Worrying About the Environment: A Passing Trend or Here To Stay?
It has been a long time since the environment received as much press as in 2007. A glance at recently released books shows an ever-increasing importance given to global warming, nuclear energy and organic food. Documentary films—with the most influential being no doubt Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth featuring Al Gore—seem to be following the trend. There appears to be a shift in social consciousness: rarely a week goes by without a mention of the environment somewhere in the news, whether bacteria-infected lakes or the inauguration of a new bicycle path. Is there a change in the making, or is this just a passing trend? Environmental damage is often portrayed as an almost irreversible fact. Do people, and in particular youth, feel that they can make a difference? Do they care? And if they do, what role do they think they can play? Tolerance.ca surveyed students and young professionals, as well as specialists in the field, to see what they have to say.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve been interested in the environment, though not always in the same way. When I was a kid, I was this little geek who would go up to people and tell them not to litter if I saw them doing it,” says Alexandra DiPaolo, a 27-year-old with a Master’s degree in social work from McGill University in Montréal. Jessie, a 25-year-old student in marketing at a technical college, does not recall growing up with any awareness of environmental issues. “My parents never spoke about the ecology or nature. If we reused items it’s because we didn’t have a lot of money, not because of the planet. So it took me a long time, until pretty recently actually, to become sensitized to the issue. I’m sure that if my parents had been more conscious of these matters, I would have been involved at a much younger age.”
Maxim, a 23-year-old student at the Université de Montréal, has spent several summers working at Vélo Québec, an organization that encourages bicycling and the development of bicycle paths across Quebec. Though his mother is environmentally conscious, Maxim explains that it was only at the beginning of CEGEP (the post-secondary public educational institutions in Quebec) that he truly understood that he is “not alone on the planet” and started doing something about it.
Twenty-five-year-old Jenn Davis is Sustainability Coordinator at Montréal’s Concordia University. Davis, who says she was brought up to care about the environment, works at Sustainable Concordia, an organization that aims to make the university more socially equitable and ecologically aware. Yet when she joined, it was because she was interested in labour unions at Concordia. Initially, she laughs, she didn’t want to be part of an environmental club, but she has now been actively involved in promoting environmental consciousness on campus for four years.
Each person interviewed pointed to a variety of reasons that led to increased awareness of the environment. Reactions to this new knowledge took different forms. Jessie, who apart from studying works as a waitress, does not recycle. She has a strong sense of its importance, but is sceptical that the contents of the green bins picked up in her neighbourhood of St-Henri in Montréal are actually recycled. She is not the only one to feel this way. Christian, a 22-year-old Austrian who has been living in Montréal’s trendy Plateau for close to two years, explains that in Europe, recycled items are supposed to be divided by type, consistency and even colour, in the case of glass, before they are picked up. “Here,” he says, “it is all mixed up. I don’t believe they actually sift through all that.”
Christian and Jessie’s scepticism when it comes to recycling is not unusual. Though recycling has become considerably more common that it was ten years ago, quite a few people wonder where their recyclable items end up. They ask whether they are making a difference at all, and if so, how?
Can we really make a difference?
Tara, a 27-year-old student at McGill, recycles and tries to buy local produce, but feels a certain powerlessness with regard to it all. “The stakes are huge, the timing is unclear. It’s so much more than ‘Do I use plastic bags when I go to the store?’ It involves all industries on so many levels of the supply scheme.” She feels, moreover, that there is a new consumerism being promoted with regard to the environment. “Now being an environmentalist is about buying the right thing, but you’re still pushed to buy. It’s hard to know what to do to really make a difference. Things aren’t made as they used to be, appliances are not meant to last.” She notes, with humour, that when she hosts big dinners, some of her friends harp on her for using disposable paper plates. “But I’m like no, there’s no way I’m washing all those dishes.”
A rather different example is Alexandra DiPaolo, who lives with an obvious awareness of the impact of each of her actions. Other than recycling and composting, she uses her bicycle as much as possible and her husband rides his all winter long. She is happy to announce that for the first time ever, Montreal’s bike paths will be ploughed this coming winter. However, her biggest contribution, she feels, comes from being vegan. “It takes less energy to harvest, grow and process vegetables and legumes than it does meat. It takes 6 to 20 times more water and energy for meat to get to our table.” She also does her best to buy local produce. “The average meal travels thousands of miles to get to us. Generally, I’d rather buy local food than organic food because of the gas used in transportation.”
