Archives June 2018

Petition Update: Travel Advisories

Update below went out to signatories today. I am sharing it here as well. Petition link: https://you.leadnow.ca/petitions/ensure-fair-travel-advisories-for-the-middle-east . Please help me by sharing, spreading the word and supporting this important issue. Let’s use our voice to build global communities of peace, justice and cooperation, and counter the negative rhetoric coming from so many places recently.
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Hello all,
I started two petitions at the same time – this and another one. The other one (related to school funding in Ontario), has over 600 signatures and growing. For some reason, I have had trouble getting momentum started on this one. However, I do not want to close it, and I believe that it has significant value.
Despite the widely different travel advisories, the BBC reported recently on a Gallup poll which found that people felt safer in Egypt than in the US or the UK. “The survey placed Egypt 16th out of 135 countries, while the UK was 21st and the US 35th.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-44467975.
In this era, building positive relationships between countries has never been more important, and unnecessary travel advisories are very damaging.
So, please help me build momentum on this important issue. Sign and share in your circles. Thank you! 🙂

Gov't of Canada Petition: Re Fossil Fuels, Pipelines and Climate Goals

“We, the undersigned, residents of Canada, call upon the Government of Canada to immediately halt any plans to purchase the Trans Mountain pipeline or otherwise support its expansion”:  https://petitions.ourcommons.ca/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-1722
In order to ensure that Canada meets or exceeds previously agreed upon Paris climate commitments, please consider signing and sharing this petition to the federal government.  Full details on the petition page. Thank you! 🙂

"Avoiding meat and dairy is ‘single biggest way’ to reduce your impact on Earth"

“Biggest analysis to date reveals huge footprint of livestock – it provides just 18% of calories but takes up 83% of farmland”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/31/avoiding-meat-and-dairy-is-single-biggest-way-to-reduce-your-impact-on-earth 
Further data on the impact of animal farming in terms of climate impacts. Lots of key points – I’ll highlight just a few here.  There seem to be lots of other articles covering the same study, if you want to read further. 🙂
Leaves me wondering – if this kind of data had been available 30-50 years ago, how might that have changed how many of us grew up viewing food? When I was younger, I never specifically thought that I would end up plant-based, but I also never had this kind of data available to add into the assessment. Once I became more aware of the environmental implications, I made adjustments accordingly. So, what kinds of ways can be found to help people get excited about plant-based eating? How might this kind of data help drive positive change? How quickly might things change? Will things reach a tipping point at some time in the future? I have noticed a definite shift in the last 5 years, but there is a long ways to go. 🙂

The scientists also found that even the very lowest impact meat and dairy products still cause much more environmental harm than the least sustainable vegetable and cereal growing.

 

The study, published in the journal Science, created a huge dataset based on almost 40,000 farms in 119 countries and covering 40 food products that represent 90% of all that is eaten. It assessed the full impact of these foods, from farm to fork, on land use, climate change emissions, freshwater use and water pollution (eutrophication) and air pollution (acidification).

 

Prof Tim Benton, at the University of Leeds, UK, said: “This is an immensely useful study. It brings together a huge amount of data and that makes its conclusions much more robust. The way we produce food, consume and waste food is unsustainable from a planetary perspective. Given the global obesity crisis, changing diets – eating less livestock produce and more vegetables and fruit – has the potential to make both us and the planet healthier.”