Environment

DURHAM, N.H. – Living in an area where amenities of daily life – groceries, playgrounds, post offices, libraries and restaurants – are within walking distance promotes healthy lifestyles and has positive implications for the environment, research has established. Now, new research from the University of New Hampshire has linked walkable neighborhoods with an increase in social benefits as well.

"We found that neighborhoods that are more walkable had higher levels of social capital such as trust among neighbors and participation in community events," says Shannon Rogers, lead author of the study and a Ph.D. candidate in UNH's Natural Resources and Earth System Science (NRESS) program. She adds that those who have higher levels of positive social capital have been shown to have a higher quality of life through better health and economic opportunities, among other things.

by Mariam Baksh

On Dec. 1, Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar announced that President Obama and his administration are reversing plans, made earlier in March, to expand offshore drilling to the Atlantic Coast—preventing oil exploration there for another seven years. Meanwhile, coastal communities are making significant investments in another form of offshore energy: wind power.

Choosing Coastal Health Over Oil

Sadly, it took the loss of 11 lives and thousands of livelihoods in coastal communities along the Gulf coast to spur the turnaround. A tragic reminder that drilling is a dirty and dangerous business, the BP disaster made it abundantly clear that the only way to truly keep our coasts and ocean ecosystems safe is to keep them free of oil rigs. In making his decision, Secretary Salazar looked at the science, analyzed the economics, and listened to the outpouring of opposition to offshore drilling from around the country and world.

This is truly a banner move and needs to be applauded! Sadly, I fear it would not be possible here in Ontario with the way municipalities work, and how the Ontario Municipalities Board habitually overrules these sorts of actions. ( editor )

by Mari Margil and Ben Price

In a historic vote, the City of Pittsburgh today adopted a first-in-the-nation ordinance banning corporations from natural gas drilling in the city.

Faced with the potential for drilling—and the controversial new practice known as “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing—within city limits, the Pittsburgh City Council unanimously said “no.” Fracking means injecting water laced with sand and toxic chemicals underground to create deep ground explosions that release the gas. It’s a technique first tried in Texas, and which is now being used in Pennsylvania, where the Marcellus Shale geological formation, a source of natural gas, is buried over a mile down. The Marcellus Shale stretches from New York, through Pennsylvania, into Ohio and West Virginia.

by Frances Moore Lappé

In 1969, as I tried to grasp the root causes of hunger, I struggled to absorb the shocking picture my simple research was uncovering: While world food experts cried “scarcity,” in truth we bright humans were—and still are—creating hunger out of plenty. We’d turned our food system into a scarcity-creating machine, and were undermining the Earth’s food-producing potential, too.

Repeat after me : I am responsible for the gulf oil spill. I drive to work every day in my own motor vehicle. Even if I am not the sole occupant of my vehicle, it still consumes a considerable amount of fossil fuel. Even if it is a hybrid, it still consumes a considerable amount of fossil fuel. I use my motor vehicle regularly to run errands for which I could easily walk. I heat my home with oil, or natural gas, or propane, or electricity that is produced with these or other fossil fuels like coal. I purchase goods and services that were made far away from where I live, and need to be shipped great distances to reach me, consuming a considerable amount of fossil fuel. Heck, most of the time I do not even bother to check where the things are made, which I buy. I fly in an airplane once a year or more. I engage in recreational activities which frivilously waste fossil fuel. I know that alternative electricity providers like Bullfrog Power exist, and are available to me, but I have never investigated them. Or have investigated them, and deemed them "too costly". I have no idea where my food comes from. I do not make an effort to purchase organic foods, and so I end up eating food which was produced with chemical fertilizers which are made from fossil fuels. I regularly consume beverages from single-use plastic bottles, which are made from fossil fuels. I often do not recycle these bottles. Even if I do recycle these bottles, I am still contributing significantly to the consumption of the fossil fuels from which they are made, since the beverage companies largely do not use recycled plastic to produce them.

My retirement savings and pension funds are managed by someone else, like a financial advisor, or my employer's pension plan, and I really do not care where that money is invested as long as there is enough of it in the end for me to retire. Or, I do care where that money is invested, but there is nothing I can do about it anyway. Nonetheless, I have never once looked to see where that money was invested. And even if I have looked, I have never even so much as written a letter to the portfolio managers to express my concern that it be invested in green initiatives. And I have never discussed the matter with coworkers, to try to make them care. Or, I make my own investment decisions, but they are made solely according to what will make me the most money, because money is all that really matters in the end. Because my personal future is more important than the planet's.

