I streamed the Canadian Federal Debate last night on my computer (who needs cable anymore?!), Elizabeth May had a very strong showing, and was my pick as the winner of the debate. I’m happy that she was included on the main stage to finally give The Green Party the representation they need.

May’s answers and responses seem to best reflect my worldviews; the unfortunate thing is that due to the strange election laws in Canada, many citizens will vote against their intentions as a purely defensive technique to be sure the ‘other’ party doesn’t gain a majority. Very complicated - I’m still trying to figure it out…and am also still undecided who I will vote for due to this very reason. May proclaimed,  in response to the question of what the first things she will do if elected Prime Minister, that she will change the election laws to address this problem. Nice! She noted that since she’s a female, she’ll be able to act on many important issues simultaneously. 

Steve Paikin, the moderator of the debate, closed by saying “this debate was way better than the Biden/Palin debate”. This remark struck me as strange, especially as part of his closing statement - made it seem like an  entertainment choice. Elizabeth May actually spoke over top of him quickly exclaiming (from my memory) “of course it was better, it’s our democracy”.

If you’re more of a youtube’r, check out The Green Party’s YouTube ads…all filmed during May’s whistle stop tour through Canada.

Ad #3: Economy

Ad #5: Nature

Ad #4: Deomocracy

RL

Another animated environmental edit. A bit harsh at times, thought it deserved a post though for shock value. Whew! After watching it (it’s only a minute long), check out some of the other related videos on the player screen.

I’m packing up and getting set to fly to Nevada today, it’s InterBike time again. I’ve been doing this yearly trip for about a decade now. Fortunately I don’t have to expose myself to the radiation of Las Vegas for long since I’ll only be present for the dirt demo days, which takes place up in Boulder City, a cute town about 45 minutes SE of Vegas, and just a few minutes from Lake Mead and the Hoover Dam.

The Outdoor Dirt Demo portion of this trade show is showing some green signs, such as:

• Biodegradable concession ware
• Organic Food options
• Recycled bins located throughout Demo
• Carbon offset program for shuttles
• Recycled/recyclable Demo bags

Trade Shows in general are very waste abundant and energy intensive. I’m glad to see that the InterBike show is taking steps in the right direction with their “Green Steps” initiative.

The headline on the Green Steps page of the site reads as follows:

“The Interbike Expo is 100% wind powered and uses 25% recycled carpet. And we are just getting started.”

At first glance, I had the vision of electricity used to power the Sans Convention Center with windmills located down the valley from the trade show. A little more digging and you’ll see that they bought carbon offsets for the equivalent power used at the show from an offset company that invests in windmill plants - which is great! They’re moving in the right direction.

They’re also encouraging visitors and exhibitors to buy offsets for their travel, I’ll have to encourage Norco on this one again; personally, I’m still Playing it Cool.

Alright, better get to the airport….

Sept 11, (forgot to get this posted when I landed in Vancouver from Europe)

Airtime…what do I do when sitting for ten hours on a plane? Some may think it’s a huge bore, a waste of time, which pretty much makes it a countdown to the future. This ironically and unfortunately is how many of us conduct our daily lives, always looking forward to the next moment impatiently. But the present holds tremendous opportunity no matter where you are, and it doesn’t even matter whether you have an iphone in your pocket with wi-fi reception!

So what did I do on the flight? Here’s a quick list:

• Finished reading “Zen in the Art of Archery“
• Started reading another Ken Wilber book
• Listened to some Xavier Rudd music
• Listened to the Thom Hartmann Podcast
• Listened to the Living Dialogues Podcast,
• Ate a couple specially requested vegetarian meals (a free option for any flight with food)
• Watched “The 11th Hour” on my computer (because of course no on board plane entertainment would feature such an important film)
• Had a couple short naps
• Had a bunch of silent ‘zone out’ sessions while watching the clouds below
• And did a little writing on the computer, as seen below…

I don’t want to be entertained for the sole purpose of passing the time. Time is the most precious resource we have, though most don’t take advantage of it due to the wicked consumerism cycle. What we choose to do with our spare time (and money) is more important today than ever before. Like one quote from “The 11^th Hour”, and it was actually the closing quote from film, “The Earth has all the time in the world, but we don’t”, - Oren Lyons.

How do you want to spend your time? Stuck in traffic, working long hours to pay for the car that’s bigger, the house that’s bigger, the extra stuff you have to put in it not to mention the time it takes to find and buy all that stuff. Do you want to spend the down time you do have worrying about all the stuff you have accumulated and the possibility of losing it? How do you want to spend your time? What is really important and do your actions reflect it? Maybe you’ll have “time” when you retire, if you can just make it another 3, 10, or 30 years, then it’ll all be good - big house paid off and time to travel and finally enjoy life. Yes? …NO!!!!

