Selected Recent Articles
on Environmental Issues

1. Who Killed Ekaru Loruman? (2012)
   Climate change arrives in a world primed for crisis. The current and impending dislocations of climate change intersect with the already existing crises of poverty and violence. By this “catastrophic convergence,” I do not merely mean that several disasters happen simultaneously, one problem atop another. Rather, I am arguing that problems compound and amplify each other, one expressing itself through another.
2. "Radon Daughter Exposure in Mines- The Risks and the Regulatory Requirements" (October 21, 2011)
   Presentation to Mining Legislation Review Committee, Sudbury
3. Who owns Papua New Guinea's Resources Boom? (October 12, 2011)
   Tribal people in Papua New Guinea fight to retain control of their communal lands in the face of 'development'.
4. Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster: A `realistic’ answer to the ecological crisis (September 25, 2011)
   Resolving the ecological crisis is incompatible with capitalism. We must build a movement that works against capitalist logic with the aim to overcoming it in favour of a properly sustainable and egalitarian form of society.
5. Workers and Environmentalists Unite! (September 7, 2011)
   When there are zero jobs available, any job will do. This fact has been exploited by corporations now re-labeling themselves ”job creators,” since being a job creator in a time of depression brings a religious status similar to a rain god during a drought. Democrats and Republicans have lavished eternal praise on the “job creators” and in consequence have created a political atmosphere that is rabidly pro-corporate “job creators” and anti-everything else. In practice this means that ANY new law or regulation that hinders the power or profits of “job creating” corporations is instantly attacked as a “job killer.”
6. Line in the sand: Africa's 'green wall' aims to stop desert's growth (July 1, 2011)
   The Great Green Wall is a pan-African plan to halt desertification through reforestation.
7. The well-intentioned dolts putting a price on nature are delivering it into the hands of business (June 7, 2011)
   It’s the definitive neoliberal triumph: the monetisation and marketisation of nature, its reduction to a tradeable asset. Once you have surrendered it to the realm of Pareto optimisation and Kaldor-Hicks compensation, everything is up for grabs. The well-intentioned dolts who produced the government’s assessment, have crushed the natural world into a column of figures. Now it can be swapped for money.
8. The public reaction to new power lines could kill renewable energy: they must be buried (May 31, 2011)
   Anti-wind campaigners are highly selective. The Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales, obsessed by wind farms, says nothing about the opencast coal mines ripping south Wales apart. Nor do you hear a word about the destruction of the ecosystems of upland Wales (and England and Scotland) by sheep grazing. These champions of the countryside want to save it from only one threat.
9. How the 'ecosystem' myth has been used for sinister means (May 29, 2011)
   When, in the 1920s, a botanist and a field marshal dreamed up rival theories of nature and society, no one could have guessed their ideas would influence the worldview of 70s hippies and 21st-century protest movements. But their faith in self-regulating systems has a sinister history.
10. India’s Vanishing Vultures (2011)
    Can the world’s fastest growing nation restore its prime scavenger before there are untold human consequences?
11. What is education for? (December 31, 2010)
    There is a fundamental difference between being a student and being a consumer. Education is not a product but a relationship and a process, a relationship between student and lecturer, and process by which knowledge transforms the individual. When someone buys a car or a hamburger, he or she is purchasing a pre-packaged, readymade commodity to satisfy a specific need. Education is about creating critical thinkers whose skill is precisely the ability to challenge ideas that are pre-packaged or readymade or designed to satisfy such a need.
12. Tear Down the Dam; Restore the Commons (November 24, 2010)
    Over 47,000 large dams around the world have displaced some 40,000,000 people. The World Bank has invested more than $60 billion in 600 dams.
13. Not Another Disaster Movie (October 26, 2010)
    Whose will is it that keeps us going the way we are? The will of capital, albeit a capital that’s been refurbished for our modern times. That will cloaks itself in the garb of progress, science and technology. At the same time, it justifies itself by the invocation, in the developed countries and those (like China) on the fast track to development, of an apparently all but incontrovertible need to maintain “our way of life.” That way of life threatens to fairly quickly become a threat to the possibility of life in any form that we would want to be part of.
14. Looking for Trouble (September 27, 2010)
    Why are we still prospecting for oil when we can#t afford to use existing reserves?
15. Five Reasons To Plant Trees Now (September 21, 2010)
    To some people, planting a tree is the epitome of the environmental cliche. Planting a tree seems so simple, so easy, so... low-technology. In the midst of the economic upheaval we are experiencing now, in the face of massive challenges such as peak oil and climate change, why should we plant trees?