It was my last year of university, and I'd made friends with a great bunch of people who unfortunately are no longer in my life. My friend Matthew, his girlfriend of the time whose name I do not even recall, and her sister Anne who was a friend and classmate of mine who shared some Philosophy classes with me. There was some kind of "environment club" at the university, and we were all members. There was a lot of talk around the world of reviving Earth Day, which was something that had taken place 20 years prior to then, back in 1970, but somehow did not become an annual event. The planet was in trouble and needed our help - and we rose to the call. The four of us spearheaded the efforts in the local community, and after weeks of planning we proudly pulled off a pretty spectacular day to celebrate the Planet we call home - Mother Earth.

We started the day with a sunrise ceremony at the lookoff (pictured). Incidentially, the house that my wife-to-be grew up in is in that picture - though it would be a number of years yet before I would meet her. The little church we got married in is hidden amongst some trees in the foreground. Unfortunately I don't recall exactly what was involved in our sunrise ceremony - I've got a pretty terrible memory like that. I do recall that afterwards we all went back to my place for a pancake breakfast. And after this we had a full day ahead of us in the Student Union Building at the University - we'd booked the main level and had tables and booths set up over the whole area, for people and organisations to put on displays and talk about the environment, and concrete ways we could do something positive to help. My terrible memory fails me again as to just what this all entailed - I do recall that we had a dozen or more people set up in booths and tables, I just do not recall what they all were. I do recall there was one lady with a cloth diapering business who was giving out information on how much better cloth diapering was for the environment, than disposables. Incidentally, that link is to the blog of the woman who owns the store where my wife works - a cloth diapering store here in Ottawa. When our fist child was born 8 years ago now, my wife was dead-set against my idea of using cloth diapers. But I managed to convert her, and now she calls herself a cloth-diapering evangelist :-)

With Earth Hour just around the corner, it is probably time for me to sit down and write out this article which has been fermenting in my head for some time now. No, I won't be taking part in Earth Hour again this year. Just like last year. Why not? In part because I do not want to support any activity which lets people think they can shut their lights off for an hour a year, dust their hands off, and tell themselves that they've done something good for the planet. Also in part because I was already pretty happy with Earth Day, thank you very much. But I guess for most people, giving up one day a year for the planet was just too much to ask, so they had to shorten it to an hour.

And just for the record, we actively do quite a bit to reduce our 'carbon footprint', even if I do not give a crap about it. In part on the odd chance that someone is right and it does matter, I don't want anyone pointing back to me 50 years from now and saying I was part of the problem, not the solution. And in part because reducing one's carbon footprint actually has an indirect effect on some of the things that actually matter. For example, we switched our electricity to Bullfrog Power, which means I choose to pay more for carbon-free electricity for my house (and this website). And while we are not vegetarian, we get the vast majority of our meats directly from local small farmers. According to Diet for a Small Planet, feedlot beef consumes about 25 times the natural resources as getting the same nutrition from plants. However, grass-feed free-range beef like the stuff we get, consumes only about 3 times! Still not perfect, but considerably better than the run-of-the-mill feedlot stuff you buy at the supermarket. We are a family of 4 - soon 5 - and yet we live in a tiny house just shy of 1000 square feet. We could afford a bigger one, and this tiny house is certainly challenging at times, but we manage because it is responsible. We have a car, but we want to get rid of it. My number one goal on my job front is not a "better career", but rather, to get a job close enough to home that I can walk, and finally get rid of our 1 car.

The big problem I have with global warming is that it is too controversial, and there is far too much room for naysayers to debunk it. Meanwhile, there is rock-solid, indisputable science out there for a whole raft of other environmental issues that need our attention, and nobody is talking about them because our attention has been diverted by this nonsense.

What the Canoe.ca's story does not tell you is that canada is ranked #12 in the world. "In spite of nearly universal support for a cleaner globe (the U.S. was one of only a few countries that failed to adopt Kyoto), it's mainly the rich nations that enjoy pristine environments, according to the Environmental Performance Index (EPI)