Four questions to ask to ensure your leaders know what they are doing
The world is full of bad leaders. Luckily for the rest of us, they are pretty easy to spot and tend to have limited impact because they generally do not have much influence or staying power. The real concern should be with leaders who are not bad – they just aren't very good. These are…
Multilateral bodies have an important role to play in spreading democracy
With democrats everywhere grieving over recent events in Afghanistan and the 20th anniversary of 9/11, it is worth recalling that as the first plane struck the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001, all 35 Organization of American States (OAS) member governments were in Peru signing a democratic charter that denied OAS membership to…
Taking a neutral position can give Canada an advantage. But government will have to be pragmatic
In November 2018, Canada and Mercosur opened free-trade negotiations. Any such deal represents great potential for Canada – but there are concerns. Mercosur – Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay – is a bloc with a gross domestic product of over $3 trillion and a population of 261 million in 2019. That compares to the GDP of…
New materials could harness energy from cellphones or body heat, and improve solar power, geothermal
Extra heat is generated from any form of energy conversion – even with something as green as solar panels. But with up to 72 per cent of it left unused, there’s also great potential to harvest electricity from that waste. A University of Alberta researcher has successfully developed a way to figure out the chemistry…
Very. But you wouldn't know it from StatsCan data
If you think food prices are increasing at a much faster pace than what Statistics Canada suggests, you’re likely not imagining it. For a few years, many Canadians have suspected that the federal agency was either underestimating our food inflation or there was some lag between what was going on at the grocery store and…
‘Wind and solar are cost competitive, or cheaper, than any of the conventional energy carriers'
The interest in renewable energy may be growing, but there are still many misconceptions out there. Pierre Mertiny, ’05 PhD, comes across these myths all the time. He’s a mechanical engineer and principal investigator with the University of Alberta’s Future Energy Systems. He’s here to share some facts. Myth 1: The technology isn’t fully developed.…
The federal election has been a colossal waste of time, effort and money
“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me; for now hath time made me his numbering clock: my thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jar their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch, whereto my finger, like a dial’s point, is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears,” William Shakespeare wrote in…
Discovery that technology is viable moves it closer to becoming part of a low-carbon economy
University of Alberta research is making new strides in discoveries about capturing and storing carbon – while yielding a high-value end product from carbon dioxide. A process that injects the greenhouse gas deep below ground, then circulates it to extract heat and geothermal energy, has proven viable in a feasibility study by U of A…
Vital learning experience – a rite of passage for the past 50 years – reimagined for safety and sustainability
By the time Ben Strelkov started high school, the self-described “city kid” assumed that once he was in the workforce, he’d be confined to an office, doing basically the same thing every workday. His summer job following Grade 10 shattered the illusion. “I spent the whole time in northern Alberta – building trails, helping communities…
Why not use carbon emissions as a building block for other industrial processes and products?
Climate change demands immediate action, and there’s no shortage of discussion about emissions reduction. Indeed, climate policies and pledges flowed left and right leading up to the federal election. However, largely absent from the mainstream dialogue on the shifting energy landscape is any pragmatic talk about the productive use of carbon emissions. That’s right –…