We feature coverage of a rally organized by Environmental Defense at the Ontario Legislature calling for a ban on the compound Bisphenol A. Jordan Poppenk interviews with Dr. Pete Myers, medial biologist, Peter Tabuns, newly-reelected Ontario NDP environment critic, and Rick Smith, executive director of Environmental Defense. Sign Environmental Defense’s online petition to ban Bisphenol A in Canada.
Jordan Poppenk is joined in conversation by Jonny Dovercourt, Christina Palassio and Alana Wilcox,editors of GreenTOpia, who speak about their freshly minted volume of environmental essays for Toronto and area.
Tia Maryanne Kim makes her first appearance on TGM to cover Canadian municipal and provincial news.
The headlines in brief:
The federal government has announced that it will set aside 25.5 million acres in the north for use as two new conservation areas;
The Quebec government said it would buy a large parcel of land slated for residential development on Île Charron;
Ontario will appoint a panel of medical experts to study and potentially bad toxins found in consumer products such as bisphenol A;
A coalition of environment groups, claims over 45,000 migratory bird nests, are being destroyed in Ontario every year, due to oversight, and lack of government funding;
Researchers have found a parasite that was present in all 446 Ontario bee samples they analyzed;
Shell Canada experienced two independent incidents involving releases of sour gas in Alberta in the same day;
New BC legislation would mandate 33 per cent cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
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Ian McAllister, conservation photographer and author of the new book, The Last Wild Wolves, speaks with Jordan Poppenk about his work and wolves in coastal British Columbia.
Stephen Hazell, spokesperson for the Sierra Club of Canada, talks about proposed oil and gas pipelines in Canada. Click here for more information about the project.
Kevin Farmer and Jordan Poppenk speak about light penalties for the recent endangered queen conch bust and approaches to reducing eco-crime.
The headlines in brief:
A report funded by concerned residents of Port Hope, Ontario, suggests its residents are awash in radioactive contamination;
The Globe and Mail reports that returning salmon stocks have collapsed across British Columbia;
British Columbia provincial New Democrat Gregor Robertson will introduce two private member’s bills which, if passed, would reduce exposure to hazardous substances;
A man and woman from Florida pled guilty to illegally importing meat of the endangered queen conch and were each fined $20,000;
An oil spill off San Francisco threatens its crab fishery, while an oil spill in the Black Sea has caused environmental devastation;
A record amount of waste flowed into China’s Yangtze River last year;
A study of the carbon emissions of the world’s power stations found that Australians are the worst polluters per capita.
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This week:
We run our very important fall fundraising drive. Having recently swapped its aging antenna with an expensive but much-needed replacement, CIUT is in need of your support more than ever.
TGM team members Simon Watson, Rosemary Mosco and Kevin Farmer join Jordan Poppenk to discuss the program, its mandate, and why it’s worth supporting.
The headlines in brief:
Nobel Prize-winning scientists rebuked the federal government over shutting down a federal climate change research network;
Conservation groups have launched legal action against Federal Minister of Environment John Baird;
British Columbia signed a $2.2-billion infrastructure deal with Ottawa, the first province to do so under the Building Canada fund;
A new book discloses that Alberta’s environment minister offered billions in investments in the Montreal Stock Exchange in exchange for a softening of Quebec’s position on the Kyoto protocol.
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Green Life reporter Peter Stock speaks with author Chris Turner, the man behind a book called The Geography of Hope: a tour of the world we need. The text focuses on the small good news environmental stories throughout the globe. It is available online and at good bookstores everywhere.
Jordan Poppenk interviews Senior Environment Canada Climatologist David Phillips about his perspectives on global warming, the function of weather trivia, and the financial hardships endured at Environment Canada. The interview was collected at the 2007 ESRI conference at The Toronto Congress Centre following a keynote lecture by Phillips (available in this episode).
The headlines in brief:
Canada’s Auditor General Sheila Fraser and Comissioner of the Environment and Sustainable Development tabled a report in Parliament indicating that the federal government has failed to green its policies and programs;
The Nature Conservancy of Canada unveiled the what it called the first comprehensive analysis of biodiversity in the Maritimes;
More than 1,300 hectares of undeveloped land within the Halifax area was designated a protected wilderness area by the Nova Scotia government;
Alberta Environment has fined Tiger Industries Ltd., a Calgary company, more than a quarter of a million dollars for a chemical incident in 2005;
The Organizing Committee for Vancouver’s upcoming 2010 Olympic Games signed an agreement with the United Nations Environment Program, thereby committing to greening the upcoming event;
B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell visited Portugal to sign the International Carbon Action Partnership even though the Federal Government would not sign the document, which aims to create a global carbon credit market;
A new study indicates that ground-level ozone pollution will likely cause major crop loss in the future;
Monkeys in Kenya are travelling to new habitats as the climate becomes drier;
An Australian man has been killed in a fight over the way he watered his lawn, as tensions rise during the six year drought.
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