Posted: February 7th, 2010 | Author: James Glave | Filed under: Transportation, autoculture | 1 Comment »
On Saturday, General Motors, invited me to test-drive a working prototype of the automaker’s potentially business-saving 2011 Chevrolet Volt electric vehicle. The company, an official 2010 Olympics sponsor, has wheeled a pair of the cars up to Vancouver for the biggest show on Earth.
GM cordoned off a generous section of the he HR MacMillan Space Centre parking lot and–with the car’s lead project engineer riding shotgun, plus my kids in the back seat–I ran about 15 laps around the perimeter. It felt a bit like a rat running around the outside of his cage, but since there are only about 80 of these cars in the world, I can hardly blame the company for keeping them on a tight leash.
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Posted: February 5th, 2010 | Author: James Glave | Filed under: Cities, Transportation, smart growth | No Comments »
One thing that frustrates me is that our low-carbon future is too-often depicted with slick architectural renderings that are designed to show how a certain infill development will make the world a better place. They’re populated with bus stops and stick figures on bicycles, but they don’t often adequately convey the potential flavor of a neighborhood, what it’s like to live there, how people will do things differently.
We have simple and powerful visualization tools out there. We need to be using them to show citizens what life might be like were we to embrace a range of better-living best practices and policies. And we don’t need any fancy CGI rendering to do the job.
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Posted: January 30th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Fossil Fuel | No Comments »
Petroleum companies have shown their true colors again. Operation Stork, a Citizenship and Immigration Canada operation to evacuate Haitian orphans, flew an all volunteer mercy flight last week out of Port au Prince, the Globe and Mail reports.
It was an all-volunteer operation: Air Canada donated a fully crewed Airbus, flight AC2150.
Air Canada’s caregiver list was activated, as was their medical team, including a doctor who specializes in the effects of cabin air pressure on diseases while in flight. There were concerns about collapsed lungs among the children. An Air Canada customer service agent in Montreal, Jacqueline Dupont, who is known for her baking, baked all day, providing dozens of small cakes and muffins for the orphans.
Everyone volunteered their time, Jane Taber reports. Well, mostly.
Several of the airline’s suppliers donated their services, including supplying food on board, waiving of airport landing charges and air navigation fees. Not the oil companies, however. Air Canada asked the fuel suppliers to donate and were refused.
We shouldn’t be suprised. After all, times are really tough for the petroleum companies these days.
Bastards.
Posted: January 26th, 2010 | Author: admin | Filed under: Cities, Transportation, Travel | Tags: HSR, Transportation, Travel | No Comments »
If you don’t count the various efforts to commercialize aviation biofuel, electrified high-speed rail (HSR) is our best bet when it comes to preserving continental mobility in the post-carbon age. Thing is, unlike much of the rest of the world, Americans are only just now figuring this out (and please don’t get me started on Canada). HSR represents a truly massive infrastructure project for the Lower 48 — comparable to the building of the Interstate system in the 1950s.
Here’s an infographics package that Rachel Swaby and I put together for WIRED. The piece unpacks the various HSR plans now underway in the States, explains the technology, and outlines the challenges that stand in the way — particularly in California, where plans are furthest along. Please forgive the slightly breathless intro.
Believe it: Bullet trains are coming. After decades of false starts, planners are finally beginning to make headway on what could become the largest, most complicated infrastructure project ever attempted in the US. The Obama administration got on board with an $8 billion infusion, and more cash is likely en route from Congress. It’s enough for Florida and Texas to dust off some previously abandoned plans and for urban clusters in the Northeast and Midwest to pursue some long-overdue upgrades. The nation’s test bed will almost certainly be California, which already has voter-approved funding and planning under way. But getting up to speed requires more than just seed money. For trains to beat planes and automobiles, the hardware needs to really fly. Officials are pushing to deploy state-of-the-art rail rockets. Next stop: the future.
Superfast Bullet Trains Are Finally Coming to the U.S., WIRED, February 2010. Illustration by Paul Rogers.
Posted: December 22nd, 2009 | Author: James Glave | Filed under: Media, Public Relations | Tags: freelance, journalism, Media, P.R. | 7 Comments »
Gratuitous unlicensed stock shot.
Every few months or so, I get an email or Facebook message from the younger brother of a long-disconnected friend, or a former colleague who worked down the hall from me three gigs or so back. It goes something like this:
Hi! it’s been a while… [insert chit-chat preamble] So I’m reaching out because I’m thinking of making some changes to my professional life, and I’m wondering about possibly getting into freelance writing. I’ve always been a total magazine junkie, and I’m wondering if I could buy you a coffee and pick your brain about how to break into the biz?
I’ve never been sure how best to answer these emails; “career” isn’t a word I would even tuck into the same paragraph as “freelance magazine journalism.” To best guide positive personal growth among such correspondents, I have developed the following eight-point checklist. Please feel free to share, modify, and adapt this for your own use.
Freelance Journalist Aptitude Self-Assessment Tool
Please check all that apply.
- Do you have a trust fund?
- Are you married or engaged to a lawyer, airline pilot, surgeon, petroleum or mining engineer, dentist, or pharmaceutical executive?
- If not, can you grow hydroponic marijuana?
- If none of the above apply, are you at least married or engaged to an individual with a “real job”?
- Are you are childless, or monastic, or both?
- Do you suffer from low self-esteem?
- Are you comfortable waiting six to eight months to be paid for two months of work even though your mortgage lender or landlord may not exhibit the same flexibility?
