Plastic bags are one of the environmental banes of our existence. Under normal circumstances, they take roughly a thousand years to biodegrade (though often only being useful as a bag for days or weeks), and in the meantime they pose a serious threat to nature. Plastics break down into tiny particles which attract toxins and leach others, the form massive clouds in the ocean killing over a million seabirds and hundred thousand mammals and turtles each year. Plastic particles are found inside everything from birds to plankton (the tiny organisms which make up the basis of the ocean food chain and produce most of the planet's oxygen). And as much as many stores are striving to move toward re-usable bags, there's still millions of them out there.

Here's the bright side. A 16-year-old student from Waterloo has found a way to break them down in a few months. The process is simple, not a lot more complicated than brewing beer - fermentation. Using dirt from a landfill as a source for bacteria which would feed on plastic (where else would you look?) and some yeast, he figured out the right temperature to keep them at and after six weeks had broken down nearly half of the plastic in the experiment. There doesn't seem like there's any reason this couldn't be done with other plastics, or on a far larger scale.

Nature is the largest collection of machines one can imagine. If you have a task, there's probably a plant, a fungus or a microorganism which can do it. Nature turns deserts into forests, garbage into food and is the only reason we have a remotely breathable atmosphere on this planet. Despite constant attempts to patent plants, bacteria and DNA, nature will provide for anybody, regardless of what colour their skin is or what's in their wallet. The offspring of a handfull of seeds can feed a family for generations, and before around 1850, all fine Belgian beers, French wines and Highland Scotch were produced without the benefit of purchased yeasts, or even knowledge of what they were. If we want a small-scale alternative to enormously expensive toxic industries, we need look no farther than the natural processes which have supported human needs for food, fiber and building materials for thousands of years.

The pressure of rising oil prices is beginning to really hit home. While a few extra bucks for a bag of rice or a tank of gas can easily be shrugged off by most Canadians, the costs are starting to add up, and we're starting to see the longer-term consequences come into view. Air Canada Jazz - one of the budget airlines operating out of Hamilton Airport is now pulling out. On a wider scale, the company is cutting 2000 jobs nationwide and seriously scaling back flights, along with adding more and more fees to tickets. As predicted years ago in battles between the peak oil crowd and "Aerotropolis" fan club at city hall, the most gas-guzzling form of transportation we've got is starting to suffer a lot. Not that proponents of a massive airport-related industrial park are deterred, but it's beginning to look like the idea may fall on its face of its own accord. As people's wallets get more strained and jets cost more to fly, the future of air cargo and commuter flights aren't looking up in the years to come.

What worries me most about this type of thing is the calls for government intervention. Companies and unions alike are screaming for the need of regulations and subsidies to save jobs. In the short run, it's hard to argue with - the massive protests at General Motors being a perfect example. Nobody wants to see thousands more out of work, especially quality jobs like those in auto plants (likely to re-appear, if ever, at a fraction of current wages), but the alternatives aren't easy to see. We are not going to miraculously find more oil, and promised solutions like biofuels are failing quickly (with many casualties along the way). However this eventually works out, it will doubtless be very hard on a large number of people.

It's important to realize that this is only the beginning of peak oil. Production has plateaued, and prices are rising incredibly quickly due to rising demand in countries like China and India. Soon enough production is going to start falling - that's when we're going to see the real price increases. Things are going to get a lot worse, not just at the gas pump but at the grocery store, in inflation rates, and eventually on the economy as a whole. Canada may have large amounts of natural resources, which is keeping our economy sheltered so far, but we also use more fuel than any other nation on earth, per capita, and we can't keep that up forever. Demands for things like tax cuts on fuel are already being heard, and the world is begging nations like Saudi Arabia to pump more gas to drive down the price. In the short term, it sounds wise, but in the long term, it's just going to run us all out of gas a lot faster, without the high prices forcing us to cut back. Thankfully, the ability of Saudi Arabia to keep raising production is doubtful, but it's a terrifying concept nonetheless. Band-aid solution like price-freezes on fuel are much easier (for those in power), and often cheaper, than investing in conservation, and every time I see something like Chrysler's new gas price guarantee, my faith in our leaders to dig us out of this hole drops again. Remember, amidst all of this, funding for alternative energy continues to drop, as it has for decades.

