Recycling?

Living in a big building and looking out on five huge bins for pick on the street below, I’m well aware of how much stuff I and my fellow apartment dwellers are throwing out in god faith that it matters. Yale Climate Connections recently exposed a few myths:

• Just putting stuff in the recyling bin - even when following local guidelines - does not guarantee that recycling happens. Much of it still ends up in the garbage. To make it worse, the triangular symbol for recycling isn’t trademarked and anyone can use it.

• Recycling is not the best thing we can do. Three things that would be better are: not driving a car, not flying somewhere, and not eating red meat. It also wouldn’t hurt to vote for the party that cares the most about the environment. The last one here probably hurts the least and matters the most.

• Reduce, re-using and recycling are not equally beneficial. The first two are much more valuable.

• Not everyone can recycle - and some have bigger priorities - for example indigenous communities trying to keep oil rigs or coal plants off their land

• Education is weak about the impacts. There is very different experiences for those who have to live near land fill sites. We all need to be educated re greenwashing and call it when it happens.

Promises?

I’ve been away from writing here for some time since I am working on other projects. Nevertheless I feel compelled to share some things to watch at the coming COP28 Climate summit from an article in the Guardian. the Cop28 president, Sultan Al Jaber, is the CEO of the UAE’s state oil company, Adnoc. He contends that only someone in the fossil fuel industry can call the others to account.

He is also head of a renewables company. But here are some of the problems:

• Adnoc has a terrible record in reducing emissions. They have huge expansion plans.

• The United Arab Emirates also fail to report methane emissions for almost a decade.

• The industries spend their profits on new exploration. It is clear that new resources become much more challenging to find - and getting them out of the ground costs energy in the process. That means our costs will rise to help them stay in business.

• Renewables can’t come fast enough to save us, if they don’t change to renewables themselves.

So we can watch this rather bizarre scenario and see what happens!

Undiplomatic

António Guterres came to the job as Secretary of the United Nations after, among other things, serving as the Prime Minister of Portugal. Usually such leaders learn to be diplomatic. As Bill McKibben observes, he abandons when it comes to talking to fossil fuel providers on climate change. Here are some examples:

“We must end the merciless, relentless, senseless war on nature.” He adds

• We need disruption to end the destruction.

• No more baby steps.

• No more excuses.

• No more greenwashing.

• No more bottomless greed of the fossil fuel industry and its enablers.

• Your core product is our core problems.

Among his fellow straight talkers are Pope Francis Al Gore and McKibbon himself. But my local daily newspapers didn’t join them this weekend. There were marches all over the world, including Toronto asking for the end of fossil fuels. The morning news today contained nary a story nor a photo in print or on screen. Our own party leaders seem not to be undiplomatic - but silent. It’s small wonder that the young roll their eyes at us,

Report Card

The Parish Agreement 2015 was the best one to date on climate change. I still remember the enthusiasm of one person I know on his return from the COP Conference compared to previous ones he attended. There is a great story in the book, Not Too Late called “How the Ants Moved the Elephants in Paris”.

The Climate Vulnerable Form was formed in 2009 and composed of the countries who stand to lose the most from climate change. While rich countries wanted global warming limited to 2 degrees centigrade, in the long term, it meant that the vulnerable would still lose their right to food, health, shelter, and water. They asked for an increase of 1.5 degrees. Everyone would have to work on carbon reduction - and the largest countries would have to work better and faster. One hundred countries had supported them, but the recommendation hadn’t made it into the proposed final goal.

The CVF broke into action - having the Eiffel Tower light up with the the goal “1.5C” and a statement read into the record, which ended , “The parties which stand in the way of recommending a sound decision base on the information available will be remembered by the children of today for the failure of Paris, and we will shout it to the rooftops.” Eventually even Saudi Arabia chimed in and agreed.

It is now 2023 and heading into the next COP conference soon. The most recent report commends what has been done. We can take a minute to rejoice that the rise of greenhouse gases as slowed. In 2015, we were then on track for a rise of 4C degrees if we did nothing. Then we have to face that it is not enough. By 2100, we had reduced the pace to 3 degrees Celsius. Many countries have made promises - largely still on paper. If these are followed through, the predictions are a rise of 2-2.4C by 2100. That takes us back to the fears of the CVF as the real scenario.

The Climate Action Tracker has been created to measure our progress. SCroll down on the tracker to find out progress. Here are Canada’s for the year 2050:

• Our policies and action: Highly insufficient. We’re contributing to a future 4 dgree world

• Our target: almost sufficient for a 2 degree world

• Our target against taking our fair share - insufficient for a less than 3 degree world

• Financing climate change - Highly insufficent.

  Our overall score: Highly insufficient.

  Get angry if you like. But act. Elect people who support the right policies and get the right people on the bus. Keep the wrong people off it. This applies anywhere you have a say - with government, with corporations, in communities and community groups. We have voices. We need to raise them.

Doing it Right

The Washington Post recently published an article about a poll that asked the best ways for our individual actions to tackle climate change. It states that most of us get it wrong.

These were the items in order that people polled in the USA thought were the best ones:

• Installing solar panels

• Recycling

• Driving an electric car

• Taking fewer plane trips

• Using a heat pump for air conditioning an heating

• Choosing an electric stove over a gas one

• Living in a smaller house or apartment

• Not eating meat

• Driving more slowly

• Not eating dairy

I wanted to see how I scored.

• Estimating the value of recycling: I do it, but I know that most of the things discarded end up in landfill. I’m trying to reduce my use of plastics by paying more for containers in glass, but I still have far too much garbage. I live in an apartment with a gas stove installed so I can take no credit there. I drive slowly in town only and not often, though the grandchildren borrow the car for trips Nevertheless, the experts say these are not climate solutions in any case, and they don’t make much difference.

• The best steps were flying less and cutting out meat and dairy. I win on the first flying only twice since the end of 2019 - but I lose on the second two = perhaps I eat less of both than previously, but that is more a factor of age than choice. The article says, “Project Drawdown estimates that if three-quarters of people around the world adopted a plant-rich diet by 2050, they could avoid the release of more than 100 gigatons of emissions.” What is noticeable here is how small individual actions have a huge collective impact - but they do have to be collective.

• The winner for both the experts and the people is solar panels. I don’t have a choice on that one personally, but I can be an advocate for them.

• Some of the other items are proportionate to size. If everyone did an energy audit and responded. there would be some true benefit.

• Our most important action is at the ballot box to vote for climate friendly policies and monitor them in between elections. I get a B plus, I guess, for writing to the premier of Ontario to protest his opening up environmentally protected land for housing. Our combined protests have at least led to the firing of a chief of staff and a resignation of a cabinet minister. Our task is not over.

But neither is our need to reduce our carbon footprint when it is one of the largest in the world. Every choice we make enhances that world or diminishes it.