Bev, Kendra, all,

Great discussion! Ultimate Civics.org will be posting (in June) some tools to help shift dialogue into action and organize for change — the real change towards a more sustainable, democratic future.

The sweetest definition of sustainability I’ve heard is: Respectful relationships.
Think about it. Relationships betw. people, humans and non humans, humans and the planet…
That’s where we are realizing we need to head.

Yep, yep, yep.
I’m not panicking either. Each ending has the seeds of a new beginning. Other cultures have collapsed b/c of the same mistakes we are making now. Our survival (or al least some people’s survival) is IMO rooted in our communities, especially those with access to resources and ability to meet their basic needs. Sustainability is really only possible, I think, through community. THere are just too many tasks for “just plain livin’” as folks say in Alaska. People need to organize at our most basic level–community. (Michael Meade The World Behind the World is a good read.)

Any job might be better when you have no job but communities that get smashed for “progress” (like Cordova, Alaska was after the Exxon Valdez oil spill or the Gulf fishing communities after the BP disaster) are starting to realize that all jobs are not created equal. These communities are organizing, identifying core community values, then encouraging businesses that are compatible with the community’s values. Hence, the local business push. And the green jobs push. In the Gulf, people started asking, “Why can’t we have jobs that don’t kill us?” As this spreads, more jobs will have dignity.

A growing number of teachers have realized the corporate influence in schools is teaching kids the opposite of what they need to learn. THere’s hope: Rethinking Schools offers wonderful material as does Yes! Magazine. Coming very soon like June 1, my group, UltimateCivics will be posting our new mini-course for high school students, Rethinking Democracy.

It’s easy to see the negative stuff, but like green shoots after a fire, the creative ideas are sprouting in lots of places.

Kendra covers them in the book and summarized them in the review: the manufacturing process for new materials produces GHG. If you’re building a home, go with repurposed materials, downsize, don’t plop it in some bear’s backyard (demolishing habitat), and make it energy efficient.

Power Shift is planning its first regional conference in the Gulf this year to take a look at the energy options and jobs that can help diversify and shift the region. It’s a start — and one the BP disaster opened as an opportunity.

I see the transition happening as a snowball effect as the more resilient communities survive the oncoming climate-economic-energy shocks. I don’t see this happening in a vacuum of theory and politics, but rather in response to oncoming catastrophes. Let’s face it: we’re heading to some very rough sledding on climate shocks. People will be looking not to government for solutions but to neighbors who more gracefully negotiate the shocks.

I agree the outlook is depressing if one only looks to the politicians for change or for initiating real change. Luckily the politicians are not the be all, end all. I’ve had amazing discussions with fifth graders about “bio-mimicry” (modeling solutions off what nature does). When I visited Santa Barbara in late January, a sixth grade class had just watched Baggit and made national news as the class got the city council to ban plastic bags. The world is changing under the noses of the power holders. AND I predict more extreme weather disasters will recruit more “accidental activists” to the movement, not to mention more economic crashes.

Yes. Transition Towns are examples of what we’re talking about. It’s values-based which is the same as rights-based b/c once a society has identified and articulated its VALUES (e.g., Declaration of Independence), then the next step is to weave the values as RIGHTS into the social fabric in laws and institutions (e.g., the Constitution and Bill of Rights). Part of the struggle here is that corporations usurped human rights (over the past 130 years in America) and are now using those illegitimate rights to overturn democratically-enacted laws. Democracy and sustainability are entwined. We can’t have one w/o the other. So the TT movement will need to include human rights based organizing — and parts of it have.

Look, we’re in the midst of the transition, not at the leading edge of it. We don’t have to recruit everyone to the movement, we just have to recruit ENOUGH to tip things. That tipping point is closer than we think, in part because of things like the BP disaster, the tar sands spill in Michigan, and the Keystone XL proposal. A whole new wave of “accidental activists” have swelled the ranks of the traditional environmental activists. And there are health care activists, peace activists, workers, etc. — the people who poured onto the streets during Occupy last fall. They aren’t going away. They’re regrouping.

Hahahaha! Forget that! The stock markets will collapse long before the Koch Bros. turn green. And I think we’ll also have a Constitutional amendment that strips these corporations of human rights and debunks speech as money before the Koch Bros. go green. The trick is to outlive the Koch Bros. and focus on what it is WE want to create — as we continue to block more wrong-headed ideas.

Kendra devotes several chapters to de-bunking “clean green” energy. Yes the good way to transition to green energy is diversify our energy portfolio or options in our own communities and regions. The bad way is what the politicians are largely subsidizing (in our so-called “free market” economy) and what you mention: mega-farms of solar panels or wind turbines. Again, communities are coming up with solutions; politicians are coming up with ways that support the current power holders and status quo (big corporations).

It’s pretty clear now that the transition off fossil fuels will take a social movement. It is not going to happen through the politicians. In fact, that’s what’s holding things up! So the faster we the people create parallel institutions in our own communities, share successes and failures to learn quickly from each other, the sooner we will be able to drag our politicians towards the inevitable energy shift. We have to approach this like the Abolitionists — we don’t start in Congress. Pulling down pillars that support the status quo (like shopping our way to sustainability) also help!

Good grief! Green Washed is all about solutions — but the premise is that we need to do more than shop and that shopping won’t get us to sustainability. Solutions abound. Like coupling human wellbeing to environmental wellbeing instead of the economy. The economy of the future, I am seeing it now emerging, blends skill-sharing, bartering, community currency, worker-owned businesses, etc. and is not so dependent on actual money. It is based on a greater diversity of skills and knowledge than just money.

I believe more and more communities and people ARE working towards “protecting what we love,” as I tell fifth graders. There is a complete disconnect betw the policies coming down from Washington DC (drill baby drill) and what people want — the ability to pass a livable planet onto their children. So people and communities are taking it upon themselves to build more self-reliant communities, which means ability to protect what we love (value) including food, water, local energy, local economy. I think this is where the eat local, eat organic food movement started. To learn more about this, visit http://www.yesmagazine.org and http://www.bioneers.org.

I liked your very simple definition in Green Washed:
to live within the limits of our renewable resources. Then you point out that our dependence on NON renewable resources has pushed our economic system beyond where it is possible to live w/in the limits of our renewable resources.

Also need to add all the second bill of rights efforts in the US like Envision Spokane and the local right-based ordinances that are asserting municipality control (see http://www.celdf.org) and the MoveToAmend.org efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution: corporations are not persons, money is not speech.

It started with Bhutan in 1972 and Gross National Happiness to replace the GDP as a measure of societal wellbeing. B/c as we know, GDP measures money exchanging hands, no values attached. At first people laughed: HAPPINESS? come on. Then Seattle picked it up in 1991 and now some 300 communities in the US alone are experimenting with using GNH as an index of progress. Transition Towns which are mentioned in Green Washed are one example. Communities are finding we can’t create a new economy with the old measure of progress.

As you point out in your book, the economy has trumped health and the environment — things that we value and are necessary to life. But our notion of “progress” has folded into growing our economy; i.e., shopping. So what is a definition of “economy” that we can live with (literally)?

Yes. People have to create a password at Firedoglake and login. I think. Lemme check.