[Sust-mar] Green Interview: Artist Franke James says 'let your green conscience guide you'

[Laura Landon]

Text Box: www.thegreeninterview.comcid:image005.jpg at 01CF3661.A0DADFA0

March 3, 2014

 

 Let your green conscience guide you, says artist Franke James

 

Concerned about climate change, artist Franke James sold her SUV and tore up
her driveway to plant a garden. Her conscience made her do it. She thinks
you should do something similar. 

 

"I'm not saying everybody should go out and sell their cars," James says in
the latest Green Interview, available now at www.TheGreenInterview.com. "I'm
saying listen to your conscience and let it tell you a way that you could
take action."

 

Her commitment to action on climate change led her to take on Toronto City
Hall-and win. In what she describes as an Alice in Wonderland moment, she
had to fight the municipal government for the right to remove her driveway
and plant a garden in the space instead. 

James also angered the Prime Minister's Office when she planned a European
art tour urging young people to consider what they could do to stem - or
reverse - global warming. Having written and published a "visual letter" to
Prime Minister Stephen Harper, asking him pointed questions on climate
change, she later discovered that federal support for a proposed European
tour of her art had mysteriously evaporated. Her Freedom of Information
investigation uncovered a back-room government effort to discredit her and
her work - so she retaliated with a well-documented visual essay called
Banned on the Hill. She later plastered Ottawa, Calgary and Ottawa with
posters saying, "Do Not Talk About Climate Change: It's Against Government
Policy."  

 

"Franke is fabulous," says Green Interview host Silver Donald Cameron.
"She's fierce, she's funny, and she's fearless. Her conscience and her
determination make her a model citizen - though I'm sure Stephen Harper
doesn't think so." 

 

Franke James's books are available at www.frankejames.com. The Green
Interview is a subscription website of extended interviews with some of the
world's greatest thinkers, writers and observers-people whose ideas and
perceptions are leading the way to a new era of sustainability. Visitors to
the site can watch the interviews for one week free of charge. In addition,
the interviews are available in thousands of libraries worldwide through
<http://www.gale.cengage.com/greenr/> GreenR, the environmental database
service of Gale Cengage Learning. The host and executive producer of The
Green Interview is Silver Donald Cameron, and the interviews are produced
and directed by Chris Beckett.

For further information about this interview or others at
<http://www.thegreeninterview.com/> www.thegreeninterview.com, please
contact: Silver Donald Cameron at  <mailto:sdc at silverdonaldcameron.ca>
sdc at silverdonaldcameron.ca or 902-446-5577.

 

-30-

 

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