Tag: environment

UMSU’s annual series of sustainability initiatives will be held March 1 through March 10 and will focus on the theme of greenwashing, the process through which an organization misrepresents itself or its products as environmentally sustainable. The events — dubbed sustainabilty season — will promote environmental sustainability and feature David Suzuki as the keynote speaker.

Businesses should not stand to profit from climate initiatives. Instead, businesses should be required to contribute all fees collected and put them toward climate action plans. Without mandates on how to spend these fees, franchise owners may be tempted to pocket the money to make up for revenue lost as a result of COVID-19. Worse, they may be tempted to hoard the extra income for a rainy day fund to offset potential losses in the event that COVID-19 restrictions lead to more closures. We cannot afford to leave the decision up to businesses any longer — with the climate emergency we find ourselves facing, it is imperative corporations prioritize the environment over profit.

A valuable tool for those who seek to blur the lines of necessary action is to obfuscate terms. Today, people confront a variety of terms with distinct meanings under the umbrella of environmental concern daily. Under this umbrella, policies seeking to reduce the amount of plastic in the ocean, fossil fuels used by consumers and the protection of green spaces are all given equal merit. While all of these goals are noble, our current emergency requires us to examine, prioritize and institute specific actions to counter human-caused climate change.

The new Churchill Marine Observatory (CMO) began operations last week, with the first research project underway after over 10 years of development. The CMO is led by a team of University of Manitoba researchers including scientific director David Barber, board of directors chair Gary Stern and chief scientists Feiyue Wang and C.J. Mundy.

Historically, Manitoba has treated Lake Winnipeg as a sink for resources, citing the lake’s economic value as motivation to maintain its ecological integrity. But this approach means sustaining the bare minimum of environmental standards to ensure its supposed value does not diminish. The result of this approach is a policy of perpetual catch-up — pollute as you go and fix the problem later. That is exactly what the PCs are doing when they blame the sustainability practices of fishers for the lake’s pollution and utter humble praises for Manitoba Hydro in the same speech.