Canada's Environmental Voice
The Worldwatch Institute’s recently released report, Green Jobs: Working for People and the Environment, outlines impressive growth projections for the environment sector. The author notes that “climate proofing” the global economy will create great employment opportunities worldwide. Could investment in a greener economy propel us toward a more sustainable future […]
“IT WAS A BAD YEAR,” David Donnelly, Earth Day Canada’s Hometown Hero for 2008, tells me. We’re sitting at a long table beside the open-concept kitchen in the common room at 215 Spadina Avenue in downtown Toronto. It’s the official hangout for socially conscious non-profit groups in Canada’s largest city. […]
MOST CANADIANS assume that Alberta is getting filthy rich from its hydrocarbon resources. In comparison with Norway, however, Canada’s wealthiest province is failing to live up to its potential. Both jurisdictions produce about the same amount of fossil fuels and have populations of a similar size, but that’s where the […]
THE FEDERAL ELECTION is kicking into high gear as this issue goes to press. It’s too early to predict which party will form the next government, but regardless of who ends up living at 24 Sussex Drive, there is an abundance of environmental lessons that our future prime minister can […]
WE ARE well into 2008 and there still is no common global name to define this decade. There’s no catchy term like the Roaring Twenties or the Dirty Thirties. These past eight years have remained unnamed and undescribed.
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, […]
IT’S BEEN OVER 20 YEARS since Gro Harlem Brundtland coined the phrase “sustainable development” in the landmark publication, Our Common Future. Since then, few terms have been so widely applied and produced such positive change, yet been so misunderstood. To pursue sustainable development, companies must minimize their environmental footprint, while […]
NORTHGATE MINERAL COROPORATION’S proposed Kemess North Project will not be going ahead, at least not soon and not as proposed. The project – an open-pit, copper-gold expansion to an existing mine in a remote, mountainous area of northcentral British Columbia – was rejected by provincial and federal authorities.
Agroforestry, the deliberate integration of woody species with agricultural crops or pastures, is an ancient practice that is coming back into vogue. In Europe, farmers used to integrate apple orchards with sheep pasture, and timber or nut trees with cereal crops. In tropical latitudes, farmers imitated vertical forest structure and […]
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 […]
