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Now usually I take public transit to get around Toronto, but once in a while, as I’m waiting for the subway, I dream of driving my electric car (powered by renewable energy) to work, nary an emission along the way. So this week, when Tesla Motors of California released their new Type S electric car, at approx. US$57,000, that dream got a little bit closer. You can order one now, for delivery in a couple of years.

OK, I’m hoping a less expensive electric car will hit the market soon (are you coming, plug-in Prius? Wherefore art thou, electric Mini?), but I’m betting that my next car will be electric. I’ve heard a lot of reasons why electric cars won’t replace gassers (as my partner calls them), and I agree with that — but perhaps EVs (electric vehicles) will become the norm, the gasser the exception.

There are a bunch of arguments against EVs. First, there’s range. For most of us, a car that will go even just 100 kms on one charge is plenty far enough. Yes, we’d need a backup plan for long trips, but most days, 100 kms would be fine. (The basic Tesla model has a 250-km range.)

Next, there’s looks and size. Some people are nervous in small cars. Did you get a look at the Tesla? Does that look like a golf cart to you? Can you imagine anything much sexier?

OK, how about the carbon footprint of the electricity that powers the car? True, if you’re hooking your car up to the grid, and the grid is powered by coal in your area, then it’s not a green car. But if you purchase power from a renewable energy supplier, or your area gets its power from more renewable sources, then that car is looking pretty clean. (And yes, you can plug your Type S into a standard outlet.)

Batteries are often a point of concern. Batteries are nasty! But we have become pretty good at recycling them through reusing the materials, and the batteries companies such as Tesla are using are lithium ion – they pack a lot of energy into a small space, just like laptop and cell phone batteries.

What about speed? True, the top-end speed of the Tesla Type S is only about 210 km/h. Oh wait, that’s crazy fast. The company’s Roadster can go from 0 to 60 mph in 3.9 seconds. Not too shabby.

The most difficult change? Accepting that our deeply worn infrastructure around gas stations and combustion engines will have to evolve. But when I think about the potential for cities and towns to reduce smog through zero emission vehicles, I feel a lot of hope.

How about you, would you consider an electric car, or do you drive a vehicle that seems green enough already?

Earth Hour ended up being a lot of fun. My folks and my partner and I went for a late afternoon walk in the woods. The Thousand Islands area is on the Canadian Shield. Meandering through the woods means making your way over tumbled chunks of rock covered in colourful lichens, surrounded by thick, spongy mosses, strewn with fragrant pine needles. Unfortunately, where my folks live, there is an out-of-control deer population, so one must steer clear of little round droppings everywhere.

After our walk, we prepped dinner on the barbecue and chopped up a salad. It’s pretty hard to eat locally in Ontario at this time of year – the winter stores have just about run out and nothing’s in the ground yet to harvest. But at least by cooking off the grid we minimized our power usage on Earth Hour night!

Dinner prep ticked into the final minutes leading up to Earth Hour, but we soon flicked off the last couple of lights and lit some candles. And then we started thinking of things that might be drawing power around the house! Before long, flashlights in hand, people were dispatched to unplug the DVD player and TV, and anything else potentially drawing power. It was a good exercise in thinking about all of the electronics and appliances that steal away a little power all the time.

I think the candlelight made for great dinner conversation. With the gentle candlelight flickering across our faces, illuminating the area around us and not much more, it’s no surprise we were focused on one another, and the lights were out well after Earth Hour was officially over.

Back in Toronto, I was thrilled to see everyone’s evident interest in Earth Hour — a 15 per cent power reduction, about double last year’s achievement. Congratulations, everybody! Here’s a video of Earth Hour’s lights out around the world.

What did you do for Earth Hour?

I was thinking about Earth Hour on the way home from work last night. It was around 7:30 p.m. and, as usual, lights were on in closed shops, office towers and picture windows everywhere. I thought a little about the benefits of having a darker night. Here are a few; let me know if you can think of others.

1. Fewer birds will die. I know that Toronto’s mayor, David Miller, encourages office towers to turn off the lights at night with the Lights Out program. The problem: When lights are on in a building, birds see the rooms inside as open spaces to fly into. Since many bird populations are in serious decline, it would be great if we could help more of them survive. Here’s a Homemakers story on building birdhouses for native songbirds.

2. You can get a better night’s sleep. Ambient light from street lights and other sources keeps us from sleeping deeply. In our new house, my partner and I use blackout cloth behind our bedroom curtains to block out the street light’s orange glow.

3. Star gazing. I used to have a great piece of software called MPj Astro. Fabulous for the mid ’90s, it would show you the night sky for your location, in whatever direction you wanted to look, and label whatever you liked. These days I could really only use it to find out what’s there, behind a wall of light. But I think I’ll see if I can find it and load it on my machine before Earth Hour — a window of an opportunity to try it out again.

What other fringe benefits are you expecting from Earth Hour?

