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Dr. Sustainability
UBC’s John Robinson on fixing the climate, winning converts, and staying upbeat.
James Glave, The Tyee (Canada)
Even as Stephen Harper backs away from this country’s greenhouse-emissions targets, the backhoes are warming up near an abandoned tractor dealership in Vancouver. There, on the edge of the CN rail yards, far from the corridors of Ottawa, workers are preparing to break ground on what may well end up the most advanced building in the world — a bleeding-edge lab dedicated to sustainability research and, by extension, the challenge of global warming.
When completed in 2008, The Center for Interactive Research on Sustainability, or CIRS, will be one of the greenest structures on Earth. The structure will draw 80 per cent less energy than a comparable new building. Eventually, it will act as a net energy producer, feeding juice back to the grid. The place will actually improve the local and global environment — simply because it exists.
If CIRS performs as expected, the concept will be cloned and adapted to a variety of conditions and cultures all over the world. Think of it as the ultimate export-ready “made-in-Canada” solution to the single greatest crisis facing civilization to date.
Recently, The Tyee sat down with John Robinson, a professor at the Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia, and a principal investigator with CIRS. Here, some excerpts from the conversation:
…On why we need to get regular people talking about global warming:
“Politicians can’t act without constituents, and markets can’t deliver without customers. If we don’t engage citizens at a level that has never been done before, we are not going to lower greenhouse-gas emissions, because the politicians won’t be able to act — they will be cut off at the knees. Having lunch with the deputy minister and convincing him that we need to act now is great, but without the constituency, you’ve got nothing.”
On the best way to coax us out of our cars:
“We should stop guilt-tripping people, stop telling them that they are putting three tons of carbon a month into the air with their cars when they live 40 kilometers from work and there is no transit. That actually makes them more resistant to change. The way you get behaviour change is through integrated programs aimed at behaviour, not just people’s heads. There is a lot of work in health promotion — in anti-obesity campaigns and breast-cancer screening and anti-smoking campaigns — that shows the way to much successful behaviour-modification programs. We should learn from those.”
(6 June 2006)
Steve Case Leads the Charge to Popularize Alternative (Green) Products
Annys Shin, Washington Post
Steve Case, co-founder of America Online, talks of living “more in balance” these days and not long ago bought his first hybrid car. He recently gave the keynote speech to a gathering of entrepreneurs in Santa Monica that included the inventor of an organic herbal throat spray, the maker of an immune-boosting tea and a psychic healer who talks to dogs — the types of ideas his new company, Revolution LLC, is trying to pick through for products and services that might succeed in the mainstream.
“Some fringy stuff,” Case said of the ideas he heard during the Southern California conference.
But then again, so was the Internet 20 years ago.
There’s an uneasy courtship going on between corporate America and the diverse, sometimes idiosyncratic collection of companies that make up the “sustainable lifestyle” movement — firms that promote their products as healthy and easy on the environment. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has begun buying organic cotton; Colgate-Palmolive Co. owns natural products pioneer Tom’s of Maine; prominent organic food brands have become subsidiaries of major agribusinesses.
(6 June 2006)
Are the Angels Listening?
Part One – The People of the New Society
Michael Kane, From The Wilderness
“We pray for warm weather (this winter). We have a prayer chain going.”
— Diane Munns, President of the NARUC, as quoted in THE BIG CHILL, 12/19/05
“The solution is to pray. Pray for mild weather and a mild winter. Pray for no hurricanes and to stop the erosion of natural gas supplies. Under the best of circumstances, if all prayers are answered there will be no crisis for maybe two years. After that it’s a certainty.”
— Matt Simmons, Energy Investment Banker, Interviewed by Mike Ruppert, 8/21/03
Matthew Simmons’ prediction that the price at the pump could have risen to $10 during the winter of 2005/2006 did not come to be for only one reason—warm weather. His prayers back in 2003 for “no hurricanes and to stop the erosion of natural gas supplies” were clearly not answered.
What does it tell us when the world’s most prominent energy investment banker and the president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) are both turning to prayer as their plan of action for dealing with fuel shortages?
It tells me it is time to find a community of conscious people, and fast.
(3 May 2006)
Michael Kane’s article is actually quite relevant to the discussion of Peak Oil and culture, as in Shepherd Bliss’s recent article, as it delves into the value of indigenous cultures. I would disagree slightly with Michael’s kind characterisation of permaculture as “actually a rehash of indigenous agricultural wisdom passed on through oral tradition and experience applied with common sense.” Permaculture can help reconnect us to those forms of wisdom, however whereas indigenous practices were developed in a way so that humans could facilitate a maintaining a dynamic equibrium with the ecology they were emeshed in (ie. periods of relative stability), permaculture is more about designing pathways for the period of energy descent (a period of rapid change). -AF
Learning to Localize
Lindsay A. Gerken, From The Wilderness
Driving through dripping redwoods on a misty, rainy day reminded me why I came to the Regional Localization Networking Conference in Willits, California on the weekend of April 7th through 9th. The redwoods have adapted to their local environment, resisting rot and decay that threatens other non-native plants, so that the hundreds of inches of rain and flooding that occur along the Northern California coast is a blessing to the redwood instead of a curse. If loggers come along and cut down the vertical grandeur of a redwood, the redwood fights back by budding another sapling straight from its stump. Learning about what conference attendees called “biomimickry,” I recalled the redwood tree, with its mighty presence, fruitful existence, and custom adaptations to its surroundings. Standing in Willits with my entire body collapsed alongside a redwood that supported my weight with undeniable solidarity and the smell of wet bark, I realized that if the purpose of this conference was to learn how to localize our efforts; whether with currency, agriculture, or local business practices; then it was fitting that all attendees consistently had a forest full of reliable redwoods to act as teachers.
(19 April 2006)
An excellnet conference report. -AF
Revolution! Britain embraces the bicycle
Cahal Milmo, The Independent
Britain is in the grip of a cycling revolution as clogged roads, concern at global warming caused by air pollution and the quest for improved fitness persuade millions to opt for pedal power.
After a decade of stagnation in the number of bicycle journeys, new figures show there has been a dramatic leap in commuters and leisure cyclists focused on Britain’s cities and the burgeoning network of cycle routes. In London, trips by bike have increased by 50 per cent in five years to 450,000 per day while figures obtained by The Independent show use of the National Cycle Network, covering 10,000 miles of urban and rural pathways, rose last year by 15 per cent to 232 million journeys.
(7 June 2006)
Skills acquisition: woodworking in Amish country
Tom Nielsen, Adaptation
Over President’s Day weekend, my life partner, Phil, and I took a woodworking workshop at Landis Valley Museum in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Landis Valley Museum preserves Pennsylvania German culture and heritage from 1740 to 1940, and every February they hold a Winter Institute offering classes in traditional crafts such as quilting, tinsmithing, open-hearth cooking, and of course, woodworking. Its proximity to Amish country is doubly advantageous: knowledgeable instructors live nearby, and brisk tourism provides a steady base of students interested in maintaining traditional skills. Of course, our interest wasn’t so quaint or nostalgic, but neither were we typical woodworking students.
(7 Jun 2006)
