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Public Private Partnerships: Understanding the Challenge
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Through the Green Glass: Climate Change Tools for Education Leaders is the third volume in the Columbia Institute's Going for Green Series. Read more...
Healthy community decisions consider our physical environment and social fabric, as well as the economy. We strengthen Canadian communities by sharing best practices, providing tools for locally elected leaders and policy analysis.
Advocates of democratic electoral reform are really out of step. Ideas like proportional representation and advertising spending limits are so retro, so 2004.
The fashionable electoral reform idea this year is to give corporations a real say. It’s time for individual citizens to share their electoral democracy with corporations to give meaning to those old legal rulings that said corporations are people too.
This report reviews the scientific and technical literature on climate change and biodiversity in British Columbia. It examines the scientific rationale behind the need for conserving natural ecosystems as a critical component of a climate action plan in four key areas: sequestering carbon, avoiding emissions, managing resilience and maximizing stocks and flows of ecosystem services.
Findings follow report on growing inequalities. Richest teenagers much more likely to do degree
Teenagers from the poorest homes in England are 50% more likely to go to university than they were 15 years ago, according to a study that will be welcomed by the government after other recent reports found that Britain had become a more unequal nation.
The government-commissioned Hills report, published yesterday, showed inequality is greater than it was in 1980.
The New Westminster Board of Education has voted unanimously to end the use of bottled water in school facilities and promote public water through educational material.
The motion, brought forward by trustee Lori Watt, directs staff to stop providing bottled water at events hosted by School District 40, phase out contracts for bottled water companies, and report on the status of water fountains in school buildings.
B.C. could lose $450 million a year, critics warn
British Columbia's biggest industries are challenging the provincial government to prove that its electricity export scheme won't turn into a major money loser.
In a submission to the government's Green Energy Advisory Task Force, the industrial group calculates that the export plans will cost B.C. taxpayers $450 million a year in money-losing power sales transactions.
"The board will develop a budget for the coming year that retains quality education for our students," trustee Bruce Mack is quoted as saying. "We recognize that with the current funding projections that this may mean a deficit budget."
Although it is a small change, critics seized on the new plan as less ambitious than what Harper government previously promised. And they argue there’s still no clear understanding of how the government will reach any greenhouse gas reduction target.
A coalition of environmental groups is calling on the B.C. government to conserve 50 per cent of the province's land base to fight climate change.
Seven B.C.-based groups, including the David Suzuki Foundation, ForestEthics and West Coast Environmental Law Society, are preparing to release a report Thursday that concludes a 50-per-cent conservation target gives plants and animals the opportunity to survive and adapt to the ravages of climate change.
Pivot Legal wants city to let it provide 500 tents to people sleeping on Vancouver's streets. Picture homeless people camped on downtown sidewalks. Big yawns inside bright red tents as the sun rises on another Olympics day. Early next month, Pivot Legal Society hopes to ask city council's permission to start handing out 500 collapsible shelters to Vancouver's most needy. Pivot's rights activists want to confront a city enthralled by Olympic jubilation with the reality of local poverty. And test the limits of constitutional law.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVANr9S4m1c
Youth environmentalist and filmmaker Slater Jewell-Kemker speaks out at the Anti-Prorogation Rally at Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada on January 23rd.
