William Oldacre Photography

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Scything Off

So I’ve been working pretty hard lately – actually very hard on several things and you might have noticed I fell a little behind in my posting – missed last week entirely. Well today I took a couple hours of me time and went to see Chasing Ice at the Tiff lightbox – beautiful building by the way, I haven’t actually been in it until today. I needed a break and I’ve been wanting to see this movie for some time now.

It was really good. I mean, it was a decent documentary but more than that the photography of the Arctic glaciers and the footage were beautiful. And most importantly,  the message was stupendous, frightening and saddening all at the same time. I recommend you see it, if nothing else it will put this entire climate change argument in perspective. This is the second or third documentary I’ve seen about climate change that has really hit home and scared me about our and my habits. So much so that I am determined to reduce and if possible eliminate my reliance on fossil fuels.

I started 15 years ago with riding my bike to work with the added physical and mental health benefit of exercise as an easy starting point to reduce my fuel usage and carbon footprint and now I’m progressing into the more difficult and expensive steps.

In truth, that’s a good part of why I embarked us on this colossal marathon furnace replacement, basement insulation reno project that has run long by about 3 times my original time estimate. It turns out the two largest fossil fuel consuming items in our lives are our homes and our vehicles followed closely by air travel. I know that’s not everything – I keep thinking of all the shipping I incur in my business and in my everyday living with food and goods.

I think my next step will be an electric car within the next 3 years – assuming I can find a way to afford it. And after that a PV solar panel array on my roof to offset my electricity carbon footprint from coal and gas fired generation plants. All this costs a lot of money but I don’t want to be so culpable and responsible for the devastation we’re inflicting from releasing so much CO2 into our atmosphere.

I just hope my and everyone’s efforts aren’t too little too late.