SGC Admin Eco News, Events: Present and Upcoming

The Town of Whitby Celebrates Earth Week 2016..

When will it grow? Curious little boy helping his father to plant the tree while working together in the garden Stock Photo - 45234716
http://www.123rf.com: Copyright : gstockstudio

Pitch in Brooklin:

  • Date: Saturday April 23 2016:
  • Time: 9:00 am to 11:00 am

Location: Join your neighbours at every park in Brooklin to help clean up your parks for the 10th annual Pitch-In-Brooklin: 

Down Town Whitby Spring Clean-up: 

  • Date: April 23 2016:
  • Time: 10:00 am to Noon
  • Join in with everyone at the Old Fire Hall, 201 Brock Street South, Supplies are available.

Project Property Sweep: 

  • Date(s): April 22-25
  • Help Keep your town clean and green… help your neighbours clean up your local parks and property: Supplies available.. Find information on proper sorting and disposal here: durham.ca/waste

Whitby Scout Tree Planting:

  • Date: April 30
  • Time: 9:00 am to 11:00 pm
  • Location: Cullen Central Park, 300 Taunton Rd. W. Whitby
  • Come on out and help clean up the planting area so these guys can plant some cedar and pine trees. 

Whitby In Bloom School Program:

  • Date: April 18 to April 22: 9:00 am to 3:00 pm:

This program, initiated by Whitby In Bloom, invites students to clean up their school yard. Students are also encouraged to participate in other activities such as litter-less lunch, school material recycling or book/toy swaps. Participating Schools receive Earth Day Certificates as well as environmentally themed book for their libraries to recognize their efforts. 

Please contact: 905 430 4303 ext 7415 or email parks.rec@whitby.ca with your questions and suggestions.

Thank you for your enthusiasm and willingness to help our communities stay clean… 🙂 

Earth Day April 22 2016 Events: 

April Showers bring May flowers: 

  • Location: Brooklin Community Centre and Library
  • Time: 11:30 am to 12:30 pm
  • What’s There: Craft for children 30 months to 5 years. Free Supplies
  • To Register: smartlink.ca-#189822

Free Lights Out Glow Stick Party: 

  • Location: Brooklin Youth Room
  • Time: 6:00 – 7:00 pm 
  • What’s it about: Whitby youth 12-18 years are invited to a lights out glow stick party

Free Yoga in the Park: 

  • Location: Whitby Civic Recreation Complex
  • Time: 7:30 pm to 8:30 pm
  • Registration: Not required
  • Age limit: None, this even is open to all ages
  • Note: This is an outdoor event and will proceed “rain or shine” 🙂

source: Whitby This Week: April 14 2016 Edition.

SGC Admin Eco News

From our inbox to you, from The David Suzuki Foundation on “Cap and Trade”(Re: emissions)

SGC Admin: We were happy to see this article regarding the proposed “cap and trade” coming to Ontario in 2017. We, like many folk didn’t really understand what “cap and trade” meant, and how it’s implementation is supposed to assist in reducing the negative impacts our present way of life has on climate change.

David Suzuki’s explanation is clear and easy to understand… (unlike the gobble gabble we get from our politicians), and helps the SGC team to see the possible positive affects of such a system. However, we remain adamant in our belief that adding more tax on at the gas pump is not necessary and smacks of an easy tax grab. Until cars are produced that run on alternative energy sources, (such as electric and water) are affordable for the general public, charging/refilling stations are conveniently in place, along with affordable and reliable transit; the public’s choices of transportation are limited. In this respect, the general public should not be subjected to another tax.

Please feel free to add your comments… 🙂 

Will cap-and-trade slow climate change?

The principle that polluters should pay for the waste they create has led many experts to urge governments to put a price on carbon emissions. One method is the sometimes controversial cap-and-trade. Quebec, California and the European Union have already adopted cap-and-trade, andOntario will join Quebec and California’s system in January 2017. But is it a good way to address climate change?

The program sets an overall limit — a cap — on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions a province can emit. It then tells polluters, such as heavy industry and electricity generators, how many tonnes of carbon each can release. For every tonne, polluters need a permit or “allowance.” So, if a company’s annual limit is 25,000 tonnes, it would require 25,000 allowances. If a company exceeds its limit, it can purchase additional allowances from another firm that, because of its greater efficiency, has more allowances than it needs. This is the “trade” part of the equation.

Although an individual company can exceed its greenhouse gas limit by purchasing credits, the province as a whole can’t. The overall limit is reduced every year, so if the law is followed, cap-and-trade guarantees annual emissions reductions. The declining cap is the system’s great strength and the way it protects the environment.

