Sasha on the Street

When I got up this morning to go to work I didn’t think twice, after finishing my breakfast I got in the car and drove to work. But I’m not sure I considered all the costs of my commute? According to Commute Solutions: The True Cost of Driving it costs me $18.50 per day to [...]

Someone sent me a link to the US GHG Inventory report for 2011. Here are a couple of highlights from my favourite chapter, Trends in Greenhouse Gas Emissions: “a year with increased consumption of goods and services, low fuel prices, severe summer and winter weather conditions, nuclear plant closures, and lower precipitation feeding hydroelectric dams, [...]

Last week I had the opportunity to attend The International Economic Forum of the Americas – The Toronto Forum for Global Cities. It was a two day conference highlighting the success and failures of the North, Central and South American Countries. The theme was supposed to be about energy, infrastructure and financial sustainability, but seemed [...]

Climate change isn’t a new topic. It probably doesn’t even make the top ten on the news anymore. But it still demands attention. Last night I attended a presentation on Local Governments Efforts to Address Climate Change: Progress and Problems. The speaker, Scott Pasternack spoke passionately about Toronto and New York City, two cities he [...]

This morning I was inspired by a friend of mine after he sent me an article from the New York Times on passive home construction. Last week  I attended the IIDEX Green Building Festival at the Direct Energy Centre, hoping to be inspired for my dream home. Here are some of the highlights: LEED for [...]

This week my good friend Dave sent me this amazing and hilarious video about a new road sign. In the video the trade-off between safety and efficiency (carbon footprint) is discussed. Although it seems a little far fetched, I’m sure we’ll see something like it in the future.

On March 17th Blue Mountain Resort is hosting it’s Keep Winter Cool Campaign. Keep Winter Cool aims to raise awareness about the potential effects of climate change and encourage skiers and snowboarders to start taking steps to reduce their own environmental impact. I’ll be there with the My Sustainable Canada team hopefully enjoying another epic [...]

To continue from the other day, our warming climate will drastically change how we design highway infrastructure. Cindy Burbank then took over the presentation. Her presentation highlighted 5 main topics Climate change science, sources and trends The importance of climate change to the state DOTs Strategies to reduce GHG emissions from transportation Climate adaptation for [...]

Last week I sat in on a webinar jointly hosted by AASHTO/FHWA/FTA on climate change and transportation; Climate Change 101: An Overview of Climate Change for State DOTS – An overview of climate change science, linkages to energy security, greenhouse gases (GHG) reduction strategies for Surface Transportation and risk-based adaptation to climate change. This presentation [...]

“We are a society that drives to the gym to run on the treadmill” Yesterday a friend of mine at work ran a session on how the built environment influences our physical activity regimes, based on a Transportation Research Board Report from 2005. The premise of his presentation is that the world is becoming less [...]