It’s hard being green, and don’t we all know it? Everything’s so complicated. Local or organic? Paper or biodegradable plastic? On and on.. For some perceptive insights into the advertising angles, catch while you can the Green Marketing podcast on one of CBC‘s very best radio shows: The Art of Persuasion. From Rachel Carson, to BP’s rebranding errors – well in advance of the Deepwater Horizon fiasco, to green pizza, to Marks & Spencer’s Plan A, it’s a good, pithy story well told. And the website now offers visual content, like this fabulous ad:

Well. Once you’ve mastered your green strategy you still have to cope with the rest of life’s irritations. It seems sometimes that things go well beyond annoying. For those still looking for a new year’s resolution, might I suggest direct consumer action? It has the double benefit of being a stress reliever for the complainant, and a public education service for the industry in question.

The Consumers Association of Canada provides a most helpful list of agencies to complain to, arranged by industry, as well as tips on complaining effectively.

Those of you not happy to be test dummies for Canadian airport security geeks wanting to play with their new body scanners can vent your spleen at the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority.

The Advertising Complaints Authority is the place to go to complain about advertising by email, mail or fax.

Thanks to Mona for passing along this article from the Georgia Straight by the excellent Bill Freeman, one of Canada’s best spokespeople on the topic of copyright, and chair of the Creators’ Copyright Coalition, an organization of 17 of the largest creator groups in the country, representing over 100,000 Canadian creators.

As Freeman says, once things were simple; then along came the internet and that changed everything. And the proposed amendment (Bill C-32) to the Canadian copyright act, which has received second reading and is now before a legislative committee, threatens the livelihood of anyone who hopes to make a living from a creative profession.

It seems that the internet, which started life as a tool for free dissemination of just about everything, is starting to become another floor in the towering edifice of our have/have not society. Wealth is so polarized for so many of us now — and it’s worsening by the day.

Have a listen to CBC Spark‘s recent program on innovation, and particularly to Barbara van Shewick who explains how and why changes to the internet’s architecture will put an end to innovation of the kind that spawned eBay and Facebook. She outlines the kinds of harm that can be done when internet service providers are allowed to limit access to information, and explains why developers of the future will have to have money and power behind them. Gone the days of making a killer app from the comfort and safety of your basement… Oh wait, I never did get the hang of that either…