We Canadians

Stephen Harper said yesterday, "To succeed, what the world must become in the future is what Canada is today."

I'd like to know how he expects that to work. If every person on the planet used the same amount of energy as the average Canadian, the world would need more than 5 times the energy it currently uses in a year. Somehow, I don't think the oil sands or all the fracking and deep-sea drilling in the world will ever make that a possibility.

Not to mention it would take numerous planets for every person on just this planet to have as much space per person that we enjoy. And where's all the food gonna come from? Other than our slightly plumper neighbours to the south, we're the fattest people in the world. 

We like to think of ourselves as a fair and just people. Is it fair or just for us to expect China to reduce its emissions before we do, when per person we use over 8 times the amount of energy that they use? I'm not saying China's emissions are acceptable. They're atrocious, actually. But who are we to say that the developing world doesn't deserve to live just like we do, or that they can't burn coal to get there, just like we did? Do we really expect the developing world to continue living in poverty so that we can continue to live in excess? I don’t think so...

So what are we supposed to do in order to give the developing nations a real chance to catch up? Business as usual isn’t an option. We’ll never have the resources to support a global population that lives as we do in the developed world. No matter how much bitumen gets forced through B.C. and onto tankers headed for China and India, it will never be enough to support their energy needs. And China and India are just the newest up and comers. What about the countries that follow them? How can we possibly hope to ever support the poorest countries on Earth in their struggle to provide their citizens a decent standard of living when our own standard of living isn’t even close to sustainable?

Will standards of living across the board just average out until we’re all living substandard lives? It’s a very real possibility that that is exactly what will happen if the developed nations of the world don’t stand up real soon and pave (or better yet, de-pave) a better route. We’re responsible for 76% of the emissions in the atmosphere. The U.S. alone is responsible for 29% of the total CO2 that humanity has pumped into the atmosphere since the mid-1800s. Can we really continue to lay the blame for the mess we’re in on China? I don’t think so...

We’re responsible. It’s up to us to find the solutions for the problems we’ve caused. We have the resources - the science, the technology, the finances, and more - to change the way we live without sacrificing our quality of life, while simultaneously providing a real example for the developing world to follow. 

Instead of cutting the funding for some of our most prestigious and internationally-recognized environmental projects and funneling it into resource extraction and fighter jets, we should be at the forefront of sustainability research and education. 

Instead of building more roads and expanding our suburbs, we should be rebuilding our cities to accommodate more people in less space, with an equal or even better quality of life. 

Instead of devoting countless acres of farmland to ethanol production and unnatural, unhealthy feed for livestock, we should be driving less to reduce the need for alternative fuel sources, and we should be eating less but healthier meat (grass-fed not corn- and soy-fed).

Instead of wasting our time maintaining front and back lawns, we should spend that time converting our lawns to gardens, providing both nourishment for our families and habitat for the very species our ecosystems depend on.

Instead of thinking only of ourselves, we should be thinking of the people struggling to survive in today’s world, and the countless more people that will be struggling to survive in tomorrow’s world if we don’t start changing today.

Why Beef Can Save the World

It might sound crazy, but I assure you it's not. Beef can save the world.

Not this beef:

But this beef:

Living grass sequesters carbon from the atmosphere more efficiently than trees do. As grass dies, however, it releases carbon into the atmosphere. Properly pastured cows eat the dying grass, preventing the release of carbon into the atmosphere, and allowing the grass to begin growing and storing carbon again. While grazing, cows naturally fertilize, helping to create healthier, denser soil, which in turn, sequesters even more carbon. If each farm and ranch in the U.S. pastured its cows, enough carbon would be sequestered in 10 years to offset the amount of carbon man has released into the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. That's no small thing.

Does this sound crazy? At first read, it might. But I would implore you to really think about it. Is it really crazy to think that animals living the way they were meant to live would be beneficial to the planet? Cows are ruminants - they're designed to graze. They're not meant to sit on a feedlot eating grain. The grasslands of North America were grazed by buffalo before hunting and development all but destroyed their vast numbers. It only makes sense that when ruminants are allowed to live as nature intended, nature benefits along with them. We benefit, too. Pastured beef is actually healthy. It's full of healthy fats, as opposed to the unhealthy fats abundant in factory-farmed cows. You don't really need to avoid red meat, you just need to avoid factory-farmed, grain-fed red meat.

