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.

The Money April May June Copies printed 1800 1650 1700 Sent by email 3130 3140 3140 Print, postage $785 $730 $737 Editorial $450 $450 $450 Donations $645 $1030 You? Advertising $130 $10 Balance $615 $468 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? Let’s 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 Élysées 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 EU’s Eco-Management 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 can’t 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 you’d 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 what’s 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 tree’s 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 micro-finance 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 month’s EcoNews appeal brought in $1,000, for which I’m 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 world’s 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 doesn’t 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 children’s future. On Monday June 6th, there’s 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 Earth’s 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 doesn’t 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 world’s farmland). DARPA expects to produce 1000 gallons per acre, which is 59 barrels per hectare, five times less than New Scientist’s numbers. If DARPA is correct, flying would require land equivalent to 0.6% of the world’s farmland. 70% of the world’s 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 6-month 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 children’s health, do everything within your powers to keep them off their cell phones.

PREVENTING CANCER “Run for the Cure” - it’s hard to naysay it, but it’s 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 President’s 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 you’d 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 Canada’s 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