Super Pesticide Bylaw Man!

Cull or be culled

Yes! The city is in safe hands!

Wanted! Bambi O’Deer!

City politicians last night recommended killing deer - proceeding with a cull - in the Sifton Bog, this fall to protect that environmentally sensitive land which is surrounded by a subdivision.

Welcome to Spudtopia

The community built around Tuber Gigantus Butleriana

Spudtopia, an offshoot of this genus of giant potato, Tuber Gigantus Butleriana, was founded around the turn of the century. After discovering that giant potatoes could be grown, there was much hope for solving the problems of hunger and homelessness – after all, now, not only could everyone afford, they could simply grow their own sustenance and housing! Anyone who came to this community was given spoons and yearly, granted a huge potato from the annual crop, thus they not only ate well, but carved their own dwellings while so doing! Alas, in The Great Bake of 1912, when fire spread so disastrously throughout it, the promise of this grand utopian community ended.

The crocodile deer solution

This oughtta’ fix up Storybook Gardens!

Ask the Experts on Garbage

 

Green boxes? We don’t need no stinkin’ green boxes!

Bikes not green machines without bike paths

The world would be a better place if everyone would just get out of the way. In a letter to the London Free Press, Friday; August 8, 2008, a reader writes:

Perhaps I can shed some light on the subject of bicycles and their contribution to saving the environment.

Clearly, you’ve demonstrated otherwise.

Where there are no bike paths for riders to use, the concept of having them on the roads as a benefit to the environment is not quite as clear-cut as you may think.

Consider that one bicycle on a single lane road can slow down an entire procession of cars. And when approaching a red light, the bike is able to pass even more cars and slow all of them down once the light changes. If one bike can make 10 cars take twice as long to get where they are going, how can you say you’re helping the environment at all?

Your entire argument seems to be that faster is better.

I’d really like to see someone refute that claim using actual science.

If that is your claim then? That faster is better?

Ron Jennings

London

“Consider that one bicycle on a single lane road can slow down an entire procession of cars.”

Yes. Bike paths would be good. But then someone will complain about the cost of building them. Oncoming traffic must be very very heavy that you can’t pass safely.

“And when approaching a red light, the bike is able to pass even more cars”

All those idling, slow, stopped cars are bad for the environment because they aren’t going fast, so the bicycle wins here.

“and slow all of them down once the light changes.”

Properly, that bike should wait at the end of the line. But how did that priviledged “entire procession of cars” get in front of the cyclist, if the cyclist is in front slowing them all down. They must have passed safely. I suppose they could do it again. 

Oh, I misunderstood. A cyclist in front of 10 cars, slows them down - and oncoming traffic is so dense you can’t pass. The line of now slowed cars lead by the cyclist comes to a red light, The cars can’t slip up beside the line like the bike can, so the bike gets to the front of the stopped line of traffic and is now in front of all the cars, and so on and so on, red light after red light until the whole of trafffic circulation is slowed to idling and vehicular civilization comes to a dead stop.

“If one bike can make 10 cars take twice as long to get where they are going, how can you say you’re helping the environment at all?”

I’d say the cyclist slowed you down enough that you actually had a chance to look at and appreciate the environment. Learn to pass safely.

Smokin’ future world

Pete Seeger sings about garbage

Pete Seeger: Garbage From The Chawed Rosin. Pete sings about garbage…

… in light of Toronto trash trucks crashing up the highways.

Absentreeism

London’s tree cover has dropped to 10%, well behind other municipalities and below the recommended level of 30%. Suspected statistical anomolies put London’s civic workers absenteeism rate at 19 days, above the average of 8.

The Current Environment

“Scientists decided to move the hands on the so-called “Doomsday Clock” two minutes closer to midnight. It’s sparked a debate over whether environmentalism has become all about raising awareness about the earth by scaring its inhabitants half-to-death.”

From CBC’s The Current’s podcast page on Earth Day, 22/04/2008: “Catastrophizing” Earth Day [mp3 file: runs 23:59] – an interview with  Marq De Villiers on his book Dangerous World Understanding Natural Calamities and Protecting Human Survival.

Is calamity a motivator? or just anxiety producing?

If Tungusta hit London, it would wipe it out. Nudge it out of the way first. Earthquakes and terrible building codes would flatten Tehran. Enforce better building codes. Overdue eruptions out of Yellowstone calderas could wipe the US clean. Do we have the willpower, the political will, to prevent the problem?

