Human behaviour is affected by factors beyond personal choice
The most fundamental determinants of our health are what I and others call the ecological determinants of health: air, water, food, fuel, materials, and other “ecosystem goods and services” we derive from nature. A second major set of determinants are the social factors that enable us to meet our basic needs: healthy food, adequate shelter…
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Great Tree Stories
Here are a few great tree stories we hope you enjoy. We welcome submissions from the public. Please share your tree stories here. Community Managed Forests: https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/10/23592712/conservation-nasa-satellite-images-nepal-forests The Spirituality... Read more
Time for a radical re-think of health care
Having worked as a family physician in primary care, as a public-health physician in health planning and as a medical health officer, as an advisor and consultant on health promotion to the World Health Organization — mainly in Europe — as a medical consultant in population and public health at B.C.’s Ministry of Health…
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If doctors operate as a business, what’s wrong with surgery through private clinics?
There is much wringing of hands these days about the state of the Canadian health care system, as well there should be. But in fact, there is no such thing as a Canadian health-care system, although there is a Canadian way of funding health services. In the 1990s, when I helped organize study tours for Swedish health-system managers to visit Canada…
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People Power in Action Results in Good News
FortisBC and Woodfibre LNG are beginning construction of a pipeline without the proper permits to house their workers safely. The process is an indication of their poor commitment to ensuring the safety of the community and the human rights of Squamish residents.... Read more
Black History Month
February is #blackhistorymonth : What I’m learning to do as a non-Black mixed POC. This post was inspired by Mikhaela Connell’s article for Greenpeace. Ella here (CU’s social media coordinator) As a non-Black mixed Euro-Canadian and Korean POC, I definitely want to... Read more
Call for Nominations Poet Laureate and Youth Poet Laureate
Applications Are Now Open Looking to share your love of poetry with Victoria? The City of Victoria is seeking nominations for the next Poet Laureate and Youth Poet Laureate. These two-year positions will run from April 2023 to April 2025. Nominees must reside within... Read more
Morgan’s columns should come with a health warning
Fossil-fuel advocate Gwyn Morgan recently provided yet another nonsensical defence of his industry (“Net-zero fantasy has empowered dictators,” Jan. 11). But as Prof. Roland Clift — a past member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.K. Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution — wrote in response…
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We must tax the rich, for the benefit of all
My recent columns on the need to reduce inequality and social injustice by, among other things, increasing taxes on the rich and introducing or expanding wealth taxes, have elicited responses from some people along the lines of “you advocate stealing from the rich.”
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The Bateman Foundation is Moving
Hello Bateman Foundation Friends, We have exciting news we want to share with you. The Bateman Gallery is moving! We are investing in a new space to fully integrate art, nature, and education, creating a new cultural centre accessible to all. This means we will end... Read moreApplications welcome: MEd in Leadership Studies at UVic
The Department of Educational Psychology and Leadership Studies is pleased to welcome applications for our 2023 MEd program in Leadership Studies! Applications are open now until 11:59 p.m. on February 15, 2023. Please see below for more information on the program, or... Read more
Happy Lunar New Year!!!
Happy Lunar New Year 恭喜發財 새해 복 많이 받으세요 Ella here If you don’t know me, I’m the social media coordinator for CU Lunar new year is close to my heart as I celebrate Seollal with my Korean family, and Chinese New Year with my step family This lunar new year is this... Read more
United for Old Growth Super Rally Feb. 25 – Info & Sharing Material
An ancient forest is a home to more life than we can imagine. The project of colonization has left less than 3% of what once stood. On February 25 a united movement of thousands of people will be sending a clear message to the provincial government: Keep your promises... Read more
Coming generations need the UN to focus on their future
Courtesy of the Times Colonist Photo: Students at a rally in California in February 2021 call for in-person learning. Young people who wrote a recent report for the UN called Our Future Agenda aim to “unleash a new generation” by engaging young people as... Read more
Call for Artists – International Women’s Day
In recognition of International Women’s Day, the Victoria Arts Council is seeking proposals from local and regional artists who are interested in participating in a thematic group exhibition throughout March 2023 in our main gallery. The 2023 theme for... Read more
United We Stand for Old-Growth Forests
As a climate champion you are no doubt aware that BC’s logging industry continues to cut down old-growth forests despite government promises to protect them. While new Premier David Eby has made encouraging statements, there is so far scant evidence to contrast his... Read more
