Tag: environmental crisis

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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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News

Climate crisis: change is coming

Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish climate activist, and representatives from different Indigenous groups led the march against climate change in Montreal last Friday.

Around 500,000 people were gathered at Sir-Georges-Étienne-Cartier monument on Parc Avenue to trek to Bonaventure Parc, where Thunberg addressed the crowd.

“You are a nation that is allegedly a climate leader and Sweden is also a nation that is allegedly a climate leader,” said Thunberg during her speech. “In both cases, it means absolutely nothing because in both cases it’s just empty words. So we are basically the same,” she added, jokingly.

Photo by Laurence B.D.

The Swedish activist sailed  across the Atlantic on a zero-carbon emission sailing boat back in early September to take part in a United Nation climate summit. She spoke in front of the committee, condemning the inaction of world leaders.

“I shouldn’t be up here. I should be back in school on the other side of the ocean,” she said during her UN speech. “Yet you all come to us, young people, for hope. How dare you. You have stolen my dreams, my childhood with your empty words.”

She continued stressing the consequences of climate change, such as the extinction of complete ecosystems and the loss of individual human lives.

“We are at the beginning of mass extinction and all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth,” she said with an emotional, assertive tone.“How dare you.”

Alongside Montreal, hundreds of cities worldwide joined the march on Sept. 27, in solidarity against climate inaction.

In Montreal, a historical association of 21 organizations, including Greenpeace, the David Suzuki Foundation and the various branches of La Planète s’invite au Parlement, all came together in the creation and promotion of the protest.

“We are climate justice seekers,” said Jacob Robitaille, Concordia Geography student and internal coordinator for La Planete s’invite à l’Université (LPSU). “We want to have a just, equitable and equal transition. We are trying to develop a firmer, anti-colonial stance because we believe that the environmental crisis has everything to do with the abuse of Indigenous people; the constant oppression and taking away of lands. These issues are very much interconnected and we want to bring forward the message to regular people.”

Photo by Alex Hutchins.

It is therefore a question of education, said Robitaille. The LPSU’s fundamental goal is to educate the general public, from the bottom up, and incite policy change from the governmental institutions.

“Being a geography student, I know the climate crisis is driven mainly by diet,” said Robitaille. “People don’t grasp that issue enough. If you stop eating beef one week at a time, it has a significant impact on your CO2 emission, your water use and land use. It is really as simple as that.”

The LPSU, a student climate activist mobilization, started being more active last February, as an answer to Thunberg’s global cry. The movement has been overwhelmingly picked up by youth, as people want to get involved at a younger age. The people who are the most organized in this movement are the high schoolers, Robitaille said.

“They are fed up,” said Robitaille. “They don’t have a voice politically, they don’t have the means, there are so many barriers for them to get their voice heard; people don’t take them seriously. So, our movement is founded on that. We want to push a ground-up change.”

Indeed, according to François Geoffroy, a spokesperson for La Planete s’invite au Parlement, more than 200,000 students were given permission to strike on Friday.

And as Montreal saw 500,000 citizens walk down its streets on Friday, one can only imagine the impact of such a movement on the upcoming Federal election. The potential of leading this energetic youth to vote for a party that offers an environmental platform is undeniably massive.

Photo by Jad Abukasm.

Yet, the LPSU remains an apolitical organization. Instead, Robitaille said they believe in flipping the entire script around and are more than willing to denounce the nonsense and lack of policy from the Conservatives and Liberals.

On Sept. 24, three days prior to the march, 10 Quebec universities, including Concordia, united to declare a climate emergency. CTV News reported that they all recognize the need for social change and have vowed to become carbon-neutral by 2050, to finance more research on climate change, and to increase the number of environmental and sustainability-related academic programs and other resources.

The impact of the Global Week for Future, the series of international protests asking for climate justice, is yet to be seen. But the conversations are changing and there is currently a momentum building, according to Robitaille.

“At the end, we are just a group of students that don’t want to die,” said Robitaille.

 

 

 

WATCH:

The Concordian talks climate change, veganism, and the federal elections with participants of Montreal’s

Jad Abukasm contributed to this report

Feature photo by Alex Hutchins, photos by Jad Abukasm, Laurence B.D., and Alex Hutchins, video by Thomas Quinn

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Opinions

What are our priorities?

When the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral burned, I was heartbroken – to see walls filled with history, culture, and years of human nuance being devoured by red flames was a sight to make the eyes burn.

