Mining

Graphic of oil barrels and a train going downhill - A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

Mégantic, Fracking & Money

EARLY SPECULATION on what caused the train disaster in Lac-Mégantic, Québec, in July seems to have settled on the role of the train’s engineer and the railway company’s poor safety record – and penchant for cutting corners. Some attention was also paid to the out-dated technology used for dangerous cargo, […]

Line9_RougePark_AdamScott_EnvDefence

Blocking the Arteries of the Tar Sands

There’s been a tremendous amount of media coverage surrounding Enbridge’s Northern Gateway pipeline proposal, which spawned an incredible resistance movement led primarily by indigenous nations of British Columbia. Events such as Defend Our Coast attracted thousands of protestors, while the Yinka Dene Alliance made national headlines with their anti-pipeline tour across […]

Prosperity mine Tŝilhqot’in First Nation drummers A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

No Means No

IN THE COLDEST NIGHT of the season, well below freezing, and the tawny grasses are stiff with frost. Since dawn we’ve been trekking through a shadowy forest of pine and fir, eventually reaching a wide, arched meadow with views extending to the south and west. Ts’yl?os [pronounced, Ts-eye´-los], sacred mountain […]

Embodied Energy

WASTE DISCUSSIONS have traditionally focused on the back-end management of garbage: the significant economic and environmental implications of finding safe disposal sites, for example.  But the obvious often escapes us – that garbage is made up of basic materials (metal, wood, plastic, glass, etc.) that require energy to obtain, process and […]