What about vegetarianism? Isn't it an even better solution than switching to properly raised meat? Unfortunately, it's not. Large-scale, monocultural production of produce is nearly as bad for the environment as factory-farmed animals are. While pastured beef replenishes soil, crops destroy it. Nature does not till, but crop-farming is dependent on extensive tillage, which degrades the soil and leads to erosion. There's no need for large-scale fruit and vegetable farming when we could all turn our lawns into edible gardens. Why transport produce hundreds of miles from farm to supermarket, when it can be grown in your own backyard, or purchased from a small-scale local farmer that practices proper crop rotation, rather than depending on tilling and chemical inputs? Fruits and vegetables picked before they're ripe and transported are also less nutritious than what you can procure locally. So while vegetarianism is a viable alternative to purchasing factory-farmed meat, it does not provide a long-term solution to the environmental degradation caused by modern, industrial agricultural production.

Critics will, no doubt, say that enough beef can't be raised on pasture, because of the greater amount of land required for grazing. When you compare the two pictures above, it certainly appears that pastured cows require more land. What the picture of the feedlot doesn't show, however, are the thousands of acres of corn, soybeans, and other crops that are required to feed factory-farmed cows. It doesn't show the dozens of tractor-trailer loads of food and antibiotics that are shipped into these facilities on a daily basis. Pastured beef doesn't require these inputs. No grains, no antibiotics. Just plain old grass, as nature intended. So not only is pastured beef better for the planet, it's economically feasible for small-scale producers, and its healthier for consumers. It's win-win-win for everyone but Big Food. And that's precisely why its taking longer to catch on than it should. Big Food has the power to influence food regulations to its benefit and to the detriment of small-scale local producers. Wonder why healthier, local food is more expensive? Because that's how Big Food wants it. Every time you go through the drive-through or load up your cart at the supermarket, you're giving Big Food more power to use to try and shut down local, small-scale farmers.

So get to know your local farmers. Visit your farmer's market or join a CSA (community-supported agriculture). Make a point of only buying locally-sourced foods at your supermarket. If there aren't any, ask the manager why. Eat less but eat better. Your body and your conscience will thank you for it.

All Eggs Aren't Created Equal

A study comparing standard nutritional egg profiles yielded the following results:

It seems that when it comes to eggs, you really do get what you pay for.

The organic, pastured egg has, on average, over 4000% more of the good stuff, and only 70% of the bad stuff, in comparison to the conventional egg. My calculations count all the cholesterol as bad cholesterol, because the statistics don't break the cholesterol down into its beneficial and harmful forms. Organic, pastured eggs contain a higher beneficial to harmful cholesterol ratio than conventional eggs contain, so I'm actually giving the conventional egg the benefit of the doubt with my 70% calculation - it's probably closer to 60%, maybe even lower. But you gotta root for the underdog, right?

The Selfish Environmentalist

As a member of the Green Party, I was recently asked to complete a survey for a university student studying members of environmental organizations. This student is attempting to figure out what motivates people to join environmental organizations, as well as identify what beliefs and values members of these organizations have in common. It was a pretty long survey, and it really got me thinking about just how much my mentality has changed since I started to take an interest in environmental issues. It also reminded my why I became interested in the first place, and I realized that, rather than just diving into writing a blog about environmental issues, that it'd probably be better if I first explained how and why I became an environmentalist in the first place. So here it is:

I didn't become interested in environmental issues until my wife was pregnant with our daughter, Olive. Before her pregnancy, I was very much aware of the environmental issues that this and future generations will have to face, but I had convinced myself that there wasn't anything I could do about it - that I might as well just live my life like every other average person. I figured that the sooner the human species wiped itself out, the sooner the planet could start healing itself. 

Becoming a parent changed everything for me. 

Becoming an environmentalist was purely accidental, however. 

While my wife was pregnant, I began voraciously reading every piece of literature on children's health I could get my hands on. I was pretty nervous about being responsible for the life of another human being, and figured that since knowledge is power, I'd better start arming myself. The more I learned about the toxic chemicals that we expose ourselves to every day, and their impact not only on ourselves, but on the environment, the more I realized how desperately things needed to change. I guess you could call me a selfish environmentalist. Yes, I care about polar bears and the boreal forest, but first and foremost, I care about my family's health. The beautiful thing about it, though, is that it's all connected. The same things that are bad for our health are bad for the environment. There's no separating the two. Canadians consistently rank health care as their number one priority (economy takes the top spot when there's a recession), but the environment is lucky to make it in the top five. This baffles me. The greatest health care is preventative, and we could prevent so much sickness and disease by protecting the environment that surrounds us. Imagine how much health care costs could be cut if the government would ensure that our air and drinking water were cleaner, or that the foods we consume weren't filled with unhealthy additives or coated in pesticide and fertilizer. We are animals, and like every other animal, our health is connected to the health of the environment we live in. By healing the planet, we heal ourselves.

