Sharks are the perfect predator – formed by 450 million years of evolution having lived longer than the dinosaurs and surviving five major extinctions. They formed life as we know it and keep the oceans, our planet’s life force, healthy. We exist, in part, because sharks did – and still do.

There is also undoubtedly no other species on the planet that is more collectively hated and villanized than sharks. Even though sharks are the unsung heroes of our watery world – we spend most of our media attention on misconceptions and fear, blinding us to the fact their populations are decreasing at incredibly alarming rates.

When we tell people 150 million sharks are killed a year they are typically surprised. After processing that startling fact, we are often challenged with “So what? The only good shark is a dead shark.” But love them or hate them, and for sure anyone who has watched Sharkwater or met a shark has fallen in love, just as we have, we absolutely need sharks on this planet.

Sharks are important to our survival

The frightening reality is, like them or not, sharks play a crucial role on this planet. Remove sharks from the oceans and we are tampering with the very things critical to our survival.

Sharks keep our largest and most important ecosystem healthy. Our existence is largely dependent upon theirs. Sharks have sat atop the oceans’ food chain, keeping our seas healthy for millions of years. And the oceans produce more oxygen than all the rainforests combined, remove half of the atmosphere’s manmade carbon dioxide (greenhouse gas), and control our planet’s temperature and weather.  

As the apex predators of the oceans, the role of sharks is to keep other marine life in healthy balance and to regulate the oceans. Remove sharks and that balance is seriously upset. Studies are already indicating that regional elimination of sharks can cause disastrous effects including the collapse of fisheries and the death of coral reefs.

One study in the U.S. indicates that the elimination of sharks resulted in the destruction of the shellfish industry in waters off the mid-Atlantic states of the United States, due to the unchecked population growth of cow-nose rays, whose mainstay is scallops. Other studies in Belize have shown reef systems falling into extreme decline when the sharks have been overfished, destroying an entire ecosystem. The downstream effects are frightening: the spike in grouper population (due to the elimination of sharks) resulted in a decimation of the parrotfish population, who could no longer perform their important role: keeping the coral algae-free.

We don’t hear how the elimination of sharks might impact our best natural defense against global warming. Or how our favorite foods might disappear as a side effect of the extinction of sharks. Or that we could lose more oxygen than is produced by all the trees and jungles in the world combined if we lose our sharks. But we should.

If you care about Climate Change, you should care about the sharks

No one knows for sure what will happen globally if shark populations are destroyed, but one should fear the results. Two hundred and fifty million years ago, this planet suffered the largest mass extinction on record, and scientists believe this was caused in part by catastrophic changes in the ocean. Sharks play a keystone role ensuring our seas remain in a healthy equilibrium and do not reach that point again.

In the last 40 years, shark populations have plummeted – in certain areas, some species are down up to 99%. We could witness the extinction of the first shark species in our lifetime if we don’t turn the tide for sharks. Just as the wolves of Yellowstone have proven, there is nothing extra in nature. Apex predators play a critical role in their ecosystems – ensuring the health of every critical, interwoven component. And no matter where you live – every second breath you take comes from the ocean. Do we really want to mess with that?

This is the first of a four part series leading up to the release of Rob Stewart’s final gift to us: Sharkwater Extinction, on October 19. Julie Andersen, who worked with Rob on the film is taking A\J readers on a journey into deeper understanding of the mysterious, powerful and dare we say… loveable? species.

The post Why Sharks Matter appeared first on A\J.

“Build an education guide,” they told me. “Easy,” I replied. Turns out, it’s not. While on the surface it may seem like a simple task, building an education guide is quite complex. For example, in this edition of the guide you’ll see we’ve included an indicator for whether or not a school has a sustainability co-ordinator. This one piece of information is important because if the school has a sustainability co-ordinator, it means that they’re investing in sustainability-based community development.

However, we need to be careful here. There are three growing activities and campaigns on campuses to increase overall sustainability: the sustainability co-ordinator or office is one, and the other two are farmers’ markets and divestment campaigns (campaigns calling on universities to move their investments away from fossil fuels). Because of these trends, the initial guide included all three as indicators for every school and college, until an unfortunate, but very real, problem emerged.

