The book’s message is that carcinogens in our air, water, fruits, meats, vegetables and over-processed food, and toxic substances that assault our immune systems are fueling the cancer epidemic. We must act to stop this “toxic trespass.” Continue reading Cancer: 101 Solutions to a Preventable Epidemic
Even the most hesitant guerrilla will find the many wise nuggets in this book inspiring. Some of the most useful include: cities are alive; wilderness is within; growing things is easy; miracles happen all the time; think like a plant; design for diversity; and, finally, get up and grow. Continue reading Guerrilla Gardening: A Manualfesto + Interwoven Wild: An Ecologist Loose in the Garden
In the wake of plummeting commodity prices in the 1980s, resulting from agricultural trade liberalization, peasants and small farmers reached across borders to find allies in their fight to defend their right to grow food. La Vi?a Campesina, a coalition of some 100 farmer groups from over 50 countries, emerged in 1993 as a result of this outreach. Continue reading La Via Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants
In 2004, the essay “The Death of Environmentalism: Global Warming Politics in a Post-Environmental World,” rocked the environmental community. Continue reading Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility + The Landscape of Reform: Civic Pragmatism and Environmental Thought in America
Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples
Mark Dowie, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009, 336 pages.
Over the last century, millions of indigenous people around the world have been evicted from their traditional lands in the interests of conservation. Many have been reduced to poaching and trespassing on their ancestral land, or “assimilated” into chronic poverty. The good news is that native people are beginning to shift the global conservation agenda to one that treats them fairly. In Conservation Refugees, investigative journalist Mark Dowie makes a compelling argument for people-centred conservation that recognizes native people as central to protecting biological diversity. Rich in rarely published details from every corner of the Earth, this is an important book for students of conservation, international development and native cultures. Continue reading Conservation Refugees: The Hundred-Year Conflict between Global Conservation and Native Peoples
Vancouver – Aarrow Productions Inc., producers of the environmental documentary series Down2Earth, will be honouring Aboriginal environmental leaders in British … Continue reading Project Down2Earth
Riva’s The Eco Store has moved! Our recent relocation into the heart of Inglewood has doubled our retail space and … Continue reading Riva’s Eco Store grand re-opening party June 23
Why We Disagree About Climate Change
Mike Hulme, Cambridge University Press; New York, 2009, 363 pages.
Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis
Al Gore, Rodale Press; New York, 2009, 405 pages.
If we can’t agree about Climate Change, how can we possibly address the issues in time to prevent disaster?
Four decades of scientific study, unilateral government discussions and international collaboration, and here we sit with very little action to show for it. The question of 
why we can’t agree is therefore one of the most important questions of our age. University of East Anglia climate change professor Mike Hulme offers a valuable explanation in
his recent book Why we Disagree About Climate Change. He tells us it’s in the capital letters.
Scientific data about anthropogenic climate change: temperature rise, ice melt, impacts on ocean salinity and acidity, weather patterns and species loss fall into a largely uncontested category designated with a small “c.” But Hulme tells us that the problem of human response and cooperation resides in the big “C” of Climate Change; the social interpretation of those bare, irrefutable facts.
Once we enter the social sphere we find a vast territory peopled with cultural, experiential and linguistic differences as great as those of the physical planet. Choose any cultural lens: politics, … [Click here to read more!] Continue reading Why We Disagree About Climate Change + Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis
Open Wide a Wilderness
Nancy Holmes ed., Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009, 510 pages.
Nancy Holmes, a professor in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at the University of British Columbia Okanagan, is to be congratulated for this plump and sumptuous anthology of English language Canadian nature poetry.
In Open Wide a Wilderness, two centuries of poetry by over 190 poets are assembled in only 510 pages. Although it enjoys little mainstream attention, Canadian poetry is strewn throughout the myriad inconspicuous little seeps and rivulets that feed the watersheds nourishing our national literary culture. It’s found in the colourful archipelago of small presses across Canada (including Turnstone, … [Click here to read more!] Continue reading Open Wide a Wilderness
Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe And Our Last Chance to Save Humanity
James Hansen, New York: Bloomsbury, 2009, 320 pages.
It’s odd. At 68, James Hansen, arguably the planet’s most renowned climatologist and one of the earliest prophets of human-induced global climate change, has finally published his first book.
“Odd” is a fitting description for the book as well.
Storms of My Grandchildren is an expansive treatise on the perils of increased carbon dioxide emissions, juxtaposed with anecdotes of Hansen’s meetings with the likes of Dick Cheney and his Climate Task Force, … [Click here to read more!] Continue reading Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe And Our Last Chance to Save Humanity
From the David Suzuki Foundation – A disaster like the oil spill would devastate our fishing industry. It would destroy … Continue reading Watching: Cause An Effect – World Ocean’s Day
The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience
Rob Hopkins
White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2008, 240 pages.
At last, here is a book about our common future that we don’t have to be afraid to read. Written by “transition movement” founder Rob Hopkins, The Transition Handbook offers an inspiring and practical blueprint for community-based action in response 
to the challenges of climate change and … [Click here to read more!] Continue reading The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience
