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True Green Report
Sustainability, a la Maurice Strong
March 22, 2004
At a recent gathering of engineers, UN Poster Boy and Kyoto architect Maurice Strong was asked whether nuclear energy was the solution to sustainability.
Strong replied that "No energy source on earth is sustainable--not even wind. With wind pollution, you have visual pollution."
Wouldn’t it follow then that Strong’s whole notion on sustainability is flawed? If no source of energy meets its sustainability definition, then sustainability is not attainable, no?
PETA sent home from school
PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) needs to go back to grade school to learn how to deal with children. First PETA activists were forced to flee the schoolyard when a group of school children hosed them down with milk during a British anti-milk protest. Now it’s the Battle of the Chickens.
It seems that PETA ruffled some feathers when its members handed out chicken-themed trading cards to children after school.
PETA reps were dressed for the part, (including a person who turned out in a 2.5-metre-tall chicken costume) and were passing out "Chicken Chumps" trading cards to students in Fort Wayne, Ind. The cards showed unhappy-looking children with such names as "Cruel Kyle", eating chicken.
Carol Mills, who walks her children home from the school everyday, questioned PETA’s tactics. "How mature are these people to come harass elementary school kids because they eat chicken nuggets?" she said. "Are they serious?"
School board secretary Joe Olinger said an elementary school was the wrong place for PETA to spread its message. "I think it’s pathetic that they’re aiming a political message at eight, -nine-, 10-, 11-year-olds," he said.
PC boom:
Your home computer worse than gas-guzzling SUV
Forget about the family SUV, the United Nations is now after your computer and monitor.
The manufacture of an average desktop computer and monitor uses more than 10 times its weight in fossil fuels and chemicals, the UN has decided. Now that computers have become the enemy, a United Nations University (UNU) study is calling for worldwide action to halt "the growth of high-tech trash".
If you look upon your PC as an educational tool for your brood of youngsters, or as a means of keeping in touch with your grandchildren, overseas, UNU sees it as "high-tech trash" that can be put out with the garbage.
The recently released UNU study shows that the construction of an average 24-kilogram computer and 27-centimetre monitor requires at least 230 kilograms, 22 kilograms of chemicals and 1,5000 kilograms of water–or 1.8 tons in total, the equivalent of a rhinoceros or sports utility vehicle. We all know how precious water is, and how according to UN advocates like Maurice Strong, water will be so scarce it will require armed guards to transport it by the year 2025.
The report, which delved into the environmental impact of the information technology revolution, concluded that computer manufacturing is much more "materials-intensive" than making a car or a refrigerator, which need only one or two times their weight in fossil fuels.
More than 130 million computers are being sold each year now, and "today it is hard to imagine life without one of these indispensable 21st century tools", Eric Williams, one of the co-editors of the UNU study said. "But it is exactly because they have become so ubiquitous that we must be aware of the negative impacts of the PC boom."
Williams and his co-editor, Ruediger Kuehr, have called for government incentives to extend the life of personal computers and the desire or need to rapidly discard them for newer models.
They also identified several other potential environmental consequences of the PC boom, such as exposure to hazardous materials during the computer manufacturing process or when used computers have been dumped in landfills.
There were no comments from the Williams/Kuehr team about the number of computers sitting around UN headquarters, or if members of the radical ALF (Animal Liberation Front) would soon be transferring their burning down SUV car lot activities to going after home computers.
Opening Oil-For-Food books
Slick scams rather than oil slicks should be a priority for the Kyoto-pushing United Nations.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the UN’s Oil-for-Food Program for Iraq is looking more and more like a gigantic scam. Yet the UN continues to claim the program was an unprecedented feat of humanitarian relief work. The Security Council members ultimately responsible for the program, including the United States, would rather keep the details locked in the closet.
Fortunately, the Iraqi Governing Council wants to pick the lock. The Iraqis have appointed auditors KPMG and the London-based international law firm Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer to investigate the many allegations of impropriety surrounding oil-for-food. Their job will include digging into the list of names–recently published by the Iraqi daily Al Mada--of individuals and organizations that allegedly received allocations of Iraqi oil from Saddam Hussein at well below market prices. Many of the names had nothing to do with oil, such as the Russian Orthodox Church and the president of Indonesia.
The UN office administering oil-for-food…appears to have been happy to look the other way while all of this took place and now refuses to take any responsibility for the way the program was abused. The Security Council was also complicit in accepting a lowest-common-denominator deal in 1995.
Attack of the long-horned beetle
The Asian long-horned beetle is a bigger headache to Toronto City Council than its taxpayers. Council, which last year put a total ban on the use of pesticides for weed control, has recently approved further measures to deal with the local infestation and threat posed by the pesky critters.
Issues of funding and the use of chemical pesticide are being worked out. Many of the city’s forestry staff, in conjunction with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, are working full-time on the survey and eradication program. Crews are cutting down thousands of hardwood trees in the northern part of the city in an attempt to halt the pest, which has the potential to destroy 60 to 70 percent of Toronto’s trees and to spread throughout Ontario.
