Our very first post was written on October 31, 2006. WorldChanging Canada writer Rod Edwards provided a distinctly Canadian perspective on the prairies. His post was a tribute to the land, its vastness, its fragility, and its opportunity:

... I've never lost my appreciation for the "scale" that the prairies proudly flaunt .... Those scales hit you at a primitive level—standing in the prairie, lost in near infinite plains below, and endless sky above, you can feel, viscerally, the raw size of the planet. The Earth curves beneath your feet, and you know that the wind buffeting you has traveled lifetimes to get there.

Perspective is fickle, however. A car passing on a nearby highway will quickly invert the sensation of infinity. The size here speaks to vulnerability, too—as huge as this land is, it’s been settled, sown, ploughed, and harvested for generations. This land is fragile and damaged, and facing challenges commensurate with its scale.

Fortunately, the potential is proportionate too: those infinite fields are ripe for transformation into sustainable, organic engines of economic growth. There's a billion acres of functioning carbon sink out here too. And that endless sky, and its howling winds, are already spinning turbines in megawatt wind projects.

Read more of The Prairie Perspective: An Introduction to Green Manitoba by Rod Edwards (October 31st, 2006)

It was a lyrical and fitting beginning.

Fast forward to Summer 2008. Two years later, Edwards, along with a steadily growing team of contributors, is still very much engaged in chronicling that potential. Rod's most recent piece examined a striking prairie innovation:

There's an interesting development lurking in your magazine rack (provided you subscribe to Canadian Geographic): paper made from wheat straw—the stem & stalk waste product of grain farming. Indistinguishable from regular wood-pulp paper, printed products made of a percentage of wheat straw are notable not for their tactile qualities, but for their sustainability implications. As agricultural waste, wheat straw is perennially renewable so long as people farm. As a product, monetizeable wheat straw provides a diversified income stream for farmers. As a source of paper fibre, it takes pressure off the forests that traditionally supply pulp, and the species that inhabit them.

Read more of Paper from Wheat, Not Wood by Rod Edwards (August 29th, 2008)

Rod's piece is an exemplary WorldChanging story. It chronicles a bright green solution which is already changing the world. It looks not just at a game-changing idea, but a successful implementation. It brings attention to an innovation that ought to be better known, but which is under-appreciated. It provides context which helps us understand why an innovation is important. It allows the reader an opportunity to drill down to the details if they so choose.

It is also a terrific WorldChanging Canada story. It not only has all the features mentioned above, it also provides Canadian context. Canadian context is harder to define than Canadian innovation, but it's every bit as important.

Canadians are the highest per capita users of energy in the world. We have some of the greatest challenges, and the greatest opportunities, in conservation and energy efficiency. We have regional economic disparities. Our cities are livable but unsustainable. Our arctic ice is melting. We have both abundant natural resources and significant energy security issues. Our opportunities in the renewables sector are underexploited. Heating for most of us is not a luxury, but an matter of survival. We have huge distances to traverse in building faster telecommunications, more efficient transport, and smarter electrical grids. We have a history of welcoming newcomers and developing enduring social institutions. We have a unique social fabric.

A Canadian context can mean many things, but it certainly includes:

• an awareness of new models and technology as they affect Canada's unique biodiversity, consumption patterns, urban/rural split, or democratic institutions.
  
• the particular challenges of a northern nation addressing climate change and energy security.
  
• voices or publications that further articulate Canadian challenges with, or contributions to, a more sustainable society
  
• new uses for renewable resources that we have in abundance (wheat, wind, waves).
  
• replacements for non-renewable resources where our continued use or extraction is polluting or problematic (oil, water, old-growth forest).
  

This is our beat: bright green solutions through a Canadian lens. Over the course of November we've been celebrating by re-publishing some of our very best.


For an overview of some of the great WorldChanging Canada stories we've brought you over the last four years, we invite you to read some of our previous retrospectives:

• Worldchanging Canada: 2007
  
• CanadaChanging
  
• The Best of Worldchanging Canada: An Anniversary Retrospective

Salman Khan is the man behind Khan Academy, a 2009 Tech Award winning site with 12+ million views and 1200+ 10-minute "videos on YouTube covering everything from basic arithmetic and algebra to differential equations, physics, chemistry, biology and finance". We talked with him about building "the world's free virtual school", the potential of open-access learning, using the format for sustainability debates, and challenges in growing a non-profit from zero to global impact.

