Clay and Wattles

Well, summer is here again. That means we’re leaving tomorrow on another sustainable vacation. This time, my wife Roberta and I are traveling from Yellowknife to Prince George, BC by bus, on to Prince Rupert by tandem bike, over to Haida Gwaii (the Queen Charlotte Islands) by ferry, and down to SGang Gwaay Llnagaay at the south end of Gwaii Haanas National Park in a double kayak. We’ll paddle back up to Sandspit or Skidegate, possibly bike to Port Clements or Masset and back, then take the ferry to Prince Rupert again and the bus home.

The reason I call this trip “Origami Tour 2009″ is because we have a folding bike, a folding kayak, and a folding house (i.e. a tent) that we’ll be using on the trip.

The map below shows our planned route. The little sailboat represents our kayak, which actually does have a sail.

Rough distances for the human powered parts of the trip (assuming we don’t take any shortcuts):

• Prince George to Prince Rupert by bike: 721 kms
• Moresby Camp to SGang Gwaay and back by kayak: 340 kms
• Skidegate to Masset and back by bike: 204 kms

View Origami Tour 2009 in a larger map

We’ll try to update this map and post our adventures when we can.

As I like to point out, the biomass of ants is four times that of humans. And because they work so much harder than we do, they equal about 30 billion people in their calorie consumption. But they are absolutely not a problem for the environment.

Michael Braungart

Last week, I turned forty years old. I don’t usually pay much attention to artificial milestones, but this one is as good a time to take stock as any. A few months ago I calculated how long I might expect to live assuming I reach an average life expectancy for my age, then wrote a program to display the current value on my computer desktop: as of today, I have 14062 days to go.

I have decided to put this blog on hiatus for a while. I may revive it again periodically (to write about future sustainable trips, for example). It has been fun writing it, and I have made a lot of progress toward sustainability because I’ve been publicly keeping track. However, it is time to take a break and think about other things. Sustainability is a foundation for a good life; activism is not an end in itself.

One of the standards I’ve used to measure our impact is the list of consumer activities that are most harmful to the environment according to The Union of Concerned Scientists in their book The Consumer Guide to Effective Environmental Choices (discussed here and here). Against their criteria, we’re doing well.

As a family, we have reduced our greenhouse gas emissions to essentially zero. We no longer heat or power our home with fossil fuels. We’re limiting emissions from travel by using only bicycles, taxis, buses and trains. We’ve substantially reduced our use of hydroelectric power by changing our habits, replacing some of our appliances, and cutting off phantom power loads. We are not consuming large amounts of water, or polluting what we do use. We aren’t using toxic chemicals around the house or in the garden. We’re eating only organically and/or home-grown food whenever possible, in spite of the higher cost. We don’t eat meat or poultry. We’ve broken bad consumer habits and buy only what we need while considering environmental impact, packaging, and place of origin of the goods we do buy. We’ve become politically active and tried to help inform others about these issues.

My goals with this project and this site were lofty (see here and here). Truly achieving them is a lifelong process, and will never be complete.

1. Greenhouse Gas Reduction
2. No Air, Water, Soil Pollution
3. Conservation
4. Fairness
5. Personal Well-Being
6. Activism

Most of what I mentioned above falls under categories 1, 2, and 6. We’ve worked hard on that last one: this blog, my election to City Council, our donations of time and money to elections at other levels of government, letters we’ve written, further donations of time and money to organizations working for these goals. We’ve stopped contributing greenhouse gases to the atmosphere directly and stopped polluting air, soil, and water. At the same time, by buying carefully, buying locally, and buying less, we are minimizing our indirect impacts through manufacturing and transportation. We are contributing to conservation through activism and by supporting CPAWS, Ecology North, and Sierra Club, but buying less also contributes to that goal. Likewise, fairness comes through community and global action, union participation, careful purchases and, most importantly, from trying to avoid using more than our share of the earth’s resources.

