So I received my Climate change dividend cheque in the mail yesterday. Is this a Canada wide thing or just BC? It came with a helpful list of things we could do around the house to decrease our energy consumption. What I wonder about it is, how many people will actually use it for those things? and not just buy some new tech thingy, pay the bills or waste it away somehow? Though I appreciate it and we do plan to use it for either a new water heater or a new double paned window in the livingroom, I wonder if the money would have been better spent planting trees where the Pine beetle has destroyed so much forest? I wonder though if it's really the homeowners that will make the biggest impact on climate change. We already recycle, compost, turn out the light, keep the heat low etc... as do a good portion of my neighbors. Then I look at my office building that has a half arsed ('cuse the language) recycling program, insists on leaving computers on etc... Don't get me started on big businesses. Again I wonder if the money might have been better spent on small business incentives to become more 'eco'. Yes, i'm just babbling, and i don't know if this is the necessarily the forum for discussing this since it's decidedly lacking in plant talk, but I have to get it off my chest. I'm looking out the window in to my garden and considering using the money to increase the bio-diversity in my yard, pay someone to dig up the grass and give me more space to plant food and wondering if we're really making any difference?
It must just be BC since I didn't get anything. How much was it? A couple of years ago, Albertans got $400 per person dividend from oil & gas revenue. What is the BC government going to do when they figure out that we have been cooling for the last 10 years and will continue to cool if sunspot activity doesn't increase? Are they going to ask for their money back?
Since this is a forum hosted by a scientific institution, I'm compelled to reply -- despite not being a scientist in the area. From the Australian Science Media Centre: Is the Earth cooling? In particular, this scientific analysis: Waiting for Global Cooling (PDF) And, in fact, the trend has been upwards over the past ten years. Here's the data --
At least your check is intended for expenditure on environmental benefit. Here in the US we got "economic stimulus" checks...the idea being that the citizenry would run out and spend this money at retail establishments. Just lost your job? No health care? Car broken down? No problemo! Go to Wal-Mart and BUY STUFF! And all these millions of dollars INCREASED the national debt! Wonderful, is it not, for a country's leaders to regard the populace as, collectively and individually, being that abysmally stupid. Anyhow...one must do what one can. I collect all the recyclables at my place of work, as well as at home. I work for a library system that bills itself as one of the best in the country. Do we have a system-wide recycling plan? No. I do ask myself every week as I'm toting the stacks of newspapers, bags of bottles and cans, cardboard boxes: Is this worth it? And I answer Yes, because the alternative is unacceptable.---Of course the best plan would be to attack and remedy the areas of worst offense: as you say, these are the businesses which leave the lights blazing, ramp up the a/c in summer till the staff have to wear SWEATERS inside the building, go through paper by the ton. But to make these changes, it still takes the dedication of a few wild-eyed dendrophiles to stand up at the staff meeting and ask: What are we doing to address green issues? The question may not save the world but it just might give someone a thought they would not otherwise have had. Expectation of a result---positive or negative---should not be our motivation. Rather, I feel that we should do the right thing whenever we are presented with the opportunity so to do. Do the thing that's nearest. We all---collectively and individually!---have the power to make a difference. We just gotta use it. Sapere aude (Dare to be wise).
We recycle diligently. Our city is very much into it, and provides the services to it's residents to this end. Our weekly garbage shrank from an average of 2.5 cans to just 1/2 to 3/4 cans, in the past few years. Our work place is not so recycle friendly, so I take all my recyclables home. But sometimes I wonder - what is the environmental cost of recycling? So, the latest thing we have been striving to do is to minimise consumption - use our own tote bags for shopping, reuse ziplock bags, stop using bottled water, read the news on line and eschew newspapers, etc.