I am increasingly becoming tired of our cultures rampant material lifestyles and the negative effects it has. I have been as guilty as anyone, but coming to terms with the charge is the first step, and owning this truth encourages automatic right choice. 

We have to move from the black hole of Well Having to the light of Well Being!!

Watching “The 11^th Hour” has really rattled my heart, and in a great way. I can’t say how many times this happened recently as I learn more about our human predicament. My goals are being re-shaped quite rapidly, and the more I learn, the more sure I am of the direction I would like to go, and the more I am convinced that the role I play can make a difference, as can everyone in their own unique way.

Viewing this film may be scary to some, as it was for me at times, but the feeling I have is one of elation and excitement; it’s a sense of purpose I feel that I think we all can join in on. Our generation will decide what life will be like for generations to come, and it can go either way; is there a mission that is any more important than that? Where do we start though?

I would suggest simplifying and reducing our material consumption so we can afford to buy the products that are necessities, and to use that consumer power we have to send the message that we as individuals are serious about change (buying smaller houses), serious about our health (buying organic), and serious about the planet (not buying disposable ‘stuff’ we don’t need). The majority of the stuff we buy has a cradle to trash lifecycle, instead of a cradle to cradle lifecycle which needs to be the new goal.

We do have power as individuals. The power to vote when we go to the store…and of course the power to vote politically. We have an election going on here in Canada which requires great attention, as does the roller coaster American Presidential race. The potential new American V.P., Governor Sarah Palin, denies that humans have anything to do with climate change, she is as far right as it gets; can you imagine if McCain gets elected? Scary. Please do the research and don’t rely on the media because they’re poised to gain financially if the republicans win. Yes this is a rambling post, and yes I’m battling to write this all before my battery dies, but I think we’re living in a very exciting time with huge possibilities for some beautiful transformations. There is reason for optimism, but we have to start acting now.

Our way of thinking must change before action is taken, that’s the challenge we face; action based in old paradigm thinking, no matter how well intentioned, could just make the situation worse (this is a confusing concept). Pico Iyer articulated it nicely with this quote, “Action without reflection is what got us into this mess in the first place, and the only answer is not action, but, first, clearer reflection.” 

Another example might be those acting out of fear, this has been a common response for many after “An Inconvenient Truth” was released. In a recent audio program, I heard Ken Wilber say “one of the strange paradoxes is that eco-centric thinking is often ego-centric thinking, and unfortunately Gaia is the One that suffers.” So we have to be careful. Perhaps more time needs to be devoted to expand on these concepts, so I’ll save it for another time.

In conclusion though, I will be doing everything I can to help raise that awareness and educate (both myself, then others), I will strive to spread the good word of hope. It is an important time to be alive, but we must act with intelligent haste.

Much love friends

Yesterday I bumped in to my old friend Hugh Patterson, who has been sailing around the world for the last two years with two of his friends. They all wanted it to be more than just a circumnavigation of the world, and sure enough, their purpose materialized after some months of the voyage.

Turns out that every beach they visited, anywhere in the world, no matter how deserted, was littered with garbage at the high tide line. When they inspect the sand, it is scattered with small pieces of plastic that have been crushed and torn among the reefs and rocks from the waves.

It’s worth just thinking about this for a while. Everytime you mindlessly use a plastic water bottle, know that it could end up somewhere you don’t intend, even if you recycle it. It takes 700 years just for a plastic waterbottle to start decomposing.

At the very very least, start using a re-usable water bottle, take it with you wherever you go. Same goes for re-usable coffee mugs. If you’re doing that, re-consider some other plastic usage habits you may be able to eliminate.

Anyway, check out these videos from my sailing friend, who is part of the OceanGybe crew. Godspeed on the second half of the journey.

Hey Folks,

Just threw this video together from EuroBike ‘08. It shows some of the environmentally friendly products and trends in the bicycle scene. It’s by no means an exhaustive list, just some stuff that caught my eye…

While cycling in some brilliant sun shining weather, I started to ponder our cultures material lifestyle. The relationship between the amount of money one makes and the amount one thus consumes materially seem to be almost inescapably linked; and in a day and age where so many are financially prolific (and soon to be in China and India), it is no wonder that consumption seems to be growing despite dire warning signs from scientists that this has to change. For those capable now of entering a fabulous material lifestyle, the excuses to justify these personal standards are completely owned and justified. What is it going to take for affluent individuals to voluntarily alter their decadent desires?

