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IRIS Tabling @ Vari Hall: Waste Survey and Climate Justice Art (Nov 27-Dec 2)

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IRIS Tabling at Vari Hall

IRIS Tabling at Vari Hall - this Friday until next Wednesday, 10 am to 5 pm

IRIS is collecting opinions on waste and climate justice

Representatives of York’s Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS) will be on hand in Vari Hall Friday November 27th, through Wednesday December 2nd to promote several initiatives, including this year's annual campus sustainability survey, which is about waste this year, and climate justice art for the COP 15 events in Copenhagen in December.

Waste Survey: Strategic Waste Elimination Education Project (SWEEP)

This year's campus sustainability survey is about waste. We've called the initiative the Strategic Waste Elimination Education Project or SWEEP; this follows last year’s food survey, whose report was released in September: "Examining Campus Food Sustainability at York University". This is the third year that IRIS undertakes a campus sustainability survey (the first year looked at climate change and carbon footprints). The entire SWEEP project will include the campus-wide survey, education initiatives, and a final report to the university. The waste survey is being tabled this Friday November 27, and next Monday to Wednesday (November 30, and December 1, 2) in Vari Hall, from 10 am to 5 pm. Additional locations at Schulich and Glendon to be announced. You can also do the survey now. The survey will be available online until December 4th.

Climate Justice Art

York University has observer status to attend COP 15 - the UNFCCC Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, this December 7th-18th - see the YFile story. A delegation will be attending and hosting an exhibit during the second week, as well as hosting a side event (details to come). As part of these events, IRIS has teamed up with students from FES to create two pieces of climate justice art. These are a banner depicting an ocean of ideas and commitments about what people are willing to do or want the government to do on climate change, and a moveable mural of a collection of drawings. Both pieces need your creative input! We will also be videotaping students opinions on climate change, that will be included in a video for the events - along with clips from last April's conference, How will disenfranchised peoples adapt to climate change. Tabling for these initiatives are in conjunction with the Waste Survey (Friday through Wednesday, 10am-5pm).

Schoolvolution

Visitors will also be asked to support a project by Learning for a Sustainable Future, a non-profit organization housed at York dedicated to promoting sustainability education, by casting an online vote for LSF’s Schoolvolution entry in the Youtopia competition, until Tuesday's voting deadline. See the YFile story for more details.

Sustainable Shopping, Feng Shui, Suze Orman and Debt

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The personal debt of North Americans - both in Canada and the US is staggering. Oprah's "O" magazine's long-time financial advisor, Suze Orman, has published a great book on Women & Money that tells the reader how to track their personal spending. Apparently many North Americans can't do this. Suze makes the link between the lack of basic awareness of where the money's going and personal debt. The Certified General Accountants of Canada 2009 report, "Where has the money gone: The state of Canadian household debt in a stumbling economy" makes this link eminently clear. At the same time, there are tons of tv shows and books on how to declutter your life. They draw a clear connection between personal stress and the accumulation of stuff - as in buying it from the mall. A search of chapters.indigo.ca available book titles with the keyword "Feng Shui" - which, in North America, is basically about getting harmony into your life by throwing out stuff, returned 606 titles.

So, here's the thing - most people actually feel happier and calmer in emptier spaces with less stuff in them. If everyone bought LESS stuff, for many people, there would be LESS debt. These people would then REDUCE their ecological footprint and their resource consumption. They would also INCREASE their personal sustainability index. Such a simple idea, yet seemingly so difficult for most North Americans to accomplish.  Has it become easier during the current recession?  And will the notion of living within one's means and differentiating more between needing and wanting become entrenched before our ice caps melt? I don't know the answer to these questions, but they are certainly something that I think about a lot.

Dawn Bazely

IPY GAPS Releases its Third Annual Newsletter

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Dawn and Milissa Elliott in Fort Simpson, NT

Dawn and Milissa Elliott in Fort Simpson, NT

The IPY GAPS Initiative, now in its third year, has just released its third annual newsletter. Our researchers are also presenting their findings in various fora, including presentations next week at in Yellowknife at the Northern Governance Policy Research Conference. Gabrielle Slowey will be heading up a panel discussion around Oil and Development. Julia and Alana will also present, along with Yellowknife-based GAPS researcher Jessica Simpson. Rajiv is also part of the secretariat for this conference through his continuing work with the Institute for Circumpolar Health Research in Yellowknife.

