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
David Brooks tells how the soft path strategy makes the most of the water we have.
Satisfying the world’s growing demand for clean water is a monumental challenge. With water supply infrastructure now stretched to the limit, editors David Brooks, Oliver Brandes and Stephen Gurman offer a new management approach in Making the Most of the Water We Have. Based on energy’s proven soft path strategy, the book goes far beyond touting water efficiency: it points the way toward decreasing worldwide demand for this precious resource and shows how we can save money getting there.
Kurtis Elton, one of the book’s many contributors, recently met with David Brooks for some background on this strategy as it begins to gain steam.
[Read the full interview] Continue reading The Water Softener: Interview with David Brooks
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
671: 8 March 2010 – Published by Green Communities Canada 10TH ANNIVERSARY. Resource Conservation Manitoba is turning 25 and celebrates … Continue reading Walkability Hero, Sexy Insulation, and Bottled Water Free Day – GC News #671
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
Food in Canada has never been cheaper: only 10 per cent of our income is now spent in the grocery store, half of what this number was 40 years ago. Yet for most Canadians, decisions about what to eat have become a matter of high anxiety. Continue reading Food, Sex and Salmonella: Why Our Food is Making Us Sick
So there you have it – a diverse, sometimes contradictory, but readable series of essays purporting to answer the question of how oil depletion and climate change will define the future. Continue reading Carbon Shift: How the Twin Crises of Oil Depletion and Climate Change Will Define the Future
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
The tone of May’s warning will make staid Canadians who have faith in the tenets of peace, order and good governance mighty uncomfortable. Described as they are in quick succession from this slim text in May’s energetic prose, the threats to our political process are disturbing. Continue reading Losing Confidence: Power, Politics, and the Crisis in Canadian Democracy
Twenty years ago, a confident nation strutted onto the global stage, ready to inspire a new era of sustainable development. But then Canada slipped into the gutter – muddling through at home, obstructing action abroad. Continue reading Innovation, Science, Environment: Charting Sustainable Development in Canada, 1987-2007
EXAMPLE JOB POST: This dream job envisions the development of a global spatial plan for global use within one year. The successful candidate will help to develop a management plan, working for [Your Company Name] and partners in the Global Coalition to assemble and analyze data to support management decisions for sustainable use. Continue reading Example Dream Job Post @ Your Company
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
