Alternatives Journal articles from June 2003

Alternatives Journal archives from June 2003

What's the buzz?(smart growth popular across Canada)(Editorial)
June 22, 2003... SMART GROWTH is in the air. Smart growth plans are popping up in municipalities all over the country, smart growth organizations are being formed in several provinces and a national coalition of smart growth groups was launched this spring. ...

Fiscally green.(website for ecological fiscal reform)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... A Web site dedicated to ecological fiscal reform has been launched by the Pembina Institute. Ecological fiscal reform involves government use of financial tools to strengthen incentives for environmentally responsible behaviour. One example is...

Protesters sued.(Western Forest Products and Greenpeace)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... After chaining themselves to logging equipment for ten days in 1997, two Greenpeace protesters have been successfully sued by the loggers impacted. The protesters have been ordered by the BC Supreme Court to pay more than $6000 to four loggers...

PCB charges.(City of Edmonton faces environmental charges)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... The City of Edmonton faces nine environmental charges stemming from the 2001 track and field championships when spectators were sprayed with PCB-laden oil. PCBs, commonly used as coolants and lubricants before being banned in 1977, leaked from...

Kingston's clean steep.(wetland technology to clean up water)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... A FLOATING filter designed by three students at Queen's University may solve a nasty water problem for the City of Kingston. Contaminated groundwater leaching out of Belle Park, the site of a former landfill, is currently being pumped out of...

Free transit on smog days.(Alter Notes)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... IF THE AIR IS BAD, everyone rides for free in Windsor, Ontario. Windsor is the first city in Canada to offer free transit on provincially designated "smog advisory days". The program lasted for the month of July, which included four smog days....

Neo-liberal trees.(Alter Notes)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... AS FREE TRADE AREAS are being negotiated and other liberalization measures sweep Latin America, some new environmental practices are emerging. The deregulation of Mexico's forestry laws is leading to the plantation of thousands of hectares of...

Wetlands versus West Nile.(Alter Notes)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... PUBLIC ALARM over West Nile Virus is putting new pressures on wetlands. Long regarded as wastelands, and still misunderstood and undervalued, wetlands are now being targeted as deadly mosquito breeding grounds. Advisories from Health Canada and...

Greenhouse gas reductions.(Global News)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... Six developing countries have reduced their combined greenhouse gas emissions by 300 million tonnes a year over the past three decades, says a report from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. If Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa...

US hemp ban.(Global News)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... A ban on hemp food products is temporarily on hold in the US. In March the Drug Enforcement Administration banned all food products containing hemp. Their zero tolerance policy on drugs is targeting industrial hemp because it has trace amounts...

Emissions trading criticized.(Global News)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... The Amsterdam-based Transnational Institute has released a new report that criticizes greenhouse gas emissions trading schemes. The schemes reflect a wider trend towards privatization and deregulation and will allow corporate interests and free...

Environmental rights.(Global News, International Program of Earthjustice)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... The use of a human rights framework for environmental protection is receiving increased recognition as a legal norm, says the International Program of Earthjustice, a non-profit public interest law firm that has consultative status with the UN...

Mining road threatens Caribou.(Campaigns)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... The Canadian Arctic Resources Committee (CARC) is calling for stringent environmental assessment of a proposal to build a new deep-sea port and a 215-km road that would cut directly through the migratory path and calving grounds of the Bathurst...

Boreal wilderness.(Campaigns, high-profile paddlers raise awareness of forest conservation)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... Ten teams of high-profile paddlers are canoeing to gain public support for conservation of the boreal forest. The Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society (CPAWS) campaign includes Tom Cochrane, Silken Laumann, Rick Mercer, David Suzuki and Justin...

Appeal to UN.(Campaigns, Sierra Legal Defence Fund and the St'at'imc (Statlium) Nation )(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... The Sierra Legal Defence Fund and the St'at'imc (Statlium) Nation have made a formal submission to the United Nations under the UN Convention of Biological Diversity claiming that the proposed expansion of a road in the Coast Mountains will...

Worm seeking worm.(Science Desk)
June 22, 2003... THE EXPERTS on the International Commission on Radiological Protection used to assume that radiation levels safe for humans were also safe for other life forms. In recent years, the commission, which suggests safety limits for radiation,...

Bird dropping fallout.(Science Desk)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... ANOTHER RECENT FINDING provides insight on how radioactivity enters Arctic food chains: sea bird droppings, or guano, may be a key pathway. Between 2000 and 2002, a Norwegian research team collected and tested samples of soil, vegetation and...

