Tag: environment

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Ar(t)chives Arts

Art for a changing world

How the Harrisons’ multidisciplinary practice tackled environmental issues

Known as “the Harrisons,” Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison were trailblazers in the eco-art movement. Their collection ranged from manifestos to maps, and sculptural installations. If a viewer didn’t know, they might interpret their work as data rather than art.

The couple’s multidisciplinary practice, which ranged a variety of disciplines, explored forestry issues and urban renewal, among others. This led them to collaborate with biologists, urban planners, architects, and more.

What makes their work particularly fascinating is not solely the aesthetic aspect of it, but rather the fact that each piece could be viewed as a solution to ecological issues.

“Our work begins when we perceive an anomaly in the environment that is the result of opposing beliefs or contradictory metaphors,” they said, according to a statement on their studio’s website. “Moments when reality no longer appears seamless and the cost of belief has become outrageous offer the opportunity to create new spaces – first in the mind and thereafter in everyday life.”

In fact, in the 1960s, the couple pledged they would exclusively create art that involved environmental awareness and ecosystems.

The Harrisons offered a unique take on art and its purpose, demonstrating the ways in which society’s inclination towards beautiful things makes them more likely to care about important issues if they are exhibited in a tasteful way.

“All of the sudden people are looking at the environment in one way or another, and they’re looking differently,” said Helen in a video of their sculpture Wilma the Pig. “In other words, it’s bringing their attention in a way that is meaningful.’”

The work was displayed at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles for their 2012 exhibition Ends of the Earth: Land Art to 1974, a remake of one of their earlier installations titled Hog Pasture, wherein the creative duo recreated a small live pasture within the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. They had intended on bringing a hog into the space, however, the museum refused.

Among their other large-scale projects is The Force Majeure (2007 to present). The ongoing series is a manifesto for the present and the future and offers proposals to adapt to a changing world.

In fact, the Harrisons started the Center for the Study of the Force Majeure at the University of California, Santa Cruz, a research centre that enables the collaboration between artists and scientists in an effort to design projects that respond to climate change.

Despite art being often deemed unimportant, the Harrisons’ works and legacy demonstrate the ways in which art can serve as an alternative way of discussing important issues.

“Why not artists?” reads a statement on the Centre’s website. “Art is the court of last resort – and our best hope.”

 

Visuals courtesy of Taylor Reddam.

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News

What is the future of sustainability science?

Concordia’s fourth annual sustainability conference evaluated the climate crisis on campus and beyond

Hosted by the Loyola College for Diversity and Sustainability and the Loyola Sustainability Research Centre, in collaboration with 4TH SPACE, Concordia’s fourth annual sustainability conference took place from March 15 to 19.

The five-day series, Sustainability and the Climate Crisis, which was hosted via Zoom, featured a variety of lectures, workshops and discussions centred around the progressing climate emergency. Topics included global warming, loss of biodiversity, renewable energy, and examined Concordia’s position in addressing the aforementioned issues.

Guest speakers included professors, undergraduate and graduate students from various disciplines, including the departments of Biology, Communication Studies, and Geography, Planning and Environment.

The week kicked off with a series of presentations centred around Current topics in sustainability science. Graduate students in the Advanced Seminar in Environmental Science course presented their research and the potential ways in which certain solutions can tackle sustainability issues. 

Among the presentations was Brian Armstrong’s research on the importance of small-scale subsistence fisheries. Armstrong’s research is done in partnership with the Cree Nation Government and the Hunters and Trappers Association and explores food security, funding for hunter-trappers, and Indigenous knowledge of food sustainability.

“I believe cataloguing and understanding these initiatives and relationships can put fisheries and food security back into the greater context of cultural wellbeing, environmental stewardship and belonging for long term, intergenerational sustainability,” said Armstrong, adding that, on a greater level, this would entail fostering partnerships, respecting Indigenous communities, and reevaluating the way settlers conceive their role in the world.

In the next discussion, Insects: Indicators and agents of global change?, panellists examined climate change from an entomological perspective. More specifically, Concordia Professor Emma Despland discussed how climate change has been disrupting insect ecosystems and causing mass outbreaks.

Despland explained how warming temperatures lead to an influx of insects to a specific region, in turn, causing damage to forests as a result of the insects’ eggs — or larvae — feeding on growing and underdeveloped bark. Thus, this disrupts not only the insect’s ecosystem, but forestry as well.

From a more economical perspective, Concordia Professor Damon Matthews’ lecture Implications of the remaining carbon budget for climate policies and emissions targets offered an overview and analysis of carbon budgets and how this data and information is applied in creating corporate policies and targets. The carbon budget is essentially the amount of carbon dioxide emissions permitted to prevent the Earth from warming above its threshold.

Whereas in Emission targets and a challenge to capitalism?, postdoctoral fellow Anders Bjørn and PhD candidate Daniel Horen Greenford discussed how applying science-based emission targets and considering alternatives to capitalism can potentially help the climate crisis. Science-based emission targets are goals developed by businesses and corporations in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

For a more biological approach to the climate crisis, Climate Change and Natural Systems, and The future of biodiversity in a changing planet explored the ramifications of human impact on forestry, marine life, and its threat to ecosystems in general.

