Doughnut Economics

When I was 6 years old and learning about addition and subtraction, I needed to use my fingers to make those concepts real. My grade 1 teacher didn’t like that. She put my hands on the desk and rapped them with a ruler. Since then I’ve not had a good relationship with numbers. Imagine my … Read more

Fire Weather, The Making of a Beast

Fire Weather, The Making of a Beast by John Vaillant Wild fires are common in Canada’s forests. But what causes an ordinary forest fire to become a fire beast, a monster that defies normal behaviour? Fire Weather, The Making of a Beast by John Vaillant, longlisted for the 2023 UK Baillie Gifford Prize for non-fiction, … Read more

Braiding Sweetgrass

Braiding Sweetgrass, Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer Some years ago I had the great privilege of auditing a Trent U course called Anishnaabemowin on the Land. Camping for a week at Bon Echo Provincial Park, elders and not-so-elders had us look at the world through a different … Read more

Blaze Island

Blaze Island by Catherine Bush Way back in 2001 I read The Ingenuity Gap by Thomas Homer-Dixon, a prof at the University of Toronto. He said, “We are amazingly ingenious, but we may not be ingenious enough to manage our world and prosper within it…We crisscross the sphere in our planes, cars, and ships, subordinating … Read more

The Ministry for the Future

The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson Reviewed by Marilyn Freeman It’s rare that speculative fiction gets a review on our website, but the novel covers so many bases of interest to those recognizing that the Anthropocene has changed climatic systems to the point of trophic catastrophe. This compelling story opens with a … Read more

Climate: A New Story

Climate: A New Story by Charles Eisenstein Reviewed by Marilyn Freeman In most of the world it’s not the skeptics that are the biggest obstacle to climate action. It’s the indifference of the general public and the political class. As long as normal routines continue, people will not be persuaded to take meaningful action. People … Read more