Green Justice

Mark and Greg chat with Fabricio Teló, discussing research he and his team are undertaking into the long-standing ties between the Canadian corporation now known as Brookfield and Brazil’s 1964–1985 military dictatorship. Teló details how Brazilian Traction (as it was then known) provided legal and political backing for the 1964 coup and how this reproduced a pattern of support for authoritarian politics extending back to the Vargas era. Teló's community-based research regarding the company's role in the displacement of Caiçaras people is also taken up. The conversation connects historical corporate behavior to modern Brookfield activities, arguing that patterns of elite...

In this episode, Mark speaks with the dynamic Honey Mathew who initiated KPU's Sustainability Club in 2024 while she was a student in KPU's graduate program in Green Business Management and Sustainability.

Check out the video that the Sustainability Club made here https://youtu.be/gl4n93RmS9c?feature=shared

And here is the info for the movie 2018, which Honey mentions, and that is based on the 2018 floods in Kerala https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9006564/

For more info on the Sustainability Club, check out their Instagram site https://www.instagram.com/sustainability...

Robert Jago, citizen of Kwantlen First Nation and Indigenous Journalist and Writer in Residence at KPU for Spring 2025, speaks with Mark about environmental and Indigenous justice. We cover a wide range of topics, including environmental racism, green colonialism, and Indigenous belonging to land. Check out the links below for the articles that we talk about, and listen in for Robert's wisdom and wit!

The Warrior Society rises: how a mercury spill in Canada inspired a movement

Canada’s National Parks Are Colonial Crime Scenes

The Hungry People

Paula and Mark chat with Aramayis, a KPU Criminology Major who took CRIM 3911: Green Criminology with Paula, about eco-philosophies, action projects, touching trees, the joys of leading kid's nature camps, and the heavy weight of capitalism. In addition to hearing about Aramayis's experience with green criminology, we also get insight from Paula about how she teaches green crim!

Greg talks with Andrew Gage, staff lawyer at West Coast Environmental Law, on the Sue Big Oil campaign and the grassroots effort to hold fossil fuel companies to account for the costs of climate change.

Sign the declaration and get involved here: https://suebigoil.ca

Mark and Paula continue their conversation with Alexandra Taylor and Alicia Gowan on KPU's "Sustainability Hub" and work underway to nurture sustainability at the institution and beyond.

https://www.instagram.com/sustainablekpu

Part 1 of a conversation with Alexandra Taylor and Alicia Gowan on KPU's "Sustainability Hub" and work underway to nurture sustainability at the institution and beyond.

https://www.instagram.com/sustainablekpu

Dr. Brett Favaro, Climate Strategy Lead at KPU, discusses his unique role aimed at driving concerted, pro-active and solutions-focused climate action within the university.

https://wordpress.kpu.ca/climatestrategy/about-the-climate-strategy/

Mark and Greg are joined by Dr. Conrad King, a faculty member in Political Science at KPU. King, an expert in issues of transborder mobilities, delves into the complexities of governance in a globalized world, particularly in regard to climate change and sustainability. He speaks on the implications of international public policies and their influence on various "mobilities" -- people, goods, capital, and even ideas -- across national borders.

Green Justice's second part of Polyphonic Voices continues to explore the personal views of KPU students on nature, climate change, and sustainable development from a linguistic perspective -- as part of the Climate+ Challenge and Teaching and Learning Commons UN SDG Champions initiative.

A huge thanks again to all everyone who took the time to share their thoughts!

This episode of Green Justice features discussions with KPU students as part of the Climate+ Challenge and Teaching and Learning Commons UN SDG Champions initiative. Students offered unique insights on discussing climate change and sustainable development in languages other than English. They reveal both similarities and differences in framing human relationship to nature in their home languages, demonstrating insights into sustainable practices and more relational, rather than hierarchical, ways of viewing nature. Discussion also ranges to linguistic differences in regard to humanizing nature and its presence as a refuge.

A huge thanks to all everyone who took...

Our final episode of the season features “streeters” – a series of short spontaneous interviews we conducted with six KPU staff and students, and one VP, at a KPU-wide Research Showcase that focused on sustainability. Interviewees were all asked the question, "What does sustainability mean to you?" Greg, Paula and Mark listen back, and use the responses as jumping off points for discussions on the intersections between social and environmental justice – with only the occasional, ever so slight, tangent.

Thank you to the kind and brilliant interviewees who gave us their thoughts!

Cover Ar...

Dr. Philip Aghoghovwia, faculty in the KPU English Department, joins Green Justice to discuss his work on literary depictions of place and life in the context of resource extraction, with a particular focus on oil, violence, and resistance the Niger Delta. This region, once ecologically rich, has suffered extreme degradation and social deprivation due to the "resource curse". Dr. Aghoghovwia explores the violence of oil production, along with the – ultimately counterproductive – forms of violence that arise in response, imbuing all life with the inescapable violence that is the very condition of accessing sustenance in a political-economy built on the expl...

We talk with David Sadoway, faculty member and teacher in Kwantlen's Geography and Environment Department, on the manifold nature of climate (in)justice and using narrative with students to work through the “double exposures” of social, economic and ecological risk and find mobility, food and housing solutions. Topics range widely from the imaginaries of automobility, the scales of climate justice, the inequities of risk and the fog of climate war, lived impacts from Pacific Island nations to the Arctic, the BC heat dome and floods, and the lead of Indigenous communities in finding solutions to the climate crisis and emba...

Richard Pierre, Sdemokeltel, Indigenous Knowledge Keeper in Residence at Kwantlen Polytechnic University (KPU), talks with Green Justice about his personal journey, passion for sharing Indigenous ecological knowledge and commitment to Indigenous-led environmental stewardship.

Research: Aramayis Harandi 

Cover Art courtesy of Dan Lett

Theme music composed and performed by Greg Simmons

Dale Tracy of KPU's English Department on her work as a coordinator of the Climate+ Challenge, a "KPU-wide initiative that engages students, staff and faculty in learning about climate change, through an empathetic and solutions-oriented lens."

https://wordpress.kpu.ca/climatepluschallenge/ 

Production assistance and editing: Kiana Holland.

Research: Aramayis Harandi .

Cover Art courtesy of Dan Lett.

Theme music composed and performed by Greg Simmons.

Lee Beavington on KPU Wild Spaces, an interdisciplinary teaching and learning hub that focuses on ecological place-based education.

https://wordpress.kpu.ca/wildspaces/

Production assistance and editing: Kiana Holland.

Research: Aramayis Harandi.

Cover Art courtesy of Dan Lett.

Theme music composed and performed by Greg Simmons.

Green Justice goes full nepo right out of the gate, interviewing our very own Mark Vardy on his ethnographic work behind the scenes at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Climate, Science and Society: A Primer, to which Mark is both a co-editor and contributor, is available now from Routledge: www.routledge.com/Climate-Science-and-Society-A-Primer/Baker-Law-Vardy-Zehr/p/book/9781032530178

Production assistance and editing: Kiana Holland.

Cover Art courtesy of Dan Lett.

Theme music composed and performed by Greg Simmons.