Your Earth

There comes a point, in every society, when it is time to either, lead, follow, or get the heck out of the way. For Ontario, Canada’s most populous and powerful province, that time is now. At issue – how to power a province that will lose 80% of its generating capacity within the next 15 to 20 years.

June 5 marks the 24th anniversary of World Environment Day. Given that 40% of the planet’s surface is already covered in drylands, this year’s theme, Deserts and Desertification, is particular timely. audio link

Canada’s recent announcement that it won’t be honoring its commitment to the Kyoto Protocol has taken the country from leading the world and making a difference to misleading the world and making excuses.

The fast food and soft drink industries spend billions of dollars every year on advertising and promotion, and yet nobody seems to make connection between their carefully crafted images and what happens to it when it ends up squashed in a ditch or smeared all over the road.

Incineration, once the bane of the waste industry, is rising like a phoenix from the toxic ash as a perceived win-win solution for two of the major environmental issues that we currently face: What do we do with our garbage and how do we meet our growing demand for electricity.

With the official opening of gardening season looming on the horizon, and municipalities passing by-laws to restrict the cosmetic use of pesticides, the beleaguered lawn care industry has gone on the offensive. Thanks to the innovative ideas of one Canada's greenest entrepreneur, it's possible to have a weed-free, healthy lawn, without having to resort to cancer-causing pesticides.

20 years after the worst nuclear accident in history we are on the verge of a global nuclear revival. The reason? The nuclear industry's carefully crafted misinformation campaign that has positioned nuclear as the environmentally responsible alternative to the burning of fossil fuels.

The paradox of Easter, of spring, is that we can predictably count on the return of new life each year, and yet we cannot explain the unfathomable miracle of the new life that we celebrate.

Celebrating Earth Day once a year begs the question, "What are we doing the rest of the time?"

When Christ talked about Hell, one of the terms He used was Gehenna. Over the centuries we've made this word a general term for torment, but it originally had an exact meaning. Gehenna was the name of Jerusalem's garbage dump.

There is an ancient Cree proverb that warns, "Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize we cannot eat money." Perhaps we should add, "And the last field is paved."

Bottled water sales now top $ 100 billion annually for a commodity that most of us can get safely from the tap. Meanwhile, the UN reports that 1.1 billion people don't have access to safe drinking water, which is turns causes 1.6 million deaths annually. The UN's Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of people without clean water by 2015 has a price tag of $ 15 billion, a fraction of what we spend on bottled water.

In recent months we've witnessed a dramatic shift in Canada's military commitment in Afghanistan. After a half-a-century as the world's peacekeepers, we have suddenly been thrust into the role of peacemaker. The difference is subtle and deadly.

While it's hard to pass up fresh strawberries in the middle of winter, we need to become more aware of the hidden costs associated with having whatever we want, whenever we want it.

An increasing number of scientists believe that rising sea levels, triggered by climate change, may pose a greater threat than the warmer temperatures that have caused them. With sea levels now expected to rise as much as 6 metres or more, our only solution may be to take swimming lessons.