Category: Around the Web

Around the Web, Sustainable Communities

Village Vancouver on the cover of Westender

VIllage Vancouver engages individuals and organizations to take actions that build sustainable communities, and have fun doing it. Village Vancouver is the official Transition Initiative for the city of Vancouver and a hub for communities throughout the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. Village Vancouver coordinates, organizes and facilitates individuals, neighbourhoods and organizations to collaborate in taking actions that build sustainable and resilient communities, cities and bioregions. Continue reading Village Vancouver on the cover of Westender

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Whole Earth Discipline

The Earth’s climate is changing and our civilization is being threatened by rising sea level, drought and disease. With unchecked human population growth we may be on the brink of self-inflicted extinction. We’ve heard the environmental forecasts, but how can we avert disaster? In his book, Whole Earth Discipline: Why Dense Cities, Nuclear Power, Transgenic Crops, Restored Wildlands, and Geoengineering are Necessary, long-time environmentalist Stuart Brand explains how these sometimes-controversial ideas might help save humanity and our fragile biosphere as we know it.
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Climate policies are good for employment, shows Pembina – GCNews #720

GREEN JOBS. Pembina Institute’s new report, Reducing Pollution, Creating Jobs: The effects of climate policies on employment, finds that Canada’s governments could create more jobs by implementing strong climate policies than by continuing with business as usual. “Renewable energy [and energy efficiency] is the pro-job (more labour intensive) choice, creating more direct jobs than fossil fuel alternatives [including carbon capture and storage]. The federal government’s economic stimulus funding for infrastructure could have created nearly three times as many jobs if it had been invested entirely in clean energy” … Germany created 300,000 jobs in 10 years with solar and renewable energy. Continue reading Climate policies are good for employment, shows Pembina – GCNews #720

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Dodging the Toxic Bullet

David R. Boyd, one of Canada’s leading environmental lawyers and an expert in the field of human health and the environment, draws on this expertise in writing Dodging the Toxic Bullet: How to Protect Yourself from Everyday Environmental Hazards, in which he provides a comprehensive assessment of practical strategies for individuals to avoid environmental health hazards. Despite the outlook, Boyd gives reasons for optimism by suggesting that environmental hazards are largely preventable. Through the conscious actions of individuals, he argues that environmental risks can be significantly reduced.

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It’s Contest Time!

To celebrate Canada Water Week (March 14-21), GreenBookReviews.ca and Alternatives Journal are giving away a library of water books!

What you could win:
Bottled & Sold by Peter Gleick
What Is Water by Jamie Linton
Thirst: Fighting the Corporate Theft of our Water by Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman with Michael Fox.
HTO by Wayne Reeves and Christina Palassio (eds)
The Atlas of Water by Maggie Black and Jannet King
De Urbanisten and the Wondrous Water Square by Florian Boer, Jens Jorritsma and Dirk van Piejpe
++ And ++
Water, a beautiful little book exploring our environmental, cultural, social and visual interactions with water, edited by John Knechtel, from the Alphabet City series.

To win, simply subscribe to Alternatives Journal during Water Week or to add another year to your existing subscription. The winner will be announced on GreenBookReviews.ca on World Water Day – March 22! Good luck!
(We apologise to our international readers, but this contest is only open to people living in Canada.)

Continue reading It’s Contest Time!