Ontario on track to see major increases in greenhouse gas emissions

Add pollution and costs from electricity generation to that list too By Mark WinfieldColleen Kaiser The Ontario Independent Electricity System Operator’s (IESO) Annual Planning Outlook report released last week contains some very bad news for Ontarians in terms of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, air quality, and future electricity costs. The directions laid out in the report also present

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Planning Case Competition fosters experiential education for MES students

Students in York University’s Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change (EUC) had an opportunity for innovative experiential education during the second virtual Planning Case Competition, held earlier this fall. The event, designed for Master in Environmental Studies (MES) planning students, was hosted by the MES York Planning Alumni Committee (MYPAC) and connects students with alumni

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Ontario’s return to the business of building roads to sprawl

By Prof. Mark Winfield Twenty-five years ago, Mike Harris’s “common sense revolution” heralded a of shredding the province’s planning rules, and proposals for a network of highway expansions in every direction outward across the Greater Toronto Area. The government’s plans prompted a backlash. Harris’ approach was widely seen as a strategy for sprawling urban development that threatened the

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No more ‘blah blah blah.’ At COP26 in Glasgow, it’s time for rich nations like Canada to keep their promises and pay for climate adaptation

By Adjunct Prof Bruce Campbel This article was originally published on The Conversation, an independent and non-profit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. The time has come for Canada and other rich nations to pony-up and pay for the devastation they have caused countries in the Global South. That means, for a

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COP26: 4 ways rich nations can keep promises to curb emissions and fund climate adaptation

Bruce Campbell, Adjunct professor, faculty of environmental and urban change, York University, Canada. The time has come for Canada and other rich nations to pony-up and pay for the devastation they have caused countries in the Global South. That means, for a start, providing far greater climate adaptation financing to low-income countries and plugging the

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What makes a city a city, officially? Kelowna and Sudbury might be in for a surprise

A new international definition, endorsed by the UN, would leave some Canadian communities off the list – if the definition had any legal standing The good folks of Kelowna believe they live in a city. In fact, local tourism boosters bill the place as “the largest city in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley.” But under a

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The New Deal, racism and war

By Prof Justin Podur The original New Deal has credited with saving the US economy from the Great Depression and, perhaps, saving the country from socialism. The original New Deal, and its champion, Franklin D. Roosevelt, are credited with saving the US economy from the Great Depression - and perhaps preventing the country from adopting 'socialism'. The

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A mosaic of solutions for one-planet prosperity

Climate change is not the problem. It is merely the most dramatic symptom of a major challenge that humanity is reluctant to acknowledge: We use more goods and services from nature than ecosystems can sustainably renew. More precisely, we use as much as if we lived on 1.74 Earths, according to the latest edition of

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Addressing Global Challenges to a Canadian Low-Carbon Energy Transition

Project Investigator: Mark Winfield. Funding: SSHRC Insight Grant. Term: 2021-2023. The proposed project will build on and expand the research, Canadian and international partnerships and networks, and knowledge mobilization infrastructure in the area of sustainable energy transitions and climate change policy. The major outputs of the project will include two books: 1) an edited volume

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What would happen if Ontario phased out gas plants?

Under pressure from municipalities and groups concerned about the climate crisis, the operator of Ontario’s electricity system is looking at what phasing out the province’s gas plants could look like. Ontario intends to rely more on natural gas-fired plants for power over the next decade, a change that is set to erase climate progress made

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