Meander

This summer saw at least two occupations in southern Ontario, one at proposed site of the Hanlon Creek Business Park in Guelph. The other at a proposed garbage dump in Simcoe County called site 41. Both sites have won a temporary development reprieve. I’ve been surprised at how little media coverage has happened about the two occupations, so I hope you’ll take a moment to read a bit more about what’s been happening.

The occupations have both been lead by First Nations groups, and have evolved into partnerships with other community members. In Guelph, citizens opposing community sprawl joined the occupation. In Simcoe County, farmers from surrounding farms supported the native people.

The lands are environmentally sensitive. In Simcoe County, the site contains a tributary of the Speed and then Grand rivers. Leaching chemicals from the dumpsite would flow down into these rivers. In Guelph, the land is home to endangered Jefferson salamanders and a tree that is estimated to be over 500 years old. The tree is probably older than European knowledge of the Americas.

Reading about these lands has got me wondering, what would cause you to occupy land slated for development? Are you categorically against this type of action? Would you do it to protect your drinking water? What about an old growth forest? Or maybe for some other reason?

Rex Weyler has a good post on the current and historic sustainability of cities. He starts with the rather obviously unsustainable Dubai, before moving to a general examination of concentrated populations.

UK oil company Trafigura knowingly dumped toxic wastes in Ivory Coast and covered up the story when 15 people died and many others were hospitalized, the Guardian reports.

There’s a great blog tracking the lead up to the Copenhagen conference on climate change from a Canadian perspective. Written by sustainability activists Rebecca McNeil and Darcy Higgins, it addresses the political and social issues, as well as the urgency of climate change.

Today’s post is about a speech Preston Manning gave to the Empire Club of Toronto on why we need to take action now on climate change.

Back in May I wrote a piece called Why We Need More Churches about how religious communities provide social support and help in organizing for social and environmental justice. Now a former UK chief government scientist is making the same point, specifically with reference to climate change. I hope that religious communities across the world will pick up on his message.