Taking Action, as the IPCC Urges
Earth Quaker Action Team - Thu, 04/07/2022 - 07:58
Perhaps like you, I’ve been reading about the recent IPCC climate change report. Some news stories have emphasized encouraging signs, like the decreasing cost of clean energy. Others stress how much suffering will occur if we don’t change more dramatically and quickly. “Stopping Climate Change is Doable, but Time is Short,” concluded one New York Times headline. My reaction to this news? Gratitude that I have a five-day walk to help organize.
Categories: B4. Radical Ecology
Youth Schedule at Bioneers 2022, May 12-15
Bioneers - Wed, 04/06/2022 - 09:12
Reminder: Masks will be required in the Palace of Fine Arts Theater and within the smaller contained venues in the adjacent Hangar space. Please review our Covid-19 protocols for any questions
Register NowThursday, May 12Youth Orientation & Dinner | 5:00 pm
May 12th | 5 pm to 8 pm | Youth Unity Center
Hosted by Jada Imani with Kayla Douglas of Weaving Earth
About this presentation
Come together to kick off the conference weekend, meet your peers, and enjoy a great meal. Hosted by Jada Imani, Kayla Douglas and Weaving Earth.Come together to kick off the conference weekend, meet your peers, and enjoy a great meal. Hosted by Jada Imani, Kayla Douglas and Weaving Earth.
Friday, May 13Youth Keynote | Max Fenning– Inheritance
May 13th | 11:13 am to 11:21 am | PoFA Theater
About this presentation
Gen Z has come of age in a world fraught with systemic injustice, a looming climate emergency, and constant attacks on democracy itself. With a generational psyche bred online, young people are able to communicate, learn, organize, and take action in ways never seen before. Maxx Fenning, founder and President of PRISM, a nonprofit organization that works to expand access to LGBT-inclusive education and sexual health resources for young people in South Florida, discusses his experiences standing on the shoulders of a decades-long fight for LGBT rights and how to help pass on the torch to this new wave of young activists.
Lunch Provided | 1:30pm
May 13th | 1:30 pm to 2:30pm | Youth Unity Center
Interactive | Tree The Magical Window Singing Tree: Hands-on Mural Painting
May 13th | 2:45 pm to 4:15pm | Youth Unity Center
About this session
This will be a hands-on art-making workshop co-led by youth facilitators. We will engage in the creation of a Singing Tree Mural from start to finish during the conference. It will be the 107th Singing Tree mural for a forest of trees made by over 21,000 people from 52 countries. We will also learn about the neurobiology and eco-based approach of the “Peace Building Through Art” program as we work. Paint clothes will be provided. Hosted by Laurie Marshall, founder of Unity Through Creativity Foundation and The Singing Tree Project. Facilitated by Lili Lopez, certified Singing Tree Facilitator and Bisi Obateru, Nigerian musician and artist, with student facilitators: Jerwey Guo, co-leader, Restorative Justice Singing Tree; Serena Ornelas, co-creator, Ukrainian Singing Tree of Strength and Freedom; Amanda Panoplos, co-creator, The Lemon Cherry Singing Tree of Peace.)
Interactive | Community of Mentors
May 13th | 2:45 pm to 4:15 pm | Community of Mentors
Featuring:
- Shilpa Jain
About this panel
Bioneers is inherently a community of mentors; people eager to learn, share, explore and create together. The “Community of Mentors” space at Bioneers offers youth the opportunity to be in small group mentoring sessions with Bioneers presenters. The presenters will share their life experience in an interactive dialogue with youth who are seeking guidance on their path to activism. With Shilpa Jain, Executive Director of YES!, who has facilitated dozens of transformative leadership gatherings around the world with hundreds of young leaders from over 80 countries. Facilitated by Lauren Dalberth Hage and Dave Hage of Weaving Earth.
Interactive | Truthworker Theatre Company: Artists as Activists and Healers
May 13th | 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm | Youth Unity Center
Featuring:
- Samara Gaev
About this panel
Come join Samara Gaev and members of the Truthworker Theatre Company in a dynamic, interactive workshop that will call upon modalities of theater, writing, storytelling and collaboration to unpack pressing issues in our communities, including: trauma, healing, power, privilege, inequity and social justice. Drawing from Augusto Boal’s renowned “Theatre of the Oppressed” pedagogy, the workshop will offer community members, educators, activists, and organizers tools for leveraging stories that so often go untold, as well as tools for engaging their constituencies. Sourcing the collective wisdom in the room, we will creatively cultivate a brave space for radical self reflection, testimony, systems analysis, community building, and the articulation of our visions for change. Truthworker Theatre Company will also be catalyzing this workshop with an original performance excerpted from their provocative trilogy, which depicts the prison industrial complex through the lens of a dozen youth directly impacted by mass incarceration.
Saturday, May 14Interactive| Special Youth Session: LGBTQ2SIA+ Talking Circle
May 14th | 10:30 am to 11:30 am | Youth Unity Center
Featuring:
- Solace Pesach
About this keynote
How is our queerness, our gender blessing, and/or our identity a portal to ancient truths and liberated futures? Who are we and who are we becoming? Where do our identities intersect with movements for justice and flourishing? Come gather together in a ritual space for speaking our experiences and beholding one another in a space dedicated for LGBTQ2SIA+ folx. Hosted by Solace Pesach of the Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education.
Lunch Provided | 1:30pm
May 14th | 1:30 pm to 2:30pm | Youth Unity Center
May 14th | 1:30 pm to 2:30 pm | Marina Theater
About this panel
Truthworker Theatre Company, directed by Samara Gaev, uses rhyme, hip-hop theater, dance, multimedia, cutting edge technology, and personal testimony to raise awareness and inspire deeper critical engagement. In this special performance for Bioneers, the company will perform excerpts from its provocative trilogy that depicts the prison industrial complex through the lens of a dozen youth directly impacted by mass incarceration, viscerally engaging with such themes as the school-to-prison pipeline, youth criminalization, the impacts of solitary confinement, and the challenges of re-entry into society. Truthworker’s deeply personal performances center redemption, forgiveness, and responsibility to humanize those most negatively impacted by systemically unjust and racist policies.
