Green Design » Movement Building and Activism

Why Bicycles Are a Must-Have for Modern Civil Disobedience

WorldChanging Team — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:31:44 +0000

by Peter Walker

What is it that makes the bicycle and the demonstration such good companions?

When the location of this year's Climate Camp protest was finally revealed on Wednesday, the first activists to arrive were a select group in rented vans, tasked with setting up tripods and fencing off a section of the land at Blackheath, south-east London.

But shortly afterwards, the first influx of protesters taking part in the "swoop" on the site from a series of meeting points around the capital was a contingent of around 150 people, all riding bicycles. They – with me in tow – had spent about 90 minutes pedalling en mass around central London, awaiting word on where the camp would be.

It's a fair bet these days that whenever there is an environmentally based protest, particularly in an urban area, a gang of cyclists will be involved somewhere or other. In fact, bikes are becoming a must-have element of all sorts of modern civil disobedience.

Many of these bike-based actions are making a point about transport and cycling issues: Critical Mass, the group celebration of taking over a city's streets with bikes is a good example, and is held regularly in dozens of places around the world (it's on tonight in London if you're in town).

There are exceptions: last year activists from one Indian political party staged a bike rally to protest, somewhat counterintuitively, against a rise in fuel prices. And there is the long-established, if still baffling to some, practice of naked bike rides.

So what is it that makes the bicycle and the demonstration such good companions? To me, there are two factors at play.

Firstly, if you're in a group, there is something undeniably liberating about riding around a city surrounded by cyclists. I've never been on a Critical Mass ride, so going to Blackheath was a strange sensation – no longer a vulnerable solo rider lined up against the massed metal forces of the motorised traffic, I was part of an entity too big to ignore or shove unthinkingly into the kerb.

Second, if you're a solo campaigner in an urban environment then the bike is the mode of transport most guaranteed to get you to your protest on time and – perhaps more important still – give you the best chance of slipping away from pursuing authorities. When I worked for another news organisation in Beijing I'd regularly pedal to meetings or protests, nipping down narrow lanes to shake off the unmarked police cars, which routinely trail foreign journalists in China.

There is, of course, a catch for protesters: the police – at least in parts of the UK – have noticed this and now send officers out on bikes of their own. Some of the police riders look noticeably fitter and keener than they once did. Perhaps it's just a matter of time before we see Bullitt-style car chases around our cities – but this time on bikes.

This piece originally appeared on guardian.co.uk

Editor's note: In WorldChanging's recent feature, BIKE-O-RAMA, we talk about Ideas to Roll With to highlight movements and ideas from the cycling community that use the bike as a vehicle for social change. This report is a great addition to that list! more...

Other related posts:
Ideas to Roll With: Bike-Related Innovations We'd Like to See Flourish
Bike, Meet the City. City, This is the Bike.
Transparency Means Nothing Without Justice
Climate Protests Escalate Worldwide

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Movement Building and Activism at 1:31 PM)

Vandana Shiva on Sustaining India’s Agriculture

WorldChanging Team — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 01:21:58 +0000

Environmental activist Vandana Shiva has been working to build an organic agriculture movement across India for the past 22 years through the Navdanya Trust, an organization that she founded and directs. She recently spoke with Worldwatch India Fellow Anna da Costa about the connections between sustainable agriculture, climate change, and poverty alleviation.

by Anna da Costa

What led you to work on the environment, and particularly on sustainable agriculture?

The big transition to agriculture really came in 1984, which was incidentally a very Orwellian year for me. We had the invasion of the Golden Temple as a result of the extremist terrorist movement that had grown in Punjab. In response and retaliation, [then Prime Minister] Indira Gandhi was assassinated. People think this violence began with Al Qaeda, but terrorism has been around for a while, and one of the first extremist responses was in fact to the Green Revolution [the 20th-century movement to boost agricultural yields through increased use of chemical fertilizers and other inputs] in Punjab. A little later, we had the Bhopal disaster, the worst industrial disaster from a pesticide plant in history.

By the end of the year, my head was spinning and I was asking myself why agriculture had to be so violent. During that period, 30,000 people had been killed in the extremist Punjab violence and 30,000 in Bhopal. So we are talking about six times [the effects of] 9-11 in Punjab and six times [the effects of] 9-11 in Bhopal.

Food is too important, and agriculture is too important, to be left to more disasters like the ones we witnessed in 1984. And that's why I dedicated myself from then on to building a non-violent agriculture. That became my life's mission.

Could you describe the work and philosophy of your organization, Navdanya?

The first element of Navdanya's philosophy is to establish an agriculture at peace with nature - that leaves farmers in peace and doesn't push them into the kind of violence we saw in Punjab in the 1980s or to the new, self-directed violence that we have seen since then in the form of farmer suicides.

Second is the celebration of diversity. Biodiverse systems produce more nutrition per acre than the most intensive industrial systems and also have a higher land-equivalent ratio. That means you can grow much more on the same piece of land because you are creating symbiotic relationships between the plants.

Third is the importance of keeping in the commons that which belongs to the commons, like biodiversity and knowledge. The dominant market philosophy today is based on competition, but to my mind, the only things that sustain themselves in the long term are solidarity economies - economies based on mutual trust, on give and take.

Our work has grown out of this three-tiered philosophy. We are working to build non-violent, bio-diverse agriculture -namely, organic farming. We have trained nearly half a million farmers across the country either through large camps or through attendance at our schools. We run teacher training and research on farms and have also set up freely accessible community seed banks, with at least 50 around the country now. We also help the farmers with direct marketing and fair trade of their wonderful produce.

What are your views on the work of M.S. Swaminathan, the founding father of India's Green Revolution, and what is needed now to deal with the agricultural challenges that India faces?

The interesting thing is that although Dr. Swaminathan brought the Green Revolution to India, we have since presented together on various platforms, including the Asian-Organic movement, where we have both given keynote addresses on organic farming. Right now, Dr. Swaminathan is both the green revolutionary with chemicals and the green revolutionary without chemicals! [she laughs]

I believe there are three reasons why we need to go beyond the Green Revolution logic. Firstly, chemical fertilizers and pesticides don't come free and are a major reason for indebtedness, which itself leads to loss of farms, land, and entitlement to food. Secondly, chemical, or industrial, agriculture is hugely water demanding, and we cannot afford it in terms of the water crisis we face. One can grow crops organically without that level of water wastage. The third, increasingly compelling, reason now is the role of chemical agriculture - Green Revolution
agriculture - in propagating climate change. The need of the hour is an authentic agro-ecological green revolution.

Navdanya now works on climate change as well as agriculture. Why is this important, especially when a lot of people feel that climate change is taking attention away from other pressing domestic causes?

It is wrong to imagine that climate change is taking away attention from domestic causes. You can think in that way only if you think that climate change is merely about the negotiations. And that the negotiations are only international and not domestic. The climate change challenge is very much domestic. Navdanya has for the last three years been focusing a lot on building resilience to climate change, and in the process we've gotten involved in monitoring its impacts a lot more closely.

