Ideeahs

As the water poured over my naked body in the shower this morning I started thinking about the amount of water that is wasted. The previous night I had turned on our sprinkler system to water our lawn and garden. The earth was cracking in some parts so I figured I could the plants a reprieve from the heat. I knew rain was in the forecast but, not knowing how much, I decided to water anyways. It is pouring outside now. Last year I wrote about how surprised I was that the previous owners of our house had consumed over 1000 litres of water a day during the previous twelve month period. As I finished my shower (quickly!!) my mind wandered a bit more and started thinking about how much of our daily life is set to automatic. By allowing our actions, reactions and thoughts to be automatically acted out and formed for us we take decisions and act in ways that are out of context. It prevents us from taking the time to look, hear, feel, smell and touch the moment. To understand its ...

As the days and weeks go by without a solution to the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico my opinions surrounding this latest disaster facing Earth are crystallizing.  I have read articles which have underplayed the oil spill by stating that hurricane Katrina had greater negative impact.  What a bunch of BS. Admittedly, Katrina was a terrible natural disaster.  Approximately 1850 people lost their lives and the damage estimates have been calculated at $81 billion.  But it was a natural disaster.  Of course, man made it worse by building cities in flood plains, below sea-level and not maintaining the protective dykes.  Had man not tried to control the flow of water in the area much less people would have died as the concentration of population would have been lower. The day after the hurricane passed nature was already back in equilibrium and in its more familiar calm steady-state.  For humans the calm would take months and years (and for some it likely ...

It is 14:59 - nope, correction, it is 15:59. I did not adjust my MacBook's clock to the Atlantic time zone. The wind is blowing down from the west-northwest. Veil after veil of rain, pushed along by the wind, are hitting the side of the 120 year-old wood-shingled home and past the window I am looking out of. The fields are wet. If I was in Montreal I would be happy. My manicured lawn and tiny vegetable garden would have received the water they need. But I am not in a suburb of a large city. I am a fifteen minute drive from New Ross, Nova Scotia in an area that has, for all of its existence, been dependent on the weather and nature for its economic survival - not just for its pleasure. This is an area whose economic basis is farming. A great friend of mine has decided to establish himself here. Since I have been here, he and I have been wondering whether the weather would hold up long enough to allow us to prepare his four acres for planting. To ensure that it is eff...

I recommend that you watch the four part series entitled One Ocean. The first three episodes are available here: http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/The_Nature_of_Things Episode 4, the last airs today, the 25th of March and will be available soon after at the same link. Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!

Getting masses to move is not easy. Succeeding in getting politicians to agree is hard work. In both cases it takes a lot of lobbying, of meeting, of convincing, of debating. There is a lot of misinformation that is spread and many exaggerations that are made. Success means that you need to have enough people who are open-minded enough, accepting enough, to change their opinion and swallow their foolish pride to admit they may just have been wrong. Today is World Water Day. Saturday at 8:30 PM Earth Hour will be celebrated. A mere day and hour to try and convince more of the masses that they need to make a difference. Does it really matter and do these events make a difference? Of course, action for a day or an hour has no real direct impact on the issues being raised. By turning your lights off for an hour, tapping yourself on the back and then going back to having your 1000 watts of ceiling pot lights turned on at all times you are not going to make a difference. Centuries ag...

Energy usage, and more importantly, conservation of energy is something that has become much more dear to me over the last few months. It all started with my discovery that the previous owners of our house were using 1007 litres of water per day (see entry ). I found this amazing and disturbing. I am happy to report, by the way, that my family has continued to use considerably less water. We are running at about 640 litres a day though to be honest that still seems incredibly high to me. My belief is that the price I am charged for water ($1 per 1000 litres) is pathetically low and needs to be increased. Thought it will be hard to convince the average Joe of this. I was reading an article in the latest edition of The Suburban (our local newspaper) today. In it a resident of the area is quoted as being "resigned" to paying $300 a year for water. The article leaves the reader with a taste that we are paying too much for residential water. We have a way to go. Anyhow.....

When I was in university majoring in economics I learnt about free goods. These were considered goods that were so abundant that their price was zero. Examples of these goods were considered to be water and air. Fast forward two decades and it seems that, while the concept of a free good still stands, the two examples of air and water no longer do. The downside with free goods is that human nature tends to abuse and waste goods that are considered free. The water tap would be left on and, since the cost of those additional litres of water was considered to be zero, there was little reason to worry about efficiency in water usage. Today many homes still waste thousands of litres of water a month in swimming pools, long showers and green lawns. If people paid $1 a litre you wouldn't see nearly so much waste. So why am I on about this? Over the last week I have been noticing the frivolous news stories that are filed by news media. There seem to be more stories about Olympic a...

My last entry was about the amount of water we consume. The water tax bill that spurred that particular entry had another interesting piece of information which I feel a need to talk about. I found out that the town of Beaconsfield charges its residents $1 per 1000 litres of water consumption. I don't know about you but I find this absurd. In comparison I pay about $1 a litre for gasoline. I pay about $2.20 a litre for organic milk. Bottled water sets me back about $2.00 (and that is for a 500 ml bottle). Compare all of that to one tenth of a penny per litre ($0.001). I also doubt that it costs the city only $1 to deliver 1000 litres to me. Clearly the incentive for people in Beaconsfield to consume less water is not going to come from a financial impact. The town will have to rely on some enlightened and aware citizens that look at their consumption in thousands of litres and, like me, decide that they want to try and make a dent. If Beaconsfield does indeed want to make a...

The house that we moved into this autumn has a water metre installed. A few weeks back we received the water tax bill for the previous year. It showed that the previous owners had consumed 406 cubic metres of water over a 403 day period of time. So slightly more than 1 cubic metre a day. Not being able to relate to cubic metres as a unit of measure I converted this to litres. I was flabbergasted to see that this converted to 406,000 litres - 1007 litres of water per day! I couldn't believe it. My gosh. The nice thing about a metre is that it puts a value in your face. It tells you, directly and immediately, how much water you are using and how much it is costing you. In the 64 days since the last reading the metre has registered another 40 cubic metres of water consumption - 625 litres a day. The good news is that this is considerably lower but says little for sake of comparison yet. The last 64 days have not included any lawn watering. We did change a defective flappe...