The Green - Big Ideas For A Small Planet
A Series of Big Ideas
Watch BIG IDEAS FOR A SMALL PLANET on Sundance Channel every Tuesday at 9PM ET/PT, or download episodes from iTunes. BIG IDEAS FOR A SMALL PLANET is a documentary series presenting the forward-thinking designers, products and processes that are on the leading edge of a new green world. Each episode revolves around a different green theme as it spotlights a specific innovator or innovation that has the potential to transform our everyday lives. The individuals profiled range from scientists to fashion and product designers, entrepreneurs to first-time inventors. The series also features a cast of recurring expert commentators, including activists, scientists, writers, and environmental personalities who provide the big-picture context to each week's stories.
BIG IDEAS FOR A SMALL PLANET
WATCH VIDEO
John Aikin, the San Francisco Zoo's Director of Conservation, has been intimately involved with nature from an early age. When he was 12, his family pooled their money to purchase him a freezer. As his fascination with wildlife expanded into falconry and taxidermy, they were tired of sorting through frozen chicks, magpies and the occasional barn owl looking for ice cream in the kitchen refrigerator. By the age of sixteen, John had started a vertebrate museum for his high school. After a few distractions from academics, like opening a rehabilitation facility for wildlife, he secured a diploma in zoology from San Francisco State University. Since then, John has made a career of wildlife conservation at the San Francisco Zoo. For eight years he served as the Curator of Planning and Design, translating between the planners and the zoologists. As the Director of Conservation since July of 2006, John works to enact policy and implement programs focused on wildlife conservation. While he administers conservation grants to organizations throughout the world, some of his favorite projects are close to home - in California. From 1985 to 2007, the Zoo operated the largest and most successful captive breeding effort in the world for bald eagles, hatching and releasing 103 eagle chicks on the Channel Islands of California to restore a naturally-breeding population to a place where they once thrived. Having helped to reestablish the species over a significant portion of its former range in California, the successful program achieved its ultimate goal in 2007 when the federal government removed the bald eagle from the endangered species list. The survival of wildlife and wild places rests in the collective hands of us all. But unfortunately, the biggest challenge to worldwide conservation efforts is our ability to influence people to alter their daily activities in ways that will preserve the environment, biodiversity, and ultimately, ourselves. John believes that people have the intelligence and compassion to turn the current extinction crisis around; they just need some help to get motivated. That's why the zoo has set a goal of inspiring the one million people who visit the Zoo each year to take some form of conservation action. Over 150 million people in America, and more than 650 million worldwide, visit accredited zoos each year. Individually and collectively, zoos already have tremendous reach into large audiences of interested individuals who come to them to be entertained, amazed, moved, and even inspired. John's dream is to inspire a love of wildlife and a commitment to conservation.
Allison Arieff writes the "By Design" column for the New York Times, and is Senior Content Lead for the design and innovation firm, IDEO. From 2002-2006, she was the Editor-in-Chief of Dwell, and was the magazine's founding Senior Editor. Arieff writes and lectures frequently on sustainability, architecture and design and has presented her ideas at numerous prestigious institutions including the Architectural League of New York, the Commonwealth Club of California, the Hearst Lectures at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, KCRW's "Design+Architecture" and NPR's Sound Money. She is author the books, Prefab and Trailer Travel: A Visual History of Mobile America and the editor of numerous books including Airstream: The History of the Land Yacht, Hatch Show Print: The History of a Great American Poster Shop and Cheap Hotels.
Dan Barber is the chef and co-owner of Blue Hill restaurant in New York City, a 2001 James Beard Award nominee for best new restaurant and a noted neighborhood eatery that continues to celebrate the farms of the Hudson Valley with its menus. In the summer of 2002, Food & Wine Magazine featured Dan as one of the country's "Best New Chefs." He has since been featured in The New Yorker and Gourmet Magazine, and included in "The Next Generation" of great chefs in Bon Appetit's 10th annual restaurant issue. To expand on his philosophy of cooking with sustainably grown, local ingredients, Dan has been working with such organizations as the Kellogg Foundation, Slow Food USA and Earth Pledge to minimize the political and intellectual rhetoric around agricultural policies and to instead maximize the appreciation of eating good food. Focusing on the issues of pleasure, taste and regional bounty-and how these imperatives are threatened-Dan helped create the philosophical and practical framework for Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture and continues to help guide it in its mission to create a consciousness about the effects of everyday food choices.
