Greenspiration News: Green Energy Act, hamburgers, nukes, tarsands
Angela Bischoff
greenspi at web.ca
Sat Feb 28 00:37:54 EST 2009
Greenspirational News
Cars shouldn't be owned by individuals, but by companies licensed by
government; in this way we can
overcome the fact that cars are over-sized/powered/amenitied, but
vastly under-utilized, resulting in a car population many times
larger than is necessary, requiring about 100 times the parking
spaces than our human population would require.
Chris Bradshaw
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Ontario's Green Energy Act
- preliminary analysis by Ontario Clean Air Alliance
Ontario’s Energy and Infrastructure Minister, George Smitherman,
publicly released his proposed Green Energy Act today. The proposed
Green Energy Act is a very positive step forward on Ontario’s road to
a renewable electricity future.
But the Government needs to do much more to promote energy
conservation and efficiency.
In addition, the proposed Green Energy Act needs to be amended to
make it illegal for nuclear power companies to pass their capital
cost overruns on to Ontario’s long-suffering electricity consumers
and taxpayers.
More: http://www.cleanairalliance.org/bulletins
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Green Energy Act + Nuclear = Greenwash
Feb. 23, Shawn-Patrick Stensil, Greenpeace
The McGuinty government will unveil its Green Energy Act today. Word
is the act will be a good vehicle for developing green power. While
congratulations are in order, the government’s genuine commitment to
green energy has yet to be tested. What’s the test? Is the government
willing to lower its commitment to nuclear power to allow green power
to grow? If the answer is no, the Green Energy Act is a greenwash
to cover the billions the McGuinty government wants to put into nuclear.
http://blogs.greenpeace.ca/campaigns/nuclear/
Go Green
Shut Down Pickering Reactors
Greenpeace launched a dramatic video today to draw attention to the
danger of nuclear reactors in the greater Toronto area.
http://30km.ca/terroristthreat/
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Can Green Energy Act clean up Ontario's electricity supply?
The province's current energy plan proposes a future that looks like
the past: nuclear and coal-powered plants
Feb 24, 2009, By Cherise Burda And Joslyn Higginson, Pembina Institute
“Here's the catch; the current electricity plan envisages only 8 per
cent of power coming from new green power sources like wind turbines
and solar panels by 2027. This is nowhere near enough to attract the
level of investment necessary to ensure a competitive green energy
economy and develop a domestic green power industry.
To put this in perspective, the solar industry in Ontario would
install over the next 20 years one fifth the number of panels that
Germany has put up in a single year. Ontario would have significantly
less wind capacity in 2027 than Texas already has today.
Meanwhile, half of Ontario's power is projected to come from new or
rebuilt nuclear reactors. Indeed, Ontario's electricity plan actually
halts construction of all new wind turbines in 2018, in order to
leave space for the new reactors that the province is considering
purchasing.
This needs to change, otherwise the Green Energy Act will simply be a
vehicle to usher in renewable energy plans already on the table,
rather than serve the expansion of cleaner energy.” <Snip>
http://www.thestar.com/comment/article/591941
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Who Killed the Electric Car?
Airing Sunday March 1, at 10 p.m. ET/PT on CBC Newsworld
Fashioned like a tongue-in-cheek murder mystery, Who Killed the
Electric Car?sets out to uncover who was responsible for the demise
of the EV-1, an electric car considered to be one of the fastest and
most efficient production cars ever built.The car used no fuel,
produced no emissions and when it was introduced in the mid-nineties,
catapulted American technology to the forefront of the automotive
industry, creating an opportunity to capture the 'green' market. .
The lucky few who drove it including filmmaker Chris Paine, never
wanted to give it up. So why did General Motors crush its fleet of
electric vehicles in the Arizona desert? As a new crop of hybrid
electric cars make their "green debut" at auto shows across North
America, Who Killed the Electric Car? investigates what happened the
last time the electric car was introduced to consumers.
http://www.cbc.ca/documentaries/passionateeyeshowcase/2009/electriccar/
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Hamburgers are the Hummers of Food in Global Warming: Scientists
February 16, 2009 by Agence France Presse
When it comes to global warming, hamburgers are the Hummers of food,
scientists say.
Simply switching from steak to salad could cut as much carbon as
leaving the car at home a couple days a week.
That's because beef is such an incredibly inefficient food to produce
and cows release so much harmful methane into the atmosphere, said
Nathan Pelletier of Dalhousie University in Canada.
The livestock sector is estimated to account for 18 percent of global
greenhouse gas emissions and beef is the biggest culprit.
Even though beef only accounts for 30 percent of meat consumption in
the developed world it's responsible for 78 percent of the emissions,
Pelletier said Sunday at a meeting of the American Association for
the Advancement of Science.
