I have to admit. It’s nice to know people are reading this blog. And not only that, they’re asking excellent questions.

Joanne and Louise left comments on my Earth Day post, and asked about the environmental impacts of wood-burning as a heating source for rural communities (in Alberta and BC).

Like most questions, there isn’t a clear cut answer (pun intended)! Every fuel source has a significant list of emissions. To its credit, wood is a renewable resource that we’ve been using to cook our food and heat our dwellings since, well, we discovered fire.

The benefits of wood burning is that there is no ‘extraction’ process (like with fossil fuels such as natural gas or oil), you can use how much you need, and you can invest in wood that was harvested sustainably.

Unfortunately, burning wood also has more than its share of health hazards and negative environmental impacts. Fireplaces and wood stoves can emit substantial quantities of pollutants to indoor and outdoor air especially if an inefficient system is used. You have to consider the harmful contaminants in wood smoke, the health effects of wood smoke and the significance of wood smoke emissions.

If you are limited by your surroundings and local options and decide to use wood-burning appliances, high-efficiency wood-burning ones are best. Check to see if the one you have is an advanced combustion system, which can burn up to a third less wood while generating the same amount of heat.

Earth Day is April 22

One of the most common questions I get when I tell people I work for Earth Day Canada is: what do you do the rest of the year?

Yeah I know, hilarious, but it does need to be said that we have five very successful environmental education and action programs that keep us busy year-round. AND we do work extra hard during the month of April helping to coordinate Earth Day events across Canada.

This post however is all about *the day* and how you can get involved. If you live in Toronto or the GTA, come on out and join the staff of Earth Day Canada at Downsview Park this Sunday, April 20. There will be plenty of eco-activities, workshops, musical performances, and treeplanting going on from 11 until 4. Rain or shine.

For a listing of all Earth Day events, and one in your hometown just visit: www.earthday.ca

Happy Earth Day!

I cringe every single time I hear someone say:

Young people are apathetic.

To me, it’s such an inaccurate generalization. Young people are more informed now than ever to what’s going on in the world. In high school, they are organizing events to draw attention to local and international issues; they head up environmental clubs, human rights clubs, and are pushing their schools to do more. True, not *all* are interested in politics, economics and social or environmental issues, but which generation can make that claim?

So it’s time to give credit where credit is due. The next generation of youth are more than ready to take on the task of changing the world.
Last Wednesday, I presented at the Global Youth Forum (GYF) in Waterloo where over 100 environmentally-oriented high school students gathered to attend Generation Green: Cultivating Connections, Creating Change.

The students in my workshop were at different stages of awareness and understanding but all were very bright. When asked to introduce themselves by picking five character traits, I was excited to hear such confident statements as: determined, a realist, a leader by example, and privileged.

That last one really got me. The ability to identify one’s own location in society as privileged, is an exceptional show of self-awareness.

One of the activities in the workshop involved working in small groups and brainstorming. They were asked to identify possible barriers that prevent people from making better environmental choices, and ways that they can spread the message to conserve.

This is what the ‘kids’ said:

Barriers to Making Better Environmental Choices

-Pessimists
- Costs
- Not worth the effort
- Focus on “now” not future
- Ignorant towards issues
- Don’t care – lazy
- Doesn’t effect them
- Dependent on others, not self
- Procrastination
- Blame, excuses
- Think they’re doing enough already
- Inconsistent
- Media/technology

How Do You Get the Message Out?

- Facebook
- Word of mouth
- People at work
- Celebrities, commercials, media
- Talk to people about the little things that they can do
- Focus on the incentives
- Stress how easy it is to change
- Posters/announcements at school
- Lead by example
- Witty t-shirts
- Protests
- Inform people of negative effects
- Boycott companies or products
- Inform yourself, then others

Clearly this group is interested in making a difference and won’t wait around for someone else to take charge. Keep up the good work y’all.

cg

p.s. What would you add to the lists?

Hey there. My name is Cheryl and this is my blog, ecoblogist.

You may be wondering how I came to be an eco-blogger. Well it turns out I never planned to work for an environmental organization. I mean, I always believed that environmental degradation was short-sighted and wrong, and I strongly believe that we do not own nature nor does it serve us. But I never studied environmental issues or sciences formally, so I assumed the work that needed to be done was the realm of ecologists.

I guess you could say I had a green ‘aha’ moment.

It came during conversations with my father in early 2006 when he was sick with cancer. During this time, he became very passionate about people needing to take individual responsibility and hold leaders accountable for perpetuating cycles of consumption and destruction.

It was then that I realized the cancer my father was dying from was not an isolated illness but a symptom of our collective environmental health. What is in the air we breathe, the food we eat, the computers we sit at, the pillows we sleep on? And what can we do about it?

Many have said our planet is sick and going to get sicker. I understand this way of thinking but I don’t believe the future is, or has to be, bleak. In a very short time, we’ve raised our collective consciousness, and more people are talking about solutions every day. And isn’t that what needs to happen? The conversations and the work must be done by everyone. Regular working people and professionals in all fields are finding their inner ecologist because if they don’t, who will?

So my first post was about my aha moment. I’m curious, what was yours?

cg