Corporate Knights recently caught up with Lynas during his recent visit to Toronto to speak with Ontario farmers. In a wide-ranging interview, he spoke of the anti-GMO movement, the ongoing battle over labelling requirements for GM foods, and some promising public-sector GM projects in the works.

CK: Tell us about your transformation from GMO opponent to supporter.

LYNAS: I was one of a large group of people involved in the early stages of the anti-GMO movement, but was certainly neither the most vocal nor the most effective. That being said, I’m really the only one that’s discovered science, to put it simplistically, and come out and talked about it. So I’m in a unique position of being somebody who’s publicly reversed their position on this – and that’s brought me a lot of attention, some of it welcome and some of it unwelcome.

CK: Why is it that many environmentalists place so much trust in science when it comes to climate change or loss of biodiversity, but these standards change once GM crops come up?

LYNAS: Anti-GMO people have been described as the climate skeptics of the left. Although that’s a simplification of the issue, it illustrates that what we’re talking about is a political issue. Climate skeptics (on the right) tend to be anti-big government. They’re against climate science because it will almost certainly require government intervention into the economy, while anti-GMO people are against the involvement of big corporations like Monsanto. They’re against biotechnology because it appears to only privilege big corporations. Now neither of these two positions is evidence-based, but the problem is that people find their information through the process of confirmation bias to justify pre-existing positions.

CK: Opponents of GMOs tend to focus on corporations like Monsanto being very litigious and protective of their seeds, at the expense of smaller farmers. Is that your thinking?

LYNAS: Monsanto did sue various farmers, and there have been numerous cause celebre like Percy Schmeiser. The question is, if all these GMO crops had blown into his field, how come they were in such neat rows? He clearly wanted to use the technology without paying for it. The reality is, if you contaminate someone’s property, you can’t sue them for property theft. The whole charge is absurd and wouldn’t stand up in court. Monsanto’s never taken out a case that’s alleged that, but that myth is persistent and still very powerful.

In hindsight, it’s clear that Monsanto should have refrained from suing anybody to avoid developing such an image problem. Even so, they felt the need to protect their intellectual property (IP) from farmers who wanted to save their seed and basically steal their IP. Farmers who use it have to sign an agreement that they won’t save the seed. It’s a biologically self-replicating technology.

Now if you’re concerned about IP and the patenting of crops, for me the logical corollary is to promote the development of GMOs in the public sector. I’ve been working with Cornell University, where I’m a visiting fellow, on a new project regarding Bt Brinjal, a GM eggplant that is pest-resistant in Bangladesh. Farmers there are currently spraying toxic insecticides without any kind of protection, often wearing nothing more than flip-flops. They spray it a hundred times a year during growing season, which leads to tens of thousands of poisonings annually. The GMO version would not need to be sprayed. It would be a vast improvement both environmentally and in terms of public health. The use of genetic modification, done in the public sector by a consortium of international and Bangladeshi scientists, has nothing to do with Monsanto.

I can’t say this enough: if you’re concerned about corporate monopolization, you don’t try and ban an entire technology in response. Back in the day, if you were concerned about Windows being a monopolistic approach to an operating system you didn’t try to ban all computers. What you want to do instead is to make the technology more available in the public sector, in a non-IP protected way, for the benefit of the poorer farmers. For me, that is way more interesting because there are so many applications, from golden rice to Brinjal, where GMOs can promote food security and the sustainability of agriculture.

CK: You mentioned golden rice. Can you discuss the controversy around it?

LYNAS: Golden rice is a single, targeted approach to tackling vitamin A deficiency, which kills two million or so children per year. Millions of families are dependent on rice for their staple food, so if there was beta-carotene in that rice it would reduce that deficiency and save a number of lives.

The opposition to golden rice is internationally supported. There’s this mentality in the west that promoting agro-ecological organic farming is the way to go for poorer countries, but the reality is that it confines farmers to a form of very low productivity farming. If they’re at subsistence level, they are currently struggling to feed themselves and their families. So you’re actually promoting food insecurity by externalizing the urban foodie biases of the modern world onto developing countries where they need to increase their productivity.

CK: Battles have sprung up in a number of individual states across the United States over proposals to mandate labelling on all food grown using GMOs. What’s your position on this?

LYNAS: This is where I get very critical of the biotech industry, because I think their strategies have been entirely counterproductive. Effectively spending millions of dollars trying to stop consumers from knowing where their products are being used is essentially the opposite of advertising. That’s tailor-made to make people feel scared about something, if it looks like there is an effort to cover up what the ingredients are in their food.

The way to dispel some of this mythology and fear mongering is to give people access to information. Opponents want a big GMO label because they want to stigmatize the product and get it off the shelves. They’re into prohibition, but there’s got to be some kind of middle road where we can actually give people the information that they want without the skull and crossbones stigmatization attached to it. You have to give people the option of finding out what’s in their food. Transparency should be the friend of science on this. If you don’t fill the void, the void will be filled by the conspiracy theorists. Let’s have farmers explain why they’re using GMO crops, and scientists demonstrate why they’re continuing to develop them. If you’re Monsanto and you want to explain why it’s beneficial for farmers to use this, you can if it’s labelled. You can’t if it’s hidden.

CK: What are the biggest barriers to the sort of open-source GMO research you’re advocating for?

LYNAS: Currently, it costs tens of millions of dollars in the United States to get through a regulatory system that is only applied to GMOs, but not any other form of crop breeding. In the U.S. and Europe, the only players that can navigate the system are the very biggest players, so the activists have created a situation where only corporations can afford to commercialize biotech crops. In the U.K. we’ve got Rothamsted Research and the John Innes Centre doing fantastic GM crop research. They’ve looked at aphid-resistant wheat, which wouldn’t need to be sprayed with agrochemicals. Can they get that through the European Union system? No way. So farmers are effectively banned from being able to access this technology. That’s the real stumbling block.

CK: Some GMO opponents have accused you of being an industry stooge. How do you respond to these accusations?

LYNAS: I’m a shill for science, I’m not a voice for hire. No one’s ever tried to buy me. It’s a classic ad hominem technique – if you can’t discredit someone’s argument then you try to discredit them personally.

CK: Some people have even drawn comparisons to Greenpeace activist turned industry consultant Patrick Moore…

LYNAS: For me, he’s a model of what to not end up as, because the only asset you have in my position is your independence, your credibility.

The post Open-source GM crops? appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“I would feel really sad, and that’s just not me,” she said. “I felt like the joy was out of my life. I still haven’t recaptured it.”

