Challenge 10: The hour is upon us

You’ve changed your light bulbs, reduced the meat in your diet, installed a low-flow showerhead, taken toxic cleaners to the hazardous waste depot and tried all the other challenges Catherine and I have set out since mid-January.
Now what?
This is the 10th and final challenge for our Green Life blog. We trust, though, that it’s just the start as you do what you can to reduce your environmental footprint.
This week, we’re proposing three more steps to turn an end into a beginning.
First, since this is Earth Hour day, the initial challenge is to turn out your lights, and anything else electric that you can safely do without, between 8 and 9 this evening.
You’ll be part of a worldwide movement that has gained remarkable momentum, particularly in Canada and Australia — where the event was launched last year.
Earth Hour is all about education and changing behaviour but, what the heck, contests are fun and why shouldn’t Toronto and the rest of the GTA achieve a bigger drop in electricity use than anywhere else.
Hundreds of governments and businesses say they’ll participate. But the consumption meters won’t fall very far, and the photos won’t be truly memorable, unless plenty of homeowners, condo dwellers and apartment residents flick some switches, too.
Second, since Earth Hour isn’t just about 60 minutes of near darkness, the next part of the challenge is to keep on keeping on with the previous green moves, and the 71 daily tips we’ve posted on thestar.com.
Some cynics scoff at this evening’s event or argue it’s the wrong approach. It’s certainly not the only way to encourage greener lives, and it can’t be enough on its own to prevent climate change and other environmental problems from reaching calamitous proportions. Government measures — things like tough regulations and substantial carbon taxes — are essential, as are new technologies and ways of doing business.
But experience shows that people who try to make improvements get angry with politicians who don’t, and it’s amazing how often politicians develop backbones when they believe their jobs are at risk.
The enthusiastic response to Earth Hour does suggest that many of us are concerned about environment issues and that the event is a great way to widen awareness. It will be a success, though, only if it helps to lead to widespread and permanent steps toward conservation.
We’ve tried to provide a good starting point, and there are vast amounts of information available to keep you going. Two good starting points are WWF-Canada’s Good Life web site and Weconserve, a project of the Conservation Council of Ontario.
Mostly it’s a matter of being conscious of the fact that electricity, no matter how cheap or under priced, is never free. From wind turbines to smoke-spewing coal-fired generating stations, every source has impacts.
The same goes for other resources: The more we use, the more damage we cause. There is no need to starve, freeze, swelter or grope in the dark: We simply need to live wiser and smarter.
Which brings us to the final part of our final challenge: Learn about the environment and make yourself heard. Whether it’s joining or supporting a group; talking to friends and neighbours; helping with a school project; contacting politicians or businesses — involve yourself.
We won't endorse any particular group, or suggest what message you should send to whom. As journalists, we’ve already ventured far enough into advocacy.
The bottom line: Simply become alive to issues that will determine the fate of our planet. To be blunt: Nothing that we do as individuals, on our own, will be enough to avert the climate-change crisis just as it would make virtually no difference to the global outcome if Canada were to immediately stop using fossil fuels. On the other hand, nothing at the essential bigger scale will happen unless people who can do something actually act and create pressure, and examples, for others to follow.
There’s still plenty of resistance to change and differences of opinion have been the order of the day in the responses to our blog.
When we suggested finding substitutes for plastic, and increasing recycling, we got an earful from Dave who objected to the city’s instruction to rinse items before tossing them in the bin. “It’s garbage. Garbage. Garbage,” he wrote. “Life is short enough. Now I have to spend time cleaning my garbage. It’s garbage. Garbage.”
Some of you expressed frustration at attempts to go greener. It can be tough to find a parking spot at GO train stations.
“Oh, ouch,” wrote Nancy, after the “Bye flight” challenge to restrict air travel and its hefty carbon emissions. “I’m finally at the age when I can afford global travel every year or so and now don’t know if my conscience will let me. My timing sucks!”
The call to go meatless for a day also produced objections. “Come on! This is another example of going way too far, at the risk of turning people off,” wrote Anne-Marie Demers. “Are you also going to suggest not having children at all, like I saw on another web site?”
Quite a few of you, in fact, have concluded that the only hope lies in population control. We didn’t pursue that debate since, while it’s true that fewer people would mean less stress on Earth’s environment, it’s an idea that’s virtually impossible to turn into a politically and socially acceptable policy. People will have to decide as individuals how many kids to have, and why.
Mostly, you’ve demonstrated understanding and thoughtfulness, and a willingness to try different things. Some of you embrace new technologies: Others look back to the future, to power-free gizmos like the “sidewalk strider” as an alternative to the treadmill.
Either way, it seems a lot of people are ready for change. We heard from many like Annie, who wrote: “Wow, this is great information ..... Great stuff! Thank you so much.”

