Canada's Environmental Voice
The People’s Climate March is happening in New York City this Sunday, September 21. I’m working with Toronto 350, GreenPeopleTO and Emily Hunter to organize the buses heading from Toronto to the march, and it’s got me thinking about what activism is.
Summer is sadly drawing to a close and visions of leftover potato salad and backyard BBQs are fading away into the distant past – much like the toothsome memories of taut plastic wrap protecting my leftovers and potentially poisoning me with its unique mix of toxins and endocrine disrupters.
Several years ago a prominent environmentalist spoke at my university. Soon, he told us, he would stop flying. We were impressed. A few years later I saw him hurrying out of the Air Canada frequent flyer lounge at Toronto airport. Even with the best of intentions it’s hard to separate […]
A new kind of community centre is emerging across Canada, and its focus is food. Community Food Centres Canada (CFCC) was launched in 2012 in an effort to provide a more integrated response to food insecurity and other food issues. One of the main principles behind the project is meeting […]
In the quest for sustainable sources of energy, we can anticipate the odd bump in the road. Some technologies appear unlikely to ever pan out (so long, cold fusion!), while others (oh, hi there solar PV!) look set to explode with unexpected vigour. Somewhere in the middle of the pack […]
We’re cleaning out the vault! (Literally – our back issues are stored in an actual vault.)
GE’s new Space Frame wind tower is lighter, taller and easier to transport than previous turbines. It also represents the wind industry’s latest effort to remove itself from human view. One wonders if something won’t be lost in moving renewable power further away from our communities.
In cities across Canada, people and organizations are finding ways to address complex challenges and creatively shape the future of their communities. They are greening neighbourhoods while producing local food, creating social enterprises to reduce poverty, mentoring immigrants and helping them integrate into their new communities, and using community arts […]
Canada and Australia have so much in common that they might be twin nations separated at birth. Both are large democratic, English-speaking, settler nations, thinly populated, prosperous, resource rich and politically moderate. They have multi-party, representative systems and historically have had strong environmental movements. Yet both have lately elected extreme […]
Ottawa knows that a common ingredient in antibacterial soaps is posing acute and chronic problems for human health and freshwater ecosystems but has done nothing to ban triclosan, according to environmental and consumer advocates.
