Published May 7, 2008
by dbazely
From Anthony Perruzza, City Councillor for York West, Ward 8
Place: Driftwood Park (meet on Tobermory Drive)
It will be a fun and interactive event, in which students will have the opportunity to explore the park and pick up litter, while learning about the environmental effects of a polluted natural resource. Our community is an area filled with beautiful parks and ravines.
Posted in: Events
Published May 7, 2008
by iris_author
I have spent the last 5 months at IRIS engaged in the recent carbon offsetting initiatives at the University. My role has been to design and conduct a survey to gauge knowledge and attitudes of members of the York community on issues around carbon offsetting, climate change, and York initiatives. This has been a long and exciting process, in which I would like to thank other members of IRIS and the volunteers that helped us out. In the IRIS news section of this site is a post with information about the most significant results from the survey. Hopefully these results and the precedent set by the bookstore being able to purchase carbon offsets from Zerofootprint for the production of course kits will lead to a watershed of other initiatives at the University. The feedback from respondents to this survey shows that members of the York community are willing to help to make a difference in making not only York's campus more sustainable, but outside the university as well. If the results of this survey and a recent Harris/Decima poll on Canadian environmental opinions and values tell us anything it is that the environment and "green" are not just the flavour of the month but a deep and necessary societal transition.
Posted in: Blogs
Published May 7, 2008
by iris_author
Earlier this year a group of us at IRIS began surveying the York student community about their opinions of climate change and carbon offsetting. The online Carbon Offset survey was a result of the exciting and precedent setting carbon offsetting initiative for course kits launched between the York University bookstore and Zerofootprint.
In all, around 500 student members of the York community, representing all of the University’s diverse faculties, were surveyed. This is about 1% of the York student community, which we were satisfied gave us a statically accurate picture of the range of opinions.
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Impact of Paper Production Background Information |
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-York produces 75,000 course kits a year. -If produced using 100% virgin paper this would result in 131.5 tonnes of CO2 being emitted. -If produced with 30% post-consume recycled paper this amount of course kits would emit 116.9 tonnes of CO2.
To put these amounts into context, one tonne of CO2 is equivalent to running the average North American home for 60 days. |
Major Findings
1) In response to the question asking who should take the most responsibility for acting on climate change issues: government, industry, individuals, institutions, or everyone because we all have equal responsibility, we were quite surprised to find that 70% of respondents said that everyone must share responsibility for acting. The second highest group, at 17%, placed the onus on government. This seems to signal a shift in which students at York recognize that all segments of society have a responsibility to do something about an issue as complex as climate change. Our finding supports some of the results of a recent Harris-Decima poll on the New Environmentalism. In response to a question about whether industry or individuals were the most responsible for addressing climate change, 79% of the 10,000 surveyed, stated that both are equally responsible.
2) York students are willing to pay significantly more for environmentally friendly products or services. Our survey first asked, "are you willing to pay more", and if so, how much more? 65% of respondents were willing to pay more, and 49% said that they’d be willing to pay 5-10% more. That is up to 10 cents on the dollar.
One concern that was raised about our survey was whether a disproportionately high number of Faculty of Environmental Studies students were responding. In fact, while there were a high number of FES students taking the survey, they were not more than 14%, and when their responses were excluded from the results, we found that the fundamental trends and results did not change. In the category of those willing to pay 5-10% or even more for environmentally-friendly and sustainable products, we found that 70% of the students outside of FES were willing to do this, while 83% of the Environmental Studies respondents would pay 5% or higher prices. Clearly, willingness to be environmentally friendly in one's personal decisions is not a direct feature of one's personal educational choices and social views. Nor does the Faculty of Environmental Studies have a monopoly on York students who are concerned about the environment.
3) The last significant finding was that a majority of the York community surveyed would like to see investment in environmental initiatives at the local level in renewable energy or energy conservation projects. While respondents could select all three investment choices; renewable energy, energy conservation, and tree planting, renewable energy was the most popular choice at 72%. Interest in local offsetting initiatives was the most popular choice, at 55% said yes, with the Toronto area gaining the highest support. Other options included York University, Ontario and Canada.
Overall, the survey results will help the development of future climate change and sustainability initiatives at York University. The York community, like Canadians as a whole, are concerned about the environment and realize that responsibility belongs to everyone.
For full survey results contact IRIS.
Posted in: IRIS News
Published May 6, 2008
by iris_author
Check out this short news segment about carbon offsetting in Uganda. I'll let the tragic story in the three minute video speak for itself:
Related to this comes scathing criticism leveled by indigenous and policy research groups against the UN's support for the World Bank's promotion of carbon trading. In their words, the World Bank is playing "both sides of the climate crisis" by supporting the market-based scheme on one hand, and investing in fossil fuel companies on the other.
With such concerns mounting, it is no stretch that carbon trading schemes need to be studied intensely, something that universities with their multidisciplinary approach could assist with a great deal.
Posted in: Blogs
Published May 3, 2008
by dbazely
I honed the observation techniques for my PhD thesis, which was on sheep grazing behaviour, sitting on a hill in Shetland. Over the decades, I have either visited or spent extended periods of times in most of the more remote parts - Highlands and Islands - of Scotland. So, I'd like to give an alternative view of Scotland and the sunny days and gorgeous views shown in the Al-Jazeera video about land ownership.