In one of the presentations, Clara Freeman-Cole delved into protected areas, such as national parks. Freeman-Cole described the concept of landscape fragmentation, a process by which habitats are broken up into smaller areas as a result of infrastructure, agriculture, and natural resource extraction, among others.

Sahar Alinezhad’s discussion on the importance of community gardens as a tool to promote social wellbeing, and Jacques Simon-Mayer’s research on remote mapping and monitoring of chlorophyll levels in the water were among the other panels that presented findings on the future of sustainability in Canada.

In PhD candidate Alexandre Pace’s lecture, he presented his research about recording the events of climate change via the observation of tree rings, whereas Clare O’Neill Sanger delved into her research about pollen records. The two presentations offered a glimpse at the ways in which the observational analysis of living systems can provide us with information about the climate crisis and state of the environment for the past, present, and future.

Later in the week, Concordia Professor Pedro Peres-Neto, whose research centres around community ecology and biodiversity from a statistical and theoretical approach, discussed the Earth’s declining biodiversity. He further discussed the difficulties and concerns where policies and models are concerned, and the ways in which these models aid in understanding these occurrences and phenomena.

Building on Peres-Neto’s discussion, Lilian Sales, a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Biology, delved into her research, which uses statistical and mathematical models as a means of further understanding the distribution of various species on different scales. Species distribution models (SDM), mentioned throughout both Peres-Neto and Sales’ discussions, are models which use locational data of species in order to better understand and predict their locational distribution.

Of course, while considering the climate crisis on a global and national level is of great importance, it is equally as important to recognize the ways in which we can take action on a local level. Various discussions introduced viewers to initiatives for climate action on campus and in academia. 

Climate action at Concordia: A panel discussion aimed to educate students about Concordia’s Sustainability Action Plan, which was launched in 2020. The plan presented the university’s vision and plans to divest from greenhouse gases and reduce waste. The presentation centred primarily around a Q&A session wherein students could ask questions about the five-year plan and its implications.

For those interested in careers focusing on the environment and sustainability, Careers in Sustainability offered students a glimpse at the various paths that can be taken upon graduation. The talk featured Faisal Shennib, Concordia’s environmental specialist at the Office of Facilities Management, Katerina Fragos, manager of sustainability and climate change at multinational accounting firm PwC, and Anthony Garoufalis-Auger, climate emergency organizer at Rapid Decarbonization Group, a non-profit organization. The panel demonstrated the ways in which students can become actively involved in the climate crisis, even without a formal education in science.

To end the week off on a more interactive note, attendees were invited to join the Climate Emergency Committee for an engaging game of Climate Geopardy. The committee consists of students and professors from the department of Geography, Planning, and Environment who are aiming to raise awareness about the climate crisis throughout the province via a series of workshops, lectures, and events. 

The game, which takes a similar form to the popular American game-show, Jeopardy!, was meant to educate the public on the current climate emergency and its underlying science. By introducing scientific concepts and research in an engaging manner, players were able to educate themselves and test their knowledge, all while putting an entertaining spin on an important issue.

The series left viewers with a variety of topics to think about, both where personal and institutional changes and policies are concerned. The speakers and presenters offered a well-encompassed glance at a simultaneously distressing and hopeful possibility for our future. Regardless of one’s area of expertise, one thing is certain, the future of the climate emergency is in our hands: as citizens, students, scientists, consumers, and beyond.

The recorded lectures from Sustainability and the Climate Crisis are available for viewing on 4TH SPACE’s YouTube channel. To learn more about 4TH SPACE and for more information about upcoming events, follow them on Instagram and Facebook.

 

 

How-to reduce your water use

Here come the waterworks — Canadians need to use less water, here’s how:

*Please note that the statistics on Quebecers’ water use do not represent water use or access on Indigenous reservations.

How much water does the average Montrealer use every day in their home? Enough to fill two bathtubs.

That’s 225 L of clean water. The province-wide average is even bigger, at 400 L per person every day, according to McGill University.

How much fresh water do private industries use per year? About 10 times household use, Statistics Canada notes.

Most of our household water use comes from addressing basic physical needs. 65 per cent comes from toilet flushing and bathing. The rest is accounted for in our drinking, preparing meals, and cleaning (including laundry).

We could trim down our water use by letting it mellow when it’s yellow, but a more impactful change could simply be redirecting our efforts to curb the wasteful practices of big industries, which make up 68 per cent of Canada’s annual fresh water use, according to McGill University.

Why is this important? After all, Canada is known for its abundant access to freshwater lakes and rivers. However, that’s not the full story.

“Canada has some 20 per cent of the world’s total fresh water resources,” according to Environment and Climate Change Canada. Of that, only seven per cent is renewable fresh water, making the supply “heavily used and often overly stressed.”

Household water use accounts for 20 per cent of the total fresh water use in Canada, and farming practices use just 12 per cent.

