Researching the Concept

The photo below shows two inches worth of heavily highlighted and marked up case law. On top is a 40-page legal report that Rob Shirkey would eventually produce to summarize his research and make the case that cities have the jurisdiction to pass climate change warnings on gas pumps into law.

There are about 500 sheets of paper in a two-inch stack, or 1,000 pages printed double-sided. What you’re looking at is 1,000 pages worth of original research just to answer a single legal question. And what about all the research that he conducted on the concept itself? It’s currently in a banker’s box in his building’s storage locker.

Later, a group of law students from the University of Victoria would help adapt Rob’s research to fit British Columbia’s legal framework. Eventually, Lidstone & Company, a prominent law firm with a focus on local government, looked at our research and came to the same conclusion: “In our opinion, a requirement to place labels on gas nozzles could be validly imposed pursuant to a municipality’s power to regulate business.”

Flipping this stack open to a random tab shows a case that’s pretty on point, but that’s not why we’re sharing it with you. Take a moment to notice the date that the printer happened to leave at the bottom right corner.

05/09/2012. That’s September 5th, 2012, or more than four months before the launch of Rob’s non-profit in January of 2013. People sometimes ask how Our Horizon seemed to have so much success within just a few short months of launching in 2013. The answer? Months of hard work and thousands of dollars to graphic designers, web developers, database providers, etc. to push our idea out into the world.