The one goal I haven’t spent much time working on directly is number 5, personal well-being. We’ve made plenty of progress indirectly. We need less paid work because we don’t spend as much. I think the whole family feels pretty good about living more sustainably, and it has spurred us to experience things (like bus trips across the country, like the bike tour my daughter and I did this summer, like gardening) that have made our lives richer. Even so, this is the goal I intend to spend more time on for the next little while. I won’t stop any of the other stuff — still serve on City Council, still garden, still continue to reduce my environmental impact — but I want to spend more time on writing and other personal projects (like eliminating a lot of the material things we’ve accumulated over the years). I’ve started to think that another aspect of improving personal and community well-being involves reducing the time I spend interacting with a computer. I don’t suggest that computers are evil, but they have become paramount in many of our daily lives — I’d like to put the computer in its proper place.

Now that you’ve seen how well this blog thing works for reducing personal environmental impact, I challenge others to take up the mantle I am dropping and try it yourselves. People need examples. My family is one example, but we should have others — there are a thousand ways to live sustainably. How about you? It’s easy, fun, and rewarding, so why not?

A couple of weeks ago, I was interviewed by Vivian Song of the Sun Media syndicate about energy efficiency and climate change in the north. She’s writing a series called “Green Planet” over the next week or so. Part one is here: FALLOUT ZONE: Moving targets’ a challenge. I’m quoted in this one.

Like any good multi-media journalist, Vivian also shot some video of our house which appears on the canoe.ca website. The caption reads

Kevin Kennedy, a city councillor in Yellowknife, shows his eco-friendly home for our cameras, while providing tips to make your house greener.

Here is the video:

Click here if you want to rate it on the Canoe site. Click here for more videos tagged “Environment” on the Canoe site, including several which Vivian shot in Yellowknife.

I recently ran across an Australian blog called Typing is Not Activism: its title is a very pithy reminder of a problem that has been troubling me lately. Likewise, recycling is not activism, using canvas shopping bags is not activism, joining Ecology North is not activism. All of these are good actions, but, by themselves, they’re just tiny gestures in the right direction.

Everywhere I go in my activist life, I talk to people who truly understand the problem of climate change (and other environmental and social problems). Yes, there are huge swaths of people who “don’t get it” and would rather focus on the marital hijinks of Britney Spears. Yes, there are active climate change deniers (though I’ve personally met very few of them). I’m talking instead about the people who come to the meetings, donate to environmental causes, display the bumper stickers, and so on.

Somehow, many such people understand and acknowledge the problem on one hand, while failing to make the connection to their own behaviour on the other. There are many exceptions, of course. Nor am I perfect either. Still, I don’t think I’m being unreasonable to suggest that the majority of environmental activists/supporters are somewhat misguided (I want to say hypocritical, but that implies intention – I don’t think this failure is entirely intentional).

Call it “Al Gore Syndrome.” Part of me wants to thunder curses down upon “environmentalists” who drive cars, eat meat, live in enormous houses, or fly in airplanes, for example. Don’t people understand that the solutions to climate change are in their own hands? It might be inconvenient to change, but it is possible.

I’ve heard a lot of excuses about automobiles — as a rule, I try not to make people feel guilty about driving (after all, I’ve owned cars myself), but let me say once and for all: if you care about climate change, you need to make a plan to stop using your private vehicle. In extreme cases, it might be a five year plan — maybe it involves moving house or changing jobs. So be it.

Meat-eating is the last thing that a lot of people will change — for some of us, meat-eating is part of our identities. In the north, I run across many, many people who claim that their meat-eating is sustainable because the food is harvested from the land. If your daily diet of meat truly does come entirely from local, wild sources (or organic, sustainable farms), then you’re in the clear. If not, then you have to live with the knowledge that, outside of driving, your optional meat-eating has the largest environmental impact of any consumer activity. Nobody says you have to go “cold turkey” (pun intended), but you can make a plan to reduce your meat consumption and stick with it. Yes, I know you say you hardly ever eat red meat — you’re practically a vegetarian already really — but be honest: are you really keeping track?

