Hamilton Climate Challenge asks participants to pledge less use of cars and air conditioners
By Eric McGuinness (Hamilton Spectator)
Environment Hamilton is offering homeowners an energy-saving kit worth $30 if they promise to cut energy use and the resulting greenhouse gas emissions.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government cancelled the One-Tonne Challenge program before Al Gore convinced Canadians that climate change is a real threat.
Now it’s back in a made-in-Hamilton form without federal funding, and there’s no limit on the greenhouse gas tonnage you can cut.
Environment Hamilton — which is focusing its efforts on the climate change issue — today began sending yellow-shirted volunteers door to door inviting people to participate in its new Hamilton Climate Challenge.
Participants — starting in Corktown southeast of the downtown core — are asked to check off things they will commit to do, such as walking, biking or using buses at least once a week, washing clothes in cold water, lowering thermostats in winter and raising them in summer.
It’s a three-step pledge in which you can go all out and agree to get rid of your car, vacation within 200 kilometres of home and join a local action group on climate change.
But organizer Beatrice Ekoko doesn’t expect everyone to go that far — she’ll be happy if people agree at least to make a start.
Environment Hamilton spokesman Don McLean said the non-profit organization will also press city officials to do more to reduce vehicle emissions through actions such as banning drive-through restaurants and banks.
The Hamilton program is funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation and the Hamilton Community Foundation. For more information or to volunteer, go to www.environmenthamilton.org.
The website lists 63 things you can do to fight climate change and offers a carbon calculator to figure out how much greenhouse gas your lifestyle produces. Ekoko says the Canadian average is over five tonnes per person per year.
Incentive to reduce energy use
Jul, 13 2007 - 8:00 AM
HAMILTON (AM900 CHML) - You may get a knock on the door over the next few weeks from a volunteer from Environment Hamilton, asking you to promise to cut your energy use.They're offering a 30-dollar energy saving kit in exchange for pledging to reduce your consumption by committing to such things as walking, biking or taking the bus once a week, washing clothes in cold water, lowering thermostats in winter and raising them in summer.
The group is also pressing city officials to do more to reduce vehicle emissions through actions such as banning drive-thru restaurants and banks.
CHCH TV also carried a piece on the climate challenge on yesterday's newscasts.
CHML has a poll on their web site "Would you consider walking, biking or taking the bus to work at least once a week?" Poll found here
1 comment:
Yellow-Shirted Volunteers? Paul Revere once rode through town yelling "the Red-Coats are coming!" It is important for each of us to do our part but this kind of nanojoule gesture is a silly and lame waste of the precious little time we have left of normalcy.
Yellow is a color that represents caution and we are well beyond that. I think red would have been a better choice since it portrays the imminent DANGERS we face from generations of frivolous lifestyle and the greed that branded it to us.
It is too late for caution, the Red-Coats are coming! And you don't need the Al Gore spin to see that.
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