Franke James’ “Bothered By My Green Conscience” Wins 2010 Green Book Award

Green Book Festival Medal by Franke James

May 2010: Bothered by My Green Conscience is the winner of the 2010 Green Book Festival Award for Graphic Novels. The award honors books that, “… contribute to greater understanding, respect for and positive action on the changing worldwide environment.” Bruce Haring at the Green Book Festival said, “Franke’s book is a sheer delight and the judges are proud to honor it with this award.”

Author and artist, Franke James commented, “I’m absolutely thrilled it won the Green Book Festival Award for Graphic Novels! Book awards catch the attention of the media — and are therefore a great way to get the core message of my book to the public, and that is, ‘Do the hardest thing first.’ And then brag about it, shamelessly!”

“Do the hardest thing first.”

“Tell everyone about the wonderful green thing you did! Pretty soon, you’ll discover it’s fun and you’ll be inspiring others. Your friends and family may feel envious at first — but before you know it, they’ll be doing their own ‘hard green thing.’ And then we’ll have a real green revolution happening! And we need that.

“We’re treating our world as though it was disposable, and we had another shiny new one just waiting on a shelf for us. But we don’t! We need to get serious about protecting the environment, so that our children and grandchildren will have a healthy planet to live on. We can do a lot to fix the world, but we need to get ambitious now — and not wait for the politicians to save us.

“Do the hardest thing first. You’ll be surprised how fun it is, and how good it makes you feel!”

Franke James’ book is in good company — other Canadians who won the US Award…

climate cover up  cover James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore won the overall Green Book Festival prize for Climate Cover-Up (Non-fiction). It is a book I highly recommend. It’s a fascinating, and illuminating read about the crusade to deny global warming.  It will give you insight into the inner-workings of the PR campaigns (financed by the fossil fuel industries) that are sewing climate confusion, and in many cases, using outright deception to fool the gullible public.

The campaign to deny global warming mirrors the campaign by the tobacco industry to convince people that smoking was safe. And we all know how that ended up. Decades were wasted, lives lost, all unnecessarily, because society refused to face the scientific truth.

Now every cigarette pack in Canada comes with warning labels, such as “Smoking Kills.” What warning label should we put on our planet that will wake people up? Please leave your suggestions in the comments.

smoking illustration by Franke James

Franke James’ Footprint Saves City Money

AUGUST 7, 2008
reduced image scan of National Post article by Vanessa FarquharsonFranke James left her green footprint in The National Post today.

Vanessa Farquharson, the Post’s Sense & Sustainability columnist wrote about Franke’s real life story of ripping up her interlocking driveway, battling City Hall, and winning the right to be the first pilot project for a green driveway in North York (as told in Franke’s visual essay, Paradise Unpaved).

“Franke James likes doing the hard things first, which is why, when it came to reducing her carbon footprint, she skipped right past the programmable thermostat and coffee thermos business and headed straight for the real green challenge — selling her SUV and replacing the driveway with a garden.

Well, technically speaking, the driveway still exists. But it’s been completely covered in grass and surrounded with trees, bushes and other lush foliage…” from Kicking a keen sense of green to the curb Aug.7/08, The National Post, Page AL12

Permeable Driveways Save the City Money

Farquharson quotes Franke in her article, “If more people did this, it would save the city money… When you look 25 years down the road at how many people will be living here, how many more hard surfaces will be built — there’ll be a lot more stormwater runoff and we’ll have to build more water filtration plants. But if we start using permeable materials for our driveways, that’ll at least be a start.”

In Paradise Unpaved, Franke compared the stormwater runoff from her former interlock driveway versus her new green driveway and garden. She found that about 75% of the total annual runoff was diverted from the sewers and now recharges the groundwater and nourishes plants and trees. But she is just one homeowner. Would more permeable surfaces save the city significant money?

Chicago’s Green Alleys Project

Chicago thinks so. Their Green Alleys project aims to replace 1,900 miles of alleyways (more than any other city in the world), with permeable alleys. The program is designed to help manage stormwater, reduce the urban heat island effect and incorporate recycled materials (such as tires) into the permeable pavers. It’s an urgent initiative for the city. Their alleys are lacking proper sewer connections which cause serious flooding issues for homes nearby. The city realized that permeable alleyways would be a more cost-effective solution than expensive sewer hookups. Read more about Chicago’s Green Alleys.

Ontario’s costs forecast at $400 to $500 million

A recent article Lake cleanup viable if city handles runoff highlights the importance of Toronto finding a solution to polluted stormwater runoff.

“The Don and Inner Harbour have some 50 points where combined storm water and sanitary sewers can overflow during heavy rains, discharging polluted runoff directly into the waterway. Underground storage tanks would catch runoff and later send it to upgraded sewage treatment plants — a project that carries a price tag of roughly $400 million to $500 million.”

It makes you wonder how much lower the price tag (and cleaner the lakes) would be if more driveways, alleys, sidewalks and eventually even roads, were converted to permeable materials.

But putting aside number-crunching and environmental benefits, some people just want to unpave their Paradise because it’s beautiful!

“[Franke’s] story made me want to buy a house just to turn the driveway into a garden.” Connor McCall


See the newspaper in pdf.

Featured illustrations and photograph from Franke’s visual essay, Paradise Unpaved.