test blog 3

I recently tried a new brand of tea. I'm always looking for almond tea, which is difficult or impossible to find (more on that below), and noticed Mighty Leaf had an Almond Spice . It's green tea, and I prefer black, but I thought for the almond, I'd take a chance. The Mighty Leaf Tea box is covered in stories about how carefully they care for the tea, the quality of their tea leaves, and how green the company is. The tea is whole leaf only, the tea pouches are made from the greenest material, and so on. Back when we had organics recycling, we always tossed used tea bags in the "green bin". Now, living in an apartment, we no longer have that option. The tea bag is going in the trash anyway, so the greenness of the pouch isn't a big concern for me. However, ordinary tea bags are fine for organics recycling, so I'm not sure why this pouch is so special. When I brought the tea home and opened the box, I was surprised and dismayed to find each individual pouc...

Tonight we watched " Before the Flood ", Leonardo DiCaprio's film about climate change, which I had heard such good things about. It's well done, and is chock full of appropriately terrifying and depressing information. But in the end, the film delivers yet another "it's up to each of us" message, focusing on individual actions, rather than systemic solutions. Early in the film, we hear that discussions of climate change used to focus on individual solutions -- change your light bulbs, bring your own coffee mug -- but now we know that's not enough. Yet in the end, the film concludes: "Consume differently: what you buy, what you eat, how you get your power." Vote for people who promise to do something. After seeing miles of gray, dead coral reef, rainforest devastation in Indonesia, and the monstrosity of the tar sands, "consume differently" is an empty platitude. And how you get your power? Most of us have no choice about that. Su...

Are there bag signs where you live? In Mississauga and perhaps most suburban places, people put up bag signs advertising services. The signs are cheap to buy and easy to post. They are also illegal. To me, they are the Nexus of Evil: advertising plus visual pollution plus polyethylene waste. I have called 311 to complain about these signs in my neighbourhood, and if the City has someone available, they will sometimes dispatch a crew to remove the signs. Presumably this crew is also doing other outdoor maintenance, or perhaps they are driving around removing bag signs, which would be awesome. Allan and I also remove these signs ourselves. When we lived in a house, we would throw the signs in the garage until enough had collected, then bundle up the vinyl for trash and the metal frames for recycling. Now, while we're out with our dogs, we'll just put the whole thing in a public trash barrel. This morning while I was out with Diego, I slipped the vinyl off a bag sign, crumbled it ...

Goodbye, old friends In the 10 years I've lived in Mississauga, I've always been impressed with Peel Region's recycling and trash management. Now that I live in an apartment, I'm seeing another side of those services, and it's not pretty. First, there's no "green bin" - organics - recycling. I've grown so accustomed to throwing all food waste, coffee grinds, tea bags, tissues, wet paper, dog fur, and other organics into the green bin, it feels very strange and wasteful to toss these in the trash. Instituting an organics recycling program for apartment buildings would be challenging, but other cities with denser populations do it, so it must be possible. I don't know if Toronto is still  in the pilot phase  or if green-bin recycling has been rolled out to the whole city, but at least it's begun. On the Peel Region waste management website , I find no information that anything like this in the works. (I will tweet this post to Peel, so maybe ...

Revolutionary thought of the day: All of this is why any attempt to rise to the climate challenge will be fruitless unless it is understood as part of a much broader battle of worldviews, a process of rebuilding and reinventing the very idea of the collective, the communal, the commons, the civil, and the civic after so many decades of attack and neglect. Because what is overwhelming about the climate challenge is that it requires breaking so many rules at once - rules written into national laws and trade agreements, as well as powerful unwritten rules that tell us that no government can increase taxes and stay in power, or say no to major investments no matter how damaging, or plan to gradually contract those parts of our economics that endanger us all. . . . This is another lesson from the transformative movements of the past: all of them understood that the process of shifting cultural values - though somewhat ephemeral and difficult to quantify - was central to their work. And so t...

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate , by Naomi Klein, is incredibly difficult to write about. I've been putting sticky notes beside important paragraphs as I read, and my copy now looks like an art project, bristling with coloured paper squares. I can say without exaggeration that this is one of the most important books you'll ever read. In her clear, readable prose, Klein demonstrates exactly what is destroying our planet: unregulated, unchecked capitalism, brought to you by the scourge of our era: neoliberalism. (US readers may be more familiar with the term neoconservatism.) In her 2007 book  The Shock Doctrine , Klein showed us how corporate interests exploit crises to enact policies that enrich a small elite, using the holy trinity of neoliberalism: privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and lower corporate taxation, paid for with cuts to public spending. Now Klein widens her lens to demonstrate how that same orientation a...

