Ever noticed some people get by with much smaller fridges? It's not always because they go out to dinner every night. I stayed with a family in Shanghai who ate almost entirely home-cooked, healthy food and had a tiny fridge. You may be surprised how alternate handling of a lot of your food makes it last longer - and uses less space in your fridge. 

According to Lloyd Alter with Treehugger.com, too many of us use our fridge as "an expensive air conditioned parking lots for what Shay Salomon called "compost and condiments." 

Smaller fridge = less electricity. ... Read more »

By Alys Granados

Following negotiations at a United Nations climate change summit in Durban, South Africa, Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent announced Canada’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 United Nations treaty requiring member nations to stabilize their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions below 1990 levels. The goal was to curb the effects of climate change and while the Liberal government ratified the treaty in 2002, it was clear that GHG reduction targets would not be met by the original 2012 deadline. Canada is now among the few developed nations not signed on to Protocol.... Read more »

Beyond Coal campaign cool new tool

Love sushi? Make sure you choose safe fish. Mercury is a potent neurotoxin and can damage your brain and nervous system. Next time you order, choose fish that is low in mercury.

Download the app to make smart choices on the go, and find out more at sierraclub.org/mercury.

More ways you can 'monitor' your computer's energy use (part 2 of 2)

Wattch This

By Jeff Alan

Computer power consumption, while receiving increasing attention, is still a confusing beast. One of the biggest potential power drains in a system could be the video card. This is easiest to explain with this fantastic writeup and chart:

http://forums.atomicmpc.com.au/index.php?showtopic=264... Read more »

Sierra Club in the States worked hard on getting Obama into office. Now they are at the forefront pushing Pres. Obama to deny the Keystone XL Pipeline permit to carry tar sands oil all the way from Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.

Obama recently indicated that the decision on the permit will come from The White House rather than the State Department. And now he's said it will not come until further investigation takes place. Go to Sierra Club online activism center to send Pres. Obama a thank you.

WASHINGTON, (Reuters) - Stung by months of protests, President Barack Obama' advisers are worried that administration approval for a planned oil pipeline from Canada could cost him political support from Democrats in 2012.... Read more »

Joe Oliver, Natural Resources Minister, met with staunch opposition at the London School of Economics (LSE) whilst promoting Canada as the next ‘Global Energy Superpower’ [1]. Protesters presented an alternative perspective to the one-sided lecture by asking difficult questions throughout.

LSE students and activists presented Joe Oliver with the ‘Greenwash Propagandist of the Year Award’ for his efforts to contort the science, dismiss the human consequences of tar sands extraction and to re-brand the world’s most destructive project as secure, reliable and sustainable.

Check out the video and read the whole article here.

The story below appeared in the EMC Sittsville/Richmond.... Read more »

Where does all that nuclear waste go? Unlike in the 1980's when nuclear waste was dumped into oceans, now the preferred method is to bury it somewhere deep. The problem that is no community wants it in their neighbourhood.

One option that has been ignored by goverment and the nuclear industry is above-ground Monitored Retrievable Storage. Instead, the cheapest method - burying the waste deep in old mines - seems to be the only method considered. Not surprisingly, this method saves nuclear companies billions of dollars, not to mention "out of sight, out the mind". ... Read more »

In a recent presentation to Bruce County council John Bennett, Sierra Club Canada's executive director, shows that a link between well placed wind turbines and health concerns is unfounded.

When talking with hundreds of people who oppose windturbines, Mr. Bennett states that "people just don't want them and then they go looking for reasons. . . I think what happens is that people have aesthetic responses to this and then they go looking for arguments." He also says that wind energy companies in Ontario have been more than willing to buy properties of people living next to wind turbines and are ill — something he says is unheard of in the oil and gas industry.... Read more »