Spring's chickens.(Letter from Vancouver)
June 22, 2003... NO ONE was paying attention to our news release. I work for City Farmer, a non-profit urban agriculture group based in Vancouver, BC. We had just commissioned a poll by Ipsos-Reid to find out how many people were growing food in Vancouver and...

PEI fish kills.(Research Findings)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... Nitrates are contaminating the rivers of PEI, say researchers at the University of PEI. Since 1994, there have been two dozen major fish kills, where thousands of fish die suddenly from the toxicity of the water due to pesticide and fertilizer...

Water and oil mix.(Research Findings, report from the Pembina Institute)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... Due to recent droughts, Albertans are concerned about the use of fresh water by the upstream oil and gas industry, says a recent report from the Pembina Institute. Recommendations to promote water conservation include better licensing and...

Great Lakes study.(Research Findings, climate change)(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... The David Suzuki Foundation and the US-based Union of Concerned Scientists have released the findings of a comprehensive examination of climate change effects on the Great Lakes Basin. The report predicts significant changes to temperature,...

Who's who: test your knowledge of some of the best-known personalities in the history of Canadian environmentalism.(Alternatives Quiz)
June 22, 2003... 1. Which well-known Canadian activist first joined the environmental movement in a campaign to oppose Nova Scotia's pesticide program against the spruce budworm in the late 1960s? a) Maude Barlow, chair of the Council of Canadians b)...

The freedom to pollute.(Brief Article)
June 22, 2003... A smoking Statue of Liberty has been traveling to cities all over Europe. Artist Jens Galschiot's 28-foot high statue was originally created for the World Summit on Sustainable Development, held in Johannesburg in 2002. It symbolizes the...

Living it up: the wide range of support for smart growth in Canada promises more livable towns and cities.
June 22, 2003... IN CANADA, we have always prided ourselves on the fact that our cities are more livable than their US counterparts. Canadian planners like to say that urban densities are higher here, car ownership is lower, transit use better and our...

New urbanism stalls without public transit.
June 22, 2003... "You must look down from 35,000 feet and see the big picture, if you want smart growth to work," says Marvin Green, president of River Oaks Group Inc. The aptly named Green cut his smart growth teeth in the mid-1990s on a 340-unit development...

Quebec village designed for train commuters.
June 22, 2003... On the site of a former sugar refinery, a new model for development is coming to Mont-St-Hilaire, a municipality on Montreal's South Shore. Aptly named La village de la gare, the project is centred on a new commuter train station. It puts...

Hong Kong is the model for high density.
June 22, 2003... What do Canadian cities need to do to more sustainable? One simple answer is for them to become more like Hong Kong. Hong Kong's seven million residents have a higher GDP per person than Canadian urban residents, but it has the lowest per...

Collaborative design yields green suburb.
June 22, 2003... A camel, goes the old joke, is a horse that was designed by a committee. Planners in Surrey, BC, have turned the joke into success, using a multistakeholder committee to design a neighbourhood as well suited to West Coast rain as a camel is to...

Big box battle: Guelph's citizens favour community values and smaller developments, but they are up against powerful forces.
June 22, 2003... YOU CAN'T FIGHT city hall? Oh yes you can. But will that stop the developers? Citizen groups and municipalities across North America have been fighting the sprawl and homogenization that comes with big box developments led by discount chains...

BC farmland reserve blocks sprawl.
June 22, 2003... For anyone passing along Canada's highways and byways, the picture seems clear--a vast countryside dotted with farms, the very picture of agricultural abundance and productivity. But the figures tell a different story. According to Statistics...

Moraine boundaries will slow Toronto sprawl.
June 22, 2003... All the forecasts call for growth. Since 1991, the Greater Toronto Area has been growing by close to 100,000 people per year and this rate is not expected to slow until 2021. Much of this new growth has been and will be "greenfield"...

Breaking the suburban habit the right incentives for developers could transform suburban sprawl into more affordable, diverse and healthy neighbourhoods.
June 22, 2003... THE DOMINANT FORM of development in North America for the last four decades has been in the suburban mode--low density, sprawling, segregated use areas relying primarily on the private automobile for transportation. Many have complained about...

One smart card, one less car.
June 22, 2003... Proponents of car-sharing in Bremen, Germany, are extolling the virtues of an animal they call an "egg-laying-wool-milk-sow". This peculiar expression is a German version of "Jack-of-all-trades"--it describes something that can do everything....

Thinking like a region.
June 22, 2003... Smart growth works best if you plan for it at the regional scale. Residents of urban-centred regions rarely live entirely within the municipality where they pay taxes. They reside in one place, work in another, shop and go for entertainment in...