On Saturday, I returned from Ottawa where I attended the last few days of the 2008 Governor General’s Canadian Leadership Conference (GGCLC). Held every four years and hosted by the Governor General , the GGCLC, “brings together Canada's future leaders from business, labour, government, NGOs, education and the cultural sector for a unique two-week experience aimed at broadening their perspectives on work, leadership, their communities, and their country.”

I made the trek to Ottawa because I was a participant in 2004, and this year, alumni like me were invited to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the program over the course of three days. The highlight was a special event at the Museum of Civilization attended by Ed Schreyer, the original patron of the GGCLC.

Inspired by the Duke of Edinburgh’s Commonwealth Study Conferences (held since 1956), the Canadian leadership conferences began in 1983 with a vision of Canadian nation-building. What’s particularly powerful and unique about the program is that the 225 members of each Conference are Canadian citizens from different regions of Canada, with different perspectives and different careers.

Through a combination of examination, debate, and discovery packed into an intense two-week period, the GGCLC is designed to help broaden the perspectives and enhance the leadership qualities of its members. After all, how often do you get to spend two weeks in a melting pot of people representing all facets of Canadian society, debating a range of issues that relate to the Canadian experience?

No topic during the GGCLC is taboo. Indeed, members are exposed to issues ranging from inner city poverty and the treatment of First Nations to regional economic development challenges and innovative approaches to addressing local social issues. And, by ensuring a diversity of participants, members are forced to confront their own biases, prejudices and tightly held perceptions.

The conference begins with a three-day plenary session in a Western Canadian city where a range of noteworthy speakers set the context for that year’s theme. For example, this year the theme was Leadership and Community; in 2004, it was Leadership and Diversity. Plenary speakers this year included Peter Lougheed, Phil Fontaine and Sheila Watt-Cloutier. In 2004, the roster included Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Bernard Kuchner, the founder of Doctors Without Borders, and Indra Nooyi, CEO of Pepsi Cola International.

Following the plenary sessions, the 225 members divide into 15 groups that travel to different parts of Canada where they engage in an action-packed tour of that region, meeting and debating with local business and community leaders of various shapes and sizes. An average day starts at 6:00 am and ends as late as midnight after a study group session where members discuss the day’s events.

The GGCLC ends with four days in Ottawa where members prepare a consensus presentation for Governor General on what they have seen and learned. With all those teams of A-type people, most presentations incorporate a range of creativity—poems, theatrical vignettes, songs and art—to help communicate their message. Then, the Governor General engages the group in a 20-minute discussion where she explores further that group’s themes.

To call this a life-changing experience is no overstatement. Members leave with a newfound appreciation for Canadian values, enriched perspectives on all aspects of Canadian society, stronger leadership skills, and a range of friendships with current or emerging leaders across the country.

As part of the alumni program I attended, we were treated to a private tour of Parliament Hill with Pat Martin, the MP for Winnipeg Centre and an alumnus of 1991. The tour ended with a chance to watch Question Period on the last day the House sat before summer recess. Pat left us at that point to take his seat on the floor.

Sitting in the gallery, we were all taken aback by the rancourous, mean-spirited and, frankly, childish display of our elected officials. The kind of cat calls, insults and accusations flying across the floor would not be acceptable in a classroom or at a dinner table, yet it was on full display that day in the House.

Speaking with Pat during the tour, he suggested that Parliament and all Canadians would benefit from having elected officials participate in a program modeled on the GGCLC prior to taking their seats in the House. I agree. Doing so, MPs would gain a new appreciation for other parts of Canada, be exposed to the complete spectrum of actors that make up Canada, and move beyond a purely partisan perspective.

Just imagine the kind of political leadership, and by extension, the kind of Canada, that could emerge from that experience.

Another terrific article by Peter ter Weeme, Stemming the tide of greenwashing, was chosen to be reprinted as a chapter in a textbook by BC Open Schools, in a module focussing on environmental literacy, nutritional literacy and media literacy.

In the past few years two ideas that were once considered preposterous have begun to seem ever more reasonable: the space elevator, and solar power satellites. Many of the biggest engineering issues have actually been solved for both these projects. But one huge issue appears to have been neglected.

For years sustainablists have been pushing the corporate sector to go green. A key question or doubt has hung over this push—will consumers really buy green stuff? For years pundits have pointed to polls that show that consumers are interested in buying green. The results have been mixed, if not downright negative, with green product sales often failing to live up to expectations.

The traditional analysis was quite simplistic: Canadians say they care about green in polls but are not willing to spend the money on green products at the checkout. This seemed to sum up the entire story.

