By Jill Richardson, AlterNet
Posted on April 5, 2010, Printed on April 5, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146286/

Anna Lappe’s new book, Diet for a Hot Planet: The Climate Crisis at the End of Your Fork and What You Can Do About It, may just be the most important book published this year. This past month, rising oceans buried New Moore Island, a tiny island in the Bay of Bengal that India and Bangladesh fought over for nearly 30 years. Closer to home, Massachusetts has suffered “two 50-year storms in the course of two or three weeks,” according to Governor Deval Patrick. That’s a reality check that the climate crisis has already caused tangible effects on our planet, with much more to come. Lappe’s book does not only expose how our current dominant methods of food production, processing, distribution and disposal significantly contribute to climate change; she also tells us how food production can actually mitigate climate change by sequestering carbon in the soil.

However, climate-friendly agriculture is a money-loser for currently powerful industries — agrochemicals, oil and meatpackers to name a few. Lappe debunks their spin, putting the lie to claims that people on earth would starve without Big Ag and factory farms. Instead she reveals the truth, based on well-documented science, on how agriculture can be part of the solution.

What is perhaps most striking is that Lappe’s book comes nearly 40 years after her mother’s classic, Diet for a Small Planet, which tackled the problem of world hunger. Even though they wrote about how to solve different problems through food and agriculture, their proposed solutions are the same. Perhaps that is more than a coincidence (especially since, as Lappe notes below, their advice on eating a plant-centered diet of whole foods is similar to dietary advice for good health). Read the complete Post.

The evening will include an opening address “Sustainable and Equitable: the Challenge for Cities in the 21st Century”

Monday, November 23, 2009 from 7:00 - 9:00 pm
St. Andrews-Wesley Church, Vancouver, BC

Presented by: Dr. Trevor Hancock
Dr. Hancock is one of the founders of the global healthy cities and communities movement and recipient of the  Humanitarian Award from the International Society for Urban Health.

PANEL
Dr. Trevor Hancock Health Futurist
Dr. Patty Daly: Chief Medical Health Officer for Vancouver Coastal Health
Dr. Evan Adams: Aboriginal Health Physician Advisor
Seth Klein: BC Director for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives
Judy Graves: Housing Advocate

Everyone is welcome.

This Forum is presented in collaboration with the BC Poverty Reduction Coalition

I can’t help but feel frustrated when I read Newsweek articles like that one below that only go as far as advocating a Business As Usual (BAU) or a Technofix just-in-time-to-save-our-asses solution (In religious jargon – False Messianic promise) to Climate Change and Peak Oil.

By Philip Be’er VPOE

In his Hierarchy of Needs, Abraham Maslow laid out in a graphic format, what human beings need to thrive http://www.businessballs.com/maslow.htm

Try to find the need for nuclear, fossil or even “low carbon” energy sources, for cars or of any other kind of mechanised transportation in the pyramid and you’ll see that they simply play no role in what human beings require to be healthy, wealthy and happy.

According to Professor Abraham Maslow, we do need Clean Air, Food, Water, Sleep and Shelter to survive. When we also get our safety and security needs met this creates a stable environment conducive to developing socially and emotionally. When we set up our societies in ways that allow us to have our Esteem Needs met, then we also have a shot at realising our personal potential.

Read the complete Post.

A Talk By Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University, Australia.

Friday, January 9, 2009
5:30 – 7:00 p.m.
Room 1400
SFU Vancouver - 515 West Hastings St.

Peter Newman and Tim Beatley have written two new books, one on Resilient Cities, the other on Green Urbanism Down Under. They are on a North American tour in January beginning in Vancouver as it was here that the gestation of the Resilient Cities book began. Peter will speak about how cities are under threat from the financial crash and especially need to avoid pushing solutions such as road building and urban sprawl that were only responsible for the sub-prime meltdown. A new approach to urban development needs to be forged out of the down-turn that can at the same time enable cities to respond to the deep challenge of peak oil and climate change. Some hopeful directions will be outlined based on cities from around the world, including cities down-under.

By Matthew Burrows
Georgia Straight 12/2/7/08
Original Article

VPO NOTE: VPO has been pushing for a peak oil task force for over a year, and now Councilor Andrea Reimer is answering the call. Time is short - please write in to city hall and voice support for this task force. Much of the work has already been done by the proposed members individually and is waiting to be taken off the shelf. We need to move into implementation immediately.

Mayor Gregor Robertson and Coun. Andrea Reimer are promising they will make Vancouver ready for peak oil.

“We have to address peak oil,” Robertson told the Georgia Straight at City Hall. “That’s a hard reality.…I think it could end up compounding the looming challenges we face with oil supply and an economy that’s totally dependent on cheap energy right now.”

Peak oil refers to the point at which the rate of global oil production maxes out, sending the supply of the resource into an inevitable decline.

In October, the U.K. Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil and Energy Security released a 43-page report entitled The Oil Crunch. The report anticipates peak-oil-related problems hitting the U.K. starting in 2011 and says the threat posed by peak oil is greater than that of terrorism.

Robertson and Reimer both say that lower oil prices don’t mean that action on peak oil should wait. Read the complete Post.

24 Aug 2008 12:04:18 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Missy Ryan and Sattar Rahim
Original article

VPO note - Iraq, with the third largest oil reserves in the world, is demonstrating the next big issue to face Mankind: oil is want, but water is a need.

BAGHDAD, Aug 24 (Reuters) - At a communal water station in a Baghdad slum, a young boy’s skinny arms fly up and down as he uses a bicycle pump to coax water from the dry ground.

His efforts produce a languid stream that will tide over his family — and the families of the children waiting near him to fill their cooking pots — until the next day.

This is a daily ritual for millions of Iraqis who lack access to sufficient clean water and proper sewage five years after the U.S.-led invasion to topple Saddam Hussein.

Water and sewage are perennial challenges in this arid country, where the overhaul of decrepit public works has been hindered by years of war and neglect.

Nearly a billion litres of raw sewage is dumped into Baghdad waterways each day — enough to fill 370 Olympic-sized pools.

The United Nations estimates that less than half of Iraqis get drinking water piped into their homes in rural areas. In the capital, people set their alarm clocks to wake them in the middle of the night so they can fill storage tanks when water pressure is under less strain.

New investments in water and sanitation are only slowly bearing fruit even as Iraq seeks to capitalise on a dramatic drop in violence over the past year.

Iraqi and U.S. officials have been working to refurbish existing water plants, distribution lines and sewage works, but they say major infrastructure improvements will take years. Read the complete Post.