Latest News
Earth's Most Wanted -
A recent Interpol report shows that environmental crime (including illegal logging, poaching, fishing, and dumping toxic waste) is a $213 billion industry—making it one of the world's most lucrative. Yet governments do little to crack down or deter it. Washington Post
The Heat Is On -
It's not exactly a surprise that 2014 is on track to be the warmest year ever measured; we've already experienced five record-setting hot months this year. But hopefully today's official warning from the World Meteorological Organization will turn up the heat on international climate talks now underway in Peru. The Guardian
Sell! Sell! Sell! -
Fossil fuels aren't just a danger to the planet—they're also putting your retirement savings at risk. The Bank of England says that oil and gas companies may be significantly overvalued, because stricter climate change strategies (we need 'em!) could require those companies to leave large stores of oil, coal, and gas in the ground. Suddenly fossil fuel divestment is as much about financial self-preservation as environmental conservation. Bloomberg
Nightmare Anniversary -
Thirty years after the world's worst industrial disaster—when cyanide gas leaked from a factory in Bhopal, India, killing thousands as they slept—its toxic legacy lives on. Hazardous waste is still buried underground, slowly poisoning more than 50,000 Indians who drink contaminated water, possibly causing birth defects in yet another generation of children. Reuters
Into the Wild -
"To step in here, to sense the canopy closing over you a hundred feet above, the finger-laced crowns of hemlocks, firs and cedars, black cottonwood and big-leaf maple, to feel that fluid life force, thundering over the creek bed like horses crashing a chute, vibrating in your thighs, to look down at a trail that shows no sign of hard use, to absent yourself for a day from landscapes vulgarized by billboards, to run your arms into the duff beyond your wrists and then plunge them deep in the fulminating creek, is to open yourself to what 13th-century architects wanted to happen to you when you entered Chartres or Notre Dame." —From “The Case for Going Uncivilized,” Barry Lopez’s Outside essay on the importance of the Wilderness Act (and of getting out into wild places)
Rising Sun, Sinking Sands -
More Canadians now have jobs in the solar, wind, and other clean energy industries than in the tar sands sector. Expect that trend to continue, as investment in renewables is still growing, while the tar sands industry faces a decidedly uncertain future due to climate change concerns and the still-on-hold Keystone XL pipeline. Maybe we should build a pipeline for photovoltaic panels instead? The Globe and Mail