With apologies to Max, the central character in Maurice Sendak’s 1963 classic Where The Wild Things Are, and his arduous journey “in and out of weeks and through a day and into the night of his very own room”, Alice the Moose puts his to shame. Alice left her home park in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, swam across the St. Lawrence river, somehow made it across the four-lane 401 highway and finally completed her 570 km-long journey by arriving in Ontario’s Algonquin Park. Talk about a wild trip!

Alice was just doing what comes naturally – migrating with the seasons, in search of safer grounds and more plentiful sources of nourishment. And not just Alice. Lots of other animals. Thousands of different species of animals in every glorious manifestation have been migrating through what’s now known as the ‘Algonquin to Adirondacks’  region (A2A) for thousands if not millions of years. We humans joined the pilgrimage for our own survival, dodging the worst of winter’s wrath and following our meal-tickets as they embarked on their own migrations.

Turns out, there’s an interconnected network of trails and wildways stretching up the east cost of North America. You – or an Alice – could travel from Everglades National Park through Georgia’s Smoky Mountains, up the Appalachians, through the Adirondacks, across the Frontenac Arch and the St. Lawrence river and on into Algonquin Park. And there’s an organization that has charted these wildways, the species (and their movements) and the threats to biodiversity, particularly the numerous species-at-risk.

In October 2019, Wildlands Network released an interactive map of the Eastern Wildway, representing a major step forward in realizing a vision of connectivity for this region:

In their own words:

The Eastern Wildway contains some of North America’s most beloved national parks, preserves, scenic rivers, and other wild places, from the wilderness of Quebec, the Adirondacks, and the Shenandoah Valley, to the Great Smoky Mountains and Everglades National Park. Protecting and expanding these and other key core areas is crucial to rewilding the East.

I like the idea of rewilding. Of our spaces and our souls. Allowing our footfalls to provide the syncopation as we walk away our worries, lost-to-be-found in nature. And allowing nature to reclaim, to repossess, what we humans have taken from them, the birds, the bees, the flowers and the trees.

I was thinking about Alice recently when I came across a tragic story about a deer. This deer had managed to swim to Prince Edward Island – akin to Marilyn Bell swimming across Lake Ontario – only to be hit and killed by a transport truck not long after its arrival on the island. Alice had somehow survived an ordeal similar to our dearly-departed deer friend in PEI. And in Alice’s case, she was crossing one of the busiest highways in North America, the 401/TransCanada. At the point where Alice dodged death, the 401 is four lanes wide and busy almost 24 hours a day. This was Alice’s reality and the reality faced by every other ground-based species that migrates through the A2A region. The animals are simply following deep programming, genetic memories of migrations from hundreds of generations. The pathways are ancient. Highways are the interlopers, the recent development that benefits one species to the detriment of all others.

There are solutions. They go by a variety off names – wildlife overpasses, animal bridges, wildlife crossings – but I like to think of them as a modern iteration on an ancient tale. In the biblical story of Noah and his Ark, human wickedness required global cleansing, as the Almighty prepared to wash the sins of humans away through the medium of an unprecedented flood. But recognizing that the animals did not cause the wickedness and therefore should be saved, Noah was instructed by the Big Boss to construct a gigantic ark, a boat, that could hold a pair of each species. This would allow the animals to repopulate the world after the forty days of ‘cleansing’.

In our modern times, humanity constructs transportation monuments that seem built to demand animal sacrifice. But when we build a bridge – a Noah’s Arch – that allows wildlife to cross our highway infrastructures, we fulfill an obligation to right a wrong.

The A2A Collaborative’s Road Ecology project is aiming “to help reduce wildlife road mortality across the entire Algonquin to Adirondacks region by making recommendations on the best possible locations for wildlife crossings.” There are strong financial reasons to support these public works projects that buttress the moral reasons. In Alberta’s Bow Valley, a study found that “from 1998 and 2010 (there) was…an average of 62 WVCs (wildlife-vehicle collisions) per year. This amounts to an average cost-to-society of $640,922 per year due to motorist crashes with large wildlife, primarily ungulates.”

An “analysis of a wildlife underpass with fencing at a 3 km section… within the project area near Dead Man’s Flats showed that total WVCs dropped from an annual average of 11.8 per-construction to an annual average of 2.5 WVCs post-mitigation construction. The wildlife crossings and fencing reduced the annual average cost by over 90%, from an average of $128,337 per year to a resulting $17,564 average per year.”

The judicious construction of wildlife crossings saves lives and saves money. And it makes our wildways that much more alive with wildlife. It’s time for us humans to do our part and prioritize wildlife crossings on our major highways and roadways.

Alice would thank you.

The post WHERE THE WILDWAYS ARE appeared first on A\J.

CAUTION: Serendipitous roads may cause new perspectives

It was early March, just before Covid-19 exploded into our collective consciousness. We – my partner and I – decided on a quick weekend getaway to celebrate an anniversary. We live in Kitchener and had wanted to visit the Lake Huron shore. We found a resort just north of Grand Bend and made our plans to escape. And when I say ‘plans’, I do mean so, given that we drive an electric vehicle, and one that happens to be best suited to inter-urban transit.

Don’t get me wrong; I love driving ‘Mr. Bobby Button’, the moniker (and character) attached to the 2017 Mitsubishi MiEV that can be seen tooting around KW in all seasons. BB is about the size of a Smartcar-on-steroids, has all-wheel drive and can turn in a phone booth, and is remarkably spunky when the light goes green. This generation of EV, however, was built just-before the innovations embedded in today’s EVs that practically eliminate ‘range anxiety’. BB has an ‘effective’ full range of 150 kilometres on a full charge but temperature, ancillary electrical use (radio, phone charger, heater, etc.) and travelling speed can combine to reduce the 150 km range by a third or more. That’s not much of a problem when you are doing errands or running across town and back; you plug in at home and are fully good-to-go by the morning. But when you’ve got an extended journey ahead of you in an EV of BB’s vintage, you need to put a bit of extra planning in place to ensure that you arrive at your destination without the necessity of pushing the last kilometre or two!

And, truth be told, I’m a bit of a nervous-Nelly when it comes to range anxiety. When driving gas vehicles, the EMPTY light was a frequent travelling companion and a reminder to stop….soon-ish. In BB? Not so much. There have been a couple of ‘adventures’ that came close to running down the battery and getting the travelling party stuck in the middle of a farmer’s field. Oh, and there’s that other time that saw yours-truly come close to committing B&E to access an electrical outlet in a barn by the side of a country road somewhere west of Belleville.

With that in mind, the route was carefully planned, thanks to the ‘Queen of Google Maps and the EV Charging Apps’. Oh yes, there’s an app for charging your EV (recommended), or for scouting out potential stopping points (also recommend, and be sure to check the latest check-in). Actually, there’s three or four apps that you need in this part of SW Ontario. In Quebec and eastern Ontario, one app gets you from Montreal to Kingston….but then you’ll encounter a patchwork of stopping points, some demonstration projects brought forth by municipalities and some for-profit, app-based solutions. In southwest Ontario, there’s pretty good coverage in the cities like Kitchener-Waterloo, London, Stratford, Guelph and Brantford. For our trip to Lake Huron, we’d first need to stop and top-up in Stratford. And then find another place to stop before getting to the shore, as the top-up only takes BB to 80% charge and the temperature was cool to the point of chilly (and passengers likewise).

