Yes, I’m an environmentalist. Dirty word, right? I remember writing “closet environmentalist” in my Facebook profile as if it were something to be ashamed of. I realised after awhile that it isn’t, and defining myself as one is as familiar as the back of my hand. I remember someone, perhaps David Suzuki, saying we’re all environmentalists, but that requires a definition I can’t quite remember. It has something to do with our reliance on nature, I think. At any rate, here I am to tell you why I’m an environmentalist and what that really means.
I grew up surrounded by nature at home, in my community and at school. I knew nearly every root and rock of my elementary school’s forest so I could run and jump through it as fast as I wanted without tripping. My parents, childhood immigrants, instilled values and habits like sensible consumption, not wasting food (especially leftovers), used clothing (e.g. hand-me-downs), using cloth rags, closing the fridge door, conserving water, turning out the lights, saving and reusing containers and recycling. All these things that make the “what you can do list” are things I’ve been doing my whole life because it just made sense and saved us money. I’ve been using cloth bags and washing my clothes in cold water and hanging to dry since before it went mainstream.
The sled dog mass killing in Whistler recently has sparked outrage, leading to some much-needed discussion about the unethical treatment and slaughter of animals that we tend to ignore: factory farm animals and grizzly bears. After a cat was thrown in a garbage can, fuelling world-wide fury, a question was posed whether food animals are “victims of their poor image”. Considering dogs and cats appear to get all the attention, I’d have to agree.
I wrote the following text almost three years ago for an Environmental Ethics essay, but I was already beyond the word limit and didn’t include it. You can probably expect to hear more about factory farming from me as this series continues (unless you help me reach my $300 fundraising goal!). Later, I’ll dig up and add some more information that came to light well after this was written.
Chicken and eggs
The deplorable conditions in which hens and “broiler chickens” are kept are becoming known to the public. Canada’s egg industry relies, as does its pork industry, on “the extreme confinement of animals to the point of virtual immobilization — in the name of efficiency” (Youngman). Of the country’s 26 million laying hens, 98 per cent are confined in wire-mesh “battery cages” of four or more birds each, cages so small they cannot even flap or spread their wings. By the time the hen is considered unproductive, “she is often bald from feather-pecking and the constant grinding of her body against the wire mesh and other birds” (Youngman) and her entire body is in terrible condition. Battery cages are, of course, unnecessary for egg production. “They are used because they allow eggs to be produced under factory-like conditions, thus lowering the market price of the eggs. The chicken’s living conditions subsidize the true cost of the eggs you eat (Vancouver Humane Society).
In this fascinating TED Talk, Pollan talks about humans’ relationship with, or rather perceived dominance over, nature, corn’s dominance over us, and nature’s incredible systems at work on a farm.
“…If you think about it, this completely contradicts the tragic idea of nature we hold in our heads which is that, for us to get what we want, nature is diminished. More for us, less for nature. Here, all this food comes off this farm and at the end of the season, there is actually more soil, more fertility and more biodiversity. It’s a remarkably hopeful thing to do. … We can take the food we need from the earth and actually heal the earth in the process.”
I was first introduced to the PR paradox of “ethical oil” when my friend Ben West at the Wilderness Committee went head-to-head with former tobacco industry lobbyist Ezra Levant in a debate on the subject. In this week’s Science Matters column, David Suzuki and Faisal Moola pull apart Levant and his fellow Conservatives’ argument, saying “the ‘ethical oil’ argument they promote has >holes as big as the ones in the ground around Fort McMurray.”
The environmental impacts alone should be a no-brainer. The razing of forests just to drill releases carbon dioxide — and if allowed to expand, an area of boreal forest the size of Greece will be industrialized with little hope of reclamation. The volume of greenhouse gases emitted prevent Canada from achieving any progressive, critical targets on GHG reductions and therefore thwart global efforts to reach consensus. The world’s largest construction project, the tar sands can be seen from space, but its effects are felt right here on earth, and no more deeply than by the First Nations downriver of the project, who are seeing higher than normal rates of rare cancers caused by toxic contaminants. Fish are turning up deformed, the water is polluted, the air is polluted. I see absolutely nothing ethical about this. It’s hypocritical for the Conservatives to suggest that oil from other nations be avoided because of human rights violations or lack of democracy. There is a human rights crisis going on in Prime Minister Steven Harper’s own back yard while his so-called “Environment Minister” Peter Kent claims our source of oil is ethical.
