KC Climate Protection Forums Forum: Vision

Yango on "Natureduca"

Yango — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 16:44:00 +0000

Educative Ecofarm&Garden by Capacitation Theoric/Practices at childrens,youngs,adults on nature and environment,incluyed workshops in nature plenity enthorn;cooperatrive-mutualist operational system with ecuanimy,equitative uses modes

JerryShechter on "Climate Protection Plan Progress Report"

JerryShechter — Tue, 01 May 2007 01:53:56 +0000

The Kansas City, Missouri Climate Protection Plan Progress Report was submitted to the Mayor and City Council for adoption on Thursday April 12, 2007. The Progress Report was accepted by Resolution 070436. The report is too large (23 pages) and has too many graphics to post here. For a pdf copy of the report, visit the City's Climate Protection website at: www.kcmo.org - Click on Site Directory and then click on Climate Protection. If you have any problems, please get in touch with me.

Gerald Shechter, Sustainability Coordinator
Kansas City, Missouri Office of Environmental Quality
Gerald_Shechter@kcmo.org
(816) 513-3401

admin on "The Idols of Environmentalism"

admin — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 19:44:54 +0000

Please comment on this excelent article below. Thanks, Marty Kraft
==============
The Idols of Environmentalism
Do environmentalists conspire against their own interests? First in a two-part series.
by Curtis White
Published in the March/April 2007 issue of Orion magazine
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/233
Art by Robert and Shana Parkeharrison

For part two of this two-part series, see The Ecology of Work.

ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION proceeds apace in spite of all the warnings, the good science, the 501(c)3 organizations with their memberships in the millions, the poll results, and the martyrs perched high in the branches of sequoias or shot dead in the Amazon. This is so not because of a power, a strength out there that we must resist. It is because we are weak and fearful. Only a weak and fearful society could invest so much desperate energy in protecting activities that are the equivalent of suicide.

For instance, trading carbon emission credits and creating markets in greenhouse gases as a means of controlling global warming is not a way of saying we’re so confident in the strength of the free market system that we can even trust it to fix the problems it creates. No, it’s a way of saying that we are so frightened by the prospect of stepping outside of the market system on which we depend for our national wealth, our jobs, and our sense of normalcy that we will let the logic of that system try to correct its own excesses even when we know we’re just kidding ourselves. This delusional strategy is embedded in the Kyoto agreement, which is little more than a complex scheme to create a giant international market in pollution. Even Kyoto, of which we speak longingly—“Oh, if only we would join it!”—is not an answer to our problem but a capitulation to it, so concerned is it to protect what it calls “economic growth and development.” Kyoto is just a form of whistling past the graveyard. And it is not just international corporations who do this whistling; we all have our own little stake in the world capitalism has made and so we all do the whistling.

The problem for even the best-intentioned environmental activism is that it imagines that it can confront a problem external to itself. Confront the bulldozers. Confront the chainsaws. Confront Monsanto. Fight the power. What the environmental movement is not very good at is acknowledging that something in the very fabric of our daily life is deeply anti-nature as well as anti-human. It inhabits not just bad-guy CEOs at Monsanto and Weyerhaeuser but nearly every working American, environmentalists included.

It is true that there are CEO-types, few in number, who are indifferent to everything except money, who are cruel and greedy, and so the North Atlantic gets stripped of cod and any number of other species taken incidentally in what is the factory trawler’s wet version of a scorched-earth policy. Or some junk bond maven buys up a section of old-growth redwoods and “harvests” it without hesitation when his fund is in sudden need of “liquidity.” Nevertheless, all that we perceive to be the destructiveness of corporate culture in relation to nature is not the consequence of its power, or its capacity for dominating nature ("taming," as it was once put, as if what we were dealing with was the lion act at the circus). Believing in powerful corporate evildoers as the primary source of our problems forces us to think in cartoons.

Besides, corporations are really powerless to be anything other than what they are. I suspect that, far from being perverse merchants of greed hellbent on destruction, these corporate entities are as bewildered as we are. Capitalism—especially in its corporate incarnation—has a logos, a way of reasoning. Capitalism is in the position of the notorious scorpion who persuades the fox to ferry him across a river, arguing that he won’t sting the fox because it wouldn’t be in his interest to do so, since he’d drown along with the fox. But when in spite of this logic he stings the fox anyway, all he can offer in explanation is “I did it because it is in my nature.” In the same way, it’s not as if businessmen perversely seek to destroy their own world. They have vacation homes in the Rockies or New England and enjoy walks in the forest, too. They simply have other priorities which are to them a duty.

