Dear Mr. Dexter and Mr. MacDonell,

My husband and I want to live in Nova Scotia. This is where we grew up and this is where our family lives. We both moved away at one point, but we made a conscious decision to move back. This is where we want our kids to grow up too.

But Nova Scotia is not making this easy. We had moved back for 11 months before I found a job in my field. I have a masters degree and I had to work at a department store to pay the rent. Then the province raised the GST, so I had less money in my pocket with every transaction I made. Then I hear power rates are going to go up, at a much higher rate than my yearly pay increases. But we tolerate and adjust because we love Nova Scotia.

And now I am terrified that our beautiful province is going to allow shale gas fracking. To me, as someone who loves Nova Scotia, someone who is making financial sacrifices to live here, this could put the nail in the coffin that drives us to another province. The risks just seem too high. Not only is this system water intensive, it could potentially ruin our drinking water supply. Nova Scotia’s fresh water is a blessing, and water resources are not something to be taking lightly. As a family looking to really settle into Nova Scotia life, we have to look at the long term. Allowing fracking seems short-sighted to me. How can we invest ourselves long term in this province if we fear one day we won’t be able to turn on the tap and have safe drinking water?

We want to do our part to help Nova Scotia be a better province. Protesting shale gas exploration is part of that. Even if it can’t be claimed that fracking will or won’t contaminate our water, it is not a risk you should place on the shoulders of Nova Scotians. Preserve this province’s natural splendor for future generations.

Help us make our lives in Nova Scotia.

Thank you,

Carolyn Marshall

Milford Station, NS

The Urban Garden Project is happening through the Ecology Action Centre. This project supports local community gardens in Halifax. They give advice, help provide equipment and connect volunteers with gardens in need.

This project is great as it creates a source of local food while at the same time raising awareness of why local food is important.

Thanks to the Urban Garden Project for making Halifax a little more forward-thinking, a little more environmentally friendly, and a little cooler!

The title of this post was overheard by me on the bus, spoken by a local to a tourist, as the local tried to explain it wasn’t always this warm/humid here.

But she claimed to not know why.

Climate change.

We hear about it all the time and now we’re living it. There’s tornados and floods in Central Canada, longer, drier droughts in Australia, heat waves in Europe, wetter wet seasons in Asia resulting in massive flooding. That’s climate change. It’s not happening 10-15 years from now, it’s happening now and people are doing the ostrich and sticking their heads in the sand. They see and feel climate change first hand but refuse to acknowledge what it is.

I think they’re afraid. Afraid of admitting that our lifestyles are and have been damaging for a long time. Afraid of admitting we’ve gone too far and there’s nothing we can do to stop it from getting even warmer, drier, wetter and windier. I’m afraid.

But we can’t just stick our heads in the sand. The governments should be the ones dealing with this. They need to step up to protect their people when they need it most and are too scared to deal with it themselves. They should be funding local food operations for when droughts and floods decimate our overseas suppliers. They need to be encouraging wind farms for when oil runs out. But they’re not. They’re sticking their heads in the sand too! WTF! Help us! You’re the ones in charge!

*sigh*

I guess we’ll just have to look out for ourselves.

So it’s up to you to support local food ventures. Maybe you should look into joining a local CSA. Buy local at your grocery store. The apples from New Zealand are not tastier than the apples from Nova Scotia (unless you live in New Zealand, then go for it).

It’s up to you to promote sustainable energy. Write your local officials and tell them you want to see solar panels on town hall. If a wind farm is proposed in your neighbourhood, support it instead of worrying about it ruining your view. A drought will also ruin your view.

Sadly, it’s up to you to worry about climate change. I know it’s scary, but we can adapt and survive. We’re really very resourceful when we need to be. It’s just a matter of recognizing that we need to be right now.

The Ultimate Cloth is awesome. It cleans using just water. And it works just as well, actually probably better, than my old sponge and cleaner. I use it on everything. Windows, wood, stainless steel, countertops, cupboard doors and even the floor (I just use it like a swiffer cloth). It’s simplified cleaning, since I only need one thing, the cloth! No more harsh cleaners! This is a great item if you have any sensitivities to chemicals. Although, really we could all handle a few less chemicals.

