The Ubyssey Magazine 2020 by The Ubyssey

THE UBYSSEY MAGAZINE 2020

COORDINATING EDITOR Alex Nguyen VISUALS EDITOR Lua Presidio NEWS EDITORS Henry Anderson and Emma Livingstone CULTURE EDITOR Thomas O’Donnell SPORTS + REC EDITOR Salomon Micko Benrimoh VIDEO EDITOR Jack Bailey OPINION + BLOG EDITOR Tristan Wheeler SCIENCE EDITOR James Vogl PHOTO EDITOR Elizabeth Wang FEATURES EDITOR Pawan Minhas SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR Luiza Schroeder WEB DEVELOPER Amelia He BUSINESS MANAGER Douglas Baird ACCOUNT MANAGER Adam McQueen PRESIDENT Ali Zahedi

NEST 2208 604.283.2024 The Nest 6133 University Boulevard Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1 ONLINE: ubyssey.ca TWITTER: @ubyssey INSTAGRAM: @ubyssey We would like to acknowledge that this paper and the land on which we study and work is the traditional, occupied and unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples, including the territories of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/ Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. COVER BY Alex Vanderput

EDITORS’ NOTE While the title of this year’s magazine is more than a little tongue-in-cheek, the subject matter is serious. The climate crisis is quickly becoming one of the defining issues of our time, and its importance will only continue to grow as its impacts become more severe and are felt in more places. It is a problem that political scientists love to call “super wicked” and that’s how it feels so much of the time, like something so big and complex that there’s nothing we as individuals can do. We think that’s part of where our tendency to make light of it comes from. When we joke about something it gives us a semblance of control. We hope that by seeing a different side of the climate crisis and hearing about the ways — big and small — that people and institutions are trying to make change, you will be inspired to act, whether that means changing your consumption or just signing a petition. Because at the end of the day, no matter how cheeky our discussion of the climate crisis is, it is here and happening now. And even if you’re not a policy-maker or a politician, we all need to have our eyes wide open when it comes to where our planet is headed. February 2020

JAMES VOGL

ALEX VANDERPUT

KEVIN JIANG

LUA PRESIDIO

BAILEY MARTENS

RIYA TALITHA

ELLA CHAN

SARAH ZHAO

Editor-in-Chief

Design Editor

Layout Editor

Visuals Editor

News Editor

Recreation Editor

Science Editor

Culture Editor

SONIA PATHAK

Personal Essay Editor

06 what goes around... 07 08 10 12

try ‘Olympic swimming pools’ ... I don’t have space in me ... Supermarket

14 15 16 19 20 22

too little too late

24 25 26 27

Perspectives: How to deal with eco-anxiety Climate, skiing and snowboarding ... The climate crisis is changing the face of soccer As the climate crisis escalates ...

13 ... comes around Sweet realization UBC straw ban ... The Game Perspectives: Climate justice and ... ‘Bad reputation’ ...

28 ways forward

29 Sharing the spotlight 32 Shopping for sustainability 33 The Carbon Footprint of Microaggressions 34 ‘Can I have oat milk instead?’ ... 36 The secret life of compost 38 After the storm ... 40 How UBC’s buildings are adjusting ... 42 Golf and the climate crisis ... 43 Confessions of an Albertan Environmentalist 44 Divestment across the country 46 UBC’s burgeoning bioenergy facilities ... 48 From Great Farm Trek to Climate Strike ...

WHAT GOES AROUND...

try Words by Sonia Pathak Illustration by Kristine Ho

wash empty milk cartons before I recycle them. I carry my groceries in a reusable bag. I sip my milk tea through a metal straw as the world burns. ‘Make a difference’, they say. As if my compost bin can save the world. Nevermind the fruit flies, just drown them in vinegar. Because the onus is on us. The weight of the world rests on our shoulders. Yet the fate of the world lies beneath the heels of the rich, their carbon footprints stamped down like corporate logos. Someone will fix this mess. Someone has to. Maybe it’ll be the rich and powerful — an act of

philanthropy, be it out of goodwill or for the tax benefits. Maybe it’ll be when their vacation homes sink in the tropics. Maybe it’ll be when profits begin to plummet as death tolls rise. Or maybe they won’t lift a single finger, burdened by the weight of diamond rings and gold-chained watches. Heavy is the hand that wears the Rolex, after all. Or perhaps we should look to the youth, for however long their activism will last. Because that’s the thing about caring: the brighter you burn, the darker everything feels when you inevitably burn out. It’s like staring at the sun. You

can glare up at it for however long your retinas last, but at some point, it’s easier to look away — to deny, to ignore, to live in our tiny little bubbles till they start to pop. Till it’s our water that’s polluted. Till it’s our air that’s unbreathable. Till it’s our homes that burn. Till we start dropping like fruit flies. Until it’s too little too late. I’ll still wash my empty milk cartons. I’ll still use reusable bags. I’ll still sip my milk tea through a metal straw, because if the world’s going up in flames, I might as well stay hydrated. I’ll do what I can, if only to say that I tried. U

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‘Olympic swimming pools’: UBC's thirst for water

he sound of rushing water is everywhere. It surges down the spillway — mossy green, then blue — spraying sky-high and settling into a bubbling pool. A swirling mist hangs in the air. This is the Cleveland Dam in North Vancouver, and it’s part of water’s long journey from the snowmelt of Vancouver’s mountains to your tap on campus. UBC is unique among most other universities because it owns and operates its own water system. But how does water get here? What do we do with it? And how do we reconcile our collective need for water with a climate crisis that could see it becoming our most precious commodity? It turns out a lot of people at UBC are thinking about these questions for our campus and beyond.

THE LIQUID LIFESPAN Last year, UBC used roughly 3.6 billion litres of water — enough to fill 1,500 Olympic swimming pools — at a cost of $2.3 million. But where did it come from? UBC’s water begins its journey in the mountainous regions of North Vancouver. Rain and snowmelt flow downstream from Metro Vancouver’s three watersheds: Capilano, Seymour and Coquitlam. The water is collected in reservoirs — lakes used to store drinking water that are closed

Words by Marissa Birnie Illustration by Tiffany Wu off to the public. UBC’s water is sourced from the Capilano reservoir and treated at the Seymour-Capilano filtration plant before it makes its way to campus. UBC buys its water from Metro Vancouver and stores it at its own reservoir in Pacific Spirit Park. UBC operates its own utilities, managed by UBC Energy and Water Services. “We effectively operate as a city,” said Managing Director of Energy and Water Services David Woodson. Water enters UBC through water mains below campus and is divided into high and low pressure zones, he said. Water is constantly flowing through more than 80 km of pipes laid throughout campus. The water is tested every Tuesday for abnormalities. The biggest threat to drinking water is typically backflow, which occurs when water flows in the opposite direction, posing a risk of contamination. Infrastructure can sometimes fail too. In 2017, a heat exchanger leaked materials into the hot water supply and as a result residents were asked not to drink the hot-water in several buildings. Wastewater — the water you flush down the toilet, for example — is treated at a facility owned by Metro Vancouver and then discharged into the Fraser River or the ocean. UBC manages its stormwater by discharging it through pipes that end in storm outfalls, which return water back to the environment.

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UBC’S RACE TO SAVE WATER In the Nest, a barista brews your morning coffee. A swimmer dives gracefully into the pool at the Aquatic Centre. Sprinklers flick on at the UBC Farm. The constant flow of water is a necessity on a campus where almost 80,000 people live and work each day. According to a 2011 external audit, UBC’s main uses of water come from process cooling, research and washrooms. Campus and Community Planning’s Water Action Plan, a document designed to guide UBC’s approach to water conservation, says the university has reduced its water usage by over 50 per cent since 1997, despite increasing enrolment. This is largely a result of two projects: ECOtrek and steam to hot-water conversion. ECOtrek was a near decade-long program designed to retrofit campus buildings to be more water and energy efficient. It was completed in 2008. In November 2007, at the United Nations Colloquium of University Presidents, former US President Bill Clinton name-dropped UBC as one of three universities leading the way in sustainability with its ECOtrek project. “All these [university] presidents are coming up to [then-UBC President] Stephen Toope afterwards and congratulating him and saying how proud he must be of being [part of] a world-leading university that’s doing these things. He gets on the phone at his hotel that night and wants to know everything about the initiative,” said Woodson. “The Bill Clinton speech we refer to as kind of our Stephen Toope moment,” he continued. He said his department felt a similar moment on the horizon when UBC formally declared a climate emergency. “We were just talking internally, like, ‘I think we’re going to have … a pivotal turning point in UBC’s histo-

ry.’ And when President Ono came out and declared a climate emergency, it really feels like that’s exactly what just happened,” he said. The other project that contributed to UBC’s water conservation efforts was the steam to hot water conversion, which saw the end of steam energy on campus. UBC saves 272 million litres of water per year as a result, according to Campus and Community Planning. These aren’t the only water-saving initiatives. There are dry toilets in the C.K. Choi building, a rainwater harvesting system on the roof of the Aquatic Centre and low-flow-showerheads in student residences. But despite its efforts, UBC is facing a problem. The campus is growing and our water consumption is growing with it. The goal is a 16 per cent decrease in water use from 2017 levels by 2025. There’s also a push to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 67 per cent below 2007 levels by 2020. Woodson says the steam to hot water conversion and the expansion of UBC’s bioenergy facility puts the university on track to meet its goals — he estimates a 63 per cent reduction in emissions by the end of the year. The issue is what to do next. “The low-hanging-fruit [is] gone, the mid-tree fruit [is] gone. It’s not just that it is the last 37 per cent, it’s going to be the hardest 37 per cent,” he said.

AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE Water could become more expensive and scarcer in Canada as the water supply becomes more volatle. Dr. John Wagner, an associate professor of anthropology at UBC Okanagan, witnessed the effects of the climate crisis in 2017 as the city of Kelowna, which was built on a floodplain, experienced severe flooding. Part of Wagner’s research involves

studying the Columbia River Basin in southeast BC that extends into the US. As the glaciers that feed the river melt as a result of climate crisis, he expects a severe impact on agriculture in the region. Dr. Leila Harris is a professor at the Institute for Resources Environment and Sustainability and the Social Justice Institute. She is also the co-director of UBC’s Program on Water Governance, which conducts research on water sustainability issues. Her research on water focuses on the intersection of the social and political. “We know that water is important for our bodies. It is important for our public health … but how else does it affect people’s experience in the world? So how do people, for instance, experience the inequality of knowing that they have water that’s less good than their neighbours?,” she said. Both Wagner and Harris say climate crisis impacts their teaching. “I’m seeing a lot of concern [about the climate crisis] in the classes I teach,” said Wagner. This semester, he’s teaching a course on the anthropology of water. “I really want to bring a sense of love of water, celebrating water, not just a sense of, ‘Oh dear, we have all these crises to handle around water,’” he said. Harris says she’s noticed a growing interest in climate issues from her students. “I just think that the imperative is that much more clear to everybody,” she said. “I feel like it’s becoming something that many other people who might not have been interested in want to be conversant and literate in. And so I’m encouraged by that, you know, just to see more people going to those sorts classes and wanting to do those sort of projects and wanting it to be a core part of their undergrad education.” U

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I don’t have space in me to hold all the pain of the world Words and illustration by Lua Presidio

’m Brazilian. Like every Brazilian, I have a family WhatsApp group that connects me from Canada to home. Some time in October 2019, messages about avoiding the beach flooded the group. I wasn’t sure what that was about — I joked that I sure wasn’t going to go to the beach, not in Canada. I didn’t think much of it until I went on Instagram. Every image on my feed was about the oil contamination of our beaches. It had gotten to the point where the governor of the state declared a state of emergency. Tonnes of oil had already been removed and they were still finding oil everywhere. Hundreds of animals had been found dead. No one knew where it was coming from because it wasn’t Brazilian oil. President Jair Bolsonaro said it wasn’t the federal government’s

problem to deal with and proceeded to ignore the national contingency plan for environmental emergencies. Oil had started to appear on our beaches months before, but the government hadn’t acknowledged it. Now, our beaches were black with petrol. Well, not our beaches, my beaches. The beaches I grew up with, where I’d dig up little molluscs. The sands that I would pretend were sprinkles, that I’d roll around in, feeling like a brigadeiro. The sea where I learned that the best way past a tall wave is through it. It was now buried in oil and the federal government refused to do anything about it. Part of me wasn’t surprised. That had been their general attitude two months before, during the biggest fire the Amazon rainforest had suffered in decades. The saddest part was that the fire was

man-made, both by supporters of Bolsonaro and by farmers in their annual illegal burning for open grazing areas. And then, the president accused the NGOs that work towards environmental conservation in the Amazon of starting the fires to “bring Brazil down.” The fire raged for a month before it simmered down to what is considered “normal,” but it still continues to burn, clearing thousands of hectares of virgin rainforest and killing thousands of animals. I was distraught about the situation. The government’s inaction was infuriating, but what could I do half a world away with no money to donate? I shared information. At least people would know. And if enough people knew, we would be able to do something about it, right? But while I was distraught about the Amazon, I was devastated about the

WHAT GOES AROUND...

northeastern coast. That hit home, literally. That was my family being affected. Everything that is part of who I am could be gone, or at the very least deeply affected. And I wasn’t even there to do anything about it. I couldn’t even try to save my home in whatever little way I could find. I couldn’t help my parents. The only people with the power to actually change anything were sitting and watching as if my world wasn’t disappearing. The state government declared an emergency situation, but that wasn’t enough to clean up the beach. So people started mobilizing — huge groups of people coming together to physically remove the oil, my family included. I wished I was there instead of them. Petrol is extremely toxic, so I was worried. If it touched their skin, they would have to immediately go to the hospital. If it was put in a place with no air circulation, it would release toxic gases. And here I was in Canada in the middle of fall, trying to focus on classes while everything I loved was in danger. The least I could have done was be there to grieve. To stand with my community.

