Canada's Environmental Voice
BEHOLD THE SIMPLE CHICKADEE. With its black toupee, matching beard and silver jacket of wings, it is a bundle of quick intent. According to famed Canadian artist Robert Bateman, it also has a face to forget. “A chickadee’s face is like the end of a sock,” he remarks frankly from his […]
Those of us who believe that humans are causing global warming may not notice the growing body of sophisticated denial literature. Al Gore’s recent essay in Rolling Stone Magazine lays out the depressing tale of disinformation and ideologically shielded ignorance that is currently unfolding in the US. “In one corner […]
Interested in convincing yourself and those around you to live sustainably? Here are three books that can help you try. In The Power of Sustainable Thinking, Bob Doppelt emphasizes the change process that he believes will lead us to sustainability. Although he sees this book as a complement to his […]
Being an environmentalist isn’t for sissies – the statistics are depressing and they turn people off, and the problems often seem to have no end. Anyone feeling this way should read The Transition Companion, which mixes knowledge, action and inspiration to address a range of areas that are central to […]
“Shifting our behaviour to achieve sustainability depends on society’s ability to reconnect with nature,” writes Brendon Larson. In his first solo-authored book, Metaphors for Environmental Sustainability, Larson, who teaches in the Environment and Resource Studies program at the University of Waterloo and is president of Ontario Nature, encourages his readers […]
Good photographs and good poetry have a great deal in common: They both offer lessons in seeing, placing their audience as if behind the lens or the pen, opening them to the world in a way not before realized. Catherine Owen’s book of poetry, Seeing Lessons, demonstrates the power of […]
The title of John Michael Greer’s The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered contains references to two very different economic works: Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. He calls on both books in his attempt to demonstrate that contemporary economics has gone […]
I have a friend I’ll call Dave. An educated, rational and intelligent man, Dave can be counted on for thoughtful, reasoned arguments, except on one issue: climate change. He has read the overwhelming evidence, but Dave remains certain that climate change is a myth. His proof? He has none that […]
Of the site selected in 1857 for New York’s majestic Central Park, designer Frederick Law Olmsted lamented, “It would have been difficult to find another body of land…which possessed less of what we have seen to be the most desirable characteristics of a park.” Olmsted went on to transform the […]
With the children’s title Not Your Typical Book About The Environment, author Elin Kelsey has crafted a breezy yet densely informative volume that maintains a positive outlook throughout its 64 pages. In chapters covering the clothes we wear, the food we eat and the toys we play with, Kelsey reveals […]