What Isman is experiencing is one of the little-recognized consequences of climate change, the mental anguish experienced by survivors in the aftermath of extreme and sometimes violent weather and other natural disasters. The emotional toll of global warming is expected to become a crisis that many mental health experts warn could prove far more serious than its physical and environmental effects.

“When you have an environmental insult, the burden of mental health disease is far greater than the physical,” said Steven Shapiro, a Baltimore psychologist who directs the program on climate change, sustainability and psychology for the nonprofit Psychologists for Social Responsibility (PsySR). “It has a much larger effect on the psyche. Survivors can have all sorts of issues: post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, relationship issues, and academic issues among kids.”

A report released in 2012 by the National Wildlife Federation’s Climate Education Program and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation predicted a steep rise in mental and social disorders resulting from climate change-related events in the coming years, including depression and anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, suicide and widespread outbreaks of violence. Moreover, it estimated that more than 200 million North Americans will be exposed to serious psychological distress from climate-related events in the coming years, and that counsellors, trauma specialists and first responders currently are ill-equipped to cope.

“The physical toll has been studied, but the psychological impacts of climate change have not been addressed,” said Lise Van Susteren, a forensic psychiatrist and one of the report’s authors. “We must not forget that people who are physically affected by climate change will also be suffering from the emotional fallout of what has happened to them. Others suffer emotionally from a distance, especially those who are most keenly aware of the perils we face, or, as in the case of children, those who feel especially vulnerable. And the psychological damage is not only over what is happening now, but what is likely going to happen in the future.

“This kind of anticipatory anxiety is especially crippling and is increasingly being seen among climate activists – in some cases rising to the level of a kind of ‘pre-traumatic’ stress disorder,” she added.

Evolution undone

Moreover, society can expect to experience a collective sense of sadness, anger and defeat as it confronts the inevitable, and possibly irreversible, long-term environmental effects of global warming, and the failure to prevent them, according to Van Susteren.

“We are undoing millions of years of evolution, and the situation is a catastrophe,” she said. “Climate activists on the front lines are desperate to convey this to the public, but are told to be wary of paralyzing people with fear. Compounding the issue is that people often generally are not good at knowing they are anxious, or, if they do, often don’t know why.

“Because of the magnitude of the problem, and the fact that our leaders are not responding commensurate with the threat, feelings of vulnerability are repressed and cause unseen psychological damage.”

The report emphasized that certain populations face greater risk than others, including the elderly, the poor, members of the military, people with pre-existing mental health disorders, and especially children.

The report compared what children may be feeling today to the distress suffered by American and Russian children over the threat of the nuclear bomb in the 1950s during the Cold War era, saying that climate change could have the same destructive impact. “Some children are already anxious about global warming and begin to obsess, understandably, about the future, unmoved by the small reassurances adults may attempt to put forth,” the report said.

It recommended that the federal government draft a plan to enact a large-scale response to the mental health effects of global warming, including public education campaigns, increased training for mental health professionals, and developing mental health incident response teams.

Despite the nation’s experiences with previous natural disasters, “the scientific data show that what lies ahead will be bigger, more frequent, and more extreme than we have ever known,” prompting potentially dire mental health impacts, the report warned.

“Many people will experience an inordinate risk and their minds will be changed because of it,” Shapiro said. “Although some people may come out of it stronger, experiencing a trauma can totally change the way you function.”

Learning to adapt

Isman certainly would agree. “Initially, I was numb, running on adrenaline,” she said. “There was a delayed reaction. I didn’t realize what was going on with me emotionally.” Yet, as bad as it was for Isman, it was far worse for others. Nearly 300 people died because of Hurricane Sandy, and many lost their homes permanently.

It’s not just about extreme weather and disasters. Ashlee Cunsolo Willox, assistant professor of community health at Cape Breton University in Sydney, Nova Scotia, has found that rising temperatures linked to climate change in Canada’s north and its impact on ice conditions and snow levels is causing emotional distress for residents of aboriginal communities.

The Inuit of Newfoundland and Labrador’s Nunatsiavut region, for example, usually get around by snowmobile, but more prolonged periods of unusually thin ice is making it increasingly difficult to hunt and make trips for supplies. Feeling trapped and detached from the surrounding natural environment, more are experiencing anxiety and depression, according to Willox’s research.

Members of PsySR worry that continued inaction on climate change will only bring more of the same. The group recently wrote to U.S. Congress, urging lawmakers to address climate change to avoid a mental health catastrophe.

“Without such action, the impact of heat waves, extreme storms and floods, droughts and water shortages, food production problems, lessened air quality, sea level rise, and displacement from homes and communities is likely to pose significant mental health challenges to millions of Americans and billions of others worldwide,” the psychologists wrote in their letter.

The resulting stress and rise in mental illness likely will “harm interpersonal relationships, make people less able to work constructively or do well in school, and ultimately injure the day-to-day functioning of our society and our economy,” the group told Congress. “Hurricane Katrina demonstrated all of these outcomes in microcosm to the American people, and an ample body of research strongly predicts such severe psychological and social consequences.”

Meanwhile, if the world’s nations do not contend aggressively with the dangers posed by a warming planet, “we will have to deal with the reality that we are living in unpredictable, unstable and volatile times when it comes to climate change,” said Laurie Nadel, a psychotherapist who started a support group after Hurricane Sandy.

“When I talk to people in other countries who’ve been living with natural disasters their whole lives, they don’t expect the phones to always work, and they understand that people may not show up on time because a tree might have fallen on the road. They accept that emergencies are part of life and out of their control.

“Their social rhythms have adapted, and that’s what we’re going to have to do,” Nadel added. “We will have to shift our mindset to accepting uncertainty and unpredictability, and develop a different belief system about what we’ll have to contend with when the order of things changes.”

The post Climate anxiety appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“I had never seen it before,” says Venugopal, who was medical team leader for a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) mission last year in Chad, a north-central African nation roiled by decades of civil strife, war, famine and drought.

Chadian colleagues suggested the rash might be cutaneous leishmaniasis, a parasite-triggered skin infection that can cause severe facial disfigurement. The disease requires a gruelling treatment regimen of intravenous sodium stibogluconate that is itself highly toxic and painful to administer.

Dismayed by the prognosis, Venugopal sent a skin biopsy to the hospital laboratory in Am Timan, which confirmed leishmaniasis. Still dissatisfied, he posted photos of the rash to MSF’s Telemedicine online portal. The photos were analyzed by a leishmaniasis expert in the United Kingdom, who diagnosed a common skin infection.

The youngster, who was put on antibiotics, was spared a painful, dangerous and unnecessary treatment. “A medical error was prevented and harm to a vulnerable patient was prevented as well,” says Venugopal, an emergency physician and assistant professor in the faculty of medicine at the University of Toronto.

MSF’s Telemedicine online portal, in operation since 2011, taps into the services of 250 medical specialists – all of whom donate their time for free. The system is designed to support MSF staff ensconced in some of the most inaccessible and dangerous places on the globe.

Such locales rarely have adequate sanitation, running water, electricity, food or shelter – certainly, they lack the infrastructure needed to support broadband Internet services. So, along with medical supplies, MSF packs satellite dishes and telecommunication equipment, allowing access to high-speed Internet for connecting with medical experts anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day.

“It is as easy as Facebook to upload cases,” says Venugopal. He examines patients in the morning, often using his portable ultrasound, which creates internal images of the body. “Then, if required, I upload the ultrasound images onto my memory stick, download to my computer and upload onto the online Telemedicine server. I can have a response from a radiologist in Toronto by the afternoon.” To date, more than 1,000 cases have been referred to MSF’s medical experts, Venugopal says.

Digital diagnosis

Telemedicine is bringing physicians and patients together from around the globe and, indeed, is becoming a key way to deliver medical services. It is due in part to computer science professor Stella Atkins of Simon Fraser University (SFU) in Burnaby, British Columbia, that medicine first began to transcend the limits of distance and geography.

In 2000, Atkins represented Canada on a NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme (SPS) initiative to help former Soviet Union satellite states that had achieved independence in the 1990s establish academic Internet connections. The project was dubbed the Visual Silk Highway, as it included nations that intersected the ancient, 6,500-kilometre-long Silk Road trade route.

Atkins’ first task with SPS was to address the concerns of the chief pathologist of Uzbekistan in Central Asia. Biopsies were being misdiagnosed, causing physicians to miss cancers and viral infections, she says. In 2008, with the backing of SPS, Atkins established a digital imaging program called iPath in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan. She brought in cameras that attached to the eyepiece of a microscope. Biopsy images could then be transmitted via iPath software to a website accessible by medical experts, who suggested a diagnosis.

Later, in 2010, Atkins ran a workshop out of Tashkent for chief and trainee pathologists from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Georgia, Armenia, Ukraine and Russia. The workshop resulted in the creation of a peer-to-peer consulting network for Central Asian pathologists.

Another initiative that Atkins is part of – the brainchild of Russian and Romanian physicians and scientists – incorporates telemedicine into crisis management in case of disasters such as earthquakes, which are rife in Central Asia. Initiated in 2013, the new program allows medical responders in disaster zones to access medical consulting websites, helping them to improve crisis medical treatment, she says.

Smart apps

Atkins is also leading an SFU-led initiative that, in 2013, created MoleScope, a tiny microscope used with a smartphone that snaps images of skin moles, a precursor of skin cancer, which afflicts six million new patients every year around the globe. MoleScope software stores images of moles, allowing physicians to monitor changes over time.

To improve its efficacy, the app has a unique interface that tells the doctor exactly where the mole is located on a 3D body map, and tracks the dates that the images were taken to monitor changes. It is especially useful, says Atkins, for patients living in remote or rural areas who can’t easily travel to see a specialist.

There are other useful smartphone apps being created at SFU, adds Atkins, including ones that allow doctors to monitor chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart conditions in far-away patients.

Broadband Internet services are rapidly improving and, in April, a new system, called Tele-Link Mental Health Program, was put into place to help address a Canadian tragedy: the alarmingly high suicide rates of aboriginal youth.

In Nunavut, founded 15 years ago as Canada’s newest northern territory, the suicide rate among the young is 28 times higher than the national average, says Lynn Ryan MacKenzie, the executive director of Mental Health and Addictions in Nunavut’s Department of Health. The people of Nunavut, which is home to 35,600 Inuit living in 25 small communities, were shattered last year when a record 45 youth ended their lives, the majority of them young males.

A study analyzing the 120 suicides that have occurred between 2003 and 2006 found high rates of major depressive disorder, as well as alcohol and cannabis use and addiction. MacKenzie says this is linked to the legacy of residential schools, cultural upheaval, overcrowding in homes and food insecurity.

Telepsychiatry 

Unfortunately, there is a lack of access to psychiatric services for both children and teens, due in part to the 3,000-kilometre distance from the urbanized south and the widely scattered nature of Nunavut communities. To tackle this problem – and provide Nunavut with consistent psychiatric care – the government of Nunavut, Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), RBC Foundation and Cisco Canada created the Tele-Link program together.

Tele-Link builds on SickKids’ telepsychiatry pilot that was created in 1997 to link health care workers with rural Ontario patients. To connect southern psychiatrists with the North, Cisco donated three large video conferencing suites to SickKids and 10 large desktop units to the region of Nunavut, says the program’s clinical manager, David Willis.

SickKids psychiatrist Susan Dundas says she and other mental health workers can now hold face-to-face, real-time meetings with young northern patients. The screens are big enough to capture up to 10 people at a time, such as family members, counsellors and social workers.

“I have to develop a useful working relationship,” Dundas says. “It’s possible to do it on a screen, and very difficult to do on a telephone. Most of my assessment comes from observing the child – six-year-olds don’t do a lot of talking. Even with older children and adults you have to observe emotional output. All the nonverbal language plays a big role in diagnosing mental health issues.”

Treatment for all

Willis expects Tele-Link will have a positive impact on the dire state of youth mental health in Nunavut. “Technology is an enabler; it allows families to avoid the cost of travel to seek medical treatment. So long as we can get the technology in place and working, it is the next best thing to having them fly out to get that service in person.”

Telemedicine is a major development in helping bridge the gulf between the world’s haves and have-nots, who often lack good medical care because of a dearth of resources.

Venugopal recalls one 17-year-old man who walked for days across the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the second largest country in Africa, to get medical help for a mysterious rash covering his entire body. Photos of the disfiguring condition were uploaded onto the MSF Telemedicine portal. Soon after, a dermatologist in New Zealand made a diagnosis, allowing MSF physicians in the Congo to determine the correct treatment.

“Just because you’re poor and vulnerable doesn’t mean you don’t deserve a high-class medical consultation,” says Venugopal. “This reduces the isolation of medical providers and improves the professionalism of our work and the quality of consultations – and that is good for everyone.”

The post Telehealth gives access to all appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Yet after finding that energy costs were increasing by more than $350,000 per year, Thompson launched a $2 million energy efficiency campaign in 2008 by replacing light bulbs, generators, pumps and other devices with more efficient ones. Along with retrofits of existing buildings, sustainable design elements were incorporated into new LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified buildings.