I love being in Canada. It was my choice to come here. But that doesn’t take away the feeling of impotence that comes with not being able to take direct action on things that matter to you back home. The day I learned all of this, I cried. Sitting in a crowded 49 bus, looking at the news and the photos from friends and family, I sobbed. Out in public with no shame, feeling like there was nothing else to do. But I did end up doing one thing through all the tears — I kept sharing information. I shared image after image of what had become of my beaches. I wrote paragraphs and directly explained to friends what it all meant. How the oil was suffocating the marine life, how the government took no action, how it made me feel. Posting online is important. It allows people to be informed and at least have the potential to do something. But the truth is that sharing information can only go so far. Doing that wasn’t stopping more oil from appearing, it wasn’t donating money, it wasn’t helping with the cleanup.

Still, I did it. I did it for selfish reasons. I did it because I couldn’t bear that pain alone. I did it because I needed someone to feel my grief too, for someone to understand, for someone to tell me I wasn’t crazy for caring so much. I continued sharing, but I had to accept that there wasn’t much else I could do. It ended up that coming to terms with my own impotence was a lot like getting past a tall wave — sometimes the only way is through it, head first, with everything you have and with the hope that you won’t be washed away. I’ve been putting off writing this essay for a number of reasons. Part of me is scared to think too much about what has happened. The other part feels guilty for not being able to do enough. One can only hold so much grief and that is part of the reason I can’t be moved by any more climate-crisis-instigated disasters. I don’t have space in me to hold all the pain of the world. I just keep coming back to this awful question: what can one person do to save an entire ecosystem when even their government doesn’t think it’s important? U

WHAT GOES AROUND...

Supermarket Words by Zhi Wen Teh Illustration by Cat Hartt Towle

At the Supermarket You don’t see peanuts plucked out of the ground; leaves hanging clustered flowers twisting into pineapples peeling tree barks scraped for cinnamon In the Supermarket looking at that chicken breast suffocated in plastic You don’t see the fatigued factories caged fowls drowning in their own filth Walking down Supermarket aisles You don’t see the stale cornfields uniform piss-yellow pulverized into high-fructose syrup hidden in the fine print Shopping at the Supermarket You don’t see the blood of corporations deflowering nations to cement republics of malnourished brown bodies growing bananas at gunpoint As I look on the protests at the Supermarket vegans preaching organic farms, plant-based meats I don’t see the CEOs profiting from green packaging I don’t see the McDonald’s planted across every continent

All I see is the plastic that covers their eyes the only farms they see are on the TV screen I’ve seen chickens butchered their necks sliced thrashing about in the bin I’ve picked out fish swimming in tanks brought out to the table over a fire and bathing in a pool of soy sauce I see your disgust as you toss out chicken feet goat intestines pig trotters fish heads You refuse to confront the nature the life and death of the food packaged for your conscience tell me again how your diet is going to save the world when you can’t even tell me where your food came from. U

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Extinction Buffet

too little too late

Chimedum Ohaegbu

Kaila Johnson

We feasted our way into this mess and by God we’ll feast our way out.

metal straws clinking against ice cubes that sink in cheap coffee swirling inside the reusable cup you bought from Amazon

Here — we’ll sit by the fireplace (all places count as such now) and slake our smoky throats: drink deeply the tempests in teapots lest they thrash lands unprepared, unrepentant. Saltwater-crusted teeth are a small price to stay our course — we’re all Atlantis-averse here, chalice-sippers. With the right lies we can make darlings of anything so some of us sacrifice by falling in love. Nowhere’s safer for butterflies than the stomach, nowadays, and it mightn’t be so bad — being a home. We’ll make room for bees as well, atonement via appetite for collapsing them all. We can’t deny the thrill of rescuing honey. Consumption’s what doomed us, yes, but surely this new insatiability will save the creatures we’ve deemed deserving. Of course, let’s be practical. The mouth works in two directions: we must remember too to sing our children lullabies, lend them just laws that keep us fed.

Illustration by Ysabel Gana

why were turtles the last straw?

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Sweet realization Words by Harshit Kohli Illustration by Napat Asavamongkolkul

ew Delhi, October 2018. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move, couldn’t feel anything other than the weight of several bricks on my lungs. Drawing each breath was a struggle. Maybe if I didn’t roll down the car windows or perhaps if I stayed in over the weekend, I could’ve gone to school, rather than laying down lifeless on the couch. Eventually, it passed. It had to. After two days of suffering and fruitlessly hoping that breathing wouldn’t feel like having to push a building off my chest each time, my mother ultimately had to hunt down medicine which allowed me to, at the very least, think about some-

thing beyond this dismal state. And, so, I did think. First, I was appalled. I couldn’t believe that this was happening in the first place. How? The pollution wasn’t the only thing to blame for bewildering me though: it was also my own ignorance. I always saw the flashing red air quality index numbers on the news, but after a few seconds of complaining about the government’s actions or lack thereof, I would move on. But now I was trapped and what I was going through was very real. I witnessed what felt like the end of the world, but was merely a tiny fraction of the endless damage we’ve caused, and I am terrified because it has come back to haunt us. If I, among many others, could be brought down by air pollution like this, I don’t even know where to begin mapping out the reality of the planet today. Zooming out from Delhi, the entire northern region

of the Indian subcontinent is battling rapidly rising temperatures. I remember how summer used to be my favourite season as a child, filled with playing outside and eating popsicles. But I’ll never forget what it turned into. It became the season of confinement. A population of 22 million vanished into thin (air-conditioned) air, leaving the streets deserted. Then came the power cuts. Because there simply isn’t enough fuel to burn to solve the problems left behind by the trillions of tonnes we’ve already sent up in smoke. Blind industrialization chose to be oblivious to the fact that the planet is not immune and still fails to realize that tearing it apart won’t yeild any more dollar bills. It’s a catastrophe. They say you only value something after having lost it. While I lived in Jakarta, I came to know that the city is sinking, and my naïve younger self thought it was a problem for the distant future and that ‘they’ will fix it. This year, however, I read how the president has officially announced a project, costing upwards of $33 billion, to relocate the capital city of Indonesia to Borneo. I was heartbroken because it felt like I had lost Jakarta forever, which lead to the realization that there is no ‘they.’ There’s only me and you — us. Past generations have left us a nearly extinguished flame and now we must fight to keep it going because our future doesn’t hold merely the beginning. It spells out the end. U

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UBC works to combat straw ban ablism that sidelines those who need them most Words by Charlotte Alden Illustration by Yiyang Wang

“I

f straws weren’t around, I can’t drink,” said Deepi Leihl, 38. “People can give it to me, but it can be messy, and you want to avoid that. With straws, it’s another form of accessibility.” Leihl, the access collective coordinator at CiTR, has metatropic dwarfism. This is a severe skeletal dysplasia that results in small stature and short arms and legs, according to the Genetic and Rare Diseases Information Centre. As a result, Leihl uses a wheelchair to get around and straws to drink liquids as she is physically unable to take

caps off cups. If Leihl doesn’t have a straw, she has support staff who can help her drink from cups, but she said that she can only completely control how much and how fast she drinks liquids with a straw. “I’m not forcing myself to drink so much when I’m using a straw. It’s just what I can handle. I have control. When somebody else is doing it, then they have the control,” Leihl said. But this form of assistive device is at risk for people like Leihl as UBC transitions away from single-use plastics, thus phasing out plastic

straws. At UBC, the 2019 adoption of the Zero Waste Food Ware Strategy has been a catalyst for many environmentally minded changes. In August 2018, UBC Food Services stopped offering plastic straws in favour of paper alternatives. In January 2019, businesses on campus began to charge an additional fee of at least 25 cents for single-use coffee cups, with more changes to follow. The AMS implementation of the plan focuses on using up current supplies of cutlery and then subsequently transitioning to bamboo

... COMES AROUND cutlery and paper straws, as well as charging fees for single-use drinking cups and cutlery. “We basically have been taking the work they’ve done with the Zero Waste Food Ware Strategy and trying to incorporate it into our own operations because it fits very well with what our values are when it comes to sustainability,” said AMS VP Administration Cole Evans. However, the question of the accessibility of these bans has come up both at UBC and on the city-wide level. In Vancouver, the city has seen a ban of single-use plastic foodware. At the November 27 Vancouver City Council meeting, the council voted in a plan to phase out single-use plastics, with a plastic straw ban starting in April and a plastic bag ban starting in January 2021.

MAKING SUSTAINABILITY ACCESSIBLE Straws have been used for 5,000 years — the ancient Sumerians used a primitive version of modern-day metal straws to drink beer. However, the first patent for a drinking straw was filed in 1888. The straws were originally made out of paper and made bendable by inventor Joseph Friedman in the 1930s, a concept that was quickly adopted by hospitals in order to allow patients to drink while lying in bed, according to National Geographic. As the plastic industry grew in the late-19th and early-20th century, straws began to be made out of plastic because of its durability. These plastic straws allow many people with a physical disability like Leihl to consume their foods and liquids both hot and cold with more ease. This has raised questions of the accessibility of a straw ban. “I completely understand what the issue is. It is an environmental issue ... but I also understand from a person with a disability side because you know, it is an accessibility thing, but at the same time, there are alternative solutions that we can take,” Leihl said.

Anna Tornros, who has an invisible disability, has spoken out on the topic to The Ubyssey and in her course work. “[Banning plastic straws] is something that places the burden on disabled people and also consumers rather than systemic problems in regards to environmentalism,” Tornros said.

straws “ Ifweren’t around, I can’t drink

”

— Deepi Leihl Janet Mee, the director of the Centre for Accessibility, told The Ubyssey that the centre has been working with Campus and Community Planning (C+CP) to address this issue. “We’ve been working ... to look for places where there might be a tension or conflict or a challenge that might come about for a person with a disability who might be disadvantaged by that practice,” Mee said. A straw ban is one of those major tensions. The process is “iterative,” with the first step to allow people with disabilities to request plastic straws at places on campus, while also working with C+CP to come up with a better, longer-term option. “In the long term, we’re looking at the possibility of distribution without any financial barrier of something like possibly bamboo, reusable bamboo utensils,” Mee said.

Banning single-use plastic isn’t the only place on campus where sustainability and accessibility come into conflict. Mee points to motion-sensored lights and sustainable building materials as additional points of contention. Motion-sensored lights that turn on when there’s motion and turn off when there’s not can pose a challenge for those with vision impairment, as it can create an extended period of time when they need to adjust to the changes in light. She also explained that some sustainable building materials change the acoustics in spaces, impairing “the ability for people who are hard of hearing to be able to function in those environments,” making it so that they would not be able to hear as well as others in the same environment. Even the “pedestrian corridor[s],” the pedestrian walkways on campus, are inaccessible to those who can’t walk or can’t walk far. “There are things that are on [C+CP’s] radar, so we’re really trying to look at how we can be a leader in identifying those kinds of challenges and finding innovative strategies to [address] them,” Mee said. “But early on, there certainly were more tensions around some of those pieces.” In a recent presentation, Tornros outlined the issues of requiring individuals to request straws. “It is dangerous to put the people holding the straws in a position of power like that. It can lead to the burden being placed on disabled people. They have to ask, they have to explain, they have to convince the people that hold the straws that [they’re] deserving of a straw,” Tornros said in her presentation. Mee emphasized their commitment to an honour system when it comes to requesting plastic straws “so that people who may not appear to require the thing that they have asked for aren’t questioned.” “We don’t want a campus where we are questioning the authenticity of

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“[Banning plastic straws] is something that places the burden on disabled people and also consumers rather than systemic problems in regards to environmentalism.

”

— Anna Tornros

somebody’s need on the ground at the cash desk. A lot of our work will be in training the folks that are on the front line to understand the need for an honour system in terms of these requests and how we can put these initiatives into play in a really respectful manner,” Mee said.

ARE STRAWS ENOUGH? On the environmentalism side, the banning of plastic straws often faces criticism for not having enough of an impact, especially with the added considerations of accessibility. Jim Leape, the co-director of the Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions called plastic straws a “tiny fraction of the problem.” Companies moving away from single-use plastics on a company-wide scale — not just banning plastic straws — would be much more effective. “The risk is that banning straws may confer ‘moral license’ — allowing companies and their customers to feel they have done their part. The crucial challenge is to ensure that these bans are just a first step,” Leape told the Stanford Report. While UBC has placed an emphasis on the banning of single-use plastics, they are also working on other ways to reduce their environmental impact. The Climate Action Plan 2020 outlines UBC’s plan for the next year. The university will continue to work towards its ambitious target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 67 per cent from 2007 levels by 2020 and the 2050 target of zero per cent emissions. UBC is looking at new buildings, the energy supply, behaviour change, the fleet of buses and additional opportunities to reduce emissions. Evans sees banning plastic straws as the potential to encourage a “behavioural change.” “In conversation with UBC, what we talked a lot with them about is the studies that have been done that show the difference it makes when you show a fee has been added on to a

foodware items,” Evans said. He cited the psychological impact that getting charged for a plastic bag has on someone to bring a reusable bag in the future. “Once you start getting people to think about what foodware they’re using, maybe you’re starting to get them to think about when they’re at home ... when they’re out beyond campus and they’re using single-use items. Once we sort of get that change for them, the domino effect beyond that is hopefully to contribute to a more sustainable future,” Evans said.

IT IS A SPECTRUM Leihl plans to transition to metal straws when she runs out of plastic straws. Tornros described the potential injury risk from metal straws and the way paper straws can easily dissolve as reasons for plastic straws being the most accessible option. But Leihl says that for her, paper straws work and that she thinks metal straws will be the best option. Leihl explained that she has trouble with plastic straws, as they easily bend in a way that makes it harder to consume liquid. “Even the plastic ones, they tend to bend or when you’re sucking them in they tend to really bend out so that’s not actually safe either,” Leihl said. She emphasized the need to look at each person with a disability individually, and to not generalize all experiences on the basis of one. “It depends on the person. Each person is so different that you would want to ask what they prefer,” Leihl said. “If those people really need [plastic straws], then I mean who am I to judge? “Everybody needs to keep [an] open mind,” Leihl said. “You may not agree with them but some people need support and it’s [for] medical use as well. It’s a part of someone’s everyday life … this is just another form of [giving them the] quality of life that they deserve.” U

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The Game Words by Moe Kirkpatrick Illustration by Cat Hartt-Towle

wanted to write you a story. Well, a sort-of story. A thought experiment, really, but I was calling it a game. It’s participatory. It would have gone like this: together, we would decide how the climate crisis would make the world end. Would it have been the fires? The Arctic melting? Air pollution — soot or smoke? Methane? Carbon dioxide? I would have taken on the voice of a researcher, your teacher, helping you design this perfect ending. I am not a harsh professor. I have very specific rules, but they are not too hard. Some examples: Rule #38: Remember, this is a 200-level project. Points are awarded on the ability of the exercise to end the world, within a class-appropriate timescale. Your final project will be an execution of this exercise within a large-scale model, so make it doable! Rule #39: No floods. I don’t like floods; they look sloppy. See? It would have been easy. But I don’t have that story in me. How would it have been different from the way we already talk about the climate crisis, like it’s a spectacle, like it isn’t affecting real people right now?