Being permitted to live in a big, energy-wasting house with a fossil fuel heating system is a Canadian birthright. We can’t freeze in the dark, can we? Certainly not. And yet, if you live with a small family in a monster home with wasteful systems, you need to make some changes, perhaps even move. Household systems are in the top five largest consumers of fossil fuels and creaters of pollution in North America. The average new home in Canada is 1800 square feet and the average family size is about three people. That means that if you live in a single family home of average efficiency (or worse) that allots more than roughly 600 square feet per person, you’re definitely part of the problem — even without acknowledging that the average house is already extremely wasteful and unsustainable. On the plus side, you can switch to biomass or other alternative heating systems, use electricity and water efficiently, and perhaps disregard floor space to some extent — even so, you can’t ignore this question if you truly want to solve the problems of climate change and environmental degradation.

Air travel is another consumer activity that we give ourselves a free pass on. Sure, I’ll make sacrifices, but not my vacation! I’m an eco-tourist, travelling in far off untouristed places anyway. I need that trip to Edmonton every three months to stay sane. Wrong. You want it — you don’t need it. Buses and trains can be inconvenient, but they are the only sustainable forms of mass transportation in the world; when they are available options, we must use them — when they aren’t, we must carefully evaluate our decision to travel. Travelling less or by slower, uncomfortable methods is a hard pill, but, if you really want to stop climate change, you can’t keep making exceptions for yourself.

I know I’m not perfect either. I know some of these things are difficult. I don’t expect everyone to change overnight. Even so, if you want your environmentalism to be more than a style or a social activity, you have to ask yourself: Am I all talk? Do I really want to live up to my values? Can I afford to do otherwise?

I spent most of yesterday at the World Community Film Festival, an annual showing of films from around the world. The topics are mostly in the social and environmental realm, but the sheer number of films ensures a wide variety of topics and perspectives.

Western Arctic Moving Pictures is the local sponsor of the festival, which travels around the country every year. This is our third year hosting it in Yellowknife. It continues today and Monday, so come down to Northern United Place and check it out.

Yesterday I saw The Ecological Footprint, a film by and about the Global Footprint Network and its efforts to create a baseline method of measuring environmental impact.

I’ve linked to it before, but it is worth checking your own footprint. What I found most interesting was the discussion of national footprints: I was surprised to learn that Italians use one third of the resources per capita that Americans do (and Canadians aren’t far off the North American pace) – nobody would accuse them of having poor quality of life.

Global Dimming argued that our impact on climate is actually more complicated than we’ve been thinking: while greenhouse gases are trapping heat in our atmosphere, air pollution is also reflecting some of that radiation back before it hits the earth. As we reduce pollution, we may actually be making climate change worse!

Independent Intervention: Breaking Silence was the inspiring story of independent journalists in Iraq trying to get uncensored, unsanitized news and images to the western, and particularly American, public.

Favela Rising was about a musical and social movement in the poorest slums of Rio, intervening between corrupt and brutal military police on one hand and drugdealer armies on the other. Brazil is one of my favourite places I’ve never been, so I was fascinated by the culture and contradictions of this amazing story; it was moving, sad, and inspiring.

Best of all, I saw The Power of Community – How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, a film about Cuba as a laboratory for how to the rest of us might cope with peak oil, a crisis they’ve already been through. In the case of Cuba, the crisis was artificial – a result of the ham-handed U.S. embargo and the collapse of the USSR.

Even so, the resourcefulness of the Cuban people is amazing and inspiring. They managed to switch their entire system of agriculture over to organic and sustainable methods within a few years. They made innovative changes to their transportation system. Above all, they maintained their investments in education and health care to provide for the future. I’m sure that few Cubans would choose to go through drastic oil withdrawal again – it was clearly a painful and scarring transition – yet, there are many lessons for the rest of us in their experience.

