Letter: The promise parties keep making -- and breaking
Dear Editor: Monday, February 1 marked the four year anniversary of Trudeau's broken promise on electoral reform. “We are committed to ensuring that the 2015 election will be the last federal election using FPtP” It was a key campaign promise which Trudeau repeated over 1800 times. An all party parliamentary committee, ERRE,...
COLUMN: From the Hill -- BC apple farmers and food security
Many sectors have been hard hit by the pandemic, and agriculture is one of them. Despite concerns about food security and pleas to buy local, orchardists and farmers in the region have had a number of serious headwinds facing them over the past year. B.C. apple growers have had to deal with huge production from just across...
Column: Alberta inquiry steps into a past era’s dark denial
That anyone today could deny the overwhelming and incontrovertible evidence for human-caused climate disruption is shocking. You don’t even need a science background to see its worsening effects occurring worldwide, from record high temperatures to increasing extreme weather events and wildfires. For a government — especially...
MLA speaks to one-year anniversary of Covid-19 in Canada
Dear Community Member, It has been one year since B.C.’s first joint statement about the novel coronavirus (now termed COVID-19) from Health Minister Adrian Dix and Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry. Since that date, our world has changed dramatically. We have all felt the impacts of the pandemic on our lives, our ...
Climate: Proforestation vs. more old-growth logging
Researchers say "proforestation" policies are the fastest and most effective way to draw excess CO2 out of the atmosphere. By Kate S. Petersen for Environmental Health News HAMPSHIRE COUNTY, Mass.—Bob Leverett walked away from the trunk, looking up through the canopy, trying to get eyes on the crown. He crushed...
Opinion: Worried about earth’s future? The outlook is worse than even scientists can grasp
By Corey A. Bradshaw, Daniel T. Blumstein, and Paul Ehrlich, for The Conversation Anyone with even a passing interest in the global environment knows all is not well. But just how bad is the situation? Our new paper shows the outlook for life on Earth is more dire than is generally understood. The research published...
Column: U.S. crisis shows need to speak truth to power
As was demonstrated in the U.S. last week, many who are motivated by fear and ignorance are feeling emboldened — and desperate. It’s not just in the United States. Irrational, authoritarian, anti-science rhetoric and action has been heating up from Brazil to India to Hungary, and is fully entrenched in places like Russia and China. […]
Column: From the Hill — Long-awaited initiatives
In late November, the federal government introduced a new climate action accountability act, then followed that on the last day of the fall session with a climate action plan. These are long-awaited initiatives. In the decades since climate change was identified as the number one issue facing the globe, through pacts at...
Letter: We must be vigilant
Dear Editor. We fought global wars, and millions of people died to defend and protect our human rights, including our right to have democratic governments. Last week’s invasion of the Capital Hill in DC was nothing but a stunning attack on democracy, perpetrated by none other than the President of the United States. It was ...
Column: What we need
The following is adapted from The Sacred Balance: Rediscovering Our Place in Nature (Greystone Books), a book I wrote with Amanda McConnell in 1997 and updated in 2007. It seems as relevant today as when we wrote it, if not more so. I hope you enjoy it and that the year ahead brings new ways of seeing and thinking about the...
