Mayor David Miller has been asked to speak about what Torontonians are doing in the fight against climate change at two prominent gatherings of international municipal leaders. On Friday, Mayor Miller will address the third annual Mayor’s Hemispheric Forum and on Sunday, he will join President Bill Clinton and Mayors Richard Daley of Chicago and Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles in a plenary session at the 76th annual U.S. Conference of Mayors.

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Toronto Hydro is hosting a day of energy conservation promotion, initiatives and education on Tuesday at Yonge-Dundas Square. Check out the latest in sustainable technologies such as solar panels, wind turbines and smart metres. Discover new conservation products and other energy saving ideas, devices and vehicles such as hybrids and scooters. Bring the kids!

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York Region plans to truck 9,000 tonnes of green bin waste to New York for disposal as there are no local firms to process it. Instead of being composted, as diligent householders expect when they separate their trash, the organic waste is heading to Niagara Falls, N.Y., where it is incinerated and turned into energy, said Erin Mahoney, York’s commissioner of environmental services.

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A German maker of offshore wind turbines is targeting southern Ontario as the location for its first North American manufacturing plant, a venture that would create thousands of local jobs and inject hundreds of millions of dollars into the province’s economy. Multibrid, majority owned by French nuclear giant Areva SA, made the announcement this morning alongside officials from Trillium Power Wind Corp., a local renewable-energy developer that plans to build a massive wind farm in Lake Ontario about 15 kilometres offshore from Prince Edward County.

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Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion is promising Canadians a raft of tax cuts and other goodies that he said will leave average taxpayers much better off despite sharply higher energy costs under the Liberals’ revolutionary “green shift” energy plan. Dion launched the green policy at a campaign-style event in a packed Parliament Hill committee room this morning.

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Toronto will not meet its target of starting green bin collection in large apartment buildings on July 1. In fact, it may be July 2009 before organic waste collection starts in multi-unit buildings, home to 500,000 households in the city, says Councillor Glenn De Baeremaeker, chair of Toronto’s works committee.

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Living Green Toronto will be chatting with Melanie Deveau this Thursday about eco-friendly ways to beat the heat. Tune in to AM800’s Windsor Now on June 19 at 3:20pm to check it out. I’m very a inexperienced live radio interviewee so wish me luck!

The worlds of entertainment, business, environment and politics will collide at the annual Earth Day Canada Gala this Wednesday. The event will take over the entire Drake Hotel on Queen Street West beginning at 6:00pm. Kids in the Hall and Saturday Night Live veteran Mark McKinney will host, and Juno-winning environmentalist Sarah Harmer is slated to perform.

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Trying to consume more local goods? Product labelling guidelines don’t make it any easier. New rules governing food labelling are already facing criticism from experts who say they don’t go far enough and will still leave consumers in the dark. Although the federal government’s proposed changes to labelling rules will force companies to indicate that a product contains foreign ingredients, they still would not have to tell consumers where the goods came from or how much of the product is foreign.

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German researchers say they have found some of the strongest evidence yet linking traffic pollution to childhood allergies. The risk of developing asthma, hay fever, eczema or other allergies is about 50 percent higher for children living 50 metres from a busy road than for those living 1,000 meters away, according to a study released on Friday.

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