fly and buy carbon passes, suzuki tells ed

Ed Begley Jr. that is, star of Living with Ed. Catherine Porter reports back from the Green Toronto Awards last night, kick-off to the Green Living Show here in Toronto:

Green living isn't just a hobby for Begley. It's an informed passion. Just ask him about water quality, and he will spout off words like trichloroethylene, an industrial solvent used as a degreaser found today in groundwater. He agrees that the science on climate change is daunting, and the planet's prognosis is bleak without an all-out commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions (by something like 90 per cent in Canada).

He doesn't expect everyone to get solar panels. Start small, he says. With an energy audit. Maybe some more insulation in your home, so you don't leak carbon-fuelled energy. It will save you money, he says. And get you hooked – so soon, you'll be like him, buying an electric car and brewing up your own all-natural household cleaners.

But what about all that flying? Airplane travel is for carbon junkies. Each round-trip flight Begley takes spews out carbon equivalent to the emissions he saves with two months' worth of solar power generated on his roof. And he takes dozens of flights a year now.

"I didn't fly throughout the 1990s," he said. "But then my friend David Suzuki said, `I think you should start flying and buy Terrapasses (carbon offsets). It's more important that you get the message out there.'"

Read article >

the $4 trillion question

Today in Metro, David Suzuki and Dr. Faisal Moola explain why the money being handed out to failing companies should be put toward saving the planet instead.

Just think what you could do with $4.1 trillion!

That’s how much the U.S. and 17 Western European countries are spending to bail out financial institutions involved in an economic crisis that began in the U.S. and soon reverberated around the world. (The final amount will likely be a lot more. It’s difficult to fathom such a large number, but consider that one trillion seconds is about 32,000 years!) To top it off, most of the details are secret; we don’t really know what the money is being used for — although it probably hasn’t stopped your retirement savings funds from plummeting.

The effect on people in developing nations is even worse. Most of them didn’t have savings to begin with, and now the economic crisis, coupled with the effects of the climate crisis — including drought and food shortages — is causing more of our human family to suffer from extreme poverty and joblessness.

Read more...

gnome suzuki fights lawn and garden no-nos

Enter your garden in David Suzuki's Nature Challenge and be a part of a growing Canadian movement to eliminate pesticides from our lawns and gardens.

Sign up now and you'll get tips all summer long on how to grow your garden drug-free, plus a chance for Gnome Suzuki to visit your green space.