Are people a cancer destroying the Earth organism? Do we have the means to distribute the resources to deal with this? Is apathy the problem? Do we need a shock?

Do we have a “pornographic eagerness for apocalypse?”

Interviewed after the break, and not on the podcast, was Brian Fagan, authour of The Great Warming, Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations.

“In some areas, including Western Europe, longer summers brought bountiful harvests and population growth that led to cultural flowering. In the Arctic, Inuit and Norse sailors made cultural connections across thousands of miles as they traded precious iron goods. Polynesian sailors, riding new wind patterns, were able to settle the remotest islands on earth. But in many parts of the world, the warm centuries brought drought and famine. Elaborate societies in western and central America collapsed, and the vast building complexes of Chaco Canyon and the Mayan Yucatan were left empty.”

I think the summary is: Worry less and do more. Argue less and fix the obvious problems.

Significant depends on what you breathe

 

Jonathon Sher reports in Woodlands’ fate in hands of OMB:

A two-week hearing before the Ontario Municipal Board ended with lawyers for the city and an activist defending a policy that protects most of the city’s larger woodlands against development. Under that policy, adopted by council in 2006, the city expects to declare as significant — and protect — about 96 per cent of woodlands that are at least four hectares. An older policy protected as little as 25 per cent of those woodlands.

The arguments are being challenged by Developers and their lawyers:

But his argument and that of the city was challenged by lawyer Barry Card, who’s representing developers such as Farhi Holdings, Sifton Properties, Drewlo Holdings, Z-Group and a lobby group that represents the industry, the London Development Institute.

Rather than make changes by amending the city’s official plan, a labour-intensive step that engages the public and experts, the city adopted a new policy, Card said.

“It really amounts to a sell-out of the planning process,” he said.

Under old rules, a woodland wasn’t significant unless it rated high in three of several categories that include size, composition, age and history. New rules require only a single high rating.

“That takes 1,000 hectares (of woodlands) off the table,” Card said.

That takes 1000 hectares of trees off the protected state and allows them to be clearcut to build suburbs, driveways, roads and golf ball driving ranges. In an earlier story, Debate blooming again over London’s tree-protection policy from Wed, January 16, 2008 By PATRICK MALONEY, SUN MEDIA, Card said:

“It’s not about whether significant woodlands will be protected — but whether insignificant woodlands will be protected,” said lawyer Barry Card, who is representing a consortium of local developers at the hearing. “Developers like treed communities. What they don’t like is a change of the rules that’s arbitrary or ill-advised.”         

I guess breathing is ill-advised. Developers like treed communities because the houses on the edge of the woodlot sell for more money. Funny. Seems people like trees. They like cars, and they like trees. From Trees In Trust;

An acre of trees absorb enough carbon dioxide in a year to equal the amount produced when you drive a car (41,000 km). (North Carolina State University Trees of Strength).       

Now get out a calculator.

if 1000 hectares = 2471.05381 acres

then 1 acre = .40468564224 hectare

1 acre can deal with the CO2 from 1 car driving 41,000 km so

the CO2 absorption per hectare would be… 41,000 x .40468 or 16,592.085 km

Let’s do some looking for the average mileage of a vehicle in a year. What’s the average mileage of a second hand car? The average mileage on Canadian car works out to between 10,000 and 15,000 k per year, so let’s say 12500 k.

 

Now, from TRANSPORTATION: Road vehicles Canada averages .58 vehicles per person, where the average for OECD countries is .5. According to Wikipedia, the population of London is 457720. We commonly round this to 450000. This gives us a vehicle count of between 225000 and 265477.

Let’s do some rounding:

CO2 per hectare: 16,500 -> 16000 -> 4     

year avg mileage: 12,500 -> 12000 -> 3     

So, 1.33 cars per hectare. 1000 hectares support the annual CO2 emissions from 130,000 cars, and London should have about twice that many vehicles.

Ask yourself then, is 1000 hectares an insignificant woodlot?

Mr. Card and this developer consortium argue that it’s good policy to cut out your lungs. Ironically, trees support urban sprawl. The more trees you have, the more CO2 from cars you can support.

The Story of Stuff

Justine at beyond30 in a post called Environmental 101 points towards a sharp little Flash animation about all our consumptive habits called, The Story of Stuff at The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. It’s a great little reminder again of just how everything is connected to everything else; dependant origination; that we are not separate from the world we inhabit.