Excuse Me While I Bang My Head Against the Wall

Sigh.

SIGH.

On days like today, I'm not even sure if "WTF!?" truly captures my reaction to the news. I need a new expression to reflect my complex emotional state after hearing that Canada has officially pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol. NDP Environment critic Megan Leslie put it best when she said, "it's like we're the kid who's failing the class, so we have to drop it before that happens", which as we know from our school days makes everything better.

I don't actually want to rant about this, since I don't want to make myself more miserable than I already am, so instead I'd like to draw your attention to the problem of air pollution in Beijing. Why? Because it gives us present-day proof of how screwed we are if we don't do something about the state of the environment. Last week, the smog in China's capital city was so bad that highways were closed and flights were cancelled because visibility was limited to a few hundred metres. The U.S. Embassy's smog index actually exceeded its upper limit. What's worse than a "hazardous" reading? Critical? Life-threatening? Deadly?

It saddens me that so many people have gotten caught up in debating the merits of measuring one particle vs. another (the Americans like the PM 2.5 standard, the Chinese like PM 10), not because it doesn't matter (it does), but because it detracts from the real problem: the air in northeastern China is a chronic and very dangerous issue. It's possible that breathing in that bad air will reduce life expectancy by five years. What are we going to do about it?

We can start by thinking about the main contributors to air pollution in the Beijing area: vehicles, coal-fired power plants, and industry. While China is on the other side of the planet, I actually feel quite capable of helping to bring about change in these areas by remembering the link between my actions and their consequences:

• cars: I admit to owning one. However, it's very fuel-efficient, and I only drive it once or twice a week. If I had to give it up, I'd probably adjust pretty quickly, never look back, and roll around in all the money I'd be saving. The best part? I would be an excellent role model, showing how great my quality of life can be without having to own a car.


• coal: I am a huge supporter of clean and renewable energy and its ability to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, thereby mitigating climate change. The more we invest in mixing alternatives into the conventional electricity grid, the sooner we'll develop more efficient green power generation technologies, which will hopefully lead to the whole world turning to renewables.


• stuff: I avoid buying useless crap, especially useless crap made in China. As for those items that are practical and necessary, I try to find the ones that are made domestically, and made without plastic (since so much of it comes from China). Our consumer culture is partially responsible for the dirty clouds billowing out of Chinese factories, and I want no part of it.

My lifestyle impacts my home and work; my city, region, province, and country; and in many ways, the whole planet. The Conservative government believes it is justified in shirking responsibility; I could not disagree more and refuse to allow this country's rapidly declining international reputation to smear my own.


Photo of F grade used under Creative Commons from amboo who? (flickr).
Photo of Beijing traffic used under Creative Commons from poeloq (flickr).

How Not to Make Friends

It seems the folks at General Motors believe they can look good by putting others down. In a WTF?!-worthy move, the car company published this ad in college newspapers across the U.S.:

"Reality sucks... luckily the GM College Discount Doesn't"? WTF?! I have never seen anyone laugh at the sight of a cyclist - not even the ones wearing neon spandex. Spend even half an hour during the morning commute on a Toronto street and you'll see drivers glancing wistfully at the cyclists speeding past them while they sit, idling, in bumper-to-bumper traffic. When I take public transit these days, I feel jealous of those who can bundle up and ride in the cold - and get to their destinations much more quickly than me.

GM, of course, had to pull the ad after receiving many complaints from the public. The reality that sucks isn't that cyclists are made fun of, it's that car companies think they can increase their sales with a low blow to a portion of the population that is smart, in good shape, and unstressed by their commute. Cyclists are well off, too, having saved money while drivers bought cars and insurance, saved some more money while drivers filled up on gas, and saved even more money while drivers maintained, repaired, and eventually replaced their vehicles. It's a no-brainer, folks. Ah, but perhaps the folks at GM have no brains? :)

In the News Today

Hold on to your hats, folks, I've got a great WTF!? post for you today. This week Coca-Cola announced a redesign of their cans to advertise their newest environmental campaign: $2 million will be donated to a project that seeks to protect polar bear habitat in arctic regions. So it comes as no surprise that the new cans will feature the iconic bear on a white background:

It saddens me that Coca-Cola has partnered with the World Wildlife Fund on this project; poor WWF must be pretty cash-strapped to choose to team up with a soft drink company for money. But that's not what's shocking about this story. Rather, it's the motivation behind the campaign, and how incongruous it is with Coke's modus operandi. Let me explain.