THE IDEA THAT WE HAVE powerful corporate villains to thank for the sorry state of the natural world is what Francis Bacon called an “idol of the tribe.” According to Bacon, an idol is a truth based on insufficient evidence but maintained by constant affirmation within the tribe of believers. In spite of this insufficiency, idols do not fall easily or often. Tribes are capable of exerting will based on principles, but they are capable only with the greatest difficulty of willing the destruction of their own principles. It’s as if they feel that it is better to stagger from frustration to frustration than to return honestly to the question, does what we believe actually make sense? The idea of fallen idols always suggests tragic disillusionment, but this is in fact a good thing. If they don’t fall, there is no hope for discovering the real problems and the best and truest response to them. All environmentalists understand that the global crisis we are experiencing requires urgent action, but not everyone understands that if our activism is driven by idols we can exhaust ourselves with effort while having very little effect on the crisis. Most frighteningly, it is even possible that our efforts can sustain the crisis. The question the environmental tribe must ask is, do our mistaken assumptions actually cause us to conspire against our own interests?

The belief that corporate power is the unique source of our problems is not the only idol we are subject to. There is an idol even in the language we use to account for our problems. Our primary dependence on the scientific language of “environment,” “ecology,” “diversity,” “habitat,” and “ecosystem” is a way of acknowledging the superiority of the very kind of rationality that serves not only the Sierra Club but corporate capitalism as well. For instance:

“You can pump this many tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere without disturbing the major climatic systems.”

“This much contiguous habitat is necessary to sustain a population allowing for a survivable gene pool for this species.”

“We’ll keep a list, a running tally of endangered species (as we’ll call these animals), and we’ll monitor their numbers, and when that number hits a specified threshold we’ll say they are ‘healthy,’ or we’ll say they are ‘extinct.’ All this is to be done by bureaucratic fiat.”

I am not speaking here of all the notorious problems associated with proving scientifically the significance of environmental destruction. My concern is with the wisdom of using as our primary weapon the rhetoric and logic of the very entities we suspect of causing our problems in the first place. Perhaps we support legalistic responses to problems, with all their technoscientific descriptors, out of a sense that this is the best we can do for the moment. But the danger is always that eventually we come to believe this language and its mindset ourselves. This mindset is generally called “quantitative reasoning,” and it is second nature to Anglo-Americans. Corporate execs are perfectly comfortable with it, and corporate philanthropists give their dough to environmental organizations that speak it. Unfortunately, it also has the consequence of turning environmentalists into quislings, collaborators, and virtuous practitioners of a cost-benefit logic figured in songbirds.

It is because we have accepted this rationalist logos as the only legitimate means of debate that we are willing to think that what we need is a balance between the requirements of human economies and the “needs” of the natural world. It’s as if we were negotiating a trade agreement with the animals and trees unlucky enough to have to share space with us. What do you need? we ask them. What are your minimum requirements? We need to know the minimum because we’re not likely to leave you more than that. We’re going to consume any “excess.” And then it occurs to us to add, unless of course you taste good. There is always room for an animal that tastes good.

We use our most basic vocabulary, words like “ecosystem,” with a complete innocence, as if we couldn’t imagine that there might be something perilous in it. What if such language were actually the announcement of the defeat of what we claim to want? That’s the worm at the heart of the rose of the “ecologist.” It is something that environmentalism has never come to terms with because the very advocates for environmental health are most comfortable with the logic of science, never mind what else that logic may be doing for the military and industry. Would people and foundations be as willing to send contributions to The Nature Conservancy or the Sierra Club if the leading logic of the organization were not “ecosystems” but “respect for life” or “reverence for creation”? Such notions are, for many of us, compromised by associations with the Catholic Church and evangelicalism, and they don’t loosen the purse strings of philanthropy. “Let’s keep a nice, clean scientific edge between us and religion,” we protest. In the end, environmental science criticizes not only corporate destructiveness but (as it has always done) more spiritual notions of nature as well.