I've begun changing my personal care products to cruelty-free: natural products from companies that are better for the environment and don't test on animals. I'm not sure how far I'll be able to go, but I've begun the process. After a lifetime of using conventional products, I was moved to think more about this by a few different sources. When I worked in the children's library, I often saw a book about animal cruelty. It was not the one I wrote about here , about dogs, but a book in a series called "Tough Issues," similar to the kind of series I used to contribute to. This "tough issue" asked the question, "Why do people harm animals?"  It's a good book, one that successfully treads that very careful line separating honesty from the overly graphic. Even so, there was one image that burned in my brain. (I know this image would have been highly disturbing to me as a child. Considering I saw the image in a children's book, thi...

Revolutionary thought of the day: Hunger isn't about the amount of food around. It's about being able to afford and control that food. After all, the U.S. has more food than it knows what to do with, and still 50 million people are food insecure. Raj Patel , author of Stuffed and Starved and The Value of Nothing , quoted by Naomi Klein in This Changes Everything

Revolutionary thought of the day: ...if there is a reason for social movements to exist, it is not to accept dominant values as fixed and unchangeable but to offer other ways to live - to wage, and win, a battle of cultural worldviews. That means laying out a vision of the world that competes directly with the one on harrowing display at the Heartland conference and in so many other parts of our culture, one that resonates with the majority of the people on the planet because it is true: That we are not apart from nature but of it. That acting collectively for a great good is not suspect, and that such common projects of mutual aid are responsible for our species' greatest accomplishments. That greed must be disciplined and tempered by both rule and example. That poverty amidst plenty is unconscionable. It also means defending those parts of our societies that already express these values outside of capitalism, whether it's an embattled library, a public park, a student movemen...

I grew this! It's eight inches long, and three more are on the way. What's ordinary to you veteran gardeners is still miraculous to me. Gardening on a small scale is easy, fun, and very rewarding. Next stop, eggplant recipes.

My summer youth programs have been going really well. Attendance has increased with each program - first 7, then 13, then 15 - and yesterday we hit the jackpot with 23 teens. We actually had to turn away three kids without tickets, as our program room was so packed with people and materials. I wasn't planning on blogging about individual programs, but there seems to be some interest. Plus, since I regularly Google for ideas for programs and displays, I'm happy to give back by adding to the ideas out there. Upcycling was a huge hit! For those not familiar with the term, upcycling is an expression for taking an item that would normally be thrown in the trash or in the recycling bin and creating something useful or decorative from it - moving it "up," figuratively, in the lifecycle of the product. I like to begin programs with a bit of context, and to immediately get the teens engaged. This is not difficult to do: I structure a brief introduction in the form of questio...

I'm reading  Dark Age Ahead , Jane Jacobs' 2004 strong caution to North American society. I'll blog about the book in general at a later date, but wanted to share some thoughts that keep coming up as I'm reading. This is the first time I'm reading Jacobs since living in a suburb, the kind of area Jacobs reviled, rather than living in a dense urban environment, the kind she revered. And now, when I read Jacobs' shorthand descriptions of suburbs, I wonder if she truly understood them. Two of the charges levelled against suburbs - and if you've read Jacobs or anyone influenced by her, you've encountered these repeatedly - are (1) no one knows their neighbours, and (2) you have to drive everywhere. The former refers to the absence of shared community spaces. Jacobs often wrote that we must encounter each other face-to-face in order to build tolerance and a sense of community. The latter criticism is often expressed as, "You have to drive [x] distance ju...

Three years ago, we planted our first-ever garden , really a tiny garden-ette, growing two tomato plants and some daisies. (I had forgotten about the flowers til I saw that older post.) I really enjoyed growing the vegetables, and was surprised and pleased to learn that it wasn't very time-consuming, at least not on this level. The following year we again planted tomatoes, but substituted herbs for the flowers. Much more fun! I was so taken with snipping fresh herbs from my garden that I cooked more often. Last year's garden was a bust, thanks to the flood and our subsequent move. This year, in our new place, we cleared a little patch and took a baby-step forward: four tomato plants, one eggplant plant (your highness, your highness), one zucchini plant, basil, and thyme. I'm hoping for grilled veggies this summer. The very helpful person at Sheridan Nurseries recommended a natural plant-food made from chicken manure. Apparently chicken poo is rich is calcium and fruit-bear...

I want to share two articles from well-respected venues reflecting on what's happening to Canada now - where it is and where it may be going. In The Lancet Global Health , one of the foremost medical journals in the world, there's "A rising tide: the case against Canada as a world citizen", Chris David Simms. It begins: A generation ago, Canada was perceived to be an exemplary global citizen by the rest of the world: it took the lead on a host of international issues, including the Convention of Child Rights, freedom of information, acid rain, world peacekeeping, sanctions against South Africa's apartheid regime, and humanitarian and development assistance—much of this under conservative leadership. During recent years, Canada's reputation as a global citizen has slipped, in recent months more precipitously than ever before, and in new directions. The Climate Action Network recently ranked Canada 55th of 58 countries in tackling of greenhouse emissions. Resul...

