Cities Go Climate Positive

I recently had a friend from Australia stay with me for a few days. We spent some time in Niagara Falls and saw the sites in Toronto. It was a pretty fun filled couple of days. After seeing the falls, we checked out Ben Harper, watched the Jays and the Yankees, went to the Hockey Hall of Fame and climbed the CN tower.

As we took pictures of the city from the CN Tower, I couldn’t help but to notice the number of energy guzzling sky scrappers that I stood face to face with. I thought to myself – imagine if all of these massive buildings supported a natural green environment on their rooftops. I’m sure I am not the first person to think of this and I’m sure it wouldn’t take much. Lay a tarp down, drop some top soil, and wait for the seeds to grow! Think of the difference this would make if half of Toronto’s buildings were able to take part in this green initiative. Carbon emissions would decrease, the environment would be much cleaner, and there may be a few more homes for wildlife. Whenever I have some sort of idea like this, naturally I turn to youtube. Check it out:

Al Gore Challenges You

Yesterday, Al Gore spoke in Washington, DC. He proposed a challenge to all Americans to commit to producing 100% of electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon free sources within the next 10 years. Check out some highlights.

350.org: Because the world needs to know

 

Wall E Saves the Day

 

At 7:05pm Eastern Time I hesitantly purchased a ticket to Disney and Pixar’s new hit film “Wall E.” I say that only because there are a few other movies out right now that I haven’t seen. However, I am so glad I did.

 

This movie has everything. Okay, here’s the teaser without totally ruining everything…

 

The movie begins introducing this little robot that has been created to clean up our mess on earth. When the camera initially zooms in there are multiple wind turbines across both land and ocean showing that we completely exhausted all options – and were not successful. So where are all the humans? They’re on some space ship resort thing in a galaxy far away permanently occupying floating lazy boy chairs with TV screens right in front of their faces. And for food, they get all the nutrition they need to survive from milk shakes (everyone is overweight).

 

The scary thing for me is that within 30 years (this is my own hypothesis) we will know if we have totally destroyed the planet. Call me a treehugger, but in the last 5 months I have had the opportunity to read the books, articles, journals that I am actually interested in and watch the videos that apply to what I’m doing. We are destroying our planet.

 

Back to Wall E… I’m glad that Disney and Pixar have created a movie for kids to expose them to the environment and get them thinking about OUR future. I don’t know if that was there original intention but it’s a step in the right direction. Now we just have to teach the ‘leaders of tomorrow’ to make that difference while we still have time instead of going on a mini retirement to outer space and depend on robotics to rescue us from our own destruction.

 

Oh yeah, there’s a bit of a love story too. It’s kinda funny. Check out the trailer.

 

 

We Can Solve It

The United States Department of Energy

Check out this tid bit of sarcasm…

Welcome to a time of exponential change. Please, be the change you wish to see in the world.

Alliance for Climate Protection

Here’s a video on how to save the planet…

The World Is Flat

 If you have not read “The World Is Flat” by Thomas Friedman I highly recommend it. This book is the way of the future. Okay, to be honest it was kind of long and there were a few chapters that I enjoyed more then others. But after reading the book for a second time it was like I hadn’t read it the first time. You get so much more out of it. Outsourcing and globalization are the way of the future. For those that have not read the book yet, check out this short video. I call it The World Is Flat trailer. Also, look forward to Friedman’s new book called “Hot Flat And Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution and How It Can Renew America.” It is set to release September 8th, 2008.

Half full or half empty?

I came across an interesting site today called www.thinkwater.ca. The site is sponsored by the UN and they focus on educating Canadians about the programs that need to be put into service and the communications tools that need to be employed for Canadians to productively reconsider national myths about water.

As Canadians, we need to understand our impact on these natural resources and practice much more sustainable ways of using (and wasting) less water. Some interesting findings:

About 65% of indoor home water use occurs in our bathrooms, and toilets are the single greatest water users. Fun fact: if your toilet was born prior to 1992 it consumes 13L of water per flush. If your toilet was born after 1992 it is what they call a low-flush toilet consuming only 6L of water per flush. You can reduce water consumption by to 50% by installing low-flush toilets.

Water usage can be reduced by about 20% by placing a weighted plastic bottle filled with water in the water tank of your toilet. Low-cost “inserts” for the toilet tank are an alternative to plastic bottles. With a toilet insert, a family of four could save 45,000 liters of water per year. For comparative purposes, that’s enough water to fill a 24’ round above ground pool. And if I could magically convert that water in to gasoline, I could fill up my car 1125 times and drive across Canada 73 times. Okay, so I’m getting carried away. My point:

WE WASTE SO MUCH WATER!

Here’s a thought…

• Don’t water your driveway. Sweep it!
• Keep cold water in the fridge instead of waiting at the tap for the water to cool
• Take shorter showers or install a low-slow shower head
• When hand washing dishes don’t have the water running for the entire time
• Plug the bathtub before turning the water on and then adjust the temperature as the water warms up
• When watering the lawn, don’t water the sidewalk or street
• When cleaning your fish tank, use this water that is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus on your plants
• Designate one glass for your drinking water each day
• Don’t use running water to thaw food

Try and incorporate these suggestions in to your daily living. Pay attention to how much water you consume. If we are all conscious of our habits and we can change things. Remember, it all starts with you!

Going Green with Ken Yeang

I was watching a show on TVO called design: e2 and I came across a few very interesting architects and their work. Check it out…