Earlier this summer, my partner and I bought these cute, func­tional, folding bikes that have already become our pri­mary mode of trans­porta­tion. I used to bike when I was a wee teenager, growing up in New Jersey, while my partner had never biked before.

So lately, we have been going out biking almost everyday, get­ting used to the rules and routes of the city, it’s a whole other world when you’re on a bike. I noticed that when I first started dri­ving years ago too – your per­spec­tive of the space you inhabit changes based on your mode of trans­porta­tion – sub­ways make me con­sider the under­ground routes to get from one part of the city to another, cars make me con­sider the high­ways, the one-way streets, the alter­na­tive smaller streets I can take to avoid heavy traffic. And now, biking is teaching me to notice even more things like where the ramps are, where the road is most uneven, where there are long blocks versus short blocks, and where the road is on an incline and where it’s on a decline, where cars tend to cluster and where there are bike lanes in the city.

I love noticing this shift in per­spec­tive, and I would encourage everyone to try dif­ferent modes of trans­porta­tion in what­ever area you’re in, to get an idea of the per­spec­tive shift – try walking around for a week instead of dri­ving to wher­ever you nor­mally go in your neigh­bor­hood. Or take the train or the bus, instead of dri­ving to a dis­tant des­ti­na­tion. Most of us are so hooked on cars and high­ways and parking lots, that we rarely just walk, or bike any­where. I urge you to try it some­time, espe­cially if you live in a part of the planet where it’s the later half of the summer season now. Just go, go out, and walk, or bike if you can get a bicycle (hint: they’re also a lot cheaper than cars!). You’ll love it!

On a related note, check out this site to see how Toronto is becoming more and more bike-friendly.

My dad for­warded me this pic that just says it all…

Eat less meat

Not only are meat and dairy pro­duc­tion & pro­cessing immensely energy-inefficient and pol­luting, the ani­mals we eat are sat­u­rated with hor­mones and genetic mod­i­fi­ca­tions.

My partner and I decided on my last birthday (August 2007) to go veggie . It’s been at times incon­ve­nient and at times very easy to keep it up, espe­cially because we chose to not go too mil­i­tant about it and so we keep our minds open for when prac­ti­cality must win out over our ideals (like when we’re stuck some­where and the only non-meat option out there is pizza with no meat but with cheese), it’s still very sat­is­fying. We are both more ener­getic, we feel calmer inside in gen­eral and we are saving loads of money. And the food options are enor­mous! We both love Indian food which has count­less veg­e­tarian options, and we have dis­cov­ered and redis­cov­ered so many deli­cious foods from spicy and filling falafel to Licks’ juicy veggie burgers, rich vegan brownies, hot and soothing soups, exotic veg­e­tarian pasta and so much more. The one thing I still love is eggs, and so we choose to buy only Free-Run (cru­elty free), organic eggs raised on local farms .

We also try and buy prod­ucts which are not tested on ani­mals, prod­ucts from rel­a­tively enlight­ened com­pa­nies like Revlon, The Body Shop, Jamieson, Estee Lauder, M.A.C. cos­metics, Whole Foods Markets, Victoria’s Secrets and many more.  And we try to avoid buying prod­ucts from com­pa­nies that still per­form unnec­es­sary and cruel animal testing, like Clairol, Arm & Hammer, Cover Girl, Johnson & Johnson, Pantene, Pfizer, L’Oreal, Suave, Sally Hansen and others like them.

For most of my life I thought I didn’t have it in me to give up eating meat. But it’s been easier than I had imag­ined. Yes there are some changes we’ve had to make, but it’s been a lot less of a hassle than I had thought. Now, the thought of eating meat the way I used to is actu­ally repul­sive to me. Knowing the kinds of cru­el­ties that fac­tory farms put their ani­mals through, and how„ at the grocer’s the meat is packed with arti­fi­cial hor­mones, has made me cringe at the thought of con­suming such poi­soned flesh .

Something to think about… the pow­erful meat and dairy indus­tries put a LOT of money in trying to con­vince you oth­er­wise, but the truth is cut­ting back on meat and dairy is good for both your body’s and your planet’s health.

If you’re reading this, I dare you to check out the sites linked here and others, and try to become more veggie-focused and be the cause/consumer of lesser and lesser cru­elty on other sen­tient beings in the world. Just try it for 1 month… I dare ya!

Related links:
Veg.ca
Vegetarian Resource Group
Caring Consumers
How to Avoid Genetically Modified (GM) Foods
Why is American Beef banned in Europe?

You never know you’ll find on just another ordi­nary stroll… A huge, unknown con­tainer of some­thing uniden­ti­fied washed up on a Scottish beach recently.

