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This Crazy Time by Tzeporah Berman and Mark Leiren-Young
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This Crazy Time

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This Crazy Time by Tzeporah Berman and Mark Leiren-Young
Ebook
Sep 06, 2011 | ISBN 9780307399809

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  • Sep 06, 2011 | ISBN 9780307399809

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Praise

“Tzeporah Berman is a modern environmental hero, and this fascinating book shares her exciting history, and the even more exciting thinking that it’s given rise to. If we get out of our ecological woes, she’ll be a big reason.”
—Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth and founder of 350.org

“Tzeporah’s inspiring and humorous story about her development as an environmental activist has significance far beyond the successful struggle against old-growth clear-cutting in British Columbia. If governments remain unwilling to enact effective climate policies, the obvious next step is for civil actions that engage the public while slowing or preventing investments that facilitate fossil fuel combustion (coal plants, oil pipelines, freeways). Who better to lead that charge?”
—Mark Jaccard, member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and author of Hot Air: Meeting Canada’s Climate Change Challenge
 
“Tzeporah Berman has risked life and liberty in what is ultimately the greatest cause: the future of this planet. Sad, alarming, witty and bold, This Crazy Time takes us inside the war against those who are so recklessly and ruthlessly destroying the Earth while most of us sleep.”
—Ronald Wright, author of A Short History of Progress
 
“Tzeporah Berman is one of the few people with the insight, experience and guts to show us a way forward that actually might work. This Crazy Time seamlessly blends hard-won practical tips on how to build a mass movement for change with deeply moving stories of Berman’s own successes and failures in the high-stakes world of international environmental campaigning. It shows how each of us—by working with others and marrying courage with political and business smarts—can change the world, for real and for good. This is a fabulous book. It will give you goosebumps, make you laugh and leave you in tears. And you won’t put it down till the last page.”
—Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of The Upside of Down
 
“Tzeporah Berman’s true-life exploits make a great read. From Paris Hilton to rock concerts in forest blockades, she manages to share a very personal take on the state of our planet with the highs and lows of life as one of our strongest eco-campaigners.”
—Elizabeth May, Green Party Member of Parliament
 
“In This Crazy Time, Tzeporah Berman brings the inflated rhetoric of the environmental debate down to earth and puts a passionate and empathetic human face on the defining global challenge of our time. Her journey from the front lines of logging blockades to the hot seats of corporate boardrooms is told with remarkable intimacy and rare self-reflection, tracing the central arc of the environmental movement as a whole over the past twenty years. In times growing crazier with each day’s weather, we need her thoughtful leadership more than ever.”
—Chris Turner, author of The Leap and The Geography of Hope
 
“Over the past twenty years the environmental debate has been loud, raucous and increasingly prominent. And Tzeporah Berman has been right there in the thick of it. Berman is a key leader and, in this book, a thoughtful interpreter of significant events. Let her be your guide to some of the most exciting, and important, moments in recent Canadian history.” ––Rick Smith, executive director of Environmental Defence; co-author of Slow Death by Rubber Duck
 
“If you’ve ever uttered the word ‘can’t,’ you need to pick up This Crazy Time. Tzeporah Berman’s inspirational journey from accidental logging activist to international climate champ will show you how a fearless dreamer can help safeguard millions of acres of old-growth forests and tackle the biggest challenge of our time: climate change. You’ll walk away with an honorary MBA in changing the world. How will you put yours to use?”
—Adria Vasil, author of the Ecoholic series
 
“You can call Tzeporah Berman a crazy, tree-hugging, jailbird, eco-terrorist. But in today’s world it’s just about the only honest job around. Save a vital rainforest, or clear-cut its giant redwoods into newsprint, packaging and toilet paper. Are we kidding? Our tragedy is that we aren’t all chained to a tree.”
—William Marsden, author of Fools Rule: Inside the Failed Politics of Climate Change

“If you’ve ever wondered how ordinary people become the extraordinary people who change the world, read this book. Here is a memoir that will convince you Canada’s forests are a global treasure, but more importantly, reminds each and every one of us that we have the power to act on our beliefs. Fast-paced, frank and often surprisingly funny, This Crazy Time is a primer for a more impassioned world.”
—J.B. MacKinnon, co-author of The 100-Mile Diet

“Tzeporah Berman is a Canadian environmental hero and national treasure. This Crazy Time is a must-read for those on any side of a particular environmental issue. Tzeporah Berman emphasizes the power of dialogue and the importance of compromise for reaching lasting solutions to environmental problems. And she leaves the reader with a sense of optimism that each and every one of us can make a difference.”
—Andrew Weaver, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Climate Modelling and Analysis; author of Keeping our Cool: Canada in a Warming World

Author Q&A

20 Writerly Questions forTzeporah Berman


1. How would you summarize your book in one sentence?
In This Crazy Time I tell stories from the past 18 years of blockades, boycotts and boardrooms to inspire others to get off their butt and kick some – starting with their nearest politicians.
 
2. What inspired you to write this book?
I have met so many people over the years that care about environmental issues and want to make change but have trouble figuring out how to engage or they think they can’t because they are not an expert. Then a couple of years ago I met youth from across Canada at the International climate negotiations in Copenhagen. They were hungry for stories of campaigns I had worked on and tips of what works and what doesn’t.  
 
3. How long did it take you to write it?
2 years.
 
4. Where is your favourite place to write?
Sometimes it is cafes with my earphones in and some good music and a really good coffee but other times it is curled up in bed with a big cup of mint tea.
 
