Earth Hour 2009 - on Facebook

I will probably feature a lot more about Earth Hour 2009 as the date of March 28 gets closer.

For now, show your support and join the Facebook group to help spread the word!

Do CFLs pose a UV risk?

There have been a number of reports lately that the amount of UV given off by our compact fluorescent bulbs may be posing a significant health risk. Word is that prolonged exposure, especially at distances of less than 30cm (1 foot), can cause sunburn!

According the GE's website, CFLs produce less UV than natural sunlight. They also make a lower UV bulb that is also shatter-resistant (good if you're worried about mercury spills as well!). Other sites [pdf] talk about a double-envelope bulb which emits no UV at all.

Let's cut through the hype and take the WWF as the final word on the matter:

• Don't spend 1 hour at less than 2cm distance from these bulbs.


• Don't spend 8 hours at 20cm or less from your CFL.


• If you have Lupus or other skin conditions, consult your doctor about your lighting choices.

Otherwise, keep your CFLs! Don't lose sight of the fact that these are serious reducers of your energy consumption!

Seriously, other than the concerns for the pre-existing skin conditions, under what circumstances would someone need to spend that kind of time that close to any bulb? With appropriate brightness, one could easily stay a reasonable distance from the bulb and still get the appropriate level of light for whatever task is needed.

The Eco Font

Here's an interesting way to go green while still using black ink - the Eco Font!

It's basically taking an open source font design and filling it with as many holes as possible without degrading the recognizability of the print. Reports suggest that it uses 21% less ink than the comparable base font. I think that's pretty cool.

Cheers to the gang at CBC's Spark for bringing this to my attention!

Because Statistics Are Important

Missed my post tonight, so I thought I'd just put up a reminder of how important the understanding of statistics is for all of us who want to avoid being green washed or simply bamboozled.



If you're not familiar with XKCD web comics, you've been missing out. Thank me later.

The Fall of Green Travel?

This article was recently posted on CNN's website.

Have a read and let me know what you think. After reading it over twice, I think I get the author's point, but the tone is so back-handed that I'm not sure he gets it. Is this simply a difference in understanding green issues and how they get presented to a mainly American audience? Or is there a bit of something that is supposed to make a right-wing, anti-environmentalist cheer?

Green practices should become standard behaviour for the world's better companies. We should not be charged extra for efforts that they should be doing anyway. But they shouldn't hide these accomplishments either! Only by full transparency can we as consumers decide who is making real change and who is simply trying to green wash us...

Rest assured, green travel is here to stay. Or rather, we still have a lot to do before our regular travel could even be considered remotely green. Offsets are not a bad idea.

More Road Widening for Halifax

Listening to the CBC, I heard the plan is now afoot to start widening Bayer's Road to accommodate more traffic into the downtown core. After last year's battle for Chebucto Road was won by the road-addicted city council, they are ready to widen another main approach to the peninsula.

I have nothing more to add to this debacle, except that Halifax seems to know no other solution than to widen roads. We haven't tried car pool lanes or car pool hours. Car after car going downtown are virtually empty - just the driver and no passengers. We also don't even know what rushhour is really about... sitting in traffic for twenty minutes is bad for the environment, but it's nothing compared to sitting on the 401 for two hours each day.

Read more on Bayer's Road in the Coast and the Herald.

Looking for Green in the 2009 Canadian Budget

It's taken me a few days to sink my teeth into the new budget brought down by the Harper government on Tuesday. If I was going to dig through and insist on finding a lot of green, I might be at this for a while longer.

Different news sources have played the report one way or the other, but the general consensus is that the budget either falls very short or seems to miss the point. Perhaps all that face time with Elizabeth May didn't do Stephen Harper much good after all.

On the side of falling short, there was little or no new funding for research into climate change. Unlike Obama's ideas for the future, less than 5% of Canada's stimulus spending was directed at anything related to clean energy. In a large country that is sparsely populated, we should be seeing (or failing to notice due said large area) hundreds and thousands of wind farms all across our country. I'd like to see the math that shows how a pipeline from Northern Alberta is more cost-effective than a power line from a turbine farm in as remote a location. (Don't get me started on the cost-effectiveness of Alberta's tar sands...)

On the side of missing the point, Harper's team points to two items in particular as being the best options for Canada: nuclear power and carbon sequestration.

Harper must have a renewed faith in AECL or just doesn't care about the long term. Either way, I don't disagree that nuclear power is an option that should be considered over continuing our blind dependence on oil, but let's see some options and plans for dealing with the resulting waste. Maybe this is the "shovels in the ground" people are talking about.

Carbon sequestration is also a good idea, but compelling businesses to account for their carbon emissions through long term storage is only a small part of what we have to do. It doesn't address the emissions themselves. We should be looking at alternative energy sources that don't produce carbon to be captured then sequestration technology can be used to reduce the mess that is already there.

Consider this simple analogy: You hire a painter to paint your dining room. It's a four day job. On the afternoon of the fourth day, you notice that he's slopped paint all over your hardwood floor except for one corner which is yet to be painted. Thus you put a drop cloth down in that corner.

When all is said and done, that corner won't have any paint spill, but the rest of the room is a mess and the painter still has an awful technique.

The drop cloth is carbon sequestration for new emissions.

The one point that I will give the 2009 budget is the home renovation stimulus package. As you know, my whole project is about making my home more energy efficient and cost-effective. With about a year left to take advantage of my ener-guide retrofits, this stacking incentive could help out a lot. I just hope it is used by most for this very purpose and not for installing fancy new water-sucking bathrooms or pesticide-sucking lawns.