Stephen Leahy is an environmental journalist based in Uxbridge, Ontario.
His writing has been published in dozens of publications around the world including New Scientist, The London Sunday Times, Maclean's Magazine, The Toronto Star, Wired News, Audubon, BBC Wildlife, and Canadian Geographic.
For the past few years he has been the science and environment correspondent for Inter Press Service News Agency (IPS), a wire service headquartered in Rome that covers global issues, and its Latin American affiliate, Tierramerica, located in Mexico City.
Stephen Leahy graciously allows Straight Goods to reprint his articles. However, he earns very little compensation for his valuable work. His solution is Community Supported Journalism.
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by Stephen Leahy
Canada's opposition to anything that might help developing countries is “mind-boggling,” a delegate from Mali told me during a UN conference to slow the widespread extinction of species. “Canadians are known to protect the environment. I cannot understand why they are pushing policies that are clearly unsustainable," he said.
by Stephen Leahy
Few people are aware Canada's GDP shot up from an average of $600 billion per year in the 1990s to more than $1.7 trillion in 2012. This near tripling of the GDP is largely due to fossil fuel investments and exports. However not many Canadians are three times wealthier. For one thing GDP is only a measure of economic activity, not necessarily of wealth. The other reason is that little of this new wealth stayed in Canada. And what did stay went to a small percentage of the population, worsening the gap between rich and poor.
by Stephen Leahy
Few are aware Canada's GDP shot up from an average of $600 billion per year in the 1990s to more than $1.7 trillion in 2012. This near tripling of the GDP is largely due to fossil fuel investments and exports. However not many Canadians are three times wealthier. For one thing GDP is only a measure of economic activity. The other reason is that little of this new wealth stayed in Canada. And what did stay went to a small percentage of the population, worsening the gap between rich and poor.
by Stephen Leahy
Like every other country in the world, Canada has promised to help keep global warming to less than 2 degrees C. However Canada's political and corporate leadership are committed to turning the country into a fossil-fuelled “energy superpower.” With a drug lord's just-providing-a-service hypocrisy Canada has openly declared it's future is tied to the profits from dumping hundreds of millions of tonnes of climate-heating carbon into the atmosphere every year.
And the world's new energy superpower plans to grow those annual emissions to 1.5 billion tonnes by 2020, giving one of the least populated countries a gigantic carbon bootprint.
by Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, March 12, 2013 (IPS) — Two years after Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the country faces 100 to 250 billion dollars in cleanup and compensation costs, tens of thousands of displaced people and widespread impacts of radiation.
The nuclear industry and its suppliers made billions from building and operating Fukushima’s six reactors, but it is the Japanese government and its citizens who are stuck with all the costly “fallout” of the disaster.
by Stephen Leahy
What's happened to Canada? To the dismay of many, a country with an international reputation for relatively progressive environmental policies (at least compared to the United States) is rushing headlong to dig up all the oil, gas, and coal it can.
The country’s leaders can scarcely muster the effort to pretend to want to limit climate-heating carbon emissions. And the Canadian business establishment and media have largely gone along with the program. Put it all together, and you have a country that has become a full-blown “petrostate.”
by Stephen Leahy
— Green energy is the only way to bring billions of people out of energy poverty and prevent a climate disaster, a new study reveals. Conservative institutions like the World Bank, the International Energy Agency and accounting giant Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) all warn humanity is on a path to climate catastrophe unless fossil fuel energy is replaced by green energy.
by Stephen Leahy
— The largest climate rally in US history occurred Sunday in Washington DC, with the aim of pressuring President Barack Obama to reject the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline.
Activists are calling Keystone “the line in the sand” regarding dangerous climate change, prompting the Sierra Club to suspend its 120-year ban on civil disobedience. The group’s executive director, Michael Brune, was arrested in front of the White House during a small protest against Keystone on Wednesday.
by Stephen Leahy
Monitoring of environmental activists in Canada by the country's police and security agencies has become the "new normal", according to a researcher who has analysed security documents released under freedom of information laws.
by Stephen Leahy
UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jan 29 2013 (IPS) — Weird is the only way to describe the way January temperatures whipsawed between record warm and arctic cold over a span of a few days. Experts say that is what climate change looks like: weird, record-shattering weather.
