Alternatives Journal articles from March 2008

Alternatives Journal archives from March 2008

A Sudbury-style attitude.(Editorial)(Editorial)
March 1, 2008... I'VE BEEN thinking a lot about Sudbury these days. Long the butt of moonscape jokes and widely recognized as one of the world's "best" examples of industrial pollution, this Northern Ontario town has much to teach us about hope and moving...

Animal, vegetable, miracle: a year of food life.(BOOKS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007,384 pages. Kingsolver collaborates with her husband and daughter to chronicle their...

Blessed unrest: how the largest movement in the world came into being and why no one saw it coming.(BOOKS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, Paul Hawken, New York: Viking Press, 2007, 352 pages. Hawken describes "the largest movement in the world": a vast collection of diverse...

The chickens fight back: pandemic panics and deadly diseases that jump from animals to humans.(BOOKS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... The Chickens Fight Back: Pandemic Panics and Deadly Diseases That Jump from Animals to Humans. David Waltner-Toews, Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2007, 240 pages. This collection of essays is about as wise, witty and provocative as a...

Coming to Terms with nature: socialist register 2007.(BOOKS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Coming to Terms with Nature: Socialist Register 2007. Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, eds., Halifax: Fernwood Publishers, 2006, 325 pages. A scholarly compendium of well-reasoned, accessible articles, Coming to Terms with Nature examines...

Courage for the earth: writers, scientists and activists celebrate the life and writing of Rachel Carson.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Courage for the Earth: Writers, Scientists and Activists Celebrate the Life and Writing of Rachel Carson, Peter Matthiessen, ed., New York: Moriner Books, 2007, 224 pages. By the time this edition of Alternatives hits your desk, the 100th...

The green building revolution.(BOOKS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... The Green Building Revolution Jerry Yudelson, Washington, DC: The Island Press, 2007, 272 pages. Yudelson offers a broad but cursory look at the green building industry, with a heavy emphasis on LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental...

GreenTOpia: towards a sustainable Toronto.(BOOKS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... GreenTOpia: Towards a Sustainable Toronto, Jonny Dovercourt, Christina Palassio and Alana Wilcox, eds., Toronto: Coach House Books, 2007, 256 pages. As groundswells of popular support for environmental values touch every corner of our...

High tech trash: digital devices, hidden toxics and human health.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics and Human Health, Elizabeth Grossman, Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006, 34 pages. Who in the world would store toxic waste in their basement, drawers and closets? Apparently, almost...

Is the sacred for sale? Tourism and indigenous peoples.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Is the Sacred for Sale? Tourism and Indigenous Peoples, Alison M. Johnston, London, UK: Earthscan, 2006, 381 pages. The claim that ecotourism has become a form of colonial exploitation is an important and timely one. Though sympathetic to...

Nuclear power is not the answer.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer, Helen Caldicott, New York: The New Press, 2007, 221 pages. Divest of nuclear, invest in renewables: this is the oversimplified conclusion of Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer. Writing passionately, Caldicott...

Peace parks: conservation and conflict resolution.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Peace Parks: Conservation and Conflict Resolution, Saleem H. Ali, ed., Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2007, 432 pages. It is easy to think of national parks as symbols of peace-both with nature and among humans. It isn't as easy to think of...

South of north: images of Canada.(BOOKS IN BRIEF)(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... South of North: Images of Canada. Richard Outram, with drawings by Thoreau MacDonald, Erin, ON: The Porcupine's Quill, 2007, 120 pages. In the Song of the Earth, Jonathan Bate emphasizes that, "Poetry continues to matter as we enter a new...

Urban camping: a testament to living without a vehicle.(Brief article)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Urban Camping: A Testament to Living Without a Vehicle. Peter and Andrea Tombrowski, Calgary: 2005, 170 pages. When they sold their family vehicle in 1998, the Calgary-based Tombrowski family's life changed in "literally every aspect." The...

Missing Malaspina.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... I was very sorry to see that we at Malaspina University-College in Nanaimo, BC missed the opportunity to be included in the special issue on environmental education in Canada (33:5, 2007). Our Geography Department offers a BA in Urban...

Not green to be easy.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... Where I take issue with Tom Bird's remarks in "We Have Ways to Make You Green" (34:1, 2008) is his insistence that convenience is what people need. There are some activities that we must do, such as hanging out our clothes to dry, which...

Bigger and worse.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... In "An Enduring Legacy," (34:1, 2008) Ray Tomalty is right to emphasize the importance of Our Common Future for bringing environmental considerations into the policy mainstream and for establishing the power of the concept of sustainable...

Fault in Faulty Towers.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... In "Faulty Towers" (34:1 2008), Edmund Fowler tries just a little too hard to turn a distaste for highrises into an argument that highrises are bad for people and cities. For example, Fowler found one Australian study on greenhouse gas...

See no evil.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... I read with appreciation Brendon Larson's article (34:1, 2008) on invasive species. I am a nature appreciator in an amateur way. I have never taken the invasive species issue very seriously. These natural beings, after all, drink the same water...

Page turner.(Letters to the Editor)(Letter to the editor)
March 1, 2008... As usual, when my latest issue of Alternatives (34:1, 2008) arrived, I flipped through it thinking I'd put it away for future reading. However, the last issue was so good and so engaging that you ended up wasting half of my day because each...

Books of the green and famous.(Bibliography)
March 1, 2008... WE SET OUT to discover the books that have most influenced environmental leaders. Judging by the overlapping favourites of our small sample of inspiring environmentalists, the following four titles are indispensable additions to the bookshelves...

