By Michael Lavelle

A new T.V. show called Going Green for Green is the hard work and creation of entrepreneur and environmentalist, Michael Lavelle. As the show gets ready to air in July, he takes a minute to look back at the journey that led him to where he is today: executive producer and host of an exciting new show.

I guess my environmentalism started when i was a young boy raised on the Rattray marsh in Mississauga, ontario, where i spent my days catching snakes and frogs and fishing for catfish. Having always enjoyed camping and the outdoors, I naturally was always disturbed by urban sprawl and the encroaching cities that threaten our wetlands and forests. Early on, as I became politically aware, I was motivated by protest and tried the traditional methods of voicing my concerns. These efforts seemed futile, including protesting the logging in Carmanaha Valley. I found myself frustrated and disenfranchised.
I spent several years planting trees in the largest clear cut in the world “the Bow Run Valley” and it is interesting to note that at the end of my third summer of planting I finally realized that the tree planters were not the environmentalists that we thought we were and in fact were the justification and rationalization for further logging. When this realization hit me like a ton of bricks I finally quit tree planting as I figured you might as well be a logger! That is a strange statement but either way you are part of the harvest. Now if they only harvested planted plots we would be a lot better off, but we all know that old growth logs and forests are just too tempting for the Macmillan Bloedells of the world. Anyway, it was during my tree planting days that I became involved with the Rock and Twang Music Festival in Rossland BC. The Rock and Twang was all about bringing sides together to engage in conversation about the environment and our political system. The Festival, although a great success, failed on many accounts to become the political forum that I had originally envisioned. This might have had something to do with a special weed which was quite prevalent in the Kootenays at that time.
The Rock and Twang was 1993-1996 and the end of 1995 I relocated to my home and native land in the big smoke of Toronto and went back to finally complete my degree at the University of Toronto some 6 years and 3 institutions of higher learning later. I was lucky enough to take a course taught by Bob Rae where I finally had the power structure that runs the world revealed to me and I knew that the only way to enact change was to infiltrate and use the power structure, a tricky endeavour while at the same time trying to hang onto your morals and integrity.
Post university, I immediately became involved with an amazing environmentalist by the name of Mark Mattson who has in many ways helped to shape my current brand of environmentalism. Mark is a follower of Bobby Kennedy Jr. and has dedicated himself to Bobby`s organization called Waterkeepers. The Waterkeepers are a justice organization which use the laws of the land to help protect the waterways around the world. Kennedy is an inspiring environmentalist because he is a realist and does not necessarily promote “naked in the field” environmentalism, but instead looks to government to merely enforce the laws which are already on the books. He also looks to the free market and makes a great case that if the market were truly free we wouldn’t be in this mess where subsidized businesses such as nuclear power get exceptions from laws and regulations with respect to environmental concerns. Waterkeepers is all about changing demand and using the true free market economy to force businesses to include the “real” cost of their product. In other words if the product you manufacture is polluting water or air, you have to include the cost of fixing and or cleaning that up in the actual cost. This may mean that your product is no, longer viable. It is tough to put a value on swimming, or eating a fish from the lake. I think that this is more where I lie these days. I am not so much focused on climate change: instead I am about promoting businesses that create jobs and solve problems, whether that be “waste management processors” or remediation companies that specialize in the huge task of cleaning up the toxic messes that our mining and natural resource industry has left in some of the most beautiful spots in the country.
Going Green for Green, the TV show that I am currently hosting and producing, is about exactly that. The first 6 episodes focus on some of the technologies that have been around for decades to process our waste. However the cost of throwing our trash, has been so inexpensive in the short term that the politicians have lacked the courage to make a decision and employ technologies which will reduce landfill usage, create jobs and energy from our waste stream.

 

The episodes I am working on now focus on the Great Lakes and cleaning up the major toxic spots that are affecting our ability to harvest the food that these liquid gardens provide. It should come as no surprise that only a century ago the majority of Torontonians supplemented their diet with fish from the Great Lakes on a weekly basis and that estimates put the number as high as 30% of the food consumed in Toronto came from Lake Ontario. That is hard to believe when now you can only eat one or two fish per month from that source, according to ministry guidelines, and there is only one commercial license left on Lake Ontario.
How did we let this happen and how is it that we have not forced government to spend accordingly? We need to force our local provincial and federal governments to en- force the laws that are on the books. Why do we get pulled over and handed a ticket for doing 60 kilometres per hour in a 40 kilometre zone and yet the local government gets away with polluting our food source with raw sewage and toxins every time it rains? We have to stand up and demand change. Don’t get caught up in climate change and the distracting argument of whether or not the science is real. Focus on the real issues!