local climate action

Video Plant

Participants in this October 10/10 planting were technically "trespassing" on the farm fields in this fertile region to plant garlic at the so called Airport Employment Growth District - EAGD - a euphemism for greenfield or sprawl development with all its imported (i.e. non-locally produced) farm eggs in one big basket of hope - hope that the airport will be an anchor for airport related jobs growth, mostly warehousing, at an airport with a poor track record for attracting flights and with a current business park mostly empty.
One of the last votes on council before elections approved the first phase of this development, with, sadly, only two members of council voting against it - McHattie and Bratina.
Find out more about opposition to the expansion into foodlands, which is ongoing. It ain't over while there are still people ready to take action to save the farmland!

local garlic news

Protest with a bite

By Ken Peters, Hamilton Spectator

Westdale High School Grade [10] student Evelyna Kay chose a unique and demonstrative way to make the most of a glorious Thanksgiving Sunday morning.

She donned an orange costume, boarded a chartered Hamilton Street Railway bus and helped plant garlic in a farmer’s field across from Hamilton International Airport.

“I care about the environment and I don’t want to create a world that is not sustainable. That’s why I dress up as the Climate Carrot,” said the 14-year-old Hamilton environmentalist, who is a member of Students Bridging Borders, her school’s popular social justice group.

Evelyna was just one of about 50 Hamilton members of the city’s 350 Committee which boarded their “garlic bus” for the ride to the “aerotropolis lands” to plant garlic bulbs to protest the potential loss of some of Ontario’s best agricultural lands.

Local organizer Jennie Rubio said the Hamilton event was just one of some 7,000 activities promoting climate change action taking place in 188 countries.

The group’s 350 name refers to the target, in parts per million, of how much carbon dioxide needs to be in the air. Currently, she said, there is 390 with the threat the figure could hit 450.

So, what does this have to do with garlic and the Hamilton aerotropolis lands? Well, the Hamilton 350 Committee opted to protest the planned urban development of prime agricultural lands adjacent to the airport. The development is 662-hectares.

And the garlic?

“We know our food supply is becoming less and less secure. Instead of importing our food from around the world, we could be growing,” Rubio said.

“So as part of this protest movement we’re going to plant garlic because you can’t buy local garlic in the supermarket, it is all imported from China. Yet it grows perfectly here,” she said, as her work party waited to board the bus in front of the Sky Dragron Centre on King William Street.

“It’s to send a message to our local government that we need to be making better choices with what we’re doing with this wonderful land. The idea of paving it over, you can’t go back. Once it is paved over it’s gone. We need to be thinking about what kind of decisions we’re making,” she said.

Rubio, an editor with Oxford University Press, said she loves cooking and she particularly loves garlic.
“There are a lot of things we can be growing here instead of importing.”

And so the local garlic growers, armed with cloves and spades, boarded the bus.

Well-known Hamilton environmentalist Don McLean was among them. He acknowledged the group was trespassing on private land but was hopeful no arrests would be made.

“We’re not doing any significant damage here, it is fallow land. If we are approached on the subject of trespassing, the people who are doing it will decide whether they want to back off or if they are so determined to get arrested doing it. But it is a symbolic event,” he said.

Hamilton environmentalist Glenn Robinson was working the spade.

“I believe there are a lot of opinions about what is happening in the community and this is one voice that should be heard,” he said.

The city’s planning and economic development committee approved moving forward with the airport development and the issue will come before city council Wednesday for ratification.

Planting not Paving

The "Garlic Bus" took about 50 people from Downtown Hamilton to this fertile farm field across the road from the Hamilton Airport to plant garlic - why? Because the city of Hamilton is one step away from voting to pave 2,500 acres of prime agricultural land so they can support an "Aerotropolis" scheme.

Yes, the failing airport is the cornerstone of the grand scheme to create hoped-for jobs on these greenfield sites far from the infrastructure required, infrastructure that exists in the downtown area in "brownfields" that could be converted to productive use with the kind of money required to build the aerotropolis (the present airport business park is 85% empty...)

Participants in the day's activities, ranging from young children to seniors, were all strictly "trespassing" as they carried out their work.

350 cloves of Garlic were planted in the shape of the number 350 in a field directly across the road from the Hamilton Airport.

The 350 number is significant because that is the amount in parts per million of Carbon Dioxide the atmosphere can handle without more serious effects of climate change, according to scientists.

Trouble is, we' re already past that number, so our efforts - including stopping sprawl developments like this one - need to address this serious issue.

This Global Work Party was organized by the Hamilton 350 coalition. Find out more at their web site, and follow the Climate Carrot on facebook.

NOTE: OPIRG McMaster will be hosting a nonviolent civil disobedience workshop on November 20/10

garlic and carrot acting up for the environment

This is the most interesting civil disobedience locally in a long, long time...It also brings back memories of being arrested with Toronto Action for Social Change for planting a vegetable garden at Queen's Park in Toronto in the fall of 1996 (it was Winter Wheat and Jerusalem Artichokes that time) to protest the slash and cut policies of the Provincial Conservative government.  rk.

The Carrots and Garlic of Climate Change

The Hamilton 350 Committee is participating in the global day of climate action on Sunday, October 10 – 10/10/10. We need your help.

As the title suggests, our action focuses on the implications of climate change for food security. Hamilton lost 20 percent of its agricultural land between 1991 and 2006. On October 13, 2010, city council decides whether to convert an additional 2050 acres of foodland around the airport into an aerotropolis industrial zone. 