Savings from the retrofit now add up to $1.2 million annually,,

Encouraged by the rapid return on investment, Thompson began to explore the idea of Gundersen shifting towards generation of it’s own energy. It is now on track to become one of the only energy-independent health care systems in the United States, by the end of 2014, through a mix of wind, solar, biogas and hydrokinetic power. Annual returns on energy investments are expected to run between $3 million and $5 million. Becoming energy independent isn’t just about saving money, Thompson insists. It’s about improving the health of the communities that Gundersen serves. Sixty-two per cent of Wisconsin’s energy is generated by coal power, causing respiratory and other problems. “We’re health care providers – you cant tell me we shouldn’t take responsibility for that,” says Thompson. The White House honoured him as a “Champion of Change” last year for his visionary work in the area of environmental stewardship for health care organizations.

Cultural change

With health care budgets under perpetual strain and climate change set to impose further pressure on the system throughout North America, U.S. hospital networks are beginning to adopt wide-ranging sustainability measures on everything from waste reduction to energy savings. Despite patient care remaining (understandably) front of the mind for most hospital administrators, facilities are discovering that sustainability and patient care are not mutually exclusive.

The U.S Department of Energy estimates that American health care facilities spend $8.8 billion per year on energy, maintaining buildings that have more than 2.5 times the energy intensity of average commercial offices. A recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Association calculated that the health care sector was responsible for 8 per cent of U.S. green house gas emissions. Hospitals also produce a sizeable amount of waste, measured by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at roughly 7,000 tons a day per hospital. Up to $10 billion is spent on disposal annually throughout the industry.

Coordinated efforts to curtail the environmental footprint of the health care industry began in the mid-1990’s, when Gary Cohen founded the organization Health Care Without Harm (HCWH). After an EPA report pegged on-site medical waste incinerators as the largest source of noxious dioxin emissions, he launched a successful campaign tjat resulted in over 90 per cent of hospital incinerators being shuttered by 2006. Medical products containing mercury were also phased out after they were found to be a potent source of pollution in landfills.

“Back in 1997, health care people such as myself had no idea we were contributing in this way to such a toxic problem,” says Kathy Gerwig, environmental stewardship officer at integrated managed care consortium Kaiser Permanente. Under her leadership, the Oakland, California-based company has evolved into a leading proponent of sustainability in the industry.

A number of related organizations have now joined HCWH in advocating for reform, including Greenfield Health Center and the Center for Health Design. These non-profits, working with Kaiser Permanente and 11 other health systems representing 490 hospitals across the nation formed the Healthier Hospitals Initiative (HHI) in 2012. Working to provide resources, facilitate dialogue between hospitals and encourage disclosure within the sector, it has already grown to encompass 900 hospitals.

Replacing waste

HHI and HCWH recently commissioned a survey of nine leading sustainability-minded hospitals and health systems to help take stock of the savings captured. If the policies adopted at these institutions were expanded nationwide, the study concluded that savings of $5.4 billion in five years and up to $15 billion in 10 years could be achieved. “It increasingly appears that going green not only benefits health and the environment, but saves money, which meets the Triple Aim of hospital quality improvements,” wrote Susan Kaplan, study author and director of the Health Care Research Collaborative.

After labor, supply chain costs remain the second-largest expense for hospitals. Comprising close to one-third of a hospital’s budget, most products will eventually end up as waste. One of the main challenges comes from regulated medical waste (RMW). Although RMW only comprises 15-20 per cent of the overall waste stream at hospitals, it can cost six to 10 times as much to dispose of. For HCWH’s Cohen, discussions about cutting waste in the health industry tend to focus instead on unnecessary treatments and bureaucracy, “but priorities are beginning to shift,” he says.

Educating hospital staff on what exactly constitutes RMW has proven to be the first step. Placing non-contaminated waste such as diapers, tissue papers and batteries in with RMW waste can balloon disposal costs as much as 5o per cent. Inova Health System, based in Falls Church, Virginia, eliminated one million tons of waste over 14 months from it’s RMW stream following a successful employee education program. That amounted to savings over $250,000 a year.

Amending procurement policy is another necessary step. In 2012, Johnson & Johnson surveyed purchasing managers and executives at 257 hospitals in the U.S., Italy, Germany and Brazil. Fifty-four per cent of hospitals responded that eco-friendly attribute are “extremely important” in their purchasing decisions.

Health systems often work together through group purchasing organizations to reduce costs. The goal, says Gerwig, is to create enough demand for products that are easily reusable, recyclable and free of toxics that it becomes the industry norm.

More research is emerging on the negative health effects of certain chemicals used in many medical devices. Kaiser made a decision in 2012 to eliminate intravenous bags and tubing that contain significant amounts of PVCs and DEHP from its supply chain. PVC creates dioxin during manufacturing, while DHEP is thought to result in reproductive complications.

Single use medical devices make up a sizeable portion of both supply chain costs and waste generated, leading more health systems to consider reusing them after being properly cleaned and sterilized. A U.S. Government Accountability Office report in 2008 found this practice to be entirely safe, as it already involved greater regulatory insight. More than half of all hospitals now divert some medical devices for reprocessing, with industry estimates placing the potential savings at $2 billion per year if replicated across the country.

Energy efficiency

The other pillar of hospital sustainability involves a reduction in electricity costs as exemplified by the Gundersen Health System. A green building construction boom has led to more than 250 new healthcare buildings achieving LEED certification with the LEED for Healthcare system being introduced by the U.S. Green Building Council in 2011. Seventy-five of those new builds are hospitals. Organizations like Gundersen and Kaiser have mandated that going forward, all new buildings in its network be certified as LEED Gold or higher.

While new green facilities and efforts to establish energy self sufficiency are important, the greatest opportunities lie in orchestrating energy retrofits of existing buildings. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s “Advanced Energy Retrofit Guide for Healthcare Facilities,” published last November, identified potential savings of 10 to 32 percent across the board, depending on facility and regional climate.

Gunderson Health System’s retrofit involved exchanging existing steam traps with sturdier and more efficient models, replacing older lighting systems, swapping out it’s chiller and installing more efficient prepackaged gas burners. It took under two years to recoup its initial investment

The post Emergency: Code Green appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Rand makes clear he doesn’t think we have to boil to death. “The good news is that we can solve the climate problem,” he writes. “The capital we need sits in our pension funds and money markets, the policy tools to unlock it are well understood and emerging innovations are fully capable of powering our civilization.”

