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To its credit, the Forest Products Association of Canada recognizes climate change is a serious threat to forests and habitat, and has vowed the sector it represents "is doing its part to fight climate change through work in our forests, at our mills and through the products we make."
Are You Willing to Pay for Your Time Stuck in Traffic? Londoners Already Are
By 2002, drivers in London, England, were spending as much as half their commuting time stalled in traffic, contributing to much of the city center's dangerous particulate pollution. To deal with a growing population, increasing gridlock and air quality concerns, the city implemented a congestion charge, using a photo-based license-recognition system.
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Transportation accounts for about a quarter of Canada's greenhouse gas emissions, making it the second-highest source, slightly behind the oil and gas industry. In the U.S., it's the largest source of emissions and pollution. Despite continued improvements in personal vehicle fuel standards since 1975, Canada's transportation emissions grew by 42 percent from 1990 to 2015, partly because of growing populations and increasing numbers of vehicles on the road, and because of huge increases in sales of trucks, SUVs and "crossover" vehicles for personal use. Clearly, we must do better.
The fossil fuel era must end, or it will spell humanity's end. The threat isn't just from pollution and accelerating climate change. Rapid, wasteful exploitation of these valuable resources has also led to a world choked in plastic. Almost all plastics are made from fossil fuels, often by the same companies that produce oil and gas.
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When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency increased safety and environmental standards for cars in the 1970s, automakers responded. Although they had to adhere to the new rules, they didn't base their entire response on safety or pollution concerns. Instead, they looked for loopholes.
Anishinaabe economist and writer Winona LaDuke identifies two types of economies, grounded in different ways of seeing. Speaking in Vancouver recently, she characterized one as an "extreme extractive economy" fed by exploitation of people and nature. The second is a "regenerative economy" based on an understanding of the land and our relationship to it.
Contrary to a common perception, ignoring climate change won't make it disappear. Global research going back to 1824 in fields ranging through physics, oceanography, biology and geology have confirmed human activity—mainly burning fossil fuels, raising livestock and destroying carbon sinks like forests and wetlands—is increasing greenhouse gas emissions and causing global temperatures to rise rapidly, putting humanity at risk. Every legitimate scientific academy and institution and every government, except the current U.S. administration, agrees.
All nine community water systems on Lytton First Nation land in BC have been under boil water advisories at one time or another. Now the First Nation is taking an innovative approach to resolving its drinking water problems. It's working with public and private organizations and universities in a "circle of trust" to identify challenges and test solutions in real-world conditions. The approach came about as the result of a partnership with RES'EAU-WaterNET, a strategic research network under the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.
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Christopher Michel / Flickr / CC BY 2.0
Canada is losing a lot of its wildlife. The World Wildlife Fund's 2017 Living Planet Report Canada found half the monitored mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian and fish species declined from 1970 to 2014. Threatened and endangered species continue to disappear despite federal legislation designed to protect them and help their populations recover. What's going wrong?
Brazil has flooded large swaths of the Amazon for hydro dams, despite opposition from Indigenous Peoples, environmentalists and others. The country gets 70 percent of its electricity from hydropower. Brazil's government had plans to expand development, opening half the Amazon basin to hydro. But a surprising announcement could halt that.
My parents were born in Vancouver—dad in 1909, mom in 1911—and married during the Great Depression. It was a difficult time that shaped their values and outlook, which they drummed into my sisters and me.
"Save some for tomorrow," they often scolded. "Share; don't be greedy." "Help others when they need it because one day you might need to ask for their help." "Live within your means." Their most important was, "You must work hard for the necessities in life, but don't run after money as if having fancy clothes or big cars make you a better or more important person." I think of my parents often during the frenzy of pre- and post-Christmas shopping.