Volume 143, Issue 7 (The Climate Issue) (October 24, 2022)

MASTHEAD

Letter from the Editors: Introducing The Varsity ’s Volume 143 Climate Issue

Renewing our pledge to cover the climate crisis

Jadine Ngan, Sarah Artemia Kronenfeld, and Nawa Tahir Varsity Editorial Management

Welcome to The Varsity’s Climate Issue!

On October 27, two days after this issue hits stands, the University of Toronto Asset Manage ment Corporation is scheduled to complete its divestment from direct holdings in fossil fuels. The university committed to this step one year ago.

Ahead of The Varsity’s follow-up on the universi ty’s divestment progress, which we hope to release soon, our editors have brought together a wide array of stories on the climate crisis from different corners of U of T. This effort is part of an ongoing coverage commitment at The Varsity

The Varsity has been reporting on the climate crisis since at least 1957, when we published a professor’s statement that the “Polar Sea” could become ice-free in a lifetime due to global warming from carbon emissions. But coverage was sparse

for decades. Only in the last few years has The Var sity consistently made covering the climate crisis one of its key focuses.

In September 2019, ahead of a UN Climate Action Summit in New York City, our Volume 140 masthead joined over 250 other media organi zations in a worldwide initiative called “Covering Climate Now.” The initiative, coordinated by the Columbia Journalism Review and The Nation, in volved publishing a week’s worth of content on climate change, in order to highlight the severity of the crisis while exploring possible solutions. In an editorial pledging our commitment, The Varsity’s editorial board at the time wrote, “we hope that the Covering Climate Now initiative will inspire our editors and contributors this year, and for years to come.”

It has. Since that commitment, The Varsity’s writ ers and editors have heightened their attention to the climate crisis. We’ve tracked the divestment movement at U of T, including the university’s re cent commitment to divest, while reporting on

similar demands for divestment from federated colleges. We’ve published several op-eds and open letters, some of which call upon students to mobilize for Indigenous land rights or demand that the university take more ambitious action. Our re porters and photojournalists covered several itera tions of the Global Climate Strike in Toronto, as well as last winter’s Wet’suwet’en solidarity protest. In 2020, our editorial board spoke out in support of the Wet’suwet’en land defenders.

We don’t want to lose that momentum. After all, experts consider the climate crisis the greatest threat our world has ever faced. The release of this climate special issue marks an affirmation of our 2019 commitment: we pledge to continue treat ing the climate crisis with the urgency and focus it deserves. We also pledge to sustain critical discus sions about the university’s response to the crisis, and keep our institutions accountable for their role in the search for climate solutions.

We hope you’ll hold us to that.

CORRECTIONS:

issue,

News article titled “Hundreds march at U of T in solidarity with Iran protests”

a comment by an organizer claiming it as the largest Iran solidarity event at U of T. However, due to lack of data, they have withdrawn this claim.

Varsity has edited the article to reflect this change.

illustration thanks to Jennifer Wang

Pakistani students call for U of T recognition following fatal floods

Climate minister confirms one third of country is underwater

gender studies, is from the Pakistani province of Sindh. Her relatives reside in Dadu, a city in inner Sindh.

Panhwar told The Varsity that her aunt, a sur vivor of stage four breast cancer, hasn’t been able to access treatment. She needs to travel to Karachi since cancer treatment is not avail able in her city, but she can’t travel from Dadu to Karachi because roads remain underwater.

Times of India reported that Pakistan was on the brink of bankruptcy, with “no immediate positive outlook.”

As of October 14, over 1,700 people have died from the catastrophic floods in Pakistan. In August, Pakistan’s Climate Minister Sherry Rehman reported that one-third of the country was underwater. Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that around 21 million Pakistanis are in “desperate need” of help.

As these catastrophic floods continue to impact millions in Pakistan, The Varsity talked to U of T students whose families have been impacted by these floods. They stressed that U of T professors and administration need to acknowledge the floods and recognize their im pact on Pakistani students’ mental health and well-being.

Background

The areas most badly affected by the floods are in the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan. HIs torically, these areas were underfunded by the federal and provincial governments.

Pakistan received three times the normal amount of rainfall in August for monsoon sea son. According to World Weather Attribution researchers, “climate change likely increased extreme monsoon rainfall” in Pakistan. The massive increase in rainfall came after an un characteristically hot summer for Pakistan.

Jacobabad, a city in Sindh, was declared the hottest city on Earth this summer, with temper atures exceeding the survivable range.

Factors like inadequate infrastructure and river management systems, high poverty rates, gender disparities, and ongoing political and economic instability further exacerbated the impacts of the flooding. For instance, a sum mer heatwave that melted Shisper Glacier con tributed to the collapse of a bridge in Swat, a popular tourist destination in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. For many, the floods de stroyed their only source of income, increasing the disaster’s impact.

Impact of the floods

Filzah Panhwar, an undergraduate student at Woodsworth College majoring in women and

Talking about the scale of destruction in Sindh, Panhwar said, “We’ve never seen something like this.”

Panhwar also stressed the importance of evacuation alarm systems, which could have saved lives by notifying people when they needed to evacuate. She told The Varsity that in Dadu, only the rich neighbourhoods were informed about the need for evacuation; most people didn’t know that their lives were in dan ger until the floodwater reached their villages and homes.

Panhwar also mentioned ways in which pa triarchy plays into the dynamics of humanitar ian aid for affected people. She said that it is unlikely to find a woman in line at a relief camp, because if a woman asks for aid at any such camps, “the first question they will be asked is ‘where’s your husband or your father or your brother? Why are you here? Where are they?’ ”

Sarah Rana, an undergraduate student in contemporary Asian studies and vice-presi dent, equity of the University of Toronto Stu dents’ Union, also has family in Pakistan. Rana’s relatives live in Jhelum, a city in the province of Punjab that is situated on a river bank. Rana said that her family was asked to evacuate because of the rising water levels.

Some of Rana’s other relatives live in Swat. She said that Swat was “basically destroyed” by the floods, and her relatives’ small business — their only source of livelihood — didn’t sur vive.

Economic and political context

When the floods hit Pakistan, the country was already grappling with political and economic turmoil. Former Prime Minister Imran Khan was ousted in April, and the country’s economic sit uation has continued to deteriorate since then.

In April, the Pakistani rupee exchange rate was 182 rupees to one USD. Soon after, the value of the rupee decreased, with the exchange rate rising to 240 rupees per USD. As of October 23, one USD equals 219 rupees. In June, The

Since then, floods have destroyed a signifi cant proportion of the country’s cash crops, in cluding around 45 per cent of the country’s cot ton. As an agricultural country, Pakistan relies on cotton and rice exports as its main source of income. With the economic catastrophe ex acerbated, it’s unclear if Pakistan can invest the huge amounts of money needed to restore in frastructure and people’s livelihoods in the af fected regions.

Why was the flood so catastrophic?

In an interview with The Varsity, Romila Verma, a sessional lecturer in the Department of Geogra phy & Planning at U of T, explained why Pakistan has been so adversely impacted by the floods.

Verma mentioned that, at the time of the Par tition of the Indian Subcontinent in 1947, the British divided the Indus river between India and Pakistan, with the riverhead starting from India. The country where the riverhead starts gets to decide the water flow, which has been the source of major contention between Pakistan and India over the decades. Despite the Indus Waters Treaty signed between India and Paki stan, which allocates three rivers to Pakistan and three to India and gives each country cer tain rights over the other’s rivers, the Pakistani river system needs robust management to avoid severe droughts and flooding.

Additionally, Verma said that Pakistan’s geo graphical location at the foothills of the Hima layas makes it prone to large flows of water. Pakistan is also home to the highest number of glaciers in the world, which have started melting as a result of global warming. She stressed that the country needs robust management systems to deal with these large volumes of water, but Pakistan has not developed such systems so far.

Pakistan has seen large-scale floods before as well. In 2010, massive flooding caused the death of over 1,700 people and displaced over 20 million. As Verma told The Varsity, the coun try hasn’t improved its flood management sys tems since then.

“If you don’t learn from history, as they say, you’re condemned to repeat it,” she said.

Need for more attention Rana expressed her disappointment at the lack

Emphasizing the need for professors and uni versity administration to recognize the impact of floods in Pakistan, Rana said, “there are a lot of students [at] U of T who are literally watching their home get destroyed.”

In an email to The Varsity, a U of T spokes person wrote, “We recognize that members of the University of Toronto community may be affected by these traumatic and tragic events and other global events, and offer a range of resources and supports for students, faculty, staff and librarians.” They listed a number of re sources around campus for mental health and academic support.

Rana said that professors need to be mind ful of students whose families may be impacted by floods and show leniency regarding dead lines. She further added that those affected in Pakistan need financial aid and that people in Canada should donate as much as they can.

Panhwar also stressed the importance of global attention toward the situation in Pakistan. She compared the floods to war, saying, “there needs to be a lot more buzz around what’s hap pening in Pakistan… On a humanitarian level, it’s no less than a war.”

If you or someone you know is affected by the ongoing situation in Pakistan, you can contact:

• Across Boundaries — a support service for racialized people that offers support in various languages including Urdu and Punjabi — at (416) 787-3007,

• Bean Bag Chat through their mobile ap plication for service in Toronto,

• Distress Centres of Greater Toronto at (416) 408-4357,

• Gerstein Crisis Centre’s 24 hour-crisis line at (416) 929-5200,

• Good2Talk at (866) 925-5454 — avail able 24/7,

• Here 24/7 at (844) 437-3247,

• Naseeha Mental Health — confidential helpline for young Muslims — at (866) 627-3342, or

• U of T My Student Support Program — available 24/7 — at (844) 451-9700. See mentalhealth.utoronto.ca for more resources.

Content warning: This article discusses death, casualties, and other impacts of catastrophic floods in Pakistan.

of recognition of the Pakistan floods by the U of T administration and Western media. “I felt really helpless,” she told The Varsity

A protestor holds up a sign referring to Pakistan floods at the September Climate Strike in Toronto.

NAWA TAHIR/THEVARSITY

Nawa Tahir

Managing Editor — External

UTSU

The breakdown: Carbon and divestment plans at U of T Spadina-Sussex Student Residence to become lowest-carbon downtown residence

Lexey Burns Deputy News Editor

On October 27, 2021, U of T President Meric Gertler announced that the university will fully divest from fossil fuels by 2030. The plan, initial ly, was to stop investing directly into fossil fuel companies by October 2022 and halt indirect investments by 2030.

The announcement followed U of T’s initial rejection of divestment in 2016. At the time, Gertler proposed a “firm-by-firm” approach with a more flexible attitude towards divestment, explaining that fossil fuel companies “only ac count for one-quarter of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions, with the balance produced by other sectors such as transportation, housing and manufacturing.”

According to a U of T spokesperson, the University of Toronto Asset Management Cor poration’s (UTAM) success in reducing the car bon footprint of long-term investment portfolios influenced the university’s decision to divest. UTAM is an organization that was created in 2000 to keep the university an “accountable, professionally staffed investment management organization.”

“The divestment commitment will see UTAM completely divested from direct investments in fossil fuel companies by Oct. 27, 2022,” the spokesperson explained.

UTAM’s most recent annual report, published in 2020, listed a number of responsible invest ing milestones that the corporation achieved throughout the year and during 2021. These milestones included joining the University Net work for Investor Engagement — which helps Canadian universities connect with the global investor movement, quickening the shift to more climate-positive recommendations — and signing the 2021 Global Investor Statement to Governments on the Climate Crisis. The Global Investor Statement was signed by 587 inves tors representing over $46 trillion USD in assets and urges a global “race-to-the-top” on climate policy, pressuring governments to become in volved in climate policy or risk being disregard ed for future investing.

According to the UTAM website, the 2020 report “[includes] many significant develop ments that took place in 2021 that will inform our responsible investing practice now, and for the next decade and beyond.” The 2021 mile stones included the October divestment an nouncement and data for that year.

U of T’s greenhouse gas emissions “UTAM will achieve net-zero carbon emissions associated with the Endowment by 2050. UTAM

is also allocating 10 per cent of the endowment portfolio to sustainable and low-carbon invest ments by 2025, representing an initial commit ment of $400 million,” the U of T spokesperson wrote to The Varsity

The UTAM report explained that U of T’s absolute emissions of “carbon dioxide equiva lent,” a unit used to measure all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, has dropped 21.1 per cent from 2017. Additionally, the report noted that U of T’s carbon footprint had dropped 40.1 per cent since 2017.

According to UTAM’s 2020 Annual Report, U of T was the first university in the world to join the UN-convened Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance (NZAOA), a member-led initiative of institutional investors who have promised to shift their investment portfolios to accomplish net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. Net-zero re fers to the process of absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to completely neutralize the amount of GHG created by humans.

NZAOA encourages institutions like U of T to create and achieve targets every five years while progressing toward net-zero.

Low Carbon plan

In 2019, U of T announced its Low-Carbon Ac tion Plan. In this five-year plan, the university stated that they hope to reduce emissions to 85,223 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents by 2024, a projected decrease of 27.1 per cent compared to 2018 levels.

According to the plan, U of T will undertake several initiatives to eliminate an average of 44,567 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents a year by 2024. These include the 2019 GHG

improvements, building optimization, lighting retrofits, and capturing GHGs using trees on urban U of T properties.

In the Low-Carbon Action Plan, U of T high lighted their ranking among Canada’s Greenest Employers. This is the ninth time the university has been included in the standings. The uni versity was included because of “the study and application of new sustainable building design, including the new Green Roof Innovation Test ing Laboratory.”

Tri-campus geoexchange programs

Another initiative U of T took on to reach their emission goals is geoexchange. According to the university, the current construction outside of King’s College Circle will result in a geother mal exchange, which is predicted to reduce an nual GHG by 15,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents by 2024, according to the university spokesperson.

This would make the King’s College Circle geothermal exchange the single largest con tributor to U of T’s annual emission-reduction target of 44,567 tonnes.

Another proposed geoexchange program for UTSG is a “revitalization” of the Robert Street Field. The new program, which is projected to reduce GHG emissions at the Spadina-Sussex Student Residence due to open in 2024, would make Spadina-Sussex “the lowest carbon resi dence on the St. George campus.”

In 2019, UTSC completed a geoexchange system connected to the Andrews Building. The university also plans to implement geoex change systems for UTM’s new science build ing, which is set to be finished in 2023.

What’s next?

In 2018, the Victoria University Students’ Ad ministrative Council’s (VUSAC) sustainability commission sent a letter to then-Victoria Col lege President William Robins criticizing the college’s administration for what the VUSAC termed a “lack of action” on environmental sus tainability.

