Vote on Toronto's Green Plan

The Mayor has a plan to make Toronto greener. And while he thinks it's ok to install thousands of street furniture that use coal-fired energy to broadcast ads, he also has some good ideas too.

On the list are:

• Doubling the size of the tree canopy to 34 per cent, which would at least triple the number of trees the city plants every year from around 60,000 to 175,000.
• Cutting water consumption by requiring all homeowners to install a low-flow toilet, which uses 6 litres of water per flush. A conventional toilet uses 13 litres.
• Conserving 90 megawatts of electricity by 2012 -- enough to power more than 60,000 homes.
• Implementing an annual parking or motor vehicle registration fee to fund retrofits and renewable energy

All important goals, to be sure, but increasing the tree canopy has to have the greatest effect since it will reduce load on the sewer system (water retention in the soil), reduce energy use due to natural cooling in the summer time, and increase air quality... not to mention make Toronto prettier.

Anyway, the Star is doing an online poll on the above options, so if you're interested, you should check out their in-depth article (from which I copied the above items).