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Hello class! My name is Aurora Gil, I am 21 years old, and this is my last semester till I graduate with my AA! I am very excited to receive my AA and progress in my degree! My major is psychology, and I will be focusing on forensic psychology from my bachelors and on. After this semester I am going to take a year off in order to save for school since I have to go to psychology focused universities in order to major in forensic psychology.

My hobbies include crocheting, building puzzles, playing board games, watching movies and shows, and playing with my cats! I am very interested in thriller and horror movies and am always listening to R&B or reggae music. For my last semester I am taking this class and a psych. class! I look forward to learning with you all!

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While attending the meeting Professor Duque demonstrated all of the online sources available to MDC students. This reminded me of the useful websites like Kanopy, which allows students to watch documentaries! I also learned of a new website called Opposing Viewpoints for extra facts and sources that appeared to be very beneficial for any topic that students are interested in. These websites also allow students to be able to learn about different things during our free time! This is a great way to build up new hobbies or new interests. As an MDC student I also have access to a tutor, which was a nice reminder.

While searching for topic to write about I stumbled upon a documentary showing how climate change has displaced Californian residents. I have always been interested in learning about climate change and all of the different impacts it has around the world and learning about solutions. So, I will be writing about climate change, but more specifically I will be discussing rising sea levels and it affects us now and how it will affect is in the future. Sea level rising is very serious side effect of climate change, and while we have taken steps to overcome flooding, they seem to be only short-term solutions. I will also discuss how this affects residents, displaced residents, our roads, and ecosystems.

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Kanopy - Stream Classic Cinema, Indie Film and Top Documentaries

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Conditions in Florida after heavy rainfall

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Marandi, A., Main, K.L. Vulnerable City, recipient city, or climate destination? Towards a typology of domestic climate migration impacts in US cities. J Environ Stud Sci 11, 465–480 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-021-00712-2

This journal demonstrates how communities in Florida and other areas labeled as vulnerable, recipient, and climate cities are being affected due to climate change, more specifically sea-level rising and flooding. Currently there is little guidance for governments who are facing these migration trends.

The Nature Conservatory. Coastal Resilience. Miami Beach, 15 November 2021. Article.

This article shows steps some conservatories are taking to combat flooding and rising sea levels in our communities. They state how natural infrastructure like mangroves, coral and oyster reefs can protect the coastline while also providing wildlife habitat and other opportunities. It is important to start making an effort to combat flooding and rising sea levels.

Wingard, G.L., Bergstresser, S.E., Stackhouse, B.L. et al. Impacts of Hurricane Irma on Florida Bay Islands, Everglades National Park, USA. Estuaries and Coasts 43, 1070–1089 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-019-00638-7

The Everglades are a vital and historical part of Florida’s ecosystem, this journal provides insight into the effects that flooding and increasing water levels has on the Everglades ecosystem. This study provides a closer look at a subject that was barely discussed before and provides a baseline for long-term examining of the Everglades and rising sea levels.

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This page was updated on January 13, 2021.

Climate change is an urgent problem everywhere, and its impacts are especially pressing for the nearly 14 million people who live in Florida's coastal counties. Rising sea levels and swelling storm surges threaten coastal communities with flooding and erosion, putting people and property at risk.

Natural infrastructure such as marshes, beaches, mangrove stands, coral reefs and oyster reefs can help protect Florida's coastline from such threats.

In Florida and beyond, TNC is protecting and restoring natural infrastructure to reduce the impact of coastal hazards related to climate change. Along with green and green-gray or hybrid infrastructure, these nature-based solutions can protect people and property while also providing wildlife habitat, recreational opportunities and economic benefits. By investing in nature-based solutions across Florida, TNC is demonstrating how local and state governments and key stakeholders can provide a win-win solution for coastal resilience on an even greater scale.

The Power of Natural Infrastructure

There are two equally important facets of climate action: climate mitigation and climate adaptation. Climate mitigation efforts focus on lowering carbon emissions and transitioning to renewable energy. These mitigation activities will continue to play a critical role in slowing the pace of climate change. Yet mitigation alone is not enough. Climate adaptation efforts are vital to reduce the threats posed by sea level rise, storm surge, flooding and coastal erosion brought on by climate change.

Typically, coastal regions are planning to adapt to rising sea levels and increasing storm surges with traditional solutions such as seawalls and breakwaters. But this gray infrastructure is expensive and carbon intensive. By contrast, nature-based solutions which includes natural, green, and hybrid infrastructure offer multiple benefits. In many cases, hybrid infrastructure is being used to provide greater long-term resilience and more cost-effective outcomes than we could achieve with traditional solutions alone.

We now have substantial evidence that natural ecosystems can protect the coastline and, in some cases, reduce storm surge beyond the capabilities of gray infrastructure. TNC scientists have found that in some regions, a healthy coral reef can reduce 97 percent of a wave's energy before it hits the shore. And just 100 meters (328 feet) of mangrove trees can reduce wave height by 66 percent. A recent study, funded in part by TNC, found that mangroves in Florida protected approximately 625,000 people and prevented $1.5 billion in direct flood damages during Hurricane Irma in 2017.

In addition to coastal protection, natural ecosystems and nature-based solutions supply a host of other benefits, including improved water quality, recreational space and healthier fisheries. Trees and other green infrastructure also capture and store carbon, while providing critical habitat for Florida's native flora and fauna.

Putting Nature to Work in Urban Spaces

Coastal cities face some of the greatest risks from climate change. South Florida's urban communities are among the most at-risk metropolitan regions in the United States. Infrastructure, homes, businesses and natural areas from Key West to Palm Beach lie at or near sea level, making them especially vulnerable to rising sea levels. Many parts of South Florida are already feeling the impacts of climate change, in the form of excessively hot days, king tides, sunny-day flooding and even changes in the migratory patterns of birds. Yet even in this heavily populated urban environment, nature has a role to play in creating resilient cities.

Morningside Park

To demonstrate the value of nature-based solutions, TNC is working with the City of Miami to restore and enhance the waterfront of Morningside Park, a busy historic park on the shores of Biscayne Bay. The park and surrounding neighborhoods were established before modern stormwater conveyance and detention design standards. Now, extreme high tides are eating away at the shoreline and heavy rainfall events are inundating ball fields and the surrounding community. With support from the Chubb Charitable Foundation, the Morningside Park Coastal Resilience Project will use a living shoreline to reduce flood risk to the park and nearby residents. This new green and hybrid infrastructure demonstration project will likely include restoration of mangroves and intertidal wetlands, the creation of elevated or upland earthen berms (natural barriers) planted with native vegetation, and the installation of limestone rip-rap to reduce wave energy as well as modern stormwater control structures to compliment drainage improvements for the park and surrounding neighborhood. The project will enhance the beauty and resilience of Morningside Park. Meanwhile, it is expected to provide significant savings in avoided losses by protecting homes and businesses from future flooding during tropical storms and hurricanes. This demonstration project will benefit the City of Miami, and we hope it will influence policy and also serve as a model for other urban areas to follow as they must adapt to climate change.