How effective is it? Although the answer isn’t straightforward, there’s evidence cap-and-trade played a key role in reducing acid rain in the United States. The 1990 Clean Air Act allowed power plants to buy and sell the right to emit sulphur dioxide. Since then, U.S. sulphur dioxide concentrations have gone down by more than 75 per cent. As Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times, “Acid rain did not disappear as a problem, but it was significantly mitigated.”

Despite this and other successes, some experts are skeptical, arguing that cap-and-trade amounts to little more than a cash grab by government, a tax in everything but name. Others say it’s a mistake to expect climate change can be addressed through markets, when the problem actually requires changing our entire approach to economics, with a commitment to a steady-state economy and an end to the commodification of nature.

Some experts have also noted that the emissions reductions it brings are often modest. A2015 paper in Canadian Public Policy claimed Quebec’s system “is still too weak to meaningfully address the environmental imperatives as outlined in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2014 Fifth Assessment Synthesis Report, in which fully eliminating carbon emissions is the benchmark for long-term policy goals.” From 2013 to 2014, California’s allowance cap went from 162.8 to 159.7 megatonnes, a drop of less than two per cent.

Ontario’s proposed legislation indicates its program will have some great strengths and a number of shortcomings. It will likely have wide coverage, applying limits on most of the province’s emissions, including those from transportation fuels. (California’s system did not initially include these fuels.)

Ontario is expected to reduce emissions by over four per cent a year — about twice the initial rate of California — and generate $1.9 billion annually from the plan. That money will be invested in “green” projects throughout the province with the goal of reducing carbon emissions even further.

Ontario’s proposal to give away many allowances to big emitters is less encouraging. The government says it will eventually phase out this free disbursement, but in the meantime millions of dollars in government revenue that could be used to support renewable energy and public transit will be lost.

To keep the bulk of fossil fuels in the ground — as scientific evidence says we must — we need a variety of strategies. Cap-and-trade helps reduce emissions and generates billions of dollars for other strategies to address climate change. It also embodies the polluter pays principle. But it’s not enough on its own.

The David Suzuki Foundation and others have long argued that provinces and the federal government should put a price on carbon, through carbon taxes, cap-and-trade or a combination of both. The urgent need to address global warming means provinces that have adopted cap-and-trade need to strengthen it by ensuring emissions drop faster and polluters pay a price that truly reflects the damage caused by carbon pollution.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Climate Change and Transportation Policy Analyst Gideon Forman.

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From our inbox to you from David Suzuki on: Don’t take our clean water for granted

World Water Day reminds us not to take clean water for granted

Earth’s oceans, lakes, rivers and streams are its circulatory system, providing life’s essentials for people, animals and ecosystems. Canada has one-fifth of the world’s freshwater, a quarter of its remaining wetlands and its longest coastline. With this abundance, it’s easy to take water for granted. Many of our daily rituals require its life-giving force. Yet do we recognize our good fortune in having clean, safe water at the turn of a tap?

Not everyone in Canada is so lucky. On any given day, more than 1,000 boil-water advisories are in place across the country. Imagine having to walk to your local church every morning to fill plastic jugs with clean drinking water for your family. Or having to drive to your town’s fire station or community centre to collect bottled water. Imagine having to boil water for everything you do at home — cooking, cleaning, washing. This is the sad reality for people who live in communities with boil-water advisories, some for decades at a time.

Water problems are dangerous. In May 2000, bacteria in Walkerton, Ontario’s water supply caused seven deaths and more than 2,300 illnesses. A public inquiry blamed the crisis on flaws in the province’s approval and inspection programs, a “lack of training and expertise” among water-supply operators and government budget cuts.

In 2001, nearly half of North Battleford, Saskatchewan’s 14,000 residents became ill from contaminated water. An inquiry concluded provincial oversight was inadequate and ineffective.

Indigenous communities continue to face a widespread drinking water crisis, with people on First Nations reserves 90 times more likely than other Canadians to lack access to clean water.

Health Canada reports that 131 drinking-water advisories were in effect in 87 Indigenous communities at the end of 2015, not including British Columbia. Places like Shoal Lake 40, Grassy Narrows and Neskantaga have been under boil-water advisories for decades. In B.C., the First Nations Health Authority reports that 28 drinking-water advisories were in effect in 25 Indigenous communities as of January 31, 2016.
How can this continue in a water-rich country like Canada?

Canada recognized the right to water at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in 2012. Yet our government has failed to live up to its commitment. As a2015 UN report points out, “The global water crisis is one of governance, much more than of resource availability, and this is where the bulk of the action is required in order to achieve a water secure world.”