Yet the fossil fuel party keeps rockin’ in the face of the risks, challenges and opportunities. The vested interests, the captains of industry, the politicians are all “paid very well to continue doing what they do.” They hire pseudo-experts to confuse and deny. They claim change is natural and we have nothing to do with it. They claim that it is simple fraud. They claim that other issues should have priority.

Rand explains why people so easily “rest blissfully in denial.” He distinguishes between “active” and “passive” deniers. Active deniers, he explains, are those who don’t actually believe what they are saying when they go on about it all being a left-wing plot to create a new world government. Passive deniers are similar to those who lived through the cold war years – they suffer from the “psychic numbing” of living under the constant threat of nuclear destruction, so they simply put the issue out of their minds.

“There are lots of reasons for passive denial,” he writes. “It’s not unreasonable. We may feel powerless or overwhelmed. We might want to avoid feelings of guilt. We are afraid of what it means for our children.”

Rand proposes a way to change the conversation and suggests that we take advantage of our cognitive biases, put on a happy face, and promote “a brave new world of clean energy abundance and sustainable economic growth.” The trouble is, everyone kind of likes things the way they are, with their cars and their granite counters their plane flights. Party on. But as notes, “The best parties are often followed by the worst hangovers, and the fossil fuel party has been a great one.”

Indeed it has. Unfortunately, we keep doing everything we can to postpone that hangover, thanks to hair-of-the-dog innovations like fracking and arctic drilling aimed at squeezing those last bits of hydrocarbons out of rocks and seabeds. Yet Rand says we have to cut our carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2030. “It’s a massive affair. Replacing it in a generation – which we must do if we are to avoid catastrophic climate disruption – is daunting.” To do so, he proposes an energy moon shot – “a publicly directed new low-carbon energy mission that unlocks the engineering, industrial and financial might of the global market economy.”

It’s a huge job, writes Rand. Indeed, it’s much more ambitious in scope than the original moon shot. “The energy moon shot is a multi-stakeholder effort. Everyone rows in the same direction. Science sets the goal. Government provides the right policy support. Industry’s job is to get us there, not obfuscate the science or lobby against the policy. Industrialists, financiers, and captains of industry contribute to the debate and start by saying, ‘We get it, we’re on it.’”

This 21st century moon shot would include a serious carbon tax, next-generation nuclear (breeder reactors), carbon capture and enhanced geothermal systems that tap the heat of the earth 10 kilometres down. That’s big stuff requiring big engineering, reflecting Rand’s own bias as an optimistic engineer.

Then there is the low hanging fruit that you pick by fixing buildings. Rand did it himself with his own Planet Traveller hotel in Toronto, cutting its carbon footprint by three-quarters. The irony here is that having a planet of travellers comes with a much larger carbon footprint, and as Rand writes, “we’ll never go without long distance air travel… it’s part of the glue that makes us a global community.”

So we’re left with the belief that we can all live in a brave new world, all row in the same direction, and at the same time we can get captains of industry to say “we’re on it!” Rand is truly convinced we can avoid the hangover.

But the unanswered question remains: Will we?

The post Waking the frog appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Wine and beer are no exception. Both appeal to consumer appetites for local and authentic. In Canada, craft beer, made on a small scale and with natural local ingredients, is the fastest growing segment of the beer market and, as Canada’s relatively young wine industry extends its regional reach, a small but growing number of wineries are challenging themselves to produce organically.

Because the results taste good, it’s less a matter of twisting consumers’ arms to make responsible choices than simply giving them what they want. As Heather MacGregor, a spokeswoman for the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, put it, “We respond to what our customers like and this market just continues to grow across the board, on both imports and domestic.” She’s referring to a fourfold increase in organic beer sales and a doubling in organic wine sales in the last four years.

Organic doesn’t capture the full breadth of sustainability which, in the realm of wine and beer, also encompasses energy efficiency in production and reduction in water use, packaging and transport. And while it may feel like a contemporary sensibility, it’s nothing new.

When two Bavarian dukes decreed on April 23, 1516, that the only allowable ingredients in beer were barley, hops and water, they were not really concerned about taste. The so-called Bavarian Purity Law, which gets flaunted on beer labels to this day, was in fact designed to stop brewers from pillaging local wheat and rye crops, a practice that was leading to bread shortages and even starvation, and to reduce illness from additives (whether this was more about consumer safety or protectionism from north German beers that featured weird and wonderful psychoactive herbs remains a matter of debate).

The decree also regulated prices (no more than a penny per litre) and defined the beer-making season (April 23 to September 29) in order to cut back on fires caused by brewing and spoilage for lack of cool storage in the summer months. Although no mention is made of yeast – integral to beer – it’s clear the ingredient was understood as earlier medieval documents regulate yeast-sharing protocols between brewers and bakers.

Efficient brewing

Today, the scant resource in beer-making is water and the energetic challenges are to heat efficiently, recapture heat loss and optimize water purification and bottle-cleaning. Elmira, Ontario-based environmental consulting firm Enviro-Stewards has specialized in beer and wine production. By reducing water and gas consumption, product losses and the use of caustics, wineries and breweries increase their output and minimize their loads on local water treatment facilities. Realizing this, and that reducing industrial water consumption is cheaper than digging more wells, several Canadian municipalities and public utilities have, in the last few years, begun to co-fund environmental assessments and refits.

The City of Guelph and Union Gas, for instance, helped Canadian brewer Sleemans to reduce its water and natural gas consumption by 8 per cent and 20 per cent respectively, boosting the brewery’s output and its bottom line by $330,000 a year, with an annual return on investment of over 100 per cent.

In Europe, Dutch beer giant Heineken has paired with the Austrian government in a “Green Brewery” project whose ultimate objective is carbon-neutral beer. Their pilot project at 500-year-old Göss brewery in southeastern Austria uses a combination of solar thermal systems and residual heat from a nearby sawmill for brewing. Almost all of the brewery’s waste heat is used to warm the municipal water supply and in the winter, outdoor air is used for cooling. External electricity used at the brewery, like all breweries in Austria’s Brau Union group (the country’s biggest beer conglomerate), is renewable.

Such ambitions may be more realizable and at a larger scale in a European context – where, for example, Austria is aiming for energy self-sufficiency by 2050 thanks to its extensive wind and hydropower. But Canadian breweries are making strides as well. One major shift here is towards local production.

When Steve Abrams, co-founder of Mill Street Brewery, decided to launch Ontario’s first organic beer in 2002, he had to import his organic hops from New Zealand and his organic malt from Germany, a painful contradiction for a local craft brewer. In the absence of a Canadian standard, he also had to turn to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for organic certification.

