Tag: Environmental law

Law, Policy, and Standards

Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World’s Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them and Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators

In Silence of the Songbirds, Bridget Stutchbury, a biology professor at York University, writes clearly and expressively about the dramatic declines of many songbirds. In her words, “By some estimates, we may have already lost almost half of the songbirds that filled the skies only forty years ago.” Continue reading Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World’s Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them and Where the Wild Things Were: Life, Death, and Ecological Wreckage in a Land of Vanishing Predators

Law, Policy, and Standards

Design Charrettes for Sustainable Communities and Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive

The book uses the example of a bee colony to explain the idea of the city as a complex adaptive system. The “co- intelligence” of the hive sustains the colony, while also adding value to the fields and orchards through pollination. Although it is interesting, the beehive- city analogy wears thin with repetition and becomes tiresome over the course of the book. Continue reading Design Charrettes for Sustainable Communities and Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive

Law, Policy, and Standards

Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods and Genetically Modified Diplomacy: The Global Politics of Agricultural Biotechnology and the Environment

ased on his analysis of dozens of studies, reports and personal accounts, Smith reveals shocking instances when governments and corporations misled, lied and covered up evidence about the health and safety risks of GM foods. These deceptions allowed the products to be fast-tracked to the market, thereby externalizing the costs of this infant science. Continue reading Genetic Roulette: The Documented Health Risks of Genetically Engineered Foods and Genetically Modified Diplomacy: The Global Politics of Agricultural Biotechnology and the Environment

Community Stewardship and Living, Energy, Law, Policy, and Standards, Water

Dry Spring: The Coming Water Crisis of North America

Wood identifies two possible strategies to address our uncertain freshwater future. We can build more dams, reservoirs, river diversions, aqueducts, canals, pipelines, wells, recycling plants and desalination facilities. Alternately, “we can choose how we use what we have now.” The latter, an approach Wood advocates, involves changing the way we manage our watersheds; using ecologically sound appliances and irrigation techniques; and changing our markets, our bookkeeping, and the laws that undervalue this life- giving resource. Continue reading Dry Spring: The Coming Water Crisis of North America

Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy
Books and Resources, Business and Economics

Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy

Perhaps it is the economic crisis. Maybe it is climate change, soaring extinction rates or the ever-widening gap between the rich and poor. Or then again, it could simply be the nagging sense among more and more people that the human project has somehow gone awry. Whatever the case, in recent years, we have witnessed an explosion of popular interest in books that question, even excoriate, the most fundamental assumptions of our current, growth-at-all-costs economic system. Continue reading Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy

Community Stewardship and Living, Energy, Law, Policy, and Standards

Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster

In his newest book, Managing Without Growth, York University professor Peter Victor makes a convincing case that rich nations, such as Canada, can abandon economic growth as a national goal without compromising their citizens’ happiness. He suggests that helping developing nations approach the Western world’s standard of living would provide a better and safer future. Continue reading Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster