Media

This page is organized into media appearances on the following topics: environmental migration; citizen science; general environmental issues.

Environmental migration

Here's my view on how Canada can help Ethiopia avoid a drought-related disaster, published in the Toronto Star in spring 2017.

Another Toronto Star article, from 2016, describing environmental migration to Toronto from Bangladesh, for which I was interviewed. 

Here's a video of a talk I gave in Portland in June 2016 on how urban planners in the Pacific Northwest can start planning for climate change-related migration in coming decades.

Dr. Luisa Veronis of the University of Ottawa and I have been studying how environmental conditions overseas influence international migration to Canada. You can read our summary of the research and suggestions on what Canadian policymakers might do about it in our commentary for the Montreal Gazette, "Canada should start thinking about how to address 'environmental migration' issues".

My colleague at Brown University, Elizabeth Fussell, and I reflected for the World Bank on what needs to be done about the possibility that settlements may need to be abandoned in coming years because of climate change - a possibility that is now captured in Article 50 of the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change. Read "Thinking rationally about settlement abandonment in a changing climate".

Some related reflections on climate change and refugee claims appear in my guest posting for the New Security Beat blog, "Climate Change Will Cause More Refugees, But That Shouldn't Scare Anyone". Except, of course, those who end up being displaced; it's the rest of us who need to avoid panicking, and start planning accordingly.

Brian Bethune's article on climate refugees in Maclean's magazine in January 2014 features excerpts of an interview with me. My own take on the subject appeared in the Globe and Mail on November 17, 2013, under the title, "Who will become the world's first climate refugee?" You can also listen to my interview with CBC Radio's The Current about climate refugees. 

If you missed it elsewhere on this site, here's a link to my TEDx talk on climate change and environmental refugees.

In March 2011 the International Organization for Migration published a report I wrote for them entitled "Climate change, migration, and critical international security considerations".Click here to get a free download.

Click here to see a YouTube video of my February 2008 presentation to the Royal United Service Institute in London on the topic of climate change and environmental refugees.

Citizen science

Please visit the home pages for the RinkWatch and NatureWatch citizen science projects I manage, or follow them on social media: RinkWatch Facebook and Twitter and NatureWatch Facebook and Twitter.

The RinkWatch citizen science project I run with Colin Robertson and Haydn Lawrence at WLU has been the subject of over 100 media inquiries. Here's a couple clips for those who may be interested in learning more about it; the first produced by the National hockey League, the other by Laurier.

Check out blog postings about RinkWatch on the NHL Green website. 

RinkWatch was featured in a great story about the future of outdoor skating in the New York Times in March 2018. Here's are links to a few of our other favourite print stories about RinKWatch, including one in our hometown paper, The Record, and a really engaging one in the Montreal Gazette. And RinkWatch was featured in the front pages of the March 2014 issue of National Geographic; unfortunately, non-subscribers can't link to it.

Read the "RinkWatch Manifesto", or, How Backyard Skating Rinks Can Change the World in the Globe and Mail, from February 2013.


General environmental issues

Here are a couple recent commentaries I've published in the National Post newspaper on the subject of pipeline in Canada: How to Get Energy East Built and Why This Greeny Supports Pipelines

Here's a Globe & Mail commentary from 2010 on the importance of broadband and wireless networks in rural Canada.

Click here to listen to a podcast of my 2008 interview on Chicago Public Radio's Worldview program, in which Jerome McDonnell and I discuss why it's important to re-learn the lessons from the 1930s Dust Bowl if we are to understand how to manage the future risks of climate change.

In 2007, I spoke with Public Radio International's Steve Curwood about how the spread of urban development has increased the destructiveness of California wildfires in a segment of the program Living On Earth entitled "California Burning".

Click here to read an interesting Toronto Star article asking whether droughts could trigger large scale migrations from the southwestern US to the Great Lakes region.