If you look up the schools with divestment student action groups, farmers’ markets, and (to a smaller extent) sustainability co-ordinators, you’ll see mainly the “big” schools, in big cities, and south of 60° latitude. A clear issue of distortion based on school size and privilege starts to emerge. Only schools with easy access to farmers can have farmers’ markets, or large enough populations to create enough demand for a campus market. Only schools with funds to invest can have divestment campaigns. Only schools with significant budgets can afford sustainability co-ordinators.

Meanwhile, all the advantages, both environmental and academic, of smaller schools go unnoticed if these three categories are our only indicators of sustainable action. Smaller schools’ environmental initiatives, while less visible, tend to have a comparably bigger local and individual impact. Schools of any size can meet your sustainability goals, but in different ways.

See? It’s complex.

So we’ve included a basic selection of indicators to help you narrow down your decision (see the legend). Our advice to you is once you’ve focused on your area of study and used this guide to narrow down your search to a few institutions, do some additional research. Look into what kinds of sustainability student groups exist, how often the students get out into the community, the school’s commitment to experiential education, and the research interests of the professors that will be teaching you.

After you’ve narrowed your search to a few schools based on their programs and sustainability activity, look beyond the campus walls into the community. Do you want to be close to water? A forest? A city centre? Tundra? Canada can offer all of these. Schools will also have opportunities for you to travel and study abroad. If that’s something very important to you, look into the school’s partnered destinations. Schools also partner up with companies, organizations and government bodies to provide co-operative education. Contact the school’s co-op education office to see if there are partnerships that appeal to you.

Never be afraid to contact the admissions office and ask them questions or for a tour. They’ll connect you with a student to take you around the campus. If you’re able, always visit a campus before you decide to apply to it. The “feel” you get when you’re on a university or college campus is an important part of the next few years of your life.

This guide is just the beginning of your post-secondary process. Don’t be dazzled by slick promotional campaigns. Instead, look deeper and think about the kind of community you want to be a part of. What kind of school promotes your values? Where will you get the best kind of education for yourself?

Get to the quick links of the colleges and universities here. Explore and have fun.

The post Think Before You Leap appeared first on A\J.

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” – Socrates

Education and learning are intrinsic parts of the human experience. In our earliest days, learning (and to a lesser degree, formalized education) were more organic efforts. They were task-based and primarily focused on internalizing the lessons from previous generations, which would then allow us as individuals to survive the never-ending threats to our existence.

In the 18th century, the Enlightenment changed the world and how we educated our children and ourselves. From Newtonian physics to Adam Smith’s invisible hand – and from Rousseau’s social contract to Descartes’ rationalism – Western society gained and built a better understanding of the world. And this improved the ways that humans could manipulate the world.

The benefits of these new approaches to learning, thinking, and living, seemed undeniable. The Enlightenment laid the foundation of modern Western intellectual culture and along with that came the freedom, liberty and tolerance that we cherish today. We continue to reap the benefits of the Enlightenment. We believe education is a right, we applaud multiculturalism, and we uphold the rights of individuals above most other things.

But these wonderful characteristics of modern society come at a cost. In this issue, Steve Quilley argues that while education may be a fundamental right, it has also become a system that reinforces the goals of economic growth. Formalized education has, in many ways, come to replicate the machinery of industrialization. In effect, students become inputs in a process that outputs workers who can plug into societal and industrial roles. How can we fan the flame of inspiration while also stoking the engines of societal development?

We want our children to think critically but also to succeed in the workforce. We want science, but we also crave deep meaning in our lives. Environmentalists feel this struggle constantly – we recognize the wonders of our modern world while being dreadfully aware of the biophysical impacts of our lifestyles. This issue explores ways that we can bring the power and beauty of pre-modern thought back into our rationalized modern world. The articles work through this tension and duality of purpose.

Mr. Green Teacher himself, Tim Grant, builds on Quilley. He shows how educators are breaking away from the systems spawned by the Industrial Revolution, to establish new paradigms that will nurture collaborative problem-solving. Our 13th Annual Environmental Education Directory and accompanying “Stories of Excellence” demonstrate education’s leading role in helping the next generation to repair the damage that past generations have caused on this planet.