As environmental issues become more pressing, there are two possible responses: forget it and hope that government and corporations will figure it out, or take action yourself. In the "take action yourself" camp, a few individuals are leading the way. One such person in California is Ed Begley, Jr. Environmental lawyer and long-time friend, Bobby Kennedy, Jr. has said "Ed has a greater sense of social obligation than anyone I know. He's like a West Coast cadet who gets up every morning and says 'reporting for duty'. Turning up at Hollywood events on his bicycle, Ed has been considered an environmental leader in the Hollywood community for many years. He has served as chairman of the Environmental Media Association, and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy. He still serves on those boards, as well as the Thoreau Institute, the Earth Communications Office, Tree People and Friends of the Earth, among many others. His work in the environmental community has earned him a number of awards from some of the most prestigious environmental groups in the nation, including the California League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council, The Coalition for Clean Air, Heal the Bay and the Santa Monica Baykeeper. He currently lives near Los Angeles in a self-sufficient home powered by solar energy.
Yves Behar is the founder of the San Francisco design studio, fuseproject. Yves is focused on humanistic design and the "giving" element of his profession, with the goal of creating projects that are deeply in-tune with the needs of a sustainable future, connected with human emotions and enable self-expression. For Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) organization, fuseproject designed the world's first $100 "XO" laptop aimed at bringing education and technology to the world's poorest children. Yves' commercial projects set out to be equally impactful as exemplified by the Herman Miller LEAF Lamp, the Aliph Jawbone and, most recently, Y Water. Yves' work has been the subject of two solo exhibitions and resides in the permanent collections of international museums worldwide, including MOMA and the Musee d'Art Moderne/Pompidou Center. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the prestigious National Design Award for Industrial Design celebrating design as a 'vital humanistic tool shaping the world' - awarded by Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian National Design Museum. He has also received the INDEX: Design to Improve Life, "Community" award for his role in creating the "XO" laptop. In addition to his responsibilities at fuseproject, Yves acts as Chairperson of the Industrial Design program at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco and he has taken on creative, business-partner roles at Aliph Jawbone and other client-companies.
David Byrne is well known as the musician who co-founded the group Talking Heads (1976 - 88) in New York. On record and in concert, the band was acclaimed by critics and audiences alike; more importantly, however, they have proven to be extremely influential. Talking Heads took popular music in new directions, both in terms of sound and lyrics, and also introduced an innovative visual approach to the genre. During his time with the group, Byrne was involved with several other projects. * The Catherine Wheel, (an evening-length ballet score for choreographer Twyla Tharp) * Music Videos, director. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, a record incorporating "found" voices such as radio preachers, talk show guests and Arabic singers (re-release with additional tracks in March 2006) * The Knee Plays - a brass band-and-spoken word score for a theater piece, The Knee Plays, directed by Robert Wilson. * Stop Making Sense. 1984, directed by Jonathan Demme, winner of Golden Globes, best documentary * TRUE STORIES, 1986, feature film directed by Byrne * THE LAST EMPEROR, 1987, DB collaborates on score for Bertolucci film, wins Oscar. * Luaka Bop, Byrne's record label, was founded in 1988 * The Forest, 1989, an orchestral score with mostly wordless vocals for theater piece dir by Robert Wilson * ILE AIYE: THE HOUSE OF LIFE, 1989, a documentary on African religion in Brazil More records followed * Rei Momo, collaboration with 15 of the best Latin musicians in New York. * Uh-Oh, 1992, funk and Latin grooves were combined together * BETWEEN THE TEETH, a concert film of that tour. * David Byrne, 1994, a stripped-down record * Feelings, 1997, collaboration with other bands and artists * The Visible Man, 1998, a record of re-mixed versions of songs from Feelings. * Sessions at West 54th Street, 1999, a weekly one-hour music show which Byrne hosted. * In Spite Of Wishing And Wanting. 