The tank, which is 27m high, has no mark­ings and is thought to have fallen from a ship before being washed up on the west of Benbecula.

It was dis­cov­ered by a dog walker on Poll Na Crann beach – known locally as Stinky Bay – near Griminish.

Children play in a flooded street after rising sea levels in Penjaringan sub­dis­trict, North Jakarta. (The Globe and Mail)

My gen­er­a­tion grew up accepting things like AIDS, cell phones and DVDs as part of our reality. For the gen­er­a­tions growing up today things like Climate Change will be part of their frame­work when they think of their world.

“Seeking Common Ground (SCG) was co-founded by five women in response to a growing desire to apply their cor­po­rate edu­ca­tion and pub­lishing skills to topics closer to heart and home.”

I am deeply inspired and in search of such a group here in Toronto.

Who knows… maybe I’ll just create one!

An article in the Malaysian Times claims that humans are worse than any of the nat­ural dis­as­ters that occured in 2005, in terms of the amount of destruc­tion, extinc­tion, death and decay that we bring upon the world.

“In gen­eral, the impact of the tsunami is a lot less than the human impact, said Clive Wilkinson, of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, who is preparing a report on the tsunami-hit reefs.

One quarter of all man­groves in Asia have been destroyed by human activity, while dyna­mite fishing has dec­i­mated many coral reefs. Now the fear is that illegal log­ging and over­fishing, long the bane of the region’s envi­ron­ment, will inten­sify. Timber and coral for recon­struc­tion, while the UN says fish stocks could face col­lapse because donors are promising many more boats than existed before the dis­aster and are offering to indus­tri­alise what was mostly a sub­si­dence business.

While the Guardian reports that well-meaning cit­i­zens who are trying to prac­tice “carbon off­set­ting” may actu­ally be inad­ver­tently cre­ating other prob­lems:

Tree-planting has always been a con­tro­ver­sial method of soaking up CO2 because it is little more than a short term fix. Once the trees die they rot, releasing the carbon back into the atmos­phere. “We are buying a few decades to trans­form our economies,” says Dr Jackson.

Chris Field, an ecol­o­gist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington in Stanford, California, agrees. “It is not a slam dunk in terms of pro­viding the kind of carbon ben­efit we would like to have,” he says, “In the long run, solving the carbon problem is going to be more about reducing emis­sions rather than storage.”

So where does this leave the eco-minded cit­izen who wants to tread a lighter carbon foot­print? “Start by doing what you can your­self,” says Tom Delay, chief exec­u­tive of the Carbon Trust, a gov­ern­ment funded com­pany that is charged with helping UK busi­nesses reduce their carbon emis­sions. “Most of the actions you can take will save you money as well as have a cli­mate ben­efit.” So installing energy saving light bulbs, insu­lating the loft or using the car less is a good start.

So that’s where it’s at. The bottom line is that what we are doing to the envi­ron­ment is not some­thing that will “just go away”. The earth is a medley of del­i­cate eco-systems which have been the brunt of abuse for a long time, espe­cially since the indus­trial “rev­o­lu­tion” and the begin­nings of mass usage of fossil fuels, including for use in cars.

On the brighter side, there are move­ments that you can be part of that are devel­oping ideas and prod­ucts that work to reduce the harmful effects of human civilization.

David Suzuki has set up an excel­lent ven­ture called the Nature Challenge:

1. Reduce home energy use by 10%
2. Choose an energy-efficient home & appli­ances
3. Don’t use pes­ti­cides
4. Eat meat-free meals one day a week
5. Buy locally grown and pro­duced food
6. Choose a fuel-efficient vehicle
7. Walk, bike, car­pool or take transit
8. Choose a home close to work or school
9. Support alter­na­tive trans­porta­tion
10. Learn more and share with others

The Challenge is to pick at least three steps and sign up.

CarFree.com is an excel­lent site with all kinds of dis­cus­sions and infor­ma­tion about com­mu­ni­ties built around people, not cars, like what most of urban and all of sub­urban areas are built.

Transition Culture is a very infor­ma­tive blog with var­ious inter­esting items about the present and future of energy decline.

These and many other resources are avail­able to us…. the hard part is learning to quit our addic­tive ways of using and over using energy, whether it be through using less petrol, buying a fuel-efficient car instead of a Hummer or SUV, turning off the lights when we don’t need them, using prod­ucts not made by tor­turing ani­mals, or helping the people around us under­stand the scope of the problem and empow­ering them with knowl­edge and resources.

May the sun bring you new energy by day may the moon softly restore you by night, may the rain wash away your wor­ries, may the breeze blow new strength into your being, may you walk gently through the world and know its beauty all the days of your life.
~ Apache Blessing