Prior to the 2022 Climate Strike, VUSAC and Climate Justice UofT organized a rally pushing U of T’s federated colleges — Victoria, Trinity, and St. Michael’s Colleges — to divest from fossil fuels. The rally also demanded more transpar ency from the university about its involvement in fossil fuel-sponsored research and called on U of T to incorporate sustainability frameworks into its academic programs.

The U of T federated colleges have invest ment portfolios distinct from the wider univer sity. As such, U of T’s decision to divest from fossil fuels doesn’t extend to Victoria, Trinity, and St. Michael’s.

Currently, U of T’s three federated colleges have not announced plans to divest from fos sil fuels or reduce carbon emissions. Despite this, all three are incorporated into U of T’s pur chased utilities and building square metres data in the Low-Carbon Action Plan.

In an 2021 email to The Varsity, Leap U of T, a student-led activist group working toward climate justice and fossil fuel divestment at U of T, critiqued the university’s divestment com mitment. A spokesperson for the group high lighted that the announcement does not apply to U of T’s pension plan, as well as that there is no mention of the social and political impli cations of divestment that is connected to land disputes or colonial violence.

“This only further contributes to the evidence that UofT was in little to no way morally incen tivized to divest, but rather that divestment was a financially motivated decision that was also convenient for restoring the University’s reputa tion, having been mired in a variety of scandals over the past year,” Leap U of T claimed.

According to the U of T spokesperson, UTAM is expected to release another Responsible In vesting Report in the coming weeks. This report will include updates on U of T’s progress since the university announced its divestment plan a year ago.

In an email to The Varsity, a university spokesperson confirmed that “the divestment commitment will see UTAM completely divested from direct investments in fossil fuel companies by Oct. 27, 2022.” This follows their promise released on October 27, 2021, to fully divest its endowment portfolio from holdings in fossil fuel companies within 12 months.

UTAM’s annual Responsible Investing Report is to be released in coming weeks.

COURTESY OF MILAN ILNYCKYK/CC FLICKR

UTSG publishes review of college system

Report calls for student engagement, residence development

Tony Xun Associate News Editor

On September 30, U of T released a report de tailing recommendations and execution plans on the UTSG’s college system. UTSG conducted the Review of the Role of the Colleges on the St. George Campus between November 2019 and June 2022, and it established five working groups to explore how U of T’s institutions could work to gether to promote student success and academic programming.

The working groups include Reviews, Academic Planning and Academic Change; Student Experi ence; Recruitment, Admissions, and Enrolment Planning; Residences; and Resources. Each group

consists of faculty and administrative staff at UTSG. The working groups collaborated with student ad visors throughout the review process.

Amid other objectives, the Reviews, Academic Planning, and Academic Change working group focussed on reviewing programs and courses administered by individual colleges, as well as the academic staffing to support the first-year experi ence. The working group’s key recommendations include encouraging collaboration across depart ments, extradepartmental units, and colleges with the Faculty of Arts and Science. The recommenda tions also encourage faculty members to engage with college communities.

The Student Experience working group recom mended that colleges build deeper relationships

TCM approves new fiscal policy at October meeting

Club funds consolidated into one bank account to save thousands of dollars in fees

Jessie Schwalb Assistant News Editor

The Trinity College Meeting (TCM) — Trinity Col lege’s student government — held its second meeting of the academic year on Monday, October 17, with around 40 people in attendance.

Over the course of an hour, members of the col lege amended the TCM’s fiscal policy, introduced a constitutional amendment, and approved all but one of the budgets proposed by Trinity’s levied clubs.

The updated fiscal policy, which was presented by head of the finance committee Imran Koehnen and approved by attendees, aims to cut unneces sary costs and limit what clubs can reimburse.

“For a long time now, all of the individual clubs had their own bank accounts, and that’'s led to a lot of bank account fees each year — about $3,000 or $4,000 in fees, which is just inefficient for our student levies,” said Koehnen. The new policy consolidates funds into one bank account, which is accessible to the finance committee and guar anteed clubs, which are organizations that receive

with the student population. It called for eliminating instances of when staff refer students to the wrong place for resources and ensuring consistent ac cess to student services for all students.

The Residences working group acknowledged a future shortfall of residence spaces up to 2,000 spaces. In accordance with the Four Corners Strategy, the framework that guides U of T’s in vestments in real estate, the university plans to develop approximately 3.5 million square feet of space around the UTSG campus for ameni ties, including housing. Current students, how ever, are not likely to benefit from these plans, as progress is planned to occur over the next five to 10 years.

The Resources working group focused on de livering a broad range of objectives related to fund ing, resource distribution, and finances across the college system. It called for a minimum technology standard to be established across colleges, as well as for increased budget and space planning col laboration between the colleges and the Faculty of Arts and Science. The working group also recom mended that colleges hire more staff to decrease the student-to-staff ratio across colleges.

a fixed amount of TCM-approved money per year.

Other changes include limiting the amount of additional money given to clubs that spend beyond their budget, increasing the amount of funds new clubs can request, and disallowing reimbursements for alcohol.

Students also approved a constitutional amendment proposed by Tourang Movahedi, a fourth-year peace, conflict and justice student. However, the amendment must survive a sec ond vote at the subsequent TCM to take force.

Movahedi proposed to allow voting for TCM constitutional amendments online and for a longer period, instead of only in person during the TCM. “We make sure that the vote is done online for a week-long period so that more people have the opportunity to vote on [con stitutional amendments], especially commuters and resident students who aren’t able to make

Lastly, the Recruitment, Admissions, and Enrolment Planning working group aimed to make U of T’s college assignment process more transparent. Another one of its goals included improving differentiation between colleges by making information about the col leges more readily available. Many of its rec ommendations do not directly impact current U of T students, but focus on admissions for future student populations instead.

Throughout the review process, all working groups aimed to prioritize equity, diversity, and inclusion and accessibility. The report notesd that these values “should be at the forefront of considerations around changes to College practices and services.”

The report also notes that several recom mendations from the review are currently be ing addressed. Among these include a revision and review of agreements between U of T and its federated colleges — Trinity, Victoria, and St. Michael’s College — and the launch of the Student Advising System, which aims to en sure excellence in providing student services.

TCMs regularly,” said Movahedi.

Of the mandates and budgets proposed by Trinity clubs at this TCM, all but one were passed, leaving clubs with a combined $2,287.50 in additional funding. The budget proposed by The Trinity Times, a student news paper focused on the college, was not ap proved; some students voiced concerns about the $2880 requested to print the publication.

“In the past, you know, we’ve had a lot of these publications, and unfortunately most of them have had to be thrown away,” said Shiva Ivaturi. The Trinity Times will present its their budget again at the next finance committee meeting, with the hopes of receiving approval.

Despite some students being elected into several positions at the TCM’s previous meet ing, some remain unfilled — including the heads of the fourth year.

The next TCM will be held on November 28.

U

T student organization working on eliminating campus food waste

Jessie Schwalb Assistant News Editor

Multiple waste audits have indicated that the U of T community improperly discards organic products that could have been used or com posted. Since these audits were released, students have stepped up to help direct food waste away from landfills.

One organization attempting to combat food waste on campus is MealCare TorontoU of T. The club, started by U of T students Tamara Al tarac and Ana Laura Noda González, redirects food waste to shelters and soup kitchens.

U of T’s food partnerships

In 2016, UTSG did not renew its contract with Aramark Corporation, a hospitality company known for catering to universities, retirement homes, and prisons. Following student feed back, Anne Macdonald, director of ancillary services at U of T, explained that the university wanted “to enhance the food offerings available to students on the St. George campus, particu larly those who don’t live in residence.”

In 2022, the University of Toronto Missis sauga Students’ Union (UTMSU) lobbied to change UTM’s food provider from Chartwells to Aramark after experiencing issues with steep pricing and a lack of vegetarian options.

The problem

In 2015, according to Massachusetts program Recycling Works, an average college student generates 142 pounds of food waste a year. According to the Food Recovery Network, col lege campuses in the US threw out a total of 22 million pounds of uneaten food in 2012.

Across Canada, an estimated 2.3 millions

tonnes of edible food are thrown away annually. This poses an issue both for individuals, who must pay more for groceries as a result of food mismanagement, and for the planet.

Food requires sizable amounts of land, water, and other resources to manufacture, package, and ship for consumption; when food isn’t uti lized effectively, more resources must be spent to feed the same number of people and more pollutants are released. In 2014, 95 per cent of food waste in the US ended up in landfills where it released methane, an incredibly potent green house gas.

Food waste also represents a wasted oppor tunity. In 2020, around 5.8 million people across Canada, including students at U of T, experi enced food insecurity. Redirecting food waste can help feed communities, reducing hunger.

Food waste on campus

The scale of food waste at U of T isn’t entirely clear. An environmental consulting service con ducted a waste audit in October 2020 and es timated that 334 tonnes of organic matter that could have been composted went from the St. George campus to landfills that year. An addi tional 1,480 metric tonnes was composted.

Although composting reduces methane emissions from food waste, it is not the pre ferred method to handle excess food, as it doesn’t best utilize the resources used to grow the food.

Current levels of food waste are likely higher, because the audit was conducted during the early stages of the pandemic when few stu dents lived on campus.

In 2018, UTSC conducted a waste audit over a one day period, which found that less than 20 per cent of all waste was diverted from

landfills — far less than the diversion rate at UTSG. The audit report noted that, “Address ing organic waste management at the [UTSC] building would result in the largest contribution to improving waste diversion from landfill per formance.” Almost 28 per cent of organic waste was incorrectly placed in the mixed recycling stream, and 58 per cent of the waste that end ed up in landfills was organic material that could have been composted.

In 2018, a UTM waste audit found that all food service operations on the UTM campus had a collective waste diversion rate of 59 per cent. These statistics are similar at UTSG. How ever, the amount of organic matter wasted is unclear.

Initiatives to reduce food waste

Many constituencies are taking steps to reduce food waste or redirect it from landfills. There are legions of compost bins across all three cam puses, which help food from landfills. UTSC has a compost program that uses worms to pro cess food waste so it can be used as fertilizer in campus gardens.

UTM also has a number of initiatives to re duce food waste. In 2019, it redesigned its waste room to make what goes in each bin more clear. UTM also banned plastic straws and the sale of single use water bottles. UTM also sells used cooking oil so it can be recycled into biodiesel — a renewable, biodegradable fuel that reduces tailpipe emissions when used instead of petroleum.

MealCare is a nationwide nonprofit that redi rects surplus food to shelters and soup kitchens and helps businesses track food waste to bet ter manage production.

So far, the U of T chapter has donated 3,500

pounds of food, largely from orientations and other events. Groups and organizations can request to have MealCare donate excess food through its online form.

U of T and the University of Toronto Stu dents’ Union have a contactless student food bank program that allows students who are experiencing food insecurity to receive boxes of produce. Starting at the end of this month, MealCare will begin diverting food from dining halls to the Student Union Food Bank.

Next steps

The waste audits conducted at U of T recom mend that the university do more to address food waste on campus. The 2018 audit for UTSC recommended that the campus stan dardize its bins, to make it clearer to students where to put their trash. The 2020 audit called on the UTSG to improve signage and continue to educate students and staff about compost ing.

MealCare is also looking to partner with more dining halls and divert the excess food they pro duce. Currently, MealCare TorontoU of T only operates at UTSG, but they are “thinking about expanding to other campuses.”

Not all dining halls at UTSG are overseen by food services, and MealCare has had diffi culty convincing these independent producers to get on board. “I’ve talked to a lot of people from colleges that are separate from [food ser vices],” said Altarac. “They’ve been hesitant to allow us to do this.” Trinity College, one of U of T’s federated colleges, is still operating under Chartwells, a foodservice company similar to Aramark.

According to Altarac, there is also a place for more education and research, which MealCare is embarking on. “We’re launching a few differ ent research projects… to look into both the food waste side and food insecurity side, so we can get some more specific data and numbers and…... find out more concrete ways that we can help.”

Indigenous Gathering Circle to be built as part of UTSC’s Indigenous House

UTSC and Public Work staff solicit feedback from community members

Alyanna Denise Chua UTSC Bureau Chief

On October 18, UTSC community members viewed designs for the upcoming Indigenous Gathering Circle. Staff from UTSC’s Equity, Di versity and Inclusion Office; Design and Con struction Management office; and Public Work — a Toronto-based urban design and landscape architecture studio — coordinated the consulta tion session.

The Gathering Circle will be an attachment to the upcoming Indigenous House at UTSC. “It’s a space to come together and to gather for cer emony,” UTSC’s Assistant Director of Indigenous Initiatives, Kelly Crawford, said in an interview with The Varsity. Both construction projects are slated to be completed by fall 2023.

Staff assembled eight poster boards at the Meeting Place, each of which featured com puter-generated perspectives of the Gathering Circle. They also put up a ninth poster board to solicit feedback from community members.

Indigenous Gathering Circle

The Gathering Circle will be located adjacent to the Environmental Science and Chemistry Building and Ellesmere Road. It will feature a series of formal and informal seating; commu nity members can choose to sit on benches, salvaged logs, or the lawn. It will also contain a central fire pit for the ceremony and an emerg

ing forest to enclose the space.

Virginia Fernandez, a project leader and land scape architect with Public Work, said that her team plans to build a Carolinian forest at the Gathering Circle. The Carolinian forest is a hard wood forest that stretches from the Gulf Coast of the United States into southern Ontario and con tains over half of Canada’s native tree species.

Fernandez said that, compared to other forest models, the Carolinian forest will flourish the most in southern Ontario in the midst of global warm ing. According to the Government of Canada, Carolinian forests boast levels of biological diver sity that are unmatched anywhere else in Ontario.

Her team also plans to expand the vegeta tion already growing in the Highland Ravine into the Gathering Circle, grow pioneering species — which are species that first inhabit a newly created environment — that reproduce quickly such as aspens and birches and build a flower ing meadow.

Fernandez said that Public Work already puts a lot of thought into the sourcing of their plants and materials. “But in this case, I think it’s es pecially important that we are mindful of where we’re getting the materials,” she said. “We really need input from the Indigenous community to choose the right species for teaching, and we’ll also want to make sure that they’re sustainably harvested.”

Public Work designed the landscaping for the Indigenous House and was hired again to design

and manage the construction of the Gathering Circle.

Other planned outdoor spaces for the Indig enous House include an Indigenous garden, a children’s playground, and an outdoor kitchen.

Connections to U of T’s Reconciliation Re sponse Report

The Gathering Circle will serve as the outdoor at tachment to Indigenous House, a 10,700 square foot, two-storey building that will serve as a cam pus hub and a gathering space dedicated to learning about Indigenous cultures and ways of knowing. “[The Gathering Circle] is a specific out door space in which different teachings and shar ing of knowledge can happen,” said Crawford.