The surveillance state continues to grow; news of its magnitude continues to trickle out . Some people shrug, claiming only criminals and terrorists need be concerned, but in these extreme conditions, that attitude looks increasingly ridiculous - or government-sponsored. The rest of us shudder and shake our heads... but what more? The Canada-US border has become another instrument of the surveillance state. For decades, people have claimed that border agencies had access to all our personal information, including tax and credit status. In the past, that was a myth. Now, what was once paranoid rumour appears to be true. We, the surveilled, are not consulted on these changes. The changes are not open to public debate. Neither we nor our elected representatives have an opportunity to vote for or against them. They are being instituted by fiat. Those magical words - "national security" - make everything possible. Some stories. September 2011 (note date): Canadians with mental ill...

At year's end, The Tyee reported that a memo - marked "secret" and first reported on OCanada.com  - cast grave doubts on the Harper Government's claim that environmental archives were destroyed only after they had been preserved digitally. In other words, the memo proves what progressive and concerned Canadians have long known and suspected to be true. A federal document marked "secret" obtained by Postmedia News indicates the closure or destruction of more than half a dozen world famous science libraries has little if anything to do with digitizing books as claimed by the Harper government. In fact, the document, a compendium of cuts to the Department of Fisheries and Oceans that can be read in its entirety at the bottom of this story, mentions only the "culling of materials" as the "main activities" involved as the science libraries are reduced from nine to two. Specifically, it details "culling materials in the closed libraries ...

Yes!  A few years back, I blogged about discovering that many of the plastics I had been putting in my recycling bin were not, in fact, recyclable. A few months after that, I unpacked a typical environmental dilemma: organic lettuce . Organic lettuce is the perfect example of a green paradox. It's unquestionably better for the local water supply, and for the health of the people who pick it and who eat it. On the other hand, it requires a huge amount of energy to stay fresh, and is often packed in non-recyclable plastic. We can ask, "Which is better?" but the answer is another question: "Better for what?" Now, after considerable consumer pressure, Peel Region will accept clear plastics for recycling . Of course, it's always better to avoid buying produce that is packed in plastic, but if you shop at a supermarket, that is difficult or impossible to do. I hope this change marks the beginning of more recycling province-wide and nationally.

By now I hope you all know about Line 9, Enbridge's plan to transport the dirtiest, most spillable oil on the planet through the most heavily populated areas of Canada and some of the most environmentally sensitive areas of New England. Line 9 is the third stage of Enbridge's plans to get their resource-draining, health-destroying, earth-killing tarsands oil from Alberta to the rest of the world, putting the drinking water, health, and lives of millions of people at risk in order to squeeze more private profit out of our earth. On October 19, concerned Canadians will demonstrate outside the National Energy Board hearings in the Toronto Metro Convention Centre. The rally caps a two-week calendar of events educating the public about this insanely dangerous plan. For more immediate and excellent education, see the Oil Sands Reality Check website , which gives you the basics in a few important clicks. The Line 9 plan would reverse the flow in two existing pipelines, causing oil to...

Nancy Zorn's Direct Action To mark Earth Day 2013, I hope you will submit a comment to the US State Department opposing the Keystone XL Pipeline. The form is properly set up for both US zip codes and Canadian postal codes. The goal is one million comments. Submit your comment here. In Arkansas, four weeks after a pipeline rupture spewed hundreds of thousands of gallons of oil into a residential area, Exxon tried to buy off affected residents with the princely sum of $10,000. What's that the human equivalent of, three cents? Exxon is refusing to pay the cost of investigating the spill, and a private corporation is profiting from the cleanup. We've seen it all before: the horrendous impact of pipeline failure, the utter negligence of the energy corporations, the disaster capitalism cleanup that profits from the misery . Concerned and courageous citizens all over North America are engaging in civil disobedience to oppose the Keystone XL pipeline. The Sierra Club broke with ...

photo by andreyohanes3 One in eight people on this planet do not have access to safe drinking water. Each day, 3,000 children under the age of five die from diseases caused by drinking unsafe water. Half of the world's hospital beds are occupied by people suffering from diseases associated with lack of access to safe drinking water. In a world of such great plenty, how can this be? It's not inevitable, and it's not beyond our power to change. Go to WaterDay.org to see an impressive photo gallery highlighting the global water crisis. In Canada, the Harper Government has removed protections from almost every lake and river in the country. They are trying to cut environmental assessments for massive projects (like pipelines) that endanger the fresh water supply. The Council of Canadians asks you to join the fight to protect Canada's water as a public commons, not a free giveaway for industry. Water is a human right.