Canada's Environmental Voice
Around the year 2000, I attended a conference organized by the Council of Canadians about the risks associated with genetically modified organisms. At some point during the proceedings, an extraordinary thing happened. One of the speakers, professor Ann Clark (then of Guelph University) rose and said the following: the problem […]
At the 2013 Canadian Wind Energy Association’s (CanWEA) conference a new group launched to encourage greater inclusivity in the energy field, Women in Renewable Energy (WiRE). Founded and co-chaired by Rebecca Black and Joanna Szarek Osawe, this non-profit organization is dedicated to “furthering education and awareness surrounding renewable energy development and […]
During the Ontario ice storm of 1998, millions of people were left without power for weeks in the middle of January. Since then, questions have been raised about how so many could go without electricity in a province which often has so much it has to pay neighbours to take […]
Chief Gordon Planes of the T’Sou-ke First Nation in Sooke, BC, motivated his community to become one of the greenest in Canada with a simple idea: “We used to live sustainably, and only took what we needed from the land. We need to get back to that.” Five years ago, […]
The last I saw Hermann Scheer, he was walking north up a side street from Unter den Linden in Berlin. It was mid-evening in August 2009 and we’d been talking for well over an hour, seated at a small table on the sidewalk next to the Café Einstein, an establishment […]
Ontario’s green energy plans have been modelled on the success of Germany’s national program to switch to renewable, non-carbon energy sources. The Feed-in Tariff Program, Green Energy Act legislation and decommissioning of coal generating stations are all part of the provincial government’s push to emulate similar German initiatives.
This article is part of A\J’s web series Night School.
Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind full of cosmic spaceGnaws at our faces – R. M. Rilke, Duino Elegies (trans. Leslie P. Gartner) IF WE CONSIDER the phenomenon of solar flares, Rilke’s description of how cosmic winds sometimes blow in our faces is surprisingly true. Atmospheric auroras, the […]
On July 13, 1908, huge crowds gathered in the streets of various small towns and villages in Germany to witness the spectacle of LZ 4, one of the first airships, flying overhead. The airship, which was on a proving flight from Lake Constance to Mainz, was greeted with cheering crowds and […]
A solar-powered boat – the largest ever built – made berth in Halifax, NS, last week. Fitted with 93.5 kilowatts of solar PV power, the German-built catamaran looks like something a Bond villain would gleefully cruise around in at its top speed of five knots. For that matter, few but […]