On the morning of October 10 (Thanksgiving Sunday) we’ll be planting a message on those aerotropolis lands – with garlic. You can get there on our Garlic Bus and we’ll supply the garlic. Tickets are $3 per person to cover our costs. These may not be public lands and we may be trespassing. We are looking for peaceful radicals! 

Garlic is one symbolic crop for our campaign. Not only is it is planted in the fall, but nearly all the garlic now available in Hamilton is imported from China. By planting local garlic on lands designated for aerotropolis development, we are sending a strong message to city hall: Productive agricultural land should be used to grow food, not warehouses! 

Without a protected and supported local food system, Hamiltonians will be vulnerable to global price fluctuations and world food shortages. It's about our fundamental right to food security. It's about our community's need for food sovereignty. And it's about climate change. Global climatic disasters this summer in Pakistan, Russia, Saskatchewan, Australia and elsewhere pushed wheat prices up 70 percent! We need to guarantee access to locally-grown food so that we can also reduce the number of miles our food travels from farm to fork-thereby reducing the contributions our food makes to greenhouse gas emissions.

The Hamilton 350 Committee is also using “giant carrots” (see photos at http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Climate-Carrot/124094217640246) to alert the public about our concerns. Unlike garlic, there are still lots of locally-grown carrots available. We’re distributing the attached carrot flyer – and need your help to do this before October 10! Please respond to this email if you can help. Please forward the flyer to all your friends and connections!

Want more information about aerotropolis development plans? Check out Hamiltonians for Progressive Development.

More information is available at www.hamilton350.com. Hamilton's latest 350 campaign is part of the global 10/10/10 movement, organized by 350.org.

103

CLIMATE OF FEAR? 

A WAKE UP CALL!

Vigil at Hamilton City Hall
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 26, 2005
6:00 - 7:00 pm

A dozen people marked the one year anniversary of the worst ever recorded air quality index reading in the province - a reading of 103 - a dubious distinction for Hamilton achieved on October 26, 2004.


The small gathering was to be a "wake-up call" to city council, a first notice that some citizens want to see some substantial action to address issues of smog and climate change. 

Children chalked messages on the pavement, as others donned air filter masks and held a "Climate Change: Action NOW!" banner in front of city hall as hundreds of cars zoomed past on Main Street. 

The group moved inside moments prior to the start of a city council meeting to deliver their wake up call. 

As city councillors settled into their chairs, a brief but noisy percussion session erupted in the foyer outside council chambers. The banner was clearly visible for councillors and a group of students visiting from Mohawk College. 

Downtown councillor Bob Bratina came and joined in a circle dance led by Rex Barger, before returning to his council seat. 

The vigil ended with Hamilton's daily newspaper and local television station failing to cover the event. 

A year ago, Clean Air Hamilton's chairperson Brian McCarry said the extreme smog warning should be a wake-up call about the amount of pollution produced locally. 

Yet, a year later we have to ask ourselves: Are we allowing ourselves to get used to smog? How much poisonous air is acceptable? What do we need to help make better choices? And, given that Canadians consider climate change an urgent issue we must ask: are governments doing enough? 

A recent study by the David Suzuki Foundation indicates that "Canada is one of the worst environmental performers in the industrialized world and has shown no improvement over the past decade." The study notes that Canada's greenhouse gas emissions are two times higher than the average for other industrialized countries and major smog-causing air pollutants are two-to-three times higher. 

In Hamilton, smog and climate change are driven largely by our transportation choices. A report prepared for the city found that while fuel use increased across Canada during the 1990s, Hamilton's per capita fuel use increased more rapidly than most other cities, from almost 1,100 litres per capita to nearly 1,250 litres." Automobile travel is the largest producer of Green House Gases (GHG) 

With only 7% of daily trips using transit, it is clear where we might begin to make the kind of gains necessary if Canada is to stop going the wrong direction on our Kyoto commitments. 

Not facing climate change, according to another study, means that heat-related deaths will double by 2050 and triple by 2080 because of global warming. The authors say that increased air pollution will cause a 20 per cent increase in smog-related deaths by 2050 and a 25 per cent increase by 2080. Scientists urged the federal government to focus on mandatory, rather than voluntary measures to meet Canada's targets under the Kyoto Protocol for reducing smog and greenhouse gases. 

We are witnessing the effects of climate change - from the seemingly mundane, like pollution-stressed trees showing less fall colour, to hurricanes and extreme weather, flooding, landslides, sea level rise, heat/cold waves, water shortage, air pollution, intensification of heat islands. The list goes on and it is only going to get worse. 

It's time for serious reflection, time to acknowledge our role in climate change and resolve to do all we can to prevent a continuation of destructive ways. It's clear that we need action, we need to be proactive and come up with a preventative, not just a reactive, smog strategy. 

We might start with planting more trees, pass an anti-idling by-law, build more bike paths and bike lanes and connect more footpaths, lower transit fares and increase service funded by dedicated gas taxes, create green roofs, de-pave parking lots, put our roads on "diets", invest in clean local energy, raise taxes on SUV purchases (currently taxed at a rate that is between one-half and one-third the rate for passenger vehicles), protect and support local organic agriculture and agricultural lands, reduce our fuel consumption through conservation measures, build more compact cities by embracing "smart growth", ensure climate change is factored into new developments, and make binding - not voluntary - emission thresholds for industry.