How is the New Year been so far for you? As crazy as here? My daughter lost my wallet yesterday, just to name one issue.
We had the Law Enforcement Agent from the city of Kitchener in yesterday to look at our windows. We heat very little (20 C is all we need) and the winter has been mild so far but with these windows we'd be heating the outdoors too. And they are wet and we get mould that I am sure was here before they painted the walls before our move in. The management sees nothing wrong in the windows because they are cheap and don't care but hopefully the agent can help us sort the issue.
Today we finally got our organic box back. I'm so glad because our fridge and obviously we have been starved of organic produce during most of the holidays. Eating has just gotten better again. For Christmas I got a small food processor and now we even make our own sugar and salt-free organic peanut butter. Yum!
My most recent project was to sand off and paint the sturdiest chair in out apartment. It's a zebra now! Beautiful!! It's a unique chair now more than ever, we never had a match to it any way since it was given to us by family together with a dinner table and three chairs (they had broken one). But we don't need four ordinary chairs at the table because we have a high chair too so this fourth one adorns our living room. And it goes well with the rest of our black, white and dark green furniture. I also repainted the top of our coffee table that my husband redid over a year ago. He never sealed the top though so the paint kept chipping off. I put glaze on top, all good. I am still working on our former TV stand that has been turned into a play counter for our daughter. It's got a white base so far and large farm animal stickers around the side but I want to paint geometrical shapes still on top. Why buy new furniture if redecorating is so much more fun.
Makes me think about a change in career considering the slow job market for office admin/ tourism jobs here in KW. I have also taken up tutoring German and showing Cutco knives to whoever is interested. If you have read the article of David Suzuki that probably appeared in almost every paper in Canada on Christmas you know that these aren't the worst jobs and products. Services, contrary to manufacturing and mining, often do not harm the environment. Services generally do not produce (as much) carbon emissions, destroy landscapes and forests, pollute air & water. The article was great and I am sure I read something similar from him the year before - it needs constant reminders that we should not be so materialistic and wasteful. Did I mention that Cutco has a forever guanrantee? Cutco knives need very little resharpening (every 10 years or so) and the company does this for free for you forever. Cutco also takes back and recycles your old knives and therefore reduces a lot of waste. I could not sell anything I don't personally like but Cutco I do like not only from the environmental perspective.
Did you read the article of the UN advising people all over the world to stop consuming so many dairy and meat products in order to stop climate change? Super interesting too. Producing food for cows and Co. produces as much carbon emissions as burning fossil fuels for cars, industry and households. And it takes good food, grains etc. away from our tables. You know we already don't each much meat but still have quite a number of dairy products in our household such as milk for the child, yoghurt for mum & daughter, cheese for all. Not sure if our dairy consumption is below, above or at average with the rest of the population in Canada, Germany and elsewhere. Something would be missing without these dairy products in our household. Especially since we can't grow tropical fruits here which would be a nice replacement but other than that I can't even think of one. Maybe that's how lots of people think about replacing meat. Although I find lentils, grains, greens, vegetables, beans are around in such a variety that I have certainly as many options there as there is different cuts of meat.
Does any of your new year's resolutions help the environment?
After I spent last week getting to know Alberta a little better I decided there is landscape-wise not much to it apart from the Rockies. Back in 2006 I made it all the way from Jasper through Banff down to Waterton National Park and back. The Rockies are like a paradise, surely a bit rough but soooo beautiful. Lakes, rivers, mountains, wildlife, trees.
From Calgary I drove through the prairie to Drumheller and visited coal mines, hoodoos and crazily carved sandstone canyons in the Red Deer River valley. This river and what has developed around it after the last ice age is truly amazing but it's located right in the middle of the Alberta prairie, not quite as flat as Manitoba & Saskatchewan but not exciting either. The wind last week was unfortunately very fierce and literally blew our hats off our heads while the sun was burning stubbornly from the big blue sky. Not my kind of weather. The carved out river valley, called the Badlands for a reason, appears rather hostile and from what I found out does not have much wildlife in it. I understand that it is worth protecting and there are several provincial parks for that reason (and to make the collection of the plentiful fossils illegal it seemed), but there's little appeal for outdoor enthusiasts like me. Often a parking lot and a picnic area made up all the "amenities". No hiking trails whatsoever. Driving back to Edmonton from Drumheller seemed a never-ending journey through endless prairie landscape again, with oil & gas wells scattered about!
