Author: The Mound of Sound

The Global Footprint Network has announced that Earth Overshoot Day, 2019 will fall on July 29th. If you’re wondering if that’s the earliest ever be assured it is. Last year it was August 1. To give a bit of perspective, in 2000 it was September 23 meaning we’ve wiped out

Nobel laureate, Joe Stiglitz, is my kind of economist. The former World Bank chief economist has devoted a lot of his career to fighting the scourge of inequality, he even focused on that in his PhD thesis. Now Dr. Joe is weighing in on the climate crisis and America’s Green

Living in the age of climate crisis will mess you up in ways you might not even imagine, not now anyway. A report by 27 national science academies (trust me, that’s a lot) details how the climate crisis will get us if we let it but also suggests how much

Britons are stirring and Greta Thunberg gets a lot of the credit. Public concern about the environment has soared to record levels in the UK since the visit of Greta Thunberg to parliament and the Extinction Rebellion protests in April.  The environment is now cited by people as the third

Okay, D-Day celebrations to commemorate the Normandy landings in 1944. The last tranche of veterans on hand for the 75th commemoration, bless them all. What I don’t get is the date. Today is the 5th of June. D-Day, and I have this on good authority, was the 6th of June.

A whole new culinary tradition may be in store with news that humans eat plastic. A lot of plastic. On average, we eat at least 50,000 particles of microplastic per person per year. The true number is likely to be many times higher, as only a small number of foods

Despite those among us who vouchsafe Andrew Scheer, the Tory leader is a malevolent little shit. The latest proof is Scheer’s attack on Trudeau, accusing the incredibly petro-friendly prime minister of betraying the West (or at least Scheer’s notion of ‘west’) by implementing minuscule carbon taxes. Scheer made the comments

A certain former Liberal, by his own account a Liberal of some past prominence, has gone out of his way to vouchsafe that Andrew Scheer is not even a bit racist. Nor, apparently, is Scheer’s party, despite what they do and what they say. Until he stepped in it, Scheer’s

By 2050 human civilization, as we’ve known it, could be over. That’s the conclusion of an Aussie think tank in a report written by a former fossil fuel executive and backed by the Australian military’s former chief of staff. The analysis, published by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration,

So much for good intentions – of which the Road to Hell is paved. For the seventh consecutive year, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are up. They’re just going up and, guess what, we’re going down. Atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas were 414.8 parts per million in May, which was

It’s fair to say, no matter if you support the Liberals, NDP or Greens, you probably see menace in the rise of rightwing populism. It’s a tenacious thing, one that is seeking to make major inroads into Canada’s body politic and we’ve had front row seats to the havoc it

The Council of Canadians has released a report on “How Canadians bought a climate killing pipeline.” The report was prepared by Gordon Laxer, political economist and professor emeritus at the University of Alberta.  For those not in the mood for reading, Laxer has produced a truncated video:

The Observer’s Sonia Sodha freely admits she is a climate hypocrite. She wants action on climate change. She has even voted Green. But she just can’t bring herself to do the heavy lifting personally. And she doesn’t believe ‘sin taxes’ will solve anything either. Sodha argues there is another way

Dominant powers come and go. Rome dominated for centuries and then it was gone. In more recent times, Spain, the Netherlands, and Britain have been top dog only to be overtaken. Now it’s the United States, the dominant country of the post-war era, and it is being challenged by the

Just in time, Canada has produced research backing our claim to the North Pole. And they got that research aboard a Coast Guard ship, the Louis St. Laurent. From Canadian Press: All coastal nations claim 200 nautical miles off their shores as exclusive economic zones.  Beyond that may lie something

It’s the distinct slapping sound made by the rotors of Huey helicopters that marks the beginning of a new season. The helos are from the forest fire fighting school a couple of miles away. The last few days have sounded like the Robert Duvall scene in Apocalypse Now.

When you’ve got a dam you’ve got a reservoir and the last thing you want is a truly seismic event. The Tyee’s Andrew Nikiforuk writes that even Alberta can figure out those things don’t mix.  Now, Mr. Horgan, are you listening? In a significant development, the Alberta Energy Regulator has

Let’s just call it ‘reclamation.’ The return of Alberta’s oil and bitumen fields to a pristine, natural state. The bad news? It could take up to 2,800 years. The good news? Mankind could be long gone by then but, give nature three or four millennia and it will do the

Northern India is nearing all-time record heat. The city of Churu hit 50.6 degrees Celsius not far off the record of 51 degrees. The Indian people are also having to cope with regional water shortages and, in urban areas, heavy air pollution. The Indian Meteorological Department said severe heat could