Environment

Special features of the website include:

• a comprehensive , listing the dozens of workshops, sustainability cafes, speakers, and so much more taking place through the 30 Days;
• a collection of that will be taken by attendees at events all month;
• A section that lists all of the news updates;
• an interactive section, where a new question will be posted each day, and the public will have the chance, along with our panel of sustainability experts, exciting events taking place this month. Please take a minute to forward it far and wide to your sustainability / environmental / social change networks, and encourage others to do the The 19th Annual Angel Forum came to a successful close this afternoon.

  Thirty-six companies in the software, manufacturing, communications, internet, and medical device sectors presented to 70+ investors over the course of a full day of sessions. Each presenting company was given 10 minutes to pitch their company, market, team, market problem, solution, and investment needs to a group of prospective investors. Then the investors had a Q A period with the entrepreneurs.

  In addition, we had some excellent presentations: * Bull Housser Tupper spoke on Intellectual property protection, employment issues, and term sheet negotiation; Thanks everybody for a great day and we look forward to seeing you all back here in Fall! 2006 session this morning, which was sponsored by , The presentation started with an overview of the successes from 2005. Next, Geoff Hansen presented an IT Outlook for 2006.

  This was followed by the Ready Along with those lists, Price-Waterhouse Coopers presented an overview of the M A and IPO activity across North America for 2005, and Bill Koty, a series of scenarios and predictions for B.C.'s technology economy development from 2005-2020.

  The summary notes are below along with some of my opinion at successful because they had a laser focus on a niche market.

• Key highlights of the 2005 has opened up the APIs, companies are succeeding by building things that Outlook, contact Geoff Hansen at Rocketbuilders at 866-824-8785 or at .
  difficulty keeping it DOWN to 25, which meant that the Ones to Watch list expanded to 40 companies.

• There were so many interesting technologies Concepts" category...

  but didn't

• Success factors. The Top 25 shared some key order to lower their costs, and simplify their operations because the costs of compliance are huge (up to 30% of IT spending per above notes, not to mention radar but our prices have gone up and our currency has gone up, leaving us as companies buying Canadian ones or vice versa. There was very little activity in companies.

  They are buying revenues, not necessarily technologies. Once a titled "Ahead of the Future". It evaluated 39 emerging technologies, the industry advisory board.

  It was long on research methodology and

  At the end of the day, what did they really say?

  If I had to summarize the session, I would say it like this:
  people had that gut sense but the numbers now prove it.
• We are building some really kick-ass companies here in B.

  C.

• Those companies are growing again.
• M A activity will be at an all time high in 2006 and the IPO markets are opening up again as exit routes.

acquisition. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. It brings money into the economy, it gives local entrepreneurs access to global acquisitors' systems and training and talent, and spawns more entrepreneurial ventures.

A year or two ago, one of the local entrepreneurs hosted a VEF event titled something like: "Why acquisitions are gutting B.C.'s economy.

" The resulting talk across the board on a bunch of different things. I remember the host lamenting at the end that he should have talked to the panel BEFORE naming the talk.
to a decent size We need to keep thinking bigger.

Even the statement that they But it's a starting point. If you are an entrepreneur, don't say, "We're the western world" or the whole world for that matter.
Mandela but which was actually written by Marianne Williamson in her 1992 book, inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be? insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of god that is within us.

It is not in just some of us. It is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give people permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
B.C.

entrepreneurs would do well to think about that and learn from it. Our playing small doesn't serve the world. So get out there, think big, and serve
Did you hear the screams?

Did you feel the menacing chill? Did you see the black and ominous clouds, moving north?
Did you sense, in other words, the very presence of Satan himself as he laughed maniacally and tossed around bucketfuls of ultrathin condoms and little travel-size packets of Astroglide like confetti while riding his Harley Softail up to Toronto or maybe Edmonton to join the ghastly and sodomitic celebrations?

Because it's happened. Canada's high court just ruled that the government can, if it so desires, redefine marriage to include gay couples, which it has declared it will do almost immediately, thus solidifying Canada's place as the chilly yet mellow and gay friendly and hockey-riffic epicenter of all known hell.
It's true.

It's rather amazing. Gay marriage will be completely legal in Canada very soon. It's been oddly ignored in much of the U.

S. media and hasn't really been much discussed among those in the terrified red states except when, deep in the night, from their respective lumpy twin beds, they whisper to each other across the room as they pop their Ambien and stroke their portfolios and curse their very genitals: oh my God what's wrong with those freakin' Canadians?
I mean (they continue), I thought they loved red meat and brutish sports and manly hunting.

Are they all just freaks and perverts now? Have they been sniffing too many elk pelts? Is it something in the clean and plentiful water up there?

Something to do with those weird French-esque people in Quebec, maybe?
I knew we should've been paying more attention to that border! Didn't I say so, honey?