Brittany Bay Park

Not far from Morningside Park, TNC is collaborating with the City of Miami Beach on the Brittany Bay Park Living Shoreline, Overlook and Park Renovation Project, with support from Florida Power & Light Company through its charitable arm the NextERA Energy Foundation. The city recently completed improvements to the existing seawall and bulkheads, and this project will go a step further toward adaptation, creating a living shoreline to further enhance habitat value and the park's resilience to high tides and storm surge. With our conservation partners, we will establish an intertidal basin for mangroves and plant native vegetation and trees along the shoreline and throughout the park. This innovative project demonstrates how nature-based solutions can enhance gray infrastructure to create space for nature in heavily urbanized areas and further protect against climate-related hazards.

Palm Beach Resilient Island

Natural and green infrastructure can be combined with gray to shore up vulnerable coastlines. But these nature-based solutions can also be combined with one another to create even more resilient systems. With support from the Batchelor Foundation and the Carrier Corporation, TNC is collaborating with Palm Beach County to restore and protect a small remnant island in Lake Worth Lagoon by arranging several nature-based solutions that have been successfully implemented in other nearby coastal restoration sites. Oyster reefs improve water quality and mangroves store carbon and provide important nursery habitat for fish and other aquatic organisms. In Lake Worth Lagoon, they may also protect against erosion that impacts upland areas including shorebird nesting habitat.

Mangroves are vulnerable to boat wakes and other hydrologic disturbances, however. To protect them, this demonstration project will minimize the use of limestone rip-rap and instead make use of oyster reefs. These will serve as a natural breakwater to reduce wave energy so that planted mangroves will become established, stabilize intertidal sediments, and limit erosion of upland areas of the island. It's the first time this layered approach for nature-based solutions has been tested in South Florida. If it's successful, it is a model that could be replicated throughout the Lake Worth lagoon and other areas to protect both natural habitat as well as homes, businesses and other built environments from destructive waves, storm surges, and rising seas.

Leading the Way to Coastal Resilience

Natural infrastructure plays a key role in protecting coastal areas in less urban locales as well. Projects such as our coral reef restoration work along Florida's Atlantic coast and our oyster restoration projects in the Gulf of Mexico are advancing the science of nature-based solutions, while also supporting critical wildlife habitat. We are also developing innovative modeling tools to help inform decision-making for climate adaptation, such as our coastal defense app, hosted on our coastal resilience website. And we continue to protect more natural spaces to ensure that nature can keep contributing to a resilient coast.

In addition to our work on the ground, TNC is taking a leadership role to advance nature-based solutions in Florida. We are an active participant in the Southeast Florida Regional Climate Change Compact, a four-county initiative established to coordinate climate mitigation and adaptation activities across Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe, and Palm Beach Counties. As part of this engagement, we led the Compact's Shoreline Resilience Working Group, which focuses on identifying and promoting healthy natural systems, engineered living shorelines and hybrid approaches to increase coastal resilience in southeast Florida and the Florida Keys.

TNC in Florida is partnering with Deltares USA to create a suite of regional resources to support the development of a coastal resilience Greenprint for areas of Florida most impacted by climate change. The Greenprint will establish natural and nature-based strategies to protect vulnerable communities from the threats of storm surge and sea level rise. Through this effort, we'll also identify a pipeline of nature-based solutions that will provide the greatest return on investment.

Climate change is already altering Florida and its coastline. To manage present threats and adapt for the future, we must use all of the tools at our disposal in order to create a more resilient coastal ecosystem for Floridians-and nature-based solutions belong at the top of that list.

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Coastal Resilience: nature-based solutions can help protect Florida's coastline.

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This page was updated on January 13, 2021. Climate change is an urgent problem everywhere, and its impacts are especially pressing for the nearly 14 million people who live in Florida's coastal counties. Rising sea levels and swelling storm surges threaten coastal communities with flooding and erosion, putting people and property at risk.

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human migration due to rising sea levels

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Damage Done to the Everglades After Hurricane Irma

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Damage Done to the Everglades After Hurricane Irma

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Before we completed CAS1 and I watched some videos from the website storyofstuff.org, I did not think clothing would pose such a great threat to our ocean life especially when they are doing mundane things like being washed and dried. After watching “The Story of Microfibers” my perspective on materials like polyester altered a bit. I knew they were harmful to the environment since they have plastic in them, but I did not know materials like that release microfibers while being washed, which act like a toxic sponge as it travels in the ocean. These microfibers soak up any pollutant it passes and can then be eaten by fish which are then eaten by larger fish or you! Learning about this I have since not bought any clothing made with polyester and will be using the rest of my acrylic yarn and keeping any items I make and will then start buying recycled yarn found in thrift shops or local business.

Watching “The Story of Microfibers” was very educational and interesting, but another interesting assignment was SP3. Before this assignment we attended a meeting where we chose a topic, and mine was rising sea levels along with all of the consequences we face due to this issue, so finding articles and journals to provide research was informational. One interesting journal I found explained how different Floridian communities are considered vulnerable to the effects of rising sea-levels, which can include displacement and even death in extreme cases. Another interesting source I found was one that talked about the different natural infrastructures Florida can implement in the coastline to combat flooding.

Until I completed this assignment, I had assumed that governments facing the consequences of high migration rates and facing the consequences of sea-level rising but after reading one of my sources for this assignment I found that to not be that case. I was infuriated to know that it is up to communities to essentially create solutions or deal with high rates of migration and the different effects of climate change. Due to this I am motivated to educate people on all the different consequences of climate change and how it can impact us, our communities, and our natural habits. I am also motivated to urge governments to implement climate change solutions as soon as possible.

Another interesting assignment we did was CAS2, which had us read articles from solutions.org. In this assignment I read a very informational article which discussed how sugar cane farms burn unwanted sugar cane leaves, a common practice here in Florida. The author of this article had previously uncovered the negligence of these farms and how they polluted low-income communities of colors, and in this article, they go to Brazil to find a better solution for getting rid of unwanted leaves. The author found that sugar cane farmers in Brazil now use some of these leaves to form a protective layer over their fields, enriching the soil as it protects it, and use the rest to generate renewable energy.

Even though there are alternatives to burning the crops, sugar cane facilities they have not taken any steps to eliminate sugar cane burning. They also have not completed necessary research in order to prove sugar cane burning is safe or harmful. When I completed this article, I was livid about how representatives of a state can be so negligent to what their community needs and is asking for. I am also shocked as to how these facilities have not been shut down nor have faced any consequences to their actions. This makes me even more motivated to join community organizations to campaign for climate solutions before it is too late for our neighbors and community members.