The fashion section includes such topics as the grassroots Fibreshed movement and corporate stakeholders embracing the circular textile economy. We are honoured to share the art and stories from Kent Monkman (see cover and Quilley) and the Singh Twins (Quilley and fashion). All use art to reclaim a cultural past that was too long ignored and erased. Truths bubble up. Misconceptions are corrected. The past is tied to the present in each painting.

Education and learning – formal or otherwise – will feed positive transformation. Enjoy this issue!

The post Editorial 43.3/4 Education/Lifestyle (Double Issue) appeared first on A\J.

Day 5 of the 2018 Turtle Island Solidarity Journey was spent back at the Pointe-Aux-Chien Tribal Building. We had connected with the community and shared a meal with its members a few days earlier, but this time we returned to nurture the relationship we all share – our relationship with Mother Earth. 
The morning began with getting our hands dirty in the community garden. Before our group prepared the soil to plant corn, Elders Chief Myeengun Henry and Seedkeeper Terrylynn Brant prepared us with a traditional tobacco ceremony. The corn we planted will provide a local, sustainable food source for the community. 
Later in the afternoon, Chairman Verdin took some of us out on his boat into the bayou for some fishing, affording us the opportunity to participate in this customary activity of the Chairman and the people of Pointe-au-Chien. The experience also forced us to witness first-hand the impacts of not nurturing the important relationship between mother earth and people living on Turtle Island. The bayou has been altered at a frenetic pace due to the intrusion of salt water from the Ocean, accelerated by canals cut for pipelines and resulting in drastic land erosion from increasingly stronger hurricanes and storms. 

Chairman Charlie Verdin and Seedkeeper Terrylynn Brant (Photo credit: Stephen Svenson)

The buffer that kept the bayou as it was is no more. Chairman Verdin spoke to our group, including Chief Henry, about how the bayou ecosystem has changed in his lifetime. Some remnants of the cypress and tupelo trees that lined the bayou waters remain; decaying tree trunks protruding from the water; trying to persist through the salt water that now envelopes their roots. Chairman Verdin is nostalgic about the days of better fishing in the bayou; along with more plentiful and diverse wildlife. He misses the time when communities formed right along the water. A couple of previous leaders of the tribe were once buried in one such community, their remains are now moved to higher ground and a cross is left to denote the original site of the burials.

Remnants of a bayou forest destroyed by salt-water intrusion. (Photo Credit: Rob St. Pierre)

Chairman Verdin’s words were a reminder to me that through this journey we are becoming united in our resistance against climate change, and particularly the way in which it is impacting the original inhabitants of Turtle Island, highlighting the need for settlers and Indigenous peoples to nurture the relationship with Mother Earth together against persistent environmental degradation. Nevertheless, we persevere, and are reminded of the importance of the work we do.

“Tant qu’il y aura le feu, nous irons, peu à peu”. – Jean Leloup

(While there is the fire, we go together, little by little.)

Just as important as putting in the work to build upon our relationship with Mother Earth is to commune together while doing so. Such experiences allow for us to conceptualize the significance of our work and learn from each other. We shared in a community feast of crawfish stew, étouffée (a classic Cajun dish) and corn chowder. After dinner, Haudenosaunee Elder and Seedkeeper Terrylynn Brant spoke to the whole group about the importance of eating and harvesting Indigenous plant varieties, and how doing so can lead our charge for sustainability in the face of pervasive problems like climate change and hunger.

As a message of thanks to the Pointe-au-Chien for hosting us, I performed a song in French to play before the members of the community gathered in the evening – Ballade à Toronto by Jean Leloup. I explained that for me, this song carries an important message of appreciating the beauty of nature, especially while traversing Turtle Island’s natural landscape on a road trip. Jean Leloup describes his love for the journey he makes with a love interest from Quebec to Toronto, as well as the importance of paying attention and respecting the natural world around us. As he professes in a spoken mid-song interlude, “le temps passe, et un jour, on est vieux et puis seul, et rien ne reste plus, que la fierté d’avoir aimé correctement, ou la honte et les torments, de ne pas avoir compris à temps”. It is our duty to love the Mother Earth properly, and to fail to do so in time is shameful. 

