On Tuesday night I left the farm and flew to milder climes. It kind of feels like I’ve run away with the circus - I’m now in an unassuming and laid back coastal city that’s about to be uncorked.

For the past two years I’ve been nursing an elite athlete-driven program called David Suzuki’s Play It Cool.  The program and I moved last spring from the David Suzuki Foundation to it’s partner organization The Climate Project Canada, and together our organizations have been hashing out big plans which culminated in a splashy news conference last Wednesday. We presented the organizers of the Vancouver 2010 Olympics with a bronze medal for their efforts to reduce the event’s climate impact. These are the greenest Games yet, and it’s been a thrilling ride to play a role in pushing the organizers to follow through on their bid promise to make them so.

Canadian Alpine Ski Team member Kelly VanderBeek, who’s tragically been sidelined from the Games due to a knee injury, and retired Canadian Speed Skater Ingrid Liepa (above with David Suzuki) filled out our Play It Cool athlete contingent. I can’t even describe how proud I felt to hear Kelly and Ingrid speak so eloquently and passionately about the visible impact of climate change on winter sports, and what they’re both doing to reduce their carbon footprint. They blew me away with their compelling stories and positive message, and we had excellent national and international media coverage which just fills my heart! It’s wonderful to see this five year campaign build up to such a positive peak.

As I’m sure you’ve guessed (no surprise here) I’m in Vancouver and I’ll be here for a month covering the Games. I have a packed calendar but it includes tickets to six Play It Cool athletes’ events so it’s not all work and no play! I’ll be blogging soon quite regularly here alongside our ‘Green Olympians’ so I’m not sure how focused I’ll be on all things locavore. I’ll post when I catch my breath, how’s that?

Let the Games begin!

My grandma asked me what I was up to at work. So I told her, and the conversation turned to a contest my colleagues have created:

1. Record a video of yourself calling the Prime Minister to tell him that you want him to act on behalf of Canadians at the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen this December

2. Post it on the David Suzuki Foundation website

3. The winner receives a phone call from David Suzuki and a gift certificate from Mountain Equipment Co-op. Not bad!

Our conversation was getting quite intense. We were feeding each other’s disgust for Stephen Harper and his blind policies. My pulse was rising. I knew it was time.

I called first. My heart was pounding, hard! I was leaving a message for the Prime Minister! I told him how concerned I was that he wasn’t acting on the behalf of Canadians; about the opportunities he was ignoring in the new clean energy economy; about the lack of leadership he was showing - especially in the face of India and China now committing to stricter greenhouse gas reduction targets; and about how concerned I was that he wasn’t securing a prosperous and clean future for my children and his.

I was on a high when I hung up the phone. And even higher when my Grandma called him. She told him that in her 98 years of life in Canada she remembers a lot of important events. But most importantly, she remembers the clean air and water, the lack of focus on economic prosperity, and the higher levels of happiness during her earlier years. She told him that there was a real opportunity to turn things around, if he did the right thing in Copenhagen.

What a rush! We hugged when she finished, and I know I’ll never forget this day. The day my Grandma and I called the Prime Minister from her living room.

Things are heating up in my day job as the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen draws closer.

On a daily basis my inbox is inundated with emails related to this, the most important event in history: the summit where world leaders will decide on new regulations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which are contributing to dangerous climate change. On a daily basis, I also become more and more embarrassed and appalled at our Prime Minister’s position of inaction, which threatens Canada’s and the world’s prosperity and future. To make matters worse, Harper is the only leader of the developed world who is now stalling progress in international negotiations to create a strong new plan to safeguard our future.

So I did something about it. I wrote Stephen a letter and told him how important it is that he act on behalf of Canadians at the UN Summit this December. You can send him a letter too. It’s easy peasy and automatic via the David Suzuki Foundation’s website, just click here.

Want to send another strong message to our leaders? Thousands of events are going on around the world this Saturday, October 24th - click here to find one near you!

Paper Valentines? So 20th century.

Greener options exist for your red-letter day. Send one of our three environmentally erogenous efforts!

Squeeze the object of your affection and hug the trees you’ll save by adding a splash of green to the traditional Valentines Day red.

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Valentine/