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1. Documentation

1. “The Story of Solutions”

“The Story of Solutions”, written by Annie Leonard, describes in depth how we can move our economy and goals from “more” to “better” (Fox, 2013). The narrator of this film explains how our economy is set like a game, a game where the goal is “more money being spent, more roads being built more malls being opened, more stuff!” (Fox, 2013). But while our economists and officials focus on more economic growth, we give less attention to all the problems we are facing, including climate change, economic imbalances, health and well-being, education, etc. The narrator then gives ways that people can participate or create change themselves and gives examples of businesses that help create healthier communities.

1. “The Story of Microfibers”

In this short film Leonard talks about tiny plastic particles known as microfibers. Microfibers are released when you wash any synthetic fabrics, whether it is created by recycled items or not. This creates a big problem because these microfibers then make their way to the ocean and act as toxic sponges. They soak up all the pollutants around them including pesticides, motor oil, and industrial chemicals (Creative, 2015). They are then eaten by fish, who are then potentially being eaten by us or bigger fish! Scientists estimate there are now 1.4 million trillion microfibers in our oceans, and they will only continue to rise if we do not think of better solutions and stop using synthetic fabrics like polyester.

1. Reflection

1. Consumption is part of my role as a global citizen, the same as almost everyone in this world. It is very hard to not consume or purchase anything, especially living within the city. But I do try to make the best choices when it comes to consumption. I am weary about anything I purchase and do my best to not buy anything plastic wrapped. I also am aware of the companies I purchase from and which organizations I support and donate to. I think these are just a few small steps to becoming aware of how your choices affect the world around you and the people around you.

2. I want to continue progressing my awareness of my choices and continue cutting plastic out of my life. I have also been inspired into volunteering more, there are local gardens here in Florida that allow the community to share veggies and fruits. I also want to speak out more and join organizations in protests about climate change, banning plastics, and animal rights. These videos are very helpful in realizing that we are all affected by one another, and that we must change in order to change our planet.

Citations:

Creative, R. D. (Director). (2015). The Story of Microfibers [Motion Picture].

Fox, L. (Director). (2013). The Story of Solutions [Motion Picture].

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The Story of Stuff The Story of Stuff, originally released in December 2007, is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us tog…

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Documentation:

The first article I read was titled “Burning Sugar Cane Pollutes Communities of Color in Florida. Brazil Shows There’s Another Way,” written by Nadia Sussman. Sussman quotes a previous article written in July of 2021 uncovering the pollution in “low-income communities of color” due to the burning of sugar cane and sets out to find a solution to this problem in Brazil (Sussman). São Paulo once had the same problem Florida now faces and took steps in order to eliminate these sugar cane burns. Now farmers from São Paulo use some of the dry sugar cane leaves to form a protective blanket over the fields which enriches the soil, and other leaves are collected to generate renewable energy (Sussman). While finding these possible solutions and reporting them back to sugar cane facilities, they have not done the necessary research or taken steps to eliminate sugar cane burning.

The next article I read was titled “Giving Up Glyphosate,” written by Moira Donovan. In this article the author writes about a chemical used by some forestry companies called glyphosate. This herbicide is used to “suppress the growth of deciduous trees… this suppression, in turns, promotes the growth of the conifer plantations…” (Donovan). Donovan includes a quote by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer declaring that glyphosate is “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Despite this some Canadian forestry companies continue to spray glyphosate on remote forests, even after recent research suggests that glyphosate remains in the tissue of edible and medicinal plants for at least a year after being sprayed and in some cases up to a dozen years. (Donovan). This has started a movement created by Indigenous people to completely eliminate the use of glyphosate.

Reflection:

While both of these articles are different in topic, they are they demonstrate some similarities. Both of these articles show the negligence of some of the companies who profit from the environment. I believe we should be banning both sugar cane burnings in Florida and any other state that hold sugar canes facilities, and glyphosate. While these is information claiming that discontinuing the burning of sugar cane will bring economic loss, there are feasible ways to make moves towards a cleaner way to remove sugar cane leaves like Brazilian farmers have shown us. Sugar cane plantations are already mechanized here in Florida, and while researchers at the Florida Department of Health have recommended health-risk assessments associated to these fires there has been no study done with no questions answered (Sussman). The banning of glyphosate would also be beneficial in the long-term for our forests and wildlife, but forestry companies nor government officials have taken necessary steps to stop the use of herbicide. Companies like the ones on these articles will publish “scientific” articles that agree with them, and neglect important research that provides a deeper look into their procedures. Both subjects were portrayed with in depth information backed by other articles. The authors for both articles also provided both sides while also displaying the faults of some of these companies and facilities due to their negligence or ignorance. In order to create change we have to advocate and yell for it, because if it is up to companies, it will not get done.

References

Donovan, Moira. Giving Up Glyphosate. Ontario, 25 Jan. 2022. Article.

Sussman, Nadia. Burning Sugar Cane Pollutes Communities of Color in Florida. Brazil Shows There’s Another Way. South Florida, 29 Dec. 2021. Article.

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Gary D Ercole/Getty Images

Florida's largest sugar companies say cane burns are safe and can't be stopped without economic harm. But Brazil has successfully transitioned away from the controversial practice, and experts there say the U.S. can follow their lead.

This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they're published.

Pictured above: A high altitude view of burning sugar cane in South Florida from a small airplane.

This year, reporters at The Palm Beach Post and ProPublica investigated the impact of sugar cane burning in Florida. The harvesting practice helps produce more than half of America's cane sugar, but it sends smoke and ash into largely low-income communities of color in the state's heartland.

In our reporting, we learned that other countries have found ways to harvest their crops without those burns. So we recently traveled to Brazil, the world's largest producer of sugar cane, to learn how and why they switched to another method.

Brazil has a massive sugar cane industry that produces raw sugar, ethanol and electricity. The country farms more than 20 million acres, compared to less than 1 million in the U.S.

Beginning in the 1990s, residents of São Paulo, the nation's largest sugar-cane-producing state, voiced concerns similar to those of Glades residents today: They complained of ash and soot blanketing their homes, and of respiratory problems.

In response to public pressure, officials in São Paulo passed a law in 2002 mandating the gradual elimination of pre-harvest burns over the next three decades. Producers invested in harvesting equipment that allowed them to cut the cane without burning. In the following years, the sugar cane industry worked with the state government to eliminate nearly all burns by 2017 and enact other environmental-protection measures. (Burning is still permitted until 2031 in areas too steep to harvest by machine.)

The results have been dramatic. The dry sugar cane leaves that once went up in smoke now form a protective blanket on the fields, enriching the soil. Some of these leaves, commonly called straw in Brazil, are also collected to generate renewable energy. Excess electricity from the mills is sold to the grid, often at a significant profit.

