Amazing 350 day!

Some things in life just seem to replenish our internal reserves of hope and inspiration. What the world witnessed yesterday is one of those. That a handful of young people a couple of years ago can start with an idea, and see it culminate in coordinated actions across almost 200 countries by people united behind a common ideal. To relive some of these moments, visit 350.org, it's definitely worth it.

As I wrote about in previous post, we headed up to the Hill Country and went ziplining and climbing across the 500 year old Cypress Forest. It was fantastic! One more piece to the beautiful mosaic of all the 350 events that took place worldwide yesterday.

Oct 24th - International Day of Climate Action

Today is likely to go down as the single largest coordinated social action in the world. Until the next one.

Because the message is clear: The people on this earth who are demanding meaningful action to reverse the catastrophic path we are on as a human race far outnumber those who either don't care or don't want to.

Corporations can't be counted on. Those who see business opportunity in solving the problem will support change, those who see business risk will oppose it. Psychotic.

Governments need to step up. Self-regulation and the like has not worked and will never work for the reasons just cited. Business will do what business will do. Don't put a gazelle in the lion's den and expect the lion not to eat it.

Let us all put pressure on our elected officials to understand their political future depends on the decisions they make now, and they will be held accountable.

As for today... We'll take part in some of the Tweet actions, then we're going to the Hill Country to do the CYPRESS VALLEY CANOPY CHALLENGE. It is described as follows on their site:

THE CYPRESS VALLEY CANOPY CHALLENGE is for the truly adventurous at heart. After having completed the Cypress Valley Canopy Tour, guests may choose to embark on our Canopy Challenge later that same day or on a return trip. The Canopy Challenge takes guests through a series of longer zip lines, sky bridges, and multiple canopy challenge events ranging from moderately to extremely difficult. The Canopy Challenge requires participants to be in good physical health as participants will be required to use strength, balance, and courage to cross various paths through a grove of trees. Participants choose the path(s) they take to complete the course. Due to physical requirements guests should be atleast 5 feet tall and 10 years old to do The Canopy Challenge. After completing the Canopy Challenge guests will have had both an incredible time in nature and the opportunity to push open some of their own physical and mental limits. Conquering the Cypress Valley Canopy Challenge can help individuals and groups learn to deal with adversity and approach challenging situations at home and at work.

We thought there was some symbolism in there. To be closer to nature will require our best efforts, and will certainly not be easy. Reversing decades of careless abuse of our environment will require our best efforts and will certainly not be easy. But just like we will need to get it done in order to get out of the forest today, so will we as a people if we don't want to leave future generations a world destroyed.

In the entire history of humanity, the past 50 years and the next 50 years are likely to be viewed as one of 2 ways: 1) Humanity almost destroyed itself but stepped back from the brink and did what was needed; or 2) Humanity had the opportunity to save itself but was blinded by greed and indifference...

Happy 350ppm day. What are you doing today?

Blog Action Day

Well, today I'm in Germany on a business trip, jet lagged and just coming off a 14hr work day. Still, there's no way I was going to miss the opportunity to participate in today's global Blog Action Day. And then I'll crash and try to sleep...

Early reports are that participation in today's action is really high, that's great news. Was trying to think of what to write, and since I'm travelling right now I thought I'd do a quick review of some easy-to-implement climate-friendly solutions I've run across in various places.

Eliminate plastic bags
Places like the UK and Ireland have dramatically reduced their use of plastic bags by implementing a very simple measure: charge for them (I believe Ireland was 22 cents a bag). Result: Everybody shops with reusable bags. Just like we tax tobacco and liquor, let's start taxing items that are very directly linked to pollution, while providing an easy alternative, and watch how fast consumer behavior adapts.

Eliminate disposable cup waste
In our Dell office here in Germany, the employee break area offers free coffee from a vending machine. But instead of having a big stack of disposable cups to go with that, there's a cabinet full of promotional mugs people have brought back from trade shows and vendor visits over the years. So the coffee tastes all that much better knowing its container isn't going to end its useful life within minutes. If you drink coffee everyday, get a reusable cup already!