Environmentalism seems to conclude that the best thing it can do for nature is make a case for it, as if it were always making a summative argument before a jury with the backing of the best science. Good children of the Enlightenment, we keep expecting Reason to prevail (and in a perverse and destructive way, it does prevail). It is the language of “system” (nature as a kind of complicated machine) that allows most of us to feel comfortable with working for or giving money to environmental organizations. We even seem to think that the natural system should work in consort with our economic system. Why, we argue, that rainforest might contain the cure for cancer. By which we also mean that it could provide profitable products for the pharmaceutical industry and local economies. (God help the doomed indigenous culture once the West decides that it has an economy that needs assistance.) Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth may have distressing things to say about global warming, but subconsciously it is an extended apology for scientific rationality, the free market, and our utterly corrupted democracy. Gore doesn’t have to defend these things directly; he merely has to pretend that nothing else exists. Even the awe of Immanuel Kant’s famous “starry skies above” is lost to modern environmentalism, so obsessed is it with what data, graphs, and a good PowerPoint presentation can show.

In short, there would be nothing inappropriate or undesirable were we to understand our relation to nature in spiritual terms or poetic terms or, with Emerson and Thoreau, in good old American transcendental terms, but there is no broadly shared language in which to do this. So we are forced to resort to what is in fact a lower common denominator: the languages of science and bureaucracy. These languages have broad legitimacy in our culture, a legitimacy they possess largely because of the thoroughness with which they discredited Christian religious discourse in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But many babies went out with the bath water of Christian dogma and superstition. One of those was morality. Even now, science can’t say why we ought not to harm the environment except to say that we shouldn’t be self-destructive. Another of these lost spiritual children was our very relation as human beings to the mystery of Being as such. As the philosopher G. W. Leibniz famously wondered, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” For St. Thomas Aquinas, this was the fundamental religious question. In the place of a relation to the world that was founded on this mystery, we have a relation that is objective and data driven. We no longer have a forest; we have “board feet.” We no longer have a landscape, a world that is our own; we have “valuable natural resources.” Even avowed Christians have been slow to recall this spiritualized relationship to the world. For example, only recently have American evangelicals begun thinking of the environment in terms of what they call “creation care.” We don’t have to be born again to agree with evangelicals that one of the most powerful arguments missing from the environmentalist’s case is reverence for what simply is. One of the heroes of Goethe’s Faust was a character called Care (Sorge), who showed to Faust the unscrupulousness of his actions and led him to salvation. Environmentalism has made a Faustian pact with quantitative reasoning; science has given it power but it cannot provide deliverance. If environmentalism truly wishes, as it claims, to want to “save” something—the planet, a species, itself—it needs to rediscover a common language of Care.

THE LESSONS OF OUR IDOLS come to this: you cannot defeat something that you imagine to be an external threat to you when it is in fact internal to you, when its life is your life. And even if it were external to you, you cannot defeat an enemy by thinking in the terms it chooses, and by doing only those things that not only don’t harm it but with which it is perfectly comfortable. The truth is, our idols are actually a great convenience to us. It is convenient that we can imagine a power beyond us because that means we don’t have to spend much time examining our own lives. And it is very convenient that we can hand the hard work of resistance over to scientists, our designated national problem solvers.

We cannot march forth, confront, and definitively defeat the Monsantos of the world, especially not with science (which, it should go without saying, Monsanto has plenty of). We can, however, look at ourselves and see all of the ways that we conspire against what we imagine to be our own most urgent interests. Perhaps the most powerful way in which we conspire against ourselves is the simple fact that we have jobs. We are willingly part of a world designed for the convenience of what Shakespeare called “the visible God”: money. When I say we have jobs, I mean that we find in them our home, our sense of being grounded in the world, grounded in a vast social and economic order. It is a spectacularly complex, even breathtaking, order, and it has two enormous and related problems. First, it seems to be largely responsible for the destruction of the natural world. Second, it has the strong tendency to reduce the human beings inhabiting it to two functions, working and consuming. It tends to hollow us out. It creates a hole in our sense of ourselves and of this country, and it leaves us with few alternatives but to try to fill that hole with money and the things money buys. We are not free to dismiss money because we fear that we’d disappear, we’d be nothing at all without it. Money is, in the words of Buddhist writer David Loy, “the flight from emptiness that makes life empty.”