The world was in an uproar, pictures of the beautiful church were everywhere, hashtags on social media were immediately trending. The media talked of nothing else.

Now, over 7,200 square miles of the Amazon have been burning since July. As a  result, 131 Indigenous communities are turning into ash, and  3 million different species of plants and animals are suffering. It took the world three weeks to pay attention. It took the media three weeks to talk about it.

But still, leaders from the G-7 Summit offered up to $20 million US towards aid for the Amazon. And yet, the offer was refused by Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, because of a feud with the French president and summit host, Emmanuel Macron. Bolsonaro insisted that in order for there to be ‘talks,’ Macron should apologize. I would call this disturbed priorities from the leader of a country in a crisis.

My questions are directed towards the journalists. I understand that the Notre-Dame was caught on video and happened in one of the most populated areas in the world. But the Amazon is called the lungs of this planet. Why did it take three weeks?

The rainforest is the world’s biggest terrestrial carbon sinker and is now at risk of becoming dry land. I can’t help but feel that had the world known earlier, we could’ve acted earlier – maybe even prevented this.

“Scientists say the Amazon is approaching a tipping point, after which it will irreversibly degrade into a dry savannah,” journalist Jonathan Watts wrote for the Guardian. “At a time when the world needs billions more trees to absorb carbon and stabilise the climate, the planet is losing its biggest rainforest.”

Carole Pires wrote in the The New Yorker that Bolsonaro said more land in the Amazon should be used for farming, mining, and logging. Much like Trump, Bolsonaro is known for caring little about the environment. His campaign was fueled with racism, discrimination, and the incessant need to commercialize the entire country. His priorities have always been towards the green – just not the right one.

In what was the most environmentally ignorant act I’ve ever heard, Brazil’s president encouraged deforestation. Brought to us by Bolsonaro, Aug. 10 became Fire Day – a day when loggers intentionally set fire to clear the land for agriculture. According to Pires, Brazilian space satellites caught surges of wildfire soon after, and three weeks later a smokey apocalypse filled the skies of Sao Paulo – thousands of miles to the south. However, on Aug. 29, Bolsonaro issued a fire ban – for 60 days.

The problem didn’t start with the fire, and it will not end in 60 days. The problem is the fundamental misplacement of our leaders’ priorities. It’s a deep lack of ethical and moral values. It’s that we are not claiming responsibility, because it is ours. Was it not the majority of us who elected them?

The Amazon burning is a symbol that represents the casualties of greed. Burning rainforests, the loss of indigenous homes, climate change… All of these world problems have one dominant factor: prioritizing businesses and material gain at the expense of our Earth’s well-being.

 

Graphic by Victoria Blair

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News

Leaders and environmental groups react as the Amazon continue to burn

Spanning eight countries and more than 5 million kilometers squared, the Earth’s largest rainforest is still ablaze. Earlier in August, day turned to night as smoke from the fires darkened the Sao Paulo sky.

The record number of fires in the Amazon rainforest are mobilizing environmental groups and spurring debate about the forest’s Indigenous population. According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research, the number of active wildfires in the Amazon rainforest increased by more than 80 per cent since last year.

Sustainable Concordia is concerned about the wildfires and deforestation. Their mission statement advocates sustainability through “acting locally and networking globally.” In a statement to The Concordian, Sustainable Concordia emphasized the economic link between deforestation and the fires.

“The fires (at least in part) are being set on purpose, driven by an exploitative capitalist system that values products and profit over people,” wrote Emily Carson-Apstein, Sustainable Concordia’s External and Campaign Coordinator.

Environmental group Greenpeace Brazil also blame deforestation. Márcio Astrini, Greenpeace Brazil’s Policy Coordinator, denounced in the Mongabay the practice while linking it to the thousands of fire hotspots.

“Deforestation only damages Brazil’s economy, the planet’s climate and endangers wildlife and the lives of thousands of people,” wrote Astrini.

In an interview with The Concordian, Christian Poirier, Program Director of Amazon Watch, said the cattle and mining industries are the most significant contributors to deforestation. Amazon Watch is a California-based nonprofit dedicated to protecting the rainforest and Indigenous rights. According to Yale University’s Global Forest Atlas, 450,000 kilometres squared of deforested land now are used for cattle ranching. He said removing trees for cattle ranching is often achieved by intentionally setting fires but this year’s increase is unusual.