Interactive | Unpacking Our Past to Move to Our Future with Aniya Butler
May 14th | 2:45 pm to 4:15 pm | Youth Unity Center
About this panel
As we strive to rebuild a better future, we have to acknowledge and appreciate the efforts our ancestors contributed in the past. In this workshop, participants will be challenged to think of ways they want to reflect on efforts in the past while rebuilding their future. To build a sustainable future, we need to dismantle the foundational systems of oppression and replace them with ones rooted in equity and sustainability, but to do that we have to recognize the efforts made in the past. In this workshop we will be discussing this idea and creatively writing and imagining a world where this is true and what it takes to get there.
Interactive | Community of Mentors
May 14th | 2:45 pm to 4:15 pm | Community of Mentors
About this panel
Bioneers is inherently a community of mentors; people eager to learn, share, explore and create together. The “Community of Mentors” space at Bioneers offers youth the opportunity to be in small group mentoring sessions with Bioneers presenters. The presenters will share their life experience in an interactive dialogue with youth who are seeking guidance on their path to activism. With Alixa García, an award-winning poet, climate organizer and filmmaker, as well as a visual artist, musician, science-fiction writer and essayist. Facilitated by Lauren Dalberth Hage and Dave Hage of Weaving Earth.
May 14th | 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm | Youth Unity Center
Featuring:
- MC Jada Imani
About this panel
Youth take center stage, grab the mic and share their talents to express their traumas and triumphs at this open forum hosted by R&B, hip hop artist and community organizer, Jada Imani.
Interactive | Queer World Making LGBTQ2SIA+ Mixer
May 14th | 6:00 pm to 7:30 pm | Conversation Café
Featuring:
- Solace Pesach
About this panel
This will be an evening of art, music, and conversation for the LGBTQ2SIA+ community. With celebration and conviviality, we will celebrate the ongoing legacies of brilliance and resilience of queer liberation and intersecting struggles for justice. Come gather to nourish our connections and imagine new possibilities. This is a space dedicated for LGBTQ2SIA+ folx, but allies are welcome. Hosted by Solace Pesach of the Weaving Earth Center for Relational Education.
Sunday, May 15Interactive | Youth of Color Caucus
May 15th | 11:00 am to 1:00 pm | Youth Unity Center
About this panel
What is the role of youth of color in environmental and social movements? The Youth of Color Caucus is a safe space and open forum where youth of color have an opportunity to sit, listen to one another and share the real issues that come with holding their identities in social and environmental movements as well as in the world at large. Facilitated by Brandi Mack along with youth leaders Alondra Aragon and Minkah Smith.
May 15th | 11:13 am to 11:21 am | PoFA Theater
About this panel
Building power and achieving success in the global youth climate movement require international solidarity, communication, and organizing. Relationships with allied groups and organizations are key to making change. An international youth organizer since the age of 13, Alexandria Villaseñor shares the unique ways in which a multicultural, geographically distributed youth movement is building trust, negotiating compromises, distributing decision-making and centering the stories, experiences and leadership of those most impacted in each action and campaign. From grassroots movements to national organizations, Alexandria will show us how youth intend to win the climate fight by working together.
Lunch Provided | 1:30pm
May 15th | 1:30 pm to 2:30pm | Youth Unity Center
Interactive | Restorative Justice Healing Workshop
May 15th | 2:45 pm to 4:15 pm | Youth Unity Center
About this panel
This workshop will be led by youth who have been trained to facilitate restorative justice circles throughout the greater community of Oakland, California. They will discuss/explain what these healing circles look like and what it has done for them on a personal level. Our RJOY Youth Interns provide healing spaces that are infused with art and therapeutic modalities that allow its circle participants to feel safe, heard, and supported. Many young people do not have safe spaces to talk about things that they cannot necessarily share with their parents or authority figures. Restorative Justice healing circles provide that space free of judgment, ridicule, or being exposed to more trauma when showing a true sense of vulnerability.
Interactive | Community of Mentors
May 15th | 2:45 pm to 4:15 pm | Community of Mentors
Featuring:
- Samara Gaev
About this panel
Bioneers is inherently a community of mentors; people eager to learn, share, explore and create together. The “Community of Mentors” space at Bioneers offers youth the opportunity to be in small group mentoring sessions with Bioneers presenters. The presenters will share their life experience in an interactive dialogue with youth who are seeking guidance on their path to activism. With Samara Gaev, founder and Artistic Director of Truthworker Theatre Company, activist, educator, theater director and performer with 16 years’ experience using performance for cross-cultural healing and social change. Facilitated by Lauren Dalberth Hage and Dave Hage of Weaving Earth.
Interactive | Closing, Reflection & Integration – How do you go forth?
May 15th | 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm | Youth Unity Center
Featuring:
- Weaving Earth
About this panel
This final session in the Youth Space is dedicated to reflection and incorporation. Together, we will consider some key questions: What is it you are taking with you? How will you integrate what you have experienced at Bioneers into your life? How can Bioneers expand and improve its youth programming to support you further on your path? What would be helpful to have witnessed by peers and mentors before you head home? All youth are welcome to attend and engage in the conversation! Facilitated by the Bioneers Youth Leadership Program Coordination team from Weaving Earth.
The post Youth Schedule at Bioneers 2022, May 12-15 appeared first on Bioneers.
Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition
Building the Solidarity Economy: Awakening to Our Mutuality and Shifting the Terrain of Power
Bioneers - Tue, 04/05/2022 - 13:12
At the core of our civilizational breakdown is an extractive economy that wastes both nature and people, at the same time it is Hoovering extreme wealth up to the billionaire class. But with breakdown comes breakthrough. Professor Manuel Pastor believes we’re living through a moment of profound transformation. It will come down to what we do – or don’t do – at this moment of radical change.
In this episode, we hear from Pastor on how shocks to the system are precipitating a great awakening and growing movements to transform the economy to our economy.
Featuring
Manuel Pastor, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at USC and Director of its Equity Research Institute, has long been one of the most important scholars and activists working on the economic, environmental and social conditions facing low-income urban communities and the social movements seeking to change those realities. He has held many prominent academic posts, won countless prestigious awards and fellowships for his activism and scholarship, and is the author and co-author of many important, highly influential tomes.
