Canada's Environmental Voice
“SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES” is one of those terms that stumps an editor. As I waded through the rich collection of articles that make up the theme section for this issue of Alternatives, I was forever struggling with it. Authors would write that communities wanted to “become sustainable,” as though sustainability was […]
Stephen Bocking hearkens back to Aldo Leopold for a new ecological vision. How can we keep all of the parts and why should we? Bocking weaves politics and science together to reveal prospects of a resilient future with ecologically creative designs for parks and neighbourhoods.
Rick Hyndman, the senior climate change policy adviser to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers in Calgary, has written this article in response to Michael R. King’s thoughts on carbon trading (“No Carbon Copy,” 34:6, 2008). That Canada should mimic the European Union and necessarily develop a carbon trading system […]
IN MARCH 2008, the Canadian government released the latest details of its proposed action plan for tackling climate change in Turning the Corner: Regulatory Framework for Industrial Greenhouse Gas Emissions. It doesn’t include provisions to reach Canada’s Kyoto target of a six-per-cent reduction from 1990 levels by the 2008 to […]
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, […]
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.
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 […]
The university experience can mean long hours in the lecture hall, but this doesn’t have to come at the expense of getting involved. Even those awkward two-hour breaks between classes provide enough time to explore environmental groups and activities. For those who long to make their mark, a smart place […]
"BIOLOGICAL DIVERSITY means the variability among living organisms from all sources including, inter alia, terrestrial, marine and other aquatic ecosystems and the ecological complexes of which they are part: this includes diversity within species, between species and of ecosystems.” -United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity
CANADA WAS an active and enthusiastic negotiator in the early days of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). It was the first industrialized country to ratify the CBD, and Montreal is home to the CBD’s secretariat.
