethylene (PE), - the material plastic bags are made from – does degrade naturally, he could isolate the microorganisms responsible and use them to speed up the process. And that he did.

In fact, he predicts that the process developed in his experiment could be used on an industrial scale and could reduce the process of degradation from 20 to 1000 years to three months. As he states, “this would save the lives of millions of wildlife species and save space in landfills.”

I will do better at remembering to bring my own bags to the store. I promise. In the meantime, until we all make cloth bags an everyday part of our lives, young people like Daniel Burd are finding solutions to our destructive behaviours.

Good on you Daniel Burd!

For those who would like the details…

Plastic Not Fantastic PDF

“I was watching that movie Mad Max, you know that movie where gas is so precious that people are killing each other for a few gallons. It was set in the future — I believe it was August.” –Jay Leno

I hear panic in their voices, blame of other nations, doom and gloom about the future. I hear about the price of gas, the cost to fill up the gas tank to get my neighbour from home to work and back again. But it is about more than just our gas tanks; it is far more involved than that.

It is about the cost of fuel to bring our cheap goods from overseas and our exotic fruits from southern gardens. The cost of a barrel of oil affects the cost of the fertilizer we spread in our gardens, the cosmetics we use, the plastic bags we get at the grocery store, the heat for many of our homes, and the list goes on.

So we can panic, blame, whine or we can figure out what power we have, what we can control and use that power. I am not going to suggest that farmers should take their goods to market in a wheelbarrow or that travelling health care workers should take the bus from client to client.

I am suggesting that each and every one of us can decide how we are going to react to the changing market conditions. No matter whether you believe that the market will adjust itself and all will be well by October or whether you believe we are heading for a huge depression that will start with another black October Monday, we can make a difference.

We as consumers make choices everyday. We can choose where to shop, how much to spend, which companies and products to support. We can

• Rethink our lifestyles,
• Refuse to be part of the problem,
• Reduce our consumption,
• Reuse what we already have, and
• Recycle where possible.

Call me an optimist, but even in the movie, Mad Max, the sun was still shining.

To read the details…Oil hits record $142 US

If you live in B.C. you probably received a cheque for $100.00 (or more) in the mail this week. This cheque is the government’s climate action dividend and is really meant to offset the first ever revenue-neutral carbon tax slated to come into effect July 1st (Happy Birthday Canada!) and to be collected at the pump.

Gas is slated to increase by 2.4 cents per litre because of the tax and apart from the other latest price increases related to the cost of a barrel. Here are some other numbers to put it into perspective.

According to an Angus Reid poll taken in March 2007

• 19% of Canadians drive 25,000 km or more in one year,
• 45% of Canadians drive between 10,000 and 25,000 km in one year,
• 35% of Canadians drive less than 10,000 km per year.

So if the average British Columbian drives between 10,000 and 25,000 km a year it will take the average driver two years to use the climate action dividend to offset the new tax. This is based on a mid-sized car that consumes 11 litres per 100km of city driving. To be clear, if that were your car, you could drive about 37,800 kms or about 18,900 km each year for two years before you started paying your 2.4 cents per litre at the pump.

What are British Columbians really going to do with that cash? Here are some other suggestions…

According to the BC Government you could choose to buy energy-efficient light bulbs, shop locally for produce, or purchase eco-friendly upgrades in your home. No matter what you do, they suggest your decision can make a big difference.

The Tyee has started a Green Your Campbell Cash campaign. As they point out B.C. now has a collective $440 million to do with what they wish. The Tyee has made it possible for people to commit their $100.00 to a good cause, submit worthy projects and vote on their favourites. As stated on the site, it “is intended to showcase B.C.-based climate change projects.”

The provincial NDP suggests you give it to them. Why? To fight the carbon tax slated to start July 1st. They have launched an axe the tax campaign.

How are you going to use your cold hard green cash? No matter what you do with it - refuse, reduce, reuse and recycle before you consume. B.C. enjoy your green.

Sixteen lakes in Canada are being considered for toxic dumpsites for mines. These lakes have fish, wildlife drink from these lakes, these lakes channel into other lakes and so on.

Let’s look at one example. According to the CBC online article Lakes across Canada face being turned into mine dump sites, “In northern B.C., Imperial Metals plans to enclose a remote watershed valley to hold tailings from a gold and copper mine.”

Who are the parties and what position do they take?

Imperial Metals, represented by Steve Robertson, exploration manager….His position:

• The economic benefits of the mine will be enormous.
• The project can bring a lot of good jobs.
• The environment will be carefully managed.

The Tahltan people, represented by, James Dennis, elder…His position

• They live 18 kilometres from the mine site.
• The animals will be drinking that water and will suffer.
• When the mining company is done, they’ll leave a legacy of pollution that his grandchildren will have to live with.

James Dennis doesn’t mention anything about economic benefits or a lot of good jobs and his people aren’t asking the large mining companies to come in and help them. He can see past that into the future and his vision is to keep that future possible through sustainable choices

Is it necessary to dump tailings into a lake, riverbed or other living ecosystem? No, there are other alternatives but they would cost the mining companies, money that they are not interested in investing in the future of Canada.

Gordon Peeling, president of the Mining Association of Canada came into the picture in another CBC article on June 17^th, Dumping mining waste into water ‘more responsible’: fisheries minister.

“The preferred solution is obviously a man-made structure, but when topography does not allow that, or when in actual fact a surface structure might be more risky … it may not be possible to find an appropriate level area that would allow that to be done,” Peeling told CBC News.

I find it intriguing that they can use explosives to dig deep into the earth, set up underground work stations for employees to mine for minerals well below the surface, but do not have the technical know-how to build appropriate containment ponds because of the topography. Even more intriguing is that the fisheries minister agrees.