One of the last weekends we spent in Elk Island National Park, 30 min east of Edmonton, and although this was a nice change to the city it was a little disappointing. Elk Island encompasses the Beaver Hills, 50-60 metres high sticking out from the prairie. Originally founded to protect a herd of Elk it later became home to plain bison and then wood bison. Today it counts 700 bison! That's lots considering the size of this, in Canada the only fenced-in, park. Of course we saw the bison. We also saw lots of birds including a bald eagle, frogs, waterfowl, a beaver, two coyotes, and lots of gophers. I was surprised by the number of bogs, swamp and ponds. Elk Island also features lakes with picturesque islands and I longed to go canoeing. The forest is boreal forest, yes, it's a boreal island in the prairie, definitely worth protecting! But the forest was also my disappointment - the trees are so little. Most actually had there tops chopped off, from storm, not from human hands. The forest obviously had not seen a fire in a long time although controlled fires are applied in the park to prevent meadows from overgrowing. I know that in the north trees grow slower and with long winters growing season is short and the dry climate of the last decade certainly did not help but I am missing big, tall trees. I mean Germany does not have big trees compared to B.C.'s rainforest but they are majestic compared to the stalks here. Where is the shelter from the sun that makes summers more pleasant?
It's interesting. I never thought I am so keen on the landscapes I grew up with but not having them leaves me a little empty too. Like in Spain or Mexico I admired the palm trees but even they did feel wrong somehow. Luckily, we have some nicely grown trees right out of our apartment (which we will not stay in because the management company and landlord suck).
The Big Wild referred in its latest newsletter to two articles that kind of aim for opposite goals - one to protect the caribou, the other one to simply not care about caribou for industry's sake.
The first article from Globe and Mail reports on the newly established Boreal Business Forum that will try to ensure that the 21 member companies of the Forest Products Association of Canada (FPAC) take actions towards meeting the goals of the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement. The (unfortunately only) three-year-agreement was signed last year and aims to protect much needed habitat for caribou and other species as well as to implement more sustainable wood harvesting practices.
The nine companies that make up the forum are consumers of the FPAC's products. They include newspaper and magazine publishers, office supply retailers, and consumer products companies such as Kimberly-Clark; Lowes, Rona Inc., Office Depot; Axel Springer AG, Time Inc., The Globe and Mail and Hearst Corp.
From the article: The signing of the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement “represented a historic milestone in the environment-forestry debate. But like many agreements, signing is not the end point – it’s the start,” said Yalmaz Siddiqui, director of environmental strategy at Office Depot. “As a business that uses forest products from Canada … we look forward to working with [the signatories] to achieve the desired outcomes of the agreement,” Mr. Siddiqui said.
Let's hope for the best.
Meanwhile in Ontario, the Ministry of Natural Resources, lead by the Honourable Linda Jeffrey, announced plans to exempt all industries from the Endangered Species Act (ESA) for most of the caribou habitat in Ontario. This proposal, when enacted, would effectively remove all legal protections under the ESA for caribou. The Ministry is jeopardizing the recovery of caribou in Ontario and failing to uphold its North American-leading Endangered Species Act.
There is nothing Honourable about that intention! First of all there should not be any exemptions to this act because it beats its whole purpose. Second, the North American-leading act makes me roll my eyes. I do not know the act in word and detail but it makes it sound to me that it's kept rather vaguely so to ensure no endangered species gets overly protected. Considering North American recklessness with nature - in the name of progress and economic growth of course - I wonder how hard it can be to be leading in any environmental issue in North America. Yes, I'm sarcastic again. This woman ought to be fired. Ontarians will shriek now that they don't need more unemployment and I wonder if this step of the ministry has something to do with getting certain industries back on track. Quote: Ontario has spent the last three years and significant public resources to create massive exemptions for industry instead of implementing the ESA to protect species and using the tools contained in the Act to assist with industry compliance. The Big Wild was therefore so kind as to pre-write a letter to Linda Jeffrey and you should click and sign it, too, now.
First New Zealand, second Japan, third ?. One time after the other our lovely planet Earth demonstrates is violent forces and causes a natural disaster, as we like to call it. And every time it will not be the last time. If one thing is for sure then it is the fact that we can not tame Earth's forces. We will always be exposed and vulnerable to earth quakes, tsunamis, hurricanes and the like. Yes, they are sad events but reading the news about Japan I also had two thoughts that might be a bit weird.
