Long before the ‘intractable conflict’ between Israeli Jews and Palestinians gets resolved, climate change will have thrown everything up for grabs — literally. It already has.
It’s the ultimate green dream: some device or substance that can capture the sun’s infinite flood of energy, store that energy, release it as heat and electricity — in controlled fashion — then absorb it all over again in a continuous closed loop. A little organic molecule called norbornadiene promises to make dreams come true, in the crucial realm of home heating and cooling.
Earth’ surface is one degree warmer today, on average, than it was at the start of the industrial revolution 200 years ago. One degree doesn’t seem like much. The Paris Agreement would limit global temperature rise to two degrees. Sound like a conservative precautionary measure? Perhaps it isn’t.
Rising seas linked to climate change pose a major threat to coastal cities around the world. Dutch engineers are designing nature-based flood control systems that are cheap, effective, and environmentally friendly.
For those who thought that corporate concentration in the food industry couldn’t get tighter, wake up and smell the coffee. The Big Six seed and farm chemical producers are now on the verge of coalescing into three. Amazon may soon be the world’s biggest supermarket.
Standing on the edge of little Battir, I feasted my eyes on an astonishing sight: an amphitheater of ancient stone terraces covered in a cornucopia of fruits, vegetables, herbs and trees — including olive trees over a thousand years old.
Imagine an electric-powered fleet of Canada Post vehicles, along with vehicle charging stations at post offices. And postal banking, where loans could be secured for renewable energy installations and home energy retro-fits. Listen up.
Last fall I rode 1500 miles from Taos, New Mexico to New Orleans on a 1983 Yamaha xs-650. It was my first solo, long distance bike trip and New Orleans — a legendary city — seemed like a good destination.
A mild mid-March in Canada’s notoriously frigid prairie capital cannot be definitively pinned on global climate change. Still, for anyone willing to listen, read and watch, the writing is on the wall. Earth is warming — and fast.
Will global capitalism eventually wean itself off fossil fuels? Can wind, solar, geothermal and other renewable energy sources generate enough joules to drive permanent economic growth? Should carbon emissions be taxed?
Things constantly change. Everyone knows it. Steady, sometimes sudden change provides contour to individual human lives. Now, it seems humans have changed planet Earth like it’s never been changed before.
Like Earth’s climate, Manitoba Hydro’s office tower — in the city of Winnipeg — is an integrated system. As Earth’s climate warms, energy efficient buildings like this will be in demand.
Rising seas linked to global climate change pose a major threat to coastal cities around the world. Who better to turn to for nature-based flood control systems than the Dutch?
It would be difficult to go a day without stainless steel, and that steel would not be stainless without ferrochrome — the end product of chromite mining. In northern Ontario, chromium mining generates controversy.
Picture a landscape buried beneath a sky-high heap of dead plants and animal corpses. This is what Earth’s surface would look like if it weren’t for fungi. Fungi are the biosphere’s recyclers. Human society depends on them absolutely.
Plants that grow from seeds are the foundation of humanity’s food supply. Wheat, barley, oats, corn, potatoes and a dizzying variety of beans and legumes … Conserving these seeds of survival is one of humanity’s greatest challenges.
As Earth’s climate changes and weather extremes become more frequent, no one has his finger on Canada’s weather pulse more squarely and firmly than Canada’s chief climatologist, David Phillips.
Imagine what it would be like to have your home water supply morph into a fire hazard — the liquid flowing from your tap liable to explode if you light a match.
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Inka Milewski was a marine biologist, not a public health researcher or epidemiologist, when she received a phone call from worried residents of her community. She took up that call. Had no choice. It was something she had to do.
The Bay of Fundy, on the north shore of the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, is one of Earth’s great wonders. Listen to Matt Abbott, a Fundy Baykeeper.
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