by PATRICK LEJTENYI

January

• Almost 70 fires that began around Christmas Day rage in Australia, surrounding Sydney and involving thousands of firefighters who scramble to put them out. By the first week of January, 500,000 hectares have been burned. Police arrest over 20 arsonists, but the blazes last for three weeks.

• A blistering scientific and academic row erupts over The Skeptical Environmentalist, a book by Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish statistician and former member of Greenpeace, which criticizes the green movement for scare-mongering, its advocacy of faulty science, lying to the media and generally making environmental matters seem far worse than they are. He and his book are vigorously denounced by dozens of organizations, academics and activists as flawed and dangerous.

• Montreal submits a call for plans to contain a slick of PCB-heavy slime leaking into the river near the Technoparc, between Nuns’ Island and the Old Port.

February

• Almost a year after he pulled the United States out of the Kyoto Accord, U.S. President Bush - “the Toxic Texan” - commits his country “to a path to slow, stop and then…reverse greenhouse gas emissions growth,” by cutting greenhouse gas intensity (not the actual amount, but the level of emissions per unit of economic output) by 18 per cent over the next 10 years. The bad news: it calls for voluntary emission reduction and business incentives, both of which have failed to curb pollution in the past. All hat and no cattle, say his critics.

• UdeM researchers report that beluga whales in the St. Lawrence have the highest rate of cancer among non-humans in the world, at 27 per cent. They blame toxic run-off from aluminum smelters on the Saguenay estuary.

March

• 500-billion tonnes of Antarctic ice shelf - specifically, the Larsen B shelf - collapses into the sea over a few weeks. Temperatures in Antarctica are said to be rising at five times the rate of the rest of the planet.

• An earthquake in Afghanistan kills at least 2,000.

April

• The federal Ministry of the Environment reclassifies SUVs as cars rather than trucks, thereby subjecting the gas-guzzling monsters to more stringent emission controls.

• At the Ancient Forests Summit in The Hague, Canada, along with Brazil and Malaysia, is accused of working consistently towards watering down agreements that would protect ancient forests from logging.

May

• Fifteen European countries ratify Kyoto, including Germany, Italy, the U.K. and France.

• The Lachine Canal reopens after 32 years of disuse, despite fears by environmentalists that the toxic sludge at the bottom may be stirred up and pollute the St. Lawrence.

• The Ultra-Violet Index, developed in Canada, turns 10.

June

• The western U.S. is ablaze with forest fires, which burn for weeks. One of the worst, the Hayman fire in Colorado, was started by a 38-year-old Forest Service female employee, when she burned a letter from her estranged husband. She faces 65 years in jail. By the end, some 5.5-million acres are torched, while an estimated 40 per cent of the country suffers from sever drought. By mid-August, 15 firefighters have died, five in plane crashes. The Ponderosa pine forest, which stretches from Mexico to Canada, has borne the brunt of the damage.

• Parliament passes Bill C-10, the Canada National Marine Conservation Areas, which will establish a network of marine conservation areas.

• Humanity is heading towards “ecological bankruptcy,” according to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The study claims that it takes the planet 15 months to regenerate the natural capital humans use in one year, and the gap is widening.

• A heat wave swamps southern Canada and doesn’t spare Montreal. Factoring in the humidex, temperatures reach a brutal, sweltering 46 degrees Celsius.

July

• Pesticides in Quebec are dealt a blow when provincial Environment Minister André Boisclair announces his plan to ban the use of commonly used chemical pesticides on municipal and provincial properties. Bans on privately owned commercial and residential properties will be phased in over three years. Furthermore, restrictions will be placed on pesticide use in and around playgrounds, schools and daycares. Sales of chemical pesticides will also be banned or restricted.

• California signs into being a new bill aimed at reducing vehicle greenhouse gas emissions, the first of its kind in the United States.

• Forest fires in northern Quebec create a haze over eastern Canada that stretches from New Brunswick to Toronto. The cost of fighting the fires reaches $1.5-million a day.

