Each week, A\J staffers will be sharing our favourite facts & findings from whatever books, articles, documentaries, podcasts and other media we’ve been consuming. Here’s what we’ve learned this week.
POLITICS & POLICIES
The Keys to Climate Action
On March 17 and 18, I had the opportunity to attend Americana 2015, the “largest environmental multi-sectoral trade show and conference in North America.” I got to wander the trade show floor and witness many wonderful new technologies and innovations that will contribute to a more sustainable world; nanotechnology and […]
The Case for a Climate Fund
The Province of Ontario is currently soliciting advice on a new climate strategy to reach its carbon reduction targets of 15 per cent lower than 1990 levels by 2020, and 80 per cent lower by 2050. These are serious targets for a serious issue, and this new climate strategy is […]
A Healthy Planet Starts With Healthy Soil
In the midst of conversations about how climate change and population growth are putting increased stress on food production, governments, activists and farmers have tackled issues such as water, crop yield and GMOs. But not much has been said about soil.
Green Capitalism: Why It Can’t Work
It seems clear that capitalism as currently practiced contributes to the planet’s destruction but Daniel Tanuro – who calls himself a “qualified agricultural engineer and a Marxist” – wants to go further and argue that capitalism in any form (present or future) would lay waste to nature. The subtitle of […]
Recent Developments in Trade and the Environment
Ten minutes now could save you $508.05. That’s the hallucinatory price tag on Amazon for a volume enticingly titled Recent Developments in Trade and the Environment. Its 869 pages – many printed in eye-straining small type – anthologize 33 post-turn-of-the-21st-century scholarly papers on one of the most divisive subjects in […]
Why Canada is Failing to Protect Species At Risk
Habitat. It is what species need to survive; there are no two ways about it. Yet, as forests continue to be felled, wetlands drained, rivers dammed and grasslands ploughed under, wildlife habitat is disappearing.
Wicked
Climate change is a classic “wicked” problem. The sources of the greenhouse gases that cause the problem are ubiquitous, such that no finger can be pointed directly at the culprit. Few people agree on how to resolve climate change, and efforts to combat it can cause more problems than they […]
Yield of Dreams
FOR 20 YEARS, Dean Glenney has been planting his corn and soybean crops in exactly the same spots. Using a reconfigured five-row planter with narrow tires that line up precisely between well-established rows, he plants seeds right into the roots of last season’s crops. Instead of turning the soil, he […]
Boreal Forest Update
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 […]
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