WorldChanging Canada

Real Change Highlighted at The Green Living Show

2009-07-11T00:17:46Z

Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz.com, made an appearance this year at the third annual Green Living Show in downtown Toronto.

Some people ask him, ‘is this shift to green in the private sector the real deal or a passing fad’? Early in the presentation he threw out a list of hypothetical major changes that companies could be making. He then conveyed that all of these major changes are not simply potential considerations but were actually announced in March of 2009 during the darkest days of our great recession. Some of these changes include:

at&t —$565 million on 15 thousand alternative fuel vehicles (over the next 10 years)
P&G — Increased green sales goal from $20B to $50B (to reach this target by 2012)
SC Johnson — Fully disclose all product ingredients (they will also explain what these ingredients do)
Disney — Zero carbon emissions, zero waste goals (over the long-term; significant short-term targets to be met in the next three to four years)

These are the kinds of changes that begin to go to the heart of operations and that have the potential to lead to effective lasting change.

While I have yet to see many, if any examples of this caliber in the Canadian context, I do hope that our country's executives will begin to take note and not only copy these ambitious targets by find ways to outdo their American counterparts.

Photo credit: Anil Mungal

ChangeCamp Ottawa: Regional Sustainability: Federal, Provincial, and Municipal responsibilities

2009-07-06T18:42:17Z

There were many tantalizing sessions on governance at ChangeCamp Ottawa, and a few on bright green themes. Here are edited highlights from Ann Coffey's session on regional sustainability. Comments from the session participants are indented.

Ann Coffey: Ottawa's main export is waste. We import our own oxygen. We import our water. Everything that flows in, we import. When we're done with them, they go into a hole in the ground. Our pollution killed about 504 people prematurely last year.

But the problem is: the city is not listening. So I'd like your thoughts. What should they listen to?

Here were some of the initial responses to Coffey's question:

Just Food has a great deal of information on where you can source food locally.
There ought to be an interactive website from the city where people could post solutions for re-use.
Recycling is confusing. The information should be clearer and larger. The numbers should be bigger.
Biodegradable bags in the compost bins would mean less waste going to the landfill.

Coffey noted that while it's even better not to have bags at all, it's hard to arrange biodegradables even under the best of circumstances:

If you look in the bins out there [referring to the main conference space at City Hall], the cups should have been made of pressed corn, or maybe not even been there. We can't even do that at an environment unconference.

Many places have pay for garbage. You might think that if they had to pay people would simply take their trash elsewhere.

They've done studies. People cannot sustain bringing their trash somewhere else, and eventually they will pay for the garbage.

User pay is important, but you also need incentives. People who do their own composting, or manage to put out very small amounts of waste can be rebated for their economy with their waste. Why am I going to compost, and someone else is going to put out a tupperware container of garbage each week. Why don't those people get rebated?

There was a report in the Ottawa Citizen a few weeks ago that went something like:

Homeowners in central Ottawa pay approximately $1,000 more in property taxes than the cost of city services. Suburban homeowners (eg outside the Greenbelt) pay $600-700 less in property taxes than the cost of their city services.

This is because central Ottawa has much higher density and already has its infrastructure. The suburbs are tens of kilometres away and all their services (sewer, drinking water, roads, road maintenance, waste collection, etc.) has to go much further afield—hence the much higher cost. Central Ottawa is in fact subsidizing the suburbs so the developers and suburbanites are on welfare!

People want to see Ottawa as the green capital. If people achieve common cause around that, it can change a lot culturally.

One participant responded:

There have been, over the years, several attempts to re-imagine Ottawa. One of them was Village Chaudiere. We had a core, and then we had a buffer zone, and then the transition zone. Which was the model of the biosphere reserves.
Another notion was: why not declare the people who live in this area as the "Ottawa" nation?

Another one that I'm just becoming aware of is Ecocities. In Mark's presentation this morning he talked about not trying to move from the mass, but to aggregate what is already there. Use the mass, and use the power of networking. And use that to develop an ecocity. If we were to do that, we would be one of the first recognized Ecocities.

The attempt to re-imagine goes on constantly. I went out to Hintonberg the other day. It's absolutely amazing the sense of community. We need things that give us something new, and out of that sense of community we can produce change.

What if you declared Ottawa an environmentally sensitive area? If you declared Ottawa to be an environmentally sensitive area, how would that change the way we plan? Because Ottawa is an environmentally sensitive area.

