SUSTAINABLE LIFE

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 […]

Rambunctious Garden book review A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World

What should conservation look like in the Anthropocene age? Under the premise that humans have transformed nearly the whole planet in some way, shape or form, Emma Marris challenges readers to reconsider their definitions of conservation, and proposes a paradigm shift in how humans define, perceive and understand nature to […]

The Transition Companion book review A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

The Transition Companion

Being an environmentalist isn’t for sissies – the statistics are depressing and they turn people off, and the problems often seem to have no end. Anyone feeling this way should read The Transition Companion, which mixes knowledge, action and inspiration to address a range of areas that are central to […]

Climate, Culture, Change book review A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

Climate, Culture, Change: Inuit and Western Dialogues with a Warming North

There is no denying the unique vantage point of Timothy Leduc’s new book, Climate, Culture, Change: Inuit and Western Dialogues with a Warming North. Your first clue is right there in the subtitle: that’s dialogues with, not about, Canada’s northern ecology.

Raising Elijah book review A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

Raising Elijah

We live in an age of monumental folly when it comes to the environment.  The folly is running along two different and equally worrisome tracks. First, there is the destruction of the natural world, our outer environment. It is typified by the looming failure to deal with global warming, a […]

Urban Homesteading book review A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

Urban Homesteading

Concerns for our unsustainable, fossil-fuelled lifestyle underlie Rachel Kaplan and K. Ruby Blume’s book, Urban Homesteading: Heirloom Skills for Sustainable Living. The book provides a colourful overview of what each of us can do to build a more self-sufficient future. It explains the principles of homesteading and permaculture, and provides a […]

Dodging the Toxic Bullet book review A\J AlternativesJournal.ca

Dodging the Toxic Bullet: How to Protect Yourself from Everyday Environmental Hazards

David R. Boyd is one of Canada’s leading environmental lawyers, an expert in the field of human health and the environment, and a Trudeau scholar at the University of British Columbia. Boyd draws on this expertise in writing Dodging the Toxic Bullet: How to Protect Yourself from Everyday Environmental Hazards, in […]

Food Security and Global Environmental Change book review AlternativesJournal.ca

Food Security and Global Environmental Change

Irrigation accounts for 70 per cent of the world’s fresh water use, so it has been evident for many years that food security is considered a greater issue, if less immediately critical, than drinking water. Add climate change into the mix, and what was already a difficult global problem becomes […]