Many people, including me, expected Greta Thunberg to win this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. Instead, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali was deservedly awarded for ending more than 20 years of conflict with neighbouring Eritrea.Greta and the young people worldwide urging adults to care about their future don’t need a Nobel....

The moment, the prospects, the significance This is my second and final column on the federal election at hand. I write this feeling very uncertain about what Canadians want from politics. I have just recently told a friend in a conversation about the election – one of many –  that I think conservatism in Canada is weak. But...

Southern BC has lost all or most of its formerly numerous wild mountain caribou. Populations are crashing in the BC central interior as well. The Western Canada Wilderness Committee points out that they “were once so numerous that an entire region of BC is named after them. The Cariboo in the central interior of BC was given...

A legal grow-op went up in smoke this morning, after a house fire in the 1400 Block of Neilson Street in Trail this morning. Kootenay Boundary Regional Fire Rescue (KBRFR) Cpt. Greg Ferraby said the call came in at 8:37 a.m., and nine Trail and three Warfield firefighters arrived on scene by 8:43 a.m. “Station 374 responded...

Greta Thunberg’s speech to the  UN was transcribed.  Here is the full text.  For the full effect, though, listen to her speech at this link:    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYqtXR8iPlE In response to the question, “What’s your message to world leaders today?” Thunberg responded as follows: Greta Thunberg:   “My message is...

Current and anticipatory grief The reality of the continuing extinction of many so species is profoundly upsetting.  Readers may wonder why old people should care.  For example, I’ll be dead in a few years myself;  it will be up to others to live their lives diminished by the loss of caribou and many other creatures, many...

By John Rapley, for Aeon Two questions: is it good or bad that professional athletes earn 400 times what nurses do, and is string theory a dead end? Each question goes to the heart of its discipline. Yet while you probably answered the first, you’d hold an opinion on the prospects of string theory only if you’ve studied...

Some Elections matter more: this should be one Canadians are about to choose a national, federal government on October 21. It is a more significant choice for our nation than we have faced in many elections, and not because Canada alone is facing some unusual circumstances: the entire human world and the non-human species...

There’s a new online source for people seeking easy-to-understand information on climate change specific to communities throughout the Columbia Basin and Boundary regions. The Columbia Basin Climate Source website—basinclimatesource.ca— was initiated by Columbia Basin Trust and developed by Selkirk College’s Applied Research...

The polar bear has become the poster child for climate change impacts in the Arctic. Sea ice, which the bears depend on for hunting, is melting at an ever-expanding rate. For other species, climate impacts are not as direct. The 2019 State of Canada’s Birds report found aerial insectivores like swifts, swallows and nightjars...