Canada's Environmental Voice
The political left has been unable to counter the vision of wealth, personal autonomy and traditional values offered by conservative proponents of the free market. To my mind – which admittedly has a left academic bias – we will need a new way of thinking to do so. In this […]
Follow Marine Biologist Carl Safina as he takes viewers around the world to show us how today’s ocean issues are being solved in his PBS series “Saving the Ocean.” You can watch full episodes online at the PBS website. Here at A/J he’s giving us a behind the scenes look at […]
Jock Brandis works for peanuts, or more accurately, for peanut shellers. His hand-cranked invention, the Universal Nut Sheller, enables farmers to shell nuts 60 times faster than they can by hand. In Thinking Big, Building Small, Jock’s sister Marianne – a Stratford, Ontario-based writer – tells the story of the […]
Hundreds of thousands of people in Canada access food bank services every month yet an estimated $27 billion dollars worth of food is wasted in Canada every year. This disturbing social reality is coupled with the negative environmental impact of food waste. When food is wasted, the fresh water that […]
A note about terminology: Lifecycle approach is a “systematic way of looking at the life of a product, technology, or process” allowing people or companies to measure and reduce costs to our economy and environment (NRTEE). This differs from lifecycle analysis (or assessment), which is “a technique to assess environmental impacts associated wi
The vision promoted by Masanobu Fukuoka to fight desertification using natural farming methods is undeniably an appealing one. Sowing Seeds in the Desert is the latest attempt to revitalize the teachings of this farmer and philosopher. Initially published in Japanese in the mid-1990s, the book’s vintage adds poignancy to Fukuoka’s […]
With 350 riveting images, Québec-based photojournalist Éric St.-Pierre takes us into the lives of coffee growers drying beans on jute-covered tables in Ethiopia, flower workers wrapping roses in cardboard boxes in Ecuador, and rice farmers sowing seeds in paddy fields in Thailand. St.-Pierre doesn’t hide the harshness of their lives. […]
Reading the book As Good As Gold, I was struck by the incredible resilience of author and professional cyclist Kathryn Bertine as she attempted to make it to the Beijing Olympics facing issues ranging from flat tires to jellyfish. Perhaps most impressive were the creative solutions she found to these […]
Medicine Hat, Alberta, is branching out. The city has approved a proposal to install the country’s first concentrated solar power (CSP) project. CSP typically employs an array of mirrors to reflect sunlight onto a single point, often at the top of a central tower. The concentrated light quickly becomes heat, […]
