Tag: politics

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Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent

Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent
Andrew Nikiforuk
Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2008, 208 pages.

It’s no secret that Stephen Harper’s Conservatives have designed their environmental policy to fit a full-speed-ahead exploitation of Alberta’s tar sands. It’s important, therefore, to have an understanding of the industry’s environmental impact. Andrew Nikiforuk’s award-winning Tar Sands offers precisely that.

First, “oil sands” is a misnomer. The resource is actually a mixture of sand and clay that contains a small percentage of bitumen – a sticky concoction of hydrocarbons that also contains sulfur, nitrogen and heavy metals. Energy companies scour vast reaches of the … [Click here to read more!] Continue reading Tar Sands: Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent

Climate Wars + Global Warring
Air and Climate, Books and Resources

Climate Wars + Global Warring

Climate Wars
Gwynne Dyer
Toronto: Random House, Canada, 2008, 288 pages.

Global Warring
Cleo Paskal
Toronto: Key Porter Books, 2009, 288 pages.

Here’s a fact I had never considered: the word “rival” comes from the Latin word rivalis, meaning “those who draw water from the same source.” Rivalry is closely related to the availability of shared resources, and tensions are easily triggered when food and water are at stake.

Now, let’s take this to the extreme: climate change projections suggest that the flow of  many of the world’s major rivers will be seriously reduced as glaciers retreat. The scale of potential conflict is staggering. The Himalayan watershed alone, which includes the Ganges, Indus, Yangtze and Mekong Rivers, supplies water to almost half the people on this planet, including nuclear powers China, India and Pakistan.

But this is about more than rivers. Two new books on the issue, Climate Wars and Global Warring, introduce a bevy of reasons for concern: natural disasters, disappearing low-lying island states, shifting coasts and access to oceanic exploitation zones, the melting Northwest Passage, desertification and altered patterns of food production. Each has the potential to redefine how we interpret and conceptualize international law, how we interact diplomatically with other nations, and how and why we engage militarily.

Cleo Paskal, a fellow at Chatham House who boasts journalistic stints at The Economist and the Chicago Tribune, seeks to “introduce and legitimize the idea that environmental change is about to have enormous, and specific, geopolitical consequences.”…[Click here to read more!] Continue reading Climate Wars + Global Warring

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The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics

The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics
Roger A. Pielke, Jr.
New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2007, 188 pages.

A stranger approaches you and asks for a referral to a restaurant in your town. How would you respond?

With this engaging question, Roger Pielke, an environmental studies professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, opens his book concerning four idealized ways that science and environmental policy interact.

It would probably surprise the stranger if you handed him… [Click here to read more!] Continue reading The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics

Water

Instituting Change

Canadian Water Politics: Conflicts and Institutions
Mark Sproule-Jones, Carolyn Johns, B. Timothy Heinmiller (eds.)
Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press
2008, 360 pages.

Institutions and Environmental Change: Principal Findings, Applications, and Research Frontiers
Oran R. Young, Leslie A. King and Heike Schroeder (eds.)
Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press
2008, 400 pages.

Admitting a keen interest in policy reform won’t make you popular at cocktail parties. Trust me. But policy is simply shorthand for decisions that determine our collective action, and those havea way of exciting people. The rights, rules and procedures that we use to make decisions and take action are woven
together by the machinery of institutions. While confirming that institutions are important, both Canadian Water Politics and Institutions and Environmental Change describe how we might tinker with, or even renovate, institutions so that they make better decisions – particularly environmental ones.

Canadian Water Politics addresses a fundamental problem in managing water: the incompatibility between the fluid properties of the resource and the seemingly immutable characteristics of its management. Institutions give rise to social practices and guide social interactions, and in this context, Canadian Water Politics examines how institutions mediate, amplify,… [Click here to read more!] Continue reading Instituting Change

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