Canada's Environmental Voice
VOWS OF MARRIAGE. Oaths of citizenship. A jury’s verdict. Words with the power to change our identities are usually spoken in public places. But a cancer diagnosis is almost always delivered within a private conversation that takes place, unwitnessed, behind the closed door of a doctor’s office, on the phone, […]
IT WAS LIKE AN ALTAR CALL. I had just finished a conference presentation on organic agriculture when a tall, hale fellow in his late 30s bounded down to the front of the auditorium. He wanted to tell his story about how organic food had saved his life. He recounted how […]
Editorial: Culture Jammers and Basic Civility – Robert Gibson Free Radio – JEFF FERRELLCaught between community service and criminalized activity, pirate microbroadcasters are challenging authority.Inset: Meet Godzilla: Media Monster Poised to Gobble the World by RICHARD EDMONDSON
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?
Is it better to retrofit existing buildings, or start with a clean slate? Our issue on Green Buildings looks at examples of each. Documentarian Stephen Svenson asks if Brad Pitt is truly “Making it Right” in New Orleans, while Alternatives photographer Brian St. Denis captures the new LEED-Platinum targeted Environment […]
The title of John Michael Greer’s The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered contains references to two very different economic works: Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. He calls on both books in his attempt to demonstrate that contemporary economics has gone […]
Concerns for our unsustainable, fossil-fuelled lifestyle underlie Rachel Kaplan and K. Ruby Blume’s book, Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living. The book provides a colourful overview of what each of us can do to build a more self-sufficient future. It explains the principles of homesteading and permaculture, and provides a […]
The underlying message in Julie Hill’s book, The Secret Life of Stuff: A Manual for a New Material World, is one of conscious simplification. Not one to slap the wrists of consumers, she professes a love of shopping and the joy she gets from the perfect “find” for pennies. She does, […]
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 […]
