---

Newsletter No. 134 - Serving the Vision of a Sustainable Vancouver Island - January 2004

---

KYOTO: TIME TO WALK THE TALK

So – are you ready? Are you ready to step up to the plate, acknowledge that we are all part of this enormous crisis called global climate change, and start reducing your emissions?

Environment Canada is about to present us with its One Tonne Challenge, which will call on each of us to reduce our personal greenhouse gas emissions by one tonne of a year.

The climate news in 2003 was all bad. The summer heat wave in Europe killed 40,000 people, and reduced Europe’s grain harvest by 10%. Ukraine lost 75%; Moldova lost 80%. The global death toll from climate related disasters was 150,000 people.

The 28-member council of the American Geophysical Union, whose 41,000 members include more than 10,000 experts on the planet's atmosphere and changing climate, declared that the unprecedented increase in greenhouse gas concentrations, together with other human influences on climate over the past century and those anticipated for the future, constitute a real basis for concern.

Their statements reads: "Scientific evidence strongly indicates that natural influences cannot explain the rapid increase in global near-surface temperatures observed in the second half of the 20th century."

The Arctic ice is continuing to melt. The rate of warming between 1981 and 2001 was eight times the rate of the last 100 years. There are now signs that the summer ice will vanish by 2030, not by 2050 as previously thought, and that the year round ice could vanish by 2100. If things continue this way, your grandchildren will be able to paddle a kayak from Ikaluit to Siberia in December without seeing a scrap of ice. Without any ice, the polar bear is heading towards certain extinction.

Our forest fire season was just awful, and the mountain pine beetle has devastated an area of BC’s interior that’s three times the size of Vancouver Island. One cold winter would control the beetle – but the winters are not cold enough any more. When it comes to the impacts of global climate change, it’s bad news whichever way you look.

When it comes to the potential solutions, however, there is plenty of good news. All we have to do is wake up from the fossil fuelled dreamworld we’ve been living in for the past 150 years, and start walking the talk.

Dreamworld? Here’s why. New research by Jeff Dukes, an ecologist at the University of Utah, tells us how much land was needed to convert the forests, plants and ocean creatures into fossil fuels, millions of years ago.

To make one litre of gasoline, you need 20 tonnes of prehistoric plant material, gathered over time from 9 acres of land. If your car does 14 litres/100km (20 mpg), and you fill it up with 50 litres, you are using the energy gathered over time by photosynthesis from 1,000 tonnes of plant material on 450 acres of land.

If you are a typical Canadian motorist who drives 18,000 kilometres a year, in a car that does 10 litres/100 km (28 mpg), you will need 36,000 tonnes of plant material gathered from 6480 hectares (16,200 acres) of land in ancient times to make the fuel. That’s 65 square kilometres.

If you fly from Vancouver to Toronto in a Boeing 747, your plane will consume 61,640 litres of kerosene, gathered over time from 1.23 million tonnes of plant material on 5,547 square kilometres of land. (Thanks to Jeff Dukes’ calculations, and www.chooseclimate.org/flying)

When plants photosynthesize sunlight, they absorb carbon dioxide and store the carbon. When they become trapped in ancient bogs and converted into fossil fuel over millions of years, they hang onto their carbon. So each time we burn some as coal, oil or gas, all of that ancient stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere. Maybe this explains why we are having such a problem.

In our annual use of fossil fuels on the planet as a whole, we burn 400 times more energy than all the plants on Earth and all the life in the oceans gathers through photosynthesis during the year, and releasing 400 times the carbon emissions that the atmosphere would normally be handing.

It took hundreds of millions of years for plants and sea creatures to lay down the oil and gas we are using today. We are going to burn it all up in a mere 200 years, so it goes to reason that there’s an awful lot of carbon being pumped into the atmosphere. No wonder the Arctic is melting.

So far, we have remained in a stupor, as if caught in a maze from which there is no way out – but oh, such a comfortable maze. When fossil fuels give us such a degree of concentrated power, why would we want to relinquish them? It’s the same question that southern slave-owners faced in the USA, before the civil war. Slaves enabled them to live with a style and grace that would have been otherwise impossible.

