All posts by stephanie

Great response from Toronto – I would suggest that this should be much broader. Why does anybody in any city/country need a gun? If the provincial and federal governments support Toronto, they why not support wider bans? In my opinion, nobody has the right to own/access weapons, regardless of where you live or what the intended purpose is. I struggle to think of any cases where people genuinely need guns, and couldn’t manage just fine with a safer option. Fewer or no guns will always, as far as I am concerned, be better than more guns. I’m excited to see where this could lead. 🙂
https://m-huffingtonpost-ca.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/m.huffingtonpost.ca/amp/2018/07/25/john-tory-toronto-shooting-gun-control-us_a_23489571/
 

I always love to see when things like this are tested and proven. I’ve never really understood the value of really long work weeks, and value work-life balance for myself and others. Hopefully this will help to nudge others towards greater balance – for individuals, companies, NGOs and others. 🙂
Thoughts?
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Work less, get more: New Zealand firm’s four-day week an ‘unmitigated success’
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/19/work-less-get-more-new-zealand-firms-four-day-week-an-unmitigated-success?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_WordPress

Please sign and share the petition below. Thank you! 🙂
https://www.change.org/p/doug-ford-keep-ontario-s-current-sex-ed-curriculum 

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/07/12/ontario-electric-car-rebate-cancelled_a_23480717/
This decision must be reversed. There is no way that a decision to take funds away from clean energy to support dirty energy can ever be justified, especially in this era, when climate change action is critically needed.

Every year, the federal government and some provinces pay billions in hand-outs to Canada’s coal, oil and gas companies, undermining climate action in Canada. Fossil fuel subsidies to producers total $3.3 billion annually, which amounts to paying polluters $19/tonne to pollute. These subsidies drastically undercut the goal of the pan-Canadian carbon price that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will introduce in 2018. It’s time to stop these harmful and counter-productive subsidies.
BOLD above added by me.
https://environmentaldefence.ca/report/the-elephant-in-the-room-canadas-fossil-fuel-subsidies/

Let’s send a clear message to all levels of government – and especially to Ford. Fossil fuel subsidies need to be dropped immediately, and clean energy support needs to be reinstated, and strengthened. Let’s show the world what Canada stands for. 🙂

Ireland becomes world’s first country to divest from fossil fuels
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/12/ireland-becomes-worlds-first-country-to-divest-from-fossil-fuels?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_WordPress
Great news from Ireland! Clearly, other countries must follow – the morally, environmentally and economically sound choice is rapid fossil fuel divestment. No place for any fossil fuel investments in this era. This is a message that the Canadian and American governments, among others, need to hear loud and clear. 🙂

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! 🙂

“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.”

For ‘Columbiners,’ School Shootings Have a Deadly Allure https://nyti.ms/2H3Kahb
Interesting correlation between historical events and more current school shootings in the US. Seems to confirm the idea that the cycle is escalating – which means that it will take a huge amount of work to turn it around. Hopefully that happens soon.
I can’t imagine living with this kind of status quo – seems almost incomprehensible to me. I’ve lived in places with safety risks, but it never felt as random or unpredictable or awful as regular mass shootings in schools and other places.
Naturally, these young men need social support etc to help them thrive and achieve their full potential. However, at the same time, it seems like nobody is talking about the fact that a bad stretch for a 15 year old will pass, if they are given strong support systems – about the only thing that can turn it into a tragedy most quickly is easy access to automatic weapons, combined with a cultural notion that solutions lie in violence, instead of doing the hard work of restoring and building relationships. That applies for the individuals, but also for society as a whole – when military solutions are glorified in the media, is it any surprise that individual violence is glorified in the same way for some people?
Perhaps the solution is at all levels – reign in the military, put the funds towards better schools and resources for youth, implement a massive gun control/buy-back/education effort, and reframe problem solving to something more positive than what is currently in place.
The alternative is to maintain the status quo, and I can’t imagine how much longer that can go on before people start to simply leave the country – Canada is always here for anybody who wants lots of maple syrup, universal health care and no guns. 🙂

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberals-trans-mountain-pipeline-kinder-morgan-1.4681911
Just saw this breaking news from CBC, and I am incredibly disappointed and discouraged by our federal government. This project belongs in the past, not the future. Any fossil fuel company must know that their business model is rapidly coming to and end, and they will need to face the losses that come from refusing to modernize, and join the carbon-neutral future.
If the company faces lost revenue from refusing to go carbon-neutral, they why would the government bail them out? Why would the government think that they can make money or find investors, using taxpayer funds, when a ruthless, for-profit company was not able to? How is this possibly good use of $4.5 billion dollars of tax payer money?
This is not an investment in the future – it’s holding us to a version of the past that is no longer relevant or appropriate. Let’s send a message to the government to put this money towards a transition to a clean, green economy, and meet/exceed our Paris climate commitments. Call or email your MP today, as well as the PM and other departments, and let them know that we expect them to walk away from this project and create a clean future for everybody.