On March 29th, Torontonians are encouraged to turn off their lights for the hour between 8 and 9pm. More than that, we can even go so far as to unplug those energy-sucking devices that draw power even when turned off. And, I would assume, turn off the furnace and grab a sweater. Light a candle. Play a game of scrabble and get hosed on wine.

Actually, I'm just reading in between the lines on that last one.

I read about all this in the Toronto Star.

Save power. Reduce, reuse, recycle.

Great stuff!

Fine by me.

The Toronto Star even devoted an entire section to the environment, written by well-known authors. Each scribe devotes a page to a particular cause. Poor air quality. Unclean water. Suburbia. SUVs. Ugly people.

Actually, I'm just reading in between the lines on that last one.

Try as I might, however, I could not find any information on a way to save oodles of trees:

Cancel your Toronto Star subscription.

I don't know how many trees it takes to print 350ish newspapers, but I would have liked to have found out how many of our leafy friends I could save in a year.

Or, perhaps the Toronto Star could publish one day less per week. I don't know their subscriber base, so it would be interesting to know how many less trees would need to be butchered for the sake of timely news. Heck, once a week we could wait to learn who got shot in Toronto a day later than usual.

No biggie. 

How about this one: stop giving us trial weekday papers. We only subscribe on weekends because we only read the paper on weekends. Yet, here we are in the midst of our second free weekday trial in less than a year. I don't know how long it's supposed to last. But it's long enough that the first time we got the trial, we had to call and beg them to stop sending us these daily papers that were piling up on our kitchen table, unread.

We're not just talking trees, here. Think of the carbon used just in delivering all these papers. Not only to subscribers, but to newspaper boxes and retail stores everywhere. Then there's the toll on the air and water quality that paper and pulp mills spew. Ever driven through Thurso, Québec? No doubt you closed your car windows and turned off the air blower. And held your breath as long as you could.

The crazy thing is, newspapers used to be more environmentally friendly. They were delivered by paper boys (paper... persons?) on their bicycles. I know: I was one of them. We inspired a video game. Now owning a car is a prerequisite if you want to deliver the paper. Yet more carbon spewing in the air.

So newspapers have regressed.

Why didn't I read about any of this in today's paper? (In fact, why didn't I just read today's paper online?) Well, this is the Toronto Star. The same paper that in the past has bemoaned the obscuring of Lake Ontario by high-rise condos around the lakeshore.

The Toronto Star building: address, One Yonge Street.

Readers have left 2 comments.

 No.2  Uncle

Seems like a good time to go outside and see if you can see stars from downtown and reflect on light pollution and the $$$$ spent illuminating the bottom of clouds.

Joce (Unregistered) • 2008-02-02 20:27:36

 No.1  Enjoyed that.

Of course we should be planting trees and planning cities so that they have green areas. I am constantly amazed at the drop in temperature that my car reports when I leave the asphalted areas of Bells Corners for rural fields and trees of rural Ottawa. It's most welcome in the summer but it even occurs in the winter. From work to home there is often a drop of 3-5 degrees and we are often 5 degrees lower than urban Ottawa.

Doug (Unregistered) • 2008-01-21 21:10:01

Submit new comment...

Please keep your comments brief and on topic, and remember that this is not a discussion thread.

Name :

Title :

E-mail :

Website :

Comment(s) :

Verify :

What is the first day of the weekend?

J! Reactions 1.09.04 • Professional Site License
Copyright © 2006 S. A. DeCaro

---