We made the first leg to Stratford without incident, although that luck wouldn’t be repeated on the homeward journey as the erstwhile-working charging suddenly wasn’t working on Sunday! But that’s a story for another day.

The battery in BB read 40% when we plugged in to the fast-charger, ChaDeMo (google it….I can’t remember what that stands for at the moment). It takes about 20 minutes to get to 80% from empty, although I’ve never risked that; in this case, the charge took about 15 minutes, which afforded us the perfect opportunity to advance scout the next stopping point.

As I mentioned, the Queen had a full array of apps to check and then cross-check with Google maps to plot time, distance and likelihood that I’d have a mini-meltdown before we reached the charging point. At this stage, I was focussed not so much on the bucolic nature of the quaint town housing the charging station – and much more focussed on not running out of ‘juice’ somewhere between Varna and Staffa….which last time I check an atlas were both located near the Black Sea? How could that be?

I should mention that in addition to the high-powered, separately-powered ChaDeMo fast-charger (15-20 minutes), there’s a mid-range charger (that runs on 220) that takes 4 hours to reach full charge from empty…and a plug-in, take-with version that can take up to 12 hours to get you to full charge from empty. Oh, and because we don’t drive a Tesla, Elon’s e-stations do absolutely nothing for us ‘plebs’. So figuring out which station was working in which location, and with which app to pay for the privilege of powering our progress, is kind of important.

The Queen remarked that there seemed to be a new station, just up and running in the town of Exeter, which was conveniently located on our route to the shore from Stratford. With an almost-full charge under our engine’s fanless belt, we headed out with a load of enthusiasm and just a tad of concern about what would await us at the destination. We checked out the Google maps, saw that Exeter is located about 20 kilometres from the Lake Huron shore near Grand Bend, with an extra dozen clicks taking you up the shore to Bayfield. Exeter is also the largest and best-appointed town once you’ve left Stratford if you’re heading in the Grand Bend/Bayfield direction. The perfect waypoint, as it turned out.

And talk about serendipity! I was almost out of coffee and the charging station was located in the parking lot of the Timmie’s on the main street (actually, Main Street)!

The station was easy to find (which is NOT ALWAYS the case), the app connected easily (again, NOT ALWAYS the case), and we both let out a bit of an exhale knowing that we’d leaped the final range hurdle, with an 80% charge more than capable of speeding us the 20+ kilometres to our final destination, where we’d plug-in the overnight charger. I ducked inside, grabbed another double-double, and sat back, enjoying the respite while the vehicle charged. The Queen, not content with EV apps and Google maps, turned her attention to another favourite, real estate dreaming.

Firing up the MLS, we noticed a couple of properties for sale and for lease in Exeter, and specifically a couple of properties in the historic downtown core. Now, there was no impetus to look at properties but why not follow the way that the road was taking us, and Exeter was leaving us happier and recharged by the minute. Once we reached the max, we headed down to the core and spied out the listings. One or two looked promising – again, not sure promising what – so in the days after we reached out to the agents to explore what-ifs. And then the pandemic hit HARD, lockdown came, and more pressing realities pressed the idea away…..for a while.

In early September, to recharge from a strenuous summer spent developing two print issues and delivering a wealth of online content, we decided to head back to the shore for a Covid-safe weekend, this time staying in Bayfield. It was a lovely time, and on the road back home we decided to stop in Exeter to recharge the vehicle. There’s also a lovely park in Exeter, and we’d recently added a puppy, Zoey, to the family. Zoey needed a good stretch-of-the-legs in some deep, green grass and lungs full of fresh, clean air. So Exeter it was (we could have made the full trip to Stratford with the full charge and the warmer temperatures). The fact that we could stop at Timmies and recharge the vehicle (and the driver) only added to the appeal. We also took the time to drive to the downtown core and see how the local merchants and businesses were doing. We were happy to note that most businesses had managed to sustain operations in spite of the historic challenges, and that people were (safely) going about their daily activities, a smile in their eyes as they greeted us from behind the masks.

When we returned to Kitchener, we made a few enquiries in regard to real estate in Exeter. Well, as things would happen, an interesting proposition was brought to us by a friend of A\J: there was a street level shop in a building in the middle of the historic downtown core, and the rent would be ‘subsidized’ by the philanthropically-inclined new owners for a year (at least). But we’d need to be ready to put staff in that office once the pandemic lifted – and be ready to use this gift as an opportunity to learn, listen and grow more earthy in our opinions and in our writing. We’re there now.

We’ve got plans again, tentative plans given the uncertain circumstances. But the plans are rooted in the core mission of our organization: to become the most effective story-teller of environmental stories that are read by a broad cross-section of Canadians. We’ve got roots in cities and bigger towns, graduating from Peterborough to KW, with stops in Toronto in between. We’ve got roots in academic circles of informed-opinions and opinion-formers. We’ve got roots in the eNGO community, and frequently seek to empower collaborations that deliver 1+1=3. But, as an organization, our roots had not yet extended to the fertile soil of a community like Exeter. So, we leaped…. again….and we’re ready to take bigger leaps in the near future.

We’ve already made some friends in the community, and have discussed how we can best become a good neighbour and an economic development supporter. We’re ideating lectures and panels and musical events. We’re engaging with schools and businesses and organizations to understand their environmental stories – and to share them with our national readership. Admittedly, we’re doing it slowly; slowly but surely. We’re planting the seeds that we hope will grow into strong roots that will allow our writing, our story-telling, to blossom and flourish.

In Exeter, Ontario, at the crossroad to Lake Huron shore, on the road to serendipity… and opportunity.

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https://www.who.int/nutrition/topics/3_foodconsumption/en/index5.html#:~:text=The%20total%20food%20fish%20supply,expanding%20at%201.8%25%20per%20year.

Market

https://www.isc.hbs.edu/Documents/resources/courses/moc-course-at-harvard/pdf/student-projects/Norway_Fisheries_2017.pdf

https://oceana.org/sites/default/files/reports/Bycatch_Report_FINAL.pdf

http://www.marinespecies.org/introduced/wiki/Catch_Per_Unit_Effort_(CPUE)

http://www.iseapartners.com/our-team/

The post OPERATION ENVIRONMENT appeared first on A\J.

Should we have been that surprised? 

I am supposed to be writing about the great wealth and depth of editorial content that was created (and can be found online) for AlternativesJournal.ca. But when we started 2020, the idea that EVERYBODY would be moving ‘off-line’ and locking down was beyond abstract; it would have seemed absurd. But, as we’ve tragically seen, the Covid-19 pandemic forced a big change on human society in the year 2020, and our little corner of that world was not immune.

In some respects, however, the move ‘online’ and working remotely with Zoom meetings from sun-up to sun-down has been part of the on-going evolution of our hyper-connected communities – and it is also reflective of the evolutionary changes that we are going through here at A\J as we prepare to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of our flagship print brand, Alternatives Journal. Brick-and-mortar (or, in our case, ink-and-paper) are being augmented – and, yes sadly, in some cases replaced – by digital iterations of the same but different. 

For us, the ‘same’ is in respect to the core mission of our work, which is to provide intelligent and informed environmental journalism. ‘Different’ would be the how the work is developed, conceived, delivered and promoted. While the ‘different’ may be significant in some areas, the storyteller’s intention in crafting the story – and engaging with the ‘characters’ who will populate the story – remains the same: help readers understand, just a little bit more, about a subject that matters to the world, the storyteller included.

