The King’s Green Pad

A few weeks ago I was approached by a canvasser employed by Envision Edmonton and asked if I would like to sign the “Demand the Vote” petition. I did not know much about the issue and the canvasser did not provide much explanation other than that the petition would require “a vote over whether to [...]

There are some very bothersome things about this video news clip about grizzly conservation in Alberta (notwithstanding that I’m pretty sure the second bear shown in the sequence of bear footage in the first few seconds, in the background behind the news anchor, is a black bear, not a grizzly)… http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/ID=1459342171 “If [grizzlies] had been [...]

Last night when my roommate offered to make tuna-melts for supper my response was to quip “No! Eating tuna is cruel! Let’s have dolphin-melts instead.” And I was only half joking. Why is there “dolphin-safe tuna” available in the super-market but not “tuna-safe dolphin”? Two conservation-related reasons are obvious: first, dolphins reproduce relatively slowly and [...]

While all species on earth are inextricably tied to and dependent upon their biophysical environment, the majority of us humans – particularly in the modern and affluent western world – can survive just fine without having to directly acquire most of the biophysical resources that we consume. Our technologies and economic systems allow a very [...]

Well, spring has finally sprung in all its avian glory. Rather than the long-winded diatribe that I usually submit to the Green Pad, I thought I’d just share the list of bird species that I observed in southern Alberta (Frank Lake and Blackie area) over the course of this past weekend. So, in taxonomic order: [...]

Part II: Ethics in the Context of Environmental Change This is a continuation of yesterday’s post, in which I described a few of the major changes in Alberta’s biophysical and cultural environment. Sea levels have risen and fallen, climates and landscapes have changed radically, species have come and gone, overall species diversity has fluctuated, and [...]

The following thoughts regarding environmental change and natural history are meant to get at one fundamental question: is there any basis for an ethical position from the perspective of science? I believe that, as Christians, if we are to take seriously the call to be stewards of God’s creation and to be morally culpable beings [...]

Dr. Van Arragon’s last post (“Changes in the Land”, Feb 28), regarding the environmental history of the colonization of New England, and Jeff Veenstra’s last post (“Easter Island”, Feb 27), regarding Jared Diamond’s book Collapse, both contained warnings about the dangers of excess and unsustainable living. Diamond is also the author of the bestselling and [...]

Reading Dr. Bestman’s most recent Greenpad post rekindled my frustration with biofuels. It pains me that they are so often touted as an environmentally friendly fuel alternative at our local gas stations, like Mohawk and Husky (to pick on two at which I have recently filled up). There are, admittedly, fewer carbon emissions and other [...]

Conventional wisdom suggests that people can only really care for and love things that they are familiar with – things that they know. And it is love that motivates people to act. To begin with, how can you care or be concerned about something if you don’t even know that it exists? For example, if [...]