Photo of Chris Turner at the Greater World Earthship community in New Mexico by Ashley Bristowe. It's been impossible to ignore the issue of climate change. Al Gore bounced back to relevancy with An Inconvenient Truth, and even NHL players have gotten into the act by teaming with David Suzuki to put global warming in the penalty box. With Earth Day coming up on Tuesday, Torontoist sat down with Globe and Mail sustainability columnist......

TTC does end-run around Toronto Preservation Board. The TTC wants the right to redesign 63 of its 69 stations. Heh. We have 69 TTC stations. Never noticed that before. Heh. Ontario budget released. The budget contains small business tax cuts (not as large as Jim Flaherty would like) and small amounts of additional spending on infrastructure in public service (not as much as Howard Hampton would like). In short, it is the classic Liberal budget......

You've got less than three weeks to prepare yourself for Earth Hour on Saturday, March 29. That's when people around the world are being encouraged to turn off their lights for one hour to raise awareness about global warming. Toronto was the first Canadian city to sign up for the international event late last year, and has since been joined by most other GTA municipalities, Montreal, Vancouver, Ottawa, and many more—close to 50 cities......

Here's a riddle: What walks throughout Canada, weighs more than a Brit, but less than an American, and can help stop global warming? No, it's not Sasquatch. It's not Kyoto. Stumped? We'll give you a hint. It's the average Torontonian's carbon footprint! According to Zerofootprint, a not-for-profit environmental organization, the average Torontonian's carbon footprint sits at 8.6 tonnes per year—more than a fully-grown African elephant! Zerofootprint teamed up with the City of Toronto to......

With insignificant funds and hopeless political support, sometimes it's the earnest fringe candidate campaigns in our by-elections that have the most charm. Toronto Centre aspirant (and political opponent of Campaign Confidential's Chris Tindal) Doug Plumb has been taping-up these breezy home-made slogans downtown, and while this sign may not even mention the party he's running for, there's a quaint spunk in comparing himself to a down-home dessert. Other flyers feature the rather unimaginative call......

Do you think you can turn your lights off for an hour? The WWF is challenging people around the world to do just that at 8 p.m. local time on March 29. The global event is called Earth Hour, and the goal is to raise awareness of global warming. Last year's inaugural event took place in Sydney, Australia, where more than 2 million people and 2100 businesses turned off their lights. The result was......

See, all that snow shovelling was just a waste of time. Toronto is expecting record-breaking heat over the next couple of days, with highs expected to hit 13 degrees. The heat wave is expected to give dumbass radio personalities a chance to say things like, "Hey, this global warming thing is OK by me!" Polls indicate that Stephen Harper won't be able to form a majority government unless he can improve his popularity with......

Torontoist is ending the year by naming our Heroes and Villains of 2007––the people, places, and things that we've either fallen head over heels in love with or developed uncontrollable rage towards over the past twelve months. Get your dose, starting Boxing Day and running into the new year, three times a day––sunrise, noon, and sunset. The Toronto Climate Campaign spearheaded the Global Day of Action on Climate Change that took place in Dundas Square......

It might be time to cut back on the brews. Fox News is reporting that old beer fridges, which one in three Canadians keep in their houses, are remarkably inefficient and "contribute significantly" to global warming. The report was commissioned by the federal government, which says something about how much the government cares about your beer-related habits. Denise Young, the researcher who put together the study, suggests that the government provide financial incentives and......

Toronto declares first cold alert of the winter season. John Baird immediately points out how the existence of cold weather might mean that we're all wrong about global warming. Report calls for expansion of Ontario's small claims court system. Many lawyers were interviewed about their opinion on the best way to increase access to justice in Canada—and then the report writers wrote down the exact opposite of what they said. (The joke here is that......

Photo by afiler. "What are you doing tonight?" asked a friend of ours Monday afternoon. "Well," we said, "we're going to an event called 'Caribou Country: Our Shield Against Global Warming.'" "You lost me at Caribou," our friend replied. We're told that environmental issues are at the top of everyone's mind, but anecdotal evidence suggests that that attention may be narrowly focused. This new environmentalism, it seems, is all about carbon: emissions, taxes, and......

Tomorrow night, November 2nd, a new CaseCamp-format un-conference will touch down in Toronto. Combining two sessions from the art community and one session from a related industry, ArtSmash is a unique speaker series that will generate a room full of creative ideas. The event is being coordinated by Ella Cooper and presented by the Emerging Arts Professional Network. Each speaker will be given 20 minutes to share a case study of a project they......

Will the province take over the TTC? Apparently such rumours are all the buzz in political backrooms. Which are kind of like political bathrooms, except that the backrooms have no toilets or sinks or indeed any serious practical use, which is why they feature so prominently in government. Torontoist's suggestion, from its own backroom: let Pizza Pizza take over the TTC. Then we would at least get Rip-Off Charity Pizza Days more often. Jim Flaherty's......

Police are investigating a mysterious purple liquid found seeping around the Don River. When asked for comment, the police stated that they have all their men rolling around in the goo in the hopes that it's radioactive and gives them all superpowers. A man is dead after a shooting near Broadview and Dundas. And an Etobicoke teen is dead after being hit by a car in a parking lot. Let's stop the hate, shall......

Marcel Marceau dead at 84. Torontoist hadn't heard anything. (Rimshot!) John Tory wants to let corner stores sell booze. He says local brewers and vintners are getting a raw deal, and he's got a point. After all, when you go into your local corner store, think of the wealth of independent chocolatiers you have to pick from when you want a candy bar! George W. Bush shuns global warming summit. In other news, sky still......

