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This is the first time I have 'heard' a minister publicly commit to a carbon neutral economy. The Ministers of Energy for Ontario and Quebec just announced bold new steps for energy. The Quebec Minister during the announcement stated, "“There is genuinely, on our part, the intention to really make a transition to a carbon free economy and it is a good thing to see that we are being supported by the federal government,” Arcand said.

Check out this video; a first person tour of a building site in Ethiopia where a new technology, which uses discarded straw to make safe, effective and strong building material, to build new homes.

Finland’s plan  to implement a basic income supplement to a sample of 100,000 people of employment age (17-65) is gaining international attention. The project objective is to give people more autonomy over their finances, and observe if people are more inclined to make different decisions if they are given more choices in their lives.

In the last week, two papers have been published, one about the West Antarctic ice sheet and the other about Greenland ice sheets, each highlighting the same concern: that conventional estimates about rates of future melting are probably much too low and that, instead, it is plausible the world will experience sea level rise this century of one to several meters should we fail to drastically reign-in emissions of greenhouse gases. Click on the links below for further information. (From the Canadian Association of Geographers newswire).

The debate over whether to ban plastic bags, continue to charge for them, or to simply let retailers decide, rages on.

British Columbia led a first round of consultations on their next steps on climate change mitigation and adaptation, called the Climate Leadership Plan. With over a thousand submissions received the second round of consultations has been extended to April 8th, 2016. If you are interested in the submissions to date, QUEST BC has compiled them here.

The Rockefeller family made their fortune, with many others,  in the burgeoning oil industry of the 19^th century, and profited immensely from their investment until recently. In 2014, the heirs to the fortune announced plans to divest from fossil fuel over concerns about climate change. At the time, they called it their “moral duty”.

March 22^nd was the United Nation’s World Water Day, and in keeping with that theme, I wanted to share this moving series of photographs by Mustafah Abdulaziz, an American photographer who has spent the last few years travelling the world capturing how different people interact with our most precious resource.

Basic income has been getting a lot of media attention lately, largely due to the Ontario liberal government’s plan to include a pilot project in their latest budget. Basic income action groups are happening on local and regional levels, and more and more, people are beginning to demand a better solution for social assistance for those in transition than existing programs provide.

The Liberal government tabled their first budget today, and the numbers are very promising for sunnier days. While they delivered on most of their election promises to boost development of the green economy, it was the fact that one third of the 5 billion dollars allocated to infrastructure will be earmarked for green projects that stood out. The budget states that 2.9 billion will go to climate change initiatives, including policies to reduce emissions in the transportation and energy sectors and a price on carbon.