B.C. eco-activist Tzeporah Berman was arrested in 1993 when she helped lead civil disobedience against logging in the old-growth forests of Clayoquot Sound. "It was a way for government and industry to keep me quiet," Berman told the Georgia Straight by phone.

It didn't work. On August 9, the cofounder and program director of international environmental organization Forest Ethics was rubbing shoulders with Paris Hilton on a green carpet on Sunset Boulevard.

"It [meeting Paris Hilton] was surreal and I have mixed feelings about it, because it is really exciting to have this big a stage to be able to talk about…British Columbia's old-growth forests that are still being logged," she said. "At the same time, it is a little depressing that five minutes with Paris Hilton should result in literally hundreds of media articles…a year of research linking deforestation to global warming in Canada–which I did and produced the first-ever report on that topic in Canada–got two articles."

The occasion of those five minutes was an L.A. screening of The 11th Hour, narrated by actor Leonardo DiCaprio. The documentary is another landmark shift in mainstream environmental consciousness, tackling loss of biodiversity, consumerism, fossil-fuel depletion, global warming, and economics stemming from humankind's effects on the planet. It opens Friday (August 31).

When Berman, now a high-profile resident of Cortes Island, met the directors of the film, Nadia Conners and Leila Conners Petersen, at a Bioneers conference in California last year, she told them about the pivotal role old-growth forests play in B.C. What she said shook them enough to invite her to appear in The 11th Hour.

Berman was back in B.C. on August 23, when Forest Ethics hosted an 11th Hour screening at the Fifth Avenue Cinemas. Berman is calling on Premier Gordon Campbell to honour emissions-reduction targets, introduce tougher legislation to protect wildlife and wild places, and end the logging of old-growth forests.

At the Vancouver screening, Berman lauded efforts to preserve the Great Bear Rainforest but warned that other old-growth forests are being lost to industrial logging.

NDP MLAs Shane Simpson (environment critic) and Bob Simpson (forestry and range critic) were in the crowd, along with Vancouver-Fairview NDP MLA Gregor Robertson. Rich Coleman, provincial minister of forests and range, did not make himself available for an interview by Straight deadline. At the after-party at Century House, guests, including stars from The L Word and Battlestar Galactica, signed postcards urging Campbell to take stronger action to preserve old-growth forests in B.C.

"The majority of British Columbians don't know that 90 percent of our logging here is still clearcut logging and that we are still logging areas like the Inland Temperate Rainforest, which are some of the most important areas of old growth left in the world," Berman said. "The idea that we are logging Canada's largest carbon bank–our old-growth forests–is absolutely absurd, and that is underreported."

Berman said British Columbians can affect provincial policy by "engaging". "The provincial government is deciding the fate of the mountain caribou in the Inland Temperate Rainforest, and they say they are going to make a decision by September," she said. "That decision will decide the fate of some of our old-growth forest.…[Companies] are mowing them down right now to make catalogues and junk mail. It is one of B.C.'s dirtiest secrets."

And it's a secret that has even Paris Hilton talking.