The IMPERATIVE Podcast

In this episode, I talked with Lliam Hildebrand about his inspiration and reasons for founding Iron+Earth; the huge opportunities to transform the dying fossil fuel industry workforce into a renewable energy workforce; the opportunities and challenges for policy to drive large-scale social change; and about the “Prosperous Transition Plan” that Iron+Earth is now rolling out, that, if implemented, could transform Canada’s workforce, businesses, infrastructure, and environment to meet the demands of a future net-zero economy.

We also talked about what gives Lliam hope and keeps him going when things look dark, and the advice he would offer listeners about what they can do to be part of making a difference in meeting the challenges of the Twenty First Century Imperative.

Lliam is the founder, and now Executive Director, of Iron+Earth, a not-for-profit NGO led by Alberta oilsands workers committed to both re-training oil industry workers for new jobs in the rapidly emerging renewable energy industry, and to engaging in, and advocating for, renewable energy development to create an energy future they can proud of. 

Lliam led the creation of this organization during the spring of 2015 when oil prices started to fall. Oil sands workers were losing their jobs, and the need to diversify Alberta’s energy grid was on everyone’s mind. As Lliam notes, “We founded Iron+Earth as a platform to engage in renewable energy development issues, and to empower us to advocate for an energy future we could be proud of creating.” Since its inception, membership has grown to include workers from a variety of industrial trades, including boilermakers, electricians, pipe fitters, ironworkers, and labourers.

You can read more about this podcast in the podcast’s Show Notes. 

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In this episode I talk with Dr. Afton Halloran about global food security and sustainability; and  the link between climate-induced food insecurity and climate refugees; the reality that there are no silver bullets to the critical environmental challenges we face; but at the same time there are still a number of positive solutions to our problems that are “lights at the end of the tunnel”, and that it’s not all “gloom and doom”.

 

We also talk about what gives Afton hope and keeps her going when things look dark, and what advice she would offer listeners about what they can do to be part of making a difference in meeting the challenges of the Twenty First Century Imperative, and maintaining their hope?

 

As an independent consultant in Sustainable Food System Transitions, and a trans-disciplinary scientist, Afton has worked on food and agriculture issues with organizations such as the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the Nordic Council of Ministers. Afton is a consultant-researcher for the Food Planet Prize Secretariat, has co-authored and edited three books on sustainable food systems,  and holds a research position at the University of Copenhagen.  

 

Afton is also now the host of the Nordic Talks podcast, the number-one producer of Nordic inspirational podcasts on sustainability.

 

You can read more about this podcast in the podcast’s Show Notes. 

 

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please consider supporting us by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page.

In this podcast I spoke with Henry Gordon-Smith, the founder and CEO of Agritecture an urban agriculture consulting firm. Henry has become the world’s go-to expert in urban agriculture: from community gardens to high-rise high-intensity hydroponic agriculture. I thought Henry would be a good person to talk with about the Twenty First Century Imperative, and specifically about the importance of developing local food supplies to counter the increasing impacts that climate change is having on our industrial food system.

In 2011, Henry started Agritecture.com, a media platform covering the news, business, and design of how agriculture integrates with the built environment. Following that, in 2013, Henry co-founded the Association for Vertical Farming, and then in 2014, he started Agritecture Consulting, an urban agriculture consultancy assisting over 126 clients in 26 countries including entrepreneurs, multinational companies, architecture firms, municipalities, and educational institutions.

Most recently, in April 2020, Henry's team launched Agritecture Designer, the world's first online urban farm planning software. In all his pursuits, Henry says he is motivated by achieving triple bottom line success – success that is measured by its positive impact on people, the planet, and profitability.

In this podcast interview, I had a wide-ranging conversation with Henry about the challenges and opportunities for urbanizing food production; where aquaponics fits in; new techniques and technologies, and what gives Henry hope in the face of the enormous climate change challenges we face. 

You can read more about this podcast in the podcast’s Show Notes. 