For further information, please visit the IPY-GAPS Initiative website.

Sustainability and exhaustion – don’t let it get you down

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[photopress:Messy_desktop1.jpg,thumb,pp_image][photopress:Messy_desk2.jpg,thumb,pp_image][photopress:messy_study_3.jpg,thumb,pp_image]Being a director of a sustainability institute and an academic is very tiring - even for a hyper Type A personality who can still put in a 16 hour field day. Not only am I always having to think about my ecological and carbon footprints, and where to buy good offsets, but in a world of greenwashing, scrutinizing everything for its authenticity is also de rigeur.  Uggh - AND THEN THERE'S THE BLOGGING. I have always had two settings - on and off. I like to jump out of bed and hit the ground running, but these days, I often feel like a car engine that's starting on a cold winter's morning. So, it's time for a mechanical overhaul. Here's what I have used  in the past, and will again, to fix the stalled engine:

These may also be helpful for those of you out there who feel overwhelmed by your life, the state of the world and the fact that Terence Corcoran in the National Post is still insisting that the science of climate change is suspect:

1. A life coach (I wrote about this in the article, Coaching for My Life, University Affairs, 2005) (I don't have time for this, these days, but you might).

2. Some great organizational and behavioural modification (often, from business) books. My ipod is filled with audiobooks such as Eat that Frog by Brian Tracy, The Golden Rule of Schmoozing by Aye Jaye, Ready for Anything by Dave Allen, The 60 Second Procrastinator by Jeff Davidson (may be out of print, so borrow it from the library), Your Management Sucks by Mark Stevens, Women and Money by Suze Orman, Crucial Confrontations and Crucial Conversations by Kerry Patterson and colleagues, Making Work Work by Julie Morgernstern (Oprah's organizing guru - and my favourite organization person to read, including her other book, Never Read Email in the Morning), What got you here, won't get you there! by Marshall Goldsmith (and, of course, The Art of War).

3. Podcasts. If you are a poor student and can't afford to pay for a life coach or audiobooks, then download some podcasts, such as Motivation to Move's Daily Boost, The Suze Orman podcast (on itunes), Marcus Buckingham (big time life coach) and Oprah's Take Control of Your Career and Your Life (itunes), and while you are at it, grab some Yoga lessons from Yogamazing (itunes), plus the Manager Tools podcast (itunes) will give you all kinds of sound advice on organizing things.

4. Other people who are more swamped than me: and, you can see the incredible mess on my computer screen and in my home office (above), and feel a sense of superiority. I find that it's always comforting to know that someone else is worse off. Here's what I will be using today, in my surroundings to give me motivation and energy:

The 2006 farewell Globe and Mail article by Ken Wiwa about his decision to return with his family to the UK and to work with the Nigerian government,  pinned to the wall in front of me. The dried edelweiss flower that my former student, and current research collaborator, Andrew Tanentzap gave me as a gift, from a trip to Europe. The photos of past and present grad students and family that are part of the clutter: they make me smile and feel guilty at the same time - a great carrot and stick, combined into one item!

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Dawn Bazely

“Why Woody?” – for an honorary degree

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A very nice reporter from the Toronto Star asked me this question on the phone yesterday, as I was standing in a field in Milton, Ontario, next to 16-Milgiant 2e Creek. I was collecting seeds from Giant Hogweed, an invasive and somewhat toxic plant (see right).

Tomorrow, York University will confer an honorary degree on Woody Harrelson. Back in January, when I wrote my nomination letter, I had no idea that the announcement of this would coincide with the recent release of a popular commercial movie, starring him! I also had no idea as to how receptive the university committee responsible for Honorary Degrees would be to our nomination! After all, universities are very conservative institutions, as I found out from the raised eyebrows, back in the mid 1990s, when I had the temerity to suggest to some colleagues that we ought to consider nominating Oprah Winfrey for an honorary degree. At the time, she was dictating what America and my local Mum's Book Club was reading, through her book selections.

There have been a lot opinions offered about York conferring this degree on Woody Harrelson, in response to the CBC story. In the wake of my interview with the Star reporter, I think there's a few things worth mentioning from my answer to her question "Why Woody?"

1. The whole idea can be traced back to 2006 and the conversation that IRIS started about making York's course kits carbon neutral. Along the way, not only did we discover a huge interest amongst our students in the issue of climate change, but we also learned a lot about how unsustainable the publishing and printing industry is, in terms of how it produces books:  inks, paper, and the energy footprint of shipping books; akin to shipping bricks, a friend in publishing has told me.

2. Then, in August 2008, I was invited by the committee organizing our Fall Green Week, to suggest environmental and sustainability-related documentaries for screening. Since I am always forcing my family to watch educational docs, I had lots of ideas, as did others, and we had a lively discussion. I thought that An Inconvenient Truth was too ubiquitous to have much appeal at the time, and that Who Killed the Electric Car, was just a wee bit too boring. But Go Further was different from anything that I had ever seen, and might just be the ticket for an undergraduate audience. It was not at all preachy and took a very different approach to engaging youth than  found in the standard lecture.

3. When we screened the film, through a colleague at York, who turned out to have a brother in publishing, we also learned about the companion book to the documentary, which is incredibly sustainably produced. From him, we learned that the appearance of these kinds of books tends to have limited appeal to the purchasing public. This is why the books in stores don't tend to look like the Go Further book: they don't really sell that well. In other words - environmentally friendly, unshiny, dull-looking books don't cut it on the shelf - YET.

So there you have it, the boring story of why I got involved in this nomination. We did a bunch of research into and learning about a couple of key items of academic life - documentaries and books and learned about Woody Harrelson, too. And, as a good academic should be, I was also rather skeptical about the nomination venture. As I  wrote in my  letter:

"Mr. Harrelson has turned out to be an embodiment of our new York slogan and our old motto, that the way must be tried. Who would have thought that the goofy bartender from “Cheers” would turn out to be such an important environmental leader and activist?"

If universities are to be leaders, then we must be receptive to different modes of teaching and learning, and be prepared to recognize and honor them.

Dawn Bazely

Markets and trading – part of being human

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Sitting in a research centre with a mandate to engage in sustainability-related research across the entire university, means that I usually get to hear all sides of arguments. And there is certainly debate about everything. While the lack of consensus, or diversity of opinion, that exists in academia, may often confuse members of our society who don't have the luxury of reading primary peer-reviewed literature, the fact is, that debate and argument are at the crux of what we do as academics. (And, yes, there IS overwhelming agreement in the peer-reviewed literature that human-created greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels are enhancing the planetary greenhouse effect).

These days, I frequently listen to divergent, and passionate opinions on whether carbon markets, carbon taxes, and carbon offsets  are good or bad. This debate is especially heated among members of the academic community interested in the link between climate change, ecological footprints, adaptation and mitigation, and poverty reduction.

My view, is that humans are hard-wired to trade stuff. Shopping, the souq, local farmer's markets, the Christmas bazaar, the summer fete, and the invention of money all come out of this fundamental behaviour. So, whether or not one thinks, that carbon offsets are the modern day equivalent of buying indulgences in the hope of saving one's soul, there will eventually be prices put on previously largely unpriced resources such as carbon and water. This will happen just as soon as we have agreed-upon ways of quantifying them. Advocates for human rights, justice and equity simply must ensure that they have seat at these negotiating tables. The fact that Canada's failure to endorse water as a human right keeps popping up as a topic at campus World Water Day celebrations, emphasises this for me.

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I have been very interested to encounter, in my role as IRIS' Director, in the last few years, businesses that aim at engaging with the practicalities of these incipient and emerging resource markets. For example, I recently received in my inbox, the XPV Waterview Newsletter for July/August 2009, which I actually opened, and read. After digesting the last line, "This should not be construed as an offering document and is solely intended to inform readers of recent developments with XPV Capital and the water sector.", I read the newsletter again. Then I discovered more of these newsletters buried in my inbox and they were great, too. My interest was piqued, and I then went to the website, to try and figure out exactly who had put together such an interesting and informative document with an amazing cartoon about beavers, that I will certainly refer to in my Ecology lectures.

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So, XPV Capital is, quite simply, a VC (venture capital) or investment firm with a great website, especially its "water facts" feed and news updates. I learned outfrom the "About" page, that:

"XPV Capital Corporation partners with entrepreneurs in emerging water companies by:

• Investing capital to ignite your growth; and
• Leveraging our extensive knowledge, expertise, and contacts to help build your business.

XPV is committed to helping you and your business succeed.  As experienced water entrepreneurs and investment professionals, we understand the unique opportunities and challenges of emerging water companies.  We work hard to give you the competitive advantage that only the right investor partnership can deliver."

Now, I am a biologist, who teaches the water cycle and has been showing the marvellous 1993 Dutch government documentary, "Troubled Water" in my 2nd year Ecology course for years. But, here are business people, aware of the same data and information as I am, and acting upon them in quite a different way. As Mr. Spock would say, "fascinating". The XPV website also told me on the investments page:

"The way we produce, manage, and use water is forced to change and is impacting governments, corporations, and citizens around the world. This drastic transformation in the water industry will create unprecedented investment opportunities as water transitions from a simple life sustaining substance taken for granted by many, into one of the most economically and socially valuable resources of the 21st century." Given our propensity as a species, to trade stuff, this is bang-on, and, to my mind, indicative of the obvious next steps to emerge, following the concerns raised by such books such as Marq De Villier's Water (2001), and Vandana Shiva's Water Wars (2002). Although, it's taken longer than I would have thought it would.

Even in Canada, we need to manage and conserve water more effectively - and I for one am delighted that XPV is generating business and investment in this area that highlights these needs. I look forward to reading more newsletters.

Dawn R. Bazely

PS Troubled Water, the documentary, reports how "In a fictitious newcast from the year 2018, reporters discuss a future where water is scarce, and the causes of the crisis are found in the past, in poor management and lack of understanding of the many uses for water, for food through recreation, that have to be managed as well, in order to conserve water for the future." (Video 0572 in York U's Sound and Moving Image Library)

We have to be much more rumpled… and muddy

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This summer, I found a great blog at This Magazine.  The webpage (supported by folk such as Margaret Atwood and David Suzuki) tells me that it's the leading alternative Canadian magazine of politics, pop culture, and the arts.  The Earth Archives has some very well written posts - including this one, that I have tried to insert below - about how doing lots of small sustainability-motivated acts won't really help us that much.  The author, Graham F. Scott,  is probably right. But,  the question is whether these acts end up enabling much larger actions - such as, changing our views on ironed clothes on a large-scale.  Why's this large?  Well, I am very fed up with being in meetings full of people dressed in well-pressed clothes.  I do not iron on the principle that it's a waste of energy (all round).  We also need to stop washing stuff so often.  I insist that when we rent very small cars for field work, that my local Hertz gives us dirty cars - they're never going to be as full of mud as they end up with us.  If this all sends a message to industry (as in, we could boycott companies where staff are forced to dress inappropriately in ironed shirts and blouses, and in wool suits in hot summers), then small acts COULD lead to big changes.

Dawn R. Bazely - dressed below right, in an outfit that I would happily wear to a boardroom meeting, to make a point, bug shirt and all.from the field to the boardroom

"January 08, 2009

Rinky-dink ink tinkering isn't the answer

Posted by Graham F. Scott at 11:57 AM ET | Comments (0)

EcoFont alphabet

A Dutch design firm has released a new computer font, Ecofont, that they say uses less ink, and can therefore reduce the e-waste that results from depleted toner cartridges. It's a regular-looking font except that it's riddled with holes, and the firm, Spranq, claims this reduces toner use by up to 20 per cent.