The video, described in Rajiv's blog on Rural Scotland, is definitely worth watching. It's pretty bang on in its explanation of the incredibly archaic, feudal system of land ownership that still prevails in Scotland, and which led, among other things to the Highland clearances. At the time, the clearances were often regarded as a violation of human rights. While there WERE other contributing factors there were also many clear examples of gross mismanagement by greedy landlords who forcibly herded their tenants on to emigration ships so as to make way for sheep.
BUT, I would also point out that there is another reason for why large parts of rural Scotland continue to have a low population density. While TV shows set in Scotland, like Hamish MacBeth and Monarch of the Glen, do a good job of dramatizing rural life and issues, they also romanticize them. The bottom line about the Highlands and Islands is that it is a darned tough place to live in, and life there is hard. A colleague and I got hypothermia while doing field work on Hirta, St. Kilda in July, in spite of us having full field gear and equipment. (St. Kilda lies west of the Outer Hebrides in the Atlantic.) The entire population of St. Kilda was evacuated to the mainland in 1930 partly because it had become so difficult for the islanders to provide themselves with enough food. Books like the Island on the Edge of the World by Charles Maclean and The Life and Death of St. Kilda by Tom Steel tell the haunting history and tales of a lost community. The popular Scottish band, Runrig, even wrote a song about St. Kilda, the Edge of the World, which is on their Big Wheel album. I would personally like to see the next series of Survivor or one of those historical reality tv series like The 1900 House, set on St. Kilda. In fact, this may be a good recipe for on-the-job training for reducing one's ecological footprint. Check out my photos of St. Kilda:
Dawn R. Bazely
Dawn Bazely
Posted in: Blogs | IRIS Director Blog
Published April 29, 2008
by dbazely
On Wednesday May 7th, Verena Winiwarter, Professor for Environmental History at the Institute for Social Ecology, Faculty for Interdisciplinary Research and Education [IFF] of Klagenfurt University, Vienna, Austria will talk on "Sustainability Lost and Found? Lessons from the Long-term History of Soils in Europe"
History Common Room (2183 Vari Hall), 11:00 a.m.
Prof. Winiwarter, among many other things, sits on the editorial board of the journal, Global Environment
Posted in: Events
Published April 24, 2008
by dbazely
IRIS Executive Meeting - Pre SCOR review discussion
Tue Apr 29 12:30pm – 1:30pm (light refreshments and lunch)
305 York Lanes
Please contact Melissa Leithwood for agenda details ext 55784
Posted in: Events
Published April 24, 2008
by dbazely
A new report from NRCAN indicates that the massive number of tree deaths in western Canada resulting from mountain pine beetle outbreaks, is driving carbon emissions on a huge scale. Many people blithely assume that our Canadian managed forests will be a great help in sequestering carbon (and reducing greenhouse gases) but this is not always the case. NRCAN researchers estimate that the amount of carbon dioxide that will not be sequestered: (1) because trees aren't growing, and (2) because decaying trees eventually produce CO2, will be similar to that resulting from Canada's annual forest fires. They recommend that this should be accounted for in future climate models. The beetle is spreading due to warmer winters (the bugs die in cold winters). This is an example of how a warmer climate is triggering outbreaks of pests and pathogens, which in turn are causing tree death and increasing greenhouse gas emissions. If you don't know what's been going on for years now in BC, check out Patrick White's excellent article on the mountain pine beetle in the Walrus magazine (April 2007). dawn bazely
Posted in: Blogs | IRIS Director Blog | Sustainability News
Published April 22, 2008
by iris_author
I must admit, it's been years since I celebrated Earth Day (pictured to the right laying out an endangered species graveyard on the Cornell University Arts Quad in 1994). Back in the early nineties, I participated in Earth Day preparations throughout high school and college. Those were the heady days of the Rio Summit, the Brundtland Report, and TV specials such as After the Warming that highlighted the potential impact of global warming through the next few decades. Environmental concerns were going to be the next big thing as the Berlin Wall crumbled, or so we thought.
Amazingly, it's After the Warming that starkly reminds me how much time has been wasted on the climate change front. From its broadcast to the Kyoto Treaty, eight years elapsed. Four more years would pass for Canada to officially ratify the treaty, and four more for Canada to all but pull out of the deal, leaving the entire regime in shambles. Despite the increasing sophistication and dire nature of the warnings emanating from the scientific community, we have seen political stagnation and regression as economic growth and globalization dominated the 1990s, followed by war and terrorism in the 2000s. Environmental concerns largely fell by the wayside, and even now, anything besides climate change and energy is all but ignored in the media.
As such, I cannot but feel wary of the recent resurgence of green issues in the body politic. I am also wary of the increasingly corporate and commercial edge of this new environmentalism as it substitutes individual consumer choices for the broader transformational change necessary to harmonize human civilization with the urgency of biosphere survival. My fear is that this upsurge of interest may quickly dissipate, leaving us next time to muddle through an upcoming planetary crisis, a dark authoritarian period veteran journalist Ross Gelbspan termed the Permanent State of Emergency.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel put it this way in March:
"It's not five minutes to midnight. It's five minutes after midnight."
We were perhaps five minutes to midnight in 1990. Not so anymore. We can't afford any more wasted time.
Posted in: Blogs
Published April 22, 2008
by dbazely
Kudos to York University's Bookstore for their Earth Day promotions (see Melissa Leithwood IRIS co-ordinator, below, with one of the many displays). On Earth Day 2007, I spoke to Toronto high school students at Greenpower Canada's Earth Day workshop at the North York Civic Centre. Dawn Bazely
