Canada's Environmental Voice
Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind full of cosmic spaceGnaws at our faces – R. M. Rilke, Duino Elegies (trans. Leslie P. Gartner) IF WE CONSIDER the phenomenon of solar flares, Rilke’s description of how cosmic winds sometimes blow in our faces is surprisingly true. Atmospheric auroras, the […]
Out for a late winter walk in 2006, I was suprised to see a bat flying around in broad daylight in a wooded area of Bedford, Nova Scotia. Seven years later, Nova Scotia’s bat population is hanging by a thread and I have to wonder whether White Nose Syndrome (WNS), […]
When travelling throughout Southern Ontario this summer one can’t help but notice the proliferation of wind turbines. After the Green Energy Act and the Feed-In Tariff (FIT) program were enacted in 2009, large scale wind farms sprang up across the province driven by a desire to increase clean, renewable energy […]
The Canadian government is all-in on the tar sands, the nation’s reputation be damned. The Keystone XL pipeline has been a central focus of opponents of unlimited tar sand development, but it has been selected for challenge in part because the pipeline decision does not rest with a government that […]
Chocolate is one of life’s great pleasures. The perfect food, chocolate is fuel for flagging spirits, an inspiration, a temptation and, for some, a sacrament. Yet most consumers of mass-produced chocolate may be unaware of their beloved confection’s dark side. Child slave labour in West African cocoa plantations haunts the […]
How can we create a society that provides for all while respecting nature’s limits?
This sleek, assertive documentary hinges on two crucial but highly controversial premises. The first is that nuclear power has been distorted by the long shadow of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the justifiable fear and panic that followed disasters at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima.
You may have thought that the reason Canada has such a poor track record on climate change is due to lobbying pressure by the oil and gas industry or lack of public support. Those are contributing factors, but the real problem is this:
I remember the day I decided to start eliminating animal products from my diet. I was 13 years old, sitting in Pizza Hut with my family. I stared down at my personal pizza and thought, “What part of the animal is the mini sausage?” Just kidding. But seriously, those tiny […]
On Friday, May 31, the BC government made its final written argument to the Northern Gateway Joint Review Panel (NJRP). The 99-page submission states that the province “cannot support the project as presented to the panel because Northern Gateway has been unable to address British Columbians’ environmental concerns.”
