Uniform, flawless produce requires a heartbreaking amount of food waste. (Photo by rick via Flickr)

This post is part of Blog Action Day's discussion on food.

If we're to feed the world delicious, nutritious food and halt climate change, we have to kill the supermarket.

There are many reasons why I suggest this enormous beast be culled. It thrives on the unsustainable industrial agriculture model of large-scale, monocrop food production, where food is not grown for taste or nutrition. It's then shipped long distances, so you can eat lettuce in Vancouver in January. Even if garlic is grown in your region, you're served up the garlic from China instead.

The produce section is a sterile place devoid of scent (the first sense to get us salivating), where the fruits and vegetables are uniform, barely ripe (if at all) and virtually flawless. It's no wonder children don't know their food grows in the ground or on a vine: the produce is so unnatural, it hardly seems a product of nature. Its sprawling, dizzying vastness is a maze that encourages overconsumption and takes up excess land to, among other things, allow for extra-wide shopping carts. It makes buying junk food more appealing than buying produce through a combination of store positioning, packaging and price, and this leads to disease.

I could go on; the reason I'm going to focus on here, however, is its massive — and one could suggest criminal — contribution to food waste.

The environmental film series at the annual Vancouver International Film Festival appears to have blossomed this year with over a dozen films dealing with issues ranging from food waste and sustainable seafood to climate change and the tar sands.

Some of them are surprising for their genre: Burning Ice brings artists, musicians and poets to the Arctic, and People of a Feather takes us intimately into the lives of Inuit whose very existence depends on the down of eider ducks.

Premiering on Tuesday is a film about Canada's energy use by local filmmaker Charles Wilkinson and produced by his partner, artist Tina Schliessler. I'm particularly excited to see this one as I've known the family since my childhood. Peace Out features interviews with both opponents and proponents of our current destructive energy systems, and aerial footage of the tar sands in Alberta, a project so massive it can be seen from space. Seen from a plane, it's utterly heartbreaking. Ultimately, we all need to use less energy.

(Photo by Gord McKenna via Flickr)

Every summer I swim in the waters of Burrard Inlet and English Bay. My favourite spot is Cates Park (Whey-ah-Wichen, Faces the Wind), which is nearly opposite a Chevron oil refinery that is responsible for a slow leak discovered a year ago. This refinery is east of the Second Narrows bridge which, as the name suggests, spans a narrow crossing — and it's a shallow one as well. The number, size and capacity of oil tankers passing through here is growing, with no decline in sight as our thirst for oil continues to increase. This worries me because it leaves us ever more vulnerable to a spill that would ruin a coastline inhabited by the Tsleil-Waututh Nation long before this place had a name, and enjoyed by Metro Vancouver residents and tourists alike. The beaches and waters are home to starfish, crabs, jellyfish, geoducks and many varieties of birds. If you're lucky, you'll spot some other fish, a seal or even a whale. Eagles are frequent visitors.

We can't afford an oil spill in Burrard Inlet, nor can we afford one anywhere along our beautiful coast. The consequences of the Exxon Valdez spill off Alaska are still felt there. A spill of that magnitude hasn't yet happened to us — neither in BC nor in the Saint Lawrence — and on Monday, May 2 we have the opportunity to uphold the decision the Liberals made in 1972 by voting for candidates who support this ban.

Friday, April 22nd isn't just Good Friday. It's also Earth Day, and in celebration, Vancouver's youth have organized a parade and festival! I'll be there with my bicycle and as many dorky treehugging pins as I can dig up. (Find me if you'd like a Vote Environment button with Suzuki's retro face on it!)

Coincidentally, this is the 41st Earth Day and, on May 2nd, Canada has its 41st federal election. Before you head to the polls as early as this weekend — because you ARE voting (or if you're a minor, telling your parents to vote), right? — think about how important it is to you to have clean air, clean water and healthy food to eat. Think about what kind of world today's youth will be facing in the future if climate change isn't mitigated today, if oil spills continue, and if our precious salmon fail to thrive. If you're a youth yourself, what do you want the world to look like? We can take many actions ourselves, but Canadians understand the government wields the biggest power to make sweeping changes in the areas where consumers have little influence. And the Canadian government needs to know that we care about our environment.

Saturday night, people around the world will be participating in Earth Hour (8:30 pm local time) and taking a stand against climate change. We participants — over 1 billion last year in 128 countries — recognize that energy conservation and sustainable, clean energy solutions are crucial in making sure we have clean air and clean water now and long into the future. But WWF encourages us to go beyond energy and make everyday positive changes in our lives that, in myriad ways, help the planet just as much as they help us.

The Earth has limits just as our bodies do, and those of us paying close enough attention have noticed over the last few decades the changes that have made our natural systems unhealthy, and us along with it. We don't have to look far to see it. That also means we don't have to look far to see solutions. You, your neighbours, and your friends can all have a positive contribution that together adds up big time. Look at what powering off for just an hour can do:

In 2010, energy consumption for that hour dropped 1.4 percent province wide, with Burns Lake, BC, reducing its consumption by a whopping 7 percent. According to BC Hydro's Team Power Smart, “If British Columbians implemented the same conservation measures (as they did in 2010) for just one hour every evening, the combined savings would be enough to power close to 2,200 homes for an entire year." — Granville

Yesterday, I bought GOOD Magazine's energy issue. I spend a good deal of time drooling over their infographics, and their design in general, and delighting in navigating their information. Fortunately, they grace us with their online versions. (Their latest visualizes where the next earthquake is most likely to hit.)

In the midst of Japan's disaster, it's hard to find an item in their website's environment section that isn't about that, and given the discussions about nuclear power, I thought this particular interactive infographic not about Japan but about one of the world's biggest energy consumers, would be relevant.

GOOD breaks down US energy sources and where it gets used. Petroleum, natural gas, and coal are the heavy hitters, with nuclear in fourth place a ways behind, but the government is interested in more nuclear power. It appears more than half of the country's energy is wasted, which brings me to question why more isn't being done to mitigate the wastage, and to reduce overall consumption, instead of constantly focussing on extracting and generating more.

This daily green blog challenge is in celebration of David Suzuki's 75th birthday, supporting the David Suzuki Foundation. Please help me out by sponsoring me online now.
Note: I am writing solely on my own behalf, and do not claim to represent the David Suzuki Foundation or its views here.

Photo by Snurb via Flickr

While searching for articles more in-depth on the first issue here, I came across some interesting finds. If you can read between the lines, you'll figure out my headline. (Unintentional cheesy rhyming.)

The nuclear plant explosion caused by Japan's magnitude 8.9 earthquake, and potential of further danger, reminds us just how risky and costly nuclear power is, says Greenpeace. Writes Ariel Schwartz for GOOD, "Nuclear power plants aren't cheap, either. Reactors cost billions of dollars to build, which is why there are only 104 operating in the entire country [US] and why they're all old — all of these plants began construction in 1974 or earlier." And I think we can all agree a wind or solar farm is far more attractive than a nuclear power plant. Speaking of solar farms, this farmer is harvesting the sun along with his wheat.