James Glave

Dreaming of a Complete Community

About a year ago, a dozen or so friends and I came together and formed a group called TRUE GREEN: Solutions for Bowen. To quote the mission statement, we're... ...a grassroots community organization that advocates for a range of progressive social, economic, and ecological local-government policies and actions to create a ...

Under One Roof

Last October, Canadian Geographic magazine published an investigative feature of mine on the emerging alliance between the green-building movement and the heritage-conservation community. During the reporting and research I uncovered a really interesting story of two different, but often complementary, groups with a shared passion for the built environment. Unfortunately, the ...

How About the “The Age Of Opportunity?”

[caption id="attachment_1562" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="Smile For the Camera, Please"][/caption] I finally watched The Age of Stupid last night. Wow, what a wake-up call. Not because I now know that glaciers are melting, or that Shell is flaring natural gas in Nigeria and poisoning ecosystems and generally doing Very Bad Things, or that ...

A “Grand Tour” of Our Clean-Energy Future

[caption id="attachment_1542" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Photograph by Markel Redondo/PANOS"][/caption] Are you as sick of Earth Day stories as I am? Then I implore you to read The New Grand Tour, a long and masterful piece of reporting in The Walrus. Chris Turner, author of The Geography of Hope, takes a trip around the ...

Sexy, Sparkling, Refreshing… Tap Water!

For about a year and a half, Vancouver's regional government has been running a pretty innovative initiative to discourage bottled-water consumption. Here's a deliciously subversive decal from the tap water campaign that I spied on the back of one of Metro Vancouver's trucks this morning. The large type reads "Tap Water. ...

Review: The Town That Food Saved

The Town that Food Saved (Rodale, $25) is among the most engaging, thoughtful, and manure-stained-honest appraisals of local agriculture and edibles since Michael Pollan rocketed to cult fame with a seven-word manifesto about plants. The town in question is an otherwise unremarkable little dogpath called Hardwick, Vermont, which popped ...

Marc Jaccard Talks Climate Change

You characterize yourself as “a very mediocre economist.” How does a mediocre economist win the Nobel Peace Prize? I was just one of hundreds who shared the prize for our collective work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. I understand people and policy, and people and ...

Density Is Not The Boogieman

Individual Submission Bowen Island Official Community Plan Update Committee February 28, 2010 Dear Members of the Committee: My name is James Glave and I'm a father of two. Ours is a young commuter family, and my wife and I actively participate in many aspects of island life. I love this place, and I am ...

Bowen Island Land-Use Politics, Illustrated

"Rural." "Urban."

Voltage Test: Behind the Wheel of the Car that Could Save Detroit

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 ...