This week: TGM‘s green news pundits put their heads together for a 2008 year-in-review. News director Chris Berube, green pundit Kevin Farmer and host Jordan Poppenk discuss Canada’s top 10 environmental stories of 2008 and their implications for 2009. These stories, in no particular order, include:

• Agriculture (science turns against biofuel, rising food prices, export bans);
• A report that 20% of the world’s coral have already died;
• Global economic collapse and deflation of the green ethic;
• The re-election of Stephen Harper as Canada’s Prime Minister;
• Tipping points of feedback cycles (arctic total melt date pushed up to 2015, global warming exceeds IPCC’s most pessimistic projections);
• International carbon markets and their role in climate negotiations;
• Alberta’s tar sands and fallout from 500 duck deaths;
• The election of Barrack Obama as US President;
• Carbon taxes in public policy.
• Water (bulk shipments to Spain, the Great Lakes Water Pact, Canada withdraws from the UN Water Monitoring Program)

The headlines in brief:

• Ontario energy regulators say the province is well on track for its goal of shutting down all its coal fired power plants by 2014.
• Ottawa quietly passed several new regulations concerning the controversial annual seal hunt to avoid an EU ban on seal products from Canada.
• Quebec officials are still trying to clean up a gas leak caused by a train derailment in Villeroy.
• The Don Valley River, one of Toronto’s largest, may soon by filled with raw human sewage after a break in the sewage pipe.
• Carbon-absorbing cement has been engineered by researchers in the UK.
• Next year is expected to be one of the top-five warmest on record.

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