Skip to main content

Blogs

IRIS envy

Published by

What on earth do irises have to do with sustainability? In a world that's drowning in acronyms, I like to have mine mean something. It turns out that IRIS is a really common acronym. I get 90 million google hits for "iris", and 89.9 million google hits for "IRIS". So, maybe I should just be satisfied that despite it being the flowering season for iris, our IRIS (York U's Institute for Research and Innovation in Sustainability) made it to number 11 on the "IRIS" google list today.

"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade", which obviously has the corollary: "when you get given IRIS as the sustainability research institute acronym, find some sustainability meaning in it". Well, here goes: the iris family, or Iridaceae, includes many native North American species. Ahaa! IRIS has an ecological aspect. My favourite member of the Iris family in Ontario is blue-eyed grass, Sisyrinchium montanum, which is widespread on Manitoulin Island.

Irises are also a renewable resource. Not only are they beautiful garden perennials, but the leaves can be used to make paper. Orris root, which comes from three species of iris, including Iris germanica (left), is mainly grown as a crop in Italy, and is used as a fixative in perfumes and pot pourri. And here's an odd factoid - orris root is also used in the flavouring of Bombay Sapphire gin (but you can't verify this on their website, unless you are of legal drinking age).

And the other faces of iris? Iris was the Greek goddess of the rainbow, and generally a messenger and errand runner. Well, part of our function is to communicate the message of sustainability. And what about the fleur-de-lis? This important heraldic symbol, particularly of French Royalty, is usually thought to be a stylized version of the iris, but there's a ton of debate about that too. Making a link between heraldry and sustainability... that's a stretch, unless we are allowed to incorporate a fleur-de-lis in York's logo, and that's unlikely.

But, overall I am good to go with IRIS being a fitting acronym for a sustainability research institute.

Dawn Bazely

YSTOP – three essential skills for not getting LOST

Published by

Laura Zeno and I did an afternoon session with the grade 8 YSTOP students last Monday. The goal was to improve our map reading, compass use and tree identification.

Why? Well, if you know how to do all this, you should never get lost. It turned out that only one of the 32 students and teachers in the room had NEVER been lost. We figured out, that this might mean that out of a crowd of 1000 people, only perhaps 30 will be worth taking directions from! Getting lost is normal, so how do you work around it?

Kurtis, in Grade 8, described how he always notes landmarks, directions, and distances when he is hiking in the bush. He makes a mental map. Laura told us about asking for directions when she and a friend got lost in downtown Toronto. We listed famous explorers, and asked why they are mostly men, and how most of these Europeans, like Cartier and Champlain, in fact relied on the help of local peoples to find their way around. We looked at maps from York University's map library and learned about scales - large and small. We discovered that students lived around Lake Simcoe in the north and in Toronto, near Lake Ontario in the south.

The students all got a really useful gift - a carabiner key ring with a compass, and I gave them homework of watching one of my favourite movies, "Romancing the Stone", in which a tree is an important landmark on the treasure map. Go Joan Wilder!

Dawn Bazely

The rise of local farmer’s markets in Toronto: Parkdale-High Park

Published by

Eating foods that are in season and buying local foods are suddenly back in fashion. Witness the slow food movement, and the 100-mile (or km) diet. BUT, there have always been farmer's markets in Toronto, and Foodland Ontario has been around ever since I can remember, urging me to eat more squash in the Fall. This "rediscovery" of local foods and farmers isn't just happening in Ontario. In the UK, Gordon Ramsay's brilliant F-Word tv show is urging Brits to remember their forgotten local foods, as well as trying to get the younger generation, who have apparently forgotten how to boil an egg, back into the kitchen. Check out Gordon on CBC's The Hour below.

Doing the homework around local foods, and sustainable shopping, and fair-trade coffee can be very tiring. These tomatoes in my local supermarket looked identical, but one batch came from Mexico and one from Canada (talk about needing to read the fine print). SO, I was thrilled to hear that I can access reliably sourced local and organic foods much more easily now that Sorauren Farmer's Market will be in walking distance from my house. The Westend Food Co-op which runs the market has posted clear statements on its vision, mission, and values.

This goal of transparency at the Westend Food Co-op is fantastic, because when it comes to ecological footprints, the intuitive idea that ALL local foods must have lower footprints for energy production, is NOT always true. A Swedish colleague once told me about a full life cycle assessment comparing local produce with that coming from Spain, which found that the ecological footprint of the Spanish fruit and veggies, was actually lower than the Swedish produce! In sustainability, full life cycle assessment or cradle-to-grave analysis looks at the total amount of energy and resources that it takes to produce some object, including food. It embodies the concepts inherent in full-cost economic accounting.