Still, voices in green consumption continue to refocus the lens of public discourse about climate change on personal action, despite the well-documented majority impact coming from private industry.

How can the public influence the ecological footprint left by private industry? We can start by reducing our consumption of the products these companies sell.

This logic runs counter to the profit goals of private industry, and they’re putting up a fight against it.

Marketers have identified a key change in the public: people want to feel like the companies they shop at share their values. “Sustainability, trust, ethical sourcing, and social responsibility are increasingly important to how consumers select their products and services,” according to Harvard Business Review (HBR)’s analysis of The EY Future Consumer Index.

HBR puts it this way: Pre-pandemic, “Your brand should stand behind great products.” As an additional requirement post-pandemic, “Your brand should stand behind great values.” The association of a brand with values creates the phenomenon of “brand values,” which amount to the marketing strategies that companies develop to target a particular consumer profile and its associated value system.

This loophole absolves the public from facing the actual scale of the problem of over-consumption, while validating the feeling that we’re curbing our personal climate footprint. Compliance with this marketing strategy also helps to reduce our guilt without requiring companies to actually improve their production practices.

Some might call this a win-win, others a lose-lose.

Reducing water use within the production line and reducing consumption of those products altogether would ultimately have the biggest impact on water waste in Canada.

Instead, companies look to their marketing teams to come up with how-tos that focus on tweaks in the public’s household behaviour (like switching the laundry setting to cold water) and divert attention from industry and consumer waste.

In the current cultural focus on resilience catalyzed by COVID-19, HBR elaborates, “Marketing now has the opportunity to seize an ongoing central role in that dialogue.”

Corporations have identified a key role that marketing plays in the way the public talks about the health crisis, and by extension, the climate crisis. When brands dictate the narrative surrounding these discussions, solutions are limited to those that propel their “broader growth and innovation agenda.” Those solutions all require our participation in industry waste.

Comparing the respective impacts of personal versus industrial water use provides a distilled picture of the biggest threats to sustainability. It is vital to critically assess the narrative around consumption by considering who tells the story, who benefits from the story, and ultimately, how the story obscures the harder truths about our contribution to climate change.

 

Feature graphic by @the.beta.lab

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Opinions

The future of our environment lies on your plate

According to climate activist Greta Thunberg, eating meat is “stealing her generation’s future”

If we pay close attention to the environmental impact of meat production, we can understand this bold statement as there are many reasons why the meat industry is unsustainable.

First, the water footprint of meat from beef cattle is 15 400 m 3 /ton as a global average.

This is particularly problematic, considering agriculture causes 78 per cent of eutrophication (pollution of water with excessive nutrients). Another interesting fact to highlight is that the global meat consumption is around 350 million tons of meat a year and is expected to be increased as much as another 160 per cent by 2050. This is why a report from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) suggests that 64 per cent of the population will be living in water-stressed areas by 2025, partially due to excessive water use for meat production.

The meat industry also threatens biodiversity. The FAO further reveals that livestock uses 30 per cent of global land, which is very alarming because cattle ranching is the leading reason for deforestation in the Amazon rainforests. What was once habitat for animals, 70 per cent of the forested land in the Amazon is now used for livestock pastures.

The FAO also reports that animal agriculture is responsible for 18 per cent of all greenhouse gases in CO2 equivalent. The livestock sector is also responsible for 65 per cent of the emission  of nitrous oxide, another harmful gas with 296 times the global warming potential of CO2. Nitrous oxide is also harmful considering it can stay up 150 years in the atmosphere. It’s also worth noting that most greenhouse gas production results from methane (which is released in the atmosphere when cows do their business), and is a lot more destructive than CO2. Over a 20-year period, methane had a global warming potential of 84 times that of CO2.

There is no doubt that the effects of meat production on the environment are detrimental. Though it is impossible to ask the whole world to turn vegan, there needs to be a reduction of meat consumption on an individual level. For example, Dr. Frank Hu from the Harvard T.H. Chang School of Public Health recommends that we “consider red meat as a luxury and not as a staple food.”

Petrina, a student who has been a vegan for roughly a year, says that she began her vegan diet because of her parents. She realized that “There is a misconception that we need meat to get our daily protein needs, but from my experience, there are so many alternatives like vegetables and beans. Once you get the basics in your fridge, you can build on that,” Petrina emphasizes.

From my personal experience, I was a vegetarian for two years, from 2016 to 2018. I wasn’t well informed nor educated enough to take this step because I had an unhealthy diet that consisted of eating junk food to replace the meat cravings. Today, I no longer identify myself as a vegetarian, but I will make it a new year’s resolution to reduce my meat consumption to identify myself as a flexitarian, someone who eats meat moderately.

Carol Altimas, a pescetarian, shares her experience.

“I always said that I wouldn’t say ‘no’ if someone had prepared [meat] for me as a special meal. Ultimately, it’s not about how perfect I am as a pescatarian, but reducing my impact on the environment by eating less meat,” says Altimas.

