Home is where the garden is

I’m a keen CBC radio fan, and was listening to ‘Spark’, as Nora Young interviewed Ben Faulk who runs a design business called Rural Homesteading in Vermont USA. The basic idea of his business is to provide advice on designing homesteads – for those who simply want to grow a few home grown foods for their own consumption to those who want to make a living from their land. The interview is worth listening to: http://www.cbc.ca/spark/popupaudio.html?clipIds=2391448101

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The Comfort of the Status Quo

As I write this column, the national news is full of the ice/snow storm in eastern Canada – the effect of the storm on the power grid and mobility. I always find these stories disquieting because they point to the vulnerability built into our way of life. Residents of BC and California have earthquakes, other parts of the world have tornadoes, hurricanes and typhoons. Winnipeg and Morris are threatened with periodic floods. For us here it is the ice/snow storm.

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Sunshine in Colorado

I’m pretty impressed with the news coming out of Boulder, Colorado. They have decided to form their own municipal utility and end their relationship with Excel Energy. The motion carried by a two-thirds majority. Why did they do this?

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Death and the Environment

Many readers will no doubt already be concerned about the environment. Hopefully this Rethinking Lifestyles column will encourage more people to join ‘transitioners’ in considering what we humans are doing to our planet Earth. That, after all, is the first objective of South Eastman Transition Initiative. The second is, of course, to do something positive about it.

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Toxic wastewater lakes necessary to feed oil habit

Today I read with some dismay about the latest plans from the energy companies in Alberta. Plans for the largest man-made lake district on Earth have been submitted to the provincial authorities, for the flooding of abandoned tar sand mines with a mix of tailings and fresh water. Syncrude have already started to flood Base Mine Lake which will measure 2000 acres. The plans say that these artificial lakes will eventually replicate a natural habitat, complete with fish and waterfowl – they think, they don’t know, it’s all experimental…only it’s not being done in the confines of a research area like Ontario’s ELA, but in the tar sands – the economic centre of the Harper Universe.

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