Low-input sustainable agriculture is helping farmers store carbon underfoot Like everybody else, farmers talk a lot about the weather without doing much of anything about it – likely because there’s not much they can do. But after a decade of wild swings in weather patterns, crop prices and farm debt levels, some Canadian farmers are starting to look at ways…
Category: Environment
Bare essentials: T.O. org puts women’s underpants on Haiti’s aid agenda
On the second anniversary of the earthquake in Haiti, let’s get down to a skimpy project that lays bare a whole lot about the men in charge of international emergency aid missions. This has to do with women’s drawers, and their new role in the agenda of global emergency assistance. The story starts here in T.O. at a fundraiser for…
Open Pit Gravel Mine Tells Farmers to “Eat My Dust”
Although the Ontario election is still six months away, the surprise candidate for most polarizing issue likely to turn the political contest into an emotional cliffhanger has already come to the fore. A 6 billion tonne gravel “mega quarry” – second-largest in North America – has been proposed in what is now quiet farm and cottage country some 100 kilometers…
Japan’s Earthquake-Tsunami Made Worse by High Risk Technologies Everywhere
Japan’s ordeal upsets and confronts onlookers because of the way tragedies unfolding from the natural disaster of an earthquake and tsunami touched off the unraveling of a more ominous human mistake – construction of a nuclear power plant in a known earthquake zone. Other disasters of recent years – such as tsunamis in Indonesia and Thailand, hurricanes in New Orleans,…
Is being vegan the only green option?
Join the discussion on how green and vegan issues relate; see my intro to the issues in this debate with PETA member Bruce Friedrich: http://www.newint.org/argument/2011/01/01/vegan-green-debate/
How Biomass Is My Valley? Could Bio-Energy Be Worse Than Fossil Fuels?
Ontario’s recently-tabled Long-Term Energy Plan confirms the Liberal government’s commitment to both nuclear power and renewable sourcing of new electricity — with price offers and open grids that invite some 11000 megawatts of green power. That’s more than enough to allow the province to go coal-free within ten years — a big break for clean air, climate protection, and local…
Northwest Territories Gardeners and Farmers Work Together For Local Food
Yellowknife and Hay River “We’re so far behind up here that we’re ahead,” Evellyn Coleman told me, explaining why her Territorial Farmers Association, the first in North America to consider accepting backyard and community gardeners as full members, was inviting me up to speak in the Northwest Territories. Just south of the Arctic tundra, where lichen and moss are the…
How to Plug the Legal Loophole that Caused the Gushing Hole in the Gulf
British Petroleum and the U.S. government can’t figure out how to cover up an underwater oil leak that’s spewing tens of thousands of gallons of oil day into the formerly rich fishery off the Gulf coast of Louisiana. But between the two of them, they’ve done a masterful job of covering up a hole in public policy that allows risky…
Black Is the New Black: The Rise of the Terra Preta Underground
After the failure of world leaders to produce a climate protection plan in Copenhagen, burnt offerings and negative thinking can keep us positive. The burnt offering is a breakthrough that can buy time by getting carbon dioxide from rotting plants out of the air and into the ground. Move over carbon-neutral – yesterday’s watchword, and enter carbon-negative biochar, the great…
The Unknown Earthquake in Haiti’s Countryside
March, when next season’s crops are due to be planted in Haiti, is less than a month away. For the tens of thousands who have left the rubble and despair of Haiti’s capital to find shelter in some 500 camps throughout the countryside, it could be their chance to plant a new life for themselves – if only a trickle…