Environment

Last Wednesday during an executive policy committee meeting, the mayor said that he was  open to the idea of replacing the pesticide malathion with permethrin, surmising that the federal government may outlaw malathion in the future.

Meanwhile, Councillor Gord Steeves wants to research a 1982 Clean Environment Commission decision that resulted in buffer zones, as he wonders whether they are too large.

The Winnipeg Free Press reports that LUSH Cosmetics intends to turn its 44 Canadian outlets into campaign centres against the Alberta tar sands. LUSH plans to showcase images of deforestation, open-pit mining, and oil fields in its shop windows, and will hand out leaflets to store customers encouraging them to support the Rainforest Action Network’s campaign to stop tar sands development.

A massive oil slick is spreading off the coast of Louisiana after a huge oil rig explosion last week that left 11 people missing and presumed dead. Oil continues to spill undersea at an estimated rate of 160, 000 litres a day.

Yesterday, FBI agents and law enforcement from multiple agencies raided a well-known activist house in Salt Lake City, Utah in connection with an investigation of the Animal Liberation Front in Iowa.

A report on Infoshop News states that residents of the house witnessed the raid and were able to read the warrant, which authorizes the seizure of any books, pamphlets, computers and other materials tied to “animal enterprise terrorism.”

After the death of a native hunter in Labrador last fall, Quebec's Innu leaders are threatening court action and barricades to disrupt economic development in the region to assert their ancestral hunting rights. Yesterday, Innu from five Quebec communities said that they are willing to block every development project in northern Quebec and Labrador until all of their rights, including the caribou hu

On Saturday, February 13, members of the Katzie First Nation and supporters took part in blocking the Golden Ears Bridge spanning the Frazer River between Pitt Meadows and Langley, British Columbia.

Construction of the bridge desecrated a 3000 year old burial ground. It’s massive pilings in the river disrupt currents, and the ability of local Katzie fishers to fish.

A new study by an ecologist at the University of Manitoba has revealed that very little tall grass prairie, a unique Canadian ecosystem, remains, and that what's left is disappearing faster than ever.

"Do we as a society want to retain this component of our heritage and have tall-grass prairies where we can bring our own children and allow them to pick flowers that are taller than themselves?" said the author of the study, Nicola Koper. "We have to decide as a society what's important for us."

The political parody group the Yes Men are reporting that

The government of Canada has used strong-arm tactics to shut down two parody websites criticizing Canada's poor environmental policy.

The two websites, "enviro-canada.ca" and "ec-gc.ca", are "directly connected to a hoax which misleads people into believing that the Government of Canada will take certain actions in relation to environmental matters," wrote Mike Landreville from Environment Canada.

In climate change news, the UN negotiations in Copenhagen have not gone smoothly for Canada.  The notorious spoof group called the Yes Men posed as Environment Canada and pledged to reverse Canada's climate change policy and commit to significant carbon emission reductions.