Canada's Environmental Voice
AS WE CROSSOVER the Claiborne Avenue bridge from the Upper Ninth Ward on Gray Line International’s “Hurricane Katrina – America’s Greatest Catastrophe” tour, local artist Brad Dupuy informs us in his rich voice that we “are about to enter what is known famously as the Lower Ninth Ward.” What makes […]
ENERMODAL ENGINEERING is Canada’s largest consulting firm exclusively dedicated to creating green buildings and communities. The company recently celebrated its 100th LEED-certified building, and its president and founder Stephen Carpenter was named a LEED fellow. He spoke with Alternatives’ podcaster Mark Brooks. Mark Brooks: What exactly is LEED certification?
MOST PEOPLE WOULDN’T buy a car without knowing its fuel economy, or sign up for a cellphone plan without comparing service-provider rates. Yet when it comes to one of life’s biggest investments – purchasing a home – few people question how much it will cost to operate that house over […]
RON PORTELLI RECALLS when his university-bound daughter asked him where she should study environmental science. Despite a long environmental career, Portelli was surprised to realize he didn’t know the answer. Such was the separation between universities and the environment industry.
Like the landscape it aims to preserve, the inherent power of This Soil, This Water comes from returning to and lingering- in its open spaces, nourishing colours and stoic wisdom. Environmental issues and controversies are certainly plentiful in 2012, but few books take aim with such subtle effectiveness, leaving room […]
Society has always had a weakness for seers and prophets, those who claim the ability to travel mentally to that murky destination called the future and bring back lessons for today. But the next frontier is, of course, an unknowable place. Regardless of how attractive or compelling a vision of […]
When reviewing a book, I mark it up mercilessly. I jot down notable points, create a list of possible quotes and scribble down potential themes that might shape my review. When my lists are long, jumbled and written in my fast, furious – and almost illegible – handwriting, it means […]
“At some point, someone in America is going to have to make something.” These obvious yet perhaps revolutionary words come from Industrial Evolution, a wonderful new book by Lyle Estill, an entrepreneur, author, and, dare I say, environmental industrialist. The book’s premise reflects something that we all know but generally […]
Professors Clapp and Dauvergne are among the few academics that recognize that the best approach to both analysis of and advocacy for environmental issues lies with political economy, or public policy designed by the application of economic concepts. Their book is a demonstration of that thesis, which they undertake by […]
Why is our food grown so far away from where we live? Why do we classify farms as rural and cities as urban? Carrot City dismantles the social constructs between these two halves of the same whole, and others: yards and gardens, industrial and agricultural practices, organic and conventional, producers […]
