Month: April 2008

Check Marks to Save Lives

- Adam Clare

An article on the CBC’s website today mentions that intensive care units in Toronto will be using a checklist to ensure the best medical care for patients. Yes, a checklist.

It’s one of three ICU checklists Dr. Damon Scales has adopted in his Toronto hospital.

“When I tell people about these things they sort of have the reaction of saying, ‘How could you ever forget that?’ said the clinical associate in the department of critical care medicine at Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. “But this is a busy place with complicated patients and these are the kinds of things that can get lost in the shuffle.”

It’s such a simple solution that most people don’t think the checklist is real. In December the New Yorker ran an article on how checklists are the best thing to happen to medicine since, well, seemingly forever. The New Yorker article is a great read.

Paris Airport to be Powered by Water

- Adam Clare

Orly Airport, outside of Paris, will be using geothermal energy to lower their carbon footprint. They’ll drive two 1.7km long pipes into hot water that is below the surface of the airport.

“We have the unprecedented luck of having hot water below our feet that can heat a large part of Orly without CO2 [carbon dioxide] emissions. We are the first airport in Europe to do this,” Pierre Graff, who is chairman and managing director of Aeroports de Paris (ADP), said on Wednesday.

The project, launched after a technical and financial feasibility study, will cost 11 million euros (17.27 million dollars). The Orly-Ouest terminal, part of Orly-South, the airport’s Hilton Hotel, and two business districts will be hooked up to the system from 2011.

Cars Being Used Less in Toronto

- Adam Clare 2 Comments

Some more information form the 2006 Canadian census has been released and it paints a green future for transportation in Toronto. The census asked how people get to work (car, walk, public transit, bike, etc.). In the city the younger one is, the more likely it is that one is taking a more green approach to getting to work.

Workers under the age of 25 in the Toronto region use public transit 30.8 per cent of the time, walk 9.5 per cent of the time and cycle 1.5 per cent of the time.

That’s a considerably higher reliance on environmentally friendly means of getting to work than the average commuter in the Toronto region, who commutes by public transit 22.2 per cent of the time, by foot 4.8 per cent of the time and by bike 1.0 per cent of the time.

Reliance on the car in the Toronto region seems to increase with the age of the commuter.

Commuters younger than 25 used a vehicle to get to work — either as a driver or a passenger — 57.2 per cent of the time. Those age 25-34 commuted by car 66.1 per cent of the time, and those 35 and over drove or were driven 75.8 per cent of the time.

What really stood out to me was that the desire to own a car is shrinking!

Owning a car used to be a rite of passage for young people, but environmental awareness in that generation has made gas guzzlers uncool, says Dan McDermott, director of Ontario’s chapter of the Sierra Club of Canada. The high cost of gasoline is another factor for those with limited incomes.

“The desire to own a car is diminishing for a number of reasons — environmental consciousness being high on that list,” said McDermott.

I’ve never understood why people want to own cars even if they don’t need one.

Swedes Like it Green

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Vaexjoe, a town in Sweden, is looking to be the greenest city in the EU. They’re doing quite well already. It’s great to see that cities are protecting the environment as best they can with such enthusiasm.

While the European Union (EU) aims to raise its share of renewable energy consumption to 20 percent by 2020, Vaexjoe, a town of 80,000 people nestled between lakes and forests in Sweden’s south, can boast of already exceeding 50 percent — and 90 percent when it comes to heating.

Carbon dioxide emissions per inhabitant dropped by 30 percent between 1993 and 2006.

“It’s a lot but we’re not satisfied, we want to reduce them further,” says Henrik Johansson, an environmental expert at city hall.

In fact, Vaexjoe, which in 1996 set the ambitious goal of ultimately reducing its consumption of fossil fuels to zero, wants to halve its CO2 emissions by 2010 and reduce them by 70 percent by 2050.

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