Can Avatar and Hollywood change our lives? Sure, they can make millions —even billions — of dollars, but can they change the way we think and act? Avatar has an obvious environmental message and it’s the highest grossing movie of all time—right on. But does this popularity mean anything?

Avatar is a parable for the downsides of industrial resource extraction (including mining for metals, other minerals, oil, and gas), which can wreak havoc on ecosystems, peoples, cultures, and whole planets.

The movie challenges us to look deeply into our lives and the values that we take for granted, and to compare this cash-rich but morally impoverished existence with that of the Blue People (Na’vi): cash-poor but deeply connected and committed to their communities and their planet.

With mind-blowing, three-dimensional visual effects and a captivating story, Avatar opens a window into a world of environmental politics that most of us would never truly experience through the mainstream media. While of course the details are all different, the plight of the Na’vi is strikingly similar to that of many indigenous peoples today, and to many more whose cultures have been shattered by ‘modern’ industrial development.

The $2-billion question is: what will we do with this information? Will we stand idly by while humanity continues to convert a glorious living planet into a dying one? Or will we recognize that the keys to our happiness and deep belonging lie not in amassing material wealth, but in cultivating our relationships with people, animals, and our planet?

Kai Chan is an assistant professor and Canada Research Chair at the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES) at UBC; vancouverletters@metronews.ca.

The chilling image is memorable because it is so real: approximately one quarter of the world’s mammals are at risk of extinction.

The United Nations declared 2010 the International Year of Biodiversity (IYB). A focal point is the Convention of Biological Diversity — a major international agreement signed by 196 national governments.

The Convention set targets to reduce biodiversity loss by 2010, but precious little has been achieved. The IYB is a wake-up call to redouble our efforts.

Why?

Because just as the Convention states, biodiversity loss often compromises human well-being. Biodiversity — all forms of life on Earth — is crucial to the provision of many benefits people derive from nature, from food production (including crop pollination and pest control), water provision, and enhancement of recreation.

Canada played a key role in the 1992 signing of the Convention, and it’s time for Canadians again to demonstrate our moral leadership.

In the recent climate talks in Copenhagen, Canada was widely seen as a moral defector, a rogue nation.

The world will be watching Vancouver next month and Huntsville (which will host the G8 Summit) in June.

Let’s make sure that Canada has reason to stand proud.

Climate change is the most pressing environmental issue of the century. Without a dramatic about-face in international and national policy, the world risks catastrophic environmental change. Although this has been known among scientists, many people continue to be blasé about climate change. Why?

This murder mystery has no single villain and no smoking gun. We all share the burden of responsibility. Environmental scientists lack expertise in communication. Powerful fossil fuel industries spend many vast sums of money creating confusion through marketing and “think tanks.” Politicians worry about the next election cycle, not the next generation.

Journalists are trained to present both sides of any story and credentials of those quoted, and to leave it to readers to decide what to believe. This is a crucial element of journalism that has generally served society well. Ironically, however, striving for balance in reporting actually promotes an unbalanced perspective of climate science. This approach often fails when reporting on scientific issues.

In science, experts gain reputations based on their record of weighing complex sets of evidence in unbiased, insightful ways. Other scientists operate as rebels and sometimes class clowns: they draw attention to themselves by challenging prevailing ideas, sometimes with scant evidence to back up their own. Rebels play a crucial role in improving science, class clowns less so.

The problem with media reporting climate change is that too often journalists give equal weight to the class clowns as the well-respected experts, without sufficiently reporting the weight of evidence and scientific opinion. Despite occasional appearances, science is not a circus, but society’s greatest sleuth and source of innovation.

Sometimes cleaner greener industries need to be fertilized. Closed-containment salmon aquaculture could create jobs and avoid harm to marine ecosystems associated with salmon farmed in the ocean — with a little help from you.

Closed aquaculture systems — including tanks on land — could help bring wild sockeye salmon back to B.C.

Farming predators like salmon is inefficient — it means catching wild fish for farm-feed.

However, the aquaculture industry has developed a mostly vegetarian fish feed that uses much less fishmeal. Now significantly fewer wild fish are needed to produce the same quantity of farmed salmon.

Informed consumers (like you) could make closed-containment salmon aquaculture a reality by paying moderately higher prices.

