Reducing climate change impacts one piece of meat at a time

I grew up in a Taoist society; even though I never understood the religion that well and was never really “religious”.  For a child, it was just part of our culture - we pray so many times a year, especially during Gods’ birthdays, and we (try to) eat vegetarian food on 1st and 15th of each lunar month.  Why two days a month?  I think it’s because most people can’t give up meat and just be a vegetarian…  But being a vegetarian is a good thing, for Taoist it’s to spare lives (of animals).  Now, there’re other reasons to reduce meat consumption!  It’s hard to go cold turkey with meat, but it is not that hard to reduce meat intake - one meal at a time.  Like Earth Hour, it could be something that we participate once a year to once every few months to once a month to more often!  

This is a great article by  Kathy Freston on Huffington Post with very interesting stats about the startling effects of going vegetarian for Just One Day. The stats are for US only.  I assume that the stats is based on the total population of approximately 300 Million.  Canada has roughly 10% of the US population, so it’s easy to do the math:

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would save:

• 100 billion gallons of water, enough to supply all the homes in New England for almost 4 months;
• 1.5 billion pounds of crops otherwise fed to livestock, enough to feed the state of New Mexico for more than a year;
• 70 million gallons of gas — enough to fuel all the cars of Canada and Mexico combined with plenty to spare;
• 3 million acres of land, an area more than twice the size of Delaware;
• 33 tons of antibiotics.

If everyone went vegetarian just for one day, the U.S. would prevent:

• Greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 1.2 million tons of CO2, as much as produced by all of France;
• 3 million tons of soil erosion and $70 million in resulting economic damages;
• 4.5 million tons of animal excrement;
• Almost 7 tons of ammonia emissions, a major air pollutant.

There’re more stats on the original article:

• if every American skipped one meal of chicken per week and substituted vegetarian foods instead, the CO2 equivalent savings would be the same as taking more than half a million cars off of U.S. roads; and
•  switching from standard American diet to a vegan diet is more effective in the fight against global warming than switching from a standard American car to a hybrid.

I propose to establish “vegetarian days” like the Taoists to reflect on our behaviour to the earth and reduce climate change impacts one meal at a time.  What do you say?

2009 Earth Hour Gallery

I looked out of my window in downtown Vancouver and barely noticed anything different… but that doesn’t mean people around the world are the same. I found some cool links for pictures.  I have to say the Las Vegas one is really impressive.

Las Vegas Strip turning off lights at 2009 Earth Hour - amazing!!!! 

EcoWorldly’s “Earth Hour Before and After Images”

Dubai!!

As for my home country Taiwan… she didn’t participate =(.

2009 Vancouver Earth Hour Recap

So the earth hour came and went by rather quickly.  We live in a condo downtown and when we looked out of the window during earth hour, to be honest, I barely noticed any change….  Just as bright as I remember =).  

According to BC Hydro - the province of BC had recorded a 1.1% power consumption reduction.  This is unfortunately lower than last year, where 2% power consumption was reduced.  

Some facts to share:

• Vancouve recorded a power reduction of 1.3%, slightly above average
• Pemberton recorded the highest power reduction - 4.6%
• New Westminster and Richmond had the lowest power reduction - 0.1% and 0.3% respectively
• Amount of energy saved: 72.67MWh, equivalent to powering 2,400 homes for an entire year

What are your thought of earth hour?  There are a lot of (valid) criticism of this activity.  The truth is this is more of a awareness campaign as supposed to an act of actually saving energy.  This is because even though electricity used on the demand side (i.e. after the electricity meter) was decreased, the supply side was unchanged (i.e. before the meter: generation and transmission).  To make it easier to understand - basically even if you have participated in earth hour and turned of the light and have reduced the energy consumption by 72.67MWh, the grid still produced just as much electricity.  So where did the extra electricity go?  You may not want to know but the electricity just got wasted, as there is no current storage facility for the Grid!!

Personally i think it’s a good event - but to make any practical use of it, we need to conserve energy all the time, and not just one hour out of the year!

Earth Hour - vote earth and switch off tonight

Hello world, 

This is one of the biggest events….  Earth Hour!  Please switch off whatever you have from 8:30pm to 9:30pm your time.  

Check out some pictures here!  Some other parts of the world has “‘finished” their earth hours =0)