Green Options

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The 7th International Ecocity World Conference continues this week in San Francisco, California and if a positive aspect exists about globalization, it can be seen at this conference. A buzz exists in what feels like a combination of the World Cup (the passion), the U.N. (the international flavor) and something like Greenpeace (the Green aspect). We ran into a potpourri of organic architects, city planners, NGO leaders, and other interested in sustaining the earth as we know it.

The speakers ranged from keynote speaker Jaimie Lerner, former mayor of Curitiba Brazil co-founder of the IPPUC, Parris Glendending (Former Governor of Maryland and President of Smart Growth Leadership Institute and Janet Larsen, Director of Research for the Earth Policy Institute and advocate for Lestor Brown’s Plan B. Larsen mentioned how Plan A refers to as “business as usual” and most of us can see that that plan isn’t working. Plan B doesn’t just refer to the U.S. Countries like Algeria who depend on their oil revenue can see the oil-less future and continue to create solar and thermal alternatives to power their future. Imagine an oil country funding alt energy sources.

Taking a break from the daily San Francisco routine, we headed down to Los Angeles for a conference known as Canada Marketplace where we search for the anything significantly Green in the Great White North. We did discover some hotels, restaurants and other things making that movement in the green direction but that will have to wait for another post.

In this one, we focus on the marketplace itself. This year, they ventured into that Green netherworld to make the conference greener. They even hired a Green conference consultant but we could track down this consultant so we had do go it alone.

We thing we see when we check in is a giant sign from Travel Alberta about how they have purchased carbon credits. It’s no secret of what we think of carbon credits (low on the green totem pole). We’re more about actually doing something to make a change instead of just buying something.