Last year, the Los Angeles Film Festival had a "Green Day," showcasing 50 short eco-films and lining a block in Westwood with a few green booths (photo above). This year, the festival has declared its plans to incorporate environmentalism into more aspects of its festivities, happening June 19-29.
Most impressively, the festival is supporting local food: "catering will use organically-grown produce purchased from local farms within a 150-mile radius of Los Angeles," announces the press release -- though exactly how much of the food will be local isn't specified. The festival will also use biodiesel-fueled generators.
Aside from those, the steps are rather unremarkable things to be sending out a press release about, in the vein of "We'll use recycled paper -- then recycle it! Also, we'll buy carbon offsets!"
Still, the greening's a step forward for the film and television industry, which is known as the second largest contributor of criteria air pollutants in the L.A. metro area. SoCal film festivals' efforts to go green is something I noted last year, when all of them started sending out press releases about how they plan to include an eco-themed film or two. Hopefully these efforts will get darker green each year.
Photo by Siel
 Regular Big Blue Bus riders: Now's the time to enroll in that intro to guitar class you've meant to take since you were a misunderstood adolescent. Why? Thanks to the dealio SMC's worked out with the BBB, students can ditch the car and take public transit -- FREE.
In fact, you may be able to enroll in said guitar class for just $2. Seriously. Read on:
SMC, unbeknownst to most, has a very active student group called Associated Students. This group's super eco-friendly and progressive -- and accordingly, got the BBB to test out a pilot program, letting SMC students ride line 6, the sunset ride, and the crosstown ride for free.
Apparently, that program was a flying (riding?) success. According to Linda Gamberg, Marketing & Public Information Coordinator for BBB, the pilot program "went over so well the students themselves initiated this [new] program," expanding the reach to include all of the BBB.
"The original plan was that they [the BBB] were going to offer the rapid 7 only," says John Kernick, Director of Financial Support of Associated Students, explaining that the BBB proposed simply increasing the services and times for that one line. "I'm a bus rider and I've been a bus rider for a long time, and at the cost that we were expected to pay for the rapid only -- It wasn't a good cost-benefit analysis."
So the SMC students pushed for more -- discussing the issue at Associated Students' March 31 meeting (PDF agenda here) -- and got it. The final dealio -- a.k.a. "Any line, any time" -- splits up the additional cost of the free BBB rides between the existing Associated Students fee and the student ID fee. According to Kernick, $14 more was required of each student -- which was translated into a $5 ID card fee increase, and a $9 Associated Students fee increase.
This is how it adds up. SMC classes cost $26 per unit. In addition to that, there's the $14 health fee, the $8 ID card fee, and the $10 Associated Students fee. With the $14 extra increase for the BBB deal, all of that will cost $72 come fall.
A monthly EZ Pass costs $70. Yes, that EZ Pass gives you access to some other transit agencies' bus lines, but if you'd been getting the pass just to ride the BBB on a regular basis, this means you can now get both the pass AND a one-unit class at SMC for just $2 more.
The new deal between BBB and SMC kicks off with the fall semester, which starts this August.
A key thing to remember is that students do have to take advantage of the program to ensure its continuation. "If we don't see students take the bus, this isn't going to pay for anything," says Kaya Foster, an SMC student involved with the school's Eco Action Club.
"In the future I'd love to see a public transportation system that reaches all the public colleges," says Kernick. Do you share that dream? Take a class at SMC -- and take the BBB to said class -- and help make that dream a reality. And if you're a UCLA student, ask your student body reps why you still have to pay to take the BBB to Westwood, while your compatriots at SMC ride for free.
Photo by Siel
 So I missed THE talk I wanted to hear at Opportunity Green. Futurist Jamais Cascio gave his "Green Tomorrows" keynote at a ridiculously early 9 a.m. or so. He even gave me a shout-out (he used one of my pics in his presentation) -- and no, I wasn't there to wave in response.
Damn those early morning conference starts! Note to self: Staying out late the night before a conference that kicks off at 8 a.m. is never a good idea even if it really, really seems like it at the time... Once I arrived around 11 a.m., I had a dozen or so people come up to ask where I was when I was mentioned.
The rest of the keynotes and most of the panels were, unfortunately, rather meh. The convo between John Picard, sustainability consultant, and Sam LaBudde, Goldman prize-winner, sort of wandered and meandered. The convo with Kevin Wall, founder and CEO of Live Earth, was a bit too self-congratulatory.
I liked the "Women In Sustainability Shaping the Future" panel, as I mentioned in a previous post. But after that came the "Green 2.0" panel, which was so bad that I -- and some others -- ended up leaving for the concurrent panel. Noah Kagan of OKDork.com actually started quizzing the audience like junior high students, telling them to shout out what companies they thought of as green, followed by shouts about what companies they thought of as not green.
Um, we came to learn from experts here, not participate in some weird impromptu call-and-answer session about consumer perception. I hear that later in the panel, Noah actually called green just a fad. Well of course it is, if you think about it just as a money-making tagline.