The articles I read reported on three different nuclear power plants that were affected by the earth quake. Nuclear power plants! For what sane reason does a country like Japan have nuclear power plants? If the statistics are right, Japan receives 20% of the strongest earthquakes, that is a magnitude of 6.0 and up, on Earth. They experienced the devastating forces of nuclear power in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But they have nuclear power plants. Yes of course, one would think, how could they live without. Japan is a densely populated country that wants and needs energy independence, especially considering who their neighbouring countries are. Lots of people use lots of electricity and sun, wind and other renewable sources of energy have not made it big style yet in most countries. Hydro - I don't know much about Japan's rivers but a breaking dam seems less disastrous than a nuclear power plant breaking apart during an earthquake. When the infrastructure gets wrecked within minutes how would they want to deal with this kind of event? Currently, it sounds like the nuclear power plants are doing alright but how well can they be assessed under the circumstances? I was not too impressed either with the oil refineries. At least one of them has gone up in flames that reach 30 metres (90 feet) into the sky. Exactly what's needed now. They are not going to stop that from burning until the oil is gone. Lot's of oil wasted for nothing, lots of emissions for nothing but never mind most conventional oil comes from the unstable middle east where oil tends to burn for no good reason. At least nobody, like BP or Exxon, can be blamed because it's a catastrophe due to natural forces. Did somebody there think they were invincible?
We are a damn selfish species. If a natural disaster occurs we always think about the people who got hurt, not about the nature, the flora and fauna. I suppose half of all human beings think that plants and animals don't have feelings to start with. But let's face there's no food without plants and animals. So why is there never a mentioning of roughly how many animals died, if a national park or other area of outstanding ecological importance was affected for example, or if just another species got wiped out. New Zealand has lots of endangered species that only live there and nowhere else. What if the last kiwi bird got killed in an earth quake, would anybody care when that same earth quake killed people? Unlikely. Might be because we harm our nature all the time already any way, so why would we care if nature "hurts" itself. No, I don't think our planet actually thinks about that and considers the consequences, it simply does not care, just like us.
I just found this out thanks to a brochure about Jasper National park. Obviously, a community like Jasper town in the middle of a very beautiful and impressive national park participates with some kind of event. This Environment week was started by the government of Canada early in the 1970 - that's quite a while ago and from what I know at a time when Canada was considered an environmental leader. That's definitely not the case anymore but the environment week has not been scraped yet by the "Harper Government".
Currently, at the website for Alberta's environment week there's only information available from last year's events http://www.environment.gov.ab.ca/edu/eweek/ Since the registration for this year's events does not start until April 1 I will have to wait a lot longer to find out what is going to happen. The Environment week is held at the end of May/ beginning of June and coincides with the UN World Environment Day whose global host will be India this year. http://www.unep.org/wed/index.asp As it is also the International Year of the Forests the official website offers some forest facts.
Having been on a guided tour through Maligne canyon near Jasper town a few days ago I remember well what our knowledgeable guide told us about forests. Forests are too dense due to the management of forest fires, basically putting the fires out. I believe he said that it would be healthy to have 150-200 trees per acre but there are 20,000-40,000 per acre in most places now. Consequently, trees do not reach their full potential (no space to grow) and all the life underneath the tree canopy is negatively effected as well. Forests need fires to exist and maintain biodiversity but human beings that like to use forests in their own way (sports & leisure activities, tourist destination, logging, living near forests) don't want the regular fires to happen. A healthy forest would burn in patches and stop burning all by itself. But a dense forest, once it starts to burn, will be a huge fire that can't stop because there's so much to "eat". It all made sense and he gave us the reasons why logging can't ever do for a forest what fires do. Mind you, fires are beneficial while logging is not, to start with.
If only 50 years ago we had known what we know now. It could have prevented a lot of mismanagement in our forests. Now the problem is not easy to fix and will come with dear consequences not only to the forests but to us as well. I think the huge fires in California and the inferno that happened in Australia are a good proof already. Anyway, I said could because there's lots of things we know now and still actions are not taken accordingly. How often do we hear after an environmental disaster, like the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, that it could have been prevented, that safety issues were known but ignored, usually due to corporate and human greed. They hoped for luck instead of taking precautions but sometimes it did not work out. I wonder how many more bad accidents it needs until we give up on the devastating way of learning the hard way and, having learnt from earlier catastrophes, take care first instead.
My most recent project was to sand off and paint the sturdiest chair in out apartment. It's a zebra now! Beautiful!! It's a unique chair now more than ever, we never had a match to it any way since it was given to us by family together with a dinner table and three chairs (they had broken one). But we don't need four ordinary chairs at the table because we have a high chair too so this fourth one adorns our living room. And it goes well with the rest of our black, white and dark green furniture. I also repainted the top of our coffee table that my husband redid over a year ago. He never sealed the top though so the paint kept chipping off. I put glaze on top, all good. I am still working on our former TV stand that has been turned into a play counter for our daughter. It's got a white base so far and large farm animal stickers around the side but I want to paint geometrical shapes still on top. Why buy new furniture if redecorating is so much more fun. 