Carbon Tax

I went to a talk the other night by a SFU researcher and professor, Dr. Marc Jaccard. He spoke quite eloquently policies and economy around climate change. It was really quite fascinating.

Now, I am not going to go into the details of his talk since I'm sure there is probably a lot of information out there that is much more accurate than what I might be able to reproduce.

What I am going to discuss is my fascination with one part of his talk that got me to thinking....Dr. Jaccard showed a map that showed how much emissions different parts of the world emit. Rather than figures, the countries were distorted in size based on the amount of emissions they produced.

The continent of Africa was quite skinny while, surprise surprise, America was extremely fat. This kind of distortion would probably also be true if we were talking about obesity rates...so then I got to thinking...nothing happens in isolation....

So here it goes...In North America, we are in a hurry...it is all about convenience...thus processed food and of course waste. Because we are always in a hurry, we like drive thrus....think about that for a minute...emissions from our cars, waste fromt the containers and packaging, and of course what often turns out to be unhealthy options....

This leads to the next issue we have in North America and that is not being socially or neighbourhood oriented. We drive to a big box store (often not in our neighbourhood) where we buy all the huge amounts we need to last a week (at least) and we deal with a customer service rep that is really only concerned about when the shift will be over and when pay day is...more emissions, more packaging, no concern for quality and no social contact...

In other parts of the world, people often shop daily...they walk a few blocks to the vegetable market or the butcher. They stop to talk to their neighbours on the way...they get to a place where the owner/sales person is most concerned about selling a quality product. Yes, he wants to make money, but his livelihood and business are dependent on making repeat customers happy.

So now I'm wondering about the value of cities and neighbourhoods. I'm concerned for the small business owner and the local farmer trying to sell his produce at the weekly market.

I'm beginning to see that obesity, social issues and climate change are not necessarily disconnected from one another....My hope is that while other parts of the world strive for the American dream, they hang on to what is essentially good about what they already have.

Kamloops' Possible Theme Song

Given the amount of beautiful land that we keep clearing to build perhaps the theme song in Kamloops should be ...well I don't know the title, but I know it goes "Take paradise and put up a parking lot". Sad but true!!!!