Green amidst the white

Readers might have noticed an absence of tips on having a "Green Christmas" on this blog. That was partly an oversight (I got busy and the holiday sort of snuck up on me) and partly deliberate. There are a lot of sites out there offering advice on minimizing the harm from your celebrations, and really, the best thing to do is to consume less of the cheap plastic trinketry we ship by the container load every year at this time.

But I'm no Scrooge. I'm fond of this holiday and really enjoy spending time with my family. I have a tree in my house, and am fully cognizant of how bizarre this practice must seem to other cultures. The lights on it are the new LED variety, and the two strings it took to decorate the tree draw a total of 8 watts. That's less than the compact fluorescent in the lamp on the other side of the couch, and plenty to navigate the room during these long winter nights.

My main plan this year is for minimal travel. I'm going to make one trip to be with family and stay for a few days. No running around this year. Speaking of family, some of the members of my family have great ideas for the holidays. For some good holiday blog posts and great ideas, I suggest visiting My Web of Life, the personal blog of Jenni Boles. Like her, I've made decorations with my son and done all sorts of unimaginably wholesome things. But unlike me, Jenni has three kids and a husband all competing for her attention. And, together with her husband Steve (Full Disclosure: he's my cousin), she is also working on launching their new business, Kuzuka.com, which will offer people a choice of carbon offsets, much in the same way that we buy airline tickets today through sites like expedia.

This can be a difficult time of year for environmentalists. As you can see from the above photo, taking my compost out will require slogging through a couple feet of snow. The car-free life is challenged by the weather (it was -12 C when I left this morning). And there's no opportunity to connect with the earth through gardening, since the ground is frozen solid.

But I take inspiration from my composter, which continues to generate enough heat to keep converting my kitchen scraps into rich soil. Besides, with a warm parka, I'm comfortable in all but the most inclement of weather. The snow is beautiful, and it's also the season for tobogganing and cross-country skiing. So get out there, enjoy the winter, and turn down the heat so you've got an excuse to snuggle up under a blanket with a good book.

Green Gorilla

Mountaintop removal mining from a Southwings flight.
Photo © Jim Motavalli

Canadian journalist Peter Fairley started my day the right way by sending over a link to his latest blog post. Coal mining and electrical generation aren't exclusively tenant issues, but they are reasons why we make the changes to our homes and lifestyles that we do.

The video he blogged is an amusing piece of propaganda. While I'm not big on having a mystical shaman character as the source of wisdom, the video is an entertaining introduction to the effect coal mining is having in many parts of the United States.

For context, the video follows close on the heels of a much more entertaining video made public by the Natural Resources Defense Council. This video is excerpts from a speech delivered by Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, the fourth-largest coal producer in the U.S. He certainly comes across as a zealot in these clips, and I somehow doubt that his argument becomes any firmer when one hears the speech in its entirety. However, he's welcome to send it to me so that I can learn and revise my opinion. After all, wise people do change their position as information becomes available. But some of his statements dont' give me much hope that there's more substance to his pro-coal rant... such as his argument that the U.S. shouldn't be a leader on environmental issues because nobody has followed. He points to China as an example. He fails to point to all the other countries that have followed the lead of the United States (or lead the United States), including Canada and much of Europe.

I live in Ontario, Canada. I'm a long way from the mountaintop removal problems. Near my home, most of the massive mines are ripping away the Niagara Escarpment for limestone. I don't see coal mines very often. Jim Motavalli wrote an interesting piece in E Magazine a couple years back on mountaintop removal in West Virginia. Jim gave me permission to use the photo which is at the top of this page. Right now, E's archives are available to subscribers only, but both Jim and the magazine's editor, Brita Belli, very graciously gave permission for the text to be posted. It's hosted on my site, and you can access it here. If you enjoy it, then please consider subscribing to E.

Despite plenty of rivers and big nuclear stations, and an increasing number of wind turbines, Ontario is still heavily dependent on coal. According to the provincial energy ministry, about 18 percent of our elecricity came from coal in 2007. As I write this, 29,527 MW are being produced in Ontario. Based on the posted mix, that would mean more than 5000 MW from coal.

I think I'll go and make sure the lights are turned off upstairs.

Shopping locally, sourcing globally

I'm now a couple weeks into my car-free life. I'm walking more and, not surprisingly, buying more from neighbourhood stores. This is no great hardship. I live in a city. I live in a Chinatown. There's lots of fresh produce. Granted, a loaf of whole grain bread might necessitate a hike to a grocery store (there are three within a kilometre of my house, though). On the other hand, I can also get posh, organic artisinal bread from the bakery at the St. John the Compassionate Mission a couple blocks down the road.

