I was at Resilient Cities conference this week - which kind of blew my mind open. It's amazing how shielded we are from the environmental impacts of our lifestyles when we live in cities. It's like there aren't any, because we export them out into landfills, the oceans, and other wondrous places.

As an adult I made my way back from the prairies to live in British Columbia, and have now called Vancouver Island and Vancouver home since 1997.

I want to tell a story about my journey with coops. It's a love story.

When I was 8, my parents were divorced.

One of the shortcomings of the cooperative movement, is the very fact that it is a movement. Movements are always against something, which means they are polarizing by nature, which means there will always be problems of scalability because the 'us' will always be in tension with the 'them'. Also, movements are necessarily political, and politics is a divisive game.

Please register at:

transportcamp.eventbrite.com

TransportCamp is an unconference, created for exploring the following theme:

How can transportation be a catalyst for building more vibrant communities in the Lower Mainland?

I've been thinking about the links between what people value or think is important, and the actions they take to support those values. The fact is, research can't find a strong link between people's values and their behavior. Lately I wonder why that is - a lot.

The Vancouver Cooperative Auto Network (CAN) is our own Vancouver Grassroots Non-profit Social Enterprise. They've created a network of cars throughout the city to give their members access to the services of a vehicle without the need to own and maintain one, and their mission is to reduce street traffic and improve green space in the city.

I've been exposed in my studies to a fair amount of what can be termed integrative thinking. This has been useful in helping me to see a larger context of my actions and my lifestyle.

A quick update: I used a carbon calculator from an offsets website to calculate the carbon footprint from my last trip (see my post - Running Away to Find Home). It turns out I personally emitted just under three tonnes of carbon.

I recently returned from a five week trip through Southeast and Central Europe. I flew to London, then to Crete, where I met some friends, and then I caught a bus (alone now) into Albania. I snaked my way through Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Austria, into the Czech Republic, and then flew back to London.

Being a so called "environmentalist," you may already be chastising me in your mind for erasing any positive carbon impacts from my relatively carbon mature life in Canada, and rightfully so. But it has been a long year, and I haven't had a holiday in two years, and I came back a better person for it; however, I am still a hypocrite. But I am a self-analytical hypocrite. And the question I asked myself many times while I was away was this: why do I need to run away from Canada in order to put my life into perspective? I've been doing it for years. I did two months in Europe in 2000. Eighteen months in Asia in 2003. Four months in Africa in 2005. And now two months in the Balkans in 2007.