16. What Bhopal Started (June 15, 2010)
    Bhopal marked the horrific beginning of a new era. One that signalled the collapse of restraint on corporate power. The ongoing BP spill in the Mexican Gulf -- with estimates ranging from 30,000 to 80,000 barrels per day -- tops off a quarter of a century where corporations could (and have) done anything in the pursuit of profit, at any human cost.
17. The Money Gusher (June 7, 2010)
    The oil industry#s decommissioning costs will dwarf those of nuclear power. The money being made now should be put aside to meet them.
18. Out of Sight, Out of Trouble (May 20, 2010)
    The UK could tap into vast renewable resources, without any of the aggro caused by existing wind farms.
19. The Unpersuadables (March 8, 2010)
    In fighting for science, we subscribe to a comforting illusion: that people can be swayed by the facts.
20. Gates of Delusion: Media Distortions and REAL Climate Scandals (February 22, 2010)
    Climate-related storms in a teacup have been appearing in the corporate media almost on a daily basis. This nonsense is distracting attention from a mountain of evidence that human-induced climate change is accelerating and poses a deadly threat to civilisation.
21. Asia Inhales While the West Bans the Deadly Carcinogen (February 16, 2010)
    Asbestos, a known carcinogen banned in much of the world, is a common and dangerous building block in much of Asia#s development and construction boom. This white powder causes 100,000 occupational deaths per year, according to Medical News Today.
22. Hard Core Green (January 14, 2010)
    Two uncompromised green activists and writers completely focused on winning, and utterly void of bullshit.
23. Doom and Gloom (December 21, 2009)
    Jermey Brecher says that the social roots of doom are part of a common pattern that we can observe repeatedly in history. People live their lives and pursue their goals by means of strategies that have been developed over time. But sometimes they discover their established strategies aren't working. No matter how hard they try, their problems remain intractable. The natural result is despair. But the awareness that other people are experiencing the same despair changes the context in which it is experienced. It opens up new possibilities. Perhaps the problems that we despair of solving as individuals can be addressed through some kind of collective action. When people begin to explore that possibility, the result may be a social movement.
24. Academics Urge Government Climate Action (December 17, 2009)
    More than 500 university faculty members from universities across Canada signed a letter to the Canadian Government calling for immediate drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. The letter points out the time frame of reductions is critical.
25. Environmental journalists censored and assaulted (December 16, 2009)
    Journalists worldwide risk their lives to report on environmental degradation. In the fight against climate change, the media is a watchdog for corrupt governments that obstruct efforts to protect the environment. The media also plays a critical role in engaging the public through stories and research. But journalists who cover illegal logging and the polluting of rivers are increasingly censored, imprisoned, assaulted and at times killed.
26. This Is About Us (December 15, 2009)
    The talks at Copenhagen are not just about climate change. They represent a battle to redefine humanity.
27. Indian Waste-pickers Demand 'Climate Justice' at Global Warming Summit (December 14, 2009)
    As governments struggle to develop an international plan for combating climate change, a new report from a leading Indian environment group has found that informal recycling makes a huge but unappreciated contribution towards the reduction of greenhouse gases.
28. Targeting Earth First! (December 11, 2009)
    The war on environmentalism.
29. Climate change: the eco-socialist solution (December 9, 2009)
    Climate change reminds us, in a phrase attributed to Lao Tzu, that #if you don#t change direction you may end up where you are heading#. The road of capitalism is now lined with horrors and we must find a new direction home. After a long absence, sustainability must be restored to the relationship between society and nature.
30. The Climate Denial Industry Is Out To Dupe The Public. And It's Working (December 8, 2009)
    The climate denial industry consists of people who are paid to say that man-made global warming isn't happening.
31. The Manufactured Doubt Industry And The Hacked Email Controversy (December 8, 2009)
    The fossil fuel industry has been working for years to create a smokescreen of doubt to obscure the facts of global warming.
32. What#s at stake in Copenhagen (December 7, 2009)
    Tere is no chance of achieving binding greenhouse gas reductions within the current framework for an agreement. Instead the problem is being redefined to fit the business-as-usual assumptions of neoliberal economics.
33. Why We Left Our Farms to Come to Copenhagen (December 7, 2009)
    Climate change is already seriously impacting us. It brings floods, droughts and the outbreak of pests that are all causing harvest failures. I must point out that these harvest failures are something that the farmers did not create. Instead, it is the polluters who caused the emissions who destroy the natural cycles. So, we small scale farmers came here to say that we will not pay for their mistakes. And we are asking the emitters to face up to their responsibilities.
