I love my green TV

 

I caught a couple of very entertaining green shows on HGTV last weekend. Both — Eco House Challenge and No Waste Like Home — are about families trying to live in a more environmentally aware way.

Eco House Challenge pits two Australian families against each other to see who can be the greenest, and the results are hilarious. It kicks off with each family losing — for 24 hours — their water, electricity, garbage cans and cars.

The family with the dad who is ex-Army is totally gung-ho, rigging up water collectors in the backyard to get water to flush their toilets and heading on the local bus to the beach to swim instead of taking showers.

The other family is devastated when they can’t use one of their many cars to drive their 11-year-old son to his birthday party. They call a taxi and have a hissy fit when it shows up 45 minutes late and much too small for all of them (heard of public transit???) Their teenaged daughter sits in the backyard swinging a hula hoop and complaining about having to unlearn everything she’s learned in her whole life — like relying on electricity and hot showers. The teenaged son complains that he can’t drive to meet his friends for drinks.

There was also a lot of complaining on the first episode of No Waste Like Home, where British environmentalist Penny Poyzer visits a family and gets them to give up their polluting ways. In this one, the family kept their thermostat at a whopping 28 degrees Celsius inside the house, the children dressed in beach clothes year round. The mother nearly had a nervous breakdown when she had to cut in half the number of loads of laundry she does each week and switch from hot to cold water to wash them. Don’t get her going on the texture of the towels that dried on the clothesline instead of in the dryer! On the upside, they managed to save 420 pounds in the two weeks that they followed Poyzer’s plans.

HGTV is also rebroadcasting Living with Ed, where actor Ed Begley Jr. and his wife Rachelle fight about his green lifestyle. She’s an actress who wants a Hollywood monster home while he’s the kind of guy who powers his toaster in the morning by hopping on an electricity-producing bike on his balcony. I liked the concept but found the bickering spouses boring.

 You can catch all three shows on HGTV on Sunday nights beginning at 6:30 p.m.

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Oh, the guilt

Our worst offending anti-Earth behaviour must be driving our minivan. With five people in the family, it’s a handy way to get from here to there. Still, you can’t argue that it’s environmentally friendly.

My husband was kind enough to remind me of the damage our driving does after a recent shopping trip to the West Island. Heading for Joe Fresh, the mini-clothing boutique located inside a few select Maxi stores in Quebec, we racked up 70 km round trip. I tried to argue that we did our grocery shopping at the same time, so really, it was two trips, not one, but he didn’t seem convinced.

The next day I decided we should take public transit to a doctors’ appointment for our kids at the Jewish General Hospital. It’s a 13-km round trip from our house, and one that lately has been incredibly aggravating. On-street parking is practically non-existent there unless you want to park six long blocks away, and I usually have at least two kids in tow, that’s not a fun walk. I’ve been late for our appointments lately as I circle the hospital, prowling for a parking spot.

So we all hopped on the bus, at a total cost of about $10 round trip, which was less than we would have paid for parking, never mind gas. The only drag was that it took took us nearly 45 minutes to get there and 45 minutes more to get back. Even though I find the bus relaxing (if it’s not overcrowded), I felt like I really don’t have an hour and 30 minutes to blow sitting on the STM’s finest.

Still, I am going to try to leave the car home more often and switch to the BMW – bus, metro, walk. Oh and the train. I love the AMT commuter trains. Now sitting on that train with a good book in hand, and a tasty piece of chocolate would be a fun way to spend 90 minutes.

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Passing the Puck

I’m taking a tip from former US Vice President Al Gore and looking to the future. While chastizing his own country’s (and Canada’s) position at the Bali climate-change conference last week, he told the rest of the world to press on with serious steps to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Referring to hockey players Bobby Hull and Wayne Gretzky, Gore said the world should not wait for the US.

“One of the most famous ice-hockey players in history was asked the secret of why he was so good,” Gore said in this story from The Canadian Press.

“He was the best passer in the history of the game, Bobby Hull. Others might disagree (and say) Wayne Gretzky.”

“And he said in response to the question: ‘I don’t pass the puck to where they are – I pass the puck to where they’re going to be’.”

“Over the next two years, the United States is going to be somewhere it is not now. You must anticipate that.”

So, I’m going with Gore. Maybe our current government doesn’t want to take drastic steps to cut our country’s greenhouse gas emissions. But our family can try.

For 2008, our family is going green. We’re going to reduce our carbon footprint, keep up some new waste-reduction habits we began last year, and do what we can to be ready for when the Canadian government starts doing some serious stick handling on climate change.

Stay tuned to Just One Thing to read about our ecological adventures.

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I go on Mat Leave and look what happens

Two years ago, with wicked morning sickness, I covered the United Nations Conference on Climate Change. Then-environment Minister Stéphane Dion was the chair, Montreal was the host city, and Canada was the belle of the ball. Prime Minister Paul Martin swooped in and gave the Americans a talking-to about what many at the conference considered their backward stance on the Kyoto Protocol and its plans to tackle worldwide climate change. Despite its growing greenhouse-gas emissions, Canada was lauded for brokering a deal to move Kyoto and its climate-change management forward despite American objections.

On more than one occasion during that week, environment groups and other non-governmental organizations (or NGOs as they were more simply referred to) dubbed the American contingent the Fossil of the Day, criticizing them for refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol. This time, in Bali, it’s Canada’s turn to be fossilized.

Now that Australia has a new prime minister, and has decided to ratify Kyoto, Canada has few allies in its position that all countries — developed and developing — must agree to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions at the same time.

This week, the UN’s top climate-change diplomat, in what is considered a highly undiplomatic move, said: “I personally find it interesting to hear Canada just a little while ago indicating it would not meet its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol and now calling on developing countries to take binding reduction targets.”

The Gazette’s Janet Bagnall has an interesting column on Canada’s actions in Bali here.

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