Category: Green

Tearing up bike lanes?

Or tearing up humanity?

Are leaders in your community threatening to tear up bike lanes, supposedly to improve traffic?

This is where it’s leading.

For drivers, pedestrians and cyclists — for all of us alike.

Why is our government actively encouraging us to choose a lifestyle that’s even more addicted to cars? Is it a clever lie, designed to grab votes from those who choose to remain ignorant?

But even if all our bike lanes and sidewalks are torn up, it won’t be a victory for drivers.

Don’t fall for the politicians who want to divide us — pitting drivers against cyclists — for their own profit.

Traffic, inflation, violence and climate disaster will continue to escalate. If we continue to make irresponsible choices like this. But there is a better way!

Think about it. Drivers will face the consequences as much as pedestrians, cyclists and everyone else. It’s destructive, even murderous, for all of us.

Please join and support a cycling, walking or climate action group in your community! Let’s work together for a greener, healthier world…

What can you do?

What can you do to support cycling and active mobility?  

Together we are strong! Join or follow one of these…

  1. Toronto:
  2. Elsewhere:
  3. Related:

You *are* the change

Are conformity, outdated habits and norms … keeping you from doing the right thing with your life?

Is fear keeping you stuck — “working for the man” — in the age of climate crisis?

Is it causing you to contribute needlessly to the destruction of our world? Mother Earth — our air, climate, food & water?

Is “playing it safe” really what you want and need to be doing with your life energy?

Take the leap — work for change! GoodWork.ca/Now

#purpose #meaningfulwork #greenjobs #greencareers #rightlivelihood #sustainableliving #greenliving #careerchange #socialchange #activism #advocacy #survival

Beyond cars and collapse

I am both a cyclist and a driver. But much more than that, I am a father in the age of climate crisis.

Fiona. Ian. Derecho. Floods. Fires. Famine. It’s almost back to back, but we’re doing next to nothing about it. Can we face the elephant in the room and prevent runaway climate change, collapse? Can we pause for a moment and reconsider our obsolete, short-sighted, rat-race lifestyles?

“We fly where we want.
We drive where we want.
We eat what we want.
We buy what we want.
That’s what’s driving growth.
That’s what’s leading us to ecological & societal collapse.
Thats what needs to change.”
— ClimateDad

Do I love my car more than my kids? Not in a million years. We need to get most cars off the road to make way for real, people-centered community. When parents drive their kids to hockey practice, is it love? Or is it killing them?

The only way to survive the climate behemoth is much more radical change than most of us have even begun to think about.

Out of necessity I too drive when I must, in these crazy, suicidal times. But my heart sinks every time I turn the key. I’d love to park my car, share it, recycle it — anything but private car ownership for each of us.

Nobody knows for sure when we will cross the tipping points to runaway, unstoppable climate collapse. It’s not looking good. Those of us who choose not to drive might just be saving your kids lives.

But we can’t do it without you. It’s easy to be cynical… just a little bit harder to truly be alive. Besides, survival is so much more fun.

Let’s rebuild our lives, our world that the car has done so much to destroy!

– Peter Blanchard

#climatecrisis #climateemergency #climatecollapse vs. #climateaction #activeliving #activemobility #activetransportation #sustainableliving #degwowth | Wikipedia: Sustainable transport | Active mobility

@International Federation of Pedestrians @Canada Walks @America Walks @Walk Toronto @Walkable Ottawa @Centre for Active Transportation @BEST Vancouver BC @Car Free Day Vancouver @Twitter | @Facebook

“You may say I’m a a dreamer, but I’m not the only one” – John Lennon

Overwhelmed? Or inspired?

It’s our choice. Work for…

“The extreme flooding in B.C. is unusual. In the future, it won’t be.” – CBC News

Anger, is what I feel.

Anger, and also compassion. Because the people who are fanning the flames of the #climate crisis, with greed and blind materialism, are ultimately hurting themselves as well as everyone else. We’re all in this together.

I’m watching the devastating floods unfold on CBC. Just seconds later — multiple, aggressive ads, pushing huge, belching trucks to whomever will buy. At the same moment we have both the destruction, and the cause. Thoughtless, selfish, socially acceptable greed.

In each ad the shiny new pickups are shown destroying nature, each in a unique fashion. One has driven out to a caribou herd. Another is tearing up the ground, just for the fun of it. In the third, believe it or not, an idling truck roars so loudly that it destroys a snowman. A spitting image of exactly what we’re doing to the climate — too crazy but true.