And speaking of storytellers, A\J was very fortunate to be joined this summer by a team of four who really took the challenge – ‘publish, don’t perish’ – to heart and produced an incredible wealth of stories and articles and posts and videos….and you get the point. We were also fortunate to be joined by friends and colleagues throughout the environmental community, partnering with Sustainable Forestry Initiative to deliver a series called #forestfridays, while also opening up our platform for impassioned voices challenging the status-quos that we keep bumping into as we push forward with progress.

In terms of a chronological review (I think that’s how these year-ends are supposed to run), our organization was very proud to be delivering a month-long series of learning events in collaboration with the City of Kitchener in their Project 220 event-space at City Hall in February. Entitled SIGNS OF THE TIME, this interactive exhibit and lecture space hosted diverse events ranging from VR demonstrations to gamification exercises, we welcomed citizens, community members and government officials – and made sure that everyone walked away with a deeper appreciation of the role of nature in sustaining Waterloo Region.

As previously mentioned, we teamed up with Western University’s Centre for Environment and Sustainability, and the four journalists/students acquitted themselves wonderfully as they were run through a Zoom-empowered ‘boot camp’ for environmental journalism. There were lots of fruits of that labour (search Alexandra Scaman, Greta Vaivadaite, Alexander Goodard and/or Shanella Ramkissoon for all their bios and stories). One series – Canada Day Reflections – was a chance for all the team members to ruminate on the meaning of Canada to them.  Another series was a bit of a time-warp exercise that made light of the fact that we can’t make our website work! GHOSTS IN THE ECOSYSTEM looks back and looks forward, and is chock-a-block with ideas and insights that definitely are ‘timeless’.

I would be remiss if I did not mention how the team of four – and then supported by Teo Guzu in the fall – created and sustain the new weekly recap called THE WEEK THIS FRIDAY (or THE WTF!). We’re heading towards volume 30 soon – and have recently published THE WTF 2020, a year-in-review that charts the WINS and LOSSES in the environmental space.

As we rounded the corner into the fall, our team was busy closing two issues at once while wrestling a double-issue to go-phase (it’s almost ready to GO to the printers!!). But that didn’t slow the work online, as we continued to publish thought-provoking (and bear-poking, if by bear you mean an elected official) articles such as HOW WE HURT ME (exclusive interview with MP Bardish Chagger), TREATIES AND TRAPS (which explored the Nova Scotia lobster ‘war’), DON’T SH*T WHERE WE SLEEP (about eco-tourism), YOU ARE WHAT YOU WEAR, and so many other great stories, posts and articles. Interestingly, given the fact that many of us were locked-down or staying-in-to-stay-safe, there was a lot of interest in our online stories about nature-as-education and nature-as-therapy. We also seem to be a little fixated on the plastic doodads in our life – and the resulting pollution – as we had three of the top 10 articles this year related to plastic-based pollution and the efforts to clean it up. And there were also a lot of articles and stories that delved into the personal sphere, whether it was a critical self-analysis of our own privilege or an earnest attempt to understand lived experiences that are different than our own. The intersectionality of those fighting for progress – played out on our screens throughout 2020 – reminds that while ‘no man is an island, unto himself’ (to quote Dylan Thomas), no one human is alone when they are fighting for a better tomorrow. We are united in our sincere hope for a more just, more equitable, more fair society that values everyone for the unique humans that we are. And we are united in our efforts to open doors to others and open our own minds in the process.

In general, I can share that my heartfelt belief that ALL THE SOLUTIONS WE NEED FOR A LOW-CARBON FUTURE ALREADY EXIST remains truer today in late December than it was in January. I have seen that the ideas, the technology and, most importantly, the renewable energy of impassioned environmentalists are growing in power and stand ready to help lift our human society upward as we create a just, green recovery in the post-pandemic near-term future.

But that’s a story for another day. In the interim, I hope you continue to enjoy the content that we publish online at alternativesjournal.ca, and consider donating, if you can, to help us keep up the good work in 2021 (our 50^th anniversary year!) and beyond.

Cheers,

David McConnachie

Group Publisher, ALTERNATIVES MEDIA INC.

The post AJ 2020: ONLINE YEAR-IN-REVIEW appeared first on A\J.

Like many things, the truth usually lies somewhere down the middle. Yes, we have made progress this year, but we still have a long way to go. We must take the time to celebrate our wins but remain aware of the hills and mountains left to climb. 

As many of you know, the team at A\J have been writing a weekly column called WTF (the Week this Friday) where we take the time to reflect and report on the environmental stories from the week passed. As one of the most pivotal years of this century comes to a close, we think it is only fitting to highlight the environmental wins and losses of the year…WTF 2020!

1. Air pollution levels lowered from the coronavirus

Source: Pixabay

One silver lining from lockdowns this year was the eco benefit it seemed to have on the natural world. Less people moving around translated to less greenhouse gas emissions. According to the Guardian, back in March, at the height of China’s lockdown “NO2 levels were down by 38% from 2019 and levels of PM 2.5 were down by 34%”.

Unfortunately, as lockdowns eased up, people began moving around again and the highest polluting industries wasted no time in recovering. According to scientists from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air, once lockdowns eased up again in spring/summer, NO2 levels in China quickly recovered.

According to scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, emissions would have to drop by approximately 20-30% for 6 to 12 months to actually make a difference. However, global emissions this year likely only dropped by about 7% compared to 2019. 

One of the few good things that came out of the coronavirus pandemic was the realization that we could live in a much less mobile world. During lockdown, we witnessed massive reductions of global CO2 and other GHG emissions which contribute to climate change (even if this was just temporarily). Experts and citizens alike encouraged decisions makers that this is the time to rebuild in a more sustainable way. Unfortunately, unless governments get serious about rebuilding into a more green recovery, it looks like we are just going to go back to our old ways.

2. New Delhi drops down to second place in the most polluted city in the world

Source: Pixabay 

This year, Lahore, Pakistan was named the most polluted city in the world with a particulate matter (PM) rating of 423with an AQI (air quality index) of 301. In previous years, New Delhi was ranked the most polluted city. This year, they dropped down to second place with a PM rating of 229.

For reference, the US Environmental Protection Agency has previously stated air that is “satisfactory” falls under an AQI of 50. 

Years of smog, dust from construction, and crop burning have all likely contributed to such high PM and AQI levels. Air quality in Lahore worsens from October to February when farmers are most likely to burn their crops, which contributes to the overall smog problem. To protect themselves from the pollution, Lahore’s residents are advised to wear a mask, run air purifiers and close windows in their homes, and avoid outdoor exercise. 

3. The Amazon forest fires

Source: Pixabay 

Back in August, 2020 was on course to be the worst year in over a decade for deforestation in the Amazon. Illegal tree loss was accelerating. In May, after facing immense global pressure, Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, had sent in the army to fight illegal logging – this plan was dubbed ‘Operation Green Brazil 2’. Although this was likely all just for show (deforestation has accelerated ever since Bolsonaro took office in 2019, growing by 209%). 

One area of the forest that had fared worse than the others in tree loss was Rondônia, an area that has seen growing deforestation since the mid-80’s. Rondônia is almost the same size as the UK has been burned and cut down to make way for crops and logging businesses. In the summer, NBC Forensics focused on Rondônia as the military was sent in – meant to track the ‘successes’ and accomplishments of Bolsonaro’s mission.

