Now that the media spotlight is gone, and a couple of months have passed, what does the Copenhagen Accord really mean for the past, present and future of climate change?

January 31, 2010 was the deadline for participating countries to submit their proposals to the UNFCCC to reduce greenhouse gas emissions reductions. How did they fare?

Currently, with no changes, the forecast for average global temperature increase by 2100 is 4.7 degrees Celsius.  Scientific consensus is that this would be catastrophic, with sea levels rising by one metre.

The Copenhagen Accord was a promise (non-binding, remember) that the participating countries would reduce emissions so that we have a minimum average global temperature increase of only 2.5 degrees by 2100.

When you look at these projections, it is worth noting that many African countries, who are particularly sensitive to the drought and desertification brought about by higher temperatures, walked out on the Copenhagen summit at one point because their position is that average temperature rise by 2100 of more than 1.5 degrees will be catastrophic for them.

So how are the proposals that were just submitted on January 31? According to Climate Interactive, a collaborative project to use open-source tools to accurately predict the future of climate change, the proposals that have just been submitted don’t even take us to where we’re supposed to be ~ that is, reducing emissions such that the temperature only increases by 2.5% by 2100. (more…)

In his bestselling book on climate change, Hot Flat and Crowded, Tom Friedman includes a chapter on what he refers to as “global weirding”. What he is referring to with this phrase is “increased variability” in the climate, as opposed to a uniform, linear increase in temperature that many have come to expect as the earth’s average daily temperature increases.

This is because the laws of nature do not behave in ways that are wholly predictable. Have you heard of the butterfly effect? Or chaos theory? Or the idea of logarithmic feedback loops?  There are so many factors interacting with each other to create the experience of a snowstorm, or a drought, or a flood, or a hurricane, that it becomes increasingly difficult to predict exactly how or when climate change will show up in our day or our year or even in this century. What we do know is that we should expect the unexpected.

That means that a typical fall may be followed by daffodils in January, followed by a typical spring and a summer that is much colder than usual, and then the complete absence of fall and then a winter with record low temperatures and blizzards. In other words, all sort of extremes with a lack of predictability built-in.

This is why our weather reporters have been so rarely on the mark this last year or two. The carefully built predictive meteorology models that scientists have traditionally used to tell us what to expect the next day or next week are falling apart in the face of this “increased variability”.

I’m a sailor, and I can tell you that the difficulty in predicting the future weather had big implications for me when I took our family sailboat out this last August for a month-long trip along the north shore of Lake Ontario. A lighting storm that hit the lake on August 9 was not predicted, inspiring an article in the Toronto Star about “meteorologist-bashing” that pointed out that the public was getting increasingly irate with inexact predictions. For my part, I was stranded on my boat that night outside a harbour with a badly marked channel. Had I known about the lightning storm I would not have been on the lake. On the other hand, if I were to not set out at all every time the forecast said there was a “chance of thundershowers”, I would not have set out on my boat at all.

When our friends and neighbors who are skeptical about global warming, pointing out that the current summer has never been colder or that the current winter has never been as severe,  you can lean towards them and say “climate change means increased variability” with a knowing look.

What does all this mean for us in our daily lives? It means that we should stay flexible and low-to-the-ground when it comes to planning our gardens, our outdoor activities, our wardrobes, our home renovations.  Be ready for anything, expect the unexpected, and then you can enjoy the beauty an intense lightning stormin the summer or a long hike on a mild winter Saturday.

A lightning bolt strikes over Highway 404 South as a major thunderstorm rolls through the GTA Aug. 9, 2009, as seen from the Finch Ave. overpass. ADRIEN VECZAN/TORONTO STAR

The following individuals deserve a special place in every greenie’s heart. All are compelling figures whose work and works have the ability to delight and inspire those of us who count stewardship for the earth among our key values.

Bob Hunter (Canadian) The first President of Greenpeace, Bob was a long-time campaigner for environmental causes. He lead the first on-sea anti-whaling campaigns in the world, and campaigned against nuclear testing, the Canadian seal hunt and later, climate change.

Al Gore (American)  In 2007, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Gore also starred in the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth, which made climate change a household concern in the United States.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (American) An outspoken activist and mesmerizing speaker on behalf of the environment, Kennedy founded The Waterkeeper Alliance, which connects and supports local waterkeeper groups. Today there are 191 waterkeeper programs worldwide.

Arnold Schwarzenegger (American) Republican politician who signed a bill creating North America’s first cap on greenhouse gas emissions and signed a second global warming bill that prohibits large utilities and corporations in California from making long-term contracts with suppliers who do not meet the state’s greenhouse gas emission standards.

Frances Moore Lappé (American) Her book Diet for a Small Planet argued that world hunger is caused not by the lack of food but rather by the inability of hungry people to gain access to the abundant amount of food that exists in the world and/or food-producing resources because they are simply too poor.

Farley Mowat (Canadian) is a fabled conservationist and one of Canada’s most widely-read authors. Many of his most popular works have been memoirs of his childhood, his war service, and his work as a naturalist.

E.F. Shumacher (German) His book Small is Beautiful, a collection of essays, brought his ideas to a wider audience. One of his main arguments in Small is Beautiful is that we cannot consider the problem of technological production solved if it requires that we recklessly erode our finite natural capital and deprive future generations of its benefits. Schumacher’s work coincided with the growth of ecological concerns and  he became a hero to many in the environmental movement.

