ECONEWS #203

A monthly newsletter funded by your

donations that dreams of a world blessed by
the harmony of nature, the pleasures of
community, and the joys of personal
fulfillment, guided and protected by our
active citizenship.
Many thanks to Helga Naguib, Gwyneth
Sproule, Gail Muzio, Marlene Rice, Marian
Kemp, Elinor Powell, Laura Anderson, Janice
Turner, Ronald Hawkins, Nina Corley Smith,
Donald Trapnell, Barbara Hourston, Lynn
Thorwaldson, Christina Tomaschuk, Thor
Henrich, Ruth Mossop, Daphne Taylor,
Haggis Farm Saturna, Robert & Hilda
Matsuo, Bob Willard, Paula Hesje, Peter
Carilho, Linda Chan, Joyce Buxcey, Louis
Irwin & R. Bilash.
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EcoNews by mail: call Guy 250-881-1304.
By email: www.earthfuture.com/econews

THE ECO-PERSONALS
$1 a word. Max 5 lines, non-profits,
low-income free. 1 box ad $50
* Lovely room to rent, close to ocean,
downtown, $30/night, 250-382-3810.
* Want to farm? No Land? Lets
collaborate! Cedar/Yellow Point area.
miyo@islandnet.com
* Organic food plants - Metchosin
Farm has many organic heirloom
vegetable starts. 50 varieties of tomato,
35 varieties of veggies. 542 Wootton
Rd, Metchosin. For location, hours,
catalogue see www.metchosinfarm.ca.
* Organic Islands Festival at beautiful
Glendale Gardens, July 10/11, seeks
volunteers for a variety of positions. See
www.organicislands.ca
PARC DE TRIOMPHE
In Paris, 2 km of the Champs lyses
have been covered by 8,000 small fields
planted with wheat, beans, vines,
mustard, bananas, pineapples and a
hundred other species of cereals, fruit
and vegetables. The two-day Nature
Capitale exhibition reminded two
million Parisians that food does not
grow on supermarket shelves or market
stalls. More than 600 young farmers and
150 foresters worked through the night
to "plant" the avenue with blocks of soil
and containers, separated by footpaths
of wood-chippings. (Independent, UK)
ORGANIC ISLANDS FESTIVAL
Mark July 10-11th in your diary for The
Organic
Islands
Festival
and

Sustainability Expo at the Glendale

Gardens in Saanich, with 150 exhibits,
20 speakers, green technology demos,
entertainment, and ten acres of Garden
Trails. Carolyn Herriot will be giving a
keynote presentation to launch her new
book The Zero Mile Diet: a Year-Round
Guide to Growing Organic Food.
www.organicislands.ca

VARESE LIGURE, ITALY

How does the world go green? Slowly,
but with certainty. In northern Italy, the
small farming community of Varese
Ligure, composed of 27 rural hamlets
east of Genoa, was gradually decaying,
its population fallen from 6,000 to
2,200. But then the Mayor, Maurizio
Caranza, appealed to the locals to turn
the town into an environmental hamlet,
with an economy based on ecology and
organic food. 20 years later, 108 farms,
representing almost all the farmland,
have gone organic, using European
Union grants to subsidize the transition.
People are renovating and rebuilding
their home, the historical town centre
has been restored, and the population
has risen by 200. Four wind turbines on
a ridge generate 8 GWh a year (three
times more than they use), and 141 solar
panels add 15 MWh, earning $514,000
a year for the council. The community
became eco-certified under ISO 14001 the first in Italy to do so - and was
registered under the EUs EcoManagement and Audit Scheme,
opening the door to financial incentives;
in 2004, they were honored as the most
eco-compatible rural community in
Europe. Progress remains fragile, with
a lack of younger farmers, and single
farmers who cant find wives.
Politically, the centre-left party Varese
2000 has polled 65% of the vote for 15
years, showing that green politics,
accompanied by green progress, is a
solid vote-winner.
FUN CAMPS FOR CHILDREN
If you have children aged 6-12, and
youd like them to catch afire with the
vision of a sustainable world, check out
the FUN Camps that will run in Victoria