I’m getting really excited about all of the lights out statements happening around the world for Earth Hour (this Saturday night at 8:30, whatever your time zone). Positioned as an opportunity to tell global leaders that people want to tackle climate change, I think that, with some of the major statements planned, this will be a landmark year. Lights are going out on the Sphinx and Great Pyramids of Giza, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Eiffel Tower, the Sydney Opera House, the Acropolis in Greece, the CN Tower — even the Las Vegas strip!

While reading up about the event, I’ve found out about a few related contests:

World Wildlife Federation, which runs Earth Hour, is offering a chance to win a trip for two to visit the polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba. To enter, just register with their Earth Hour site.

For Toronto dwellers, there’s the “How Low Can We Go, T.O.?” contest, a chance to win an “Earth Hour Conservation Pack.”

Canon Canada’s Nurture Nature Awards are open for entries starting on Earth Hour. Just submit a proposal consisting of a short video and a brief written plan on how you intend to positively impact a threatened habitat in your area. Each winner gets a cash award of $20,000 to fund their project, as well as a Canon digital SLR camera and a Canon video camera so they can document their progress and the final results of their project. The contest closes on Sept. 1, 2009.

During Earth Hour (this Saturday night at 8:30), my partner and I will be visiting my folks at their place in the Thousand Islands / Frontenac Arch region. If the weather plays nice, we’ll get to enjoy the fresh air (always has a hint of pine), get out for a good walk, hopefully do a little woodworking (my dad is making us some bedroom furniture) and then get ready for a nice, low-power Earth Hour.

I hope to get notes from you guys about what you did for Earth Hour, and what you saw. I’ll miss being in Toronto to witness lights blinking out across the city. Aside from the ever-present lights on the Thousand Island bridge, my folks’ place — and their neighbours’ — should be pretty dark.

At about 8:30 (Earth Hour), we’re usually having dinner. That takes power to make, but this year we’re planning to have a low-power meal. We’re still finalizing the menu, but my dad suggested fondue. Perfect! We’ll probably need a little camp stove to get things heated up – tealights don’t hold a candle to a stove’s ability to melt cheese – but once things are heated up we’ll be able to turn off the burner and dine by candle light.

After devouring the last bit of beer-softened cheese, we usually need to take a walk before embarking on the next fondue course. But when faced with chocolate and fruit, we always bravely find a way to scrape the pot clean.

Here are some recipes for chocolate, cheese and broth fondue from the Homemakers and Canadian Living Test Kitchens.

Which low-power foods might you enjoy during Earth Hour?

Last year on Earth Hour night, my partner and I met a friend down on Toronto’s Queen St. The three of us checked out city hall at Queen and Bay (dimmed as promised – neat but not as fun as the night we played games on its windows during Nuit Blanche), gaped at the shadow of the CN tower (usually lit up in blues, purples and pinks these days) and generally grinned at other people on the street. The fact that most people were out to see how different Toronto could look that night was neat in itself, like we were all sharing something.

And as we walked West down toward Spadina Ave., most storefronts were completely dark, even though Earth Hour itself was long over. Where they would usually spotlight the latest and greatest for window shoppers’ benefit, most places, particularly the independents, were blacked out. A few stores seemed oblivious to the night’s event, however, and blazed against the dark night so brightly I wondered if they were capitalizing on the opportunity to stand out.

We were headed to a concert at the Horseshoe, and after Luke Doucet got his guitar wound up on a few opening songs, he made a comment about the multinational clothing company across the street with its lights on in full force. The crowd made it clear what they thought of the store’s light show with a round of booing. Now there we all were, inside a bar with the lights, the sound system and the beer fridges running full steam, but the booing felt justified: the clothing store wasn’t being a good sport.

Later I wondered if that store, and others still lit up down the street, even knew how to turn off their display lighting. Odds were that the lights were on timers that the employees didn’t even know how to interrupt. And I thought that that’s sort of the trouble with the way we use energy: it’s been so cheap for so long, it’s made more sense just to put things on automatic, leave things running than make daily decisions about what’s on and off.

In our offices here at Homemakers, the lights are either on or off across the entire floor, with the exception of some of the offices and boardrooms. While I’m glad that the lights all go off on a timer in the evening, I’m sure there are ways to make it more efficient, say, on a sunny afternoon when you don’t need the lights on, or a late night at work where you’re the only one there.

Does your office have power-saving programs or practices? Has your building made any changes to save energy?

Earth Hour is this Saturday night at 8:30 p.m., no matter what time zone you live in. It’s a global energy-saving party – last year, according to WWF, than 50 million people in 35 countries took part. Canadians really embraced this event, even though it started as something for Sydney, Australia. I think that last year, our politicians were surprised at the number of people who got involved in Earth Hour, and that let them know that with a few incentives, we can be more efficient.

The neat thing about Earth Hour is it’s an opportunity to try out an “R” that we often skip over, in my opinion. How much can we reduce? If Earth Hour is our one in 8,760 hours a year to show our village, town, city, province, country, world that we can reduce the power we use, and that we want to reign in our consumption, then let’s see just how much of a difference we can make!

I’m not saying that I’ll let my ice cream thaw by turning off all the power at the panel. Although that could be interesting. (Hey, we’ve all survived power outages, right?)

