TGM team members Naomi Jehlicka, LeeAnne MacGregor, Daryn Caister, Dylan Jervis, Chris Berube, Kevin Farmer and Jordan Poppenk join host Peter Stock to discuss the program and why it’s worth supporting. We are also joined by Alternatives Journal Executive Editor Nicola Ross and Wayne Roberts, NOW Magazine columnist and manager of the Toronto Food Policy Council.

In an attempt to appease Canada’s green-minded seafood eaters concerned about eating an endangered species for dinner, Green life reporter Peter Stock dives into a conversation with David Lavigne, marine biologist and professor at the University of Guelph, about the best selling book, Bottom Feeder: how to eat ethically in a world of vanishing seafood.

Responding to a listener request, Danny Leskiw speaks with University of Toronto Dentistry Faculty Dr. David Locker about a concern that drives some people to consume bottled water at home, in spite of the environmental impact: concerns about health impacts of fluoridation in public water supplies. Dr. Locker dispels myths about health risks of fluoridation, and addresses misinterpretations of the current science.

This summer, Ontario’s “Green Energy and Economy Act” (Bill 150) was approved by the Legislative Assembly of Ontario. Since that time, it has received international recognition as a model policy framework in sustainable energy policy. Declaring a bill as law, however, is only the first of many steps to transforming a policy proposal into legislation. To learn about one of the barriers – configuring the proposal into the existing legal framework – Environmental Law correspondent Naomi Jehlicka speaks with lawyer Elliot Smith, an Associate with Osler, Hoskin, and Harcourt LLP, which is involved with implementing the Act.

Kim McKay is co-founder Clean Up the World. In partnership with the United Nations Environmental Programme, Clean Up the World mobilizes 35 million volunteers each year in community-led initiatives to clean up, fix up and conserve their local environment.

McKay, who was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2008 for her environmental work, has co-authored a series of True Green environmental how-to books. The latest is entitled “True Green Home: 100 inspirational ideas for creating a green environment at home.” It is published by The National Geographic Society.

Green Living reporter Peter Stock spoke with McKay from Australia about the new book.

Joanna Dafoe speaks with P.J. Partington, a climate change policy analyst for the Pembina Institute, to discuss Canada’s role in the UN climate change negotiations. Partington deals with climate change policy at the federal and international level. He is a founding member of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition and has previously managed the highly successful Canadian Youth Delegation to the UN climate negotiations.

Ecological Economist Peter Victor joins us to consider how Canada might be able to make room for steady-state economics within a shifting economic context.

We break from our usual format to present a giant of the global environmental movement, British scientist James Lovelock. Lovelock is well known for his scientific work detecting CFC’s and linking these gasses to processes contributing to the ozone hole. This work set in motion global agreements to restrict ozone-depleting gasses and won his group the 1995 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Today, however, Lovelock is one of the few Nobel prize winners who can be described as better known for a different idea – not one that won a Nobel prize. In Lovelock’s case, that idea is “the Gaia Hypothesis”. Conceiving of the entire planet as a enormous superorganism, Lovelock gave birth to a new way of thinking about life on earth. In today’s lecture delivered at the Glenn Gould Studios in Toronto, Lovelock presents Gaia’s struggle for survival in a lecture based on his book, “The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning”. Thanks to Danny Leskiw for recording this lecture.

Bailey's Local Foods

And so, she set up Bailey’s Local Foods, basically a local food buying club, from her home to help bridge the void. And, she was then promptly shut down by local authorities as she had run afoul of the Kitchner Waterloo zoning rules.

Nina Bailey-Dick spoke to Green Life reporter Peter Stock and explained what happened and why she feels zoning rules need to be changed.

Masdar City

This 24 Billion dollar planned community is touted as being the world’s most sustainble – car free, carbon neutral, waste free….

It has also snatched the headquarters for IRENA – the International Renewable Energy Agency – from under the noses of better known renewable leaders like German, Norway and Denmark.

But might there something hypocritical about an island of leading edge sustainability in the middle of a major petroleum producing country, which also has one of the world’s biggest carbon footprints, next door to a Formula One race track?

Jennifer Taylor wondered the same thing and wrote about Masdar City for the “Your Town: Sustainable by Design” issue of Alternatives Journal.