Twelve years later, Mill Street’s organic ale (one of the brewery’s more than 40 beers) accounts for 60 per cent of the company’s sales. The brewery is now one of over 30 craft breweries in Ontario and Abrams is able to source all his ingredients within the province.

Hops on the ups

The boom in craft breweries has, among other things, brought hops back to Ontario following a dry spell that Ontario Hop Growers’ Association vice-president Hugh Brown believes dates back to prohibition. Founded four years ago, his association now comprises roughly 30 commercial hops growers, up from “next to none” five years ago.

Most are producing organically and on a small scale but Brown believes that, given the high local demand, bigger commercial players are soon to enter the market. He sees Ontario’s beer industry undergoing what the province’s wine industry went through a decade ago – a move towards estate production, with ingredients being grown and processed on site, a situation where sustainable practice takes on greater immediacy.

Crannóg Ales, founded in 2000 in British Columbia’s interior, is one such on-farm brewery and the first in Canada to get organic certification. Crannóg brews 1.5 million litres annually: “minuscule” in the words of its co-founder Rebecca Kneen (craft brewery is anything below 40 million litres). For Kneen, who grew up on a farm, it “only made sense” to farm and brew on site. Crannóg grows its own organic hops, propagates its own yeasts, draws its own spring water and has its Prairie barley malted by a local maltster. All spent grains and waste water are used on the farm.

Having found no solar or wind systems practical for its scale of operation, Crannóg’s solution has been to keep its energy needs low by eliminating two of the most energy-intensive processes in beer-making: thermal pasteurization and bottling.

“Why spend so much attention on the ingredients if we’re just going to filter out the goodness and flavour?” asks Kneen. Being non-pasteurized, the beer can’t be sold through the liquor board, but Crannóg has a cult following locally and nobody complains that the beer is only available in kegs or “growlers” (which get cleaned and reused rather than recycled) or that it has to be stored cold because it’s “alive.”

Breaking tradition

Crannóg harbours no dreams of expansion beyond the B.C. border: “One important piece of sustainability is being content at a place of sufficiency,” says Kneen. “Constant growth isn’t necessarily sustainable. When things go industrial, they also become invisible.”

Bill Redelmeier, owner of Southbrook Vineyards in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, is something of a kindred spirit in the world of wine. Southbrook boasts biodynamic, organic and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certifications – making it unique in Canada.

Biodynamic takes organic farming to another level. Redelmeier, a third-generation farmer, dispenses with fungicides and pesticides, raises sheep for their manure and cultivates wild yeasts and moulds “right out of the sheep’s rear end.” He considers the difference between conventional and organic farming to be one of degree, whereas biodynamic farming is more one of kind. By tolerating low levels of infection in the vineyard, the grapes cultivate thick skins rich in tannins and bio-flavonoids and by using wild yeasts, fermentation takes longer and occurs in unique succession. “It’s the difference between a note and a chord,” he says referring to the taste, adding that Ontario’s two biodynamic wineries take home more than their share of national awards every year.

Redelmeier would like to see far more organic vineyards in Ontario, but understands that risk and expense are real obstacles for most grape growers. Organic vineyards typically yield less than half that of conventional ones and they’re more vulnerable to blights and weather irregularities. When taking the leap to organic, growers often look for advance purchasing commitments from wineries to protect themselves financially.

Nor is it universally agreed that organic is better. J-L Groux, winemaker at Stratus Vineyards, just down the road from Southbrook in Niagara-on-the-Lake, argues that organic doesn’t always correlate with quality or sustainability. Originally from the French Loire with wine-making experience on both continents, Groux talks about the downsides of organic production. Grapes need to be sprayed more often, he says, and that requires more fuel. There’s also the need to occasionally pick grapes prematurely to avoid disease, and in the past, organic sprays such as copper and sulphur have taken a toll on soils.

While not organic, Stratus believes deeply in sustainability, which Groux calls “the overall picture.” The winery, built in 2005, was the first building in Canada and the first winery in the world to get LEED certification – a distinction that applies to both its construction and ongoing operation. Groux talks about a “gentle on the earth” approach – which, along with no use of herbicides, includes largely natural pesticides, compost fertilizers, electro-magnetic sprayers rather than irrigation, bio-fuelled tractors and labour-intensive production that uses gravity rather than pumps. Because the parcels adjacent to Stratus are less than 30 feet away and farmed conventionally, the vineyard is not eligible for organic certification. But even if it were, Groux wouldn’t subject his wines to that corset. For him, the young, experimental culture of winemaking in Canada is what makes it more exciting than in the tradition-bound old world.

Taste trumps

For many winemakers like Groux, the term “sustainable” implies virtues rather than restrictions. California’s Sonoma County is embracing it whole hog, aiming to become America’s first 100 per cent sustainable wine region by 2019. Wine has a long tradition in Sonoma, its vineyards dating back to the 1820s and many still in family hands; it’s also big business, accounting for 60 per cent of the county’s GDP and one in three jobs.

According to Karissa Kruse, president of the Sonoma County Winegrowers, the body behind the sustainability initiative, it seems a logical step to make sure winemaking is sustainable. “The marketplace is going this way,” says Kruse. And she’s right. In its 2014 Culinary Forecast, the U.S. National Restaurant Association cited sustainability as the top trend in food and beverage for the coming decade.

While the initiative is completely voluntary, Kruse says that all of Sonoma’s 1,800 grape growers and almost half its 450 winemakers have opted in. And it’s not just a marketing ploy – the region’s susceptibility to drought makes optimal canopy management, drip irrigation and frost protection vital to survival.

Sustainable breweries and wineries, while growing, still represent a small slice of the total market, a position that seems to foster a healthy mix of solidarity and fierce competition. To expand their market share, they have to work together; to distinguish themselves within the small pack, they have to be creative. This leads to wonderful spinoffs – like the glass jewelry made from Stratus’ bottle shards or the blankets woven from Southbrook’s sheep clip – and community collaborations like Mill Street’s partnership with Earth Day Canada, or eastern Ontario craft brewer Beau’s hiring of homeless youth to drive its delivery vans.

But ultimately, it’s taste buds that drive the market. As Mill Street’s Abrams says, “Our research shows that flavour is the single biggest factor for consumers. The fact that it’s organic is nice but for the vast majority it’s not the number one reason to buy.

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Last summer, for the first time since Vakil began practising in 1985, she saw a patient with the full-blown bull’s-eye rash and flu-like symptoms that the disease is known to cause. “There’s no question there are more ticks,” says Vakil, family physician in Kingston, Ontario, and assistant professor in the department of family medicine at Queen’s University. “This didn’t exist 20 years ago.”

