Monday Afternoon Links
Miscellaneous material to start your week. – John Paul Tasker writes that Canada needs to push hard to increase the number of vaccinated people to prevent a fourth wave of…
environment
Wednesday Morning Links
Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading. – Marlene Habib writes about the continued efforts of grocery workers to ensure we have access to food and supplies in the face of…
Explaining Degrowth and Why it Matters
The way the economy runs leads to environmental destruction and it doesn’t have to be that way. The industrial revolution accelerated consumption of non-renewable resources and governments allowed corporations to…
Cleaner Air Produced $5 Billion in Crops
Farmers can’t control the air quality of their farms, yet the air makes quite the difference to the success of the crops. Since air can’t respect property rights it requires…
On Narcissism & Independence
The fourth of July….I realize only now, that is today’s date, as I finish writing this short reflection. How fitting. Independence Day. Now, let us talk about where real independence…
Ecocide—an international crime?
“We need to change the rules”—Greta Thunberg, 2019 In 1970, American biologist Arthur Galston coined the term “ecocide” to describe mass environmental destruction. Galston was a critic of the Vietnam…
This Isn’t a Heatwave — It’s a Dying Planet
Our Civilisation is Boiling Alive in the Fumes of its Own Waste umair haque Follow Jun 30 · 7 min read Image Credit: ABC11 Screenshot It was my lovely…
After BC’s historic heatwave, Canada should double down on building retrofits
This week’s heatwave in western Canada is an unfortunate reminder that as the end of the COVID-19 pandemic nears, the climate crisis is only growing in intensity. Image from Shutterstock.…
Ontario Electricity VIII: Now also going backwards on climate
There have been a number of important developments in the Ontario electricity sector since my last update when I summarized my arguments in front of the Ontario Legislature against the…
Arnold Bercov and Ben Parfitt: More than intentions needed for B.C. forests
Originally published by the Vancouver Province Opinion: Millions of logs are culled from our forests annually and loaded in raw, unprocessed form onto ships. The government’s “intentions document” mentions log…
Hypocrisy
on at the centre of national policy making chooses to leave government to work on the climate crisis. She is silent about her government dedication to expanding fossil fuel production,…
Urban Ecology Cools Building, Cities, and Helps Biodiversity
Modern cities are full of biodiversity, you just need to know where to look .Urban ecology is a relatively new field of study that examines how isolated urban green infrastructure…
SaskPower’s War On Solar
Today the utility described the home generation of 16MW of solar and wind power as "insignificant." The clear message: solar and solar customers are a problem to be managed. Not…
Taxpayers pay for Earth’s destruction
When an industry is on a path to extinction, private investors exit and governments often step in, spending huge dollars that merely delay the inevitable. We should not allow that…
321 years into a 246 year cycle
Canada’s federal government gave $4.5 billion to Kinder Morgan for Trans Mountain after the owners had difficulty financing expansion of the pipeline. By 2020, the new construction budget had soared…
Population Growth & The Environment
There has been a debate going on for over 50 years as to whether the primary cause of the growing environmental crisis is over-population or over-consumption. The debate still continues,…
Chris Potts Nails It
Nailed it! In his latest blog post, former Town of Collingwood employee, Chris Potts writes about our council’s ill-conceived plan to hire a “climate change specialist” to add to the…
Watch These Documentaries to Better Understand SE Asia
The environmental movement is a global struggle against big corporations and corrupted governments, which means each struggle has commonalities while also being unique to its region. Over at Global Voices…
BC NDP, guardians of the environment… the corporate environment
The origin story of Stand.earth—previously ForestEthics, successor to Clayoquot Rainforest Coalition—illustrates how little has changed in recent decades. NGOs and concerned citizens are ever the underdogs when competing with governments…
Reclaiming Democracy In Canada – And Around The World
In the 1960s, there was a cultural awakening which spread rapidly around the world, and Chomsky is right in calling it both a cultural awakening, and also, an outbreak of…