There is much greater intensity, frequency, and velocity of cyclones now. Cyclone Aila this May killed [at least] 125 people and devastated the eastern coast [of India]. We are also seeing far higher levels of drought and flooding with, for example, flash floods in the deserts of Ladakh and Rajasthan, in areas where there is normally no rain, and the devastating Mumbai floods in 2005. So climate change is very much a domestic threat to the poor, whose very survival is threatened by these events.

The second reason we must address climate change domestically is that if we do not, we risk adopting policies that make climate change worse - for example, through building an agriculture that makes us more vulnerable, or the rapid expansion of highways without proper impact assessments.

So what kind of policy change would you advocate in the agricultural sector for India?

First, we need to move away from fossil fuel dependence in our agriculture. Chemical fertilizers are fossil fuel-based and a major contributor of nitrogen oxide as a greenhouse gas. They also make the soil much more vulnerable to the smallest drought or flood. Through moving toward a biodiversity-based organic farming paradigm, farmer indebtedness and carbon emissions from agriculture would be reduced and climate change adaptation through increasing crop resilience would be supported. In addition to all of these benefits, a biodiverse system would provide raw materials for artisanal production, and an agriculture that is linked to crafts can also generate huge amounts of employment in a country like India. That is the way to solve the employment crisis.

To do this, however, the rights of farmers and rural communities to their resources must be ensured. Farmers need both land security and seed security, and in terms of policy this means getting away from intellectual property rights and patenting of the kind that has increased the seed price of cotton from 7 Rupees to 17,000 Rupees for Bt cotton and has led to a wave of suicides - 200,000 farmer suicides so far. We need to keep seed as a common property, as a common public good.

We also need to strengthen the smallholder by guaranteeing a fair market, a fair price. Right now the share of public money [to agriculture] is going totally as subsidies to industries that are environmentally destructive and non-sustainable. Investments in agriculture have been totally slashed and those investments need to be brought back. Policymakers absolutely have a role in protecting the resource rights of rural producers and in providing a share in the pie of public money.

Why are sustainable agriculture and forestry of particular importance as a solution for India?

Through organic farming, agroforestry, and forest regeneration, we would not only turn our soil and our vegetation into a major carbon sink [which absorbs and stores carbon from the atmosphere in a stable form], we would directly address the poverty problem too. When you seriously address climate change, you do the very things that reduce poverty and hunger: for example, using scarce resources to produce more food.

By intensifying biodiversity, you intensify biological output per acre, which means your productivity is going up, your hunger is being addressed, but more than hunger, your employment issues are being addressed. We need a biological and ecological renewal of India. India is one of the most densely populated countries in the world. We need to create enough work for all the hands in this country.

Poverty and climate change have the same solution. The model that displaces people from this work is inappropriate anywhere but it is doubly inappropriate in a country like India because not only does fossil fuel intensity displace people, it contributes to climate change. People, land, biodiversity, that's the message.

Anna da Costa is a Worldwatch Institute fellow based in New Delhi. This article is a product of Eye on Earth, Worldwatch Institute's online news service.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Movement Building and Activism at 5:21 PM)

Electric Bicycle World Tour: One Person Can Send a Loud Message

WorldChanging Team — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:18:00 +0000

Nominated by Petz Scholtus

I'd like to grant Guim Valls Teruel, who is doing the Electric Bicycle World Tour.

The main goal of the tour is to promote sustainable transport and actions to stop global warming on a glocal level. I'd like to highlight the fact that one person raises plenty of awareness with positive action in a way that's simple to understand, and that's inclusive to people around the world.

Nominator Petz Scholtus is an eco designer. You can follow her on her blog.

This piece is part of Worldchanging's Attention Philanthropy campaign. All week long, the Worldchanging Network will be delivering "attention grants" to worthy projects, individuals, resources and more. You can learn more about these gifts of notice and find other entries by clicking here.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Movement Building and Activism at 8:18 AM)

Youth Networks: Climate Action Networks Expand Globally

Bill McKibben — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:18:06 +0000

As Copenhagen nears, we'll be hearing regularly from the spokespeople for the big green groups. But if you want to know who's really powering the climate change movement right now, you need to look at young people. As I travel the globe organizing the giant day of action for 350.org, it's people between the ages of 15 to 25 who are carrying the load in country after country. This movement began in the states with Billy Parish, Jessy Tolkan, and EnergyAction, which drew 12,000 college kids to the Powershift gathering in D.C. in March. Now there are Powershift gatherings planned in Australia, in the UK, and lots of other places. The India Youth Climate Network is turning the subcontinent green. The same in Africa, the Caribbean, South America, the Mideast, even China where kids are currently crisscrossing the country on the Green Long March. And best of all, they're refusing to settle for the "politically realistic." They're actually asking our leaders to produce what science demands. It's good fun to work alongside them.

This piece is part of Worldchanging's Attention Philanthropy campaign. All week long, the Worldchanging Network will be delivering "attention grants" to worthy projects, individuals, resources and more. You can learn more about these gifts of notice and find other entries by clicking here.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Bill McKibben in Movement Building and Activism at 7:18 AM)

Youth Networks: Climate Action Networks Expand Globally

Bill McKibben — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:18:06 +0000

As Copenhagen nears, we'll be hearing regularly from the spokespeople for the big green groups. But if you want to know who's really powering the climate change movement right now, you need to look at young people. As I travel the globe organizing the giant day of action for 350.org, it's people between the ages of 15 to 25 who are carrying the load in country after country. This movement began in the states with Billy Parish, Jessy Tolkan, and EnergyAction, which drew 12,000 college kids to the Powershift gathering in D.C. in March. Now there are Powershift gatherings planned in Australia, in the UK, and lots of other places. The India Youth Climate Network is turning the subcontinent green. The same in Africa, the Caribbean, South America, the Mideast, even China where kids are currently crisscrossing the country on the Green Long March. And best of all, they're refusing to settle for the "politically realistic." They're actually asking our leaders to produce what science demands. It's good fun to work alongside them.

This piece is part of Worldchanging's Attention Philanthropy campaign. All week long, the Worldchanging Network will be delivering "attention grants" to worthy projects, individuals, resources and more. You can learn more about these gifts of notice and find other entries by clicking here.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Bill McKibben in Movement Building and Activism at 7:18 AM)

A Plea To President Obama: End Mountaintop Coal Mining by James Hansen

Yale Environment 360 — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 21:22:13 +0000

by James Hansen

Tighter restrictions on mountaintop removal mining are simply not enough. Instead, a leading climate scientist argues, the Obama administration must prohibit this destructive practice, which is devastating vast stretches of Appalachia.

President Obama speaks of “a planet in peril.” The president and the brilliant people he appointed in energy and science know that we must move rapidly to carbon-free energy to avoid handing our children a planet that has passed climate tipping points.

The science is clear. Burning all fossil fuels will destroy the future of young people and the unborn. And the fossil fuel that we must stop burning is coal. Coal is the critical issue. Coal is the main cause of climate change. It is also the dirtiest fossil fuel — air pollution, arsenic, and mercury from coal have devastating effects on human health and cause birth defects.

Recently, the administration unveiled its new position on mountaintop coal mining and set out a number of new restrictions on the practice in six Appalachian states. These new rules will require tougher environmental review before blowing up mountains. But it’s a minimal step.

