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Monthly Archives: April 2010

Climate Change: Women’s Voices from the Global South

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Last week, IRIS attended the Climate Wise Women (CW2) to listen to the experiences of three women from the Global South who are already living with the impacts of climate change. After the failure of COP15 to reach a binding accord, a group of women from the Global South, began a worldwide speaking tour. Their objective is share their stories and to spur climate action at the grassroots level. This well put together public speaking tour offers an alternative narrative on how climate change affects women and families.  Ulamila Kurai Wragg from the Cook Islands focused on how traditional knowledge, inheritance structures, and livelihoods are changing forever.  The community has found that traditional crops can no longer flourish, fish have migrated away from the shores near home, and local water reserves are now saline. Ulamila's family has adapted by changing crops, by collecting rain water whenever possible, and by walking to fishing grounds on the other side of the Island. However, resource yields have fallen and the pressure to seek other livelihood options looms for her daughters. Ulamila’s message was that traditional ways of life and cultural practices have already changed due to climate change. Sharon Hanshaw from Biloxi, Mississippi told us a tragic story of personal loss and community displacement after Hurricane Katrina. Her message was that politicians have turned a blind eye to most vulnerable victims of the Hurricane, and in response women have gathered to place political pressure on the local government to rebuild what was lost.  Finally, Constance Okollet from Uganda told a gripping tale about the impacts of the 2007 flooding and subsequent droughts on the agricultural community of Tororo. She recounted the stories of the deaths of children and elders to cholera and malaria during the floods, and then the further losses due to malnutrition as the drought came.  Just as the community began to recover, another intense flood and drought followed in 2009. Her message was that the community has never seen such an intensity and frequency of both droughts and floods. She emphasized how her community fears only the worst for their future and survival. The presentation pointed to how local people are living with the impacts of climate change, and offered the space for understanding climate impacts and responses across gender and cultures.

Learn more at: http://www.climatewisewomen.org/

Eyjafjallajokull: Necessity is the mother of green invention?

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This morning’s episode of CBC’s ‘The Current’ featured the sounds of birds singing in West London. A newsworthy event, since no one knows if the birds sing everyday. On most days, the songs are drowned out by the ever present droning of jet engines overhead. Local residents interviewed commented both on how nice the sounds of nature are, and how refreshing silence can be in the city. A radical idea: nature is part of the city and contributes to our well being. Elsewhere, the British Navy has sent ships to take stranded travelers home; others have taken trains home. And for those whose travel plans have been canceled, they are opting to go local by taking trips to the countryside.  A radical idea: we can relax close to home, and we can move across Europe by train, boat, and not plane.  Business is adapting as well, with the grounding of employees on their way to meetings, conferences, and presentations, business is replacing travel with video conferencing.  Another radical idea: business people do not have to fly for every meeting abroad.  Perhaps the Icelandic volcano was fortuitous for climate politics, because without any advocacy from environmentalists, people have found alternative ways for moving, consuming, and conducting business. It is estimated that the grounding of planes has saved about 1.3 million tonnes of CO2 emissions in less than a week (plane emissions minus volcano emissions).  This is not to sideline the frustration of millions of travelers or the loss of millions to the airline industry. But, just before the planes take off again, we should take a moment to think about how this one geological event opened a space of potentiality, and showed us that we can find alternatives to emitting GHGs, if necessary.

NIMBYism and windfarms in Toronto

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The City of Toronto was well ahead of the Canadian curve when it came to adopting basic principles of sustainability around public transport, intensification of building density and the need to increase sources of renewable energy. The Ontario Green Energy Act has provided marvelous opportunities for increasing provincial sources of renewable energy. I have been amazed at how wind farms built in recent years in southwestern Ontario and on the way to Grey Bruce have livened up the landscape.

But, as the province moves on from terrestrial wind farms to offshore projects, one Toronto community is mobilizing against them. Some Guildwood residents have asked their city councilors, Paul Ainslie and Brian Ashton, to bring forward a motion to the city’s executive committee asking the province for a blanket-moratorium on wind-power development. The Globe and Mail article, Bluff residents fight wind turbines, explains that this motion, if passed, will be purely symbolic. But, while it will have little impact, it illustrates the nature of local opposition to such projects. The article quotes my colleague, Mark Winfield: "it would be “tragic" if fear of angering residents prevented the city’s politicians from pursuing much-needed renewable energy initiatives."