Here’s a different story. When I was ten, and the winter brought no snow to Cincinnati for the first time in years, my best friend Hazel rolled their eyes and scoffed at the entire sky itself. They were bitter that whole winter, or as they still call it, “The Winter That Wasn’t.” My parents called it “unseasonably mild.” I wasn’t bitter or confused. Just unhappy. The winter before that one had been disappointing; snow had melted overnight, so no snow days. Or it melted during school and whatever remained by the time I could kick it wasn’t good packing snow. I hadn’t thought of that before. I hadn’t thought that maybe the next year, I wouldn’t be able to build an igloo with Hazel, because there wouldn’t be good packing snow. It seems obvious now. Of course there wouldn’t always be good packing snow. That’s how things work. The world keeps moving even when you’re not looking. Clocks tick down. In “Climate Change and the Stories We Tell,” Brenda L. Murphy and Jo-Anne Muise Lawless talk a lot about stories, and about how our depictions of the climate crisis define our perceptions and our interac-

tions with it. How do we speculate about the climate crisis? How do we speculate about our survival or our lack of it? Do our speculations reiterate “the existing world order”? Do they interrogate “what it could or should be”? If I wrote you a story, it would go something like this: The sun is bright and there is a desert before us. We have to cross it, but we have never been there before, and we know not what is on the other side. We have to shape what is on the other side, but we have to leave first. We have to walk there. I can promise you this: we will not be good at this. We will wear the wrong boots. We will not be able to keep the sand out of our eyes. The wind will scratch at our faces until we learn to cover them. We will not be good at this. We will be hungry and tired. We want this to mean something. We have been trying so hard. We wanted our trying to mean something. We are not good at being vulnerable. We are not good at trusting each other. We are not good at going into the unknown with our bare hands. Keep walking. U

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Perspectives: Climate justice and marginalized communities Words by Shanai Tanwar Illustration by Alex Vanderput

t’s all over the news. It’s brought up at dinner tables and in election debates across the world. It’s one piece of news whose messy splatter you can’t escape. In the past year, cities around the world have seen grassroots protests and strikes that have been attended by a multitude of people from different backgrounds. As land defenders all over the world, particularly those from Indigenous communities, bear the brunt of violent opposition to climate actions, it is imperative that climate justice is a central aspect of the movement. This begs the question: Is the climate activism movement a truly inclusive one? Western media’s portrayal of the movement seems to lump all the disparate movements under one banner. Most of the popular discourse surrounding the climate crisis comes from the media giants and colonial interests whose voices we’ve always heard, but do those conversations sound different coming from people of different marginalized groups? According to Alyssa Yu, the VP internal of the UBC First Generation Student Union, the movement has been largely accepting, mostly because of the comfort of community. “[The movement] does not only center itself on environmental protection, but also protects human rights, especially of vulnerable communities and historically marginalized peoples. “For people such as myself, the climate justice movement is important because we have family around the world, some in places where climate change is predicted to hit the

hardest. While the future may seem uncertain sometimes, it is comforting knowing that there is a growing social justice movement dedicated to protecting the people most vulnerable to climate change,” said Yu. Hannah Balba, a Filipina Canadian and a fourth-year history student, expressed that true realization of the the climate crisis’s urgency often only happens when it threatens a place we call home. “As a Filipina in Canada, it’s easy to not recognize the urgency of climate change when you hold the privilege of not having to experience the immediate effects of it. However, I still see how human-induced climate change brutally affects my people back home,” said Balba. “In the Philippines, lives and homes are lost with increased flooding and more deadly typhoon seasons, together with coral reefs being at the cusp of death because of increased pollutants and warming waters. Being connected to these issues back at home serve as a harsh reminder of who experiences the immediate effects of climate change.” Looking at environmental justice and regard for land as a natural and spiritual resource is an essential aspect of the belief system that frames several peoples of faith too. This faith aspect can sometimes be missing from larger narratives of the movement. UBC’s Zoroastrian Student Association ascribes full support for ongoing climate activism and its goals. They explained in a written statement to The Ubyssey that, "Zoroastrianism is an ecological religion and we believe in respecting and protecting the

“Forsuchpeople as

myself, the climate justice movement is important because we have family around the world, some in places where climate change is predicted to hit the hardest.

” — Hannah Balba

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environment and natural life. “Climate change has already resulted in serious damage across the world and unfortunately the situation will continue unless serious measures are taken to tackle climate change and to promote ecologism. As Zoroastrians, we fully support the climate movement and hope that environmental activists are successful in implementing their aims.” Power to Change, a Christian campus organisation whose chapter has existed in UBC since the ’60s, emphasize this connection that they feel in a written statement: “We believe God created this earth, and has given it to mankind to steward it well.”

The climate activism’s greatest challenge remains in successfully mobilizing political will to enact meaningful change. Some climate activists are dissapointed with the reluctance of governments around the world to combat the climate crisis without some political incentive. The conflict as a ‘third-culture kid’ from different backgrounds, particularly at this point in history, can be disorienting. Audrey Lo, a fourth-year psychology major said that “as a Canadian raised in Hong Kong, the approaches and strategies taken by the respective governments cannot be neglected. Canada often considers itself as one of the forerunners in

the fight against the climate crisis, implementing a myriad of environmental policies that target a sustainable future, albeit [amidst] criticisms and occasional contradicting deals made with large businesses.” “Although there have been efforts exerted by the government of Hong Kong, environmentalists have often criticized on the lack of structural and systematic support for the environmentally conscious,” she added. “If governments continue to lag behind without taking on an active and aggressive role in tackling the climate crisis and holding the violators responsible, I fail to imagine a world suitable for living in 2050, let alone a world for the generations to come.” U

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‘Bad reputation’: Mining engineering and mining justice at UBC Words by Riya Talitha Illustration by Kristine Ho

ccording to the 2019 Times Higher Education list, UBC ranks number one globally for “taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.” With its various sustainability initiatives, it certainly appears as though there’s a lot going on with UBC as an administrative institution with relation to the climate crisis. On the research and academic side, UBC is home to the Norman B. Keevil (NBK) Institute of Mining Engineering, a tight-knit Faculty of Applied Sciences department. Considered a leader in the field, it attracts innovative researchers and talented students every year. But as an extractive industry run by huge multi-national corporations, the mining industry is a contributor to the ongoing climate crisis — something that UBC experts undertand. Dr. Scott Dunbar, the department head of the NBK Institute and founder of UBC’s Integrated Engineering program, is quick to agree that the “[mining] industry has a very poor image and it hasn’t done itself any favours.” In turn, Dunbar aims to answer two questions through his research: What will a mine look like 50 to 100 years from now and what innovations are needed to make it happen?

‘KNEE-JERK REACTION’ According to Dunbar, the aim of making the mining industry have a lower carbon footprint is highly effective in the struggle against the climate crisis — something he believes the industry itself is aiming to do. On the other hand, he personally sees the practice of divestment as a “knee-jerk reaction [that] seems to be optics.” “The university should be at the forefront of this debate,” Dunbar said of the transition from fossil fuels to one of renewable energy — a “technical issue” that he sees as the future of the mining industry. Noting that the older generation is not doing enough to decarbonize the economy, he added that the NBK Institute focuses on teaching mineral and metal extraction over fossil fuel extraction. “In fact, I’ll put this out there: Greta Thunberg was right, absolutely right,” said Dunbar. “What we’re mainly focused on in this department is called green or cleaner techniques for doing mining.” Dr. Ali G. Madiseh, assistant professor and Canada Research Chair in advanced mine energy system, agrees.

Just last March, Madiseh delivered a “Mining with Clean Energy” research seminar at UBC which stressed that “ultra-efficient” technologies were the only way to ensure long-term sustainability and combat the Canadian mining industry’s “heavy reliance on fossil fuels.” He also believes that complete fossil fuel divestment is impractical, especially for developing countries which he thinks should not be held to the same ecological standards. But Madiseh does not deny the urgency of the climate crisis. Born and raised in Iran, he sees how much redder — and drier — the soil of his home village is becoming every time he visits. He believes that innovative mining engineering skills are a necessity for any sustainable future, while stressing the importance of precise terminology. “There’s no such thing as green,” he said, explaining that mining technologies and mines can only accurately be called sustainable, low or zero carbon. Adrian Heisis, a recent UBC mining engineer graduate, has a similar viewpoint. For Heisis, mining engineering — especially at UBC — is a forward-thinking technical discipline whose research and graduates are necessary for the development of sustain-

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able technologies and the transition to a carbon-free economy. But he says he often has a “difference in opinion” from the people that he works with when it comes to the climate crisis. “But that’s why I wanted to be there, so that my opinions will be heard within in the industry,” he said.

BROADENING THE CONVERSATION But for many campus community members, it’s not enough to just consider the sustainability of the mining industry through an environmental lens. Instead, they believe the mining industry needs to also adequately address its numerous human rights violations — especially in relation to Indigenous communities in various parts of the world — and its often violent treatment of land defenders. Last November, campus group Students for Mining Justice (SMJ) — in collaboration with a range of student and civil society organizations — held a “Stop UnderMining Indigenous Rights” rally in an effort to raise awareness about the Indigenous Xinka people in Guatemala’s peaceful protest against the construction of the Escobal silver mine and the resulting violence they faced. The Xinka people sued Tahoe Resources, the previous owner of the mine. This lawsuit was then settled by Vancouver-based Pan American Silver, after it acquired Tahoe Resources. “At this early stage we are just interested in learning from the different stakeholders and the different parties within their communities and getting their viewpoints,” said Siren Fisekci,

Pan American’s VP of investor relations and corporate communications, in a November 2019 interview with The Tyee. Started around three years ago, the SMJ is a collective of mostly Peter A. Allard School of Law students and faculty that focuses on the extractive metals and minerals industry. For Jacob Fischer-Schmidt, the president of the SMJ, being aware that Vancouver is home to numerous mining corporations is crucial, as they are “students in UBC in Coast Salish territories.” Through demonstrations, conferences and panel talks, the SMJ has actively campaigned against violence they believe “most people tend not to know much about.” Dunbar believes the human rights violations related to mining are “not so much in Canada ... but a lot of it happens in Africa,” adding he believes the responsibility for violations lies not with the industry as a whole but with miners who are involved in Artisanal and Small-scale Mining (ASM) in places like Africa and South America. “It’s very, very very messy and difficult, and there’s all kinds of different stories about things but it’s the reputation of the industry,” he said. “It causes problems for the reputation for sure and it’s hard to deal with that.”

ENTANGLED IN EDUCATION Mining companies also have a presence on campus. For instance, the Beaty Biodiversity Museum is named after Ross Beaty, the founder and chairman of Pan American Silver, following an $8-million

donation to UBC for the museum’s construction. But there are only a few courses about the intersection between mining and Indigenous rights. At UBC, courses like MINE 470 and 559 are crosslisted, and are called “Indigenous Peoples and Mining in Canada.” Along with MINE 555: Mining and Society, they are the only courses that deal with Indigenous communities with relation to mining. Delivered by Dr. Marcello Veiga, who is an expert on ASM, MINE 555 mainly deals with human rights in relation to the corporate social responsibility (CSR) of mining corporations and social ethics. For these corporations, CSR can take a variety of forms, through scholarships to marginalized students, attempts to diversify their employee base, donations, awards for innovations in mining engineering, investing in sustainability research and offering assistance to developing countries with their extractive industries. But Fischer-Schmidt questioned how much CSR can truly do to mitigate the mining industry’s impacts. “It’s hard to find a company that has a clear record because at the bottom line, mining is a violence on the land … so one of the big questions that we ask is how can we reckon with this idea that our reliance on all these minerals and mining in general as a whole industry and as a relation to the land is causing a lot of violence?” he said. U This is an ongoing story. If you have any information you would like to share, contact Riya Talitha at r.talitha@ubyssey.ca.

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Perspectives: How to deal with eco-anxiety Words by Barbara Neto-Bradley Illustration by Daphinie Situ

s the earth suffers from the slow and incremental wounds inflicted by humans, we too are suffering. Chances are you’ve found yourself thinking about how the climate crisis will affect you. What glacial ice melting means for your access to clean water. Whether and how rising sea levels will impact your hometown. How more frequent and extreme weather events — from flooding to drought — will change what makes it to your dinner table. Perhaps you’ve considered how the climate crisis is a social justice issue that will disproportionately affect marginalized groups. This is easily and understandably disheartening. The catch-all term for what you might be feeling is “eco-anxiety.” The climate crisis is the single largest threat facing our generation and yet there are few specialized resources for helping you cope when you need it. This gap may also exist at UBC, but there are a suite of available tools and resources that should at least help you manage your mental health, in general. Talking through your thoughts with someone else can help you work through them by shedding some light on the issue. It is important that you do this with someone that you feel you can share a comfortable and non-judgemental discussion with. Access 24/7 support through Empower Me (a multilingual call-in service at 1 (844) 7416389) and the Crisis Centre (chat over the phone or online at 1 (800) 784-2433 or Crisis-

CentreChat.ca). Talk to a professional at UBC Counselling Services by setting up a same-day appointment (appointments fill up early, so it’s best to stop by in the morning) or scheduling a mental health appointment with UBC Student Health. Talk to a peer at Kaleidoscope, an anonymous peer group that meets on campus weekly or check out the UBC Wellness Centre, which can pair you with a trained student volunteer to talk with. If you’re comfortable with it, con-

nect with friends and colleagues. They can often provide the most immediate and long term support network. Feeling helpless is stressful. Get involved with initiatives on campus or around Vancouver, as this can empower you and connect you with like-minded people, alleviating some of the stress. If you want to get involved and are unsure of where to start, check out UBCC350 and the Climate Hub. Visit Sprouts for some low-key and eco-friendly cooking hang-outs or just an affordable and sustainable on-campus cafe to study in and meet people at. Bring a friend or make some new ones! Much like the climate crisis itself, threats to our mental health feel challenging both to convey to others and to act upon. While both are important and urgent threats, we are taught to search for and deal with the instantaneously visible ones. Your thoughts, worries and troubles are valid. It is okay to have them and it is okay to want to talk about them even if they don’t seem headline-worthy. Unfortunately, the climate crisis and climate anxiety are going to be around for the foreseeable future. It’s important that you find strategies that work for you, to help you cope and effectively take part in this long struggle! U The author is not a mental health proffessional. If you need additional support, please contact Student Health Services and/or the Wellness Center. In case of an emergency call 911. The views of the author are their own.