We must preserve our remaining resources and reduce our carbon footprint if we want to protect our planet for future generations. Whether it is by becoming vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian or even just limiting your meat consumption — the power is on your plate.

 

Feature graphic by @the.beta.lab

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News

What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which consists entirely of plastic debris and waste, spans approximately 1.6 million square kilometres, that’s roughly twice the size of Texas.

Somewhere between Hawaii and California, in the temperate waters of the Pacific Ocean, lies an island that has scarcely been visited by humans. It is one of the few man-made locations on the globe that has yet to be colonized.

Contrary to other secluded must-visit islands in the Pacific ocean, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is not a luxurious get-away spot.

Spanning approximately 1.6 million square kilometres, or twice the size of Texas, the Great Pacific Garbage patch is a build up of plastics and other debris. It is the largest of the five off-shore plastic accumulation zones in the world, according to The Ocean Cleanup, a Netherlands-based non-profit organization that is developing advanced technologies in an effort to rid the oceans of plastic.

While organizations such as The Ocean Cleanup are building technologies to help clean the waters, individuals are also adding to the cause like the French-American man Benoît Lecomte, who swam the length of the garbage patch to collect data and raise awareness.

In 2019, Lecomte set out to swim 300 nautical miles, or just under two kilometres, alongside a crew boat. The accompanying scientists collected data to track the movement of the plastics and marine life. He began his journey in Japan on June 5, with the intent to swim up to eight hours per day for three months.

Lecomte, who in 1998 swam across the Atlantic Ocean in just 73 days in support of cancer research, said he wanted to do something to bring attention to the increasing amount of plastic in our oceans, in an interview with Austin 360.

“We saw a lot of items we use on land, like plastic cups, straws, forks and spoons and oil containers,” Lecomte told Austin 360. “It was depressing because you see amazing sea life, then you see the plastic that we infect the oceans with, and it’s not supposed to be there.”

Accompanied by scientists from NASA and the University of Hawaii, Lecomte ended his journey on Nov. 11, 2019, though he did not complete it. Despite the thought of not finishing the expedition being among his greatest fears before setting out on his journey, he said that all he can do going forward is to turn people’s attention towards plastic pollution.

“I think that’s the problem — we don’t think it’s that big of a problem, but it’s all due to what we do on land,” Lecomte told Austin 360.

In fact, 1.15 to 2.41 million tonnes of plastic are entering the ocean each year from rivers, according to a study by Laurent Lebreton, an oceanographer and the head of research at The Ocean Cleanup. 

According to Lebreton’s study, because of plastic’s “durability, low-recycling rates, poor waste management and maritime use, a significant portion of the plastics produced worldwide enters and persists in marine ecosystems.”

The density of these plastics is less than that of the water, allowing them to rise to the surface and be transported from smaller bodies of water, such as rivers and streams, to the ocean.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is bound by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, which is what draws the plastic and other waste together. A gyre is a large system of rotating ocean currents, as defined by the National Ocean Service. In other words, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is part of a giant vortex of debris. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre consists of four of these “vortices” rotating in a clockwise direction.

The centre of these four currents forms the most dense area of the garbage patch. However, as per a 2018 study conducted by Lebreton on the rapid rate at which the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is accumulating plastic, it is estimated that if the less dense outer region of the garbage patch were considered when estimating the mass of the patch, the total would weigh approximately 100,000 tonnes.

In the same 2018 study, Lebreton and his team estimated that 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic and waste were floating in the patch. According to Lebreton, this would be 250 pieces of garbage for every individual on the planet.

At an estimate of around 40,000 pieces, the majority of the waste consists of plastic ropes and fishing lines, followed by hard plastic items. While it may seem as though these items are easy to remove, it is, in fact, the opposite. As large hard plastics break down within the garbage patch, sun exposure, waves, and other environmental factors cause them to deteriorate into microplastics, which are virtually invisible to the human eye.

According to the National Ocean Service, these microplastics are often mistaken for food by marine life, putting them in danger. A 2018 study in the journal Environmental Pollution found that “half of the fecal samples and one-third of the mackerels contained microplastics.”

For the time being, microplastics remain a problem that is unresolvable, but that hasn’t stopped The Ocean Cleanup from developing new missions to clean up The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

System 002, which is part of their second clean-up mission, is planned to be a system that is able to “endure and retain the collected plastic for long periods of time.” It is set to be ready for 2021 in an effort to fulfill their goal of reducing the amount of plastic in the world’s oceans by at least 90 per cent by 2040.

Visit The Ocean Cleanup’s website for more information.

 

Graphic by @the.beta.lab

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Opinions

Let us use reusable coffee cups again

Single-use containers are wasteful and don’t actually protect you from COVID-19

Let’s set the scene: it’s a warm, rainy autumn afternoon, and I am running errands —  looking for linen pillowcases in the Plateau, to be exact. I found them; gorgeous, bright yellow ones. I had to look for them because I had ordered some online and they were “returned to sender.” Long story short, I asked for a reimbursement but still ended up paying for shipping, so I decided to continue my search in real life and support a local business. So, I get the yellow ones to brighten up my life, I stop to pick up some groceries (frozen tortellini), and impulsively walk into a new coffee shop on Mont-Royal Avenue.

