Canadian Baby Boomers Begin Retirement In 2010

from All Headline News
Staff - December 28, 2009

Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (All Headline News) - Canada, like many western countries grappling with low population growth rates, faces a demographic challenge of finding workers to run its economy as Baby Boomers start to retire in 2010.


The start of a new decade means those born in 1945 or 1946 - the start of the Baby Boomer years - will turn 65 beginning 2010 and would face retirement from the labor force.

In Canada, the Urban Futures Institute estimates 425,000 Canadians will retire annually beginning next year.

Although the Baby Boomer retirees may stop full-time employment, some of them are reportedly expected to pursue their passion or start home-based enterprises, particularly Internet-based businesses since most of them are by now tech-savvy.

[...] more at All Headline News

And Thus Ends the Hottest Decade on Record . . .

from TreeHugger.com
by Brian Merchant, Brooklyn, New York

Yup, the aughts or naughts or naughties or whatever you want to call them have been confirmed to be the hottest decade in recorded history -- a full 0.2 degrees C warmer than the nineties. And now, as Joe Romm puts it, "the hottest decade begins." So were do we stand?

Yes, barring a spate of supervolcano eruptions or some sort of galactic alien cooling beam directed at earth, the '10s are almost certainly going to be even hotter than the '00s. The trend, unfortunately, is continuing interrupted (the '90s were previously the hottest on record, with temps 0.14 degrees C warmer than the '80s) thanks in part to the near complete lack of carbon emissions reductions by the world's biggest polluters. Here's looking at you, USA and China.

[...] at TreeHugger.com

Getting Back to the Basics Without Becoming a Hippie

from Life 123.com
By: Jackson Tremont

Back-to-basics living can be part of a major life change, or it can be an accumulation of many smaller changes. You don’t have to rush out to live in a yurt in order for your lifestyle to become more basic, more sustainable and more affordable. Here are three easy tips for getting back to lifestyle basics without turning into a hippie.

Eating Habits
Believe it or not , our eating habits have an enormous impact on the world we live in. Choices we make as consumers influence the way that agriculture is managed, the energy expended to bring food from farm to market and even the resources that are used—and sometimes wasted—to package the food that we buy. And, naturally, the food you eat also affects your personal health.

You don’t have to become a vegan or switch to a raw foods diet to make big changes in the way that you eat. Start simply. Take a look at your cabinets: Are they filled with prepackaged snacks? These types of foods have the lowest ratio of nutrition to energy expended, which makes them low-hanging fruit, so to speak, for elimination from your diet. In fact, replacing prepackaged snacks with fresh fruit is a fantastic and easy step for getting back to basics.

Travelling Habits
Americans are used to driving everywhere, but many of us don’t have to. Consider the expense of gasoline—and your engine’s contribution to global warming—as a flexible variable. Buy a high quality bicycle, preferably one built for commuting, outfit it with a reliable set of panniers and bike to work one day out of the week. If work is too far away for biking, make two trips to the grocery store by bike rather than in your car.

Electricity Use
Getting back to basics is easy inside the house. Just reduce your electricity use. Buy only compact fluorescent lightbulbs—they look as good as incandescent bulbs these days—and install them in every socket in your house. Reduce your air conditioning, or, if you live in the north, don’t use it at all. A few days of discomfort might yield spectacular energy savings.