Climate Cafe

Starting today, Sunday, May 11th, Ray Zahab and a team of amazing runners will attempt to run 80 kms per day in ALL 13 Provinces and Territories….whew, it makes me tired to even say it ! The goal is not to just run 80 kms each day- but to visit schools, participate in community supported events and meet with kids, parents and people across Canada! This run has an objective well beyond the extreme endurance. Ray and the team’s goal with this run is to raise awareness for ONExONE and to highlight the tireless work they are doing in Canada and abroad in helping to eradicate social issues that affect children. Check out www.onexonecampaign.com for more info. We also have the goal of inspiring young people into action- and we will visit many schools en route , get their opinions, speak with them- and blog their stories by video on www.canadaonexone.com

On the Web site, track the journey live on the website, with text blogging, daily photo journals, and video stories from Canadians coast to coast to coast !

A multitude of activities have been planned in each Province and Territory. Another example of how one person’s vision can grow to involve and influence many.

Do you know the word of the year for 2007?

It’s locavore, a dieter who endeavors to get their food from locally available sources, usually within 100 Miles - as described in the book, 100 Mile Diet. . . . and people from all over Canada are getting involved in eating locally. In our region, a new group - Near North Locavores has been started by Becca Mullins and others including Marlo Nikkila who started a Near North Locavores Facebook Group.

The locavore movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to produce their own food. The general principle is that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Local grown food is an environmentally friendly means of obtaining food, since supermarkets that import their food use more fossil fuels and non-renewable resources.

When you go to the grocery store, don’t just look for organic, look for local. If it takes less fuel to get the food to your plate, you are making food choices that have less impact on climate change. Be sure to ask your green grocer to stock food grown by your neighbours, or at least in your province of Canada.

Also, as I often focus on during my presentations, the use of bottled water has significant environmental consequences. One report suggested that as much oil as 1/4 of the volume of water in a bottle, just to get the water to you. If you don’t trust the water coming from your tap, isn’t it time you brought these concerns to your municipal government or provincial representatives?

For goodness sake, let’s drink the water from our tap and support local agriculture.

• Time Magazine Article on Locavores and the benefits of eating locally.
• NY Times article on Eating Locally.

Scientists say that earth’s temperature has gone up .6 degrees C in the last century. The measured increase in ocean temperature is coupled with a rise in ocean level over that time period of 18 cm.

It got me thinking about people who scorn this kind of information and think that a small increase in temperature might not be that significant. So I crunched the numbers. Earth is covered by 1.4 Billion cubic km of water. Most of that in deep ocean water that covers 75% of the planets surface. What if the heat the scientists were talking about was all focused on Canada’s water? How much water could be heated to the boiling point: 100 degrees C?

Turns out, that if all the heat added to the worlds oceans in the past century were focused on Canada, there would be enough heat to Bring to Boil all of Canada’s 890 000 km2 of fresh water including all of the Great Lakes as well as Hudson Bay and the Gulf of St Lawrence. And there would be heat left over to warm the Gulf of Mexico!

.6 degrees C, over the entire planet . . . that’s a lot of heat, and with it comes significant consequences as shown to the world in Nobel Prize winner Mr. Al Gore’s Academy Award winning movie An Inconvenient Truth.

Perhaps more people would pay attention and take action on the Global Climate Crisis if it was positioned as a Canada-Wide boil water emergency.

Why does Google earth no longer show ice at arctic ocean. The earth as we know it has always had a sheet of ice that expands and contracts over the year, but it has always been there. This pictures below are the satellite view of sea ice extent at their smallest range at the end of summer (September) in the Arctic from 1980 and 2007.

No more according to Google Earth. Are Google, NASA, and other organizations conspiring to make Americans think that the Arctic Ocean is in fact ice free already? These are screen shots from Google Earth taken today on my computer.

I guess with this Google Earth conspiracy teaching us that there is no ice on the Arctic Ocean, the political gamesmanship over rights to the oil on the bottom of this ocean can begin. The tragic consequences of human inaction on the climate crisis that will eventually bring about an end to this ice covered ocean, are already bringing about serious consequences…. just ask the people of Myanmar about weather-related consequences of Global Warming (May 3, 2008 Cyclone killed over 20 000).

Thank you Google, for making it easier to sleep at night.

The town of Powassan recently passed a resolution encouraging businesses to adopt a Power Down Friday policy and turn off the power on Fridays between noon and 1 pm.

This is a great climate project because it encourages community involvement and makes it the norm for people to take the time to turn off unused sources of electricity.  The campaign has garnered national media attention with mentions on CTV National TV News.

Have a gander at the Power Down Friday Resolution passed by Powassan council and consider encouraging your municipality to adopt a similar one.  By encouraging small acts that conserve power and making them habit forming, the lifestyle changes that will make a bigger difference in slowing climate change will be easier to act on.

Special thanks to Rusty Perkins, local resident, who encouraged council to take this small step in adopting a green policy that will help raise awareness of climate change in her community.