The construction of the Gathering Circle and Indigenous House reflects U of T’s Recon ciliation Response Report, Answering the Call: Wecheehetowin. U of T commissioned the report in 2016 to assess how the university could imple ment the calls to action put forward by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) in 2015. The TRC report included 94 “Calls to Action” that aim to address the legacy of residen tial schools in Canada and “advance the process of reconciliation.”

One of the 34 calls to action in Answering the Call: Wecheehetowin is to create “dedicated, ap propriate Indigenous spaces on the UTM and UTSC campuses.” Each of the working groups that were consulted in the report stressed that

Sustainable Labs Initiative aims to lessen environmental footprints of UTSG science labs

Facilities & Services office launched initiative in April 2022

Emma Livingstone Graduate Bureau Chief

As U of T embarks on its campus-wide climate initiative with the Climate Positive Campus cam paign, the Sustainability Office at UTSG’s Facilities & Services (F&S) is also hoping to integrate sus tainability into over 1,000 science labs across the campus.

F&S launched the Sustainable Labs initiative in April 2022 to lessen the environmental impact of science lab operations. In addition to labs, F&S is also planning to promote sustainability in offices, residences, course content, and events on cam pus.

According to F&S, typical lab buildings con

sume 40 to 60 per cent of the university’s energy. The Sustainable Labs initiative aims to provide resources for science labs looking to increase their sustainable water and energy use, as well as chemical and waste management.

In an email to The Varsity, Scott Hendershot, senior manager of the F&S Sustainability Office, wrote that the initiative provides researchers with alternatives to using hazardous chemicals when possible. This includes sourcing chemicals made with renewable materials or using a computer simulation when the use of chemicals is not nec essary.

Hendershot also explained that while many of a science lab’s inner workings can be made more sustainable, some practices need to remain un changed for safety purposes.

UTM controlling invasive species across campus conservation areas

Campus deer are a highlight of UTM conservation

Lexey Burns Deputy News Editor

UTM is home to more than just students. Jefferson salamanders, skunks, Canada geese, and families of deer can also be spotted on campus, which is located on 225 acres of mostly undeveloped land beside the Credit River Valley. To protect this eco system, UTM’s Campus Master Plan has detailed the campus’s goals for conservation in the area.

UTM’s Campus Master Plan

According to a U of T spokesperson, UTM’s recently-released Campus Master Plan 2021 “identifies a holistic approach for supporting and enhancing UTM’s natural setting.” The spokes person explained that this new approach involves reducing the university’s impact on sensitive envi ronmental lands, studying the natural woodlands

and wetlands on campus, ensuring tree cover on campus, removing invasive species, and planting native species.

UTM’s Facilities Management and Planning team initiated the Campus Master Plan in affilia tion with Brook McIlroy, a landscape architecture company.

Peter Kotanen, a biology professor at UTM, ex plained in an interview with The Varsity that UTM has grown over 20 years, which has resulted in the reduction of green space. The lost green space was “lower quality,” but it shouldn’t have been lost at all, according to Kotanen. He believes that the expansion of UTM into conservation land is “a con cern” for several reasons.

At the October Campus Council meeting, UTM announced that it is bringing in a new national lead ing researcher to study Jefferson salamanders. This development is new, and the identity of the

“Due to the nature of the research, some sci entific laboratories produce more waste and con sume more energy. Some waste is unavoidable, and some types of lab equipment — such as fume hoods, ultra low temperature (ULT) freezers and temperature-sensitive thermal cyclers — are espe cially energy intensive,” wrote Hendershot.

Fume hoods are required to remove noxious fumes from spaces, but also use much more en ergy than the typical household.

The Sustainable Labs Program also offers a cer tification program for labs that take steps to incor porate sustainability into their work. “Through this certification program, users learn how to minimize use of the equipment itself, and to reduce energy consumption when in operation,” wrote Hender shot.

researcher has yet to be disclosed. UTM President and Vice-Principal Alexandra Gillespie explained that the administration made this decision to help foster sustainability. This decision will also allow UTM’s researchers to continue producing posi tive environmental impacts in and outside of UTM’s community, according to Gillespie.

Kotanen explained that the salamanders have breeding ponds on campus and that there are concerns “about whether the ponds are going to survive in the longer term.”

Additionally, Kotanen noted that a lot of the UTM acreage is frequently used by the surround ing Mississauga community. Since the green space is located in an urban area, it has been sub jected to overuse, and this has caused multiple issues, including the arrival of invasive species.

Invasive species on campus

Credit Valley Conservation has a list of over 200 invasive species found in Mississauga. According to a U of T spokesperson, many of these species currently live or have existed on campus.

Kotanen explained that in an attempt to rid some of UTM’s acreage from Asian Honeysuckle — a shrub that can grow up to 15 feet high — “[UTM] tried a couple of controlled burns a few years ago.”

Kotanen explained that there is an abandoned field on campus that the UTM community uses

current spaces at U of T dedicated to Indigenous Peoples “were lacking in both number and fea tures,” which could hinder the recruitment, reten tion, and flourishing of Indigenous community members at U of T.

In September, UTSC Vice-Principal, Academic and Dean William Gough reported that UTSC currently employs 10 self-identifying Indigenous faculty members. However, it is not known how many Indigenous students attend the campus.

Answering the Call: Wecheehetowin also not ed that indigenizing existing spaces and building dedicated Indigenous spaces on campus would “aid in the education of the U of T community as a whole about Indigenous people.”

Community feedback

Feedback from community members at the event was generally positive. Community members wrote on post-it notes that they were “happy” and “excited” to see the Gathering Circle come to fruition, and praised the design of the Gather ing Circle as “stunning” and “a great use of the space.”

One community member wrote, “I like the use of land to (re)-introduce indigenous flora to the area, as monocultures are not conducive to our campus conservation [of] land.” Another sug gested that all signs at the Gathering Circle be written in Indigenous languages.

“We would like to get [feedback] from every one — students, faculty, and staff — on what they think… because this is a very important project to the campus,” said Mayes Rihani, a se nior manager with UTSC’s Design and Construc tion Management office, in an interview with The Varsity

“Hopefully, [the Gathering Circle] can help build relationships between everyone here at UTSC,” said Crawford.

Four labs have been certified so far, including the ReSTORE Lab, which studies ways to improve mental and physical health in the workplace, and the Sinton Lab, which researches renewable fuels, industrial fluids, and biotechnology. Hendershot expects more labs to achieve certification in the coming months, adding that the overarching goal of the campaign is for all labs to get certified.

David Sinton, a professor of mechanical engi neering and the Canada Research Chair in mi crofluidics and energy at Sinton Labs, wrote that sustainability is central to the lab’s research work, so the lab embraced the chance to participate in the U of T Sustainability Office’s initiative.

“It was nice to receive silver certification, but the real win was learning about how our operations could be more sustainable,” wrote Sinton in an email to The Varsity

“I appreciated that we could make some most ly-painless early wins and some of those were high-reward. We are of course focused on how to keep those gains and how to advance further,” wrote Sinton.

for experiments and classes. He pointed out that campus landscapers unfortunately do not main tain the field anymore. Without this maintenance, it has grown over. “If nothing is done to keep it open [for field work and course use] it’ll eventu ally fill in first with invasive shrubs, eventually with forest.”

UTM’s honorary mascot

In 2015, two students — under the supervision of Monika Havelka and Christoph Richter, profes sors of geography and biology respectively — un dertook a Research Opportunity Program exam ining the deer population on campus.

According to Kotanen, both professors have been involved in a project monitoring deer popu lations at UTM and the nearby Riverwood Conser vancy. Neither Havelka nor Richter responded to The Varsity’s request for comment.

The U of T spokesperson explained that deer are “a fundamental part of our campus’s biodiver sity and UTM remains committed to low-impact development and alignment with best practices to preserve local ecology, including our white-tailed deer residents.”

The spokesperson also pointed out that UTM’s deer have their own Instagram and Twitter ac counts, with over 2,000 and 500 followers re spectively.

RBC Innovation Challenge Launch Panel interrupted by Climate Justice UofT Demonstrators call out UTE for “greenwashing”

Georgia Kelly Associate Business & Labour Editor

On October 11, the University of Toronto Entre preneurship (UTE) hosted a panel to launch the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) Innovation Chal lenge — a program for hopeful student entre preneurs to develop startup plans and compete for $100,000 in total venture funding. RBC will be providing funding and business expertise to the participants over the course of the chal lenge. The theme for this year’s challenge is “Tech for a Greener Future.”

The challenge began not long after the Com petition Bureau of Canada opened an official in vestigation into RBC’s alleged misrepresentation of its climate policy in its marketing practices, as reported by the Financial Times. The Competi tion Bureau is an independent law enforcement agency that promotes competitive behaviour within the Canadian economy.

Six people supported by environmental groups like Ecojustice and Stand.earth claim that the bank is contradicting the Paris Agree ment — an international treaty on climate change — and is not on track to achieve netzero emissions by 2050, despite what its adver tising states. RBC has denied the allegations. The Competition Bureau has neither confirmed nor denied them at this time.

During the panel, a group of audience mem bers interrupted the speakers to protest the UTE’s continued partnership with RBC, as part of a larger campaign to stop RBC’s actions on campus altogether.

Interrupted by Climate Justice UofT

During the panel, RBC panellists Mark Beckles, Alanna La Rose, and Krishna Ruthnum were discussing their work on the bank’s climate poli cy when an audience member interrupted them, crying out, “This is GreenWashing!” Two rows of people stood up. Audience members, includ ing students, professors, and faculty deans —

Melanie Woodin of Arts and Science and Chris topher Yip of Applied Science and Engineering — witnessed the demonstration.

“Greenwashing” is a term coined by envi ronmentalist Jay Westerveld in 1986. It refers to publicity materials that portray organizations as environmentally responsible, when they are actually engaging in environmentally destructive practices.

The demonstrators unfurled a banner read ing “Fund Futures not Pipelines.” The audience member said, “I can’t just sit here and let you present this event without acknowledging that RBC is the fifth largest funder of fossil fuels.”

When the panel was interrupted, the RBC economist who was moderating acknowledged the demonstrators’ claims but maintained that they would continue the panel as scheduled. The demonstrators refused. After some back and forth, the panellists left the room. An audi ence member exclaimed to the demonstrators

that their time was being wasted. Then, another called on the room to raise their hands if they wanted the panel to continue on; a majority fol lowed suit.

Eventually, the demonstrators escorted them selves out of the building. The RBC panellists reentered, and the panel resumed as normal. The demonstrators and their complaints were not further acknowledged.

Erin Mackey, the demonstration’s spokesper son, is a co-coordinator at Climate Justice UofT. She is majoring in political science and environ mental studies. “We, at Climate Justice UofT, don’t want RBC on our campus, if they’re going to continue to mislead the public, and they’re going to continue to expand fossil fuels,” she said.

UTE’s response UTE, which hosted the panel, is the university’s support network for student and faculty en

trepreneurship, and has a rather robust part nership with RBC. The bank funds a number of UTE scholarships and programs for U of T entrepreneurs, including the Innovation Chal lenge. RBC also facilitated the development of the OnRamp – UTE’s event and work space for students — the RBC name is displayed on one of the walls.

UTE director Jon French explained in an inter view with The Varsity that “from our perspective, RBC is not only a long-standing partner, but also an organization that does have a climate strategy. It’s published, it’s well articulated, it has measurable goals, many of their objectives are consistent with University of Toronto objectives.”

Following the demonstration, French noted in an email to The Varsity that “we were pleased to see a healthy and respectful exchange between activists and the panellists and other students at the event.”

The challenge French explained in an interview with The Varsity that challenge judges will be looking for pitches that leverage technology and data to create im pactful climate solutions but are also viable on the market. “We need to figure out ways to bring [the idea] to market and… provide the capital for it. We hope that the solutions are impressive,” said French.

November 13 is the deadline for teams to submit their applications. Project development will take place over the next three months, with the winners being announced at the end of Jan uary 2023.

Noah Cazabon, a student considering par ticipating in the challenge, explained in an in terview with The Varsity that he had come to the launch panel with some reservations about RBC’s sponsorship of the event. Cazabon is a third-year student majoring in biology and urban studies.

He recounted that he had been getting frus trated at the RBC panellists’ discussion of their climate strategy, which he described as “ironic”. He noted that it was “relieving and refreshing to hear” Climate Justice UofT bring up RBC’s posi tion in the fossil fuel industry. He also added, “I would have appreciated it if [the panellists] did address it.” After the event, he is still debating whether or not to participate in the challenge.

November is almost here and while your home will soon need warming, the climate needs cooling.

Unfortunately, these two facts are at odds with one another. With home heating costs contributing to 40 percent of all energy-relat ed carbon dioxide emissions worldwide, the impact of residential temperature control is becoming increasingly concerning. Luckily, a new generation of U of T startups that want to enable housewarming without global warming is here.

Energy and conversion

Enersion is a U of T startup co-founded in 2016 by Hanif Montazeri, a U of T alum and adjunct professor in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, who now oversees En ersion’s developments as CEO.

Montazeri and his team aim to accelerate the adoption of clean and efficient decentral ized energy through their green Tri-Generation technology. Enersion developed a system that converts solar energy into cooling, heating, and electricity — all combined into one prod uct called Energy Cubed.

Enersion claims to revolutionize heating and cooling with its technology’s ability to use solar panels to transfer solar electricity to the Energy Cubed unit. The unit retains heat from the sun that would otherwise be wasted by solar panels, utilizing it instead to heat water. Panels turn sunlight into cooling and domestic heat through nanoporous materials that enable adsorption — a process by which water vapour evaporates along the materials’ large surface area.

A cool solution to global warming “It is essential to replace the current technol ogy with a solution that is sustainable, does not create a burden on energy resources and does not use refrigerants that leak into the at mosphere,” Montazeri said in an interview with the Toronto Star . “Enersion’s technology truly provides the cleanest and most efficient way to harness solar radiation.”

Enersion’s environmental efforts earned them the Solar Impulse Efficient Solution Label in June of 2021. The Label, awarded by the Solar Impulse Foundation, which awards clean and profitable solutions. Enersion boasts its in novative use of water as a refrigerant, which al lows avoiding the use of atmosphere-polluting chemicals— enabling cooling without the use

of electricity and with zero emissions.

In an interview with Global Affairs Canada, Montazeri mentioned that about 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions are caused by refrigerators and air conditioners. He said that, as the world gets hotter, increasing the use of cooling technologies will accelerate global warming even more. According to him, Enersion helps limit this problem: “Our tech nology… doesn't use electricity; it uses waste heat, a byproduct of electricity generation.”

True blue entrepreneurs Enersion began as a U of T startup. The com pany took advantage of resources offered by the Faculty of Arts and Science’s Centre for

Entrepreneurship. The Centre for Entrepre neurship is one of U of T Entrepreneurship’s twelve accelerators that cumulatively created over 600 companies.

