Canada and Abu Dhabi share one big trait: an economy addicted to oil. But while Canada doubles down on the tar sands, the emirate quietly plans a renewable energy hub in a gleaming zero-emissions city in the desert. Can either of these bets pay off? Looking out over the site of Masdar City in Abu […] More »
The July-August 2010 issue of This is now in subscribers’ mailboxes and on newsstands. As usual, you’ll be able to read all the articles here on the website as we post them over the next few weeks. But also as usual, we encourage you to subscribe to the magazine, which is the best way to […] 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 »
Pablo Picasso had his so-called blue period. Ottawa artist Stefan Thompson is exploring a green period. Thompson first made a name for himself on the streets of the capital as a graffiti artist. Working under the pseudonym Maki, Thompson populated nooks and alleys throughout the city’s downtown with a menagerie of dazzlingly rendered and brilliantly […] More »
The Claim Bamboo fabric is the perfect solution for the eco-chic shopper. The plant grows fast, with little water, few pesticides or fertilizers, and produces 30 percent more oxygen than trees. But does all that really mean guilt-free fashion—or is bamboo just a savvy marketing trick? The Investigation Last year, the Competition Bureau of Canada […] More »
Even as the Deepwater Horizon spill releases an estimated 25,000 barrels of crude oil a day into the Gulf of Mexico—making it, in some experts’ estimates, an even greater ecological disaster then 1989 Exxon Valdez spill—Chevron Canada Ltd. is pursuing plans to create one of the deepest offshore oil wells in the world off the […] More »
The May-June 2010 issue of This Magazine has been on newsstands for a while already, so I apologize that I’m a little late to the party blogging about what you can read in this issue. You can find This in quality bookstores coast to coast, or get every issue without making a special trip by […] 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 »
“No one would think it’s possible to have students with no construction experience making an entire selfsustainable building from scratch,” says David Elfstrom, a graduate of Fleming College in Peterborough, Ontario. But that’s what he and 25 of his classmates in the sustainable building design and construction program did in 2006, erecting an eco-friendly outdoor-living […] More »
From the first breath of spring, we North Americans dream of an expanse of green grass, a vast carpet that tickles our skin and stains our sundresses on which we can spend long, lazy days barbecuing and reading summer fiction. But our love affair with the lawn has got to stop. Even pesticide-free, grass is […] More »
It’s Earth Day today, the time every year when we think about the environment and stuff for 24 hours. Earth Day celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, and there are lots of events going on to celebrate the milestone. There have been some good-news stories about the environment over the last four decades, but over […] More »