This thought process started with the awareness of a shift in my own consuming habits and patterns; now by no means am I part of the growing league of elite rich, but I can draw a parallel in my own consumption desires and what my salary is capable of consuming, they are no longer par with one another; so the question comes, what has changed for me? I still have much work to do, but the needing and wanting of things like a big fancy house, fast car, and the best weekend toys money can buy have lost their grip on my mind, same with having the latest electronic gadget and fancy camera. I believe that the more citizens that can curb this material yearning voluntarily, before they are forced to by mother nature (which is inevitable), the smoother and less violent this transition to a sustainable culture will be.

Now perhaps you might think I’m idealizing things, because after all, it’s just wise for me to reduce my material aspirations to below my income level, at least that is what all financial planners preach; they say you have to plan ahead, invest and save your money, live below your means and you’ll have a happy future. That’s all good and true, and I have always been decent at following that plan; but on average, the stats clearly show North Americans live well beyond their financial capacity due to this craving for material status. Financial planners may also warn of job stability, and not to over spend if your job isn’t secure. My income is tied heavily to my physical well-being, so it’s also wise not to go overboard, but unfortunately, most jobs these days are dependant on all sorts of variables; but still those blind, deep, material desires has now lead to, for example in America, the worst mortgage and lender crash since the depression. Most of these victims’ are smart people, and hold good jobs, so how could things go so wrong, how could we be so disillusioned with our spending, and how might we reframe our conditioning to gain some perspective?

One suggestion would be to think back to when you were a young teenager, before you had a license (or in the case of some readers, think ahead to this point). For me, if there was a particular place that I wanted to ride my bike, I would ride for as long as needed to get there. My bikes were often quite Frankenstein like (especially my rear derailleurs); but did these material limitations affect the level of enjoyment and happiness I experienced? No. Now that I have unlimited fancy smancy bikes, do I enjoy my riding experience more than I did back then. No. So will the house on the hill provide you with more happiness than the apartment in the city, absolutely not! Sure there may be a temporary high, but it’s not lasting; if anything the journey to acquire and maintain this material landmark postpones the crucial realization of our inter-connectedness to the earth. It seems human nature to continually want more and more (thanks to the western white man anyway), and no matter what level of finance you reach, the greatest lie our culture maintains is that more will be even better. We tend to unconsciously propagate this materialistic story to our young, and then wonder why there is so much dis-ease in our society.

Let us say I am just being smart about my financial future, and I haven’t had some magical shift in my consumeronciousness, the theoretical question still remains, how would my consumption change if I won the lottery today and my financial future was secured? Please ask yourself this, what would you buy!? Or what if you became a successful businessperson that makes more money in a year than most in their life? How would you change your lifestyle? Where would you travel? I just glanced through a magazine article showing the indulgences of the owner of Tommy Hilfiger, the cars, mansions, and helicopters…at one point, I would have thought it was pretty cool to have all that, but with the knowledge of the world I now possess, I see it as a gross sin for one human to be responsible for so much consumption of the worlds resources. Watching a show like cribs for instance makes me sick to my stomach most of the time. But then again, so does my consumption, the same gap between me and Tommy is similar to the third-world and me; I consume way more than my one world limit.

Typical third world neighborhood vs typical suburban mansion.

As the first-world population slowly (too slowly) comes to terms with the fact that our lifestyles are killing the planet, and hence our children’s future, a powerful emotion will set in and wreck havoc on our minds, guilt. Once we are able to stare this guilt in the face, we can do a few things:

1. Quickly look the other way before it notices us.

2. Give up, decide you can’t make a difference, and return to business as usual.

3. Turn this powerful emotion in to a positive signal to wake up and take action!

At this point the discussion can get pretty complicated, so I won’t sink too deep. If we ignore the emotion, it will just keep re-surfacing more forcefully, and scarily. Giving up may work temporarily, but what about your children? My own incubation period between reading the scientific stats and studies (an upcoming article will focus on this specifically), and actually doing something about it is shockingly slow and lame, and I even consider myself above average in this regard, a bit scary really.

Modern scientific revelation (or Gods word if you like) has made it immanently clear we are not merely humans living on the earth as was once thought back in the flat earth epoch, but are humans grown from the earth, just like a fox or a tree; the key difference is that we have developed the unique capacity to not just know, but to know we know. This is consciousness. It is through us that the earth is now able to consciously see herself. When you look at the moon, the moon is literally seeing itself through your eyes! Coming to terms with this sacred truth was what brought about the shift in my material desires, and of course, much more. It would take an infinite number of pages to describe this realization fully, precisely because it is indescribable. Point is, that inherent within this emerging worldview comes the inability of harming the earth for personal gain. Ignorance was once material bliss, but true bliss, it turns out, is immaterial.

Check out this list of interesting reasons to ride your bike. A few unique ideas are listed. The bottom line formula with all this pro bike stuff is: Bikes + Environment = Good News.