The Obama administration is being forced into a political compromise. It has sacrificed a strong position on mountaintop removal in order to ensure the support of coal-state legislators for a climate bill. The political pressures are very real. But this is an approach to coal that defeats the purpose of the administration’s larger efforts to fight climate change, a sad political bargain that will never get us the change we need on mountaintop removal, coal or the climate. Coal is the linchpin in mitigating global warming, and it’s senseless to allow cheap mountaintop-removal coal while the administration is simultaneously seeking policies to boost renewable energy.

Mountaintop removal, which provides a mere 7 percent of the nation’s coal, is done by clear-cutting forests, blowing the tops off of mountains, and then dumping the debris into streambeds — an undeniably catastrophic way of mining. This technique has buried more than 800 miles of Appalachian streams in mining debris and by 2012 will have serious damaged or destroyed an area larger than Delaware. Mountaintop removal also poisons water supplies and pollutes the air with coal and rock dust. Coal ash piles are so toxic and unstable that the Department of Homeland Security has declared that the location of the nation’s 44 most hazardous coal ash sites must be kept secret. They fear terrorists will find ways to spill the toxic substances. But storms and heavy rain can do the same. A recent collapse in Tennessee released 100 times more hazardous material than the Exxon-Valdez oil spill.

We must make clear that we the people want a move toward a rapid phase-out of coal emissions now.
If the Obama administration is unwilling or unable to stop the massive environmental destruction of historic mountain ranges and essential drinking water for a relatively tiny amount of coal, can we honestly believe they will be able to phase out coal emissions at the level necessary to stop climate change? The issue of mountaintop removal is so important that I and others concerned about this problem will engage in an act of civil disobedience on June 23 at a mountaintop removal site in Coal River Valley, West Virginia. [Editor's note: Hansen and 30 other protesters were arrested at the June 23 protest and charged with impeding traffic outside a Massey Energy coal site in Raleigh County, West Virginia.] Experts agree that energy efficiency and carbon-free energies can satisfy our energy needs. Coal left in the ground is useful. It holds up the mountains, which, left intact, are an ideal site for wind energy. In contrast, mountaintop removal and strip mining of coal is a shameful abomination. Mining jobs have shrunk to a small fraction of past levels. With clean energy, there could be far more, green-energy jobs, and the government could support the retraining of miners, to a brighter, cleaner future.
Politicians may have to make concessions on what is right for what is winnable. But as a scientist and a citizen, I believe the right course is very clear: The climate crisis demands a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants that do not capture and safely dispose of all emissions. And mountaintop removal, providing only a small fraction of our energy, should be permanently prohibited.

President Obama remains the best hope, perhaps the only hope, for real change. If the president uses his influence, his eloquence, and his bully pulpit, he could be the agent of real change. But he does need our help to overcome the political realities of compromise.

We must make clear to Congress, to the EPA, and to the Obama administration that we the people want mountaintop removal abolished and we want a move toward a rapid phase-out of coal emissions now. The time for half measures and caving in to polluting industries is over. It is time for citizens to demand — yes, we can.

This piece originally appeared in e360.
Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Yale Environment 360 in Movement Building and Activism at 1:22 PM)

NASA’S James Hansen Arrested During Coal Mining Protest

Yale Environment 360 — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:32:58 +0000

NASA climate scientist James Hansen and 30 other demonstrators were arrested in West Virginia while protesting the practice of mountaintop=removal coal mining, which Hansen says President Obama must ban as the U.S. weans itself off fossil fuels. Hansen; actress Darryl Hannah; Michael Brune, executive director of the Rainforest Action Network; and Ken Hechler, a 94-year-old former congressman, were among those arrested as they blocked traffic on a highway in front of a Massey Energy coal plant in Sundial, West Virginia. “We have to phase out greenhouse gas emissions over the next 20 years,” said Hansen. “Where should you start? Well mountaintop removal is producing only seven percent of the nation’s coal and it’s a destructive practice.” The mining technique, which involves blasting the tops off Appalachian mountains to get at coal seams below, has buried more than 800 miles of streams in mining debris and has severely damaged or destroyed an area of forest nearly as large as Delaware. Protesters have recently carried out acts of civil disobedience against companies involved in mountaintop removal, including chaining themselves to mining equipment.

This piece originally appeared in e360 Yale Digest.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Yale Environment 360 in Movement Building and Activism at 4:32 PM)

NASA’S James Hansen Arrested During Coal Mining Protest

Yale Environment 360 — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:32:58 +0000

NASA climate scientist James Hansen and 30 other demonstrators were arrested in West Virginia while protesting the practice of mountaintop=removal coal mining, which Hansen says President Obama must ban as the U.S. weans itself off fossil fuels. Hansen; actress Darryl Hannah; Michael Brune, executive director of the Rainforest Action Network; and Ken Hechler, a 94-year-old former congressman, were among those arrested as they blocked traffic on a highway in front of a Massey Energy coal plant in Sundial, West Virginia. “We have to phase out greenhouse gas emissions over the next 20 years,” said Hansen. “Where should you start? Well mountaintop removal is producing only seven percent of the nation’s coal and it’s a destructive practice.” The mining technique, which involves blasting the tops off Appalachian mountains to get at coal seams below, has buried more than 800 miles of streams in mining debris and has severely damaged or destroyed an area of forest nearly as large as Delaware. Protesters have recently carried out acts of civil disobedience against companies involved in mountaintop removal, including chaining themselves to mining equipment.

This piece originally appeared in e360 Yale Digest.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Yale Environment 360 in Movement Building and Activism at 4:32 PM)

Suriname Tribe Protects Land, Ensures Rights

Ben Block — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:34:42 +0000

Six relatively unknown grassroots activists from around the globe receive a moment in the spotlight when the Goldman Environmental Prize announces its list of annual recipients. The prize, now in its 20th year, is considered the Nobel Prize for the environment. Past recipients include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, former Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva, and Nigerian environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was killed seven months after his recognition.

The Worldwatch Institute is honoring this year's prize winners with a series of profiles based on personal interviews. Click here for additional profiles.

When Suriname gained its independence from the Netherlands in 1975, it was among the most prosperous countries in South America. With the economy thriving, the Maroons tribal people, descendents of escaped African slaves, were left largely in peace.

But a handful of military dictatorships, along with drug trafficking and corruption, led to a decline in foreign aid in the 1990s, and Suriname's inflated economy tumbled. As a result, the country's rich tropical forests - once viewed as the best chance for long-term sustainable development - were plundered, and the rights of its tribal people were largely ignored.

The Saramaka, a group of Maroons, live in a 9,000-square-kilometer area of central Suriname. In the 1960s, a hydroelectric dam built to power a nearby aluminum factory inundated nearly half of their traditional land. More of the territory was threatened when the government allowed Army-supported Chinese logging companies to set up speculation sites in the late 1990s, without the tribe's permission.

"We fought against the logging companies sent by the government. They tried to cut our forests, but we said ‘No,'" said Hugo Jabini, a Saramakan who was raised on the Upper Suriname River. "Our territory in Suriname is the only place that the Saramaka have to call home. It is the only place that we exist."

