The world is about to collapse. The environment is on the verge of complete and utterly irreversible destruction.

We are all going to die!

But there are still limits to what humans can be asked to do avoid this calamity.

Well, there are limits to how much Severn Suzuki is willing to do. The rest of us, of course, have to carry the load.

David Suzuki and his daughter Severn Suzuki are going to teach us how to be more environmentally conscious.

With just these five simple, budget-friendly tips, anyone can embrace today's eco revolution and make a "real life" move in the right direction.

They may not be as visually impressive to your neighbours as cruising up your driveway in a new hybrid car or basking in the glory of your new solar panelled "smart" home. Yet these small steps can change your world and benefit the entire planet, according to this dynamic duo.

So what are these "world-changing" ideas? Ride a bike. Use a bus. Brilliant ideas. Never thought of that.

But the best idea is the first one.

Use your own coffee mug instead of a disposable cup:

"I never use disposable cups," says Severn. "Just because I can't really justify using a resource that was once a tree or a plant for just 15 minutes and then throwing it in a landfill." According to the Say No to Trash website, Canadians throw away 25 billion styrofoam cups each year, and they will still be sitting in landfill sites 500 years from now.

I never use disposable cups. Well, doesn't that put me in my place. I am so ashamed. I wish I was as good a person as Severn Suzuki.

OK, I'm not ashamed. I'm laughing. At least as far as this is concerned, I'm a better environmentalist than Severn Suzuki. I don't drink coffee.

Severn Suzuki is the product of the mocha-latte-sucking intellectual coffee clatch crowd in British Columbia. She'd never suggest that you give up on coffee altogether:

Of the 50 countries in the world with the highest deforestation rates from 1990 to 1995, 37 were coffee producers.

In Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, Laos, Myanmar, and Mexico coffee production is expanding into previously pristine natural areas. Colombia, in turn, has increased production by converting to more sun-grown coffee. It is not clear whether the land used for new producers in China, New Caledonia, Samoa, and Mauritius has come from converting pristine areas, or from conversion of other agricultural lands. There is little data globally to indicate what the previous land use was for new coffee production areas.

Another driving force of habitat conversion is the increasing market for high-grade speciality coffees. These coffees tend to be produced in new, out-of-the-way areas with unique soils and topographies that give the beans unusual flavour profiles. Such coffee is often produced in areas that are too steep or otherwise of too poor quality for the production of other food and cash crops.

These are precisely the types of areas that are rich in biodiversity or, at the very least, have become local biodiversity refuges in the face of the expansion of other forms of agricultural production. They are also typically the types of areas that are most prone to erosion. Consequently, the demand for higher-quality arabica coffee may exacerbate environmental degradation.

You want to affect the environment? Ban coffee.

But, then, Severn Suzuki likes coffee. So let's ban cars and power plants and overpopulation. But not coffee. No, let's just use coffee mugs. That'll make up for the deforestation.

Posted by: Steve Janke at 10:16 AM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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