Dawn Bazely

One Ecology professor’s view of all this “green” consumer hype

Published by

It's over a year since Al Gore won an oscar for An Inconvenient Truth. The 2008 Earth Hour and Earth Day have come and gone. "Green Awareness" events do tend to be more frequent in spring, as we come out of hibernation and notice the environment - tree pollen, tulips etc. But, there is definitely also a tsunami of environmentally-driven advertising, products and newspaper coverage. Globe & Mail columnist, Karen von Hahn wrote about what she sees as some of the hypocrisy of 'ethical consumption' in her May 24th column "Hey Bono, shopping is supposed to be fun".

Ms. von Hahn is quite right to question whether "buying fair trade really does make trade fair". This is an important area of research in universities, and everyone else should think about it too. The ecological reason for why green shopping IS an important piece of the sustainability puzzle, though not the whole picture, is that from its birth, EVERY organism is a consumer. Even if we abolished all shopping malls and our consumer society, we'd still all be consuming, simply by breathing, drinking, eating and occupying space.

One key sustainability goal for Homo sapiens (us humans), needs to be that we each consume as little as possible in terms of materials and energy. Should we be thinking about where stuff comes from, who made it (and how they are being treated), how much gas was burned in getting it to the store, and where the metal came from, etc? ABSOLUTELY Ms. von Hahn! Because when you are doing that much research into the ecological and carbon footprints of stuff, shopping bcomes EXHAUSTING. And that's good, because, in answer to the question that we ask our kids to ask themselves in the local sweetshop "Do I WANT it or do I NEED it?", you are much more likely to buy only stuff that you really do NEED or are really motivated to WANT. So, there's the bottom-line - responsible consumers will tire themselves into reduced consumption as a consequence of their increased awareness!

Dawn Bazely

Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides in Produce

Published by

This wallet-size guide from the EWG will help you decide which produce to buy organic, and which are lowest in pesticides, so you can eat healthy without emptying your wallet. I recommend the health-conscious shopper to print and keep a copy with you in your wallet or purse:

P.S. It is always better to buy locally in order to reduce gas emissions from transport vehicles

Welcome to the YSTOP Blog!

Published by

IRIS would like to welcome participants of the YSTOP program to the Seneca and York campuses. This year, we will be hosting the Urban and Rural Youth as Environmental Scientists blog here on the IRIS web site, so stay tuned for the sharing of experiences by both students and mentors alike. Until then, take a look at the program page for a brief account of last year's highlights.

Watch Jared Diamond talk about Collapse online

Published by

It's amazing what great stuff is available online. Andrew Tanentzap, a former York U Biology student, now at Cambridge University, sent me the link to a great lecture by Jared Diamond at Columbia's Earth Institute. In case you didn't know, Jared Diamond is the originator of the list of major causes of the current biodiversity crisis - also known as the only human-caused mass extinction. In a 1989 article in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Diamond and his colleagues, listed the human causes of today's species extinctions: overhunting, habitat loss, introduced species and ripple effects or "chains of extinction". Jared Diamond is also the author of the Pullitzer-prize winning, Guns, Germs and Steel (1997) and the more recent, Collapse (2005).

Dawn Bazely

Why Should Science Students Attend History Lectures?

Published by

Dr. Verena Winiwarter’s talk at York’s History Department on May 7, covered the long history of human interactions with soil in Europe. Verena is both a scientist and a historian. She is a professor in Environmental History in the Social Ecology department at the University of Vienna. The history of human impacts on soil, which have mainly been fertilization and harvesting, has been largely overlooked. However, the past has definite implications for sustainable agriculture in the future. Traditionally, before large-scale industrial fertilization became an integral part of how we practice agriculture, overall crop productivity was much lower than it is now, but the crop yield relative to the energy input was actually several-fold greater than the energy invested through farming. This means that production efficiency was actually much greater in the past. Modern farming practices persist because the final crop output is much higher than for past traditional farming practices, and the manual labor required is lower. This is because modern technology allows for a lot more energy input in the forms of machinery and heavy fertilization with fossil fuels. Therefore, modern practices allow farmers to be competitive in their crop yields, but this is not without ecological consequences for the soils and surrounding ecosystems.

Modern fertilization practices not only deplete the soil when crops are harvested, draining a non-renewable resource, but excess nitrogen running off into groundwater, lakes, and rivers can cause excessive plant growth in aquatic ecosystems, sometimes to the point of collapse. Excess nitrogen might also cause plant community shifts and make it easier for non-native species to invade, as nitrogen-loving plants take advantage of it.
What’s the solution? In Europe, traditional farming practices (some of which are still used in places where heavy machinery can’t go, like in the mountains) were optimized by the farmers and land-owners, who kept very specific records about how to maximize crop yields on their particular piece of land. They took into account variables like the soil type, nutrient content, rainfall, and annual temperatures. This is opposed to our current farming practices of heavily fertilizing all croplands, regardless of their ecology.

