Canada's Environmental Voice
Of the site selected in 1857 for New York’s majestic Central Park, designer Frederick Law Olmsted lamented, “It would have been difficult to find another body of land…which possessed less of what we have seen to be the most desirable characteristics of a park.” Olmsted went on to transform the […]
If the world as you knew it was going to end in 21 days, what would you do? Find shelter, locate a water supply or possibly pull out your SKS assault rifle? Wendy Brown’s Surviving the Apocalypse in the Suburbs takes readers through day-by-day preparations in order to live comfortably after an […]
In Recovering a Lost River: Removing Dams, Rewilding Salmon, Revitalizing Communities, author Steven Hawley leads readers on a meandering journey up the Snake River – dropping in on the communities it threads through – to its wilderness headwaters in Idaho. The largest tributary of the Columbia River, the Snake was once […]
The trust inherent in a community’s relationship with its water utility is profound and often unquestioned. That is, until a rash of illness opens the floodgate to doubt. In The Epidemic: A Collision of Power, Privilege, and Public Health, author David DeKok reconstructs a deadly typhoid epidemic in Ithaca, New York, […]
A baby innocently enters the world unaware that it has been the victim of a quiet assault from toxins since conception. Exposed in vitro as a result of its mother’s contact with polluted water and clothing, as well as cleaning and healthcare products, an infant is then subjected to more […]
It is no secret that the environmental challenges facing our world today are dizzyingly complex. To add to this, the public is constantly bombarded with messages about how nearly all aspects of our system are in crisis. A common reaction is to bury our heads in the sand and hope […]
“The neo-liberal system has fallen into pieces and cannot be put together again. Nor should humanity attempt it. It is time to move on to a better future.” These are the last words in James Laxer’s Beyond the Bubble. The rest of the book fills in the details of what amounts […]
How do you change the world? Where do you start, locally or globally? For inspiration and a way out of the paralysis that stymies so many of us, two remarkable women – Jane Jacobs and Frances Moore Lappé – offer some practical ideas.
Here’s a fact I had never considered: the word “rival” comes from the Latin word rivalis, meaning “those who draw water from the same source.” Rivalry is closely related to the availability of shared resources, and tensions are easily triggered when food and water are at stake.
Slow Death by Rubber Duck has one non-chemical ingredient that catapulted it to the top of the charts. As the story goes, the duo behind the Chicken Soup for the Soul empire couldn’t find a publisher when they assembled their first book. But despite Chicken Soup’s winning formula – 112 million books sold in 15 years […]
