Transition Brockville

sustainably.eco business certification program

Transition Brockville / 06 December 2019

Our Steering Committee has been discussing how TB can encourage expansion of Sustainable Kingston’s sustainably.eco business certification program into the Brockville area. A quick glance at the sustainably.eco website suggests the program is already “Brockville-enabled”, ie. suggestions of Brockville businesses can already be made in a number of sustainability categories. Use the ‘Suggest a Business’ button to submit your nominations; use the site to identify your buyer-worthy choices.

[ WEBSITE ]

Town counts on transit, urban design to protect rural flavour

The Energy Mix / 06 December 2019

Drawing inspiration from sources as diverse as the garden city movement of the early 20th century, Israel’s cooperative moshavs, and the annual Burning Man event, the town council of Innisfil, Ontario has developed a new model of suburban intensification built around nature, two wheels, and walking, in a bid to protect the good things about rural life […]

Architect and design leader Alex Josephson of Toronto-based Partisans said the “next-generation community” will be “for people who want access to a big city, but also nature and everything that comes with living in a rural community.”

Combining the customary grid-based street plan of today’s typical development with “some degree of irregularity, and lots of cut-throughs for pedestrians,” the Orbit is “radical,” the Globe and Mail writes. That’s a characterization that suits Innisfil just fine, as it moves to preserve its rural essence even as it “faces huge pressure to grow from its current 36,000 people”.

[ FULL ARTICLE ]

Lake Erie residents reckoning with worsening shoreline erosion

CBC News / Ellen Mauro / 06 December 2019

O’Brien lives on Erie Shore Drive, a stretch of road near Chatham-Kent in southwestern Ontario that was originally built as a dyke.

It’s prone to flooding, but O’Brien and her neighbours aren’t alone in their struggle. Many communities along Lake Erie have faced a challenging combination over the past year: record-high water levels and significant erosion of the shoreline.

This double whammy has caused property sizes to shrink as the lake swallows land, and has forced some homeowners to make the painful decision to either continue to try save and their lots or abandon them.

[ FULL ARTICLE ]

AG: Ontario not using ‘sound evidence’ in climate change plan

CBC News / Nick Boisvert / 04 December 2019

Ontario’s auditor general says the Ford government’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and battle climate change is not supported by sound evidence.

Bonnie Lysysk’s 2019 report found that Ontario is overestimating the potential impact of its new environmental plan.

She said the government has also miscalculated some estimates and made policy changes that could discourage further emission reductions.

“Our office’s analysis found that the emissions reductions in the plan are not yet supported by sound evidence,” Lysysk writes in the report.

[ FULL ARTICLE ]

Mental health expertise meets sandbags in building resilience

The Energy Mix / 04 December 2019

It was judicious use of mental health expertise, along with many, many sandbags, that enabled Fargo, North Dakota to weather the challenges of the epic 2009 Red River flood.

That was one of the experiences that pointed to a basic precondition for building communities’ ability to face the climate emergency: Recognizing climate change as a profound threat to mental health, responding with messages of “hopeful realism” and ongoing compassion, particularly for older adults and children, and helping communities acquire the psychological and social resilience to cope.

[ FULL ARTICLE ]

Climate change to push food prices higher

CTV News / Aleksandra Sagan / 04 December 2019

The average Canadian family will pay up to an extra $487 on feeding themselves next year, according to an annual food price report that highlights climate change as a major culprit for rising food prices, especially in the produce department.

Unexpected snowstorms, droughts and other weather events have impacted crops and food prices in the past, said Simon Somogyi, lead researcher from the University of Guelph.

But for 2020, he and others behind the report highlight climate change as the cause.

“We’re deliberately pointing out that, you know: climate change is causing the droughts, is causing the bad snowstorms that’s impacting prices,” he said.

[ FULL ARTICLE ]

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In passing

So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent… Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger…. The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences…. We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now….

— Winston Churchill