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Vancouver — A professional hockey player and environmentalist David Suzuki make for strange breakfast companions, but their unlikely encounter in Calgary last year is greening dressing rooms throughout the NHL.
Since their meeting last fall, Andrew Ference, a Boston Bruins defenceman, has become the point man for the National Hockey League Players' Association on environmental issues. His goal is to slow climate change by changing the mindset of his fellow players.
Friday, Ference and Suzuki will unite for a news conference in Toronto to unveil a partnership between the NHLPA and the David Suzuki Foundation. The two are teaming up to help offset the greenhouse gas emissions produced by NHL players whose jobs require them to travel by planes, trains, buses and cars.
"We can do as much as we can as environmentalists, but let's face it, kids look up to heroes," Suzuki said yesterday. "My first reaction, as an environmentalist, was, 'Whoa, what a great set of allies.'"
The program is designed to make players carbon neutral, and the initiative is considered the first of its kind for professional athletes.
Carbon neutral means that every polluting emission, such as a flight, can be subtracted by an investment in a clean energy project. The investments are called "carbon offsets."
"Hockey players are educated enough and smart enough to do the right thing," Ference said yesterday. "There is a lot of good character in the league. What I like about the initiative is that it is positive. It's actually taking action."
Suzuki became aware of Ference's environmental bent after the defenceman gave an interview to a Toronto newspaper last year.
"It was one of those off-hockey interviews," Ference said. "The questions was, 'Who would you most like to have breakfast with?' I said: 'David Suzuki,' and sure enough, one week later, they called and said, 'David is in Calgary and wants to have breakfast.'"
The foundation calculated the average NHL player generates 10 tons of carbon emissions each season by travelling to games. At $29 a ton, Ference is asking his colleagues to donate $290 annually to Montreal-based Planet Air. The non-profit organization is redistributing the money to three clean energy projects: hydro in Indonesia, biomass in India, and a wind farm in Madagascar.
"In that part of the world, you cannot only get pollution-free power, but you can also stop a coal plant from going up, so you get it both ways," Ference said.
More than 300 players have signed up, including the entire Dallas Stars team, which was recently visited by new NHLPA executive director Paul Kelly and ombudsman Eric Lindros. Kelly and Lindros are in the middle of their fall tour and have visited 17 of the 30 teams, pitching their environmental challenge, among other union business.
Initially, Ference set a goal of 50 to 80 players, but better than expected turnout for information sessions has forced them to revise their target. Now, he wants to enlist 600 players.
"That's incredible," Suzuki said when told of the response. "I'm amazed at how cheap it is. For them, it is a drop in the bucket."
Ference said he grew up in suburban Edmonton playing sports, building forts and participating in outdoor activities as opposed to watching television. Five years ago, he was surfing in Manhattan Beach, Calif., when he was spurred to change his own habits.
"You could clearly taste gasoline in the water and it was, like, 'Man, this is wrong,'" he said.
Ference started by greening his life at home, but he then took his lifestyle into the Calgary Flames' dressing room. Last year, he and six teammates, including Jarome Iginla, Rhett Warrener and Robyn Regehr, began offsetting their emissions after attending the David Suzuki Foundation Christmas party.
Ference bought a hybrid vehicle and made sure the Bruins' dressing room got a recycling bin after he was traded there last February. His passion has earned him some nicknames from teammates, "David Suzuki" and "Tree-Hugger," but it hasn't stopped him from promoting green thinking.
"We know the consequences," he said of NHL players. "There is more than one Land Rover in the parking lot, but this is our start."