1999 a collaborationwith the Belgian Dance Company Ultima Vez, * Look Into The Eyeball, 2001. Subsequently Byrne toured with a six-piece string section. * "Lazy", 2002 David's collaboration with the DJ group X Press 2 was released in the UK. The song went to number 2 on the UK charts within its first week of release & number 1 on the US dance charts, along with topping the charts in Syria and Turkey. * YOUNG ADAM, 2002, a score for the David MacKenzie film for which David gathered together a comprehensive group of musicians from Scottish bands; Belle & Sebastian, Mogwai, Appendix Out amongst others. David also worked with director Stephen Frears composing the song "Glass Concrete and Stone" for his film DIRTY PRETTY THINGS. Somewhere around 2002 Talking Heads were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. About a year later, in 2003, Talking Heads released a lovely boxed set which includes a DVD of all the band's videos. In 2005 a Brick was released with the complete studio catalog on dualdisc with previously unreleased audio and video material. * Grown Backwards, Spring 2004 release and tour. * Here Lies Love, a project about Imelda Marcos with musical contributions from Fatboy Slim, premieres in Adelaide AUS in March 2006. ART David Byrne has been involved with photography and design since his college days and has been publishing and exhibiting his work for the past decade. Like his film and musical projects, his artwork is often described as elevating the mundane or the banal to the level of art, creating icons out of everyday materials to find the sacred in the profane. Byrne's works are about interiors, both physical and emotional, as much as exteriors. Museum shows in Germany, Italy, and Japan have mixed these pieces with audio elements, acoustiguides, and sculptural elements. Since the beginning Byrne has mixed exhibitions with public art: billboards in Belfast and Toronto, subway posters in Stockholm, fly posters during the presidential election in NY, LA and Chicago and lightboxes in the streets of San Francisco and Sydney, Australia. More recently there was a 215-foot long flow chart covering the 5th Avenue side of Saks 5th Ave, multiple-choice questions on the Tokyo subways, an audio piece in the World Financial Center in NYC, PowerPoint installations in a building lobby on Times Square, and an audio installation in Stockholm that turned a building into a giant musical instrument. Several books have appeared in recent years, each a kind of piece on its own. The first, Strange Ritual (Chronicle Press, 1995) mixed text and image in a notebook-type format. The second, Your Action World (Edimar, Italy, 1998 and Chronicle, 1999), was modeled after corporate reports and inspirational and motivational literature. The third book, The New Sins / Los Nuevos Pecados, looks like a bible and was created for the Valencia Biennial, where copies were placed anonymously in hotel room drawers. It was published by McSweeney's in the USA and by Faber & Faber in the UK, and there is a Bulgarian edition as well. Another book project, Envisioning Emotional Epistemological Information (Steidl/PaceMacGill, 2003) focuses on Byrne's use of the presentation software PowerPoint as an art medium and contains a DVD of 5 PowerPoint presentations set to music. Byrne's most recent book, Arboretum, is a sketchbook facsimile of his "tree drawings"; it was published by McSweeney's in September 2006. David has ridden a bike in NY as a means of transport for almost 20 years.
Josh Dorfman is an environmental entrepreneur, media personality and author of The Lazy Environmentalist: Your Guide to Easy, Stylish, Green Living. He is also the founder and CEO of Vivavi, a retailer of modern, green furniture and home furnishings, and of ModernGreenLiving.com, Vivavi's residential search directory for consumers seeking green homes. Inc. Magazine has called Vivavi one of the top 50 companies driving today's green revolution. From January, 2006 to January, 2008, Josh was the creator, producer, and host of The Lazy Environmentalist national radio show on Sirius Satellite Radio. He is currently collaborating with the Sundance Channel to develop THE LAZY ENVIRONMENTALIST for television. About The Lazy Environmentalist book, Dwell Magazine called it, "a guide to going green without resorting to brown rice casserole." Josh's next book, The Lazy Environmentalist on a Budget, will be published in 2009. As an advocate for positive environmental change, Josh also serves as spokesperson for Brita's FilterForGood campaign to help reduce bottled water waste and for Green Works, Clorox's line of natural cleaning products. He is a member of Newsweek Magazine's Global Environment and Leadership Advisory Committee and the Wolf Trap Foundation's National Advisory Council for the Arts and Environment. Josh also sits on the Board of Advisors of Healing Lifestyles & Spa Magazine. Josh is a frequent guest speaker presenting his message of innovation-based environmentalism to a diverse range of audiences. He has addressed corporations such as Google, MTV Networks, Pepsico, and Bristol Myers Squibb and has been invited to keynote events such as the International Interior Design Association's annual conference. As a green lifestyle expert, Josh has appeared on The Martha Stewart Show, Sundance Channel, MSNBC, Bravo, and numerous other television networks. Josh holds an MBA from Thunderbird, The School of Global Management, and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania. His environmental epiphany came while living in China during the 1990's to launch Kryptonite Bicycle Locks' sales and marketing program. Josh saw a nation of a billion bicyclists transforming into a nation of a billion car drivers, causing potentially unprecedented stress on the global environment. How all countries enable their populations to pursue a better quality of life while bringing their lifestyles into balance with nature is a vital challenge for the 21st century and what Josh's ventures strive to address.
