大象传媒

I went to a very intense music camp in Michigan when I was a kid. We wore uniforms that included navy corduroy short pants, so I was onside from the get-go. The camp鈥檚 motto was Do More In Less Time. They played reveille at 6:15 a.m., and days were packed with activities and lessons and concerts. Somehow I managed to learn classical guitar, watch obscure foreign films, obtain my lifeguard certification, realize I actually hated classical violin, develop a major crush on a contrabassoon player, and see about 40 concerts in a mere eight weeks. I imagined it would be impossible to maintain this pace year-round, but they now have a boarding school, so who knows.

Phrases imprinted on my brain when I was young seem to stay there, like tacky glass pebbles on the bottom of a fish tank. I come back to Do More In Less Time on the regular, even if there鈥檚 a sort of lifehacky striveyness to it that I don鈥檛 love. I think it鈥檚 because, despite every deep-breathed effort to slooowww myself down, I like the idea of doing more in less time. It means there鈥檚 lots of leftover time to do even more.

When it comes to climate, I鈥檓 interested in the ways we can do more in less time because we don鈥檛 have time. When I started thinking about how I could best work on climate full time, I searched for the work that would have the quickest and most meaningful impact. For me, the answer was carbon pricing. An instant global carbon tax would do so much in so little time. Even the .

While I have forbidden myself from using the phrase 鈥渟ilver linings鈥� with regard to COVID-19, I鈥檓 curious about how it can get us to do more in less time. We talk of shovel-ready/shovel-worthy green projects. What are the things we can do quickly? After initially rebuffing all efforts to expand and expedite Toronto鈥檚 pedestrian spaces and cycle paths, our mayor has done an about-face and now plans to . This, when every few kilometers of bike lanes in this town normally require 72 years and 45 minutes of deliberation. Do more in less time! Or in the parlance of our mayor, fast-track it! (He likes to add the word track to the end of any transit project.)

I 鈥渁ttended鈥� two great talks this week that gave me hope we can do some things immediately. From electrifying our vehicle fleets to retrofitting our built infrastructure, we can get so much going on in relatively short order. The trick: we need to do the right more in the smallest amount of time possible. 

Though emissions have fallen for the wrong reasons, Carbon Brief鈥檚  give us headwinds. And the COVID fallout has given us the opportunity to spend like the wind. We need to use this small window of opportunity to do so much more than status quo. We need to use this time to restructure and decarbonize as quickly as possible. I鈥檒l play reveille at 6:15 if it鈥檒l help.

How can you do more in less time? LMK

Hope you are safe and healthy and better at baking bread than I am,

Sarah

Cute Humans Dancing

I don鈥檛 know what this even is, but I like it –

P.S. I鈥檓 always curious to know what you think. This is my newsletter for the week of May 7, 2020, published in partnership with 大象传媒 Media You can sign up to get Minimum Viable Planet newsletter emailed directly to you at .