Well, I’m sorry to report that my friend Doug came in second in last night’s election. He worked very hard, as did a lot of friends and volunteers. I don’t think we made any terrible mistakes and the final result seemed to come down to “popularity” for lack of a better word. In saying so, I don’t mean to insult our new MLA – the winning candidate had many family connections and decades worth of personal contacts in the riding, which are indeed worth something; in spite of all Doug’s great leadership qualities and vision, he didn’t have those roots.

I am excited to report, however, that my friend Bob Bromley was elected in the nearby riding of Weledeh – it wasn’t a great night, but Bob’s victory helped confirm that progress on environmental and social issues is at least possible.

I’m sure some people out there are wondering what happened to me for the past three weeks. I’ve been very busy starting up my classes at Aurora College and acting as the co-campaign manager for my friend Doug Ritchie’s run for MLA in the Great Slave riding where I live. Doug’s website is here.

The election will be over next week, so I’ll be able to breathe a great sigh of relief and get back to normal life.

In case anybody is looking for it, I’ve moved the map of our cycling trip here.

Back to regular posting soon.

We did it! We’re in Vancouver!

The day before yesterday we rode on Highway 1 out of Hope towards Vancouver. We took country roads through Chilliwack and into the city of Abbotsford (thanks for the tip, Cheryl!). The Fraser Valley is full of cornfields and views of mountains in the distance. Once we reached Abbotsford, things got a bit tougher for cyclists and we had to ride on the sidewalks through a blighted region full of big-box stores. We were anxious to get to the Fraser Highway on the other side of the city, so we pushed as far as we could until dark and stayed in a motel.

Before we left Hope, we decided not to ride over to Victoria after all. We figured we deserved a break after 41 days of cycling. We were also getting pretty tired of lower mainland traffic. We’ll still go to the island, but as pedestrians.

Yesterday morning, we got on the Fraser Highway and were relieved to confirm that it had a good wide shoulder most of the way. We were on the road at about 8:30 and made good time through to Langley where we stopped for bubble tea. We soon crossed the border of Surrey – we were in Greater Vancouver!

There were intermittent bike lanes through Surrey, which was nice, but eventually they petered out and the traffic started to get heavy. We reached the King George Skytrain station and decided to find out if bikes were permitted on the train. I didn’t relish the thought of riding the last 20 kms to downtown Vancouver on the last day of a holiday weekend, so we were thrilled to find out we could roll right on to the train and travel to the Vancouver waterfront without risking our lives.

Once we were at the harbour, we stopped at the tourist info centre nearby and got some help finding a bike shop downtown. Our plan was to have the bike shop dismantle our bikes and box them for shipping back home. We rode a few blocks to Burrard and Pacific, dropped off our bikes, then took a cab to a hotel (all the hostels are booked solid, unfortunately). We made a quick trip to MEC to buy a couple of large duffel bags to ship our gear home and day packs for the stuff we need for the rest of the journey. We walked back downtown to our hotel, and slept in until 8:30 this morning for a change!

We’re having fun in Vancouver. We already managed to eat sushi and visit a couple of bookstores. We’ll head to Victoria for a day or two when we’re good and ready. We need to leave for Yellowknife by August 14th. To keep our greenhouse gas emissions low, we’re taking the 24 hour train ride to Edmonton, then the 23 hour bus ride to Yellowknife.

It has been a great trip. I’m very proud of Martin for travelling all this way – I think it takes a very mature and determined fifteen year old to accomplish a feat like this. I’m now convinced that cycling is the best way for anybody to travel long distances. We’ve seen and experienced a hundred times more than if we had travelled by car.

I’ve filled fourteen 80 minute videotapes, so you can all look forward to seeing the video. I’ll write more reflections on the trip once I’ve had a few days to digest it all.