Credits
- Executive Producer: Kenny Ausubel
- Written by: Kenny Ausubel
- Senior Producer and Station Relations: Stephanie Welch
- Program Engineer and Music Supervisor: Emily Harris
- Host and Consulting Producer: Neil Harvey
- Producer: Teo Grossman
- Production Assistance: Monica Lopez
- Special thanks to Status Coup News for use of their interviews with workers on strike
Resources
Solidarity Economics: Why Mutuality and Movements Matter | 2021 Book by Manuel Pastor and Chris Benner
SolidarityEconomics.org | Joint Project of the Equity Research Center (ERI) at the University of Southern California and the Institute for Social Transformation at UC Santa Cruz
Manuel Pastor – Solidarity Economics: Mutuality, Movements and Momentum | 2021 Bioneers Keynote Address
Solidarity Economics: Our Economy, Our Planet, Our Movements | 2021 Bioneers Panel
Bioneers Reader: Our Economic Future | Free eBook
This is an episode of the Bioneers: Revolution from the Heart of Nature series. Visit the radio and podcast homepage to find out how to hear the program on your local station and how to subscribe to the podcast.
Subscribe to the Bioneers: Revolution from The Heart of Nature podcastTranscript
NEIL HARVEY, HOST: When engineers prototype a machine, they run it at high speed and high stress to see what blows out. The aim is to determine where the flaws and weaknesses are, and hopefully to correct them.
These days, it seems like everything is broken. Maybe we need an entirely new and different design.
At the core of this civilizational breakdown is an extractive economy that wastes both nature and people, at the same time it is Hoovering extreme wealth up to the billionaire class.
But with breakdown comes breakthrough. Professor Manuel Pastor believes we’re living through a moment of profound transformation. It will come down to what we do – or don’t do – at this moment of radical change.
One thing is for sure. This time is apocalyptic in the original meaning of the word, which is a revelation or an unveiling.
Manuel Pastor spoke at a virtual Bioneers conference…
MANUEL PASTOR: It’s been a very difficult last couple of years. We have been and are still experiencing the COVID pandemic, and it’s important to realize that this was a shock to our system. COVID was the disease that revealed our illnesses as a society: the racial wealth gap, which meant that communities of color were not able to survive the blows of an uneven economy; inadequate healthcare – black people died at 1.4 times the rate of white folks, and if we look at Los Angeles county and age adjust for that, we’ll see that the black death rates were twice that of white folks, the Latino death rates, three times. So COVID was the disease that revealed our illnesses of economic precarity, of systematic racial disparities, of inadequate healthcare.
Slide from Manuel Pastor’s 2021 Bioneers keynote address
However, it also revealed our mutuality. The number of people who stepped up in mutual aid societies, the food kitchens that stepped forward, communities beginning to care for the unhoused amongst them. And of course, people wearing masks, even if not just to protect themselves, but to protect their neighbors.
And we, in fact, need to think about COVID as occurring as part of three big hits to the consciousness. COVID itself revealing disparity, the murder of George Floyd and the reckoning around structural racism in the United States, and of course all of that coming on top of four years of a presidential administration that seemed to have cruelty as its main strategy, that wound up [INAUDIBLE] in xenophobia, racism and hate, and had sought to polarize the society. So where does that leave us now?
HOST: As Manuel Pastor points out, one central pivot of transformation that’s being revealed is to change our societal pronoun from “me me me” to “we.”
Manuel Pastor is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of California. He’s Director of its Equity Research Institute. He’s long been one of the most astute researchers studying the economic, environmental and social inequities facing low-income urban communities. He’s also worked tirelessly to address these systemic crises through movement building.
But, he says, the upside of the downside is that the concatenation of crises that bedevil us has shaken loose the foundational ideological assumptions about what an economy is for, and who gets to benefit.
I would argue there is no going back to what we had before. People often use the word recovery, but why would we want to go back to a normal that did not work for so many, with so many crowded into jobs that were high-risk and low pay, with so many left without a social safety net, with so many subject to racist policing, racist education, and even racist environmental conditions in terms of climate inequities. Rather than use the term recovery, we need to understand that this is a moment of transformation, and it’s going to require reimagination and restructuring to be able to get forward to a model that both recognizes the disparities that have existed, challenges inequality, and begins to lift up our commonalities.
Traditional economics, often called classical or neoliberal economics, assumes that people are selfish, they act just in their self-interest, and that markets exist to coordinate that too, and actually sometimes on the left, people think folks act in their self-interest and you need the state to constrain people.
But the fascinating thing is that people also act out of mutuality, out of concern. You know, when there’s a disaster like COVID, there are price gougers, but there’s also people who rush to the rescue of other folks. And the question is: Does our system feed the wolf of selfishness or does it feed the spirit of inclusion, and fairness, and mutuality? And that’s a really important thing that I think is wrong, both with the way we theorize and with the way we structure.
HOST: The prevailing ideology of modern capitalist economics arose in the mid-19th Century in tandem with the Industrial Revolution and the Olympian rise of the plutocratic Robber Barons and their bloated monopolistic trusts.
During that Gilded Age, a leading anti-monopoly crusader named Henry Demarest Lloyd described the ideological conflict around the plutocrats’ so-called “survival of the fittest” Social Darwinist ideology in this way:
The golden rule of business is: There is no hope for any of us, but the weakest must go first. There is no other field of human associations in which any such rule of action is allowed. The man who should apply in his family or in his citizenship this ‘survival of the fittest’ theory as it is professed and operated in business would be a monster, and would be speedily made extinct. To divide the supply of food between himself and his children according to their relative powers of calculation would be a short road to the penitentiary or the gallows. In trade, men have not yet risen to the family life of animals. It is a race to the bad, and the winners are the worst.
In fact, what Charles Darwin was referring to with “survival of the fittest” was an ecological paradigm of the survival of those best fitted to their environment, place and time.
Around the same time, the Russian naturalist and philosopher Pyotr Kropotkin reported on his studies of animal behavior in his famous book Mutual Aid. He concluded this:
Happily enough, competition is not the rule either in the animal world or in mankind. It is limited among animals to exceptional periods. Better conditions are created by the elimination of competition by means of mutual aid and mutual support. That is the tendency of nature.
In fact, Kropotkin proved to be correct. It’s cooperation and symbiosis that make the world go ‘round. The classical “survival of the fittest” economic model is less an ideology than a theology – an article of blind faith in the supremacy of the market to solve problems, and in the benevolence of billionaires. Surveying the state of the world, it’s self-evident that the invisible hand of the market has failed catastrophically.
MP: And we know in our heart that when businesses treat people correctly, that those businesses thrive. We know that if low wages and the ability to destroy the environment were the driving factors behind economic growth, Haiti would be the richest country on Earth, but it’s not.
Neoliberalism has hijacked common sense. So you know, people, when they look at their individual situation, they individualize it, like somehow it’s my fault rather than a result of the structures of inequalities. Or that markets will take care of it. Or that a tax cut on the rich will generate prosperity. There’s no evidence of that over the last 45 years that we’ve been trying it. It’s never generated economic growth. What’s generated economic growth is public investment in each other. That’s what generated the long period of economic prosperity between 1945 and 1970.
So we really need to shift our mindset and begin to realize when we work out of a spirit of mutuality, we begin to generate a more prosperous economy.
HOST: Indeed, as the late senator Gaylord Nelson, principal founder of Earth Day, said, “The economy is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the environment.”
Real wealth creation is based on replenishing natural systems and restoring the built environment, especially our infrastructure and cities. It’s based on investing in our communities and workforce. It’s been shown to work best when done all at once. Restoration could become an estimated $100 trillion market. There’s plenty of work to do, plenty of people to do it, and abundant financial incentive.
When we return, more from Manuel Pastor on how to bring mutuality into the economy – and why movements matter.
I’m Neil Harvey. You’re listening to The Bioneers. This is “Building the Solidarity Economy: Awakening to Our Mutuality and Shifting the Terrain of Power.”
HOST: In his book Solidarity Economics: Why Mutuality and Movements Matter, which he co-wrote with Chris Jenner, Manuel Pastor lays out the kinds of mind-shifts and practical applications that can rewrite the rules at this transformative moment. It starts with reframing the term, “the economy.”
MP: When we talk about the economy, it makes it seem like it’s a set of natural laws, things given by God, the market that’s outside of us. But it’s our economy. These are the rules we make about whether to compete or collaborate. It’s a tax system that either lets Amazon go off Scot-free with no taxes or ensures that they pay taxes and treat their workers decently. We should always go back to talking about our economy, the set of rules we set up and use to either protect property or to protect people.
Second big point is that we need to recognize that mutuality actually drives our economy and stress how mutuality, fairness and inclusion can generate prosperity for the many. Now this is a really key point because even progressives sometimes seem like they accept the arguments of conservatives, that inclusion maybe a good thing morally but somehow it’s going to come at the cost of economic prosperity. But you know that when you have a society that’s underinvesting in young people, you’re not going to have more productivity in the future. You know when you’ve got a system of over-policing and over-incarcerating that you’re wasting talent that could contribute. You know when you are not legalizing people who’ve been in this country, perhaps without papers, but for quite a long period of time, you’re not only disenfranchising them politically, you’re disenfranchising them economically and you’re wasting their talent and ability to contribute. And research is showing that those metropolitan areas that are more equal, less residentially segregated, and less fragmented actually tend to grow more sustainably over time.
HOST: Those same metropolitan areas that are more equitable also experience less pollution and environmental degradation.
Manuel Pastor cites compelling statistics that reflect how vital it is to build a solidarity economy. In Los Angeles County, while the median income for white households hovers around $86,000 a year. Latino households plunge to $52,000, and black households to $45,000. It gets even worse. For households with children under the age of 5, the income median for white households is about $124,000 a year. For black and Latino households, it’s about $51,000.
Pastor says that means we’re baking racial inequality into the future – unless we act to change the terms of engagement.
Slides from Manuel Pastor’s 2021 Bioneers keynote address
MP: First, we need to center the struggle for racial equity and against racism. We need all of us to have a deep interrogation of how anti-black and anti-indigenous racism has set the terrain for othering, for xenophobia, for hate, for structural inequality that in fact affects all of us. Even immigrants who come to this country, the terrain of an inequality is set by those fundamental dynamics of the taking of land and the taking of labor to amass capital to make this country.
So, if we really want to make a world that is better, we need to center the struggle for racial equity, and take it upon ourselves to understand the deep role of anti-black racism.
But the ground truth of the COVID pandemic is that it radically amplified the Social Darwinism corrupting the economy. The richest Americans raked in the biggest upward transfer of wealth in the country’s history. Concierge service from the U.S. Treasury Department provided them with no-interest cash to capitalize on a fire sale of vulnerable small and medium-sized businesses, while also supporting lucrative stock buybacks and executive bonuses.
While the super-rich got filthy richer, struggling taxpayers received a pittance in direct assistance – and a temporary one at that. Meanwhile companies started complaining bitterly that workers weren’t showing up.
Rather than go back to crappy low-wage jobs that already were often not enough to live on, so-called “essential workers” additionally now faced mortal danger from the pandemic. It’s a nightmare scenario amounting to “Your money or your life.” Thousands of workers staged union and wildcat strikes across the country.
Archival clips courtesy of Status Coup:
“People are sick and tired of being sick and tired, as Fannie Lou Hamer said, they’re sick and tired of being taken advantage of. They’re sick and tired of the top 5 percent getting all the wealth and those of us on the bottom, you know, are struggling to make ends meet, living paycheck to paycheck.”
“It’s about sticking together as a team to win! These men and women who are standing in line today are really fighting for the new hires and the people of the future.”
“We still deserve human rights and human decency, and I would say that enough pay to pay your rent and get a car to work if you need to and put groceries in your fridge is a human right.”
MP: You know, the business press is calling it the great resignation, because from the point of view of employers, it’s people leaving and not wanting to come to work. But I think it would be better to call it the great rebellion or the great awakening.
What’s going on is that workers are saying, you know what, we’ve just been through this huge existential crisis where we realized what work was essential, and it was not being the manager of a hedge fund, it was being a grocery store clerk or an agricultural worker or a healthcare worker. And yet so many of those jobs are not treated with the pay, respect, a combination that they deserve.
And what I think you’re seeing is that workers are fed up. I mean, restaurant employers used to expect that people would come in for low wages, uncertain hours, and disrespected work. And now people are saying, really? And I have to risk death from COVID too? Later. I’m not coming in. So, you’re really seeing a kind of recalibration of what work means in people’s lives, and a demand for more from it.
But I also think that it’s important to realize that this comes—now it’s about a dozen or so years since the 2008, 2009 financial crisis in which capitalism ran itself into the ground and expected the taxpayers to bail them out at the mistakes they made, even as they left black and Latino homeowners, particularly, in the wind, losing all of their assets, with the racial wealth gap worsening over time.
