7.7.07 - Green Toronto Streetfest Rocks Yonge Street

Maybe I just got there too early (not long after noon), but I didn't find this event that impressive. Some of the exhibitors seemed quite unprepared (a bare table with a stack of pamphlets and not much else won't attract much attention to your cause, yo), the screen showing adverts for CTV and Bullfrog Power was more prominently placed (right near the exhibitor booths) than the one screening the actual concert, and the dearth of food vendors was really disappointing.

And why was Yonge closed between Shuter and Queen? Not that I'm complaining about the lack of cars - the more car-free streets, the better - but it just seemed really odd as all of the booths, etc. were set up north of Shuter, so the southern stretch was completely deserted aside from some guy from the Gideons with a table of free bibles.

Greg, yes, I agree about the lack of food! However, I found the exhibits quite fascinating. Sure, some of them had nothing more than a few pamphlets, but then there are lots of smaller, grassroots, volunteer-based environmental organizations who can't afford much more than a bunch of pamphlets. But in addition to those, there were plenty of interactive exhibits, I would say.

<em>My dog Baby is pictured above, hiding under the "Students Against Climate Change" sign. We shared a table with "Canadian Youth Climate Coalition" and Greenpeace, who were promoting the VoteCleanEnergy.ca campaign.

I want to share an incident from the Live Earth streetfest yesterday</em>

Hey, Baby is famous now! :-)

Wow, the incident is appalling! And yeah, talk about the irony of it!

I went to the StreetFest as well and while there were some products and services there that seemed good, it just seemed like a lot of people who were there just don't get it.

The city was showing off one of its Hybrid Electric buses down near Shuter, but they just left it on, idling the whole time.

There were other things there that seemed a bit odd, like "environmentally conscious" companies trying hand me flyers constantly even when they could see me writing down the same information on a piece of paper I already had. To me, the worst offenders was CFTO with their booth near Dundas. They didn't seem to be covering the event, but instead was just there so they could give the impression like they care about <fill in the cause here>. They were handing out little plastic keychains with their logo on it -- nothing better for the environment than little pieces of plastic, made overseas and brought here, and given to people who don't need it and will end up tossing it into the garbage.

Don't get me wrong -- I am happy that the StreetFest even happened and it's a step in the right direction. It's just that there should maybe be an organizer that steps in and takes a look to see if the participants are actually doing something good and not contributing to the problem instead of the solution.

I just came across the reply to the comments from Duncan H and Hans. Duncan H is clearly biased and doesn't understand that the climate crisis calls upon all of us to do more than what we're doing. This is what the peer-review scientific consensus leads us to. He accuses me of a narrow world view; this is a projection. Only the most narrow-minded ideological worldview could reject the conclusions of the world's scientific community as regards the importance of the environmental crisis. Locally, the best thing we can do is conserve energy and urge others to do the same. We need to follow the example of Germany and Norway and California in this regard. As for the second writer, Hans, his dispute with me is in regards to my tactics -- urging people in the store to boycott it because the manager refused to close the doors while the AC was blasting. Dozens of people agreed with me and wrote to Sports Champ with the same message, which prompted the store to eventually close its doors this last summer. Unfortuntately there is no by-law from the City in place to require stores to conserve energy; what this means is that enforcement is left to the consumer. You must have either one: consumer choice or government regulation. Dunca H sounds like a right-wing ideologue so I'm sure he is against regulation; that leaves consumer choice. Boycotts are ways of influencing that choice. They are a perfectly valid method of civic action, undertaken all the time -- they are certainly better than violence, with the store manager resorted to. I note that neither Duncan H nor Hans condemned the violence; do you really think that should permitted in a civil society? Or excessive energy waste during peak hours, which results in brown outs and requires the province to import energy from coal plants in the U.S. Plus the energy we use now deprives people in the future - it is a finite resource. Those coal plants kill people with smog -- in Ontario 1,700 per year. If you don't have a solution to the energy problem, you are saying it's okay to murder people by allowing energy pigs to air condition the out of doors. This is violence to the planet and to human beings. But someone who tries to do something about it is put down and chastised. Get your priorities straight!