“Fires are an annual phenomenon to clear parcels of land, but this year it’s an on an unprecedented scale,” said Poirier.

Like Sustainable Concordia, Poirier is concerned about economic incentives that encourage deforestation. In a statement, Poirier said that President Jair Bolsonaro encouraged farmers to light fires, with anti-environmental rhetoric.

“Farmers and ranchers understand the president’s message as a license to commit arson … in order to aggressively expand their operations into the rainforest,” wrote Poirier.

The fires attracted international attention at last weekend’s G7 summit. Leaders from around the world offered technical and financial support. According to AFP, the G7 pledged $20 million. Bolsanaro initially refused the aid. He has since agreed to accept foreign assistance as long as Brazil controls the funds.

Following the G7 summit, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau committed $15 million to fight the wildfires and praised international collaboration. However, Poirier said Canadian-owned mines are part of the problem, referring to Toronto-based and traded Belo Sun Mining Corporation.

Belo Sun operates the Volta Grande Project, a proposed open-pit mine in the Amazon located on a 160,000-hectare property. According to Environmental Justice Atlas – an organization that tracks global environmental conflicts – the project seeks to open Brazil’s largest open-pit gold mine. Mining operations often require massive amounts of deforestation and mineral extraction – two detrimental procedures to the forest’s sustainability.

Last July, Reuters reported on Belo Sun’s numerous legal challenges in Brazillian courts over construction permits. State and Federal Court cases have left the project on hold. On Jul. 12, Belo Sun released a statement lauding a Federal Court of Appeals ruling in Brazil’s capital, Brasília. However, the judgment was described as a “procedural win.”

With legal disputes ongoing, uncertainty surrounds the Volta Grande Project and the Amazon’s future. Despite international outcry, wildfires continue to burn in the world’s largest rainforest. For now, what effect these fires will have on the Amazon and the world-at-large remains unknown.

Categories
Briefs

World in Brief

The Amazon forest has been burning for the past four weeks at an alarming speed. In July only, areas of the forest were being cleared at a rate of five football fields a minute according to The Guardian. While there is only a portion of the forest on fire, experts estimate that 2019 might be the most destructive year for the Amazon in 10 years.

Tension rises as two drones crashed in Beirut’s southern suburb on Sunday, according to Reuters. While Israel has not claimed responsibility for the drone strikes, Lebanese president Michel Aoun claims the attack as “a declaration of war.” The Hezbollah also warned Israeli soldiers at the border to await a response.

President Donald Trump proposed nuking hurricanes before they made landfall in an attempt to neutralize the storms. However, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) suggest the results would be “devastating,” according to the BBC. “Radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas,” said the NOAA. Trump denied making this proposition in a Tweet.

Chemists will be gathering in San Diego this week to present latest research on chocolate and cannabis. According to new research, chocolate’s properties can throw off potency tests, leading to inaccurate labeling in states where marijuana is legal, according to the Associated Press. Chocolate edibles may contain a way bigger dose of THC than their label, sometimes sending consumers into unexpected trips.

 

Graphic by @sundaeghost

Climate change ads as partisan activities?

As we come to the end of a summer with some of the highest recorded temperatures, Elections Canada’s decision to declare climate crisis ads as partisan activities during the election period fueled a lot of reactions across the country.

Although Election Canada says it only applies to “activities or ads that specifically identify a candidate or party,” Dianne Saxe, former environmental commissioner of Ontario, argues that such regulations means the absence of science-based information.

“It’s absolutely outrageous. It’s wrong in law, it’s harmful to this election and it’s dangerous to public trust,” Saxe said in an interview with CBC Radio’s Metro Morning.

The decision came after the leader of the People’s Party of Canada, Maxime Bernier, made some remarks questioning the urgency and legitimacy of the climate crisis. As a result of such claims, any groups planning to run paid advertisements over $500 must now register with the government as a third party.

While there’s much misinformation and fake news threatening our democracy, declaring such an important issue as partisan is stopping environmental organizations from carrying the facts and helping Canadians make the best decisions throughout the election.

The environmental crisis is not an opinion. Nor is it a choice. It has become everyone’s responsibility, especially our leaders, to start making decisions that will positively affect our planet. And if we can’t even talk about it during elections, we are destined to remain blind.

 

Graphic by Victoria Blair

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