From the ‘burbs to birds and from social justice to Olympic poetry, the next installment of the York Circle’s popular Lecture & Lunch series returns on Saturday, April 30. It promises plenty of new ideas for inquiring minds. As with previous York Circle Lecture & Lunch events, organizers have planned a full day of inspiring lectures […]
Environmental studies Professor Timothy Leduc (MES ’01, PhD ’07) will be part of a panel discussing the environment, following a free screening of the documentary film Climate Refugees. The screening will take place Friday, April 29, from 6:30 to 8pm in Room 2158 JJR MacLeod Auditorium, Medical Sciences Building, 1 King’s College Circle, University of […]
The Three-spot Mariposa Lily is an understated three-petalled white and yellow flower indigenous to some areas of the Columbia Basin. Like all living things, it’s part of the intricate and complex web of life that sustains us all, wrote B.C.’s Revelstoke Times Review, April 12: Recent research by biologist Lincoln Best, [a graduate student] at […]
Organic farms can be more energy efficient than conventional farms that mass produce crops using unsustainable practices, a surprising result from a study co-authored by a York University professor. Researchers analyzed 130 studies to compare the energy use and global warming potential of organic versus conventional farming. They concluded that organic farms were more energy […]
Artists of all stripes from around the world are reducing their carbon footprint in creative ways. Many prominent ones – including the Cirque de Soleil’s Gil Favreau – are coming to York this month to share how at a conference on sustainability and the arts. Hosted by York’s Faculty of Fine Arts, Staging Sustainability: Arts, […]
Hosted by the Canadian Studies Program and student club in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies, the Canada Like You’ve Never Heard it Before Lecture Series explores everything from economics and indigenous issues to Canadian government and poetry. The next instalment of the series will be delivered by Cate Sandilands, a professor in York's […]
New research and teaching facility scheduled to open Fall 2011 Federal Environment Minister Peter Kent paid an informal visit to York's Keele campus yesterday to view first-hand the results of the government's investment in Canada's current and future scientists and researchers. Above: From left, Environment Minister Peter Kent, senior project superintendent Chris Robinson and York President & Vice-Chancellor […]
York University students, faculty and staff are getting a jump on Earth Hour 2011 with Earth Hour, Every Hour, a special event tomorrow evening, March 16, from 4:30 to 9pm in the Winters College Master's dining hall. Hosted by the Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS) in collaboration with the Ecologically Conscious Organization and Schulich […]
The risk of a catastrophe on the scale of BP’s offshore Deepwater Horizon disaster happening in Canada poses a real threat to people’s health and the economy. At the Oil: Slick Suits and Sinister Scenarios symposium tomorrow, leading researchers in risk, disaster management, ethics and the environment will provide insights into the murky world of oil and […]
For two weeks in January, two York professors bundled into parkas and flew to Arctic villages along the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline. They were delivering valuable cargo – the results of their International Polar Year (IPY) research. Reporting back to the communities was a condition of receiving IPY research funding in 2007, and after three years […]
The Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and Canadian governments are reviewing a section of the Atlantic Accords that critics say lets offshore oil and gas operators veto a wide swath of information from being released publicly, including environmental and safety data, wrote Ottawa’s The Hill Times, Feb. 22: Meanwhile, as governments keep talking, operators continue to use the […]
A forum held last week in our community has further raised the profile of pollution and its impact on our health, and underscores the need for a local study on the issue to commence immediately, wrote The Sarnia Observer Feb. 16 in an editorial: The devastating effects of pollution were discussed at the Community Forum […]
Now that the garbage has hit the fan again in Toronto, so to speak, it would have been nice to have seen some serious investigative journalism before an editorial rushing to endorse privatization, wrote Leo Panitch, Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science in York’s Faculty of Liberal […]
Organizers of an upcoming environmental forum are hoping to engage First Nations youth, wrote The Sarnia Observer Jan. 30: The event, hosted by the Aamjiwnaang First Nations Health and Environment Committee, in partnership with York University, is a follow-up to a 2008 health symposium held in Sarnia to share research findings with members of the […]
A United Way report last week highlighted a problem in Toronto: our city’s poor are increasingly concentrated in crumbling highrise towers, mostly in the inner suburbs, wrote Edward Keenan in EYE Weekly Jan. 20: The report addresses a subject that National Film Board filmmaker-in-residence Katerina Cizek has been studying for two years, while making films on […]
York University environmental studies Professor Mark Winfield of the Faculty of Environmental Studies, who sits on a provincial smart growth advisory panel and studies urban sustainability, said the Star’s analysis – the first of its kind – raises important questions about how the 2006 Places to Grow plan is playing out, wrote the Toronto Star […]
A York University professor’s new book aims to integrate the Inuit experience of climate change with Western climate research, and includes an Inuktitut companion to the volume, making it accessible across cultures. Climate, Culture, Change: Inuit and Western Dialogues with a Warming North, released this week by University of Ottawa Press, calls for a shift […]
‘Green jobs’ have been increasingly touted as the solution to job loss and environmental crisis. Will Canada transition to a cleaner economy that reduces greenhouse gas emissions and employs a new generation of workers? Are green jobs the only link between environmental policy and employment policy? Defining green jobs raises further questions. What is a […]
Every year, graduate assistants working with the Institute for Research & Innovation in Sustainability (IRIS) do a campus survey on a sustainability theme. The first survey in 2006, asked students what they knew about climate change and resulted in more environmentally friendly course kits (see YFile, April 2, 2008); the second assessed the value of urban […]
If mixed-income neighbourhoods are to work, such as the one proposed for Lawrence Heights, there has to be a mental shift in the way people view renters, said a professor in York University’s Faculty of Environmental Studies, wrote InsideToronto.com Jan. 6: “You can’t tell people the way to go is to own property,” said Roger […]