Bolsonaro falsely claimed the mission a success. However, the figures supplied by the government’s own space research agency demonstrated deforestation rates in May of 2020 and higher than in May 2019. In fact, the government’s own data showed that deforestation is increasing every single month since the previous year for 13 months in a row. 

What is happening in Rondônia is a reflection of what is happening throughout the Amazon. Eventually, the Amazon will reach a tipping point, where the tree loss will result in a rainforest that cannot produce enough rain to sustain itself. 

4. Trump withdrew from the Paris Agreement 

Source: Pixabay

This year, the United States officially withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. 

It was first announced back in 2017 that Donald Trump would back out of the Paris agreement. However, the Paris agreement requires nations to wait a minimum of three years before giving notice to leave (partly to prevent future presidents from withdrawing from the deal in the name of short term interests). This is why the US did not formally leave until the end of 2020. 

The Paris agreement was established in 2015 in order to collectively battle the threat of climate change and keep the global temperature rise below 2C above pre-industrial measures. 

The United States is ranked the second top polluting country, accounting for over 15% of global emissions. Pulling out of the agreement poorly reflects the values of American in regards to climate change.

However, this news isn’t all bad. Joe Biden, new president elect recently announced that his administration will rejoin the Paris agreement once he takes office. Phew! 

5. Canada’s proposal to ban single use plastics and a new Net zero plan 

Source: Pixabay 

My favorite story of the year! 

This year, Ottawa announced single-use plastic straws and plastic shopping bans are among the six items that the federal government plans to ban in 2021. The six items include: stir sticks, six-pack rings, plastic cutlery and plastic food take-out containers. This decision is part of a broader initiative to divert plastics from landfills and classify them as a “toxic substance”. 

This ban is one of elements of a broader plan on their list to reach zero plastic waste by 2030. The government will consult on it’s plans this December because they are sure to experience pushback from industry groups and the Albertan government which have already voiced concerns – especially about the toxic classification on plastics. Alberta is worried that this federal plan will undermine the provinces’ petrochemical sector and its goal of becoming a plastics-recycling hub. Instead, Alberta states that Ottawa should focus on creating a circular economy whereby plastics from manufacturing go through recycling. 

Environment and Climate Change Minister, Jonathan Wilkinson, pressed on that the ban is necessary because of the significant harm plastics are causing to Canada’s wildlife and coastlines. A daunting statistic was mentioned: In Canada, only 9% of the plastic that is thrown out is recycled. The government also plans to set recycled-content requirements on products and packaging and will further consult with all provinces and territories to set up these targets. Additionally, earlier this year the federal government released a draft state-of-the-science assessment on plastic pollution – effectively arming Ottawa with the scientific basis to regulate plastics. Basically, the assessment discussed the dangers of macro and microplastics causing harm to the environment and on wildlife. 

Members of Greenpeace have criticized the ban, saying that this is simply not enough of a response for the severity of the global plastics problem. I would have to disagree; I think this is a great first step.

Moreover, other governments have tried to implement a ban on single use plastics in some form or another in the past (read about Laredo’s plastic bag ban), and have lost because big oil won’t go down without a fight and is eager send their reps into the courtroom or lean on old legislation to prevent a plastic ban from going through. With these past failures in mind, I would rather take small victories over a huge loss. 

6. Coral reefs: The Great Barrier Reef moved to critical conservation outlook  

Source: Pixabay

According to the International Union for Conservation for Nature (IUCN), the health of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, the world’s most extensive and once spectacular coral reef ecosystem, is in a critical state and deteriorating as climate change warms up the waters in which it lies. The Reef has lost more than half its coral in the past three decades. Coral-bleaching in 2016, 2017 and now 2020 has further damaged its health and affected its animal, bird and marine population.  

Coral bleaching occurs when hotter water temperatures destroy the algae which corals feed on, causing them to turn completely stark white. Because of mass bleaching events, the IUCN moved the reef’s status to critical and deteriorating on its watchlist. Some activities which threaten it, like fishing and coastal development, can be tackled by the management authorities. 

“Other pressures cannot be addressed at the site level, such as climate change, which is recognized as the greatest threat,” the IUCN explained. Although efforts to safeguard the reef are rising, the process has been slow under a long-term sustainability plan through 2050. HSBC and the Queensland government said back in October that they would buy “Reef Credits”, a tradable unit that quantifies and values the work undertaken to improve water quality flowing onto the reef. 

According to Optimist Daily, “Buying one credit is the equivalent of removing one kilogram of nitrogen from the water, or preventing 538 kilograms of sediment from entering the ocean.”

Cool!

7. The rise of jobs in the sustainability sector (Netflix, Microsoft… did big hirings this year) 

Source: Pixabay

As a sustainability grad, one of the most promising changes (stories) of the year was witnessing the rise of jobs in the sustainability sector. Companies that would have never before considered hiring a team “to make them more green” now have huge departments all focussed on reducing company emissions and leaving behind a better legacy. To name just a few examples, this year Netflix, Microsoft and Tesla have all been making major hiring moves in sustainability. 

According to ECO Canada, “In the next 3 – 5 years, 84% of sustainability consulting firms expect to hire, creating about 400 new positions. A further 3,800 new jobs will be added to this number as 46% of other sustainability employers increase their staff…The top employers of sustainability professionals are governments (employing 27% of sustainability professionals), research institutions and not-for-profits (24%), large companies in manufacturing, oil & gas, mining, forestry and utilities (10%) and businesses in retail, finance and insurance (10%).”

Good news for sustainability! 

8. The Earthshot Prize 

Source: Flood Control Asia 

Move over Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Prize for environmentalism is coming through!

Back in October, Sir David Attenborough joined forces with Prince William to launch “The Earthshot Prize”. According to BBC, this is the biggest environmental prize to date. They are searching for 50 solutions to the world’s biggest environmental problems, allocating five one million-pound prizes (valuing at $1,704,300 CAD each) to be awarded over the next decade. 

Prince William believes this prize could be the positivity that the environmentalism movement is missing, “The Earthshot prize is really about harnessing that optimism and that urgency to find some of the world’s solutions to some of the greatest environmental problems,” he told the BBC.

According to the Earthshot website, the prize was inspired by President John F. Kennedy’s Moonshot, “which united millions of people around an organising goal to put man on the moon and catalysed the development of new technology in the 1960s.” Attenborough believes it’s this same spirit that can guide the next generation of thinkers and dreamers to solve some of earth’s problems.

The announcement came just after Sir David Attenborough released his latest documentary, “A Life on Our Planet”. 

I am looking forward to seeing where this goes.

9. Tree’s ability to socialize and “speak” to each other. 

Source: Unsplash

This December, the New York Times shared that forests are social and communicate with one another through dense fungi networks in the soil below the canopy.

More specifically, “trees and fungi form partnerships known as mycorrhizas: Threadlike fungi envelop and fuse with tree roots, helping them extract water and nutrients like phosphorus and nitrogen in exchange for some of the carbon-rich sugars the trees make through photosynthesis.”

Suzanne Simard, a professor of forest ecology at the University of British Columbia, has been studying these relationships in the wild, coastal forests of North America. Through her research, Sinard discovered that these fungal threads link EVERY tree together in the forest- even ones of different species!