My sisters and I had stumbled upon it a few weeks ago, when we could still sit in a café, only to find out they weren’t actually open to the public yet (their door was literally wide open at the time). So the shop is that brand new, to me anyway. We were intrigued because the new shop is called Columbus Café, and why is anything called “Columbus” anymore? It’s 2020. F*ck Columbus. I thought we were all on the same page.

Back to this warm, rainy day. I follow my query and order an elaborate coffee —  the only reasoning I can come up with to justify paying for coffee when I have a perfectly good espresso machine at my apartment. The “Café Latte de l’Ours” is Columbus Café’s signature drink, with crushed speculoos (a type of cookie) and honey. I order it with oat milk and whipped cream.

The entire time I drink it, I’m honestly hating myself, thinking: “Why did I just do that? Why did I buy a cup of coffee just to see… see what? I’m only adding to the waste cycle —  no matter what this cup says, it can’t be recycled or composted in Montreal.” I finish my cup and ceremoniously throw it in a garbage bin at a nearby park. Was it worth it?

I’m a big fan of treating yourself to a fancy coffee every once in a while —  with a reusable cup. I miss my reusable cup, something that has stayed deep in my kitchen drawer over the course of the pandemic, safe for a few camping trips. I’m so angry, fueled by an article I read about how the recycling industry is a lie, another that reveals the truth behind “biodegradable” labels, and a third that announces Tim Horton’s “miraculous” new reusable takeaway container program.

Why can’t they just let us use what we already have?

Not that I would ever go to Tim Horton’s anyway —  I’m of the opinion that the Canadian company’s splendour took a major downfall when Burger King bought them in 2014. But waste production levels have surged over the past six months, and it’s time we bring the reusable coffee cup back into the picture. Providing plastic take-away containers for a small fee, made from recycled plastic or not, is only creating more waste in the long run.

So, as it turns out, Columbus Café was the very first coffee shop chain to be established in France, first opening in 1994. The chain has about 200 shops in a number of countries and also specialises in muffins. In sum, while the name might be questionable, Columbus is definitely better than Starbucks or Tim Hortons. The company is committed to serving fairtrade and eco-certified coffee, “using only eggs from alternative farms to cages, by 2020 at the latest” (whatever that means) and free-range poultry.

Their website also outlines their source of paper packaging and compostable straws, as well as identifying an interest in opting for wooden cutlery. While their transparent cups (cold beverages only) are made of PLA, a fully “biodegradable” polymer, they say nothing of their hot-beverage cups, and under the current circumstances, we can assume reusable cups are out of the question.

Pretty please, let us use reusable coffee cups again. I am begging you. 

Even science “supports the end to the reusable coffee cup ban,” according to this article by Jodi Helmer for FoodPrint. “Banning reusables failed to account for possible contamination of single-use plastic cups … latest research shows that the virus lives longer on plastics than other surfaces, increasing the risk from single-use plastics.” Even though potentially contaminated single-use cups will be immediately disposed of after their use, it doesn’t stop opportunities for cross-contamination, even before the coffee is served by a barista and their (hopefully) disinfected —or better yet, gloved — hands.

Furthermore, what’s the difference between the virus staying on single-use coffee cups and say, something like door handles or public benches? Long story short, using reusable cups is no safer than single-use cups.

If this is the case then why are we still stuck on banning reusables?

I really just want to have fancy coffees from coffee shops and walk around with them. In my own mug. I need a reason to leave my apartment, especially now that our lockdown has been extended once again. I also really want to support local businesses. Sure I can buy coffee grounds from them to bring back home, but it’s just not the same.

I would also love to know the story behind Columbus Café’s name and bear logo, because right now, that’s oh so very *French* of them. And by *French* I mean nationalist, bourgeois and colonial AF.

 

Feature graphic by @the.beta.lab

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News

Poli SAVVY: Environmentalist Steven Guilbeault slipped away from the Ministry of Environment

Last week, Justin Trudeau named his new cabinet, which includes 36 MPs. Most of them are coming back for a second mandate, but there are new surprising faces at the table.

One of these new nominations, which created a political bombshell, was elected here in Montreal. His nomination might not be a surprise, but the department he was given probably was. The newly-elected MP of Laurier Ste-Marie, Steven Guilbeault, was sworn-in as Minister of Canadian Heritage, when he was expected to be handed the Environment department.

The reason why many were seeing him as the Environment Minister is that well-known, long-time activist Guilbault is the founder of Equiterre, and has been fighting for the environment for the last 25 years.

Trudeau’s decision led many, such as former Mayor of the Plateau Mont-Royal Luc Ferrandez, to claim Guilbeault’s popularity was used to win the election.

“We did not elect him to have this role. Trudeau even said we need to vote for Guilbeault if we believe in the environment’s protection. I was asked 10 times to fight Guilbeault in the Plateau, but I said no I will let him try, he wants to change things from the inside…I was really disappointed when I heard his new role,” said Luc Ferrandez, on 98.5 FM. 

