http://www.greenlivingonline.com/OurWorld/chris-turner/
(Mar 16, 2008)
Environmental consultant, Lee Schnaiberg caught up with Chris Turner to discuss his book, The Geography of Hope, and his thoughts on the green movement. 
Anthropocene Era. Nice term. Is that one of yours?
No, that was coined by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen (who won the Nobel for his work on the hole in the ozone layer) and his colleague Eugene F. Stoermer a few years ago to describe our place in geologic time. They placed the Anthropocene’s commencement at about the time of the invention of the steam engine in 1784 - when, of course, the process that’s led us to our current predicament was set in motion.
You cite McDonough: "Think of Paris with Farms on the Roof" while you conclude finish the book musing over a Calgary skyline. Are you talking about the seed of hope lying in a shift in perception and finding hope from within?
My point in closing with a scan of Calgary’s skyline was to demonstrate my own abandonment of two counterproductive lenses that were clouding my vision. The first, of course, was the doom-and-gloom lens, that paralyzing inability to see past the towering scope of the problem to anything like a viable solution beyond.
The second was - the starting-from-zero lens, I guess, in Modernist terms. The idea, anyway, that we must rebuild from scratch, or alternately that the solutions to the climate crisis - the ones I’d been talking about throughout the book - were the only ones there were. There are as many solutions as there are gazes prepared to look at this city - any city - with hope and vision.
What other inspiring technologies did you witness along the Geography of Hope?
Well run-of-river hydro is a very elegant way to go where it’s applicable, and passive-solar apartment blocks (which are all over the place now in Germany) are pretty slick and pretty near universal in their potential market. I noticed in yesterday’s paper the first SkySails-equipped ocean freighter set sail from Germany to America, which is encouraging. And I absolutely love the idea of thin-film solar, which I have to kind of restrain myself from thinking about as the Netscape-like killer app of green power that’ll bring it to every shopping mall in the free world, if you will. (Here’s hoping, but it’s important not to put all your eggs in one basket or whatever . . .)
You say "Abiding is damn near synonymous with sustaining." Why suffer at all?
I stand with Lovins and McDonough: We are not talking about suffering, sacrifice, going without. Definitely not talking about merely tolerating unpleasant circumstances, we are
My motto these days runs somewhere along the lines of this: It’s not enough, anymore, just to be right; you have to win. The green movement’s own rhetoric on climate change - which I think is justified in its sense of urgency - makes this case. If we’ve got ten years left to redirect this mothership, we can’t wait till every last captain of industry and self-serving politician has undergone the right kind of conversion; we simply need to show them how making the shift to sustainability is in their self-interest as well.
The Geography of Hope: an interview with Chris Turner
Image: www.thegeographyofhope.com
Anthropocene Era. Nice term. Is that one of yours?
No, that was coined by Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen (who won the Nobel for his work on the hole in the ozone layer) and his colleague Eugene F. Stoermer a few years ago to describe our place in geologic time. They placed the Anthropocene’s commencement at about the time of the invention of the steam engine in 1784 - when, of course, the process that’s led us to our current predicament was set in motion.
You cite McDonough: "Think of Paris with Farms on the Roof" while you conclude finish the book musing over a Calgary skyline. Are you talking about the seed of hope lying in a shift in perception and finding hope from within?
My point in closing with a scan of Calgary’s skyline was to demonstrate my own abandonment of two counterproductive lenses that were clouding my vision. The first, of course, was the doom-and-gloom lens, that paralyzing inability to see past the towering scope of the problem to anything like a viable solution beyond.
The second was - the starting-from-zero lens, I guess, in Modernist terms. The idea, anyway, that we must rebuild from scratch, or alternately that the solutions to the climate crisis - the ones I’d been talking about throughout the book - were the only ones there were. There are as many solutions as there are gazes prepared to look at this city - any city - with hope and vision.
What other inspiring technologies did you witness along the Geography of Hope?
Well run-of-river hydro is a very elegant way to go where it’s applicable, and passive-solar apartment blocks (which are all over the place now in Germany) are pretty slick and pretty near universal in their potential market. I noticed in yesterday’s paper the first SkySails-equipped ocean freighter set sail from Germany to America, which is encouraging. And I absolutely love the idea of thin-film solar, which I have to kind of restrain myself from thinking about as the Netscape-like killer app of green power that’ll bring it to every shopping mall in the free world, if you will. (Here’s hoping, but it’s important not to put all your eggs in one basket or whatever . . .)
You say "Abiding is damn near synonymous with sustaining." Why suffer at all?
I stand with Lovins and McDonough: We are not talking about suffering, sacrifice, going without. Definitely not talking about merely tolerating unpleasant circumstances, we are
My motto these days runs somewhere along the lines of this: It’s not enough, anymore, just to be right; you have to win. The green movement’s own rhetoric on climate change - which I think is justified in its sense of urgency - makes this case. If we’ve got ten years left to redirect this mothership, we can’t wait till every last captain of industry and self-serving politician has undergone the right kind of conversion; we simply need to show them how making the shift to sustainability is in their self-interest as well.
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