But beyond turning out the lights for an hour, why not turn off computers, flip off power bars, turn down the thermostat, and forego running dishwashers, microwaves, hair dryers and other appliances (even if they’re really really efficient)?

Do you think Earth Hour is a legitimate chance to send a message? Do you plan to do anything special for Earth Hour this Saturday night? Do you have other energy-saving tips?

Financial troubles have downplayed our climate crisis, but saving energy obviously pays off on both fronts. Let’s see how far Canada will take it this year!

It’s easy for me to forget about trees and carbon footprints when I walk into a furniture store. Things are so uncluttered, so bright and shiny, so colourful. Think how great my place could look with all this stuff in it!

But when I get a bit closer, there it is. The smell. The smell of off-gassing glues prevalent in carpets and particleboard furniture.

It comes back to shopping locally once again. When I worked at Canadian Home Workshop magazine, I found out that to get any piece of wood furniture you want, you might as well talk to a local woodworker about a custom piece. Why not get something made exactly to the dimensions you want, in the style you want, with the safe glues and finishes you want to have a healthy home. Sure, it costs more than the department store, but the piece could last for generations. Talk about reuse!

Woodworking might seem like something a tree lover wouldn’t do. But au contraire! Those who can take a few choice boards and turn them into something that a family can be proud of over generations — those are the people with a healthy respect for trees! Many custom builders know of sources of reclaimed lumber as well, which comes from old buildings, or they have connections with area sawmills that work with selectively harvested trees or reclaimed wood from old barns, etc.

Here are some steps I’d recommend when working with a custom woodworker:

1) Gather information. Measure your space, and perhaps cut out some cardboard in the footprint of the furniture to better gauge the actual size you want. Cut out pictures of the style you want, or take photos if you want a piece that matches something you already have.

2) Search for a woodworker. Aside from Google searches and your local phone book, you might also try a post on the Workshop Buzz forum.

3) Provide parameters, including the size of the piece, the material you want, the style, and when you need it. Ask for a quote and a sketch, and discuss how you will provide payment (independent woodworkers rarely take credit!)

4) Review the sketch carefully and make sure every detail is worked out.

5) When the piece is built and before you take it home, check it over for workmanship (make sure the drawers move well in the drawer boxes and that all joints are nice and tight) and the quality of the finish.

6) Ask for maintenance tips to protect the wood’s finish.

My partner likes to watch Life on Earth episodes from the late ’70s. I was born in 1975, so to me these stories of discovering earthly wonders are a thing of my early time, although I only remember watching Nova on PBS and David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things on CBC.

While I love learning more about interesting species (why do so many episodes of nature shows focus on mating habits?) and watching the beautiful photography, I find watching the old episodes troubling. I can’t help wondering if the places Sir David Attenborough is visiting on screen are still “there”, or if they’ve over harvested, become deserts or fallen victim to urban sprawl.

Lately I’ve noticed that a few Canadian media outlets, including Canadian Geographic and Quirks and Quarks, seem to have taken a deep breath and waded into political waters once in a while, pointing out how people are changing the earth forever. I find I’m much more interested in these programs and publications when they get into the debate – they just seem more relevant. Apparently, in his latest series, Planet Earth, Attenborough closes with this: “We can now destroy or we can cherish — the choice is ours.”

How do you like your science shows? Should they be fascinating info-tainment or should they try to sway public opinion?

I love music (who doesn’t) and fancy myself a musician, but I have a weird specialty: jingle writing. I haven’t done any actual commercial jingles but so far, I’ve written a large handful of ditties for friends and family. If it’s someone’s landmark birthday, wedding… or they’re moving to Japan, I’ll write that person a song to mark the occasion, and give him or her a recording to remember it by (yours is coming soon, Grandma!) I even had fun writing a custom voicemail for someone at work, used to raise funds for the United Way.

Last week, one of my best friends asked me to write a lullaby for her newborn baby. This was an intimidating project because not only did I need to come up with a new tune, it had to be something that would send an infant to dreamland. AND my friend would have to be able to sing the song, so it had to match her tonal range.

So where does the Eco Logic part come in? Well, 10 years ago I probably would have hooked up a mic to a tape recorder and sung it. Now all I do is fire up my Mac, launch Garage Band and sing right into the built-in mic on the computer. (Yes, sound purists, there are certainly better ways but for my purposes, it sounds just fine. I’m actually amazed at how clear my voice comes through). So I recorded it in Garage Band, exported it to iTunes, then e-mailed the file as an MP3 file to my friend, which she could then open in iTunes and enjoy. I sent different versions of the tune in different ranges. And I did it all digitally. You could point out that there’s a carbon cost in the manufacturing of the computer and the electrons to run it. Very true. We do buy our power from a renewable energy company, so at least the electrons are green!

I think it’s pretty neat that I can do a bunch of things without materials or shipping. Is there anything you do that’s become purely digital? Do you think it’s truly helping the environment?

Oh and, for the record, my friend loves the song. Her baby? It seemed to work on her a little bit, but I think she’s a tougher audience!