The long-term need is to stop burning fossil fuels altogether. Canada’s short-term goal under the Kyoto Treaty is to reduce our carbon emissions by 20% by 2012. This year’s goal is for each of us to reduce our personal emissions by one tonne. Inside, I’ll show you how.

Guy Dauncey

For the Jeff Dukes story with the fossil fuel numbers, see www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-10/uou-bm9102603.php

---

ECONEWS

A monthly newsletter, funded by your donations, that dreams of a world blessed by the harmony of nature, the pleasures of community, & the joys of personal fulfillment, protected and guided by active citizenship.

	Nov	Dec	Jan
Circulation:	2000	2000	2000
By Email:	1650	1657	1660
Print & Post:	$961	$794	$800
Editorial:	$250	$250	$250
Donations:	$2376	$1239	You?
Advertising:	$40	$200
Balance:	$1680	$2075

A big thankyou to Ms Redwood, Jean Wallace, JM Gerlach, Emily McGiffin, Sue Hiscocks, Gail Schultz, Bruce Cooper, Marilee Goheen, Lawrence Smith, Bob McMinn, Adam Fawkes, Darlene Monkman, Penny Goldrick, Rose Evans, Richard Bocking, Tony Embledon, Marguerite Hanson, Michael Carson, Yvonne Bondarchuk, Kathleen Gibson, Hilda Tutton, Fang Zhang, Mary Aldrich, Miriam Thorn, Martin Weideman, Darcy Ambler, Marie O’Shaughnessy, Diane Lade, Harald Wolff, Connie Mungall, Marilyn Weland, Ann Gower, Bobbie Seeds, Judith Monroe, Emile Lacroix, Lind Miller, Pat McMahon and Virginia Smallfry.

Donations can be sent to EcoNews, 395 Conway Rd, Victoria, BC, V9E 2B9. For a receipt send stamped addressed envelope.

---

THE ECO-CORNER
$5/line (non-profits, low-income free)
1" box $40, $2" box $70. Insert $180

* Garden designs with nature in mind by Stewardship Natural Landscape Design. Christina Nikolic, 382-4450 stewardshipnld@yahoo.ca

* Wanted: Compatible person to share 2-bedroom Gorge condo with non-resident owners in exchange for reduced rent. N/S, N/P. 250-722-9408 chriskay@pacificcoast.net

* New Year's Resolutions? Investing questions? Want to get started? Gentle Certified Financial Planner can bring you up to speed. Roxanne Brydges, 360-6284, boxwood@inetex.com

* Wanted by April 1st. Housing for former community based social worker. Peace and quiet a must. Under $400 inclusive. Prefer self-contained; no basement. 704-0103.

* One bedroom studio loft unit available in Superior St. Housing Co-op, James Bay, Feb 1^st. Faces SW, tons of light. Need progressive enthusiastic member with a broad outlook, able to work with others and volunteer 2-6 hrs a month on a committee. All members are shareholders, govern the co-op together. Experience with co-op housing an asset. Share fee $1000. Send SASE to Membership Committee, #1- 415 Superior St, asap.

---

SMALL POTATOES URBAN DELIVERY

www.spud.ca

Organic food and more delivered to your door. Canada's leading natural foods delivery service.

Buy local - choose from hundreds of locally sourced high quality products, at great value.

Help the planet - by buying organic food and environmentally friendly products. Improve your health - by eating delicious organic produce that are free of pesticides.

Simplify your life - by ordering on-line and having your groceries delivered to you.

With your first order we'll give you a FREE GIFT and donate a bag of organic produce to a local women's shelter. Offer ends March 31st 2004. Enter promo code EN014.

---

A SPECIAL ISSUE ON THE ONE TONNE CHALLENGE

*

CALCULATING YOUR CARBON EMISSIONS

So – how much CO2 did you produce last year? Finding out is the first thing to do, if you are to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions.

