Not too long ago I invited you to think about Greenland, our second largest neighbour. Now I’d like to invite you back to look at it, because a very — very — large piece of its ice cover is about to fall into Nares Strait opposite Ellesmere Island. How large is very large? The piece of ice in question is the tongue of the Peterman Glacier, and the amount destined for a dunking in the next few weeks is something like 5 billion tonnes in weight and an area the size of Manhattan, according to a report in the New . . . [more]

I’m a big believer in the idea of a solar panel on every rooftop. It just makes sense to me. I would also like to experience an electric car traffic jam, and to have the power of the ocean used to light my home. Some may say I live in a dream world. Maybe now I do, but our world is changing—and in British Columbia my dream has a chance to become reality, thanks to the provincial government’s commitment to renewable energy. 

Premier Gordon Campbell proclaimed on April 23, 2009 that “We are going to be the alternative energy . . . [more]

Liu Guijin, China’s special envoy to Darfur, is currently in Doha meeting with representatives from Britain, France, Russia, United States and the European Union in a 5-day conference on how to deal with the situation in western Sudan.

U.N. backed negotiations between the rebels and the government are also continuing in Doha, and the rebels have released government prisoners in a gesture of good faith. Meanwhile, the government is making advances in Darfur, capturing several towns.

But the key to these recent gains are that the main rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), indicated that they withdrew to . . . [more]

On Thursday, Canada joined the EU, Brazil and Chile in demanding the withdrawal of tax credits in the U.S. for black liquor.

The credits are estimated at $4-8 billion, passed in 2007, and intended for energy alternatives in paper mills and cogeneration facilities. Paper manufacturers have started mixing F-T diesel with a kraft process byproduct known as black liquor to meet the definition of the tax credit, which Canada claims is hurting Canadian jobs.

Although President Obama wants to terminate the rebate on Oct. 1, Canada and the other countries are threatening action through the World Trade Organization (WTO).

In . . . [more]

What Matters is an outstanding new website from McKinsey & Company. From the site:

We began last summer by asking researchers, academics, journalists, policy makers and executives to address ten big questions, whose answers will shape our collective future. In each case, we asked our essayists to take a long view and tackle tomorrow’s trends rather than today’s headlines.

We published those essays in a print collection, also titled What Matters. But our goal was always to translate that vision to the Web, to create a place where we could continue to frame the important questions and gather a

As reported on the front page of today’s Ottawa Citizen, the federal government has launched its own internal version of Wikipedia to which all federal public servants will be able to contribute:

“At the annual Government in Technology (GTEC) conference, taking place at the Westin Hotel in downtown Ottawa, federal officials took the wraps off the government’s internal version of the popular online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, which it calls GCpedia.”

“The service will allow federal employees to post, comment and edit articles placed on GCpedia by their peers (…) ”

“For example, information about climate change policies could be posted

A jury in the UK has decided that the threat of global warming justifies breaking the law.

Jurors accepted defence arguments that the six had a “lawful excuse” to damage property at Kingsnorth power station in Kent to prevent even greater damage caused by climate change. The defence of “lawful excuse” under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 allows damage to be caused to property to prevent even greater damage – such as breaking down the door of a burning house to tackle a fire.

This interesting tibit came across my screen from Russ Brown’s post on the University of . . . [more]

This is the report that the federal government would probably prefer you didn’t find:

A Climate Change Plan for the Purposes of the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act 2007.

Under the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act 2007, the government was required to release a plan for climate change by Tuesday, August 21, 2007, according to a report from the CBC. Later that week, news sources said that the report had been released, but where? No news release on the main Canadian government website. No news release on the Environment Canada website. And surprisingly nothing on the Environment Canada climate . . . [more]

It took a bit of digging, but I have found the letter released which I referred to in yesterday’s post.

See this site: Canada’s Boreal Forest, hosted on the Boreal Songbird Initiative website. The letter itself is a 37 page PDF in English, and French. The letter is 1 1/2 pages in length, with 2 1/2 pages of footnotes and 33 pages for the over 1,500 signatures.

It was released yesterday simultaneously in Ottawa and Seattle by:

• Dr. David Schindler, Professor of Biology, University of Alberta
• Dr. Terry Root, Stanford University Professor and author of multiple

The Globe and Mail reports that a group of 1,500 scientists from around the world will be releasing a letter today urging Canada to better protect our forests.

According to The Globe and Mail article Scientists plead for protection of forests by Bill Curry:

The scientists’ letter points out that forests absorb and store carbon dioxide, playing a key role in the fight against climate change. Global warming concerns are based on predictions that human-made emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide are trapping heat in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The boreal forest, a green band primarily made up

A quote I always use when I’m teaching statutory research is, “Statutes are not cuddly, and no one reads them for fun.”[1] The legal profession relies primarily on the written word, and those words typically aren’t light bedtime reading. Legal research, when compared to other mandatory text-dense courses, can offer a reprieve. As a practical course it is often rooted in processes that benefit from visual aids.

This post will provide an overview of some visual aids for teaching legal research that I’ve developed over the past few years. I share these based on positive student feedback and with . . . [more]

When the distinguished Canadian jurist, Kimberly Prost, began her term as a judge of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2017, she could not have imagined what happened on 20 August 2025. That day, the United States imposed sanctions on her, putting her on a list alongside those implicated in terrorism and organized crime.

Judge Prost is one of eight ICC judges sanctioned by the US during 2025, along with the ICC prosecutor and two deputy prosecutors. They are all being penalised – without any due process – for performing their professional duties as mandated by the Rome . . . [more]