We’re pleased to announce the addition of a new series to our weekly offering of downloadable audio and video podcasts.
Mark Leiren-Young, director of the new forestry docudrama, “The Green Chain” is joining our site. He’s kicked off his contributions with three compelling interviews with high-profile environmentalists.
Here they are:
*Trash-Talking with the Garbage-Warrior, Oliver Hodge
Director, Oliver Hodge, was a movie props maker who helped design and create the stuff you might find on spaceships — including light sabers for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace. But Hodge left Hollywood to make a film about an architect named Michael Reynold - who builds sustainable housing out of garbage. The result is his first feature film, Garbage Warrior.
*Trees and Us: An interview with Severn Cullis Suzuki
Severn Cullis-Suzuki has been speaking out on social justice and environmental issues since she was small. She founded the Environmental Children’s Organization at age nine and attended the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and several UN summits since. Mark talks to Severn about her book about the new generation of environmentalists.
Mark Leiren-Young’s film, The Green Chain, is a dramatical interpretation of the clash between forestry-workers and environmentalists. Through a series of monologues, activists, politicians, and lumberjacks describe their wildly different versions of the conflict. It’s like a Rashomon for the logging industry. Find out more about Mark Lieren-Young and his film, “The Green Chain” on his production blog.
American architect Michael Reynolds turns old tires, beer cans and plastic bottles into “earthships.”
Director, Oliver Hodge, was a movie props maker who helped design and create the stuff you find on spaceships — including the light sabers for The Phantom Menace. But Hodge left the Oompa Loompas at Charlie’s Chocolate Factory and suspended his license to create killer weapons for James Bond to chronicle Reynold’s adventures for his first feature film, Garbage Warrior.
Hodge spent three years following Reynolds as he fought to change the laws in New Mexico to create a self-sustaining community and flew into disaster areas to build — and teach locals to build — homes that require no heating, no outside sewage or water systems and redefine the meaning and possibilities of “living off the grid.”
Garbage Warrior just finished a run at the 2007 Vancouver International Film Festival where it won the inaugural People’s Choice Award for the Most Popular International Nonfiction Film. Hodge also won the award for Best Debut Director at the British Independent Film Awards.
By now you might have heard of the one laptop per child campaign. The organization is bridging the global information divide by putting affordable computers into the hands of children in developing countries.
This month they’re offering a give one get one campaign - where, for $400, you can get a laptop and give another one to a child with little or no access to education.
Reading the program’s mission statement, I was reminded of questions posed by Thomas Homer-Dixon and Datalibre. These people are looking at crowd-sourcing and collaborative problem solving to solve some of the gravest problems facing humanity. OLPC also asks, “If every child in the world had access to a computer, what potential could be unlocked? What problems could be solved?”
Not to mention the laptops themselves - dubbed the XO laptops - look beautiful. They have been specially designed to function in adverse climates and are with robust hardware and software. The innovation in design is enough to get any tech nerd like myself excited. It will be exciting to see where this project leads us in the coming years.
Last night she spoke in downtown Montreal to a crowded room and I was there to record the event. She is a wonderful speaker; calm, clear and boundlessly insightful.
Listen to this week’s podcast (Running time: 32:20):
When I first read John Vaillant’s story about “The Golden Spruce” in The New Yorker I had two simultaneous thoughts… what an incredible story and… who the heck is John Vaillant?
I definitely don’t know the work of every writer in Vancouver, but I couldn’t believe there was someone in my city who wrote this wonderfully, who I’d never heard of. The article is one of the best I’ve ever read. It’s an amazing story, beautifully told. But the book rocked my world.
It wasn’t just the rich history of the Spruce or the drama and mystery of renegade logger, Grant Hadwin, that impressed me, it was the way John wove in the history of logging and the BC forests.
When I decided to do a podcast, John was the first person I contacted. He not only agreed to be interviewed, he provided me with a list of other potential interview subjects — many of whom you’ll hear me talk with soon.
Most interviews with John focus on the man who killed the Golden Spruce, but I wasn’t interested in Grant Hadwin’s story for this. I wanted to know what a writer from the U.S. saw in Haida Gwaii that all the writers in BC had missed. I also wanted his thoughts on our forests, the way they’re run, and the new story he’s doing for National Geographic — both because it sounds like a fascinating model for land management and because I’m really looking forward to reading it when he’s done.
John and I talked at his kitchen table in his home in Vancouver, BC. So if you hear any squeaks, that would be the sound of wooden chairs shifting on a hardwood floor. And in a podcast about trees, I kind of like the idea of punctuating it with the music of creaking wood.
