Andrew Knox will talk about Transition Towns.  Andrew is an Environmental Engineering PhD candidate.  He’s just back from Devon County, the birthplace of the Transition movement.

Transition Towns and Toronto:
From Oil Dependency to Urban Resilience
a presentation by Andrew Knox
Withrow Park, near the clubhouse
Sunday, 2009 September 20, 2 pm     Read more »

The stresses we put on the planet are a product of individual demands on resources multiplied by the number of us there are.  Ecologists are well aware of this and used to discuss it when I was a child.  One of the reasons these concerns were dropped politically is because population control can be used as an excuse for a lot of nasty policy — racist immigration reforms, draconian meddling in personal fertility and tax structures that punish children who are in no way to blame for being alive.

Still, plenty of sensible voices lament silencing of the issue, which is serious.  And many of these have been unhappy about the Green Party’s refusal to address this issue.  I’ve heard this concern expressed at the door at least four times while canvassing – and I’ve been proud to say that at the last Green Party of Canada AGM, we adopted a sensible population policy that recognizes the problem, yet proposes to address it in ways that are non-intrusive and which enable rather than punish the most disadvantaged people on the planet.     Read more »

While canvassing today, I met a nice man who recommended this site and this movie to me.  I just watched it.  It sort of languishes lovingly over primarily aerial images of tremendous beauty, both natural and man-made, while soaring music plays in the background and frightening assessments are made about our climate, our energy sources, and our ability to feed and water humanity.  It ends with a worried but uplifting message of hope.  It’s well worth the hour and a half.

Explaining my introductory postcard: “Fiscally responsible and socially progressive”     Read more »

Explaining my introductory postcard: “Remove subsidies propping up dying industries and tar sands, and invest the savings in a local, low-energy economy.”     Read more »