Is One Day A Year Enough To Save The Planet?

"We grow corn that hungry people need to eat, but turn it instead into biofuel to run our automobiles"
- Alan Ferguson, The Province, April 22, 2008

That pretty much sums up for me all that is wrong with the world.

Today as I waited for my daughter after Kindergarten, I watched another class out in the field with garbage cans and salad tongs as they picked up garbage, presumably in honour of Earth Day. This got me wondering if one day a year is really enough.

It becomes like Christmas. We all mean to practice good will to all men through out the year, but human nature rears it's cranky head and we forget, until next season. On Thanksgiving we count our blessings, and then promptly return to taking everything we cherish for granted.

These same kids who scoured the playground with such enthusiasm today will more than likely return to the old habit of tossing their garbage on the grass if a can is not handy. They're nice kids - they're just afflicted with human nature.

If we want to be cranky to one another or take each other for granted, that's one thing, but destroying the planet is a whole other problem.

Why not have Earth Day once per month? It could be, say, the first or last Monday, for example (a week day is better because it would require school participation). At the very worst, if it fails to create new habits, at least we'd clean up more often...

Rising Gas Prices and Electric Cars

The recent suggestion by automakers to Ottawa to raise gas prices to cut emissions won't work unless an alternative to the pricey fuel is available.

What about either changing the rules applying to electric cars or manufacturing these cars to go faster? Another alternative could be to reduce speed limits everywhere to accommodate the 40 km cars. Although that option wouldn't go over well initially, once consumers enjoyed the savings in fuel costs there might be a different prevailing opinion. Not only that, there might be a safety benefit to a slower speed limit maximum.

Just my two cents for today...

Banning Plastic Bags

Why not??? It's already done in South Australia and San Fransisco, among other places I'm sure.

Surrey Mayor Dianne Watts said on the news tonight that she thinks that banning bags alone is not the answer, and that there should be a more comprehensive strategy in place to ban other things as well (Styrofoam, etc.). Obviously I don't know as much about this issue as she does, but it seems to me that banning just bags now and other things later is better for the environment than waiting to ban anything.

My guess is it's a cost issue? (Or is my ignorance showing?) I guess only time will tell.

Compost

Wow - I'm impressed with those busy little worms (OK, big fat wiggly worms with attitude). I was not expecting my kitchen scraps to be ready for the garden so soon, because I'm doing what's sometimes referred to as "cold composting" - in other words, here's a pile, worms, dig in!!

Today I thought I'd start setting up the garden for planting next month, so I got the shovel and started re-arranging the worms' hang-out. I was happy to find that the compost was ready for use on the garden beds. I'm really interested to see the difference in this year's crop from last year, when I wasn't composting. I'll keep you posted!