At the end of the night, I thought I might puke if I heard "vote with your dollar" one more time. By that, I'm not saying you shouldn't vote with your dollar. Yes, by all means, always think about putting your money where your mouth is. But the audience was made of enviro-diehards who'd already heard that, a lot. And I really was hoping to hear something new.
In many ways, Opportunity Green was biz as usual. The number of female speakers and panelists? Eight. Compare that to the 28 male speakers and panelists invited to participate. The number of female keynotes? Zero of five. Non-white panelists or speakers? None, as far as I could tell, although there were a couple breakout sessions so there may've been a couple in the panels I didn't attend.
But I did get some good stuff out of Opportunity Green, just because many cool people were there. Post-conference, Jamais wrote: "The lesson I took from the Opportunity Green event is that activist passion doesn't necessarily translate well into business passion." I couldn't agree more. My friend Jeremy Jacquot, writer for Treehugger, twittered: "opp green was good but ... for my part, i thought it was a wee bit too predictable."
I should add that I liked the organic Casa Barranca wine at the after-party.
De-car-ing: The way there -- Metro 720 to Westwood, plus a bit of a walk into the UCLA campus. The way back -- a ride from my friend Barent. Thanks dude :)
Photos by Siel
 Not yet registered for Opportunity Green, the green biz conference happening this Saturday, Nov. 17? Sign up now so you don't miss out on this quick crash course on how to combine environmentalism with profitable business. (Discount code at end of post)
Organized via a partnership among UCLA organizations, Opportunity Green will feature breakout sessions and panels, "green speed networking," and inspiring talks from the impressive speaker lineup, which includes Kevin Wall, the founder of Live Earth, and Heather Stephenson, founder of Ideal Bite.
 But the speaker I'm most psyched to hear from is futurist Jamais Cascio, co-founder of Worldchanging who now blogs at Open the Future. We've kept in touch since we were both on a green blogging panel at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Since then, Jamais has done everything from figure out the carbon footprint of a cheeseburger in minute detail to include me in the most geekified blog memes ever, like this pharyngula mutating genre meme.
His being a futurist and all, I asked Jamais what he sees that's unique about L.A.'s future (versus other cities). His answer: Los Angeles is a city built on competing visions of the future.
On the surface, L.A. seems to be the realization of all of the leading environmental risks: the auto-centric culture; the suburban sprawl; the overburdened water table; the celebration of all things consumer, from media to merchandise. There's truth to this caricature, unfortunately. And while these environmental burdens could once be seen as persistent annoyances, they're now nothing less than engines for catastrophe.
At the same time, L.A. embraces constant reinvention. The immigrants passing through, both from outside the U.S. and -- even more often -- from other American states, churn the culture, the economy and the society of Los Angeles in ways that would be hard to replicate anywhere else. With them come new ideas, and the desire for a space to see the ideas flourish. The media industry is itself founded on the notion of creative destruction, entrepreneurial cycles accelerated a hundred-fold; and while the media companies themselves may sometimes forget this underlying truth, and instead seek the comforts of stagnant incumbency, the thousands upon thousands of creative people working in and supporting the industry live the life of creative destruction every day.
Fortunately, Los Angeles doesn't ignore the environmental challenges it faces, and the number of organizations and companies looking for ways to handle these dilemmas is staggering. The solutions won't be simple and won't be cheap, but will -- if and when they arise -- be globally transformative. If they can work in Los Angeles they can work nearly anywhere, especially in the explosive cities of the developing world. Lessons (and innovations!) from Los Angeles are far more likely to be applicable in Beijing or Bangalore than would techniques copied from Portland or New York.
The quandary that Los Angeles faces, then, is whether to see the environmental risks as the leading driver for innovation and reinvention, or to allow them to turn the megalopolis into the first big failed city-state of the 21st century.
What will Jamais be talking about at Opportunity Green? "Oh, the usual: the future and how to get there (hint: don't take the 405)."
So find out how to get there this Saturday! Registration is rather pricy at $249, but the first 10 Emerald City readers to sign up can get $50 off using this code: emeraldcity. Students get in for $75.
 I got up late but still made it to the Global Warming Rally in front of the Federal Building in Westwood today. There I joined other Angelenos who turned out with signs, bikes, and music -- and I gave out chocolate chip zucchini cookies!
The rally was part of Step It Up, a national day of enviro-action with events happening all over the U.S. today, all with the same goal: to make Congress 1) cut carbon 80% by 2050, 2) create green jobs, and 3) prevent new coal-fired power plants.
Ingrid, who organized this event, signed people in at a little table in Westwood Park and gave out Clif bars before sending them, signs and posters in tow, to the corner of Wilshire and Veteran. Cars and more cars went by, many honking in support.
 I had to leave before a screening of the film "Everything's Cool," but when I did, everyone seemed to be relaxed and having fun, sitting in Westwood Park and nibbling on a late lunch from Native Foods, a yummy organic vegan restaurant that's trying to go zero waste -- Takeout comes in biodegradable containers with bioplastic spoons.
I got the Bali Surf Burger, as usual. What's your fave Native Foods dish?
De-car-ing: I took the 720 rapid bus there and back.
Photos by Siel
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