Throughout our history, the deal was we left the world in a slightly better place than we found it. That was progress. The wheel, the rule of law, penicillin. It was our covenant with our children and grandchildren.
- From the film The Age of Stupid
I have been inspired this weekend. I got to see Jean Grand-Maître and Joni Mitchell's collaboration with Alberta ballet, The Fiddle and the Drum, which touches on themes of war and the environment. And I saw two documentaries on the environment as well: The Age of Stupid and The Cove, which have had me thinking, not only about climate change and dolphins respectively, but also about my own carbon footprint and how I eat, even though they perhaps don't touch on those themes explicitly.
So, with the help of David Suzuki, my goal is to both look at going carbon neutral with at least what I figure are my two largest deficits in this area: home gas and electricity, where I need to be more mindful of how I spend energy, and plane travel, with trips to Calgary and Europe planned for this year.
My other goal is to limit my meat intake to just twice a week, which isn't as extreme as it sounds, as I have grown accustomed to cooking and eating lots of vegetarian dishes because my girlfriend is vegetarian; but which holds a lot of pull for me still, being a fan of both Alberta beef and West Coast sushi.
Other actions I'm following:
1) Help Cut Emissions By 10% In 2010
2) Five Things You Can Do Now: to create worldwide awareness of the annual slaughter of more than 20,000 dolphins and porpoises in Taiji, Japan, and to pressure those in power to put an end to the slaughter. And to create awareness of how this meat, containing toxic levels of mercury, is being sold as food in Japan and other parts of Asia, (often labeled as whale meat) and the dangers of eating seafood contaminated with mercury
3) Learn from food folk like Claire at I Love Alberta Beets.
The very fact that the crisis is taking place within our generation, that it’s happening right now, means that we are tremendously powerful people. So this position of despair and I can’t do anything and there’s no point is completely illogical, it’s exactly the opposite.- George Monbiot, journalist and author in The Age of Stupid.