Young people entered into the labor market in that period of time and they saw Trump get elected and mismanage this last crisis. People don’t trust the system. They know that something is wrong. They know that they deserve better. And even though they don’t quite yet have the collective means for articulating their concerns, they’re articulating them individually by deciding not to go to work, or quitting the jobs they have, or getting together with other people to demand improvements in the conditions at work.
www.flickr.com/photos/redvers/ – CC-BY
Manuel Pastor has a practical vision for how to begin to restructure “our economy.” It grew out of prior work he and Chris Jenner had done, including an economic report called “From Resistance to Renewal: A 12-Step Program for the California Economy.”
They helped develop a dynamic suite of transformative policies to build the Solidarity Economy Movement. It’s grounded in green infrastructure, education, workforce development, housing, transportation systems, and the Care Economy for the 21st century.
MP: And that is a movement that looks at co-ops, community land trusts, mutual aid societies, everything where people come together to forge institutions, economic institutions, that center collective well-being and provide an alternative to the capitalist orientation of most of our institutions.
So you can imagine making sure that financial institutions lend to communities so that they can start community land trusts. You can imagine making it easier for worker co-ops to form, and also making it easier for them to get the capital finance that they need to be able to move forward. You can see, as happened during the pandemic, government delivering aid, often through these mutual aid societies or community-based organizations in ways that build up that sector of the economy.
That’s going to take some time, and we don’t have a lot of time. We need to scale up quickly. So the solidarity economy vision is kind of a post-capitalist vision. But we also think there’s a lot you can do with currently existing businesses. How do we reward the businesses that are paying taxes, paying decent wages, training their workers, providing paid family leave, and penalize those businesses that are not doing that? How do we take that large part of our economy that exists right now and shift it in the direction of serving mutuality.
HOST: When the pandemic paralyzed the U.S. economy, community mutual aid networks sprang up or leapt into overdrive around the country. They tried to ensure people living alone received the help they needed, such as groceries or rides to the doctor. It’s been civil society – not the invisible hand of the market – that has risen to the occasion to grow and strengthen these networks, and incorporate them into official structures where that’s been possible.
But there have to be some fundamental changes in our economy and our government policies to make a difference that really makes a difference in people’s lives for the long haul. Which is why movements matter, say Manuel Pastor.
MP: That means we need to commit to social movements. There’s a famous quote from Martin Luther King. He actually borrowed it from someone else, which is that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. Let me add, Bioneers, but it requires that someone bend it. It doesn’t get the justice just on its own. That’s going to require you. It’s going to require you working with others. It’s going to require broad social movements that challenge the constellation of political power, that challenge economic and racial privilege, and insist on mutuality as the guiding principle for our economy, and solidarity economics as our framework for getting forward.
When you see how the one percent has been running away from the rest of us with its share of national income continuing to go up and social distance mounting and mounting, we know that some people do benefit, even though most of us would gain from inclusion and investment in all of us. And so we need movements like the Fight for 15, the fight for immigrant rights, the fight to house the unhoused, to make sure that we can actually change things.
We also know that the other side effect of movements is just as markets make us selfish, they teach us to be self-interested, look out for ourselves instead of someone else, and see the world as zero sum. Just as markets make us selfish, movements make us mutual, they build the habits of solidarity, intersectionality and mutual consideration that are key to make our economy function for all of us.
Solidarity economics insists that we should address the climate crisis, not just because there’s a cost benefit analysis of how that would be good for us in the long run, but simply that we need to move past an extractive relationship with the planet and understand that we must stand in solidarity with the planet, with other species, and with future generations, to make sure that we have a planet that lasts.
The post Building the Solidarity Economy: Awakening to Our Mutuality and Shifting the Terrain of Power appeared first on Bioneers.
Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition
Deep Community Resilience: Preparing for the Coming Age, Place-By-Place | Jason F. McLennan
Bioneers - Tue, 04/05/2022 - 08:38
Recent years have shown us how fragile our communities are in light of institutional failures highlighted by a global pandemic, systemic inequalities, and climate change. Responding to this moment in history requires an urgent and revolutionary reordering of societal systems and structures. In this article from his book, Transformational Thought: Radical Ideas to Remake the Built Environment, Jason F. Mclennan outlines a blueprint to restructuring societal systems and infrastructure to create resilient communities to mitigate and solve our most pressing issues facing humanity.
Jason Mclennan is one of the world’s most influential visionaries in contemporary architecture and green building, is a highly sought-out designer, consultant, and thought leader. A winner of Engineering News Record’s National Award of Excellence and of the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Prize (which was, during its 10-year trajectory, known as “the planet’s top prize for socially responsible design”), Jason has been showered with such accolades as “the ‘Wayne Gretzky’ of the green building industry and a “World Changer” (by GreenBiz magazine).
The hurricane and flooding in New Orleans. The F5 tornado in Joplin, Missouri. The magnitude 6.2 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand and the devasting earthquake in Haiti. The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The earthquake, tsunami and subsequent nuclear crisis in Northern Japan.
Disasters happen and people respond, on both individual and societal levels. In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to the notion of community resilience as the size and number of community disasters has increased globally. We seem increasingly resigned to adapting to disasters rather than avoiding them as their inevitability becomes apparent. The good news is that the dialogue is finally becoming more sophisticated, with a focus on how to prepare in advance for the next crisis and how well our systems might withstand what’s to come rather than simply planning to respond after the fact. The word “resilience” is an important word in the context of community planning, yet to truly become more resilient we must take a step back and examine the very fabric of our communities, identifying our vulnerabilities both culturally and physically and replacing them with more robust and elegant solutions.
Understanding Our Fragility
Several realities make our societies inherently less resilient than in the past. Overpopulation literally places more people in harm’s way, particularly in earthquake and flood zones where much of current population growth occurs. With another billion people likely to be added within the next two decades this will become even more of an issue. Increasingly dangerous technologies (nuclear energy and deep-water drilling come to mind) raise the stakes when problems occur. In our insane quest for cheap energy we are greatly increasing the potential for human-based natural disasters with riskier technologies and resource extraction.