The Centre’s primary offering is its Venture Mentoring Service (VMS), which provides a curated selection of mentors to assist in the creation and growth of startups. The VMS is available to U of T students, alumni, faculty, and staff at UTSG.

The Centre for Entrepreneurship also offers a number of coworking spaces for startup founders. Among these will soon be U of T’s Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus, which will be Canada’s largest university-based in novation node and is slated to open in 2023.

Andrew Yang Ki Associate Business & Labour Editor

JISHNA SUNKARA/THEVARSITY

VINCENT QUACH/THEVARSITY

Anthropocentrism is affecting environmental ethics

Understanding the harmful way we view our living world and its contributions to climate change

Isabella Liu Associate Comment Editor

When it comes to the climate crisis, we tend to take a rather reactive approach, with discussions often revolving around the most pressing climate needs of the moment. We find ourselves asking questions like how many years we’ve got left or how much carbon emission we’ve been putting out since 2016. How much sea levels have risen by. Which animal is going extinct this year.

Consequently, such climate discussions never take a proactive approach and seek to understand the big picture. We’re never asking about the “why” when it comes to the factors resulting in climate change. Not why, as in why companies need to pollute so much — we all know the big green dol lar-signed reason for that — but instead, why we do so much to our earth without taking into ac count the consequences.

The answer to the last question requires a bit more digging into the archives of environmental ethics but, eventually, you’ll find yourself with a slew of terms such as liberation and welfare, instrumen tal value, ecofeminism, or anthropocentrism. That last one is particularly important when investigating why we treat the earth the way we do.

Anthropocentrism, taken literally, means humans at the centre. As one of the most well-known con cepts of the environmental ethics world, anthropo centrism derives from the belief that humans, and only humans, possess intrinsic value.

On such grounds, this ethos thus claims that we are naturally above all other entities, like plants and water and animals, and therefore, by process

of hierarchy, are entitled to use them. It’s a little like those medieval-times feudalism pyramid diagrams

because we benefit from it — and as anthropo centrism dictates, we’re more important anyway.

EVELYN BOLTON/THEVARSITY

land and water and air is allegedly meant to be ours.

This isn’t to say that anthropocentrism is the direct cause of environmental destruction. Rather, anthropocentrism is one of many explanations for how we as humans view our natural environment, and why we choose to act upon it the way we do.

But with that being said, it’s time we realize just how unsustainable this belief is. The modern world is so intensely focused on economic growth and taking industrialization to the next level that it ig nores the state of every other living being on this planet. While the last century has been a significant era for the expansion of technology and human ca pability, it’s also seen perhaps the greatest world wide loss of habitat and species, and the greatest acceleration of climate change in history. For the first time, this phenomenon is human driven — and not in a positive way.

For the better half of the last hundred years, it has been about humans and only humans. Even as the tides begin to change in favour of environ mental preservation, and climate change aware ness ramps up higher than ever, there is an even bigger need to shift our thinking away from the onedimensional plane we’ve been on for so long. Only then will efforts to address the climate crisis really be effective.

years, anthropocentric thought has been used to perpetuate environmental destruction.

Put simply, it’s a philosophical justification for re source exploitation. When animals and biomes are not seen as our living counterparts, but rather as tools at our disposal, there’s an intrinsic motivation to abuse them. Consequently, whatever maltreat ment we inflict upon them is more or less okay

of taking more and more, with little to no remorse or thoughts of what we give to the earth in ex change for what we take.

We commit practices of cosmetic animal testing and excessive ocean trawling, horrifying treatment of poultry and destructive nonrenewable energy mining, and the current rationale of anthropocen trism allows it — justifies it even, because all this

Coca-Cola sponsorship calls COP27’s integrity into question

The world’s top polluter and climate forum partner leading up to the conference

Chloe MacVicar

Varsity Contributor

Given the worsening state of the climate, there has never been a more pressing time to take action against the climate crisis. Scientists and environ mentalists alike have warned of the dangers of con tinued stress on the environment and emphasized the importance of preventing further damage. We have now entered a critical time frame for action: one that necessitates immediate responses and meaningful efforts to change conventional practic es of consumption that disregard the environment. This year presents a valuable opportunity for governments to work together to set new com mitments. In November, the 27th annual Confer ence of the Parties (COP27) will be held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. As the major decision-making fo rum of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the primary goal of each COP is to understand whether the current ac

tion taken by nations to combat climate change is working toward the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit temperature increase.

COP27 is an opportunity to make real changes and effective commitments. As a forum that brings together major international actors, COP27 is the best platform to collectively address the challenges that are intertwined with changing environmental conditions.

The UNFCCC advertises COP27 as a transpar ent and inclusive space for deliberation. However, on September 30, the government of Egypt an nounced its decision to partner with Coca-Cola and introduced the company as a sponsor for COP27. The partnership calls into question the in tegrity of COP27 and its plans to use the climate conference as an opportunity to accelerate climate action.

In 2021, the Coca-Cola Company was identified as the world’s top polluter for the fourth

year in a row. While the corpora tion claims to be working toward a more sustain able process, data from Break Free from Plastic, a global movement that aims to limit plastic pollu tion, effectively disproves Coca-Cola’s allegations. It is completely backwards for the world’s leading conference on the climate crisis to associate itself with the world’s top polluter. COP27 was created to regulate actors with impacts like those of CocaCola — not rely on them for sponsorships.

Operating in 39 countries and producing 19,826 plastics in 2021, Coca-Cola produces more plas tics annually than the next top two plastic pollut ers. Audits conducted by Break Free from Plastic showed that the company was responsible for three million metric tons of plastics in 2020, pro ducing greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to that of over three million vehicles. Electric vehicles are all the rage, yet Coca-Cola’s impact alone makes the goals of sustainable transportation and electric vehicles seem trivial.

This partnership contradicts the fundamental values of the UNFCCC and COP27. The practices of the Coca-Cola company directly undermine the Paris Agreement’s goal, and the world’s ability, to limit temperature increases below 1.5 degrees Cel sius.

Coca-Cola’s operations are also deeply con nected to the fossil fuel industry. The company is not only reliant on these nonrenewable forms of energy but also benefits from them — the number of plastics required to run Coca-Cola’s operations makes huge profits for fossil fuel companies.

Coca-Cola depends on fossil fuels for produc tion and manufacturing, yet phaseouts of these resources and increased reliance on renewable energy are on the list of topics for the upcoming climate conference. This presents a direct conflict with what the UNFCCC and COP27 claim to ad dress.

The contradiction between the goals of COP27 and the actions of its top sponsor has caused

Isabella Liu is a second-year student at Victoria College studying international relations, public pol icy and environmental studies. She is an associate comment editor at The Varsity.

many environmentalists and activists to speak out and demand change. Despite the significant back lash of the decision, both the company and COP27 coordinators have continued to support the part nership.

Acraf Ibrahim, Ambassador of the Republic of Egypt and COP27’s acting organizational and fi nancial coordinator, believes that the involvement of private corporations in environmental confer ences is a positive step toward a collective action plan. His belief is supported by the more recent actions from Coca-Cola, which, according to the company’s chief sustainability officer, has reduced the carbon emissions of its process by 30 per cent since 2010.

This is a positive step toward the eventual goal of net-zero emissions. However, that doesn’t change the fact that Coca-Cola is the world’s top polluter but is sponsoring a conference on climate change that represents ideals of sustainability and mitiga tion.

The reality of the situation is that such a time-sen sitive global issue requires collective, cooperative action toward solutions. The climate crisis affects all of humanity and as such, mitigation, adaptation, and commitment to environmental protection have never been so important. Previous attempts and current actions have proven inadequate, and the world is off track to meeting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degrees C target. Each delay makes irreversible damage more likely, and the COP27–Coca-Cola partnership is another example of the prioritization of funding and profits over environmental health. Simply put, this is greenwashing for the sake of public perception.

Plastic pollution from companies like Coca-Cola threatens the survival of both the environment and future generations, and the damage driven by plastic waste will exacerbate already complicated problems. Perhaps in the next month, we will see changes to the sponsorship decision, but if the partnership endures, the fundamental values of COP27 are clearly misaligned with its actions.

Chloe MacVicar is a third-year student at University College, studying environmental studies, political science, and writing.

JESSICA

Climate Justice UofT is a main driver of student climate activism Student climate activism is more important now than ever before

Isabella Liu Associate Comment Editor

On September 23, signs with “There is No Planet B!,” “We Demand Justice!,” and other outraged messages flooded outside of Sidney Smith Hall as part of the annual Global Climate Strike. Hosted by Fridays for Future Toronto and in collaboration with a few other student organizations, the strike served as a continual call out to the University of Toronto administra tion and their involvement — or lack thereof, really — in pursuing environmental action.

Among the crowd was Climate Justice UofT (CJUofT) — a campus student organization dedicated to advocating for a #FossilFreeUofT, and one of the major contributors to the orga nization of the strike on September 23. Here’s a look into one of the main drivers behind cli mate activism at U of T and why their role is more important now than ever before.

What is Climate Justice UofT?

Founded in 2016 and formerly named Leap UofT, CJUofT was created in response to Pres ident Meric Gertler’s original refusal to divest from the fossil fuel industry. Alongside its sister organization, Climate Justice Toronto (CJTO), the U of T club has since gone on to host nu merous successful climate awareness events and protests, advocate for marginalized com munity rights, and much more, becoming one of the largest, most prominent environmental activism student groups on campus.

In an interview with The Varsity , Erin Mackey, a fifth-year student studying political science and environmental studies at UTSG, and one of the main coordinators for CJUofT, said that “Our main focus right now is on creating a fos sil-free future at U of T.”

The organization has been a longstanding advocate against fossil fuels and an active critic of the nonrenewable energy industry’s chokehold on academic institutions like

U of T — the university’s groundbreaking deci sion to divest last year is just one victory of that. According to Mackey, “[We] played a re ally critical role in U of T divesting last October, which [was] really exciting.”

Climate Justice UofT and advocating for fossil free research

But simply cutting off fossil fuel endowments is far from the end goal for organizations like CJUofT. If anything, the divestment has prov en that U of T is capable of change — and CJUofT is ready to pounce on that.

According to Mackey, the next step for U of T is to stop accepting financing from fossil fuel companies, especially when that financing goes towards funding climate energy research.

“It poses a clear conflict of interest and under mines the work these researchers are doing,” she contends.

“These fossil fuel companies funnel money into this research… [and] use that as a green

U of T’s promise to divest is not enough

washing tactic to turn to the public and say, ‘we’re investing in cleaner technologies and developing climate solutions,’ when their entire business model is to continue the production of fossil fuels. It’s extremely contradictory and does much more harm than good.” In other words, no money given, no money taken.

Fossil-free research is just one of multiple campaigns the organization is currently work ing on, and it has no intentions of stopping anytime soon. From pressuring the Federated Colleges to divest, to campaigning against the Royal Bank of Canada’s — one of the largest investors of fossil fuels in Canada — involve ment and presence on campus, CJUofT mo bilizes students to fight for their futures at the university, and speak up for environmental sal vation. Most of all, it continues to prove why it’s so important that students advocate against climate injustice, especially when it comes to calling into question the integrity of their own universities.

perverse influence of fossil fuel companies” due to remaining ties with aforementioned business es.

What does this mean for U of T?

Youth and climate activism

More often than not, youth are left out of the decision-making equation, and our opinions are thrown aside — despite us being the big gest stakeholders, the ones who will feel the future impact of the climate crisis the most. Especially in issues like climate justice, our protests, criticisms, and advocacies often fall on deaf ears.

But when enough of us band together, we can’t be ignored. And U of T’s divestment is an example of that. “It is not something [U of T] would have done unless we did a lot of pressure and publicly push them,” Mackey re marked.

Rivka Goetz, an organizer at CJTO, agreed with Mackey in an interview with The Varsity : “Young people have to confront the future in a bigger way than anyone else. There is strength in numbers, especially for those of us who are part of influential institutions like U of T.”

Campus groups like CJUofT ensure that there are grounds for students to build a voice on, to come together and collectively rally for environmental justice. If these institutions are truly made for us, then we should have every right to decide how they are run. Like Goetz said: “Students are the university, and if enough of them call for action — especially a specific action like divestment — eventually the administration will have to listen.”

The Global Climate Strike on September 23 shows that there is still much to be done here at U of T in regards to environmental justice, and that student activism is one of the main drivers behind such progress. From CJUofT to student unions, to the multitude of other groups and clubs across campus, these organizations are here to advocate on our behalf. And at a time like now, that has never been more important.

And finally, to U of T itself: It’s past time.

For more information on CJUofT, or to get in touch, find their media pages at @climatejusti ceuoft on Instagram and @cjuoft on Twitter.

Isabella Liu is a second-year student at Victoria College studying international relations, public policy and environmental studies. She is an as sociate comment editor at The Varsity

ommendations by an advisory committee.

Eleanor Park Associate Comment Editor

On September 29, following nearly a decade of activism by students and alumni, Princeton Uni versity announced its commitment to divest and dissociate from 90 oil and gas companies and subsequently suspend research partnerships with the fossil fuel industry. The Board of Trust ees collectively made this decision as part of the school’s commitment to achieving its net-zero endowment goals.

A set of recommendations established by a panel of faculty experts informed Princeton’s decision by formulating quantitative criteria for the school to determine the list of companies to separate from. The thorough examination via the criteria resulted in the dissociation from compa nies including but not limited to oil and gas giants like ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies, and Syncrude Canada.

All companies on the list are active in the tar sands and thermal coal sectors, which most sig nificantly contribute to carbon emissions. Among the corporations, the university has had an es pecially long-lived association with ExxonMobil, which has funded approximately eight million dollars for climate and energy research since 2016 and had a former contract with Princeton worth five million dollars in 2015.

What does this mean for other universities?

Albeit later than activists expected, Princeton University’s commitment sets a precedent for other major universities and nods at the immi nence of the Fossil Free Research movement.

This movement advocates an end to fossil fuel money being used to fund climate-related re search in universities.

With over 750 signatories from faculty and students across more than 150 institutions, the movement has been paving the way for publicly calling on universities to institute bans on con ducting climate change and environmental re search by accepting fossil fuel industry funding.

By stressing how academic integrity is un dermined when universities research the cli mate crisis under fossil fuel industry funding, the Fossil Free Research movement has reached a milestone through Princeton University’s recent decision. The school’s capability to immediately create a new fund that supports energy research within the school also serves as a testament to how there are other options for funding than just the fossil fuel industry.

This, however, does not suffice.

The movement’s press release lauding the Ivy League university also maintains that the school “can and must do more” by ceasing any financial relationships with corporations like British Petro leum and Shell that are centred around fossil fuel extraction and production. Criticism also stems from how the university is still “vulnerable to the

The discussion on fossil fuel industry funding and divestment brings us to U of T. After all, com pared to all other Canadian universities, U of T ranks first in endowment. On October 27, 2021, President Meric Gertler announced that, from its four billion dollars in endowment funds, the Uni versity of Toronto Asset Management Corpora tion will divest from direct investments in fossil fuel corporations within the forthcoming year.