Rob St. Pierre entertains the gathering at the Pointe-au-Chien Tribal building (Photo Credit: Stephen Svenson)

As an Acadian whose ancestors remained in New France following Le Grand Dérangement in the mid 18^th century, and therefore were not relocated from the original colony to places like Louisiana, I imagine that the people who lived alongside my ancestors in Louisiana did exactly as Jean Leloup describes – they learned to properly love mother earth by living off the land, but in particular, also learning from and eventually uniting with the Chitimacha, Biloxi, and Choctaw when settling in this area. On a personal level, this journey is so important for me because it allows me to feel re-attached to my roots, and in the Acadian tradition, living alongside and in solidarity with Mi’kmaq and other original inhabitants of Turtle Island. 

The Turtle Island Solidarity Journey is an important vehicle for all of us to rediscover our connection with one another, with the land upon which we live, and with ourselves as peoples responsible for nurturing relationships with the land.  

Rob St. Pierre

Robert ‘Pipes’ St. Pierre is a veteran of three trips to New Orleans, having participated in Turtle Island Solidarity Journey 2016 and one other wetland restoration adventure where he subdued and half-devoured an alligator. Rob was specifically recruited for his capacity to drive long distances, his unique planting style, and finally his ability to endure the trip leader’s questionable sense of humour. Rob is a graduate of the Global Studies program at Wilfrid Laurier University and has a Master of Public Policy from the University of Toronto. He works as a policy analyst for Employment and Social Development Canada. In his spare time, Rob likes to play guitar and enjoys providing music entertainment for new friends and allies on the journey.

Thank you for joining us on our journey! You can follow along by liking our facebook page or by following us on twitter @turtleislandsol. You can also contribute to the journey by contributing to our gofundmepage where there are lots of cool perks from Anishinaabe artist Emma Rain Smith and John “Smitty” Smith, Lower Ninth Ward resident and author of Exiled in Paradise All funds will go to unforeseen trip costs, honorariums to the communities we meet, and to the production of visual media. These media will feature notable community organizers and indigenous leaders we meet throughout our journey speaking out on issues of environmental racism, climate change, and colonialism and inspiring us to take action to create a better world.

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the WLU AUS (Arts Undergraduate Society), WLU Indigenous Initiatives and Services and St. Jerome’s University as well as Commons Studio for their generous rate on camera equipment.

The post It’s Time to Unite! appeared first on A\J.

Executive director Moe Garahan tells me the 150-acre agricultural operation forms part of the National Capital Commission’s Greenbelt yet it’s squarely within Ottawa city limits. “We have a 25-year lease on one of the NCC’s farm properties,” she says, and it’s a farm accessible by public transit. “You can take a city bus there: the O-C Transpo number 94.”

Twelve kilometres east of Parliament Hill, the Just Food Farm grows a dazzling mix of organic fruits and vegetables including carrots, brussel sprouts and watermelon.

Executive director Moe Garahan tells me the 150-acre agricultural operation forms part of the National Capital Commission’s Greenbelt yet it’s squarely within Ottawa city limits. “We have a 25-year lease on one of the NCC’s farm properties,” she says, and it’s a farm accessible by public transit. “You can take a city bus there: the O-C Transpo number 94.”

Just Food is intriguing not only for its status as a rural-urban hybrid. It also boasts an unusual electricity source: a 10-kilowatt photovoltaic array launched in October 2017 with the financial assistance of Bullfrog Power and Beau’s Brewery. The PV panels power a cooler and greenhouse — where the group will attempt year-round growing — and a circa-1920s barn that serves as an education centre.

“The whole farm is about education,” Garahan tells me. She says elementary and high school students, along with corporate groups, tour the facility throughout the growing season, learning about agriculture and solar energy’s inner workings. Last year, as part of Canada 150 celebrations, youth from across the country visited the property to witness the solar array’s construction.

