This week:

• Agricultural policy expert Peter Andre speaks with Green Life reporter Peter Stock about some of the challenges of small scale farming, such as why many government agricultural policies are sorely out of step with the market realities, why you can’t buy a free range chicken in Quebec, and why the controversial and uniquely Canadian Milk Marketing Board makes sense.
• Susan Walsh, Executive Director of USC Canada, speaks with host Jordan Poppenk at Toronto’s Seedy Saturday seed diversity event. Susan takes a different perspective, spelling out holistic reasons why small scale farming is essential in Canada and the global south.

The headlines in brief:

• The Ontario budget includes a measure to apply provincial sales tax to energy for the first time as a way of making up the deficit.
• The University of Winnipeg has become the first Canadian campus to ban the sale of bottled water.
• The Polaris Institute has announced that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency has been underreporting problems it finds in bottled water.
• The federal government has restored funding to the United Nations Water Program, after cutting it off earlier this year.
• Italy and Switzerland have decided to re-draw national borders to account for melting Alpine glaciers.
• The House of Representatives has voted to grant wilderness status to two million acres of public land in the United States.

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- Photo credit: Arthur Chapman -

This week:

• We feature a discussion comparing Canadian and American environmentalism. Environmental Justice Correspondent Joanna Dafoe recounts her experiences at the PowerShare event in Washington, D.C. – which drew 2,500 activists from across North America – and discusses lessons for the Canadian environmental movement.
• South African environmentalist Patrick Bond presents a critical look at cap and trade systems, and explains how his country is suffering from negative returns in the carbon trade (originally aired March 21, 2008).

The headlines in brief:

• The organization representing tar sands producers in Alberta has recommended that the province begin exporting energy to Asia to avoid coming tariffs from the United States;
• Environment Minister Jim Prentice announced that new environmental assessment rules would allow the government to skip assessments in nearly 80% of new building projects;
• Environment Canada is warning that early spring may lead to the devastation of insect, bird and small animal populations across the country;
• The government of Maldives set an ambitious target that will likely make it the first carbon neutral country in the world;
• Powerful incentives to support the production solar-energy were introduced this week by many major North American cities.

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- Photo credit: Capitol Climate Action -

This week:

• P. Douglas Petrie, an environmental lawyer with Willms & Shier Environmental Lawyers LLP, speaks with Law Correspondent Naomi Jehlicka to bring us insight into new federal legislation intended to create harsher penalties for environmental crime.
• Joanna Dafoe makes her first contribution as a correspondent with The Green Majority as she speaks with environmental lawyer, Dean and distinguished American environmentalist James Gustave Speth about his book, Bridge at the Edge of the World.

The headlines in brief:

• Ontario announced a plan to pay a fixed rate to all suppliers of ‘renewable energy’ using subsidies.
• Over 15 million hectares of longpole pine trees have been decimated by the mountain pine beetle infestation in British Colombia, leaving BC companies and government scrambling to deal with the dead trees.
• A report reveals that spending on nuclear power in Canada has more than tripled since the Conservative government came to power.
• Australia’s Northeast Coast has been polluted by a spill from a cargo ship holding fertilizers and oil.
• In recognition of National Tree-Planting Day, 3 million people planted three trees each in China yesterday.

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This week:

• Barbara Freese, co-author of a recent Union of Concerned Scientists report on coal energy and carbon capture, speaks with host Jordan Poppenk about carbon sequestration, the sweetheart technology of dirty energy projects, and presents a nuanced perspective on whether it is a viable solution for mitigating carbon dioxide emissions in the long run.
• Green Life reporter Peter Stock speaks with writer David Kendall about the cautionary environmental tale Nauru, a South Pacific island and the subject of his book Doomed Island. Kendall explains how it came to be that in 150 years, Nauru transitioned from a tropical paradise to a geological, cultural and financial wasteland.

Headlines in brief:

• New federal environmental regulations create much larger maximum fines for corporate polluters at the federal level.
• Ontario’s Environmental Commissioner Gord Miller released a statement this week warning of the dangers to biodiversity in Ontario from the current state of the endangered species act.
• A new Health Canada report released this week has shown that the estrogen-mimicking chemical known as Bisphenol A, has been shown to be present in almost all Canadian energy and soft-drink cans.
• A drought in 2005 has been found that have caused the Amazon rainforest to release more greenhouse gas than the annual emissions of Europe and Japan.
• A French firm has released a zero-emissions, air-powered car.
• China will increase spending on agricultural production by 20% this year to prepare for a future food crisis.

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- Image credit: Alberta Geological Survey -