Walter Hood is Professor and former Chair of the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of California, Berkeley, and principal of Hood Design in Oakland, CA. Hood has worked in a variety of settings including architecture, urban design, community planning, environmental art, and research. He was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome in Landscape Architecture, 1997. He has exhibited and lectured on his professional projects and theoretical works nationally and abroad. His work was recently featured in the exhibition and publication, "Open" New Designs For Public Spaces, Van Allen Institute, NY, Metropolis Magazine, the New York Times, and Dwell Magazine. His firm designed the gardens and landscape for the New De Young Museum, San Francisco with Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron. Walter Hood's published monographs: Urban Diaries and Blues & Jazz Landscape Improvisations illuminate his unique approach to the design of urban landscapes. These works won an ASLA Research award in 1996. His essay "Macon Memories" is featured in Sites of Memory, Princeton Press, 2001. Hood participated in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's "Revelatory Landscapes" Exhibition 2000-2001. He is currently researching and writing a book entitled Urban Landscapes; American Landscape Typologies. His area of teaching, the American Urban Landscape, is intertwined with his design work creating a didactic approach to the design of urban landscapes.
Accomplished stylist, breakout television star, equestrian, author and now fashion designer Carson Kressley is out to make-over the world. Kressley is one of the stars of the hit original series "Queer Eye For The Straight Guy" for the Bravo Network. He is also a best selling author on the New York Times list for the Queer Eye For The Straight Guy companion book. His sharp wit and undeniable sense of style have made him one of the standouts of the show. Having won the 2004 Emmy Award for "Outstanding Reality Program," the cultural impact of the show has been tremendous, helping to bring gay culture to mainstream American audiences. The show, which recently wrapped its fifth season, was also nominated for a 2005 Emmy Award in the same category. Kressley recently launched, to great success, his new collection of womens wear and menswear, Perfect by Carson Kressley, exclusively on QVC. Perfect by Carson Kressley for women includes career staples such as the quintessential navy suit and a tailored print blouse, along with casual wardrobe essentials like a tailored dark denim skirt and polo sweater. In addition, Kressley designed outerwear pieces such as a luxe leather jacket in camel and a trench coat perfect for those in-between days. For men, Perfect by Carson Kressley focuses on rich outerwear pieces, including bomber jackets, touring coats and vests that pair effortlessly with pullover sweaters. Kressley celebrated the release of his children's book You're Different and That's Super for Simon and Schuster. You're Different and That's Super," touted by Oprah, tells the story of a young pony who doesn't quite fit in with his peers and is illustrated by Jared Lee. 2004 saw the release of Kressley's New York Times' best-seller style-help guide Off the Cuff (Dutton Publishers). Written in Kressley's witty and energetic style, Off the Cuff, currently available in paperback, is an essential style guide for men and for the women who love them. A longtime fashion guru, Carson Kressley began his career as an independent stylist, which lead to a long tenure with Polo Ralph Lauren in New York. At Ralph Lauren, Kressley worked on the design team of the men's sportswear division, then moved to the corporate advertising group. His responsibilities included fashion styling for the company's national retail advertising campaigns, as well as domestic and European men's fashion shows. He has also worked extensively styling catalogs for such retailers as Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, and Bloomingdale's, as well as editorial and film shoots. Kressley graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa from Gettysburg College with degrees in Finance and Fine Art. He is also an avid nationally ranked equestrian and a former member of the U.S. World Cup Equestrian Team. In addition to doing his part in helping to bridge the gap between peoples of different genders and sexual orientations, Kressley is an avid philanthropist, championing a wide array of charities and organizations. A strong supporter of many gay rights causes, Kressley uses his celebrity to advance many different concerns such as the Human Rights Campaign Federal Club, for which he has hosted numerous charity events. He was also one of the hosts for the 2004 AIDS Walk in New York City and was a major donor in establishing the first college scholarship program for gay youth in his hometown of Allentown, Pennsylvania. Carson has also contributed his time to GLAAD (The Gay and Lesbian Association Against Defamation), Heritage of Pride, Inc., The Trevor Project and GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network.) Also an advocate of medical interests and mental health causes, Kressley is a member of the Lay Advisory Board for the New York University Medical Center's Mental Illness Prevention Center and recently participated in Katie Couric's annual fundraiser for The