Globe & Mail May 8, 2008

A who’s who of major U.S. and Canadian environmental organizations is urging the U.S. Senate to keep in place a rule banning the United States government from buying fuel from Alberta’s tar sands on the grounds that it is too environmentally tainted. (Keep reading…)

Special to Globe and Mail Update May 2, 2008

In periods of changing climate, winners can quickly become losers — and vice-versa, especially when it comes to the ready availability of fresh water. In that regard, Alberta is emerging as the province to watch as the effects of anthropogenic global heating play out across Canada. (Keep reading…)

Special to Canadian Dimension April 9, 2008

The vast tar sands of northern Alberta have entered the global stage. In the context of U.S. concern about “energy security” and the five fold expansion of tar sands development proposed through the North American Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) , the tar sands are no longer an issue only for Albertans. All Canadians have an interest, not only as global citizens, but also because of the big implications of tar sands development for our national economy and the environment. (http://www.environmentaldefence.ca/reports/tarsands.htm) (Keep reading…)

Rideau Institute April 9, 2008

STATEMENT:

Canada must recover its leading role in working for the elimination of nuclear weapons, a role that has been cast into doubt under the Harper government. That was the dominant finding for the sponsors of a special seminar of 20 nuclear disarmament experts held February 3-4, 2008 in Ottawa. (Keep reading…)

Monthly Review
January 2008

Rachel Carson was born just over 100 years ago in 1907. Her most famous book Silent Spring, published in 1962, is often seen as marking the birth of the modern environmental movement. Although an immense amount has been written about Carson and her work, the fact that she was objectively a “woman of the left” has often been downplayed. Today the rapidly accelerating planetary ecological crisis, which she more than anyone else alerted us to, calls for an exploration of the full critical nature of her thought and its relation to the larger revolt within science with which she was associated. (Keep reading…)

Winnipeg Free Press April 2

OTTAWA — Gasoline-powered cars are driving humanity to the end of the oil age, leaving electric vehicles as the best weapon against global warming. (Keep reading…)

Special to Canadian Dimension March 21, 2008

A few weeks before Stephen Harper went to the 2007 APEC meeting in Australia, ready to discuss George Bush’s Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), the Energy Alberta Corporation (EAC) in consort with AECL announced its plan to build two Advanced Candu Reactors (ACRs) near Peace River, Alberta. Harper, EAC’s Wayne Henuset and AECL’s mandarins won’t want the public to connect the dots too quickly. Harper’s minority government might not weather a heated controversy over Canada importing nuclear wastes while having a huge unsolved nuclear waste problem of its own. That controversy erupted in the Australian election campaign after the Howard government indicated it would consider buying into Bush’s plan to have supplier countries take back and reprocess spent fuel. The Howard government was later defeated. (Keep reading…)

Globe & Mail March 8, 2008

Canada’s 11 largest environmental groups have jointly issued a blueprint to solve the country’s environmental woes, calling for high carbon taxes and at least half of the country’s remaining wilderness to be off limits to development. (Keep reading…)

the Guardian 29th January 2008

I cannot avoid the subject any longer. Almost every day I receive a clutch of emails about it, asking the same question. A frightening new report has just pushed it up the political agenda: for the first time the World Food Programme is struggling to find the supplies it needs for emergency famine relief(1). So why, like most environmentalists, won’t I mention the p-word? According to its most vociferous proponents (Paul and Anne Erlich), population is “our number one environmental problem”(2). But most greens will not discuss it. (Keep reading…)

Globe and Mail Update March 6, 2008

OTTAWA — Successive Canadian governments have paid lip service to keeping international environment agreements and greening their own operations but little progress is actually being made, Canada’s Environment Commissioner said in a scathing report released Thursday. (Keep reading…)