Needless to say, many people with environmental sympathies will easily agree with what I’ve just said and imagine that in fact they do what they can to resist work and consumption, to resist the world as arranged for the convenience of money. But here again I suspect we are kidding ourselves. Rather than taking the risk of challenging the roles money and work play in all of our lives by actually taking the responsibility for reordering our lives, the most prominent strategy of environmentalists seems to be to “give back” to nature through the bequests, the annuities, the Working Assets credit cards and long distance telephone schemes, and the socially responsible mutual funds advertised in Sierra and proliferating across the environmental movement. Such giving may make us feel better, but it will never be enough. Face it, we all have a bit of the robber baron turned philanthropist in us. We’re willing to be generous in order to “save the world” but not before we’ve insured our own survival in the reigning system. It’s not even clear that this philanthropy is a pure expression of generosity since the bequest and annuity programs are carefully measured to provide attractive tax benefits and appealing rates of return.

Even when we are trying to aid the environment, we are not willing as individuals to leave the system that we know in our heart of hearts is the cause of our problems. We are even further from knowing how to take the collective risk of leaving this system entirely and ordering our societies differently. We are not ready. Not yet, at least.

For part two of this two-part series, see The Ecology of Work.
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/267

In the next issue of Orion, Curtis White describes an environmentalism built around changing the nature of work.

Curtis White's essays have appeared in Harper's Magazine, the Village Voice, and In These Times. He is the author of The Middle Mind, Requiem, and earlier this year, The Spirit of Disobedience. He teaches at Illinois State University.

JerryShechter on "KC, Mo Climate Protection Plan Progress Report"

JerryShechter — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 22:05:57 +0000

The Kansas City, Missouri Climate Protection Plan Progress Report has been submitted to the Mayor and City Council for adoption. A presentation will be made to the Council at its Business Session on Thursday April 12, 2007. The report is too large (23 pages) and has too many graphics to properly post here. For an electronic copy of the report, in pdf format, send an e-mail to:

Gerald Shechter, Sustainability Coordinator
Kansas City, Missouri Office of Environmental Quality
Gerald_Shechter@kcmo.org
(816) 513-3401

jgt on "A question about hydrogen production"

jgt — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 22:45:37 +0000

I am having a hard time googling something about hydrogen production from electrolisis and would like some help finding the answer.

The question is how much hydrogen must be produced by how much current passing through how much water to produce the equivalent of one liter of gasoline for an internal combustion engine?

katiegrotegut on "Neighborhood Centered Community"

katiegrotegut — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 23:38:05 +0000

Howdy. I'm making up for lost time.

Localized energy production is not only important but a necessary goal, and all these ideas are just wonderful. But remember that we are part of a vast system. Berkabile said that what happens in KC (and elsewhere) caused the problems in New Orleans. For example, planning on creating local energy to power something like the internet, relies on the ability of other communities around the world to send and receive as well. The point is that we must think and behave like a large organism when it comes to interacting with the global community. It's very different than being a self-sustaining small community. We are a society that depends on a grid. Perhaps "Neighborhood Centered Community" might be better described as a "Neighborhood Community Node" ?

As you all know, the entire country, globe, must move toward alternative and benign energy to prevent collapse, or go back to developing the type of survival skills used by communities before the industrial revolution, when economies of scale didn't exist. But those skills depended upon known and for the most part predictable natural environments. Its very different when your wet region suddenly becomes drought stricken, runs out of water (depleted glacier melt and aquifers) or a warm region is suddenly too cold to grow things. We can't depend on technologies or skills that work in climates we are used to. We are already in the early stages of climate change and the science is showing it occuring much faster than expected due to unforeseen positive feedback loops. Shouldn't we begin to look further at technologies that have been used for survival in regions where ingenuity has overcome hardship? How do we grow local food if 80% of the weather is too cold or hot?

Furthermore, can we expect anything to be predictable? Yes - the nature of man. We must avoid finding ourselves in a them or us situation. All must share. We can lose sight of this issue when we start thinking incrementally. I agree with the proposal that neighborhoods will become central to society once again. But we live in a different and interdependant world. Many mistakes were made back in the day, because other's needs weren't considered. This social issue is huge. I recently read that the difference between today's wealthy conservatives, poor conservatives and progressives goes back to social structures in England between the British and the Scotts/Irish, which were carried over and are manifested today in the US according to geographical settlement patterns 300 years ago.