The university then promised that by 2030 it would dissociate from indirect investments, which are usually made through third-party fund managers. This is indubitably a crucial step for ward from the 2016 decision by Gertler to strike down the equivalent fossil fuel divestment rec

However, it seems the devil is actually in the details. U of T’s ambitious declaration was not transparent enough to acknowledge that the ma jority of its fossil fuel investments are indirect or that each of the federated colleges of the school is not included in the divestment since they have individual investment portfolios. Taking the veiled elements as well as Princeton University’s recent precedent into consideration, the promised year 2030 also seems particularly further away.

While U of T may think it is working towards its pledge to become a “climate-positive” university, students want answers about the grey areas that the school refuses to colour in. U of T, don’t leave us disappointed.

Eleanor Park is a second-year student at Trinity College studying English and religion. She is The Varsity’s Associate Comment Editor.

In October 2021, U of T announced its decision to divest from fossil fuels.

In issues like climate justice, our protests, criticisms, and advocacies often fall on deaf ears. AUGUSTINE WONG/THEVARSITY

MILAN ILNYCKYJ/CC FLICKR

Princeton sets a precedent for Fossil Free Research that U of T should follow

When you’re faced with a narrowly defined problem, you ask an expert to help find a so lution. If your dilemma is a legal one, you’ll ask lawyers. If you’re stuck with an engineer ing issue, you’ll hire engineers. But when you’re faced with the complications of climate change — the long shift in weather patterns and temperatures that the World Health Orga nization has called “the single biggest threat facing humanity” — the problem is no longer one that belongs to an expert. It simply be longs to everyone on our planet because it af fects everyone on our planet.

In an interview with U of T News, David Sin ton, a professor of mechanical engineering at U of T’s department of mechanical & industrial engineering, offered the above explanation of the climate crisis. Sinton ended the interview by expressing that climate change is an “allprofession, all-social sciences, all-natural sci ences and all-humanities problem.”

Sinton is inarguably correct; the effects of the problem he speaks of have already proven to be deadly. This year alone,

er catastrophes that have rocked our planet have caused about $29 billion in damage. These severe weather events have included six floods, five droughts, three tropi cal cyclones, and one European windstorm. More important than their monetary value is the fatality of these events — if left untreated, the climate crisis is expected to cause ap proximately 250,000 additional deaths per year from 2030 to 2050.

Here in Toronto, 2050 is also a critical year; it’s the benchmark for U of T to achieve their climate-positive goal of reducing 80 per cent of absolute carbon on campus. To achieve that goal, the university promises to manage the expansion of UTSG to mitigate that growth’s environmental impacts, renew its existing and ageing utility infrastructure, and build systems to change how UTSG produces, distributes, and consumes energy.

Hand in hand with this initiative is Sinton, who, in 2022, founded the Climate Positive Energy (CPE) Initiative. He currently serves as CPE’s academic director. Made up of more than 100 faculty members, the CPE harness es U of T expertise to develop clean-energy solutions that are guided by political, human, and societal considerations. Through re search grants, workshops, and a mentorship program, the CPE encourages U of T under

Empower, envision: how our approach to the Interviewing the recipients of the

that differentiates our approach,” said Sinton in an interview with The Varsity Will putting the community first be enough to combat the defining issue of our time? The CPE is hopeful — at their Inaugural Research Day event, CPE participants presented their research projects to a panel of industry ex perts, who awarded prizes to the most prom ising projects. The Varsity spoke with three of the winners about their research and why the key to fighting the climate crisis lies in the next generation.

Building organic solar cells

Nina Farac has always described herself as being geared toward making something with a purpose. This gearing, Farac estimates, manifested through her studying, she delved into the world of sustainable chemistry, a scien tific field that looks to use natu ral resources to meet human needs for chemical products and services.

Eventually, Farac’s pas sion grew; she is now a fifth-year PhD student at U of T’s Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemis try. The idea for her dissertation, named “Harnessing More Solar Energy: The Sustainable Design of Hy brid Organic Materials for Next-Gener ation Organic Solar Cells,” originally stemmed from a research su pervisor. The supervisor intro duced her to hy brid organic mate rials, molecules that contained the potential to benefit solar cells or

“He planted this seed of [how these] molecules exist, and they have potential to be beneficial materials in either organic solar cells or other organic devices,” Farac explained. After that revelation, Farac and her professor further brainstormed these materials, which had the “promising capacity to actually ab sorb more of the solar energy.”

Eventually, Farac and her supervisor came up with the idea to program these cells to function as solar panels. During the day, the panel would charge by absorbing the sun’s energy, which could then be used throughout the day. Though the panel’s main use is to generate usable energy from the sun, a re newable energy source, Farac added that with more sophisti cation, it could be used as an energy storage system for future use.

The first step of her project, Farac ex plained, was to brain storm with device engineers about what type of device would best enable these molecules to capture sunlight to their full potential.

That stage is completed; now, Farac and her team are working on actually fashioning the devices to see how efficient they are. In the coming stages, Farac and her team will test their device’s performance, and refine it to in crease its effectiveness.

“Sometimes, you can make the material and it looks promising,” Farac expressed. “We have to also think when it translates into a panel the size of your laptop… for now, [we] have to see how it performs even on the small scale and then

grow it from there.”

While making these crucial changes to her project, Farac knows that she’ll be sup ported. Her supervisor was part of the first cohort of professors to promote the organi zation — shortly after its creation, the pro fessor encouraged her to apply. Since Farac became involved, her professor has offered her consistent feedback, which has helped Farac find the motivation to make her work the best it can be.

“Being propelled with the ethos that CPE shares, [it]… helps drive the project forward,” Farac admitted. She add ed that she also

Sara Kallas

Varsity Contributor

how research can shift the climate crisis the Climate Positive Energy grant values the initiative for emphasizing the im portance of not only its participants’ findings but the necessity of their research for edu cating members of the public.

“It’s not just about the science,” Farac explained. “It’s also about: how do people actually implement that science in terms of policy?”

From a fossil fuel past to clean energy fu ture

An idea that Charlie Bain has always main tained is that “Climate change is as much a political challenge as it is a technological

Five years ago, it was this idea that pushed Bain to apply for postgraduate school at U of T. Though he had a general idea of explor ing the role of business in climate change politics, Bain’s thinking began to take shape when he stumbled across a paper co-written by Jessica Green, a professor in U of T’s po litical science department. Green’s paper explored the climate stances of some of the world’s largest oil companies over a period of 20 years.

While reading this paper, Bain began to consider the impact of these oil companies. “When we think about… purely fos sil fuel firms like oil majors, or coal mining companies, these are companies which are fully invested in maintaining the fos sil fuel status quo,” Bain said. “They’re going to act in a way to slow down ambitious climate regulation.”

Bain pointed out the con trast between these compa nies and ones which use clean energy, such as manufacturers of wind turbines and so lar panels. The latter, he explained, are “going to be supporting… really ambitious climate policies because they ben efit from them and they have nothing to lose from supporting those policies.”

Eventually, this revelation pushed Bain to explore firms that didn’t have this immediate bias. These companies, which Bain called convertible firms, “straddle the fossil fuel past and the clean energy future.”

Now a fifth-year PhD student, Bain is su pervised by the co-author of the article that inspired his work. His dissertation project, named “The Political Econ omy of Convertible Firms:

ties and Automakers in Climate Politics,” studies the differences between and chang es in behaviour in electric utility and car mak ers between 2005 and 2021.

The basic aim of his project, Bain ex plained, is twofold. His first step is to track how these companies have historically be haved with regard to climate politics. His second step is to examine why these com panies were supportive or disapproving of climate regulation. Currently, Bain has been reading through such companies’ quarterly reports to manually collect data about their investing histories.

Though Bain hasn’t started to formally analyze his data, he’s observed that most companies have been transparent with their shareholders. Bain is optimistic that this will be his research’s status quo: “In theory, they’re going to be punished if they lie to their investors and say… ‘We’re really concerned about climate,’ and then don’t do anything about it.”

In the next few years, Bain hypothesizes, the global solution to climate change will shift to building coalitions of people “that might not necessarily normally work together, but might have aligned interests and in particu lar fields.” Bain hopes that his work will help identify potential alliances which should or shouldn’t have influence in addressing the fight. This step, Bain said, is crucial, because he’s unhappy with the progress thus far.

“[Climate change is] this huge threat, but the actual response has been pretty weak in comparison to the size of the threat,” Bain confirmed.

Mining our way out of crisis

Though Bain’s research evaluates institu tional responses to the climate crisis, other students argue that it’s more important to evaluate the quality of our solutions. “It’s very easy to point out the problems with our current global system and our current global environment — it’s much harder to come to consensus on the solutions,” insisted Amalie Wilkinson, third-year international relations and peace, conflict and justice studies major.

Before joining the CPE, Wilkinson had been researching lithium for one year. Last year, she was a member of a research oppor tunities program group at U of T that stud ied the social and ecological implications of lithium mining for the clean energy transition. Through the connections she made through that group, Wilkinson was recruited to be part of a research team that operated at U of T, the University of Guelph, the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Univer sity of Sydney. The group received a federal grant to study lithium mining as a source of raw materials for the development of tech nologies against the climate crisis.

The CPE grant, Wilkinson explained, al lowed her to conduct research that was in dependent of the groups she was part of. Wilkinson’s individual project, titled, “The Dynamics of Lithium Mining for a Clean Energy Transition in Québec, Canada,” focuses on how Canadian lithium ties and stakeholders. Lithium

ies, and energy storage ergy. Some experts argue that lithium is integral to our sustainable ment

as a solution to the climate crisis… these clean energy technologies demand a really high volume of minerals,” Wilkinson ex plained. “We’re looking at what that means for people on the ground.”

“Is this the way out of climate change? Can we mine our way out of an extractive cri sis? [These] are the kinds of questions we’ve been exploring,” Wilkinson added.

Though Wilkinson has only recently started working for the CPE, she has already seen a noticeable difference between its working en vironment and the environment of initiatives she was formerly involved with. In her past experiences, Wilkinson found that research ers would only interact with professionals in their fields; while working with the CPE, she has already spoken with lithium stakehold ers, university researchers, and biologists who specialized in hydrogeology.

“CPE [brings] together researchers that normally wouldn’t be talking and [it creates] more nuanced solutions because of that,” Wilkinson explained. She added that collaborating with researchers from dif ferent disciplines was a push for her to regularly work with those outside her “departmental bub ble.”

The importance of col laboration isn’t the only takeaway that Wilkinson, who is one of the pro gram’s summer students, took from her involvement with the CPE — she is writ ing a personal paper from her CPE research, which she plans to submit to an academic jour nal. Wilkinson is also co-authoring an article with one of the profes sors working on her overseas project. However, Wilkinson stressed that this personal work is not enough; she cited her coworkers’ activism, some of which involved submitting proposals to federal climate change initiatives. That activism, Wilkinson noted, “is something that I need to be work ing on more.”

Wilkinson is equally critical of U of T. As a globally ranked institution, she explained, the university has an obligation to invest its money into solutions to combat climate change, a phenomenon that she described as “the most pressing and most important crisis that’s facing all of humanity.” Wilkinson stressed that, although internal initiatives like the CPE are important, “there’s got to be more” to the university’s involvement than simply creating such initiatives.

“As Canada’s largest research univer sity, we have a critical role to play in meet ing the urgent challenge of climate change,” acknowledged a U of T spokesperson in a statement to The Varsity

nies by October 27, and indirect hold ings by 2030. They added, “the University of Toronto was the first university in the world to join the UN-convened Net-Zero Asset

cifically working on the topics.”

With files from Alexa DiFrancesco and Maeve Ellis.

Climate Strike 2022

Arts

Culture

The OISE Gardens: storytelling through horticulture

Taking a creative approach to sustainability, education, and equity

Daniyah Asad and Ashiana Sunderji Varsity Contributors

The quads and gardens of U of T are a wel coming respite from the hectic atmosphere of downtown Toronto. Foremost among them is the University College quad, featured on nearly every brochure advertising U of T, with its Ro manesque design emphasizing the prestige and historic significance of the campus. Meanwhile, secluded havens like the Trinity College quadran gle pay homage to gothic architecture, with intri cate medieval crosses etched into the ground, and offer an excellent escape from the imposing skyscrapers and bustling city life of UTSG.

Given the sprawling gardens and unique horticulture all over UTSG, I will admit that the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) gardens, found in six large planters in front of the building, were more than a tad underwhelming at first sight. However, on a deeper look, one can appreciate OISE’s attempt to condense the qualities of larger gardens and bring them out of their enclosures into the bustling streets around campus.

to push the boundaries of research. This leads to the final platform — the Environmental and Sustainability Education Garden. This garden looks to the future of sustainability, displaying an environmentally conscious arrangement of lowmaintenance and local plant life without sacrific ing aesthetics, creating a visually stunning cap to the series of gardens.

Artistic elements

The play between composition and form helps weave a narrative for each platform. We can best visualize this in the contrast between the Holistic and Creativity in Education gardens.

In the Holistic Education Garden, plant species are arranged in almost concentric circles centred around a black chokeberry bush. Though the shrub is the tallest structure, it is not overbearing — rather, it compliments the ring of black-eyed susans, wild bergamot, and goldenrods sur rounding it. The Virginia mountain mint blooms in the front, its white petals complementing the lemon balm, marigold, and bluebells adjacent to it. Here, the arrangement accomplishes bal ance without forced symmetry. The composition

Sunflowers at the OISE Gardens

Let ’s talk about sex: Contraceptives

Getting off while getting STIs and pregnancy off your back

Dalainey Gervais Varsity Contributor

Let’s face it — our high school sexual education curriculum didn’t prepare us for the real world. Leaving the safety bubble of your family home to join a busy post-secondary culture can be intimi dating, especially when you haven’t been prepared for the sexual freedom you may gain. While explor ing your newfound sexual freedom, it is important to stay safe. So to kick off the notorious Let’s Talk About Sex column this year, let’s talk about con traception!

Growing up in a Catholic family and education system, safe sex to me meant no sex at all. Absti nence was taught to be the only form of safe sex; all other forms of contraception were sinful. In ret rospect, I can’t believe how much sex scared me.

Sure, not having sex lowers your risks of con tracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and pregnancy, but the same can be said for any kind of activity: never stepping foot in a pool would ab solutely lower your risks of drowning.

Contraceptive one: The common condom

A common form of contraceptives is condoms, which are one of the most effective forms of pre venting STIs and pregnancy. Condoms are also an accessible, relatively low-cost contraception op tion.