Step One: Travel. Every litre of gasoline that you burnt in your car or truck releases 2.5 kg of CO2. If your car does 30 mpg, that’s 9.5 litres per 100 km (www.rockymountainmoggers.com/convert.html for conversion factors). You need to know how far you travelled last year. If you write down your January odometer reading, it’ll be easy next year. For this year, you might need to make an informed guess. If (like the average Canadian) you travelled 18,000 km, you will have burnt 1710 litres of gasoline. At 2.5 kg of CO2 per litre, that’s 4275 kg of CO2, for your first total. If you share the vehicle with someone else, divide this by 2.

Step Two: Flying. Make a list of each flight, and then go to www.chooseclimate/flying , where there’s a map of the world. If you mark the start and end of each flight, you will see how much CO2 your share of each flight produced. Victoria to Winnipeg – 1700 kg. Victoria to Florida – 3280 kg. Victoria/London UK – 5280 kg. Tally them all up, for your second total.

Step Three: Transit and Trains. A daily commute of 5 km each way comes to 2500 kilometres. Each kilometre on a bus or train, on average, releases 0.14 kg of CO2 per passenger, so a daily 5km commute releases 350 kg in your name, for your third total.

Step Four: Electricity. BC Hydro produces 90% of its power from hydroelectricity, which does not produce CO2 emissions. The big hydro dams trap a lot of plant material in their waters, however, which breaks down as methane instead of CO2, and methane is a much more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2. Without detailed measurements at each dam, however, it’s impossible to know how much. The other 10% of our power comes from natural gas. It makes sense to count all of your electricity use as coming from natural gas, for this reasoning: If you used less electricity, BC Hydro could burn less gas; they won’t release less water from the dams. They could also export the saved energy to the USA, where it would displace energy from natural gas or coal. So dig out your hydro bills, and look at the total kilowatt hours (kWh) you used. For every kWh, 400 grams of CO2 is released by burning natural gas. If your total is 15,000 kWh, that’s 6 million grams, or 6 tonnes of CO2, for your fourth total. If you share your home, share your total.

Step Five: Heating with Gas. Each GigaJoule of gas releases 34 kg of CO2. So did out your gas bills. If you used 75 GJ last year (the residential average), that’s 2550 kg of CO2, for your fifth total.

Step Six: Heating with Oil. Each litre of heating oil releases 2.5 kg of CO2. So look at your oil bills. If you used 1000 litres, that’s 2500 kg of CO2, for your sixth total.

Step Seven: Your food. Cattle produce a huge amount of methane by burping from their three stomachs. Each kilogram of beef produces 0.5 kg of methane, which is the greenhouse gas equivalent of 11.5 kg of CO2. If you’re an average Canadian beef eater, you eat 31 kilos of beef a year, producing 356 kg of CO2. I don’t have an average CO2 figure for groceries, but if you buy locally grown BC food, instead of food imported from the US or Mexico, you’ll reduce your emissions.

Step Eight: Household Wastes. All that garbage has to be manufactured and transported, so there’s a lot of energy tied up in it. Most landfills don’t capture their methane gas, so there’s a big burden of greenhouse gases there, too. Victoria’s Hartland landfill does, so there’s no need to account for this here. Each bag of garbage per week accounts for 300 kg of CO2 a year. Each blue box or bag full of recyclables accounts for 140 kg. If you put two bags of garbage and two blue boxes or bags of recyclables every two weeks, that’s 440 kg of CO2 for the year, for your eighth and final total.

Step Nine: Add it all together. Put your household totals in Col 2, your % share of each in Col 3, and your personal totals in Col 4.

Source	CO2	%	=
Vehicles
Flights
Bus or train
Electricity
Heating - gas
Heating - oil
Household wastes
Your food
TOTAL

Step Ten: Buy Carbon Offsets. If you want to pay your planetary dues, as I believe everyone should, you can offset all of last year’s emissions by paying into a fund which will prevent the equivalent amount of CO2 emissions from entering the atmosphere. I do this with help from the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF) (www.self.org ) in Washington DC. They help rural villagers in countries like Bhutan to install small solar PV systems, instead of burning kerosene. As well as removing a source of CO2, this also removes a source of local air pollution, and a danger from fire if the lamp gets knocked over. It also lowers the birth rate, since couples spend their evenings reading or listening to the radio, instead of going to bed early.