As befits its name, the farm is a hub for social action. It donates some of its crop to Gloucester Emergency Food Cupboard, a local charity that provides families in crisis with a four-day food supply. Sadly, people in this situation are often given sub-standard provisions; here they can receive high-quality organic produce. Just Food houses a program called FarmWorks that teaches street-involved youngsters how to grow vegetables and develop other skills that can help them find employment. The farm provides space for Karen refugees who came to Ottawa after surviving war in Burma. In a sensitively written post, the organization’s website says the land offers these people, “who have endured years of displacement, a place of comfort and sense of home, as well as a place to practice and adapt their farming skills.”

The project benefits from solar energy’s affordability. “We expect over time the solar installation will save us money,” Garahan says. “Operational funds are hard to come by, so solar, which is in abundance, helps facilitate all our work.”

George Wright concurs. He grows oats at Castor River Farm, an Ottawa-area operation powered by wind and a three-kilowatt solar installation. “The price of solar panels has come down 10-fold,” he explains. “Renewables are a form of insurance; they carry us through the lows. During bad growing seasons we have no hydro bill.” If one needed another reason to embrace these energy sources, this is it: they can improve the economic security of the folks who grow our food.

W.H. Auden began his great poem, Law, Like Love with the words, “Law, say the gardeners, is the sun.” He meant, perhaps, that all the Earth’s bounty is ultimately attributable to the grand fireball in the sky. At Just Food Farm, with its new solar array, the sun brings forth more than vegetables and fruit. It energizes a powerful experiment in social justice.

The post Powering ethical agriculture with the sun appeared first on A\J.

Alternatives Journal and the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation are hosting a celebration of the possible expansion of the Greenbelt into Waterloo Region and Wellington County. There’s just one problem: earlier this month, Waterloo Regional council voted for revisions to the greenbelt expansion before agreeing to join. In fact, if these revisions aren’t met, regional chair Ken Seiling says the Region is, “quite happy to be left out.” Sounds serious. Let’s take a closer look.

By now, most people in mid-Ontario know about the Greenbelt. Enacted in 2005, “Ontario’s Greenbelt is an area of permanently protected landscape of prime farmland and natural systems, as well as vibrant communities. It surrounds the Golden Horseshoe, and is vital to the quality of life in southern Ontario.”  (Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation) The Greenbelt Plan curbs urban sprawl and protects natural and rural lands from development in the greater Toronto and Hamilton area.

Preserving the rural and natural land within the Greenbelt positively influences so many intersecting aspects of society: recreation, health, air, water, food, transportation, and the economy to name a few. By curbing sprawl, urban centres must focus on doing more with less, and rather than build out, create vibrant cores with walk-able, transit-centric communities.

These priorities match with Waterloo Region’s, so what’s the problem with joining the Greenbelt? Well, let’s go back to 2004 when Ken Seiling, Waterloo Region’s regional chair and Kevin Thomason, a community advocate with Smart Growth Waterloo Region who wears many hats, travelled to Queen’s Park. They asked premier McGuinty to be included under the newly formed provincial Greenbelt legislation. At the time, the province decided to focus on the inner ring of the Greater Toronto Area for Greenbelt designation, and this excluded Waterloo Region. However, at the same time, Waterloo Region was targeted by the province for a population increase of 15 per cent in five years by in the Places to Grow act.

“Waterloo was left with the worst of both worlds,” says Thomason, “we were getting all of the growth, none of the protection.”

Waterloo Region is unique because it is almost entirely dependent on groundwater, and a population increase puts a lot of pressure on that usage. The Region realized stronger protection was needed for their land and water, and that they would have to do it unsupported by the Greenbelt Plan.

Luckily, because the Region of Waterloo depends so much on groundwater, they have a history of prioritizing the environment, and they were up for the challenge.

“We weren’t being included in the provincial greenbelt,” says Thomason, “so we decided to build our own here and in fact, we’ll even do it better than the province’s because we can learn from their mistakes.”