from July 5th to August 27th at Windsor

Park Pavilion in Oak Bay, organized by
the irrepressibly determined Maia Green.
During their eco-summer, they will learn
how to build and race a solar racing car,
bake brownies in a solar oven, maintain
their bike, plant seeds, reduce their
ecological footprint, and develop
leadership skills, mixed with outdoor
games, sports, art, swimming, drama and
hiking. Registration is through Oak Bay
250-595-7946, see www.funcamps.ca.
Could you help a disadvantaged youth to
attend for a week by donating a $200
scholarship? You can send a cheque to
FUN Camps, 5010 Lockehaven Drive,
Victoria V8N 4J5, or do so online at
funcamps.ca/Sponsor_A_Student.html.
VANCOUVER, FAIR TRADE CITY
In the future sustainable world, all trade
will be fair trade. 800 cities and towns
have become Fair Trade Cities, in 19
countries, and Vancouver has just joined
them, having met all the criteria, which
includes having fair trade products
widely available in local restaurants and
supermarkets, and having an active Fair
Trade steering group. For the five
requirements for your town do the same,
see www.fairtrade.org.uk.

GROASIS FOR TREES

In many dry parts of the world, trees
struggle to survive, and there often is not
enough water to irrigate them. Even
when there is, much is lost to
evaporation - so whats to be done? For
Pieter Hoff, a Dutch flower-grower, his
solution is the Groasis Waterboxx, which
will grow food and trees even in the
driest places. The round box is the size
of a car tire, deigned to capture both
rainwater and condensation which
collects in the chamber underneath the
cover, preventing it from evaporating. A
wick taps into the ground and drops a
small amount onto the trees root system
every day. Once the tree has taken root,
reaching a water source several meters
below the ground, the box can be
removed and used again elsewhere.
In a 3-year test in the Sahara desert in
Morocco that gets only a few inches of
rainfall a year, 88% of the trees planted
with the box survived after it was
removed. In a test group planted without
the box, but watered once a week, only

10% survived. Pieter has developed a

biopolymer version that will biodegrade,
releasing nutrients into the soil, and is
talking to a Dutch bank about a microfinance scheme to enable farmers to buy
the Waterboxx. ($26) Pieter thinks they
could also promote reforestation,
replanting the two billion hectares of
trees we have cut down in the last 2000
years. See www.groasis.com
ECONEWS APPEAL
Last months EcoNews appeal brought in
$1,000, for which Im very grateful.
but it was only 1/3rd of the amount that
EcoNews needs to keep going for
another six months. So if you had
thought of chipping in, please do. You
can mail your donation to EcoNews, 395
Conway Road, Victoria V9E 2B9, or
donate through PayPal. Thankyou!
OCEAN WARMING
The worlds oceans are warming up and
the rise is both significant and real,
according to one of the most
comprehensive studies into marine
temperature gathered over the past two
decades. The upper 700 metres warmed
significantly between 1993 and 2008,
even though there has been a slight
leveling off in the increase since 2003.
Global warming is not going away, just
because the deniers think it doesnt exist,
and the looming emergency is as grave
as ever. We must wean ourselves off
fossil fuels - ideally by 2020. No-one
believes this to be possible, but this is
what the climate science demands if we
are to safeguard our childrens future. On
Monday June 6th, theres a big Climate
Rally focused on the Push for a Green
Economy and Climate Sanity at the
Alex Goolden Theatre. The goal is to
pile the pressure on Ottawa to include
climate change in the G-8 and G-20
Summits (see Green Diary).
GEOTHERMAL DRILLING
Geothermal energy is of the solutions
that could replace coal-fired power,
using heat 3 to 10 km below the Earths
surface to create steam and run electrical
generators. A Massachusetts Institute of
Technology study found that enhanced
geothermal energy could supply 2,500
more power than the entire USA
consumes. The holdback has been the
high cost of drilling, to which the
solution may be a new way of drilling
that uses super-heated water fired at
supersonic speeds to carve through the
rock, instead of mechanical abrasion. In
August, Potter Drilling will use the new
technique to drill a 4-inch hole through
1000 feet. Compared to regular drilling,

