One sunny afternoon in my sit spot, located in a busy west-end Toronto neighbourhood, I started to notice the people passing by.  Many of them are millennials, each one glued to their phone either looking at their device, reacting to a notification or speaking into their nearly invisible earphones. They are young professionals, on a work call taking their dog for a mid-day walk, and parents out with their newborns for a stroll. Glancing down to see if I had any new notifications, I saw that my Co-Star app was prompting me to check in with myself today, offering bizarre (yet somehow very accurate?) guidance. Co-Star is an app which offers daily readings to users based on their astrological chart. It offers advice, readings about how you are feeling that day and makes suggestions for how to handle challenges in your life. The app also suggests who in your life might be able to help...

The past few months have been a whirlwind. Our cohort moved from CALS 500 where we gained an understanding of climate science foundations, then went directly into CALS 502 to study climate communications. Throughout this we have also been working on our design challenge, applying iterations and preparing for the next phase of the design process. A question I’ve found myself asking throughout the program is “when will I know enough?”. Within this blog post, we’ve been prompted to answer the question of how our learning has influenced our understanding of empowering others to take climate action. In considering this prompt, I am drawn to the question of the knowledge-action gap and what it takes to give individuals the confidence and the tools to move towards action. Within CALS 500 we started by learning about paleoclimatology and just how devastating the impacts of human-caused...

Views from my sit spot in the west-end of Toronto. I chose my “sit spot” at the beginning of September, when shifts in the air were beginning to make me think of permanence and change. I rent an apartment in an old house which sits at the corner of two bustling streets, in the west-end of Toronto. From my front door I can look on to a neighbourhood park which, especially during the pandemic, has become a staple for locals. At this busy intersection I am able to witness my neighbourhood’s ecology – noticing the patterns of the living beings, both human and non-human, who live in this small corner of the city. I sit by my front door under two huge honey-locust trees, on a bed of mulch with an incredibly diverse variety of plants pushing through. Sitting in this space, I am able to notice the contrast between the fleeing presence of humans and the sustained existence of non-human...

I have chosen to complete my climate communications analysis on an article by Mihskakwan James Harper, a scholar from Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation in Treaty 8, which was published by the Yellowhead Institute. The brief, entitled “Can We Achieve Climate Action And Reconciliation In A Post COVID World?” was published in June of 2020, in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. All research and publications on the Yellowhead website are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 Canada License. The Yellowhead Institute is a First-Nation led research centre, focused on policies related to land and governance (Yellowhead Institute). The Institute has five core objectives including: Shaping new governance models and supporting governance work in First Nations communities and urban communitiesInfluencing policy development and holding governments accountable for policies...