Michael Dudley

<p>With few local job opportunities, residents in small towns have grown accustomed to long commutes to cities. But with high gas prices making those commutes unaffordable, some economists wonder how much longer small towns can retain their populations.</p>

<p>A small town in Germany is demonstrating that a strategy of distributed, renewable and locally-controlled energy production can not only be Earth-friendly but profitable.</p>

<p>Friends of the Earth president Brent Blackwelder and journalist James S. Henry believe that the federal bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac needs to come with some very green strings attached.</p>

<p>It's Gold Rush days long since passed, Canada's Yukon Territory was until recently a wild, myth-bound place. But now oil and gas revenues are fueling new construction and population growth.</p>

<p> <span> <!--[endif]--></span><span>As a grassroots North American organization for “people involved in planning,” <a href="http://www.plannersnetwork.org/">Planners Network</a> (PN) attracts not just professionals and academics but laypersons and activists as well. This year’s PN conference was a dramatic debut for the <a href="http://www.pnmb.org/">Winnipeg chapter of PN</a>, which was only formed in January of 2006. The conference title, “Flat not Boring” was an amusing reference to southern Manitoba’s notoriously unvarying geography.