This week:

• We feature a lecture by Canadian academic Thomas Homer-Dixon, who presents what he describes as an update to Al Gore’s famous slideshow, An Inconvenient Truth, and brings together the scientific and geopolitical aspects of climate change. Thomas Homer-Dixon speaks at the Isabel Bader Theatre at the University of Toronto’s Victoria College.

The headlines in brief:

• The federal government has blocked a controversial toxic substance that is mined in Quebec related to asbestos from being added to a UN ban list.
• A new report by Toronto’s Auditor General has charged Toronto’s water department with giving price breaks to polluters dumping chemicals into city sewers.
• Canada’s new environment minister Jim Prentice announced that the environment will become “an economic issue” under his watch.
• New reports from British Colombia show fear that its Killer Whales may soon be extinct due to the overfishing of its feed stocks.
• Debate is growing over whether to build substantial new wind turbines in the Scarborough bluffs outside Toronto.
• The city of Toronto is preparing a waste strategy that will lead to a ban on takeout food containers and a tax on plastic bags.
• A new study shows that pesticides commonly used in Europe interfere with brain development in fetuses and young children.
• Atmospheric methane concentrations spiked in 2007 after eight years of near-zero growth.
• World population statistics show that humans are using 30% more natural resources than what is considered to be sustainable.

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*