I am grading final exams right now. Since my head is in this space, my response on hearing about this motion in the last week was to imagine a take-home exam that I would like to set all of the voting residents of this local community. Here are the essay questions:

1. Explain what the acronym NIMBY stands for and discuss how this may or may not be applicable to Guildwood.

2. Define the term “ecological footprint” and explain how you would calculate your personal footprint.

3. In the documentary, The Age of Stupid, the filmmaker, Franny Armstrong illustrates the case of local residents opposing a wind farm project on the basis of landscape aesthetics. Compare and contrast this case with that of Guildwood in terms of how you are still “do[ing] your bit for the environment” (quote from wind-farm opponent in The Age of Stupid).

4. Discuss the evidence in the peer-reviewed literature for the harmful impacts of wind farms on human health and the environment. In your answer, define the term, peer-reviewed literature. (hint - you may want to use Google Scholar for this).

The purpose of these questions? Well, none of them have definitive right or wrong answers, so they are aimed at improving the level of informed opinions on the issue, because, obviously, there is homework that would need to be done to answer these questions. In the Globe article, Mr. Ainslie comments “there’s a lot of things that are unanswered”. These questions would help in addressing his concerns.

And, I am NOT advocating for only peer-reviewed science to drive action and policy. My close colleague,  environmental ethicist, Dr. Nicole Klenk proposes that “scientific narratives should be denied a priori privilege over non-scientific interpretations of nature for policy purposes”. I completely agree – local knowledge is very important and should be taken into account. BUT just how much local knowledge is there about wind farms in Guildwood?

I have lost patience with the dominant notion in our society, that an uninformed opinion should count for as much as an informed opinion. Too many people, including my teenager,  are getting away without doing their homework. The question of exactly whom I see as being responsible for this lamentable state of affairs is a topic for another blog.

Dawn R. Bazely

PS the quote is from the 2008 article, “Listening to the birds: a pragmatic proposal for forestry” in the peer-reviewed journal, Environmental Values, volume 17, pages 331-351

Plunder, Pollution and New Enclosures *location change* (April 20)

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Latin American Studies at the University of Toronto invites you to
this special event:

Time:Tuesday, April 20th, 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Location: Victoria College, Room 206
91 Charles St. West (Museum Subway Station)
Professor Andrés Dimitriu
Departamento de Comunicación Social, Facultad de Derecho y Ciencias
Sociales, Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Argentina.

Plunder, Pollution and New Enclosures
NO MORE "DOWN THERE" APPROACHES: CONSEQUENCES OF THE EXTRACTIVE MODEL IN ARGENTINA, ECOLOGICAL HISTORY AND WHY "LOCAL" CONDITIONS ARE OF GLOBAL CONCERN.

"The physiognomy of a government can best be judged in its colonies,
for there its characteristic traits usually appear larger and more
distinct.When I wish to judge the spirit and vices of the government of
Louis XIV,I must go to Canada. Its deformities are seen there as through a microscope"
--Alexis de Tocqueville

Andrés Dimitriu is full professor in the Department of Communication at the Universidad Nacional del Comahue, Argentina.
Also he taught graduate seminars in Brazil, Canada, and Germany. He published numerous articles and books on political economy of communication, political ecology and critical views on development. Moreover, Andrés Dimitriu worked at the National Institute of Rural Technology in Argentina (INTA), and as an independent journalist, editor of several publications and filmmaker. He was Secretary of Communication of the Province of Rio Negro, Argentina (1983-1987), and headed a regional research centre in Bariloche, Patagonia. He is
a founding member of the Canada-Comahue Center. Currently he is co-director of the indexed THEOMAI journal>
(http://revista-theomai.unq.edu.ar/), a member of the Rural
Reflection Group Argentina (http://www.grr.org.ar/), and of the People*s
Assemblies Against Plunder and Contamination of the Patagonia Region,
Argentina.
He is a board member of the Latin Union of Political Economy of
Information, Communication and Culture (ULEPICC)
http://www.ulepicc.org/quienes_somos.html

The quest for a sustainable writing tool

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Last Friday, I was one of the volunteer parent drivers for an excited group of school children that included my daughter. We went to the opening day of  the "Harry Potter" Exhibition at the Ontario Science Centre. Like all trendy exhibitions, the cost of entry was pretty steep, and naturally, since this is a commercial enterprise which is all about making money, the exit of the exhibition led directly into the gift shop. All kinds of pricey Potter paraphernalia was on sale:  a Wizard Chess set for over $400 and a replica of the marauder's map for $45 (prompting me to keep asking myself, "Do J K Rowling and Warner Bros REALLY need another few million?"). Luckily, my daughter kept her selection on the less expensive side and settled on a $20 Parchment Paper Writing Set. "Heck, I thought" as I handed over the plastic, "I could put the kit together from stuff I have on hand at home, and make a quill from a gull or Canada goose feather..." [photopress:Harry_Potter_1.jpg,full,alignright]

Now, when it comes to consuming sustainably, we all KNOW that we should strive to avoid creating garbage that goes into landfill. The Parchment kit purchase got me brooding about my ongoing irritation at the mountain of used up ballpoint and felt-tip pens that I and all the students that I teach have been creating. I am extremely annoyed at how few pens are  recyclable or biodegradable (there are some that are) and at their limited use for  crafts. I have actually given this very serious thought and I maintain a huge collection of pen lids salvaged from pens that have run out, just in case some artist needs them for an installation project involving making a mosaic or collage out of old pens.