Traffic in Vancouver, like most growing cities, is getting pretty intense. Combine that with rising fuel prices, and extreme suburb commuting, and you get some nasty driving attitudes and road rage. Serving humanity and the greater whole is a key element to finding purpose in ones life. I know an old man whose apparent purpose is to help reduce the stress of the car commuter. He’s the old man at the corner of the Hwy 1 on-ramp at Hastings St. in Vancouver.

You can choose to let the old man put a smile on your face, or choose to look down upon him, and ignore him, like many do with homeless people and beggers. When passing him one direction there is no light so I just whiz by, but he always makes eye contact while waving the peace sign; coming the other way, there’s a light, at that point I see him with his broom and dustpan sweeping the curb trash and debris, I see him smiling and waving, and only when signaled by a driver does he come to the window to accept tips. The times I have signaled him, he comes along with his reflective vest on, and shares a joke that always brings a smile to my face; job done.

I started thinking about street people, and that they probably have one of the smallest carbon footprints in western societies. In a culture that values material wealth more than anything, it might be hard for them to be content with the few, if any, possessions they have. However many world travelers often remark that the happiest people they see are the ones in cultures where there is little material wealth. When I was in Peru filming for Kranked 3, we came across a small village, everyone was gathered around the fire, and they invited us over to join. They lived in little huts, no electricity or plumbing, but they weren’t embarrassed, they gave us nothing but welcoming smiles and great hospitality, and there was this unforgettable feeling of calm contentment and connectiveness. In a documentary I just watched called “Ten Questions with the Dalai Lama”, he suggested that the more you have materially, the more you have to worry about; I can certainly see the truth in that.

Back to commuting, a more sustainable method with enormous benefits on so many levels is by way of bike. Now for someone who does more riding at work than to work, I can’t be too preachy, but the times I do choose to take the bike for errands and meetings around town, everything seems better. Hopefully you don’t live too far off in the suburbs, but if the distance is within riding reach, give it a go! Careful though with your bike commuting ego, as Eckhart Tolle said in an interview I recently read, “A cyclist might have a bigger ego than the man in the SUV, especially if he hates the man in the SUV for polluting the planet and thinks he’s superior.”

Cycling is indeed an important part of the solution to climate change, especially as our savings account of oil dwindles. There is still some debate regarding climate change, but it’s hard to argue with the consensus of 2500 scientists on the intergovernmental panel on climate change, chances are they may know better than your neighbor Joe. In an audio interview I heard with author Karen Armstrong, she said “and I don’t think we’ll save the planet if we don’t’ dismantle these habits of selfishness, even with the environment, not just jumping in to a car every time we feel like it, realizing that we can’t just drive anywhere, we can’t go on poisoning the atmosphere like this, our grandchildren are going to curse us.”

The One Planet Two Wheels campaign tells us that 60% of the pollution created by automobile emissions happens in the first few minutes of operation, before pollution control devices can work effectively. 24% of all trips are made within a mile of the home, 40% of all trips are made within two miles of the home, and 50% of the working population commutes five miles or less to work.

Carpooling has been an important initiative in many big cities, but increasing the number of multi passenger trips has proved difficult. A recent study illuminated the reason why; turns out that because of the fast paced modern lifestyle, the car commute is the only time individuals have to themselves! If you go by way of the bicycle you still get that personal reflective time, you save the planet, and always get to the top of the climb first on the weekend mountain bike ride. Sounds like an extraordinary deal to me!

Ride ON!!

Caryn and I were hanging out cleaning the kitchen last night after chasing our nephews all day (well, she was cleaning the kitchen and I was surfing - thanks love). Through the ipod speakers came the Counting Crows cover of A Big Yellow Taxi. Now this is a song I have grown up hearing, but it wasn’t until I heard it last night that it struck my environmental chord…Are we going to wait until it’s gone until we realize what we’ve done to this planet? (yes that’s an oxymoron). Or are we finally coming to terms with the message Joni MItchell shared in this song that she wrote some 38 years ago? I sure hope so! 

10-big-yellow-taxi

They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot
With a pink hotel, a boutique
And a swinging hot spot
Dont it always seem to go
That you dont know what youve got
Till its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

They took all the trees
Put em in a tree museum
And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see em
Dont it always seem to go
That you dont know what youve got
Till its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Hey farmer farmer
Put away that d.d.t. now
Give me spots on my apples
But leave me the birds and the bees
Please!
Dont it always seem to go
That you dont know what youve got
Till its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

Late last night
I heard the screen door slam
And a big yellow taxi
Took away my old man
Dont it always seem to go
That you dont know what youve got
Till its gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot