A Cool Event for a Cool Planet

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.

Eco-Terminology That Stumps MSWord

I write and report on the ongoing rapid evolution of our transportation infrastructure, energy systems, agriculture, buildings, and so on — and I do most of my work with MSWord 2004 for Mac. Though I loathe spellcheckers, by habit I run the feature on my work before passing it along.
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A Laptop and a Hammer

Blue Planet Green Living, a greener-living site based over in Iowa,  is presently running the transcript of a long-ish two-part interview conducted with me a couple weeks ago. The discussion covers the recession, President Obama, green building, Canada’s tar sands, transformational change, the challenges of living both rural and responsibly, and yes, everyone’s favorite topic, the mixed blessing of artificial turf soccer fields. Check it out.

Bowen Queen ferry photo by Chris Corrigan.

975 Green-Collar Layoffs Hit B.C.

British Columbia is about to lose 975 green collar jobs for the next eight weeks— and potentially longer. That’s because the only two industrial-scale Forest Stewardship Council sawmills in British Columbia—the same mills that sliced up the framing lumber for my Eco-Shed (see below)—are about to fall silent.

Tembec, the company in question, is shutting down its Elko and Canal Flats sawmills for two months as of early next week. When you factor in a third plant that will also spool down for the duration, 975 employees will be out of work.

The fact is, you don’t have to be a solar-panel installer to have a green-collar job. These mill workers were  processing lumber from just about the only industrial forestlands in all of British Columbia that are truly managed sustainably. The vast majority of the rest are clear-cuts—the standard-issue take-no-prisoners logging strategy that has, over decades, devastated thousands of square miles of ecosystem in this province.

Here’s a snippet from Almost Green that explains why FSC lumber is so important:

In a nutshell, the FSC tree logo does for lumber what the Energy Star label does for appliances and windows—it lets you know you’ve made the greener choice. An FSC stamp guarantees that the wood adheres to a set of ten principles of forest stewardship, including a set of kinder, gentler harvesting practices. FSC-certified foresters work selectively—leaving tracts of trees intact—and pay close attention to issues such as erosion, wildlife habitat, streams, and lakes. The program was set up to protect biodiversity long before greenhouse gas emissions really hit the radar screen, but it certainly advances carbon-conservative practices along the way.

The shutdowns shouldn’t surprise anyone, really: As I note in my book, I only managed to get my hands on the ultra-rare Tembec eco-studs by pure fluke. (It pretty much fell off the back of a truck.) Tembec has shipped almost every stick of the dimensional lumber produced at Elko and Canal flats exclusively into the States—in railcar quantities, and likely to big-box home-improvement chains—and people just aren’t building much of anything down that way these days.

The company has failed spectacularly to market its responsibly harvested lumber here in B.C.—the place where Tembec’s sustainably managed forests grow, the place where the logs are cut up, and the place where the green-collar workers have been punching the clock and making it all work. As I document in the book, none of the local Home Depots and lumber yards I called had even heard of the stuff. Consumers can’t ask for FSC lumber if they don’t even know it’s an option.

Now, it isn’t just the company’s product that is heading south this week, it’s their business, too. A damn shame. Does anyone else see a lesson here?

Backstage at Dockside Green

Just back froma quick hop over to to Victoria, B.C. where I spoke at the annual meeting of the Victoria Car-Share Co-op, and also snuck in a backstage tour of Dockside Green, the highest-rated LEED Platinum development in the world.

Joe Van Belleghem, a chartered accountant and the cofounder of Windmill West, the project’s developer, graciously showed me around. Here’s a shot of a new commercial building on the site; the three turbines up top will power the ventilation system when the wind blows. Workers are installing photovoltaics on the window awnings.

Here’s Joe showing off his wastewater treatment plant. The development treats all of its sewage onsite, which is more than you can say about the whole city of Victoria. By the end of the process, the one-time “wastewater” is almost good enough to drink. It’s a challenging environment for photos, but beneath the grates underfoot is a froth of raw sewage. It didn’t smell a bit.

Here’s the roof of the second tower of Synergy, seen from the first. Those are food gardens up there for the residents.

Update: File under, credit where it’s due: My pal Dan Paris at Vancity Enterprises points out that his company, along with Vancity Credit Union, together own a 75 percent stake in Dockside along with Joe’s company Windmill West. Vancity Enterprises is as green as they come: The company’s Verdant project, in the new neighborhood at my alma mater, Simon Fraser Univeristy, is evidently even more energy efficient than Synergy, the building I toured at Dockside. It also sold at 20 percent below market value and uses an innovative legal agreement that Dan’s company created to protect affordability in perpetuity. Both these guys are leaders, and they deserve acclaim.