If you happen to be in NS, you can get them from Betty Touesnard in Cape Breton. There only $7 a piece, way cheaper than I would expect! It’s a great way to green-up your home with minimal effort and no compromise.

I’ve tried a few different make-up removers over the years, and this one really works the best. It has no problem getting mascara and eyeliner off where the other ones I’ve tried have always left some behind that ends up staining my towels. Plus, it has no fragrance or freaky chemicals, which is nice when you’re smearing something around your eyes. And it’s a Canadian Company that started as a green company, and who’s philosophy is green to the core. No green-washing here!

As an added bonus, I’ve been using the same tube for over a year and there’s still some left. I know, I know, you’re not supposed to keep beauty products that long, but I can’t bring myself to throw something away that works perfectly fine. Plus I haven’t gotten any freaky eye infections, so it seems to be OK. I can’t remember what I paid for it at the time, but it’s listed on Well.ca for $15. That’s more than some products you can find at the drug store, but if it lasts this long and works this good, it works out money-wise in the end.

Douglas Channel, where the supertankers will pass through

My friend Kyle pointed me in the direction of this post. Once I did some reading on it, the situation is very intense.

The Northern Gateway pipeline will run from Edmonton to the northern BC coast to carry petroleum to waiting tankers that will head off for America and Asia.

The First Nation bands in this area have said an oil spill in this area of the coast “would be devastating to the environment. It would literally wipe out all of our cultures.” (From the Globe and Mail). They have presented a petition they ran in the Globe and Mail that was signed by 150 First Nations, Greenpeace, WWF, David Suzuki, Margaret Atwood, and Willie Mitchell.

Enbridge responds with: “It’s important to note that the Enbridge Northern Gateway Project will be required to undergo a comprehensive and rigorous regulatory review process to ensure the project is in the interest of the Canadian public,” Ms. Varey [Senior manager of corporate communications for Enbridge Inc.] wrote. “That is the highest level of regulatory scrutiny an economic development project can receive.” (From the same article in the Globe and Mail, March 27, 2010) Right. I’m sure they say that about all oil projects. “We’ll be really careful”. Then the bottom line appears and corners are cut and money outweighs regulations/safety .

Have you seen The Yes Men Fix the World? They give a fake presentation as a representative of Dow Chemical about a formula measuring the cost from loss of human life against profits. No one in the audience really got upset about this. I think someone said it was “refreshing” to hear someone say what they’re all thinking. I personally wouldn’t expect Enbridge to think much different than that guy.

I think I’m justified in my mistrust of Enbridge and the sinking in the pit of my stomach over the very idea of this pipeline. These things have a history of not going well. The Exxon Valdez is often used to illustrate the concerns over this pipeline. What about the ship that just hit the Great Barrier Reef? How can you not know where the Great Barrier Reef is? We can’t risk this on the diverse, but fragile, BC coast.

Public pressure is growing about this issue. That’s the only way to put the brakes on the process. If you’re concerned too, you can go to http://pipeupagainstenbridge.ca/ to sign the petition.

Huh.

That’s fantastic news. If enough people realize this, governments are going to be forced to put money into green industries. Job creation is a big deal, and if the government runs with this, it’s win win! Well, oil and gas doesn’t win, but we don’t want them to anyway.

The same article uses Germany as an example. Their apartment retrofit program has created 140 000 jobs and saved the government €4 billion in unemployment payments. Those are more impressive numbers.

I feel the strong forces of oil and gas are what is holding these industries back in Canada. We need the government to do what is best for Canadians, and that means investing green industry. The numbers don’t lie!

A real live spirit bear...who's protecting it's habitat? Not Canada

I know, I know. There’s already been a tonne of blog posts and tweets about the environmentalism of the Olympics. However, I believe that when an issue is important, every voice counts. The more voices, the more the people in charge are forced to take notice. So take notice Ottawa!

