With misinformation running rampant, it becomes ever more important for people to identify strategies to address it. The standard response is to want to correct the misinformation. However, as we’ve seen, this often doesn’t have the impact we want. A more recent recommendation is to bypass the misinformation. When you bypass misinformation you “introduce different, … Continue reading
I know that climate change, particularly the lack of action on climate change, affects my mental health. Therefore, an article about the impact of climate change on the mental health of vulnerable populations caught my eye. The research, done by Fahrudin and colleagues (2024), conducted a review of published research between 2000 and 2023. I’m … Continue reading
I’m always curious whether incentive programs work. Some of them seem logical. If you received an incentive to switch to a high energy furnace, then you kind of have to be using that high energy furnace. Of course, you might be keeping the temperature higher than you would have otherwise but that’s a topic for … Continue reading
The world is warming through climate change but 2023 was warmer than predicted. This led to questions of why and Quaglia and Visioni (2024) think they have part of the answer. International shipping regulations came in in January 2020 that significantly reduced sulfate emissions. This is important because sulfate causes both risks for human health … Continue reading
I’m curious about how different foods will be affected by climate change. We’ve already been seeing impacts, such as the loss of peach and nectarine harvests in BC, Canada, in 2024 after extreme cold piled onto previous years of extreme heat and harsh winters (see for example Junos, 2024) The podcast Gastropod has a good … Continue reading
My city has an amazing river valley. It offers many recreation trails, treed areas, and open spaces. Even outside of the river valley, many neighbourhoods have access to smaller green spaces. Green space is not evenly distributed with lower socioeconomic status communities often having less access than higher ones, known as the luxury effect. Sadly, … Continue reading
Let’s be honest, we need to implement many different solutions to address climate change. But to do this, we often need more answers. In our current approach, someone has to give a number and that number has to then be budgeted. This is the goal behind research by Wang and colleagues (2024). Many places around … Continue reading
I’m always curious about how travel impacts the environment. I know many people, including myself, who travel to natural places in order to connect to nature and break from “the real world.” Clearly, there are other issues to unpack in this, not the least of which is that so many see nature as an escape … Continue reading
I knew there were telescopes in remote in remote locations but it hadn’t occurred to me how these telescopes were powered. It turns out, that many of them are powered by generators that run on fossil fuels, diesel and natural gas. But the location of many telescopes makes them prime candidates for solar power. This … Continue reading
At the start of the semester, I opened it up for students to ask me questions. One of the questions was what is the hardest thing about teaching sustainability. Without missing a beat, I responded, “the despair.” I kind of joked about it afterwards, but the despair people feel is really serious and, as Bird … Continue reading