Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: To Whom it May Concern,

Our names are Stefano Vela and Lachlan Pope and we are third year students at Queen's University. Unfortunately we are writing concerning a grade we recently received in our Environmental Economics course (ECON 290). We believe our assignment, a Policy Poster, was unfairly marked by our professor and we are requesting a review of the instructor??s decision on this grade which we would prefer to be reviewed by someone other than the original grader. We would also like to request that the appeal not be processed until mid January if possible. We contacted our professor, who marked the assignment, upon receiving our grade and asked to discuss this grading and they expressed that they were unfortunately only willing to assist with comprehension questions.

We decided to create a poster for our assignment, in which we analyze a policy through the lens of the course, on British Columbia??s Carbon tax as we are from Vancouver and are passionate about grasping a better understanding of the environmental effects of these emissions, experiencing this firsthand in the province. We spent a considerable amount of time on the assignment, going above and beyond by creating our own theoretical graphs with computer programs and using provincial data on Excel. To our disappointment upon grading we were presented with a 48% and an F. Upon reading the feedback provided by our instructor, we were disappointed by the lack of substance in the critiques, with many points being pure misunderstandings or assumptions on the part of the grader, and believe there is evidence of bias on the part of the grader.

Feedback began with mention that our policy was over ten years old, a provision our
professor made in the criteria. While British Columbia??s initial carbon tax was created 13 years
ago, we made clear in our poster that we were analyzing the 2019 revision to the carbon tax. In
particular, we were analyzing the 5/ton increase in the tax every year until 2022, which was not
implemented in 2020 due to COVID induced financial instability. We specifically mention the
50/ton tax on carbon emissions and fossil fuels burnt for manufacturing and transportation. This
is set to be implemented in 2022, an increase from the 40 tax set in 2019, in an effort to correct
past market failures. The goal of our poster was to test if continuing the tax, which had failed to
reduce emissions until 2019, is a truly socially efficient method of reducing carbon emissions.

We believe this misunderstanding about the policy was caused by an exchange that may have biased the grading of our assignment. We were initially interested in the EPA??s Arsenic Standard (from more than 10 years ago) and asked to use it, which we were denied and then switched to BC??s carbon tax. We believe that the professor may have interpreted this as us blatantly ignoring the criteria for the assignment and continuing with our denied topic when we did in fact change our topic.


Feedback continued with a statement that ??CO2 emissions have no direct effect on ozone and overall are helping to repair the ozone layer?. A rather bold claim that stands against scientific findings and becomes even more concerning when the grader cites a website link after the claim. The website links to an unauthored write up with the title ??Does CO2 Deplete the Ozone Layer?. This link, posted by our professor, a member of the University??s faculty, becomes even more concerning after doing minimal research into the source of this information. Upon one google search we find that the ??CO2 Coalition?, is ??a nonprofit climate change denial advocacy organization in the United States founded in 2015. The group's claims are disputed by the vast majority of climate scientists.? The source is known for making statements like ??carbon emissions are good for the planet? and publishing statements calling climate models a failure. According to Newsweek, the climate denial group has ties to the Trump organization and received over 1M from energy executives and conservative groups. As you can imagine it was quite horrifying to see a faculty member citing such an unscientific and climate-ignorant source considering the reputation Queen??s University has as an advocate for the environment.

Aside from the controversial standing of this source, the research into CO2??s effects on
the ozone layer are actually quite mixed, without a concrete scientific consensus as our grader
suggests. There is a variety of research that has shown different effects of CO2 on the ozone
layer dependent on factors like latitude. In the lower stratosphere (closest to surface) increased
CO2 slows the production of new ozone, especially in the spring. But near poles and in the upper
stratosphere, CO2 is increasing the amount of ozone by preventing nitrogen oxide from breaking
it down. What we know for certain is that CO2 has indirect effects on the ozone layer and that
ozone chemistry is very sensitive to temperature changes, which CO2 and burning fossil fuels
contributes to. Thus, while there is mixed research, indirect effects are acknowledged by the
scientific community, which are the effects we are referring to in our poster assignment.

We were also told by our professor within our feedback that CO2 does not cause smog. In our analysis we were referring to BC??s smog that appears often in the summers as forest fire smoke trickles into the city and harms air quality. We found that carbon dioxide does have a role in creating these fires and this smog, by increasing temperature and humidity which increases the formation of smog and increases the chances of extreme weather and dryness , largely to blame
for forest fires. We included these indirect effects because they are a major concern during forest fire season in BC.

Our project was also critiqued with an assumption by our professor who assumed our graph of emissions, which was sourced in our poster, was created with greenhouse gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalents instead of solely CO2 emissions which our group was analyzing. In reality, our group specifically isolated for just CO2 emissions from our source and included just data on CO2 in the graph.

We believe our assignment was marked unfairly as much of the feedback includes assumptions about our work and scientifically refuted claims. We do not believe the assignment we put extensive work into deserved a failing grade and we are concerned with the professor??s use of misinformation in the grading process which is in stark contrast to Queen??s environmental paradigm and quite concerning. We also believe the professor had preconceived notions that we chose a topic she told us not to which fuelled biased grading for the assignment, even though we changed our topic to accommodate this feedback prior to submission. We are requesting a review of the instructor??s grading, preferably to be done by different grader than this professor who was only willing to provide feedback on comprehension and preferably to not be processed until mid January.

Thank you for taking the time to help us with this matter and consider our points.

Sincerely,
Lachlan Pope 20145010
Stefano Vela 20150698

Works Cited:
Allen, Jeannie. ??NASA GISS: Research Features: Ozone and Climate Change.? NASA Goddard Institute
for Space Studies, https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/features/200402_tango/. Accessed 14
December 2021.
??British Columbia's Carbon Tax - Province of British Columbia.? Gov.bc.ca,
https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/climate-change/clean-economy/carbon-tax.
Accessed 14 December 2021.
??CO2 Coalition.? Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CO2_Coalition. Accessed 14 December 2021. Murdock, Jason, et al. ??Climate Change Deniers Exploit Facebook Loophole to Spread Fake Science.?
Newsweek, 25 June 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-co2-coalition-fact-checking-ads-fake-content-science-clim ate-change-1513311. Accessed 14 December 2021.
Rose, Kasandra. ??Does CO2 Deplete the Ozone Layer?? Sciencing, 13 April 2018, https://sciencing.com/co2-deplete-ozone-layer-4828.html. Accessed 14 December 2021.
Somma, Marina. ??The Effects of Carbon Dioxide on Air Pollution.? Sciencing, Sciencing, 20 October 2021, https://sciencing.com/list-5921485-effects-carbon-dioxide-air-pollution.html. Accessed 14 December 2021.