Their hearts are in the right place, but this is clearly public-relations bunk. (And I realize I'm playing into it by linking to them.) There are plenty of environmental problems in the world, and technology waste is some of the most difficult to deal with. But the real effect of this font is statistically insignificant, and no one should be fooled into thinking it's a real solution to any of our pressing environmental problems.

This kind of "environmental" measure is increasingly common — easy to implement, emotionally gratifying, socially acceptable, and totally ineffectual. You would be better off turning on the ink-saving features now available in every modern printer; even better would be choosing not to print that two-line email in the first place.

This morning on Twitter I linked to a new advertisement from the World Wildlife Fund that makes a crucial point: consumers and end-users are being constantly scolded to change their behaviours and reduce their environmental footprint while government and industry continue to allow damaging beahviour to go unchecked. Individual efforts like installing compact fluorescent lightbulbs and downloading an "Ecofont" are fine, but they won't get us where we need to go unless the biggest and baddest polluters are brought to heel."

The Age of Stupid – a review of the new, essential climate change movie

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In the run up to Copenhagen, the new movie, “The Age of Stupid”, which was shown on multiple screens around the world last night, is this year’s “must-see” film about climate change, just as “An Inconvenient Truth” was a couple of years ago. But, it takes a very different tack. Franny Armstrong’s engaging dramatic documentary looks back to the present from 2055, when the world has dissolved into chaos, due to the irreversible run-away effects of climate change, to ask why, despite all of the signals, people let it happen. Peter Postlethwaite acts as the “curator” or keeper of the Global Archive, a vast tower-like warehouse, somewhere in the arctic. The treasures of all the world’s museums have been stashed away in this lonely place. We see a King Tut-like sarcophagus to the left of curator’s computer screen, where he is pulling up fragments of film from his media-archive.

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These film clips feature the stories of a young woman in Nigeria, who wants to become a doctor, and who turns to trading in the diesel black market to raise her tuition fees, a wealthy young business man starting up a cheap airline, India’s version of Ryanair, because he believes that this is the way to “help” poor people, an incredibly fit, 82-year old French mountain guide from Chamonix, who has watched the glaciers recede, and a young British family, in which the dad builds wind farms and who is seen trying to combat a most excruciatingly civilized case of NIMBYism (Not in My Backyard) in Bedford, UK, from a group of well-heeled fifty and sixty-year olds who hold the view that windfarms ruin the aesthetic of the landscape, but who all feel that “we are doing our bit for the environment in other ways”. These interviews made me grind my teeth and want to put in an order for Che Guevara type T-shirts with the face of the woman, (pictured below right), who was the chief spokesperson for the anti-wind farm protestors on the front, and the slogan “Supercilious, Selfish, Sententious” emblazoned across the top. I see this as being my hommage to the “I am not a plastic bag” campaign of last year or so, which also made me grind my teeth a lot, in terms of its shallowness.AgeOfStupid

I left the movie feeling really upbeat, because I just love these doom and gloom docs and lectures about climate change. They make me feel quite cheery, because after including the topic of climate change in my ecology courses for nearly 20 years, anything about climate change, coming from anyone else, that might actually grab people’s attention and engage them enough to make them change their behaviour, makes me feel less lonely! The movie does a great job of explaining how everyone in the Global North needs to go on a strict carbon diet, as well as giving a superb Monty Pythonesque animated overview of Homo sapiens' historical tendency to make war over resources. OK – so mine is probably NOT the average reaction to this movie, but then not many people had a Master’s supervisor who was on an IPCC working group, either, and who was discussing climate change with them in 1984.

Dawn R. Bazely

World Climate Conference

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This week, the World Meteorological Organization is assembling over 2500 experts from 15o countries in Geneva to examine long-range forecasting amidst climate change. This will be particularly important for the world's poor farmers who can increasingly no longer depend on traditional weather patterns. One of the proposed plans will use the ubiquitous global mobile network  in many countries to share weather-related information. For better or worse, cell phone coverage is increasingly eclipsing every other utility in terms of territorial availability and penetration.

Check this IPS article for more contextual information on this important gathering.

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