Winning Back the Words - Confronting Experts in an Environmental Public Hearing

Winning Back the Words chronicles the politics of the environmental public hearings on the Alberta-Pacific bleached kraft pulp mill in northern Alberta, and illustrates how the public challenged the authority of experts. Drawing from their own experiences in the hearings, the authors recreate the power struggles among participants over the words and discourses used to debate the impact of the mill on the environment. Controversies about science and values, sustainable development, and local knowledge suggest promising new directions in environmental review.

Michael Gismondi teaches at Athabasca University in northern Alberta, where he is a third-term Town Councillor and active in community and sustainability issues. In 2005, he helped collectively edit Consuming Sustainability: Critical Social Analyses of Ecological Change (Fernwood Press).