We need to bite the bullet. High fuel prices are here to stay, and even if we did chop $0.20/litre off in taxes, or start pumping millions more barrels a day, what we'd save would only be eaten up by further price jumps in the months to come. If you have a job in an industry that survives based on low oil prices - automobiles, air traffic for instance, it's time to start looking for other options, because sooner or later you'll have to. We, in the modern first world, use more energy than anyone ever has, anywhere. This simply cannot continue, and though the prospect of selling your car might not look attractive now, I'll guarantee you that ya won't be getting any more money for it once everyone else catches on and starts trying to sell theirs, and the $20 deals for bikes like this at garage sales aren't going to continue when people in Hamilton start biking like people in Vancouver or Portland do.

Sexaphobia

Burlington's Catholic school board has formally decided against providing space for public health nurses to give out shots to immunize against the HPV to Grade 8 Students. HPV has no known cure or treatment, and has been called a "necessary step" in the formation of cervical cancer by the American Cancer Society, as well as cancers of the mouth, throat, penis and anus. Cervical cancer often leads to infertility, and frequently leads to death. Over 400 Canadians will die of Cervical Cancer this year.

Why would any warm-blooded school administrator wish to increase the risk of such fates to their students? It's simple - because HPV is spread through sex, and the Catholic faith declares sex outside of marriage to be a sin. The Catholic board has a strict policy of abstainence when it comes to sex education, and it feels that allowing such vaccinations to take place would undermine that.

This kind of logic, frankly, boils my blood.

It wasn't that long ago that I was a teenager in this region, and I knew many Catholic school kids from Burlington. They made bunny rabbits seem abstainant. I know many people to this day who were former students of Catholic schools, all the way to the old-time English sort run by nuns. None of these people are Catholic today, and most are not even Christian. The more young people I talk to about religion, the more people I find turning away from Christianity, specifically for these types of issues. Sexual "morality" (especially of the anti-sex, anti-gay sorts) may be a hot-button issue for religious fundamentalists, but nearly everyone beyond that fringe can see a host of more crucial issues - poverty, war, famine, environmental destruction and many others, which the Church constantly ignores so that it can continue it's crusades against condoms in schools or gay marriages.

Abstainence education doesn't work. Abstainence, as a birth control strategy, fails far more often than condoms. Teenagers are some of the horniest creatures on this planet, and unfortunately sexual arousal tends to diminish rational thinking and risk assessment. This is why the US, with it's "just say no" policies on sex education has 6-9 times the teen pregnancy rates of Western Europe, with their frank and open notions on birth control. This is why liberal northern US states have lower teen pregnancy rates and STI rates than the south, and it is why, despite remarkably similar rates of sexual activity, Catholic high schools in Ontario show higher rates of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections than public schools. The notion that all sex before marriage should be condemned is based in the religious ideology, clearly not reflected by the views of most Canadians. As my old anthropology prof liked to remind us, only 5% of human societies forbid sex out of wedlock, anyways. If that's their belief, as a religion, then they can keep to it themselves, if they wish, but to limit options in schools which are paid for by our tax dollars, then they're making choices for us. This issue should raise many issues about how we fund Catholic schools, and not Anglican, Muslim or Buddhist schools.

Most grade 8 students are not in a position to choose to go to a public school. Most 13 and 14 year olds are only beginning to grasp the great questions of religion, a personal choice which many people take whole lifetimes to decide upon. While many 13 year old girls may not be "interested" in sex at the moment, to expect them all to reach the age of marriage without gaining said interest is purely unrealistic. Kids make mistakes, and teenagers aren't going to stop having sex because grown-ups told them to. And most importantly, even if this good catholic girl does abstain until marriage, and even if her husband has only ever had one other sexual partner (in a committed, years-long relationship), the risk is still there, and it would be a real shame for her to become infertile, or die as a result. If her husband cheats on her, the risk is there. And if she is raped, the risk is there. To remove the option of a vaccination that may save her life because of anti-sex ideology is cold-hearted and vindictive.

Sex is a fact of life. If it weren't one of the most compelling drives we have, there wouldn't be billions of us on the planet right now, and billions more on the way. While I'm no fan of unwanted pregnancies, chlamydia or sexual assault/harrasment/manipulation, I'm realistic enough to note that the vast majority of sex doesn't involve these. It can be done safely, and is, the vast majority of the time, by people of all walks of life, and genuinely contributes to their happiness and satisfaction with life. To stall efforts to make it even safer, in the name of safety itself, is simply...fucked.