34. A Direct Tax On Fossil Fuel Is What The World Needs Urgently (December 6, 2009)
    A direct tax on fossil fuels is the only realistic way to achieve the necessary cuts.
35. An Open Letter To Congress From US Scientists On Climate Change And Recently Stolen Emails (December 6, 2009)
    As U.S. scientists with substantial expertise on climate change and its impacts on natural ecosystems, our built environment and human well-being, we want to assure policy makers and the public of the integrity of the underlying scientific research.
36. Canada Is Now To Climate What Japan Is To Whaling (December 3, 2009)
    Here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush. Until now I believed that the nation that has done most to sabotage a new climate change agreement was the United States. I was wrong. The real villain is Canada.
37. Bloody Oil (November 1, 2009)
    The extraction of oil from tar sands is perhaps the most ecologically insane idea on the planet. Four First Nations representatives from Canada travelled to Britain to participate in the London climate camp # the country#s biggest annual gathering of climate activists. Organized by the Indigenous Environmental Network and supported by the New Internationalist, the group#s aim was to internationalize the campaign for a complete tar sands moratorium.
38. Capitalism and the Ecological Footprint (November 1, 2009)
    The capture of ecological discourse by the political culture of the consensus (a necessary expression of the conception of capitalism as the end of history) is well advanced. In contrast, the expression of the demands of the socialist counterculture is fraught with difficulty—because socialist culture is not there in front of our eyes. It is part of a future to be invented, a project of civilization, open to the creativity of the imagination.
39. Impossibleism (October 29, 2009)
    Impossibleists want unrestrained sustainable growth in the face of its inevitable impossibility. It is a mystery how they think this way, knowing as they surely do that eventually the bill will come due, and the engine will run out of gas - literally. Think about it - growth that never stops, ever. Even with limitless resources, it is simple intuition that eventually, somewhere, sometime....
40. Sources Calendar (October 29, 2009)
    Listings of events of interest to journalists, editors, researchers, publishers and others working in the media and in publishing, covering Canadian and international events, press conferences, meetings, festivals and holidays, as well as award deadlines.
41. Sources News Releases (October 29, 2009)
    News releases from organizations and companies on a wide range of topics. Includes an extensive topic index, an archive of releases going back to the 1970s, and links to experts and organizations knowledgeable about the issues covered in the releases. Available via RSS feed as well as on the Sources.com website.
42. The Humble Tuna (October 19, 2009)
    The humble tuna, "the chicken of the sea", is an unfortunate metaphor for all that is dysfunctional about our contemporary, western, capitalist world. The story of the Tuna is the story of our triumphant world, and provides a unified theory of its runaway excess
43. Earth's Life Support Systems Failing (October 13, 2009)
    The world has failed to slow the accelerating extinction crisis despite 17 years of national and international efforts since the great hopes raised at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
44. Last Frontier (October 1, 2009)
    Afro-descendant communities in Colombia are fighting to retain control of their ancestral goldmines in the face of pressure from private interests.
45. Carbon trading: privatising the world's forests (September 20, 2009)
    The World Bank sponsored carbon offset program has faced widespread criticism for, in effect, privatising forests and allowing rich nations to evade responsibility for cutting emissions themselves.
46. The great #success# of a carbon trading failure (September 18, 2009)
    The #right to pollute# has never been more affordable. Energy companies and market speculators can buy a tonne of carbon for less than the cost of a cup of coffee. The low cost gives an incentive for companies to pollute more in the short-term and prices renewable energy alternatives out of the market.
47. Farmers in Palestine create amazing produce in adverse conditions # and are fighting to export them (September 13, 2009)
    Palestine produces some of the finest olive oils in the world, not to mention dates, nuts, tomatoes # even wine. Now, despite the conflict, farmers are finding ways to export their produce # and show the world that their country is still the land of milk and honey.
48. Women Recycle for Income and Environment (September 12, 2009)
    The women of this town in northern Venezuela no longer say "garbage" but rather "secondary raw material," and instead of referring to recycling, they talk about "separation at point of origin."
49. Desert Winds Stir New Hope (September 9, 2009)
    With oil and gas reserves running dry, Egypt is eyeing wind power as a solution to its looming energy crunch.
50. Double Jeopardy: Carbon Offsets and Human Rights Abuses (September 9, 2009)
    Whether you're a climate change denier or doomsayer, an avid recycler or rabid consumer of plastic bottles, there is one very good but little-known reason to oppose carbon offsets: their immediate and dire human costs.