H E R T Z O G

Spare Some Time To Save The World?

Monday Magazine - Book Review
July 27, 2006

Kermit the Frog once famously declared that “it ain’t easy being green.” But with the voracious North American Bullfrog currently eating its way through its smaller cousins and the onset of climate change, it isn’t even easy being a frog these days.

What do you do if yet another housing development threatens to pave over your own personal connection to nature? Whom do you call to initiate an emergency cleanup of toxic sludge leaching into a local lake or salmon-bearing stream? How can you persuade a factory or pulp mill to control its stinking and highly poisonous air emissions? What about global warming - can we save the world?

Neither is becoming a citizen activist. Not only does an activist group have to come up with a public campaign to achieve its goal, but each individual has to deal with what could easily become an all-consuming obsession affecting work and personal life. But fear not, fellow froggies, help is at hand. Those Boomers who cut their activist milk teeth in the heady days of the anti-war and environmental movements are now come of age, writing books that hopefully will guide the next generation of idealists between the despair of too much knowledge and the burnout of over-activist mania.

“ How To Save The World In Your Spare Time is a well-organised, practical, and wise manual for putting together that perfect campaign while remaining relatively sane and having some fun in the process”

Noted Canadian environmentalist and Officer of the Order of Canada Elizabeth May has environmental credentials in spades, starting literally on her mother’s knee (May’s mother was involved in the US anti-bomb movement in the late 1950s) and maturing during her years as a leading Canadian environmentalist. May also worked for federal minister of Environment Tom McMillan. Until recently the executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, May has been involved with many of the major environmental campaigns in Canada, from the Sidney Tar Ponds to global warming, and is currently running for leadership of the federal Green Party.

How To Save The World In Your Spare Time is a well-organised, practical, and wise manual for putting together that perfect campaign while remaining relatively sane and having some fun in the process. May cheerfully and methodically works through setting up a group; choosing and promoting the goals; influencing the public directly and through the media; lobbying elected politicians; and group organisation and fundraising. The Earth Charter, which she helped put together at the famous Earth Summit of 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, is usefully included as an appendix, together with concise and well-written sample media materials and a brief guide to federal Freedom of Information legislation by Ottawa researcher Ken Rubin.

If you’re going to have to think about it, decide on it or learn how to do it, May has it covered. This is Activism 101, and it should be a social studies textbook in all Canadian schools. Politicians are always complaining about how turned-off today’s kids are from the democratic process. May’s book could turn them back on - they’ll soon be challenging the politicos to keep their election promises. But despite the rather tongue-in-cheek title, May admits that becoming an activist can change a person’s life profoundly and permanently. A short-term commitment to a specific issue can create an acute political awareness that never goes away, making it impossible to return to what she describes as “the cocoon-like complacency of those who don’t know.” How to deal with the resulting frustration and cynicism experienced by many activists that often can lead to a chronic, unrelenting anger and inner brittleness, is the subject of Carry Tiger To Mountain by Victoria-based environmentalist and NGO leadership consultant Stephen Legault.

“ Legault takes a philosophical approach to the activist life, influenced by his study of the mediaeval classic text Tao Te Ching (The Way and Its Virtues) by mythological Chinese sage Lao Tzu.”

Legault’s environmental activism began with the Alberta Wilderness Association after a disappointing experience as a federal Park Ranger in Banff National Park. He then went on to set up Wildcanada.net, a national conservation group, running it for five years. Legault takes a philosophical approach to the activist life, influenced by his study of the mediaeval classic text Tao Te Ching (The Way and Its Virtues) by mythological Chinese sage Lao Tzu. Legault adds to this to his knowledge of Tai Chi, tackling a very difficult subject with a philosophical approach that almost succeeds. A self-admitted over-achiever, Legault handicaps himself by his own ambition. The Tao Te Ching is a mystical text, often deliberately opaque, with many English translations each offering its own interpretation of the Chinese pictograms. You might know the Tao Te Ching from the famous quote: “a journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.” That refers to a journey of self-discovery that Lao Tzu urges us to undertake, with each of his 81 verses acting as a mini-Koan to trick the reader’s mind out of conventional wrong-headedness - May’s “cocoon-like complacency of those who don't know” - into an intuitive understanding of Tao.

The Tao Te Ching is difficult stuff, an 81-course smorgasbord that must be taken individually and digested slowly, preferably with the help of an enlightened guide. Legault misses the Zen-like nature of the text and doesn’t help by offering his own interpretation of the translations, rewritten around activism and current political correctness. The fact that the 81 verses are dumped into the book as Chapter Two and not an appendix only interrupt the flow (Tao) of Legault’s own narrative, which is grouped into chapters under the headings of Tai Chi movements, which I for one don’t know and which are only briefly explained. It was easy to get lost, and fast.

For all its faults Carry Tiger To Mountain is worth the read, but only if you’re already struggling with the conflicts of committed activism. There’s no blame in taking on a difficult task and failing, and Legault’s forthcoming environmental mystery Blackwater will be all the better for the work he put into Carry Tiger. But if you’re new to activism or just contemplating getting involved, Elizabeth May’s book is the one to start with. It’s straightforward and sweetly inspiring and will get you going on The Way of the Activist. Later, when the clouds of doubt and despair arise, you can graduate to Carry Tiger To The Mountain - if Tiger still wants to go.

How To Save The World In Your Spare Time
By Elizabeth May
Key Porter Books, Toronto
208 pp. paperback ISBN 1-55263-781-6
$21.95

Carry Tiger to Mountain
By Stephen Legault
Arsenal Pulp Press, Vancouver
295 pp. paperback ISBN 1-55152-200-4
$24.95