Smarter growth in a smaller city.
June 22, 2003... The fertile Okanagan Valley in southern BC is a beacon for urbanites seeking the clean air, crystalline lakes and relatively uncrowded ski hills of the southern Interior. But such popularity comes with a price. The area's fragile, semi-arid...

The nearly perfect official plan.
June 22, 2003... Toronto is at a crossroads. As the centre of the second fastest-growing region in North America--projected to welcome 2.5 million new residents by 2021--Toronto could easily become a typical, car-oriented, suburban-dominated regional capital,...

High tech hopes: new transportation technologies may reduce vehicle emissions only marginally.
June 22, 2003... NOW THAT CANADA has ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the pressure is on to cut our greenhouse gas emissions, particularly from the transportation sector. New transportation technologies have been on the horizon for decades: the hydrogen fuel cell,...

Exposed by efficiency: the SARS outbreak demonstrates our vulnerability to nature's unpredictability.(Political Science)
June 22, 2003... EXPLANATIONS of chaos theory often start with a butterfly flapping its wings in, say, China, and causing a storm on the other side of the planet. In a complex world small causes can have improbably large effects. And now with the SARS virus we...

A cautionary tale: single-minded efforts to manage nature are confounded by the complexity of ecosystems.
June 22, 2003... THERE WAS A MORNING, back in time, when this region of British Columbia they call the Kootenays changed from ice and rock to land and water, from Pleistocene to Holocene. This morning can be described neatly in multiples of ten; at the...

Feds cod napping: federal fisheries mismanagement demands a public inquiry.(Commentary)
June 22, 2003... ON MAY 2, the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada designated the Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic cod as endangered. This tragic announcement was an undeniable testament to the utter and stunning failure of federal...

Out of sight, out of mind: cross-border traffic in waste obscures the problem of consumption.
June 22, 2003... AS TWO researchers on either side of the Canada-US border, we prefer to exchange ideas. But lately we've been exchanging waste products, however unwittingly. Toronto began to export its municipal garbage to Michigan on January 1, 2003. The...

Troubled Waters.(Blue Gold: the Battle Against Corporate Theft of the World's Water)(Book Review)
June 22, 2003... Blue Gold: The Battle Against Corporate Theft of the World's Water,Maude Barlow and Tony Clarke, Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Co. Ltd., 2002. Blue Gold is a polemic, in both the good senses of the word. It does call attention to a pair of...

Sins at Sea.(Cruise Ship Blues: the Underside of the Cruise Industry)(Book Review)
June 22, 2003... Cruise Ship Blues: The Underside of the Cruise Industry, Ross A. Klein, Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2002. If Ralph Nader had targeted the cruise industry rather than General Motors, he might well have written the sort of...

Just Coffee.(Coffee With Pleasure: Just Java and World Trade)(Book Review)
June 22, 2003... Coffee with Pleasure: Just Java and World Trade, Laure Waridel, with photos by Eric St-Pierre, Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2002. Coffee is a drug that has held humanity unconsciously in its thrall since the rise of its popularity in Europe...

Hunters and Nurturers.(In Nature's Name: An Anthology of Women's Writing and Illustration, 1780-1930)(Book Review)
June 22, 2003... In Nature's Name: An Anthology of Women's Writing and Illustration, 1780-1930, Barbara T. Gates, ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. In Nature's Name is a fascinating collection of writing by Victorian and Edwardian women on...

Back to school: as kids, teachers and parents get ready for school again this fall, click on these Web sites for greening your school ... and your education.(Hot Green Web Sites)
June 22, 2003... Go for Green--Active and Safe Routes to School www.goforgreen.ca/asrts/home_e.html Register online for International Walk to School Day this October 8 with the national non-profit Go for Green. The Active and Safe Routes to School program,...

Gary Gallon: long-time Alternatives author, advisor and friend. 1945-2003.(Tribute)(Obituary)
June 22, 2003... WHEN death comes too soon to a good person, the tradition is to count accomplishments rather than years. This does nothing to soften the loss, but it permits some celebration and stands as a sort of defiance against the fundamental injustice....

Taking on risks.(Letter)(Letter to the Editor)
June 22, 2003... I was so impressed by your Winter issue on environmental racism; I am planning to subscribe to your magazine. It is really refreshing to read critical perspectives on how the environmental movement and society at large have...

September is the cruelest month.(Brain Mulch)
June 22, 2003... September is the Cruelest Month AUGUST always gets my stomach in a nervous state of irrational anticipation. This phenomenon is not due to the upcoming fall fashion collection, or because I have mountains of peaches to can before...