Deeper Shade of Green

A little departure from the site’s theme. An excerpt from a book about the worst disaster in the sport of ocean racing:

On Aug. 11, 1979, a team of Canadian sailors set out on a 600-mile race from England to an island off the Irish coast called Fastnet Rock. A weather bomb of near-hurricane force descended on the fleet; ultimately 15 people died and 25 boats were abandoned in what remains the worst disaster in the sport of ocean racing.

Full excerpt here.  Buy book from Amazon.ca for $23.30 can here. Well Worth reading!

Al Gore made a stop in Toronto yesterday, part of the Green Living Show, the first “green consumer show” hosted by the city. But before Gore put up his first slide he told the audience he wanted to make a comment and he wanted to make sure he did it before the media had left. Gore than lashed out at the federal conservatives for focusing on intensity of emissions rather than tough, overall reductions in the absolute amounts of pollution.He went on to say that Canada is a country known for moral leadership and “standing up for what is right in the world.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Right at the heels of his hugely successful tour “If you were prime minister…”, David Suzuki kept his promise and delivered more then 30,000 ballots voting for the environment at Ottawa’s doorsteps. Afterwards, he was to meet the minister of environment and the opposition parties.
Read the rest of this entry »

The federal government will be delivering a new plan tomorrow, to curb our emissions by 20% by 2020. What is funny is that it faxed the report- by mistake - to the opposition party - and the report leaked out.

Read the rest of this entry »

I have recently received a power point presentation via email explaining how we are gauged by the gas companies and to take the matter into our own hands to do something about it. The idea was simple: spread to word to many people and they will do so in turn and soon enough we’ll have more then a million people that would buy gas anywhere but Petro-Canada and Shell. Then those companies would be obliged to lower prices and then others would follow.

Read the rest of this entry »

Treehugger.com has an excellent article on how and with what products to clean anything around your house in an eco-way. Very enlightening, with practical solutions. If you’ve ever wondered how to stop using the likes of windex and - gasp - febreeze, then head on over here. You’ll feel refreshed, save money and feel better knowing you reduced your pollution.

Today I read an article on the Tyee, a first-rate online daily publication. What I read made me very, and I mean very scared. Global Climate Change is here, now.

Read the rest of this entry »

As you may or may not know, April 21st is Earth Day. An event to celebrate our ever-increasingly fragile planet. Here’s an awesome website (Earth Day Canada) where you can search for events happening that day around your town and also some simple tips that you can do to tread lighter on Earth.

Read the rest of this entry »

Earth Day Celebrations are coming worldwide in one week. One of my fans and someone whom I love and have admiration for what they do in respect to the environment on a daily basis - Sue Campbell - wrote a wonderful poem I would like to share with all of you.
Sue, thank you for your gift.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yup, once again, you can count on our politicians to come out as heroes for putting forth a bill (the Clean Air Act) that reduces emissions. Or can you? Not quite, because politicians love to placate people and still protect industries’ interests. And in this case that means basing reduction in emissions on something called intensity targets, which refers to the amount of greenhouse gases produced per unit of economic activity (GDP, for example). However that doesn’t help, because although we could be reducing the intensity targets, we could, at the same time be increasing our actual emissions. Basically, its a swindle, the kind you’d expect from smiling Harper. Oh I forgot, our honourable Mr. Harper. Or is it Harper, the Climate Criminal? Read more on this issue in David Suzuki’s weekly column.

Frustrated things are not moving fast enough? Well leave it to Al Gore to continue fighting Global Climate Change in new innovative ways. Al Gore is launching Live Earth, the concerts for a climate in crisis.

Read the rest of this entry »

What are they you say? No, they do not hail from Transylvania but rather from your own home. I’m talking about any and every device that is plugged-in in your home right now and that is turned off; be it your camera or cell phone charger, your toothbrush, your air freshener (this toxic nonsense should not be in your home - just open up your windows!), your vcr, your TV and your computer as well as countless others. All of these devices are plugged into the power grid, yet they are off and not used or needed.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s a nice article about David Suzuki’s daughter.  For those of you who love David Suzuki - nominee for CBC’s The Greatest Canadian - this article is a nice fresh portrait of how his daughter follows in his footsteps, but how she is also a force of her own.

I think I’d like to meet her.

This is the tile of a half hour special news cast going on this whole week on cbc channel. Watch it if you can, and you will be very surprised to see how the global climate is now affecting, in a very real manner, many countries worldwide. Global climate change is no longer a phenomenon that will go away or that our children will have to deal with and solve with their superior technology.

Global Climate Change is happening  n o w.  Therefore we must act  n o w.  Not when it’s convenient for us.

Read the rest of this entry »

If every driver of a light duty vehicle avoided idling by five minutes a day, collectively over the year, we would save 680 million litres of fuel, over 1.6 million tonnes of GHG emissions, and $646 million annually in fuel costs (assuming fuel costs are $0.95/). (Source: Natural Resources Canada).

Read the rest of this entry »