Jabini was honored last month with the 2009 Goldman Environment Prize for South and Central America, along with Head Captain Wanze Eduards, one of the four members of a powerful Saramaka governing council. The two united the Saramaka to oppose the logging companies and fought their way to an international court. Their victory set an international precedent for tribalinternational court. Their victory set an international precedent for tribal land rights.

After loggers allegedly constructed roads through Saramaka farmland in 1996, Eduards and Jabini organized the first community meetings to determine a response. The duo soon realized that the logging companies posed a threat not only to individual villages, but to the whole Saramaka nation. They formed the Association of Saramaka Authorities, an organization to represent the estimated 30,000 Saramaka who live in the region's 63 villages. The association used GPS technology to document their traditional territory and the loggers' activities.

The Saramaka were told that any efforts to disrupt the logging companies' work would result in imprisonment. Regardless, Eduards and Jabini, assisted by the international human rights group Forest Peoples Programme, filed a petition against the logging activities with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in 2000.

The commission requested that Suriname suspend all development activities on Saramaka lands until the claims were investigated. In spite of the complaints, the government allowed at least $11 million worth of tropical hardwoods to be exported in recent years, according to estimates by Robert Goodland, a former chief environment advisor to the World Bank.

In response, the human rights commission sent the Saramaka case to the legally binding Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The allegations stated that Suriname had not recognized the Saramaka's territorial rights - a violation of national law.

The case represented an existential fight for the Saramaka; their entitlement to live in the forest, unbothered by outsiders, was on the line.

"The Saramaka are a unique people and culture that are not found anywhere else in the world," Goodland said during court
testimony [PDF]. "If they lose more territory, it would be no exaggeration to say that they will face a substantial risk of irreparable harm to their physical and cultural integrity and survival."

In November 2007, the court ruled [PDF] that Suriname had "violated, to the detriment of the members of the Saramaka people, the right to property." The government was ordered to modify the logging concessions to preserve the Saramaka's survival.

In addition, the court declared that Suriname grant the Saramaka "free informed, and prior consent" for any future development or investment projects that may affect their territory. Future projects must also provide reasonable benefit-sharing and proper environmental and social impact assessments.

The decision was the first international ruling to state that a non-indigenous minority group has legal rights to the natural resources within their territory - a precedent that may persuade other regional bodies or national courts considering similar land disputes, said Lisl Brunner, a human rights lawyer who studied the Saramaka case. "For a group whose identity has been developed specifically in relation to this territory, whose culture is so made by it, they couldn't be moved to another site," she said.

For Jabini and Eduards, the decision represented new hope for the Saramaka. With the guarantee that they can remain in their territory, they are now exploring plans to expand protected areas around their lands and develop an ecotourism industry.

"The forest means everything to the Saramaka. From it we get our food, our medicines, our homes, everything for life," Eduards said at the Goldman Prize reception in Washington, D.C. "We live in the forest and with the forest."

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org. This article is a product of Eye on Earth, Worldwatch Institute's online news service.

Photo of Jabini (left), a law student at the University of Suriname, and Eduards (right), a head captain, who organized some 60 meetings to unite the Saramaka people against government-supported Chinese logging companies. Credit: Goldman Environment Prize.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Ben Block in Movement Building and Activism at 11:34 AM)

U.S. Activist Battles West Virginia Coal Industry

Ben Block — Tue, 05 May 2009 21:18:47 +0000

Six relatively unknown grassroots activists from around the globe receive a moment in the spotlight when the Goldman Environmental Prize announces its list of annual recipients. The prize, now in its 20th year, is considered the Nobel Prize for the environment. Past recipients include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, former Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva, and Nigerian environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was killed seven months after his recognition.

The Worldwatch Institute is honoring this year's prize winners with a series of profiles based on personal interviews. Click here for additional profiles.

Maria Gunnoe raises her children in a small town in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia. Her grandfather toiled for 32 years in the coal mines to buy the property where she lives. She helped build the house that her son and daughter now call home.

Five years ago, a flood unlike anything her ancestors experienced nearly wiped Gunnoe's home off the map. A spring rain turned the docile Big Branch Creek that transects her yard into a barrage of black water. The flood ripped Gunnoe's Rottweiler from his collar and carried him downstream. Her family stayed indoors, praying the house would withstand the current.

"There is nothing more intimidating than a 60-foot-wide, 20-foot-tall wall of water coming at you," said Gunnoe, whose property has flooded seven times in the past nine years. She blames the 486 hectare (1,200-acre) mountaintop removal mine that has been leveling the ridge above her home.

Gunnoe, who was honored last month with the 2009 Goldman Environment Prize for North America, has become one of the most fearless opponents of mountaintop removal in her state. Her campaign against the powerful coal industry has helped attract international attention to the damaging mining practice.

During mountaintop removal, miners fill the ridge with explosives and blast the earth, exposing coal seams deemed unworthy of a traditional sub-surface mine. Bulldozers push the rubble into adjacent depressions. During rains, the infilled valleys can accelerate storm runoff, leading floodwaters toward homes such as Gunnoe's.

The mine sites often use holding ponds to store the runoff from washing the coal - water that contains high concentrations of heavy metals such as lead, arsenic, and selenium. Dams are built to withstand heavy rains, but sometimes the structures fail.

"The people of Appalachia are being sacrificed for energy in this country," said Gunnoe, a grassroots organizer with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC). "The work I do with fighting mountaintop removal coal mining was inspired because I am a mother. I do not and will never support any aspect of the coal industry, simply because I've seen it kill people I care about."

Gunnoe, who worked as a medical technician and waitress before turning her attention to West Virginia's coal industry, joined OVEC in 2004 after polluted floodwaters contaminated her property and drinking water. She trained her community on how to read mining permits, write letters to local newspapers, and protest using nonviolent methods.

OVEC sued the Army Corps of Engineers in 2007 to stop any new mining at a mountaintop removal site near Gunnoe's home town of Bob White. Days before the hearing, Gunnoe gathered 20 local residents who were scheduled to join her in testifying against the mine site. But more than 60 coal miners also showed up at the community hall to harass the protestors to stay silent.

The day of the testimony, more than 100 people packed the courtroom, with a divided gallery split between miners and
environmentalists. Among the community witnesses, Gunnoe was the only resident willing to challenge the industry directly.

Her testimony helped sway U.S. District Judge Robert C. Chambers to rule in the coalition's favor. "Money can be earned, lost, and earned again," Chambers wrote. "But a valley once filled is gone forever."

The mining company involved in the lawsuit released a notice stating that the ruling could result in job losses for at least 39 miners at the site and another 180 at a related underground mine. Soon, Gunnoe found her face across her community on "wanted" posters labeled "Job Hater." A neighborhood store started collecting signatures for a petition against Gunnoe. Her daughter's dog was shot dead.

Friends heard rumors that Gunnoe too would be shot, and that her home would be burned with her children inside.

"It created a sense of fear, especially when we caught people standing in my yard at 2:30 in the morning, 15 feet from my home," she said. "There were times when I literally stayed up all night long so my children would sleep."