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please consider supporting us by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page.

In this podcast interview, I spoke with Ryan Zizzo, the Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Mantle, an interdisciplinary climate change consultancy based in Toronto, about the challenges and opportunities for reducing both operating and embodied carbon in new buildings as well his thoughts on climate change adaptation. Ryan is doing some really exciting work in the quantification of carbon and developing strategies to reduce both operating and embodied carbon.

 I first met Ryan when we were both presenting at a CaGBC Conference some years ago. What impressed me most about Ryan’s presentation was his deep understanding about, not just how to design a sustainable, low-carbon building, but the implications of the life cycle of the building – and this was when life cycle approaches were not widely used. Ryan is also one of the most knowledgeable people about carbon accounting in Canada. He is currently the Chair of the Embodied Carbon Network’s 80+ member Policy Working Group, as well as a member of the Canada Green Building Council’s Zero Carbon Steering Committee.

As the Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Mantle, Ryan and Mantle’s team of lawyers, engineers and green finance experts assist public and private sector clients decrease their carbon footprint and devise strategies to transition to a low-carbon and climate-adjusted future.

You can read more about this podcast in the podcast’s Show Notes. 

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please consider supporting us by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page.

In this podcast episode, in place of our typical interview format, you will hear the keynote presentation I gave to the American Institute of Architecture StudentsConference in December 2019.This presentation sums up the key ideas that I have been exploring with our podcast guests over the past two years, as well as background research for those interviews.  

 For all of you who have been following the science of climate change, you will know that this will be no ordinary decade! It will most probably be the last opportunity our species has to pull back from the brink of climate change catastrophe, and hopefully save ourselves, and the rest of the biosphere, from run-away global warming.

 The good news is that we now have all the tools and technologies at our disposal to stop global carbon emissions if we decide to do it! And we’ve done this before. We did it in the Second World War, in 1940, where in 2 years under President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the United States instituted their “Arsenal of Democracy” program, and went from producing no planes, no tanks, and no arms, to producing hundreds of thousands to supply all the allies in their fight against Nazi Germany and then Imperial Japan. However, instead of gearing up to produce planes, tanks, and guns, we will need to build millions of photovoltaic panels, thousands of wind generators, and plant billions of trees.

 It is no exaggeration to say that we now need to be making serious preparations for an all-hands-on-deck, heroic, last-ditch effort to save ourselves, and the biosphere as we now know it from global warming catastrophe. From what we are hearing from the most knowledgeable and expert climate scientists, we have ten years – and possibly less, depending on how the quickly the global warming  positive feedback loops accelerate the warming process – to stop emitting CO2 into our atmosphere, and to find ways to reduce existing atmospheric concentrations of CO2. In this keynote presentation I lay out how we can most effectively do this, and I introduce what I have called the “Architects N.E.W. D.E.A.L.” – an acronym for the seven key things that I think architects, engineers, and planners can do to make a significant contribution to this effort.

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You can read more about this podcast in the podcast Show Notes.

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please show your support by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page.

In this podcast I speak with Jeff Ranson, the Regional Director of the Canadian Green Building Council (for the Greater Toronto Area).  For as long as I have known Jeff (going on ten years now) he has been passionate about exploring and developing transformative policies that improve the environment, people’s living conditions, and sustainable, economic prosperity.  

 After receiving an Honours BA in Business Administration from the Ivey Business School at Western University in 2002, Jeff has held a number of positions including: Program Manager of the Clean Air Foundation; a Senior Associate in Sustainability at The Innovolve Group Inc.;  Manager of Education & Outreach for Sustainable Buildings Canada in Toronto, (which is when I first met Jeff); the Executive Directorship of the Toronto 2030 District; Design Review Panel Member at Waterfront Toronto; and now the Regional Director for Greater Toronto Area of the Canadian Green Building Council.