But was he used?

Last week, in an interview with Radio-Canada, Guilbeault said there was no promise made to him and he is happy about his new role.

Guilbeault also said that many people in his surrounding thought it was good for him to learn the role of being a politician, before jumping into the Environment Ministry.

Yet, in an interview with Le Devoir, Karel Mayrand from the David Suzuki Foundation said that Guilbeault was not named as the Environment Minister because he is an environmentalist, claiming it was a political move by Trudeau in order to please the people in the Western provinces.

It is fair to say that his nomination to another department other than Environment was a political decision. Even if Guilbeault has more expertise and knowledge pertinent to the Environment, putting him in the department ended up not being the first choice for the Liberal Party of Canada.

 

Graphic by Victoria Blair

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News

Students from the geography department strike for more climate action

According to protesters, Concordia would be able to divest faster than their target five-year plan.

“What do we want? Divestment! When do we want it? Now!” chanted students from the Geography Undergrad Student Society (GUSS) on Friday during a strike.

The 25 students who gathered at the Henry F. Hall building’s ninth floor were urging the university to divest faster than their previously announced five-year plan.

The Concordia University Foundation sent a press release in November presenting its divestment plan in all of its investments from the coal, oil and gas sectors before 2025, reported The Concordian.

“We want to make sure that Concordia is held accountable in this divestment protest, so making it as fast as possible and have real binding agreements, because historically, they had been kind of lax,” said a student who wished to remain anonymous for privacy purposes with the university. Other striking students asked to remain anonymous and not have their faces shown on camera for the same reasons

In 2016, the university had already established a joint sustainable investment advisory committee to “make recommendations to their respective governing bodies on socially and environmentally responsible investment opportunities” reported Concordia News. The committee included representatives from the student body like the Concordia Student Union, the Graduate Student Association and Divest Concordia.

“The Concordia University Foundation publishes an annual report which includes audited financial statements,” wrote Concordia’s spokesperson Vannina Maestracci in an email to The Concordian. “The Foundation will continue to provide these annual reports which serve to assess its investments.”

The students were handing out pamphlets with their demands that the university be held accountable for divestment at the fastest rate possible through a student-faculty body that oversees divestment, by implementing binding agreements and and that the measures taken would be communicated to students with full transparency.

The protesters claim that Concordia would be able to divest way faster than the planned rate and that a lot of information regarding the process is not publicly shared.

“We believe that five years is the time it will take to replace our remaining exposure to coal, oil and gas,” wrote Concordia’s spokesperson. “If we can do it sooner, all the better. For us, it’s not simply about withdrawing investments from coal, oil and gas. It is also about finding the new investments that are sustainable and benefit our community in terms of research, teaching and charitable programs.”

Students are also demanding that Concordia declares climate emergency in which they would implement more binding language. However, Concordia has already done that last September.

“We signed a climate emergency declaration with nine other Quebec universities by which we committed to more sustainability education and research, and carbon neutrality by 2050 at the latest,” wrote Concordia’s spokesperson.

The strike had been previously voted upon unanimously by the GUSS during a general assembly.

“In geography, there’s a desire for climate action in our education and sort of what the professors are learning and researching on,” said the student.

Although no other events have been planned yet, the geography student body said it is not willing to back away until Concordia takes serious action.

 

Photo by Jad Abukasm

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Opinions

Why we have all fallen victim to greenwashing

Have you ever noticed that your favourite shampoo is now mysteriously in a green bottle, with shaded trees and reminding you that plastic can be recycled?

Or maybe you feel like the paper towel you usually buy to wipe your dirty counter is helping you change the world because it has a leaf on it? Did that kombucha bottle come up from the roots of the earth, or is that just the new design?

If any of these scenarios resonate with you, you might be a victim of a marketing tool called greenwashing. This term was coined by an environmentalist named Jay Westerveld in the 1980s, “to describe companies which grossly overstate the environmental or ethical benefits of their products and services.”

That’s right, 1980. We have been manipulated by falsely sustainable products for almost 40 years and the trend is only growing. This marketing tool could not be more valuable in our modern economy, as everyday we collectively panic about the climate crisis.

Many of us are doing what we think is right by buying what we think are sustainable products. Capitalism has a funny way of turning a disastrous crisis into an economic opportunity, with big companies exploiting and manipulating the market for their personal gain.

One of the main issues with greenwashing is that defining sustainability is not as straightforward as it is marketed to be. We tend to respond well to simplified categories and digestible explanations, but sustainability is a very complex issue. It is often defined as maintaining ecological balance or being environmentally conscious, but these terms are vague, and companies are using this to their advantage.

Let’s take a look at a textbook greenwashing example: Fiji water bottles. Fiji as a company has done a very effective job at perpetuating a message that they will help you connect with nature. One of their slogans was “a gift from nature to us.” Not to mention, they got a cute little girl to say it, which creeped me out, but seemed to work for others. The creepy little girl also says, “bottled at the source, untouched by man.” I mean, it’s beyond me how they created mass amounts of bottled water without touching anything. Also, where is that girl’s mother? Anyway, the irony here is obvious. Fiji promotes connection to nature, while feeding into the destruction of it.