But Gunnoe has remained steadfast. She continues to lobby for an end to mountaintop removal mining, and she refuses to move from her home. "That's my birthright and I'm not going to walk away from it," she said. "If they can shut me up, then they can continue to do this into my children's lifetime. I won't allow that."

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

Photo credit: Goldman Environment Prize

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Ben Block in Movement Building and Activism at 1:18 PM)

Russian Activist Seeks End to Soviet Toxic Legacies

Ben Block — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:26:13 +0000

Six relatively unknown grassroots activists from around the globe receive a moment in the spotlight when the Goldman Environmental Prize announces its list of annual recipients. The prize, now in its 20th year, is considered the Nobel Prize for the environment. Past recipients include Nobel Peace Prize laureate Wangari Maathai, former Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva, and Nigerian environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was killed seven months after his recognition.
The Worldwatch Institute is honoring this year's prize winners with a series of profiles based on personal interviews. Click here for additional profiles.
A sickening odor recently drifted across the Russian countryside. Alerted by a concerned schoolteacher, local environmentalists joined government authorities to launch an expedition in search of its origin.
They found a stockpile of cancer-causing pesticides, hidden away in an unsuspicious basement.
"Nobody knew how they got there. Even the owner of this house," said Olga Speranskaya, director of the chemical safety program at the Eco-Accord Center, a Russian environmental group.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, hordes of banned chemicals have been uncovered throughout Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Poorer communities often lack the capacity to dispose of the dangerous pesticides. Despite international bans, farmers continue to distribute the chemicals.
"As a result of overconsumption, 80 percent of land is contaminated. Water is contaminated. Food is contaminated. Human bodies are contaminated," Speranskaya said. "We cannot simply run away from toxins. We have to fight this problem."
Speranskaya, who was honored last week with the 2009 Goldman Environment Prize for Europe, leads a regionwide network of community, government, industry, and scientific leaders tasked with rooting out the toxic legacies. Since 2004, her work has assisted more than 80 projects that monitor, research, or remove the chemicals in 11 former Soviet states.
Speranskaya worked as a physicist with the Institute of Oceanology in Moscow before becoming an environmental advocate. Her career path changed course following a visit to Lake Baikal in southern Siberia. After witnessing a paper mill pollute the lake and its rare wildlife, Speranskaya entered a Financial Times writing contest with an essay that explored how the collapse of Communism would affect the environment.
"I answered this question and then I got depressed," she said. "I started thinking of switching my career from pure science to working with community groups."
Speranskaya joined Eco-Accord in 1997 and has since helped advance community awareness of the dangers associated with 12 particularly pernicious chemicals, known as persistent organic pollutants (POPs), that the global community has targeted for elimination.
The substances, most famously PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane), are known to disrupt the endocrine, reproductive, and immune systems. Chemical exposure is also linked to various cancers and neurobehavioral disorders. Once released, the chemicals can travel globally via wind and water currents, contaminating regions as remote as Antarctica.
Speranskaya was nominated in 2004 to serve as her region's director of the International POPs Elimination Project (IPEP). She oversees an area that applied between 250,000 and 520,000 metric tons of DDT alone between 1946 and 1990, according to estimates. Since 1940, an estimated 1.8 million metric tons of the chemical were produced and applied worldwide.
Government authorities in Eastern Europe and Central Asia regularly encourage residents to avoid exposed stockpiles of POPs. But Speranskaya said that non-governmental organizations have been key in influencing farmers to abandon the obsolete chemicals.
"Because of economic constraints, people do not afford new or less dangerous pesticides. They want to apply what they have. They go to the warehouses...take the pesticides and apply them to their backyards," she said."The government authorities simply close their eyes."
After the Soviet Union's collapse, Moldova sent its POP stockpiles to France for proper elimination. Ukraine is now coordinating with Germany and Poland to address its toxins, but many countries still lack the financial resources to eliminate the chemicals without damaging the environment, Speranskaya said.
In Russia, many stockpiles are stored properly in warehouses. But Speranskaya said that thousands of tons of PCBs have been burned away in an effort to reduce elimination costs.
"This is really scary. The pollution cannot stay in this region.... With air and water flow, it goes far away from the original pollution source," she said. "Our problem is a global problem. As soon as the world recognizes that, the easier it will be to tackle it together."
Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.
This article is a product of Eye on Earth, Worldwatch Institute's online news service.
Photo Credit: Flickr/zone41 Creative Commons.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Ben Block in Movement Building and Activism at 1:26 PM)

Got a Minute? Use Your Cell Phone to Volunteer

Sarah Kuck — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 19:51:22 +0000

Bored on the bus? Twiddling your fingers at the doctor's office? Why not use these micro-time slots to volunteer?

On-demand volunteerism organization, The Extraordinaries, wants to help you use your spare time for social good. Their smart phone software sends volunteers micro-tasks that can be completed within short periods of time.

Here's how co-founder Jacob Colker describes the project:

We make volunteering feel like a video game to encourage repetition and competition. People login to our system from any place on Earth within cell reception, and constructively use small windows of spare time for science, medicine, nonprofits, government, and more.

Nearly anything you do on a regular computer you can do on a smartphone.

You can help: -Translate micro-finance loan applications (Kiva). -Transcribe subtitles for human rights videos (Witness). -Immigrants improve their English (Phone ESL). -NASA find craters on the surface of Mars (Clickworkers). -Cornell University collect data on urban birds (Celebrate Urban Birds).

…Done by everyday people directly on their smartphones during a few moments free. With The Extraordinaries system, small windows of spare time can have a major social impact.

The social entrepreneurs behind The Extraordinaries were recently awarded $25,000 -- the top prize for non-profits -- from the We Media Miami 09 Pitch It! competition. The organization will use this money to "get people hooked on social good," and get a million people working to solve social problems in brief moments of spare time. Congrats to The Extraordinaries! We're looking forward to following the growth of these efforts.

Thanks to Nathaniel Whittemore of Change.org for the video link

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Movement Building and Activism at 11:51 AM)

The World Has Changed

Alex Steffen — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 18:29:51 +0000

Reading the president's inaugural address a few days later, these words stand out even more strongly:

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.
To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.

And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

Add perhaps a line acknowledging that becoming nations which are sustainable and fair to others is the surest route to our own freedom, safety and prosperity, and these words might as well be Worldchanging's mission statement.

It's certainly a profoundly different world than it was when we began this project back in 2003. That alone is cause for real hope.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Alex Steffen in Movement Building and Activism at 10:29 AM)

Climate Protests Escalate Worldwide

Ben Block — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 19:48:05 +0000

Photo courtesy Evergaldes Earth First! Members of Everglades Earth First!, a Florida-based environmental group, block the construction site of a natural gas-fired power plant in February. Lynne Purvis and seven other members face charges next month for trespassing onto the site.

Lynne Purvis stood apart at a Ritz Carlton cocktail party Thursday night.

Surrounded by coal, oil, and natural gas executives at a Bank of America energy conference in Key Biscayne, Florida, Purvis and her six friends had not been invited. Armed with banners and signs, they still made their presence known.

"Bank of America forgot to put alternative energy into the agenda," Purvis, a member of the activist group Everglades Earth First!, said into her megaphone. "So as the clean energy transition team, we were asked to speak to you all tonight."