water-drilling doesnt have a bit that

wears out, and it can drill continuously,
3-5 times faster than a mechanical drill.
The trial is being funded by the US
Department of Energy and Google. The
eventual goal is to be able to drill to 10
kilometres. (Guardian)
ALGAE FOR AIRPLANES
Another problem we have to solve is
how airplanes will fly without fossil
fuels. The solution that is getting the
most attention is biofuel made by
farming
algae.
Virgin
Airlines,
Continental and the Chinese government
have all held successful trials, and the
US Defence Advanced Research Projects
Agency (DARPA) has successfully
extracted oil from algal ponds at a cost
of $2 a gallon ($0.52/litre); they say that
large-scale refining, producing 50
million gallons a year, will begin in
2013, yielding 1000 gallons per acre
from an algal farm that could use
household sewage or brackish water.
Global flying uses 5 million barrels of
oil a day, and is responsible for 2.4% of
the cause of global warming, when all
factors are taken into account. New
Scientist magazine reported research
showing that this much oil from algae
could be grown on 66,000 square
kilometres, or 276 barrels per hectare
(about the size of Ireland, 0.13% of the
worlds farmland). DARPA expects to
produce 1000 gallons per acre, which is
59 barrels per hectare, five times less
than New Scientists numbers. If
DARPA is correct, flying would require
land equivalent to 0.6% of the worlds
farmland. 70% of the worlds farm and
pastureland is used to raise animals for
meat and dairy.
Looking ahead, the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology has designed a
green airplane for NASA that could be
flying by 2035 that uses 70% less fuel,
with similar cuts in air and noise
pollution, by redesigning the plane as a
double bubble, with the engines in the
rear where the air is slower moving in
the wake of the fuselage, allowing
engines to use less fuel for the same
amount of thrust. For a photo, Google
MIT + double-bubble.
CELL-PHONES AND CANCER
It was all over the news in May - a huge
new study compiling research from 13
countries which concluded that there was
no association between the use of cell
phones and brain cancer. Or so it was
reported in North America, and by the
US National Cancer Institute. But what
awful selective reporting that was. In

Britain, the Sunday Times reported

Heavy mobile users risk cancer. So
how come the difference?
Firstly, the study defined heavy use
as more than 30 minutes a day. The
researchers defined a regular user as
making just one call a week over a 6month period. Er - hullo? Has anyone
seen a teenager without a cellphone
glued to the ear recently? Secondly, it
excluded anyone under the age of 30,
because it was a ten-year study. The real
news, which should have alarm bells
ringing, was that people over 30 who
used a cell-phone for 30 minutes a day
had a 33% increased risk of developing
glioma tumours, a form of brain cancer.
Because of the age delay and the 30
minutes a day assumption, the study is
deeply flawed. If you want to protect
your childrens health, do everything
within your powers to keep them off
their cell phones.
PREVENTING CANCER
Run for the Cure - its hard to naysay
it, but its so frustrating to know that
only 2% of all the money raised goes to
actually help prevent cancer. In its
studies of babies cord blood, the
Environmental Working Group found
201 known and suspected carcinogenic
chemicals in 20 babies. In May, the US
Presidents Cancer Panel said that public
health
officials
have
grossly
underestimated the likelihood that
environmental contaminants trigger a
large proportion of cancers. On Saturday
June 26th, Guy Dauncey and friends will
be running/walking at Elk Lake to raise
funds for Prevent Cancer Now, to
provide help where it is sorely needed.
See www.preventcacnernow.ca. Call
Guy 250-881-1304 if youd like to help.

ACTION OF THE MONTH

A MORATORIUM ON DRILLING
IN THE ARCTIC & WEST COAST
Believe it or not, July 1st is the date
set for US exploratory drilling for oil to
start at Arctic drill sites up to 140 miles
off-shore, in an area notable for extreme
storms, gale-force winds, moving sea
ice, darkness and subzero temperatures.
Greenpeace and the World Wildlife
Fund are both calling for a moratorium,
and a permanent Arctic Treaty. We
must also protect Canadas West Coast.
Action: Write immediately to Prime
Minister Stephen Harper, urging action.
Rt Hon Stephen Harper, Office of
the Prime Minister, 80 Wellington St,
Ottawa K1A 0A2.
pm@pm.gc.ca Tel: 613-992-4211