These linkages allow vital molecules including carbon, water, and other nutrients to pass through the network circuits. Wait, it gets better. Simard also stated that chemical signals are also passed through this network, allowing trees to signal to others nearby when there is danger.

“If a tree is on the brink of death, it sometimes bequeaths a substantial share of its carbon to its neighbors.”

Is anyone cutting onions in here?

10. Doug Ford’s conservation authority changes

Source: NationalPost

In December, the Ontario government passed its new budget bill. One major change to this bill was the new constraints on the conservation authorities in the province to regulate development and “introduced new channels through which developers can obtain permits.”

According to the Globe and Mail, there are 36 conservation authorities in Ontario (with most of them in the southern end) all tasked with protecting the various watersheds that make up the province. This might include operating dams, defending against flooding or erosion, regulating development on wetlands, protecting water sources, and managing natural parks. Ultimately, conservation authorities are nature’s defender against poor land use policies. 

Unfortunately, their ability to defend will be threatened with the upcoming changes as a result of the new bill. And this isn’t the first time the government has tried to sidestep these authorities. Past budget cuts and using ministerial zoning orders (MZO) has allowed the government to circumvent the rules and bypass conservation authorities. 

Schedule 6 of the new bill will only add to this momentum. Changes include:

• The conservation authorities must now issue a permit once an MZO has been issued
• Developers can more easily appeal a conservation authorities decision

The decisions ultimately allow developers to take the path of least resistance if they want to build on a naturally significant area, while making it harder for conservation authorities to fight back and stand up for what they are meant to do.

11. Buzzworthy – Honeybee venom shown to kill cancer cells

Source: Unsplash

Now here is some news to buzz about, scientists in Australia have found that Honeybee venom has been linked to killing some aggressive breast cancer cells. This exciting news shows signs of hope for treatment of breast cancer – which is the leading cancer in women across the globe, representing 25% of all cancers in women.

Melittin – the compound within the venom were used to destroy two cancer types: triple-negative and HER2-enriched. Bee venom has been discussed to have anti-cancer properties before but there is still a long way to go from watching cancer cells be destroyed in petri dishes to being applied in medicinal practice.

It does provide us with hope and has proven to be yet another prime example of how nature is really the best doctor we have. Dr. Ciara Duffy a 25-year-old PhD researcher led the study and found the venom killed the cancer cells within an hour! We hope to see more development with this great news, and hopefully it increases acceptance towards incorporating more holistic approaches to cancer and medicinal treatments. Now that is buzzworthy.

12. Stay away poachers: rare white giraffe is now being tracked 

Source: Unsplash

Being the only white giraffe left is causing a stir up around the world to protect the remarkable creature, the extremely rare giraffe now has a tracker attached to it in order to trace its whereabouts hourly – this allows rangers in Kenya to monitor the giraffe and keep it out of danger from poachers. The device was planted on one of the horns on the animal on November 8th.. 

The white colour of the giraffe is from the absence of pigmentation in its skin – also called leucism, which is a rare genetic condition that can affect a variety of animals. Due to its rarity – the  animal is in a critical position to stay alive as the rest of its family has been killed off by poachers and making this one especially lucrative in the poaching and wildlife trafficking underground market.

The conservation status of the species as a whole is vulnerable, with over 68,000 giraffes in the world. Two white giraffes of the same family were killed in march and there was discussion that there was one found in Tanzania in 2015. With the tracking device, this hopes to protect the vulnerable giraffe and keep it out of harm’s way.

13. Shell Canada going carbon neutral

Source: Unsplash

Shell will become the first gas retailer in Canada to offer a program that offsets emissions from customer fuel purchases with an optional buy-in at the pump. The Drive Carbon Neutral program will be available to 1,400 stations Canada wide. The program allows customers to offset their carbon emissions from fossil fuels for two cents a litre. Shell states that many of their carbon conscious customers were demanding them to do more. They also stated that many individuals cannot afford to buy an electric car but still want to offset their carbon footprint – this will allow this to happen. This is a model that was taken from a program in Europe, which saw positive feedback and adoption levels with nearly 20 percent of people in the Netherlands using it.

Shell also announced their plan to reforest British Columbia in a partnership with Central Chilcotin Rehabilitation. They aim to plant 840,000 native trees in effort to resort much of what was lost in the 2017 wildfires. They plan to do this over a two-year planting period, with the cost being unreleased. Meanwhile Environmental Defence is arguing that this is “pure greenwashing”, as it directs the cost onto the consumer rather than the giant who is profiting from the world using fossil fuels.

14. A galaxy of microfibers in California – literally

Source: Unsplash 

Invisible but plentiful is a good way to describe the unfortunate situation of the plastic microfiber problem. A whooping 13.3 quadrillion (yes, quadrillion) plastic fibers are found in California alone – that is more than 130,000 times more fibers as there are stars in the Milky Way galaxy. In 2019, an estimated 4,000 metric tons were released into California’s natural environment. With these fibers ending up in our water systems, a study found that 73% of fish caught at mid-ocean depth in the Atlantic had microplastics in their stomachs. 

The fibers are under 5mm in length and most often come from washing materials in our laundry. Mostly from synthetic fibers that make up our clothing, they go from our washing machines all the way to our water streams. Just one load alone can pass out more than 700,000 fibers alone. The amount of microfibers shed also depends on the material, wash temperature, detergent, etc. 

15. Hottest Temperatures EVER recorded 

Source: Unsplash

We hit a record again! There is no surprise of temperatures reaching soaring highs with the rising records of fossil fuels emissions, every year seems to hit a new heat record. But Death Valley held the flaming torch of the highest temperature ever recorded on Earth, sitting at 54.4C (130F).

Death Valley is a desert valley in the Mojave Desert that lies 86 meters below sea level. It is one of the hottest places on Earth but these soaring temperatures this high have never been accurately recorded before. There were extreme heat advisories, urging people to not walk in the desert past 10AM. 

It serves as the hottest air temperature ever recorded, this begs the question of what is to come in the future. It is so hot, that the sweat evaporates so fast off your skin that you actually don’t feel wet. Talk about a hot – n – not sweaty?

16. Zero carbon flights by 2035? 

Source: Unsplash

By 2020, we may have already expected flying cars – while our expectations may have been sold short, we do have something as exciting in the talks. Transportation giant Airbus has revealed their plans for the first commercial emission-free flight by 2035. Airbus has three ZEROe concepts in store, all to use hydrogen to power the planes.

In order to truly make this a feasible carbon-free option, it relies on finding large quantities of renewable or low-emitting sources of hydrogen. As this process currently relies mostly on methane and fossil fuels – it is not exactly a low-carbon option but more innovative solutions to hopefully come in future announcements.

One of the concept designs could carry up to 200 passengers for more than 2,000 miles. This is a milestone waiting to happen in the aviation industry and would mark a remarkable moment in history – with hopes that all travel and transportation can one day be emission free.

17. Google now has a carbon footprint of zero.

Source: Shutterstock

The tech giant has set the bar again. Although already being carbon neutral since 2007, Google now has offset their entire carbon footprint to ever exist. While many in the technology industry are right behind Google – such as Microsoft and Apple. Microsoft has released a statement to become “carbon negative” by 2030, and Apple is announcing to be carbon neutral for their business and the supply chain for their products by 2030. 