The party guests were less than impressed with Purvis's sense-of-humor. One guest allegedly wrestled the activists' banner out of their hands. During the melee, Purvis said, two of her associates were doused with beer.

"We did commit trespassing," Purvis said. "But is trespassing truly a crime as opposed to putting the entire planet in turmoil?"

Climate activists worldwide are raising the stakes, with many turning to civil disobedience to make their voices heard. Actions in recent months have ranged from chaining themselves to coal conveyor belts in Sydney, to forming port blockades in the Netherlands, to scaling smokestacks in the United Kingdom.

The rise in activism reflects growing frustration against the continued, and expanding, use of coal as a source of energy. The fuel, while affordable, is directly linked to climate change and air pollution.

"What I see is - in the last year - it just exploded and went from being a sizable amount of people, several thousands of very active youth all around the country, to just hundreds of thousands of young people," said Brianna Cayo Cotter, communications director for Energy Action Coalition, a network of North American youth climate activists. "I feel like the floodgates are about to open. We have the numbers. We have the skills. We have the passion."

In Europe, where some 50 new coal plants are being planned, Greenpeace is leading a continent-wide campaign [PDF] to halt eight upcoming projects in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In the United Kingdom, plans are under way to build the country's first coal plant in 34 years. Activists have escalated their opposition to the proposed construction this year.

In the United States, a nationwide fight against 150 proposed new coal-fired power plants that began four years ago has put a serious dent in the coal industry's plans. Through the courts, government lobbying, and acts of civil disobedience, activists have helped cut in half the number of new coal power stations.

The movement achieved a major victory last week. In response to a Sierra Club lawsuit, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ruled that a proposed coal plant in Utah would need a plan for controlling its carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions before being granted a federal operating permit. The ruling essentially delays all such permits for the time being. "In the immediate future, no new coal plant will be moving forward," said Virginia Crame, a Sierra Club associate press secretary.

Meanwhile, the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has staged campaigns targeting two of the largest funders of such coal projects: Bank of America and Citibank. Last weekend, RAN and Greenpeace organized more than 50 events across the country to protest the banks' financial support of the fossil fuel industry.

"A lot of people are jazzed up about it because global warming was such an important issue in the election on the state and federal level," said Mary Nicol, the Greenpeace student network coordinator. "The cleanest coal plant is the one that isn't built. The youth generation really understands that."

Environmental author Bill McKibben organized 1,400 simultaneous call-to-action events, known as Step It Up, in 2007. He has since founded 350, an organization that raises awareness of the 350 parts per million of CO₂ equivalent that many climate scientists consider the maximum level necessary for a stable climate.

Following a rally at the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 18, McKibben said that plans for a fall 2008 global day of action would be announced at the climate conference in Poland next month. "Hopefully there will be rallies on every corner of the planet. We have organizers working on every continent except Antarctica," he said. "We need people to realize that coal is the dirtiest fuel on our planet."

McKibben also said he expects more acts of civil disobedience in the next year. "It'll happen. Keep your eyes open in D.C.," he said.

The Energy Action Coalition is expecting 10,000 participants at its second annual Powershift, a conference of climate workshops, lobbying, and protests in Washington in February. Similar "climate camps" have been held this past year in London, Hamburg, and Newcastle (Australia).

The large-scale campaigns rekindle memories of effective grassroots campaigns from the 1960s and ‘70s. But a saturation of information has made it more difficult now for organizers to attract attention, said Paul Wapner, director of the Global Environmental Politics Program at American University.

"There is a changing landscape in which activism in general, not just environmental, finds its expression," Wapner said. "With the Internet and all sorts of media, it's hard to figure out how one makes a difference and not just have their message get lost in the virtual world."

Regardless of whether the world is watching, more activists are risking arrest for the cause, and more support is coming their way.

In the U.K., six Greenpeace activists faced criminal charges this past summer for damaging a coal-fired power station on the Kent coast. With the support of NASA climatologist James Hansen, an Inuit leader, and other environmentalists, the defendants argued that they were acting on behalf of the world - specifically the Pacific island state of Tuvalu, the Arctic ice cap, and China's Yellow River, they said.

The jury ruled that their actions were indeed protecting property in England and across the globe. The activists were cleared of all charges.

In the United States, 11 protesters who formed a human barrier to a power plant construction site in Virginia in September faced 10 criminal charges and a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison, until a plea bargain was reached last month. Hansen again offered his support.

"If this case had gone to trial, I would have requested permission to testify on behalf of these young people, who, for the sake of nature and humanity, had the courage to stand up against powerful ‘authority,'" Hansen said in a prepared statement [PDF].

Next month, Lynne Purvis will appear in court as well. She faces charges of trespassing, unlawful assembly, and resisting arrest following a protest earlier this year against the construction of a natural gas-fired power plant in the Everglades. She, too, requested that Hansen testify on her behalf, but he has yet to respond.

Stories of climate activists who have avoided punishment did not, however, influence Purvis, she said. "I honestly don't pay too much attention to that kind of stuff. My personal motivation is that whatever the consequence, it's better than the massive consequence that will be felt by the entire community and the entire planet."

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Ben Block in Movement Building and Activism at 11:48 AM)

The Post-Election is the New Election

Alex Steffen — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 02:59:51 +0000

Everyone's buzzing about what to do after November 4th to make change happen. We're collaborating on some great projects and debates. Stay tuned.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Alex Steffen in Movement Building and Activism at 6:59 PM)

An Inconvenient Youth

Sarah Kuck — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:15:36 +0000

When now high school senior Mary Doerr signed up for Al Gore's Climate Project training in 2007, she was 16, and she was surprised find out that she was one of the youngest people to have ever attended.

To Doerr, who had first become interested in the movement after a sixth grade project on greenhouse gases, this was the issue her generation, and she became determined to help more young people get involved.

She found that most people her age fall into two camps: those for whom climate change is just barely sitting on the fringe of their consciousness and those who know and care, but don't know what action to take.

"We're told, change your light bulb, buy a hybrid," Doerr said. "But most people who know the severity of the problem want to know how to do more."

She wanted to find a way she could inspire young people without enough information, and to connect with those who wanted to do something about climate change, but maybe didn't know what to do. So revamped the Inconvenient Truth speech to be shorter, snappier and youth-focused and took the new talk, Inconvenient Youth, on the road.

She's teamed up with California band KSM and the other Inconvenient Youth trainees to take the message that this is a problem we can do something about across the United States.

For the most part, Doerr said, the youth she talks with are excited and enthusiastic, and many of them are "chomping at the bit" to get to work on solving the problem.

"They have not yet been given the resources to do something about it," Doerr said. "They want to know how they can get involved on a bigger scale."

Using the power of the Internet and text messaging, Inconvenient Youth gives these people the knowledge and the tools they need to make a difference in their communities. The organization also has a social networking site where young people can connect with each other, find how-to guides for political action and learn more about the science behind climate change.

Inconvenient Youth is doing something truly worldchanging in that they are disseminating critical information and tools to a portion of the population who arguably needs to get it most. And they are doing it with language and communication methods that this group understands.