- Are you Malcolm Gladwell?
If you answer “yes” to at least three of these questions, then congratulations! You may be a candidate for a career in the glamorous and rewarding field of freelance journalism. You are prequalified to play a critical oversight role in our democracy. Please contact me to book a coffee meeting at your nearest convenience!
Ahem.
In the media world, a reporter who transitions to the world of public relations strategy—as I have done this year—is “going over to the dark side.” To be honest, it sure doesn’t feel that way. Instead, it feels like I have stepped into the light. I’m exercising new parts of my brain. I’m finally able to take a stand on issues that matter to me (journalists aren’t technically supposed to “join” causes). I’ve helped bootstrap a smart-growth advocacy group in my community. I’m presently working with a team of incredibly smart people, and pitching in on projects that support my values and passions. Even better: When they say my check is “in the mail,” it actually is.
If this is the dark side, then I’m here to stay. Wishing all my friends near and far a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2010!
Posted: November 24th, 2009 | Author: James Glave | Filed under: Academia, Global Warming, IPCC | No Comments »
Only days remain until world leaders meet in Copenhagen to hash out a new international climate treaty to replace the Kyoto protocol, and in recent weeks many world leaders have attempted to quell expectations that the world will emerge with a strong, fair, and binding deal. President Obama has hinted only that a “politically binding” treaty may be all we can hope for. And even though its citizens are embarrassed by a lack of federal leadership, Canada’s Harper government has all-but-declared that it intends to stand in the way.
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Posted: October 29th, 2009 | Author: James Glave | Filed under: Behavior, Global Warming, Habits, Transformational Change | Tags: dentist, greenhouse gas, nitrous oxide | No Comments »
I frequently parrot the message that a lot of small actions can add up to big change. For proof, look no further than this short video clip I did over the summer, one of a series of greener-living advice segments for a real-estate website called Cyberhomes.
There I am, proving the point that easy gestures—in this case, unplugging idle electronic devices—can all add up. It makes sense on paper, which is why the “everyone do their bit” credo is the basis of many behavior-change campaigns. And sure, it’s all well and good to unplug a few video games, or enjoy a healthy bike ride, or savor the vegetables and fruits you grew yourself.
But what about nitrous oxide? You know, laughing gas?
My dentist offers it to me every time I go in for a new crown or onlay which, given the pathetic state of my teeth, is pretty much at least once a year. And I usually turn it down, because despite its jovial nickname, the stuff is effectively two kinds of bad in one bottle.
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Posted: October 27th, 2009 | Author: James Glave | Filed under: Activism, Conferences & Events, Media Coverage | Tags: Activism, events, Media Coverage | No Comments »
Some 5,000 people showed up for Bridge to a Cool Planet, an event tied to the International Day of Climate Action–including me, my kids, and my parents.
More egregious exploitation of children.
My kids and I managed to hog the media cameras, we paraded through the background of Global Television’s live coverage of the event - check it out, you can’t miss us. It wasn’t entirely my idea: The reporter came over and grabbed us in advance of the segment — “we need kids with signs for the shot,” she said. We also popped up in an image in Sing Tao, one of Vancouver’s large-circulation Chinese-language dailies. Scroll about half-way down.
The lesson: Find a way to stand out from the crowd. In this case, I put my girl up on my shoulders. And know that my friends in the media will always seek out hand-lettered signs, easily-read signs with ultra-simplified messages such as STOP GLOBAL WARMING. It sure did the trick here.
Posted: October 14th, 2009 | Author: James Glave | Filed under: Published Work | Tags: carbon, IPP, Renewable Energy, run-of-river, Tzeporah | 4 Comments »
The original tree-hugger.
The November issue of
Vancouver magazine features my profile on Tzeporah Berman, cofounder of
ForestEthics and executive director of
PowerUP Canada. Links to both Web and PDF versions below.
Berman is a Canadian climate activist of considerable influence who has inserted herself at the center of a significant green-energy backlash here in her home province of British Columbia. A fierce public debate rages here over “run of river” hydro power projects, which temporarily divert river water to spin turbines. The resulting electricity is carbon-free, but opponents of the projects claim the schemes aren’t as green as they claim to be. The fight is getting very nasty. As the story documents, at one point Berman’s support for renewable-energy development led to a threat of professional blackmail.
Check out “Green Light,” published in the November 2009 issue of Vancouver magazine.
Green Light, [Web version at Vanmag.com]
Green Light, [2.3 MB .PDF FILE]
Posted: September 11th, 2009 | Author: James Glave | Filed under: 350.org, Conferences & Events, Global Warming, Influence, top | Tags: 350, bridge to a cool planet, climate events, International Day of Climate Action | 1 Comment »
Mixing up the ABCs.
On October 24, my kids Duncan and Sabrina, and my wife, Elle, and I will together march in our first-ever global-warming, er, “action.”
The occasion is Bridge to a Cool Planet, which will likely be British Columbia’s largest event marking the International Day of Climate Action. Expect drummers, people dressed up in polar bear costumes, dudes on stilts and unicycles, and lots of off-key improvised call-and-response singing and chanting.
It’s the kind of gaggle-of-people-holding-signs event that, once upon a time, I would have driven on past without even blinking. But this time, I’ll be on the other side of the windshield. And you should be, too.
After the jump: Five reasons why you should circle October 24 on your calendar—no matter where you live—and plan to join all the cool kids who will be calling for their leaders to finally get with the program.
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