The town of Ignace, Ont., passes by in a blur when you're barrelling along the Trans-Canada Highway. There are a few motels, a crumbling shopping plaza, and Capt. Ron's Fish & Chips, a truck parked next to the highway. Captain Ron is in fact Ron Woolner, a 72-year-old with a deeply creased face, and hands calloused from a life in the mining industry. He sits on a picnic table next to his truck and watches the passing vehicles. A few stop. Most leave Ignace behind, likely without even noticing it.

B.C.’s public sector is officially carbon neutral, a first for any province or state in North America and an achievement that places British Columbia on the leading edge of climate action and growth in the clean energy and clean technology sectors.
 
To kick-start carbon neutral efforts, B.C. launched a $75 million public sector energy conservation capital fund in 2008. It has funded 247 energy projects in schools, hospitals, colleges, universities and other government buildings across the province. Once complete, those projects are expected to reduce carbon output by 36,500 tonnes, create 500 jobs and save organizations about $12.6 million in annual energy costs.
 

April 26, 2011

A few years ago in central Florida, John Santarpia had an idea. He was the president and CEO of a credit union and felt he needed to do something to improve its image. He and his colleagues had found a lot in Lakeland, a city of about 100,000 residents, with an ice cream shop on it. Knowing the community wouldn't be in favor of losing the ice cream shop, Santarpia decided to build a flagship building for his credit union around it. Whatever it was, he wanted to make it green. What resulted was the state's first commercial net-zero-energy building.

An award-winning bio-energy plant at the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) is taking its place among the most celebrated sustainability projects in North America. It is the first of its kind to be implemented at a Canadian University. 

Japan's damaged nuclear plant in Fukushima has been emitting radioactive iodine and caesium at levels approaching those seen in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Austrian researchers have used a worldwide network of radiation detectors – designed to spot clandestine nuclear bomb tests – to show that iodine-131 is being released at daily levels 73 per cent of those seen after the 1986 disaster. The daily amount of caesium-137 released from Fukushima Daiichi is around 60 per cent of the amount released from Chernobyl.

The Earth Hour List, compiled in partnership with Corporate Knights, highlights positive actions being taken by municipalities to fight climate change.

For Canada, the danger of nuclear power lies not in a Japanese-style meltdown. When industry boosters say such an event is unlikely here, they are right.