Again, we need to think globally while acting locally. While our community learns behaviors that might help it survive and slow further damage, the point of all this is to get the KC region to wake up, but part of KC's problem, is that it and other communities in the region, tend to be insular in the first place. I'm concerned that we don't lose sight of the big picture in the process.

To see what the rest of the country is planning, may I suggest we get into those rocking chairs and read the brand new national carbon reduction strategy. Yesterday, the Sierra Club joined with the American Solar Energy Society (ASES), Representative Henry Waxman, and the nation's preeminent climate scientist, Dr. James Hansen, to unveil a new report authored by ASES that outlines how America can reduce its carbon emissions by 60-80% by 2050. The peer-reviewed report, titled "Tackling Climate Change in the U.S." is now the official Sierra Club global warming strategy, and consists of 9 reports that cover topics ranging from hybrid vehicles to wind power. It is a huge pdf file, but very informative and a good primer for the workgroups. I don't have a URL. Google "Tackling Climate Change in the U.S.; Potential Carbon Emissions Reductions from Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy by 2030"

Pam is right. I mean Akasha. We need to get radical. But that means, to get off of fossil fuels, yesterday. To become climate neutral yesterday. The fact that the CEO of KCP&L is on the steering committee is a huge step. I wish our first goal is to help him see the error of implementing this new coal-fired power plant. An about face would make him famous! Set an example! And find an alternative that puts KC squarely on the path to sustainability.

Perhaps one of the goals for our group, and which is doable with any luck, is to work on Bill Downy. Present him with alternatives that are too good to turn away from. If we could get him to sequester his carbon output, reduce his company's waste, would be a pretty significant chunk of "change". This idea is one of endless numbers of overlaps with other groups, specifically energy, that we are always faced with, and I wish this weren't the case, even tho manageablility is important. I'm glad we have this forum to share ideas accross the board.

Katie

patspring on "Neighborhood Centered Community"

patspring — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 03:30:57 +0000

Localized energy production:
Here's one small idea that came to mind as I read your posting, Marty. The internet reduces the need for transportation -- we can transmit our thoughts without moving our bodies to meet with other people. But it won't work without electricity. So a neighborhood might want to generate its own electricity for that, and for other uses as well.

How about a community gym where the treadmills & other machines are all hooked up to a power storage device? I know very little about electrical power management, but I do know that individuals can generate electricity to feed back into the larger grid ("run the meter backwards"). I certainly would exercise more if I knew I was creating electricity for my neighborhood!

If I could, I would make some watts right now sitting on my bum at the computer. I picture a little treadle device under my feet, which I could happily pedal as I read, or write, or do otherwise stationary things. Some people might prefer a rocking chair.

How much power could a rocking chair generate? I don't know. But I just bought myself one of those windup flashlight/radio thingies and it runs for quite a bit longer than the time spent winding it up.

Pat

TerryWiggins on "Let's get radical"

TerryWiggins — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 01:16:48 +0000

Here's another possibility, that KC could emulate. A friend just sent it to me from Yahoo news:

California may ban conventional lightbulbs by 2012

By Bernie Woodall Tue Jan 30, 9:05 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A California lawmaker wants to make his state the first to ban incandescent lightbulbs as part of California's groundbreaking initiatives to reduce energy use and greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

The "How Many Legislators Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb Act" would ban incandescent lightbulbs by 2012 in favor of energy-saving compact fluorescent lightbulbs. . .

A number of years ago, maybe as long ago as the 1970's or 1980's, I read psychological studies that indicated that people changed their attitudes after changing their behavior. As I recall, these studies were done in regard to Affirmative Action laws, and found that people who were initially against the laws changed their attitudes after working under them. So, initial opposition doesn't mean that people might not learn that they can do better, even though sometimes the better behavior has to forced onto some of them.

MartyKraft on "Let's get radical"

MartyKraft — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 00:46:02 +0000

Akasha

I can understand your frustration. You have seen what can be done and know that your life is not restricted by environmental laws that protect natural systems. We have the communication tools with TV, radio and newspapers to educate people in a very short amount of time if the media owners would choose to work for the public good in this way. I think the Star is going to have an article and start a blog on climate change this Friday 2/2. Maybe the other media will follow suit.

