The Environment
RENÉ JOHNSTON/TORONTO STAR
Coffee cups get recycling reprieve
John Spears  
Toronto coffee shops will get a second chance to come up with a plan for curbing the flood of throwaway paper cups – a million a day – that flow into the city's garbage bins.
The low-carbon diet
Mitch Potter  
How Sweden and Denmark kicked a nasty fossil fuel habit (using taxes) and got rich in the process. Warning, Canada: Diet may not be effective for all political body types.
Northern forests at risk
Moira Welsh  
The old-growth forests of northern Ontario's Temagami region may fall victim to widespread clear-cutting if an Ontario government plan passes unchecked, say outraged environmental and tourism groups.
Living green
From cleaning supplies and appliances to getting rid of your old junk, learn how to colour your life a darker shade of green.
 
Guide to going green
Sick of being paralyzed by the environmental problems facing us? Here is a list of organizations around the GTA that are working in different ways to clean up the planet – from preserving ...
 
Earth Hour
Full coverage of this critical environmental milestone, including video reports, Lucas Oleniuk's Industrial Devolution film and related essays by Canadian writers.
New scrap-tire plan to get rolling
Kerry Gillespie  
Most Ontario motorists pay a fee of a few dollars to get rid of their old tires when they buy new ones. But since there's no provincial recycling program, much of that money simply stays in the pockets of retailers.

Global warming and psycho bears
Lynda Hurst  
Knut was the perfect mascot for the Green moment, splashed on the cover of Vanity Fair. Now? He's a quivering, angry mess. A cautionary tale of animal celebrity.

Northern oil riches raise fears
Linda Diebel  
A report assessing for the first time the magnitude of reserves of oil and natural gas north of the Arctic Circle is raising concerns among Canadian environmentalists.

Sparking a fish comeback
Emily Mathieu  
The electrical current coursing through the water almost completely immobilized the little silver fish. Now, scooped up out of the water, it lolls on its side in the white plastic tub.

Climate change rift immediately apparent
Sean Gordon  
Despite talk of working together, the annual premiers' conference opened with rival camps in the climate change debate digging in their heels.

Great Lakes invasives hurt economy: Report
A scientific report says invasive species in the Great Lakes may cost the Canadian economy and surrounding states' economies dearly.

Ontario to protect vast tract
Kerry Gillespie  
Ontario has made the largest conservation commitment in Canadian history, setting aside at least half the Northern Boreal region – 225,000 square kilometres – for permanent protection from development, Premier Dalton McGuinty ...

California glacier defies odds, keeps growing
Samantha Young  
Global warming is shrinking glaciers everywhere, but the seven tongues of ice creeping down Mount Shasta's flanks are a rare exception: they are the only known glaciers in the continental U.S. that are growing.

Small communities howling over wind turbines
Tyler Hamilton  
As Innisfil resident Gaye Trombley held a news conference yesterday to protest plans for a small wind farm in her fast-growing Ontario community, legendary oil baron T. Boone Pickens unveiled an energy plan ...

Hanging on
Nick Kyonka  
The Jefferson salamander is one species caught between the good and the bad of the new Endangered Species Act.

The city's lost animal kingdom
Nick Kyonka  
For the first time in three decades, Ontario has enacted new legislation to protect dwindling numbers of its most vulnerable plants and animals.

Greenpeace touts tar sands for vacation
Jeffrey Jones  
If it's sand you crave on your vacation, then Greenpeace knows just the destination for you.