Google is also moving into using carbon-free energy by 2030 by using renewable energy such as solar and wind to power their operations. They also plan to increase their use of battery storage. Artificial intelligence will also come into play by allowing AI to forecast the demand of electricity. This shift would create over 12,000 jobs in the span of five years. Not only will it be good for the environment to turn away from oil and gas but it will also contribute to the economy, as they vowed to no longer create AI for oil and gas exploration. Nice one Google!

18. Thailand will shut national parks regularly to protect nature 

Source: Unsplash 

Footsteps are not the only things left on the beach. Many tourists flock to Thailand to enjoy their sandy beaches, crystal clear water, and a beautiful culture. Being a travel and tourism hotspot for many years, this has left a lasting impact on the natural environment. 

However, thanks to COVID-19, the closure of parks has allowed nature to recover by seeing the return of whales and turtles. This is a lesson that speaks volumes as the Natural Resources & Environment authorities now want to close the national parks yearly for two to four months to ensure the ecosystem and wildlife health remains stable and is not overexerted. 

Thailand has more than a 100 national parks and attracts between 10 – 20 million visitors, with this year expecting to drop below 7 million visitors. While tourism is one of the main economic pillars for Thailand’s economy, amounting to one-fifth to their gross domestic product, it could not keep up with the unsustainable degradation the heavy tourism brought. In order to sustain future tourism and a healthy ecosystem, Thailand conservation authorities saw first hand through the pandemic how with time, nature can begin to restore itself.

19. We can see penguin colonies from space

Source: Unsplash

Want the good news or the bad news first? We’ll start with the good. Emperor penguins are very difficult to study due to their extremely remote nature, making them often inaccessible with Arctic temperature conditions dropping below -50 degrees celsius. But good news, a new study using satellite mapping tech reveals that there are 20% more emperor penguin colonies in Antarctica than was previously thought. The scientists from British Arctic Survey (BAS) explain that they used images from European Commission’s Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite mission to locate birds. They were able to find 11 new emperor penguin colonies, three of which were previously identified, but not confirmed. These findings take the global census to 61 colonies around the continent. 

BAS scientists have been searching for new colonies for the past 10 years using land-based research methods. Dr. Peter Fretwell, a BAS geographer, says that satellite images have enabled scientists to discover colonies that would have been extremely difficult to find otherwise.  

Now here comes the bad news as promised, the colonies are so few and far between that this discovery takes the overall population count up by 5-10% to just over half a million penguins in total. Emperor penguins are known to be vulnerable to loss of sea ice (their breeding habitat). Given current climate change projections, this habitat is likely to further decline. Most of the new colonies are on the edge of the breeding ground meaning that they are likely to be lost as the climate warms. 

20. Water is now trading on wall street

Source: Unsplash

Water, a necessity to all life on our planet, is now being traded on Wall street. We should have seen this one coming, another natural resource commodified and brought onto Wall street. CME Group – the company in charge of managing the contracts states that water will be traded on Wall Street due to the fear of rising scarcity in the future. As with other traded commodities like oil and gold, the price will fluctuate due to supply and demand.

According to the Nasdaq Velez California Water Index, the price of water has doubled in the last year, and the market price of it is at 1.1 billion dollars. On December 7th the trading price started at $486.53 per acre-foot equating to 1,233 cubic meters.

Water contracts are a first of their kind, incubated by the heat and wildfires in California, this change hopes to protect the resource for California’s consumers to indicate the scarcity and the value it holds. Over 2 billion people live amongst water scarcity around the world…This foreshadows the grim future of millions of people getting displaced by this factor. Not only will water limit industries, but it will trickle down to limited supply for human consumption too.

—

Well 2020 being crazy and turbulent are just a few words we can agree on describing this year in a nutshell (basically this year was one big WTF, right?) With the ever so dynamic natural world and constantly shifting state of politics, it can often make it hard to keep up with what is going on in the ‘green’ world. That is why our team has had the pleasure of picking our top six weekly environmental stories in our weekly column, The WTF (The Weekly This Friday). 

We hope to have even more environmental wins for 2021 for us to document every Friday – yes we are extending the series into the next year (woo!) We are hoping to hear less about the pandemic and leave it in the rearview mirror of 2020, and make more strides and reach even more environmental triumphs. We hope you had the pleasure coming along this ride with us of reading these stories as much as we had writing them.

The post WTF 2020 appeared first on A\J.

At Alternatives Journal, we are ecstatic to announce that at the end of this December, we will be releasing our final issue of 2020, “Operation Environment”. At A\J, we have a hard working, dedicated staff which has allowed us to have released not one, but two, zoom-enabled issues in the middle of a global pandemic!

This issue is particularly unique, not only because it is a double issue. In “Operation Environment”, we will explore environmental education and how we can lift the next generation of environmental change agents, the next “green army”, if you will.

As the Editor and Associate Publisher at A\J, the development of this issue had me reminiscing back to a 17-year-old version of myself about to start an undergraduate degree in environmental studies…I had so much to learn. This issue represents everything that we wish we would have known as young students, stepping out on to the environmental scene for the first time.

Inside this issue, you will find stories about…

• The triumphs and tribulations of former Green Party leader, Elizabeth May (By Greta Vaivadaite).
• Letters from our youth; what would the next generation tell Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, about climate change and the environment? (By Meghan Parsons)
• How growing up in India influenced A\J journalist, Sahil Gambhir, and helped him rethink his relationship with the natural world.  
• How do we move away from a Eurocentric view of learning and incorporate Indigenous knowledge into our education systems? (By Lora Yurdakul)
• How female empowerment through education impacts our ability to achieve climate progress (By Anuj Dogra and Kerstyn Lutz).
• Will virtual and augmented reality be the future in environmental education? (By Chris Rizzi).
• The chronicles of environmental grads, they are ready to make their case! (By John Kennedy and Meghan Parsons)

This issue is also special because it was our second collaboration with the Centre of Environment and Sustainability (CES) at Western University. With the help of the CES students (and guidance from CES Guest Editor, Stephan Vachon) we were able to bring this issue to life. As a team, we learned about what it means to be an environmental educator, and the importance of being a lifelong learner.

At CES and A\J, we understand that the drive and passion to make a difference can only take you so far. To be agents of positive environmental change, one must possess a high degree of environmental literacy, and the path to get there is not always simple. New doors will open as others close, but throughout our educational journey, we persevere to turn our hopes into realities.

I hope this issue helps you get a little closer to opening that next door.

We are excited to share it with you. 

References to this issue can be found at this link. 

The post OPERATION ENVIRONMENT, Coming to a Mailbox Near You in January 2021! appeared first on A\J.

Source: Unsplash

If Australia isn’t always surprising us with cool new animals news, a study now finds that kangaroos are able to intentionally communicate with humans. 16 Kangaroos who have been socialized around humans and used to human presence from different wildlife parks, and participated in an interesting experiment.

They carried out six of the training trials, by placing a piece of food in a box on the ground and the food is available to them for all six of the trials. But on the seventh test trial, when you close the box, the kangaroos try to open the box and once they understand the box is closed. They then begin looking at the experimenter and looking back at the food and approaching the experimenter and scratching and nudging them as a means of asking for help.

This challenges the notion that only domesticated animals ask for help with problems they encounter, now we can see socialized kangaroos do too. This research hopes to prove that kangaroos and marsupials do have some more advanced cognitive abilities.