Akasha on "Neighborhood Centered Community"

Akasha — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 00:45:17 +0000

Great ideas, great vision. Thanks for all the links. This is the kind of visioning that inspires. The internet can also serve to keep us connected to the whole human family when our traveling options diminish.

MartyKraft on "Neighborhood Centered Community"

MartyKraft — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 23:06:28 +0000

Neighborhood Centered Community

This is a brainstorm opportunity. Let’s change and add to this piece of vision and then institute the changes in law and funding necessary to support it.

SERVICES CLOSE - As we move into a world without abundant fossil fuel it is logical that the neighborhood will again become the center of community. It takes a lot of energy to get us from place to place using automobiles. We will need to get our food within walking distance from markets, small stores, backyard and community gardens. See http://kcfoodcircle.smn-rab.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=140 Pharmacies, hardware and drygood stores too will have to be sited close to where we live. Schools could again become real community centers for larger evening events. Some thought too should be given to having a house on every block become a block gathering place for neighbors to dine together, have meetings or receive food deliveries. These converted homes could also be the place for the block automobile and pickups that could be checked out for longer trips or hauling needs. These block centers could be places for neighborhood artisans and musicians could meet to share their works.

INTERNET - Computers could be used to connect neighborhood carpenters, painters, electricians etc. to their very local customers. E-bulletin boards could carry news of the larger neighborhood and connect neighborhoods together from all over the world. The internet could also be used to learn forgotten skills and the block center could become a place to practice these reacquired skills with others. Communiversity could be used as a model. See http://www.umkc.edu/commu/Catalog%20index.asp

PLANTS & GARDENS- Every piece of pavement could be shaded by a tree to diminish the heat island effect and make summers livable. At the same time we must be mindful of the need to have sun for food gardens. Native plants will become the fashion because of their beauty but also because they need the least energy and water use for survival. Their extensive root systems sequester much more carbon than turf grass with shallow root. See http://www.grownative.org/ No till gardening would be favored because it encourages the natural soil communities to flourish sequestering carbon and tilling exposes the soil and the loss of stored carbon. See http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/sep02/soil0902.htm

SOCIAL CAPITAL - Block and neighborhood social capital should be invested in through the funding of block parties especially with sustainability themes that would get people thinking about simple abundant living. One idea about how this might happen can be found at this link. The city could also fund the Ecoteam program that they discontinued several years ago. See http://www.empowermentinstitute.net/ There is another similar program that should be looked at as well. http://www.enactwi.org/ UMKC’s Communiversity could be used as a model for neighborhood based classes for neighbors to teach neighbors on a wide variety of subjects.

EXPERIMENTAL SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES - UMKC and Rockhurst could become leaders in neighborhood community building classes, using their holdings in the neighborhoods surrounding their institutions as experimental sustainable community building centers. An earlier proposal to do that exists at this location. See http://www.allspecies.org/bbs1/messages/68.htm

WALKABILITY - The whole city should be redesigned to promote walkability and bicycling. See http://www.allspecies.org/forum/topic/10?replies=5 And http://carfree.com/

Akasha on "Let's get radical"

Akasha — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 06:53:53 +0000

Barbara Boxer sent out an email asking us to number a list of priorities in relation to the climate crisis. I took the opportunity to submit my opinion.
This is what I said.
First, inform citizens with a scientifically verifiable predicted scenario of what life will be like for their children and grandchildren. Point out the immorality of the position of ignorance.
WAKE UP people so that they realize that it is vital to make sacrifices. Prepare them for RADICAL changes. And then make them. Make it illegal to build buildings that aren't green, illegal to make non-fuel efficient cars. It is a state of emergency NOW!! Engage the human spirit that awakens when disaster strikes, empowering our capacity for innovation and joyful sacrifice. And don't ask uninformed to rate priorities, figure out which action is the most effective and start there!
*********************************************

It seems to me that we aren't taking the science seriously, and you know what happens when we do that. Things get worse. I've lived 30 years in Sweden where the priorities are much saner and I know, legislating to protect the environment is possible. One can live a very satisfying life and still consume only half of what is consumed in the US. EDUCATE people! Legislate with the future in mind.
In Sweden we pay a deposit for all PLASTIC bottles, aluminum cans and most glass pop and beer bottles. In the grocery store one must purchase "plastic or paper". That affects patterns of consumption. It affects the amount of waste produced. Auto fuel is expensive, auto taxes are high, public transportation is cheap and efficient. In our family of 8 adults, 1 owns a car.
If gas prices went up in the US, wouldn't more people use public transportation? It seems to me there are innumerable things that could be done. If we wanted to. Without awareness of the facts, no one will do anything. I believe the change will come from the grassroots, once they are informed.