Over the next ten years, the Region created a set of policies to act as their own “home-grown greenbelt.”  Two policies stand out. The Protected Countryside designation and Countryside Line worked as two complimentary policies designed to protect the entire Waterloo moraine and impose strict boundaries on every urban centre in the region from small hamlets to larger cities. These were enacted in the Regional Official Plan in 2009, among other policies meant to protect the land and water. Developers fought the entire Plan in court after court until a settlement was reached in 2015.  

“Thank goodness the region spent millions of dollars defending [the ROP],” says Thomason, “but because of it, we now have this interesting situation coming full circle. Our local protection is so good that it might actually even be better than parts of the Greenbelt…we need to make sure the strongest of either [policies] prevail and that the Greenbelt doesn’t erode or degrade our local protections that we’ve spent millions of dollars in the last 15 years working on.”

This is why Ken Seiling and the regional council voted for revisions. But what kind of revisions are they looking for exactly?

In the Region’s February 28 report sent to the province in response to the Growing the Greenbelt proposal, they are asking for the following:

• Stronger language to give municipalities the option to enforce policy beyond the minimum outlined in the Greenbelt Plan.
• Allowance for the policies with the highest protection to prevail
• Better protection for the groundwater Waterloo Region depends upon
• Revision of the current policy restricting municipalities regarding aggregate extraction
• Commitment from the province to more consultation with municipalities
• Commitment from the province to use the best technical information and municipal land-use planning information
• Allowance for municipalities’ ongoing planning projects to be completed and respected before the final mapping for the greenbelt expansion is completed.

The full report can be read on the Planning and Works committee meeting agenda on pages 39 to 49 here.

How likely is the province to meet the Region’s requests? The provincial minister of municipal affairs Bill Mauro sent a letter to Waterloo Regional Council saying, “If we were to move forward with a Greenbelt expansion, we would work with the Region of Waterloo to ensure that a new Greenbelt boundary does not result in a reduction of existing local protections. That may include potential changes to the Greenbelt Plan if they are needed.”

You can view the whole letter here.

Interpretations of the letter differ. Kevin Thomason is optimistic. He says, “you’re not going to be getting a clearer message, and it’s highly, highly unusual for a minister to send a letter to ever single Councillor saying that I’ve heard your concerns and we’ll work with you on them. We’re very lucky to have exactly what we need to have happening which is the province is offering to work with the region to make sure the right things happen.”

Ken Seiling on the other hand feels the letter was too vague. “I don’t know what that means at this point in time, or where they’re prepared to go. So I really can’t comment because I don’t know what they intend to do.”

While all of Waterloo’s townships and cities have agreed to the Region’s legislation over the past ten years, Thomason feels the missing piece in the Region’s current protection is the province. “This opportunity for Greenbelt expansion is bringing the province to the table and in fact frankly, all of these local protections we developed always anticipated eventual Greenbelt expansion for reinforcement. We need a strong second layer of protection. We need the permanence that only the provincial government can bring.”

Seiling doesn’t feel that way. He feels local legislation is stronger than provincial because citizens are quite active on the local level, while provincial legislation is not conducive to citizen participation, and decisions can be made with little or no citizen input.

Ultimately the best of both protections is what needs to happen in the Region of Waterloo. Both parties have the same goal – to curb urban sprawl and protect our green spaces and water.

While the deadline for this round of citizen feedback on the Growing the Greenbelt proposal has passed, it’s still up to us to keep the momentum on this proposal going.

“The most important thing is that these large-scale, land-use planning decisions only happen once or twice in a generation.” says Thomason. “There’s a lot of money at stake – a lot of developers, a lot of people out there who are speaking with chequebooks and you know wallets and that sort of thing. That’s where we need to make sure that the public has an equally strong voice and is part of the process, and that every citizen is speaking up for the future that they want to see. If not, there’s plenty of others who will speak up for an alternative future.” 

Tell your local MPP you care about the greenbelt, and that implementing it should not undermine current Regional protections.

Follow progress at greenbelt.ca and Ontario.ca/greenbelt

Other Resources:

Ontario’s original Places to Grow document.

Waterloo Region’s Regional Official Plan.

The post The Greenbelt is Growing appeared first on A\J.

Interested in joining our board of directors?

The board of directors of Alternatives Inc., the charity that operates Alternatives Journal (A\J), has empowered me to make this call for candidates interested in joining our board of directors.