"I have no doubts that today, no one wants to return to the past and no one wants to burn [sugar cane]," said Antonio de Padua Rodrigues, the technical director of the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association.

ProPublica made numerous requests to Florida's two largest sugar producers to film the harvesting and milling processes and conduct on-camera interviews with company representatives for this story. A U.S. Sugar spokesperson declined. Florida Crystals did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The latter firm, however, previously told the news organizations that Brazil was one of several countries "unsuitable to compare to South Florida" because of differences in farming practices, soil, weather and regulations.

While the company did not offer more specifics for its claims, an advocacy group with ties to the industry argues that the straw left over from harvesting raw, unburnt cane would promote rot in Florida's nutrient-rich soil and attract pests. Top Brazilian agronomists and industry leaders acknowledged that Florida's soil differs from theirs in some key ways but told us that the challenges created by leftover straw can be effectively managed.

"If the problem's the straw, you pick it up and generate energy, and that way you win twice over," said Arnaldo Bortoletto, president of the Cooperative of Sugarcane Planters of the State of São Paulo.

In fact, some cane in Florida is already harvested without burning when it grows in "smoke-sensitive" buffer areas close to schools, hospitals, highways and assisted living facilities. Neither U.S. Sugar nor Florida Crystals responded to questions about why burn-free harvesting could not be expanded.

Judy Sanchez, a U.S. Sugar vice president, previously told The Palm Beach Post and ProPublica that any changes to harvesting practices in Florida would have a "significant economic impact." When asked for specifics, though, the company did not respond.

In Brazil, the industry has successfully navigated the financial impacts of the transition. Companies had to retrain workers and develop firefighting teams to combat wildfires in the cane fields, among other changes. The purchase of harvesting machinery was among the largest investments, according to the Brazilian Sugar Industry Association, a trade group representing mills and ethanol factories.

Brazilian experts noted that Florida companies have already bought harvesting machinery and have had it for years.

"You'll simply use the same machine that harvests burnt cane and it will harvest raw cane," said Marcos Landell, the general director of the Agronomic Institute of Campinas, a major agricultural research institution and graduate school in São Paulo state.

Industry and government officials in Florida have claimed that Brazil provides some manner of subsidies that helped offset the costs of the transition. Government officials and sugar executives in Brazil disputed that claim, saying companies did not receive direct subsidies. The industry did, however, benefit from federal policies to support agriculture and promote the production and use of ethanol and other renewable energy sources.

In the U.S., the federal government "supports U.S. sugar prices, which are usually well above comparable prices in the world market," according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In Brazil, the transition to mechanized harvesting resulted in net job loss, since fewer workers were needed to run the new machines than to cut the cane by hand. Over the past year, local officials and Glades residents told ProPublica that they feared a similar outcome if the burns stopped in Florida. But Brazilian experts told us that they would not expect significant job loss in Florida because the harvest is already mechanized, a process that took place there in the 1990s.

In the U.S., little research has been done into how Florida could transition to a new method of harvesting. Agronomists at the University of Florida did a study of alternative harvesting methods, and they told us that leaving straw on Florida's soil could make plants more prone to freezing and inhibit growth in the short term, but might provide long-term benefits. The study, which was financed by the Florida Sugar Cane League - an industry group - and the Florida Department of Energy, did not examine the economic feasibility, including the job implications, of such a transition.

Florida authorities have opted to regulate the burns instead of banning them. But ProPublica and The Palm Beach Post found that regulators rely on a threadbare air-monitoring system that fails to account for short-term spikes in pollution, a hallmark of cane burning in Florida. Recognizing the potential for human harm, the state Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services passed new restrictions on burning in 2019. But the number of burns ultimately allowed in the 2020-21 harvest season was comparable to previous years.

Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried has said she believes "it's possible for green harvesting to be a feasible alternative," but her office said no alternative harvesting methods "have yet emerged as an environmentally and economically viable option."

Meanwhile, state research into the health effects of cane burning appears to have stalled. In 2016, researchers at the Florida Department of Health recommended a health-risk assessment after finding that the pre-harvest burns release toxic air pollutants. Such a study would evaluate whether members of the community had illnesses that were linked to the pollutants researchers had found. But, five years later, the department has yet to produce such a study. It has not responded to questions about why.

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Burning sugar cane pollutes communities of color in Florida. Brazil shows there's another way.

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Gary D Ercole/Getty Images Florida's largest sugar companies say cane burns are safe and can't be stopped without economic harm. But Brazil has successfully transitioned away from the controversial practice, and experts there say the U.S. can follow their lead. This story was originally published by ProPublica.

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Photography by Chris Donovan

Also in this issue

Giving Up Glyphosate

The forestry industry's prized pesticide may be harming people and nature. Is it time to stop spraying?

As anyone who's spent time in a forest knows, the quiet in even the most remote stretch of woods is never complete. Absent the rise and fall of human voices, the thrum of traffic from a nearby road, the distant tear of a passing plane, there are still sounds-the rustle of some small creature making its way furtively through the undergrowth, the drone of insects, the fluttering of leaves.

But in the Northern Ontario forests Troy Woodhouse first started exploring as a young man, a new kind of quiet has taken hold. In his early twenties, Woodhouse worked as a forester and moved from mixed boreal forests to monoculture plantations of spruce and pine. On his trips to assess the quality of timber prior to harvest, Woodhouse eventually felt the relaxation of being in the bush slip away. In its place, a feeling of unease crept in-it was eerily quiet, he says, as if he'd stepped into a ghost forest.

These stark transitions weren't his first encounter with a changing ecosystem. As a teenager, Woodhouse, a member of Flying Post First Nation who grew up west of Timmins, Ontario, would go out in the bush to hunt moose. He had seen death inequitably distributed in the woods-dead or dying shrubs here, seemingly untouched conifers there. The inexplicable contrast struck Woodhouse as strange, and not only because these forests looked different: with the flutter and rustle of forest life silenced, the forests sounded different, too.

It was only after training to work in forestry that Woodhouse was able to identify the culprit: glyphosate, a herbicide used to suppress the growth of deciduous trees, like poplar and birch. This suppression, in turn, promotes the growth of the conifer plantations that are valuable to commercial forestry operations.

In the public conversation about forestry in Canada, much of the angst is sparked by concerns about clearcutting or the felling of old-growth trees. But forestry isn't just a matter of what's being taken out-it's also about what's being put in. And in ecosystems ranging from the boreal forests of Northern Ontario to the Acadian forest of New Brunswick-provinces where glyphosate spraying is reportedly happening at the highest levels in the country-community groups and Indigenous knowledge holders say the application of glyphosate is changing the soundtrack. Now, after decades of advocacy, work is underway to find new ways forward, before the sounds of the forest are lost for good.

