Community Stories
Request Your Participation in Supporting CRD Biochar Incinerator Facility
We are requesting your support to encourage the (CRD) Capital Regional District, to move ahead with plans for purchase of a thermal conversion biochar facility. It would be incredibly useful to have Nanaimo and the Regional District of Nanaimo (RDN) send letters of…
It’s Not Just the Ecosystem; Our Economy is Socially Unfit, Too
Last week, I discussed a couple of recent global-level reports that identify serious problems with our current economic system. In particular, the UN Environment Programme, in its 2026 report…
The World’s 280 Million Electric Bikes & Mopeds Are Cutting Demand for Oil Far More Than Electric Cars
We hop in the car to get groceries or drop kids at school. But while the car is convenient, these short trips add up in terms of emissions, pollution and petrol cost. Close to half (44%) of all Australian commuter trips are by car – and under 10km. Of Perth’s 4.2…
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Science’s Wise and Beautiful Older Sister
While we owe a great deal to the scientific method and its objective reasoning and always will, we need to transcend the mechanistic world view that we have inherited from it. Here we need to engage science’s wise and beautiful older sister, art. We have known this…
PFAS Lawsuit Smacks of Irony
Dear CRD Board, Senior CRD staff, and Minister Heyman, I’m sure many of you saw the following article on CBC this weekend highlighting a lawsuit launched by the BC government against the manufacturers of PFAS chemicals for contaminating drinking water and…
B.C. Launches Class-Action Lawsuit Against Makers of ‘Forever Chemicals’
The BC government has filed a class action law suit in the BC Supreme Court against a number of chemical companies which manufacture so called ‘forever chemicals’ or PFAS which commonly occur in household products and do not break down in the environment. The US…
We Are Deeply Connected to and Kin With All of Life
In a very real sense, we are indeed separated from nature. In North America we are 80 per cent urbanized and we spend 90 per cent of our time indoors — and a further five per cent in cars and other vehicles. So we — and especially our children — have very little c…
CRD’s Biosolids Plan Beset With Issues
The report by Sidney Coles of Capital Daily exposes the problems with disposing biosolids at the Lafarge cement plat at Richmond and at Cassidy Quarry at Cassidy. The CRD Board will approve the long term pan for biosolids management on Wednesday June 12. Creatively…
Ecosystems Sustain Societies That Create Economies
Back in April, I was asked to be the homilist at the First Unitarian Church just before Earth Day and to talk about the values revolution that is needed. Now I don’t know about you, but I didn’t even know there was such a a beast as a homilist…
New Bill Could Bail out US Farmers Ruined by ‘Forever Chemical’ Pollution
Courtesy of The Guardian. The US may soon bail out farmers whose livelihoods were destroyed by toxic PFAS “forever chemical” contamination. The proposal for a $500m fund aims to head off a crisis for the nation’s growers and is moving through Congress amid increasing…
Petition that the Province of B.C. Protect Native Tree Species within Building Envelopes
With the recent housing Bills, protecting the natural environment within so-called building envelopes couldn’t be more crucial.
Take the Nanaimo Climate Pledge
Ever get the feeling that your family is the only one taking the climate emergency seriously enough to try to do something about it? Want to know that you are not alone or what else you can do? Take the https://www.nanaimoclimatepledge.ca/ Together we can make a…
FORWARD! for a Frack Free Future
Get ready for a weekend of connection, training, scheming, and dreaming of a Fossil Free Future. Build the power of the BC climate movement for a climate-safe future! From June 7-9, activists, organizers, and changemakers from across the B.C. will gather on the…
Petition – MPs: Put Big Oil on Trial This June
In early June, executives from the largest fossil fuel companies in Canada – Enbridge, Imperial, Cenovus, Enbridge, and Shell – will testify before the House of Commons’ Environment Committee. The purpose of their summons? To answer for their failure to rein in…
Our ‘Ignore-ant’ Elites Blindly Adhere to ‘Business As Usual’
My colleague Paul Kershaw is a professor of public health at UBC and founder of Generation Squeeze, a “Think and Change Tank” that promotes wellbeing for all generations. It does so “by turning evidence into action and rejuvenating democracy to protect what is sac…