Yet the cost of making this kind of consumer choice adds up. Buying organic cotton or fair-trade chocolate is not the same as buying regular brands. When this point is raised with several members of Sustainable Concordia, Arlene Throness, a 25-year-old political science student who uses her bike as her main form of transportation, explains that she recently started drinking organic milk. “I realized I had wrong concepts of what things should cost. I’d easily spend five bucks on beer but would hesitate to spend the same on two litres of milk. That’s changed now.”
Changing habits
Jenn Davis explains that organic produce is grown in Quebec, but more than 80% of it is exported, making it less accessible to Quebecers. Because of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the food that comes to Quebec in return is often of lesser quality and cheaper than what is grown locally. Davis points out, however, that big companies have the power to affect consumer choices. She gives Wal-Mart as an example. Despite its unpopularity in other domains, the multinational corporation has started selling energy-efficient and water-conserving appliances and machines as well as organic products. “Because their demand is so huge, they can afford it. All their shipping is going biodiesel. So lower-income people do have access to organic produce.”
Political science student Arlene Throness adds, “We’re not going to change the world, but if we make alternatives convenient, people will opt for them. If there is another way, people will choose the better way. My stepmother buys fair-trade coffee now. I didn’t even know what fair-trade coffee was a few years ago and now it’s in almost every store. Separating garbage is becoming the norm. It’s all about the little things in life. Daily habits.”
That is precisely what Sustainable Concordia tries to promote on campus. Davis is confident that what students learn goes beyond campus walls. “Students are a transient population,” she explains. “Our volunteers at Sustainable Concordia, who spend on average two years involved with us, learn a lot from their work here. They get empowered and they see that they can actually change things. So they go out into their community once they’ve developed the necessary skills and persistence. They know how to get people together and they have a network on which to build. This is how our impact is felt far beyond campus in terms of leadership.” Davis gives the example of volunteers at Sustainable Concordia who, after graduation, became involved in larger projects. Some have organized locally supported agriculture in Ontario, others have gone to protest the WTO negotiations in Mexico, one person is working on the river network to help preserve rivers across Canada, another sits on UN panels, yet another is consulting for a waste-management project in South Africa. “Some people have really gone far and done some important work,” Davis concludes.
At the Université de Sherbrooke, Jean-François Comeau, assistant director of the Centre universitaire de formation en environnement, explains that students come from a wide variety of educational backgrounds. It is the largest such program in Quebec, with over 500 students currently enrolled in either the Master’s program or Continuing Education. Comeau says that in recent years, there has been more interest in the environment than ever before. “Interest has generally been cyclical, but it seems that in the past two or three years there has been a new-found awareness that did not exist before.” Comeau suggests that this might be due to increased contact with certain issues, such as the degradation of water quality that affects much of rural Quebec.
Indeed, there does seem to be a tendency to be more environmentally conscious at the moment. Anjali Helferty, National Coordinator of Sustainable Campuses at the Ottawa-based Sierra Youth Coalition, agrees. “We in Canada have the opportunity now to steer this willingness to do something into actual change. I'm concerned, however, that this is not happening.” Helferty explains that she feels the stall is due to a combination of grant cuts to organizations as well as an unwillingness to be environmentally responsible coming directly from the top. “The death of the Clean Air Act [a piece of legislation introduced in Canada in 2006 with the aim of reducing smog pollution and greenhouse emissions] is only one of many examples of this. The Prime Minister may be talking the talk, but his actions certainly are not demonstrating a commitment to the environment or to the future well-being of Canadians,” says Helferty.
Geneva Guerin, co-director of the Sustainability Solutions Group Cooperative in Montréal, feels that there is a lot of rhetoric around sustainability. “Everyone is talking about sustainability, everyone wants to be green, and some people are doing good stuff, but right now I don’t see the government helping in these sort of initiatives.” She explains that the current Conservative government has cut incentives for green buildings as well as 1.6 million dollars in climate change program funding. “There have been announcements that some new money will be allotted to the environment. Yet all they’re doing is reinvesting a portion of what they have already cut. Moreover, so far no financing is operating and in the meanwhile programs have stopped running.” Comeau explains that the new Conservative government has undone what the previous Liberal governments had taken a long time to put forward. “It is regretful, because for this new government, the environment is not yet an issue.”
Guerin distinguishes between levels of government. Provincial government contributes to general awareness, but it’s municipal government that currently plays a big role. “At the moment, we don’t have leadership at the highest level, but practically, it’s really municipalities and neighbourhood councils that have the power.” Still, the municipal levels require funding in order to put forward sustainable programs. This means that the contribution of individuals, who invest time and effort to help improve the quality of life in their municipality, does not go unnoticed.