We've got to have something that is going to kick off a different kind of planning. How are we going to be environmentally and socially responsible on our planet?

As soon as we started out on this recession, all of the leaders have been getting together. If you take that same language, we have decades of losing species, and natural cycles and processes.

Let's draw it.

Say you've got neighbourhoods. Your neighbourhood fits into a city. And that extends out to fit into the planet.

Biodiversity contains processes that support life. Really, biodiversity is the bottom line, and community and economy are a subset. So biodiversity should be the bottom line. Community health and economic health are dependent on the health of the planet.

But then we have these human constructs. We have this city that has this human habitat. Because we've been spewing into the air, it's been affecting our communities, our health, our quality of life. If you don't have a healthy biosphere, you're never going to have that.

We're thinking in little bits. The left hand doesn't seem to know what the right hand is doing. How are we going to survive? How can we can do all of these little things so that we could grow our own food, so we have a manufacturing base—how can we plan for that?

There are whole cities that are working to go off the grid. How can we plan so we can be self-sufficient, and don't have to import everything in from outside?

It may not be something that it's possible to plan for!

Ann Coffey: If we cannot plan for it - why do we plan for not it? Why can't we plan not to do certain things?

Several people responded with ideas:

There are bike sharing systems where you don't have a problem of owning a bike, like Velib.
We need closed loop bicycle paths, which don't intersect with cars.
We also need bicycle commuter routes, which don't intersect with pedestrians.

One participant disagreed, saying that Ottawa was an old city, and had fewer opportunities for bicycle routes.

Ann Coffey: It doesn't matter how ancient your city is. Bonn and Cologne have made bicycle paths a priority. Those paths are very well used, with traffic circles for bicycles. You have 17 million people cycling in Holland. I tell you, you see no fat kids at all.

How can we create the situation where people can change?

One person in the audience said:

You have to start with awareness and education. You need to have public support. If people aren't aware, you can't get anywhere. If you just impose it, you won't get anywhere. You need to work with the people.

Ann Coffey: You have masses of people working on public education. I was on the board of directors of a group called Ecovision. In 1990 the former City of Ottawa released the draft of its new Official Plan for public comment. City staff received only two submissions from the public. Alarmed by the low public response, Ecovision’s chair approached other local groups to encourage them to provide their input. The result was that the city received 189 additional submissions from groups and individuals. The upshot of that was that the city discarded much of content of the document and rewrote their Official Plan. It turned out to be the greenest OP in North America, and a lot of cities in Canada and the US purchased copies of the plan. The Regional Municipality of Ottawa Carleton’s (RMOC’s) plan was far less “green” and they were compelled to rewrite it. Before that time the normal practice was for the RMOC to write its OP, and for all the municipalities within the RMOC to then rewrite their official plans according to RMOC’s. In 1990, Ottawa and not RMOC led the way. Unfortunately, developers opposed the Urban Design Chapter of the OP, and took their objections to the Ontario Municipal Board (OMB). Due to developers’ opposition, this forward-thinking chapter was omitted from Ottawa’s 1990 OP, and the city’s Urban Design Branch was eliminated.

RMOC and many of its municipalities (Gloucester, Kanata, Ottawa, Rockcliffe, etc.) had good public education programmes on such things as water conservation, composting, the 3Rs, xeriscaping, alternatives to pesticides, tree planting, alternative modes of transportation, etc., but these all but disappeared at the time of amalgamation. Since that time, Ottawa has become a city whose citizens have been increasingly discouraged from participating in civic life because neither staff nor council appear to listen. In fact, it is often stated that the city is dysfunctional and run by developers. Meanwhile, as Ottawa has declined, other cities across North America have become environmental leaders taking action on climate change and renewable energy, implementing congestion charges and carbon taxes, planning for public transit and bicycle networks instead of cars, creating green belts to protect biodiversity and ecological functions, protecting wildlife, designing natural drinking water filtering systems, and reducing waste. Education is important, but we do not have time to wait until the public is “educated” before following other cities’ lead.

Another participant responded:

The only way you'll change what council does is if you scare them with people. We can reach every person in Ottawa by putting a message out on the internet. Only a percentage will see that, but they'll be able to engage in their own time, with their own skills. Some people know the policy levers to push. Some can push from the federal level down. Some can push from the municipal level up. That's the one factor—you can now get 100,000 people to sign a petition, and get 1000 people to show up at the minister's door. People went to the minister's meetings in Calgary, and it scared him, and he pulled the copyright bill.