It’s a familiar pattern now: Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon ate locally for a year and wrote a book about it; Jen and Grant went zero-waste for a year, blogged and filmed a documentary about it. If doing either of those things doesn’t seem crazy and transformative enough, Colin Beavan’s family of three did both for a year, and turned off their electricity (for 6 months), self-powered their transportation, went vegetarian and stopped using toilet paper. The project, No Impact Man, is a film, a book and a blog about eliminating one’s personal impact on the environment.
The point of doing something this extreme, he cautioned, was not to suggest that everyone do it, but that everyone can do something. Individual actions, he says, inspire and engage others to act. That’s the power of community, something he says has eroded. It’s also a challenge to us to consider what really is necessary for daily life and what we could do without. As Colin puts it, living with a low impact is about “doing more good than harm.” At the end of their year, Colin’s wife Michelle decided she’d like to keep cycling (something she’d never have considered a year earlier) and not bring back their TV — except on vacation.
David Suzuki is turning 75 on March 24. To celebrate this momentous occasion and honour his life’s work, the David Suzuki Foundation invites you to make a gift or fundraise online to support the Foundation’s work, and send a personal message to David. There are prizes involved, and those coaxed me into signing up.
But I was at a loss for what pledge to make in return for my friends’ generosity. Jenny has pledged to bike the 60+ km round trip to work and back. Siri has promised to avoid shopping sprees until the big day. It got me thinking about what change for the greener I could make, and it wasn’t easy coming up with something — not because I’m unwilling to make lifestyle changes, but because I’ve made so many that I was struggling to find something new. I know my showers could be shorter and I really ought to shut down my old iMac hog at night. I’ll come around to a permanent commitment to those eventually. I eat four or five bananas a week, my cheese comes wrapped in plastic (I eat a lot of cheese) and I’m kind of addicted to the internet. (Just kind of.) I could change one of those for a little while, no big loss for a little bit of gain. But this isn’t about guilt, it’s about inspiring people and doing something meaningful. First, though, I have to inspire myself.
So I’m going to write a blog post about the environment every day until I reach my fundraising goal of $300. Just look at my sporadic track record: I’m going to need all the moral support I can get!
I may get carpal tunnel, avoid social occasions and frequently skip flossing in order to keep this up — but it’s David’s 75th and I believe very strongly in the work he and his Foundation does.
Will you celebrate with me? Here’s how:
1) Sponsor me online. (Two donors have pledged to match the first $15,000 raised in the campaign, so you’ll essentially be doubling your donation.)
2) Write a birthday message to David.*
3) Look for your personal message to be displayed at HappyBirthdayDavidSuzuki.com within a couple business days of your submission.
I invite you to join me and write your own blog post or comment here about what you’re doing for the environment and why. Or conversely, if you’re not doing anything, why not? I won’t guilt trip you; I’m seeking to understand. Also, if you’d like to request an eco topic about which you’re yearning to know more, leave a comment and I’ll consider it for a future post.
Thank you in advance for supporting the cause that is so very dear to my heart, and valuable to the majority of Canadians.
Monoculture, by its very nature (pardon the ironic pun), is not a resilient agricultural system to begin with. More susceptible to disease because of genetic similarity, and terrible for soil health, it’s a venture with growing risks that are starting to outweigh its purported benefits. A new study is warning its lack of genetic diversity puts it at risk from a new enemy that doesn’t discriminate like fungus or insects do: climate change.
If the current reports of species loss around the globe isn’t already freaking you out, taste this:
The genetic diversity of the plants that we grow and eat could be lost forever due to climate change, threatening future food security, the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) said on Tuesday.
Experts from the Rome-based organization warned that the loss of biodiversity will have a major impact on humankind’s ability to feed itself in the future as the global population continues to rise to nine billion by 2050.
“There are thousands of wild crop relatives that … hold genetic secrets that enable them to resist heat, droughts, salinity, floods and pests,” FAO director general Jacques Diouf was quoted in the report as saying.
“Increasing the sustainable use of plant diversity could be the main key for addressing risks to genetic resources for agriculture,” he said. (Vancouver Sun)
Cyclists on Robson St. Photo by cabbit via Flickr.
