New Zero Heroes Play Draws Raves!

Well our 2010-11 season is upon us and we have another jam-packed season of environmental responsibility plays ahead!

Including our new show, Zero Heroes - a play about zero waste. Zero Heroes is playing to about 20,000 Metro Vancouver kids this year and it's rocking the house. Kids from kindergarten through grade seven are just loving it - as are the teachers!

One teacher wrote, in our online survey, "The kids just eat it up, and afterwards keep singing the catchy eco-songs from the play, so it's obvious that the message is getting through. The action steps are so do-able for children, and presented as a fun and important thing to do. It does change how they're thinking about environmental issues."

We're touring the show in Richmond, Delta, Vancouver, Pitt Meadows, Port Moody and New Westminster - for free thanks to those municipal governments, as well as our development funders TD Friends of the Environment Foundation, Real Estate Foundation of BC, Canada Council of the Arts, Hamber Foundation. Thanks to our awesome sponsors!

What a great year!

Our 2009-2010 season is over, and it's been fantastic! To grow even in such a difficult funding climate feels truly great. Here's our comic update on our goings-on:

New Esmeralda Superspy Planet Protector video!

Over twenty thousand kids have seen this video in school and on line in the first month it's been available!  Can Esmeralda Superspy Planet Protector and her sidekick Goober stop the Evil Dr. Carbon's dastardly plan to stop kids from walking to school? Join the quirky superhero Esmeralda as she braves any danger to protect the planet from harm. Also check out our fun behind-the-scenes clips!

Esmeralda Superspy! quirky superhero saves the planet every time

This week we're in production of the very first episode of our new webTV show: Esmeralda Superspy - she's a planet protector.

Sara Holt stars as Esmeralda Superspy

I get to don the director's hat (and pink fluffy scarf).

We are having a blast and look forward to sharing it with you! But it'll take a while to finish, so please be patient!

Climate, Copenhagen, and the world: We've come a long way, baby

sign at Copenhagen conference on climate change

photo by Maurita Prato

Things are brewing and building to a climax at this week's conference at Copenhagen. Will world leaders decide on a "survival pact" (let's get serious about the future of humanity and do something about it) or a "suicide pact" (let's chicken out and blow this opportunity to truly take care of the planet before it's too late).

As I write this, some of the campaigners and activists that I follow on Twitter, who are reporting on the proceedings at Copenhagen - Kris Krug, Jason Mogus, Jason Barnett, Joe Solomon, The Uptake - are alternately despairing and determined. But no one knows whether a last-minute "Real Deal" can actually happen.

Now people are saying: what next? What happens after Copenhagen, regardless of the outcome?

What happens is: we keep building the movement of the millions around the globe who are speaking out, joining together, becoming a part of the wave of change that is needed, until the wave is the whole world.

Regardless of what happens at Copenhagen, our survival on the earth requires changes from all of us.

But I have hope. I have been around awhile now, and we have come a long way, baby.

Twenty years ago at Clayoquot, we leaders of the blockade were publicly labelled Eco-Terrorists when we sang and danced on logging roads. There were about twenty-five of us in 1992, fighting against major international corporations. And then we'd hear about things coming down the road like climate change, and I wondered how in heck we would ever get to the mass awareness needed - to make the changes we would need to make -  when we ragtag bunch with no resources were being publicly ostracized for caring about our little corner of the planet.

Twenty years is not a long time for change in the human race. But we have changed. We have come a long way, baby. There aren't just a handful of people who are taking action. We are millions. We are growing exponentially. No matter what happens at Copenhagen, this movement is growing and we will not be stopped until we have woken up enough of humanity to join us as we endeavour to save ourselves.

Join us.

More info:
www.avaaz.org
Kris Krug, Jason Mogus, Jason Barnett, Joe Solomon, The Uptake

An open letter to Stephen Harper

Dear Mr. Harper,


Please breathe deeply , Mr Harper, and tell me something, if you'd be so kind.
It's about climate change, and Copenhagen. I'm really glad you're going.
I'd like you to forget the science, for a bit. Let’s forget, for a moment, whether you “believe” in climate change or not, and just answer this one thing, as you breathe deeply for me - 

Mr. Harper, is the air clean, like when you were a kid?

Is there a good amount pollution in our atmosphere now? Or should we add more without thinking much about it.

How much longer can we keep adding to it?  

Because it’s not just disappearing, vanishing, going to another planet, magically leaving our atmosphere.

Nope, it stays there. And next year we add more, and next and next.

And regardless of whether or not this has any effect whatsoever on our climate (though it’s hard to see how it wouldn’t, frankly), it just can’t be good for our human lungs.

So what do you think? Can we wait?

Breathe deeply, Mr. Harper, and tell me. Maybe we should act on climate change - if not for the climate and humanity's, than for our own lungs. And our kids. 

You know rates of asthma and lung diseases are rising. 

It's not going to magically get better.

Here's your chance.


On behalf of the lungs of all Canadians, I remain,

Yours Sincerely,

Vanessa LeBourdais

Port Moody, BC

Teachers rave about littering play

It really warms my heart to listen to these principals and teachers speak so enthusiastically about our littering-vandalism-graffiti play Clean Up Your Act. Now in its 12th year of touring Metro Vancouver elementary schools, Clean Up Your Act teaches kids how to "take care of this place" - one of the goals of most schools student responsibility codes.

I toured with Clean Up Your Act for ten years. Now Sara Holt has taken my place. Lucky Sara gets to dump garbage on Ian's head twice a day.