You've got the city of Ottawa making planning decisions with homes in one place, and jobs in another. It's taking water. It's taking energy. From a planning perspective, how do we change that around?

One participant suggested:

You could get rid of average cost pricing. It's cheaper for people in Centretown to have public services. The people in the centre are subsidizing the suburbs. So add marginal cost pricing for services.

Ann Coffey: The problem with that is that's a provincial decision. The city cannot legally make that change. So what you would need is for people to get together to ask the province to change that.

It's a vicious circle. People in the suburbs drive in. They drive in to the centre and make it disagreeable to live in: pollution, noise, and safety go down. And the centre deteriorates more. And people flee. And the cycle repeats. So you get a situation where a house in a suburbs costs the city 20-25% percent more. They've done studies on that, both here and in the States.

There are some things that are federal, some things that are provincial, and some things that are local.

A decision that is made at the level of the federal government is the building code. Let's say you say you're going to build that house so it's going to last 300 years. At the federal level, you would need to change the building code.

At the provincial level, you would need to change pricing. And at the local level we need to think about how to grow food locally, and generate energy locally. You could, for instance, have water catching, green walls, and houses that don't need outside energy.

We've got some ideas down, but it is a difficult job. We need to encourage the city to think like this so we can plan this way. And that's a difficult job. It's scary. It doesn't even seem to enter into planning. How can you do that? You can keep showing them what New York is doing—Hamilton, New York, Montréal. If Curatiba can do it, if Bogata can do it—why can't Ottawa do it?

Photo: Adam Hill

For more on ChangeCamp Ottawa, see ChangeCamp Ottawa: Open Data and Open Access

Also see Jason Diceman's article on ChangeCamp Toronto: New Interfaces on Government

The Roots of Resistance 2: Moral Filters

2009-06-30T19:29:05Z

In his fascinating talk at TED, Jonathon Haidt discusses five components of moral reasoning. His context is liberalism vs. conservatism, but this same paradigm can help us think about climate change issues.

Haidt's scheme may not be complete, and certainly there are other ways to look at morality (Lakoff's idea of conceptual metaphor, as explicated in the book Moral Politics, comes to mind). But Haidt's ideas can be helpful. He traces five main criteria for the moral choices we make. We make moral decisions based on:

Harm (or harm-reduction--preventing innocent people from getting hurt; reducing the damage our actions cause to our fellow creatures or the environment)
Fairness (justice in the broad and narrow senses of the word--criminals should pay, and you should share your cookies with me 'cause I shared my coke with you)
Ingroup membership and preservation (everything from nationalism and church membership to race. Applying a label like "green" to oneself is probably an example of ingroup judgment)
Deference to authority (assenting to the judgments of someone we consider a moral touch-stone, whether that be our pastor, the president, or Plato)
The maintenance of Purity (preserving our precious bodily fluids, our virginity, our honor, or culture)

Interestingly, Haidt finds that liberals put harm-reduction and fairness right at the top of their priority list, and tend to discount the other three criteria almost entirely. Conservatives give them all more or less equal weight. But nobody can avoid them all entirely; even liberals adopt the criterion of purity when, for instance, they argue against artificial food-dyes or preservatives. Liberals and conservatives just apply the criterion of maintaining purity to different things.

Now, people get very emotional about environmental issues. Climate change in particular engages people's emotions strongly. This means it also engages their moral judgment. Haidt's work implies that when we think or argue about climate change and its surrounding issues, we will probably do so through the filters of harm-reduction, fairness, in-group membership, authority and purity.

And indeed, we find arguments about reducing the harm we're doing to the environment; we also find arguments about preserving the purity of the natural world—which is slightly different. We hear arguments about North/South fairness in dividing the pie of greenhouse gas reductions. We encourage one another to vote green and to declare our greenness, and to put signs on our lawns ("I use Bullfrog Power") or windshield stickers that indicate we've bought a carbon offset for our car. We pick and choose which authority we'll pay attention to, and having an authority (such as Al Gore) is important to us. And we try to remain pure by rejecting behaviours and products that go against our green ethos.

This is very interesting, especially considering that the actual problem of climate change really boils down to a single physical variable: the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as measured in parts-per-million. It's hard to see how an argument over fairness or purity translates into ppm reduction. In fact, our moral reasoning may lead us away from actual solutions and into supporting actions that do more harm than good.

