Reasons for Buying Food that is Local, Regenerative, and in Season
Please don’t shoot the messenger! There is a lot of supporting information that we need to know! I do not want to overwhelm you, with more information yet I feel that this information is some of what we need to know, so we will have the knowledge to be motivated to do... Read more
Integrated Resource Management in the CRD: A Progress Report
In 2018, the CRD established an Integrated Resource Management (IRM) committee and issued a Request for Proposals from practitioners to apply the approach to waste management throughout the Region. Despite receiving many valuable proposals, the CRD Board cancelled the... Read more
Digging into our Transportation, Building and Consumables Footprint
I looked at our food consumption and associated food waste, which at 24 per cent is the largest share of the ecological footprint (setting aside the 46 per cent of the ecological footprint that is due to the local activities of the provincial and federal governments)…
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100’s of Trees Slated for Removal at Prospect Lake
BC Hydro is planning to remove several hundred trees near Prospect Lake in Saanich in order to upgrade their power transmission lines. Among a number of questions that come to mind, what is Hydro’s relation to the development/real estate lobby?
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Food Consumption and Waste a Big Part of Our Ecological Footprint
As I reported last week, CHRM Consulting has just completed an updated report on the ecological footprint of Saanich, which is available on the District of Saanich website. The report found Saanich’s footprint was equivalent to four planets’ worth…
Read moreGrowing Trees From Seed
Learn how to propagate and plant native Pacific northwest trees from seed — save money and get stronger, healthier, more resilient trees! A great way to create stock for eco-restoration or wetland projects. Or offer to donate the seedlings to your local... Read more
Our Planet No Longer Has the Privilege of Supporting War
Our planet no longer has the privilege of supporting war- the waste, the proliferation of exploded armaments, the damage to infrastructure. War in 2023 should be illegal from a planetary safety point of view. The world should not allow War to destroy the fragile... Read moreA Powerful Message on Old Growth Protection
A powerful message on protecting BC’s last remaining old growth forests (and biodiversity), featuring Elder Bill Jones. (…with a working link to a 5 min video of the ‘Protest Art’ Exhibit/Event at Metchosin School, Sep. 28.) Feel free to... Read more
We’re A Long Way From Being A One Planet Region
That should have been been obvious all along, but never more so than since 1972, when two key books — Only One Earth and The Limits to Growth — were published for the First UN Conference on the Environment in Stockholm…
Read moreJoin us! Save the Deer from Parks Canada Extermination
Please join us for a very important demonstration in Sidney! ParksCanada is embarking on a $6 million project to kill all the Fallow and native Black-tailed deer on Sidney Island by helicopter and using dogs. This is a cruel and unnecessary cull.
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Joe Brewer, Cultural Evolution and Bioregional Regeneration
I first came across Joe Brewer’s work some years ago in an article he wrote critiquing the failure of universities to address in a comprehensive manner the complex ecological, social and cultural challenges we face. He began his 2017 article “Why Are Universities Failing Humanity?” with this statement…
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Thinking Globally, Acting Locally — and Bioregionally
I have spent the last couple of months exploring the global polycrisis and the set of responses — great turnarounds — proposed in the Earth For All report. But what, you might reasonably ask, does this all mean for us here in the Greater Victoria region? How can its concepts be translated into local action?
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Learn to Grow Trees From Seed for Cheap!
Join professional arborist and commercial and non-profit tree grower, Ryan Senechal, and the Community Trees Matter Network for this fun, practical workshop! Learn where and when to gather seed or cuttings (now is a good time), propagation basics, container culture,... Read more
Zoning is the Magic Wand of Local Government
Last month, a Leger poll showed only six per cent of Canadians blame the country’s onerous housing costs on municipalities. As local government, we must remember we are the most powerful level of government for affordability and environmental sustainability because of... Read more
Small Community Could Lead Way to Showcasing Real Climate Action
In 2019, a major step forward for climate leadership was taken by the Township of Esquimalt Council with potential far reaching outcomes for Canadians. A report was commissioned to explore the feasibility of thermally converting municipal solid waste( garbage) into... Read more
We Need To Change The Way We Farm and Eat
The first three of the five “great turnarounds” in the Club of Rome’s “Earth for All” report address different aspects of inequality. But the final two, to which I now turn, are concerned with two of the most fundamental determinants of our health: food and — next week — energy.