In exchange, you get a guilt-free pass to delicious health-promoting salmon that doesn’t contribute to the decline of wild salmon stocks.

It is still cheaper to grow fish in open pens in the ocean where fish farms benefit from ocean-provided subsidies: Tides clean out fish feces.

Fish farms aren’t currently held accountable for ecological degradation when the poop overwhelms the ocean’s capacity to assimilate waste, when sea lice outbreaks spread from farms to wild salmon, or when farm-based antibiotics and vaccines harm wild fish.

Who pays then?

Fishermen and anyone who enjoys wild salmon.

Open-pen salmon farms might seem cheap to industry, but they’re costly to many of the rest of us.

It’s time for the provincial government to think creatively.

Fish on land?

Why not?

Getting Atlantic salmon out of the Pacific Ocean could help restore wild B.C. salmon.


– Kai Chan is an assistant professor and Canada Research Chair at the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES) at UBC; vancouverletters@metronews.ca.

Vancouver is running out of places to dump its waste. A curbside composting program is a great way to reduce the waste stream — as much as 30 to 40 per cent of household waste is compostable. And when people have the option of getting their organic waste collected, they are more likely to compost.  

However, large-scale composting programs face a number of challenges. First, compost will eventually smell, so composting facilities must be located near collection locations to minimize transportation and processing time. And as with many recycling programs, contamination (with non-compostables) is an issue.

Will Vancouverites ever see a green bin gracing their doorstep? According to Mayor Gregor Robertson’s new plan to make Vancouver a more sustainable city, a citywide curbside composting program is in the works. So there’s hope that soon there will be green bins to keep our hard-working blue boxes company.

But composting programs are only as good as their citizen participation, so the success of these potential blue-green marriages is in your hands.

Kai Chan is an assistant professor and Canada Research Chair at the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES) at UBC. Amy Thai is an MSc graduate from UBC’s Department of Geography.

As climate change becomes more pronounced, subsistence practices here in B.C. will likely become threatened. One prime example is sockeye salmon, which some prominent fish biologists expect to disappear from the Fraser River and all its tributaries within two decades. Sockeye salmon are considered “keystones” to many First Nations cultures, because of their importance to many aspects of life like ceremonies, trade and diet.

When you hear “climate change,” don’t just think “environmental problems.” Think “people problems,” especially for those most in need.

Like the canary in the coalmine — whose health is indicative of health for others — the mountain caribou’s health is indicative of the health of the inland temperate rainforest of southeastern B.C. Because it feeds on lichen that grows on old trees, the mountain caribou needs large expanses of old-growth forest for its survival.   

The caribou has been extinguished throughout much of its range; there are fewer than 2,000 left. Its dramatic decline over the past several decades is due to logging, recreation and other human activities. Does this spell doom for the last inland temperate rainforests?  

Every species is unique, but the viability of some species has more significance than others. As an indicator of this globally significant ecosystem’s overall health, the mountain caribou’s fate should concern us deeply.

Last year the province took steps toward improving the prospects for the mountain caribou (and B.C.’s inland temperate rainforest). A conservation plan was released that calls for increased habitat protection and better management of recreation activities.

The key now is to ensure that the plan is well implemented to protect caribou and the ecosystem so that this is not the mountain caribou’s swan song. 

But the forests aren’t only for the owls. More than 100 other known (and many unknown) old-growth dependent species inhabit the southwestern mainland.  Many of them are also at risk.  Together, these species and their environment form the old-growth forest ecosystem.  

This ecosystem also offers many benefits to people including: Recreation opportunities, such as hiking and fishing; the protection of water quality for the Lower Mainland; edible forest products; and carbon storage, which mitigates climate change.

In a recent report, Duncan Knowler and Kristin Dust found that the economic value of conservation for these benefits is greater than the value of logging for many old-growth stands.

Much remains unknown about species habitat needs and what happens to the forest and the benefits it provides when species decline or disappear.     

One way to deal with this uncertainty is to conserve “umbrella” species like the northern spotted owl, whose large habitats encompass the habitats of many other species.

If the owl is well protected, so will be many other old-growth dependent species and the critical benefits that the ecosystem provides for people.

So next time someone bemoans the cost of saving the owl, tell them to take a hike — in forests protected for the owls and for us.