Articles by Clark Williams-Derry

Guilt tripping

The Tyee is running an interview with University of British Columbia professor and sustainability guru John Robinson, with some sage advice on how to coax us out of 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." [Emphasis added.]

That seems just about right to me. Ultimately, guilt isn't motivating; it's just dispiriting.

Great, white north!

It looks as if Canada is poised to ban flame retardants known as PBDEs, which are have been linked with learning deficits and behavioral abnormalities in lab animals, and are found at high levels in some people.

That's the good news. The bad news is that some tests are finding alarmingly high levels of the compounds in kids. You win some, you lose some.

Fee to be carbon free

Summer is upon us, unofficially at least. So to usher in the driving season, may I introduce Carbonfund.org, a new way to offset your personal carbon emissions from driving -- as well as from flying, and heating, cooling, and powering your house.

Obviously, Carbonfund.org isn't the only carbon offset program in town; Terrapass is more established and better known. But one thing about Carbonfund.org is unique: it's cheap. I mean, really, really cheap. A ton of CO2 costs just $5.50 U.S., which is, oh, about a quarter of the current price on the European Union carbon futures market, and substantially less than other carbon offset programs I've found (see here and here for a rundown).

In fact, Carbonfund.org is so cheap it made me wonder: is it for real? With some caveats, I'm inclined to think it is.

Big greenish taxi

As gas prices have risen, hybrids have become a substantially better buy than they once were. Still, it depends on how much you drive: the more miles you log, the more money a hybrid can save you.

So I'm heartened (though far from shocked) to see that cab companies are starting to realize this. Cabbies drive a lot. That's their job, after all. And higher gas prices mean that they're starting to run up enormous fuel bills, which means that switching to hybrids offers an immediate benefit to a cabbie's bottom line.