The farmers and tradespeople who actually need trucks already have them, and are not the target of these ads. But the ads function as intended. Profiteering corporations pay tens of thousands of dollars to seduce their targets — many good people, our neighbours and friends. Through climate everyone is the victim.

Is this the world we want? Is this the best we can do?

What’s happening in BC is just the beginning — it’s up to us just how bad it will get. Our choices, our priorities, our actions or inaction. Lifestyles that once were okay, becoming nothing less than murder.

The ads themselves are criminal, should the law treat them as such? Or better yet, increase carbon taxes so high that such behaviour would be untenable?

We live in a society where we are ruled more by old habits and norms, than by using our brains. We’re more worried about doing what’s ‘cool’, than doing the right thing. That has to change, or we will perish.

Every day I see well-meaning people obliviously idling their cars. In parking garages, I see moms idling SUV’s with kids in the back, hatches wide open, slowly loading or unloading. Meanwhile, millions of us overheat our homes and workplaces, rather than dressing properly for winter.

What can you do about climate change?

There’s no longer any excuse.

There’s nobody to blame but ourselves.

We need to stop pointing fingers, pull together and act.

Or… don’t complain when storms, food shortages and even war, kill us and our children.

Will you be part of the change, the action, the work that needs to be done?

#ClimateEmergency #ClimateCrisis #ClimateAction #ActiveTransportation #SustainableTransportation #SimpleLiving #Frugality #DriveLess #Walkability #GreenJobs

All we have to decide…

Image: Joel Lee, CC some rights reserved.

In our time — the anthropocene — how many of us are doing what really matters? How will history remember you, me, all the others who denied or despaired? Bilbo & Frodo didn’t run away from what needed to be done, or sit around and blame everyone else. Models of action, against all odds — exactly what we need today. Shall we rise to the challenge?

Work for  Climate | Climate Strike | Climate Action.

 

Birds worth protecting…

“I share this photo every spring, of a Scarlet Tanager pair that I found on the ground by a neighbor’s glass door. It was spring, and he must have been chasing her (she’s the one with yellow plumage). They both hit the glass and died instantly.

HOW TO MAKE YOUR WINDOWS SAFE:
ABC | FLAP Canada | more 

“I thought about the long journey these stunning neotropical migrants had made from their wintering grounds in South America, and all the challenges they’d overcome to return to their breeding grounds here in upstate NY. It just seemed heartbreaking and senseless for them to die this way.

Continue reading “Birds worth protecting…”

School Strikes for Climate

Students Strikes for Climate Action
Friday May 3, across Canada

Toronto: Toronto Queens Park, May 3, 12:30 – 2:30pm | Ongoing
Ottawa: Parliament Hill, May 3, 11am – 3pm | Ongoing 

Many more locations:
https://cop24climatestrike.com/

Facebook |  #FridaysForFuture | #SchoolStrike4Climate | #ClimateStrike

Fridays worldwide: 
Fridaysforfuture.org (2) | #FridaysForFuture 

More info, organizations, volunteering: GoodWork.ca/fridays


An eco-friendly Christmas?

Shopping frenzy to show our love?

Christmas is supposed to be a time of peace and togetherness. For many it’s a happy, joyous time of year. But it’s also a time when we drive around madly, feeling obliged to shop for everyone on our list. Each year we also use millions of plastic bags, throw out tonnes of packaging and food, and try to buy just about everything in sight.

Is this good for us? Our children? Are there better ways to show our love for each other and the world?

Continue reading “An eco-friendly Christmas?”

Ottawa tornado: one month later

This is what climate change looks like.

This was a healthy tree. And behind it? That was an apartment building.

True, you can’t prove that this specific tornado was caused by climate change. But there’s an abundance of evidence that climate change is causing more frequent and severe extreme weather events — and that climate change is caused primarily by humans. So while we can’t prove this tornado was entirely caused by climate change, the chances are pretty good it would have been less powerful or occurred somewhere else. 1600 homes damaged or destroyed. So the next time you hop on an airplane, or choose fossil fuels over solar or pedal power: think again. What are you doing to your neighbours, your children, maybe even yourself? This is what climate change looks like. We all need to kick the fossil-fuel habit as best we can!

More: Ottawa tornado | How to help (more) | Climate change action

Continue reading “Ottawa tornado: one month later”