Lyme disease is on the rise in Canada, with the Public Health Agency of Canada noting new risk areas emerging in provinces from Nova Scotia to Manitoba and advising health professionals to learn about diagnosis and treatment. Global warming, it says, is expected to speed up the expansion of Lyme disease into Canada.

Climate change has already triggered an increase in average annual temperatures in Canada in recent decades, along with rising sea levels. It is expected to trigger more extremes of weather, from higher rainfall to more intense storms and floods and more periods of drought, particularly in the Prairies.

That has myriad implications for Canada’s health care system. It means more people suffering from heat waves, poor air quality and floods, as well as the spread of diseases – and the pests that cause them – to new areas. (Kingston isn’t the only place ticks are showing up; further north, Sudbury’s health unit recorded its first case in 2008.)

Globally, the World Health Organization pegs climate-related deaths at 150,000 a year, and calls climate change “the defining issue for public health during this century.”

In Canada, worsening air quality and higher temperatures will result in more emergency room visits and rising hospital admissions, which will come at great cost to the public health care system, according to the now-defunct National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. (The round table was dismantled in 2012 after the federal government stopped funding it; 25 years of research is no longer publicly available on its website.

A need to adapt

Having a resilient health care system in the face of climate change requires a willingness and determination to adapt, experts say. One of the best places to start is to introduce the health impacts of climate change into the curriculum of medical schools, something Vakil and others have been pressing for. She would also like to see public health units across the country do more education and help the public connect the dots between climate and health – both physical and mental.

“It’s scary and overwhelming, but climate change is a public health issue that should be dealt with,” says Vakil, who sits on the board of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment.

Change is afoot. Last year, the Canadian Coalition for Green Health Care published a toolkit for health care facilities on “climate change resiliency.” It was based on a pilot of six facilities in Canada, and included a checklist of what institutions should do, from emergency management to boosting energy efficiency to how to maintain patient care during a weather-related disaster.

Such disasters – wildfires, extreme thunderstorms, droughts and tornadoes – all have implications for health care facilities, and Canadians will be increasingly vulnerable to such events as the population grows and ages. They’re already happening with greater frequency and health professionals are seeing the impacts first hand, said Linda Varangu, the coalition’s executive director.

Some hospitals in northern Ontario, for example, are seeing their cooling systems over-taxed while others are rethinking their design after major flooding events nearby. “There’s growing awareness, especially in those facilities that have been impacted already. They’re having to do things differently now,” says Varangu.

It’s not like authorities haven’t seen it coming. Expected population growth and chronic disease trends “indicate that the proportion of Canadians highly sensitive to climate-related health impacts will grow over the coming decades,” a Health Canada report made clear six years ago.

An additional risk is the potential for diseases, such as dengue fever and malaria, to become more prevalent as places Canadians typically visit on holiday, such as the Caribbean, see warmer temperatures that boost the survival rates of disease-spreading mosquitoes and parasites.

The Public Health Agency of Canada has $12 million in funding over five years – 2011 to 2016 – to bolster its “preventative public health systems and adaptation to climate change” program. The agency is boosting its risk assessment methods, particularly around vulnerable populations (such as the elderly, children and northern populations) and ramping up research in areas such as Lyme disease and gastrointestinal illnesses.

Focus on resilience

Real change will require longer-term thinking. Infrastructure, for example, will need to be planned around new weather patterns and risks from now on, says Sanjay Khanna, resident futurist at University of Toronto’s Massey College, who focuses on how global risks such as climate change may impact public, private and not-for-profit sectors.

For now, Khanna says efforts to make Canada’s health care system more climate resilient have been “fragmented,” underscoring the need for coordinated efforts to build system-wide adaptive capacity. Planners will have to consider granular details of likely risks, such as how extreme weather could disrupt transportation routes and thus slow delivery of crucial medical supplies.

Doctors and nurses, too, will have to consider the potential mid- to long-term impact of extreme weather. These include more frequent disruptions to health care delivery with implications for patient care. “Health care professionals should take the time to develop scenarios that help them touch, taste and feel the future so they can prepare for it,” says Khanna. He adds, however, that fiscal restraints on health care spending mean it will be difficult to boost investments unless longer-term costs and benefits are weighed.

Many shifts are under way at the local level, as risks for each community vary considerably. For Victoria or Halifax, rising sea levels are a threat, while in Windsor, a principal concern is heat waves.

Windsor, Canada’s southern-most city, estimates its number of hot days could almost quadruple later this century, with the risk that heat-related illnesses will strain health care services. Its climate change adaptation plan proposes more public education on heat waves and their effects, and mapping “hot spots” in the city of populations most vulnerable to these illnesses.

City staff planners have met with the medical officer of health to assess risks from heat and vector-borne diseases. The city is now boosting its tree canopy for more shade and exploring how to better keep its public parks cool, says Karina Richters, the city’s environmental coordinator. “We’re trying to put this on the radar.”

Pursuing self-sufficiency

Some facilities are bolstering self-sufficiency. In London, Ontario, the goal is simple: creating a “bullet-proof infrastructure to keep the buildings operating regardless of external operating conditions,” says Phil Renaud, director of engineering services at London Health Sciences Centre, which includes two large hospitals.

It uses cogeneration to power one hospital and has added backup generators at the other. The benefits are manifold – cogeneration has led to cost savings pegged at more than $3 million a year in reduced hydro bills. Its turbines are more efficient and cleaner than traditional sources, and at maximum capacity produce enough energy “to power a medium-sized town.” And the system is now more resilient to power outages from natural or man-made disasters.

Some facilities are being built in new ways. In Boston, the Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital was recently “future-proofed.” That involved ensuring its ground floor was 30 inches above the 500-year flood level lines. It has windows that can be manually opened in case the air conditioning conks out so patients don’t overheat. And it placed its electrical equipment on the roof, instead of the basement, in case of flooding.

Across the United States, momentum is growing to rethink how climate change will affect the health care system, says Colleen Funkhouser, program coordinator at Reston, Virginia-based Health Care Without Harm.

Funkhouser says the sector was previously reluctant to engage on the issue, at least until climate change was reframed as a public health concern. When Superstorm Sandy directly affected several hospitals and exposed their vulnerability to extreme weather events, the conversation shifted. More attention was focused on preparedness, she says. At the same time, health care institutions explored opportunities to reduce their own impacts on the climate.