In our wide ranging conversation, we talk about the opportunities and challenges for policy to drive large scale change; about whether climate change trumps all other urban concerns; about how to design for effective urban density; about his guarded optimism that we still have a fighting shot at meeting the challenges of climate change;  and what advice he would have for someone setting out to make a difference.

You can read more about this podcast in the Show Notes. 

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please consider supporting us by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page.

Aaron Myran is the founder and director of Future Majority, a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to amplifying the collective voice of young Canadians, and through Future Majority, it’s pretty clear to me that Aaron is going to have a BIG impact on Canada’s future! In this episode I talked with Aaron about how he ended up as a political organizer; the role he sees for the Future Majority organization in helping to engage the youth vote in the upcoming Canadian Federal Election; the critically important role of an engaged young electorate in meeting the huge environmental challenges we now face; and what advice he would have for someone setting out to make a difference.

You can read more about this podcast in the Show Notes. 

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please consider supporting us by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page.

 

 

If you are at all familiar with the building and design sector in Canada you will know that Sustainable Architecture and Building Magazine (SABmag) is the go-to source for green design news and commentary. Our podcast guest today, Jim Taggart, is its editor and founder.

In this podcast I talked with Jim about what he wants to do with the SABmag ideas platform he has created, and his thoughts on how we might design buildings to be more effective in addressing the impacts of climate change; what the future looks like, or could look like; and what advice he would have for someone setting out to make a difference.

You can find the Show Notes at: http://bit.ly/JimTaggart-ShowNotes

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please consider supporting us by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page.

 

Eric Davies is one of the Canadian media’s most sought-after experts when it comes to trees, urban forests, and ravine ecology. Whether it is the plight of indigenous trees in our ravines, or the propagation of resilient heritage trees to help mitigate climate change, Eric is the guy the media goes to for information and insight. 

In this podcast, I spoke with Eric about his thoughts on how forests can be an important part of how we will address the impacts of climate change;  and how he sees his role as someone on the front lines of environmental harm reduction, regeneration, and climate adaptation;  and what advice he would have for someone setting out to make a difference.  

See Show Notes at: http://bit.ly/Eric-Davies-Notes 

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please consider supporting us by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page.

In this episode I had the pleasure of talking with Dr. Wendy Pentland, a personal coach, and a recently retired professor of occupational therapy at Queens University. 

I’d been thinking for some time that it would be worthwhile doing a podcast that explores the anxieties and fears that so many listeners are telling me they are experiencing around the emerging realities of Climate Change, and how they might better cope with them or channel them in a positive direction. 

Wendy has worked as a professional coach for more than 15 years, coaching over 500 people in all walks and spheres of life -  professionals, academics, executives, in the private sector, public sector, large organizations, small businesses, private practices, academia, healthcare and medicine. With all that experience, I thought Wendy would be the perfect person to help us explore our climate-change worries. 

Wendy’s coaching approach is grounded in the belief that people are motivated primarily by two desires: to fulfill their own potential and to make a meaningful contribution to the world; to make a difference. People frequently have difficulty fulfilling these desires because they govern themselves with beliefs and fictions that hold them back and blind them to what may be greater possibilities. 

I thought I would interview Wendy, but in the end, she interviewed me. It turned out to be the best approach. Instead of listening to Wendy and me talk in very general terms about how we might all deal with our common climate-change worries, you get to hear a world-class coach help me with my own personal climate-change worries.  So, I am standing in for you, the listener, because for coaching to work, it has to be very personal and specific.  However, I am pretty sure that everyone listening will find something they can apply to themselves from this interview on my fears and sadness about the state we are in.  As with all the interviews in the series, we end up agreeing on the importance of hope, even in the face of the wicked challenges now on our doorstep.

I hope you enjoy our conversation!

You can find show notes at: http://bit.ly/Wendy-Pentland

Please Support this Podcast: The Twenty First Century Imperative podcast is ad-free and relies entirely on user support. If you find it valuable please consider supporting us by becoming a patron at our TFCI Patreon Page.