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Industrial Evolution book review A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

Industrial Evolution: Local Solutions for a Low Carbon Future

“At some point, someone in America is going to have to make something.” These obvious yet perhaps revolutionary words come from Industrial Evolution, a wonderful new book by Lyle Estill, an entrepreneur, author, and, dare I say, environmental industrialist. The book’s premise reflects something that we all know but generally […]

Creative Community Organizing book review A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

The Agitator’s Library

With the worldwide explosion of the Occupy movement, and related Indignado protests in Europe, renewed attention has focused on the possibility of a new high water mark in the push for social change. Each of these four books approaches issues of social change from different perspectives, all drawing from a […]

Paths to a Green World book review A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

Paths to a Green World: The Political Economy of the Global Environment

Professors Clapp and Dauvergne are among the few academics that recognize that the best approach to both analysis of and advocacy for environmental issues lies with political economy, or public policy designed by the application of economic concepts. Their book is a demonstration of that thesis, which they undertake by […]

Carrot City book review A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

Carrot City: Creating Places for Urban Agriculture

Why is our food grown so far away from where we live? Why do we classify farms as rural and cities as urban? Carrot City dismantles the social constructs between these two halves of the same whole, and others: yards and gardens, industrial and agricultural practices, organic and conventional, producers […]

The Urban Food Revolution book review A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

The Urban Food Revolution

A great resource for understanding the possibilities of urban agriculture and international food security, Ladner situates food at the centre of many contemporary issues such as oil dependency, obesity, climate change and the loss of farmland. His argument is that by finding solutions to urban food issues, many of the […]

Canadian flag, snowy mountains. A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

The Myths That Make Us

When I was asked to compare nature literature in Canada and the United States, particularly in the West, I quickly went for my bookshelves – only to discover that the lion’s share of my library was still far away, sequestered, like a lost collection of ancient Middle Eastern scrolls in […]

Photo: Jenny Chen \ canopyplanet.org Nicole Rycroft A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

Spinning Straw into Gold

RECENTLY LAUDED by the CBC as one of Anna Maria Tremonti’s “Game Changers,” Nicole Rycroft has been on an impassioned journey. Originally from Australia, this stalwart activist for environmental rights has gone from practising direct-action in blockades to sharing boardrooms with CEOs from some of Canada’s largest paper-consuming businesses.