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Climate, skiing and snowboarding: UBC mountain-goers worry about the future of alpine sports Words by Tanner McGrath

grew up ski racing in Vermont, at a small family-owned resort called Bromley Mountain. I knew the owner of the mountain well, and he once told me that if the mountain doesn’t make enough revenue to cover all of the yearly expenses the week of Christmas, it’ll run a deficit that year. This is obviously a shocking statement, but it’s also a very pertinent one, as we consider the long-term effects the climate crisis is having on skiing and snowboarding. In British Columbia, changing climate conditions and rising average temperatures are threatening the existence of many of the province’s ski and snowboard areas by shortening their seasons and making snowmaking conditions tougher. “I’ve noticed a change in the consistency of the conditions, definitely,” said Jean Westenberg, a 22-year old UBC graduate student and life-long skier. “In my opinion, the early- and late-[season] snow conditions have been getting worse because the snow is stickier and heavier and there is more hail or rain.” I asked Westenberg if he thought the climate crisis posed a serious threat to the future of the ski and snowboard industry. “Of course!” He said. “There is a worrisome trend for the future of the industry for sure and climate change is leading to more and more unpredictable weather conditions, which will affect people’s willingness to hit the slopes.” The Alpine Club of Canada (ACC) releases a yearly State of the Mountains Report, which highlights the impact of the climate crisis on the alpine environ-

Illustration by Alex Vanderput ment of Alberta and British Columbia. The 2018 report shows data on the average mean winter temperature of Cypress Ski Resort, located just north of Vancouver, between 1901 and 2015. That average winter temperature rose about 1.5 degrees Celsius during this period, and it was so warm during the 2015 ski season that Cypress closed down for most of the season. In the coming years, the conditions are expected to get even worse. The report went on to say if we don’t substantially curb greenhouse gas emissions, average global temperatures could rise by three to five degrees Celsius by 2100. This temperature rise would spell disaster for Cypress Ski Resort and other mountains in the greater Vancouver area, not to mention mountains all over the world. “Skiing in deep, natural snow, as opposed to machine-made snow, will be less possible and I believe this will directly affect the industry,” Westenberg said. “The industry will have to compensate for unpredictable weather with lots of snow-making machines.” Westenberg was concerned about both sides of the industry: the supply of snow to mountains and the demand for skiing by skiers. It’s a common and logical mentality among UBC students — as temperatures rise, it’s going to be tougher for mountains to maintain good conditions. And if the conditions are bad, why would skiers continue to ski? “If the weather becomes more unpredictable, we might see shorter seasons or seasons with very little

snow,” Westenberg said. If the average temperature at Bromley Mountain rises another two or three degrees, keeping a mountain open with decent conditions during the holiday period is going to become an increasingly complicated task. If that happens, I don’t know how Bromley Mountain will survive. As Westenberg and the ACC have pointed out, this problem won’t be restricted to my childhood ski resort — BC’s mountains will be affected as well. UBC skiers and snowboarders are rightfully worried about the future of their favourite winter activity because the climate crisis is having a palpable effect in our own backyard. U

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The climate crisis is changing the face of soccer, inside and out Words by Diana Hong Illustration by Alex Vanderput

hough it might not be obvious, the climate crisis affects more than just sports in the snow — it also affects summer outdoor sports like soccer. The climate crisis affects world temperatures, which also influences the performance of athletes. For soccer players, a 90-minute game in high temperatures can cause heat illnesses, such as cramps and heat stroke. This summer, UBC’s men’s soccer team travelled to Guangzhou, China for a two-week tournament where they faced extreme temperatures. “It was super humid and 50 degrees. You had to have water breaks otherwise people [were] passing out. It was crazy,” said Tariq Gareau, a player on the team who is also a second-year Sauder student. For the women’s team, conditions closer to home are equally brutal as they train in Portland, Oregon for the pre-season around the middle of August. “We have our cooler with ice water and you just dump cloths in it. At half time, people will come off and put all their heads to their neck in cooler. People are bright red and the turf is plastic [so] your feet will be on fire and people get blisters just by playing a game on it,” said Sabrina Anderson, a defender for the women’s soccer team. As a response to the climate crisis, many soccer organizations are now training referees on how to deal with

the heat in order to protect the players. They are told to make sure they give multiple water breaks to help players cool down and give them a chance to catch their breath. In fact, the first-ever water break in the FIFA World Cup’s history was on June 22, 2014 during the game between the United States and Portugal when the referee stopped the match for a

water break 39 minutes into the first half of the game. Another rule change in advance of the 2022 World Cup will give athletes more opportunities to hydrate, cool down and catch their breath to avoid heat-related illnesses. Qatar, a country known for its high temperatures in summer, will be the host of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. To avoid putting the players — many of whom will be running for the majority

of a 90-minute match, in danger — FIFA’s executive committee decided to hold the Qatari tournament during the winter instead. “Living in the Middle East, it was extremely difficult to play out in the summer with temperatures up to 50 degrees Celsius. It’s very likely to get dehydrated or sunburned and the increased levels of humidity made it feel very difficult to be out … playing outside in the summer is becoming more out of the question,” said fourth-year biology student Sarim Mirza, who plays soccer with UBC REC Intramurals. The temperatures can also affect fans who sit under the sun, often for hours, to watch games. At the 2018 US Open in New York, a tennis fan fainted in the stands and needed medical assistance. Qatar is trying to avoid that outcome by including air-conditioning technology in the fan areas as well as the pitch. As the risks for the athletes increase in tandem with rising global temperatures, there may come a time where soccer organizations like FIFA must begin allowing outright cancellations of games — even the World Cup tournament itself — because they may cause dehydration, exhaustion or heat stroke for the athletes. The climate crisis is changing soccer’s status quo and it will continue to do so unless the world takes swifter action to address the crisis. There may soon come a time where soccer tournaments are no longer played outside at all. U

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As the climate crisis escalates, mountain ranges are undergoing irreversible change Words by James Vogl Illustration by Alex Vanderput

s we unloaded the car and laced up our boots in the predawn chill, a glance up through the fir boughs revealed wispy clouds whipping off the craggy pyramid of rock on the horizon, driven by winds gusting over 95 kilometres per hour. It was just after 6:30 a.m., but my dad and I had been up before the sun. I couldn’t think of a better way to start a Monday morning. Standing at over 2,700 metres, Mount Shuksan, located in Washington state, is touted as one of the most-photographed mountains in the US — but this photogenic fixture is under threat. Like many of the world’s mountains, Shuksan and the glaciers that coat its flanks are undergoing dramatic change as the climate crisis escalates. The Hanging Glacier that dominates the mountain’s northern aspect, improbably suspended high above the valleys below, is in retreat. The Lower Curtis Glacier has run back uphill more than 130 metres since 2007 and each year, less snow and ice accumulates on its surface than melts away at its tongue. As we climbed away from Lake Ann towards the entrance to the Fisher Chimneys, the Lower Curtis steadily came into view. My dad was stunned by how far the glacier had receded in the four years since he had been there last. I didn’t have any sense for the scale

of the shrinkage until I compared my photos from our trip to photos from his previous trip. When I did, I shared his shock. The higher we climbed, the clearer the extent of the damage became. Across the mountain ranges that have come to feel like a second home to me, the combined effects of retreating glaciers, below-average snowfall during the winter and accelerated warming are having a dramatic and devastating effect. Popular routes up peaks like Shuksan and Mount Rainier are becoming increasingly compromised. These routes depend on intact, stable glaciers in order to be passable, so as the ice recedes and breaks up, they become impossible to safely navigate. The Price Glacier route up Shuksan — one of the 50 classic climbs of North America according to Steck and Roper’s seminal guidebook — has become increasingly difficult as the glacier has retreated. In a few decades of business-as-usual, climbing it may become all but impossible. To those who have never been close to such mountains before, these might not seem like pressing

concerns. But as someone who was lucky enough to get out into the hills frequently growing up, trends like this fill me with sadness. The mountains of the Pacific Northwest have challenged me, awed me and filled me with a profound appreciation for the overwhelming beauty and daunting power of the natural world, as well as our comparatively diminutive place within it. On the geological time scale by which the lives of mountains and glaciers are measured, humanity is a mere flash in the pan — yet we have gained the power to irreversibly alter landscapes millennia in the making. That morning, my dad and I were turned around by a combination of poor conditions and the effects of what would turn out to be a 40-degree fever, but I returned to Shuksan the following summer. We successfully topped out, despite the best efforts of an enterprising mouse who raided my cache of PB-and-J tortillas and chewed a third of the way through the waist belt of my climbing harness. Standing on the summit in the bright morning sun, my partner and I were afforded a sweeping panoramic view of the North Cascades. As I looked out over the skyline at all the places I had been and all the places I wanted to go, I felt the comfort and excitement that comes from returning to a place you love, like arriving at my grandparents’ house for the holidays. I can only hope that generations to come will be able to stand on that same summit and find those feelings of love and awe high in the cool alpine air. U

WAYS FORWARD W A Y S F O R W A R D

WAYS FORWARD

Sharing the spotlight: Why Indigenous climate activism stays in the shadows Words by Andrew Ha Illustration by Camila Castaneda

ennedy Tuccaro found herself barely able to move as she photographed signs held above thousands of people packing the plaza outside the Nest at the UBC climate strike. She saw people file onto buses, their signs and faces pressed up against the windows, while others joined bike brigades trailed by balloons — all headed to the art gallery downtown to unite with strikers from across the city. “Everybody came out from the fringes of their environmental clubs … and were able to all come together,” the 20 year-old third-year environment and sustainability student said. “It was a big moment. A very big collective happiness for sure.” The strike marked a big moment for Kennedy. While she couldn’t make it to the Vancouver strike attended by Greta Thunberg, she was surprised that Thunberg stopped in Alberta to meet with the chief of her band, Mikisew Cree First Nation. Although millions look up to Thunberg as the face of the climate movement, she’s only bringing awareness to a longstanding concern. Indigenous peoples continue to advocate for the environment, despite often being overlooked by media and UBC; as first-year Allard law student and Kennedy’s sister Justice Tuccaro says, they’ve done so “since time immemorial.” So why does the spotlight land squarely on Thunberg?

OVERSHADOWED In Canada, 15 year-old Anishinaabe activist Autumn Peltier was heralded

as a ‘water warrior’ for her internationally recognized advocacy a year before Thunberg rose to fame. Many Indigenous people have spoken at climate strikes, including associate professor Sarah Hunt at UBC. In Vancouver, Chief Judy Wilson of the Neskonlith First Nation gifted Thunberg a scarf that the teen then wore as she spoke, and in Edmonton, nine year-old Cree singer Noah Simon performed before Thunberg took the stage.

“

I think it is the responsibility of those that have a lot of spotlight and have a lot of influence to give more power to those who may not necessarily have it.

”

— Kennedy Tuccaro

But Indigenous people haven’t received anywhere near the attention that Thunberg has. They often serve as opening acts before the main event: a Greta Thunberg speech. “I think that it’s amazing how far she’s come for how young she is,” said Justice. “But at the same time, she should not be the sole focus of this whole entire movement.” While Kennedy applauds Thun-

berg for highlighting the names of Indigenous activists, she says it’s “unfortunate that it has to be a big name that calls attention to what Indigenous people have been fighting for for a very long time. “I think it is the responsibility of those that have a lot of spotlight and have a lot of influence to give more power to those who may not necessarily have it,” said Kennedy. Both Kennedy and Justice believe that the issue lies in colonial history. Justice says this is part of society’s ignoring of Indigenous voices that has happened for years. “That it’s come to the forefront of worldwide news because of the spotlight that was put on a European girl … reflects this colonialist structure that we can only really pay attention to these problems if they’ve been exacerbated by someone who has the ability to be in the forefront of these headlines,” she said. But Thunberg’s reputation does bring benefits. Kennedy doesn’t blame Thunberg for her stardom — instead, she sees it as a positive. On a small scale, Kennedy raises awareness through her work with beeswax wraps. It’s a new product intended to replace plastic wrap, which she says provides an opportunity to bring up climate issues with curious customers. Volunteering for marine conservation non-profit Sea Smart and concern over plastic packaging sparked her activism. She’s since helped with beach cleanups for Surfrider and now works for Bee Kind Wraps, a reusable beeswax food wrap business.

WAYS FORWARD

Kennedy says that there is “a lot more that could be done” by climate movement organizers to include Indigenous perspectives, but acknowledges the importance of Thunberg’s limelight: “Any attention is good attention.” But 21 year-old Reeva Billy doesn’t think there’s space for her in the movement. The third-year First Nations and Indigenous studies (FNIS) major says she isn’t involved with the climate movement at UBC because, perhaps due to her personal bubble, she and people in her circle haven’t heard of any climate opportunities for Indigenous people on campus. Her activism happens outside UBC. Of Squamish, Yale and Nuxalk heritage, she’s an avid war canoer and has been involved with the tradition since she was two or three years old. Nowadays, Billy trains young canoers at her family’s canoe shed in North Vancouver. But in her memory, the waters have always been far from pristine. “We would find oil slick in the water, different pieces of trash, used contraception and that kind of thing,” she said. “So when we’d find things that we felt safe touching,

we’d pick it all up … We’d put it in our canoes, and we’d practice with it and then bring it back in and throw it in the trash or recycling.” She feels “hopeless” about the future of the canoe shed as sea levels continue to rise. “It makes me feel powerless to what’s happening because I know the Earth wasn’t like this pre-colonization and everything. It feels disrespectful.”

