Biodiversity: The diversity of life and species living in a given ecosystem. Biodiversity is important for ecological resilience in the face of environmental changes. For instance, if a season is longer than usual, a species already in place, which thrives under these new conditions, will be able to compensate for the population reduction of other species which are not adapted to this change. Unfortunately, the planet’s biodiversity has radically diminished in the last few decades.
Capitalism: Economic system in which a minority of owner purchases the labor of the majority to sell it for more. The wealth produced by this process creates in part a capital to be reinvested in more means of production followed by a theoritically infinite economic growth. In that perspective, all is optimized toward reducing costs. Thus, goods starts from the extraction of ressources to end in landfills, to the opposite of the circular logics of ecosystems.
Carbon: An element present in great quantities in most organic compounds, like wood, coal, and petroleum. Combustion of these compounds produces an oxidization reaction resulting in, among other things, carbon dioxide (CO2), a greenhouse gas.
Carbon Cycle: Outside of human activity, plants absorb greenhouse gases to feed parts of the plant through cellular respiration. Carbon dioxide is necessary for the growth of plants, and enables them to produce oxygen. This oxygen is then used by animals who breathe it in and produce carbon dioxide.
Carbon Dioxide (CO2): Gas produced by, among other sources, human activity, and is responsible for the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect raises the amount of solar energy absorbed by the atmosphere, which raises the Earth’s mean temperature.
City Dump/Eco centre: XIXth century invention used to accumulate waste produced by cities. Before that time, most of the goods were reused or made from easily degradable matter. Commercial plastic usage started mostly in the 1910s and more than 79% of plastic that has ever been produced, is accumulated in city dumps or the natural environment.
Ecofascism: Far-right doctrine which recognize the importance of climate change, but whose solutions are to reduce human consumption drastically through a radical diminution of human population. Ecofascists typically recommend the genocide of non-white populations.
Ecologist: Term used to qualify a person or a community defending practices which favors the safeguarding of ecosystems.
Ecology: The study of ecosystems, how they work and their interrelations. Ecosystems consist of a set of species living together and maintaining a certain long term equilibrium in a specific environment. In order to understand the dynamics within an ecosystem, specific cycles are used as base elements, like the water cycle. This equilibrium is possible because an ecosystem is made of different populations of different species using resources in a complementary manner.
Environment: That which surrounds a person or a community. The environment can be natural or artificial.
Evolution: Scientific theory which explains how species adapt to their environment, depending on other species around it and their specific biome (desert, tundra, etc.) in which the species evolves. It includes generally the ecology of populations, which explains how these populations increase and decrease over time. For instance, dandelions became an invading species in the context of the massive use of Kentucky bluegrass (commonly used lawn grass) in urban settings. Evolution processes take thousands of years, therefore it is clear that current climate changes will not be compensated by evolution.
Global Warming: Because of human activity linked to, among other things, fossil fuel use, the planet’s greenhouse effect was reinforced, causing a global rising of the Earth’s mean temperature, starting in the middle of the XXth century. This warming is inconsistent across the planet’s surface, with certain zones more seriously affected than others. This global warming comes along with drastic changes in the amount of precipitation and in the durations of seasons. The term more often use nowadays is climate change.
Greenwashing: Deceptive marketing practice which aims to convince people that an organization, a product or practice is ecological. An example of greenwashing would be an ad presenting a detersive as “ecological” based on the fact that it contains less phosphate than other products. In this case, a true ecological solution would be to completely remove phosphate.
Internet: Interconnected network of computers which consumes as much energy as the whole airline industry. The Internet uses a huge quantity of servers, necessary for the transfer and the storage of information, which are mainly on “American” soil, where electricity is mainly produced using coal and natural gas. Therefore, between 10% and 50% of the electricity used by websites comes from fossil fuels.
Social Ecology: School of thought which aims to understand the impacts of specific forms of social organisations on ecosystems. One interesting thesis of Murray Bookchin is that a society based on domination tends to dominate ecosystems.
Watershed: Area where water empties in one specific waterway, often a river. It is an important concept in ecology since an upstream pollution source will affect its whole watershed. The Montreal island is situated in the Saint-Laurent watershed, in which flows the Great Lakes.
-4.3 Degrees Celsius: The variation of Earth’s temperature between the last ice age, 24,000 years ago and 1850. At that time, the layer of ice over the city of New York was about four kilometers thick. Many phenomenons were disturbed by the temperature change since then, whether on ocean currents, air flows, or carbon sequestration in ice and in permafrost.
1.1 Degrees Celsius: The mean rise of Earth’s temperature between 1850 and 2017.
2.0 Degrees Celsius: The objective of the Kyoto accord, which predicted how much Earth’s temperature would change until to 2100.
5.4 Degrees Celsius: How much Earth’s temperature is calculated to rise by 2100, in light of the objectives given by the countries present at the 2015 Paris Conference. These objectives are not followed through.