THE OTHER DAY, a fellow journalist told me that Happiness equals Expectations divided by Reality (H=E/R). In other words, if you expect Prince or Princess Charming, but reality dishes out a frog, you might not end up being that happy.
Search Results for "climate"
What’s the Big Idea? Simplicity
SIMPLE SOLUTIONS to difficult problems are exceedingly rare. Their attraction, however, is undeniable. The world is awash in cults, fanaticisms and miracle cures. Millions of media minutes are devoted to how we can stop climate change by dumping iron filings in the ocean, prevent cancer by taking massive doses of […]
Eye of the Storm: Time for a New Deal
WITH ALMOST 20 YEARS of negotiations behind us and greenhouse gas emissions rising faster than the federal deficit, perhaps the time has come to look for alternative approaches to tackling climate change. As University of Victoria professor Michael M’Gonigle suggested in The Tyee in December, could it be that Copenhagen’s […]
Don’t Bogart that Tree
CANADIANS THINK of forests as “the lungs of the earth” or “natural air purifiers.” They understand that forests provide life-giving oxygen. They may not be familiar with the corollary benefit of sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, but they appreciate that having large areas of healthy forests helps balance the web […]
The Rhetoric of Resilience
IT IS FREQUENTLY CLAIMED that the human species already possesses the know-how to avert the direst consequences of climate change and environmental collapse – it’s now simply a matter of deploying this know-how.
Resilience 101
“RESILIENCE IS … the ability to absorb and learn from disturbances, to be changed and then to re-organize and still retain basic structure and ways of functioning. Growth and efficiency alone can often lead ecological systems, businesses and societies into fragile rigidities, exposing them to turbulent transformation. Learning, recovery and […]
Planet B
IT’S 2060. Your grandchildren are sitting in their classroom. On the wall hangs a photograph of a blue planet. But it isn’t Earth. It’s a planet in a distant star system. And we know that this planet harbours life. Humanity is not alone. Now imagine a different scenario. Suppose our […]
Calling Buzz Holling
LISTEN TO the full 45-minute interview with Buzz Holling on our Podcast page. Nicola Ross: You’ve written that “Novelty emerges from the interaction between opportunity and crisis.” Can you explain what you mean by novelty?
Editorial: Resilience for Dummies
OVER CHRISTMAS, I used my recently learned Spanish. Each time I understood a taxi driver or shopkeeper, I felt a great sense of awe. What once seemed to be a jumble of indistinguishable sounds had sub-divided into individual words. It was as if a microscope in my brain were able […]
The Silent Spring of Al Gore
Welcome to Living Classics, our new book review column. Upcoming issues of Alternativeswill include a look back on classic environmental books and reports. We’ve dusted off old copies of Silent Spring, the Berger Report, Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, and more to see how they resonate today. We invite you to suggest your […]
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