12 Prince Claus Mentorship Awards Recipients Announced!
Together with the Goethe-Institut, we are excited to announce the 2022 Mentorship Award for Cultural & Artistic Responses to Environmental Change! Floods and forest fires, storms and disappearing species: the climate crisis is being felt everywhere around the... Read more
Setting Goals in 2023
New Year’s resolutions have always seemed intimidating and many people seem to set themselves up for failure. Why is this? Well, from what I have seen and experienced in my own life, oftentimes it seems like people set New Year’s resolutions as a way to punish... Read more
2022 Creatively United Wrapped
2022 Creatively United Wrapped is here! In 2022 you helped us… Reach 670 Instagram followers Reach 1.46K YouTube subscribers Put on four Climate and Artists series webinars Launch our ‘Trees Matter’ film Put out 16 newsletters In 2022 our website… Had 26,971 unique... Read more
Reconciliation with the planet includes Indigenous Peoples
“Reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians, from an Aboriginal perspective,” wrote the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015, “also requires reconciliation with the natural world. If human beings resolve problems between themselves but continue to…
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Great Annual Family Christmas Tree Hunt
We set out early in the morning. A wintry sun grudgingly appeared as we piled into the car. Mom and Dad, siblings and cousins made up our party. The roof-rack was securely in place on which to bring home the quarry: the perfect Christmas tree which we’ll flush... Read more
In tackling biodiversity loss, it’s actions that matter, not words
The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat, the materials and energy we use — they all come from nature. We are part of the web of life, and as the Duwamish elder Chief Seattle is recorded as saying more than 150 years ago: “Whatever we do to the web of life, we do to ourselves.”
Read moreCome One, Come All, Including Ye Forest Advocates of Lore.
North Cowichan is conducting a consultation to determine the fate of our community forests — to log or protect our Six Mountains. No matter who you are, or where you live, near or far, our Council invites you to participate, to give perspective, to fill out our... Read more
Seven ways to include nature in our economic choices
From nature’s perspective, human civilization has been a disaster. It has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and 50% of plants. Between 1970 and 2016 alone, humans wiped out 68% of the world’s mammals, birds, fish and reptiles. The world’s governments support this destructive activity with subsidies…
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Sustainable Holiday Gift Guide (Victoria + Vancouver BC)
This year we’re bringing you the ULTIMATE Sustainable Holiday Gift Guide (Victoria + Vancouver/BC) 🎁 This is in no way an exhaustive list but we just wanted to highlight some of our absolute favourite local organizations, markets and businesses to check out... Read more
Playing field needs to be tilted in favour of low-income countries for a while
I was fortunate to be born in a fairly peaceful high-income country. I had a high standard of living while growing up, with enough energy, food, water and other resources to lead a good life. I am fortunate to have never experienced war, real hunger or starvation, serious poverty or homelessness.
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Mobilize: Cell Phones & Cancer Documentary
This award-winning, feature-length documentary explores the long-term health effects from cell phone radiation including cancer and infertility. The film examines scientific research, follows state and national legislative efforts, and illuminates the influence that... Read more
The Great Transition – Which Future Are We Living In?
The Great Transition scenarios, detailed in the 2022 Great Transition essay, stand the test of time. All six are alive and well, not as scenarios but as realities. In the two Conventional World scenarios, market forces still determine almost everything, regardless of... Read more
GREEN EARTH ART STUDIO: Paul Yewchuk @ Victoria International Airport
The birth of “Green Earth Art Studio” Art has been a favorite subject of mine since high school, but it was not my only passion. The lure of other knowledge and other activities, the desire to see what was over the next horizon, was irresistible and captured my... Read moreCall to Artists! Until Magazine issue 14: New Traditions
Deadline to Submit: 15 January 2023 New Traditions Traditions ground us. They are markers of time and place, giving meaning to key moments in our lives and connecting us to our ‘people’, whether that be as intimate as family, as far reaching in diasporic... Read more
Why can’t we use the ‘F’ words?