For instance, let's apply the idea of moral purity to nuclear power. There are sound arguments against nuclear power that are based on harm-reduction. Nuclear power can be dangerous, both to the environment and to human beings. Still, in the physical calculus of climate change, coal plants turn out to be doing more damage than nuclear stations. Using the moral criterion of harm-reduction, therefore, the balance tips in favour of nuclear power as an option to consider in solving the climate change problem.

Some people will, however, go into a state of blind moralistic fury at the mere suggestion that nuclear power might help. This seems odd, if the moral metric you're expecting them to use is harm-reduction. (Next-generation pebble-bed thorium reactors, for instance, stand to be intrinsically safe and can burn radioactive waste from the previous generation of reactors while producing almost none of their own. They would make waste repositories like Yucca Mountain unnecessary, and could substantially reduce the size and environmental impact of the uranium mining industry. In harm-reduction terms, it's a win-win proposition.) The reason that some will reject nuclear power even if it can be proven to reduce harm, may be that they have come to associate all things nuclear with impurity.

We would be sullying ourselves by accepting a nuclear solution; this is the implicit reasoning. And there's no use trying to argue someone out of such a stance rationally, because as Haidt points out, all our moral criteria have equal validity, in a strictly objective sense. To someone for whom nuclear power is impure, arguments of harm-reduction, fairness etc. seem beside the point. And they are.

Not convinced? Well, what about the recent debate over geoengineering? There's a lot of very strong passion on both sides of this debate, and once again while some of it is about harm-reduction, much of it is clearly about purity. Why try to block research into ocean iron fertilization, for instance, as some have done, if your goal is to reduce CO2 ppm? Research simply adds to our knowledge of what will or won't work, it doesn't harm anything. But if you see geoengineering as inherently impure, then researching a potential geoengineering technology will also be impure--and therefore, morally wrong.

My understanding of the visceral impurity reaction to geoengineering is that for some people, it stands for all that's wrong with humanity's relationship to nature. Many people seem to believe that the only acceptable solution to climate change must be one that involves the mass conversion of humanity to a more frugal, sustainable... and humble lifestyle. Geoengineering is arrogant, it elevates industrial and artificial solutions over natural ones, it runs roughshod over the normal processes of the environment, and it's yet another initiative of the guys in the lab coats and the guys in the suits to control everything. It's one more attempt to control everything--to, as Heidegger would put it, reduce the entire natural world to "standing reserve"--that is, raw material for human consumption.

...And all of these arguments are arguments from purity.

Thus does the moral calculus of climate change play out. Meanwhile, the physical calculus remains unaffected: success = less than 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere or an equivalent climate stabilization from some other intervention. As far as the physical climate is concerned, how the stabilization is attained is not a moral question.

So what am I suggesting here? I'm suggesting that certain kinds of moral reasoning are inappropriate when it comes to reducing physical harm to the environment. In particular, we should be deeply suspicious of arguments from purity. The notion of purity has been extremely useful for creating the in-group ethos of the environmental movement. It's an attractive tool in the toolkit of climate-change argument. But... If the robber barons turn out to be the ones to solve the climate change problem, we need to get on board with them and applaud their results--not reject them as the "impure" authors of the problem. More generally, if somebody we hate has a solution, we should be willing to deal with them; if a real solution involves something we consider impure (like nuclear power) we need to set aside our prurient distaste and be willing to embrace it. The notion of purity has some use in the climate debate, but it also stands to get in the way if we're not careful.

Nobody's going to like me for saying this, because everybody has some group or other that they don't want to see benefit from reducing climate change. Everybody has some technology, industry, pressure group, lobby, movement or philosophy that—if it turned out to be the solution to the problem—would make them feel like the devil had won.

But the fact is, the enemy here is the parts-per-million—not the oil companies, not the nuclear lobby, not the treehuggers or Greenpeace or the Great Climate-Science Conspiracy or whatever.

Remaining pure may just be something you have to give up if we're all going to cooperate together to combat the ppm.

Photo: Rick LaMesa

A plastic film made from corn

2009-06-26T15:00:34Z

A Canadian firm (Bi-Ax) has released a biodegradable plastic film. They advertise that it takes 65% less fuel to produce, and can be made from corn that is not used to feed humans.

Guardian crowdsources expenses review

2009-06-25T21:54:26Z

How to wrap your head around the Expenses scandal in Britain? Simple, if you're the Guardian—get many heads. Michael Andersen at Nieman Lab derives four crowdsourcing lessons: Make it fun, launch quick, use a framework, and use the cloud.