Jay Monahan Center for Gastrointestinal Health in conjunction with The National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance. He recently donated his time to consult on a NYC shopping spree to the Dream Foundation, which enhances the quality of life for individuals and families battling terminal illnesses by granting dreams and wishes. Kressley is also a proud member of the Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Anna Lappe; is a national bestselling author and sought-after public speaker, respected for her work on sustainability, food politics, globalization, and social change. Named one of TIME's "Eco-Who's Who," Anna has been featured in The New York Times, Gourmet, O-The Oprah Magazine, Domino, Food & Wine, Body+Soul, Natural Health, Utne, and Vibe. Anna's first book, Hope's Edge: The Next Diet for a Small Planet (Tarcher/Penguin 2002), co-written with her mother Frances Moore Lappe, chronicles courageous social movements around the world addressing the root causes of hunger and poverty. Winner of the Nautilus Award for Social Change, Hope's Edge has been published in several languages and is used in classrooms across the country. Called "ingenious" by The New York Times, Anna's second book Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen (Tarcher/Penguin 2006) combines an expose; of industrial agriculture with chef Bryant Terry's seasonal menus. For the Grub speaking tour, Anna organized a sixty-five city book tour, connecting with grassroots community groups nationwide. Since 2002, Anna has been collaborating with her mother, Frances Moore Lappe; through their Cambridge-based Small Planet Institute, an international network for research and popular education. They are also co-founders of the Small Planet Fund, which has raised more than half-a-million dollars for democratic social movements worldwide, two of which have won the Nobel Peace Prize since the Fund's founding in 2002. Anna is the host for MSN's Practical Guide for Healthier Living and the public television series, The Endless Feast. She can be seen on Sundance Channel's BIG IDEAS FOR A SMALL PLANET and the PBS special, Nourish. At Howdini.com, she is a featured expert on bringing sustainability into your life. Anna has appeared on numerous television networks, including Fox, NBC, PBS, and the CBC in Canada, as well as dozens of nationally syndicated radio programs, such as Martha Stewart Living, National Public Radio's Weekend Edition, Talk to America, and WYNC's Leonard Lopate Show. Anna frequently lectures on college campuses and to community groups nationwide. Since 2002, she has spoken at more than 250 events, including lectures at Allegheny College, Boston College, Brown University, Columbia University, Dominican University, Northwestern University, University of California at Berkeley, Wellesley, Wesleyan, and Yale University, among other colleges. Anna's writing has been published in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The International Herald Tribune, and Canada's Globe and Mail. She is a contributing to numerous books, including We Got Issues!: A Young Women's Guide to a Bold, Courageous and Empowered Life (Inner Ocean: September 2006), WorldChanging: A User's Guide to the 21st Century (Abrams 2006), and Feeding the Future: How the Battle Over Food Will Change Your Life (Realize Media 2004). Anna serves as a consultant to foundations, media projects, and non-profit organizations and served as a consulting editor for a Nation magazine special issue on food. She is an active board member of the Center for Media and Democracy and the Community Food Security Coalition, the nation's leading network of food justice and sustainable agriculture organizations. In 2007, she was honored, with New York Time columnist Nicholas Kristof, by The Missing Peace Project and was featured with Karenna Schiff Gore and Amanda Hearst in Contribute Magazine's "21 Under 40 Making a Difference." Anna holds an M.A. in Economic and Political Development from Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs and graduated with honors from Brown University. From 2004 to 2006 she was a Food and Society Policy Fellow, a national program of the WK Kellogg Foundation. Anna has worked and lived in South Africa, England, and France. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York where she is at work on her third book for adults about the connection between the food system and climate change.
Chris Neidl is the advocacy and outreach coordinator for Solar One, a green energy, arts and education center based in New York City. Originally from Albany, NY and educated in Vancouver, B.C., Chris has been active in renewable energy advocacy since 2004. During that time Chris has been experimenting with innovative uses of arts and cultural programming in the domain of issue organizing. He is particularly interested in the potential of NYC's fertile cultural scene to generate new messages that will help re-identify the project of sustainability within an urban context. Chris is a founding organizer of New York City's solar-powered music, arts and advocacy festival, Citysol and was a coorganizer of Sea of People, the largest local event during the national Step It Up day of climate action in April 2007. Chris is currently pursuing his MA at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Studies, and lives in Brooklyn with his wife Reena.