Forestry abounds with bland euphemisms. Terms like "even-aged management" and "low-retention harvesting" are often used to describe practices that are popularly understood through a blunter sobriquet: clearcutting. Estimates suggest that in 2019, 639,455 hectares of forest were clear-cut in Canada. Proponents of clearcutting say it replicates the natural processes that are part of the forest cycle, like fires and wind disturbances. But it's likely an imperfect mirror, removing trees in a more homogenous and comprehensive way than through natural sources alone.

Following cutting on public land (which is carried out by forestry companies who've been issued licenses or timber supply agreements by the province or territory), harvesters are legally required to ensure the area is reforested. In the wide-open spaces of the ensuing microclimate, where shrubs and hardwoods thrive, this often means using glyphosate, making clearcutting and glyphosate use an unholy union from which it can seem impossible to escape.

Since its introduction to the market by Monsanto in the 1970s, glyphosate has achieved the kind of reach most chemical companies can only dream of.  In Canadian forestry, where it's by far the most used herbicide, it's sprayed over tens of thousands of hectares of publicly owned forest every year. By blocking an important metabolic pathway, glyphosate prevents weeds, shrubs and deciduous trees from growing, and ultimately kills them.

Conifers are less vulnerable to glyphosate's effects due to a protective coating on their leaves that makes it harder for the herbicide to penetrate their plant tissues. As a result, these trees are more likely to win the biological race that kicks off following the harvesting of a forest. With less competition from paper birch, raspberries and other fast-growing species, the pine and spruce seedlings planted after a clear-cut can grow more easily into the plantations useful for the forestry industry.

Because mammals and vertebrates don't have the cellular pathway affected by glyphosate, some scientists and industry players have said that this makes the chemical relatively safe for people. In Canada, glyphosate is often spread by helicopters dropping clouds of the herbicide over remote forests. Perhaps for that reason, glyphosate application in forestry has attracted less attention than its use in agricultural and residential settings, where some studies have linked exposure to glyphosate to non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

In 2020, Bayer (which acquired Monsanto in 2018) agreed to pay more than $10 billion USD to settle US claims that the brand-name herbicide Roundup, of which glyphosate is the primary ingredient, causes cancer. Five years earlier, the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer declared that glyphosate is "probably carcinogenic to humans."

Despite this fact, the US Environmental Protection Agency and Health Canada maintain that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a human cancer risk. Nonetheless, Bayer announced this past summer that it would replace its glyphosate-based landscaping products beginning in 2023, citing the risk of future litigation. For its part, Health Canada has committed to funding more research on the assessments of pesticides.

Many of the non-Hodgkin lymphoma cases where claimants have asserted or established a link to glyphosate involve people who'd been directly exposed for years, mixing and spraying Roundup as landscapers, farmers and homeowners, unaware of the potential dangers. In forestry, though, where glyphosate is most often rained from the sky, limiting the direct risk posed to those applying the chemical, the consequences of exposure have been even murkier. Except, that is, for those spending time in the woods.

Nearly a decade ago, Susan Chiblow was passing through Mississauga First Nation, on the North Shore of Lake Huron, to check on an Anishinaabe Elder. By that point, Chiblow (who uses the pronoun "wiin") had already come up against glyphosate. While working as the environmental coordinator for the Chiefs of Ontario, wiin had helped draft a 2008 resolution that identified chiefs' opposition to spraying in their territories. They were concerned about the threat it posed to waters and plants, and called on the province to institute a ban on herbicide use in forestry.

But herbicide use continued. So it wasn't altogether surprising when, several years later, Elders in the community Chiblow was passing through asked if wiin would help a group calling themselves the Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Elders bring about an end to glyphosate spraying in the Robinson-Huron Treaty territory, between Sault Ste. Marie and the Parry Sound region.

While in the bush, Sagamok Anishnawbek First Nation Elder Raymond Owl had seen signs posted warning of herbicide spraying, but that wasn't all he'd observed. For years, Elders had also been noticing a concerning number of dead and dying plants. After talking to other Elders who'd seen similar warning signs and damage in the woods, and tracing the connection to glyphosate use, Owl formed the TEK Elders. Chiblow, who quickly became the group's coordinator and de facto spokesperson, says Elders knew what was happening to plants would have consequences for other beings, including bears, birds and bees, as well.

Despite glyphosate's widespread use, there have been gaps in the science on its long-term impact on forested ecosystems, perhaps because most of the research has been focused on its toxicity to people and large mammals, says Chiblow. But in recent years, studies have been published suggesting that glyphosate persists in the tissues of edible and medicinal plants for at least a year after spraying, though the effects of this on wildlife are unclear.

In some cases, these traces can last up to a dozen years, despite studies that have found glyphosate degrades quickly in most soils. Other research has found deformations in the reproductive structures of wildflowers one year after spraying, which could impact how attractive they are to pollinators, and affect foraging animals who rely on the plants for food and cover in open areas. Another study found that the presence of glyphosate in freshwater ecosystems affects the diversity of zooplankton. Researchers say the ecosystem-level consequences of this need further study.

Of course, much of this work confirmed what Elders were already saying. Throughout the 2010s, the TEK Elders carried out additional research of their own. They ran a water sampling project in areas along the North Shore of Lake Huron to establish a baseline against which future samples can be compared. They also made submissions to Environment Canada asserting the importance of traditional knowledge, and sent letters to the UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights, as well as provincial and federal officials. The group cited not just ecological concerns over the use of glyphosate, but also violations of treaty rights to hunt, fish and gather plant medicines and berries in the territory. "It affects our way of life, affects our connections to the land, our governance systems, our law, it affects everything," Chiblow says.

That broad impact has been top of mind for Tom Fox, newly minted councillor for Matachewan First Nation, in Treaty 9 territory southeast of Timmins. This year, as Fox was preparing to go into his first meeting with Ontario's Ministry of Northern Development, Mines, Natural Resources and Forestry (NDMNRF) about spraying, he kept his expectations low. Despite years of advocacy by Indigenous groups, including his own council, little had changed.

Fox says when NDMNRF staff announced, with some fanfare, that there had been a 10 percent reduction in spray, he responded that it wasn't enough. He asked staff if they'd let their kids play in the backyard after it was sprayed with glyphosate. "And right away, everybody's like, 'Oh, no, we can't do that.' Well that's what you're doing to our kids, because that's our backyard. You spray it and then our kids go play in it," he says. "Not only our kids, but I mean, us adults, we go in there too."

Fox is focused on glyphosate for many reasons, including the loss of culture and tradition. He's not alone; other councillors are helping to organize annual hunt camps to pass on traditional knowledge. This year, a member of the reserve donated a moose and showed youth how to skin and quarter it up. But without access to medicines, which Elders have told him are disappearing from the bush in areas that have been sprayed, Fox is worried that many of the avenues to pass traditional knowledge along to future generations will disappear.

