4 ~ Wednesday, December 20, 1989 - North Shore News

WHEN FRENCH agronomist Rene Dumont told a con-
ference on sustainable development in Montreal recently
that one million people died last year as a result of drought
caused by the Greenhouse Effect, he altered forever the

nature of the energy debate.

Until now, the issue of our out-
rageous waste of energy has been
essentially abstract. We were talk-
ing about changes to our climate
that, while they might have begun,
nevertheless were mainly an event
looming in the future.

It all seemed like science fiction,
despite the fact that more forest
fires burned across Canada last
year than at any time since records
were kept.

The reason for the fires was
simply that the average
temperatures across the country
have been higher in this decade
than at any time in the last cen-
tury. This matches the measured
increase in global temperatures.

Yet no one had been killed, and
so it all remained an apocalypse
without victims.

Now, for the first time, a body
count is available. A million dead
already — because of you, me, our
automobiles, toasters, clothes
dryers, freezers, hot tubs, frying
pans, televisions, water bed heat-
ers, rotisseries, outboard engines,

jets, hydroelectric dams, you name
it.

The people who died because of
global warming, Prof. Dumont
noted, lived in Third World coun-
tries.

In all, 12 million people there
died of starvation, but by his
calculation one-twelfth of those
would not have died except for the
fact that the industrialized world
spews five billion tonnes of carbon
into the atmosphere every year.

Prof. Dumont went on to say
that there should be a 17-cent tax
on every litre of fossil fuel. The
money raised by this means should
go into a crash program worldwide
of developing alternative energy
sources.

Turthermore, people who drive
“aefficient cars should be penal-
ized. Gas-guzzlers themselves
should be banned outright. And,
perhaps most shocking of all,
because it drives the point home so
well, people who put up Christmas
lights should also be fined.

The Greenhouse Grinch has ar-

TAOIST TAI CHI
OPEN HOUSE AND REGISTRATION

Saturday, January 6th from Noon to 4 p.m.

* Demonstrations and information on Taoist Tai Chi
A information on classes around the city
* Registration for North Shore classes

including:

North Van YMCA

North Lonsdale United Church
JayCee House

also at:

Eagle Harbour Community Center

Sutherland High School
Cee ee
For more information, phone 681-6609

The Vancouver Taoist Tai Chi Society is located at
220-440 West Hastings Street
one block from the SeaBus and Watertront Station

Everybody
needs one!

Suite 300, 233 West ist Street,
North Vancouver, B.C.

V7M 1B3

Fax: (604) 986-4872

(604) 986-8600

Left ta right’ Dan Sudeyko.
Janine Stewart and Oon Jabour.

Donald Jabour, BA LLB,

has practised taw for 30 years, 11 of those

on the North Shore. He was the first lawyer

in Canada to advertise and to pioneer the
use of legal clinics to make legal services
more affordable and accessible to the
consumer. He is active in musical theatre
and has been a director of the West -
Vancouver Youth Band.

Dan M. Sudeyko, BA BSW LLB

Former Canadian National Soccer Team
member and current member of the
Vancouver 86ers Soccer Team. Dan has

worked as a parole officer with Corrections

Canada and as a social worker with the
Ministry of Human Resources.

Janine M. Stewart, BA LLB,

was Cailed to the bar of B.C. in 1985. Born

and raised in Vancouver, Janine has been a

North Shore resident for 20 years.
Besides being a lawyer and
mother of a pre-schoolers, she
takes an active role in
education in her community.

° Eco-Logic ©

rived.

Good grief, you ask, what’s
wrong with Christmas lights?

Nobody wants to hear it,
especially at this time of year, but
it is high time we grew up and cast
aside our brightly-glittering bau-
bles. The planet simply cannot af-
ford them any longer.

squander through the burning of
fossil fuels, it amounts to five ton-
nes a year per person. That’s five
times more than the global
average.

Compared with the United
States, we now use more than
twice as much electricity to make a
dollar’s worth of goods.

“fA
million dead already — because of you, me,
our automobiles, toasters, clothes dryers, freezers ...

you name it.’

Christmas lights are an incredi-
ble waste of energy — a further
waste of energy in a country that,
by its own admission, is the most
energy-intensive in the world.

Per capita, Canadians consume
more energy than any other people
in the world. We are the energy
pigs of Planet Earth.

Just in terms of the energy we

RON ZALKO
HEALTH CLUB
e ive

986-3487"

When we think of electricity, we
think of it as being clean. It isn’t.
it comes from coal- or oil- or nu-
clear-fired power plants, all of
which are environmentally destruc-
tive, the first two contributing
greenhouse gases on a massive
scale.

The argument that nuclear
power is somehow more ‘‘en-

vironmentally friendly’’ than other
forms of energy gencration ignores
the long-term problem of disposal
of nuclear wastes, and as Cher-
noby! proved bevond a shadow of
a doubt, a single nuclear accident
can cause damage on a Staggering
scale,

In addition to producing carbon
dioxide emissions, the mining of
coal ravages the land and oil spills
have now reached epidemic pro-
portions. These — along with $15
billion worth of military expen-
ditures by the Americans alone to
protect their oil supplies — are
among the hidden costs of energy.

Global energy consumption
reached 318 quadrillion British
thermal units in 1988, generating
an amount of heat equivalent to
the burning of 170 million barrels
of crude oil. It is for this reason
that warming of the planet’s at-
mosphere has begun in earnest.
And it is, as Prof. Dumont makes
clear, for this reason that a million
people died from lack of food.

He stated that energy wastage in
the industrialized countries now
carries with it, in addition to its
hidden costs, the burden of bring-
ing death to people in countries ~
where the soil is cracking under the
heat, drifting away, turning into
desert.

It may be within the traditional
“‘Christmas spirit’’ to turn on str-
ings of cheerful lights, but in reali-
ty it is an act of long-distance
murder, as surely as if we had
launched invisibie missiles against
poverty-stricken countries.

The ‘‘inissiles’’ in this case are
carbon dioxide emissions from
power plants rising into the at-
mosphere, circling the globe like a
cowl, causing it to heat upe

_ 2625 W. 4th Aye.
KITSILANO 736-0341.

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