People Speak Out On Global Warming

Farts, burps and our future
By GREG WESTON

OTTAWA -- In an effort to stimulate debate on global warming, we recently asked readers to take the 200-megatonne challenge: How exactly should Canada reduce Canadian-made greenhouse gas emissions that are helping to heat up the planet, the recent sub-human winter deep-freeze notwithstanding?

To help readers find 200-million tonnes a year in greenhouse gas reductions -- Canada's target under the Kyoto protocol -- we provided a list of some of the biggest Canadian emitters, from the belching smokestacks of the country's coal-fired electrical generating plants to the tailpipes of farting farm animals.

The point of the piece was ultimately to illustrate the hard choices confronting scientists and legislators in trying to clear the air on global warming.

As always, our readers came up with some illuminating ideas, from putting the screws to industry and consumers to keeping our heads in the clouds and ignoring the whole issue. Here are some of the responses we received.

First prize for the most elaborate submission came from Michael Ash of Grand Bend, Ont., who sent us a detailed spreadsheet of possible emission reductions in different sectors. His suggestions included a 30% cut in home heating through more efficient technologies; A 26% cut in emissions from the oil and gas sector, including the oil sands ("Let the energy sector bear its fair share of the burden; they can afford it"); and burning garbage to produce energy.

Anne Wilkings suggests a potential path to eco-salvation which, coincidentally, suddenly seems to be in big favour with the current Conservative government: Go nuke. As she notes, Canada could cut man-made greenhouse emissions by almost a third by building nuclear reactors to replace oil, gas and coal in electrical generation, and for heating and processing the Alberta tar sands.

Ray Temmerman of Winnipeg suggests replacing payroll taxes with increased government levies on non-renewable energy. "We might pay, say, $5 a litre for gasoline ... but we would exercise our choice as consumers, from driving our Humvee to work to walking. Depending on the choices we made, we might have more or less money overall in our pockets at the end of the year -- but the choice would have been ours."

Lane Myers of Kingston, N.S., says all those opinion polls showing public concern for the environment should instead be asking how much Canadians would be willing to sacrifice to help save Mother Earth. "I recently visited Toronto and was amazed to see how many four-wheel-drive SUVs people own in a city that hardly has any snow ... How many (people) would willingly move to car pools or public transit?"

Gary Cooper of Peterborough, Ont., suggests cutting fuel consumption of garbage trucks by piling our household trash with a neighbour's for pick-up (reducing stops and starts by half), and by crushing cans and plastic bottles before pitching them in the recycling box.

Al Roffey recommends concentrating more on energy demand than supply, saying conservation would go a long way to reducing Canada's contribution to global warming -- specifically, throwing the switch on unnecessary lighting and other wasted electricity consumption; and obeying speed limits for all cars and trucks.

On the flip side of the global warming issue, we got plenty of missives from readers who think the controversy over greenhouse gasses is all a lot of Kyoto hokum.

Brian in Ottawa writes: "I think you could have added that even if Canada met its Kyoto targets (for reducing greenhouse gas emissions), the odds are significant that it would have no effect on global average temperatures ... I often wonder if 20 years from now, global warming will be seen in the same light as the 1970s belief in the coming ice age, and the Y2K scare."

Finally, Derek Holmedal, a western farmer, wants to set straight "another dumb easterner" (that would be me) on the science of farting cattle warming the Earth. Seems we may have been making a big stink about the wrong end of the right animal.

Forget farmyard flatulence, he says. The big gas bags are burping bovines, stupid. Phew.