Voting with money: more information needed

2009-06-25T16:48:52Z

A new U.S. poll says that when it comes to climate change, 58% of Americans are willing to reward or punish companies through their buying behaviour—however 68% say they don't have enough information to do so.

Bamboo bikes

2009-06-24T17:06:26Z

Bicycles made of bamboo have a number of advantages: the materials are cheap, they're renewable, they're strong as light steel, they don't clatter as much as aluminum bikes, and the bamboo is a carbon sink.

An anthology of global warming stories

2009-06-24T14:19:05Z

A forthcoming anthology, Thoreau's Legacy (Union of Concerned Scientists & Penguin Classics), collects personal stories of the impacts of global warming. There's an easy-to-read online version for those who prefer to save paper.

Put your money where your heart is

2009-06-23T20:57:16Z

A couple of weeks ago, I attended Sustainable Brands 09, a conference that promotes itself as “the preeminent event for discussing the rapid rise of sustainability as a driver for revenue growth and brand equity in the 21st century.”

Over the course of three days in Monterey, Califorinia, C-suite executives, communicators and marketers, non-profit leaders and students engaged in an intense conversation about many interrelated topics:

what needs to be done to address the significant social and environmental issues facing the planet
emerging leading corporate commitments and practices
how organizations are engaging and inspiring their stakeholders around sustainability

While I was pleased to hear about the latest efforts in the world’s largest economy, I was also left with an indelible understanding of how much more work needs to be done if we want to see a global economy that operates within the carrying capacity of the planet.

If there was one consistent theme at SB09, it was collaboration in its many forms: collaboration between firms, collaboration between business and non-profits, collaboration between business and academia, and so on.

One critical team of collaborators that the conference recognized is entrepreneurs, investors, and consumers. If enough mission-based entrepreneurs with good ideas receive the funding they need to propel their businesses, then consumers will have more ways to align their values with their consumption. We’ll move to a restorative economy more quickly. It’s that simple. The problem is that it’s increasingly difficult in these credit-constrained times for businesses to access capital.

SB09 recognized this fact by creating the SB New Venture Exchange. It was a sort of Dragon’s Den, where, in this case, entrepreneurs pitch to a group of green/social investors, executives from leading companies, top sustainability and brand consultants, and peers. In return, they received publicity, advice and exposure for their concept.

While some notoriety through SB09 is nice, what the New Venture Exchange didn’t offer was access to capital. Enter funds like the recently launched Renewal2 Investment Fund, one of the judges at the New Venture Exchange.

Renewal2 is a Vancouver-based social venture fund that offers investors the opportunity to achieve strong financial returns while helping to grow companies at the forefront of social and environmental innovation. Renewal2 will invest in six sectors it believes are essential to building a sustainable society:

Organic and Natural Foods
Green Consumer Products
Green Building
Social Media
Social Finance
Environmental Innovation

The roots of Renewal2 go back 15 years to when two visionaries, Joel Solomon and Carol Newell, assembled a team of advisors and staff in Vancouver to establish the investment and philanthropic sisters, Renewal Partners Company and Endswell Foundation. Their goal was to use all of the tools of business and philanthropy to “shift the culture of business from the dominance of the quarterly bottom line, to one in which the long-term future of the human and natural world is an integral part of financial success.”

To date, Renewal Partners has made more than $7 million worth of equity investments in the sectors that will be funded through Renewal2. You may have heard of a few of them: Stonyfield Farm Yogurt, Seventh Generation, Jantzi Research, Happy Planet Foods, Salt Spring Coffee, and spud.ca. They have also placed an additional $20 million into a range of related areas such as conservation financing, social purpose non-profit real estate and social enterprise business lending.

Until now, the focus of Renewal and Endswell has primarily been in British Columbia. However with Renewal2, Joel and Carol are extending their approach further afield. As their communications materials indicate, “Renewal is expanding its scope to join the exceptional innovators across North America who are reimagining the economy, culture and public policy to meet the demands of the future.” In short, they are acting as a catalyst for an emerging asset class of social venture financing.

Last week, the team at Renewal2 celebrated the first close of their fund. While their goal was to raise an initial $20 million, even during these darkest days of credit and finance, they accumulated $18 million. Their goal is to continue to grow that pool to $30 – 50 million dollars and generate a portfolio of 15 to 20 deals split between the U.S. and Canada.

