January 2015

by Bruce Mason • Cleantech – the most significant under-reported story of 2014 – might be the best news you receive this year. Unless you are ‘Big Oil’ or ‘Bad Government.’ Then it is very bad news, indeed, something you would prefer mainstream media to continue to gloss over, belittle or bury beneath distractions. Hopefully, you read in...

January 2015

As LUC would have it by Geoff Olson • Let’s hear a laugh for the man of the world Who thinks he can make things work Tried to build the New Jerusalem And ended up with New York Ha Ha Ha… – Bruce Cockburn, Laughter Murphy’s law snarkily asserts that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. The law of unintended consequences is its close cousin....

January 2015

A New Year’s manifesto in the war on prescription drug waste DRUG BUST by Alan Cassels • Thirty-six billion dollars is a lot of money. That’s roughly what we Canadians will spend on prescription drugs this year. How big is that number? Let’s see: by the end of the day on January 1st, we’ll have sent $100 million to the drug companies....

January 2015

by Nancy Prokosh • Obesity is increasing and the need to shift towards disease prevention is an imperative. Mass merchandisers and pharmaceutical companies promote their commodities as the “antidote,” however, most of those antidotes do not have a history and the real winners are the companies’ bank accounts. On the other hand, tea has been around since...

January 2015

the quiet transportation revolution by J-M Toriel • 2015 is the year to release addiction to oil and embrace a low carbon life. The world is on the cusp of a renewable energy revolution and Canadians are participating. The 10,000th electric car is about to be purchased in Canada this month. Despite the recent elimination of a $5,000 rebate for electric powered...

January 2015

1928-2014 • Ralph Maud, one of the founding English professors at Simon Fraser University in 1965, became an authority on the work of Dylan Thomas, Charles Olson and the ethnographers of the Pacific Northwest. Born on December 24, 1928, Ralph Maud was an iconoclastic professor and eccentric pamphleteer who died on December 8, 2014. As one of the founding...

January 2015

by Lari Laurikkala • We have all seen some funny looking mushrooms growing in the forest, but the parts we see account for only a tiny fraction of how big the fungi really are. Underground, the fungi spread their mycelium web to recycle dead animal and plant matter. About 90% of the world’s plants rely on fungi and the mycelium is what keeps the soil...

January 2015

ON PURPOSE Peter Ormesher • The idea to create an initiative to support women started years ago on the dance floor of a Nairobi nightclub. Friends of mine were telling me stories about how their female friends were dying of AIDS after their boyfriends or husbands brought home the HIV virus. Years later, that observation led to a project in the Philippines we...

January 2015

READ IT by Bruce Mason • Naomi Klein’s brilliant, best-selling This Changes Everything is doing just that – fundamentally altering how we think and act to save life on our planet. We ignore climate change at our own and future generations’ peril. Becoming aware of and motivated by what’s in this game-changing book is humanity’s most hopeful and...

January 2015

by Tom Mulcair • Thomas Mulcair is the leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada as well as the Leader of the Official Opposition in Canada. thomasmulcair.ndp.ca thomas.mulcair@parl.gc.ca   In 2015, Canadians will have a choice. Not only will they have the opportunity to elect a new government, but they will also have the opportunity to elect a...

Looking forward, looking back by Lucy Sharratt   • As we look back on last year, we thank everyone for all your action and support. In 2014, we continued to hold back genetically modified alfalfa and even started removing GM sweet corn from stores in Canada. In fact, the grocery chain Metro says, “We are writing a letter to all our suppliers asking for...

January 2015

SCIENCE MATTERS by David Suzuki • There’s no free ride when it comes to generating energy. Even the cleanest sources have environmental consequences. Materials for all power-generating facilities have to be obtained and transported and infrastructure must be built, maintained and eventually decommissioned. Wind turbines take up space and can harm wildlife....

January 2015

FILMS WORTH WATCHING by Robert Alstead • The gulf between what the US government says it is doing and what it is probably doing has never seemed more apparent than in Citizenfour. A first-hand account of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations in June 2013, it demands us to ask why the National Security Agency’s surveillance activities have been allowed...