HOT ISSUES @ bpeg.ca

Saturday's Globe and Mail had an article about bottled water referring to the drive among some churches and other groups to more agressively refuse to use bottled water. The arguments are well known: ridiculous cost (more than gasoline),the commodification of a 'gift from God', the silliness of thinking that bottled water is better than tap water - Many bottling companies just filter out most of the chemicals and minerals from tapwater and then replace the minerals for taste. As it turns out even the plastic of the bottles is now suspect -especially for those who freeze and reuse the bottles several times. There are also serious concerns about the effect on water sources of removing large quantities of water from local aquifers.
Sometimes people do not have clean water to drink and need bottled water but thankfully not too many. The Walkerton disaster was a great boon to the bottling companies but we should not conclude that bottled is always safer or better.Perhaps we should consider in BPEG to decline to provide it as we and the church by policy have lead in the refusal to use disposable dishes and cutlery.
Any comments?
Don

The ethanol question is a very divisive one - especially in Ontario. Yes we might indeed use up so much corn for ethanol that we drive up the price of food of all sorts. Further, the critics say that ethanol is a 'net loss energy' meaning it takes more energy to produce than we gain from burning it in cars. ethanol also reduces gas fuel efficiency (mileage)but does burn cleaner tahan normal gasoline.
On the other hand even a rudimentary understanding (such as mine)of the concept entropy tells us that all energy conversion is 'net loss' conversion. Certainly Ontario farmers seem to be delighted with the government support for ethanol.
Experts can tell us of the relative efficiency of wind and solar vs petroleum but we ought to be thinking of the carbon footprint of our civilization rather than get bogged down in dead-end debates.
Don

The Hon. Laurel Broten
Minister of the Environment
135 St. Clair Ave. W., 12th Floor
Toronto, On M4V 1P5

Dear Minister:
Bruce Peninsula Environment Group is a group of 150 members involved in education and advocating action in many efforts including waste diversion of agricultural waste which is, I understand, a focus of the second phase of the Provincial initiative.
Two of us recently visited the Think Plastics site in New Hamburg and were very impressed with their products and their strategy to recycle balewrap, greenhouse sheeting and white pail polyethylene into lumber and wall sheeting for farm use. BPEG is building two engraved park benches to publicize and educate people about the initiative which we will place in public locations in the municipality.

Of course a new initiative such as this requires education, promotion and support from various sources and this is the reason for our letter. The local Municipality of Northern Bruce Peninsula has a balewrap collection point at the Eastnor landfill site which consists of a large steel bin which neither the farmers bringing in balewrap, or the truck collecting it for Think Plastics find adequate but the concrete or asphalt base and surrounding concrete blocks and cover to prevent wind blowing it around all cost quite a bit of money which the municipality has not been
able to budget so far.

The logistics of this complex puzzle are not impossible and the initiative is very worthwhile so we are hoping Provincial funds might be found to help out with the construction of a more suitable collection point at the landfill as part of Waste Diversion Phase II.

Thankyou for your consideration. We will look forward to your reply.

Yours truly

Don McIlraith, chair, Bruce Peninsula Environment Group

c.c. Hon. Leona Dombrowsky, Minister of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs

Climate Change - The Skeptic and the Cynic

When a study of over 250 peer reviewed climate specialists’ papers found that:
a) all these eminent scientists agreed that climate change (global warming) was taking place beyond the long term observed cycles, and
b) a significant part of this was due to human introduced greenhouse gasses. The continuing discussions and disagreements relate not to the fact of human induced climate change, but rather to the extent, longer term speed of change and the longer term results on more local weather patterns and water levels One can no longer dismiss their claims of humans’ effect on climate.
Teachers’ usual advice to students and citizens in democracies is to maintain a healthy skepticism in all the information you are exposed to as much of it is unreliable and often outright lies. On the other hand there always appear to be some cynics among us who are prone to reject whatever doesn’t suit their mindset at the time and slide into that unproductive curmudgeonly funk we too often see people in these days. Occasionally we read of cynics such as the ‘climate expert’ contrarian Tim Ball – Globe and Mail, on line edition Aug 15 2006. who claims that global warming is myth. Contrarian ‘scientists’ like Mr Ball tend to use anecdotal evidence or their own short term experience, and pick and choose facts or pseudo facts to make their claims of global warming as myth. Too often it turns out that such ‘scientists are backed directly or indirectly by funds from corporations who have a financial stake in disproving the emerging large findings such as the peer reviewed articles mentioned above. The tobacco companies, chemical companies, car companies and pharmaceutical companies have all been found to support such contrarians over the Twentieth and now Twenty First Centuries
How then does one build a ‘true’ understanding of the world about us? This is not an easy question and probably will never have an absolute answer as little if any human knowledge is absolute.
I’ll go with the consensus of well educated, well trained scientists, keep an open mind and a somewhat skeptical eye.
It seems to me that we are well beyond debating the ‘reality’ of global warming and indeed well into the discussion of what to do about it.
Recommended reading: Tim Flannery The Weather Makers, Harper Collins, Toronto, 2005

Don McIlraith