I visited Victoria as a guest of Harbour Air, North America’s only carbon-neutral scheduled airline. This all-floatplane company serves Canada’s West Coast, and purchases carbon offsets for each flight on behalf of each of its passengers. Thanks for the ride, gang, and keep up the good work!

Oprah At Home in the Eco-Shed

The new issue of Oprah at Home magazine devotes three pages to the Eco-Shed, and includes a jaunty 700-word piece by yours truly, adapted from ALMOST GREEN. Here’s a scan of the opener… and speaking of Media Mega-Divas, I’ve guesting on Martha Stewart Radio next week, Sirius XM Radio 112, Tuesday Sept 16 10AM Eastern. Give it a listen!

A Red-State Reco

Padre, my republican father-in-law, is a big Fox News fan. Many of you might know the network, which finds a receptive audience amongst American conservatives. At times its hosts can really go for the jugular. Which is why it was such a pleasant surprise to have a great conversation last week with Spencer Hughes of Fox News Radio. Right off the top of the hour, Hughes called ALMOST GREEN “very humorous, very telling, and very insightful.”

My host kicked off the 20-minute interview by questioning whether climate change is caused by human activity. My response:

“I start my approach from the baseline that this is science, and it’s correct, and that there is just no point in endlessly going around and around about this. We are wasting time, and we are missing an opportunity. And the opportunity is for America to completely reinvent how it does business, how it powers itself, and moving into a completely whole new era, and the opportunity there is tremendous.”

From there the conversation shifted to China and India’s carbon emissions.

You can say ‘We won’t do this if nobody else will,’ and go around and around. Look, this is a nation that was born to lead. And if America says, ‘Listen, we are going to do this,’ well you are going to see the entire rest of the world line up behind you. This is what is so exciting to me, you can create a happier and brighter future starting today, instead of just arguing about, ‘Is it clean coal or dirty coal?’

I was pumped to get out there in front of such a large nationwide audience, and with such a receptive host, who called the book “a good read, no matter where you fall on the global warming debate.” Here’s the MP3. Have a listen.

Spencer Hughes Interview, Fox News Radio, Sept 2, 2008.

The CBC Session

On July 17, I was a guest on CBC Radio One’s “Sounds Like Canada,” a national program. It was a great interview; host Rick Cluff and I had lots of fun. Give it a listen.

Sounds Like Canada, Streaming MP3 file, [14.7 MB, 16 minutes].

Signed, Sealed, Delivered

Happy Canada Day. I’m celebrating more than just my nation’s birthday today: The Eco-Shed is finished. There are towels on the shelves. There’s a pound of fresh-ground island-roasted coffee in a jar on the counter. It’s been almost two years, but my studio and guest house is pretty much ready for guests (and by the way, if you’d like to come spend a green weekend on spectacular Bowen Island, the relevant details are at Eco-Shed.ca).

Here in Canada, the book is printed and working its way to warehouses and the like in advance of its official August 22 launch. I have a copy in my hands, and the matte Naomi MacDougall cover is fantastic; it has a great tone, feels fun and intriguing. I’ll be reading in front of my first live audience at the opening night of the Write on Bowen festival here on the island, July 11.

Patience, my American friends; the U.S. edition is following close behind.

I have coverage of the book and the project cued up with Oprah at Home magazine—which shot the place last month—plus Outside, This Old House, and a slew of others. To keep the momentum rolling, later this week, my buddy Cam and I will begin shooting a series of YouTube trailers. We’re going to have some jolly good fun.

Finally, today’s the day British Columbians start paying a new Carbon Tax. Personal income taxes will be reduced across the board while gasoline, diesel, propane, and all other fossil fuels will cost a few cents more. It’s a bold step in the right direction.

PW on Almost Green: “Yay”

Publisher’s Weekly —the book industry’s most influential magazine—gives Almost Green a very positive review (see fourth item down). Key adjectives are "compelling," "as irreverent as is it deeply informative," "endearing," and "caustically comic." The 200-word ditty concludes that the book holds "real universal appeal." I’m psyched on this. The major audience for PW is the bookseller who wants a more critical judgement than is provided by catalogue copy, in time for him to place pre-publication orders. Cool stuff. Will add the link when it comes available.