The current price of CO2 offsets such as this is $10 US a ton. ($14 CAN a tonne). In 2002, I produced 28 tons of CO2, most of which came from flying to conferences on climate change. So I paid $280 US to SELF, which is being used to extend the revolving loan funds that SELF sets up, enabling villagers to buy 50 watt solar systems. The maths works out almost exactly, that my $280 assists towards the purchase of enough solar PV systems to offset 28 tons of CO2 over the life of the systems.

You can also buy carbon offsets by making a cash donation to Tree Canada (www.treecanada.ca ), who will plant enough trees to absorb your emissions. Their estimate is that 6 trees will absorb 1 tonne of emissions over their 80 year lifetime. So if you produced 20 tonnes of CO2 last year, you’ll need to plant 120 trees. Planting trees where they would not otherwise have grown is clearly a good thing. My only concern is that with the rising temperatures, and the increasing risk from pest damage, will the trees survive to hold the CO2, or will they die early, releasing it back into the atmosphere?

Step Eleven: Your Reduction Goal. Decide on your reduction target for 2004. Environment Canada is asking each of us to achieve a one tonne reduction. For most people, that’ll be a relatively small reduction in emissions. If you keep it up each year until 2012, however, it’ll make a big difference. If you are already a keen green cyclist, living in a small energy efficient home, your emissions may be as low as 3-4 tonnes, in which case your target for reduction might be as small as 250 kg. If you live in a big house, run two cars, and take several flights a year, on the other hand, you might want to aim for a 2 tonne reduction.

Step Twelve: Action! Look at your emissions, and plan how you are going to achieve your reduction. Some tips:

• Aim to do fewer small local vehicle trips, by walking and cycling more. You’ll save 262 kg of CO2 for every 1000 miles less that you drive.

• Switch to transit for some of city trips

• Switch to gasoline that contains 10% ethanol – this will reduce your vehicle emissions by around 8%. Ethanol is not a fossil fuel, but it needs fossil fuels to make it, so it’s not a 10% reduction

• Switch to a more fuel efficient vehicle

• Stick to the speed limit – you’ll use less fuel at 90 km/hr than at 110 km/hr

• Switch off, instead of idling. Here’s the rule of thumb: if your wait is more than 10 seconds, switch off. If you reduce idling by 10 minutes a day, your emissions will fall by 258 kg a year.

• Take the bus and ferry, instead of flying to Vancouver

• If you sell your car, and join the Car Share Coop (www.victoriacarshare.ca ). you’ll save more CO2, since you’ll cycle and use the bus more.

• Take a holiday locally in BC, instead of flying to somewhere more distant

• Change as many lightbulbs as you can for the compact fluorescent bulbs that use 3-4 times less power

• Change your Christmas lights to the new LED bulbs that use 90% less power – but don’t use the LEDs as well as the old ones; use them instead.

• Make your home more snugly and energy efficient. BC Hydro, Terasen, and the federal government all have grants available to help, at present. Call City Green (381-9995) www.citygreen.ca for advice and ideas.

• If you have an old fridge chugging along in the basement, switch it off. This could save 400 kg of CO2 a year.

• If you install a four-season solar hot water heater on your roof, you could save 1000 kg of CO2.

• If you are buying a new house, buy one that is smaller, and energy efficient.

• If you switch to a water efficient, front-loading washer, you’ll save up to 180 kg of CO2. If you also switch to a 99% cold water wash, you’ll save 585 kg of CO2.

• Lower the thermostat on your hot water heater to 48 C (120 F).

