Searching for sustainability
The planet is reeling from growth-at-all-costs. Can an eco-disaster be far off? Wayne Ellwood says it’s time to declare a truce with Mother Earth.

How to catch a monkey
A parable about letting go and gaining more.

Natural capitalism
Can the market lead us to an eco-friendly world? Not without a stiff dose of politics, argues Mary Jane Patterson.

Shell game
Stephanie Boyd reports on one oil company’s attempt to polish its image in the Peruvian Amazon.

Stumped!
Sustainable forestry may be an oxymoron. But there’s light in the woods, says Ruth Abramson.

SUSTAINABILITY – THE FACTS

Printing our own money
Jeff Powell reports on Thailand’s first alternative currency – a scheme which has ruffled a few official feathers.

How Earth-friendly are you?
Add up your score on this sustainability audit. And get some tips on how you might improve.

Eat, sleep, buy, die
Economic growth has become a process of cannibalization, according to Jonathan Rowe.

Little feats
Could you live a decent life consuming only what you’d be entitled to in an equal world? We talk to Erica Sherwood and Jim Merkel, who are trying to do just that.

Rhythms of life
Farida Azhar-Hewitt documents seasonal life in northern Pakistan where traditional respect for the limits of local ecosystems is under increasing threat.

Inevitably, when we deal with mega-issues like sustainability there’s a strong temptation to curl up in front of the TV with a stiff drink. But before that happens, bear with me while I talk about something much closer to home.

Garbage – specifically the garbage produced by my hometown. Like modern cities everywhere Toronto is sprawling into irreplaceable farmland and choking on its own waste. We continue to bulldoze most of our refuse into huge landfill sites, space which is fast disappearing. And nearby communities are no longer thrilled to be dumped on.

The solution: send 1.3 million tonnes a year of trash by rail 600 kilometres north where it will be tossed into the Adams Mine, a worked-out, open-pit iron mine near the hardscrabble town of Kirkland Lake, Ontario. By the time you read this, Toronto City Council will have made its’ final decision, one way or the other.

Sure, the isolated mining town could use the 75 jobs that come with the garbage. But toxic poisons leaching into the groundwater seem guaranteed and local residents, including native people, have threatened to block highways and railways to stop the garbage train.

Sustainable? I don’t think so. What clearer illustration could there be of those basic lessons we’re all supposed to have been taught in kindergarten:

Don’t be a bully. And clean up your own mess.

Wayne Ellwood
for the New Internationalist Co-operative
nican@web.net