Courtesy of the Times Colonist Photo: Young activists lobby world leaders at the COP27 United Nations Climate Summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, this month. NARIMAN EL-MOFTY, AP Although I intended to continue my examination of Earth For All, the astounding hypocrisy... Read more
Guide for a Green Weekend! (and Avoid Black Friday/Cyber Monday)
WHAT IS BLACK FRIDAY / CYBER MONDAY? The term “Black Friday” had been used in the mid 1800s to indicate a decline in gold prices that caused a market crash The term became associated with this time of year, right around American Thanksgiving, in the 1950s when... Read more
Curious and Hopeful
As hope to substantially delay a 6th extinction fades it is, for me, being replaced by deep curiosity as to how it will all spiral down. How much, if at all, that impacts lifespans is in itself another matter for curiosity. And for what as well as how intensely the... Read more
Laughing Sense Into Us
How best to speak of our society’s ongoing self destructiveness in a way that our eyeballs, ear holes and heart might get it? How to “fool” us into a little unlearning of our learned disconnect from the watery animally earth? How to tease out a thread, a rope, an... Read more
Ecological sanity and social justice — we can’t have one without the other
More than 40 years ago, in my major paper for my master’s degree, I sought to identify the fundamental principles underlying public health. I concluded there are two: ecological sanity and social justice. The pursuit of these principles has defined much of my work to create a healthier society ever since.
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Dance for the Trees! – Elders for Ancient Trees November Update
Hello Elders, This is a very short callout, mainly to let you know about what’s coming up in November. As BC’s new Premier is being sworn in, we Old-Growth Supporters need to raise a bit of a ruckus to encourage David Eby to implement old-growth deferrals immediately.... Read more
What has the Community Trees Matter Network been up to?
Since CTMN began, in 2018, our various passionate members have been involved in a variety of projects: Educational Outreach to the Public via technology: We created a website filled with information about trees and ways citizens can protect them, at... Read more
Canada must stop digging a deeper climate-crisis hole
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned last month the world is in “a life-or-death struggle” for survival as “climate chaos gallops ahead,” while the World Health Organization calls climate change “the single biggest health threat facing humanity.”
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Executive Direction Position at Ecoforesty Institute Society
The interview process for this part-time position will take place over 2 phases during December 2022: Phase 1: an invitation for application based on high-level aesthetic qualities required for an ED position: leadership; team player; innovative; creative; ability to... Read more
COP27: The good, the bad, and what you can do
What is COP27? COP27 is the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference aka the Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC, the 27th COP conference since 1994 The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is a treaty through which signing nations agreed to... Read more
As UN climate summit begins, not much good news, but room for hope
One of the five great turnarounds proposed in the recent Earth For All report to the Club of Rome is the energy turnaround. So with COP27 — the annual UN conference on climate change — opening in Egypt, this is a good time to look at this issue.
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November Elders for Ancient Trees Update
Dear Elders,At this time of the year, some of us may identify with the Latin American tradition of Día de los Muertos or with the Celtic tradition of Samhain. Día de los Muertos honours and remembers the Dead. Samhain marks the end of the harvest season and beginning... Read more
Thoughts on Breach Media’s courageous article “how the NDP establishment stole the BC leadership race”
This is a follow up to my post Calling out mainstream media for their coverage of Anjali’s disqualification. To some this may be considered old news, because of the fast-pace nature of the news cycle. However, I am still left confused, seeking answers and looking for... Read more
More Houses Built Faster Act
See what can go wrong when housing supply efforts aren’t viewed through the critical lenses of affordability, tree and watershed protection and tenant rights. “Roughly 50 people gathered outside a Progressive Conservative constituency office in Hamilton on... Read more
Will We Lose Downtown’s Last Garry Oaks?
This should not be a battle between supportive housing and the urban forest canopy. Everyone should have access to the mental and physical health benefits provided by mature trees. Every neighbourhood should gain from the carbon sequestration and enhanced biodiversity... Read more
A Symbolic Gift
Symbolic Gift was written in an attempt for me, to brake away from our hectic world and to slow down take a breath and just see, taste, smell, feel the wonderful gift that is around us, and to, LIVE LIFE FOR EVERYTHING IN THAT GIFT AND IT’S FUTURE!
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The human and environmental cost of growth-obsessed ‘extractivism’
The new Club of Rome report Earth For All addresses the two greatest challenges facing humanity: the massive and rapid ecological triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution — to which I would add resource depletion — and the social crisis of massive inequality.
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“I’ll Have it Back When You’re Done” New Paintings
I remember early on in the pandemic, seeing online images of animals from all over the world, emerging into lockdown-abandoned public spaces. From New Delhi to Buenos Aires, deer and goats and jackals and lemurs and sheep emerged into spaces formerly occupied by us.... Read more
Petition to Withdraw the District of Saanich from Development Lobby Membership
If you are a resident of Saanich, please sign the petition to make Saanich Withdraw its membership from the UDICR Development Lobby. This is of key importance in placing the interests of residents above that of industry in determining our future.
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