Climate Change

A Greener Way To Go: Exploring Environmentally Friendly Death Practices

The environmental impacts of death are just as important as life’s environmental impacts, but death is often overlooked in environmental actions. This oversight is typically due to cultural discomfort with death, resulting in a lack of environmental considerations when it comes time to plan for a funeral/burial. So, since death […]

A Being in Nature: How the Mourning Dove’s Call of Inspiration Quieted My Busy Mind

The Power of Taking a Walk Around the Block Over the past week or so, my world has been very high-energy, productive, and busy, busy, busy! I have been maximizing my time at A\J by writing, thinking, creating, editing, and giving as much of myself to my work as I […]

Fighting Fire with Fire

Recently, we came across Wallin Snowdon’s CBC article entitled “Fighting forest fires with fire: Pyrotechnics and flaming Ping-Pong balls” (June 22, 2020). What piqued our interest was that it discusses interesting techniques of fighting wildfires from a unique and counterintuitive prospective – fighting fire, with fire! This news article is […]

The Summer of the Flying Fish

The Summer of the Flying Fish is a Chilean-French coproduction directed by Marcela Said. It premiered at Cannes Film Festival (2013) and won awards at the Cinema en Construction in Toulouse, La Habana Film Festival, and the RiverRun International Film Festival. The story unfolds as Manena, a young teenage girl, […]

Why is it Vital to Conserve Rivers?

Water is necessary for humans, but where does that water come from? The world’s rivers have been degraded by humans so drastically that the water security of approximately 5 billion people and the survival of thousands of aquatic species are at risk. Rivers are home to ~0.5% of our freshwater […]

Are We Failing to See the Forest for the Trees?

A tree is probably the most iconic image of environmentalism. Or better yet, a person planting a tree. We are called tree-huggers by some people, after all. It has long been known that trees are key organisms in our ecosystems – they sequester carbon dioxide (CO2) and release oxygen, they […]

Slow Fashion at the Speed of Light

In my second year of university, I watched a documentary called The True Cost in a lecture and it brought me to tears. This film was all about the social and environmental harms caused by the fast fashion industry, and watching it was both an eye-opening and heart-breaking realization for […]

Fool’s Fuel

Many people believe that growing our fuel will improve energy security and independence, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote rural development. The Biofuel Delusion contends that such perceived advantages are quite simply not the case. Authors Mario Giampietro and Kozo Mayumi dedicate much of this book to energetics – an […]

In Review

The Ptarmigan’s Dilemma: An Exploration into How Life Organizes and Supports Itself, John and Mary Theberge. If I were asked by a visitor from outer space for the best information on the history and ecology of life on Earth, I’d offer this book. Deservedly short-listed for the 2010 Writers’ Trust […]

A Part, Not Apart

You are probably aware that nature is dead. This may be why you are gloomy all the time. We tried so hard to ensure that biodiversity wasn’t lost and climate change didn’t spiral (further) out of control, but only an extreme idealist can maintain the illusion any longer. We have […]