14 February 2007

I'm a 'Green Journalist' and Didn't Even Know It

The blogosphere is a strange place, perusing my sitemeter I noticed a link from Green Living Magazine, a Toronto based group of concerned citizens (to my post (with an update, just in case I get any visitors from there) about the Grammys and their choices in vehicles).

I'm #14 on Tuesday, February 13th's links for EcoFashion.

Yes, my mind is blown as well.

I don't know, if I were Canadian, I'd be all for global warming.

First, Canada has the world's largest reserve of fresh water (Russia might make an argument against that claim, but they've polluted so much of what they have, that I doubt anyone would buy what they might be able to sell), and if the dire predictions about global warming are true, then fresh water will be a sought after commodity, more so than even oil today.

Second, wouldn't the Frozen North benefit from being the slightly less Frozen North?

Their Western Provinces would supplant our Great Plains as 'world's breadbasket' (again only if the worst of the worst projections are true).

Also, on top of that, by any calculation you want to make, on a per capita basis, Canadians are the least green folks on the planet.

They use more electricity per person, more oil per person, and therefore have the largest 'carbon footprint' on a per person basis of any other nationality on the planet (including us here in the USA!). At just over 16,000 kWh per person (Americans consume slightly over a piddling (compared to Canadians) 12,000 kWh per person), that nation of around 33M folks consumes nearly as much electricity as India with 1B folks (522 B kWh in Canada compared to 587 B kWh in India, the whole list of electrity consumption ranked top to bottom, here) And like the USA, they get little of their power from the only truly green and currently technically feasible energy source that can be adapted to a variety of locations, and that's nuclear power (I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the greenest green is the green glow of nuclear energy). Granted, Canadians get some power from clean hydro-electric sources, but hydro-electric energy doesn't come without its own host of environmental costs as well (dams are hell on fisheries no matter how you set them up). But to put it in perspective, Canadians are just .5% of the world's population, but Canada uses 3.2% of the world's energy consumption.

Way to go, Canada!

Hope I didn't make you concerned Canadians faint away with the vapors with this post, though while passed out, you should at least be exhaling slightly less CO2 than normal, so consider that my contribution to limiting the damage done by runaway global warming.

2 comments:

James Aach said...

You might find this an interesing link if you'd like an entertaining layman's tour of nuclear power in the U.S. Incidentally, nuclear fuel typcially gives off a blue glow (rather than green).

RadDecision.blogspot.com

bill said...

Aach must do blog searches for posts about nuclear energy. He's left me a comment and a link before: link