Becoming involved
Nicole Loubert, who prefers to describe herself as an engaged citizen, says that she became involved in the environment because of a quarry that operated in her neighbourhood of Mercier-Est in Montréal’s Hochelaga-Maisonneuve area. That was fifteen years ago, but as a result of the implication of citizens such as Loubert, the quarry’s administration took serious measures to work with the municipality and its citizens to help create a situation that would benefit them all. “The reason most people in my neighbourhood become involved is because of local improvements that need to be made, not the environmental cause at large.” From experience, Loubert believes that with team spirit and the interaction of several players—engaged citizens included—serious changes can be made. Thanks to the environmental committee of which she is a member, more than a few sustainable developments have been made in her municipality. Loubert laments the low rate of involvement by young people, however. “People don’t realize how much space there really is for them to get involved. They don’t have to be discouraged before they even start. We do have the power to influence municipal decisions—it’s just that it happens with little steps at a time, rarely big ones.”
Helferty, who is 23, believes that there is a sense of injustice among youth because although they are not in decision-making positions, they are the ones who will feel the irreversible impact of the damage done to our planet. “This is the moment when the right decisions need to be made and we are extremely frustrated with the lack of leadership that is currently being demonstrated.” Yet Helferty is quick to add that there is little point in giving up hope. “I know that people can change, and as much as it seems to be an uphill battle at times, I know that we're going to get somewhere. I am concerned, however, that we're not going to get where we need to be when we need to, particularly in terms of climate change. But I still believe it can happen and I’m going to push as hard as I can to get us there!”
Throness believes that the fact that being environmentally conscious is becoming “hip” affects many demographics, be it with eco-products, eco-foods, or eco-building. “Behavioural changes take a while; it may as well be a pleasant process when it can be,” comments Jasmine Stuart, a 25-year-old student and member of Sustainable Concordia. Throness continues by saying that a lot of it is about convenience, such as reusable bags that can now be bought in almost every big supermarket. “If there was, for example, a choice to pump in ethanol gas at the station, we’d use it. The environment is important but it needs to be convenient.”
Helferty, too, believes that for environmentally friendly habits to stick, individuals need to be given simple and obvious ways to make changes in their lives. Through her work, she has heard many people, of all ages and political leanings, tell her that they are willing to make changes, whether to pay more for gas or take transit to work. “At a minimum, many people are willing to offset their emissions and are more and more open to the idea of a carbon tax,” she says.
It remains to be seen whether recent concern for the environment is a passing trend, with climate change the current focus of today’s media attention and books, similar to the way the erosion of the ozone layer was making headlines in the early 1990s. One thing is certain: habits do seem to be changing. But perhaps the habit that most requires changing is the hardest to break: shopping. We need to buy less and buy wisely. According to Comeau, at the bottom of the environmental issue lies the problem of over-consumption in our society. “In Quebec, we are champions of residual materials.” Comeau explains that products are increasingly sold in several layers of wrapping and packaging. Products are individually packaged so that they are easier and quicker to use. “This mentality has its consequences.”
Indeed, waste bins are filled with items that could otherwise be reused. Yet the very concept of reusing is no longer as common as it once was; the convenience and rapidity of a product are now the most-valued factors when purchasing and disposing. Even though the challenge is great, Comeau stresses that each consumer has a big role to play in order to reverse this trend. “The tendency to say that our individual impact is negligible isn’t wrong. But think about it. In Quebec alone, if seven million people decide to change one little habit, things will change. It’s not one car in Quebec that creates pollution,” Comeau concludes, “It’s the combination of very many cars.”
To learn more:
On the Internet -
Centre universitaire de formation en environnement, Université de Sherbrooke www.usherbrooke.ca/environnement
Sierra Youth Coalition syc-cjs.org/sustainable
Sustainability Solutions Group http://www.sustainabilitysolutions.ca/
Sustainable Concordia http://sustainable.concordia.ca/
This article is part of a series on the diversity of values and religious beliefs in colleges and universities and is presented with the financial support of:
* Melissa Garcia Lamarca, member of Sustainable Concordia, is showing renown Canadian scientist and environmentalist David Suzuki worm composters in Concordia's rooftop greenhouse.
Photographer: Marco Burelli.
** Student Jasmine Stuart, member of Sustainable Concordia and Jenn Davis, Sustainability Coordinator at Montréal’s Concordia University. Photo : Gunther Gamper.
*** Jenn Davis, Sustainability Coordinator at Montréal’s Concordia University and student Jasmine Stuart, member of Sustainable Concordia. Photo : Gunther Gamper.