Canada's Environmental Voice
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 […]
THIS ISSUE OF ALTERNATIVES demonstrates what sets it apart from other environmental magazines. The theme is Testing for Sustainability. In it, one might think we would discuss questions relating to what sustainable development is and whether we can use fossil fuels sustainably. These are the topics that come to mind […]
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 […]
LAKE WILCOX should be safe. It is on the Oak Ridges Moraine, an area specially protected under Ontario planning law. But if Lake Wilcox isn’t ruined by spreading suburbia, it will owe more to Sharon and Jim Bradley than to planning policies.
DAVE THOMPSON POCKETED a cool $1.75 million a couple of days after the Ontario government released details about its greenbelt and Thompson learned that his land sat just outside its borders. Four years from now, he’ll receive the balance – another $1.75 million earned from the sale of his 40-hectare […]
I LOOK OUT over the Credit River valley and the Niagara Escarpment from my home office. It’s early May and soon leaves will have burst open. But for a few days, there is an ephemeral green tinge to the maple and beech, basswood and birch trees that cling to the […]
WHEN I BEGAN writing A Scientific Romance 15 years ago, I pictured the ruins our civilization might leave behind if it died from its own folly like so many others. My tale is set in Britain and told by an archaeologist who travels to the year 2500. I made satirical […]
COMBING THROUGH scientific studies and correspondents’ reports in her seaside home in Maine, Rachel Carson saw nature bludgeoned by a chemical barrage. Telling stories about the northern Barren Lands, Farley Mowat expressed the spirit and meaning of wolves at home in the wilderness. Drawing on advice from every continent, Barbara […]
I’VE BEEN THINKING a lot about Sudbury these days. Long the butt of moonscape jokes and widely recognized as one of the world’s “best” examples of industrial pollution, this Northern Ontario town has much to teach us about hope and moving ahead. By the 1970s, after decades of exposure to […]
THERE ARE SO MANY good and tasty reasons to eat insects that the 20-per-cent minority of Earthlings who don’t practice entomophagy – insect eating – should listen up.
