environment

There's a good opinion piece in The Tyee by Michael McGonigle, in which he argues that Copenhagen must fail "if we are to win the fight against global warming".

Looks like he might get his wish, although there's still a chance that his worst fear might be realised: a weak climate change agreement that acts like a major obstacle to change. I haven't heard that many advocates making the connection between climate change and the general ill health of the environment, although it's pretty plain to see.

I can't say I'm a fan of taxidermy. The whole idea of killing an animal that was happy bounding about in the hills or stalking prey in the wild, gutting it, stuffing it, and displaying it as a trophy or for some other form of personal vanity seems macabre and just lacking in taste.

They expected 8.7 million sockeye salmon to return to the Fraser River this summer. Only 600,000 turned up. Only 7% of what was expected. It's the third year of low returns.

What's happened to all the salmon?

The recession may have slowed global consumption down a bit, but we're still consuming our planet's finite resources faster than it can replenish them, according to the Global Footprint Network.

Friday was an ignominious milestone: Earth entered ecological debt.

The 16-day Vancouver International Film Festival gets underway on 1st October. If previous years are anything to go by, you can expect a programme bursting at the seams with world cinema, documentary, music and arthouse work from across the globe. In particular, with the Earth Summit in Copenhagen coming in December, expect festival artistic director Alan Franey to field a strand of hard-hitting environmental documentaries when the full VIFF programme goes live on 12th September.

Dororthy Woodend, resident movie critic at The Tyee, is someone whose opinion I value, so it was interesting to see she really didn't like Earth Days, unlike me.

A preview of the closing film, Earth Days, at the Projecting Change Film Festival, Vancouver.

I like the idea from a geek point of view of Vote For the Environment, which has been reportedly getting tons of hits lately. But this doesn't make sense for the party with the strongest environmental policies - the Green party - who really need to attract as many votes as possible even if they don't win any seats.