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Good News for Preserving the Marbled Murrelet and its Nesting Habitat, Old Growth
We are an organization of concerned community members and scientists who have recently filed an Action in the Supreme Court of British Columbia to save the Marbled Murrelet (MaMu) and its nesting habitat, Old Growth trees.
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Biosolids are Everyone’s Issue
Biosolids are the dried residual of sewage sludge generated from a waste water treatment plant, such as McLoughlin Point in Esquimalt, BC. Biosolids contain toxic chemicals and micro plastics which do not break down in the environment – hence their name, ‘forever... Read more
BC is Burning – An Open Letter to Premier Eby
Eby Fiddles While BC Burns BC is on fire and you, Premier Eby, are busy fiddling while our forests burn. Your commitment to protect old-growth forest has gone up in flames just like 1.5 million hectares already burned this season. With more than 1,200 fires since... Read more
We Need To Talk About Wildfires (and the Media)
You may have seen the news about devastating wildfires raging in Hawaii right now, with one town (Lahaina) being burnt down almost entirely. With wildfires happening across Canada this summer, displacing people in BC, Alberta and Nova Scotia, it’s hard to not feel... Read more
Transforming Communities with Art: A Toolkit for Educators & Leaders
This Masterclass explores the transformative power of art and how it can create change in your school, community, city, and beyond! Are you struggling to create real impact in the communities you serve? In this free 3-day virtual workshop we will give you the tools... Read more
How To Save Oodles of Precious Water!
Residents throughout BC were recently asked to start conserving water. Bowinn Ma, our new minister of emergency management and climate readiness, said water supply is already extremely low in much of the province. All of Vancouver Island is now at Drought Level 5, the... Read more
We Can’t Afford To Miss The Shift From A Consumer To A Conserver Society
My recent columns have emphasised that we urgently need a rapid transformation of the major systems that make up society and underpin today’s dominant culture. Not only will this transformation protect the Earth systems we depend upon for our wellbeing, indeed our very survival, it will lead to improved wellbeing and quality of life.
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Earth Overshoot Day is August 2nd 2023
What does it mean? What can you do about it? What does it mean? Earth overshoot day is the calculated (world bio capacity divided by world’s ecological footprint) calendar date representing the point in a given year when we’ve used up all of the natural resources that... Read more
A Polycrisis Is Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts
The polycrisis, according to the UN and Cascade Institute, includes the climate crisis, war, extreme economic inequality, financial system instability, ideological extremism, pernicious social impacts of digitalization, cyber attacks, mounting social and political unrest, large-scale forced migrations and an escalating danger of nuclear war…
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We Have Already Passed Safe and Just Planetary Boundaries
A 2009 publication by Johan Rockstrom and his colleagues at the Stockholm Resilience Centre identified a number of key Earth systems fundamental to natural processes and human wellbeing, and “thresholds which, if crossed, could generate unacceptable environmental change” were identified.
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Ecological Sanity Must Be Linked to Social Justice
More than a decade ago, a group of Earth system scientists developed the concept of planetary boundaries. They identified a set of a dozen or so Earth systems and proposed thresholds for each system beyond which it was likely that the system’s stability and resilience would be compromised.
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Climate action needs a greater sense of urgency
On June 12, Bill Blair, federal minister of Emergency Preparedness, said Canada is in the midst of its worst wildfire season in the past 20 years — and it was only mid-June. Then in a June 20 news release, Environment and Climate Change Canada said we can expect “higher-than-normal temperatures [in] most of the country until at least the end of August.”
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Take Action for Old Growth
As summer is fast approaching, we (Elders for Ancient Trees, Stand.earth, Sierra Club BC, Wilderness Committee) ask for your continued support to keep the pressure on the BC NDP Government to follow through on its promises and work with First Nations to protect... Read more
One Planet Student Challenge Winners Celebrated
A total of $1,000 was handed out to the winners of the One Planet Student Challenge competition during a ceremony at the Cedar Hill Golf Course on June 8. Part of the One Planet BC initiative, the challenge is in collaboration with the District of Saanich and... Read more
Elders for Ancient Forests May 2023
We’re on the cusp of seasons changing, saying goodbye to spring and moving into summer. Farewell fawn lilies, orchids, shooting stars, flowering red currant. Welcome sword ferns unfurling towards sunlight, the delicate white bottle brush flowers of vanilla leaf,... Read more
Continual growth is completely unsustainable and heightens inequality
Last week I discussed some of the problems that result from our focus on the economy rather than on ecologically sustainable human and social development. This week, I turn to a more in-depth exploration of the impacts of continual economic growth, and in particular the way in which growth, if unchecked, will dramatically increase inequality.
