Environmental Law Alert Blog

Through our Environmental Law Alert blog, West Coast keeps you up to date on the latest developments and issues in environmental law. This includes:

  • proposed changes to the law that will weaken, or strengthen, environmental protection;
  • stories and situations where existing environmental laws are failing to protect the environment; and
  • emerging legal strategies that could be used to protect our environment.

If you have an environmental story that we should hear about, please e-mail Andrew Gage. We welcome your comments on any of the posts to this blog – but please keep in mind our policies on comments.

2020 Canadian Law Blog Awards Winner

Some interesting recent developments in the US on regulating hydraulic fracturing, aka “fracking.” 

Unless you keep a close eye on announcements from the US Department of Transportation, you may have missed, as I did, this announcement from US Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood:

Last week, BC’s Minister of Forests and Range, Pat Bell, announced the introduction of a new Zero Net Deforestation Act.  Minister Bell explained:

In recent months there has been a sharp drop in public faith in climate science.  The collapse is not, as is sometimes suggested, in the scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is occurring.  As West Coast has previously pointed out, despite embarrassing errors and some arguably unprofessional e-mails, the

Only weeks before the Copenhagen conference on climate change, climate skeptics gleefully released over a thousand e-mails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) in East Anglia, claiming that these e-mails (which they branded climate gate) discredited not only the wo

Last week I read this announcement of the launch of Transition Canada – a national network to facilitate transition towns in Canada.  I haven’t been able to find much further information about this new organization, but there have been

West Coast Environmental Law has been working with communities along the controversial proposed Enbridge Pipeline and oil tanker route  to make sure that their views are fully considered in any government decision.

Dianne Saxe, an Ontario environmental lawyer, writes about the efforts of the municipality of Oakville to regulate air pollution and to block plans for a proposed power plant.  “Spurred by opposition to a new gas-fired electric power plant, the Town of Oakville has opene

For me one of the most interesting observations in West Coast Environmental Law’s “Emerging Solutions on Clean, Green Power” Dialogue came from former Hupacasath Chief,

You may have heard that the province is in the process of consulting British Columbians about how cosmetic pesticides should be regulated.  “Cosmetic” – as in, “used primarily to look good.”  The classic example includes using chemicals to maintai