We dedicate this week’s program to a keynote lecture by Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada. May previously served as the Director of the Sierra Club of Canada and has been praised by many for her pragmatic approach to environmental change, straying beyond party lines when doing so promises what she believes to be the best environmental outcome. The lecture we recorded was not a political one; May speaks at the theological symposium Faith and the Common Good, where she describes her view of the spiritual relationship between the environment, life, and politics.

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Students at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick will soon be able to tune into TGM. Sackville’s campus and community radio station, CHMA 106.9FM, will broadcast the program on Wednesdays at 3PM, AST.

This week:

• We feature the 2008 Hart House Stages Panel held at the University of Toronto on the music industry and its environmental practices, hopefully titled, “Can music save the environment?” The panel was organized by Mitchell Wong, Julia Lo and Brett Winestock. This coming together of minds on music and environmental issues involved a unique mix, ranging from label managers to student musicians. The panel included:
• Candace Alper: Creator / Executive Producer of Name Your Tune
• Jennifer Larry: Digital Media and Marketing Manager for Sunrise Records
• Liam O’Doherty: student organizer with the University of Toronto Environmental Resource Network (UTERN)
• Barzin Hosseini-Rad: Musical performer

The headlines in brief:

• Canada was ranked second to last among G8 coutries this week in a comprehensive climate change report performed by the WWF;
• PM Harper warned European countries that they will have to accept Canada’s model of environmental legislation due to increasing global recession;
• The European Commission will ask its member states to ban the importation of furs made from the skins of young seals hunted in Canada;
• Tens of thousands of farmed Atlantic salmon escaped into the Campbell River, posing a great threat to wild stocks;
• A new report has revealed dismal on-time performance for Via Rail last year, with delays affecting up to three-quarters of arrivals during some months;
• Canada’s first carbon tax has taken effect this week in B.C;
• The B.C. government has begun negotiations with American coastal states to develop alternative energies and a broader collective green strategy;
• An Ontario high school student has isolated a bacteria that can biodegrade plastic bags in less than six months.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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This week:

• As CIBC reports that global trade networks are shifting on account of the surging cost of oil, we turn our microphone to a feast of initiatives running on people power. Host Jordan Poppenk speaks with Albert Koehl of the local advocacy group Bells on Bloor, as well as a joint discussion with Rick Conroy, Co-ordinator of the newly minted Toronto Cycling Union, and Adrian Heaps, the City of Toronto Councillor chairing the city’s cycling committee.

The headlines in brief:

• A CIBC report indicates that the rising cost of transportation due to oil prices is undercutting global trade;
• The Canadian uranium company Cameco has warned that its Port Hope plant may have leaked uranium into Lake Ontario;
• A probe has revealed dishonesty in revelations about 2006 Ottawa River sewage spill;
• PM Harper has been promoting Canadian wildlife conservation in France, while reports denounce his lack of action;
• BC has made uncertain emission capture technologies a centrepiece of future green planning;
• The National Energy Board has forecast average gasoline prices of $1.30 to $1.40 per litre this summer;
• American bald eagles have come back from the brink of extinction on Vancouver Island;
• Five Arctic countries have met to agree on distribution and protection of Arctic resources;
• After 20 years, Italy is re-considering nuclear energy as a viable source of power.

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This week:

• Dr. Lawrence Packer, a Professor of Biology at York University and an expert on Canadian bees, speaks with host Jordan Poppenk about bee myths, the good things bees do for an ecosystem and the collapse in bee populations that was widely reported last year.
• Jordan Poppenk interviews Senior Environment Canada Climatologist David Phillips about the function of weather trivia, his perspectives on global warming and the financial hardships endured at Environment Canada (originally broadcast on November 2, 2007).

The headlines in brief:

• Newly released figures from Environment Canada show that Canada’s greenhouse-gas emissions dropped marginally in 2006;
• Alberta has released a draft land-use policy, although the draft is non-committal on tarsands management;
• The Western Climate Initiative is set to restrict Albertan oil exports;
• PEI has canceled an alternative energy program;
• New federal guidelines will require products labelled “made in canada” to contain Canadian ingredients unless otherwise specified;
• A report suggests that nanomaterials in food and clothing are more dangerous than suspected;
• Canadian and U.S. governments have reached agreement over a new Pacific Salmon treaty intended to protect dwindling salmon stocks;
• NDP and Bloq Quebeqois party leaders have attacked the notion of a carbon tax;
• Prime Minister Stephen Harper says that he won’t be cutting back federal taxes on gasoline to compensate for high gas prices;
• Los Angeles plans to cleanse sewage water to increase drinking supplies;
• Iceland has announced it will resume commercial whaling;
• The WWF reports that world biodiversity has decreased by nearly a third over the last 35 years.

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TGM is hitting the airwaves in Atlantic Canada thanks to Fredericton’s campus and community station, CHSR 97.9FM, and St. John’s campus campus and community station, CFMH 107.3FM.

CHSR is a community station in Fredericton, New Brunswick, with a radiated power of 250 watts. CHSR boasts the largest music library of a Canadian radio station east of Montreal and is one of the oldest stations in Atlantic Canada, dating back to 1950. Its volunteers are drawn from the University of New Brunswick, St. Thomas University and the Fredricton community at large. It is broadcasting TGM on Mondays at 3pm.

CFMH is a relatively young station that has been broadcasting out of broadcasts out of Saint John, New Brunswick since 2001. Its volunteers are primarily drawn from the University of New Brunswick’s St John campus. It has recently moved to its new frequency of 107.3 MHz. CHSR and CFMH are the seventh and eighth stations to join the TGM project and we’re very pleased to be working with them.