5. Did you do much research?
Well, the book is a result of 18 years of campaigns and research but during the writing of it we had to research up to date facts and figures all the time.
 
6. If there was one book you wish you had written what would it be?
The Geography of Hope
by Chris Turner.
 
7. What’s the best piece of writing advice you have ever received? 
I think it was advice from Louise Dennys at Random House in our second meeting. I was struggling with how to make sense out of all these disparate experiences and stories and how to tie it all together into a book. She told me to, “Think of the book as a campaign and plan it out then just tell one story at a time and weave them together.”
 
8. If you could talk to any writer living or dead who would it be, and what would you ask? 
Barbara Kingsolver – I would just tell her that sometimes she explains what I am thinking so clearly it is a relief, and she does it with such grace and humour it makes my heart sing.
 
9. Do you listen to music while you write? If so, what kind?
Yes almost always. Right now my favourites are Jack Johnson and John Mayer.
 
10. Who is the first person to read your manuscript?
My husband Chris.
 
11. Do you have a guilty pleasure read? 
My twelve year old son’s fiction. When he is sleeping I sneak in and borrow whatever he is reading! It started with Harry Potter and then moved to Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson and recently Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games
 
12. What are you reading right now?
I just finished Ian McEwan’s new book Solar.
 
13. What was your favourite childhood book?
Harold and the Purple Crayon
or maybe Where the Wild Things Are. When I got older I was deeply affected by The Diary of Anne Frank.
 
14. Were you always interested in writing?
Yes when I was younger but this is really the first time I have written anything longer than a press release or report in almost twenty years.
 
15. What do you drink or eat while you write?
Really good coffee or lattes or herbal tea. I never eat when I write.
 
16. Typewriter, laptop, or pen & paper?
Laptop.
 
17. What did you do immediately after hearing that you were being published for the very first time?
Poured a glass of wine, went out onto my deck on Cortes Island to look out over the lake and called my husband. 
 
18. What was the most surprising fact you uncovered while writing your book?
The tarsands operations in Albert result in 1.8 Billion Litres of toxic water being spewed into open pit unlined mines EVERYDAY. On the flip side we also uncovered that last year for the first time in humand history, the combined new investment of renewable energy (solar, wind etc ) was greater than the investment in new oil, coal and nuclear.
 
19. If readers learn one thing from your book, what do you wish it to be?
We are living a tremendous tipping point moment in which we all have an opportunity to affect whether we have clean air to breathe and water to drink, whether we protect the last of the wild and choose clean, safe renewable energy over dirty, limited and dangerous fossil fuels. In this moment decisions are being made over whether the poor will have access to energy and whether new emerging economies leap the fossil fuel era and learn from the mistakes that we have made in industrialized countries. We don’t need to be rocket scientists, we don’t need to build a new widget––we need to find ways to organize, to engage each other and hold our elected officials and major corporations accountable. You don’t have to be an expert, we all have a role to play. Actually engaging in the debate and organizing is way more fun and satisfying than just taking out the recycling or writing a guilt cheque for carbon offsets. Start small. Write a letter to your MP. Have a dinner specifically to discuss an issue you care about and invite someone from one of the groups working on that topic. Go to a rally or protest. It can snowball from there!
 
20. What is the best gift someone could give a writer?
Space. A great dinner. Review time and serious, thoughful feedback.

Author Essay

It was the oddest thing to watch as one after another, the scientists and UN officials and all my environmental colleagues from around the world made statements condemning Canada.
 
After hearing that, every morning I’d get up at five and go to the main coordinating office to check the agenda, which was larger than an encyclopedia. I’d flip through it, underlining and highlighting sessions I thought I should attend. I went from international panel to international panel and learned more than I ever wanted to know about the coming impacts of climate change. What blew me away most was not just the statistics but that so many scientists were unable to stop themselves from crying.
 
The second day in Bali, Canada had the dubious honour of receiving the Fossil Award of the Day for a leaked memo that showed Canadian delegates had been instructed to agree to nothing short of binding targets for all countries. The memo went on to propose that Canada push for a “special circumstances” addendum. The positions were designed to derail the negotiations in Bali. The Harper government knew full well that China would never agree to be treated the same as the “developed countries” that had created the mess to begin with, let alone agree to special circumstances for Canada and other oil-producing nations. The result was that Canada could hide behind China, and the Harper government was left with a very convenient excuse to do nothing.
 
I delivered my speech, and it was a tough one to make because I’d never felt less proud of being Canadian. So that’s what I talked about. “Today I stand here as a Canadian, ashamed. Ashamed that while the international community struggles to fight global warming, Canada is developing the largest fossil fuel project in the world, the Alberta tar sands. Ashamed that my government has reneged on our Kyoto commitments and is refusing to commit to strong absolute emissions reduction targets and, more than that, holding up important international agreements that would chart a path forward.”
 
Then I laid out for them just how much climate change had already changed Canadian forests. Ten million hectares (25 million acres) of forest are completely dead due to pine beetle infestations. The pine beetle is an innocuous little bug that used to die every winter when the temperature dropped below minus forty degrees. The problem is that the beetles don’t die seasonally anymore because it doesn’t get cold enough. The result is that pine beetles are eating their way through British Columbia’s old-growth forest.
 
There were over a thousand environmentalists in Bali for the climate talks. At the end of every day hundreds would meet and vote on which countries did the most to hurt the potential for progress in fighting climate change. Canada won first, second and third place. On the third day, Canada’s minister of environment, John Baird, finally arrived, just in time to win all three days’ Fossil Awards.

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