The ways in which we have planned and built our cities (especially in North America) also spreads people out over greater distances, creating geographic and cultural separations as well as highly inefficient, expensive centralized transportation, water and waste systems that make potential disruptions harder to fix and put whole communities at risk. Culturally we have become complacent about governments, corporations and technologies stepping in and taking care of us in tough times. As a result we find ourselves more vulnerable – and sometimes helpless in the face of challenges when they do arise.
The topic of resilience comes up frequently in discussions and debates surrounding climate change, among the people that focus on these issues, but is mostly ignored by the public at large. Most experts agree that the rate of natural disasters will continue to rise as the climate continues to change. Yet suddenly it has become politically dangerous to even discuss climate
change and the many threats we face to our well-being in the public sphere. Emotional partisanship has replaced scientific rationality for most Americans. For communities that need to think about resilience – and I think every community in the world should be having vigorous civil discourse on this subject—very little is being done.
Government, corporate and environmental leaders that are up to speed on these issues all agree that the costs to respond to these catastrophes over and over are simply too high and economically untenable. We can not keep insuring the status quo and rebuilding communities that are ill-prepared for the next disaster down the road. The question remains: how can we make all of our communities more resilient to inevitable disasters, whether they are natural or man-made?
Clearly, the overall topic of resilience is massive. For the purposes of this article, I have chosen to focus on those aspects of community resilience that I believe we are still capable of achieving—provided we are courageous enough to make some serious changes.
New Realities Clash with Old Habits
Many climate experts now believe that we have already lost the battle against climate change; that it is already too late to reduce emissions in time to avoid significant catastrophic environmental loss around the world. The debate is turning to how we will adapt and thrive in a vastly altered world. Some anticipate the inevitable collapse of civilization as we know it, where warming temperatures and rising seas will flood coastal areas and result in human tragedy on a hitherto unheard of scale.
Meanwhile, politicians offer their rhetoric (if anything at all) without offering real solutions. And challenging economic times make minor hardships feel considerably more dire. Even a modest spike in oil prices sends a shock wave throughout the already tense economy, reminding us how dependent we are on fossil fuels. We find it difficult enough to endure price hikes in boom times; when money is tight, the effects are much farther reaching. In lean economic times, there is a general shift in the balance of optimism and pessimism. People feel less secure and more afraid because there is less to fall back on, both in our personal accounts and in the public coffers. So if disaster were to strike, we feel less confident in society’s ability to support us if we need help.
The typical scenario following a large-scale crisis in the first or developed world goes something like this: a critical event occurs, experts from elsewhere swarm in to rescue the victims, money comes from outside sources (such as FEMA, non-profit NGOs, religious groups, insurance companies), and the affected community attempts to rebuild itself much like it was before.
However, this pattern makes no sense. When we rebuild exactly what was destroyed, we simply return ourselves to the vulnerability of where we started. Yes, it is what we know, but recreating the past circ*mstances only places us squarely in the path of future disasters. Will New Orleans ever encounter another hurricane? Will Southwest Missouri endure another tornado? Will Northern Japan continue to be affected by shifts in the earth’s crust? Of course. So why would these communities return to business as usual in the wake of devastation? Why wouldn’t they re-think the way they re-build so that they can be more resilient the next time around?
Third world disasters of any nature typically result in massive human suffering, disease and death – and rarely a return to conditions prior to the event. Things just keep getting tougher for those most disadvantaged around the world. When a disaster is large enough to capture the international stage and media attention, money flows in for a period of time when the story is “hot”, but then quickly recedes to a trickle within a short period of time.
Rethinking Concepts of Power and Strength
I live just across the water from downtown Seattle on Bainbridge Island, a small community where an abundance of trees and a blustery climate combine for relatively frequent power outages. When the lights and heat go out, we patiently wait for outsiders to fix the problem on our behalf. The local power company quickly obliges, but residents have no control over how long we wait before our energy, water and heat is restored. Those of us without generators (which have their own limits) wait in our homes, relying on the candles and blankets we have on hand, until the bulbs miraculously flicker back on. We are not fond of, nor are we accustomed to being in dark, unheated houses, but we adapt because we know it is only temporary.
We’re lucky on Bainbridge Island; we rarely deal with disruptions that last longer than 24 hours and almost never more than a couple of days at worst. Such short disruptions almost become enjoyable, romantic breaks from TV, video games and the constant hum of modern life. But every time it does happen, at the back of our minds looms the question—what if it doesn’t come back on?
And what if true disaster hits, rendering our centralized systems irreparable and the public emergency response teams unmanned? What would we do if nobody were available to help for extended periods—or at all? Would our community have the capacity to help itself? Have we lost our resilience as a people? Deep down I think we all know the answer. We are perhaps the most individually and culturally helpless society in the world if the complex systems we’ve built to support us go down due to some sort of disaster.
In comparison, I often think of the resilience of Amish communities. There, neighbors build structures together, whether they are intended for private or communal use. People learn how to fix the tools they use. They grow their own food. They work in trades that will sustain their families for generations. There is no centralized infrastructure to which all systems are tied—and this is a key understanding that needs to be underscored. The Amish are nothing if not resilient.
Let’s define this clearly as it has huge importance. The following page outlines categories of resilience.
In my book, Zugunruhe, I refer to the growing agitation I see across all pockets of our society as we unconsciously become aware of our vulnerability. People are feeling restless, knowing on some level that something fundamental has to change in our civilization if we are to correct our course toward a way of living that has a chance for long-term prosperity. I believe this unconscious awareness is the first stage for people pursuing individual resilience. More houses are going off the grid, more workers are telecommuting, and more people are growing their own food and supporting local agriculture.
This awareness can not spread quickly enough. We need to resist alarmism while keeping in mind the large-scale consequences of our vulnerability. The longer we take to develop resilience as individuals and communities, the farther-reaching the potentially adverse effects. True, deep, sustainable, community resilience should immediately become a central part of the planning paradigm for cities and towns across every country. I am not just referring to disaster preparedness—I mean fundamental resilience that begins with the individual and reaches across the community and finally to the community’s infrastructure of support.
The Key Ingredients of a Resilient Community
A truly resilient community is based on three distinct elements: a resilient infrastructure, a resilient culture and resilient individuals. Let’s explore the workings of each of these elements in order to understand their contributions to the whole.
Infrastructure Resilience
In order for a community to function without all-out failure in the face of disaster, it must have the physical infrastructure to support its citizens in good times and bad. Cities should be appropriately dense and walkable so citizens do not need to rely on cars to get essentials they need and to reach others they need to find. The walking/biking scale should define the planning module of our communities—distances should be measured in hundreds of feet not dozens of miles.