According Our Changing Planet, 47 per cent of Fijians do not have access to clean, safe water. This company is sending a message that they are saving forests and creating sustainable change, but it’s propaganda. The unnerving thing is, even though, New York Times Magazine came out with an article criticizing Fiji’s integrity in 2008, the company is still a massive capitalist giant. Although we can rationalize the clear intent of the company, they are professional manipulators. We have to push back against our instincts to get lost in a little girl’s cute voice and a pretty forest background.

My consumer conscience relaxes when I clean my toilet bowl with a green bottle. I fall for buzzwords like “all natural,” “eco-friendly,” and “sustainable” all the time. A lot of people do — that’s why companies continue to do it. This being said, we have more control than we think. There are good companies out there — but greenwashing is loud and invasive, and often drown them out.

Try your best to buy local products and try to avoid chains when possible. I know that sometimes this can be more expensive, but often choosing the more environmental choice just takes a bit more time and research. When you are buying products keep in mind where they are coming from, how much packaging they use and what ingredients they consist of, although this is just the tip of the melting iceberg.

Like Our Changing Planet states, “One of the greenest things you can do is to buy fewer things. No matter how great the product is, it’s probably still kind of deceptive to market it as green.”

So remember, mass consumption of sustainable goods is a harmful paradox, and for goodness sake, get a reusable water bottle. 

 

 

Photo by Britanny Clarke

 

 

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Concordia professor talks international environmental agreements

“I have a daughter,” said economics professor and researcher Effrosyni Diamantoudi. “I want her to live in a happy world, like I did—in a world that’s not stressed with hurricanes and storms and all the consequences that come with climate change.”

“I see the world is not the same as it was 30 years ago,” Diamantoudi continued. “It’s not just for the sake of academic curiosity. My research has an important implication on the world I live in.”

Diamantoudi and her team have been researching international environmental agreements, through an environmental economist lense, for more than a decade.

She explained there are currently 180 environmental agreements that have been signed worldwide, which speaks to the necessity of an alternative method.

“If it was a no-brainer, then we would be drafting one agreement and then we’d all go home and it’ll be the end of it,” said Diamantoudi. But as it stands, these agreements are usually written and cancelled and rewritten and more defined and drafted.

We have the Paris Agreement, she said, and the Kyoto Protocol before that, and the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit even before that.

After much research, Diamantoudi and her team suggest to embed the international environmental agreement within another overarching agreement, like trade, and involve as many countries as possible.

It is favorable for country leaders to be part of agreements. “When you’re outside of the agreement, then you have to pay taxes for everything you sell to those markets, you don’t benefit from everything they’re exporting. You lose a lot if you’re outside of a trading block, said Diamantoudi. “What we’re suggesting is a situation where the environmental agreement and the trading block becomes one body, and they negotiate over the two together.”

The concept is simple: if you don’t meet the environmental standards of the agreement, then as a country, you will have to pay a higher tariff.

“That’s a way of balancing the incentives,” said Diamantoudi.

Diamantoudi said their research shows that if some issues are tied into each other, it would reinforce the validity of the agreement.

Through this, more incentives would be created for federal governments to contribute, and for ways to ensure indirect punishment if the agreement isn’t met.

She explained there are several international agreements currently in the works, which usually involves much of the same countries, on a singular topic. A group of countries get together to talk about trade, and months later the same group talks about the environment, and then, another couple of months later, technology transfers, and so on.

Diamantoudi said there are three characteristics that explains the failure of most international environmental agreements.

The first is the lack of enforceability. There is no supranational authority overlooking individual countries to keep them accountable if they don’t abide by the agreements made in the international agreement. These agreements are voluntary, and have to be self-enforced, which therein lies a problem.

“Within a country, you can come up with laws,” said Diamantoudi. “‘Do not dump more than X pollutants in the river, and so on, and if you break the law then you get a fine, or you lose your business. Well, nobody can fine a country, and nobody can shut down a country.”

The second is freeriding. Diamantoudi explained that although it would be ideal for all of us to actually do our part, and keep our environment clean, each one of us individually deviates from the agreement because we count on the other to do their part.

If everybody else agrees to cooperate and to decrease their pollution, then each country individually has an incentive to free ride, to not meet their target, because they assume everybody else has. “They think to themselves ‘now climate change is under control, presumably, and therefore we can continue doing business as usual,’” said Diamantoudi.

The third is the heterogeneity of the problem. Not all countries are the same. So in that,  not all countries have the same economies, are the same size, have the same industry, have the same natural resources, and not all countries suffer the same environmental consequences.

“It often happens that the countries that contribute to this greater bad, are not the ones that suffer the most,” said Diamantoudi. “So there’s this asymmetry in terms of contribution to the damage, and in consequences of the damage.”

“We have a dire problem in our hands, which explains why so many agreements tend to be drafted, and fail, and why we are where we are.”