FROM AWARENESS TO ACTION While spreading awareness is crucial, many are calling for the lack of Indigenous spaces in the movement to be addressed. According to Dr. Candis Callison, faculty member in the UBC graduate school of journalism and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies, the focus used to be on attracting policy makers’ attention through public awareness, but this philosophy has changed since she began her climate research at the turn of the century. “Now you have a lot more public awareness, but how is that translating into action?” she said. In her work on Indigenous media

representation in the climate crisis, she explains that Indigenous peoples are disproportionately impacted by global warming because they often live outside of urban centres — in Northern Canada and the Arctic, for example, where melting ice raises sea levels and impacts food systems. Despite this, Indigenous peoples are “very underrepresented” in the “celebrity-focused” media which often relies on headliners to prop itself up. She notes a lack of Indigenous voices in coverage of the UN Climate Change Conference held December 2019 in Madrid. “That said, there are more stories than there have ever been,” she said. “And at the same time, those stories still … struggle with fitting into very neat narratives where Indigenous people are either heroes or they’re victims.” And there continues to be a diversity of responses Indigenous communities have had to the climate crisis, but media needs to pick up the slack, she says. Closer to home, some are questioning the opportunities available for Indigenous voices at UBC. Justice says it’s difficult to take up space when Indigenous voices have been

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sidelined for so long. “In my experience and from people that I’ve talked to … sometimes they don’t feel like we have space here at all,” Justice said. Going beyond perfunctory land acknowledgements, Billy thinks UBC should do more by co-organizing events with the First Nations whose territory the university sits on.

‘AN INTEGRATED CONCERN’ Since 2018, Dr. Sheryl Lightfoot, senior advisor to the president on Indigenous affairs, has overseen the creation of UBC’s Indigenous Strategic Plan (ISP) to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) after a provincial mandate. The ISP, currently in a draft stage, is intended to replace the university’s 2009 Aboriginal Strategic Plan (ASP). “There’s nothing wrong with [the ASP],” she said, explaining that the ISP would address a shifting atmosphere around reconciliation. “It’s just that it’s reflecting a different time.” But a December 2019 draft of the ISP had a notable omission: there was no mention of the climate crisis in the 38-page document, aside from a brief list describing a Land and Food Systems program curriculum. Lightfoot says that the ISP team collaborates teams working on the Inclusion Action Plan, the Climate Action Plan and the International Strategic Plan. Although the three plans often intersect, this is because none

wants to step on the toes of another. “Each of these plans is working in a realm. And so I think the basis of working has been that we respect those realms, and then we come together to talk about how they intersect and how we can help one another in advancing them all.” But to what extent can UBC pursue reconciliation if its guiding plan leaves out the environment? “Concerns that are coming from Indigenous communities are not separated from climate change,” said Callison. “Climate change is often an integrated concern of people who are watching the environment for which their communities are situated in, their relations with lands and waters, their relations with each other.” Callison says the question of how focused UBC is on climate in relation to its commitment to issues affecting Indigenous communities “needs to be asked often.” With the climate’s uncertain future, traditional knowledge of the environment gives not only a historical context to understand the crisis, but a resource that the university can integrate in its planning. In other words, a document such as the ISP would benefit from a link to the climate crisis, especially when Indigenous ways of life are so closely linked to the environment. And the ISP aims to implement UNDRIP — several articles of which address Indigenous peoples’ right to environmental sustainability. Billy agrees. “The way that they’re approaching their relationship with Indigenous people is fragmented,”

she said. “They’re not looking at the whole picture here.” Lightfoot says she’s open to including that reference. However, she wants to avoid being “top down,” instead waiting for community feedback on what should be included. Whether it be at UBC or in the wider climate movement, a dearth of opportunities for Indigenous peoples to take space continues to be felt. Although media coverage has changed, the climate movement still misses out on Indigenous voices and traditional knowledge that could be key to addressing the crisis. For Billy, the outlook of her canoe shed is grim if the crisis isn’t addressed. Her father told her of a dream where he walked through a newly built canoe shed of cedar with lights shining within. He was old, so there was a strong woman by his side helping him walk through the shed. That woman? He thinks it’s Billy. And so she and her brother are tasked with determining the future of the shed if sea levels force them to relocate. “It’s only about four metres above the [sea] level,” she said. “And it should be thoroughly underwater by the time 2050 is here, which means that we’ll have to relocate and then we’ll have to pretty much uproot our lives when it comes to canoeing. “I wish I could be that Indigenous student who’s like ‘if we work hard enough, we can make a difference.’ But I’m working my hardest to be a part of a different cause.” U

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Shopping for sustainability Words by Sam Smart Illustrations by Ayra Faiz

eople use personal care products every day, and often they don’t realize how much waste they create as they go about their day. From makeup to menstrual products to skincare, it can be hard to find companies that make products with the environment in mind. Vancouver, as a major Canadian city that is often pretty environmentally conscious, has some companies that strive to lessen their environmental impact, while still preserving quality. This can mean anything from reducing wasteful packaging to almost entirely eliminating waste. Here, we’ve compiled an assortment of Vancouver-based companies that sell and produce sustainable personal care products. When it comes to beauty products, it’s often quite hard to find anything very affordable, especially in an expensive city such as Vancouver. While this list keeps affordability in mind, there aren’t many options that are both sustainable and affordable. Some products are expensive as a one-time cost and some are unavoidably pricey. The intersection of affordable and sustainable is hard to come by, and this is something that could hopefully be addressed in the future by these brands. U

ILIA This makeup brand seeks to make products that use natural and organic ingredients as well as safe synthetics. It also tries to make sure its packaging is eco-friendly by using materials such as recycled aluminum and recycled paper. Its prices are more on the mid-range side, which unfortunately seems to be the case with a lot of Vancouver-based beauty brands.

Well Kept This company makes shaving products, most notably its plastic-free safety razors that are meant to reduce waste and provide a good shave. The safety razor can fit any standard razor blade, and it sells its own blades as well. The price of its safety razor is $68, which is a lot up front. But with repeated use, it could end up being cheaper than buying disposable razors.

Lunapads

MOONDOG is another menstrual product company based in VancouA pretty well-known company for men- ver, but it sells only one thing at the strual products, Lunapads produces moment: a black period underwear period underwear and reusable pads. for light-to-medium flow days for The underwear costs about $40, and $20. It seeks to create an affordthe pads range from $5.99 to $29.99. able and low-waste product, and It claims each pad replaces over 125 comparatively its price is much disposable pads and that, based on lower than the better known Thinx its sales, it has diverted more than 2 and Knix. million disposable pads and tampons from landfills every month. Lunapads seeks to reduce waste when it comes to menstrual products, which are a necessity for every person with a period.

RMS Beauty

Another makeup company, RMS not only seeks to create more clean products that are safe for skin, but it also uses packaging that is minimal, recyclable or reusable to create less waste. Its products, like ILIA’s, have prices that are mid-range.

MOONDOG

While it’s not a brand, The Soap Dispensary is a store that sells refillable soaps, cleaners, personal care products and more with the intention of reducing waste by encouraging the use of reusable containers. The products it sells are also biodegradable and have minimal environmental impact. It’s located at Main Street and E 21st Avenue, and it also opened a zero-waste grocery store next-door called Kitchen Staples.

The Soap Dispensary

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The Carbon Footprint of Microaggressions Words by Kaila Johnson Illustration by Daphinie Situ

or starters, I’m not a vegan. The movement of transitioning to a plant-based diet, reducing the consumption of animal products, has adherents because of the negative environmental impact of meat consumption and the dairy industry. Veganism became more mainstream in the mid-2010s, but this lifestyle dates as far back as the 1940s. It has since snowballed to the point where Whole Foods is no longer the end-all be-all, for plant-based eating. There are other reasons why people choose to be more plant-based besides just the environmental side. I’ve seen one too many videos about gut health with mentions of nondairy probiotics. Not only are they educational, but they’re really helpful if you need something to fall asleep to. One reason that is pushed heavily onto non-vegans is how violent and abusive the industry is to animals. There have been times where people have set up outside of the Nest with graphic videos and have tried to

highlight this issue to uninterested students. People are now more open to the idea of going vegan or vegetarian, but there are still hurdles to going all in. In Irving K. Barber, I overheard someone complain about how many vegetarians there are at UBC while I rolled my eyes a few feet away. I decided to go vegetarian over a year ago, more for the environmental aspect. Even so, I try not to be too hard on myself for ‘slipping up.’ I’m the type of person who doesn’t want to step on anyone’s toes. In other words, if my mom makes food that has meat in it, I’m still gonna eat it. “I thought you were [insert diet here]” is something I’ve heard over and over. I get why people bash vegans. You live your life being taught one thing and suddenly this alternative, ‘hippie’ lifestyle pops up — you’re bound to be confused by it. Even the term ‘plant-based’ is becoming more common because of the negative connotation with the word vegan. By

making passive-aggressive comments about someone not being the perfect vegan or vegetarian, you miss the whole point. Minimizing the overall amount of animal products consumed, such as partaking in Veganuary or Meatless Monday, is much more beneficial than pointing fingers and doing nothing. It pushes people away from making small changes in the first place. Fearing judgment and striving for perfection can act as obstacles to living sustainably. Asking a barista to use your own tumbler for the first time is unnecessarily stressful. Not buying yourself a coffee because you didn’t bring your reusable cup could hinder your learning for the day. We’re already feeling the impact of ignoring the minor ‘inconvenience’ of sustainability. If the science behind being plant-based interests you, whether it’s health-wise or environmental, dive into the deep end and do some research. Looming existential dread can be combatted by taking action, regardless of how big or small. U

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‘Can I have oat milk instead?’: Building a sustainable campus food system goes beyond cutting single-use plastics Words by Alex Nguyen Illustrations by Rachel Cheang

offee was the first thing on our minds as SEEDS Sustainability Program Manager Liska Richer and I walked into the Orchard Commons dining hall for an interview about sustainable food systems on a rainy December morning. “Can I have a latte with almond milk please?” said Richer, before something caught her eye. “Oh actually, can I have oat milk instead?” At the time, I didn’t give the switch much thought. How much is there really to something as basic as a cup of coffee? As Richer would later point out during the interview, the answer is a lot. “Climate-friendly food has more to do than whether or not you just eat meat or don’t eat meat,” she said. “If you’re looking at the issues with almonds in California and how water-intensive they are, so I was really pleased to see today that they have oat milk. “And we’ve got fair-trade coffee, excellent. Is it shade grown? The sugar that we put in there, is that fair trade? … How much sugar are we putting in there?” While much public attention has

been given to phasing out single-use plastic at UBC, there are many other complex considerations and initiatives that go into building a sustainable campus food system. Given its scope, this goal has demanded and will continue to demand the full capacity of the ever-expanding UBC Food System Project (UBCFSP).

‘A LIVING LABORATORY’ From reducing single-use plastic items to purchasing only sustainable seafood, the university community is working to build a sustainable campus food system. But these well-publicized initiatives are just the tip of the effort. In fact, this goal has been central to the UBCFSP, the longest-running collaborative project at this university. Started in 2001 by SEEDS and the Faculty of Land and Food Systems (LFS), the UBCFSP — through its capstone course, LFS 450 — has pulled together research from over 2,000 students, faculty members and community groups who study not only how the university community consumes food, but also how it produces, processes, markets, disposes of and recovers food. Currently, the project lists “climate friendly food systems, zero waste and circular economy, biodiverse food systems, food justice and sovereignty, urban food production and systemic food insecurity” among its priorities. The project also allows students to present their recommendations to

their community partners for implementation. In many cases, they help to inform changes in policies and programming. Former LFS 450 student Olivia Light recalled doing a baseline audit of UBC Food Services’ food vision and values plan. Focusing on Feast, Gather and Open Kitchen, her team would go into these three first-year residence dining halls at different meal times to evaluate the offering of plant-based options, the transparency of nutritional information labelling and the affordability of different categories of food. “One of our main suggestions was to look at that affordability and see where Food Services could do a little more to make sure that students are able to have not just affordable menu items on campus but ones that are healthy as well,” she said. “To see that UBC Food Services was able to just recently open up that $5 [Fooood] cafe, it was connected to one of our biggest hopes for implementation.” Their end result also could leave a physical legacy on campus. Born out of a UBCFSP initiative in 2007, the Orchard Garden on Totem Field continues to provide not only an outdoor classroom for all levels of study but also a food-growing space for Agora Cafe. “It’s a living laboratory,” said Richer about UBCFSP broadly. “What we’re experiencing here is like we’re a microcosm and part of what the broader systems around us, the city of

WAYS FORWARD Vancouver and the world [are] dealing with.” Going into the future, there is a particularly conscious effort to go beyond a “climate-centric lens” when thinking about sustainability. “Under procurement … it really needs to be a lens that’s embedded within people and planet so from a justice lens, ethical lens and also from nature’s rights,” said Richer. “So the bottom line isn’t necessarily lowest greenhouse gas emissions — there are other things you need to take into consideration, such as people’s livelihoods and the impact on water supplies.”

more is making something sustainable,” said Moore, who views affordability as “social sustainability.” “Initial signs are maybe [Fooood] is sustainable.” At a more systemic level, the UBCFSP lists food insecurity as one of six current key priorities. It’s also supporting the Food Insecurity Action Team (FIAT) that is working to tackle the issue campus-wide and at its roots. “We can’t talk about food insecurity without talking about income and cost,” Dr. Candice Rideout, FIAT co-chair and a senior instructor in LFS, said in a September 2019 interview.

