This will mark my 4th review of the pattern of world trade over the past dozen years. Previous efforts described exports among twenty countries in 2013, 2016 and 2020. For the first time, I will use the World Integrated Trade data rather than rely on The Economist magazine’s World in Figures summary. As before, these… (read more)
Most of population ecology focuses on births and deaths, disregarding the immmigration or emigration of individuals into or out of the population. Spatial ecology takes up the topic of movement and explores how the quality of living conditions for a species varies within its territory. The list of conditions within which a species flourishes is… (read more)
To be clear, Canada has no shortage of major projects. Natural Resources Canada lists 500 of them across the country. What is significant about the latest First Ministers’ meeting is that they discussed a list of projects that would make Canada more self-reliant. Here, I will do a scan of the environmental issues and Indigenous… (read more)
Conservation is a political movement to place value on nature itself. The value of the food, fibre and fuel that we collect from natural systems is self-evident. It is less clear why we should continue relying on nature rather than further controlling and cultivating our sources of organic matter. Conservation biology is particularly focused on… (read more)
Party platforms, or manifestos – as they are known in the United Kingdom, may be a thing of the past. The parties made no effort to get their total package of proposals costed and available to the public until the last 9 days of the election. The publication of these platforms and the submission of… (read more)
A key issue in the current federal election is helping Canadians purchase or rent a home. Each party has set out an approach for building more homes and making them more affordable. Whether they can make an appreciable difference in a $270 B industry is another matter. Both the Liberals and the Conservatives have set… (read more)
The context of the current federal election in Canada is a little bizarre. The United States government is trying to extend its sphere of influence across North America and to reshore jobs lost to globalization over the last 80 years. What was supposed to be an election fought over changing a tired and out-of-touch Liberal… (read more)
The nature conservation treaty signed in 2022 called for a halt to biodiversity loss by 2030 and a restoration of some of the natural quality of the past by 2050. Pretty ambitious language! How will we know if we are making progress towards a world where humans share the planet with our fellow species (and… (read more)
Pollution is a matter of life or death. In 2019, 9 million premature deaths were caused by pollution, an impact similar to tobacco products. Much of this was caused by air pollution, particularly by wood smoke in low and middle income countries. More than a million deaths were caused by water pollution. Ecotoxicology has a… (read more)
Ecologists are known as alarmists. Dealing with things that are irrelevant to daily life and likely to have only long term consequences, we naturally deal in doomsday scenarios to get attention. This is tiresome, if not downright misleading. My last review of what ecology can tell us was 12 years ago. I propose to revisit… (read more)