Doerr said that she sees clear parallels between the importance of this movement and the movements that took place in the 1960s. Her hope is that people her age wake up and get involved on the kind of level before it's too late.

"These were students whose lives were at risk, and in a different way our lives and our livelihoods also hang in the balance."

To join Inconvenient Youth, visit www.inconvenientyouth.org or text EARTH to 626269.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Movement Building and Activism at 4:15 PM)

An Inconvenient Youth

Sarah Kuck — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:15:36 +0000

When now high school senior Mary Doerr signed up for Al Gore's Climate Project training in 2007, she was 16, and she was surprised to find out that she was one of the youngest people to have ever attended.

To Doerr, who had first become interested in the movement after a sixth grade project on greenhouse gases, this was the issue of her generation, and she became determined to help more young people get involved.

She found that most people her age fall into two camps: those for whom climate change is just barely sitting on the fringe of their consciousness and those who know and care, but don't know what action to take.

"We're told, change your light bulb, buy a hybrid," Doerr said. "But most people who know the severity of the problem want to know how to do more."

She wanted to find a way she could inspire young people without enough information, and to connect with those who wanted to do something about climate change, but maybe didn't know what to do. So she revamped the Inconvenient Truth speech to be shorter, snappier and youth-focused and took the new talk, Inconvenient Youth, on the road.

She's teamed up with California band KSM and the other Inconvenient Youth trainees to take the message that this is a problem we can do something about across the United States.

For the most part, Doerr said, the youth she talks with are excited and enthusiastic, and many of them are "chomping at the bit" to get to work on solving the problem.

"They have not yet been given the resources to do something about it," Doerr said. "They want to know how they can get involved on a bigger scale."

Using the power of the Internet and text messaging, Inconvenient Youth gives these people the knowledge and the tools they need to make a difference in their communities. The organization also has a social networking site where young people can connect with each other, find how-to guides for political action and learn more about the science behind climate change.

Inconvenient Youth is doing something truly worldchanging in that they are disseminating critical information and tools to a portion of the population who arguably needs to get it most. And they are doing it with language and communication methods that this group understands.

Doerr said that she sees clear parallels between the importance of this movement and the movements that took place in the 1960s. Her hope is that people her age wake up and get involved on that kind of level before it's too late.

"These were students whose lives were at risk, and in a different way our lives and our livelihoods also hang in the balance."

To join Inconvenient Youth, visit www.inconvenientyouth.org or text EARTH to 626269.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Movement Building and Activism at 4:15 PM)

A Solar-Powered Pilgrim

WorldChanging Team — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:43:53 +0000

by Ben Block

Martin Vosseler wakes each morning and walks towards the rising sun.

For seven months and counting, the retired Swiss doctor has crossed the United States to discuss the merits of solar power and other forms of renewable energy with whomever he meets. He has refused to accept car rides or travel via public transportation. Instead he chooses to walk all the way from Los Angeles to Boston.

"When people see me on the highway, sometimes on the freeway, thousands and thousands of people see this strange guy," Vosseler, 59, said during a stop in Washington, D.C. "They connect. Later they read in their newspaper about my walk or they see it on television. It's a good way to be seen to spread my message."

Vosseler's commitment to a clean energy revolution began in 1975 when he joined a protest against the construction of a nuclear power plant in his hometown of Basel, Switzerland. He left his medical practice in 1995 to dedicate himself to raising awareness for renewable energy through his organization, Sun21.

A lifelong advocate of walking as a means of transportation - his father paid him 25 cents to walk to school, rather than ride the bus - Vosseler sold his car for good in 1979. He abandoned aviation travel in 1999, with the exception of one emergency flight. Instead he travels by train or ocean freighter.

That is, unless if he is walking in one of his many renewable energy pilgrimages. Those began nine years ago when he walked from Constance, Germany to Santiago de Compostela in Spain along the St. James trail - long considered a journey for spiritual awareness. In 2003, he walked from Basel to Jerusalem, a nearly six month trip, repeating the motto, "There's enough sun for all of us."

Vosseler's next travel was his most ambitious yet. He crossed the Atlantic Ocean on-board the first entirely solar-powered boat. "For me it was overwhelming to see how well the combination of renewable energy and energy efficiency works," said Vosseler, who was part of a five-man crew. "90 percent of the energy from the roof went into the motors and propellers. A car maybe uses 10 percent."

Now Vosseler is completing the final leg of his 3,000 mile-plus walk across the United States, which he expects to finish by late August. He has made appearances in school classrooms and spoken to several communities throughout the trip. "There is no way around a sustainable energy future, thanks to renewable energy and energy efficiency. And I believe it has to be 100 percent," he says. "The U.S., I believe, has to be a leader in this energy revolution. So I came here."

The trek has not been without its challenges. In Arizona, he camped out in a blizzard. He crossed Texas through gale-force winds and sand storms. Along the way, he was offered some 300 rides, he estimates, but he made a vow not to enter a car until he reaches the Boston Commons.

"Midstate Tennessee is not an area where many people walk at all," said Christine Irizarry, an archivist for The Tennessean, who met Vosseler during his stop in Nashville. "Martin would not even accept my offer of a bicycle while in town. This was surprising."

Across the country, Vosseler said he saw one wind farm in California and another in Oklahoma. But despite the name of his trip, the SunWalk, he saw very few solar energy projects. "There's so much sun! But it's not tapped," he said. "There's so much potential."

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

Photo credit: Martin Vosseler

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Movement Building and Activism at 10:43 AM)

Scenius, Innovation and Epicenters

Alex Steffen — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 18:55:49 +0000

Ally Kevin Kelly has a terrific piece up about Brian Eno's concept of scenius:

Brian Eno suggested the word to convey the extreme creativity that groups, places or "scenes" can occasionally generate. His actual definition is: "Scenius stands for the intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. It is the communal form of the concept of the genius."
Individuals immersed in a productive scenius will blossom and produce their best work. When buoyed by scenius, you act like genius. Your like-minded peers, and the entire environment inspire you.

The geography of scenius is nurtured by several factors:

• Mutual appreciation -- Risky moves are applauded by the group, subtlety is appreciated, and friendly competition goads the shy. Scenius can be thought of as the best of peer pressure.
• Rapid exchange of tools and techniques -- As soon as something is invented, it is flaunted and then shared. Ideas flow quickly because they are flowing inside a common language and sensibility.
• Network effects of success -- When a record is broken, a hit happens, or breakthrough erupts, the success is claimed by the entire scene. This empowers the scene to further success.
• Local tolerance for the novelties -- The local "outside" does not push back too hard against the transgressions of the scene. The renegades and mavericks are protected by this buffer zone.

Scenius can erupt almost anywhere, and at different scales: in a corner of a company, in a neighborhood, or in an entire region.

I've been lucky enough to be involved (at least peripherally) in a few really vibrant scenes of communal innovation, and in my experience, the one thing they all have in common is what I've called an epicenter:

[E]very community needs the space where people who do innovative, creative, risky, noble, worldchanging things get together and fuel each other's ardor. Meeting your allies -- shaking hands, sitting down and eating together, talking, laughing, getting to look one another in the eye, getting to know someone in all the rich, primate non-verbal ways which can only happen in actual physical proximity -- is powerful. Epicenters are tools.

