When thinking outside the box just isn't enough
Canada will finally be reversing its controversial status on asbestos, thanks in part to the PQ’s new anti-asbestos policy. What this means in terms of actual exports though, is less certain. During the recent election, the PQ said they would cancel a $58 million loan promised to the Jeffrey asbestos mine, the last of its […]
There were three environment stories in the media today that, though seemingly unrelated, are pretty typical of Canada’s environment news, at least under the Harper regime.
With university back in session, the cops are back on the beat, arresting protesters and racking up overtime. Radio Canada found the SPVM logged $5.6 million in overtime from February 1 to June 27, y’know, keeping track of protesters. As of July 13, it had reached $7.3 million.
There have been a lot of stories lately about climate change and other dire warnings of a global nature, so this week I thought I’d keep things local. Expo-67 legacy on the chopping block If you missed it in yesterday’s Gazette, city councillor and long time QC politicion Louise Harel told the paper that Montreal’s […]
It probably comes as no big surprise, but Canada may be drastically off its emission targets, despite contrary promises from the government. Though the Harper government says Canada is halfway to reaching its 17% emissions reduction target by 2020, critics say the country has only cut emissions by as little as 3%. The devil, it seems, is in the details, according to CTV. The Montreal based environmentalist group Équiterre says the government is skewing the data to make it look more palatable.
Though temperature changes of a few degrees of the earth’s surface might not sound like a lot, it will have a drastic impact on Canada’s geography. It is predicted that global climate change will result in almost 40 per cent of land-based ecosystems making changes from one ecological community type – such as forest, grasslands or tundra – toward another.
There are already grumblings in the international media of what this could mean politically. The Arab Spring was tied to high food prices, and it’s possible there could be a second wave of global protests
The Charest government has granted a Montreal-based forestry company permission to log on Algonquin land in Northern Quebec. The Algonquin community at Barriere Lake, however, say that they were not consulted and that the new clear-cutting logging project at Poignan Bay violates a trilateral agreement on resource co-management they signed with the province in 1991
Understanding the arguments behind climate change is important because there’s lots of misinformation out there, thanks to some very powerful interest groups. It’s also handy to have the facts down should you find yourself at a family reunion with politically divergent relatives, or if you’re trying to get someone to leave you alone at a bar…
Maybe the state of water in Canada is better than a decade ago, but the folks at the Sustainable Water Management Division – now semi-defunct – say Canada needs a water charter, possibly because safe water could be considered a human right
Five years ago, the Aamjiwnaang First Nation on the St. Clair River near Sarnia, Ontario made national headlines for their birth rates: between 1999 and 2003, only one third of babies born in the community were male. From 1995-2003, the male birth rate was still only 41% according to a study in Environmental Health Perspectives. The reason? Aamjiwnaang reserve is situated next to one of the most polluted areas in Canada…