But I'm getting ahead of myself...

So my wife was pregnant. Her hormones were all out of whack, she was nervous about becoming a mother, and on top of that and all of life's usual daily stresses, here I am educating myself (and her) on all the countless ways we're killing ourselves (and our unborn child). I'm sure she was just delighted. I'm pretty sure that she also thought I had lost my mind, especially when I announced that our home was going chemical-free. Luckily, she came around quickly. She's still not too keen on the idea of getting composting toilets, but once again, I'm getting ahead of myself.

We started small. First we purged - got rid of all the toxic cleaners and cosmetics. I started making cleaning supplies from scratch, using ingredients that won't kill the planet or a curious toddler. My wife realized that she had way more make-up than she needed, and replaced the "essentials" with healthy alternatives. We replaced our shampoo, conditioner, soaps, deodorants, shaving lotions, etc. with chemical-free, earth-friendly alternatives. Believe it or not, we're cleaner for it, too. There's nothing clean about lathering yourself up in carcinogenic, hormone-disrupting chemicals. 

It kinda ballooned from there. We started avoiding plastic as much as we could, we started cooking more, instead of relying on additive-, pesticide-, and fertilizer-soaked foods, and we replaced our clay cat litter with a biodegradable pine litter (it's more absorbent and smells better, too). I'm sure I'm forgetting numerous switches we made (oh, switching to unbleached, 100% recycled paper products was one) but the product switches aren't really the point. You can switch everything you purchase over to an earth-friendly version and still be contributing plenty to climate change. The most important thing is reducing our consumption. Sounds pretty scary, I'm sure. People don't so much like the word "less" nowadays. Not in a culture where bigger and more are always better. Gotta upsize the fries you pick up in your V8 SUV on your way home from work to your 4000 square foot "house" in the 'burbs, right? We seem to have forgotten that less is more. 

Shoot, here I am, getting ahead of myself again.

So our daughter was born, just about 2 1/2 years ago. She came a month early, but we had successfully detoxified our home and our lives. My wife and I are both allergy sufferers (me more so than her) and we both have asthma (her more so than me). Any offspring we create have an increased risk of becoming allergy sufferers and asthmatics, and exposure to chemicals greatly increase those risks. So if for nothing other than for our daughter's health, greening our home was well worth it. 

During the process, though, something funny happened - I started to care about more than just my own home. I think that, like the Grinch, my heart must have grown three sizes - not all in one day, mind you, but over the course of an 8-month pregnancy. Cleaning up my home was no longer enough. After all, my children can't just stay at home their entire lives, and they certainly can't stay in my home forever (as much as I sometimes think I would like them to). And what about my grandchildren? I doubt many people in their twenties consider the lives their grandchildren will lead, but I consider it on pretty much a daily basis. I want my children and their children (and so on) to be able to live happy and healthy lives. 

And that is why I am an environmentalist. 

I'm not a hippie. I don't have dreadlocks. There aren't crystals on my night stand. I don't believe in fairies, and I don't dance naked under the moon (although that sounds like it could be fun). I still respect people who fit these descriptions, however - I just don't appreciate being drawn as a stereotypical caricature of a "greenie". I don't believe that every Conservative has missing teeth and a shotgun in the back of his pick-up truck, or that every Liberal is a pampered member of the Ivy League, or that every supporter of the NDP is a commie. Stereotypes make it too easy to disrespect and ignore each other. With the economic, social, and environmental issues that face this and the coming generations, the last thing we can afford to do is to ignore each other. The problems we face need to be acknowledged and addressed by all of us if we are to find and implement solutions to them. To work together, though, we need to actually get together - to get to know each other. I think we'll realize that we have a lot more in common than we think. And even if we don't, there is one thing we all have in common: we all love our children. I'm sure we can all agree that, as parents, it is our responsibility to protect our children's interests before protecting our own.