Month: February 2008
-
What is Global Dimming?
There has recently been a lot of talk and a lot written about global warming. Increasingly, skeptics are coming to realize that global warming is not a political issue. I used to often hear the question “do you believe in global warming?”, but I have not heard it in a while.
-
A Delicate Balance
The state of our environment hangs in a delicate balance. A once flourishing planet has been obviously replaced by a polluted, factory-filled wasteland. Just look around you. Look around a modern, urbanized city. Watch the news, listen to the reports, read the newspaper; environmentalists, activists and politicians alike are screaming to be heard: “Our environment…
-
Shenzhen, China: “The Biggest Place You’ve Never Heard Of”
A mere thirty years ago, what we know today as the city of Shenzhen was nothing more than a fishing village in the province of Guangdong, just north of mainland Hong Kong’s New Territories. Established as a city in 1979, it was chosen as a ‘Special Economic Zone’ (SEZ) by the Communist government by 1980.…
-
Making The Connections: A Social Environment Indictment
I have lived through two “Green revolutions.” When I was a teen, I remember protesting acid rain, having friends in demonstrations against the clear cutting of Clayoquot Sound, and instituting recycling programmes in the highschool. Global warming was not quite on anyone’s lips just yet, but a hint of depleted ozone had some people wondering.
-
HALT the Dump
It was in early December that I first got the call from a friend of mine. It was from a Toronto Lawyer; one who has devoted herself to anti-oppression legal system-based activism, and who is also the primary legal advisor for the local activist group—AW@L—that I am a member of. Within a few days of…
-
Breaking out of the university bubble with class and integrity
At university we’re presented with an overabundance of ideas and theories, lifestyles, and viewpoints, but what happens when you break out of the university bubble into the world of work? Will you remember everything you learned at school about social and environmental responsibility? Will the phrases ‘fair trade,’ ‘environmental sustainability,’ ‘respect for diversity’ and ‘critical…
-
Give Greens a Go
They say that ‘green is the new black’ but that’s not fair; green is the whole spectrum these days. Every store window, television commercial and political party has entered into a ‘green war,’ feverishly trying to out-green the competition. But is this the utopia that environmentalists dream of? Not quite.
-
Sacramental Living
Arguably one of the most misused and misinterpreted sacred text in existence today is the book of Genesis in the Hebrew Scriptures. The book and particularly the two creation stories contained within it have been central to the creation vs. evolution debate. Since Darwin published ‘On the Origin of Species’, Genesis seems to have become…
-
Eco-Nomics
During the holiday season and the weeks leading up to it, the prime time to observe the true essence and nature of consumerism is at hand. Stores filled with eager shoppers willing, and wanting, to spend hundreds or thousands of their hard earned dollars on anything and everything that is available and desired. During this…
-
Brand Me
Protecting the environment is something we can all appreciate, I think. We live on this beautiful Earth, so let’s take care of it! The thing that I can’t handle though is the trendiness of it all. If I hear another celebrity say that they’ve “gone green” I think I’ll punch a small child.