Make it lucrative to turn in recyclables
Unfortunately, many people still don't recycle consistently. Or at times only have access to public bins that don't offer a choice. But in places like California where a surcharge is placed at the point of sale on reusable containers (i.e. cans, bottles), this creates a secondary opportunity for the item to find its way to a recycling center. For example, transients, who otherwise might have to beg on street corners in order to get some money, go around collecting these items and can collect the redemption value by turning these items in.

Quick blog post to mark and take part in Blog Action Day. More to follow soon, including our plans for Oct 24, world climate action day. To learn more go to www.350.org.

What is it going to take?

I am not optimistic at the progress being made ahead of the crucial conference on climate in Copenhagen later this year. Indications are that everyone is in there looking out for their own agenda, with the US and EU leading the shameful lot, not willing to agree to anything binding, looking for loopholes left and right, trying to exempt entire sectors known to pollute excessively, etc...

I have many questions. One is where are our leaders? What do they think their job really is? Is getting re-elected so important that they will make sure not to piss off their sugar daddies, aka lobbyists and corporate backers, even if that means going against the will and best interest of humanity?

The other question is: What will it take? Because let's be clear. This is not an if, it's a when. These guys will try to punt to the next guy until one day it's truly too late and we have to face up to it. This will be true for Social Security reform. It will especially be true for global warming.

So what will it take? What will be the tipping point? Will a hurricane 5 times as strong as as Katrina need to kill 100,000 people? Or wipe out Florida? Or when some US states have to do rotating water outages, similar to what California did when Enron was toying with the grid, because they can't meet demand?

What about if the rest of the world decides to challenge the sovereignty of our decision not to act? With less than 5% of the world population we generate almost 30% of the world pollution. If any other country in the world did that, we would deem that a threat to our national security and would likely commit them by force to change their ways. The US is strong, but what if all of Asia, Africa and Europe decide to unite against us to finally make us act? Would we nuke them all (I'm sure someone has already suggested that nuclear winter would be one way to stop global warming)? What if the entire world goes on a coordinated boycott of American products? What if China and Korea and others stop buying our currency and treasury securities, and instead threaten to dump their trillions of dollars of holdings, a move sure to collapse our economy?

I sincerely hope none of these things happen. My point is that this is like a tooth cavity, it will never get better on its own. The longer you wait to go to the dentist the worse the decay will get. But you know it's coming, it's just a matter of time.

Our leaders need to hear from us that we will hold them accountable for their inaction. And they need to hear we accept that this isn't just about making the hard political decisions, it's about following through with some real changes in our lifestyles, consumption habits, etc... From all of us. Starting now.

I recently read the book 'No Impact Man', in which the author says he never thought he was someone who could make a difference, and what he learned is that he is someone who is sure willing to try. That applies to all of us.

Write your elected representatives. Join a cause in your area that is going beyond talk and taking the message more directly to those in power. If you're not sure where to start, click on one of the badges on the right of the page to learn more about the Seal the Deal campaign, Tck Tck Tck or 350.org, among others. But do something.

A Gift to Humanity

'It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit'. Harry Truman.

One of the key barriers to rapid adoption of something new, no matter how beneficial to mankind, is who holds the rights to it. These days, everyone wants to patent their thing. We have strong remedies to treat AIDS patients. We have innovative technologies to reduce energy consumption or generate more in a sustainable way. And so on. But the patent owners are there, lined up, lobbying and marketing, waiting for their big pay day. Or worse, sometimes patents are acquired for defensive reasons because they threaten established, typically noxious industries, only to slow progress or adoption.

For anyone who's watched Food, Inc. you know companies like Monsanto have built huge lucrative monopolies on the back of patented seeds that farmers are pretty much obligated to use. The corn you buy in the supermarket will likely soon come with a trademark on it.

What if I stumble onto a cure for cancer tomorrow? Or discover a way to harness the power of the sun at a hundredth of the cost of methods known today? Or devise a way to provide food and clean water to the whole world in an environmentally sustainable and cost effective way? Should I be allowed to profit from that? To somehow restrict access to my invention only to those who are able to pay for it? At what point does an invention become of such public utility that it should belong to all of humanity? I'm all for rewarding innovation and hard work, but there are limits. Especially when lives are at stake. This is where Eminent Domain should come in. Rather than spend hundreds of billions of dollars bailing out moribund financial instutions, let's use public funds to acquire the rights to key medical, technological and environmental inventions. And then turn them over freely to the entire world. I bet the ROI on this investment would be off the charts!!