Property should be developed on a relatable scale so that there is a proper human-based relationship between people and the buildings where they live and work and less reliance on elevators and systems that require energy to work.
Water and waste systems should almost always be gravity fed, and neighborhood scaled—with plenty of redundancy and onsite water storage. Energy systems too should be decentralized, renewable and as simple as possible. The Living Building Challenge provides an overarching vision for truly resilient communities.
If every element of the built environment followed the principles of the Living Building Challenge, the effects of catastrophe would play out on a dramatically smaller scale. Following a storm or earthquake, fewer people would be without power or water because systems would be site-specific and less vulnerable to widespread damage. Repairs can happen more quickly when systems are simple and can be worked on by a few people without special tools. Affected citizens would not require strangers to swoop in from elsewhere to restore the systems that support their way of life; they would have the ability to address their own property- or neighborhood-specific issues. Connections between infrastructure and users would be tighter and more localized, making citizens and communities inherently more resilient. It would be much more difficult for a disaster of any type to shut down a community that relies on a well-planned decentralized infrastructure.
Cultural Resilience
I referred earlier to the independence of Amish communities; a wonderful example of a resilient culture. The Amish know their neighbors, they care for the weak and elderly, they build and fix what they use, they grow what they eat. By no means am I trying to paint theirs as a perfect community, but certainly they know how to take care of themselves and one another. There is a strong cultural expectation of shared conditions and solutions. This is true of most traditional communities around the world and certainly was true of all cultures prior to the rise of empires and the focus on specialization.
I referred earlier to the independence of Amish communities; a wonderful example of a resilient culture. The Amish know their neighbors, they care for the weak and elderly, they build and fix what they use, they grow what they eat. By no means am I trying to paint theirs as a perfect community, but certainly they know how to take care of themselves and one another. There is a strong cultural expectation of shared conditions and solutions. This is true of most traditional communities around the world and certainly was true of all cultures prior to the rise of empires and the focus on specialization.
This is true of most traditional communities around the world and certainly was true of all cultures prior to the rise of empires and the focus on specialization.
We need to interact with our neighbors, check in on those who need extra help, rediscover how to work with tools, and collaborate with one another to get our collective work done.
Each of us should be surrounded, not by strangers, but by a tight circle of people who are aware of our patterns and available to lend a hand when in need. Obviously, our cities need to be designed to facilitate such interactions naturally and effectively.
Attaining cultural resilience requires softening our sometimes fierce commitment to individualism (or at least recast the definition of what it means), which does not serve us as well in the face of hard times. This begs the question: is the Facebook generation capable of caring as deeply for others as it cares for itself? Can we translate greater virtual connections to stronger literal connections?
Individual Resilience
Attaining individual resilience will take more than looking beyond existential soul searching and gazing at our computer screens or doing yoga. It will require a complete shift in the mindset of what makes us valuable members of our communities and our role and responsibility to ourselves and to others around us.
We have established such a habit of outsourcing everything that few of us possess even the most basic survival skills. We have divided labor and mechanized systems to a point where most of us know how to do very little that is practical or useful in trying times. When something breaks, we tend to hire a repairperson or, worse, purchase a replacement and simply discard something that was fixable. Interestingly, the most resilient citizens during disasters are typically not the highest paid “expert” members of a community—but are the blue collar individuals who spend their days getting things done with their hands. In the coming world what we value and celebrate may and should change. Hedge fund managers bring much less value than a plumber or a carpenter in a turbulent world.
I don’t mean to suggest that every member of every community must be an expert in every subject. But I do believe that we’ve de-valued those skills that are useful in hard times and that everyone should have something to contribute when called upon. We also need an informed and up-to-date “reliance network” in each community that maps the skills and talents of people that are around us—a skills inventory that can be called upon. Social media and smartphones are perfect for organizing this democratically and organically— with communities being able to actively monitor what knowledge is missing and what is available. Perhaps this is a “killer” app that can save lives. Having this knowledge as well as a community triage plan for people tied to their skills can make a huge difference in times of need. There is a direct connection between knowledge and preparedness. When we know what to do, we tend to remain calm. Just imagine how effectively entire communities could respond to a calamity if they didn’t require outside assistance to get them back on their feet. Individual resilience requires a healthy balance of skills, knowledge and resourcefulness.
Taking Steps to Get Where We Need To Go
Returning our cities, towns and citizens to a place of resilience will take a great deal of effort and foresight that is not currently in our political DNA. However, I believe the following six actions could get us well on our way:
1. Measure each community’s carrying capacity.
We need to know what we are capable of achieving on our own so that we’re prepared for the coming paradigm shift. Conducting carrying capacity analysis for a community means identifying what local resources exist, what level of population those resources can support, and how the
regional climate enhances or restricts the resilience of the place.
Phoenix, for example, does not offer sufficient local water to accommodate its current population of nearly 1.5 million people. So it pipes water from the Salt Verde and Colorado Rivers to meet municipal needs. In a crisis that cuts off that supply, what contingency plan is in place to provide
water to those citizens? More profoundly, should that many people really live in a place ill-equipped to provide the most basic element of survival?
In the modern age, we tend not to develop cities around whether or not local resources are available to support a community. We’ve discarded the wisdom of nomadic tribes, which settled in areas that offered survivability then moved on before resources could be depleted. In the 21st century, we face the inevitable disappearance of several key resources on which our modern societies depend. It’s time to explore and measure just how vulnerable we are, wherever we are, so we might begin a healthy transition to self-sufficiency.
2. Create models of resilient infrastructure.
Living Buildings, Living Neighborhoods and Living Cities are the answer. The more we shift to this paradigm, the less reliant we will be on outside systems. If the structures where we live and work generated their own power, provided their own water, composted their own waste and gave back to their surroundings, operational disruptions would be less catastrophic. Decentralized solutions that operate at the scale of a district or neighborhood—and sometimes at a building scale—provide much greater resiliency than large centralized systems. Every time a new Living Building takes shape, we show that this approach is possible, affordable and simply more sensible.
