Community Stories
Will You Help Put Comfortable, Affordable Homes Within Reach for More Canadians?
A House of Commons petition is calling on the government to make energy efficiency a nation-building priority. We’re asking the federal government to set double the rate at which we improve energy productivity, and to end energy poverty. The benefits of efficiency are…
New Westminster Joins Sue Big Oil
In February, the New Westminster City Council became the 12th BC community to support a proposed class-action lawsuit seeking to recover a share of climate-related costs from global fossil fuel companies. Local residents and young people played a pivotal role in…
Is This the Way the World Ends?
ChatGPT has been all over the media, and none of the news is good. The mother of a Tumbler Ridge shooting victim is suing OpenAI (the mother company) for culpability in the mass killing. And a recent article in The Guardian expressed the deep concern of academics who…
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Community safety is about more than police
It is said that it takes a whole village to raise a child, not just the family and the school. Similarly, the most important message in the decades-old global Healthy Communities movement that I helped to create is that it takes efforts at all levels and across all sect…
Seeking Rental Space for Our Tibetan Bon Buddhist Centre in Comox Valley
“Heal yourself Heal the Planet. Finding Peace through the Sacred Tibetan Bon Buddhist Teachings.” Geshe Yongdong Losar
Community safety is a wicked problem with no simple solutions
While community safety is about more than crime and violence, it is nonetheless where people’s minds often go. They are greatly assisted in that by the attention paid to crime and violence by the media, often amplified by what we might call the “law and order” bri…
Sanctuary Recording Studio
A new family-owned recording studio has recently opened located on beautiful Salt Spring Island, BC. What started mid-pandemic in 2021 as a project between friends to create a beautiful, uplifting and relaxing recording space secluded in the woods has blossomed into…
The October 15th Local Elections
2022 Local Government Elections – Climate Champions Registration Are you a climate champion who is running for council, school board or regional government? We are here to support you, and connect you with a climate group in your municipality. Use this form to…
Local Climate Solutions Papers
On October 15th, candidates from all across BC will be elected to local councils, school districts, and regional districts. The urgency of the climate crisis is such that we need to elect a majority of climate champions on every council, in every regional district,…
Urge the UBCM to Support the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty – Write today, no delay!
On Thursday, September 15th the Union of BC Municipalities will vote on whether to ask the Province of BC to enact a GHG emissions cap for natural gas utilities, and support the objectives of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. A strong YES vote would be a…
Community safety is about more than crime
One issue we are likely to see a focus on in the upcoming municipal elections is community safety, often focusing on crime and violence. But important though that is, community safety is about much more than that. I recall, as a consultant working on the Healthy Cities …
Don’t blame Victoria for other governments’ failures
There is a concept in health promotion called victim-blaming — blaming smokers for their habit, for example, when in reality they are the victims of a sophisticated marketing campaign. The same concept applies to the tendency by many to blame the City of Victoria for …
Vancouver Island Pilgrimage
The Pilgrimage is a communal walk over four days from the Cowichan Valley to Metchosin to consider our place in the biosphere and connect with nature and spirituality. Details of the walk are here- Vancouver Island Anthropocene Pilgrimage. You are welcome to join the…
Decline and collapse unpalatable, but not implausible
One of my professional roles throughout most of the 1980s and 1990s was that of a health futurist. Often that involved working with scenarios of plausible alternative futures. In addition to helping people understand the implications of past, current and future actions,…
The world is not ending, but humanity has a problem
Even the human species is probably not at risk, although we should remember that, over time, pretty much all species become extinct. But we are a highly adaptable and tough species, able to survive and indeed usually thrive in habitats as diverse as the Arctic, equatori…
