.

This week:

• Gardening expert and Globe and Mail columnist Marjorie Harris shares eco-gardening tips with host Jordan Poppenk and discusses changing attitudes towards gardening;
• Green Life correspondent Peter Stock presents a special feature on lawn care and explores several new departures from the 1950’s-era green oasis.

The headlines in brief:

• The federal government has unveiled new ‘green labelling’ plan for food products, although many critics lament the plan as ‘too lax’
• Oil prices hit a new record high of $140 this week, just as visible signs of strain emerge in various sectors of the economy;
• American mayors meeting in Florida passed a resolution that urges major American cities to ban the use of fuel derived from the Alberta tarsands in municipal vehicles;
• US Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has criticized Alberta’s tar sands industry;
• Alberta and Canadian tar sands company are launching a PR offensive to counter their negative environmental image;
• A new report released this week commisioned by Greenpeace indicates that major flaws exist in the way that the risks of accidents and terrorism at nuclear power stations is assessed;
• Criticism rained on the federal government from international delegates at the World Wind Energy Conference for failing to send its own delegate to the event, which was held only two hours from government offices;
• The largest sugarcane producer in America, United States Sugar, has agreed to sell all of its assets and land to the state of Florida in a bid to restore Florida’s shrinking Everglades;
• The US Supreme Court has overturned the 2.5 billion dollars US in punitive damages that Exxon Mobil Corporation had been ordered to pay for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off the coast of Alaska;
• Kazakstan’s Aral Sea, once the world’s fourth largest lake, is now almost entirely desert.

You can download the show here (right click, save as…), or listen in the player ** Note: player will close if you surf away from the page**

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This week:

• Green Life correspondent Peter Stock delivers a tour of the book, “Drive: our complicated affair with the automobile”. The author, Tim Falconer, joins Peter to recount a 2-month road trip across the United States and examines the past, present and future of what he considers our collective automobile obsessed society.
• We present a recent lecture by Jack Santa-Barbara, director of the Sustainable Scale Project, an NGO dedicated to promoting a scale of human economic activity that is ecologically realistic in the long term (originally aired January 12, 2007).
• Correspondent Simon Watson fills in as host for Jordan Poppenk.
  

The headlines in brief:

• Honda is releasing the first mass-produced hydrogen fuel cell car, but only in California;
• Beijing is importing water from across China for the upcoming Olympics;
• British and US conservation groups are working with Iranian groups to protect the rare Asiatic Cheetah.

You can download the show here (right click, save as…), or listen in the player ** Note: player will close if you surf away from the page**

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This week:

• Alex Rose, author of Who Killed the Grand Banks, speaks with host Jordan Poppenk about the collapse of the cod fishery off of Newfoundland and some historical lessons that may apply to resource use today.
• Jordan speaks with Leif Harmsen, artist and spokesperson for the Toronto chapter of the World Naked Bike Ride, which is taking place in cities across Canada and around the world over the next several days. He joins us to describe what his group is doing to promote cycling and other environmentally-friendly alternatives.

The headlines in brief:

• A controversial zoning document known as the EcoDensity charter has passed in Vancouver’s city council that will encourage greater density throughout the city rather than just in the core;
• Ontario won’t scrap plans to review the safety of the pesticide 2,4-D despite its recent approval by Health Canada;
• British Columbia’s provincial government has announced an air action plan aimed at reducing smog in the province;
• Documents released under freedom-of-information legislation indicate that the BC government may be stonewalling habitat protection for the endangered Vancouver Island marmot;
• On the heels of new science indicating that shower curtains made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) release 108 toxic chemicals, retailers are beginning to stop carrying the product;
• A new petition from BC environmental groups is asking the government to revoke permission from gravel miners in the Fraser River, over new fears about depleting salmon stocks.
• Alberta premier Ed Stelmach announced a large new program this week to try and develop new skills and move parts of the Albertan economy away from tar sands development.
• Ottawa has developed a method to detect pollutants on a small scale, and there is hope that other Canadian municipalities will follow.
• The federal Liberal Party may abandon their vaulted carbon tax plan, over fears that leader Stephane Dion would not be able to articulate the specifics of the plan to Canadians.
• The United Nations is considering adding nuclear power plants to its list of green energy initiatives eligible under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism.
• Madagascar is planning to sell nine million tonnes of carbon offsets in an effort to protect one of its largest and most pristine forests.
• A UN Atlas study has revealed that Africa is suffering deforestation at twice the rate of the rest of the world.
• US government scientists declared the Carribean Monk seal extinct this week.

You can download the show here (right click, save as…), or listen in the player ** Note: player will close if you surf away from the page**

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This week:

Arne Næss

• Dr. Alan Drengson, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Victoria, speaks with Correspondent Simon Watson about the Deep Ecology movement and its founder, Norwegian philosopher Arne Næss.
• Host Jordan Poppenk speaks to Bruce Benett, CEO of the US-based CD Recycling Center, about how to recycle CDs and the economical and industrial considerations that are part of the process.

The headlines in brief:

• The Federal Conservatives say they will not be bound by the NDP climate bill passed into law by all other parties;
• An Ontario-Quebec cap-and-trade climate pact has been announced;
• The Montreal Exchange celebrated its official opening of Canada’s first carbon market;
• Environmentalists and forestry workers have formed a coalition to fight the BC foresting industry;
• Due to development threat, groups have asked the UN to add the Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park to its World Heritage Sites in Danger list;
• More than two-thirds of $53-billion in U.S. refinery investments is aimed at tar sands production, which environmentalists lament as an “entrenched commitment” in a new report;
• Teck Cominco’s lead and zinc smelter leaked nearly a metric ton of lead and 400 litres of acid into the Columbia River;
• An attempt by investors in Exxon Mobile to push a greener agenda at the company’s annual meeting has been thwarted;
• US President George Bush has vowed to veto a climate change bill that is being discussed in Senate this week;
• A new report says biofuel output will soar over the next decade causing concern for the future costs of food;
• New Zealand has announced it plans to ban commercial fishing on some of its coast in an effort to protect some of the world’s rarest dolphins.

You can download the show here (right click, save as…), or listen in the player ** Note: player will close if you surf away from the page**

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.