Breathing Clean Air

Montreal has a smog alert today as it has several times in the last two weeks, which is a little ironic, considering that yesterday Quebec Premier Jean Charest pledged to cut the emissions by 20 per cent compared to 1990 by 2020. On a per capita basis, the province's emissions would drop to eight tonnes, considerably less than Quebec’s previous target of 11 tonnes per capita. In comparison, the European Union targets are nine tonnes per capita, while the Harper government aims to reduce them to something around 22 tonnes.   Charest said that the biggest effort will go to reducing emissions linked to ... Read Full Story

What’s wrong (or right) with this picture? Jean Charest is getting praise from Arnold Scharzenegger, but it looks like Harper will be a no-show in Copenhagen. The Republican governor of California has just praised Quebec’s announcement about amibitious plans for green house gas reductions. “Like California, Quebec is not waiting for national and international commitments; they are taking action now to reduce emissions and dependence on fossil fuels,” he’s quoted as saying. “This is another example of a subnational government leading the way and I look forward to more commitments and partnerships from all levels of government in the fight against global warning as ... Read Full Story

Lots of background noise this morning when I woke up—it’s an effect I’ve noticed frequently lately as temperature inversion layers settle over Montreal. Then when I walked into a cloud/fog as I climbed Mount Royal in the cemetery, I noticed how progressively quieter things became, until at the top the roar of traffic appeared very distant.   There are climatological reasons for this, it seems. To make a long story short, sound is deflected downwards by the inversion which acts sort of like a lid on the bustle of the city in the morning. Up the mountain, one is above the inversion and hence ... Read Full Story

When a taxi driver complains about Bixis cutting back on clients you’ve got something that is more than just a gadget. The big question for me when the Bixi , Montreal’s bike share program, was rolled out last spring was: who would use them? Bike riding has grown around here in the last few years, as more bike paths have been constructed on busy streets. Bike traffic is even approaching a critical mass on some side streets. Everybody who might want to ride a bike already has one, right?   No. The locals have figured out how to use the bikes for short strips ... Read Full Story

The health of Montrealers depends on Mount Royal: if there were any doubt about it, new research to be published shortly in Social Science and Medicine shows that the mountain and neighborhoods next to it are much less polluted.   Dan Crouse, a doctoral candidate at McGill University in geography and epidemiology, has been keeping track of nitrogen dioxide--a good indicator of overall pollution-- at 129 points around the island of Montreal for the last couple of years, checking each device in spring, summer and winter. He’s plotted NO2 levels against socio-emographic data, and his results have been a bit of surprise, he admitted ... Read Full Story