May 26, 2008

Community solutions for food security and urban health, Part 2.0: The global food crisis

apples

It figures it’s been a month and a half since I wrote Part 1 and said it would be “a couple weeks.” I have a legitimate excuse, however: the topic on which I desperately wanted to write was (is!) getting bigger and bigger as news stories and blog posts flooded the papers and internet on the topic. An overwhelming amount of information to sort through, half of it’s out of date by now and much of it I haven’t yet read.

My blogging has been sparse at best lately, and this behemoth of a topic isn’t helping. Of course I’d also like to write about everything! But whilst I muster up the energy/time to do this, here are my key points:

– global food crisis overview

– modern agriculture… permaculture… what our monoculture system + pesticide/herbicide use did to our natural systems: reducing yield, damaging and polluting the earth, losing diversity, bringing in GMO which is proven to harm humans

– hoarding: it’s human nature

food wastage (also see BBC article)

– oil: peak oil, pesticides, the benefits of local eating

community and personal gardening

– developers get (potentially large) tax credit by turning land into “public land” while waiting for a project to get underway, then can install a community garden, makes them look socially responsible

PHEW!

Well, now that I’ve got a few hours of my life per week back from the brain-sucking, life-wasting machine called the Television (I watch mostly intelligent programming, but it’s TV nonetheless), I should have few excuses not to sit down and churn this out. Unless, of course, I get distracted by Stephen Rees’s blog.

And now it’s time for bed, but I will leave you with this tidbit and links, and inform you that I’m still alive!

May 23, 2008

350 Challenge!

Brighter Planet's 350 Challenge

A new blogger action initiative just launched this week. Brighter Planet, “a Vermont start-up committed to fighting climate change and building a clean-energy future,” will offset 350 pounds of carbon for every blogger who puts the badge on their blog (let them know you’ve done it, via the form on the campaign website in order to make it count). Their goal is to get 350 bloggers on board, to offset 122,500 pounds of carbon! “That’s like flicking off 100 lightbulbs for a day. Or going two full weeks without your car!”

I encourage you to sign up to put the nifty, fun badge on your blog, too.

May 12, 2008

Look what I found!

Heritage trolley

Near the entrance to Granville Island on Saturday I was stunned to see a heritage trolley car on the old tracks at “Granville Station.” They have tours every weekend now — did anyone else know about this? What a pleasant surprise!

May 5, 2008

Emily Carr Grad Show 2008

Grad show poster

Saturday night I attended the ever-popular Emily Carr Undergraduate Exhibition, more commonly referred to as the “grad show” among my peers. There is some stellar work there, as always, and I strongly encourage anyone interested in art, communication design, industrial design, film or animation to get down there in the coming week and see the work of this year’s group of 350+ talents.

The show runs for a shorter period this year so you only have until this coming Sunday the 11th to see it for yourself! The show is open 10 am to 6pm at Emily Carr Institute, 1399/1400 Johnston St. on Granville Island. More info »

For myself and my class, today marks one year since our graduation and grad show… how time flies! The feeling walking to the show opening on that perfect sunny evening and the energy of the night itself has a nostalgic magic.

Grad website

This year I helped put out the grad site again but with a much different set of roles. The student volunteers and coordinating faculty gave a tremendous effort; many thanks and congratulations go out to them for producing a fabulous grad 2008 website!

Note that many projects showing at the school are not on the website, and vice versa. This is particularly true of design projects which were not yet complete at the time of submission. So do visit the show, pick up a printed catalogue, and check out the website. Enjoy!