Browsing: Environmental Articles

Environmental News
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Facts and evidence matter in confronting climate crisis

We recently highlighted the faulty logic of a pseudoscientific argument against addressing climate change: the proposition that because CO2 is necessary for plants, increasing emissions is good for the planet and the life it supports. Those who read, write or talk regularly about climate change and ecology are familiar with other anti-environmental arguments not coated with a scientific sheen.

Environmental News
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Intact wilderness is a hedge against our ignorance

In 2011, I travelled with my family down Yukon’s Hart River. It’s one of seven pure rivers in the Peel River watershed, a 68,000-square-kilometre wilderness that’s been at the centre of a legal dispute for many years and a land-use planning debate for more than a decade. For two weeks, we fished from the river’s vibrant green waters and gazed at the limestone and dolostone peaks of the Ogilvie Mountains.

Environmental News
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Faulty logic fuels fossil fools

Apparently, fossil fuel companies protect watersheds and rivers by removing oil. That’s according to comments on the David Suzuki Foundation Facebook page and elsewhere, including this: “The amount of contamination occuring [sic] from extraction is far less than if we just left the oil there to continue polluting the waterways.”

Community News
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A Beach Clean in Portsmouth

We all know just how important the ocean is and how vital is that we help to support and maintain it as a resource and eco system but some individuals spend time and energy taking that to the next level to promote it locally and to instigate action. We meet Jim Cutting, a Portsmouth resident who has a passion for the environment and for its protection.

Environmental News
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We need to work less to live better

Since the 1950s, almost everything about work in the developed world has changed dramatically. Rapid technological advances continue to render many jobs obsolete. Globalization has shifted employment to parts of the world with the lowest costs and standards. Most households have gone from one income-earner to at least two. Women have fully integrated into the workforce, albeit often with less-than-equal opportunities, conditions and pay. A lot of our work is unnecessary and often destructive — depleting resources, destroying ecosystems, polluting air, water and soil, and fuelling climate change.

Environmental News
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We can learn so much from nature

If you fly over a forest and look down, you’ll see every green tree and plant reaching to the heavens to absorb the ultimate energy source: sunlight. What a contrast when you look down on a city or town with its naked roofs, asphalt roads and concrete sidewalks, all ignoring the sun’s beneficence! Research shows we might benefit by thinking more like a forest.

Scuba Features
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The Superpowers of Seagrasses

How many times have many of us, myself included, ignored a sign like this during our misspent adolescent years? Now that I am older (so say the majority!) and wiser (so say a small minority!), I realise the purpose of this type of sign is to protect and conserve nature. Nowadays I pay more attention because nature conservation is a subject close to my heart. Being a diver, I am particularly interested in sustainability of the coastal and marine environment.

Environmental News
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Oceans of reasons to protect what we love

June 8 marks World Oceans Day, but what if we celebrated oceans every day? Covering more than 70 per cent of Earth’s surface, oceans, more than anything, define our small blue planet. We should celebrate their complex and vibrant ecosystems, life-sustaining services, calming effects and unimaginable diversity, much of which we have not yet even discovered.