In my concluding major paper for my master’s degree at the University of Toronto in the late 1970s, I identified two major principles that have guided my career ever since. The first is ecological sanity…
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It’s global conference season, and once again the corporate sector is spending huge amounts of money — money that comes from us when we purchase their products and services — to lobby for their own…
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Thanks to tens of millions of Americans who just voted to turn the American Dream into the American Nightmare, we now have to deal with the consequences of a second Trump presidency. Let’s be clear: Donald Trump is not only a fascist who is a threat to democracy in America, as two former generals…
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Over 40 years ago, in the early 1980s, I co-led a major report on “Our Chemical Society” for the City of Toronto’s Department of Public Health. In it, we sought to step back from what we called the “chemical of the day” problem — so many chemicals of concern, so many requests to look at them…
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There was a lot of attention paid in the recent election campaign to the provincial deficit, by which various politicians and commentators meant the budgetary deficit. But important though that might be, there is another deficit that is much more concerning, and yet largely ignored…
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Last month, Planetary Boundaries Science, an international partnership of Earth scientists based out of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, published the first of what will be an annual Planetary Health Check. It makes for grim, if unsurprising, reading.
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Carbon pricing is a form of pollution pricing. But air pollutants from fossil-fuel combustion and greenhouse-gas emissions from a variety of sources are not the only forms of pollution we face. And pollution pricing itself is just one aspect of the broader field of full cost accounting.
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It is very clear that pollution causes harm. Oxford Reference defines it as “contamination or undesirable modification of soil, food, water, clothing, or the atmosphere by a noxious or toxic substance,” adding that “any form of pollution can have adverse effects on health.”
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By proclaiming that the carbon tax “is an existential threat to our economy and our way of life” and that it threatens a “nuclear winter” for the economy, Pierre Poilievre has entered the world of full-on craziness and inverted logic. The reality is exactly the opposite. The “carbon tax” — actually…
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I was born in 1948, when the average annual atmospheric CO2 level was about 311 ppm. When I started writing this column in December 2014, average annual CO2 was 399 ppm. Today, it is 422 ppm. The impacts of these heightened CO2 levels, as well as increased levels of methane…
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Recently, I have been discussing the large-scale changes we need to make in the face of the eight critical shifts identified in the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report Navigating New Horizons. Those changes are a focus on intergenerational equity; a new social contract that reinforces shared values about how we relate not only to…
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In addition to a commitment to intergenerational equity, which I discussed last week, the recent UN Environment Programme report Navigating New Horizons also calls for “a new social contract reinforcing shared values that unite us rather than divide us” and “a new global emphasis on well-being metrics…
Read moreLast week, I summarized five of the eight critical shifts identified in a recent UN Environment Programme (UNEP) report, Navigating New Horizons, which is “a global foresight report on planetary health and human well-being.” I also touched on a sixth critical shift: persistent and widening inequalities.
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The UN Environment Programme’s new report Navigating New Horizons, produced in partnership with the International Science Council, is not easy reading. It’s not just that it is a dense 100-page document, but because it paints a grim picture of the challenges we face.
Read moreIn exploring the need for a transformation of our values so they are fit for purpose in the 21st century, I have been using a piece of “scripture” from the World Wide Fund for Nature’s 2014 Living Planet Report. The third realm from my piece of “scripture” is the economy, and the text makes an important but often overlooked point…
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In my time, I have co-founded a number of organizations, but I am particularly proud to have helped start CAPE — the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment — 30 years ago. Three of us, independently, had started to develop the idea of some sort of doctors’ organization…
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In a very real sense, we are indeed separated from nature. In North America we are 80 per cent urbanized and we spend 90 per cent of our time indoors — and a further five per cent in cars and other vehicles. So we — and especially our children — have very little contact with nature, and most of that is…
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Back in April, I was asked to be the homilist at the First Unitarian Church just before Earth Day and to talk about the values revolution that is needed. Now I don’t know about you, but I didn’t even know there was such a a beast as a homilist…
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My colleague Paul Kershaw is a professor of public health at UBC and founder of Generation Squeeze, a “Think and Change Tank” that promotes wellbeing for all generations. It does so “by turning evidence into action and rejuvenating democracy to protect what is sacred for younger and future generations…
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A team led by Prof. Martin Wagner of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology recently reported that of 16,000 chemicals associated with plastic, at least 4,200 “are of concern because of their high hazards to human health and the environment.”
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Monday is Earth Day, and the theme this year is Planet vs. Plastics. This is timely, because Tuesday marks the start of a week-long session in Ottawa of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution. So this week, I begin to look at the plastics industry…
Read moreThe Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto just released a report on another industry that in various ways harms health — gambling. Not only can it be addictive and harmful to health and social wellbeing, its impact is disproportionately experienced by low-income people…
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So far, in examining what the World Health Organization calls the commercial determinants of health, I have been looking at private sector firms that produce products that harm health, such as tobacco, fossil fuels or unhealthy foods.
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In my last three columns, I looked at the health and economic burden of unhealthy diets, the role of large parts of the food industry in producing and marketing an unhealthy diet, and the ways in which our current food system harms the planet.
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Last week, I noted the private sector is the key player in the provision of a healthy diet. But the food industry also makes a great deal of money from the production and marketing of unhealthy food. It is estimated that globally, unhealthy diets account for about 11 million premature deaths annually.
