Electronic Green Journal

A look back at the many faces of the Electronic Green Journal.

The Environmental Education community is at a very exciting time in its development with the strides the profession has made in formalizing the discipline, which include recognition from state and national organizations. There appear, however, to still be significant misconceptions about what Environmental Education is in the settings in which it is placed. These misconceptions are what Environmental Education practitioners are facing while the leaders in the field put in place an infrastructure of support. This article characterizes the position Environmental Educators commonly find themselves in and what can be done to better create environments for them to succeed. The article begins with a brief description of common perceptions that the environmental nonprofit organizations and formal school environments have of Environmental Education professionals. This is followed with recommendations that aim to help dispel misconceptions and aid Environmental Educators to meet their own needs.

This paper explores the significance of the rapid increase in municipal by-laws restricting the use of pesticides on lawns and their support by the courts and higher political jurisdictions in Canada. Using a review on the literature of lawn management, recent policy events in Canada, and a case study of the Town of Caledon in Ontario, the study confirms the power of local democratic forces in support of such initiatives, but cautions against an overly positive view. Selective community backing, the continued endorsement of an industrial lawn aesthetic, and the continued strength of the pesticide industry sector and its supporters, can compromise both the extent and quality of the effectiveness of a by-law. The study points to the value and urgency of further research and assessments of individual municipal by-laws and their local and cumulative impacts.

The proliferation of the Internet has profoundly altered the way the environmental movement communicates both internally and externally. Personal meetings, phone calls, and door-to-door canvassing have been widely replaced by email, listservs, websites, and social networking applications. The author investigates the ways the environmental movement is currently using the Internet and explores the impact of these changes on the effectiveness of environmental communication. The paper concludes with recommendations for how environmentalists may best take advantage of new technologies and suggests the need for a renewal of more traditional, in-person strategies to complement online activities.

Resources supporting the information presented in Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth."

A look at the spiritual lives of Gifford Pinchot and Les Sponsel.

An annotated guide to websites and books containing environmental information.