There are a variety of reasons why green products have not lived up to expectations. People are often uncomfortable with anything new. Green is associated with being less effective, or requiring some type of compromise. Green can at times be more expensive (sometimes due to our backwards system of laws and taxation). The list goes on.

Over the past year or so dramatic statistics have surfaced. It turns out the belief that customers simply cannot be bothered to pay more is not the end of the story. Just over a year ago TerraChoice came out with their landmark study looking at over 1,000 ‘eco’ products at a Canadian big box store. TerraChoice believes that free markets, combined with credible claims about green goods, could be the most powerful factor in creating a green economy. They were also concerned about the possible rejection of ‘eco’ products in the marketplace. This study featured ‘The Six Sins of Greenwashing,’ which are listed at the end of this article. TerraChoice outlined six ways in which companies can intentionally and unintentionally misinform consumers through green claims. The ‘Six Sins’ have garnered global attention and the organization is currently working on a follow-up to the study.

Surprisingly, the TerraChoice study showed that almost 99% of the more than 1,000 assessed ‘eco’ products were guilty of some kind of greenwashing. Green claims associated with those products were found to be false, over-stated or misrepresentative. This only began to cloud the green product picture.

Environics did some polling last year and helped plug another gap in the equation. It is not simply that Canadians are cheap. Environics found that a majority of Canadians (51%) only believe that some claims about green products are actually true. 75% say that only some or few of the claims about green products are true.

Clearly, many people do not believe what they are being sold when it comes to ‘green’ products. If people don’t believe these claims are valid, why would they bother taking the chance on a new product or spending more for the greener option?

Well over half the country doubts they can consistently find valid green products on the shelves, and if the TerraChoice study is of any indication, it can be difficult to find any truly green mainstream products. TerraChoice’s results (99% of products failing) make the group of serious doubters look relatively small. These numbers do not allow us to compare apples to apples, but they do paint a richer picture.

Last summer, the Federal Competition Bureau came out with guidelines, unexpectedly early, that are meant to inform companies about what kinds of claims they should and should not make about their products’ green credentials. The new guidelines will take effect in July 2009 to give companies time to adjust. Larry Bryenton, the Competition Bureau’s Acting Assistant Deputy Commissioner, says that the hope for these guidelines is to encourage companies making green claims to provide greater clarity, avoid vagueness, and only make verifiable and substantiated statements.

According to one other Competition Bureau employee, when they pass such guidelines, they find that 85% of the market place automatically falls in line and follows the new suggested rules. The problem is these are guidelines, not laws, and it is not expected that they will be enforced. According to Scott McDougall at TerraChoice, these new guidelines are not materially different from the last set of guidelines, originally issued in 1991. He said that the only factor that would make a major difference would be real enforcement of the guidelines.

Even if these new guidelines are top notch, what do we do when 15% of companies fail to tow the line? Consumers are, as we have seen, justifiably skeptical, and every time we read another story about some company greenwashing, consumers become that much more disillusioned with the entire green movement. People become jaded and disempowered, and are less likely to believe true green claims anywhere. We cannot afford to have even a small minority of companies continue to sell ‘brown’ products under the veil of green.

Scott McDougall does not believe that all of the false green claims are made intentionally. Multinational companies, he says, only make major changes in the face of shifts they perceive as real trends in terms of consumer preference. The flood of ‘green’ goods in the marketplace is clearly in response to newfound interest that is expected to have a lasting effect.

He also notes that each company has a legal team vetting all the communications they put forward. While this procedure does not always have the impact green advocates are looking for, these legal teams do make efforts to ensure their companies are not making inappropriate claims for which they could be found liable.

Scott McDougall goes on to say that so long as people are reminded about the ever-growing environmental problems and believe they can do something about them, they will remain engaged and motivated, potentially through the purchase of greener goods.

While the picture is not rosy, our understanding of the situation is improving. Only a few years ago, we would have thought that we would have to find a way to subsidize green goods and calm consumers’ insecurity about these purchases. Now we can see that other challenges may take priority. We need to look at mechanisms to ensure consumers have the necessary knowledge to make good green purchases. Ideally, with better information, people will also be included make fewer, more targeted, purchases. Here at WorldChanging, we’re very interested in such mechanisms.

We can see the beginnings of a private sector ready and willing to do its due diligence. Tools and studies like the ones highlighted above can help in development of a green marketplace. Finally, a clearer sense of the effectiveness of guidelines can help policy-makers decide when and where stricter enforcement is necessary to ensure that claims made by the private sector are relevant, verifiable and truly green.

Front Image: Credit: jdurham
Inside Image: (Image of Scott McDougall) - Credit: TerraChoice

The following are the Six Sins of Greenwashing. Go to the link below on the TerraChoice website to read the explanation of each 'sin.'

