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Weather or climate?

August 16, 2010

It’s hard to know whether individual weather events are just random fluctuations, or whether they are growing signs of climate change. What we need to look for are patterns- is the weather changing? And how do the changes that are actually happening compare to those predicted for climate change? Three years ago, two federal government [...]

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Seven years after the blackout

August 13, 2010

Seven years after ten million people were affected by the August 14, 2003 blackout, our electricity policy remains somewhat schizophrenic. I’m a strong supporter of the Green Energy Act; we do need to shift what we can to conservation and to small scale, distributed, renewable electric generation. It’s not the cheapest option, if all that counts [...]

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Speaking for whales

August 12, 2010

Social media has helped to beat back efforts by pro-whaling countries, like Japan and Norway, to legalize commercial whale hunting. At the International Whaling Commission meeting held in Morocco in June, web campaigner Avaaz.org, delivered to Australian environment minister Peter Garrett, an anti-hunting petition signed by more than 1.2 million supporters.  This helped to galvanize supporters [...]

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Hanna lawsuit against wind turbines grinding on

August 11, 2010

Procedural skirmishing is underway in the Hanna lawsuit against Ontario wind turbines.

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Why is FOI so hard?

August 10, 2010

In 2009, of the 10,240 general information requests received by provincial government organizations, the Ministry of the Environment received 4944, the most of any provincial institution.

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Municipality can protect shoreline

August 9, 2010

Quebec City has successfully defended a bylaw requiring private property owners to naturalize the shoreline of its water supply. The St. Charles River, which flows into the lake of the same name, provides over half the potable water used by Quebec City.  A study revealed that the banks of the lake were eroding due to [...]

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Berendsen going to SCC

August 6, 2010

I think I forgot to mention it: The Supreme Court of Canada granted Berendsen leave to appeal from the Court of Appeal’s dismissal of his lawsuit against the province for the contamination of his land. The case has now dragged on for more than 20 years…

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Skytruth: a great site

August 6, 2010

Skytruth.org is a great site for seeing what is really happening in big environmental problems, like the BP oil spill, and fast-growing oil and gas production fields. They collect and publish up to date aerial photos. That’s another good thing about Google, the web and social media: it’s getting harder and harder to hide things [...]

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Old coal to improve, slowly….

August 5, 2010

Canada’s electricity sector is responsible for 17 percent of national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Most of that -13%- comes from 51 coal-burning electricity plants, along with mercury, particulates, NOx/ SOx and other health hazards. [i], [ii] Minister of the Environment Jim Prentice has promised new regulations for these coal-fired plants.

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Bike tourism: We’re glad to help

August 4, 2010

One of the joyful things to do on a lovely spring, summer, or fall day is to cycle the beautiful areas around Toronto. We are proud to be sponsors, for the third year running, of Bikes and Transit. This great website has maps, GPS coordinates and encouragement for combining bicycles and public transit in the [...]

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Water quality trading ebbs away again

August 3, 2010

Ever since the Newt Gingrich “Common Sense Revolution”, much ink has been spent on the alleged superiority of economic instruments over “command and control”.   In theory, government cannot efficiently or effectively tell people what to do; instead, government should give people an economic incentive to do the right thing, allowing them to use their own [...]

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Hidden contamination: it wasn’t my tank!

July 30, 2010

Two Vancouver families have had an expensive nightmare due to an leaking underground storage tank.

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Photos of the BP spill and cleanup

July 30, 2010

It is wonderful to hear how quickly the surface soil is disappearing from the Gulf of Mexico. Dec Doran of Oil Spill Control has graciously allowed me to post his photos from the BP spill cleanup in the Gulf. His key take-home message: watch out for those alligators! PART 1 BP OIL SPILL RESPONSE OPERATIONS. [...]

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Retroactive injustice

July 28, 2010

For more thoughts on the unjust aspects of Smith v. Inco, see our column in Slaw.

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And in the U.S..

July 27, 2010

Three and four decades ago, Canada was an environmental leader. Now, in many ways, we just follow the US. On climate change, in particular, the Harper government has promised to do little until the US adopts its own climate bill. It is therefore particularly disappointing that last week congressional Democrats scuttled their climate bill for now. [...]

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