Vancouverites were taken aback last week at the news that city council, in a divided vote, passed a motion by Green Party Coun. Adriane Carr to allocate up to $700,000 towards a class action lawsuit against fossil fuel companies.
This measure was instantly slammed as a performative stunt and window dressing for the enviro vote as we head into election season.
A hard-nosed look at our choice of futures. Lots of fact and lots of feeling! Great new (relatively) publication based in Winnipeg!
-- Gene McGuckin
Jun 29, 2022
I.
What could plenty mean, in a finite planet?
Traditionally, socialist utopias envisioned a society based on a superabundance of essential goods which could be treated as though they were free. Thus, markets would be eroded, and the compulsion of work would be reduced.
Canadian lakes are in hot water over climate change, a new research survey has concluded.
"Canadian lakes are warming twice as fast as the rest of the lakes globally," said York University biologist Sapna Sharma, a co-author of a paper published in the journal Bioscience.
Sharma and her colleagues pored over 143 studies from around the world to try to summarize how climate change is affecting the globe's 100 million lakes.
Climate change is exacerbating pressures on every Australian ecosystem and Australia now has more foreign plant species than native, according to the highly anticipated State of the Environment Report released today.
The report also found the number of listed threatened species rose 8% since 2016 and more extinctions are expected in the next decades.
The document represents thousands of hours of work over two years by more than 30 experts. It’s a sobering read, but there are some bright spots.
BC says a deal with the West Moberly First Nations over Site C damage shows reconciliation in action. The nations’ Chief disagrees.
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, tasked with informing Canadians about what happened to Indigenous peoples in residential schools, defined reconciliation as a process of “establishing and maintaining a mutually respectful relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in this country.”
Standing in a vast clearcut in British Columbia feels strangely dystopian. It’s quiet. There are no leaves to rustle, no bushes for animals to hide behind. The sun beats down and, you soon discover, there are no trees for shade.
Slash piles are your landmarks now — those mountains of branches leftover from logging. Come winter they’ll get burned. Bonfires against the snow, like a scene from Game of Thrones.
The West Moberly First Nations have reached a partial agreement with B.C. Hydro and the provincial and federal governments over a lawsuit that says the massive Site C hydroelectric dam in northeastern B.C. would destroy their territory and violate their rights.
