New Year's Resolutions

Today's Metro Morning asked people to call in with their new year's resolutions for the city of Toronto, which were then commented on by guest Glen Murray. They only had time for three callers (unless I missed the beginning), and their resolutions were:

1. Close Bay Street to private vehicles.
2. Increase the number of recycling options.
3. More affordable housing.

Based on these calls, I will now conclude that if an election were held tomorrow, I'd get 66.6% of the vote and Michael Shapcott would get the other 33.3%. (Note: not a scientific poll.)

The question got me thinking though, and I decided to create my own top ten environmental new year's resolutions for anyone wondering what they can do. The catch is that these kinds of lists are already everywhere, and I didn't want to be boring. So, things like "drive less, replace your light bulbs, and recycle" didn't make the cut. I'm assuming you already know that. These resolutions also ask a little bit more of you. Sorry about that.

Here, off the top of my head, are ten other things you may or may not have thought of or already be doing.

1. Eat less meat. We already eat too much for our health anyway, and meat is a very inefficient (albeit admittedly delicious) way of producing food energy. It takes more resources (food, land, water, etc) to produce meat than it does to eat lower on the food chain.
   
2. Eat more locally. The average meal travels further than it needs to, which contributes to climate change, damages local economies, and generally makes your food less yummy.
3. Eat more organically. (Yes, I did skip breakfast.) Did you know that agribusiness uses petroleum and natural gas-based fertilizers and pesticides? And that it's only because of this infusion of oil that we're able to grow as much food as we do? And that oil production will likely peak sometime between last year and ten or twenty years from now? Because I didn't know that until a few years ago, and it's a pretty big deal that we should all be aware of. We are, in effect, "eating oil," in that much of the food we grow wouldn't have been possible otherwise. Buy foods that avoid the use of artificial fertilizers.
4. Take transit less. I actually got this tip from the now defunct One Tonne Challenge (this link is pretty funny and demonstrative), which advised me that since I don't drive very much, and since even public transit uses energy, biking and walking would further reduce my carbon emissions. Also, biking is awesome.
5. Start a garden. This relates to #2. If you've got a back yard, this should be fairly simple. If you live in an apartment building or condo, you've got a little more work to do, but it's still possible.
6. Buy less. My brother is returning from a trip to Kenya today, and he's assured me that the impoverished Kenyans he met are, on average, happier and more life-loving than us wealthy Canadians. Almost everything we buy ends up in the garbage eventually anyway. The first and most forgotten R (of the three R's) is the most important.
   
7. Produce some of your own power. If wind or solar (either passive or active) work where you live, consider getting them installed. If not, maybe you have a geothermal option. If you live in a condo this isn't impossible, but obviously you'll have to either talk your board into it or get elected to the board yourself.
   
8. Buy power from Bullfrog. Easier than #7, as they've already done the legwork.
9. Reduce your overall footprint. Using this ecological footprint calculator may give you some insight into what sorts of actions have the greatest effect.
10. Add your own tip by commenting on this page. (Note: Blogger comments have been buggy recently, but they're still being saved. Even if it says "0 Comments" below, clicking on that link may reveal that there actually are comments.)

Hope that's been helpful and/or interesting, and, of course, not too preachy. If not, that's what tip number ten is for.

Writing for the Torontoist

I've been hired as a contributor to Torontoist, a Toronto community/info/news/blog site that gets around 100,000 unique visitors a month and is the largest website of its kind in the country. (Although they're also in the largest city in the country, so that's kinda cheating.)

My first post was today, regarding the end of BikeShare. All future posts by me should appear here. My contributions to Torontoist will be fundamentally municipal or local in nature, while I'll continue to use this blog for topics that are more federal and/or partisan. (I won't post here less than I have been, I'm just adding Torontoist to the pile.)

By the way, this seems like a good time to solicit feedback from y'all on what you want to get out of this blog. What sorts of posts have you liked? What haven't you liked? And, come to think of it, who are you? Where are you? How did you find me? I've been getting over a thousand visits a month (increasing each month since I started), but I don't have a good sense of who you all are. It'd be great to hear from you via comments to this post.

For the Record...

Today I took the recycling out in a t-shirt and was pretty comfortable. According to Environment Canada, the temperature in Toronto is currently 13 degrees Celsius, dangerously close to breaking the 1984 record, and 12 degrees above the "normal maximum."

I just thought someone should mention that. I couldn't find any news reports about it except for this one, and most conversation regarding the weather around Toronto is about "how nice it is." Reminds me a bit of the frog in the pot.

On the Radio Tonight

I will be a guest on tonight's episode of "Catch Da Flava," a project of Regent Park Focus aired on Ryerson University's CKLN in Toronto. Listen live (from 7:30-8pm) in Toronto at 88.1 FM, or online (hi-bandwidth lo-bandwidth).

The topic is that nebulous thing we call "the environment," what it has to do with Regent Park (hint: Regent park is in the environment), and what people, particularly youth, in Regent Park and Toronto can be doing about this mess we seem to have gotten ourselves into. Should be good times.

Who Kidnapped My Crosswalk?

Last week I started a new job in Liberty Village, Toronto -- a series of converted office lofts (my office used to be the Toronto Carpet Factory), new condos, cafes, and restaurants. When I don't bike to work (read: when it's cold or raining) I take the King Streetcar west from downtown, get off at the intersection of Fraser and King West, and cross south at the crosswalk.

That is, until this morning, when, instead of a crosswalk, I found a yellow sign that read "Caution: Crosswalk Removed," and had arrows pointing left and right, towards the closest intersections, a few hundred meters away each.

Google searches of words like "fraser, king, crosswalk" fail to turn up any evidence of warning or consultation regarding this apparent crosswalk kidnapping. In fact, most of the search results were Due South fan pages. (Fraser. Benton Fraser.)

This sort of thing is allowed to happen because pedestrians have not had an advocate at city hall, which collectively seems to believe that cars have more rights than people. (I'm talking about the crosswalk here, not the proliferation of Due South fan pages. That's allowed to happen because Due South is awesome.) It's the same reason why bike lanes and even whole sidewalks can disappear during road construction, as was the case last month on the busy south-east corner of University and Queen.

Pedestrian deaths and injuries in this city are already too high; the last thing we should be doing is killing crosswalks. I'm going to write Gord Perks, the councillor of this ward. I'll let you know how that turns out.

This morning some cars were still stopping where the crosswalk used to be -- in part out of habit, but also because there's still a steady stream of people who cross the street there. Let's hope that as memories of the crosswalk fade no one gets hurt.

UPDATE (December 12th, 6pm): Got a reply from Perks' office. Turns out the crosswalk was removed because a new intersection was installed about 100m east to accommodate a new development, and there are rules that say you can't have a crosswalk that close to an intersection. (How surprised are we that that rule didn't work backwards, "you can't put that intersection there, it's too close to the crosswalk!")

As of this morning people were still crossing at the phantom crosswalk in large numbers, while confused drivers slowed to a halt and tried to figure out why we were in their way. Perks' office has asked the TTC to move the stop back to the new intersection, further from where those of us who use(d) the crosswalk are trying to get to. Not the world's biggest deal in the grand scheme of things, but still an unfortunate example of the systemic bias that favours cars against transit users and pedestrians. (Just so we're clear, I'm not blaming Perks for this. Not only is he new, but apparently the last councillor, Sylvia Watson, didn't give them any files at all.)