Why we made this film
Contact us
Copyright
Privacy
Funders
Why we made this film
The Good Life – The Green Life is a documentary film about what it means to live a good, green life at the climate crossroads. It features nine amazing people who are thinking about and taking action on climate change—and the broader ecological crisis we face—in a variety of creative ways. Learn more about each of them here.
This project was born out of the challenge that most people know climate change is a serious threat and want to deal with it, yet as a society we seem stuck in neutral. Maybe it’s because the scale of the problem is overwhelming. Or maybe it’s that we have more immediate stresses to deal with. Or that living green in a society built on fossil fuels really isn’t easy. Or that our political leaders seem to be focused on the short term. Or that imagining a world without (or with very little) reliance on fossil fuels is actually pretty hard — never mind figuring out how we make that world happen.
We wanted to learn more about people who, against these odds, are defining a different way of life, and working to make change locally and on a bigger scale. And to create a documentary film in the process that could help other people get engaged. You can find out more about the film creators here.
The people featured in this film (presented chapter by chapter on this site, but soon to be available in a single-run version) are all from the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia, Canada – also the territories of many First Nations. The film reflects an intensely local story and culturally-specific understanding of what the good, green life means. What we might hear from people in other parts of BC, especially in rural or resource-dependent areas, from Aboriginal people here and in other regions, or from people in other places in Canada and beyond, would likely be very different…though we suspect there would be much in common too.
We hope this film inspires you to start, or keep up, conversations about the changes needed to deal with climate change, and to transform our society and economy so we live within our ecological limits. It’s a big change – but it could also mean a better quality of life – a happier, healthier, more enjoyable way of living. We can help you organize a screening of this film (big or small, in your home or at a community event), and you’ll find resources to help you learn more about the issues or get involved here.
The Good Life – The Green Life is part of a larger effort called the Climate Justice Project — a research and public engagement initiative that looks at how British Columbia can make the shift to carbon-zero in a way that is fair and democratic. The Climate Justice Project is led by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and the University of British Columbia, together with environmental, social justice, and First Nations groups, and researchers from a number of BC’s universities.
Contact us
For more information, to request a copy of the DVD, or find out how we can help you organize a screening, contact us at:
[email protected]
The Good Life – The Green Life is a project of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ BC Office. We are located at:
520 – 700 West Pender St • Vancouver, BC • V6C 1G8
www.policyalternatives.ca
Copyright
The Good Life – The Green Life by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. That means you can feel free to show the film without asking our permission, including in public settings – but you may not alter it, use the its contents (audio, video, images, narration, titles, etc) in your own works, or use it for commercial purposes (ex, charge people money to see it, sell it, etc).
For citations, please use the following attribution information (more about the film creators here):
Daub, Shannon, Jonathan Taggart, Shane Gunster, Josha MacNab, and Amazing Factory Productions. 2014. The Good Life – The Green Life. Vancouver, BC: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. https://goodlifegreenlife.ca.
Privacy
We respect your privacy. Here’s how:
This website is provided by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA), a registered charity. We do not collect personally identifiable information from individuals through this website, except if you sign up for our email newsletter (in which case we collect your email address). If you sign up for our email newsletter, we will send you information and updates about The Good Life – The Green Life, and occasionally related CCPA information. You can unsubscribe at any time.
We collect non-personal and aggregate information from our site visitors. We automatically log information about visits to this website in the normal course of establishing and maintaining web connections. Our servers record statistical information such as visitors’ IP addresses, time and duration of visit, and web pages visited. We use cookies to obtain non-personal information from visitors. Cookies are small data files that your web browser places on your computer when you visit a website. Most browsers accept cookies automatically, but can be configured not to accept them or to indicate when a cookie is being sent. We do not extract personal information in this process, nor do we provide this information to third parties. Cookies allow us to speed up the navigation process and to make the website experience more efficient; they also help us measure the traffic on our website so that we can assess the effectiveness of our education and outreach efforts.
Funders
Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions (PICS) 
PICS is lead funder of The Good Life – The Green Life. PICS is a dynamic knowledge network that brings together leading researchers from BC and around the world to study the impacts of climate change and to develop positive approaches to mitigation and adaptation. Created in 2008 with a major endowment from the BC Ministry of the Environment, PICS is hosted and led by the University of Victoria in collaboration with BC’s three other research-intensive universities: Simon Fraser University, the University of British Columbia and the University of Northern British Columbia. Learn more here.
We are also very grateful to the McConnell Foundation, Vancity, Vancouver Foundation, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) for their support. The opinions and ideas expressed in the film do not necessarily reflect the views of its funders.
