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Planet Earth

The Inconvenient Truth About Flying

This Magazine Staff

When our elected officials get around to talking about global warming a lot gets said about reducing emissions from industry, from cars and even from our homes but little or nothing gets said about flying. Face it whether we like or not flying contributes a lot to climate change. The Suzuki foundation puts the number […] More »

what if the awesome power of WalMart were used for good?

This Magazine Staff

From today’s New York Times — what if WalMart forced Americans to drastically reduce their energy consumption? Would we like the megacorp a little bit more than we currently do? Even just a little bit? WalMart Pushes Energy Efficient Light Bulbs on a Reluctant Population More »

Commitment to sustainability or smogscreen?

This Magazine Staff

One of Andrew Potter’s comments on the Liberal convention was bang-on: A party that did sweet bugger all about Kyoto for 13 years, despite possessing three bulletproof majorities, will now elect a leader whose overriding agenda will be to save the Earth from the CO2 depradations of Americans and Stephen Harper. I can’t imagine they’ll […] More »

Next up: Emissions restrictions on Don Cherry

This Magazine Staff

As a subscriber to The Hockey News, the last thing I expect to see is a story on global warming. But there it is, on page 51 of this week’s edition (not available online, though): a nice Adam Proteau column on NHLers whose eyes are wide open when it comes to climate change issues. Calgary […] More »

Don’t worry, we’re doomed

This Magazine Staff

Two bits of pretty scary news in the past two days: 1. World hunger ‘intolerable,’ with scant progress in decade: UN 2. Slumping Flames fall to Capitals. Er, no. Scratch that. Global warming will devastate economy: report Not that any of us are necessarily that surprised, but the news hardly comes as a welcome reminder. […] More »

Greening Apple

This Magazine Staff

It’s about time we saw a campaign like this: Greenpeace has launched an effort to organize Apple customers and demand that the company employ non-toxic materials in its hardware. For those of us who consider themselves environmentalists and buy a lot of junk from Apple (myself included), it’s time to stop turning a blind eye […] More »

Open source research

This Magazine Staff

A nice post from The Conscious Earth serves as a reminder that oftentimes, activists are working for the common good rather than personal gain. Take David Suzuki. When Liberal party leadership candidate Stéphane Dion borrowed, um, liberally from Suzuki’s research for his environmental platform, Suzuki was pleased, saying, “the whole point of conducting and publishing […] More »

Please turn off all cellphones — and don’t throw them away

This Magazine Staff

Hands up everyone who has bought a computer, cellphone, iPod or other electronic device in the past year. Pretty cool gadget you’ve got, isn’t it? Now, what happened to the item it replaced? Some of us probably threw the old device out, but others may find a growing pile of old electronics filling junk drawers, […] More »

Indie Label Sub Pop No Eco Slacker

This Magazine Staff

The sweet irony of Sup Pop records is that the defiantly indie Seattle record label came to prominence during the era of Generation X disaffected slackerdom. Now eighteen years old and still repping some of the finest indie artists, the label has gone 100% green energy. That means that all energy consumed by the company […] More »

to ponder on the weekend

This Magazine Staff

“Power is essential for survival, but additional power is also needed for doing anything fast and complicated, like eating your neighbour…” From a discussion of: Current Middle East conflict? — No. Iraq/Kuwait, early 90’s? — No. North and South Korea? — No again. The quote is from a Times Literary Supplement review of the book […] More »

and also get one of them nifty power washers

This Magazine Staff

Ten years ago, I swear, a decade in the past, I had this conversation with a friend: She: “Why can’t I go to Canadian Tire and buy an affordable wind turbine or solar panel set for the roof of my house?” Me: “I know. It’s, like, a market crying out to be serviced by a […] More »