Canada's Environmental Voice
Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada’s Oilsands, Ezra Levant, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2010, 272 pages. EVERY DAY, bitumen plugs up the economic and political works of Canada with another heavy headline. Thanks to the rapid development of the tar sands, Canadians can now read about dead birds, deformed fish, […]
AS I PREPARED to leave for Argentina, a friend offered to lend me her Kindle. It seemed the perfect thing to take to a place where English-language books are in short supply. I graciously – enthusiastically, in fact – accepted her offer and soon powered up the slim little beast. […]
A WHITE SPIRIT BEAR cub tentatively crosses a mossy log, followed closely by his black sibling. Majestic grey wolves search for salmon from a rocky, seaweed-enveloped shore at low tide. Two orca whales ply the waters at sunset. “They call this the Great Bear Rainforest,” explains Gitga’at first nation member Helen […]
One day, an off-the-cuff comment by a radio host tempted me to put the “small measures list” to the test. You know what I mean: it’s a list of all those little things you’re supposed to do (and not do) with your car to help the environment that will reduce […]
THE BUSH ERA IS OVER but the stain, including a string of last-minute legal changes, lingers. These “midnight regulations” made some things easier, such as dumping mine waste in streams and building power plants near parks. Other things became harder, such as using science to protect endangered species or to […]
Rick Hyndman, the senior climate change policy adviser to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in Calgary, has written this article in response to Michael R. King’s thoughts on carbon trading (“No Carbon Copy,” 34:6, 2008). That Canada should mimic the European Union and necessarily develop a carbon trading system […]
IN MARCH 2008, the Canadian government released the latest details of its proposed action plan for tackling climate change in Turning the Corner: Regulatory Framework for Industrial Greenhouse Gas Emissions. It doesn’t include provisions to reach Canada’s Kyoto target of a six-per-cent reduction from 1990 levels by the 2008 to […]
DO YOU SUPPOSE that Humpty Dumpty saw it coming? Did he have any advance warning of his impending fate? Even the slightest wobble to tip him off? I mean, as it’s told, he went straight from sitting to falling without a single intermediary step. And with no means of reversal, […]
IT’S BEEN OVER 20 YEARS since Gro Harlem Brundtland coined the phrase “sustainable development” in the landmark publication, Our Common Future. Since then, few terms have been so widely applied and produced such positive change, yet been so misunderstood. To pursue sustainable development, companies must minimize their environmental footprint, while […]
NORTHGATE MINERAL COROPORATION’S proposed Kemess North Project will not be going ahead, at least not soon and not as proposed. The project – an open-pit, copper-gold expansion to an existing mine in a remote, mountainous area of northcentral British Columbia – was rejected by provincial and federal authorities.