Comments

[Oldtimer]

It is hard for frail elderly living outside your city to decide to turn off the usual modest lighting for the Hour when Toronto boasts of commercial electrical consumption like Honest Ed's thousands of street front bulbs and festivals like Illuminato the rest of the year.

[Steve]

Would be nice if we could get enough lights out that city
people could witness a real night sky.

[Shana Albo]

Earth Hour shed some light on some things for me and my family: 1. it's incredible how many stars can be seen with so much less light. 2. the dial on my electricity meter came to a virtual standstill. 3. We can be the change we want to see in the world!

[Dan Powell]

Hopefully the conservation of non-renewable resources will not go away after the major media like The Star and others have had article after article on Earth Hour this weekend.

We have found that the best thing we did was in the late fall by participating in the ecoENERGY Retrofit grant program which incents homeowners with financial grants (after having a home energy audit undertaken by an authorized firm) for undertaking small, medium and large energy conservation tasks in their home.

We even wrote about our experiences in the program on our blog page http://dailyhomerenotips.com/ecoenergy .

The money is out there; it's yours for the taking. And, we learned a whole bunch of new ideas like drain water recovery devices and even those for which no grant money is provided like solar blinds (not as exotic as it sounds) and solar air heating.

Hopefully Canadian home owners will become more aware of the ecoENERGY Retrofit program as well. It has only 3 more years to run.

Dan

[Edward W. Stanley]

How much vs. How.

If one decreases usage of a product or service, the cost per unit increases. Buy one chocolate bar its a dollar, buy a box its 75 cents. Decrease consumption of electricity, the cost per unit will go up. You cant have a nuclear power plant work at 50% it either generates the power at the rate or its down. This also takes time, you can not just unplug them to stop them for a few minutes.

The suggestion is to decrease electrical power, but on the otherhand enviornmentalists want cars which run on electrical power. I find that contradictory. Note low altitude ions, a by-product of electrical generation is highly toxic.

We have two huge sources of energy, one we see every morning and one we walk on top of: the sun and the earth.

Solar and my preference geo thermal power will generate more power than we can ever use. This is "how" we should change. I also see 'clean coal' as very viable was well.

Stopping climate change and 'global warming' is only possible when we stop volcanoes from erupting, the sun from changing its solar output, and the planets penchant for wobbling.

One might notice the acid rain problem we had is no longer a forefront issue.

Well I put forward the major cause was high altitude SO2 from the Mount St Helen's eruption not by industry. I have no hard evidence on the subject, but SO2 is one of the major outputs of volcanoes.

Enviornmentalism is the latest social meme going around.

Plants love CO2.

Take some time and Google "Laki, Iceland - 1783" 25% of the population ofIceland died because the volcanoes eruption.

"The climatic effects of the Laki eruption are impressive. In the eastern United States, the winter average temperature was 4.8 degrees C below the 225 year average. The estimate for the temperature decrease of the entire Northern Hemisphere is about 1 degree C. The top graph shows change in acidity in micro equivalents H+ per kg in the Greenland icecap...."

The below link is a great place to start to learn about the terrestrial force that affects and for the most part controls gas emissions we can never change; ever.

http://www.volcano.si.edu/

People,animals and planets we feed off of will die because of them, the only thing we should be focusing on is providing the 50% of the planet living in poverty the opportunity to have employment, shelter and a means to feed themselves when these sleeping giants show us how irrelevent these social memes are.

You want to improve the planet?

Get to know your neighbour, push for the abolishment of 'temporary' taxes imposed on Canadians and realise most of us here, in North America, stole this land to be free.

E

[Robbin MacQueen]

Ah, another much hyped, smoke and mirrors event. Events such as these do nothing more than confuse the average person who might want to do their part but, like many, get their messages from the media. Electricity is the cleanest form of energy available to us. Hydro-electric power produces no emissions while nuclear produces little waste, yet these are portrayed as bad. So instead, we have these events encouraging people to turn off their lights and instead light millions of CO2 emitting candles. Just take a look at all the pictures, how many candles are being burned to make up for the lack of light all in the name of fighting climate change.