Kevin quite rightly points out that scenius is difficult, if not impossible, to create on demand, and the same is true of its epicenters. You can't just open a bar and expect collective genius to erupt. Artists can tell you that the same thing is true of any form of human creativity -- it just doesn't turn on like a tap. But artists can also tell you that while you can't command creativity and innovation, you can create a welcoming space for it and increase the likelihood that it will show up. It can't be commanded, but it can be courted.

The art of courting genius is one that people hoping to solve the world's big problems would do well to learn, because truly worldchanging solutions don't arrive steadily or predictably on schedules as deliverables for rational investment. No, truly worldchanging solutions tend to arrive in unruly clumps, in great non-linear spills of changed thinking.

This reality vexes today's philanthropists and social investors. For the past two decades, the trend in the practice of giving money intelligently in an effort to do good has been all about measurable outcomes and predictable returns on giving. This approach has had some benefit, driving social enterprises to leaner operations; but mostly it's been an abject failure. Indeed, as I wrote last summer, many social investors are finding that in trying to bring predictability to their work, they've become incredibly averse to risk, and that this fear of risky giving has left them almost completely incapable of finding and funding efforts that would create the conditions for the emergence of the kinds of innovation we most need.

(Worse yet is the trend towards half-assed citizen media and social networking approaches, projects based on the insane assumption that all that's needed to court collaborative creativity is a website and a good advertising campaign. This tendency to think that innovative collaboration comes free of cost, bubbling up out the Internet like spring water, betrays a poor understanding of the actual workings of either online collaboration or quality thinking. Most often, when these open/ citizen-media/ online-collaborative approaches work, it's because a core group in the project provides most of the important input, and usually curates most of the other participants' input into useful forms. So, frequently, funders' hopes that they can create transformation on the cheap actually just create a system that appears cheap because it externalizes the cost of expert participation onto the shoulders of others... and when their enthusiasm lags (or they need to get day jobs), the project falters or dies. The examples of failed peer-based social innovation efforts outnumber the successful cases by orders of magnitude.)

I suspect what we need is an exploding number of epicenters, independent and creative people and groups, and well-designed networks to support them -- things that set the conditions for a planetary explosion of new thinking. We need to prepare lots of welcoming spaces where genius can take roost. That's going to take some risk-oblivious, keenly perceptive, imaginative money.

But even more, I suspect it's going to take worldchangers understanding how valuable networked scenius is, and joining efforts to welcome it into their own lives and communities.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by Alex Steffen in Movement Building and Activism at 10:55 AM)

One Approach To Sustainability: Work Less

WorldChanging Team — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:30:39 +0000

by John de Graaf

About six years ago, I addressed the annual state conference of the Associated Recyclers of Wisconsin, an organization of private and public waste managers. The topic of my talk, “Haste Makes Waste,” was focused on overwork and overconsumption. I told the assembled solid-waste handlers, “if you want to reduce landfills, reduce working hours.”

I argued that the long hours we in the United States work -- some 300 more per year than western Europeans -- mean we are more likely to rely on “convenience” and disposable items, such as heavily-packaged fast foods and single-use goods. I told my audience that many people had told me they were “too pressed for time even to recycle.” Moreover, our long work hours allow us to produce and buy more and more “stuff,” resulting in a greater pressure on resources and an inevitably stream of more waste.

A few members of the audience told me they agreed with my remarks, but I’m sure most thought I was pretty far out. Since then, the arguments for cutting working time to save the planet have only gotten more compelling.

I’m all for the new greener technologies and alternative energy strategies, but by themselves, they won’t stop climate change or create a sustainable society. To do so, we need to think outside the box and apply whole systems thinking to the ecological and social problems we face. To create a sustainable society, we’ll need to work less to have more of what we truly need: time.

EUROPE -- VIVE LA DIFFERENCE!

With their long vacations and far shorter working hours, Europeans are consistently far healthier than Americans -- after the age of 50, they are only about half a likely to suffer from chronic illnesses such as heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, hypertension and even cancer. They are only half a likely to suffer from depression and anxiety, and they spend only half as much on average as we do for health care. Studies show their better health results from more exercise, more socializing with friends and families, less stress and more sleep; all of these are made possible by having more time.

Europeans are not only more personally sustainable (they live longer!), but they are also more environmentally sustainable. On average, they produce only about half the amount of air pollution, use half as much energy and produce half as much solid waste and greenhouse carbon per capita as we do; all while enjoying a similar material lifestyle. Their average “ecological footprint,” at 12 acres per person, is also about half that of ours. They are far from perfect (since their lifestyles still would require two and half planets if reproduced everywhere), but their ecological impact is far less than ours.

A December, 2006, study by the Center for Economic and Policy Research provided strong evidence that if Americans were to reduce their working hours to European levels, they could drastically cut their energy use by as much as 26 percent, nearly meeting key Kyoto climate change targets. This is a massive reduction. Combine this with advances in clean energy technology, and we could reduce our impacts even further.

The study argued that by reducing work hours, Americans would reduce the energy used for transportation (with more time, Europeans are far more likely to walk, bike or take public transit), and even more importantly, that they would reduce the energy necessary for the production of goods – as Americans trade time for money, they would consume and produce less.

THE FOUR-DAY WEEK

In response to escalating fuel costs, many companies are now considering going to a four-day work week. They believe this will save large sums on commuter fuel expenses and reduce traffic congestion. The problem is that they mean four 10-hour days. But for many American families in which both parents work, such long days will intensify daily stress.

Families will find less time to take care of tasks on the home front, or to exercise, eat properly and so forth; and families with young children will be hit particularly hard -- imagine leaving children in daycare 10 or more hours a day. The health impacts could be severe. There will be increased pressure to reduce commute times (since the work day is already so long), encouraging more high-energy (automobile) commuting to get to and from work faster so as to have more time at home. Moreover, businesses will see a clear decline in hourly productivity, since fatigue sets in rapidly after eight hours on the job.

The real solution to this problem is to go to a four-day workweek of eight-hour days.
Total production would be reduced slightly, but this will make us more sustainable. The commuting/energy benefits of the four-day week would be kept, without the negatives. We could expect significant reductions in energy and resource use, and in health problems and health care costs. Talk about a win-win situation! The Center for a New American Dream, a Maryland non-profit, has had such a 32-hour work week for 10 years, with excellent results for productivity, creativity and worker morale.

VACATION TIME AS A FIRST STEP TOWARD SHORTER HOURS

In 2002, together with a group of colleagues, I started TAKE BACK YOUR TIME to promote the idea of trading gains in productivity for time instead of stuff. In our view, such a strategy would leave Americans healthier, happier, and more connected to each other, their communities and the environment. Increasingly, the evidence is mounting that we were on the right track. We are now working on campaign to pass a law in the United States guaranteeing paid vacation for workers (the United States is currently the only industrial nation without such a law). But the campaign is about more than passing the law; it’s about generating a new national dialogue about the importance of time.

Help us change the world - DONATE NOW!

(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Movement Building and Activism at 4:30 PM)