Importantly, the fund is also living the spirit of collaboration so essential to sustainability. Not content to just use their own influence and capital, the team at Renewal2 is co-investing in appropriate ventures with other values-aligned funds.

So as I follow my daily morning routine of making a cup of Salt Spring Coffee, a smoothie with Stonyfield Farm Yogurt and fruit from spud.ca, and then clean up with Seventh Generation dishwashing soap, I am reminded how critical venture capital is to fostering a conservation economy. As we all come to grips with the fact that the current state of capital markets and the global financial system have not met societal expectations, it’s good to know investors can still invest in positive, community-building and wealth-building alternatives.

Solar-powered trash compactor

2009-06-23T19:42:59Z

If you compact the trash in public trash containers, it substantially reduces the number of times you have to collect it (potentially 1/5 as much), reducing fuel, and hence GHG. Banff picked up 17 of the BigBelly units, and expects a 2-year payback.

Intermittently shutting down hot water heaters as grid peaks can balance power loads

2009-06-22T22:33:41Z

Dr. Mark Barrett at UCL has done work that suggests that coupled with a grid connection with France and beefed up energy storage, Britain could provide 95% of its electricity from renewables this way.

The Roots of Resistance 1: Battling Agents

2009-06-19T22:06:01Z

If you look at climate change through the lens of Actor-network theory, we seem to be in the middle of the problematisation phase of organizing. Understanding the actors and the network might make it easier to understand and avoid climate-change denial.

In some versions of the Actor-network theory of sociology, there are four phases to taking on an issue: problematisation (defining the problem and interested parties), interessement (getting people involved), enrolment (actors accepting their roles) and mobilization (people act and also adopt designated roles willingly). Granted the timetable that the climate crisis is forcing on us, we should be finishing enrolment and moving on to mobilization. Within certain constituencies, we are; people have largely accepted the logic of recycling, for instance, and are widely coming over to the notion of saving energy by buying compact fluorescent lamps. But other, major actors are not yet "enrolled in" the problem.

In fact, some of the most powerful actors (whole industries like coal and petroleum, for instance, plus the communities that depend on them) are not on board. It's easy to dismiss them with the dictum that "it's difficult for a man to believe something when his salary requires him not to" but it's more complicated than that. Much of society is stuck in the problematisation phase: they can't even agree on what the problem is, much less how to fix it.

In Actor-network theory, this first phase is characterized by one or more primary actors trying to "own" the problem. These primary actors try to define the terms of the issue, and, more importantly, they struggle to become gatekeepers for everybody else's actions with respect to the issue. The gatekeeper is able to assign roles to other actors and enroll them (often simply by labeling and branding people, things and actions in an uncontested way).

In other words, the problematisation phase is a power struggle.

A lot of people are suspicious of the whole climate change issue because they correctly perceive that what's happening right now is that one particular group is trying to own the debate. That group that they are suspicious of is us: those who believe in the objective reality and danger of human-caused climate change. And here's the rub: we're not suspect because of who we are, we're suspect because we're trying to become the gatekeeper. Anybody who tries to own the debate (become the gatekeeper) is going to be suspect. Because problematisation is a play for power.

The logical strategy for climate change during this phase is to defer to one particular actor: the climate science itself. Not all the interested parties in an actor-network need to be human, and in this case the environment itself is arguably the biggest player. So logically, the problematisation phase should have ended long ago because we should all have just let the environment (as represented by the science) assign us our roles.

I am going to argue that one of the reasons this hasn't happened is that a very large portion of the human race does not believe that there are non-human social actors. For them, the environment literally cannot exist as an actor, and therefore what the science represents cannot be the environment: it must represent some group of humans. Ever heard the argument that there's some sort of conspiracy among climate scientists to convince us that there's a crisis? (Often it's described as a conspiracy to get more funding for more studies; if that were true, I'd expect every other area of science to be sprouting its own conspiracy now because it's clearly worked so well for the climate scientists.) This conspiracy theory is a direct effect of the struggle to define the gatekeeper for the problem, and it's perfectly logical when you realize that many people don't believe any human group can disinterestedly represent a nonhuman actor.