Didn't I say we should keep an eye on those northern weirdos after they dissed the Iraq war and legalized pot and sort of went about their happy and calm Canadian business whilst we here in panicky red-blooded America chewed our own karmic legs off in a paranoid and jingoistic rage? Hippies and perverts, I said! Save a few bombs for Ontario, George, I say!

Let us now do the naughty math: Canada has roughly 32 million inhabitants, of whom about 75 percent are over 18, of whom it can be loosely estimated that anywhere from 2 to 8 percent are gay (depends, of course, on who you ask).
All of which translates into a ballpark figure of anywhere from 1 million to 2 million gay Canadians of legal marrying age who will now eagerly laugh and kiss in the streets and confound poor reactionary born-again George W. Bush, and they will flash their wedding rings at parties and annoy all the single people, all while proving for the umpteenth time that love knows no gender limitations or legal restrictions and will trump your whiny sanctimonious religious puling any given Sunday.

Heathens!
It's getting more confusing by the minute, isn't it? I mean, Canada now has legal pot and legal gay marriage and universal health care and no known terrorist enemies and a relatively successful multiparty political system.

They also have, according to U.N.'s Human Development Index, one of the highest qualities of life in the world.

All coupled with a dramatically reduced rate of gun violence and far better gun-control legislation than the U.S., despite having the exact same per capita rate of gun ownership and gun-sport enthusiasm.

What the hell? How is this possible? Why aren't they scared to death like whiny red-state Americans?

Why don't they want to kill each other along with anything that might threaten their access to televised hockey and cheap beer and yummy poutine?
Aren't they aware of what's happening in the world? Don't they know they are openly hated for their freedoms and their caf s and their vinegared french fries?

Aren't they human, fer Chrissakes? Oh, red states. How confused and irritated you must be.

After all, unlike the U.S., Canada backed the Kyoto Treaty (along with 165 other heathen nations).

They also spend more per capita on education and less on health-care overhead than the U.S. They have a $10 billion federal surplus, a new record.

They are not, as of yet, abusing the hell out of their vast natural resources (freshwater, huge forests, oil and natural gas, mineral deposits, etc.) and embarrassing themselves on a global scale every single day and making a mockery of their constitution or their citizens' civil liberties. What the hell is wrong with them?

Yes yes, I know, Canada's universal health care is flawed and not always of the best quality, and a great many Canadians think their prime minister is a bit of a schmuck and they hate paying taxes and of course they can be all profitable and progressive when they don't have a massive bogus unwinnable war to pay for, one run by a ravenous and fiscally idiotic federal government, and they only have one-tenth of our population and one-fiftieth of our desperate consumeristic gluttony. They have it easy, right?
Remember, Canada is boring.

Canada is rarely in the news. Canada has no massive belching socioeconomic engine like America does, what with our NASCAR and Hollywood and Fox News and bad porn and the absolute best medical care on the planet despite how only a tiny fraction of us have access to it while the rest languish in bloated abusive HMOs and poverty and disease and 40 percent of us have no access to health care whatsoever. Take that, Canada!

Oh wait.
We hate gays and love guns and think pot is evil but hand out Prozac and Zoloft like Chiclets. Meanwhile (as "Bowling for Columbine" so beautifully illuminated), Canadians leave their doors unlocked and don't feature violence and death on every newscast and still value community and diversity and discussion over solipsism and protectionism and a general hatred of foreigners and the French.

See? We rule! Oh wait.

All of which makes you wonder: how many more countries will it take? How many more nations will have to, for example, prove that gun licensing works, or that gay-marriage legislation is a moral imperative, or that health care for all is mandatory for a nation's well being, before America finally looks at itself and says, whoa, damn, we are so silly and small and wrong? Is there any number large enough?

After the announcement that gay Chinese and gay Russians may legally marry and grow lovely gardens of marijuana as they all get free dental care, will America remain terrified of nipples and queers?
Canadians. So mellow.

So laid back. So gay. So not producing any truly superlative modern-rock music or ultraviolent buddy-cop movies and not actively siccing Wal-Mart or Starbucks or Paris Hilton on the rest of the world like a goddamn cancer.

They're just so ...

nice. And boring. And calm.

And solid. And friendly.
And they simply beat us senseless on the whole open-minded, progressive thing.

Kicked our flag-wavin' butts. Trounced our egomaniacal self-righteous selves and made the red states look even more foolish and backward than the whole world already knows them to be.
They did it.

Canada made the whole gay marriage issue look effortless and obvious and healthy, and a massive black rain of hellfire did not pour down upon them and the very idea of hetero marriage did not immediately explode and their economy did not unravel like all the sneering cardinals and right-wing nutballs screamed it would. We must ask, one last time: what the hell is wrong with them?
Oh wait.

