Related Posts

  • Proposed Darlington overhaul fails to plan for Chernobyl-scale disaster, critics charge

    Nuclear planners are not considering the possibility of a Fukushima-scale accident at Ontario’s Darlington nuclear station, critics told a regulatory hearing Monday.

    The comments came as the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission opened hearings about the mid-life overhaul of the Darlington station, which provides 20 per cent of the province’s power.

    “We would like to see them plan for an accident as severe as happened at Fukushima or Chernobyl,” said Theresa McCleneghan of the Canadian Environmental Law Association. “We’re not satisfied there’s been any serious attention paid to the capability to respond to such an accident.”

    McCleneghan noted that if Ontario Power Generation gets approval for the overhaul, the plant will continue operating until 2055. OPG shouldn’t be allowed to proceed until more extensive emergency measures are in place, she said.

  • First Nations joins fight to restore our upper Great Lakes levels

    MEDIA ALERT -- For Immediate Release                                

    Attention: Great Lakes, Water, Federal, Provincial, Municipal Politics, Environment  

     

  • Levant's ethical oil case takes hits from all sides

    TV host Ezra Levant raised some eyebrows by calling oil from Canada's oilsands "the fair trade coffee of the world's oil industry." Levant, who has become a spokesperson for the so-called "ethical oil" movement and has made a career bolstering the Alberta oilsands, was a keynote speaker Tuesday at Pacific Northwest Economic Region's (PNWER) annual summit in Saskatoon.

    "Out of the top 10 oil reserve countries in the world, we are the only one that is a liberal democracy," Levant told the crowd, which had a large contingent of people working in the oil and gas industry.

    Levant distinguishes oil produced in Canada from so-called conflict oil produced in countries such as Saudi Arabia, which don't have the same environmental standards or human rights records.

    "I'm just saying we should have a moral preference for the ethical stuff," Levant said after the speech.

  • Province adds more protection for river lands

    Local environmental organizations say a decision by Queen's Park to enhance its plan to protect the environment will be a boon for the Credit River.  

    Premier Dalton McGuinty announced today that the Province is expanding its Greenbelt Plan and adding provincially owned lands in Oakville to grow the greenbelt to nearly two million acres of protected land across the Golden Horseshoe.  
    The greenbelt stretches about 325 kilometres from Rice Lake, near Peterborough, to the Niagara River and was created to protect environmentally sensitive lands from urban development and sprawl.

  • Baird & Assoc.: Middle Great Lakes are 50cm lower than trends say

    New information from the internationally respected coastal consulting firm W.F.Baird & Assoc.comes this very disturbing report that Lakes Michigan/Huron/Georgian Bay water levels based on many historic trends should be 50cm higher than they are right now. Baird agrees that climate is a factor but that the rate of erosion in the St Clair River that has lowered lake levels is ongoing and has likely increased very significantly.

  • Water scarcity's effect on feeding a population expected to reach 9bn by 2050

    Leading water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying that the world's population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages.

    Humans derive about 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to drop to just 5% to feed the extra 2 billion people expected to be alive by 2050, according to research by some of the world's leading water scientists.

    "There will not be enough water available on current croplands to produce food for the expected 9 billion population in 2050 if we follow current trends and changes towards diets common in western nations," the report by Malik Falkenmark and colleagues at the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) said.

  • Your chance to get involved: Line 9 Earth Day Canvassing

    http://www.stopline9-toronto.ca/

    As you probably know, a few different groups are coming together to do a fun Day of Canvassing (aka Knock off Line 9) on Saturday April 20th, from 10am-5pm.  There’s already been a strong interest, but in order to make this a success, we need your help!  

  • Action Alert: Say no to more Shell tarsands mining by Oct 1st!

    Say No to Shell: Write a letter to Shell about Jackpine expansion by October 1st

  • Who will eat from radioactive kitchenware?

    OTTAWA – Documents released yesterday indicate that back in May the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) was alerted to a shipment containing radioactive kitchenware (contaminated with Cobalt 60) and it wasn’t until October 5th CNSC ordered Hanin Shipping [1] to remove their radioactive shipment from a dock in Montreal.

    This incident raises a number of very serious questions, including:

  • Burying the Past, Exhuming It, Repeating

    By Jeff Allen

    Canada's history (and present state) as a place of mines and sawmills and boom-bust cycles has left a lot of pock marks across the landscape. Sometimes someone deals with them, sometimes nobody does.

    Marathon, Ontario, has had a string of hazardous materials spilled/leaked/mishandled out of an abandoned sawmill over the last few years, on top of the already dirty history of operation. Said contamination blessed the surrounding area with everyone's favourite friends “Miss Mercury” and “Captain PCB”.

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