If people really want to make a difference they must start thinking about the unintended consequences of their actions and what the real world application will be. Stop buying into the hype and marketing and start taking a critical (and common sense) look at ALL of it. Power plants can be regulated to reduce pollution while alternatives often cannot. Government conservation initiatives only benefit those who have the money to implement them. Even little initiatives are often at odds with each other (as an example, the government of Ontario gave out coupons for dimmer switches to reduce consumption while bringing out legislation to ban the light bulbs that can be dimmed)

It is time to get off the bandwagon and actually start using the brains we were given. As long as we keep bouncing from celebrity endorsed fad to celebrity endorsed fad we will just keep creating new problems. And, given our history, we'll just keep replacing one problem with a bigger one.

[Chris Logel]

Earth Hour was such a great idea. My wife and I got out and walked the dog. I'd want to do it all over again. The idea of having a candle-light dinner out on the town, would be great. Earth Hour should be a weekly event.

[Ben Ahi Hilleli]

The problem with EARTH HOUR is that it is misleading to the point of absurdity. You are actually WASTING ELECTRICITY BY NOT UTILIZING THE POWER THAT IS BEING GENERATED! In that regard - Earth Hour ENCOURAGES WASTE!

Anyone who understands the power grid (I have 2 electrical engineers in the family, one specializing in POWER) realizes that THE ELECTRIC COMPANIES PRODUCE AS MUCH AS IS NEEDED FOR PEAK USAGE PER TIME-FRAME. IE if there are 10 seconds somewhere between 5 and 6 each day that 100 Mwatts are used, then 100 watts will be continuously generated throughout that hour so not to deny energy during that timeframe (btw: I use 100 Mwatts as an example, it's Wayyyyy more!).

That said: Earth day is the equivalent of driving around in aimless circles - YOU ARE WASTING THE SAME AMOUNT OF GAS PRODUCING THE SAME POLLUTION... BUT NOT GETTING ANYWHERE!

In a nutshell: That is the problem with the bulk of the environmental movement.

[Cheryl McTasire]

Ok, so we turn off the lights. Then what? Cultural wasteland, that's what. I am so offended by all these green types whining about the environment. You know what? I've been oversaturated; I don't care anymore! Turn on the lights! Crank up the A/C! Get your car out of the driveway! You know you want to! Smug, self-congratulating greenies, you couldn't last one day without technology and you know it? How's you write this blog? Is your computer solar-powered? Didn't think so. You want to be green so badly, go to Greenland. Besides, by the time humans ruin the earth, all of us alive today will already be dead! Haha!

[Celia Cancelliere]

Why haven't 'drive-throughs' been banned yet???

I understand that every individual participates in the degradation of the earth and has to measure his/her personal footprint, but I find there is a disproportionate amount of pressure placed on the average Joe Blow to reduce his carbon emission when corporations and business gets away with murder.
Among so many examples of this hypocrisy (on the part of the establishment)is drive throughs at restaurants, banks, etc. It boggles my mind why these environment killers haven't been banned? and why do people (who can walk) use them? I was totally disgusted the other day when I saw three pickup trucks with perfectly healthy men in them all stopped at the drivethrough as their vehicles spewed out lovely loads of greenhouse gases and toxins into our childrens' air. At the very least, they should be restricted for those who are crippled or those with children in their vehicles.
Basically my point is that I'm sick of so much onus being placed on the individual to make efforts to reduce carbon emissions, when all the while coal plants are burning as they always have been, gas-guzzling hummers are polluting our air more than ever, businesses are pumping up air conditioning to an absurdly uncomfortable level, and almost every company is dumping chemicals into our water, air and land every minute of every day!!! Corporations and businesses are smiling as they discover that once again somehow all the blame is being placed on the next-to-helpless average citizen, while they continue the crime and gets away scott-free!!!

[Dagny McKinley]

What struck me as interesting was having a meatless day. Why would that be so hard to go for one day without meat. Even one day a week would alleviate stress on the environment. Think of all the fruits coming into season, rice, bread, veggies, pasta. Just one day a week. I'm in.
As far as population control, I think in this country where raising a child is so expensive, a lot of people have rethought having more than one or two children. I think education about contraceptives and education about the realities of raising children will be our biggest influence on reducing the population.

Dagny McKinley
www.onnotextiles.com
organic apparel