Adam's Ideas

Ah, voting day. The day that democracy lives and dies for, then we sit back and watch what happens. Or so it seems.

Nowadays young people don’t vote and old people do; however, youth of today are more engaged politically than previous generations in non-traditional ways. Voting is merely one thing about being political for today’s more socially-aware youth and for many it’s more important to be active in-between elections than just at election time. The problem with that thinking is that some youth don’t even vote because they feel like their vote won’t do anything, so they direct their political energy elsewhere, say volunteering at Greenpeace.

That’s fine, but you still need to vote.

Voting allows to send a message beyond just who you want to run the country this time. Thanks to some fancy Canadian election laws each vote gives $1.25 to the party you voted for. That means that if you vote for the NDP this time you are showing support for them AND helping them fight for the next election by raising their coffers. Obviously this works only for registered Canadian political parties so voting for an independent won’t get them any money.

So go vote and support who you’d like to see run this country.

Some more info on voting from my Things Are Good post:

Yes, it ’s finally here! All Things Are Good Canadian readers need to make sure they vote today. If you don’t know where exactly to vote check out elections.ca. It’s not a difficult task to vote since you don’t even need to be registered.

Remember that the most important thing you do today (if not this year) is to vote for the environment.

CETO Wave Energy has designed a system that uses tidal power to both pump water and desalinate it! Desalination is a growing necessity in areas lacking fresh water that have access to sea water; however, it is energy and cost intensive. By using a renewable resource, it makes desalination a viable option.

Unlike other wave energy systems currently under development around the world, the CETO wave power converter is the first unit to be fully-submerged and to produce high pressure seawater from the power of waves.
By delivering high pressure seawater ashore, the technology allows either zero-emission electricity to be produced (similar to hydroelectricity) or zero-emission freshwater (utilising standard reverse osmosis desalination technology). It also means that there is no need for undersea grids or high voltage transmission nor costly marine qualified plants.

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Upcycling takes items that would otherwise be wasted and makes them into useful products. James, who works for Terracycle, wrote to let me know that they have teamed up with Kraft to make some upcycled bags. I wonder how people will react to branded recycling.

Kraft will become the first major multi-category corporation to fund the collection of used packaging associated with its products. Several Kraft brands, including Balance bars and South Beach Living bars, Capri Sun beverages, and Chips Ahoy! and Oreo cookies, are now the lead sponsors of TerraCycle Brigades. These nationwide recycling programs make a donation for every piece of packaging a location collects.

“Sustainability is about looking out for future generations. Kraft is proud to partner with TerraCycle, an innovative company who has made it their mission to reduce the impact on landfills and to educate consumers on the importance of recycling,” says Jeff Chahley, Senior Director, Sustainability, Kraft Foods. “TerraCycle’s model of rewarding ’brigade hosts’ is a novel way of collecting packaging waste that would otherwise have been sent to landfills. It’s so cool to see trash turned into merchandise that’s unlike anything else on the market.”

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The Ontario government recently announced that a patch Canada’s boreal forest twice the size of England will be protected. The De-Smog Blog describes the greatness of the boreal forest and what the recent announcement means.

Canada’s Boreal Forest is important when it comes to global warming and greenhouse gas emissions. Canada’s Boreal forest is the world’s largest terrestrial storehouse of carbon, exceeding even the total carbon stored in the Amazon.

North America’s Boreal Forest stores up to 11% of the world’s terrestrial carbon. Roughly 56% of all the carbon is stored in peat. The remaining carbon is pooled in above-ground vegetation, rocks, and soil. At 186 billion tons, Canada’s Boreal carbon storage alone is equal to near 27 years of the world’s carbon emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels.

You can download a comprehensive fact sheet on global warming and Canada's Boreal Forest here. (pdf)

Last year, 1,500 scientists from 50 countries called on Canadian governments – federal, provincial and territorial – to protect the 5.6 million square kilometres of boreal forest in Canada, which holds about 186 billion tonnes of carbon.

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I’ve been wanting to write this for a long time. Please bare with me here.

THE DEMAND FOR SUVs IS DECREASING IN THE USA.

That feels good to write. You should try it. One of the biggest symbols of waste, greed, ignorance, and arrogance is starting to fade away in the country that consume the most energy and pollution. It cannot be ignored that this is a direct result of the price of gas.

Toyota has announced that they are shifting their production plant that produces Highlanders to producing Prius cars. That’s right their factory making SUVs will now be making hybrids.

The company also announced that as of August 8, it will temporarily suspend the production of the Sequoia SUV and the Tundra pick-up — along with the production of the V8 engines that power them.

And it’s not alone. GM recently announced that it too is closing four truck plants and focusing on smaller cars for good, after total vehicle sales sank 18 percent in June. On top of that, it said it’s considering selling off its Hummer brand, whose future is hanging by a thin thread.
But GM wasn’t quite the worse performer in June. That honor belongs to Ford, which saw a drop in sales of 28 percent.

Meanwhile, US sales of the Toyota Prius took a giant hit of 26 percent in the month of June — after dealers ran short of inventory and customer waiting lists grew to six months from its soaring popularity.

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The Green Grok has a good video that shows how anyone can eat in a sustainable way.

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