The Six Sins of Greenwashing

1. Sin of the Hidden Trade-Off
   
2. Sin of No Proof
   
3. Sin of Vagueness
   
4. Sin of Irrelevance
   
5. Sin of Fibbing
   
6. Sin of the Lesser of Two Evils

The BBC is planning to follow and report on the progress of a container around the world for a year. They have painted a container and bolted a GPS transmitter to allow is readers to follow its progress around the world on their map [as of the end of October 2008, this container is in Shanghai, containing whisky].

The BBC named their project "The Box" after The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, an interesting book on the history of containerization, and its effect on globalization, by Marc Levinson. (Here is a book review from Ethan Zuckerman and an essay by Witold Rybczynski).

I read the book earlier this year and enjoyed it. I would have liked more economic history and statistics in the book, but the main problem was that people mocked me when I told them I was reading a book about containers. However, containers have become an essential part of global trade and of its rapid growth.

Below are some maps of parts of global trade. They give a bit of an idea of where such a container is likely to move between.

The book—The Box—includes lots of interesting history of the container system, and how as a system it lead to innovations, efficiencies, and had many unintended consequences. One example is that it made many old ports obsolete, while reshaping many city centres (over decades). Also, the creation of new ports—and the changes in container ships they triggered—caused ongoing shifts in global trade patterns.

One key cycle of change was a positive feedback between ship size and port attributes. Because the fuel consumption of a ship does not increase proportionately to the number of containers a ship can carry—containers ships have become bigger and bigger—which has had the effect of focusing trade into ports that can handle the large ships and the trade volume. These big ports then lead to the construction of more of these bigger ships. Wikipedia lists the world’s busiest container ports. The busiest are Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Shenzen, and Busan. This concentration of big ships in big ports has had the effect of making world trade unexpectedly (for economic theory) “lumpy.” Paul Krugmann explains:

[Economic theory suggests] a country like China should export a wider range of products to a small country, like Ecuador, than it does to a big country, like the US. Why? Because Ecuador, being small, probably has fewer industries that are cost-competitive with Chinese exports. In fact, however, China seems to export a wider range of stuff to bigger economies.

A possible explanation is the lumpiness of transport costs: there are more container ships heading from China to US ports than to Ecuadorian ports, so that it’s worth sending over a bigger range of stuff. It’s like the reason there are fewer food choices in supermarkets on St. Croix (where we spent our last vacation) than in New Jersey—there’s just one boat with groceries coming over every once in a while, so you can’t keep, um, arugula in stock.

Reading the Box also makes it clear that while higher fuel prices will reshape trade patterns and probably boat designs, neither global trade patterns nor transportation costs will return to those of the 1960s or 1970s. This is due to huge improvements in logistics that have radically dropped the labour cost for shipping goods long distances, and this has also decreased fuel costs.

The rapid expansion of skills in logistics is a hidden environmental efficiency of the moden world economy—in that it allows things to be moved around for less cost than earlier in history. However as occurs with most increases in efficiency, modern society undoes the environmental advantages of efficiency by using the cost saving to simply move more stuff for the same amount of money.

Logistics makes at least parts of the world “flatter.” And the ease of making these connections appears to make it easier to spread tools and ideas as well as goods. The World Bank claims that countries with the most predictable, efficient, and best-run transportation routes and trade procedures are also the most likely to take advantage of technological advances, economic liberalization, and access to international markets. Countries with higher logistics costs are more likely to miss the opportunities of globalization. The World Bank ranks countries using a logistics performance index which measures the ease with which the country connects to the global economy. Singapore, Netherlands, and Germany are at the top as the most accessible; while Rwanada, East Timor, and Afghanistan are at the bottom of the rankings.

Of course, novel solutions also produce novel problems. Discarded containers litter landscapes worldwide (finding uses for them has become a standard architecture project), container ports are centres of environmental and biotic pollution, and the ease of using containers is also useful for smuggling.

And at least my impression from reading The Box, was that containerization has not finished transforming the world economy.

—

P.S. Ethan Zuckerman also has a long post Mapping a connected world discussing containers and world trade.

—

This article by WorldChanging Canada writer Garry Peterson was originally published on Resilience Science.

On the first Saturday after Obama's inspirational inauguration, and just days before Canada's parliament reconvened to debate a controversial budget, 140 web geeks, designers, academics, government staff, local political players, consultants, and social innovators came together to "re- imagine government and citizenship in the age of participation".

