Yes, it ‘s finally here! All Things Are Good Canadian readers need to make sure they vote today. If you don’t know where exactly to vote check out elections.ca. It’s not a difficult task to vote since you don’t even need to be registered.
Remember that the most important thing you do today (if not this year) is to vote for the environment.
This is just freaking awesome: Ecuadorians believe that nature ought to be protected by their constitution.
While the the new constitution has many ramifications for how the country will now be governed, the pro-nature aspects of the constitution have their roots in Ecuador’s resentment toward international companies that have exploited the country’s natural resources and left pollution and poverty in their wake. Currently Ecuadorians are in one particularly nasty lawsuit with Chevron (formerly Texaco). The oil company polluted a huge area with oil waste and did not clean it up, causing extreme pollution to ecosystems and deadly health problems for numerous communities. It has been described as the “Amazon Chernobyl.â€
To most people it looks like leaders in North America keep forgetting about global warming, well this isn’t all true. Brush the Bush and Harper conservative agendas aside and you’ll find other political leaders trying to save the planet. In Mexico, aboriginal leaders are looking into the ways of that their ancestors lived to help us slow global warming today.
More than 200 leaders from 71 American Indian nations in Mexico, the United States and Canada came together in this Mexican jungle to find indigenous solutions to pollution and ecological problems threatening the planet.
“Our Mother Earth is being polluted at an alarming rate, and our elders say that she is dying,” said Raymond Sensmeier, a Tlingit leader from Yakutat, Alaska. “The way the weather is around the world … a cleansing is needed.”
The conference began with a pre-dawn ceremony that included fire, copal incense, chants in Lacandon Maya and blasts from a conch shell.
More often than not, rich countries state that they’ll only give aid to countries with ‘good governance,’ whatever that means. To me it seems like a vague term, nonetheless this vague term is now more vaguely applied – and that’s a good thing!
The World Bank, which itself suffers from not-so-good governance, has released a report saying that good governance is on the rise and corruption is on its way out in developing nations. This means that more nations are qualified to receive more aid if they want to.
Reflecting on the report’s findings, Kaufmann added: “The good news is that some countries, including the poorest ones in Africa, are showing to the world that it is possible to make substantial inroads to improve governance.”
The old saying “better late than never” comes to mind here as the United State’s Congress has decided to go carbon neutral by 2020. It is impressive that congress has decided to do this in a nation that has a leader that denies climate change. The fact that congress is trying to become green will hopefully send a message that being environmentally friendly is something that any institution can do.
What stands out for me is that they go beyond carbon neutrality and encourage a bike-to-work program. Good for your health and the environment!
Reducing energy usage is not all that is covered in the report, as it also calls for the use of non-toxic cleaning products, increasing water conservation, and significantly improving recycling, improving access to mass transit and car sharing for employees, changing the current fleet to hybrid vehicles, purchase locally and organically sourced food, changing to 100% recycled paper, and even implementing a bike-to-work program.