Talk about a different war on terror. Imagine the headlines in Gaza or Kabul or Islamabad if the USA made such a gift to the world. If our message was that we would use our might and our money not to send bombs and soldiers across borders, but doctors and architects and engineers with unrestricted access to the inventions needed to improve the lives of populations everywhere.

As John Lennon so rightly said: You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one.

Peace...

Another Inconvenient Truth

I saw Michael Moore's new movie this weekend, 'Capitalism: A love story'. It could have well been titled 'Another Inconvenient Truth'...!

I'll start out by admitting I have long been a fierce believer in the efficiency, power and inherent fairness of free market forces. Allowing supply and demand to inter-operate freely, whether it be for goods, labor, etc... I continue to believe that. But I have also come to the conclusion that our economy is far from a free market economy, and is in fact manipulated and distorted by powerful forces.

The other inconvenient truth, following Al Gore's assertions on what human activity is doing to our planetary environment and climate, is that the economic system we have long held up as the model to promote fairness and opportunity for all is in fact not doing that at all.

Moore does a good job of reminding us that the cut-throat, profit-at-all-cost model our capitalistic economy is based on is not somehow defined in our constitution, or somehow ideologically inherited from the founders of this country. Further, he clearly demonstrates that the greed and ruthlessness that the system promotes clearly go against established religious beliefs of looking out for one another etc... Moore then tries to give socialism a good name, and there I think he fails. Socialism, communism and even capitalism have their merits on paper, in theory. Where Moore loses credibility is that socialism has proven to be just a corrupt as any other model. The Soviet model was 'you will all be equal in poverty and oppression'. The European socialist model was for the most part 'we will tax ourselves into an economic coma and the ruling class will squander the money'. Mind you, at least they have long vacations and universal healthcare and typically a much higher quality of life, so it's not all bad. But it's not all good either.

So where does that leave us? Well, for one it's high time to dramatically reduce the power the corporations and their lobbies have in our government. For this, real campaign finance reform is needed. We all watch - outraged but idle - as lawmakers who are taking millions from health insurance lobbies try to convince us that universal health care in un-American. Or as we continue wasting tens of billions of tax payer dollars on unjust wars instead of using that money to build renewable energy and cleaning up our planet.

Moore reminds us that when GM auto workers were being bullied by corrupt local police and industry thugs, Roosevelt sent in the National Guard to protect the workers. I wonder if President Obama should call in the National Guard to prevent all lobbyists from approaching within 1000 feet of the Capitol while urging Congress into an extraordinary session to get some real work done. None of this 'starting to phase in by 2017' crap...

Drastic regulatory measures with real teeth are needed. But first, enough politicians with real integrity are needed to support these measures. Do we have enough of these?

Can we regulate fairness? Are we measuring success in this country in ways that push us to these cut-throat systems? By most measures other than GDP, the US falls very far down the list when it comes to social equality, quality of life, etc... Is that the American dream? I say it's not.

My main fight is to combat climate change and the destructive human activities causing it. Yet it is clear that blind capitalism is the very cause of planetary abuse, pushing for consumption for its own sake, making long term sacrifices for the sake of short-term returns, etc...

Enough. Moore has a fantastic quote at the end of the movie: 'I refuse to live in a country like this, and I'm not going anywhere'. Change is needed. Real change. And it won't happen on its own. The American people deserve so much better, the world deserves so much better. Throughout history, oppressed populations have risen up against tyrants, have stood up for what was right once they could no longer stand by and tolerate the egregious behavior of those who were oppressing them.

Given the outrage of having been lied to in order to get this country into unjust wars, or to bail out financial institutions that did not deserve to survive (and whose leaders should be made to give back all the money they took while raping the system and should be sent to jail), or watching in real time as the health care lobby buys its way into even more lucrative outcomes, I'd say the tipping point is not far off. Politicians in Washington today will soon need to decide if they want to be part of the solution, or continue being part of the problem.