August 10, 2005

(Toronto) Today, Toronto is suffering through its 40th smog advisory day of 2005, doubling the old record of 20 smog days set in 2001. To mark this dubious achievement, the Toronto Environmental Alliance released a list of the Top Ten Reasons Why We're So Smoggy.

"We have a choice," said Keith Stewart, Smog and Climate Change Campaigner for the Toronto Environmental Alliance. "We can try to get used to breathing poisonous air, because with global warming this will be the new normal for Toronto's summer. Or we can take real action to reduce the pollution that causes smog and climate change." To indicate what kind of action is required, TEA has prepared the following list:

Top Ten Reasons We're So Smoggy

10. The feds passed legislation on mandatory fuel efficiency standards in 1981, but have never asked the Governor General to sign it into law so...

9. The average vehicle on the road in Canada has become less efficient every year since the early 1990s, thanks to SUVs and light trucks which don't have to meet the same pollution standards as cars.

8. The province's investment in transit is half of what it was 10 years ago.

7. The city doesn't do enough to get cars out of the way of buses, streetcars, bikes and pedestrians.

6. The McGuinty government is investing less in energy conservation in our electricity sector than did the Peterson government, and about 1/3 of what the Rae government invested.

5. The Harris/Eves government destroyed the province's energy conservation programs because Enron and friends asked them to. Honestly, we're not making that up.

4. Five of our 20 nuclear reactors haven't worked for 8 years while the rest are unreliable, so the use of coal has doubled. We're looking at spending over 5 billion to try to bring back broken-down nukes which soaks up all the money that could be used for wind, solar, and conservation.

3. The oil and car companies have invested in fighting action on climate change rather than in renewable energy or better vehicles.

2. The federal government waited 13 years to get serious about a climate change treaty they signed in 1992.

1. The federal government's Kyoto Plan still isn't up to the job

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