Research is underway to examine potential costs to health care systems. In the first study of its kind in the U.S., scientists from the Natural Resources Defense Council and economists studied the health costs of six climate-related disasters that occurred in recent years, and which are likely to worsen as atmospheric CO2 levels climb. They pegged total costs at more than $14 billion. It’s just an “indication” of what to expect in the coming years, the study warned.

Are we fully aware of what’s to come? Are Canadians prepared? Change in Canada has been slow to come, in part because the federal government has not prioritized the issue, says Trevor Hancock, professor and senior scholar at the University of Victoria’s School of Public Health and Social Policy.

Still, given the size of Canada’s health care system, its moral obligation to do no harm and the costs – both economic and social – associated with climate change, “the sector should be setting an example for the rest of society,” he says. “There’s a lot more it could and should be doing.

The post Your health and climate change appeared first on Corporate Knights.

It’s long been known that reducing electricity use through efficiency is cheaper than having to generate more power to meet rising demand. A report from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy puts numbers behind that claim.

According to the council, energy efficiency costs two to three times less than generating power through newly developed traditional sources. It pegs the average cost of energy efficiency measures at only 3 cents per kWh.

“Why build more expensive power plants when efficiency gives you more bang for your buck?” said Maggie Molina, author of the council’s report. “Investing in energy efficiency helps utilities and ratepayers avoid the expense of building new power plants and the harmful pollution that plants emit.”

The report looked at the cost of running efficiency programs in 20 states from 2009 to 2012 and found an average cost of 2.8 cents per kWh. Each dollar invested in electric energy efficiency yielded $1.24 to $4 in total benefits for customers, including avoided energy and capacity costs, avoided costs from building new power lines, and reduced pollution.

“Incorporating higher levels of energy efficiency in long-term planning can protect utilities and their customers against volatile and rising costs of traditional energy resources,” the council added.

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Gardens cover the grounds and a roof of the hospital, which serves patients who need long-term rehabilitation or disease management. Inside, walls are painted in green or the blue of nearby Lake Ontario. Nature themes dominate artwork.

The design aims to connect patients to the surrounding community and park, says Celeste Alvaro, a specialist in experimental social psychology who heads a team researching green features and their impacts.

Data on health outcomes, such as how much sooner patients are ready to be discharged, are still being analyzed in a study that compares the year-old Bridgepoint with the building it replaced and another hospital with a similar mandate. The study is the first of its kind in Canada.

But one thing is already clear, Alvaro says. Patients and visitors use the gardens whenever possible; inside, they gravitate to the many windows. “Patients want to be outside, or positioned by a window to be exposed to what’s going on outside.”

Bridgepoint’s work is part of a trend toward acknowledging the health benefits of exposure to nature. It extends beyond hospital care: Corporations are being urged to adopt it to improve employees’ well-being and productivity. Experts view it as a general rule for everyone.

Decades of research consistently conclude that wilderness trips, time in a city park or even gazing at pictures of trees and water improves mental and physical health.

“Natural environments may have direct and positive impacts on well-being,” states a review of 25 studies, headed by Andrew Pullin of Bangor University in Wales.

“Humans are hard-wired genetically for an affiliation with the natural world,” says American author Richard Louv, who coined the term “nature deficit disorder” to describe the unhealthy consequences for the growing population deprived of it.

Nature builds strong minds and bodies three ways:

• Exposure to it directly improves health;

• People living near parks or other natural areas exercise more, which contributes to the prevention of more than 20 conditions including coronary heart disease, diabetes, some cancers, mental illness and obesity;

• Natural areas absorb pollution, reducing cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.

“A growing body of evidence suggests that human mental and physical health is closely associated with the health of our forest ecosystems,” says “A Healthy Dose of Green,” a recent report from Trees Ontario.

Green spaces provide exposure to the microbes, or “old friends,” that stimulate our immune system but are lacking in high-income countries, Graham Rook of University College London said in a study last year. It’s “a neglected ecosystem service that is essential for our well-being.”

Hospital patients are said to benefit from even minimal naturalization.

“Patients in rooms with plants and flowers had significantly shorter hospitalizations, fewer intakes of analgesics, lower ratings of pain, anxiety, and fatigue, and more positive feelings and higher satisfaction about their rooms when compared with patients in the control group,” states a 2009 study by researchers at Kansas State University.

That research echoed an earlier study of people who had gall bladder surgery at a Pennsylvania hospital. Those with trees outside their windows took fewer painkillers, appeared to nurses to have fewer negative effects and spent less time in hospital than those viewing only brick walls.

The addition of gardens, aquariums, plants and artwork (but not abstract) has become part of creating “healing environments,” along with more private rooms, less noise, natural lighting, better signage and social areas such as lounges.

Advocates of corporate social responsibility say businesses – even those creating natural areas on their properties, funding urban parks or protecting wilderness areas – aren’t yet engaged in the health impacts of these environmental activities, beyond attempting to improve employees’ job satisfaction and reduce workplace stress.

But they might consider a study of “visual search accuracy,” conducted two years ago at New Mexico State University that exposed undergraduates to natural or urban images, and then tested how well they could detect whether a target – an “O” – was embedded in pictures showing other letters.

The nature group did much better. Perhaps airport baggage-screening agents would perform more proficient searches if exposed to images of nature while on their shift, radiologists would benefit from a bit of foliage in the office or office workers would gain from a computer background cycling through nature images, the report suggests.

It seems, says American psychologist Eric Jaffe, that being in nature engages “involuntary” attention – “a rather effortless form of engagement with the world” – giving a breather to voluntary attention, which is crucial to problem-solving and demands energy and focus.

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“There have been new issuers, new currencies, new underwriters, new areas of issuance and, for the first time, a green bonds index,” according to Bridget Boulle, the initiative’s program manager, in a blog update posted in April.

Development banks continue to lead the way with issues of $4.9 billion, but corporations are not far behind at $4.02 billion. For the corporate side, this is a major achievement given that the first corporate green bond was only issued in November 2013. Development banks, on the other hand, have been issuing since 2007.

Export Development Canada (EDC) was the latest development bank to issue a green bond, which was priced at $300 million (Canadian) and received $500 million in orders within 15 minutes.

Ken Kember, chief financial officer, said the bank sees green bonds as becoming a regular part of its funding program. “The green bond is a nice balance to EDC’s corporate focus on clean technology, an area that will feed new green bond issues in the years to come.”

Toyota, Unilever and TD Bank were among the new corporate issuers, which also included Sweden’s SCA, a producer of personal care, hygiene and forest products. Toyota was the second-largest issuer at $1.75 billion, but the European Investment Bank once again dominated at $2.9 billion, representing six bonds issued in five different currencies.

Again, most green bond issues in the quarter were oversubscribed.

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