That's because a single kilogram of beef produces 16 kilograms carbon
dioxide equivalent emissions: four times higher than pork and more
than ten times as much as a kilogram of poultry, Pelletier said.
If people were to simply switch from beef to chicken, emissions would
be cut by 70 percent, Pelletier said.
Another part of the problem is people are eating far more meat than
they need to.
"Meat once was a luxury in our diet," Pelletier said. "We used to eat
it once a week. Now we eat it every day."
Food is the third largest contributor to the average US household's
carbon footprint after driving and utilities, and in Europe - where
people drive less and have smaller homes - it has an even greater
impact.
The average US household contributes about five tons of carbon
dioxide a year by driving and about 3.5 tons of equivalent emissions
with what they eat, he said.
"Switching to no red meat and no dairy products is the equivalent of
(cutting out) 8,100 miles driven in a car ... that gets 25 miles to
the gallon," Weber said in an interview following the symposium.
Full article here: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/
ALeqM5iSFzzJTQlFBr3vjq1Nv2wixJXpmA
For more information on how to eat a low carbon diet, visit
www.eatlowcarbon.org.
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Dirty Oil: Alberta's Tar Sands Explained
An excellent, 5 minute overview of the tarsands by Andrew Nikiforuk
Renowned environmental journalist Andrew Nikiforuk breaks down the
tar sands operations in northern Alberta, Canada in this video. Based
on his new book, Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent,
this concise presentation explains how this "unconventional oil" -
the majority of which is exported to America - is ruining forests,
wiping out woodland habitat and draining our water systems, not to
mention wreaking havoc on economic systems and energy policy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjjnEzoxEI8
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Obama's Tar Sand Trap
The tar sands of Canada constitute a deadly threat to our planet. The
US and Canada must agree not to develop them
by James Hansen, Published on Friday, February 20, 2009 by The
Guardian/UK
The tar sands of Canada constitute one of our planet's greatest
threats. They are a double-barrelled threat. First, producing oil
from tar sands emits two-to-three times the global warming pollution
of conventional oil. But the process also diminishes one of the best
carbon-reduction tools on the planet: Canada's Boreal Forest. <snip>
So an underlying fact has become crystal clear. The horrendously
carbon-intensive unconventional fossil fuels, tar shale in the US and
tar sands in Canada, cannot be developed. The carbon emissions from
tar shale and tar sands would initiate a continual unfolding of
climate disasters over the course of this century. We would be
miserable stewards of creation. We would rob our own children and
grandchildren.
Now is a critical moment in the history of our planet. The US and
Canadian governments must agree that the unconventional fossil fuels,
tar sands and tar shale, will not be developed.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/feb/17/barack-
obama-canada-climate-change
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Wal-Mart's glow-in-the-dark mystery
Retail giant can't account for 15,800 of its exit signs
that contain a potentially dangerous radioactive gas
Toronto Star, February 15, 2009
It began in late 2007 as a routine audit. Retail giant Wal-Mart
noticed that some exit signs at the company's stores and warehouses
had gone missing.
As the audit spread across Wal-Mart's U.S. operations, the mystery
thickened. Stores from Arkansas to Washington began reporting missing
signs. They numbered in the hundreds at first, then the thousands.
Last month Wal-Mart disclosed that about 15,800 of its exit signs – a
stunning 20 per cent of its total inventory – are lost, missing, or
otherwise unaccounted for at 4,500 facilities in the United States
and Puerto Rico.
Poor housekeeping, certainly, but what's the big deal?
In a word: radiation.
The signs contain tritium gas, a radioactive form of hydrogen.
Tritium glows when it interacts with phosphor particles, a phenomenon
that has led to the creation of glow-in-the-dark emergency exit signs.
http://www.thestar.com/Business/article/587906
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Is Nuclear Energy Sustainable?
Feb. 12, 2009
… Lastly, as if the above issues weren’t enough, what makes the
debate truly and terrifyingly laughable is the fact that we already
have technologies that are better investments, with better returns,
that can be implemented now, with no further development, for a
fraction of the price, and that will help build a strong, resilient
economy for many, not just one industry. These include efficiency
technologies pioneered and in use in California since the 70s as well
as new standards and technologies that can, right now, cut the energy
demands of the USA by 30%. Add in the promotion and support of solar
and wind and other renewables and we can get to 50% in the same
amount of years it would take to design, approve, build, and service
even one new nuclear power plant. It doesn’t take an economist to see
the better investment? Or does it?...
http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/is-nuclear-ener.php
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For the BEST overview on the nuclear situation in Canada, watch this
50 minute presentation by
Gordon Edwards:
#6 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSmw4fCe9a4
#5 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9G_ZN23K4k
#4 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6GJ-lnEmjc
#3 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXGDoHalM5Y
#2 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmjm7UzUDF0
#1 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgnyYV7gBGg
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