The polar bear is the focus of this project in part because the animal has been featured in Coke ads since 1922 and also because its population has been declining due primarily to warming arctic waters, i.e. climate change. Briefly, rising temperatures in the north cause sea ice to melt earlier in the summer. Without this ice, polar bears have a really hard time hunting seals, and they end up on dry land with less food and not enough fat to see them through the season. Many lose even more energy just trying to make it to the coast, now that there are greater distances to swim between ice floes. Tragically, pregnant female bears can't always build effective dens in thawing permafrost. There are many more threats to polar bears' survival that are related to climate change, and you can read about them here.

Red areas show the projected loss of optimal polar bear habitat over the next 40 years.

I have no issue at all with the efforts being made to protect these majestic bears. My beef is with Coca-Cola. How can they expect us to see this as anything besides greenwashing? They want to save the bears that are harmed by climate change... while contributing to climate change by making soft drinks... WTF!? I may not be a climate scientist, but if the company is responsible for over 1.6 billion servings of its various beverages every day, then I'm willing to bet that the carbon footprint of this worldwide production is not exactly negligible.

The syrup/concentrate alone accounts for much of this, since Coke is made with high fructose corn syrup. HFCS is really complicated to produce, starting with the monoculture farming of a variety of corn that is rich in starch and utterly devoid of nutrients. Vast amounts of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides (which, in and of themselves, require plenty of energy to produce) are applied to the corn, which must subsequently be milled into corn starch, processed into corn syrup, mixed with enzymes, purified, enriched, and evaporated to yield HFCS. Imagine just how much energy is required to make this happen... and how many greenhouse gases are emitted by the coal-fired power plants that feed the processing plants! All in the name of profit...

There are other issues related to the production of soft drinks, not the least of which is the depletion of groundwater in the areas surrounding Coca-Cola's bottling plants, notably in India. I don't need to tell you that messing with the water cycle has a serious impact on global climate. Another big factor is packaging: the production of single-use plastic bottles and aluminum cans only adds to the already enormous carbon footprint associated with making Coke. I don't need to go on. It's clear that making this beverage is as bad for the planet as consuming it is hazardous for human health. Spending $2 million on protecting polar bear habitat just doesn't make up for the damage that has already been done. Where is the accountability?


Photo of new Coca Cola can used under Creative Commons from José Roitberg (flickr).
Image of changes in polar bear habitat sourced from Wikimedia Commons.
Image of Coca Cola's impact in India sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

One Small Step for Mayor Ford, One Giant Step Backwards for the TTC.

When I created the WTF!? category for my posts, I didn't imagine ever having to use it more than once or twice a month. I guess it's a sign that we live in an increasingly crazy world that I'm now using it twice in four days.

In a move that benefits no one and screws us all over, the Toronto Transit Commission decided last Friday to reduce its 2012 budget by 10% - doing exactly as Mayor Ford commanded requested in order to help lower the City's deficit. Where are the savings going to come from? Why, regressive measures, of course! Service will be cut back, employees will be sent home, and fares will go up. In other words, more commuters will turn away from the TTC and hop into cars, further clogging the roadways in and around town. Yay!

I'm not sure how this is even possible, considering that overcrowding on TTC vehicles is already a huge problem, but apparently 50 routes will see reductions in frequency during the morning and afternoon rush. I guess cutbacks on 60 off-peak routes don't seem so bad in comparison? But that's absurd, because any further decline in service is outrageous, no matter the time of day. Just last week I was on a streetcar that refused to pick up any more passengers because it was full... at 2:00 in the afternoon. WTF!?

In terms of cutting staff, the picture turns from bleak into cruel: today, 251 non-unionized employees will be laid off. In other words, for hundreds or thousands of TTC staff, this weekend was one of stress, uncertainty, and anxiety, wondering if they'd be the ones to find out today that they are no longer needed. And it's not like those who still have a job to come to tomorrow will feel relief: in total, 1,000 jobs will eventually be cut. I can't even begin to imagine what it must feel like to worry every day that you might be let go, let alone not know when it could happen.

Transit users can take small comfort in the fact that fares won't go up until the new year, and when they do, the increase will only amount to ten cents per ride - that's much less than the 25-cent hike we experienced in January 2010. Except... we're going to be paying more for less. Something about this math doesn't add up. And it's not just the math, it's the reality that everybody loses. In fact, I anticipate that stress levels will go up astronomically. Think about it: TTC users will loathe the longer wait times and more crowded vehicles, drivers and cyclists will hate how many more cars will be on the road, and those of us lucky enough to be able to walk to work? We'll arrive at the office in time to greet our irate colleagues ranting about how bad their commute was. Oh joy.