Working words: from Carson to McKibben, Mowat to Monbiot, the environmental movement can be traced in the rich history of its books.
March 1, 2008... COMBING THROUGH scientific studies and correspondents' reports in her seaside home in Maine, Rachel Carson saw nature bludgeoned by a chemical barrage. Telling stories about the northern Barren Lands, Farley Mowat expressed the spirit and...

A Scientific Romance: the author of A Short History of Progress envisions a world recovering from environmental wounds.
March 1, 2008... When I began writing A Scientific Romance 15 years ago, I pictured the ruins our civilization might leave behind if it died from its own folly like so many others. My tale is set in Britain and told by an archaeologist who travels to the year...

Dreaming a new myth: listening may be the most profound and heroic activism of our time.
March 1, 2008... There's a natural connection between storytellers, environmental activists and scientists. The oral traditions of all three share the belief that we ignore the world's smallest voices at our grave peril. In every wondertale, the true wisdom...

Between heaven & earth: tree climbers found astounding life and form high up in the redwood canopy.(Reprint)
March 1, 2008... Richard Preston, a writer for The New Yorker magazine since 1985, mastered the technique of tall-tree climbing in order to see, first-hand, the cathedral-like canopy of America's biggest redwoods. From 35 stories above ground, in a...

Do it with someone else: Iain Richmond and Steven Waring have perfected the art of paired book reading.
March 1, 2008... FOR YEARS my friend Steve and I exchanged titles of our current reading enthusiasm. We shared common interests in the earthly concerns of environmental issues and in the more ethereal expanses of spirituality (primarily informed by Eastern...

Turning to hope: Chris Turner describes the despair that preceded his search for a landscape of optimism.
March 1, 2008... The distance between our concerns about climate change and our ability to act remains tragically wide. It is a gap formed, in no small part, by the language we use to discuss the problem. We talk about the grave dangers of failing to act...

Word on the street: across Canada environmental book sales are on the rise.
March 1, 2008... IF 2007 was the year when a wallop of environmental reality finally penetrated the collective Canadian psyche, 2008 begins on a more hopeful note. Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers, George Monbiot's Heat and Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth,...

Walden lives: the legacy left by Thoreau continues to inspire.(Living Classics)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Walden, Henry D. Thoreau, edited by Jeffrey S. Cramer, introduced by Denis Donoghue, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2006, 464 pages. QUICK, NAME THE PERFECT book for a quiet weekend in the woods. If you said Walden, chances...

Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto.(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto, David Tracey, Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2007, 477 pages. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Interwoven Wild: An Ecologist Loose in the Garden, Don Gayton,...

La Via Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants.(Book review)
March 1, 2008... La Via Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants, Annette Aurelie Desmarais, Halifax: Fernwood Publishing, 2006, 238 pages. The graphic image of a Korean farmer stabbing himself to death atop a barricade at the 2003 World Trade...

The Culture of Flushing: A Social and Legal History of Sewage.(Book review)
March 1, 2008... The Culture of Flushing: A Social and Legal History of Sewage. Jamie Benidickson, Vancouver: UBC Press,, 2007, 432 pages. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I confess that the word "culture" in the title of Jamie Benidickson's book threw me off. I...

Break through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics Of Possibility.
March 1, 2008... Break through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the politics of possibility. Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007, 344 Pages. The Landscape of Reform: Civic Pragmatism and Environmental Thought...

Water Policy for Sustainable Development.(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Water Policy for Sustainable Development, David Lewis Feldman, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007, 371 pages. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Design for Water: Rainwater Harvesting, Stormwater Catchment...

Hunters at the Margin: Native People and Wildlife Conservation in the Northwest Territories.
March 1, 2008... Hunters at the Margin: Native People and Wildlife Conservation in the Northwest Territories John Sandlos, Vancouver; UBC Press, 2007, 360 pages. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] That Canada's Northern peoples have experienced a long and painful...

Developing and Extending Sustainable Agriculture: A New Social Contract.
March 1, 2008... Developing and Extending Sustainable Agriculture: a new social contract, Charles A. Francis, Raymond P. Poincelot and George W. Bird, eds., New York: Haworth Food and Agriculture Products Press, 2006, 367 pages. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

Natural Visions: the power of images in American environmental reform.(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Natural Visions: The Power of Images in American Environmental Reform, Finis Dunaway, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2005, 246 pages. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] From the Blue Marble photo of Earth taken from Apollo 17 in 1972,...

Hot Air: Meeting Canada's Climate Change Challenge.(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Hot Air: Meeting Canada's Climate Change Challenge, Jeffrey Simpson, Mark Jaccard and Nic Rivers, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2007, 265 pages. Though they have been appearing with increasing frequency, books on climate change vary...

Ecoholic: Your Guide to the Most Environmentally Friendly Information, Products and Services in Canada.(The Virtuous Consumer: Your Essential Shopping Guide for a Better, Kinder, Healthier World)(Book review)
March 1, 2008... Ecoholic: Your Guide to the Most Environmentally Friendly Information, Products and Services in Canada, Adria Vasil, Toronto: Vintage Canada, 2007, 333 pages. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Virtuous Consumer:...

In Aornis.(Poem)
March 1, 2008... Where each tangle in the foliage is not a nest, where the wind is ridden by machines. Aornis, birdless land, whose uninflected sky extends like rhetoric to the horizon, idee fixe, tight as Tupperware. Each item insular, insomniac,...