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The Canadian press

Carl Pope sends some interesting ruminations from Canada:

It's not that Canada (or Europe) necessarily does a better job of environmental stewardship. Canada's greenhouse emissions -- driven by production of oil for the U.S. market -- have actually increased faster than those in the United States.

...

What's different here is that the dialogue feels more honest. The media actually try to describe reality rather than falling back on critiquing spin. Although the reporting may be opinionated, biased, or even wrong, it remains (at least modestly) connected to the real world. Consider global warming. Canada is a country that cynics in the U.S. like to offer as a proof that "a little warming wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing." Canadians suffer no such illusions. ... Little wonder that eighty percent of Canadians are proud that their nation has ratified Kyoto.

Canadians are desperate to find a way to get the U.S. back in the game. They struggled to get their government to agree to host the United Nations global warming conference in Montreal this fall. Their leaders were told that this was a foolish idea -- that the Bush administration would make them regret it -- but the public insisted, and its voice was heeded. The signers of the Kyoto agreement will meet in Montreal in November. Canada wants to use that meeting to enlist Americans -- on both side of the U.S./Canada border -- to join the struggle for a viable climactic future. The passion, the fury, the fear, and the hope are tangible and exciting.

Sustainable, yes. Possible, not so sure.

So you want to make sure your eating habits are not contributing to global warming, but aren't ready to go veg. You like the idea of eating only organic food, but worry about the long trek much of it makes to get from producer to grocer. So you're thinking about consuming only locally produced fare. But is it possible? Well, Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon are giving it a go and sharing their experience with our friends to the north, The Tyee.

In part one, we get the background:

For the average American meal (and we assume the average Canadian meal is similar), World Watch reports that the ingredients typically travel between 2,500 and 4,000 kilometres, a 25 percent increase from 1980 alone. This average meal uses up to 17 times more petroleum products, and increases carbon dioxide emissions by the same amount, compared to an entirely local meal.

Let's translate that into the ecological footprint model devised by Dr. William Rees of UBC which measures how many planets'-worth of resources would be needed if everyone did the same. If you had an average North American lifestyle in every other way, from driving habits to the size of your house, by switching to a local diet you would save almost an entire planet's worth of resources (though you'd still be gobbling up seven earths).

Toxic babies

You know, nothing warms the cockles of a father-to-be's heart like a study showing that babies in the womb are awash in toxic chemicals.

We are abusing our children, all of us, before they are even born. Lovely.

Julian Brookes has more.

SCOTUS update

Looks like, Beltway scuttlebutt notwithstanding, Rehnquist isn't retiring.

Slitherin’ Scholastic

Greens urge boycott of Harry Potter’s U.S. publisher J. K. Rowling and a coalition of eco-Muggles are giving props to Canadian publisher Raincoast Books for printing Rowling’s hotly anticipated sixth novel — Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, being released tonight — entirely on recycled paper. Canadian conservation group Markets Initiative estimates that Raincoast’s good […]

The Axis of Oil

China gets pushy about finding oil and gas supplies outside Mideast Historians cataloguing the unintended consequences of the Iraq war can add another to their list. Until 2003, China had been wooing Saddam Hussein, hoping to lay claim to some of Iraq’s undeveloped oil reserves. But the U.S.-led war, perceived by China’s leaders as a […]

A Dung Deal

Toxic pollution in Arctic likely caused by contaminated bird poop Native residents of northern Arctic regions are ridden with toxic chemicals — some of the highest body concentrations in the world — and new research has uncovered an unlikely culprit: guano, or as we prefer to call it, bird dookie. Scientists have long assumed that […]

New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman chats about global warming and the heated climate around the energy bi

He may hail from an energy state out West, and he may be a soft-spoken moderate, but Jeff Bingaman, Democratic senator from New Mexico and ranking member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has joined the sparsely populated ranks of members of Congress pushing for real progress on climate change. Sen. Jeff Bingaman. […]

Macroeconomy as microecosystem

To follow up on this post, it's great when ecologists and economists start speaking the same language. Even better is when they form the US Society for Ecological Economics. If you're the conference type they are having their third biennial conference next week.

Even if you won't be in the Tacoma area, though, one of their policy briefs is of particular note. Written by Herman E. Daly of the University of Maryland, it covers "Economic Growth and Development." But it has a very environmental twist.

It's a Word document and it's only 1.5 pages. Go read it. To further entice those terrified of commitment, two particularly poignant excerpts are below.

Dams

I missed this TIME story on the growing dam-removal movement a few days ago -- it's worth a read.