A\J is Canada’s oldest and most respected environmental media charity, founded in 1971. We have been publishing the best brand of intelligent and informed environmental journalism, in print and online, to support Canada’s environmental community.

UPDATE: EXTENDED DEADLINE: August 11, 2017

Interested in joining our board of directors?

The board of directors of Alternatives Inc., the charity that operates Alternatives Journal (A\J), has empowered me to make this call for candidates interested in joining our board of directors.

A\J is Canada’s oldest and most respected environmental media charity, founded in 1971. We have been publishing the best brand of intelligent and informed environmental journalism, in print and online, to support Canada’s environmental community.

Alternatives Inc. is looking for volunteers to join our board of directors. We seek people who share our belief in our mission of empowering positive environmental change via expanding the media capacity for our community.

In addition to publishing four (4) quarterly print editions and daily/weekly online content (including online exclusive and special reading series), we collaborate with our academic and community partners to deliver public events, knowledge mobilization opportunities and other public engagement efforts.

The Board’s main responsibilities include supporting the A\J staff in an advisory capacity, fundraising on behalf of A\J, providing legal and financial oversight of the organization, promoting our programs and enhancing our reputation.

Board members are expected to attend monthly board meetings, generally held in Toronto (and via Skype for those who can’t be there in person), and to sit on at least one committee according to their interest and skill set. All board members are expected to participate in fundraising activities.

At this time we are particularly seeking applications from people with experience in the following areas: Fundraising/Philanthropy; Employment law/Human Resources, Media Industry, Event Planning, as well as those with social media and marketing skills.  However, we are always looking for committed, active champions of our programming and encourage those with experience in other areas to apply as well.

Above all, we want our Board to fully reflect the values, hopes and aspirations of Canada’s environmental community in our work to foster a low-carbon economy. We welcome applications from people of colour, those with disabilities, Indigenous Peoples and members of the LGBTQ+ community.

We welcome your resume with a covering letter describing why you are interested in joining the board of directors of Alternatives Inc. There is a special Board meeting scheduled for mid-July to discuss possible Candidates and, ideally, we would like successful candidates to join the Board at that time.

Should we not fill our vacancies by then, we will continue our search and have new members join as they are selected.

Please send your information to:

David McConnachie, Publisher, A\J; david@alternativesjournal.ca.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at 519-578-2327.

The post Alternatives Journal Call for Board of Director Candidates appeared first on A\J.

Pamela Rojas is an artist, a community organizer and civic mobilizer who uses murals as a way to build connections between people and places in her home community of Waterloo Region. Believing that ‘a mural is a piece of art for everyone,’ Rojas has been helping to physically transform urban spaces while empowering individuals since she first moved to Canada in 2005. Read more of Pamela’s story in “Power of Art.”

A\J: What was your inspiration to do murals in the first place?

Pamela Rojas: Murals can have a social impact. It’s not the kind of art that is selective or just for educated people. A mural is a piece of art for everyone. When I first moved to Canada (2005), I remember my first winter was so cold and grey. I wondered, why does the city have to be so grey? Why don’t they paint, why don’t they use colour? I saw that when I lived in Switzerland too. Why don’t they use murals to make the city look more vibrant and more welcoming? We have so much talent that we can cover the whole city in colours. It would be like having an outdoor museum. Why do all museums have to be inside? You have to pay for a ticket, that makes it selective. I’m more interested in the education of the masses. 

Tell me about your greatest influence.

Ximena Ahumada. She is the founder of the first mural collective in Seville, Spain. I was her assistant for six years. She approached the murals from a social background. When she was young and in Chile, she belonged to a very famous mural collective. At that time, the people were oppressed and they didn’t have access to the press, so how could they communicate? Through the murals on the wall or very basic print. When we painted murals together, I heard a lot of that history, and I became very interested in how social work and art can be connected. I could see a lot of potential. When I came to Canada, I started working at Reception House, and I could clearly see all the challenges that a social agency has in the community, trying to address different problems, so I thought muralism and the arts are tools to advocate – friendly, and everyone can participate. You can interact with people you don’t know, and when they are painting something together they are at the same level. They have a brush in their hand and they just have to follow the instructions. 