My irritation was recently exacerbated, because I was given a beautiful York University metal, rollerball pen. When it ran out, I tried to buy a refill for it, and found that this needed a "special order" from the bookstore. Only one other person had placed such an order, which led me to wonder what all the other recipients had done with their rather expensive metal pens once they ran out?

This seemingly small question of writing instruments had become, for me, yet another irritating example of our sustained unsustainable practices. And, I thought of a solution: I grew up using a fountain pen, and I would go back to it.  Through most of the 1980s, and early 1990s, I used a SINGLE pen - a Sheaffer, with a 14K gold nib that I simply refilled from a bottle of ink. Unfortunately, I am as hard on fountain pens as I am on everything else. On dusting the pen off, I found out that I had stopped using it  because it was very leaky and the nib was bent out of shape. After watching my forefinger and middle finger turn blue, I remembered...

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So, off I went on a rather desultory search for a new fountain pen that  has taken me  6-months, give or take. Staples did not really sell quality everyday-use fountain pens, but rather, caligraphy kits with specialist nibs. I then began a random check of stationery stores but failed to find inexpensive, good quality fountain pens. I did, however, discover that the only fountain pen for sale in the York Bookstore was DISPOSABLE. I did end up buying it, out of sheer fascinated horror at the concept, it and I have used it up - it gave a pretty smooth, if guilt-inducing write.

I was starting to become quite obsessed with the whole issue of  being forced to use single-use pens but did not have the time to do a really thorough investigation. But, today, while hanging around, waiting for my daughter , who was on a birthday celebration scavenger hunt at the Eaton Centre, I went on a hunt of my own. At Birks, and European Jewellers, I found Mont Blanc pens for $500-$1000. Gulp! I would lose it/break it/ drop it. Too expensive for me.

But, luckily, I found a shop called La Swiss, with a very patient young man, named Marc who was having a slow day. I drove him crazy, because here, at last was a shop full of not just Swiss watches but a ton of German, French and US-manufactured fountain pens. I left the store with 4 of them:

1. A Waterman, Charleston, Ebony Black model - nice weight, and heft

2. A Diplomat Excellence B Black Lacquer model - a little heavier and with a fine nib

Since they were both well under my target price point of $200 each, and I was so happy to have found a store with a whole range of fountain pens, I went crazy and bought a couple of inexpensive (around $35 to $60) pens from companies that I had never heard of:

1. An ONLINE Piccolo tri-colour fountain pen with a pink and purple lid. This German company, founded in 1991 by Alexander and Thomas Batsch, manufactures a line of eco-friendly, writing products for kids - and, has one of the most chic retail websites I have ever seen - WAY TO GO!

2. A Monteverde Jewelria resin fountain pen in brown. Monteverde is a US company.

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I expect to be just fine with these pens for the rest of my life. Like HP Reverse Polish notation calculators, I expect that most people will be unlikely to pick up a pen and use it if I leave it around. Do consider switching back to a fountain pen, and rejoin the fan club. If you did not grow up using one, give it a whirl with a disposable starter pen - you are sure to love it. Fountain pens write faster and smoother than any other pen that I have ever used, and I write a lot. The only thing to remember is to put the pen in a ziploc bag when you fly - the ink leaks - or, just don't fly.

Dawn R. Bazely

Morris Katz Memorial Lecture in Environmental Research (May 10)

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2010 Morris Katz Memorial Lecture in Environmental Research

Dr. Ronald Keith O’Dor
Consortium for Ocean Leadership, Washington, DC., USA
and Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

Changing Life in a Changing Ocean

Abstract: New technologies demonstrated by Census of Marine Life projects have transformed the ocean from dark and mysterious to transparent and understandable. The Canadian led Ocean Tracking Network is one example that allows us to know when commercial fish and conservation icons go where and records the conditions they experience. Changes in atmospheric chemistry are warming and acidifying the ocean. Where life have to go to survive is still open to debate. Corals can’t move and perhaps even coral sands will dissolve! Traditional knowledge about fish distributions will change dramatically with warming. Why subsidize fuel burning vessels to search the ocean for fish when we could subsidize the tagging of fish so that they tell us where they can be caught cheaply with minimum impact on the environment?

