Canada as bad example

Australia is in the midst of an election where climate change is one of the biggest issues. Climate change is hitting Australia hard now. Guess what country embodies the fears of many political observers?

One of Connor’s biggest fears is that the country emerges from all this political upheaval looking something like Canada has under the anti-environmental government of Conservative PM Stephen Harper.

“I look at Canada as a similar country, and it is my nightmare,” Connor said. “Australia can easily become an international pariah, we are very good at derailing international negotiations as an effective middle power and vicious defender of self interest. Some of the Coalition have been to Canada and seen how they get away with walking away from Kyoto and exploiting the tar sands.

“The transition away from fossil fuels is a very hard one culturally, socially and economically for Australia to make,” Connor continued. “We are on the knife edge of walking backwards or moving forwards in sensible way.”

Canada, nightmare.

Upcoming book from Dean Bavington

Dean Bavington is an assistant professor and Canada Research Chair in Environmental History at Nipissing University. I expect his first book, from University of British Columbia Press in May, to have a big impact on resource debates.

Here's the publisher's blurb:

Managed Annihilation: An Unnatural History of the Newfoundland Cod Collapse
Dean L.Y. Bavington

The Newfoundland and Labrador cod fishery was once the most successful commercial ground fishery in the world. When it collapsed in 1992, fishermen, scholars, and scientists pointed to failures in management such as uncontrolled harvesting as likely culprits. Managed Annihilation makes the case that the idea of natural resource management itself was the problem. The collapse occurred when the fisheries were state managed and still, nearly two decades later, there is no recovery in sight. Although the collapse raised doubts among policy-makers about their ability to understand, predict, and control nature, their ultimate goal of control through management has not wavered – it has simply been transferred from wild fish to fishermen and farmed cod.

Unlike other efforts to make sense of the tragedy of the commons of the northern cod fishery and its halting recovery, Bavington calls into question the very premise of management and managerial ecology and offers a critical explanation that seeks to uncover alternatives obscured by this dominant way of relating to nature.
– Bonnie McCay, Department of Human Ecology, Rutgers University

Will the Maldives disappear?

Yesterday in the Islamic Civilization course I mentioned the Maldive Islands in connection with the travels of Ibn Battuta. Today I discover that there is an AFP video report at the Globe and Mail website, on the effects of climate change and rising sea level on a country that is not much more than a meter above the waves now.

Today! James Murton speaks today on BC Environmental History, 6 pm, Weaver Auditorium

Dr. James Murton speaks a 6 pm today in the Weaver Auditorium as part of the NipissingYou speaker series. He describes the subject briefly:

The talk considers the draining of Sumas Lake, BC in the 1920s by the
BC government, with the agreement of local landowners. James Scott
argues that when state-directed projects lead to social and
environmental problems it is because the state understands the
environment (and society) in an overly simplified way. I argue that
the landowners’ support of the project, despite its cost and their
meager gains, suggests that the problems of the project lay less in
the limitations of the state than in a widely held cultural discourse
of a progressive countryside and an orderly nature.

The talk is derived from material that has just been published in the
journal Environmental History.

See also: http://www.nipissingyou.ca/speaker-series

Canada: worst country in the world

High latitude kind of person? See this report on Vitamin D deficiency and cancer.