Since there is no silver lining to this bad news, I will say this: Thomas Fuller wrote that abused patience turns to fury, and it is fury that we need to motivate us to stand up against this injustice. So go ahead, be impatient, get angry, organize, and then take action!


Photo of TTC logo used under Creative Commons from Neal Jennings (Sweet One/flickr).
Photo of Dundas West station used under Creative Commons from Andrew Goloida (theapoc/flickr).
Photo of Bloor/Yonge station used under Creative Commons from Jamaalism (flickr).

In the News Today

You may want to sit down for this one, because this story is clearly of the WTF!? variety (thanks again to Amy of Eco-Steps for suggesting I create a category for ridiculous news like this).

AlterNet is reporting that Del Monte, the people that bring tropical fruit in fresh and canned versions to Canada and the US, has sued the FDA for daring to recall their cantaloupes this past March when it seemed that the melons were contaminated with salmonella. Apparently the fruit corporation thinks this is an open-and-shut case because there is no hard evidence, despite the fact that the epidemiological investigation yielded some pretty clear results:

"Twelve of sixteen ill people reported eating cantaloupe in the week before illness. Eleven of these twelve ill people ate cantaloupes purchased at eight different locations of a national warehouse club. Information gathered with patient permission from membership card records helped determine that ill persons purchased cantaloupes sourced from a single farm. Product traceback information indicated these cantaloupes were harvested from single farm in Guatemala", says the CDC.

The likely reason that subsequent tests performed on cantaloupe samples from that farm came out negative for salmonella is that none of the original melons could be found. In the time it took for people to become sick, for someone to realize these 20 cases of illness were related, and for the probable source of the outbreak to be traced back to Del Monte... well, the cantaloupes were gone. They matured, were harvested, and were shipped up here. A month had passed, after all. Lacking confirmatory evidence from test results proves nothing, especially when the tests are performed too late. The same would happen if two friends were to get food poisoning from the same restaurant one night and only tell each other that they had both gotten sick one or two days later, once they had recovered; at that point, the original contaminated food in the restaurant would be gone, and tests would come back negative. Does that change the fact that the restaurant is clearly the source of the illness? No!

Am I the only person who thinks this lawsuit is ridiculous? A horrendous waste of time and money? An insult to public health agencies whose job it is to protect us from harm, not fight private corporations in court? WTF!?


Photos of cantaloupes used under Creative Commons from Kabsik Park (Royalty-free image collection/flickr) and mary (marymactavish/flickr).

When Growing Your Own Food Is a Crime

Can you blame someone for putting vegetable beds in their front yard after it was torn up for sewer repairs? I wouldn't, but the city of Oak Park, Michigan, seems to think that's an appropriate action to take against a mother of six who refused to remove her garden. Julie Bass has now been ticketed, charged with a misdemeanour, and may face up to 93 days in jail if a jury finds her guilty on July 26th.

The five raised beds she uses to grow corn, squash, tomatoes, other veggies, and even some law-abiding flowers can be seen in a photo embedded in this article from Treehugger. Frankly, that garden looks tidier than many front lawns I've seen, but apparently Oak Park City Planners take offence at how unsuitable edible plants are for a front yard. It would seem "suitable" means "common", and if you want to keep up with the Jones' you plant grass, trees, and flowers, but no veggies - regardless of how well or poorly they are maintained. I guess small-minded city bureaucrats like the proverb about the nail that sticks out getting hammered down.

But we don't have to let this happen without putting up a fight. Here's what you can do:

1. Call Oak Park city officials. Check out Julie's blog to find contact information for the Mayor, City Manager, and other officials. Remember that one phone call is worth about a dozen e-mails, so please call if you can.
2. "Like" the Oak Park Hates Veggies Facebook page.
3. Tell your Twitter followers and Facebook friends about this in the weeks leading up to the trial. There are many reasons to support Julie, not the least of which is outrage that a cash-strapped city would spend so much money on investigating, charging, and prosecuting such a harmless act. If it can happen in Oak Park, it can happen where you live. I wouldn't want my taxes to be wasted on something like this!

Imagine you move into a house with better growing conditions in the front yard than the back (due to differences in size, exposure to sunlight, soil drainage, etc.). Would you consider planting veggies out front rather than out back? Would you fight the City if they disapproved of your "unsuitable" choice of plants?


Photo used under Creative Commons from Scorpions and Centaurs (flickr).