crc blog feed

“We love positive environment stories. But sometimes the gravity of bad news forces us to bear witness."   - The Guardian

A new research project led by Carleton University will allow scientists to measure the emissions from flare stacks, which are used by production sites to burn off unusable natural gas. Flaring releases black carbon and is a major contributor to pollution, but since there was no way of measuring the emissions – until now – we could neither regulate nor work to reduce their impact.

Last year, for the first time, renewable energy accounted for more than half of new power generation worldwide.

Deborah Irvine, Vice President of the Vancouver Foundation, broke down some statistics last week for a student audience in Victoria, BC about the state of charities in Canada.

A fossil fuel-free Scotland is not only technically achievable but could prove a cheaper and safer option than pursuing fossil fuel-based development, according to a new WWF-backed report. The target is separate to the goal of providing 100% of electricity demand from renewables by 2020, which still allows for coal and gas to remain on the grid. While electricity production accounts for around a third of Scotland’s emissions, renewables are already the country’s biggest

The European Union hits energy reduction targets six years early. Several EU directives maligned by critics and industry groups played a key role in reaching the non-binding efficiency target of reducing final energy use 20% by 2020 compared with projected use that year, according to the report published by the EU’s Joint Research Centre. These included laws on energy efficiency, eco-design, buildings performance and fuel economy.

By: Jaime Clifton, Research Curator

In this blog post, Alex Himelfarb, former clerk of the Privy Council Office, supports the Ontario Government in testing the idea of a basic income.

Over at The Guardian, readers have been given a sneak peek at Far & Away, a new book on travel and perspective by Andrew Solomon. Solomon proposes that travel is a necessity in order to counterbalance the narrow-mindedness that can come from only knowing one's own experiences (or one's own language, cultural norms, and versions of war stories).