And maybe they're right to be suspicious. Can anybody really act as mouthpiece for the facts of the matter, without importing their own agenda? Is it really true that nobody advocating action on climate change is coupling it to other agendas (globalization or anti-globalization, for instance)? And if we're stuck in a phase where multiple groups are trying to use the debate to drive their own agendas (however well-meaning they may be), how do we move on? How do we get to the vital step of enlisting the entire human race in an endeavor that's only going to work if people accept their roles?

Next time you meet a climate skeptic, you might want to consider that what they're skeptical about may not be the facts of the matter, but rather the agenda of the messenger. The louder you yell, the more you try to explain, the more suspicious they'll become.

One answer to this problem may be to accept it and use it. By declaring that his agenda behind pushing green energy is to make America independent of Middle East oil, for instance, Barack Obama provides a credible motivation for skeptics to hang on to. They might never believe that he's pushing green energy in order to save the environment, because for them, the environment can't be an actor. But oil companies and foreign powers can.

This is a great strategy, which seems to be working to motivate a lot of people who couldn't be enrolled by an appeal to environmental protection. Small communities across the U.S. and Canada are waking up to the fact that wind power means local jobs, for instance. But while the actor we call energy-independence can help enroll people, it can not be allowed to become the ultimate gatekeeper for the issue. The environment really is an actor, and we have to be willing to put its agenda ahead of our own.

That means that we all have to think long and hard about where our own agenda differs from its; and we must be willing to step back from what we want to let the real gatekeeper of the issue do its job. Climate change is not about globalization; it's not about consumerism run wild; it's not about the rich 5% of countries pushing the other 95% down; it's not about money; it's not about oil. It's about a number—parts-per-million of CO2—and the agenda of any real gatekeeper for this issue cannot be about anything but reducing that number.

Front photo: From Wikipedia — Screenshot of free software taken by User:DarwinPeacock
Inside photo: From Morguefile.com — Photo courtesy of Kenn W. Kiser

Jordy Gold in Toronto Star and Metro Toronto

2009-06-19T04:47:16Z

WorldChanging Canada correspondent Jordy Gold was profiled by the Toronto Star this week following the launch of OpenCities' Icebreakers. Jordy talks connecting communities, urban density, vertical villages, and $200-300 oil.

**And on the cover of Metro, from left to right, Jordy Gold, Heather Gold, and Job Rutgers**

Our favourite part:

He may not be the green Messiah but he sees dark days coming. And, amiable as he is, when he talks about what he thinks it'll take to ward them off, he exhibits the proselytizing zeal of a hellfire-and-damnation evangelist.
That doesn't, he insists, make him a prophet of doom.

"If you were a pessimist, you might as well just give up right now," he says. "All I want is for people to act like adults."

Read the full Toronto Star article here.

Earlier this month (pictured), Jordy and the rest of the OpenCities team appeared on the cover of the Toronto edition of Metro.

The photo in Metro Toronto, seen on the cover pictured above, was taken by Heather Buchan.

Bixi: the Bicycle-Taxi for a Bright Green City

2009-06-13T04:54:14Z

By Daniel Haran.

If you care about cities, sustainable infrastructure, solar energy, life-logging and product-service systems, the Bixi is worth learning about. It is billed as a fourth generation bike sharing system: portable, solar-powered and wireless.

While it has many problems that have been discussed, I want to cover 4 elements that qualify this system as bright green.

Social Engineering wrought large

There’s already been one accident involving a Bixi rider, and the media has been focusing on the dangers of riding without a helmet. No doubt someone will die riding a Bixi, and the media will declare it some kind of bixipocapypse.

Melora Koepke writes that after the introduction of the Vélib’ in Paris, “Parisian motorists seem to have learned to share the road with cyclists and even respect them.” The same will happen in Montreal. Motorists will change their habits, making all cyclists safer—whether or not they’re riding Bixis.

Despite the media, the perception of cycling as a normal mode of transportation will keep on increasing.

Solar with immediate payback

While our parking kiosks also have solar panels, the Bixi stations are a lot more conspicuous:

Wireless communication and solar panels allow for faster and cheaper installation of stations. So fast that they plan to install temporary stations during special events, something which would be otherwise cost-prohibitive.

Even regular stations get moved. Due to higher than expected demand, a the Bixi station for the Mont-Royal Metro was expanded and moved behind the entrance. Examples like this change the way the ROI for solar technology gets calculated: the cost of saved kilowatt-hours is a small fraction of the cost of installation.

Conspicuous solar infrastructure, off-grid in the heart of the city. Planners from around the world will be looking at the Bixi and integrating this lesson. The meme will spread.