It’s an equalizer. 

Exactly. When everyone is at the same level you feel accepted and that you belong. I take charge of the design and assigning the colour because I know that the product has to be something beautiful and with harmony. I want the volunteers to see the finished mural and say, “Wow! We did it! We did it together!” So the ownership of the mural does not just belong to the artist, it belongs to all the people who help. When you do it with guidance you are not set to fail. Make it clear and have a result, a nice one, so you can say, “Yeah, I made that.” 

The post The Muralist appeared first on A\J.

Dilbit could be a good name for a goofy dog. Instead it is short for “diluted bitumen,” the serious mix of light petroleum diluent and the oily tarry sandy goop that the hydrocarbon industry wants to ship from Northern Alberta to foreign markets…

Unlike bitumen, dilbit flows in pipelines and several new or expanded dilbit pipelines will be built if the industry gets its way. The proposed pipelines – most notably the Northern Gateway and Transmountain pipelines from Alberta to British Columbia’s Pacific coast, Line 3 across the prairies, and the Energy East pipeline to New Brunswick and the Atlantic – would facilitate big increases in bitumen extraction, transportation, processing and eventual combustion.

The main attraction is jobs and revenues, presuming the price of oil rises. However, bitumen extraction is already an environmental horror. Spilled pipeline dilbit is a clean-up nightmare, and bringing more bitumen to market is difficult to justify in a country committed to doing its part to prevent climate warming beyond 1.5ºC. 

Inevitably, then, proposals for more dilbit pipeline capacity have faced determined opposition.

For much of the past decade, the designated lightning rod for these conflicts has been the beleaguered old National Energy Board (NEB) – an old school regulatory body with a staff of technical experts and a board of appointees sensitive to industry and government concerns. 

Acceptable to whom? For how long? Assuming what circumstances? Relative to what other options?”

Formally, the NEB’s job is to determine whether each major pipeline proposal “is and will be required by the present and future public convenience and necessity.” In practice that has meant judging whether (and under what terms and conditions) each proposed pipeline is acceptable. 

The “acceptability” test is a relic from the days when private sector resource exploitation ventures were a mostly unquestioned Good Thing, and just needed to be checked to ensure the engineering was sound and the results would not offend national policy.  

In those days it was possible to imagine an identifiable line between unacceptable and acceptable. Technical analyses by specialized experts and close relations with government and the regulated industry could reveal whether or not a proposed project met the accepted standard of established practice.

Unfortunately for the NEB, the imagined line between acceptable and unacceptable has faded. Established practice is now widely associated with imposing local sacrifices, disregarding Aboriginal rights and ignoring climate change. The available information is always incomplete, the simplifying assumptions are always debatable, and acceptable is always a matter of choices and preferences. 

Even when acceptability decisions are coated with technical analyses and buttressed by entrenched expectations, they always rest on assumed answers to the big choice questions – acceptable to whom? for how long? assuming what circumstances? judged against what criteria? relative to what other options?

In the dilbit pipeline cases, these questions have been central. Interests and experts have disagreed, often forcefully and fundamentally – not only about the likelihood of particular effects from individual projects, but also about what bigger issues should be on the table, what happens if all the pipelines are approved, what would be a fair distribution of benefits and risks, and how might any dilbit pipeline fit in a viable plan to meet Canadian climate commitments.

The old NEB has doggedly persisted in trying to identify a line between acceptable and unacceptable for the individual projects of an unsustainable agenda. So far, it has succeeded mostly in undermining its own credibility. Its approval of the Northern Gateway proposal met a wall of Aboriginal and public interest opposition, high court rejection and political abandonment. The other proposals may fare no better.

For the dilbit pipelines, the relevant question is not whether this or that old economy project is in some narrow technical or political sense acceptable, but whether such projects will move us to a more promising future. That is a question about options and objectives. It rejects imaginary lines and faces the big choices. 

An approval test based on best options for a viable and desirable future is demanding but realistic. Settling for less is unacceptable.

The post Acceptable appeared first on A\J.