Canada's Environmental Voice
I’VE LED the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE) for 10 years now, and when I tell people about our organization one question I don’t often receive is: “Physicians for the Environment? What’s that?” The fact is, people get it: If you want folks to be healthy, you need […]
IT WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO BE EASY. But it was never supposed to take this long. Through the Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement (CBFA), forestry companies agree to leave parts of Canada’s boreal forest untouched and use the remainder sustainably, while environmental groups agree to cease marketplace campaigning against logging the […]
Acting on Climate Change More than 60 scholars from across Canada collaborated with Sustainable Canada Dialogues to formulate viable, science-based policy options to guide Canada toward sustainability.
Despite the obvious need to act, moving Canada toward sustainability sometimes seems a hopeless task. One way to combat a sustainability funk is to write a blues song. Another is to think about the environmental ideas that have already changed the way we live.
WE LIVE in turbulent times, characterized by “wicked” problems. What makes our environment and modern problems so wicked? They are beyond the capacity of any one sector or discipline to research, understand and resolve. Their solutions must emerge from diverse social actors that are convened in forums deliberately designed to […]
EVEN THOUGH PEOPLE PAY attention to images of oil-soaked birds in the aftermath of oil spills, researchers know that another, less perceptible, issue is the death of algae from the use of chemical dispersants after these disasters. Although people focus on shifting to hybrid cars to reduce their carbon footprint, […]
Aristotle nailed it when he said, “What is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care.” He elaborated that people “pay most attention to what is their own; they care less for what is common.”1 One wonders whether the ancient teacher could have foreseen the day when […]
IN 1906, the New York City Police Department dispatched mounted officers onto Wall Street to break up mobs of investors trying to buy Cobalt, Ontario silver mine stocks. Simultaneously, thousands across North America descended upon the burgeoning camp cut into the remote northern Ontario wilderness to stake additional claims or […]
Imagine a morning when the lights and coffee machine don’t work, your home has no heat and your car doesn’t start. We generally don’t give much thought to where our energy comes from – we just flip the switch. But energy is an integral part of our economy, society and […]