We are the only G8 country, and one of just two OECD countries, without legally enforceable national drinking-water-quality standards. Federal water policy is more than 25 years old and in dire need of revision. We have no national strategy to address urgent water issues and no federal leadership to conserve and protect water. Instead, we rely on a patchwork of provincial water policies, some enshrined in law and some not. Meanwhile, highly intensive industrial activities, agribusiness and pollution are putting water supplies at risk.

The federal government will deliver its first budget on March 22 — World Water Day. The David Suzuki Foundation’s Blue Dot movement is also taking a stand on World Water Day, helping communities across Canada call on the federal government to make good on our human right to clean water by enacting a federal environmental bill of rights.

Canada’s environment and climate change minister has a mandate to “treat our freshwater as a precious resource that deserves protection and careful stewardship.” The government could take a big step toward accomplishing this by recognizing our right to a healthy environment, including our right to clean water.

The government should also implement legally binding national standards for drinking water quality equal to or better than the highest standards in other industrialized nations, and set long-term targets and timelines to reduce water pollution. And it should fulfil our right to water by addressing the drinking water crisis in Indigenous communities and establishing a Canada Water Fund to foster the clean-water tech industry and create a robust national water quality and quantity monitoring system.

Committing to these actions would help ensure all Canadians have access to clean, safe water for generations to come. On World Water Day, help protect the people and places you love by joining the Blue Dot movement.
Take action - speak up about water rights.

By David Suzuki with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Blue Dot Communications Specialist Amy Juschka.

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From our inbox to you, From David Suzuki on “love bees–especially the wild ones!”

Love bees — especially the wild ones!

Bumblebee doing its thing

(Credit: Mikael F via Flickr)

Many environmental campaigns over the past 50 years have aimed at getting people to care for imperilled species in wild, far-off places. The focus in Canada has often been on large, photogenic, culturally important animals, with bonus points for campaigns that include alliteration, bumper sticker-friendly slogans and plush toys. This has been a sensible and often successful strategy.

Over the past few years smaller, charismatic critters closer to home have buzzed into the spotlight: bees. About a decade ago, beekeepers in Europe and North America started noticing serious declines in honeybee populations. Bees have lost much of their natural habitat to urbanization and industrial agriculture and face increased stress from climate change-related drought and severe winters. These threats, coupled with the global spread of diseases and pests and a dramatic increase in the use of agricultural pesticides like neonicotinoids, have resulted in unprecedented losses for beekeepers. (Because bees and other insects provide ecological services like pollination, it makes no sense to declare war against all just to eliminate or control the few nuisances.)

The honeybee decline has been big news partly because they make delicious honey, but more importantly because they’re pollinators. About three-quarters of flowering plants and more than a third of food crops worldwide depend on pollinators — from bees and butterflies to hummingbirds and bats. As a result, governments across the globe are developing strategies to protect them, including Ontario with its recently proposed Pollinator Health Action Plan.

Public attention in Canada has largely focused on domesticated European honeybees, but research indicates the honeybee crisis is part of a wider problem affecting hundreds of lesser-known but crucially important wild bee species.

Of about 800 wild bee species in Canada, more than 90 per cent have a “solitary” lifestyle rather than living in large, social colonies. Two-thirds of these are ground-nesters, including bumblebees, mining and digger bees that make nests in soil and under leaves and rocks. The rest are cavity-nesters like mason and carpenter bees that burrow in hollow stems, twigs and logs.

Although honeybees get the headlines and most of the credit for pollinating flowers and crops, studies show that wild bees can be two or three times better at pollination, and some, like mason bees, can be up to 80 times more effective.

The good news is that the honeybee crisis has galvanized interest in all pollinators, inspiring thousands of groups and citizens worldwide to establish new spaces for them, from wild bee hotels and rooftop honeybee hives to pollinator gardens in parks and schoolyards.

As our communities grow, pollinator habitat is fragmented into increasingly disconnected patches that disrupt natural pathways, making the potential of connected networks of habitat within cities especially fascinating. Oslo’s Bumblebee Highway, Seattle’s Pollinator Pathway and Hamilton’s Pollinator Paradise are all great local initiatives.

Establishing an urban pollinator corridor is also at the heart of the David Suzuki Foundation’s Homegrown National Park Project, which since 2013 has created more than 50 pollinator-friendly patches along the path of a creek now buried beneath Toronto — from small guerrilla plantings to a network of flower-filled canoe planters in schools, cafés, churches, parks and yards.

