Sorry, You Gotta Show Up

Mixing up the ABCs.

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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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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When Times Are Hard, Eat Your Yard!

I recently spent a few days in Seattle–one of my favorite American cities–and was amazed to discover how many homeowners have planted victory gardens in their front yards. In much of America, the front yard is the place for a few roses, maybe a rhodo or two. But in Seattle, especially the Ballard neighborhood where we stayed, “curb appeal” evidently means raspberries, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, and even the odd chicken or two.
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How To Compost a Corpse

My first piece for The Walrus is up on the magazine’s site. Here’s an excerpt:

Squirrels, it turns out, compost quite nicely. Small birds? Sure. Happens in the woods every day, after all. But stuff a human body into a backyard bin, and within a day or so the neighbours will start to complain.

Susanne Wiigh-Mäsak, a Swedish biologist specializing in soil production, explains: “When you die, you start smelling, because the oxygen does not reach inside the body.” More specifically, an abundance of anaerobic bacteria quickly takes hold in such a large mass of tissue, resulting in the rank gases CSI techs use to sniff out “decomp.” But after a decade spent investigating green options for dealing with dead bodies, Wiigh-Mäsak has finally figured out how to discreetly turn our earthly remains back into, well, earth.

How did she do it? Read “Decomposting Bodies” and find out.

Backstage Tour at a Run-of-River Plant

Last week, Plutonic Power–one of Western Canada’s largest green-power developers–invited me and a few other journalists to tour a 123-megawatt run-of-river project that the company is building at the top end of the Toba Valley, about 110 miles due northwest of Vancouver.

In essence, these projects capture the kinetic energy of falling water without the massive negative impacts associated with dam construction, and they’re causing quite a stir out here on Canada’s West Coast, where geography and hydrology combine to create tremendous green-power potential.

When it is completed by the middle of next year, this will be the largest green-power project of its kind in the province. I went on the trip to try and see first-hand what many run-of-river opponents say are extensive negative environmental impacts.

For my on-the-ground and in-the-air report, including video clips, check out Backstage Tour at a Run-of-River Power Plant, over at the Huffington Post.

Visit To a 1912 Hydroelectric Station

Just back from an absolutely fascinating trip to The Power House at Stave Falls, in Mission B.C., just 40 miles east of Vancouver. This 52.5-megawatt hydroelectric plant fed sustainable energy into the region’s grid between 1912 and 2000, when it was decommissioned and replaced with a more efficient powerhouse just to the east. Anyone with an interest in green energy would love this easy day trip from Vancouver.
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The Beach Yields A Secret

A few weeks back, I found this artifact on a beach here on Bowen Island while grabbing fistfuls of stones to toss into the sea. It is very weathered, from many decades spent being tossed around in the surf. It appears to be an arrowhead or spear point of First Nations origin.

Nobody around here seemed to know much about it, so I contacted the Museum of Archeology at the University of British Columbia, and shared this image with them, speculating that it might be obsidian. Patricia Ormerod, an archaeology curatorial research assistant with the university’s Laboratory of Archaeology, wrote back with the following assessment:
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Portland’s Mayor on the “20-minute Neighborhood”

Notes from “Active Transportation in Portland,” a lecture by Portland Mayor Sam Adams, at the SFU City Program, Vancouver, earlier this evening.

- Stats: Population 570,00. 143 square miles, surrounded by urban growth boundary.

- Sam is the mayor but also the city’s transportation commissioner.

- Out of 143 square miles, 73 miles are pervious pavement, ie water flows through and into the ground rather than over.
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I’m “For Bowen.” (But Not Your Bowen.)

A petition is presently circulating through my community; it opposes a proposed development on the grounds that it is “far too big for our island.” The Cape Roger Curtis Neighborhood Plan has its shortcomings, sure, but also its strengths—including space set aside for a seniors care facility, affordable housing, community food gardens and composting, an outdoor amphitheater, bike paths, $7 million dollars worth of amenities, and hundreds of acres of protected parkland. More than 75 percent of the development is within a five minute walk of its center crossroads, where a bus stop, general store, or car co-op lot could potentially be located.

The plan embodies a number of smart-growth principles, and in my mind it is a better choice than the alternative—no parkland, just a sprawling subdivision of 58 10-acre lots, each likely crowned with a single McMansion. Though the opponents of the plan insist that the land owners do not have the legal authority to build out that sprawl nightmare, the truth is, they do. And they might end up doing just that if the community says thumbs-down to the proposal currently on the table.

Those behind the “no” petition are running a well-organized campaign that includes phone tree work. So far more than 650 people have endorsed the document; in doing so they affirm that they are “For Bowen.” That doesn’t sit right with me, so I wrote this letter to the local paper this week.

If you call me on the phone and ask me if I am “for Bowen,” here’s what I’ll tell you.

Are You an Atmosphan?

I’ve been mulling over in my head potential replacements for the word “environmentalist,” a term that in the minds of many needs to be retired, then sent home with a pension and a gold watch.

Why? Maybe it’s that it’s just not a very inspiring word. Maybe it’s that the term suggests that there is this “thing” out there called “the environment” that we need to buckle down and fix. To me, “the environment” feels more like an obligation than something to get excited about fixing. It’s a catch-all  collection of planetary ills: Deforestation? Overfishing? Whales? Particulates? Mercury? E-waste?

Can we please turn down the earnestat a few degrees?

Look, you’re all smart people out there. Maybe we can put our heads together and come up with some more upbeat words to describe those of us who know everything is ridiculously out of whack, and are working on the solutions, at home, at work, around the neighborhood, or across the country. Something a little more, er, marketable….

Let me throw one out to start. For me, it’s still all about climate. Attentive readers of this blog will note that I’m a big supporter of the atmosphere. It’s in rough shape, and pretty much everything down here depends upon us getting it back into balance, asap.

So call me an atmosphan. There.

Okay, now you. Go.