Environment
Green Report Card Highlights Smog
Toronto 'The Green', an environmental report card, was released today by the Toronto Environmental Alliance.
At a (sparsely populated) press conference in City Hall, the group focused on highlighting what they called the most significant issue facing the city: smog. Even though they give the City a B+ for efforts to reduce smog in 2008, they point out that many of the cities plans in this regard are not being given high profile and therefore risk failure from inaction. And after all, the state of global warming has turned out to be "worse than the worst case scenario" (okay I couldn't leave out mention of that somewhat dubious claim - but most of what they had to say was pretty solid).
The report highlights councilors' voting records by grading them based all the "key votes" that have taken place since 2006. Note that all of these initiatives passed with at least a two-thirds majority, backing up the TEA's claim that this is "the greenest council yet."
The overall message seems to be that even the greenest City council can't get the work done at the ground level. I agree that plans like the Green Economic Development Strategy are implemented too far from the City Manager, where priorities are decided.
This report adds to another report card by the Toronto Star published back in December.
Photo by boukesalverda, member of the blogTO flickr pool.
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"Even though they give the City a B+ for efforts to reduce smog in 2008 they say point out many of the cities plans in this regard are not being given a high profile and risk failure from inaction."
I call brutality on the author's use of the English language.
And this is passable analysis? "I agree that plans like the Green Economic Development Strategy are implemented too far from the City Manager, where priorities are decided."
Such lazy writing is beneath BlogTO.
Car owners in the province must pay (out of their own pockets) to get emission tests which over 90% pass.
The city has no real manufacturing companies in the city as the taxes forced them out of town, therefore no pollution from the city.
Bad reporting from the media when they see morning or evening haze and proclaim it's pollution!!! Ugh.
As for global warming, I doubt blogto would appreciate I add a link here, but this headline was in the Edmonton Journal just last week, March 17.
"Global warming's no longer happening
So why are eco types moaning about record highs while ignoring record lows?"
Leave us alone green people (aliens?). The air pollution and global warming has nothing to do with Toronto. If you bother us again, you must pay a 'carbon' tax to the city for blowing all your hot air.
I am the person who made the comment at the press conference yesterday about the new "worst case scenario" for global warming. It is based on the most current science on global warming. Just over 10 days ago, Sir Nicholas Stern, a former world bank economist who wrote a definitive report on the costs of global warming, commented on these new studies (see http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/lord-stern-on-global-warming-its-even-worse-than-i-thought-1643957.html.)
Near the end of the article the author states:
"A central assumption of the 2006 Stern Report was global temperatures would rise by between 2C and 3C over the current century if nothing was done to counter global warming.
Stern also mentioned the possibility of a 4C rise.
Yesterday, Stern said 4C, 5C, 6C and even 7C degree rises were a real possibility by the end of the 21st century, taking the world into new territory - agriculture would be destroyed and life impossible in many areas."
Stern is simply reflecting the most recent science on global warming which says the worst case scenario is now the most likely outcome (see http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/09/poznan-copenhagen-global-warming-targets-climate-change)
If we don't change current practices, things will only get worse making "the worst case scenario" the new best case scenario. That is very scary.