As Vancouver’s City Hall proposes another separated bike lane, this time on Hornby Street which currently has just a regular bike lane, the usual bike vs. car debate fires up again. I don’t see it as a choice of one over the other; we all have to get along. But as a cycling advocate and addict (and the daughter of another — I like to joke that my father was practically born on two wheels), I’d like to share some ways in which bikes make our city a better place, without getting too much into the anti-car realm here. Certainly thinking of these benefits makes me even more resistant to ever using my driver’s license for its primary purpose. The last time I used it was to hand it over so I could test ride a bike!
1. Bikes are the ultimate zero-emission vehicle.
I think we all understand that clean air is vital. Cycling contributes to cleaner air by taking pollution-emitting vehicles off the road. Having fewer cars on the road results in less traffic congestion, which should in turn reduce pollution further. Because bikes require no fossil fuels to operate (let’s not get into a debate over what fuels the human because everyone eats regardless of their mode), there is reduced strain on our non-renewable resources. We all know oil extraction has catastrophic environmental impacts even without oil spills.
Bikes are extremely efficient and use less materials. On the other hand, “These 1,300-kilogram metal boxes carry on average one-and-a-half people, approximately 130 kilos — a mere 10 per cent of the vehicle’s weight” (Yves Engler, The Mark) and require 1,860 calories per mile, compared to 35 for a bicycle, according to the WorldWatch Institute.
2. Bikes take up less space.
Whether they’re parked in an apartment or on the street, riding on the road or a trail, bikes require less physical space than cars. And when you have more space available, this makes room for more useful and pleasant aspects of a city: restaurant patios, parks, street food, community gardens, street performers, art installations, and so on. A parking space is private space, not public, when a car is on it.
If you’re reading this you might be as last-minute with your holiday shopping as I tend to be. Admittedly my post itself is last-minute. I’ve done half my shopping and, this year, with each item I’ve put more thought than ever into what effect each will have on this finite planet. If you’re the kind of giver that prefers to give an item rather than an experience, make it meaningful not just as a useful object but as one with the smallest environmental impact possible.
Before I tell you how easy it is to be eco-conscious at Christmas, you might want to know why you should:
* according to Statistics Canada, 900,000 tonnes of garbage is produced between Thanksgiving and Christmas each year
* transportion of gifts that are produced a great distance away, whether it’s Califonia or China, emits greenhouse gases that pollute our air and contribute to climate change
* logging of old-growth forests to produce “virgin” paper products releases CO2 into the atmosphere and threatens animal habitat (think of the caribou and the owls!)
* conventional plastic is a petroleum-based product, which carries a triple-threat carbon footprint
* it takes resources and produces waste to make something new and to recycle or dispose of it at the end of its life cycle (which, these days, is often pretty short!)
* that regiftable stuff is better off loved by someone else than being a guilt trip in your closet for you or your kids!
* buying local supports the local economy and friends of your friends
* and more environmental, ethical and health-related reasons…
h3. Ok, I get it. I’ll be good this year. How easy is it?
Got a bookstore nearby? A Choices/Capers/Whole Foods? MEC? Independent coffee shop? Granville Island? Main St or Commercial Drive? You can make smart choices anywhere — that includes IKEA. I did not have to go out of my way to get smart gifts for my family. A bit of thoughtfulness and planning is all it takes. And do I ever feel good about it!
Yes, I’m an environmentalist. Dirty word, right? I remember writing “closet environmentalist” in my Facebook profile as if it were something to be ashamed of. I realised after awhile that it isn’t, and defining myself as one is as familiar as the back of my hand. I remember someone, perhaps David Suzuki, saying we’re all environmentalists, but that requires a definition I can’t quite remember. It has something to do with our reliance on nature, I think. At any rate, here I am to tell you why I’m an environmentalist and what that really means.
Eggs at a family farm in Pemberton, BC
Tar sands excavation north of Fort McMurray, Alberta, in 1981. Despite a recession, the project continues to expand. (Photo by 
If you’re reading this you might be as last-minute with your holiday shopping as I tend to be. Admittedly my post itself is last-minute. I’ve done half my shopping and, this year, with each item I’ve put more thought than ever into what effect each will have on this finite planet. If you’re the kind of giver that prefers to give an item rather than an experience, make it meaningful not just as a useful object but as one with the smallest environmental impact possible.