Sometimes being green ain’t so easy, which is why the CBC and Cisco have launched One Million Acts of Green to help people take this whole “environmental” thing one step at a time.   The site offers everyday activities and tips that can reduce your ecological impact and share your progress with the community with videos and photos.

While somewhat self-congratulatory, the helpful process allows you to easily manage greening your life and keep track of all the good you’ve done for the environment.   The eco-tips range from changing simple daily habits and easy home projects like using low-flow shower heads, to reconfiguring your mode of transportation and big home projects like installing solar panels.

takepart by joining our Canadian neighbors (I mean, neighbours) and start on your path towards One Million Acts of Green.

Winter Miller is a brilliant author and friend. This quote comes from an amazing op-ed she wrote for the Boston Globe this past Saturday. And she is referring to Obama’s support- or the lack thereof- for gay marriage.   It’s titled, Standing Up for Your Gay Friend and you can read it here.

I’m Canadian and very proud that same sex marriage is legal in Quebec. It really is as simple as two in people in love should be legally allowed to get married. And if I was allowed to vote in this coming election, there is no doubt that No on Prop 8 would be my decision.

Winter writes, “I don’t know if I will choose to marry, just as I never knew if I would choose an abortion, but our convictions mean the most when they include those beyond ourselves.”

Here’s to electing a candidate that can see beyond his own beliefs.
takepart with Google’s Voter Info to find out how and where to vote.

by Liz Singh

Why, you ask? After all, Canada is a rich nation and one that has never fought a war on its own soil. They’re friendly, peaceful and progressive, right?

Well, that is only part of the story.

Canada’s governing party, The Conservative Party of Canada, led by Stephen Harper have apparently remained bound and determined to do anything but conserve. Although Canada had originally agreed to meet the Kyoto protocol, Mr. Harper, who notoriously referred to Kyoto as a socialist scheme, under his governance Canada has reached an almost total standstill on the saving the planet front.

Two days ago, a hundred and twenty leading Canadian scientists issued a plea for Canadians to vote against the Conservatives in the upcoming federal election. Two weeks earlier, Greenpeace Canada requested that its members and allies put pressure on candidates to make the environment the issue in this campaign.

How can you takepart ?

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I’m in Montreal this weekend visiting my family. And this morning while out getting groceries with my dad, I was trying to convince him to purchase re-usable canvas bags. And for this first time, he agreed. I paused. This battle was never won before so why such an easy defeat? My dad explained that he can no longer use plastic bags when throwing out our garbage thus eliminating his justification for getting grocery store bags.

And why can’t he throw out plastic bags you ask? Well, it started with a confusing answer. First, he tells me that the city dropped off a large brown bin where he has to throw food waste, leaves and other things listed in a packet of instructions that with the bin. Kitchen refuse? Leaves? No more plastic?

A compost bin! I exclaimed in the middle of IGA.

My dad was a little fuzzy on the details so when i got home, I discovered all of the literature (photo above). and in fact, the city gave all Cote St Luc residents a compost bin. The first pick up is Oct. 12, 2008.

How amazing is this?

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Maple Leaf Foods, one of Canada’s largest food processors, recalled 220 products when their cold cuts were linked to 12 deaths and 29 confirmed cases of listeriosis.

Bob Kingston, an ex-inspector for the Canadian Food Inspection Agency says that Federal inspectors are spending less time on the factory floor and relying more on food producers to monitor themselves.

“The biggest concern from the [CFIA] inspection staff is simply the amount of time now they spend looking at reports and generating reports,” said Kingston. “And all of that means time off of the production floor.”

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A chuck of ice measuring 7 square miles broke off a Canadian ice shelf in the arctic yesterday. The sheet broke away from the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf off the north coast of Ellesmere Island in Canada’s far north.

Derek Mueller, a polar scientist and research fellow at Trent University explained that a crack in the shelf was first spotted in 2002. This is the biggest chunk of ice to break away from one of Canada’s six ice shelves since the Ayles shelf broke loose in 2005.

“Ice shelves don’t just break up. There’s no karate chop,” he said. “This is the result of a gradual weakening over time as a result of warming temperatures.”

“We’re in a different climate now…. “It’s not conducive to regrowing them. It’s a one-way process.”

takepart with We Can Solve It and support Al Gore’s challenge: America must commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and other clean sources within 10 years.

Related:

Inconvenient Truth of the Day
Huge Ice Sheet Breaks Loose in Arctic
Ice sheet breaks loose off Canada

We may have found some good news on the environmental front, as Canadian researchers have found that some levels of toxins are finally dropping in a wide array of Arctic animals.   The Canadian Press (which I assume is like the Associated Press, but, you know, Canadian), tells us that

The study, the first large-scale attempt in a decade to measure contaminants in common Arctic food animals, found carcinogens such as PCBs and other toxins derived from pesticides sprayed in the south have largely levelled off or have begun declining. ‘Organochlorines, like DDT or chlordane or toxaphene or industrial chemicals like PCB, are declining,’ said project leader Laurie Chan of the University of Northern British Columbia. ‘That’s good news.’

PCB levels, the study says, have fallen an average of 47% in Arctic animals since 1997.  This, in turn, has reduced the amount of the toxin to which Inuit people are exposed, which in turn has caused the “average PCB levels in the blood of pregnant women from 14 communities in the northwestern Northwest Territories fell 24 per cent between 2000 and 2007″.

Yet, the news is not 100% good stuff, as the scientists note that mercury levels have remained constant, and in some instances, on the rise (such at a surge of 42% in the ringed seal).

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The world’s richest nations and emerging economies joined together at a summit on the island of Hokkaidou, Japan to commit to long range cute in global greenhouse emissions. They concluded their meetings today, calling climate change one of the great global challenges of our time. Good news, right? Well, not just yet.

Yesterday, leaders of the G8 (United States, Japan, Germany, France, Canada, Italy, Britain and Russia) pledged to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases in half by 2050. But the Group of 5 emerging economies (China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa) refused to sign onto that goal. They are holding out until rich nations like the United States take more aggressive steps to cut pollution over the next decade.

It is good that the developing countries have embraced the principal of a global target that they will participate in, Philip Clapp of the Pew Environmental Group said. It would have been better if the United States and the other G-8 countries would have been willing to step up to the plate and make a strong commitment about what they would do over the next 10 years.”

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As long as we’re talking about Canada these days on the site here, I’ll go ahead and mention that Ottowa has approved construction of a facility that will turn 400 metric tons of garbage into 21 megawatts of electricity every day. I didn’t even know this technology even existed, but it seems like it’s the best idea ever.

Technology Review (published by those fancy-pants at MIT) reports today that this plant, to be constructed by the PlascoEnergy Group, would be the first large-scale gas-to-energy facility in North America. Technically, the process is called “gasification,” and

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It’s Canada Day!! YAY!!! As a proud Montrealer, I am wearing red and white, listening to the Bare Naked Ladies and even changed my IM image to a little Canadian flag. (Except it is supposed to be animated but it isn’t working…insert joke here.)

In honor of this holiday, grab a may west, Tim Hortons coffee, some maple syrup, say zed instead of zee, use your garburator, and watch one of these extraordinary Canadian films (yes, we make movies.)

1) Barbarian Invasions

2) C.R.A.Z.Y

3) Water

4) The Corporation

5) My Left Breast

6) Ryan

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