This spring, the Foundation will launch the Great Canadian Butterflyway Project, to inspire bee-friendly urban innovations and neighbourhood-scale pollinator corridors across the country. Through videos, tips and other resources, the project will profile projects nationwide that are bringing nature home, one pollinator-friendly planting at a time.

You can become part of the growing movement to protect pollinators. Head to the library (or check out davidsuzuki.org/pollinators) to research the amazing diversity of wild bees and other pollinators in your community. While you’re there, learn what flowers and shrubs best support those species, and what might work in your yard or on your balcony. Then check out what local groups are up to.

Want to show wild bees some love? Create a sanctuary in your yard or garden by leaving a sunny patch of bare soil for ground-nesters. Add some pithy stems, sticks and wood debris for cavity-nesters. And be sure not to disturb the nests over winter.

Will the buzz generated by media stories and pun-filled campaigns save the bees? Only time will tell. In the meantime, we can all help by making bees welcome in our yards and neighbourhoods.

Written with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation communications strategist and urban beekeeper Jode Roberts.

SGC Admin Eco News

From our inbox to you from: David Suzuki on “we are the world, we must learn to act on that understanding”

 

copyright: GretaMckenziephotos
copyright: GretaMckenziephotos The Adirondacks Elizabethtown NY State

We are the world; we must act on that understanding

 

The coming year looks bright with the promise of change after a difficult decade for environmentalists and our issues. But even with a new government that quickly moved to gender equity in cabinet, expanded the Ministry of the Environment to include climate change, and offered a bravura performance at the climate talks in Paris, can Canada’s environmentalists close up shop and stop worrying?

Of course not. The nature of politics includes constant trade-offs, compromises and disagreements. Even with a government sympathetic to environmental issues, we won’t act deeply and quickly enough or prevent new problems because we haven’t addressed the root of our environmental devastation. The ultimate cause isn’t economic, technological, scientific or even social. It’s psychological. We see and interact with the world through perceptual lenses, shaped from the moment of conception. Our notions of gender, ethnicity, religion, socio-economic status and the environment we grow up in all limit and create our priorities.

If we were to examine the anatomy of human brains, the circuitry and chemistry of neurons or the structure of our sense organs, nothing would permit us to distinguish gender, ethnicity or religion because we all belong to a single species. But if you were to ask a man and a woman about love, sex or family, answers could be quite disparate. A Jew and Muslim living in Israel might respond differently to questions about Gaza, the West Bank or Jerusalem. A Catholic and Protestant living in Northern Ireland might hold radically different outlooks about their country’s history.

We learn how to see the world. That, in turn, determines our priorities and actions. The world has been overwhelmed by the belief that our species stands at the pinnacle of evolution, endowed with impressive intelligence and able to exploit our surroundings as we see fit. We feel fundamentally disconnected from nature and therefore not responsible for the ecological consequences of our actions. Even at the 2015 Paris climate conference , the sense of urgency about climate change was dampened by the perceived equal need to protect jobs and to consider the economic costs of aiding vulnerable nations and even ways to continue exploiting fossil fuels, the very agents of the crisis.

We can’t just look at the world as a source of resources to exploit with little or no regard for the consequences. When many indigenous people refer to the planet as “Mother Earth”, they are not speaking romantically, poetically or metaphorically. They mean it literally. We are of the Earth, every cell in our bodies formed by molecules derived from plants and animals, inflated by water, energized by sunlight captured through photosynthesis and ignited by atmospheric oxygen.

Years ago, I visited a village perched on the side of an Andean mountain in Peru. People there are taught from childhood that the mountain is an apu, a god, and that as long as that apu casts its shadow on the village, it will determine the destiny of its inhabitants. Compare the way those people will treat that mountain with the way someone in Trail, B.C., will after being told for years the surrounding mountains are rich in gold and silver.

Is a forest a sacred grove or merely lumber and pulp? Are rivers the veins of the land or sources of power and irrigation? Is soil a community of organisms or simply dirt? Is another species our biological relative or a resource? Is our house a home or just real estate?

Once we learn that our very being, essence, health and happiness depend on Mother Earth, we have no choice but to radically shift the way we treat her. When we spew our toxic wastes and pesticides into the air, water and soil, we poison our mother and ourselves. When we frack our wells, we contaminate the air and water on which we depend. When we clear-cut forests, dump mine tailings into rivers and lakes and convert wilderness into farms or suburbs, we undermine the ability of the biosphere to provide the necessities of life.

Is this how we treat our source of survival? Until all of society understands this and then acts on that understanding, we will not be able to act fully to protect a future for ourselves.

By David Suzuki