However, condoms are a little more complicated than the average user assumes. A downfall to con doms lies in the use of the condom being a correla tive factor to its effectiveness. For it to be as effec tive as advertised, condom users must understand how to check the expiry date and know how to put on and effectively remove the condom.

Additionally, condoms have a fatal flaw: they can finish early! When they interact with oils, like those in oil-based lubes, they can deteriorate. Water and silicon-based lubes are the perfect match for con doms — a good pick for those desperately in the know is Durex’s “Play More,”

a water-based lube. You can also buy condoms that are prelubed.

However, latex may not be the perfect partner for you. In fact, many people are allergic to latex. Don’t lose hope, though, there are also lambskin condoms made from a lamb’s large intestine. Al though they’re effective in preventing pregnancy, they do little for STIs. They’re also good for some historically accurate Outlander cosplay.

A less popular, but still effective, contraceptive similar to a typical condom is the internal condom. Inserted into the vaginal canal and held in place with a cervical ring, an internal condom prevents semen from entering the cervix. This form of con traceptive additionally prevents STIs, although not as effectively as external condoms. Because of the way you insert it, it is possible that in the heat of the moment, your partner may slip out of the in ternal condom and

into the vaginal canal. If internal condoms are your preferred choice, make sure to check in with your partner while doing the deed.

Contraceptive two: birth control pill

Unfortunately, there is a lot of misinformation about birth control. For most of my teens and early adult years, I was under the impression that there was only one form of birth control pill and that it is only used for pregnancy prevention.

The most common type of birth control, the one you have probably heard about, is the combined pill. The pill is made of artificial hormones that stop sperm from reaching the ovum in the uterus. There are many versions of combined pills, all of which have different effects on the body. While they all work toward preventing pregnancy, some can cause nausea, while others can lead to a perma nent headache. When it comes to birth control, it’s the luck of the draw.

Contraceptive three:

Only accessible to those assigned female at birth, an IUD is essentially a copper cross and, like an anchor, copper makes sperm sink! The copper prevents the sperm from finding their way to the egg by altering the way they swim. An advantage of an IUD is that it is a low-maintenance option. The device is inserted into the uterus and can be effec tive for up to 10 years depending on the brand.

A contraceptive implant is similar to an IUD in its long-term effects, yet unlike the IUD, you typically get it implanted on the inside of your arm. A down side of both of these options, and the one that turns many away from these methods, is the pain of insertion. Doctors insert both the implant and in trauterine devices without administering any local ized anesthesia, making your visit quite unpleasant.

Contraceptive four: emergency contraception

I can list forms of contraceptives all day, but at the end of the day, passion is powerful — powerful enough to make you forget everything in this ar ticle! So, keep emergency contraceptives in mind.

Emergency contraceptives pills, sometimes known as ‘the morning-after pill’ are also available. They are to be used as the name suggests — in an emergency. After having unprotected sex, or if you are worried about your other form of contraceptive failing, morning-after pills release hormones to pre vent fertilization. Although the morning-after pill can be taken up to five days post sex, the earlier you take it, the more effective it is.

But we understand: sometimes a morning-after pill isn’t quite right for your situation. A safe, medical procedure to end a pregnancy, abortion is an op tion, and having access to one is a form of health care. If you find yourself pregnant and need op tions, find your nearest Planned Parenthood. Along with offering a lending ear and support, Planned Parenthood will help you find a clinic that offers abortions in your area.

With all of the available contraceptives on the market, it’s best to sit down with your partner to de cide what works best for the both of you. After all, these types of conversations are part of informed consent, but that’s a topic for next time. It’s also normal to want to try different options, so don’t fret if one method doesn’t fit. Between condoms, the pill, IUDs, the implant, and emergency contracep tion, there are many ways to avoid STIs and preg nancy — it’s best to be prepared!

Climate anxiety, existentialism, and sometimes denial

Aimee Perry Varsity Contributor

If you’ve ever taken a high school science class or, indeed, even glanced at a climate strike flyer, you might have become a little afraid that the world is ending. The truth is, it’s easy to both be overwhelmed with trepidation for such a real and current catastrophe and — on the flip side — completely ignore it!

Dr. Stephanie Collier, the director of education in geriatric psychiatry at McLean Hospital in Mas sachusetts, contends that climate anxiety is not a ‘mental illness,’ but instead is “anxiety rooted in uncertainty about the future.” This fear of the future — does it sound familiar? It seems that in such fear-inducing, changing times, many young folks are experiencing premature existential cri ses and spiralling about the state of the world.

Indeed, existential crises and climate anxiety are linked. Existential crises are common in tran sitional phases, such as moving to university, a break up, or death of a loved one, when the topic of death becomes all consuming. Climate anxi ety is a type of existential crisis provoked by a more specific challenge faced by humanity: the idea that the world is ending and it’s our fault. Whether it be climate anxiety or another type of existential crisis, it makes sense why some are so inundated with the end.

In an interview with The Varsity, Erin Mackey, divestment organizer at Climate Justice UofT,

elaborated on fear of the future and climate anxi ety. Mackey suggested that “climate anxiety has a lot to do with wanting a livable future” and is related to the thought that “we are [living] in a moment where the future is really uncertain.”

She added, “my relationship to climate anxiety is a little bit complicated, because I’ve definitely experienced it and I definitely think it can be a motivating factor, but it is also a very debilitating feeling.”

Sometimes climate crisis and existentialism can be too big and complex to fathom, and so we elect to ignore them, which can be even more detrimental to our well-being. The decline of the Earth often isn’t clearly visible in our immediate day-to-day lives, and thus, such a large-scale, foreboding event might be inconceivable to the average student when we already have to stress about midterms and meal prepping.

Denial of such topics is on the flip side of cli mate anxiety; it is a defense mechanism that stops you from addressing a problem or mak ing a change. Author Ron Ashkenas contends that denial is “one of the most common defense mechanisms that we use to cope with difficult situations.”

But in terms of managing climate anxiety in a productive way, Mackey revealed some tips on the matter: “I’ve tried to focus more on what we can do… We [do] have control over it, and there are tangible changes and things that we can do right now to help mitigate it, whether that’s indi

vidual or structural.”

As she entered university and became in volved in climate activism, Mackey says that she “gained a better understanding of the power structures and the systems at play… With divest ment and divestment organizing, it’s focusing on one particular pillar, and being able to focus on that and knock that down.”

Mackey said that a professor once told her, “I wake up every day and I say ‘how can I ‘F’ over the oil industry,’” and that has helped her a lot in believing that she can tackle the root issue of cli mate crisis and mitigating the anxiety that comes from “pessimism” and the “tendency to feel like the climate crisis is too big to tackle.”

Finally, Mackey added that she is ultimately hopeful: “There’s been a big shift recently in the climate movement from this idea of climate ‘doomerism’ to [the question of] ‘what can a future look like?’… We have this opportunity to build a world that we want to see... [This idea]

is much more powerful in terms of motivating people to take action and get excited about the climate movement.”

If you are experiencing distress that is in any way related to the climate or the future, it might make you feel less fearful to know that this is an experience felt by many young people across the country. It can feel very lonely and upsetting to consider that the climate crisis is real and it’s happening right now — you might even be in de nial because such thoughts are so troubling.

However, just like with any form of anxiety, it’s crucial to take small steps toward balance and peace. This might look like eating less meat or removing fast fashion from your lifestyle, as Mackey has done, or even bringing the topic up with a friend. Sharing experiences with others, and learning that you’re not alone in your anxiet ies, is the first step in moving toward a positive change. In the case of the climate, we need lots of small positive changes to create a real one.

How to deal with stress in the face of the climate crisis

CHERYL NONG/THEVARSITY

LAUREN TURNER/THEVARSITY

Striking a chord: A deep dive into the life of a Music Student

Everything I’ve learned after a year and one month at the Faculty of Music

Alia Ginevra Varsity Contributor

Just north of Queens Park stands a building that looks like Shermer High School from the movie The Breakfast Club. It was built in the 1960s, and was found to contain asbestos, and we just got new chairs — the first update to the building I’ve seen since coming to U of T. If you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m talking about the Edward Johnson building, home to the Faculty of Music and yours truly.

Let me tell you a bit about myself. When I was

seven, my parents began searching for an extra curricular hobby for which I would show enthusi asm. I tried ballet, soccer, and rhythmic gymnas tics for a couple of years. I enjoyed each of these activities, but I had no aptitude for any of them.

I had nothing that I was truly passionate about until my parents enrolled me in an operatic choir. That is where I discovered my passion for classical singing. From that moment on, I con tinued singing in choirs, performing in shows, and spending my Friday nights taking vocal les sons. I’ve wanted to study music since the tenth grade, and I am lucky enough to have been ac

cepted into an institution where I can fully dive into the intricacies of classical music with some of the best instructors.

Being a U of T music major truly makes you feel like you’re inspecting a specimen in a labora tory, but that specimen is your instrument in the classical or jazz stream. Unlike most programs, taking an extraordinary amount of breadth elec tives is not required. In my case, required classes include English and Italian art song, music skills, music theory, and choral ensemble. So, yes, I go to school to try to create pleasant sounds, and no, it’s not as easy as it seems. I’m not saying that a music major is the most difficult thing in the world, but from experience, a theory class is no walk in the park.

From the moment you enter the program, you are surrounded by great musicians who have the same drive to learn as you do. All of my peers are technically excellent. While I used to see this environment as an overwhelming burden, which it no doubt can be, I’ve learned to view it as an opportunity instead. Listening to those who are more experienced than myself allows me to take notes on how I can improve.

Moreover, a niche community where every one knows everyone has its upsides and down sides. The help that you need is always avail able and class sizes are small. Professors know you by name, and you’re not wandering into a lecture hall of 1,000 people aimlessly trying to make connections.

Being a part of an interwoven community is part of what makes artistic careers so great — it allows you to meet and work with brilliant people that will help you grow as an artist. When you in habit professional musical spaces, specifically in a small institution like a school, you never know if you will run into someone again. Being cordial and respectful is required to maintain good relation ships in any setting, but what I have learned is that pleasing everyone is a near impossible task. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed making connections, but I’ve come to understand that they shouldn’t come at the expense of your authenticity, and that it is okay to not be loved by everyone.

It can also be easy to orbit only within the halls of academia or the arts when you are a music major. Of course, I am a singer, but my identity

Ecocriticism’s struggle to define our relationship with nature

How an emerging critical field shifts our perspective on art

Jevan Konyar Varsity Contributor

The past few decades have witnessed un precedented — and, according to some, apocalyptic — levels of ecological upheaval, and new developments in the humanities re flect that. While there’s no shortage of discus sion surrounding the effect of the Industrial Revolution on modern life — that torch is car ried by a diverse group of thinkers compris ing theorists like Timothy Morton and Max Liboiron — the question of how we interpret our own relationship with nature is the subject of a more specialized domain, which is called ‘ecocriticism.’

“Ecocriticism… started in the 1990s, so it’s very recent,” explained Andrea Most, a pro fessor in U of T’s Department of English. “The field has grown… in response to the ways in which our understanding [of] the environmen tal crisis has progressed.”

According to Most, ecocriticism is not an isolated field, but part of a broader field of environmental studies. Ecocriticism demon strates how artistic narratives on the environ ment can influence our approach to the envi ronment, even if they shed light on the artwork itself to a lesser extent. It’s a critical lens that focuses on how we — as species, cultures,

individuals, etc. — interact with the world around us. Like the environmental humanities at large, ecocriticism isn’t just a reexamina tion of traditional assumptions regarding our place in the world; they’re a particular ap proach to understanding our interaction with ecology based on cultural products.

Endeavors in ecocriticism are essentially nuanced, tackling issues of interpretation through an interdisciplinary approach. Profes sor Most noted that artistic fields are increas ingly interested in the relationship between humans and other animals, as well as the im pact of colonial ideologies on contemporary understandings of nature.

Most also noted that it’s important that the university focus on ecocriticism so academic analysis can be used to tackle the climate crisis. “[Ecocriticism enables] students and scholars to question and think through our historical, cultural relationships, our cultural perspectives, [and to] think through the sto ries we tell about who we think we are in rela tion to the living earth, because the stories we’re currently telling are killing the earth,”

Most explained.

For Most, a focus on ecology should be worked into every facet of the academy. “You could study math through this lens, you could study business through this lens, you can

study classical culture through this lens — it doesn’t matter,” she said. “If you’re not tak ing the Earth into account… everything else you’re doing is inevitably going to be lesser or pointless depending on how hopeful you

is not entirely art and is not homogenous with all the other musicians around me.

If you know me, you know that I’ve orbited both in and out of the arts community for the last 10 years. I didn’t grow up listening to classical music — it happened to find me at a young age at an impromptu choir audition. My family is not a music family, and I am partly glad about that because I have come to see the world from their perspective as well. Sometimes classical or jazz musicians assume that the rest of the world has the same attachment to classical music or the arts in general.

As much as I’d love to live in a utopia where everyone listens to Mozart, it became striking ly clear to me that this is not the case when I sang at a wedding and around 90 per cent of my repertoire was too unrecognizable to main stream audiences for me to sing. I am committed to classical music, but at the same time, I have started to consider that I may need to become more versatile as a singer if I want to perform in various settings.

Additionally, I am taking classes and explor ing disciplines outside of performing as I feel that I need to be a more well rounded person. As much as I love being in music, I can’t stay in the same building for my entire university ca reer, and I want to be around people who don’t consider themselves to be ‘creatives,’ so I can better understand my own relationship with the arts and also my relationship with myself out side of classical music.

So, where am I now? After a year and one month of university, I have become entirely im mersed in the music community, and to tell you the truth, last week was my first time visiting Ro barts. I have faced many challenges and pushed myself to my artistic limits, but my greatest ac complishment thus far was finally making it to the other side of campus. In all seriousness, I am grateful for the education I am receiving, and I look forward to reflecting on how my experi ences at the faculty will shape me further.

So, in the simplest terms, we are the basket case of the university.

Sincerely yours, A Faculty of Music student

tential threat, developing an understanding of the cultural practices contributing to that crisis becomes a matter of survival.

It would be naive to think, as Ontario experi ences 15-degree-Celsius days at the outset of winter, that any cultural product is immune to questions from this new approach to ecol ogy. Whether deliberate or not, there are hints of ecological narratives in every facet of what the average person watches or reads, and ecocriticism exists to pull those narratives out and critique them in a new light. In Most’s words, “the environment is not an issue that can be put into a little box… it’s what sustains

MIRKA LOISELLE/THEVARSITY

DALAINEY GERVAIS/THEVARSITY

We already have the resources to stop the climate crisis The fight against the climate crisis may seem hopeless, but we can do more than we think

Sahir Dhalla Science Editor

Climate change is no longer just a problem for the future. It is happening, and it is only getting worse. For decades, scientists have warned us about the impacts our choices and actions will have, and every year, governments and corpo rations have decided to do nothing, or at least not enough.

