Category Archives: Forestry
NAFTA vulnerable
(March 1, 2008) Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton threaten to tear up NAFTA, arguing – correctly – that high U.S. environmental standards place U.S. workers at a disadvantage in America’s trading relations with Canada and Mexico. Canadians have good reason to be concerned. The U.S. does have higher environmental standards. Canada is vulnerable in a renegotiation of NAFTA. Continue reading
Scouring scum and tar from the bottom of the pit
(July 1, 2006) Faced with the undeniable reality of “Hubbard’s Peak” in global conventional oil supplies, the world’s largest multinational energy corporations are now hell-bent on squeezing oil out of tar in northern Alberta, like junkies desperately conniving for one last giant fix in a futile attempt to quench America’s insatiable “addiction to oil” (described so eloquently by President George Bush II). Along the Athabasca River near Fort McMurray, a sub-arctic town almost 1,000 kilometres north of the U.S. Continue reading
Forest’s new enemies – environmentalists
(December 3, 2003) Four environmental groups and four resource companies yesterday endorsed the giveaway of half of Canada’s great boreal forests to industrial interests. The CEOs of the resource companies deserve credit, of sorts, for actions designed to enrich their shareholders. The CEOs of the environmental groups deserve only censure. Continue reading
The eco-affluence myth
(July 31, 2003) “Affluence fosters environmentalism,” argues The Real Environmental Crisis, a book by professor emeritus Jack M. Hollander of the University of California at Berkeley. “As people become more affluent, most become increasingly sensitive to the health and beauty of their environment. And gaining affluence helps provide the economic means to protect and enhance the environment.” Continue reading
No property leads to plunder
(December 31, 2002) The Carnegie Endowment’s Scott Vaughan chose an apt example by invoking Indira Gandhi’s memorable speech in Stockholm at the 1972 UN Conference on Human Environment. “Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters?” Mrs. Gandhi said famously, in arguing that the environment should take a back seat to the economy. Continue reading
Urban Renaissance Institute 