2011 is the year for climate activism (knock wood–so far): the Keystone Pipeline protests at the White House, Climate Reality last week, Moving Planet this weekend, a Keystone Pipeline action in Ottawa on Monday, all in September. Chances are you missed the White House bit and won’t be making it down to NYC for Occupy …
Lappe’s Eco-Mind & Jensen et al’s Deep Green Resistance: the matter & anti-matter of environmentalism
Reading Deep Green Resistance followed by Eco-Mind over the course of a few days is a great way to get vertigo. They’re both written by well-respected, well-known environmentalists and authors. They rely on many of the same facts: 90% of fish gone, global warming inevitable, hundreds of millions of human deaths to follow, screwy notions …
babies are always cute
On the way home from Frances’s school last Monday–a walk which is by the way all of five minutes and 1 1/2 blocks long–she stopped, suddenly. “Mummy, look!” I looked, and saw four baby skunks gamboling on the neighbour’s lawn, composed of equal parts grass and clover. Four cuter little fluffballs you never have seen. …
Nearby Nature: wildlife vet
Frances wants to be a wildlife vet when she grows up. Until recently, it was just plain vet, from her lifelong fascination with animals of all kinds. You can imagine how excited she was when I told her that “wildlife vet” is a real job, not just some pie-in-the-sky fantasy she dreamed up. On the …
Near IS the New Far (or: I Told You So)
I became very afraid last weekend about the potential apocalypse. There I was, going about my regular business, when I saw this giant yellow flaming ball in the sky. Then I remembered that it was something called the sun, and usually heralded a good day to spend outside. I obliged. Mostly this consisted of yard …
Mother’s Day Skull Walk
Ah, Mother’s Day. A leisurely sleep-in, to be woken at a civilized hour by an adorable jammie-clad child bearing a pancake breakfast on a tray, with Dad clearing up heroically in the kitchen. Then, flowers! A much-cherished homemade gift from the adorable, small child, mis-spellings intact. According to the television commercials, a meal later on …
a long and lustrous winter
I love the way snow turns blue at dusk, and how everything looks beautiful with the escarpment in the background. These are a few weeks old now, and the snow has melted and frozen and snowed again since then. Groundhog Day is meaningless here; we’re lucky if spring beats Easter and we actually get a …
New Year’s Resolution
Hey, I have an idea: this year, let’s save the world. Oh I know, we’ve promised to before, but this time, let’s really do it. Let’s get off our comfortable asses and decide to put real money and effort into climate change. Let’s get that using a tonne of metal and litres of gasoline to …
Is it 2011 already?
It is. If the calendar tells the truth, it is about 2.5% of the way through 2011, no less, and I’m just getting around to saying hello. (Hello, 2011!) 2010 was a great year for me and my family, and an interesting year for the environment in Ontario. My daughter and I moved to a …
Six Months In to the Green Energy Act and Ontario Regulation 359/09
The most exciting part of working under a new piece of legislation is that no one, and that includes the people who wrote it, knows what it means yet. So far what it means is a whole lot more work under a process that was meant to streamline things–but never mind. The learning curve is …