Wangari Matthai (Kenyan) in the 1970s, Maathai founded the Green Belt Movement, an environmental non-governmental organization focused on the planting of trees, environmental conservation, and women’s rights. In 2004 she became the first African woman, and the first environmentalist, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

Petra Kelly (German)  Kelly was instrumental in founding Die Grünen, the German Green Party in 1979. Between 1983 and 1990, she was a member of the Bundestag (German Parliament). Kelly received the Right Livelihood Award (also known as the Alternative Nobel Prize) in 1982 “…for forging and implementing a new vision uniting ecological concerns with disarmament, social justice, and human rights.”

Paul Hawken (American) author of The Ecology of Commerce, dedicated his life to changing the relationship between business and the environment, and between human and living systems in order to create a more just and sustainable world. His work includes starting and running ecological businesses, writing and teaching about the impact of commerce upon the environment.

As Canada Day approaches, it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on what our country has had to offer to the global environmental movement. We should be proud — because Canadians have made significant green contributions to business, academia, policy, and science.

No list of Canadian greenies would be complete without David Suzuki, of course. As a television broadcaster and writer, he raised our awareness as to The Nature of Things and the problem of climate change. He has received 22 honourary degrees and The David Suzuki Foundation has become a watchdog organization that is respected around the world. His daughter Severn Suzuki is an activist in her own right who electrified the 1992 World Summit in Rio De Janeiro at the age of eleven, by making a passionate deputation demanding that children’s voices be heard as we consider how our actions determine their future.

And of course, there is Greenpeace. This Vancouver non-profit sprang out of the consciousness-raising hippie movement of the sixties and seventies. Its founders brought a media-savvy, in-your-face kind of activism to the battles against whaling, old growth clear-cuts, nuclear power, and genetically modified foods.  And Pollution Probe in Toronto created a model for public interest environmental groups that has been copied around the world.

Canadians have also been pioneers in passing tough and effective legislation that protect both our own natural world, and the planet at large.  In the 1970s, Ontario passed two pieces of legislation, the Environmental Assessment Act and the Environmental Protection Act, that are still considered to be among the toughest worldwide. More recently Ontario passed the Endangered Species Act, created a greenbelt around Toronto, and introduced The Green Energy and Economy Act.

Ontario is not the only Canadian to pioneer progressive environmental legislation. Out west in British Columbia, the very first carbon tax in North America was introduced only a year ago. And our Atlantic provinces, along with Quebec, were the first to create a Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative with their neighboring New England states.

Our federal government has also made great strides in developing technologies for a cleaner greener world. Engineers from Natural Resources Canada developed world-class software to develop renewable energy called RETSCREEN. It’s available for free download in 35 languages and is currently used by NASA, among many others around the globe.

So this Canada Day, as you fire up your barbecue and sip on your Alexander Keiths beer or your Niagara Reisling, meditate on all these achievements and be extra proud to be Canadian.

Each year Earth Day is a bigger event….Why?

Earth Day is now observed on April 22 in 175 countries, and coordinated by the nonprofit Earth Day Network, according to whom Earth Day is now the largest secular holiday in the world, celebrated by more than a half billion people every year.  Environmental groups have sought to make Earth Day into a day of action which changes human behavior and provokes policy changes.

Founded in 1970, Earth Day is a driving force steering environmental citizenship and progressive action worldwide, around the world. Through Earth Day, activists connect change in local, national, and global policies. Earth Day’s international network reaches over 17,000 organizations in 174 countries, while the North American programs engage 5,000 groups and over 25,000 educators coordinating millions of community development and environmental protection activities throughout the year. It is the only event celebrated simultaneously around the globe by people of all backgrounds, faiths and nationalities. More than a half billion people participate in Earth Day campaigns every year. 

(more…)

If you get a professional energy audit done and make subsequent changes to your home, you could be eligible for a grant of up to $5,000 from the federal government, which may also be matched by your provincial government.

Proposed new legislation in Ontario may soon require a home energy audit prior to sale. If you are wondering if your house wastes energy, get a professional home energy audit now to locate your home’s leaks and inefficiencies. It’ll help you make choices about home upgrades and will save you money over time.

Looking ahead, energy efficient homes are attractive on the real estate market and sell for as much as $8,000 more. A more energy-efficient home is warmer in winter, cooler in summer and has cleaner air. Apart from the benefit to the bottom-line pricing of your home upon resale, you can also recoup the cost of the audit and the retrofits you make by saving as much as 35% on your heating and cooling costs.  Using less energy in your home will also reduce greenhouse gas emissions from energy production by as much as 4 tonnes a year.

At Green Cricket we are concerned about energy saving too and we highlight to our customers the products that are produced within 100 miles of our warehouse. Seeing the distance-to-market criteria symbol on our website will help you in your purchasing decisions along with our other Quality Criteria.

[written by Kate Holloway, Trevor Smith]

Carbon taxes and credits are tools to correct our economic systems and prices so that they more accurately reflect the reality of our finite planet.

Our current pricing system does not take into account the way that our business and industries affect the water, soil, plant and animal life, and the biosphere, which supports all life on Earth. When prices are set by buyers and sellers, the market just assumes that we have unlimited resources that we can draw on to expand. This is because up until very recently, economists did not imagine that we would become so populous that our industrial systems would put a real stress on the planet’s resources.

(more…)