While going to York University may seem like a giant hassle (Torontoist recommends you pack a snack for the trip), this year’s Ioan Davies Memorial Lecture is shaping up to be worth the drive or TTC ride to York. The Ioan Davies Memorial Lecture commemorates the life and work of Ioan Davies, journalist, author, and professor. Each year, invited lecturers have re-invigorated the links between cultural expression, everyday life, and political practice. Dr. Thomas King,......

David Hughes, a senior geoscientist at Natural Resources Canada, is to energy security as David Suzuki is to the environment or Al Gore is to Global Warming. The fact that he has yet to receive the same level of attention is an unfortunate oversight, since our energy security (or lack thereof) is an increasingly urgent issue that we must learn more about and begin to address. Mr. Hughes' message regarding dwindling energy supplies is......

Environment Canada reports that this has been the driest summer in fifty years for Toronto, with the city only receiving around half of its usual rainfall. Short-term predictions suggest that fall will be equally dry, with the the long-range forecast calling for global warming followed by drought, famine, plague and societal collapse. Sounds like great picnic weather! Provincial NDP leader Howard Hampton has said that, if elected, he will roll back college and university......

Though the lineup for this year's Virgin Music Festival is, admittedly, pretty awesome, there are still bound to be individuals for whom a full day of live music (and shameless advertising!) is simply not reason enough to make that ferry boat ride out to the Island. That's where Global Inheritance comes in. A registered non-profit organization based in Los Angeles, Global Inheritance is looking for volunteers to participate in a human chess game at......

NASA is embarrassed after a Toronto man found an error in their climate reporting. The new data mean that the warmest year on record in the US was 1934, not 1998, and skeptics have seized on the story as proof that the whole "global warming" thing is a hoax. Upon hearing the news, the newly navigable passage through the Arctic Ocean immediately refroze. Prime Minister Stephen Harper is shuffling his cabinet. The move will......

Employees of the Alcohol and Gaming Commission, which now oversees the Ontario Lottery Gaming Corporation, will not be permitted to buy lottery tickets in Ontario. A representative of the affected staffers complained, "why do you think we wanted to work here in the first place?" before shotgunning a 40-ouncer of Absolut and collapsing to the ground. Who says you can't go home again? Well, if you're former Canuck Conrad Black, Judge Amy St. Eve does.......

Chicago prosecutors expected to ask that the book be thrown at Conrad Black. HA HA HA ROT IN JAIL YOU UNKIND GENTLEMAN [Needless to say, the previous two words originally read...uh...differently. They were swears!—Ed.]. Sorry, that was not very objective. Please amend the previous sentence to read "hee hee hee rot in jail you freaking aardvark." In other news, he may also go bankrupt, making this officially the best news story of the year so......

Nine months into their existence, Porter Airlines chugs along, still under the radar of most. As the Toronto Star recently reported, the young airline is still struggling to find a steady stream of regular business customers. With traffic on the 401 at an all-time high, getting to Pearson during rush hours can potentially take as long as a flight to Montreal. On a weekend getaway, the give-or-take ten hours spent traveling to La Belle......

The Anaheim Mighty Ducks win the Stanley Cup. Thus finally fulfilling the lifetime goals of Emilio Estevez. Asked to comment, the Ottawa Senators said "aggghhhhhhhhhhccckkk," then scored on their own net again. Quebec to collect Canada's first carbon tax. Quebec's Natural Energy Minister says it's possible oil companies might not pass the tax on to the consumer. Petroleum companies agree with the minister—it is possible. Other things that are possible: the invention of a perpetual......

This was Toronto’s downtown at 10:30 a.m. yesterday, as seen from Lakeshore Boulevard near the Canadian Exhibition Grounds. Air Quality Ontario’s Air Quality Index measured a daytime high of 54, which put Toronto’s air well into the “Poor” category. The day before, the AQI hit 59. What to do? I ran errands on my bike yesterday, passing bumper-to-bumper car traffic everywhere I cycled. When I started cycling Toronto’s streets fifteen years ago, I didn’t......

Parking metre rates to rise by at least 50 cents. City drivers complain that it makes shopping more expensive. City cyclists point at the city drivers and laugh. The city drivers responded by shaking their fists and telling the cyclists to get the hell off the road. At this point, things deteriorated rapidly. Elsewhere, the era of free parking is coming to an end in Missisauga. Delegates at the Thailand conference approve a global warming......

Everybody’s talking about the weather—now’s your chance to get out and do something about it. Mayor David Miller is inviting everyone in the city to attend the Climate Change Action Forum this Sunday, April 29 at Exhibition Place. The Forum is a venue to discuss and shape Toronto’s plan for tackling the related menaces of air pollution and global warming. Participants will have the opportunity to learn more about greenhouse gases and climate change,......

In a time when Al Gore is predicting that global warming is the coming of the apocalypse, people are looking for creative ways to maintain a sustainable ecosystem without giving up their consumerist lifestyles. Toronto’s first Green Living Show will inspire ways to do just that. The Green Living Show is this weekend, April 27-29, at the Direct Energy Centre at the Exhibition grounds. It boasts eco-fashion shows, organic cooking demonstrations, a wildflower garden, the......

Doctors urged to use tape measure to see if medical advice is necessary due to excess abdominal fat. I'm all for anti-obesity measures, but surely this is counterproductive? Did we really need another reason to dislike going to the doctor for a checkup? Toronto Star employee buys old laptop on eBay, gets relatively recent Canadian Alliance mailing information. Amusingly, they repeat the figure of $6.48 that Kevin Omura paid as many times as humanly possible.......

Each weekday morning, we pick a recent image from the Torontoist Flickr Pool and feature it here on the site. It's our way to give the many excellent photographers in our pool the attention they deserve! This photo should be reprinted on the front of every newspaper in the country. There should be on 100-foot-high billboards, pamphlets, and t-shirts. It should be burned into our psyche as a galvanizing image in the fight against global......