Energy East, the gargantuan, $16-billion pipeline project that would have transported over one million barrels of oil a day from Alberta to New Brunswick, has died. It was four-years-old. Parent company TransCanada announced the death of its 4,500-kilometre pipeline baby on Thursday morning. Chief executive officer Russ Girling offered his thanks to the businesses, Irvings and […]
Climate change
Posted inNews + Opinion
SCIENCE MATTERS: Bye-bye, bug splatter
Masses of monarch butterflies fluttering across Toronto’s waterfront. Painted ladies (often mistaken for monarchs) descending on Montreal. Combined with the hottest September ever recorded in the Great Lakes region, it’s been a strange time in Eastern Canada. We should savour the joys of these captivating critters while we can, because their future—and that of insects […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
SCIENCE MATTERS: Environmentalism is a way of being, not a discipline
I’m often introduced as an environmentalist. I prefer to be called a father, grandfather, scientist or author, as these terms provide insight into my motivation. Environmentalism isn’t a discipline or speciality like law, medicine, plumbing, music or art. It’s a way of seeing our place in the world and recognizing that our survival, health and […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
SCIENCE MATTERS: We can’t sacrifice quality for quantity when it comes to CO2 and food
Bigger isn’t always better. Too much of a good thing can be bad. Many anti-environmentalists throw these simple truths to the wind, along with caution. You can see it in the deceitful realm of climate change denial. It’s difficult to keep up with the constantly shifting—and debunked—denier arguments, but one common thread promoted by the […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
SCIENCE MATTERS: Nature offers solutions to water woes and flood risks
When the Aztecs founded Tenochtitlán in 1325, they built it on a large island on Lake Texcoco. Its eventual 200,000-plus inhabitants relied on canals, levees, dikes, floating gardens, aqueducts and bridges for defence, transportation, flood control, drinking water and food. After the Spaniards conquered the city in 1521, they drained the lake and built Mexico […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
SCIENCE MATTERS: We only have one Earth, and we’re overshooting its capacity
August 2 was Earth Overshoot Day. Unlike Earth Day or Canada Day, it’s not a time to celebrate. As the Earth Overshoot Day website explains, it marks the time when “we will have used more from nature than our planet can renew in the whole year.” That is the definition of unsustainable and means we’re […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
SCIENCE MATTERS: Local action needed to resolve world’s biggest problems
Humans are an astonishing anomaly. As many species teeter on extinction, our populations grow in size and complexity. From exploring space to eradicating diseases and other remarkable achievements, human curiosity has pushed the outer limits of our physical universe. Yet our ability to embrace shared values has been challenging. More than a billion people live […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
Climate change a large, systemic problem for Maritime farmers
A year-long research project from Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute says small-scale farms in the Maritimes are vulnerable to rapid and long-term disruptions caused by climate change. Just how vulnerable is “vulnerable?” “Pretty vulnerable, is the answer,” says Bernard Soubry. The Master’s candidate in environmental change and management compiled the newly released study, which says […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
SCIENCE MATTERS: Nature offers the best defence against flooding
Spring flooding in Canada this year upended lives, inundated city streets and swamped houses, prompting calls for sandbags, seawalls and dikes to save communities. Ontario and Quebec’s April rainfall was double the 30-year average. Thousands of homes in 130 Quebec municipalities stretching from the Ontario border to the Gaspé Peninsula flooded in May. Montreal residents […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
SCIENCE MATTERS: Oil and plastic are choking the planet
People who deny that humans are wreaking havoc on the planet’s life-support systems astound me. When confronted with the obvious damage we’re doing to the biosphere—from climate change to water and air pollution to swirling plastic patches in the oceans—some dismiss the reality or employ logical fallacies to discredit the messengers. It’s one thing to […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
SCIENCE MATTERS: Increased awareness is key to resolving the climate crisis
Most people understand that human-caused climate change is a real and serious threat. True, some still reject the mountains of evidence amassed by scientists from around the world over many decades, and accepted by every legitimate scientific academy and institution. But as the physical evidence builds daily—from increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather events like […]
Posted inNews + Opinion
SCIENCE MATTERS: Long work hours don’t work for people or the planet
In 1926, U.S. automaker Henry Ford reduced his employees’ workweek from six eight-hour days to five, with no pay cuts. It’s something workers and labour unions had been calling for, and it followed previous reductions in work schedules that had been as high as 84 to 100 hours over seven days a week. Ford wasn’t […]
