Chris Benjamin

Most of the advocacy of the environmental movement focuses on governments. Industry is more likely to be the target of protests and boycotts than gentler forms of persuasion. There are good reasons for that. As difficult as governments are to access at times, no one does secrecy and closed doors quite like the private sector. […]

Earth Day is supposed to celebrate the planet and raise awareness of the need to protect it. But doing so requires a greater change in perspective, a mass realization that just because we need the planet doesn’t mean it needs us. That is, a cultural shift. The makers of culture have a key role to […]

Jason Russell, an American filmmaker and activist, has been publicizing Joseph Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army since 2003. For decades, the LRA wreaked havoc through central Africa, kidnapping tens of thousands of child soldiers and sex slaves. The International Criminal Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Kony and other LRA officers in 2005. Russell’s […]

I don’t remember reading The Lorax when I was a kid. I read it to my kid now. But I’m not a Lorax purist. So, on a Friday afternoon I hit the Empire and paid my $13, got my 3D glasses in cellophane wrapper and prepared for a sermon. There’s no church of environmentalism, so […]

Transit operators say that one bus replaces 50 cars—making every bus strike a smack to the environment. The actual impact is difficult to quantify. The only place in town counting cars is Halifax Harbour Bridges. Its spokesperson, Alison MacDonald, says they’ve seen spikes in peak-hour traffic since the Metro Transit strike began (excluding spring break […]

The buy local movement is exploding, in spirit. But when we aren’t buying meat and produce direct from farmers, it’s hard to know where it comes from. Most food is distributed globally, travelling from field to distant processing facility to distant table. Food distribution is an industry dominated by giants. In Nova Scotia, there are […]

In the past few weeks the Harper government has become more blatant in its anti-environment stance, and much of the story has become public via whistleblower Lawrence Frank, former communications guru of ForestEthics. Frank says that the existence of anti-environment rhetoric from the feds is common knowledge among environmentalists. But it came to a head […]

Stephen Harper has drawn frequent comparisons to Hitler—including in this publication, in the Chronicle-Herald, by a Liberal candidate and as part of that YouTube blank-as-Hitler meme. Hitler’s the most infamous, but the playbook could be borrowed from any dictator: Stalin, Suharto, Amin. And while Harper isn’t directly massacring humans en masse, when you consider how […]

11) FeHEDTA legalized On May 24, Halifax council rejected a recommendation by staff to add the iron-based pesticide FeHEDTA to its allowable list to put the HRM ban in synch with the new provincial ban. A week later, council re-voted—based on procedural issues no one understood. The staff recommendation was approved; for the first time […]