Read the whole piece here: http://www.pinecone.on.ca/MAGAZINE/stories/the-well-groomed-trail.html
Category: environment
Dec 18 2020
Why the fuck are ATVs, jetskis, snowmobiles still legal?
“By 2050 at the latest, and ideally before 2040, we must have stopped emitting more greenhouse gases [typically caused by the burning of fossil fuels] into the atmosphere than Earth can naturally absorb through its ecosystems (a balance known as net-zero emissions or carbon neutrality). In order to get to this scientifically established goal, our …
Nov 08 2020
Hunting – simply unjustified
It’s hunting season again — moose for a week, then deer for two weeks — and I have yet to hear an acceptable justification. The animals are having enough trouble surviving because of what we’ve done, and what we’re still doing, to the forests. And now you want to just go out and kill them. …
Sep 29 2019
Business, Responsibility, and the Environment
The following is the introduction to Chapter 10, Business and the Environment, of my business ethics text, Ethical Issues in Business 2e, Peg Tittle (Broadview Press, 2016). I post it here, motivated by the recent astounding meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, and the reports that the Alaska glaciers are melting 100 times faster than …
Aug 10 2018
Noise Trespass
We need a noise trespass law. At the very least, the concept of noise trespass should be as familiar among the general population as physical trespass. Why is going onto someone’s private property without permission (physical trespass) considered a wrong? Because doing so is intrusive (presuming a right to privacy) and potentially damaging. The same …
Jul 10 2018
Blind to Natural Beauty
Living in a world in which most people are blind to natural beauty is so painful. What little beauty there is left so often gets destroyed, irrevocably, without a thought. After polite requests and rational explanations, I simply beg, Please don’t, but they just smile at me, with incomprehension, perhaps amused by my apparently baseless …
Jul 01 2018
Life as We Know It
So I noticed this morning the birds are gone. They used to wake me up every morning around five o’clock and since I’d just gone to bed at two or three, I’d roll over, put in my earplugs, and go back to sleep. And I just realized that I haven’t had to do this for…must …
Jun 10 2018
Private Property and Visual Intrusion
There should be regulations about what people can put on their private property that will be in view of their neighbours. Even more than in public spaces, visual material on private property is not easily avoided. If you put a swastika or a pornographic image on your garage door, and that door is right across …
Apr 02 2018
New and Improved
‘New and improved’ is not just a bit of harmless puffery; it’s a two-party addiction. Stupid consumers must have and stupid companies must produce – new and improved stuff. And it hurts third parties. Such as the animals who are used to test a product every time it changes, every time it becomes new and …
Jan 10 2018
On Power Outages in the Middle of Nowhere
I live in a cabin on a lake in the forest. You’d think that whenever the power goes out, there would be silence. Lovely silence. And lovely dark. And there is. For all of thirty seconds. Then everyone’s backup generator goes on. And for the next five, ten, twenty, or forty-eight hours, I hear engine …
fiction