‘THE BOTTOM LINE’ But as almost 40 per cent of UBC undergraduate students face food insecurity, affordability is perhaps the most influential factor. “What we found in conversations with different students is that … you may care about fair trade and you may care about zero waste, but if you only have $5 in your wallet, that is going to determine the bottom line,” said Light. UBC is actively engaging with this issue. In fall 2019, the university opened a “choose-what-you-pay” outlet called Fooood in the Earth Sciences Building, which allows for $5 hot meals. There are also options to pay $10 or $15 to help maintain the operations or “pay it forward.” So far, it has served around 100 customers per day with 70 per cent of them choosing the $5 option and 30 per cent paying $10 or $15, according to Colin Moore, the director of UBC Food Services. Besides Fooood, there are other outlets that focus on affordable and sustainable food like Agora, Seedlings and Sprouts. But these are all run by student volunteers — a business model that wouldn’t work for a UBC-run outlet. “It’s not just about cheap food ... [it’s] important, [it’s] necessary but what’s

“In our context, we are looking at income-driven food insecurity. It is not an issue of having no food in the grocery stores. … Our work would not be addressing security if we weren’t looking at the broader question of affordability.”

NO END IN SIGHT Reflecting on complex issues that the UBCFSP is grappling with, Richer believes there’s only one direction for the project: expansion. “It needs to expand because of the recognition of our food system crisis, whether that’s food insecurity or the climate crisis within our food system or the ecological crisis,” she said. She hopes that there will be more

opportunities for joint initiatives and funding between faculties. Similarly, she stresses the need to recognize and respond to food systems’ major influences on the environment, especially since UBC declared a climate emergency in December 2019. “We all eat,” Richer said. “[We are] really lucky to be somewhere like UBC, where the purchasing power surge is so enormous because [we] can create a lot of ripple changes in the system.” The rapid increase of third-party vendors on the campus food scene is also begging the question of how to maintain accountability on the issue of sustainability, as Light pointed out. According to Moore, UBC is focusing on sharing information about sustainability with over 20 outlets in the campus core and around 50 outlets in the periphery. For instance, the Zero Waste Foodware Strategy went into full effect in January after being introduced in June 2019, requiring businesses on campus to phase out single-use plastic items and charge a small fee if needed. In turn, university staff will be available to respond to questions from businesses and provide UBC materials on the initiative. But beyond communications and outreach, there seem to be little to no hard accountability measures for third-party vendors. “I would agree with that,” Moore responded with a laugh. “I guess you got to find that balance. … I think we’re taking the softer approach as opposed to policing food providers on campus that may not be demonstrating good sustainability.” Ultimately, with constant new innovations and developments at UBC, there may simply be no endpoint for building a sustainable campus food system. “Sustainability is not something that can be achieved — never can,” Richer explained. “It’s a process. It’s ongoing.” U

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The secret life of compost: How UBC’s closed-loop system tackles food waste Words by Kevin Jiang Illustration by Alex Vanderput

ew people give much thought to the food scraps they throw away. But for UBC’s compost system, there’s much more to organic waste than meets the eye. Since 2004, UBC has hosted a closed-loop, in-vessel composting system on campus. This means, like the “Hotel California,” most organic waste generated at UBC can never really leave; instead, it’s processed right on campus into compost for use by the landscaping department.

Unfortunately, the missorting of waste and plastic contamination of UBC’s green bins are putting a damper on its composting efforts.

THE STRANGE AND SQUISHY STORY OF FOOD WASTE UBC hosts two composting facilities on campus: one in the south end of campus and one hidden away in the Nest. The south campus in-vessel facili-

ty can process five tonnes of organic waste daily, churning out compost ready for maturation every two weeks. It’s also the first of its kind in a Canadian university, reads the UBC Building Operations’ website. To produce compost, food and organic waste undergo a complicated journey of aeration, curing and degradation by bugs, worms and microorganisms. In my quest to unravel the secrets of compost, I spoke with Dr. Antho-

WAYS FORWARD ny Lau, an associate professor in chemical and biological engineering pursuing research into organic waste-to-resource recycling and one of UBC’s few remaining composting experts. “There are two stages to compost: the active stage and the curing stage,” he said. In the south campus processing facility, waste is first shredded and then dropped into trays. These are slowly pushed along a conveyor belt, while vents blow oxygen into the pre-compost to keep its many microorganisms alive, he explained. After a few weeks of microorganism digestion on the conveyor, the compost is spun in a chamber to further break down the material. Finally, after three long weeks, the compost is ready for curing. “You can make the analogy to wine. Wine, if you cure it properly, you get a higher quality wine,” Lau said. During curing, which takes place over a period of months, macromolecules in the organic waste, like lipids, carbohydrates and proteins are broken down, with the end goal of transforming unusable nitrogen into the type of nitrogen that plants need to survive. The whole process takes place in a fully enclosed machine, which serves to both regulate the temperature, as well as to keep odours from escaping. The usable nitrogen and the accompanying slurry of useful nutrients in cured compost function as a fertilizer. However, “the main goal of composting is not to produce fertilizer,” said Lau, explaining that organic compost can’t compare with synthetic ammonia as fertilizer. “… The main advantage of compost is as a soil amendment.” As broken-down organic waste,

compost contains mostly carbon compounds. Lau said that the extra carbon can help cation exchange in the roots of plants, improve soil water retention and slowly release nitrogen at levels safe for plants. Too much nitrogen at once can prove deadly, he said.

GREEN BIN DIVING FOR PLASTICS AND STYROFOAM According to Tamas Weidner, UBC manager of waste management and the garage, the campus generated a whopping 600 tonnes of food waste last year. He believes that number has gone up this year. However, not all of that waste is going to the composter. “Currently, our contamination rate for the campus is about 15 per cent,” he said. “15 out of 100 green bins are contaminated and are then sent to the landfill.” This means that, if the trend keeps up, over 90 tonnes of compostable waste will be headed to the landfill instead of the garden this year. That’s why contamination is currently the biggest problem for composting on campus, according to the UBC Building Operations website. It’s also why plastics are giving the workers at the in-vessel facility a collective headache. According to Weidner, staff must manually sort through every single green bin sent to the facility. Unfortunately, some are simply too contaminated to separate efficiently. “That 15 per cent is so contaminated that we say you know what, more than half the bin is plastic and non-compostable material. We are now going to deem this as ‘garbage,’ said Weidner. UBC conducts a volunteer-led waste audit annually to check where our waste is really going. In the 2017 audit, which sifted through 387 kg of waste from the Nest, only 22 per cent of items found in the garbage actually belonged there. 59 per cent

of the garbage sorted was compostable. Sending organic waste to the landfill is bad news. Not only is it robbing UBC’s landscaping department of high-quality compost, it’s contributing to the climate crisis through truck emissions after transporting organic waste to the landfill, said Weidner. What’s worse, methane is released by organic waste decomposing in landfills, a gas 28 times more effective than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in our atmosphere, reports The Washington Post.

A GREENER FUTURE? Heading into the new decade, UBC has missed its goal of diverting 80 per cent of waste away from the landfill. The waste diversion rate between 2018 and 2019 was closer to 54 per cent. Weidner said the in-vessel facility will continue processing for the foreseeable future. However, a growing student base may put a strain on the processor. “Future-wise we’re going to continue to process and make our own compost because there are not many options out there anymore,” he said. Weidner lamented the lack of composting options in the Lower Mainland. He said there were more composting facilities before stricter regulations shut them down. “[It] kind of limits us to having to process our own material,” he said. But at the end of the day, the least we can do is to sort our trash. U

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After the storm: How one city’s love affair with rugby helped it to heal Words by Salomon Micko Benrimoh Illustrations by Shereen Lee

he sites of a major international sporting event are usually reserved for the largest and most glamorous urban centres of the host nation. The 2019 edition of the Rugby World Cup, held in Japan throughout October, was no exception — except for one city. Away from the sprawling urban masses of Tokyo or Fukuoka lies the small town of Kamaishi in the Iwate prefecture. Kamaishi, nestled in a valley that borders the Pacific Coast, has a population of just over 34,000, but it found itself amongst the host cities of the World Cup. The Kamaishi Recovery Memorial Stadium, built in 2018, has the ability to seat almost half of the entire town, although it was still by far the smallest venue of the entire tournament. The home venue for the Kamaishi Seawaves rugby team was built in part with harvested Japanese cedar that was collected after a nearby 2017 wildfire and donated seats from the former Tokyo National Stadium. The stadium is also one of the hundreds of new buildings in a coastal city recovering from natural disaster. Kamaishi bore the brunt of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, where almost all of the city was wiped out by 14-foot high waves and over 1,250 people were either killed or went missing.

CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT Perhaps the only thing that wasn’t destroyed was the city’s love affair with rugby. Even the Seawaves players put everything aside, from rugby to their own lives, to help in the immediate recovery efforts in Kamaishi.

region’s recovery and the city’s rich history with rugby. “We were walking around the streets, people are taking our photos, everyone knew this World Cup was going on. It was such a spectacle in Japan and they really embraced us as part of the community,” explained Coe, who was with the World Cup squad in Kamaishi as they prepared to take on Namibia in their final group stage match. “We were very excited to play because that was a winnable game for us. … The whole team was looking really good moving forward into the Namibia game.”

STORM STRIKES

“When they decided that the World Cup was going to be there, they really [wanted] to bring fans to Kamaishi to support the rebuilding efforts and show how the city has rebounded from the tsunami,” said Andrew Coe, a fullback for the Canadian National Rugby team and a Thunderbirds rugby alumni. Becoming a venue for the 2019 World Cup was also meant to be the crowning achievement for both the

But fate had other plans in store for the Canadians. Typhoon Hagibis, a category five super typhoon, came knocking on Kamaishi’s door before the players got a chance to take the field. The storm brought wind speeds higher than 200 kilometers per hour and became the costliest Pacific storm in recorded history after causing over $15 billion in damages, along with landslides and flooding throughout Kamaishi. Typhoons and tropical cyclones are not foreign to Japan. But the last 40 years have seen the intensity of the storms increase with the deepening of the climate crisis. Research conducted by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San

WAYS FORWARD Diego has projected a 12 to 15 per cent increase in landfall intensity of typhoons in East and Southeast Asia. “We couldn’t sleep because the wind was so loud. I had to move my suitcase away from the window because I was scared that the window would shatter,” said Coe. “When we were supposed to play the next morning we woke up and it was actually sunny and beautiful out. It was a very nice day, but you looked around and there [were] trees wiped out, there [was] … tons of debris in the ocean. “You could tell that something big just hit.” The uncertainty of the condition of Kamaishi Recovery Memorial Stadium forced tournament organizers to cancel Canada’s game against Namibia. The players were disappointed about the cancellation, but they understood the need for it. “Rugby and sport goes beyond just

playing the game. ... If the people and the fans were going to be put in harm’s way for playing this game, then we definitely understand their stance on cancelling the game,” said Coe.

ACTIVE RECOVERY Once the team’s emotions subsided, they sprung into action. Instead of playing that last World Cup match, the Canadians spent time helping a devastated community. Canadian team captain Tyler Ardon told the other players that a bus would be coming to take them into town so that they could help with cleanup. “Most of the guys on the team [were] right on board, they wanted to help out,” Coe said. Given the small size of Kamaishi and that the Canadians were the only team staying in the region at the time, the help was greatly appreciated, Coe said. “We went into this 90-year old

woman’s house, and in Japan they have hay flooring. So the house was completely flooded and all the [flooring] had to be removed. And this poor 90-year-old no longer had her husband and her kids lived far away,” Coe explained. “As soon as we came in and took the [flooring] out and cleaned her house, she started crying and she was very thankful.” Coe and the Canadian team may have not gotten the ending they wanted in Japan, but they did leave their mark on a region that is still trying to recover from the devastating effects of extreme weather. What could have easily been a time of sulking turned into a full day’s work helping a community that has already been through so much. But as much as Kamaishi has suffered, its love affair with rugby shows how sport can help with the healing process in the wake of an environmental disaster. U

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How UBC’s buildings are adjusting for a greener future Words by Rithikha Rajamohan Illustration by Olivia Bird

BC is striving to curb the environmental impact of its infrastructure through a far-reaching action plan. Working to expand the university’s sustainability mandate into all areas of its operation, UBC adopted an ambitious new set of guidelines in 2018 called the Green Building Action Plan (GBAP). Acting as a roadmap of goals, targets and action items, the GBAP takes a holistic approach to sustainability. Its goal is to transform UBC’s buildings to make positive contributions to human and natural systems by 2035. Globally, infrastructure and construction account for 39 per cent of total carbon emissions, presenting one of the largest challenges and opportunities in mitigating the climate crisis. With over 415 institutional, residential and mixed-use buildings housing over 12,000 people on campus, UBC’s infrastructure is currently a significant contributor to its total carbon emissions. Of UBC’s total 37,941 tonnes of carbon dioxide released in 2018, 36,606 tonnes came from its buildings, according to the university’s 2018 Carbon Neutral Action Report. Over 70 per cent of this figure came from the university’s core buildings, mainly through their use of natural gas and light fuel oil for power and heating. These figures are an improvement over 2007’s 41,436 tonnes of building-related emissions, lowering emissions by 37 per cent over ten years. However, it’s still a ways away from UBC’s goal of a 67 per cent reduction of emissions since 2007 by 2020.

‘A TRIPLE-BOTTOM-LINE APPROACH’ Feeling that past sustainability efforts have been too narrow in scope, the GBAP takes a multi-disciplinary approach to achieve its vision of a net-positive impact campus. “We’re really looking at sustainability from a triple-bottom-line perspective, making sure there’s a social piece, environmental piece and economic time savings,” said Jennifer Sanguinetti, managing director of UBC Infrastructure Development. The plan focuses on eight synergistic and critical aspects of green building design: energy, water, materials and resources, biodiversity, health and well-being, quality, climate adaptation and place and experience. “These things aren’t intended to be isolated. They’re intended to be holistic in how we think about [them],” explained John Madden, director of sustainability and engineering at UBC Campus and Community Planning. When strategically placed, natural elements provide a number of benefits across social, economic and environmental fronts. Studies suggest observing nature has links to improved psychological well-being and cognitive function. They also influence the surrounding area’s micro-climate and natural processes, which can provide additional benefits in carbon sequestration, improved air quality, stormwater management and consequently, reduced cooling costs. A number of guidelines and metrics exist to help guide the integration of these components into new building designs. Among these are the passive house-certification standard and the

climate-ready building guideline. The climate-ready building guideline asks designers to integrate responses to challenges posed by future climate scenarios into their designs, while the passive house-certification encourages the use of passive solutions — those which require no energy inputs to function — in order to address these challenges. Historically, most Vancouver houses require heating due to the climate. However, with future temperatures expected rise to 2.5 degrees Celcius by 2050, a surge in cooling demand in the city is expected. “Our fundamental philosophy in this plan is to maximize those passive design measures in building-design optimization,” said Madden. In the context of future cooling-dominated circumstances, this means using passive designs that optimize window-to-wall ratios, using higher-quality insulation, orienting the building according to incoming solar radiation and using vegetation to increase shade. The university is also considering active energy solutions such as the use of solar panels. Evolve, an upcoming staff and faculty housing project, is expected to have solar-absorption technology integrated into its design. “There is very rarely only one aspect that we’re looking to improve,” explained Sanguinetti. “We look to improve seismic performance, energy performance and really fundamental to the university is the performance for the occupants in terms of teaching and learning spaces or research spaces,” she continued.

