Canada's Environmental Voice
SUPPOSE THEY HAD a depression and nobody came? Instead of accepting today’s economic downturn as a pink slip that can’t be refused, what if our governments reacted as if they had received a Facebook invitation: by selecting “join cause,” “learn more” or “ignore”?
"NEOPHOBIA" is the fear of novelty. While this condition is pervasive in the hallowed halls of Parliament Hill, nowhere is it found amongst the contributors to this issue of Alternatives. From crisis comes new ideas, and our current economic and environmental conditions have shot the creativity metre among our authors […]
LET’S FACE IT – the really inconvenient truth is that the age of unconstrained exuberance is over. Techno-industrial society has broken faith with Gaia and is now wrestling its twin demons of hubris and greed. It is illusory to think that anything can ever be the same. Nevertheless, not a […]
Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of Carbon Shift, The Up Side of Down and The Ingenuity Gap, chronicles the evolution of “master” sciences and demonstrates how ecology will soon wear that title.
FOR A SHORT TWO-WEEK period every spring, before the leaves burst their buds, the warm spring sun penetrates the deepest nooks and crannies in the small cottage where I live. Its rays illuminate the grit and cobwebs that have accumulated over the long, dark winter. Sparkling dust rises toward the […]
This index cites only one publication year for those titles that have multiple editions. *Refers to a book that has been reviewed in this issue. An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It, Al Gore, Emmaus, PA: Rodale Books, 2006, 328 pages. […]
IT WAS TOO MUCH of a challenge for some of our board members and staff to select the title of only one environmental classic that most influenced them, as well as only one contemporary book they would highly recommend. In fact, Marcia Ruby, Alternatives’ long-time production co-ordinator, chose to do […]
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 […]
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, […]
CLIMATE CHANGE, climate forcing, global warming – all these terms frame a collective public debate about the future of the world as we know it. Since that “world” is dynamic and geographically diverse, it is not surprising that political responses range widely from hand-wringing to commitment and resignation, to disbelief […]