JerryShechter on "Meeting Schedules"

JerryShechter — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 03:09:42 +0000

CLIMATE PROTECTION PLAN
MEETING SCHEDULES

STEERING COMMITTEE

Meeting #1 October 23, 2006 3:00 pm-5:00 pm 10th Floor
City Hall
414 E. 12th St
Meeting #2 December 21, 2006 3:00pm – 5:00pm 10th Floor
City Hall
Meeting #3 January 19, 2007 3:00pm - 5:00pm 10th Floor
City Hall
Meeting #4 March 15, 2007 3:00pm - 5:00pm Discovery Center
4750 Troost
Meeting #5 March 23, 2007 3:00pm - 5:00pm 10th Floor
City Hall

WORK GROUPS

Meeting #1 December 14, 2006 4:00pm - 6:00pm Bartle Hall

Meeting #2 January 16, 2007 4:00pm - 6:00pm Maple Woods Community College
2601 NE Barry Rd

Meeting #3 February 6, 2007 4:00pm - 6:00pm Kauffman Foundation
4801 Rockhill Rd

Meeting #4 March 6, 2007 2:00pm - 6:00pm Maple Woods Community College
2601 NE Barry Rd

PLEASE NOTE: Work Group dates, locations and times have been set in advance and may be subject to change. Please contact the Kansas City Office of Environmental Quality to verify the information: 816-513-3452

JerryShechter on "Principles of Sustainability"

JerryShechter — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 23:03:06 +0000

I don't remember where I got this but I think it's a good philosophical statement.

SUSTAINABILITY
Sustainability is the ability to achieve continuing economic prosperity while protecting the natural systems of the planet and providing a high quality of life for its people. Achieving sustainable solutions calls for stewardship with everyone taking responsibility for solving the problems of today and tomorrow, including individuals, communities, businesses and governments, which are all stewards of the environment.

PRINCIPLES OF SUSTAINABILITY
1. RESPECT for wisdom of natural systems
2. RESPECT for people
3. RESPECT for place and differences among places
4. RESPECT for the cycle of life
5. RESPECT for energy and natural resources; Know that natural resources are finite
6. RESPECT for process; If we want to change a result, we must change the process
that led to the result.

MartyKraft on "Ego - Barrier to Change"

MartyKraft — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 01:33:59 +0000

Eckhart Tolle in A New Earth says, “The collective egoic mind is the most dangerously insane and destructive entity to ever inhabit this planet.”

I believe he is right. Einstein says that we are under a kind of optical delusion that makes us think we are separate individuals when we are really part of the whole. Einstein also says that we can't solve a problem with the same consciousness that created it. Changing consciousness is deeper than changing your mind. You sense it in your whole being.

Cutting back on energy to cut greenhouse gas emissions will give a whole new meaning to the word sharing. How do we go from competing to sharing? I think Tolle's books or CDs are a great place to start. Tolle has also written The Power of Now. I highly
recommend both.

MartyKraft on "Vision"

MartyKraft — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 00:52:51 +0000

This quote by Goethe seems appropriate.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said:
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.

MartyKraft on "Vision"

MartyKraft — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 21:22:05 +0000

Arlo Guthrie said in a song, "I don't want a pickle. I just want to ride my motorsickle."

But we are in a pickle with the evnironmental imbalance we have participated in. How do we get out of this pickle? What vision can we project that we can design ourselves into? How can we get from right here to there? How fast can we change without flying apart?

No one can answer these questions but together we can begin a process of sharing our piece of the vision. Through the sharing, our separate visions will shift and change until workable pieces emerge. We can change as fast as we can let go of what isn't working and bring into being that which does work.

This can be an exciting process or it can be scary. If only a few of us go through the process we will be at odds with those who don't even realize that we have a problem. I hope every citizen can enter into this process very soon. Please share this process widely with people you know. There will be other forums on other websites. There are letters to the editor. There are talk shows. There are the upcoming elections with lots of places to ask questions of the candidates. Let's get going!