In the past year, we’ve seen just how disas trous the impacts of the climate crisis are. From droughts and heat waves across Europe to floods and mass migrations in Asia to a surge in hurricanes and tornadoes in North America, it is clear that things are only getting worse.

We have had treaties like the Paris Agree ment — a legally binding international treaty to mitigate climate change signed in 2016 — be tween major world powers to address climate change, but barely any member states are on track to reach the agreed-upon goals. Corpo rations, meanwhile, have continued their tirade upon the environment, tearing up rainforests, destroying marine life, and releasing over whelming amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

With the lack of effort on many fronts in miti gating the effects and future impacts of climate change, it may seem as though there is noth ing we can do — that all hope is lost and we might as well continue our lives as usual.

However, many climate activists and experts argue that we have the resources to fight cli mate change, but a lack of focus on the issue by governments is holding us back.

So how can we take steps in the fight against climate change, and are these chang es even feasible?

Renewable and nuclear energy

Probably the most evident means we have of slowing down our carbon emissions into the atmosphere comes in the form of renewable or nuclear energies.

According to reports by the United Nations, burning fossil fuels is responsible for over 75 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions — more than every other source combined. If we are to slow down the rate at which our climate is being impacted, governments need to shift their economies and infrastructure away from fossil fuels as soon as possible.

And while this may seem like a major under taking, we already have the technology needed.

As of 2019, 16.3 per cent of Canada’s energy comes from renewable resources, including hydroelectricity, wind, tidal, solar, biomass, and geothermal energy. Hydro is the largest contributor, making up almost 70 per cent of Canada’s renewable energy, but wind and solar are rapidly growing in popularity and use.

New technologies have also made solar panels cheaper and easier to install by yourself.

It’s clear that we have the technology to change energy consumption on a global scale. While it will take a lot of capital investment to modify infrastructure in countries across the world, this is an investment that has the poten tial to save millions of lives.

Sustainable land use

Agriculture has been another major contributor to the climate crisis and accounts for nearly 90 per cent of all deforestation.

Cutting down trees for land and wood re leases significant amounts of carbon, as trees store carbon during their lives. Removing these trees also removes one of our planet’s only natural ways of decarbonizing the atmosphere, increasing the rate of climate change.

Coupled with the use of fertilizers and pes ticides in farms, agricultural practices have the potential to decimate ecosystems and cause damage for decades to come.

But sustainable methods for farming do ex

ist. Crop rotations, where different species of crops are planted in a single field throughout the year, help to improve soil fertility as vari ous plants give and return different nutrients to the soil.

Another drastic change to agriculture comes in the form of vertical farming. Vertical farm ing refers to the system of cultivating crops in stacked layers rather than side by side, as in traditional farming.

Vertical farming has immense benefits and leads to increased crop yields and a lack of plant diseases as these environments are en tirely controlled. It also has the benefit of not being reliant on external environmental factors.

While many other technologies have evolved so that a hot or cold year does not affect yields, agriculture remains largely affected by temper atures. This year’s heat wave over the summer led to immense food shortages across Euro pean countries, but vertical farming has the potential to change that.

The main benefit of vertical farming is the incredibly reduced land usage, reduced de forestation, and more immediate food sup plies to cities. Building vertical farms within urban areas would also eliminate the need for long-range transportation of food, eliminating another major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.

While vertical farming does have many ben efits, it requires a large initial investment and is far more technologically reliant than traditional farming. Building vertical farms in urban spac es would be akin to constructing new build ings, and would require stronger foundations and more money than traditional farming.

Since these environments are also entirely controlled, farmers would also need to invest in powerful sensor technology and training

for factors like moisture, temperature, light ing, and more. Any fluctuations in these fac tors could lead to disastrous crop yields, and some experts believe today’s technology is not ready yet for uses as sensitive as this.

Despite these caveats, agriculture and sus tainability need to co-exist for improved food security and lowered environmental impact, and these changes need to start soon.

Why are we not there yet?

Considering how much technology and ad vancement we’ve seen, why is climate change still getting worse?

One reason is that the climate crisis has reached a point now where it has developed momentum. Similar to Newton’s first law of motion, climate change will be significantly harder to stop now that it has gained speed and traction globally. It will require far more drastic action, ambitious goals, and rapid change to our ways of life before things have a chance of getting better.

While Canada’s renewable energy percent age is higher than the global average of 11 per cent, these values are not high enough. Reports by the World Meteorological Orga nization showed that despite the transitions to renewable energy, global greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise to new re cords each year.

The pledges made by member states in the Paris Agreement would need to be nearly seven times higher to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to the report.

But while climate change will be harder to stop, that doesn’t mean we are power less. We possess the technology necessary to make these changes, and limiting a global temperature rise to 2.5 degrees or three de

grees Celsius will still be better than letting climate change run rampant.

We have the technology. It is simply a mat ter of pressuring governments and corpora tions to make the changes needed.

Issues with climate change mitigation run deeper than simply doing more, though. One of the biggest contributors to climate inaction is psychological rather than physical.

Factors like ignorance, where people either don’t know about an issue or don’t know how to react to it, are the most common of these challenges. Some individuals aren’t aware of the extent of the climate crisis, believing that it isn’t too much of an issue yet. And even among those who are aware of it, some be lieve there is nothing we can do about it. This ignorance is also often manufactured by mixed messages we see in our media.

Another bastion of psychological barriers to overcome is a combination of the bystander and technosalvation effects. In these situa tions, people believe that either someone else or some new technology will come in time to save us, and therefore, tend to avoid taking the initiative. The bystander effect stops when people see others start helping, which is why individuals might be willing to attend protests or sign open letters, but few of us start and organize these actions.

Many also tend to avoid trying at all be cause they don’t think they could ever have an impact. The climate crisis is a global issue and is affecting all of us on such a scale that it seems ridiculous that one person could ever make a difference.

Overcoming the psychological barriers be hind climate inaction will be essential if we are to mitigate the effects of the climate crisis and treat our planet well.

JESSICA LAM/THEVARSITY

Are we past our peak of fossil fuel consumption?

A look at the future of energy use

Andrea Zhao Design Editor

For thousands of years, humans have relied on natural resources to provide energy for machinery, industry, and progress. Water wheels and windmills were among the first inventions that harnessed the power of the natural world for human use. In the 1700s, the development of the steam engine — the first fuel-powered machine — signalled a new era for energy. Since the Industrial Revolution in the early 1800s, fossil fuels — made up of decompos ing organic matter and rich in hydrogen and carbon — have been the main important source of energy around the world.

Coal, oil, and natural gas are all examples of fossil fuels, and they are used to power everything around

us. Global consumption of fossil fuels has increased dramatically in the past century — current rates of use are eight times higher than in 1950, and twice as high as they were in 1980.

In 2019, fossil fuels made up 84 per cent of pri mary energy usage around the world. Recently, there have been increasing concerns about the envi ronmental consequences of fossil fuel usage. Fossil fuels are a limited and nonrenewable resource, and it is infeasible to wait millions of years for new deposits to form. Fossil fuel usage is a major contributing fac tor to the climate crisisw, making up nearly 75 per cent of all human carbon emissions over the past 20 years.

The world we live in is powered by nonrenew able energy; our current ways of life are highly reliant on these finite fuels, resulting in us chipping away

at the planet and depleting the ozone layer. How ever, despite the seemingly bleak state we’re in at the moment, there is reason to be optimistic about the future.

In 2021, the annual World Energy Outlook, a re port published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), proposed — perhaps surprisingly — that fossil fuel usage could hit an all-time peak by 2025 and begin to decline in the second half of the decade. The IEA report is centered around the “1.5 degrees Celsius scenario,” the trajectory outlined by the 2016 Paris Agreement in which climate change should be limited to below a 1.5 degrees Celsius increase in temperatures worldwide. According to the report, IEA experts believe that if countries can reach this target and if more resources are directed toward de veloping sustainable energy sources, we could soon be transitioning away from fossil fuels to an age of renewables.

In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on further developing sustainable and renew able energy, and there has been significant progress made in the field. Solar and wind power are both growing quickly in usage and are now the cheapest

University, Purolator, and City of Toronto launch Urban Quick Stop on campus Shipment hub will serve as “living lab”

Caroline Bellamy Design Editor

On October 13, Purolator — in collaboration with the University of Toronto and the City of Toronto — opened Urban Quick Stop near 60 St. George street. The hub will facilitate “last-mile” package deliveries via ebikes instead of delivery trucks. Last-mile deliveries are when an item is sent from a local warehouse — in this case, the Urban Quick Stop location — to its final destination.

The hub is the second of its kind in Toronto; the first one opened at Bloor and Spadina in July 2022. There are five electric cargo bikes be tween the two hubs that facilitate the last mile of delivery for locations within a few kilometres of the hubs. The pilot program hopes to make de liveries and transportation more environmentally and economically sustainable in the city. Cur rently, the transportation sector accounts for 36 per cent of emissions in Toronto.

Students can get a 50 per cent discount on shipping costs for packages sent to or delivered

using Purolator. They can access this discount by presenting their student ID when shipping a package at any Purolator centre, including the hub.

Packages are delivered to the hub once a day, where they are either picked up or packed onto an ebike and delivered to their final destination.

Ebike couriers ride the bikes in bike-only lanes while conducting deliveries. The smaller size of the ebikes makes parking easier, and they don’t slow traffic as a delivery truck would.

Campus as a living laboratory

Researchers at the university will be using the campus as a “living lab,” collecting and analyzing data on this system. Professor Matthew Roorda — of the Department of Civil & Mineral Engineer ing at the University of Toronto — and his team will receive and analyze the data received from sensors embedded into the e-bikes.

In a written statement to The Varsity, Roorda specified that he and his team would be assess ing greenhouse gas emissions reduction, air

Opinion: These disasters were meant to happen once in a generation

Climate change is accelerating the rate and intensity at which natural disasters are striking

Philip Zawistowski

Varsity Contributor

Strained infrastructure, displaced families, and ru ined hometowns — a now familiar trio in weatherassociated disasters. Despite weather-related ca tastrophes becoming the norm, as shown in their fivefold increase in the last 50 years, mortalities have decreased almost threefold! Seems manageable, right? But nearly $400 million dollars are lost each day as nations weather disasters that are increasing ly linked to climate change driven by human action.

Events like this were not meant to happen this fre quently, but we’re seeing them more often and with far more intensity than we have before.

Hurricane Ian

Rapidly gaining strength, Hurricane Ian hit Cayo Costa Island, Florida in September 2022 as a Cat egory 4 hurricane, which can cause catastrophic damage to homes and reach wind speeds up to 156 miles per hour. People who stayed in the coast al state witnessed waves as tall as 13 feet in areas like Fort Myers, Florida, USA.

Cities experience immense damage from storm

surges like these because storms push water inland from the coast, where the lack of proper drainage systems forces it into houses and businesses and onto streets and highways. As a result of Hurricane Ian, over a hundred lives were lost, and billions of dollars in damage were inflicted. But Florida resi dents must simply brace for the next hurricane sea son.

Hurricane Ian has been the deadliest hurricane in Florida this century, for now.

Heat waves and droughts

While frying an egg using sun rays makes for a fun trend, it ultimately screams concern. Hot tempera tures affecting Europe this summer and other parts of the world wreaked havoc on energy infrastructure and quality of life for an entire summer.

Considering only one-fifth of European house holds have functional air conditioning, people all across the continent, especially the elderly and those in health-care institutions, were suffering in these heat waves — which reached 47 degrees Cel sius. Thousands of lives were lost, crops and farm animals were destroyed, and terrain and air quality were damaged by wildfires, but European nations will simply have to brace for the next heat dome.

quality improvements, and safety impacts on au tomotive and cyclist traffic. Additionally, they will be looking at delivery efficiency and cost.

“This really is a living laboratory,” said Roorda. “We’ll gain some really valuable insights that will facilitate further innovation in more sustainable and efficient freight transportation across the re gion.”

The large number of package deliveries at UTSG has made it the perfect location for the pilot research program — students love their on line shopping. Roorda wrote, “A lot of deliveries

source of energy in many markets. Globally, sales of electric vehicles are now hitting record highs.

Climate experts around the world are also work ing on undoing the damage we have already done. A team of researchers at Stanford University are working on carbon capture and sequestration, a process which takes carbon dioxide from the atmo sphere and stores it underground, and they, along with scientists in the United Kingdom, are research ing the use of carbon dioxide to make reusable plas tic. Here at U of T, a team of scientists leading a na tional climate science satellite project have received more than $200 million from the federal government, and experts on nature-based infrastructure are help ing vulnerable populations fight climate change.

It can be easy to get caught up in climate anxiety and believe that we’re hurtling toward irreparable environmental destruction, but it’s also important to remember that we are capable of making positive change. Not all is lost — as long as we take action soon.

are made on campus, but the roads are often congested… we want to find ways to improve safety and air quality for students on campus.” The use of ebikes will help reduce traffic on cam pus, ultimately making it a safer place for stu dents.

The program is expected to reduce carbon emissions by 68 tonnes a year. It will also reduce traffic congestion in the city. As a “living lab,” the program will provide researchers with insight and data, which will ultimately help the city develop more sustainable and efficient last-mile delivery in dense urban areas. Innovations and adapta tions like this program offer a brighter outlook on the sustainability of future delivery services and methods.

These were the hottest temperatures in Europe on record, for now.

Floods across Pakistan

Nearly 15 per cent of the Pakistani population was affected by the recent floods, with the country losing educational, logistical, informational, and economic infrastructure. Driven by increasing temperatures, melting glaciers and stronger than usual monsoons flooded Pakistan in August 2022, and left a wave of destruction affecting almost one sixth of the country.

With the flood causing the loss of over 1,700 lives and displacing millions of residents, Pakistani residents must rebuild their country before they can even prepare for the next climate disaster. It’s unfair for a country to be left preparing for another disaster like this while facing compounding issues like waterborne diseases and malnutrition.

This year saw the deadliest flood in Pakistan on record, for now.

Where are we headed?

There is a clear trend in the severity of these disas ters. Can you imagine what your life will be like as disasters get more frequent, with seasons becom ing a blend of disasters and increasingly warmer and more violent each year? As the US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo put it during the launch of a government initiative for climate information, “this summer… is likely to be one of the coolest summers of the rest of our lives.”

Every year, we reach a culmination of the most extreme events increasing in intensity and frequency.

The shortsightedness of governments, corpora tions, and individuals is leading to the destruction of a planet teeming with resources, sights, and nature to accommodate everyone multiple times over.

At what point do we hold institutions and people accountable if they’re capable of implementing and enforcing change?

AUGUSTINE WONG/THEVARSITY

Content warning: This article discusses damages from climate disasters.