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As far back as 1964, Paul Sears, an eminent American ecologist and former chair of the graduate program in Conservation at Yale University, described ecology as “a subversive subject” and asked “if taken seriously as an instrument for the long-run welfare of mankind…
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Last week, I documented the massive impact of the fossil-fuel industry on people and the planet, an impact the industry generally ignores or downplays in its rush to make money and maintain its power, earning it the title of “the new tobacco.”
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Tobacco is the forgotten pandemic in Canada. While much attention has been focused on the opioid overdose crisis, COVID, alcohol use and other popular issues, tobacco use remains, to this day, “the leading preventable cause of premature death in Canada,” according to a July 2023 Health Canada report.
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Indeed, in a wide variety of ways, the private sector is what I called producers of health — they build our homes, grow our food, produce beneficial medicines, create good jobs and provide many other important determinants of health.
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More than a quarter-century ago, I wrote an article called “Caveat Partner” about the problematic aspects of public health creating partnerships with the private sector.
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The end of the year is always a time for reflection, but more so this past year, which has been significant for me in four key ways. First and foremost, I turned 75. That’s three-quarters of a century, and that’s given me pause for thought — I really am getting old!
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It’s that time of year, when Charles Dickens’ story of Ebenezer Scrooge and the Cratchit family is everywhere. But it’s not just a charming story of how a mean old curmudgeon sees the light and becomes a kindly old gent and a generous benefactor to his employee, Bob Cratchit.
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This week, I continue this exploration by looking at key recommendations related to buildings. The next main recommendation is: “In addition to energy efficiency and fuel switching we will make greater gains if we reduce the material intensity of our buildings, and ensure they…
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Over the past few weeks, I have dug into the details of Saanich’s “four planets” ecological footprint, as calculated by CHRM Consulting, while recognizing this is an underestimate, in that it does not account for our impact on biodiversity or the extent of our…
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While biological wastes and materials going to landfill or recycling are accounted for, “Toxics and pollutants released from the human economy that cannot in any way be absorbed or broken down by biological processes … cannot be directly assigned an Ecological Footprint,” notes the Global Footprint Network.
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mportant though the ecological footprint is, the way it is calculated means the estimate that Saanich’s ecological footprint is equivalent to four planets is an underestimate. That is because a lot of different activities — energy use, food growing, materials for buildings, modes of transportation, waste disposal…
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I looked at our food consumption and associated food waste, which at 24 per cent is the largest share of the ecological footprint (setting aside the 46 per cent of the ecological footprint that is due to the local activities of the provincial and federal governments)…
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As I reported last week, CHRM Consulting has just completed an updated report on the ecological footprint of Saanich, which is available on the District of Saanich website. The report found Saanich’s footprint was equivalent to four planets’ worth…
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That should have been been obvious all along, but never more so than since 1972, when two key books — Only One Earth and The Limits to Growth — were published for the First UN Conference on the Environment in Stockholm…
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I first came across Joe Brewer’s work some years ago in an article he wrote critiquing the failure of universities to address in a comprehensive manner the complex ecological, social and cultural challenges we face. He began his 2017 article “Why Are Universities Failing Humanity?” with this statement…
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I have spent the last couple of months exploring the global polycrisis and the set of responses — great turnarounds — proposed in the Earth For All report. But what, you might reasonably ask, does this all mean for us here in the Greater Victoria region? How can its concepts be translated into local action?
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Earth For All is the title of a September 2022 report from the Transformational Economics Commission to the Club of Rome. It is also “an international initiative to accelerate the systems-change we need for an equitable future on a finite planet.”
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The fifth great turnaround proposed by the Earth For All (E4A) initiative of the Club of Rome is a complete restructuring of our energy system. But it’s more than that, since energy is so bound up in all we do. Energy has powered our civilization ever since we first learned to use fire to warm us, cook and scare off predators.
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The first three of the five “great turnarounds” in the Club of Rome’s “Earth for All” report address different aspects of inequality. But the final two, to which I now turn, are concerned with two of the most fundamental determinants of our health: food and — next week — energy.
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The report’s authors stress the need for improvement in “women’s access to education, economic opportunities and dignified jobs, and all life’s chances that these bring.” The education and empowerment of women and their involvement in the economy, they note, is strongly linked to reduced fertility rates and a reduction in population size.
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In the past few weeks, I have been stressing the need for a rapid transformation of our society if we are to ensure people around the world can have good lives within planetary boundaries. A recent article in a (British) Royal Society journal by Prof. Timothy Lenton, a leading Earth-system scientist…
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Last week I looked at the 1977 Science Council of Canada report “Canada as a Conserver Society.” The report recommended “Canadians as individuals, and their governments, institutions, and industries, begin the transition from a consumer society preoccupied with resource exploitation to a conserver society engaged in more constructive endeavours.”
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My recent columns have emphasised that we urgently need a rapid transformation of the major systems that make up society and underpin today’s dominant culture. Not only will this transformation protect the Earth systems we depend upon for our wellbeing, indeed our very survival, it will lead to improved wellbeing and quality of life.
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The polycrisis, according to the UN and Cascade Institute, includes the climate crisis, war, extreme economic inequality, financial system instability, ideological extremism, pernicious social impacts of digitalization, cyber attacks, mounting social and political unrest, large-scale forced migrations and an escalating danger of nuclear war…
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A 2009 publication by Johan Rockstrom and his colleagues at the Stockholm Resilience Centre identified a number of key Earth systems fundamental to natural processes and human wellbeing, and “thresholds which, if crossed, could generate unacceptable environmental change” were identified.
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