Canada's Environmental Voice
RON PORTELLI RECALLS when his university-bound daughter asked him where she should study environmental science. Despite a long environmental career, Portelli was surprised to realize he didn’t know the answer. Such was the separation between universities and the environment industry.
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 […]
“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 […]
There is no denying the unique vantage point of Timothy Leduc’s new book, Climate, Culture, Change: Inuit and Western Dialogues with a Warming North. Your first clue is right there in the subtitle: that’s dialogues with, not about, Canada’s northern ecology.
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 […]
“The neo-liberal system has fallen into pieces and cannot be put together again. Nor should humanity attempt it. It is time to move on to a better future.” These are the last words in James Laxer’s Beyond the Bubble. The rest of the book fills in the details of what amounts […]
Here’s a fact I had never considered: the word “rival” comes from the Latin word rivalis, meaning “those who draw water from the same source.” Rivalry is closely related to the availability of shared resources, and tensions are easily triggered when food and water are at stake.
Andrew McMurry, Associate Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo writes in “the Rhetoric of Resilience” that “In a world that runs on persuasion, the green movement would be wise to re-examine its use of language”. (1m05s – 21m06s dur: 20m05s) And in his second “What’s […]
Executive Editor Nicola Ross in conversation with the father of resilience in ecological thinking, Buzz Holling. In part two: Andrew McMurry, Associate Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo weighs in on The Rhetoric of Resilience (“In a world that runs on persuasion, the green movement would […]