Time: Monday, May 10, 2010
2:30 p.m.
Location: Senate Chamber, N940 Ross Bldg., York University
4700 Keele Street, Toronto

For more information please refer to the attached poster.

Eco Fest Niagara (April 18)

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3RD ANNUAL ECO FEST NIAGARA
Niagara’s Greenest Trade Show!

Location: Niagara College, Glendale Campus (NOTL)
Time: Sunday April 18, 2010
10am - 4pm

Hosted by CLIMATE ACTION NIAGARA
Phone: 289-820-6440 Email: Can.info@cogeco.net

For more information please refer to the attached poster and Press Release.

Social Justice Retreat Coordinator

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The Centre for Social Justice invites applicants for the position of Social Justice Retreat Coordinator

May 10 – August 30, 2010

The Retreat Coordinator will work with a Steering Committee (made up of experienced community workers and academics working in the field of social justice) to organize the 13th Annual Social Justice Summer Retreat. A member of the Board of Directors will act as a direct supervisor and meet with the student on a regular basis.

Please follow the link for more information on the Retreat:
http://www.socialjustice.org/index.php?page=summer-retreat

Duties:

· Responsible for overall coordination of logistics leading up to and at the event.

· Coordinate regular Steering Committee meetings, take minutes and follow-up with assigned tasks.

· Process registrations and subsidy applications.

· Respond to high volume of inquiries via email and phone.

· Develop a publicity strategy and manage website content.

· Recruit, train and supervise volunteers to help with logistics.

· Track expenses and manage event budget.

· Consult and work collaboratively with external groups, including the development of relationships with other non-governmental organizations, activist groups and the private sector.

· Coordinate fundraising efforts.

· Produce an evaluation report for funders and recommendations for future events.

Qualifications:

· Must have been registered as a full-time student during the preceding academic year and intend to return to school on a full-time basis during the next academic year.

· Event and social justice organizing experience is a strong asset.

· Demonstrated commitment to social justice work.

· Flexible and resourceful, self-starter with the ability to work independently and as part of a team.

· Knowledge / experience using the internet (particularly social networking sites) to promote events and initiatives within the social justice community.

· Strong computer skills (including experience updating website content) would be considered a strong asset.

· Sensitive to individuals with mental health and/or developmental disabilities.

· Sensitive to various ethno-racial cultures and backgrounds.

· Candidate must be able to attend main event on August 26th-29, 2010 at Camp Arowhon, Algonquin Park.

Please send resume and cover letter to retreat@socialjustice.org by April 28.

Late applications will not be accepted. $15/h, flexible hours.

Spring is here… too early

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This morning, the novelist, Rui Umezawa, who is a neighbour and who kindly reads my blogs, asked me why I have been so inactive on the blogging front. "Too busy", I yelled across the garden fences. This term I have been teaching BIOLOGY 2010, the Plants course, which I taught from 1991-97, before powerpoint and course websites. So, while all of those life cycles are forever burned into my brain, chalk and talk, as we call that style of lecturing, is, in science, pretty much gone the way of the dodo. I have had to create Keynote and Powerpoint lectures and to learn "moodle" which is the most comprehensive electronic classroom software that I have ever seen. This open source software has replaced the way that I previously accessed my course websites - namely through the very nice, and now retired Biology Department Lecturer who functioned as our webmaster.

Moodle has allowed me to teach this course as I always wanted to: skipping from chapter 1 directly to chapter 32, and then to 21, to chapters 2-8, to 11-12 and then 18, 17, 16, 15, 14, 13 in Raven et al's Plant Biology 7th Ed.  CRAZY, right? But in fact, moving through the material in this sequence always made more sense to me than the linear way that I was forced to teach in earlier versions of the course text book: i.e. start at chapter number one and proceed forward in a one-way sequence. The internet and moodle has provided me with the tools to lay out a completely different roadmap than that provided by the book's author's and index, and, in 2010, the students can follow my map and route through the text book. If I had tried to do this in the 1990s, supported by paper course handouts and chalk and talk lectures, there would, most likely, have been a revolution in the lecturehall. Students who missed classes would have been griping about the jumping around, and any deviations from the lecture schedule, when I found that I was not delivering planned lectures on the expected date. With moodle, I  constantly update the students about where we got to, and with podcasted lectures, they have more flexibility than ever before, to miss a class and still catch up.