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LOWER COSTS, HIGHER PERFORMANCE To get the plan approved, a financial analysis was conducted to identify economic benefits and losses associated with a series of climate-adaptation and building-efficiency measures. “We had to be incredibly thoughtful to generate a positive business case as to why it’s important to make these initial investments,” said Madden. Buildings, over their long lifespan, have costs associated with daily operations. The results show that renewals and new buildings that follow the guidelines set by the GBAP are expected to offset these costs due to savings from reduced resource consumption. What’s more, these savings could be realized within five to ten years of a green building’s operation. It’s also in the university’s economic interests to reduce its carbon emissions due to provincial carbon taxes. Reducing its carbon liabilities can result in further savings, which Madden says can come full circle and be put back into maintaining campus spaces. Current financing for the 15-year GBAP occurs incrementally through the UBC 5-Year Capital Plan (20202025) which is partially funded by the BC Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training (AEST). Retrofitting has economic and environmental advantages over the demolition and construction of new buildings, which are usually more expensive and result in massive amounts of material ending up in landfills. AEST currently matches UBC’s anual funding for retrofitting buildings in a 75 to 25 per cent split. The

province currently provides 75 per cent of approximately $50 million — about $38 million in funding, which UBC is then required to top up by 25 per cent or $12.5 million through matching funds. “It’s a really good deal for UBC because we get these improvements that improve on so many aspects of the building’s performance, for users, for operators, for the environment, and we’re only paying 25 per cent of the cost,” said Sanguinetti.

A FOCUS ON CLIMATE UBC is on track to reach a 62 to 63 per cent decrease in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2021 which is one year behind schedule and just under the 67 per cent emission reduction target set for 2020. “We’re just starting off a process that will be kicked off in the new year around how we more aggressively [accelerate] to our 2050 target of net-zero emissions and that’s the challenge that faces us today,” said Madden. Energy use intensity and thermal energy intensity, which refer to total energy use per square metre and energy use specifically related to heating and cooling costs per square metre,

are the two main metrics used to evaluate building energy performance. However, even if energy consumption is shown to be reduced using these metrics, this doesn’t always translate to a reduction in GHG emissions. In fact, GHG emissions may remain the same or even increase depending on the energy source being used. To address this, Madden says a new evaluation metric is in the process of being implemented this year. Looking ahead, a number of different retrofitting and new building projects are in the proposed pipeline for completion. New buildings include Evolve, the Gateway Building, the School of Biomedical Engineering, the Mathematics Building and an expanded chemistry laboratory complex. Buildings identified for renewal and expansion include the Douglas T. Kenny psychology building, the School of Music, the Institute for Computing Information and Cognitive Systems and Forest Sciences Centre. While the GBAP’s overall vision and long-term goals have largely remained the same since its approval in 2018, Madden explained, that moving forward there will be a much greater emphasis on components of the plan directly related to climate. “We will always look at synergistic opportunities to advance every component of the green building action plan, but the focus is on climate change, climate mitigation and climate adaption.” U

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Golf and the climate crisis: UBC professor Brian Wilson is examining sport and the environment through an unexpected lens Words by Tristan Wheeler Illustration by @RESLUS

he game of golf is one of leisure, with great green expanses where athletes train, friends bond and families have a day out together in the sun, all followed by a beer at the ‘19th hole.’ But these carefully landscaped environments in the middle of our cities are more than just recreation spaces. They are also places that have an impact on the world around them. UBC kinesiology professor Dr. Brian Wilson has devoted much of his work to examining how sport interacts with social and environmental issues. “I’m interested in the ways sport can be enabling for people, like forms of activism related to sport, and the ways that sport can be problematic and constraining for people,” he said.

UNDERNEATH THE GREEN The walls in Wilson’s office are plastered with a painting of Muhammad Ali and a photo of the famous Black Power salute at the 1968 Olympic Games, but his research has also led him down a different path: examining the golf industry. He’s a lover of the sport, but it also seldom comes up in conversations about environmental concerns. “The use of chemicals, water usage and also, in the building of golf courses, the impacts of construction and people moving about on ecosystems — that’s

what led me to wonder, ‘Huh, I wonder about the history of the golf industry’s response to environmental issues,’” said Wilson. His work includes investigating the origin of our perceptions about what a golf course should look like. The phrase ‘Augusta National Syndrome’ was coined in the 1950s and 1960s when fans across the world watched the Masters Tournament at the beautiful Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia, USA on their televisions. The proliferation of colour TV is what solidified the perceptions of a golf course as a lush green place dedicated to leisure. “What was less known is that in order to produce a golf course like that, you, in many cases, need to use immense amounts of water and lots of chemicals,” said Wilson. “It’s not natural to have a shimmering, pristine light-green look.” One of the more hard-to-swallow ideas that Wilson is currently researching is that the best way to preserve the future of a sport like golf and make it more environmentally friendly may be to radically change it. “What are the conditions that we might want to have in place in order for it to be more reasonable for golf to exist? Does it have to look the way that we’ve always thought it would look?” said Wilson.

“It raises questions not only about how we can have the most environmentally friendly sport events, but when is a sport event not environmentally friendly enough [to hold]?”

BEYOND THE 18TH HOLE Golf isn’t the only area of the sports world that Wilson scrutinizes. Along with colleague Liv Yoon, he recently created a documentary looking at the cutting down of an ancient forest for the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. He has also been chair of the UBC Centre for Sport and Sustainability, where he examines the intersection of sports and social development. “I’m interested in the way that sport is enabling and constraining,” said Wilson. “These issues that take place both within sport and through sport don’t necessarily receive the attention they could.” Despite the thorny issues that lie at the intersection of the environment and sport, Wilson remains hopeful, pointing at the great leaps and strides that industries like golf have made. But he is also interested in what that change means — and who’s in charge of it. “Should [we] be looking to these industries as leaders or not and what does it look like for them to not be leaders? Who else is leading and what might that look like?” U

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Confessions of an Albertan Environmentalist Words by Tara Osler Illustration by Alex Vanderput

feel like a walking paradox. An Albertan environmentalist. Growing up, I never wanted environmentalism to be ‘my thing.’ I wasn’t one of those tree-huggers. Sure, we recycled, but no one would define themselves as an ‘environmentalist’ — that was life in Alberta. Of course, that isn’t an choice now. Now environmentalism is my thing, whether I want it to be or not. I made my sign and marched along with the 100,000 people in Vancouver back at the first climate strike. That same day, about a hundred people gathered in Calgary for the same purpose, outnumbered by the counter-protesters in their exhaust-spewing trucks. They didn’t get the day off of school like we did — that would be unheard of in Alberta. If I talk about climate action in front of people in my home city, I get the ‘friendly reminder’ that everything I have in life is due to the wealth that the oil and gas industry has brought to my province. I know that they’re right — it paid for my tuition and my cushy Vancouver studio apartment. It does feel traitorous to march alongside critics like Dr. David Suzuki — who is such a persona non grata in Calgary that my parents visibly cringe at every mention of his name. I rarely talk about climate action in front of most people back home — it’s just not worth it. I don’t agree with their views — there’s concrete scientific evidence of the climate crisis, and I know that the oil and gas industry has to meet its end as soon as possible if we want to remedy these issues. I’m damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. If I show my support for climate action, I get criticized back home. If I say anything less than

hateful about the oil and gas industry, the movement turns against me. There is a good reason I don’t tell people I’m Albertan at the get-go. In a second-year political science class, I sat still and listened as one of my peers ranted about the evils of the Albertan oil sands. There is part of me that wanted to say something — but what’s the point? I don’t want to be that girl who’s ‘pro-oil.’ I’ve watched as the oil and gas industry ran my province into the ground. We spent decades building a wealthy province off of this one industry. I wish we had diversified more 30 years ago, but at the time it seemed like the wellspring would never end. Every year, most of the graduates at my high school would announce their acceptance into one of the many excellent petroleum engineering programs offered in Canada. I still think about those students. Most of them would have ﬁnished those degrees in the last year or two, only to ﬁnd that the industry they’d trained for was a wasteland. When my class crossed the stage at the height of the last oil recession, fewer than half of us went down that path. But what jobs are even left in Calgary? In the last couple of years, hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost, and they are not coming back. What are we supposed to do? Most people spent their whole lives training for and working in the oil and gas industry. Where are they supposed to go now? It is not that Albertans are climate crisis deniers. Most of the people in my life believe the science. They’re not ignorant – they’re scared. And they have every damn right to be. They feel abandoned by their federal govern-

ment and by their fellow Canadians. If we shut down all oil and gas production tomorrow, it wouldn’t be the CEOs of energy firms that would suffer. It would be the working-class Albertans who are already struggling because they trained for jobs in a field that is disappearing. Where is Alberta’s place in the climate action movement? The Sustainabiliteens promised at the first #fridaysforthefuture strike in Vancouver that the workers in the oil and gas industry would not be left behind, but I have yet to see anyone put forth a concrete policy suggestion. Alberta has spent decades bankrolling other provinces through the equalization payment system, but when it suffers economically Ottawa has nothing to give. I don’t want people to stay in the oil and gas industry forever. What I want is a policy plan going forward that is not going to leave them in the dust while the rest of Canada marches onwards. Alberta is not the villain in the climate crisis story. Albertan workers are just as much victims as anyone else. I wish the people in my hometown would accept that an era is ending and look to the future for a way to move on. However, I wish environmental activists across Canada would see Albertans for what they are: fellow Canadians. If we want to combat the climate crisis effectively, we cannot do so divided. Alberta has never been the enemy – don’t make it into one. U

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Divestment across the country UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (UBC)

In collaboration with student journalists around the country, we compared university divestment policies from Vancouver to Montréal. For an in-depth comparison, visit ubyssey.ca. Illustration by Alex Vanderput

UBC has one of the largest endowments among universities in Canada at $1.71 billion, and it is estimated to have the most invested in fossil fuels: over $120 million. Following a steady stream of protests from student groups like UBCC350 and Extinction Rebellion UBC, and half-measures from the university, UBC’s Board of Governors authorized a plan to divest 22 per cent of its Main Endowment Pool in December 2019. Why such a specific number? The remaining 78 per cent is made up of charitable donations that are bound by specific donor agreements and the university has received legal opinions that investing the money for political reasons could be illegal. That same month, the Board also declared a climate emergency and committed to exploring full divestiture, though it provided no concrete timeline for doing so.

Among the U of A administration, there has been little to no conversation about fossil fuel divestment at the administrative or student government level. While the U of A has made a commitment to consider “environmental, social and governance risks and opportunities” in its investments, their endowment fund lacks a dedicated green portfolio. According to a 2019 annual report, the U of A’s Investment Committee made one investment based on environmental considerations by investing in Bakkafrost, a salmon producer, but the report did not mention any consideration of divestment from fossil fuels.

In 2013, environmental activism group UofT350 started calling on the university to divest an estimated $32.1 million in fossil fuel its endowment, which now sits at $2.59 billion. S after, U of T President Meric Gertler appointed a Committee on Divestment from Fossil Fuels in M 2014. The committee released its long-awaited repor December 2015, recommending that U of T dive all companies that “engage in egregious behaviou contribute inordinately to social injury.” But disa soon followed when Gertler announced in 2016 would be rejecting the committee’s recommenda instead supporting a “firm-by-firm” approach. Since then, the issue had largely been forgotte Global Climate Strike brought divestment to the in 2019 and reinvigorated student activism.

Henry Anderson, The Ubyssey

Andrew McWhinney, Tina Tai and Adam Lachacz, The Gateway

Josie Kao, The Varsity

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MCGILL A number of student groups have been advocating for divestment since 2012, including Divest McGill, C-JAM and Greenpeace McGill. But in 2013, McGill’s Committee to Advise on Matters of Social Responsibility (CAMSR) rejected calls for divestment because Divest McGill “failed” to show that fossil fuel companies had caused “social injury.” Since then, McGill has established a $5 million Fossil Fuel Free Investment Fund within its total endowment of $1.7 billion. It still has an estimated $105.1 million invested in the energy sector. In fall 2019, a petition — signed by students, alumni, faculty, staff and donors — circulated pledging no donations until the university fully divests. Shortly after, CAMSR released another report that ruled that divestment is “not advisable,” citing similar reasoning as before. Emily Black and Yasna Khademian, The McGill Daily

CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY In November, 2019, Concordia became the second university in Canada to commit to fossil fuel divestment after six years of activUNIVERSITÉ LAVAL ism from student group Divest Concordia. The university’s investments in oil, coal and Three years ago, Université Laval gas account for 5.7 per cent of its $243-milbecame the first Canadian post-seclion endowment. ondary institution to commit to divesting Concordia Interim President Graham Carr its endowment from fossil fuels — an equivalent emphasized that while Université Laval may of $11 to $30 million of the university’s $200-milhave resolved to divest first, Concordia was lion portfolio. The decision came after only three the first to produce a detailed timeline for months of activism from the student group ULaval doing so. sans Fossiles, including handing out buttons and But not all are so quick to celebrate. Divest pamphlets, doing outreach on social media and Concordia and other climate action groups hosting informative talks. have criticized the organization that managBut a year and a half later, Quebec City newspa- es Concordia’s endowment, The Concordia per Le Soleil reported that Université Laval had still University Foundation, for setting a five-year not made any changes to its divestment portfolio timeline when immediate action is needed. because it was in the process of researching how to do so without taking on too much financial risk. A Henry Anderson, The Ubyssey new investment plan was presented to its Board of Directors in the fall of 2018. Henry Anderson, The Ubyssey

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UBC’s burgeoning bioenergy facilities sustainably heat and power our campus Words by Zohrah Khalili Illustration by Ayesha Diwan

BC gets a large percentage of its power and heating from clean energy projects like the Bioenergy Research Demonstration Facility (BRDF) and Campus Energy Centre (CEC). The two projects help UBC further its climate action plan, working together to both power the campus and help meet UBC’s target of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 67 per cent by 2020. They function via the Academic District Energy System (ADES), which replaced 14 kilometres of 90year old steam piping and connected over 160 buildings to a new, more efficient hot-water system. The BRDF is a bioenergy facility that processes renewable biomass sourced from urban wood waste to generate thermal energy for heating campus buildings. It is also a vital part of the campus’s sustainability and academic efforts as a Living Lab Ini-

tiative. Living Labs are research concepts which integrate private parties such as academics, students and companies with public institutions like the university and its facilities, in hopes of creating knowledge and community. The CEC is UBC’s $24 million state-of-the-art hot-water boiler facility, which is able to meet all of UBC’s heating requirements. The CEC is the primary energy source for the new hot-water district energy system. The conversion from steam to a hot-water system first began in 2011, and in June 2017 the old steam plant was finally turned off.