Maybe we should rephrase. What the hell, we should be asking, is wrong with us? Listening to Robin S - Show Me Love (Stonebridge mix) from the album "Club Sounds Vol.

27 CD2" Andrew Zolli (again) points out a fantastic project known as the Eastgate building in Harare, Zimbabwe that was (see ) and that resulted in 10% lower up front capital costs, lower ongoing running costs, and 20% lower rents for its inhabitants compared with the building next door built with a normal HVAC system. (That last bit I love stories like this one at the Christian Science Monitor about Chris Anderson, a New Zealand scientist . (Thanks for the link.

) In one fell swoop, he has come up with a process to improve the small artisan miners in business, although now they are watching over crops instead of pouring chemicals into the old mines. UPDATE: Closer to home, brought my attention to a between Teck-Cominco, Western Bioresources Consulting, and Celgar Pulp Mill. Thanks Matt!

Portland Indymedia (pdximc) has a in particular that is very interesting. In short, it states that we use 1 billion gallons of fossil fuel per day and that we only generate 1.5 billion gallons of vegetable oil per year.

He posits that were we to shift radically from fossil to bio fuels, we necessary bio feed stocks - feeding human food to cars as it were. He flawed energy usage culture for a little bit longer, while shifting the costs around to another place, making us feel better, and gaining some air quality. Of course, all energy sources have pros, cons, weaknesses, strengths.

And of course, varying outputs per dollar invested and varying environmental, social, and cultural costs. However, I am going to explore this topic more in future postings. It in the U.

S. and how that will likely lead to diesel/hybrid vehicles. The problem is that diesel is still fossil-fuel based, stinky, sooty, and toxic.

And a Booz Allen Hamilton report claims that ...

and 80 percent by 2015. Hopefully, we will put modifying the engines.) Sure, bio-diesel costs a few cents more but if your car is getting 85mpg (like the ), who cares?

Okay, so it has to use human poop to attract the flies and it still mouth - but all the same, the interesting parts of this equation are: Isn't technology great? Imagine writing the grant application for this baby: that will swallow and digest the flies, which it will then use for Department of Homeland Silliness: "Does it counter terrorism? Can you attract terrorist flies?

Or can it digest terrorists? Or can you use Applicant: "Ummmmmmm..

...

.sure..

...

...

yeah...

...

.I'm positive it can do some of those things." DHS: "Right, here's twenty million and let me know if you need more.

" looks like a blast! Check out the of somebody goofing around on the prototype Centaur. It uses the Segway wheelies.

What a blast this would be to have around town! (I'm thinking that the posties will like this one WAY more than the 2 wheeler.) Centaur jousting or polo anyone?

If you have a love of architecture, green homes, virtual reality, and Dilbert, and you have a good half hour to waste spend, I recommend that you visit Scott Adam's new Virtual home tour at and be prepared to be blown away. The house design was the result of Dilbert's Ultimate House. I think the results are stunning.

I the chance to sit in it. It was incredibly roomy up front for the two passengers. I totally fell in love with this car.

There is not much room in the back. Less in fact than I had behind the back seat in my old Jeep TJ. But the car is just so damned cute.

I wonder if you can mount bike racks on it at the back???

(hwy) / 65mpg (city), uses a clutchless automatic 6-speed, and comes in several different models ranging from $16,500 to $22,000 in Canada. They are being sold through the Mercedes network across Canada. I hope they sell millions of these things to Vancouverites.

Wouldn't it be great if we were all driving these tiny little things around town? Then, wouldn't it be even better if we were filling them with for zero-toxicity, clear, clean emissions? How cool is this?

Metin Sitti, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon's has built a , the same way that water striders do. The "bug" contains about $10 worth Mike Crissey, writer for Associated press wrote: Although it's only a basic prototype, Sitti and other researchers With a chemical sensor, it could monitor water supplies for explorer; with a net or a boom, it could skim contaminants off the top people in 52 countries. It took a decade and 262 scientists to complete the work, which, according to the editor of The Lancet medical journal, The scientists, who concluded that about 90 percent of the risk factors for heart attacks can be prevented, are scheduled to published the findings in The Lancet next week.

continent, not a single civilization, not a single race, can be spared from cardiovascular disease, which will hit humankind more dangerously than the Black Death in the Middle Ages," said Bassand, who was not connected with the study or the publication. "What we need is political action." [.

..] A bad cholesterol profile, measured using a new test considered cholesterol and bad LDL cholesterol, was the most important risk Smoking was the next most important player, followed by diabetes, high blood pressure and a fat belly.

Stress came next, followed by inadequate fruit and vegetable intake, then lack of exercise. Light to moderate alcohol consumption was found to be of slight benefit. societal change, including better urban planning and health-promoting food policies and advertising regulations, experts said.

obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other illness linked to an Similar to my on swarming algorithms, Steve Jurvetson, head of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Nice to see he agrees with me!! I'm kidding of course.

