Peter Andree's article starts out: "While 100-mile dieters provide a ray of hope, small-scale farmers the world over continue to face intense pressures, and many are still forced out of farming each year. In response, we need to think carefully about our aspirations for the 21st Century food system." In  […]

Nauru is a teeny speck of an island in the middle of the Southpacific. Once a bountiful habitat for 1,000 residents, in the past 150 years Nauru has been reduced to a lunar landscape of rubble. Novelist David Kendall tells the whipsaw tale of greed and shortsightedness, how phosphates made […]

Conversation with Nicola Ross, Executive Editor of Alternatives Journal, on the Biofuels issue.  (18m05s)

Sick of high fuel costs? Sickened by the damage transportation is doing to our environment? In theory biofuels — ethanol, biodiesel, etc. — might provide relief on both these fronts. But theory aside, is it really practical? For four years Blake O'Brien ran his 1985 diesel Mercedes Benz "beater" (his […]

Imagine you have to buy gas for your car. At one station down the street, the sign offers "1.3 liters per $1".Another though is offering "5 liters per $1" Which would you choose? Well, with Bill C-33 it appears the Government of Canada has opted for the former, the Less […]

Energy policy analyst and Alternatives Journal editorial board member Susan Holtz explains why, when it comes to Biofuels policy, Food versus Fuel is not as important a question as everyone seems to think. She also explains why we need a balance of biofuel solutions, even if ethanol is relatively inefficient. […]

In this podcast we speak with some of the book reviewers from the print edition. As Executive Editor Nicola Ross points out in her Editorial Overview, since the reviewers are often as interesting as the writers of the featured books, these interviews go way beyond a simple review. Intro 0m21 […]

Alternatives Journal issue 35:4 is entitled The New Ecology, and in this five-part podcast, we go deep with two contributors, short with one other, and have fun with the title term "Ecology" in another.

Imitation, they say, is the sincerest form of flattery, and in this podcast we feature some environmental ideas from around the world that our contributors think we'd do well to replicate here in Canada. Alternatives' Executive Editor Nicola Ross gives us a preview of the print version of the magazine. […]

The environmental bandwagon is a pretty crowded place these days. And consumers appear finally willing to choose and pay more for environmentally sound products. Not surprising then that if you pick up any glossy magazine, you'll notice a startling number of advertisements touting the green benefits of products and services. So what […]