Product Service Systems

Renting rather than owning is not a new idea; We’re used to video rentals, laundromats, libraries, gyms, and taxis. Bixi stations every 300 meters are a high-profile and novel example, creating a teachable moment to talk about car sharing and co-housing.

For those who would compare the bixi to a cheap bike, it’s worth repeating that sharing is often more convenient. Take a bus to get to work in the morning because it’s raining, and you can still bike back at the end of the day. This will change the way you move around the city in surprising ways, just like a cell phone changes how you coordinate social activities with friends. We routinely defer making plans with friends until we’ve arrived near a meeting spot.

Now it’s transportation that’s getting untethered.

Life logging: making the invisible visible

I’ve used a lot of buzzwords already, but this hardly gets a mention in any of the reviews. When you buy a monthly or yearly membership, Bixi tracks all your rentals and that information is available to you on their website:

Bixi is new, and it shows here: there’s no easy way to get all the information. To make matters worse, Bixi’s administrators have sued one developer for unauthorized use of their data, so creating mashups is risky. Whether they’re logging for fitness, weight loss, pure curiosity or an obsession with pretty graphs, a lot of people would like to have their personal data.

To the extent that such applications can encourage more people to use and continue using the Bixi, its administrators should encourage it.

Conclusion

Bixi is a great idea that incorporates many elements of the future we want. Energy efficient, green infrastructure that encourages use rather than ownership. I hope bright green folk will help this meme spread.

This article by Daniel Haran originally appeared on his blog at danielharan.com.

Photo: Daniel Haran
Image: BIXI

Walk Score

2009-06-09T22:47:51Z

Ever wondered what kinds of amenities were in your area but you were too busy driving in your car to really pay attention? A new website might help you figure out how easy it is to use your feet instead of your wheels.

Walk Score is an innovative online tool that allows people to measure “how easy it is to live a car-lite lifestyle.” The user enters an address and the website provides a score out of 100 ranking an address’s walkability. The Walk Score algorithm calculates the score based on the proximity of amenities like stores, restaurants, schools and parks to the entered address. If you’re in an extremely walkable location, your score will end up in the “Walkers’ Paradise” range, while if you need your car just to get a haircut, you’ll be in the “Car-Dependant (Driving Only)” score range. Much more upbeat than “Walkers’ Hell.”

Walk Score also did an interesting “walkability heat map” analysis on the largest 40 U.S. cities to determine the walkability of these locales. It’s no surprise that at the top of the list were San Francisco, New York, and Boston. The least walking-friendly locales in the analysis were Charlotte, Nashville and Jacksonville. The image below shows the map for San Francisco. Green is walking-friendly; Red is vehicle-dependant.

Walk Score is also a good introduction to the environmental, social, economic and health benefits of walking. The website has a real estate services section that allows realtors to identify the Walk Score of locations as part of the information on the property. Finally, their blog provides some interesting stories and videos on all things walking.

As a self-described urbanite who is focused on location as the primary criteria for my decision on where to live, I was curious to see how my house fared. I live in the Kensington area of Calgary – one of the most walkable inner communities in the city. I scored a 77 out of 100, which puts me in a “very walkable” location. Not bad. It seems I have taken a step backwards from the condo I moved from last year in Calgary’s Beltline, which scores a very respectable 89 out of 100. Either way, in these two locations, I have been able to grab a coffee, get my groceries, rent a movie or most importantly during Calgary’s glorious 4 days of summer, have a choice of multiple locations to enjoy a beer on a patio – all by foot. These are the day-to-day interactions that are most important to have within walking distance as they add up so quickly over time.

While it currently doesn’t include important factors such as community design, topography and public transit, Walk Score provides an interesting perspective on your neighbourhood and the relative level of ease to take advantage of the services and spaces nearby. For those that are inclined to drive, it shows the places where it makes sense to stroll to. For those that already use their feet, it can also highlight some things in your area you didn’t even know about. I just found a coffee shop in the neighbourhood I’m going to have to check out this week.

What’s so interesting about Walk Score is that it puts walking at the forefront. Often, locational discussions are centered on the availability of parking spaces. In all likelihood, the higher the Walk Score a location gets, the worse the parking situation will be. That’s OK, while they easily win the parking discussion, no one ever accused big box stores of being vibrant and interesting.

What is your city, neighbourhood, and Walk Score? Post it below and share the best thing about your area to make it walkable.