So, I am certainly using less gas and creating fewer greenhouse gas emissions. Or am I? Because of the neighbourhood I live in, a lot of products are imported from China. Some things, like fruit juice, are hard to find. I bought apple juice for my son last week, and then noticed that it was imported from China. Think about this for a moment. We live in Ontario, which is covered in apple orchards. According to the Ontario Apple Growers, the province's orchards produce about 150 million tons of juice apples a year. I shudder at the thought of the energy wasted shipping apple juice to a major apple-growing region.

The local food movement has made people much more conscious of the distance their food travels. The 100-Mile Diet, by James MacKinnon and Alisa Smith certainly added a Canadian perspective, though I have my doubts about the feasibility of a city the size of Toronto feeding itself with that small an area. It's about 30 miles to the nearest farm. But their point is well taken.

Right now, I'm reading one of the latest additions to the library of books concerned with tracking the environmental and social cost of food and other commodities. In Confessions of an Eco-Sinner, Fred Pearce goes on a selective journey to figure out where his stuff came from and how it got to his local shops. It's a British book, so some examples will be less relevant to North Americans, particularly sections relating to fresh produce. But much of the book is relevant, and a good overview of just how global our closets and pantries have become.

The book is something of a travelogue, though Pearce frequently leaves out the colour that would really bring to life the people who grow and produce his stuff. In that regard, the book was a disappointment. But Pearce has travelled the world, and he does have fascinating stories to tell. The section on cotton made for a particularly compelling read.

The other shortcoming of the book is that it rarely presents a solution. After reading his section on coffee, for example, I'm left without a clear answer as to whether or not "Fair Trade" coffee really makes a difference. But the book is not about easy answers, it's about difficult questions, and he gives us the information we need to start our own journeys toward answers. In that regard, it's a valuable resource. And thus, it's going onto the Green Tenant bookshelf.

Car Free: Week One

Here it is, a week into my new, car-free life. What difference has it made?

I still got my son to school on time every day. We walked for nine of the ten trips last week. Each trip is 1.8 km. Because I work from a home office, this means that I did the walk 18 times for a total of 32.4 km. I feel healthier for it, and look forward to continuing. And yes, I do own good winter boots and a warm parka.

We normally try to walk, but with bad weather, dark evenings and my general laziness, there's a good chance I would have wussed out and picked him up in the car a few times. If my walking replaced four round trips, that means my new car-free lifestyle saved 14.4 km of driving. My old 2002 Focus wagon got 8.3 l/100km, so that means I saved about 1.2 litres of gasoline. Not a lot, but there were no major trips last week. According to the government's Office of Energy Efficiency, burning a litre of fuel produces 2.4 kg of carbon dioxide. So my walking prevented about 2.9 kg of carbon dioxide from enering the atmosphere. Not bad for a start.

The one day when we took transit, we did so because I had a bunch of errands to run. With a $9 TTC day pass, this was an easy thing to do. I just ordered my errands so they'd be in a big circle route, then took subways, buses or streetcars between them. It did not significantly add to the time it took to complete the errands. Not cheaper than driving, I expect, but it was fun to just grab whatever transit I wanted, whenever I wanted, wherever I happened to be, without having to think about having correct change. Now I know what metropass holders feel like.

So, no major hardships yet. I feel healthier and happier, and my stress level is a little lower.

Car free

This is a big step. I've gone car-free.

That's not to say I'll never drive again, or that a car won't be my occasional choice in terms of transportation mode. But I no longer own a car, and no longer have easy access to one. I won't be able to drive to my son's school if I'm feeling lazy, or drive to the grocery store (neither of these places is far enough from home to warrant driving).

To be clear, I like driving. I like it a lot. But it's an expensive hobby, an unnecessary luxury and one of the most environmentally harmful things I did.

One of the things I'll be doing with the proceeds is buying a bike. I want a bike anyway, so this seems like a good time. Nobody ever questions selling an old car to trade up to a new one, so why should anyone question trading it in for a decent bike (likely a used one)?

Sometimes I do need a car. There are events I need to attend for work that are very difficult to get to by public transit. And there will be times when I want to get out of town to a place that isn't accessible by bus or rail (or where it's very inconvenient). Right now, I'm debating the best option. I'd really like to sign up with something like Zipcar, but am still weighing the costs. Their rates seem to have gone up recently, and since most of my use would be for weekend getaways, I'm not convinced they're economical. The day rate isn't outrageous, but it only includes 150 km, and then it's 30 cents a kilometre beyond that. For multi-day getaways, renting a car might just be cheaper.

What I do like about Zipcar is the ability to grab one for an hour or two in order to run a bunch of errands. I also like that they have cars close to where I live (which none of the rental agencies do).

If there are people reading this blog who have used Zipcar or AutoShare (particularly in Toronto), please comment and let me know how it's worked for you.