In an emailed statement, the NDMNRF told Maisonneuve that it has no plans to phase out the use of herbicides in forestry, and that alternatives, such as manually removing competing species with brush saws, as is carried out in Quebec, remain expensive. (In Quebec, herbicides were banned in Crown forests twenty years ago, after concerns over their potential impact on public and environmental health fuelled multiple rounds of public consultation. Vegetation management in the province now involves manual tending and changes to seedling planting practices.)

The NDMNRF statement also noted that the department has safeguards in place, "including no spray buffer zones around sensitive areas, to minimize risks to people and the environment," and that Health Canada's most recent assessment determined that glyphosate "does not pose unacceptable risks to human health or the environment when used as directed."

But Fox says though little has changed on the government side, something has shifted in the public reaction to glyphosate. In recent years, he's seen concern about glyphosate expand beyond Indigenous communities, with small towns and community groups joining the conversation. And as the conversation around concerns becomes more fervent, so too does the one about solutions.

In 2011, a forestry company called Tembec and members of several Indigenous communities in Northern Ontario gathered in Timmins. They were there to identify and develop a strategy to apply alternatives to herbicides. It wasn't the first time people had looked into vegetation management alternatives in Ontario. Researchers have investigated alternatives in other jurisdictions, including of the four-legged variety, with cattle and sheep proposed as agents of non-chemical weed control. They've also looked at manual clearing and a kind of fungi that attacks hardwood species.

In Tembec's case, the company already had experience operating without herbicides in Quebec, following the provincial ban. But the Northern Ontario project was different, since it was guided by the concerns of the First Nations communities in whose territories Tembec (now called GreenFirst Forest Products) operates, such as Chapleau Cree and Missanabie Cree First Nations. After meeting with communities who unanimously identified herbicide spraying as their number one concern in forestry management, the Herbicide Alternatives Program (HAP) was born.

Since its inception, HAP has been operating in forests in Northern Ontario, trialling methods that could reduce herbicide use at several points along the process. These methods start even before harvest, identifying areas where soil and root disturbance should be minimized (reducing the spread of unwanted plants that would then be controlled with glyphosate). Then, during planting, the program has investigated the impact of changing the density and timing of planting, and whether planting larger seedlings could help planted trees outcompete other species.

When management of that competition is required, HAP sends employees into the bush armed with brush cutters, to remove trees and shrubs mechanically. Early results suggest that this brush cutting, alongside the use of larger seedlings, is helping planted trees survive. Meanwhile, the program has also been conducting surveys of plots, which informs whether or not an area can be excluded from spraying. This on-the-ground surveying can reduce herbicide use by helping foresters identify areas where alternatives are most likely to succeed. But it's also triggered the start of a conceptual shift, moving glyphosate from the default option to the measure of last resort.

This has implications beyond HAP's research areas, as the program has implemented steps that could be applied elsewhere in the region. Lark Ritchie, a Chapleau Cree First Nation member who was involved in HAP from 2012 until 2018 as co-chair of the steering team, says the program was meant to show what's possible. "Our feelings were that by doing this, we would become a role model for other organizations in the industry to kind of understand what we were doing, and change their attitude from 'you must be crazy' to 'we might be able to do something here.'"

Isabelle Allen is projects forester with Wahkohtowin Development, a development corporation owned by Chapleau Cree, Missanabie Cree and Brunswick House First Nations, which is a partner on the program. Ultimately, she says HAP is about a change in worldview-moving away from a formulaic approach to forestry to one that emphasizes a collaborative approach with Indigenous communities, for whom glyphosate use constitutes a fundamentally disrespectful relationship with the environment.

The way Allen sees it, the industry worldview looks to trees as a source of profit, whereas the Indigenous perspective emphasizes a reciprocal relationship with the ecosystem in its entirety. And insofar as HAP encourages foresters to be patient, to appreciate the interdependence of species in forest ecosystems, and to take concerns about chemical control seriously, it's bringing those perspectives closer together, ushering in a less combative relationship between communities and industry, Allen says.

But the rapprochement isn't complete; for some community members, HAP isn't perfect. So far, it's led to a reduction in herbicide use, including a 75 percent reduction in the Chapleau Crown Game Preserve in the program's first phase, as well as an overall reduction of about 20 percent in the forests HAP is studying. The program isn't over, and participants hope for further reductions. But Allen says a full halt to spraying remains tricky from an industry perspective, given that many competitors are still using herbicides-which are the most efficient and profitable option-even as elimination continues to be the goal for Indigenous communities.

"We're signed on to this idea that we're going to look for solutions together. But [communities'] goal is for sure zero," says Allen. Scientific and technological advances could help move the needle, but the ultimate goal is policy change at a provincial and federal level, Allen says, both in strengthening the consultation and engagement requirements with Indigenous communities, and in addressing glyphosate use itself. Part of that change could come from activism in ecosystems far from the boreal forests of Northern Ontario.

Matthiew Vienneau never set out to be an activist. A hunter, he's used to spending time amid the trees in New Brunswick's expansive forests, but for a long time, that's where any overlap with anything "green" stopped. Still, he'd long been mistrustful of glyphosate. As a teenager, he lived five houses down from his grandparents' farm. About twenty-five years ago, spray from the forest abutting their fields drifted onto one of the crops. Soon, the leaves turned yellow and the potatoes, when dug up, were blistered. Worried that the tubers were contaminated, Vienneau's grandparents insisted on throwing the potatoes away.

Vienneau says J.D.Irving Ltd, the company that had been doing the spraying-and the largest forestry company, by far, in New Brunswick-compensated them for the loss of crop. The experience left Vienneau with a question: if glyphosate did that to plants, what was it doing to people?

J.D. Irving doesn't only play a role in Vienneau's story. The company exerts an outsize influence in the province, occupying a dominant position in industries ranging from forestry and food production to transportation. Other companies owned by the Irving family-one of the richest in Canada-are responsible for oil refining, media (they own most English-language newspapers in the province) and real estate, among other businesses. As a result, roughly one in twelve New Brunswickers is employed by the Irving family, and their companies have close ties to government. The premier of New Brunswick, Blaine Higgs, worked for Irving Oil for thirty-three years and has tapped former executives at Irving companies to provide advice to the province.

About two decades after Vienneau's family's brush with the Irvings, he ran into glyphosate again, in 2014. This time, he was planning a moose hunting trip in the forest. In New Brunswick, the moose hunting season for settlers is contained to less than a week in September. When Vienneau went to check his stand in preparation for the hunt, he saw moose tracks, but no signs of the animals themselves. After doing a bit of digging, Vienneau learned that the area had been sprayed with glyphosate.