We Need More Women Leaders! Evidence is in COVID Statistics.

Source: Shutterstock

Numbers don’t lie. Norway, Finland, Iceland, and Denmark all have drastically lower rates of COVID-19 and they are all led by females. This is comparing numbers to their partnering countries that are led by males.

The commonality between the low numbers keeps pointing to the countries with female leaders. An analysis conducted by the Centre for Economic Policy Research and the World Economic Forum states that this lies in female leaders taking a “proactive and coordinated policy responses.”

Finland have a rate of just 60 deaths per million people, Norway stands at 57 per 1 million, Iceland 73, and Denmark 135. While the UK is averaging out to 820 deaths per 1 million. The variance is quite shocking, but it does show a correlation when women are in charge. While there is still gender disparity and in many public service positions, women still have a lower pay rate and a lower number of women in senior positions compared to men. Let’s keep shattering some glass ceilings ladies!

DNA Detectives

Source: The Guardian

Poaching of rhinoceros in India is a huge problem. The species is difficult to track, making it challenging to identify poaching trade routes and hotspots. Oftentimes, the rhino body parts are found too late, making it nearly impossible for law enforcement to identify the poachers or where the crime took place. 

A PhD student and senior research fellow from India are trying to help solve this problem. They collected dung from 749 rhinoceros, through analyzing the dung they were able to create a genetic baseline of the rhinoceros across India. The project is part of the “Rhino DNA Indexing System (RhODIS- India) conservation program.” 

The DNA profiles have given each rhino a unique “genetic fingerprint”, allowing them to trace the rhino back to its breeding populations, creating a rhino family tree if you will. Researchers have used this information to build a DNA database of the rhinos that are left. At the time of writing this article, there are approximately only 3,500 one-horned rhinoceros left in India.

According to Science Daily, “The forensics team at WII were also able to match a suspected poached carcass from a protected area to a seized horn found elsewhere along the trade route in India. Occasionally, they had as little to work with as blood-stained soil, pebbles or a bullet to perform DNA profiling.”

Very cool!

Women for Natural Gas?

Source: Mother Jones

“Join the 2,463 women that Support the Oil & Natural gas Industry in Texas!” reads the site, Women for Natural Gas. The site goes on to provide testimonials from different women explaining their reasons why they love the natural gas sector. Sounds a little fishy.

This week, the site was exposed by a journalist from Mother Jones for fabricating these testimonials and being an example of the oil and gas industry trying to turn the tide of public opinion in their favour. In fact, the women behind these testimonials do not exist at all.

According to Mother Jones, the site was actually using stock photos of women for the profiles. The site even went as far to misuse the professional headshot of Jessi Hempel (a senior LinkedIn editor) for a profile for a woman named “Carey White” (Hempel stated she never allowed the site to use her photo, and said it was incredibly disturbing to her). Other profiles include names like “Rebecca Washington and Natalie Smith,” I am getting bot name vibes. 

So, who is behind “Women for Natural Gas” and these ridiculous profiles? FTI Consulting and Texans for Natural Gas communications department. 

According to Hiroko Tabuchi, a New York Times journalist who did a similar investigation last month, these campaigns are trying to portray the oil and gas industry as a grassroots movement.  Following the NYT article, the spokesperson for FTI admitted to using stock photos, but said that the testimonials themselves were real. While the testimonials remain the same, but the photos are swapped out as needed, one must wonder if that is actually true. 

If you eat mussels, you eat microplastics – it’s that simple

Source: Wikipedia

A new study published in Environmental Pollution by the University of Bayreuth, led by Prof. Dr. Christian Laforsch, reveals that this claim holds is true worldwide. The Bayreuth team investigated the microplastic load of four mussel species which are often sold as food in supermarkets from 12 countries around the world. All the samples analyzed contained microplastic particles, and the researchers detected a total of nine different types of plastic – Polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) were the most common types of plastic. These plastics are the most common types used in packaging and consumer items from water bottles to single-use straws all over the world. All of the mussels were purchased from different grocery stores. Some of them had been farmed while some were wild catch from the North Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Pacific Ocean, the South China Sea, and the Gulf of Thailand. The study revealed that mussel samples from the North Atlantic and South Pacific were the most infected. To make the analyses of different sized mussels comparable, one gram of mussel meat was used as a fixed reference to test for microplastics. According to the study, one gram of mussel meat contained between 0.13 and 2.45 microplastic particles. To provide some context, medium sized mussels are 16 grams, so you can just imagine how much plastic you’re ingesting if you have a mussel meal.  

It’s no secret that contamination of different organisms with microplastics has been investigated in earlier research, however, this study is particularly important because it has advanced methodology in this field. “We have combined the latest technologies and procedures in sample preparation, measurement, and analysis of microplastic contamination in such a way that comparable results can be obtained on this basis in the future” explains Prof. Dr. Christian Laforsch. It is the hope that this methodology will be used in future research on microplastics. 

2020 might end up being the hottest year on record

Source: Carbon Brief

Just how warm Earth stays this December will determine if 2020 goes down as the hottest year on record. And it’s looking warm. On Monday, The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration calculated that November globally was the second hottest November on record, behind only 2015, while NASA and a European climate monitoring group said it was the hottest November on record. Since NASA has coverage over the poles, this is a more accurate read. Earth’s temperature in November was 56.95 degrees Fahrenheit, which was 1.75 degrees above the 20th century average, according to NOAA. NASA and NOAA records go back to 1880 so we can bet that they have accurate results. Emissions from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas among other factors cause the planet to warm. What will the temperature look like in 2050? 

The post The WTF: The Week This Friday Vol. 29 appeared first on A\J.

While voting is important in placing environmentally conscious political leaders in office, we need to have reliable candidates to vote for in the first place. If your options are between a candidate who approved a pipeline expansion and a candidate who left the Paris climate agreement, one could feel at a loss for a viable choice.

We need solid, environmentally sound options to vote for.

But just like encouraging youth to vote, this side of the coin poses its own challenges. I was recently on a call with a former MP who mentioned that one of the greatest challenges in solving the environmental problems of our time will be ensuring representatives in the House of Parliament are environmentally literate. During her time as MP, she relied heavily on a team of environmental scientists and researchers to ensure that she understood the issues pertaining to the environment as clearly as possible. This is reasonable. An MP cannot be an expert on every topic they are expected to speak and vote on- they are human too! Moreover, many of the individuals who enter politics have backgrounds and degrees in political science or law, and not necessarily environmental sciences.

Fostering environmentally literate MP’s (and their teams!) leads the way to greener, science-based policies and legislation. GreenPAC understands this and have made it their mission to help elect environmentally educated leaders. As mentioned in my previous article, GreenPAC is a non-partisan organization which offers a Parliamentary Internship Program to youth between the ages of 18 to 30. The program places young environmentalists in the offices of host MP’s with proven track records as being environmental champions. For nine months, the interns learn about the inner workings of the federal government through an environmental lens.

This September of 2020, GreenPAC took on four new interns. The interns are positioned with MP’s from different political parties Canada-wide. With diverse backgrounds from agriculture to biology to engineering, the interns are assigned specific projects relating to the environment, as well as assisting their MP’s and the offices in which they work become more environmentally adept.

