Other
U of T News: U of T to divest from fossil fuel investments, create climate-positive campus
U of T recently announced to divest from all direct investments in fossil fuel companies within the next 12 months, and from indirect investments by 2030 at the latest. The University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation will allocate 10 per cent of its endowment portfolio to sustainable and low-carbon investments by 2025, and commit to an endowment portfolio that has net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Op-ed: How U of T is focusing investments on a climate-secure future
CECCS Presidential Advisor and Chair, Professor John Robinson, recently wrote a Op-ed for The Varsity about U of T’s work on sustainability. Go to The Varsity to read the full article
CECCS’ Business Air Travel Report
Download the Business Air Travel Report
In 2019-2020 CECCS worked on a report to the President on three areas:
- Estimating Scope 3 business air travel emissions
- Approaches reducing air travel
- Mitigating business air travel that does take place
U of T News: Investing to Address Climate Change: A Charter for Canadian Universities
The University of Toronto is taking on an ever more significant leadership role as a local, national, and global citizen. Our community is contributing to coalitions, partnerships and collective actions with the aim of advancing global sustainability and averting or mitigating the catastrophic threat of climate change.
In June 2020, U of T co-led the creation of Investing to Address Climate Change: A Charter for Canadian Universities to tackle climate change through a commitment to responsible investing practices.
The charter aims to standardize responsible investing practices like those implemented by University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation (UTAM), which incorporates environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors into its investment decisions.
Read the signed document: Investing to Address Climate Change: A Charter for Canadian Universities.
‘A sustainable life for ourselves and the planet’: U of T researcher on religion’s role in saving the environment
Sometimes religion doesn’t catch up to current circumstances as fast as it should.
That’s according to Tanhum Yoreh, a scholar of religion and environment at the University of Toronto.
Yoreh’s new book, Waste Not: A Jewish Environmental Ethic, aims to build bridges between ancient wisdom and contemporary global challenges so that faith communities have accessible pathways to environmental engagement.
Read the full story.
The unexpected link between the ozone hole and Arctic warming: U of T expert
One of the earliest climate model predictions of how human-made climate change would affect our planet showed that the Arctic would warm about two to three times more than the global average. Forty years later, this “Arctic amplification” has been observed first-hand.
Record-breaking Arctic warming and the dramatic decline of sea ice are having severe consequences on sensitive ecosystems in the region.
But why has the Arctic warmed more than the tropics and the mid-latitudes?
We now know that this is due, in part, to tiny concentrations of very powerful greenhouse gases, including ozone-depleting substances such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).
Read the full story.