In Ontario, the proportion of forest treated with glyphosate is a fraction of the forested land base, but it's still the highest recorded, in terms of total hectares, in Canada. In 2018, the most recent year for which numbers are available, glyphosate was sprayed over nearly thirty-four thousand hectares of forest, mostly in Northern Ontario, representing about 40 percent of all glyphosate use in the country. But in New Brunswick, glyphosate is, in a way, even more dominant. In 2018, roughly fifteen thousand hectares of Crown forest were treated with glyphosate-nearly half Ontario's total, in a province only 8 percent of Ontario's size.

Moreover, glyphosate is helping to reshape the landscape. Much of the forest in New Brunswick is within the Acadian forest region, naturally made up not just of conifers, but also hardwoods such as sugar maple, yellow birch and American beech. It's an ecoregion that the World Wildlife Fund has deemed endangered. Over time, researchers say clearcutting and conifer plantations have contributed to the transformation of the Acadian forest, a transition in which glyphosate plays a significant role.

For his part, motivated by concerns about the changes he'd seen in the woods, Vienneau launched a Facebook group after his relocated moose hunting trip, which eventually morphed into a group called Stop Spraying New Brunswick. The group started growing quickly soon after its inception, populated not only by environmentalists, but mostly by hunters and anglers who were as angry about glyphosate as Vienneau was. Eventually, overwhelmed by the public interest and the stacks of mail that the group's petition was generating, Vienneau asked a Fredericton dentist named Caroline Lubbe-D'Arcy, who'd been active on other environmental issues, to take over the reins.

Initially, Lubbe-D'Arcy was concerned about a forestry plan the province had signed in 2014, which had augmented the amount of softwood in Crown forest allocated to industry, increasing harvesting by 21 percent. But in 2015, the CBC released a story, citing data that New Brunswick's white-tailed deer hunt numbers were at one of the lowest levels ever recorded. In the story, a biologist working for the province pointed the finger at harsh winters. But many New Brunswickers had another idea; in the days after the story's release, membership in the Stop Spraying New Brunswick Facebook group grew threefold.

"The shit was hitting the fan," as Lubbe-D'Arcy puts it. A petition the group launched shortly afterwards quickly garnered tens of thousands of handwritten signatures, which members say makes it the largest petition in New Brunswick's history.

The concerns over glyphosate have particular resonance in New Brunswick, where the use of DDT in the twentieth century-particularly between 1952 and 1968, when at least 5.7 million kilograms of DDT were spread by aircraft to control for spruce budworm-led to devastatingly high mortality rates among Atlantic salmon in the Miramichi River. Those impacts served as part of the impetus for Rachel Carson's 1962 book Silent Spring, which became a foundational text in the environmental movement.

By challenging claims by regulators and some scientists that DDT was safe, Carson's book helped spur the 1972 ban on DDT in the US (though not in Canada, where DDT was not banned until 1985 and could be used until 1990). Following the publication of excerpts from Silent Spring, though, government officials and other scientists criticized Carson as being "misinformed," a "bird-lover" and, predictably, a "spinster." And as it turns out, criticizing glyphosate in New Brunswick hasn't been straightforward either.

Since 2014, a number of researchers who've spoken out about New Brunswick's forestry practices have faced consequences. An instructor and a former college director have been let go from the Maritime College of Forest Technology in Fredericton-wildlife biologist Rod Cumberland, who spoke out against glyphosate use, and Gerald Redmond, the colleague who defended him. Representatives of J.D. Irving and other forestry companies sit on the college's board. (In Cumberland's case, the college claims he was let go for harassing his students, a characterization Cumberland disputes.) According to the CBC, biology professor Marc-André Villard was dropped from a J.D Irving forestry committee and had research funding pulled by the company after raising concerns, including some regarding the impact of conifer plantations on biodiversity.

In response to a request for comment on glyphosate's impact on forested ecosystems, the consequences for glyphosate critics, and the impact of a glyphosate ban on the profitability of the company's forestry operations, a spokesperson for J.D.Irving sent a presentation in which the company's director of research and development Andrew Willett said that the public's concerns with glyphosate stem from "misinformation."

"We can't make public policy and we can't make public investments on something Karen from Facebook said, or something we read on Google," he told a legislative committee. "We rely on national and international regulators like Health Canada to provide us information on what is safe with the science." In the same presentation, company co-CEO Jim Irving said a ban on glyphosate would have a dramatic impact on the business. "It would be disastrous," he said.

A statement from the province's Department of Natural Resources and Energy Development also said that despite research into alternatives, "there are no alternatives that match modern herbicides, such as glyphosate, in terms of general utility, effectiveness, reliability, low cost and documented environmental acceptability."

But the effectiveness of alternatives is a matter of some debate. A long-term study in Oregon, which has compared stands sprayed with different degrees of herbicide, found that stands did regenerate without herbicides, although sprayed tracts grew 20 to 30 percent faster. Matthew Betts, a professor at Oregon State University who led the study, says the tradeoff for this speed is a "remarkable" decline in plant, pollinator and bird biodiversity.

That last category is a particular concern in New Brunswick. Betts has studied the decline of bird habitat in the Maritimes, as a consequence of intensive forestry practices that include glyphosate spraying. That research, which is still undergoing peer review, found that out of fifty-four common bird species in eastern Canadian forests, over 90 percent have experienced habitat declines between 2010 and 2020. Betts, who grew up planting trees in New Brunswick, knew the extent to which forests were changing. Nonetheless, he says the findings are alarming. "It's a different story, when you really see the numbers on paper."

Halting glyphosate could be one small part of reversing this decline, but it's far from the only part. Betts says forestry practices writ large need to change in the Maritimes. At the same time, he says, "we need to respect and think about people who have their livelihoods based in the forest. It's not them who are profiting massively from current practices."

The question of the timber industry has made glyphosate use a particularly fraught conversation in New Brunswick, a small province where roughly ten thousand people are employed in forestry, including in places like Matthiew Vienneau's hometown of Sainte-Anne-de-Kent, a region where he says he's had less support than in other communities. He attributes this situation to the high proportion of the population that works for J.D.Irving.

In this polarized environment, information has become hard to trust. In late 2020, a full-page open letter appeared in several Irving-owned newspapers, stating that political parties' support for a ban on glyphosate would be politically motivated if the policy doesn't extend to "the use of all chemicals on all land types and all applications." Two days later, the provincial Liberal opposition government said it would phase out glyphosate spraying on Crown land. (The party lost the provincial election two weeks later, and the commitment was dropped.) Other industry groups in the province have said concerns about glyphosate are not based in science, and that there is no substitute.

Meanwhile, advocates have said there hasn't been enough research done on glyphosate's impacts, and that existing research often has industry ties. This has, in turn, prompted grassroots efforts from citizens. Two thirteen-year-old girls in northern New Brunswick conducted a school science project looking at declines of herbivores in areas treated by glyphosate. They found significantly reduced rabbit, deer and moose tracks in areas sprayed with glyphosate. Members of the Wolastoqey Nation in New Brunswick led a testing program for the tissues and organs of moose brought in by hunters, which did not find glyphosate in the samples.

