Canada’s first minority government in 25 years will have to ensure it acts on environmental and sustainable development issues if it is to maintain support from the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois.
According to International Institute for Sustainable Development Board Member Mary Simon — also a former Canadian Ambassador for Circumpolar Affairs — climate change should be at the top of the Liberal government’s environmental priority list. As someone with close connections to Canada’s north she is well aware of climate change’s “profound implications for the social, cultural and economic well-being of the 50,000 aboriginal people who live in the Canadian Arctic.”
Ms. Simon’s compellingly readable two-page report (Adobe Acrobat required) is available here.
Category Archives: Environment
World Food Prices Set to Rise
At the same time we’re being hit by increased prices for gas at the pump, the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute (EPI) reports that world food prices are set for a dramatic jump in the coming year.
According to the group’s calculations, four successive shortfalls in annual grain harvests have reduced the world’s carry-over stocks to their lowest level in 30 years, amounting to only 59 days of consumption. That is 11 days short of the 70-day level that is traditionally considered the minimum needed for food security.
The last time global stocks were so low in the early 1970s, wheat and rice prices doubled with disastrous consequences for millions of the world’s poor. A similar pattern may be asserting itself now, according to Lester Brown, EPI’s founder and president, as basic food and feed commodities are on the rise.
Brown says that the challenge of rebuilding the stocks to the 70-day consumption level will be very difficult to overcome, particularly if early indications for the winter wheat crop, which was planted last fall, are not hopeful.
Make Earth Day 2004 count
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While some people may plant trees or pick up litter to honour Earth Day, Yahoo (by way of Debra Galant) points the way to how you might go about Saving the World in a Day.
As we read every day, and as we are aware, environmental crises abound as our own actions and those of industry pollute and degrade the fragile environment we all need to survive. What can we do? Well, certainly this provides some insight as answer to that question.
First launched as an environmental awareness event in the United States in 1970, Earth Day (April 22nd) is celebrated as the birth of the environmental movement. Spearheaded by Wisconsin Governor Gaylord Nelson and Harvard University student Denis Hayes, Earth Day has become a powerful catalyst for change, involving some 20 million participants each April 22nd, in teach-ins that address decades of environmental pollution.
In Canada in 1990, two million Canadians joined 200 million people in 141 nations across the globe in celebrating the first International Earth Day. Earth Day serves to put needed pressure on heads of nation states to address issues such as climate change and the world wide loss of species.
In many places, including Canada, Earth Day has grown into Earth Week and even Earth Month, when thousands of events take place, ranging from waterway clean-ups to engaging in a variety of other pollution solutions. This is Earth Day. Organize, volunteer, and learn what you can do to help make this a better world for all of us.
Stop the Bush Air Pollution Plan
Working in concert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Natural Resource Defense Council’s Earth Action Center has released this flash cartoon which, in a somewhat less academic fashion than is true of the article just below, attacks the Bush administration’s environmental policies, employing the services of everyone’s favourite miscreant, Tommy Toxic.