I wanted to check in to see how they were coming along, and to gain a better sense of what the future MP’s of Canada might look like! Here are a few of their stories…

Zhenglin Liu | Interning with MP Taylor Bachrach | NDP | Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC

With a background in engineering and economics, Zhenglin Liu joined GreenPAC to gain experience in public service and federal politics with a future goal of a master’s degree, and then perhaps go to law school (wow, I know!).

“I came into the internship hoping to get sort of the vibe as to what environmental politics was like,” he laughed, “I think this internship has definitely been helpful in that. I was not hugely knowledgeable about the details of Parliamentary politics before starting this internship. For example, I didn’t know about the distinction between the work that is done in the House, versus Parliamentary committees, versus MP’s just informally talking to each other.”

Liu has been focussing specifically on issues relevant to his MP’s portfolio (infrastructure and transport), including green recovery policy, high-speed rail, aviation, and the incorporation of climate considerations into infrastructure funding.

Liu has also been researching historical policy with his MP’s office. “I was researching historical approaches to rural telephone connection in the mid-century as an analogy and potential source of best practices and recommendations. That was really interesting because it was something I had never done before; looking into policy that was decades old and trying to draw analogies for the modern day.”

“One thing that has really jumped out to me is how hard leadership (specifically in the political arena) is without knowledge or resources from civil society.” -Zhenglin Liu

“One thing that has really jumped out to me is how hard leadership (specifically in the political arena) is without knowledge or resources from civil society,” says Liu. “For me, working in an opposition party that currently has a small caucus, it can feel like even MP’s with strong environmental convictions (of which Taylor Bachrach is a great example), don’t really have the time, the staff, or the capacity to develop the technical or grassroots expertise stakeholders can provide on specific issues.”

“The experiences I have found most interesting and exciting have been hearing ministers answer questions posed from a progressive environmental perspective, whether that’s in question period or in committee,” he continued, “Through the office, I have had the opportunity to hear from really interesting stakeholders like the Canadian Federation of Municipalities and the Canadian Urban Transit Research & Innovation Consortium (CUTRIC).”

While his educational background has been in electricity systems, he is now learning about transport infrastructure from the perspective of planning, understanding the broader social benefits, and how politics and engineering intersect.

For the remainder of his internship, Liu hopes to learn more about which stakeholders play large roles in influencing policy. “Whether it’s industry leaders in clean tech, civil society, or experts within the civil service – who has the strongest impact?”

Jessie Mayes | Interning with MP Eric Duncan | Conservative | Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON

“All of this [was] really new to me,” says Jessie Mayes, speaking of her political experience prior to starting the GreenPAC internship. Coming from a background in Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Mayes knew that she would face a learning curve when it came to navigating the ins and outs of everyday politics. But in the office of MP Eric Duncan, she also had a unique opportunity to work on projects that utilized her passion for agriculture.

“My office has been really great. They wanted to carve out specific environmental projects for me to work on while I’m in the office so they can use my skills, which is wonderful,” says Mayes. During her internship, she has also been conducting research on the impact of the carbon tax on farmers and the ways that farmers can be supported to adopt more sustainable practices.

“I have a much greater appreciation for what can be done at the local level and how big of an impact that can have.” – Jessie Mayes

Before peering behind the curtain of politics, Mayes was often frustrated with the slow speed at which our political system operates.  “From the outside, I have been judgemental and perhaps too much so,” she says. “When I was doing more grassroots and local work, I thought, ‘wow, why isn’t this happening?’ Now that I have more experience here, I realize that it isn’t easy on this level either. I have a much greater appreciation for what can be done at the local level and how big of an impact that can have as well.”

In the meantime, Mayes says she is “interested in gaining more experience with policy analysis and how to develop strong policies while also being critical of them.”

Clément Badra | Interning with MP Jenica Atwin | Green Party | Fredericton, NB

GreenPAC intern, Clément Badra, feels he can make the most difference in the world by working in and around politics in the broad sense of the term. “The one sphere where I feel like we are lacking the willingness to take on [environmental issues] is the political sphere,” he says.

“Most of the people that are working in the offices [were] political science students or people with a background in administration. Which is extremely necessary because of the complex structure you are working in…but the more time I spend listening to what is happening, the more it seems the programs are not structured to properly help people working on the ground. There might be a disconnect there.”

“[An MP] cannot be an expert on everything, so you need your team to be experts for you and guide you through this.” – Clément Badra

Badra believes that without diverse backgrounds in the House or on an MP’s staff, “you might miss nuances on specific issues and can’t do the best work possible as an MP because your staff wasn’t able to bring the nuances to the bill… [An MP] cannot be an expert on everything, so you need your team to be experts for you and guide you through this. But diversity should not only be in regards to professional backgrounds represented, but should also include socioeconomic backgrounds as well as racial diversity.”

Badra hopes to learn more about committee work and the various kinds of procedures you can use to push for ideas and projects within the House of Commons. More specifically, “I would like to learn how the committee work translates to the debate in the House and pushing motions and amendments to a bill, the negotiations that happen around a bill when it is put in the House, and how you work to try and get the most out of it.”

In terms of impactful moments during his internship? “I have had some very interesting meetings…you get to understand the partisanship and the non-partisanship sides because some people in other parties do not share the idea of the party themselves,” says Badra. He says that another impactful moment is seeing the positive influence he and his team made on someone they were trying to help, “those are great moments”.

Joshua Swift | Interning with MP Catherine McKenna | Liberal | Ottawa Centre, ON

GreenPAC intern, Joshua Swift, found GreenPAC’s training prior to his internship helpful in preparing him for what was ahead. When asked what kind of training GreenPAC provided prior to the internship, Swift stated, “We had training with the House clerks. We learned how to do research that would probably be required in the office. We also learned about how the different branches of government work… We spoke with many speakers, some of whom having worked on the Hill before, some who had worked around it. We also began working on a GreenPAC related project before actually starting in our offices.”

“I have also gotten the chance to work on some local environmental projects,” says Swift. He has learned about environmental challenges specific to Ottawa including tree planting projects, and phasing out single use plastics, as well as working with local groups and smaller environmental initiatives within the community. “I have also done a lot of following and reporting on meetings for my MP,” says Swift, “I have been following [The Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development] at the federal level, as well as the city of Ottawa and the local sides environmental committees.”

“Climate change is a global issue, and I don’t think there is any better actor situated to be at the forefront and coordinate that approach than the federal government. They have the tools and capacity to make this happen.” – Joshua Swift

While he has a background in environmental policy, the GreenPAC internship is providing him with the skills to put his education to use in the real world. “This experience has strengthened my view that the climate crisis is so big, and in order to meaningfully combat it, we need a multifaceted approach,” says Swift. “Climate change is a global issue, and I don’t think there is any better actor situated to be at the forefront and coordinate that approach than the federal government. They have the tools and capacity to make this happen. This experience so far has just kind of fortified that view.”

When asked what surprised him during his internship so far, he stated, “I knew MP’s and ministers were probably busy, but I didn’t realize the extent to which their schedules are jam-packed! From my experience, everyone here is working extremely hard.”

“I would like to better understand the Parliamentary process,” says Swift, “The federal government is multifaceted, with so many departments, ministries, and checks and balances. The more well-versed I can become in those inner workings, the better prepared I will be to utilize that system to implement some of the many changes we need, especially around the environment…I am just trying to absorb all I can.”

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Now that I have peeked behind the curtain myself into the work and workings of the GreenPAC interns, I’d say the future is in good hands.

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