Of course we will never return completely to the traditional farming practices of pre-industrial Europe, but we can certainly learn from them. Taking into account the subtle differences in the nature and ecology of farmlands might help us increase the efficiency of modern agriculture, while saving both energy and the integrity of our ecosystems.

So, why should students of science attend history lectures? The reason is that examining our past can help us build a more sustainable future.

The Ultimate Unsustainable Act

Published by

Over the past year, prices of staple foods have reached unprecedented levels. Food riots have broken out in multiple countries and the UN has sounded the alarm on the severity of this emerging global food crisis.

A full page spread in the May 3 Vancouver Sun starkly highlighted the baleful impact on the world's poorest citizens. The article also ran through a myriad number of causes, including:

  • US-led investment in corn-based ethanol and the biofuel push
  • Depletion of global grain reserves
  • Unsustainable agricultural practices
  • Decline in agricultural land and rural populations
  • Rising incomes in developing countries fueling demand for meat
  • Drought and poor harvests in Australia and Europe respectively
  • Stock-market speculation
  • Liberalization of trade that has increased rural poverty by wrecking local markets, increasing dependency on imports and vulnerability to price fluctuations

The article also provided the following figures for price increases between March 2007 to March 2008:

  • Corn: +31%
  • Rice: +74%
  • Soy: +87%
  • Wheat: +130%

Rising global meat consumption in particular has been the unspoken factor in spiraling food prices, whereas even environmental groups have chosen to focus on faulty biofuel policies as opposed to this graver long-term threat. In fact, grain production has never been higher, but the sad truth is that much of that grain is being increasingly diverted to feed livestock. In China, meat consumption has doubled in the last decade alone. In largely vegetarian India, consumption has not risen as much, but dairy production is likewise up. When the grain to meat ratio of raising livestock which is anywhere between 5 to 10:1 is factored in, the environmental and climactic impacts become overwhelming.

However, this upwards movement still has a long way to go to match the unsustainable consumption levels of the West. As the New York Times put it so succinctly, meat and oil "share a great deal":

"Like oil, meat is subsidized by the federal government. Like oil, meat is subject to accelerating demand as nations become wealthier, and this, in turn, sends prices higher. Finally — like oil — meat is something people are encouraged to consume less of, as the toll exacted by industrial production increases, and becomes increasingly visible."

"Global demand for meat has multiplied in recent years, encouraged by growing affluence and nourished by the proliferation of huge, confined animal feeding operations. These assembly-line meat factories consume enormous amounts of energy, pollute water supplies, generate significant greenhouse gases and require ever-increasing amounts of corn, soy and other grains, a dependency that has led to the destruction of vast swaths of the world’s tropical rain forests."

With the FAO estimating that almost a third of world's unfrozen terrestrial surface is already involved in some aspect of livestock production (gruesome fact: the US alone kills 10 billion animals a year for food), and with global meat consumption looking set to double by 2050, the gigantic scale of the threat comes into sharp, startling relief. Greenhouse gases emitted by livestock production even exceed transporation, such that if an American family lowered their meat consumption by merely 20 percent (Americans already consume double the global average), they would have the same impact as if they had sold their mid-sized sedan and bought a hybrid.

As usual, British environmental guru George Monbiot does his homework, moving beyond his devastating jeremiads against biofuels (most recently, here and here) to highlighting the possibilities and challenges inherent in converting to a more plant-based diet. His middle-of-the-road approach of reserving meat for special occasions (beef is right out) and turning to more efficient feed-to-meat sources such as tilapia fish is eminently sensible, especially for those who cannot eschew eating meat altogether.

Project 350

Published by

Bill McKibben, veteran environmental thinker and author of the bestselling book, End of Nature, has a new initiative out called simply Project 350. The number refers to a "red line" for atmospheric carbon dioxide levels (as acknowledged by NASA scientists like James Hansen), above which climate change will exact a heavy toll from human civilization. While based on hard climate science, McKibben and the 350 crew hope to sear the number into the collective conscience of humanity through an international awareness raising campaign.

Recently, the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere reached 385 ppm and the rate of increase is only accelerating. McKibben noted this dire fact in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times, balancing stark warnings with the tiny sliver hope afforded by organizing on a mass scale via the Web. While it may seem like a tiny hook to hang one's hopes on given the immensity of the challenges, it is also important to remember that McKibben is not alone. Groups like Oxfam Canada are also working on this front, lobbying in Oxfam's case for both action in mitigating climate change in an equitable way and helping poor communities adapt to the impacts of catastrophic climate events.

css.php