What isn't in dispute is that for many communities, phasing out commercial forestry entirely is neither realistic nor desirable-and if forestry is going to continue, so too will a need to manage how the forest grows. Addressing this situation means tackling glyphosate use in the provinces that depend most heavily on it. And that means bridging the gap between communities and industry. On that, projects like the Herbicide Alternatives Program-though designed for the specific conditions of Northeastern Ontario-are nonetheless showing that a different way of thinking about herbicides is possible.

Yet as with Northern Ontario, policy change may be what advocates need to see significant progress. In April 2021, then-Green Fredericton MP Jenica Atwin introduced a private member's bill to ban glyphosate nationwide, calling its use on New Brunswick's forests and across the country a menace "to plant and wildlife biodiversity." Atwin was responding to concerns from constituents, including Caroline Lubbe-D'Arcy and other members of Stop Spraying New Brunswick.

Because forestry is provincially regulated, the actions of provincial officials are important too. In the summer of 2021, New Brunswick's standing committee on climate change and environmental stewardship held hearings on pesticide and herbicide use, including glyphosate spraying in forestry. The fact that these hearings happened at all is a sign that politicians are feeling the pressure, says Lubbe-D'Arcy, but she doesn't believe the government is committed to change. Still, she thinks unflagging advocacy has shifted the conversation in the province and across the country.

Grassroots activism "is very ragtag in a way," Lubbe-D'Arcy says. "But more and more people are becoming more smart about understanding how you can win this. And that is definitely something that we've been able to accomplish just by being out there and being recognizable." Advocates in Northern Ontario hope that by bringing the issue to the forefront, they will underscore the need for provincial policy change there too.

Even consumers have a role to play in this. In the summer of 2021, pandemic-induced surges in the price of lumber sparked considerable angst across North America. Yet the expectation of cheap wood comes with considerable consequences-consequences that are playing out far from where most consumers live, in the forests of Ontario and New Brunswick. If more people decide they want to see those parts of the natural world preserved, the expectation of what the natural world can provide, and at what cost, will need to be recalibrated as well.

As for Troy Woodhouse, who spent his youth in the forests of Northern Ontario, he recently moved back to the area after some time away. He wanted to offer his three daughters, who are also members of Flying Post First Nation, a chance to get out on the land and connect with their roots. Finding alternatives to glyphosate is part of securing that future, he says. And yes, these alternatives will cost more money, and could complicate the goal, if the goal is managing forests to maximize the production of wood.

Yet there are other values at stake, too, and the issue with herbicides like glyphosate rests not just in their potential environmental impacts, but in how they shape the world into binaries: trees versus ecosystems, competitor species versus commercial value, economic strength versus ecological well-being. When all you have is a hammer, as the saying goes, everything looks like a nail.

And when measured against the potential losses-of birdsong, of the plants providing nourishment, of culture itself-the use of glyphosate creates a binary that may prove to be too stark of a tradeoff, after all.

Moira Donovan is an independent journalist and radio producer based on the east coast of Canada, with a body of work focused on the environment and climate change. Her work has appeared in the Christian Science Monitor, Vice, and the Walrus, and aired on CBC Radio. Follow her on Twitter @MoiraDonovan.

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Photography by Chris Donovan Also in this issue As anyone who's spent time in a forest knows, the quiet in even the most remote stretch of woods is never complete.

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Animals could easily be affected by use of pesticides

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Summary:

The first video I watched is titled “The global food waste scandal”, this TED talk discusses the amount of food being wasted everyday by restaurants, grocery stores, farms, and everyday people all over the world. During the Ted talk the speaker includes a graph reflecting what is likely the level of food production we need to be able to feed everyone in that country, in this graph most countries including the United States was above that line. Stuart says this represents unnecessary surplus and is likely reflecting the levels of waste within the country. Stuart continues by then discussing where wasted food ends up and how we can continue making food at such a colossal scale. The over production of food contributes to global warming, deforestation, and biodiversity loss while wasted food is at best given to dogs or incinerated. As you can see these are not good ways to be using our resources.

Summary:

The second TED Talk I watched is titled “Watch what you dispose of”, which discusses how the speaker, Rani Bahaa, and her company have come up with innovative ways to reduce waste. Her company has recovered over 60 tons of waste and has created jobs for many people including physically challenged people. Her company has also worked with many other organizations who also have helped create jobs for visually impaired people. Bahaa speaks about the value you bring in reducing waste and creating recycled items by helping the environment and many people all over the world.

Reflection:

Watching and listening to both of these TED Talks really motivates me to decrease the amount of food waste created in my own house. I would be able to do this by buying only the necessary amount of food needed and making sure nothing is wasted in my household. Another way to also decrease food waste is by using left over food as fertilizer for any plants growing in your house. These are just simple ways people can be conscious about the amount of food wasted in their household. As I was watching the first TED Talk, I was hit with a big realization: that food is wasted everyday by so many different companies, when this food can be given to people who need it. I also realized how much land and resources are wasted unnecessarily because of greed or ignorance.  Stuart also states how some fruits and vegetables never even leave the farm because of cosmetic reasons, meaning if the food item is shaped different or is too small then they will discard them. Obviously, this is a horrible way to go about harvesting food, I think about all of the displaced people just in Florida and how much they could benefit from these fruits and vegetables if companies only cared.

Citation:

Bahaa, Rania. TED. 09 2014. TED Talk. 03 03 2021.

Stuart, Tristam. TED. May 2012. TED Talk. 03 03 2021.

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Tristram Stuart: The global food waste scandal

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The video I watched from DW Planet A is “The problem with fur”, which talks about the issues in the fur industry, including the effects on the environment and ourselves. The narrator in the video says how a great alternative to fur is faux fur, due to its due to its style and formation since faux fur has no limitations. But faux fur is made from oil-products like polyester, and although there are attempts to make faux fur from recycled plastics, faux fur coats are only environmentally conscious if the item is made to last. Some experts in the video also said how legislators should apply some pressure and responsibility to these companies that primarily produce fur products.

I learned that there are ‘high-tech’ coats, some having minimal fur infused inside, that can keep people warm in even low negative temperatures. As an expert in the video said, astronauts do not wear fur when they travel to space. Faux-fur coats, when not made with oil-based products, are innovative when they are made from recycled items like plastic bottles and feathers from old pillows. While there is no need to wear fur coats in Florida, there are still fur based clothing here. Whether it is done to accentuate an item or give a special detail fur I do not think it is an ethical item to use.

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DW Planet A - YouTube

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We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't need to be this way. Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world - and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change.

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Bow down before Recyclops destroys your planet

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We Can Change The World (Featuring Bridgit Mendler)

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We Can Change The World (Featuring Bridgit Mendler)