October 2009


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You can download the episode here or listen in the embedded player.

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    Copenhagen

    Copenhagen. Photo by jimg944.

    Countdown to Copenhagen

  • Joanna Dafoe speaks with P.J. Partington, a climate change policy analyst for the Pembina Institute, to discuss Canada’s role in the UN climate change negotiations. Partington deals with climate change policy at the federal and international level. He is a founding member of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition and has previously managed the highly successful Canadian Youth Delegation to the UN climate negotiations.

  • Steady-state economics

  • Ecological Economist Peter Victor joins us to consider how Canada might be able to make room for steady-state economics within a shifting economic context.

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    James Lovelock

    James Lovelock at a book signing. Photo by askpang.

    James Lovelock

  • We break from our usual format to present a giant of the global environmental movement, British scientist James Lovelock. Lovelock is well known for his scientific work detecting CFC’s and linking these gasses to processes contributing to the ozone hole. This work set in motion global agreements to restrict ozone-depleting gasses and won his group the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Today, however, Lovelock is one of the few Nobel prize winners who can be described as better known for a different idea – not one that won a Nobel prize. In Lovelock’s case, that idea is “the Gaia Hypothesis”. Conceiving of the entire planet as a enormous superorganism, Lovelock gave birth to a new way of thinking about life on earth. In today’s lecture delivered at the Glenn Gould Studios in Toronto, Lovelock presents Gaia’s struggle for survival in a lecture based on his book, “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning”. Thanks to Danny Leskiw for recording this lecture.

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    Traditional Giving of Thanks

  • We feature a traditional giving of thanks by Danny Beaton of the Turtle Clan of Mohawk Nation. Beaton initially presented this address to a press gallery at the Ontario legislature as he made his plea to save Alliston Acquifer from becoming home to a garbage dump.

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    Greenpeace campaign logo

    Greenpeace campaign logo.

    Breaking into the Tar Sands

  • This week Greenpeace launched their second disruption action on Tar Sands operations. Last week we reported on the first action in which 20 American, Canadian and French activists broke into Shell Canada’s Albian Muskeg River oilsands mine north of Fort McMurray and successfully shut down production for 6 hours. This week, their target was Suncor. As of the night before broadcast, lead Greenpeace Canada officials Bruce Cox and Jessica Wilson were still in custody. We managed to reach spokesperson Mike Hudema in Edmonton.

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    Waste Vegetable Oil, Miles Per Gallon

  • Sick of high fuel costs? Sickened by the damage transportation is doing to our environment? In theory biofuels — ethanol, biodiesel, etc. — might proide relief on both these fronts. But theory aside, is it really practical? For four years Blake O’Brien ran his 1985 diesel Mercedes Benz “beater” (his description) on WVO — Waste Vegetable Oil — he scavenged from a nearby Vietnamese eatery. In this telephone conversation, O’Brien lays out the pros and cons of of pollution-free, cost-free motoring.

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