The city’s mayor, David Miller, indicated that Toronto needs all the help it can get to achieve its ambitious plans. The mayor was quoted in the Toronto Star commenting that “the plan’s success depends on residents creating change.” The Toronto Environmental Office is closely involved with the project. It is this official agency which has negotiated all the criteria for the grants that citizens can obtain for projects involving environmentally safe ideas. Funding will especially be directed to people looking to invest in equipment and materials.

The Live Green Toronto program is structured in a rather unique way. It works with what are termed “activators,” environmentalists working for non-governmental agencies. Activators meet people with project ideas and collaborate with them through the first stages. If a project idea survives the idea development stage, citizens will have been granted $1,000 to $25,000. They then can apply for full grants of between $25,000 to $250,000 for their projects to become reality. The city’s long term targets are a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions 30% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. The Toronto Star reports on a number of brilliant examples of projects that the City of Toronto supports; a solar heated water system and an inventory initiative of neighborhood trees. The latter project has a goal to plant more similar trees on private property and public parks.

Toronto’s city officials say they are open to other cities around the world wishing to copy the Live Green Toronto program. If you are interested in finding out which sub-federal governments are involved in what types of environmental programs, check out the information on Oil Depletion Protocol, which links to the the Post Carbon Cities site, listing links to laws passed by a municipal and regional agencies aiming to reduce the threat of peak oil. 

A recent addition is the State of Connecticut, which in June passed a law creating an energy scarcity and sustainability task force. Connecticut will assess all its official agencies’ petroleum use and has established a grant program for municipalities to plan for energy scarcity and cost increases. “Local government officials need to initiate conversations about how to respond to declining oil supplies”, commented Daniel Lerch, a program manager with the Post Carbon Institute in California recently told RedOrbit.  

The Post Carbon Cities website is especially interesting because it provides an insight into various approaches taken by the authorities such as internal vulnerability studies, internal policy assessments, community vulnerability task forces, and their resolutions and ordinances.

In 1923 President Harding set aside 23 million acres as an emergency oil supply for the U.S. Navy. In 1976 administration of the reserve shifted to the Bureau of Land Management, an agency of the Interior Department.  

The upcoming lease sales, set to take place in October, will open up much of the northeast section of the reserve. Tom Lonnie, Alaska state director for the BLM, says he expects the first oil production to begin between 2010 and 2012 in the easternmost portion of the reserve west of the Colville River. There is a fully developed oil complex on state lands on the eastern banks of the river.

Henri Bisson, deputy director of the BLM said that the timing of the sale, just when Congress and the Bush Administration are clamoring for access to more and more federal land for oil exploration, is coincidental. (While at the same time voting down “use it or lose it” legislation requiring oil companies to show they have fully explored and developed any oil on the 68 million acres of federal land on which they already hold leases before any more federal land be made available to them.)

The timing is exactly the path we’ve been on for the past year and a half”, said Bisson, further noting that the management plan, released last May, had been in the works for some time.

Not included in the sale are environmentally sensitive wetlands north and east of Teshekpuk Lake, near Beaufort Sea – at least for now. Any drilling in the area has been deferred by the BLM for 10 years.

Stan Senner, Executive Director of Audubon Alaska, along with local Inpiat Eskimo residents, praised the BLM’s decision to defer drilling in these wetlands, saying that it…

…acknowledges the international importance of the Teshekpuk wetland, which have been protected by every federal administration since Jimmy Carter”.

Senner added that ideally the protection would be made permanent.

Sources and Further Reading:
Reuters UK
New York Times

Adding lime to sea water helps dramatically reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere, according to new scientific research which is being funded by Shell. Lime increases alkalinity in the water, which boosts its ability to absorb CO2. It also reduces the water’s tendency to release the CO2 back into the atmosphere again.

Shell is funding a feasibility study into the logistics of large scale projects around the globe according to a recent article in Chemistry & Industry magazine. Shell spokesman Gilles Bertherin, who coordinates the project, was quoted as saying that there are potentially huge environmental benefits from addressing climate change in this way. "Adding calcium hydroxide to seawater will also mitigate the effects of ocean acidification, so it should have a positive impact on the marine environment," he said.

Scientists have been working on ideas to implement lime to oceanic waters for over a decade already, but previous efforts stranded because researchers believed obtaining lime from limestone was too expensive. They also thought that getting to the limestone was a process that itself would release masses of CO2 into the atmosphere.