UK Set to Scupper Ban on Pesticides Linked to Bee Harm

theguardian

Environment secretary not expected to support proposal despite poll showing almost three-quarters of the UK public wants ban. Details here.

Bumble bees on chives. PLT photo

Record Area of Biotech Crops Used in 2012 - Report

Reuters

U.S. farmers still lead world in planting GMO crops. Details here.

PLT: Unelected agrifood giants like Bayer and Monsanto continue to throw their weight around, dictating the shape of our world food system, while yellow-bellied, elected "lawmakers" sit back and say nothing. They are no better than those who hunker down while the school yard bully beats up on little kids. 

Curbing Food Waste for Human and Environmental Health

World Watch Institute

It is said that the US alone wastes enough food to fill every empty stomach in Africa! Details here. 

PLT: This is sooo outrageous! When will something be done?

Organic salad. PLT photo

Revealed: How the FBI Coordinated the Crackdown on Occupy

The Guardian
New documents prove what was once dismissed as paranoid fantasy: totally integrated corporate-state repression of dissent. Details here.

Is It Time to Put the Brakes on Runaway Coal Development?

The Globe and Mail
The coal industry is booming in British Columbia, with a dozen new mines proposed around the province and the port of Metro Vancouver making expansive plans to become the biggest coal-exporting facility in North America.
But the flurry of activity is raising environmental concerns at both ends of the supply chain, and British Columbians may soon want to put the brakes on what is starting to look like a runaway coal train. Details here.

PLT: "Runaway coal development" is exactly the effect desired by our Harperite government after it passed on a golden opportunity to tighten restrictions, choosing to actually loosen ones it had earlier promised. In so doing, it has shown itself to be the most blatant and shameless anti-science nation on the planet, caring not a whit for the future of our children. In the full knowledge that coal offers the worst of the worst in terms of energy alternatives and the fight against catastrophic climate change, they govern for business interests only. Period, end of story.

Arab Youth Arrested at COP; Canadians Confront Kent

Cdn. Youth Delegation - Climate Conference, Qatar
An hour ago, two members of the Arab Youth Climate Movement were  arrested. They held up a banner in the COP18 conference centre that read, “Qatar, why host, not lead?”. Onlookers erupted in cheers as...Details here.

Canada "Bottoms Out" at International Climate Negotiations

Alternatives Journal - Alana Westwood

Canadians are apologetic people. Yet, navigating the halls of the COP18 climate negotiations as a member of the Canadian Youth Delegation (CYD), the “sorry”s I gave weren’t stereotypical Canuck politeness. Instead, they were apologies of shame for... Details here.                

  

East-Central SK, 2011. PLT photo

Canada Ranked as Worst Performer in the Developed World on Climate Change

Climate Action Network Canada
Canada trailed only by Kazakhstan, Iran and Saudi Arabia in 2013 climate change performance index. Details here.

Western SK. 2011 PLT photo

BP Pleads Guilty, Pays Record $4.5 Billion Over Gulf spill; 3 Employees Charged

Winnipeg Free Press. Details here.



PLT: You don't suppose BP will simply write this off as "the cost of doing business" and carry on as before, do you? Naaaah!

Earth's Defenders Being Murdered at Increasingly Alarming Rate

June 19, 2012 by Common Dreams

Environmentalists across the world being killed at rate of one per week, and growing. Story here

The Home of "Canada's Reindeer" is Being Destroyed. They Need Your Help!

Please donate generously to this Nature Canada cause.

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 PLT; If there were any justice in this world,  it would be the tar sands corporations (and their mindless investors) who are paying the bill to help our caribou. Afer all, who else (apart from our hollow, compliant politicians) is responsible for denuding vast areas of precious boreal forest,  depriving these bautiful, vulnerable animals of critical habitat!

Climate Conference 2011: Canada Says Kyoto Protocol 'Biggest Blunder,' May Withdraw

Tom Zeller Jr. - Huffington Post

Global climate talks got an inauspicious start in Durban, South Africa, on Monday with reports that Canada planned to withdraw fully from the Kyoto Protocol,  Details here.

Public Happy Face on Ottawa's Cuts Smeared by Official's Private Memo

Mike De Souza - Vancouver Sun - Nov. 20-'11

OTTAWA — A senior Environment Canada bureaucrat who publicly defended the federal government’s plans to slash funding and eliminate “redundancy” within the country’s ozone monitoring programs, privately approved a briefing note that concluded there was no duplication in its network, Postmedia News has learned. Read more here.

PLT: It is truly a sad day when a Prime Minister can instil such fear in his public servants that they feel compelled to tell a different story in public than in private, just to keep their jobs! 

Be - Without Water? A Video of the Struggles of Citizens of New Brunswick Against Fracking

The 1% Have a Stranglehold on Politics: New Al Jazeera Documentary Sheds Light on the Koch Brothers (Video)

Ain't This the Truth! (Cartoon)

Exposed - Koch Industries & the Cancer Risk - Video

Eminent Domain Fight Has a Canadian Twist

LESLIE KAUFMAN and DAN FROSCH New York Times Oc 17'11

A Canadian company has been threatening to confiscate private land from South Dakota to the Gulf of Mexico, and is already suing many who have refused to allow the Keystone XL pipeline on their property, even though the controversial project has yet to receive federal approval. Details here.

Bombshell: State Department Outsourced Tar Sands Pipeline Environmental Impact Study to ‘Major’ TransCanada Contractor

By Joe Romm - Climate Progress - Oct 8, 2011

The Game was Rigged: Entire Environmental Impact Statement Should Be Invalidated. Details here.

Is The Kremlin Now In Charge? Harper Government Silencing Canadian Artists And Scientists

07/27/11 - 350 or bust

The Harper Government is sending out a clear message at home and abroad that if your politics are not correct your art shouldn’t be shown, and if your findings are inconvenient your science doesn’t matter. Details here.                                                                                           

 Harper rendering by PLT

PLT: I wrote the following after reading the "comments" section following the newspaper article. 
"The Sun story is excellent. I'd suggest that those who'd like to discredit the paper and its reporters are Harperites who'd rather defend his misguided efforts to stifle science than hear the truth. The "commenter" who actually believes that the journal Science is "activist" would feel right at home with conspiracy theorists everywhere. The only thing the paper missed in this story was Harper's shameful record at muzzling the science of climate change itself, so Canada can prosper in his image as an ugly 'petro state.'"

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Please also read: "Stephen Harper Disgraces Us All, Yet Again."