Here’s your first quiz for the new school year: It’s going to be cold this winter, and the price of home heating oil has doubled over the past five years . You can either: A) Get an apartment in which heat is provided by the landlord (AHP) and the price of oil is included in […]
Environment
Posted inNews + Opinion
Planting ideas
Universities are society’s bastions of good sense, chock full of learned (and learning) minds, busying themselves thinking up the best and brightest of ideas to make the world a better place. It only seems natural, then, that some of those ideas would find their way out of the lecture halls and into the daily life […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Memory of the flood
Katrina’s winds shredded through the Gulf South like a giant scythe, but it was the flood in New Orleans that jolted the American psyche, leaving the deepest memory. The flood turned the Big Easy into a disaster zone, planting the image of a Third World backwater. When has the persona of a city been so […]
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Cool cups
Inside Trident Cafe on Hollis, along with the warm smell of fresh roasted coffee, are little reminders written on index cards: “Please take only as many as you need,” above the napkins, “Paper towel ONLY for green bin composting,” in the washroom, and “Garbage only thanks. No compost stuff. No recyclable stuff. Give that to […]
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The litter laws forgot
Outside Mic Mac Mall in Dartmouth, Tyrone Clyke is on his 10-minute break, inhaling deeply and rapidly on a cigarette. In three hours he’ll be back here again. On average, Clyke leaves about 20 cigarette butts here a week. Smokers like Clyke are caught between two city campaigns; one to eliminate smoking, the other to […]
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Salvage garden
Under a welcome sun, a dozen Dalhousie architecture students wrap up their Free Lab, an intense two-week field project that students design and build themselves. In this case, it’s phase one of the transformation of a long, narrow and steeply sloped strip of land running alongside the Salvation Army building into an urban garden on […]
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Green roots
Tucked in beside North and Agricola are two little streets that you may well never have stepped foot upon. May Street boasts 11 houses and one business. At one end of Fern Street is the Bloomfield Centre, and at the other end is the service garage of Colonial Honda. In between are 12 houses. Except […]
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The green mile
The greening of the Grand Parade is an idea both promoted and protested—promoted by environmentalists who want to see it turned into a car-free space, such as a skating rink, and protested by some Halifax Regional Municipality councillors who don’t want to lose their parking spots. But a “green corridor,” the result of a study […]
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Convenient truths
Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth opens in Halifax June 16, and the accompanying Climate Crisis website: www.climatecrisis.net is a treasure trove of information, from glowing reviews of the film to 10 easy ways you can cut down carbon dioxide emissions. You’d expect nothing less from the guy who invented the internet, but it turns […]
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The David
In a promo for the 47th season of The Nature of Things, David Suzuki, the 70-year-old science and environmental activist, appears as naked as the jaybird he tries to protect, wearing nothing more than a strategically placed maple leaf. Held high over his remarkably buff physique, he literally carries the world on his shoulders. Although […]
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Climate change info
www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/ www.davidsuzuki.org/NatureChallenge/ www.theweathermakers.com/globalwarming/ www.gov.ns.ca/energy/AbsPage.aspx?id=1391&siteid=1&lang=1 www.worldwildlife.org/climate/involved/individuals.cfm www.environment-agency.gov.uk/yourenv/639312/1361980/?lang=_e www.earthday.net/resources/2006materials/Top10.aspx
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Cold comfort
Like many students who rent in south end Halifax, Robert Jewer feels he’s being gouged. He’s paying $620 per month for his room in a modest three-bedroom apartment, located at Park Victoria on South Park. “It seems high,” he says, “but it’s something you learn to live with in this city.” Jewer moved here from […]