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…)

Canadian Dimension magazine, March/April 2008

In early June, 2007, I was one of seven Saskatchewan women who made their way to Boston to record the vocal tracks for an ecofeminist recording project, My Heart Is Moved. In all, 85 women from ten different bio-regions of North America — many of whom had never before met — gathered to sing songs based on the Earth Charter, a global peoples’ document on sustainable living. All who traveled to Boston brought with them the breath and life of their local communities, the voices of all those in their singing circles, the amazing preparation and intention of the local group into the focused work of rehearsals and recording. The experience was profound and continues to shape me, much as the songs continue to take shape in community. (Keep reading…)

Canadian Dimension magazine, March/April 2008

The application of treaty rights as a legal strategy implemented by the First Nations themselves must be the key focus in efforts to challenge Big Oil in Alberta. Resources and effort must be placed into building the knowledge and capacity amongst First Nations and Métis leadership, including grassroots, elders and youth, to engage in both an indigenous-led corporate-finance campaign and in decision-making processes on environment, energy, climate and economic policies related to halting the tar-sands expansion. Canadian policy makers need to understand that there is an inextricable link between indigenous rights and energy and climate impacts. (Keep reading…)

Canadian Dimension magazine, March/April 2008

Plans are afoot for the wholesale ecological reconfiguration of vast parts of the northern hemisphere. The planners are suggesting that infrastructure is required to facilitate far-reaching change: the second-largest dam in the world, a possible nuclear-power station at Peace River, and pipelines across Alberta to the west coast, across the prairies, and down the Mackenzie River. These changes are being drawn up primarily to satisfy the insatiable needs of our neighbours to the immediate south. This current Harper/Stelmach energy sell-out is Phase Two of the selling of Canada initiated by their true predecessor, Brian Mulroney. (Keep reading…)

The Progressive Economics Forum February 19th, 2008

Since the provincial Liberals came to power in 2001 I have seen a lot of BC Budgets and not been too happy with any of them. Until now. Today’s 2008 model is a very interesting budget, and while I have a number of quibbles, I support the overall direction. And as in the recent past on climate change I find myself siding with the government against business – which is, well, pretty weird. (Keep reading…)

Haaretz, December 5, 2007

This is most definitely not a pastoral picture: Two village council heads are standing in front of the garbage dump of one of the villages, Beit Liqia, and counting, one by one, all of the environmental hazards. The village’s houses are 200 meters away. There are people who burn garbage (mainly to separate metal from old cables or the iron from tires) and then black smoke forms and wafts around the windows of the crowded homes. Around the garbage dump are olive groves. Nobody harvests the olives there any more. At the garbage dump in the village of Beit Anan they burn the waste. Though it is situated relatively far from the village houses, it is also located among olive groves and alongside the narrow road. The smoke and the smell of burning plastic and organic waste accompany travelers. (Keep reading…)

Independent.co.uk Online (December 10 2007)

BP, the British oil giant that pledged to move “Beyond Petroleum” by finding cleaner ways to produce fossil fuels, is being accused of abandoning its “green sheen” by investing nearly GBP 1.5 billion to extract oil from the Canadian wilderness using methods which environmentalists say are part of the “biggest global warming crime” in history. (Keep reading…)

October 31, 2007 Socialist Worker

THE MEDIA verdict on this disaster seems to be that the federal government and the state and local authorities did a great job, and everyone who evacuated to the Qualcomm football stadium is getting the royal treatment. What’s left out of this picture? (Keep reading…)