Environment
Tzeporah Berman's Green Idea
By James Glave published Nov 1, 2009
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The original tree hugger has a big, pragmatic agenda. Meet Canada’s next-generation climate change warrior
At 650 feet Above the waters of Georgia Strait, Easter Bluff is not exactly a lofty peak. It’s basically a rocky bump dotted with moss, lichen, fir, spruce, arbutus—all the usual coastal temperate rainforest accoutrements. Still, from here, the highest point on Cortes Island, you can see for miles in all directions. Lie flat on your back and an eagle might swoop over you, so close that you can count its wing feathers.
Tzeporah Berman hasn’t taken me up on this cold, clear March afternoon to point out the sights. She wants to show me what isn’t in this picture. “As a result of community opposition, we don’t have a wind farm right off that point of Quadra Island,” she says, pointing. Then Berman—one of Canada’s most successful, and controversial, environmental campaigners—tracks her index finger across a sweep of ocean teeming with salmon, orcas, otters, and sea lions. “And we don’t have a tidal-power operation right there, in the Georgia Strait off Campbell River. Both were proposed in the early 2000s and late ’90s.”
You may remember Berman. Back in 1993, at the tender age of 24, she inspired some 10,000 people to travel to the west coast of Vancouver Island to protest logging practices in Clayoquot Sound, the largest act of civil disobedience in Canadian history. Leonardo DiCaprio later invited her to appear in his 2007 documentary The 11th Hour. But here’s the thing. As she stands on Easter Bluff, tracing the imaginary outlines of industrial projects that might have placed spinning turbines in the waters surrounding her island home, she doesn’t see victory. She sees a tremendous loss.
“Globally, we need every country in the world to harness the ecological capacity they have to be creating green energy,” she says. “That means Denmark doing offshore wind, it means California scaling up solar as quickly as possible, and it means B.C. investing in energy from falling water, wind, and tidal.”
Fair enough, a casual observer might say. But to many of Berman’s one-time allies and supporters, her words smack of treason. For while she says there is “no question” that we should be ramping up renewable-energy production, quite a number of people do, in fact, have questions. And for the better part of a year they have been asking them, loudly, at public meetings from Pitt Meadows to Powell River and all points in between.
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I'm all for green power and being eco-friendly, so kudos to Tzeporah Berman! I like using companies that have a conscious environmental impact, like buying green printing or helping out the air quality with a hepa air purifier in my office. Last year I traded in my sports car for a hybrid. Go green.
Interesting, if somewhat superficial article about the issue of private power (run-of-river in particular) and Ms. Berman.
More than a few people in the environmental movement in BC were bemused by Tzeporah's rapid injection into the run-of-river campaign this spring considering her relatively poor understanding of the issue. For instance, when the provincial government forbade BC Hydro from developing new sources of hydro-electricity in 2002 (point 13 of the 2002 Energy Plan) at the same time they were actively lobbying against the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. The 2002 Energy Plan as it pertained to BC Hydro had nothing to do with the generation of "green power" and everything to do with the deregulation of the electricity sector in BC and the slow-motion privatization of BC Hydro. Ms. Berman conveniently ignores this fact and insists that the Energy Plan was about tackling climate change when it is clear that was not the case.
Many people familiar with this campaign are also very concerned about Tzeporah's close ties with the current provincial government on this file, and her relationship with large industrial players such as Plutonic Power. These relationships are ongoing and strategic, and undermine Tzeporah's reputation when it comes to building consensus and support within the environmental community.
What is also galling to many people is that Ms. Berman tries to portray her opponents as people unconcerned about climate change, or worse climate change deniers. This facile approach may play well with the media but it has led to many in the environmental community distancing themselves from this fundamentally dishonest portrayal. The reality is far more nuanced: people concerned about the private power gold-rush, which has led to over 600 rivers being staked by the likes of General Electric and Plutonic Power, are not opposed to green energy they simply want to see it done in an environmentally robust manner that includes the public good - not just corporate profits.
My vision of a sustainable future includes democracy, real climate change action, proper planning, public power, citizen input and healthy streams and rivers - unfortunately, I am not sure if that is the case for Ms. Berman.
