Feature

by Arthur Caldicott

Plutonic Power Corporation is one in a battery of companies flooding BC Hydro with small hydroelectric generation projects. Arthur Caldicott takes a wide-ranging look at small hydro and the issues that arise from it.

Since 2000, BC Hydro has received dozens of small hydroelectric generation proposals. Fourteen are now producing electricity. BC Hydro has signed Electricity Purchase Agreements (EPAs) with about sixty of them, totaling nearly 1500 megawatts (MW) of generating capacity, about an eighth of all provincial generation. And there are many more proposals to come.

This series of articles, "The Yellowcake Trail," tracks all aspects of uranium in Canada from the mining and milling, to processing and use, throughout its eighty-year history. The series begins with the history of uranium in Canada, from its initial discovery to the rapid development of mines that placed Canada as the prominent world leader in uranium production. Each mine has a story and each story has a common thread and legacy.

For the complete series in PDF format click HERE

by Barry Saxifrage

Almost all the energy we use to build the "good life" comes from fossil fuels, gas, oil and coal. But now that same fossil fuel use is tearing our good life apart. We can’t have both anymore. Time’s up: we have to choose now. We can promptly and purposefully create a new version of the good life without fossil fuels…or we can continue aimlessly into collective misery.

Fossil fuel emissions drive climate change and ocean acidification. Together they are inflicting thousands of

Scandal is not new to the private forest lands on Vancouver Island.

by Will Horter

Fortunes have been made – and are being made – by resource companies that benefit from sweetheart deals that privatize vast tracts of land in BC. A select few, with the right government connections, reap the benefits. The public, especially First Nations, pay the price. The BC government’s recent decision to privatize 28,000 hectares of forestlands previously in Western Forest Products (WFP) tree farm licences (TFL) is only the latest scandal in a sordid history that traces back to BC’s entry into the Canadian Confederation.