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Where We Are and What’s Next
It’s been three weeks since the RBC AGM and our national fossil fool’s day mobilization. What did we collectively achieve, and what’s next? We went from 8% of shareholder support to … 26% At last year’s RBC AGM, a single resolution called for the bank to clarify its... Read more
We need to get over our obsession with the economy
I recently came across an eloquent and powerful passage by Carl Sagan, the famed cosmologist, written in response to an image of Earth taken by Voyager 1 in 1990, from beyond the planet Neptune. The Earth was just a pale blue dot, which inspired the title of his 1994 book from which the following passage is quoted. Sagan wrote: “You see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us…
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A Local Guide To Participating in Earth Week
Highlighting actions and events related to art, nature, and social justice happening in Victoria, in BC and remotely! Check out the events below and browse the Community Events Calendar for more! What is Earth Week? • The first Earth Day, inspired by protests of the... Read moreMove the dial on biodiversity at your city council!
This is a key moment for us to ensure the many plants and animals that call B.C. home can thrive. And you can help! Local governments have the power to adopt or amend bylaws that support greater biodiversity, and it is up to us residents to urge them to take action.... Read more
It’s not population growth but inequality that’s the problem
Whenever I write about the problems of economic growth and our ecological footprint, I get emails asking why I don’t also address population growth. The short answer is that I have, on several occasions. The longer answer, as I wrote in a July 2018 column on this topic, is that the issue is complex, and the solution not just a matter of family planning.
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B.C. timber industry in throes of change, as premier warns of ‘exhausted forests’
Courtesy of the CBC Photo: A timber operation in the Cariboo. B.C. passed amendments to modernize forestry legislation last year, including laying the groundwork for a new system of 10-year forest landscape plans to be developed in partnership with First Nations.... Read more
Creatively United Earth Day Events
Special Film Preview Creatively United for the Planet, in partnership with Climate and the Arts, presents the special Earth Day preview of our newest film, Changing Course: A River’s Journey of Reconnection. This 60-minute documentary features stunning footage by... Read more
Help Preserve Old Growth Forests for the Threatened Marbled Murrelet
Help prevent the extinction of the marbled murrelet. Act now by signing the petition.
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How Can We Stop The Looming Climate Disaster?
So much has been written about the urgency of the looming climate disaster that I’ll skip straight to the solutions. I am a climate alarmist, just as Churchill was a Nazi alarmist in the 1930s. But I am not a climate doomer. I am of one mind with Paul Hawken, author... Read more
A Deeper Exploration of Our Ecological Footprint
Given that we only have one planet, we need to live within the carrying capacity of the global ecosystem that is Earth. Yet as I noted last week, Canada’s ecological footprint per person is equivalent to using 5.1 planet’s worth of biocapacity and natural resources every year.
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Climate Leadership Plans Must Include Protecting and Enhancing Our Urban Forests
Photo credit: Nikki/Flickr The Victoria-based Community Trees Matter Network has created this handy letter to cut and paste, and send to Victoria City Council, or the officials of your choice, in an effort to protect and enhance urban trees and forests. The Letter:... Read more
We just overshot our fair share of Earth for 2023
Just a few days ago, Canada overshot its fair share of Earth’s biocapacity and resources, as measured by the ecological footprint in 2018, the latest year for which data is available. By March 13, Canada had already consumed its fair share of the Earth’s bounty for the year. Collectively, humanity passed its 2022 Earth Overshoot Day on July 28.
Read moreIPCC Report Findings
This is a good summary of the main points of the IPCC report released yesterday. The new analysis, a synthesis of six previous reports by the United Nations’ climate group, presents a mixed picture of the world’s fight against climate change. Here are three takeaways.
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Open Letter to Premier Eby: To Protect Our Oldest and Rarest Forests
“Our forests are foundational to B.C. In collaboration with First Nations and industry, we are accelerating our actions to protect our oldest and rarest forests.” These are the words attributed to you, Premier Eby, in the February 15, 2023 government press release... Read more
Purchasing for protection: A perpetual Sophie’s choice for conservationists
Unlike the rest of BC, where the majority of land is under public management, 80% of the Coastal Douglas-fir zone is privately owned. Thus land protection is one of the most common conservation approaches, but is it sustainable?
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