Canada's Environmental Voice
The “age of ecology” dawned at the end of the 1960s. Cold-war fears of nuclear fallout, warnings of a pesticide-laden silent spring and rivers so polluted they caught fire drove new attention to the environment. The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970. The US created its Environmental Protection Agency […]
Most environmentalists are familiar with the so-called “tragedy of the commons.” In 1968, Garrett Hardin popularized the idea in Science as a way to understand environmental deterioration of common-pool resources.
California once possessed one of the most precious and critical natural resources of the North American continent. The Redwoods, also known as Sequoioideae, are the majestic, mystical trees that line the Oregon and California coast by the thousands. They are a keystone species, the pillars of an entire ecosystem that […]
There is a longstanding consensus among the ecologically aware and the health conscious that beef is bad. At the site of production, cattle operations are widely understood to be resource-intensive and to have various negative outputs, including biological waste and plenty of carbon. At the site of consumption, we have […]
For years now, greens have touted electric cars as a cardinal solution to the world’s problems. Electric vehicles would not only lower carbon emissions, but also make our cities quieter and cleaner places. But hardcore science has always had some trouble with this pleasant illusion, given all the energy and […]
If you are the type of person who wants to be an ethical, sustainable dresser, you probably make efforts to buy clothes that are made in fair labour conditions from fibres that are farmed and manufactured sustainably. You are probably also conscious about how many clothes you purchase. While these […]
Constructing unique world-class competition facilities for multisport events often leaves behind overbuilt, expensive and underused relics. With this harsh reality in mind, organizers for this summer’s Pan Am and Parapan Am Games in Toronto are taking lessons from other host cities to develop best practices for infrastructure design and construction […]
Think back to the old folk tale “The Little Red Hen.” In the tale, the red hen’s friends sit idly while she grows the wheat to get the grain to make the flour that eventually makes the bread – that, of course, all the animals want to eat. The moral […]
Raw Cotton Demand: ~26.0 million tonnesWater use: Up to 3860** litres/kgEnergy use: 50 MJ/kg Pesticides or chemicalsHeavy pesticide use leads to reduced soil fertility, loss of biodiversity and water pollution. Effluent/pollution from manufacturingEcosystem contamination from pollutants in runoff. Toxic wastewater from manufacturing process (e.g., cleaning, dyeing).*
TRANSCANaDA ABANDONED plans for an Energy East oil port in Cacouna, Quebec, earlier this month, pushing the projected finish date of the pipeline back two years, to 2020.
