Vancouver is Canada’s climate leader (photo: Wendy / flickr) Amid the dire warnings about global warming’s impacts, what’s often overlooked is that actions to reduce or prevent them will lead to livable communities, improved air quality, protection of natural spaces and greater economic efficiency, to name just a few benefits.
Continue readingAuthor: Dr. David Suzuki
The Common Sense Canadian: David Suzuki: Time to save bees and ban neonic pesticides
Neonic pesticides “pose a serious risk of harm to honey bees and other pollinators,” a new study warns. Bees may be small, but they play a big role in human health and survival. Some experts say one of every three bites of food we eat depends on them. The insects
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Are pipeline spills good for the economy, as Kinder Morgan says?
Health concerns plague many who worked to clean up the BP oil spill (photo: Wikimedia Commons) Energy giant Kinder Morgan was recently called insensitive for pointing out that “Pipeline spills can have both positive and negative effects on local and regional economies, both in the short- and long-term.” The company
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: White House climate report is clear: Global warming is here
Because we enjoy relatively pure air, clean water and healthy food systems, Canadians sometimes take the environment for granted. Many scarcely blink if oil from a pipeline spills into a river, a forest is cleared for tar sands operations or agricultural land is fracked for gas. If Arctic ice melts
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Small is the new Big in sustainable urban revolution
Vancouver urban farm mixer (Photo: www.urbanfarmers.ca) “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably will not themselves be realized.” That was American architect Daniel Burnham’s city-planning advice at the turn of the 20th century. More than 100 years later, he couldn’t be more wrong.
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Salmon farms: Has anything changed after a decade of controversy?
The David Suzuki Foundation and others have run ads over the past decade decrying British Columbia’s open net-cage salmon farm industry. With significant expansion planned for the West Coast, the question remains: Has B.C.’s salmon farm industry improved? Salmon farming threatens some of the planet’s last remaining viable wild salmon
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Is it time for a real war on cars?
Gridlock in China forces drivers out of their cars In railing against everything from bike lanes to transit spending, pundits and politicians often raise the spectre of a “war on cars.” Of course, there is no war on cars – but there should be. Cars directly kill and hurt more
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: David Suzuki: Earth Month should be a time for action
April is Earth Month, and April 22 Earth Day. We should really celebrate our small blue planet and all it provides every day, but recent events give us particular cause to reflect on our home and how we’re treating it. Through an amazingly ordered combination of factors, this spinning ball
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: David Suzuki: Don’t blow off wind power
I have a cabin on Quadra Island off the British Columbia coast that’s as close to my heart as you can imagine. From my porch you can see clear across the waters of Georgia Strait to the snowy peaks of the rugged Coast Mountains. It’s one of the most beautiful
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Disappearing Monarch butterflies need citizen scientists’ help
From the age of five, Fred Urquhart was fascinated by monarch butterflies in his Toronto neighbourhood. Born in 1911, he spent hours watching the orange and black insects flutter about, wondering: Where did they go in winter? At school, he read voraciously about nature, especially monarchs and other insects. He
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: David Suzuki: We can’t geoengineer our way out of climate change
Seawater is sprayed into clouds to make them reflect more sunlight (Illustration: Nasa) Because nature doesn’t always behave the same in a lab, test tube or computer program as it does in the real world, scientists and engineers have come up with ideas that didn’t turn out as expected.
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Urban infrastructure investment is path to Canada’s economic future
Canada’s federal government recently announced $14 billion in new funding to help municipalities repair and replace aging infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, sewer lines, energy production and distribution systems, and subways and other public transit. About $1 billion is dedicated to smaller communities, but most of the funding will target
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Measuring progress with GDP is a gross mistake
Governments, media and much of the public are preoccupied with the economy. That means demands such as those for recognition of First Nations treaty rights and environmental protection are often seen as impediments to the goal of maintaining economic growth. The gross domestic product has become a sacred indicator of
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: David Suzuki: Trading water for fuel is fracking crazy
Fracking protest in New Brunswick (photo: Colin McPhail) It would be difficult to live without oil and gas. But it would be impossible to live without water. Yet, in our mad rush to extract and sell every drop of gas and oil as quickly as possible, we’re trading precious water
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Will thorium save us from climate change?
As knowledge about climate change increases, so does demand for clean energy. Technologies like solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, tidal and biofuels, along with energy-grid designs that will help us take advantage of renewables, are part of the equation, as is conservation. But many argue that, despite Fukushima and other disasters,
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: David Suzuki: Remembering Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger at a “Farm Aid” concert, joined by Neil Young, Dave Matthews and Willie Nelson “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.” – Words painted on Pete Seeger’s banjo A man with a banjo can be a powerful force for good. Pete Seeger, who died January 27
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: David Suzuki: Citizens asked to help with Fukushima radiation research
An Internet search turns up an astounding number of pages about radiation from Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant meltdown that followed an earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. But it’s difficult to find credible information. One reason is that government monitoring of radiation and its effects on fish stocks
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Out of the darkness, the light
Nelson Mandela, who died last month at age 95, was sentenced to life in prison in 1962 because he fought for justice, equality and democracy. He was finally released 27 years later, in 1990. South Africa’s racist apartheid system fell and Mandela served as president from 1994 to 1999. The
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: David Suzuki: Canada’s environment needs constitutional protection
BC’s Great Bear Rainforest (photo: Ian McAllister/Pacific Wild) Canada is blessed with some of the last vestiges of pristine nature on Earth – unbroken forests, coastlines and prairies, thousands of rivers, streams and lakes, open skies, abundant fresh air. Many of us live in urban areas, but our spectacular landscapes
Continue readingThe Common Sense Canadian: Greenpeace Arctic 30 arrests yet another attack on enviros
Friends of the Earth-UK shows its solidarity with the Arctic 30 Early November marked the 18th anniversary of the tragic murder of outspoken writer and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight colleagues by the Nigerian government. Saro-Wiwa and the others had waged a long campaign to stop multinational oil company
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