Sustainability

Sustainability needs diverse groups of experts to solve climate change

I teach a course on sustainability challenges. Students work in groups to help community partners with projects relating to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. The students come from many different areas of study and collaborate on developing meaningful projects. According to a recent report by Cole et al (2022) working with diverse teams is … Continue reading →

The climate anxiety is real

In one week this year I have skied at lower than -30°C and higher than 0°C. We have what I’m sure is the best snow base in years, but it’s layered with freezing rain. We’ve had record breaking cold. And this past summer we had record breaking heat. Even without there being a global pandemic … Continue reading →

Does changing one food item a day make any difference?

In the past few years I have changed my diet to be (mostly) a weekday vegetarian. If I’m honest this change was aided by also switching to one of the weekly meal kit boxes. I signed up for the vegetarian box and through it gained many delicious vegetarian recipes. Vegetarian on its own isn’t automatically … Continue reading →

What does “green infrastructure” actually mean?

I hadn’t really given this question any thought if I’m honest. I assumed green infrastructure included things like street trees, parks, stormwater retention facilities, and probably green roofs. As it turns out, I’m a little more inclusive in my definition compared to many and I may have thought about it more than many US municipalities. … Continue reading →

What can you gain from giving something up

Sustainable development goals

In my sustainability classes we look at the United Nations sustainable development goals. I think there are positives and negatives with the goals but one of their benefits is that they do introduce a broad perspective on sustainability. With that in mind, I thought that I would connect the different ideas from my posts this … Continue reading →

Why self-care is scientific and sustainable

When I thought of creating an advent calendar of self-care on my blog I asked myself why. How does it fit within the overall purpose of the site? But that question is the very reason why I decided to do it. Taking care of yourself is often shunted to the side. Particularly during holidays there … Continue reading →

Not untouched nature: Birds are changing due to climate change

I’ve written before about the idea of an environment or wilderness that is separate from humans. The separation is an artificial construct. We can’t be separate as we depend on nature for everything from food to building supplies to our recreation. Sure, many of our objects are not obviously from nature but the petrochemicals for … Continue reading →

Do we need to train empathy to achieve sustainability?

It seems that we are constantly looking for the reason why some people will engage in pro-environmental behaviour. Many of the links are tenuous at best. Recent research by Di Fabio and Kenny has explored how empathy connects to connectedness with nature with some promising results. Di Fabio and Kenny (2021) had Italian workers completing … Continue reading →

Saving the Metals From Batteries

Batteries are incredibly useful technologies and key to many sustainable technologies. Unfortunately, the chemicals in batteries pose a huge environmental problem themselves. But a new study by Xiao et al (2021) may have a solution or at least an improvement over the current situation. Ultrasound is a relatively common imaging technology. It uses sound waves … Continue reading →