The area of bio-mimetics has been discussed for quite some time. However, now we biological creatures to create nano structures. We live in fascinating Now there is still a huge amount of pollution, possibly including PCBs, Mercury, dioxins, asbestos, and others permeating the buildings across I actually understand why, from a National Security perspective, the nation-state would insist that it was okay to go to work.

They needed want to scare people away from doing that. sacrificed their long-term health for that effort, to not be taken care of. Apparently as many as 40% of the people affected do not have any the I.

T.'s office looked at the current clean up that the E.P.

A., finally after months and months of criticism and public outcry, agreed it was going to do a clean up of lower Manhattan, but decided only to do residential apartments and only those where people requested it. The Manhattan can happen is, number one, if buildings are cleaned up as systems.

If you have a central air conditioning system and three or all together, all at once and also the inspector general is saying that the commercial office buildings have to be cleaned, not just residential buildings. And the E.P.

A.'s response to that is that s going to cost a lot of money. So the inspector general reminds E.

P.A. of lower Manhattan.

I think that is the battle that is still being Clinton. I think they will have a press conference today about it--that if there were pollutants, and there were, that made their way into buildings that have not been properly cleaned, then that pollution and those toxic chemicals are still there, circulating in the air. order to pull the water in.

Some of the benefits that are listed on the Enwave site are: Removes 40,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the air - equivalent to taking 8000 cars off the road Reduces ozone depleting refrigerants (CFC's and HCFC's) [by how much???

] It's an interesting project. I look forward to reading more on the actual implementation and real-world results. efficient before it will be widely useable, and how this may be achieved with nano-scale means.

I would add that there may be some It also quotes Sunil Paul, founder of Brightmail commenting that go "beyond just making money" - a favourite topic of mine. I wrote a research paper back at UVic on Alternative energy sources, and had as my instructor, Dr. Fred Knelman, a major thorn in the side of the global nuclear establishment.

I learned a lot from him and from that class. The biggest thing I learned was that renewable and non-petroleum, non-coal power was only capable of creating 5% of the these alternatives was not very high in comparison to oil, coal, and nuclear. And that was one of the primary reasons that they had not gone anywhere.

The costs were relatively exorbitant to create the same amount of power. Until the economics become reasonable, there still Everything old is new again. It's all about timing.

These are afoot here in British Columbia. Some major global, national, and Daily, we are pummelled with news of , the leaching of petroleum based chemicals , and . as their crops are either commodified driving the prices down, or their natural genetic stock supplies are cut back, leading to due to massive consolidation of seed-stock into fewer and fewer genetic strains.

It seems like nothing but bad news. But there are many, many people currently working on these issues in the international arena: energy security, climate change, and sustainable development to name some key ones. And they are making some real progress.

Nationally, here in Canada, we have some things happening that are Provincially, the Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Fisheries is advancement and promotion of a BC Bioproducts-based industry. They are All of these forces - international, national, and provincial - are conspiring to create a renaissance of sorts. I say renaissance heat and light.

But now we have the beginnings of genetic understanding So, what are Bioproducts anyway? Well, there are lots of definitions domestic plant, animal, marine, or forestry-based material, that generally does not contain synthetics, toxins, or environmentally damaging substances. (I used this definition by merging two other definitions that I have recently read.

It is not a formal definition by any means.) In short, you take bio source materials such as barley, corn, wheat, soybeans, wood wastes, aquaculture wastes, animal rendering wastes, or municipal wastes, and then through a series of bioprocesses convert it molecules), biochemicals, or biofuels (such as ethanol, biodiesel, or services, we lower the total waste, lower our Carbon emissions, develop build sustainable and environmentally sane communities, cities, and mill wastes into energy; or converting corn into biodiesel, which has extremely positive benefits such as no black filthy smoke, many fewer toxins, and better mileage. Another great example would be using Like all emerging sectors, in order for our province to seriously develop it, a concerted effort will be required to connect policy farmers, funders, and researchers.

Columbia. I will write more about it here as things develop. I love Craig Venter for his long view, his burning curiousity, and his adventurous spirit.

And probably because he pisses so many people off in the scientific community for being a dilletante. And yet, he has done more for the development of the various *omics (genomics, proteomics) than almost all others to date. : sequencing ALL of the genetic material in it at once.

His expectation is that he will find 10-20 million new genes in upwards of 100,000 new but their actual physical molecules are recycling in days, hours, and minutes. This makes me think of Steven Johnson's excellent book which have an arc of months or years, despite the fact that the ants themselves live only weeks (not sure if I have the timelines correct but that's the basic gist of it.) Another author who may be able to she light on this would be Ken Wilber in his book, .