Help strategize how to address climate change
Huffington Post
says that the best thing Canada can do to fix climate change is to raise carbon tax. I say BULL! Here are some things that Canadian governments of all levels can do:
I am a firm believer in starting with fixing yourself. And the governments of Canada (Federal, Provincial, Territorial, Municipal and First Nations) need to start with fixing themselves. Continue reading “An open letter to Canadian governments”
In Is wood heat green? I present a case that if you are burning wood from trees that have otherwise died, you are creating a net positive for greenhouse gases. Burning such wood in a modern wood stove releases less methane than letting nature take care of it herself. Because methane is such a potent greenhouse gas, converting this methane to CO2 produce a net benefit.
This also goes for the burning of any biological material as biomass. Continue reading “Biomass heat, better than green?”
Many argue that wood heat immediately releases the wood’s greenhouse gases, but it takes 50 to 100 years for nature to grow the replacement tree.
Ok, so we are worried about climate change. We are even ready to take action, but what action? Buy an electric car? Put solar panels on the roof of our home? Did you know that one technology could cut the average Northern Canadian’s carbon footprint in half! Oh, and it cuts your heating bill in half too! (It reduces your footprint quite nicely if you live in southern Canada too.) This is a ROE double play — both optimizing and electrifying. And this is not a pie in the sky technology, but one that is commercially available. As far north as the Yukon. Now! But you probably haven’t heard of it.
I have taken up the expression “green as the grid”. The expression implies that the grid is the greenest thing going. But some have noted that grid power is generated, to some extent, with fossil fuels. Continue reading “Is the grid green?”
For many years we have all known the three Rs, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. I propose an acronym for the green age: ROE. Reduce, Optimize, Electrify. These are the three primary methods of reducing our personal carbon footprint, and reduce our contribution to climate change.