Canada is a nation of wild, legendary rivers. The Mackenzie, the Fraser, the Churchill, and dozens more all empty into our national identity. They flow through our landscape, history, and imagination. They are vital to any history textbook, Group of Seven exhibit, or gift-shop postcard rack. Canada is also a nation of river-tamers. We revere […] More »

The Claim Supporters of “upcycling”— turning garbage into funky purses, photo frames, jewelry, and more—say it’s a great way to minimize what’s going into our mountainous landfills. But just how truly green is this practice? The Investigation One company that’s been making waves in the world of upcycling is TerraCycle. Partenered with such big businesses […] More »

The billions of dollars and years of research that NASA has spent studying Mars may have finally yielded some results here on Earth. Earlier this year, NASA scientists told the UN water conference in Egypt that they could use radar technology originally developed to search for water beneath Mars’ surface to find H2O buried up […] More »

[Editor’s note: Alixandra Gould is attending the 2010 Canadian Water Summit on Thursday, June 17. In advance of that, she interviewed a few of the experts who will be speaking at the event about some of the key issues in current Canadian water policy. Yesterday she contributed a report on the sorry state of water infrastructure […] More »

A reforestation scheme in Borneo could radically reshape wildlife protection, land conservation, and indigenous stewardship—simultaneously. Halfway around the world, on the eastern side of the island of Borneo, near the oil city of Balikpapan, a new tropical rainforest is being created out of what was once a poisonous wasteland. It is a story of radical […] More »

A new generation of designers propose products and buildings that are energy efficient and elegant Rick Mercer’s quip during the Copenhagen climate conference last December summed it up best: “So [Stephen] Harper flew to Copenhagen to have a club sandwich and hide in his room?” The post-Copenhagen doldrums were still bringing us down when Thomas […] More »

The tide may finally be turning on environmental action from the Canadian government. The Canadian Environmental Bill of Rights had its first reading in the house yesterday afternoon, and our fingers are crossed. Ecojustice, formerly the Sierra Legal Defense Fund, drafted similar legislation last year, in hopes of giving Canadians a legal means of protecting […] More »

The commercial fishing industry is costing us more than just the price of our seafood platters. With seafood consumption at a record 16.7 kilogram per person, our appetite for fish is putting the entire ocean ecosystem at risk. But the seas aren’t the only thing in danger. We humans depend on those waters for food, […] More »

Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park is home to one of the planet’s most richly diverse ecosystems. Beneath it lies enough oil to generate some billions of dollars in revenue. What’s a poor Andean nation to do? Hold off drilling in exchange for cash, it turns out. In 2007, Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa proposed a novel solution: […] More »