• The one change we don’t recommend is switching to a microwave –see below

• If you eat 25% less beef, you’ll save 89 kg of CO2. If you go vegetarian, you’ll save 356 kg. If you go vegan, giving up meat and dairy, you’ll save even more (no CO2 numbers, alas).

• If you switch to a local organic food delivery service such as Share Organics (www.shareorganics.bc.ca ), Small Potatoes Urban Delivery (www.spud.ca ) or Saanich Organics (544-4369), your emissions will fall by 78 kg of CO2 a year, by reduced travel, and eating more locally grown food.

• If you grow more of your own food, you’ll do save even more!

• See www.climatechangesolutions.com (‘Individuals’), for more ideas like this.

 

---

Renovations

Residential – Commercial
Indoor – Outdoor
Carpentry – Painting – Flooring
Composters – Creative storage
& much more

Harald Wolf – 250-882-9653

hwolf@wolfweb.ca

---

‘SEEDS OF VICTORIA’

Organically Grown–Locally Harvested
Vegetable, Flower & Herb Seeds

2004 Seed Collection

Carolyn Herriot, 250-881-1555
Catalogue $2 or order online at
www.earthfuture.com/gardenpath

---

MICROWAVE OVENS (1)

Notes from The Ecologist, Nov 2003: Russian research into microwaves has shown that people who ate microwaved foods had a statistically higher incidence of stomach and intestinal cancers, a general degeneration of peripheral cellular tissues, and a gradual breakdown of the digestive and excretory systems. Due to chemical alterations within the food, they had lymphatic malfunctions, causing a degeneration of the body’s immune system. Microwaved food loses its nutritional value, especially for vitamins B, C, E, essential minerals, and lipotropics (that prevent the abnormal accumulation of fat). The use of microwave ovens was banned in Russia in 1976. In 1989, the Swiss food scientist Dr Dans Ulrich Hertel fed eight individuals on a range of raw, conventionally cooked, and microwaved food. Blood samples, taken from each volunteer after eating, showed serious irregularities in the structure of the food microwaved, and in the blood of those eating the microwaved samples. The microwave manufacturers used the Swiss courts to silence Dr Hertel, and made him fear for his family’s safety, so that he publicly disassociated himself from the research.

More on this next month.

---

THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF WEB

The Watershed Sentinel’s new website: www.watershedsentinel.ca

"Toxtown: www.toxtown.nlm.nih.gov/city/main.html

George Bush GI Joke Action Toy: www2.warnerbros.com/madmagazine/files/onthestands/ots_437/6.html

The Earth Viewer. Just click on any location, and the satellite photo turns: www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/uncgi/Earth?imgsize=320&opt=-l&lat=43.5417&ns=North&lon=87.25&ew=West&alt=1000000&img=learth.evif

Earthwalkers - Canada’s online eco-home store: www.earthwalkers.com

The Tyee – a new BC on-line magazine: www.thetyee.ca

Nanaimo’s Community Involvement Project, and Interactive Community News: www.cip.nanaimo-online.net/home

Canadian Wolves. "The wolf is neither man’s competitor nor his enemy. He is a fellow creature with whom the Earth must be shared.": www.CanadianWolves.net

"Reconstruction Zone" by Mark Fiore: www.markfiore.com/animation/reconst.html

---

NOTICE

EcoNews provides this electronic version of the newsletter free of charge even though it costs time and money to produce. Please feel free to repost. You can help by making a donation, whether $5 or $100, to:

EcoNews, 395 Conway Road, Victoria V9E 2B9, Canada. Thanks !

---

Click here for previous issues of EcoNews.

---

EcoNews, Guy Dauncey
395 Conway Road, Victoria V9E 2B9
Tel/Fax (250) 881-1304

Author of "Stormy Weather: 101 Solutions to Global Climate Change"
(New Society Publishers)
$25 + postage from www.earthfuture.com

Web Design by Dave Shishkoff.

EcoNews shares Content Partnerships with the following:
EnviroLink www.envirolink.org
Solar Access www.solaraccess.com
Sustainable Business.com: www.sustainablebusiness.com