• The Prairies continue to suffer from drought over one of the hottest and driest summers on record, with Environment Canada saying Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba are drier now than they were during the dustbowl era of the 1930s. In the same breath that Alberta Premier Ralph Klein announces he’s giving stricken farmers $324-million in emergency aid, he denounces Kyoto as being too expensive.

August

• Zambia announces it will ban the importation of genetically modified food, citing safety concerns. Almost 2.5-million Zambians are at risk of starvation.

• The Asian Brown Cloud, a massive, dense blanket of pollution, is photographed by satellite over much of South Asia, stretching from Sri Lanka to Afghanistan. A group of 200 scientists claim the three-kilometre-thick mass is contributing to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people every year from respiratory illness, as well as floods, acid rain, erratic weather patterns and drought.

• Floods ravage central Europe, threatening Dresden, Salzburg, Prague and Budapest. By the end of it all, 16 have died in Germany and 100,000 had to leave their homes - the biggest mass evacuation since WWII; 12 died in the Czech Republic, 210,000 were displaced and Prague’s historic city centre was only barely spared. Hundreds of kilometres of rail, road and bridges were destroyed. The cost of repairs is estimated to be in the tens of millions of dollars. Meanwhile, at least 60 die from flash floods in Russia.

September

• The UN World Summit on Sustainable Development, billed as “Rio+10,” wraps up in Johannesburg, South Africa. Thousands of activists, scientists, diplomats, businessmen, journalists and over 100 heads of state - excluding George Bush - attend. More talk is made of fighting poverty than on conservation, but many dismiss the Summit as a waste of time.

• Prime Minister Jean Chrétien announces to the world that Canada will indeed ratify the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. Environmentalists cheer, but warn that Kyoto is only a first step in what will be a long haul to reverse climate change.

October

• Scientists in Quebec suspect, but have no proof, that the eastern cougar - believed extinct ’round these parts since the ’30s - may be making a comeback.

• A report by the Pembina Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation beats on big corporate polluters that haven’t honoured voluntary pledges to reduce greenhouse gases. It names Epcor, SaskPower, TransCanada, Imperial Oil, Husky Oil and Stelco as the worst offenders.

November

• The European Union Agricultural Council implements new regulations on labelling all foods and feeds that are genetically engineered. Some 30 countries now have such laws, including Australia, Japan, Norway, Saudi Arabia and Switzerland, but not Canada.

• Due to dwindling stocks, the EU considers banning cod fishing, a move that could cost 20,000 jobs, Scottish fishermen claim. According to government statistics, there are only an estimated 30,000 imperial tons of adult cod in the North Sea; 150,000 tons are needed for stocks to replenish themselves.

• The trade in harp-seal and hooded-seal penises plummeted, according to a paper published in Environmental Conservation, thanks in large part to the widespread availability of Viagra. Seal penises were thought to increase sexual potency, and were especially popular in Asia. While hooded seals are not currently endangered, other animals whose various parts offer similar joy, such as sea horses and certain types of sea cucumbers, may be. And rhinoceroses, whose horns in powdered form are also considered a pick-me-up, are nearly extinct.

• The oil tanker Prestige sinks 245 kilometres off the coast of Spain, carrying 77,000 tonnes of heavy oil bound for Singapore. Blame is laid everywhere: on the tanker’s age, its safety as a single-hull vessel, international inspections, Spanish authorities for not allowing the stricken ship to take to port when it had the chance, and Portugal, which tugged it further out to sea before it finally went down. The coast of Galicia was covered in muck, the livelihood of thousands of fishermen threatened, and oil is leaking from the sunken hull.

• Quebec announces it will scrap its plan to build mini-dams on 24 provincial rivers. Conservationists cheer.

December

• The Pacific Fisheries Resource Conservation Council blames salmon farms for the explosion of sea lice and the resulting “devastating” drop in pink salmon stock off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island. The B.C. government denies the charge, saying there is no clear scientific evidence linking the two.

• The Canadian Supreme Court rules that higher life forms (i.e. not plants) cannot be patented. The decision stems from a presentation made in May by the Canadian Environmental Law Association concerning the patenting of the “Oncomouse,” a Harvard-developed, genetically engineered mouse used for cancer research.

• Canada ratifies the Kyoto Protocol. It is the 98th country to do so. :