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.

Monkeys!

A great benefit of living in Australia is you can get cheap flights to South East Asia. Hooray! So that is why Brad and I took fours days and flew to Kuala Lumpur (KL).

It was an amazing few days. The first day was spent checking out the city. The largest chunk of time was in Chinatown…eating, drinking and bartering. Petaling Street is a bustling street bazaar where I felt I needed a shirt that read “No I don’t want any DVDs”. We found that, in general, the people were much more relaxed than in China. They still try to call you into their stalls to look at their goods but they are no where near as pushy as the guys in China.

And we saw monkeys hanging out outside the Planetarium. Sweet.

The next day we took a bus to Melaka, a historic-type town about 2 hours south of KL. It was air conditioned. Awesome. While there we learned all about the Portuguese/Dutch/British colonizations. Melaka was a bustling trade hub run by local Sultans till the Europeans showed up around 1500 and basically messed it up. Melaka never recovered the glory of pre-European arrival. Way to go guys. Yeesh. We saw a church built in 1521, bits of an old fortress, and lots of dioramas. Malaysia really likes dioramas. The bus back to KL was not air conditioned. Boo.

Diorama number 85 of a sultans court

Next day, more monkey spotting in downtown KL’s rainforest park. Sweet.

Took another air conditioned bus to Kuala Selangor, about 2 hours west of KL. Saw more monkeys crossing the road. Sweet. We went to see a humongous firefly colony inhabiting the banks of a near by river. It was beautiful, but no photos turned out. Boo. After spending the night in the mosquito forest…whoops I mean the mangrove forest…park, we checked out some more Dutch ruins (and saw more monkeys…these guys could take over the country!) including an execution rock and poison well. Those guys knew how to get things done. Walked around the very nice mangrove forest (more details in a later post…stay tuned!) and fed the mosquitoes. Then one non-air conditioned bus back to the city.

Brad punching diorama number 105

Food was fantastic. We made an effort to find places that looked a bit like they could be a hidden treasure (ie down alleys, stalls at the markets and places filled with locals and not Westerners). It proved to be a good strategy and my belly was very happy at the end.

In conclusion, Malaysia is very humid and a delight. When you visit cross your fingers for air conditioned buses and if a restaurant/stall only sells one thing they’re probably really good at making that one thing, trust them.

Mmmm...random menu pick

I think many Canadians feel Canada is a green country because it has so much green space…but that’s not what counts. Are we taking care of that green space? The survey thinks not enough.

Our emissions per person are among the highest in the world. The conservative government just hasn’t stepped up to the plate.

As Canadians we need to put climate change higher up on the priorities list. And I think it is for a lot of Canadians. So make the effort to let the government know. It would only take a few minutes for you to look up the email of your MP and send them a note that you’re worried about the climate and are upset at our low ranking among the G8. Or email the PM himself at pm@pm.gc.ca. Tell them you want the environment to become a key issue of the government.

If you want you can use this template I modified from a website for a campaign for the Australian government. Just sign your name at the end!

Dear Prime Minister,

I’m writing you about Canada’s climate change policies, because I am deeply concerned about the future of our planet, not just for myself, but even more importantly, for Canada’s children and future generations, because they will be more seriously affected than us by climate change impacts.

The repeated news of changes in Canada’s north does not allow us to ignore climate change any longer. The melting of glaciers and the altered hunting grounds of polar bears show us that this is a real issue with real consequences for our people.

Climate change is no longer something that happens in the future, or something that happens “elsewhere”, but it is with us, here and now, and our population is deeply affected. That’s why I count on you all taking my message to you as urgent and extremely important.