I LOVE IT - but it's been a heck of a lot of work at the back end. Still, there's nothing like jumping into a new technology with two feet, and sinking or swimming. The York University support staff have been amazing and I have taken several mini-courses. And, the time involved, has meant no time for blogging here. But, I have sought to imbue the course with a large measure of sustainability thinking. This is easy to do in a course that is essentially about biodiversity, why plants are important to humans, and about evolution. Our lectures on the Carboniferous and the tree ferns and progymnosperms (ancestors of seed plants) that fixed enormous amounts of carbon, and which subsequently turned into fossil fuels, relate directly to human-produced greenhouse gas emissions arising from the burning of these fossil fuels. I found an amazing old You Tube video about fossils, from the 1950s or 1960s by Royal Dutch Shell (that's Shell Oil to you and me), that the students have watched.

Everything is connected. Teaching about flowering plants and pointing out to my students that trees are already flowering , has reminded me, every day since early March, that climate change is happening NOW. I told my husband yesterday that one is supposed to prune roses when the forsythia blooms, and today, I have seen forsythia flowers. My gardening journals from the 1990s tells me that in 1994, the forsythia was only just flowering on April 27. In the early 2000s, I was noting that the forsythia blooming in mid-April was just "too early" - and in 2010, it's been flowering since the 2nd or 3rd of April. Climate warming is here, and in fact, in the USA, the Gardening Zones were  adjusted in 2006 by the Arbor Day Foundation to reflect this.

Dawn R. Bazely

YFile: More bins, better labels can improve waste diversion at York

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The following appeared in the Wednesday, March 31, 2010 edition of Y-File:

What should York do to reduce waste on campus? Lots of things, but students, staff and faculty surveyed last December say the University should focus on three diversion measures – placing more composters closer to dining areas, introducing electronic course kits and other paperless practices, and encouraging food vendors to use recyclable dishes and cutlery.

About 70 per cent of the 569 who completed the survey also admitted they are confused about what is recyclable at York.

“York does manage its own waste, so what is recyclable at York isn’t necessarily recyclable at home,” said Alexis Esseltine, the environmental studies graduate student who conducted the survey, at an Earth Hour Symposium at Keele campus last Wednesday. “This may be causing confusion.”

Right: Marlee Kohn (left) and Alexis Esseltine demonstrate proper garbage disposal

A recycling contest in Vari Hall last week underlined that fact. Participants were timed for how fast they could empty 40 items from a bag into the correct recycling and garbage bins. Many mistakenly placed aluminum foil in with bottles and cans, and didn’t know batteries could be recycled in drop-offs around campus, said Marlee Kohn, an environmental studies master's student who led the educational Waste Challenge.

The solution? Those surveyed suggested more bins and clearer labels on bins, so people can figure out quickly where to dispose of their waste. They also suggested York should  provide feedback on how well it is reducing and diverting waste, simplify its recycling system and post reminders on how to recycle.

Esseltine oversaw the survey for the Strategic Waste Elimination Education Project (SWEEP), an initiative of York’s Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS). Every year, IRIS's graduate assistants do a campus survey on a sustainability theme. The first, in 2006, asked students what they knew about climate change and resulted in more environmentally friendly course kits, now a Yorkwise initiative (see YFile, April 2, 2008); the second, assessed the value of urban forest on Keele campus; and the third surveyed students about their food choices and needs.

The goal of the waste survey was to determine the York community’s attitudes, behaviours, and knowledge surrounding waste. The results will be shared with Campus Services & Business Operations (CSBO) and the President’s Sustainability Council.

Conducted over two weeks late last fall, the survey solicited responses online, through listservs and on Facebook, and for four days on laptops set up at tables in Vari Hall.

More than 60 per cent of the respondents were students, 20 per cent staff and 12 per cent faculty. Almost 90 per cent of all respondents live off campus.

A majority use reusable mugs (60 per cent) and reusable water bottles (70 per cent) and bring their own meals and snacks in reusable containers with cutlery (70 per cent). Most (80 per cent) turn off lights when leaving a room.

Just over half said they were aware of the black outdoor composters on campus. Of those who were, only 35 per cent used them. The other 64 per cent said they never or rarely used them because the composters were not conveniently located or were dirty, or because the respondents weren’t aware the composters were meant for community use. Some respondents said they take their garbage home. “No one thought that they weren’t important,” said Esseltine.

York currently diverts 59 per cent of its waste from landfill. On April 22, CSBO plans to launch Zero Waste, an awareness program to reduce waste and improve the recycling stream, to raise that diversion rate to 65 per cent by May 2013.

Visit the CSBO Web site for more information about York’s recycling program.

By Martha Tancock, YFile contributing writer

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