Canada's Environmental Voice
Welcome to Living Classics, our new book review column. Upcoming issues of Alternativeswill include a look back on classic environmental books and reports. We’ve dusted off old copies of Silent Spring, the Berger Report, Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, and more to see how they resonate today. We invite you to suggest your […]
“Climate porn.” That’s how the Institute for Public Policy Research in Britain depicts the portrayal of the climate crisis by media and governments. In the organization’s report, “Warm Words,” the authors claim the apocalyptic and external framing of global warming convinces the public that climate change is inevitable and therefore […]
WHAT THE WARMING WORLD needs now,” writes author Bill McKibben in Grist magazine, “is art, sweet art.” Precisely because environmental problems are rooted in cultural practices and ideologies, it is artists, immersed in world and cultural practices, who are ideally situated to locate and develop effective- responses. In fact, we’ve […]
LAUNCHING STREET FESTIVALS. Planting watermelon. Doling out fake traffic tickets. If you’re wondering what these have in common, read on. They’re ingenious ways of handling issues, prying open the box. That’s what Alternatives delivers in this Creative Communities issue: fresh approaches to entrenched social problems – poverty, waste, addiction, environmental […]
A RADICAL TRANSFORMATION of education would develop an ecologically literate society – one that understands the principles of ecological systems and uses them to design human systems.
I ATTENDED Belfountain Public School from Grade 1 to 8. With four classrooms and a gymnasium, it was a considerable step up from the one-room schoolhouses where my older siblings learned their three Rs. Nonetheless, a product of educational wisdom in 1960s Ontario, the schoolyard was devoid of vegetation and we […]
SINCE ROMAN PLEBEIANS rose up against their masters in the fifth century BCE, social movements have been the most important force for advancing progressive change. They work because ordinary people – like you and me – are the ultimate source of power in any society: People in positions of economic, […]
The Playlist for the Planet is another example of how the music community believes we need to do more to protect the environment. I hope the songs … inspire you to make changes that will bring about a healthier world. -David Suzuki
VOWS OF MARRIAGE. Oaths of citizenship. A jury’s verdict. Words with the power to change our identities are usually spoken in public places. But a cancer diagnosis is almost always delivered within a private conversation that takes place, unwitnessed, behind the closed door of a doctor’s office, on the phone, […]
WHEN BJÖRK CRITICIZED Magma Energy Corp. chairman and CEO Ross Beaty in an interview with Maclean’s in November 2010, the Icelandic pop singer couldn’t have struck a deeper chord. Maclean’s subsequently pulled the interview from the internet after Magma threatened the Canadian magazine with a libel suit.