The Olympic organizers have made a pretty solid effort to make the games “greener”. They built energy efficient buildings, they’re re-using heat waste to heat other buildings, they’re promoting carbon offsets. Super.

But I want to focus on the big picture. There’s the frequently played “Beautiful British Columbia” commercial showing Ryan Reynolds enjoying a campfire in the forest, there’s the high impact images of salmon and old growth forests at the opening ceremonies, there’s the overload of images of mountains, oceans, trees and wildlife around every corner. We’re showing the world just how much we love our nature, how much we cherish what we’ve been gifted by geography.

Liars! We present this image to the world but we don’t live up to it at all. This article in the Vancouver Sun sums things up pretty well.

What a majestic representation of the salmon running at the opening ceremonies. According to the Vancouver Sun, 38 salmon runs in BC are endangered. Yet fishing of salmon runs still gets approved due to their commercial value, even those on the brink of becoming endangered or extinct. These runs are also in danger of genetic contamination by escaped farmed salmon (which are Atlantic salmon) or infection by lice picked up when swimming near salmon farms. Drastic changes are needed in the salmon fishery to ensure this symbolic animal does not go extinct.

Great display of the glory of the old growth forests. Logging of old growth stands is happening right now. The pockets that exist are getting fewer and far between. These stands represent a structure that can’t be re-grown in a decade or two. We’re talking hundreds of years.

And then there’s Canada’s environmental track record in general. Not so good. Just because we have a lot of nature and not so many people doesn’t give us a free ride. We consume pretty much the same as America per capita, produce the same amount of GHGs per capita.

Canadians love being associated with nature. So let’s make sure we keep nature around. Let’s live up to what we project to the world. Let’s tell parliament we want to be a green country!

Are you serious? Am I supposed to believe Exxon Mobil cares about saving mangrove forests? *sigh* (In case you can't read it, this section of Mangrove was re-planted by Exxon Mobil)

Now I don’t want to say never shop at Wal-Mart. I’ve shopped at Wal-Mart and there was a time in my life where if I needed a cheese grater, or towels, I could only really afford to shop at Wal-Mart (ok, maybe I’m still in this stage but I’ve made due without Wal-Mart for a couple years now).  But I will say THINK about it when you shop at Wal-Mart.

Just to say something good about Wal-Mart…do you remember when deodorant came in boxes? It doesn’t any more. Wal-Mart made that happen, saving countless trees from being harvested to make deodorant boxes. Why did Wal-Mart do this? Each box cost 5 cents. They asked their suppliers to take out the box so Wal-Mart pays 5 cents less for each one bought, plus less weight to ship saving shipping costs. That’s a lot of saving when you think about how many people have deodorant that they buy 3 or 4 times a year. So they didn’t do it for the environment, but it worked out well anyway.

But what else happens when you want to squeeze 2 or 3 cents less per item from your suppliers? Well maybe the supplier has to use a cheaper material. Maybe they skip employee raises this year.  Maybe, if you ask them over and over to find a way to take 2 or 3 cents off per item (which Wal-Mart does, often, and with a non-negotiable attitude), the supplier has to move it’s factory to China or Mexico.

The Wal-Mart Effect has a story of a company or two that went through each one of those steps. It has stories of real people, like the women from Bangladesh talking about factory conditions where if you made a mistake sewing a pair of pants the supervisors beat you with the pants. How does that make you feel about buying those pants for $20 at Wal-Mart? Not so great a deal anymore, is it?

Wal-Mart does do factory inspections overseas. They do a lot of them. But they also have a lot of factories that supply them and when you push and push to get cheaper products, things happen at those factories that Wal-Mart just can’t catch.

I don’t want to make this a super long post, so I can’t even really scratch the surface of the information in the book. There is also a very interesting afterward that talks of the initiatives Wal-Mart is taking to improve their image, such as cutting greenhouse emissions from all stores by 20% by 2012. Pretty impressive. But will they actually do it? I hope so. As much as we love to hate Wal-Mart, it is a global force that won’t be going away anytime soon and it affects many aspects of our everyday lives whether you shop there or not.