How much CO2 does this article produce?

(CNN) — Twenty milligrams; that’s the average amount of carbon emissions generated from the time it took you to read the first two words of this article.
How green is your website? Calculating all the factors involved in a website can be tricky.

Now, depending on how quickly you read, around 80, perhaps even 100 milligrams of C02 have been released. And in the several minutes it will take you to get to the end of this story, the number of milligrams of greenhouse gas emitted could be several thousand, if not more.

This may not seem like a lot: “But in aggregate, if you consider all the people visiting a web site and then all the seconds that each of them spends on it, it turns out to be a large number,” says Dr. Alexander Wissner-Gross, an Environmental Fellow at Harvard University who studies the environmental impact of computing.

Read the rest on CNN

July 2009

We’re not as green as we think

Canadians who look in the mirror and see green may be environmentally colour blind, according to a new study.

Researchers compared how Canadians perceive their commitment to the environment and what they actually do about it in a study commissioned by marketing firm Cossette Communication and Summerhill, an environmental consultancy.

On average, people believed they were 20 per cent greener than their reported behaviour showed, the study found.

For example, close to 80 per cent of respondents said they use reusable drinking containers regularly, Cossette’s Nick Cowling said. “Yet if you are standing in the lineup at Starbucks or Tim Hortons or Second Cup and you look around, of course 80 per cent of people in the lineup are not doing that. They’re going to use the paper cup they’re given.”

Read the rest on CBC

July 2009

Next time, skip the seafood

Overfishing continues at a shocking rate, as countries break one environmental promise after another

When it comes to stopping overfishing in coastal ocean waters, there’s a whale of a gap between what nations pledge to do and what happens at sea. That’s the grim conclusion of a new study published in PLoS Biology, the first global assessment of human management of fisheries — designated areas where fish and aquatic animals are caught — whose coauthors include renowned marine biologists such as the late Ransom A. Myers and Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.

It’s well documented that many of the world’s major fisheries are in shocking decline. Some 90 percent of the world’s big fish, such as bluefin tuna, blue marlin and Antarctic cod, have almost disappeared from the oceans since the advent of industrial fishing in the 1950s, according to a groundbreaking paper published in Nature in 2003 by Myers and Worm. And by 2048 the world’s supply of seafood will likely simply run out, Worm and other marine biologists warned in the pages of Science in 2006. As of 2008, 80 percent of the world’s fish stocks were considered either vulnerable to collapse or already collapsed.

Read the rest on Salon

Even though some of the seafood comes from farms and more renewable sources, why take a risk? Stick to fish that can be farmed efficiently and sustainably, and leave the wild stocks be. Or alternatively, skip the seafood altogether. As shown in The Tragedy of the Commons, multiple individuals acting independently in their own self-interest can ultimately destroy a shared limited resource even when it is clear that it is not in anyone’s long term interest for this to happen. It’s up to each one of us to encourage regulation and responsible consumption of seafood in order to avoid this massive loss of life in the ocean.

Write your local MP (or representative) about a responsible local and foreign fishing policy.

July 2009

Biomimicry and zero-carbon building

A brilliant zero-carbon building proposal that could potentially generate income and rejuvenate a former landfill site.

June 2009

Plants vs. frost

Thanks, ADD-riddled Canadian climate. Tonight I had to protect some of my tomato and pepper plants from possible frost. Having run out of jars and plastic bottles I channeled MacGyver and came up with a quick way to cover up all the plants. I threaded plastic bags we had in abundance with some left-over wood and covered the plants that way. The wood kept the plastic bags from flying away fairly well so far. I figured that you can also tie the bags at the base of the plant if it’s windy, but I just bunched them up. I’d post some photos, but it’s cold and dark out. Sigh.

May 2009