This was ChangeCamp, the inaugural Canadian "unconference " on the question of how we interact with government. ChangeCamp was held in the MaRS Centre in downtown Toronto. The 8 hour day was packed with small, ad hoc, group discussions, as well as participant proposed sessions organized using guidelines from the "Open Space Technology" meeting methodology.

This event was recognized as a continued evolution of the BarCamp model. BarCamps had originally been organized to provide web developers with opportunities to share and collaborate on innovative technologies. The focus on technology prevalent at BarCamps was certainly on display at ChangeCamp. Wifi laptops abounded. Conversations were often punctuated with open source computing jargon. It was easy to find familiar faces and themes from related local conferences, such as Open Everything, Transit Camp, and Open Cities.

Across the sessions and discussions was excited talk, and example after example, of how government-at every level from local to national-was going to become more transparent and collaborative through the use of new technologies. A few simple but powerful examples I learned about were created by the U.K. programmers at MySociety.org. From both within government, and outside of government, MySociety have created tools that empower citizens to communicate with their elected representatives (WriteToThem.com), hear from members of parliament (HearFromYourMP.com), track what members say in parliament (TheyWorkForYou.com), access government information (WhatDoTheyKnow.com), and report local infrastructure problems, like broken street lights and pot holes (FixMyStreet.com). Their biggest success was being asked by Number 10 Downing street (the official residence of the British Prime Minister) to create a web site to facilitate online petitions. With over 8 million signatures from over 5 million unique email addresses, the online petition site shows that people are interested in making their opinions available to government outside the election cycle.

Similar North American projects also exist. HowdTheyVote.ca scrapes the records from Canada 's Hansard records from parliamentary debates. OpenSecrets.org gives insight into money's influence on U.S. elections and public policy. GovTrack.us tracks U.S. federal legislation and information on Members of Congress. VisibleGovernment.ca is promoting tools for transparency of Canadian government information. The SeeClickFix.com collaborative tool allows for reporting on local problems. But none of these have the official legitimacy of the above mentioned petitions.number10.gov.uk , which can now be considered a political player of sorts, frequently referenced in the media.

The most interesting initiative I learned about was from the Citizen's Briefing Book component of Barack Obama's change.gov campaign web site. There, 70,000 people posted and voted on tens of thousands of policy suggestions for the incoming President. The top 10 suggestions were:

1. End marijuana prohibition (92,970 Points)
2. Become the “greenest” country in the world (70,470 Points)
3. Stop using federal resources to undermine states' medicinal marijuana laws (66,170 Points)
4. End government sponsored abstinence education and provide age appropriate sex education (65350 Points)
5. Fund bullet trains and light rail (65,100 Points)
6. Permanently close all torture facilities (61,250 Points)
7. Revoke tax cuts for the top 1% (57,080 Points)
8. Get the insurance companies out the health care (55,080 Points)
9. Revoke the tax exempt status of the Church of Scientology (52,470 Points)
10. Bring back the Constitution! (50,160 Points)

These results are obviously more representative of the web savvy Obama supporters than the general U.S. population, but it is notable that some of these specific suggestions (e.g. supporting rail) are rarely discussed in the media and represt a fresh grass roots perspective that is lacking from the typical general opinion polling that is often designed in reaction to the mainstream news.

Similar to sites like Digg.com, services like UserVoice.com, and Google's new free Moderator application, Obama's high profile-and open ended-approach to gauging public opinion could set a new trend away from polling and towards crowdsourcing. We should keep our eyes open to see what initiatives the newly created Federal Office of Public Liaison may demonstrate further in this direction.

All this optimism must be put in a realistic perspective, since the "digital divide" still exists. The most prolific online users are not demographically representative of the general population. To get a better sense of the informed voice of the people, participants can be organized into a representative sample of the larger whole. Case studies of such approaches can be seen in the Ontario and BC Citizen's Assemblies and more recently in the Australian Citizens' Parliament. These multi-day, face-to-face, approaches may not have the Web 2.0 sparkle of twitter.com or FaceBook, but their informed and deliberative approach can provide wiser recommendations than most current online voting systems.

What's next? In Canada, look to organizations like Ascentum and MassLBP, who are breaking new ground in both online and offline democracy between elections-and watch what emerges from upcoming ChangeCamps in Ottawa and Vancouver.

Image: Matthew Burpee

For more great articles on collaborative democractic practice, see:

• Citizens' Assemblies: Wise Democracy from the Minipublic | Jason Diceman
  
• Policy from the People | Jason Diceman
  
• Dotmocracy in Venezuela | Karl Schroeder