We might be approaching the peak of fossil fuel pollution and consumption.

COURTESY OF FOREST AND KIM STARR/FLICKR

Purolator and u of t use campus as a living lab to study last-mile deliveries. AUGUSTINE WONG/THEVARSITY

A more nutritious Nutella

U of T alum Iman Mounib’s Real Food Only aims for sustainability through food

Mekhi Quarshie Sports Editor

Food — we eat it, we talk about it, and we love it, but very few of us think about the process that gets it to our plates. Before taking a bite, have you ever thought about where the food comes from, how it was made, or who made it? If you have, Iman Mounib has got you cov ered; her ethically sourced, sustainably pack aged, locally made hazelnut spread is perfect to cover your toast. The Varsity interviewed Mounib about her product and the importance of sustainable food in the modern climate.

Every entrepreneur has that lightbulb mo ment when they come across the idea for their business. For Mounib, her inspiration was personal, and it came to fruition while she was a UTSC student.

“I can’t eat refined sugars… but I would crave sugar,” she said, “so I [needed] some thing that satisfies my cravings, but is also good for me.” The most natural progression for Mounib was to start making her own ver sion of Nutella, except a lot healthier. With some help from UTSC’s startup incubator, The Hub, her brand Mounib Real Food Only was born.

Mounib Real Food Only sells a total of four different products: two hazelnut chocolate spreads, a peanut chocolate spread, and an almond chocolate spread. The hazelnut spreads are made with few ingredients: hazel nuts, which require little water to produce, are

drought resistant, and require no pesticides; honey, which is generally more sustainable than cane sugars whose production yields harmful liquid and solid waste; and organic, fair-trade cacao.

The product does not include palm oil like its competitors do, as palm oil production is a known contributor to deforestation. The production process requires farmers to con vert tropical land to agricultural land, which destroys the natural environment of many dif ferent species.

The packaging of Mounib Real Food Only’s products is also environmentally friendly. “Any thing I use, I’m trying to make it recyclable,” Mounib said. “The only thing that I haven’t fig ured out yet is obviously the seal that goes around [the jar].” She’s also attempting to find labels that are both waterproof and recyclable to ensure that the containers can be reused even after the chocolatey goodness is gone.

Once customers of Mounib Real Food Only are done with the product, they have the option to bring the containers back to the various locations where the products are sold, which can be found on the company’s website. “People can give me back the glass jars. We disinfect them, and we reuse them.” From input to output, Mounib Real Food Only makes strides to be a healthy, sustainable op tion for its consumer base.

Sustainability does come with costs. Mounib noted that glass packaging does cost more than the plastic alternative, but for her,

“it’s just not worth the few extra dollars to use plastic.”

Another drawback to only using natural ingredients is that it shortens the products’ shelf life. “The reason a lot of spreads overall add that palm oil is because it makes it sit for longer without having any sort of oil separa tion,” Mounib said. “ It makes the whole prod uct a lot cheaper to make.”

According to Ferrero, Nutella’s shelf life after opening is 12 months. While a Mounib Real Food Only spread won’t last a year with out texture change, Mounib says that her cus tomers eat the spread so regularly that they don’t give it time to expire. “[My customers] will pick up a jar every two weeks, and then the ones that take longer [would take] like one a month, and even if you keep it for a month,

it’s fine.” The treat might not be evergreen like Nutella, but Mounib’s customers are willing to make that trade off.

At the end of the day, the biggest obstacle to more food brands going green seems to be the profit model. Small businesses like Mounib Real Food Only might be tasked with higher input costs, which can affect the price for consumers, but their niche consumer base is willing to pay up. It’s becoming evident that in today’s day and age, consumers are willing to pay more for products that are sustainable. Maybe there is hope on the horizon.

In the meantime, Mounib is looking to ex pand into the States and is also thinking about creating a protein bar version of her product.

I guess it’s safe to say that people are going ‘nuts’ for this chocolatey spread.

Hargun Kaur Rekhi Varsity Contributor

The eSports industry is flourishing and com petitive video games are being rapidly integrat ed into pop culture. Whether it’s due to invest ments from celebrities like Drake and Michael Jordan, or increased coverage on platforms such as ESPN, eSports viewership is growing at an incredible speed. The audience for com petitive gaming has increased by 11.5 per cent between 2022 and 2021 and averages about 29.6 million people per month. Team SoloMid, the most valuable eSports team according to Forbes, has an estimated appraisal of $410 million.

Gaming has matured from its humble ar cade roots to a complex digital ecosystem with team owners, endorsements deals, pro motional crews, and franchises. However, re search suggests that the video gaming indus try causes horrifying environmental damage. US gaming consoles are linked to 34 terawatt

hours a year in energy usage, which is equiva lent to the carbon dioxide emissions of roughly five million cars.

Even if gamers decided to forgo digital con soles to decrease ewaste, higher engagement with cloud computing games would mean in creased usage of data centres. These buildings can be regarded as electric factories with IT equipment. They consume electricity and water and provide data and heat in return, worsening anthropogenic global warming.

By combining consumers’ desire for highperforming big consoles and conforming to the demands for server-side computing, the gaming industry is matching that demand with supply; and that decision is dangerous to the natural world.

Teams efforts to combat the climate crisis Nonetheless, not all hope is lost. In 2021, the Global Esports Federation joined the Sports for Climate Action initiative by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The agreement has 350 signatories,

including Formula One, the NBA, and the Ca nadian Olympic Committee. Joining Sports for Climate Action is a step in the right direction, since change begins with accountability. By acknowledging the part that eSports play in the climate crisis, it becomes easier to devise a plan for improvement.

Improvements can be observed within the operational methods of different eSports teams. Betclic Apogee is the first eSports team to achieve zero carbon certification worldwide. The Portuguese organization installed propri etary software on the players’ machines to calculate the team’s ecological footprint. The carbon emissions are then added, with travel included in the final value. Betclic Apogee then attempts to achieve neutrality by purchas ing carbon credits through a company called ZEROcertified. However, some experts have warned that carbon offsets are anything but a solution to the climate crisis.

After successfully earning their certificate, the Apogee team partnered with Esports Insider to organize a roundtable discussion called Carbon Neutral Collective. The session took place on September 5–7, 2022, and brought together European Esports tournament operators and players, who talked about the steps that can be taken to reduce the industry’s carbon footprint.

The individual effort

It is heartwarming and inspiring to notice eS ports teams coming together to support goals about environmental sustainability. Yet, the ef forts of individual teams are insufficient when it comes to moving gaming in a better direction. Organizations with real power are still con tinually falling short of their goals. Within the gaming industry, trends illustrate that corpo rate giants who produce consoles and create games often dodge highlighted environmental concerns by passing the responsibility of im

provement onto individual users.

Gaming companies know the negative impacts of the industry and have promised changes. Sony has produced an optional “low power mode” for the PlayStation 5, which is es timated to use around 0.5 watts. The company claims that the activation of low power mode by one million users can save the electricity use of 1,000 US homes. Xbox Series S and X have similar options when not in active use. Be that as it may, the onus of using that option is de pendent on the user and not built into the con sole. Sometimes players might not even know that these features exist.

Although Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have all set goals for carbon neutrality, the results of their proposed steps lack transparency. Creat ing goals and following through on goals are two completely different things. Without the ex istence of accountability mechanisms for these businesses, it is difficult to track the efficacy of their claims. Individual action is beneficial, but for long-term sustainability, gaming infrastruc ture has to change.

Looking into the future

For now, it is essential to realize that the car bon impacts of eSports are sometimes swept under the rug. To improve, avid gamers can begin by familiarizing themselves with environ mentally friendly options on their console. As for viewers of eSports, showing concern can motivate corporate actors to alter practices because they are lured by profits.

Video games are a form of entertainment, but for the people connected to the eSports industry, they serve as a livelihood. Consum ers have increased leverage in the direction of development within relatively newer industries. This new sport has potential and, with the right amount of coaxing, can be shaped to be better for the planet.

How eSports affect the environment Your household gaming console might use more energy than you think

Uses for the spread go way beyond sliced bread.

COURTESY IMAN MOUNIB

Team LGD competes in a League of Legends eSports tournament.

COURTESY OF BRUCE LIU

Toronto Pan Am Centre’s LEEDcertified facility leads U of T to sustainable design

Seth Martosh Varsity Contributor

Officially opened to the public in September of 2014, the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre (TPASC) was constructed to host events for the 2015 Pan Am games. Located at UTSC, the fa cility has been an international leader in cham pioning sustainability practices.

Planning for the centre began in 2008, even before Toronto was awarded the rights to host the games. In the subsequent years, the city ap proved development and UTSC students voted in favour of a 25-year levy that would contribute up to $30 million to the centre.

The layout

The 312,000 square foot facility boasts an im pressive list of amenities including, but not lim ited to, two Olympic-sized 50-metre swimming pools, a diving pool, a four-court gymnasium, an indoor running track, a fitness centre, a food court, and a climbing wall.

At the time of its construction, the facility was the largest infrastructure investment for ama teur sports in Canadian history and has since continued to provide a hub for the international

sporting community, hosting events like the In victus Games and the North American Indige nous games in 2017. As well as hosting athletes from countries around the world, the facility has hosted some of our favourite Canadian Olympic heroes, most notably Penny Oleksiak, seventime olympic medalist, and U of T’s own Kylie Masse, a four-time Olympic medalist.

The LEED certification system

While the TPASC has had its fair share of athletic greatness, it also stands out for be ing a leader in sustainable design. The facil ity achieved Leadership in Energy and Envi ronmental Design (LEED) Gold Certification, for meeting strict standards in all aspects of its construction, and its design upholds high standards in areas of both human and environ mental health.

Created in 1993, LEED “provides a frame work for healthy, efficient, carbon and costsaving green buildings.” It focuses on promot ing a holistic approach to sustainable design, rather than simply grading buildings on one element. Almost any type of building can ap ply for LEED certification, and is consequently awarded points for meeting certain require

ments. Accumulating 40–49 points means that a building gets a standard certification, 50–59 will achieve Silver certification, 60–79 points means the building is Gold certified, and over 80 points designates the highest rank of Plati num certification.

TPASC has several features that contribute to its high-scoring LEED certification, includ ing 1,854 solar panels, an irrigation rain-water system, green roof blankets that reduce en ergy consumption, and geothermal wells that help heat most of the building. Additionally, 30 per cent of the materials used in construction

were recycled, and 95 per cent of waste from construction was diverted from landfills.

Does LEED certification matter?

While there is some debate surrounding whether LEED certification is simply just anoth er placard developers can put onto their proj ects to attract investors, conversations about sustainable construction are more important than ever. In our rapidly growing society, LEED is just one of the organizations taking a sys tematic approach to curb wasteful building practices around the world.

Opinion: Red card for Qatar — a look at how climate change is being tackled at the 2022 World Cup Qatar and FIFA claim the World Cup will be carbon neutral; should we trust them?

Kunal Dadlani Associate Sports Editor

It’s pretty clear the 2022 World Cup will be incredibly unique: it’s the first World Cup to be held in the Middle East and the first to be played in the winter.

It will also be the first carbon-neutral World Cup. Or at least, that’s what Qatar and FIFA claim.

Carbon neutrality is achieved by offsetting any carbon emissions through sustainable, quality projects. This isn’t the first time carbon neutrality has been invoked in the sporting context. The 2020 Tokyo Olympics were billed as the first carbon-neutral Olympics, and China conversely claimed the 2022 Beijing Olympics would be the first carbon-neutral Olympics.

Both of those claims are lies — neither event was carbon neutral. Carbon neutrality can only be truly determined after the event is over, when the full scope of the event’s carbon foot print can be understood. Claiming carbon neu trality prematurely is simply predictive and ulti mately useless. Nevertheless, there are various reasons why Qatar’s “carbon-neutrality” claim is already problematic.

Qatar is the smallest host country for a World Cup, boasting only one major city — Doha. The country’s geographical area is seen as a massive environmental benefit, as, in a more compact area, travel emissions will be signifi cantly reduced. This will certainly be true when compared to previous tournaments, like the 2018 World Cup, where fans and teams had to travel to different Russian cities for various games. Comparatively, the 2022 World Cup will be hosted in eight stadiums within Doha and its surrounding areas. As a result, players and fans no longer have to take flights between cities and can stay in the same accommoda tions throughout the entire tournament.

Yet this is also the source of a major problem — there are now eight massive stadiums within 55 kilometres of Doha. Qatar has built seven more stadiums, each with a minimum capacity of 40,000, which will host the tournament. The

construction of this much new infrastructure is already environmentally devastating.

Furthermore, considering Qatar only had one major stadium before being named host, there is no guarantee that these stadiums will continue to be extensively used after the World Cup has ended. It’s a common problem that previous hosts have faced — after the 2014

Brazil World Cup, one stadium now partly serves as a bus parking lot. It is incredibly un sustainable to build so much new infrastruc ture with uncertain future value.

Additionally, Qatar Airways announced that they partnered with many regional carriers that will allow fans to stay in neighbouring countries and travel in and out of Qatar to attend the

games. Furthermore, the 2026 World Cup will be the first to be hosted across three countries — Mexico, Canada, and the United States. If Qatar’s small size offers such a huge advan tage, the plans for the next tournament and the announcement by Qatar Airways are com pletely contradictory.

Furthermore, to mitigate the carbon emis sions, Qatar will create the largest large-scale tree-and-turf nursery in the world to absorb any carbon emissions. That nursery will also produce the grass for the stadiums. Yet this is still problematic. Carbon dioxide needs to re main within these green spaces for centuries before anyone can credibly claim that carbon emissions have been successfully mitigated. The trees and plants in this turf farm will likely be dead by then.

It should be obvious by now that Qatar and FIFA lacked integrity when announcing their sustainability plans.

“Football has the power to radically shift mindsets on climate change and mainstream climate action,” explained Isha Johansen, the president of the Sierra Leone Football Associa tion and FIFA Council member, to the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference summit.

“We can amplify key messages that will help to educate fans on climate change and encourage them to play their part in protect ing the planet and this beautiful game,” said Johansen.

Johansen is right — soccer has the power to create change. But right now FIFA is spreading a false message about the World Cup that is misleading for fans.

The decision to extend hosting privileges to a Middle Eastern country is an admirable one. Soccer is a global sport, so it’s only right that the World Cup is hosted in various locations, including the Middle East.

Yet, FIFA needs to be more responsible. This means establishing more strict regulations that allow for football to grow while also being en vironmentally friendly. Making global football a more sustainable sport is certainly going to be difficult — but it isn’t impossible.

The design of the centre ensures a world where your grandkids can work out

The Water Velocity monument in front of Pan Am features multiple swimming lane ropes intertwined. MAKENA MWENDA/THEVARSITY

JESSICA