Daniel Bell's blog

Everyone here at 11thhouraction.com should take part in a Step It Up 2007 event on November 3rd.

Step It Up is a national grassroots day of action on global warming. There will be actions in every state. The first Step It Up in April was the largest action on global warming ever, lets make this one just as big.

The goal of these actions, one year away from the next presidential election, is to find out which elected leaders are ready to take real action on the climate crisis.

The biggest impact you can have right now is invite leaders to events near you and let them know that you expect to hear their plan to deal with global warming. The website has developed a fantastic invite tool to let you send invites to every politician in the nation. So far, more than 6,500 invites have been sent. Nine members of congress and three presidential candidates have agreed to attend. Go there and tell the leaders its time to Step It Up!

Next, you can find and sign up to attend an event near you. There are events in every state except North Dakota. This is the defining issue of our generation, will you be a part of the greatest economic and social change in history? You have to get out in the streets and make your voice heard.

I am a Bay Area resident, but will be travelling to Chicago for the national green building conference in November. Bill Clinton will be giving the keynote adress on the importance of green buildings in the fight against global warming. On my way, I'll be stopping in Iowa City for The Iowa Climate Caucus, a Step It Up event that is attracting attention from the presidential candidates. Because they are beginning to see that the voters will not accept inaction for the health of future generations.

Also, see an interview with the Mayor of Berkeley on how he has taken leadership on climage change.

peace

Daniel

Essential reading in our climate's 11th hour: Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future.

Deep Economy is the latest book by Bill McKibben, organizer of StepItUp07.org (public demonstrations to tell congress that we need an 80% reduction in carbon by 2050) and author of End of Nature (a book in 1989 that details the problem we face with global warming, an example of true leadership.)

This book begins with the idea that economic growth has ceased making us happy. Since 1950 we have been getting more but we've been getting steadily less happy. At the same we've gotten in our cars more often to drive to increasingly isolated homes. Also, he notes a study that found that the end price of goods very closely matches the total embodied energy within that good, meaning that the idea of an infinitely expanding economy might be myth. 

The second chapter is recount of McKibben's year spent eating only locally produced food in his home of Vermont. This becomes a foil for his trip to Cuba, where trade embargoes created something truly unheard of in modern times: a physical and economic island. This caused them to be default organic and local farmers, and they've proven that local food economies do work.

 The third chapter is a meditation on our societies individualism, what he calls hyper-individualism. The example given is when a Wal-Mart comes to a small town, each individual benefits from lower prices on their own goods, but the community suffers greatly. The community loses jobs and wages, and profit gets funneled to corporate accounts instead of staying in the community, while all the other shops close down. Other cultures might deplore this outcome, but not our hyper-individualist one.

The fourth chapter, The Wealth of Communities, makes the argument that local economies and communities don't work well for growth, but they do increase happiness and more equitable income distribution. It also so happens that they dramitcally reduce energy consumption.

The fifth chapter, The Durable Future, talks about what a world with an increasing quality of life for all people would look like. The current growth models for ending poverty won't work, as the world is already buckling under the weight of just one America. This is a synthesis of the entire book into the notion that what is good for the planet will turn out to be better for people's quality of life.

This book is a wonderful read; inspiring and necessary. 

Discuss

Daniel Bell

Green Building Professional

Sustainablity Activist

“We face a convergence of crises.”

This film teaches us the interconnectedness of ecosystems. The nitrogen sprayed on an Iowa cornfield doesn’t go “away”, but it makes its way to streams, then rivers, then to the ocean. In the ocean the amalgamation of all this nitrogen creates giant dead zones.

We must also learn the interconnectedness of poverty, income inequality, and employment with ecosystems. As people become degraded, they have less incentive to care about the degredation of the environment.

A sustainable future will have fewer corporations, but greater employment; less growth, but greater quality of life; fewer cars, but greater mobility.

On the front lines of this issue is the Ella Baker Center in Oakland. Their Reclaim the Future project is working for the Green Jobs Act. The aim is to train people of color in the inner city in green technologies, such as installing solar panels. The program would pay trainees a living wage during the training, and would partner with green businesses to provide them with 6 month internships. I hope that this program succeeds, and I thank those at the Ella Baker Center for their great work.

A profound change is economy is at hand. Will that change simply conserve the environment without helping people? Is it even possible to create sustainable environmental policy without addressing human sustainability?

To paraphrase Paul Hawken, this movement will recognize itself when a logger in Northern California cries when he sees child cut down in Oakland, and a child in Oakland cries when he sees a Redwood cut down in Northern California. This movement is an environmental movement, it’s a social justice movement; it is the coming world.

______________________________________

From http://ellabakercenter.org/page.php?pageid=5:

The "green wave" is coming.

A new, multi-billion dollar economic sector is emerging, bringing new opportunities in green construction, clean technology, urban agriculture and energy. Our goal: ensure that this green economy is strong enough to lift people out of poverty.

Reclaim the Future creates opportunities in the green economy for poor people and people of color through policy advocacy, public outreach, and an employment pipeline - the Green Jobs Corps.

_________________________________________

Daniel Bell

Green Building Professional

Sustainability Activist

Discuss 11th Hour Issues 

Join us in berkeley for an 11th Hour Action event. This event will feature speakers on the hour from 11am - 6pm. The Green City Gallery is a fantastic Bay Area resource, please support them and see the great work that they are doing!

Also, after you see the film on Saturday night, come back to the green city gallery for an after party.

Green City Gallery

WiserEarth Event Page

Also, visit my blog to join in a discussion about the issues featured in 11th Hour.

Ecosystems are not linear systems. Neither are human societies. They are both complex systems, and I will posit here that they function in a similar manner.

Ecosystems tend to accept pollutants and continue functioning until a certain threshold is reached, the tipping point. Once this point is reached the system quickly deteriorates, often with positive feedback, meaning degradation begets degradation.

When there's a gorilla in the room, one, you know you can't ignore it, and two, you know its probably there because it has no more natural habitat.

I'd like to make some points about this more to start a discussion rather than to make a statement.

What does it mean to have this important environmental message delivered by a celebrity?

The first and most obvious critique will be the lifestyle arguement, which goes something like this: "These celebrities want to tell us that we have to change how we live, but look at the rampant energy use by those people." This classic line was levied at Al Gore and has and will be done so for Leo.

This sort of attack is a kill the messanger strategy, trying to diminish the speaker rather than the argument, which adroit observers will understand to be a logical fallacy.

The 11th Hour places ecological crises in the context of human culture. The 11th Hour, as a piece of media, has a context within societal events; namely, the presidential election. This film will shift the kinds of questions that people will ask of candidates.

A movement of people who are no longer willing to ignore the facts facing them will put pressure on politicians. As the 11th Hour infuses more relevant issues into the popular media, the candidates will be forced to make more substantive statements on their environmental policy.

I had a great discussion with my friend Adam the other weekend. It was during our car ride to a grove of giant sequoias, where we also toured the clear cutting practices going on at the boundaries of the park.

It was very interesting when the very topic of our talk was discussed in the film.

Linear thinking and Web based thinking

Our culture is based on the tradition of linear thinking. We seek to quantify and delineate processes. Linear thinking aims to create desired outcomes by controlling factors in reduced systems. Native cultures are more often use web-based thinking. Where understanding of how systems work is not necessary to observe what happens to inputs and outputs.

My Review

I recently saw this film at an advanced screening in San Francisco. I was able to speak with the directors of this film in a Q + A and in person.
First off, I've worked with Paul Hawken on the WiserEarth.org project. So I was personally excited to see him in the film.

This film is not a film about global warming. It is about the sustainability of human culture.