THE BACKSTORY David Woodson, UBC’s managing director of Energy and Water Services, has been a part of the projects since 2006. He said that at the time they knew “something was coming to BC,” referring to the possibility of carbon pricing. “We started down a process of what we called our alternative energy study to say ... Before we spend money [on] the existing plan, is there another way to do what we’re doing?” said Woodson. According to Woodson, Energy and Water Services sourced three initial ideas from a study that weren’t ideal for their plans. Interestingly, all three ideas required UBC to have a hot-water loop on campus. The initial ideas all had jurisdictional issues and significant regulation

WAYS FORWARD issues, such as connecting the campus to the surrounding ocean for energy or running a one kilometre pipe to transport waste energy under the Fraser Valley River and then transporting the heat to campus. However, the inclusion of hot water had a clear business case. It was within the university’s jurisdiction to support their desire of reducing GHG emissions. “[UBC] pays $65 a tonne for carbon at the moment, and eventually it will be $75 a tonne,” said Woodson. With the need for alternative energy, the BRDF was a compromise between a full-scale bioenergy plant and a feasible way for the university to reduce carbon use while providing academic opportunity. During the planning stage, the BRDF garnered the support of faculty and student environmental groups through Energy and Water Services’ efforts to include community feedback. The BRDF “create[s] a space [for research] to take place on something that could have a big impact on society,” said Woodson.

HOW TO RUN ON SAWDUST AND STEAM The CEC houses three 15 megawatt (MW) thermal, natural gas-fired, high-efficiency boilers that source most of the campus’s hot water. The BRDF uses biomass in the form of chipped, clean wood waste from furniture manufacturing, sawmill residuals and municipal trimmings. Biomass is gasified to produce a clean synthetic gas (syngas), which is combusted into flue gas to generate steam for heating campus buildings. A precipitator filters the particulate matter from the flue gas, after which it is released into the atmosphere. Syngas fuels a cogeneration engine that uses a mix of natural gas and renewable natural gas (upgraded biogas) to generate electricity and heat through the ADES. Overall, the CEC and BRDF

currently source 50 per cent of the ADES hot water per year.

A CLEANER, GREENER CAMPUS Clean energy projects at UBC have many benefits outside of saving money — they are more sustainable and allow for community interaction. The CEC saves the university $5.5 million in operational costs and $3.4 million in actualized savings annually, but its biggest saving is water. The new hot-water system is by far the biggest water conservation project at UBC and has allowed for a 22 per cent reduction in UBC’s carbon footprint from 2007 levels. The BRDF has annual fueling and operational costs of $3.7 million. However, it saves UBC $800,000 a year in operational costs and generates additional income. It has also reduced GHG emissions by 14 per cent compared to 2007 levels. As a Living Lab Initiative, much research into the process of bioenergy production, sourcing and processing have been undertaken at the BRDF, especially by the UBC Biomass and Bioenergy Research Group (BBRG). “When the project first started, the researchers were interested in the energy content of the wood supply. And so they would take a sample bag off every load to analyze what its energy content was,” said David Woodson. This process allowed the facility a complete breakdown of fuel content, enabling them to ensure the best wood biomass. “It is very important to have clean [fuel] because we are operating within a city and we don’t want to introduce toxins [to the atmosphere],” said Dr. Ehsan Oveisi, a member of UBC’s BBRG. He noted that precautions like sampling prevent the facility from having to shut down temporarily from low-quality wood chips and ensures cleaner energy. Dr. Anthony Lau, an associate

professor with the BBRG, added that “carbon dioxide from biomass is generally considered carbon neutral.” But members of the scientific community argue that this neutrality is conditional, highlighting the GHG emissions accrued from sourcing and shipping biomass internationally and the time lag between burning wood biomass and the growth of new trees.

BUILDING A BRIGHTER FUTURE UBC is currently undergoing a $20.4 million expansion of the BRDF, with $7.6 million in federal help, to cut natural-gas use and reduce GHG emissions. The university intends to use the federal funding to install a new 12 MW biomass-fuelled hot-water combustion boiler. “Once the new boiler is operational, the BRDF will increase its heating production capacity to 20 MW and will provide up to 70 per cent of annual thermal production for UBC’s hot-water district energy system, halving its current dependency on natural gas, eliminating an average of 14,500 tonnes of CO2 greenhouse gas emissions on an annual basis, and saving more than $1M in annual operating costs,” said Media Relations Director of University Affairs Matthew Ramsey in a written statement. This change could reduce the campus’s need for natural gas, which Ramsey wrote would “[improve] the university’s operational resilience.” Part of this expansion will be used to meet operational drawbacks. Woodson expressed that he would like to make the truck-unloading process safer by creating a designated zone that does not cut into the path of pedestrians. Additionally, they would like to decrease the unloading time from 45 minutes to 15 minutes. These projects could be key for UBC to meet their goal of reducing GHG emissions by 100 per cent by 2050. U

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From Great Farm Trek to Climate Strike: A reported history of student environmental organizing at UBC Words by Emma Livingstone Illustration by Shereen Lee

n the south side of campus in Wesbrook Village, surrounded by ever-expanding housing developments, sits the Centre for Sustainable Food Systems at UBC Farm. Now recognized as an important pillar in UBC’s sustainability and research initiatives, the future of the farm’s 24 hectares was facing uncertainty just 12 years ago. The 1997 Official Community Plan for the University Endowment Lands designated the land in Wesbrook Village — which is itself stolen, ancestral, traditional and unceded Musqueam land — as potential future housing developments. As the uncertainty of the farm’s existence heightened, UBC students began to organize under one clear message: save the farm. The AMS club, Friends of UBC Farm, increased pressure on university administration and the Board of Governors (BoG) in 2008. On October 28 of that year, they brought a stack of petitions totalling over 16,000 signatures supporting keeping the farm to then-UBC President Stephen Toope and then-VP External, Legal and Community Relations Stephen Owen.

The campaign expanded to draw support from the wider community, including Dr. David Suzuki, a former UBC professor in the department of zoology. The protests even encouraged Metro Vancouver to weigh in. On October 31, 2008, the Metro Vancouver Board voted in favour of sending a letter to UBC that supported keeping the farm. On December 1, 2008, the BoG issued a media release saying the farm would not be turned into market housing, so long as development plans in other areas kept UBC in line with the community plan. This momentum led to the Great Farm Trek on April 7, 2009, which organizer Matt Filipiak, a graduate student at the time, told The Ubyssey was “a celebration demonstration.” During the demonstration over 2,000 students, staff, faculty and community supporters marched from the Student Union Building to the UBC Farm to celebrate and appreciate the farm’s significance on campus. Student movements for sustainability and environmental initiatives continue today at UBC, more than a decade after the success of the Great Farm Trek. Many different student

groups have popped up over the years to adovcate around different environmental topics, from styrofoam to nuclear bombs and fossil fuels. Now protests and demonstrations are also increasingly taking place. According to UBC history PhD candidate Henry John, “universities have often been the centre point for social movements as a whole,” including environmental movements.

THE BEGINNINGS Most historians agree that what is commonly understood as the environmental movement in the West started in the 1960s along with other social movements. At UBC, inklings of environmental activism can be traced back to the 1960s, with students worried about the effects of pollution. A 1969 article in The Ubyssey described the UBC Society for Pollution and Environmental Protection as wanting to “actively wage war against pollution.” Worries about a possible nuclear explosion also plagued people’s minds and tied into concerns about the environment both at UBC and across

WAYS FORWARD Vancouver. Notably, Greenpeace, an international environmental NGO, traces its roots to Vancouver in the 1970s. UBC students were among those who got involved in the organization’s mandate to “bear witness” to environmental degradation with their fishing boat journeys to observe the testing of nuclear bombs and the hunting of whales. At UBC, the 1970s saw environmental topics such as clearcut logging and fossil fuels on the minds of students. John explained that, the 1970s are becoming known as “the environmental decade.” “Not just questions of environmentalism nature, nature protection, animal rights [and] pollution came about,” he said. “But there was also a growth of ideas and politics, focusing on questioning the limits of human resource use,” he said, adding that the 1970s’ Oil Crisis worried people into thinking oil would run out. The environmental movements of the 1960s began to gain traction in the mainstream in the late 1980s and 1990s. The AMS Student Environment Centre (SEC), which is now an AMS resource group, was set up in 1989 with the goal of getting rid of styrofoam cups. In 1989 SEC member James Young told The Ubyssey, “Our basic purpose is rid students of the idea that we live in a disposable society.” Sustainability movements also started emerging in the 1990s among students and the wider university. In

1997, UBC became the first Canadian university to adopt a sustainability policy. But these histories are Western-centric and disregard the Indigenous and First Nations communities all over the world who have long been defending lands and waters. “Now that it’s come to the forefront of worldwide news because of the spotlight that was put on [Greta Thunberg] … reflects this colonialist structure that we can only really pay attention to these problems if they’ve been exacerbated by someone who has the ability to be in the forefront of these headlines,” said Kennedy Tuccaro, a first-year Allard law student and member of the Mikisew Cree First Nation.

MOVING TOWARDS THE FUTURE Today, environmental activism on campus is growing more prominent than ever, matching urgent reports from the scientific community. The 2019 UN Emissions Gap Report saw more global emissions despite previous promises to cut them, and another report by the World Meteorological Organization found 2019 to be the second-hottest year on record. Activism by young people, especially young Indigenous activists and activists of colour, is also leading the charge in many parts of the world. Besides the mainstream media’s focus on Greta Thunberg, water warrior Autumn Peltier from the Wiikwemkoong First Nation and artist-activist Ta’Kaiya Blaney from the Tla’amin

First Nation have been vocal climate advocates for years. At UBC, the September 27 Climate Strike was a particularly visible example of community activism, with thousands of campus members joining over 80,000 attendees in the broader Vancouver strike. Gabby Doebeli, a co-chair of the UBC Social Justice Centre (SJC), said the large crowds at the climate strike speaks to the urgency most young people are feeling about the climate crisis. But outside of protests and demonstrations like the climate strike, many student groups are quietly working on their own sustainability and education initiatives, whether that is by sorting through the Nest’s garbage like Common Energy or running a locally sourced, community cafe like Sprouts and Seedlings. But direct action still remains a large portion of UBC activism. UBCC350, a student-led climate activist group, has been using it to campaign for fossil fuel divestment. Showing up in larger and larger numbers at each meeting, the group has demonstrated publicly and loudly presented their demands. This December, UBC President Santa Ono declared a climate emergency and the Board committed to explore complete divestment from fossil fuels. UBCC350 member Michelle Marcus reflected on the years of student activism that made it possible. “[The motions] wouldn’t have happened without years of student and faculty pressure. These motions today were a direct result of the divestment

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movement and relentless organizing by students and faculty over the past six years,” she told The Ubyssey. But, according to Doebeli, the work is far from over. “So [climate justice is] recognizing that Indigenous sovereignty, migrant rights, racial justice ... and economic justice are inherently bound up together when we talk about the climate crisis and really talking about the climate crisis in

a way that recognizes its roots in … colonialism [and] capitalism,” she said. “But it’s really pushing the envelope and rejecting the status quo as as as an option.” According to John, linking environmentalism in Canada to decolonization and Indigenous land rights is “a fundamental piece of the picture.” It’s also been extremely central to Indigenous-led activism

around pipelines such as the Trans Mountain Expansion and the Coastal GasLink pipeline, both of which UBC students have taken part in. “Part of pushing the narrative of climate justice is working, or striving to align ourselves with Indigenous defenders who are on the front lines,” said Doebeli. U — With files from Andrew Ha and AMS Archivist Sheldon Goldfarb.

FREDERIC WOOD THEATRE, UBC

UBC SKI SHOW FEB 25, 7:30PM Live presentation from local skier and photographer Reuben Krabbe, plus ski films from around the world.

VIMFF.ORG

UBC CLIMBING SHOW FEB 27, 7:30PM Local climbers Kim & Graham McGrenere present on their ‘Project Armenia’ along with climbing films from around the globe.

The Ubyssey Magazine 2020

Articles inside

Golf and the climate crisis

After the storm

How UBC’s buildings are adjusting

From Great Farm Trek to Climate Strike

Confessions of an Albertan Environmentalist

UBC’s burgeoning bioenergy facilities

Divestment across the country

The secret life of compost

The Carbon Footprint of Microaggressions

Can I have oat milk instead?

Sharing the spotlight

As the climate crisis escalates

Shopping for sustainability

The climate crisis is changing the face of soccer

Sweet realization

Climate, skiing and snowboarding

too little too late

UBC straw ban

The Game

Perspectives: Climate justice and

Bad reputation

Perspectives: How to deal with eco-anxiety