Diamantoudi further explained if there are some smaller agreements which also has the environmental agreement embedded, it could be a good start.

“If we cant have all 180 countries sign, could we have a group of 90, and another group of 90, by all means, it’s better than nothing,” said Diamantoudi

She further explained that in situations like the environmental crisis, people have to take individual responsibility for their actions as well.

“You can’t teach people to care, but you can teach people to understand better, so information, education, into how this all works,” said Diamantoudi. “Yes, temperatures have increased, yes the water levels have risen, but [educate them on] the consequences of that. Make the calculation of that cost [to them individually], make that information more publicly available so that the masses can understand what’s going on.”

 

Feature photo by Alex Hutchins

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The science behind composting

We have all surely crossed paths with those orange-capped garbage cans that decorate Concordia’s campuses. Little hubs for our biodegradable waste, the list of things we can put in them is particular but easy!

If your trash is made from plants, like those brown paper bags greasy fries from a favorite burger joint are tossed in, plop it in! If your lunch was too big, the bins are perfect orphanages for leftovers you’ll abandon. It sucks that you cannot finish your grandmother’s pasta, but the compost will happily handle that for you. Napkins covered in mascara after crying over an assignment? A banana that got squashed at the bottom of your bag? Toenails? Yup, all of those organic-based items can go in, but it’s important to know exactly how composting works and why we bother with it.

It all comes down to microbes. Eons ago, before you, or I, or any of our ancestors stressed over school, there were tiny lifeforms on Earth that thrived without using oxygen. They are called anaerobes. Eventually, oxygen users like us, known as aerobes, joined the scene hundreds of millions of years later. We and anaerobes now strut across the same runway that is the planet, but humans have to be careful. No, you’re right, anaerobes won’t throw marbles under our feet while we pose, but they do dangerous things with our trash!

When you put that bite of your grandmother’s pasta in the general garbage, it all gets closed up in a plastic bag. This prevents airflow and creates a low oxygen environment that gives anaerobes a chance to grow. Contained in a perfect microcosm, they break down your food and produce methane as a byproduct. That’s bad because methane is a greenhouse gas; it absorbs the sun’s heat and consequently contributes to climate change.

Aerobes also biodegrade food, but make carbon dioxide instead of methane. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas as well, but soaks up way less solar radiation. In addition to that, aerobes manage to eliminate toxicity better and produce less of a rotten smell than anaerobes.

So, how do we get our food to be handled by aerobes instead of anaerobes? By composting!

Composts are set up to maintain airflow. Aerobes get the oxygen they need to live and this type of environment blocks anaerobic expansion. All it can take to sustain the right aerobic atmosphere is a simple stir of a container. With composts, we can make humus. Before you take your pita out, know that humus isn’t your favorite Middle Eastern spread (that’s actually hummus). Humus is a term used to reference dirt achieved from rotting organics. Those orange bins on campus are a way to take remaining glop and make beautiful, nutrient soil. Letting anaerobes process our leftovers goes the opposite way, tending to make waste more hazardous.

It’s worth noting that some compost processing sites actually embrace anaerobe disadvantages to harvest their methane. Humans burn the gas for heat and electricity. Despite not being clean energy, at least our species can use it and cause climate change instead of not using it and warming the globe anyway. If you think of all the landfills on our planet, there is a lot of food rotting without being exploited.

In a world piling up with trash, humans are faced with more and more complexities surrounding what to do with it. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported, “Pound for pound, the comparative impact of [methane] is more than 25 times greater than [carbon dioxide] over a 100-year period.” Concordia’s orange bins are a game of anaerobes vs. aerobes. These days, the seemingly simple act of throwing away a teabag is actually an influential decision that’ll shape history.

 

Featured photo by Virginie Ann

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Simply Scientific: Cultivating plants by farming fish

Imagine cultivating plants with endless sources of natural fertilizer. Considering Earth’s current state, such a process would answer many of our problems regarding food production and the viability of the soil.

Yet, such a sustainable system broke from the imaginary and is now known as aquaponics.

Historically practiced by Aztec and Chinese populations, aquaponics is a combination of fish farming (aquaculture) and soilless farming (hydroponics). Yielding as much as 12 times the amount of crops produced in soil per square foot, aquaponics successfully addresses farming in resource-scarce areas.

But how does it work?

The three main components of aquaponics are plants, fish, and bacteria.

Fish excrete high amounts of ammonia, increasing the toxicity of their environment. That water is then transferred to another tank, where bacteria (Nitrosomonas) break down the ammonia into nitrate. Pumped to the last tank, the nitrate-concentrated water will be utilized as nutrients for the plants. The water, now purified by the plants, is redirected to the fish tank for the process to be repeated.

Some companies in Canada have started using this farming technique. AquaGrow Farms is an aquaponics company and one of its operations runs at The Mississauga Food Bank to provide fresh food to people in need. Around 900,000 Canadians make use of food banks every month, on average.

Aquaponics has incredible potential because of its low need for resources. This helps lower any environmental impact while producing quality goods that are in high demand.

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