Award-winning eco-expert and freelance journalist Simran Sethi is the co-host and writer of Sundance Channel's THE GREEN. Initially a story consultant for the THE GREEN, she is now a featured commentator on the Channel's original series BIG IDEAS FOR A SMALL PLANET, winner of the Environmental Media Award for Best Documentary, and anchor of the interstitial business series ECOBIZ. Sethi is also the creator of the upcoming Sundance Channel web series The Good Fight, highlighting global environmental justice efforts. A member of NBC Universal's internal environmental initiative Green is Universal, Sethi is also the contributing environmental correspondent and expert for NBC News. She is the Lacy C. Haynes Visiting Professional Chair at the University of Kansas School Of Journalism and is writing a book for Harper Collins on the impact of American consumption. She was the contributing author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy, a companion guide to the first PBS series on sustainable business for which she served as host and writer. Lauded as Vanity Fair's 2007 green issue as the environmental "messenger" and identified by Variety as a Woman of Impact, Sethi was named one of the top Eco-Heroes of the Planet by the British newspaper The Independent. She hosted a forum on global warming with Nobel Laureate Al Gore for MSN.com and created an audio podcast series for Gore's non-profit The Alliance for Climate Protection. She has lectured on corporate social responsibility and sustainability in media at conferences, universities, and think tanks, and has appeared on talk shows with Oprah, Martha Stewart and Ellen DeGeneres, highlighting ways we can be more green. Sethi produced for MTV Asia, MTV India news division, and developed programming for the BBC and others through her own production company SHE TV. She holds an MBA in sustainable management from the Presidio School of Management and graduated cum laude with a BA in Sociology and Women's Studies from Smith College. She was a 2007 NYU Goddard Fellow and is an Associate Fellow for the Asia Society.
Dr. David Suzuki, PhD is a famous environmentalist, broadcaster and award-winning scientist from Canada. He has brought, much needed, attention to the environment as the host of the Canadian Broadcasting Company's popular science television series "The Nature of Things". Suzuki has used popular media to focus the world's attention on the environment and the damage that we as humans are causing. Suzuki is the founder of the David Suzuki foundation, an organization that also promotes his beliefs, environmental research, and challenges consumers to change their behaviors. Suzuki has created some of the most popular television programs relating to nature, the environment, science, and people. Programs includes "The Nature of Things," "A Planet for the Taking," "The Secret of Life," "It's a Matter of Survival," "From Naked Ape to Superspecies," and the radio program "Quirks and Quarks." He is also the author of more than 32 books and published columns discussing science, the environment, and nature. In 1990, he founded the David Suzuki Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to finding innovative solutions to help conserve the natural world and care for, protect, and restore the environment. The organization has more than 40,000 members and is a registered charity supported by donations and grants. Major issues that the foundation focuses on include climate change, global warming, ecosystem-based forestry, sustainable fisheries, aquaculture and biodiversity. Most recently the organization has advocated for Canada to back the implementation of the United Nations Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas reduction. "Play it cool" is a new initiative by the David Suzuki Foundation to get winter athletes to help combat global warming and reduce greenhouse has emissions. A recent United Nations report warns that downhill skiing could completely disappear at some resorts by 2030. Now retired from teaching, Suzuki has dedicated himself full-time to educating the public about the importance of the natural world. It's a role that places him alongside the likes of Carl Sagan and Jacques Cousteau, and makes him one of the world's most effective ambassadors of science - and our future.
About Lexus
Across the entire Lexus line of vehicles, the focus for hybrid design is to build cars that are exceptionally lean in the use of raw materials, fuel and impact on the environment, all while pursuing the boundaries of performance, luxury and quality. In that pursuit, Lexus became the world's first manufacturer of luxury hybrid models, offering the first SUV, the RX 400h; an uncompromising performance sedan, the GS 450h; and the ultimate hybrid for connoisseurs of luxury, the LS 600h L. Our own design inspiration positions Lexus as the quintessential purveyor of vehicular eco-design that embraces sustainability without sacrificing style, comfort or luxury.
