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Image via news digest of the Canadian Association of Geographers

This past Friday, the Federal Government released its 87 page long-term climate strategy with a caution that “Most Canadians recognize the need to mitigate climate change and limit the increase in the global average temperature, but the magnitude of the challenge is less well understood, with a requirement for very deep emissions cuts from every sector by mid-century”. The strategy says that global emissions reductions of between 70 and 95 percent are required in order to have a better than 50-50 chance of hitting the 1.5 degree temperature target.

“What we can do is stop thinking about property in exclusively human terms and extend the concept beyond the human species.” — John Hadley, The Guardian 

Environmental advocates attending this year's COP22 in Marrakech, Morocco, issued a release Wednesday calling out Canada's competing policy priorities.

"It is a serious concern when we see the international community not honouring their commitments and we are concerned Canada is still pursuing their fossil fuel projects," Benson Ireri of Christian Aid Africa said in the release. "Developed countries have a moral obligation to honour the Paris Agreement."

Two disturbing trends—this year will likely be the hottest year on record and “We have lost one half of the animal population and knowing this is driven by human consumption, this is clearly a call to arms and we must act now,” said Mike Barratt, directory of science and policy at WWF.

What if you could learn about climate change through taste? And better yet, while eating ice cream? Jonathan Keats, a conceptual artist and experimental philosopher, calls this new process data gastronification. He literally wants to activate the emotional cognition of people’s stomachs so they have a “gut feeling” about the urgency of climate change.

This is a new column exploring different concepts that we use when we talk and write about space and geography.

By: Shoshana Schwebel, Research Designer

Where are the Giants of Your Past
    
    Oh America!  America!
    You who listen and applaud
    The Man Who Would Be King.
    
    Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?
    Where is the one who sang
    "My Captain, My Captain"?
    Where is the man who freed the slaves?
    Where is the man who told
    that fear itself was all there was?
    And what of he who asked

I just finished teaching the leadership for sustainability class at my university and am always amazed at the wonderful diversity of students I am privileged to meet. One of them, Shawn Laidlaw just sent me his beautiful blog, and there is one in particular that I wanted to share with you, The art of motocycle camping. Wonderful integrated writing with splashes of humour, worth the read.

Several interesting articles reveal how climate change adaptation and mitigation is really a super wicked problem in terms of the scale of the challenges and the nature of some of the innovations. This article by the Guardian argues that the logic of economic growth at all costs must be addressed with an interesting analysis of the main driver of growth is debt.