Eco-fair ambush

Posted on October 30, 2011 by ottawaowl


If the CBC could ambush Rob Ford in his Toronto driveway then approaching Elizabeth May as she left the Bells Corners Eco-fair was no big deal.

The Green Party leader wanted to take the bike-taxi to the airport, but opted for a motorized vehicle running on used cooking oil to save time.

cars for sale in front of the church

Is “98 km per gallon” a marketing ploy? Why not litres per 100 km, the usual measuring stick?

Volunteers gathered large amounts of electronic waste for recycling.

There were dozens of displays and lots of interesting people to talk to.

Ecology Ottawa

These people from OneChange were giving out “blue dots” so you can find out if you have a leaky toilet, which apparently 20% of us do.

This local travel agent had some interesting ideas on sustainable travel.

making mats and other useful products for the third world out of recycled milk bags


local green guru





There was something for everyone at the Bells Corners Eco-fair – hope it happens again next year. The Bells Corners United Church is to be congratulated for putting on such a great community event. I was very impressed by the quality and quantity of the exhibits, the workshops, the excellent organization, the 100-mile lunch and the many passionate people.

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2 Responses to Eco-fair ambush

  1. wanderer says:
    October 30, 2011 at 12:24 pm

    Sorry we missed it – but the Hawaiian Cruise was much more relaxing { :>)

    Reply
  2. ottawaowl says:
    October 30, 2011 at 8:55 pm

    Green leader draws parallel between climate change, slavery
    Elizabeth May headlines ecofair in Bells Corners
    Nevil Hunt, OttawaThisWeek

    Green leader speaks in Bells Corners. Federal Green party leader Elizabeth May brought a message of sustainability and hope to an ecological fair at Bells Corners United Church on Oct. 29.

    May called climate change, “a moral and ethical crisis on the scale of slavery,” during her keynote address to about 100 people.

    “What made slavery hard to ban was the economics,” May said. “It was free energy; it couldn’t be beat.”

    May injected a large dose of humour and preached optimism while delivering what can be a disheartening message about the planet.

    She said the media’s standard description of the choice facing humans is between jobs and the environment.

    “That’s an interesting way to describe the future of humanity,” May said. “There are no jobs on a dead planet. Take a look at Venus: there’s not a lot of jobs there.”

    May said the real choice is between a sustainable, peaceful world and one where nations fight over the last scraps of food, water and resources.

    CARBON TAX

    May said her priorities are to stop subsidizing fossil fuels and to start charging a carbon tax. She said that since the invention of the automobile, people have benefitted from a “one-time-only, limited offer,” namely easy access to non-renewable fossil fuels.

    “This has allowed a period of luxury, with advances and progress, but we’ve come to the end of it.”

    May said the decline of conventional oil capacity is making sources such as Alberta’s oil sands more attractive, despite the fact it wastes a lot of energy to extract the oil from the rock.

    Burning fossil fuels has resulted in climate change, which has triggered other changes, such as retreating ice caps, melting permafrost and warmer weather that allows insects such as the pine beetle to survive our winters.

    She called those developments “positive feedback loops,” because each action may cause the process to accelerate. Eventually the damage could reach a tipping point, where human intervention won’t be able to reverse the effects.

    May used the melting ice caps as an example, saying that as the ice melts, there is less white ice to reflect the heat of the sun from the Earth’s surface, and more blue sea to absorb the heat. That may result in further warming of the planet and more ice melt.

    May said the removal of subsidies for fossil fuels paired with a carbon tax would mean people and industry would pay the true price of fuels.

    “The game is rigged,” she said. “We subsidize the bad energy sources and charge full price for the things we need to use.”

    In response to a question from the audience, May said she always assumes MPs are “primarily decent human beings,” although some may be hard-core climate change deniers. She said she is trying to convince all 308 MPs “one at a time.”

    “Most are willing to talk,” she said, adding she has found Prime Minister Stephen Harper “very hard to reach.”

    May’s hope is that people – including Conservative MPs – realize the current situation isn’t sustainable. She said Conservative MPs don’t have to speak publicly about their support for green initiatives.

    “Where they need to speak is at their caucus meetings,” May said. “We do not have time for partisanship on this.”

    Reply

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