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Despite premier's emissions progress, BC nature is under attack. The precautionary principle sensibly says before you mess with the environment, the onus is upon you to show you will do no harm. That's been turned on its head.

Gordon McBean, one of Canada's top climate scientists, says we've bickered long enough about the causes and the culprits of global warming. It's time to roll up our sleeves and cope with the consequences, because the outlook is getting bleaker by the year.

Stephen Harper refuses to show leadership and put hard caps on Canada's global warming emissions -- all so the tar sands can keep growing. No matter how much Canadians clamor to join the global fight against climate change, we are being held hostage by the tar sands.

The U.S. Supreme Court Monday denied Vancouver-based mining giant Teck Cominco's application for the re-hearing of a lawsuit launched by Washington State citizens over pollution in the upper Columbia River. As a result it is possible that Teck Cominco will have to pay millions of dollars to U.S. citizens who claim to have been affected by its pollution. Actually enforcing a cross-border "pay-up" command against Teck Cominco is still a challenge untested. Actually seeing a cleanup of the upper Columbia River? It may be impossible.

The section of the Rocky Mountains that straddles the Canada-U.S. border has long been recognized as a region of outstanding biological diversity, often referred to as the Crown of the Continent ecosystem. But it might be at-risk for development.

The Tyee offers its readers 12 textbook cases of thinking outside the box. All of them come from people trying to make their communities a better place to live. Check back daily until January 1 for a new idea each day.

As co-founder of ForestEthics, Tzeporah Berman has been at the front lines of environmental causes in British Columbia for years. This piece is drawn from her Bali blog, which she updates daily.

The average production and downstream emissions of Alberta synthetic crude add up to around 638 kg of carbon per barrel.

When all the Alberta oil sands have been extracted, upgraded and burned, they will result in the release into the Earth's atmosphere of around 112 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. That is equivalent to all fossil fuel and industrial emissions worldwide combined over a period of more than four years.

Garbage is the product of how we have decided to produce things and run our society. 94 per cent of the inputs, the raw materials and energy that go into a product, never make it into the output, the finished item. In other words, we make way more garbage than we make stuff; it's just "easier" that way. And of course, most of the stuff we make is garbage. But there are other options.

We in Canada, and especially in the west, have a bad case of knowing the right thing to do, and not doing it when it comes to preparing for our new climate reality. There are too few acres of cropland feeding too many mouths. Too many pipes sucking up or spilling into too many rivers. Ecosystems are shattered and overstretched, triggering the sixth major wave of extinctions in our planetary experience. The weather is changing. We need to think hard and act fast.

A new opinion poll suggests Canadians are among the world’s most progressive in their attitudes toward the environment, with 91 per cent saying they would alter their lifestyle and pay more taxes to help counter climate change. But is this reflective of reality?

Maude Barlow, National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians, Canada’s largest public advocacy organization, feels the looming water crisis has barely registered in the public consciousness.

"I guess what I'm hoping is that this is a kind of cri de coeur to get people alarmed enough," she said in an interview about her latest book Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water.

Novelist, poet, editor, professor and the first Poet Laureate of Canada, George Bowering is famous for his words. But he first started working in the woods, and his family works in the forest industry. Here he talks about those forests.

Although the BC government is promoting run-of-river as a clean, green source of power, critics say the speedy development of this industry, coupled with weak wildlife legislation, is destroying the landscape of B.C.'s back country and endangering wildlife there.