3. Learn from the wisdom of others.
Expanding our skills and deepening our self-sufficiency will require that we collect and learn from the wisdom of others. There are plenty of our contemporaries with whom we can trade knowledge; there are even more who came before us whose expertise is documented. We can learn new things by watching our neighbors, or we can educate ourselves by re-
searching what’s been done in the past. This learning relates to the easy transmission of ideas. Technology enables the quick and ecologically friendly transmission of documents, which allows people to share ideas from across the globe. Developing community based knowledge maps is a great first step. Sharing information with other communities will help us create resilient nations throughout the world.
4. Use the power of education.
Community resilience should be discussed at length in the classroom setting. Exposing children to the importance of these ideas will help prepare them to lead future generations into a new era of self-sufficiency. Practical skills should be taught in schools, as should the philosophy of community connectedness. I like to think of this as a modern take on the home economics courses once considered standard for high school students. Once youth culture enthusiastically adopts these ideas, we’re well on our way to engaging in productive resilience discussions.
5. Build strategic reserves.
Each community should assess its distinct needs and build strategic reserves to be used in the event of an emergency. We have set aside federal oil reserves, but shouldn’t we provide the same type of backups at the state and local levels? This action would require an analysis of individual communities’ food supplies, water and energy systems, communications channels, shelter availability, and so on. Going through this process would force us to evaluate exactly what our usage rates are and think through how we might respond to various emergency scenarios. The goal here is to build up each community so that it can sustain itself in the face of isolation.
6. Scale systems appropriately.
In my opinion, any system that is deemed “too big to fail” is a disaster waiting to happen. Communities require a diversity of systems that are built to site and neighborhood scales. The simpler they are, the more fixable they will be within the community boundary if problems do arise. Think passive; think low-tech. This rule should apply to systems designed to deliver energy, water, food, culture—virtually anything required to keep a community strong and safe.
Replacing Panic with Optimism
I want to be very clear. I am not talking about the type of emergency management that starts and stops with a generator hooked up in one’s garage. I am making an argument for true, deep, sustainable community resilience that can strengthen local economies and improve people’s quality of life. I am promoting connection-building more than fear-mongering. I am attempting to elevate our discussions of disasters to focus more on avoidance than on response. I am recommending proactivity, not reactivity.
We will know we’ve been successful in our quest for resilience when there is less of a distinction between normal and emergency procedures. Our present-day cities are no sturdier than a house of cards if a critical input or two is removed. Once they transform into resilient communities with healthy ecosystems and skilled, responsible residents, they will continue to function well even when systems go down. Disruptions will be inconvenient, but not necessarily catastrophic.
One thing that is certain is that significant change to our modern way of life is rapidly approaching. Not acknowledging the vulnerability of our current model leads us down dangerous and delusional paths. Working within a more realistic paradigm that values resilience will allow us to build new, more stable and sustainable communities that will be better prepared to thrive in the face of whatever man or nature throws our way.
The post Deep Community Resilience: Preparing for the Coming Age, Place-By-Place | Jason F. McLennan appeared first on Bioneers.
Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition
Colonial Ecologies of the Half Earth
Undisciplined Environments - Tue, 04/05/2022 - 06:00
By Austin Miles.
The movement to conserve half of the Earth’s land and waters is gaining momentum. What kind of world would result if it succeeds?
The post Colonial Ecologies of the Half Earth first appeared on Undisciplined Environments.
Categories: B4. Radical Ecology
Vanguard Investments' Points of Destruction
Earth Quaker Action Team - Thu, 03/31/2022 - 13:00
Over the years, I encountered so many positive references to INVESTING in our communities, in our infrastructure, in our future, in research, in our children, etc. that I developed a vague, unreflective feeling of trust in the corporations that handle investments in our economy. Then EQAT organized a "points of destruction" tour of some of the local investments of one of the biggest investors of all -- the Vanguard Group, which has invested some $8 trillion on behalf of the owners of its mutual funds.
Categories: B4. Radical Ecology
The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Urgency of Mutual Aid
Bioneers - Thu, 03/31/2022 - 09:06
One of the only things critics of capitalism and true believers in Adam Smith-style “free markets” agree upon is how destructive monopolies are to economies and social fabrics. It’s been easy in recent weeks to (justifiably) vilify Russia’s kleptocratic oligarchs, but our own American economy can also very fairly be described as plutocratic. Wealth inequality is even higher than in the “Robber Baron” era and perhaps higher than it’s ever been. Tiny handfuls of enormous enterprises that only the most naive fail to characterize as monopolies control most of our communications media and main economic sectors from energy to agriculture to pharmaceuticals to retail to aerospace.
In this newsletter, we highlight some penetrating analyses of our current form of monopoly capitalism and share models of citizen engagement that point the way to a far more dynamic, creative, fair, and humane economy, that inspires us to move from “greed is good” and “greenwashing” to a society based on unbridled creativity and mutual aid.
Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to Covid-19 Vaccines
Through the sharing of discoveries and knowledge, humans have throughout history sought to achieve progress and increase wellbeing, but the ever greater privatization and commodification of knowledge, especially in the domain of medicine, are now drivers of inequality and pose immense threats to public health. In his new book, Owning the Sun: A People’s History of Monopoly Medicine from Aspirin to Covid-19 Vaccines, New Orleans-based investigative journalist Alexander Zaitchik tells the unknown story of Big Pharma and explores the long, contentious fight over the legal right to control the production of life-saving pharmaceuticals.
Democracy v. Plutocracy: Behind Every Great Fortune Lies a Great Crime
The extreme concentration of corporate power and the prevalence of monopoly are indeed inarguable. In today’s new Gilded Age of rule by the wealthy, rising anti-trust movements are challenging the stranglehold of corporate monopoly. In this first part of a two-part program, we travel back and forth in time to explore the battle between democracy and plutocracy that goes back to the very founding of the United States.
Seed Diversity Threatened by Monopolies and Patents
Bill McDorman is the founder of a number of small regional seed companies and seed organizations and the former Director of Native Seeds/ SEARCH. He is currently the co-founder and Director of the Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance working to connect communities with locally adapted seeds. McDorman was interviewed by Bioneers Restorative Food Systems Director Arty Mangan.
2022 Bioneers Conference
The urgency of our present moment calls for a massive civilization transformation. At Bioneers 2022, we’ll dive deep into solutions, visions, strategies, and paradigm shifts to do just that. We’re excited to return to an in-person event this year in San Francisco, CA, at the Palace of Fine Arts, with live virtual access worldwide for those who can’t make it in person.
Ticket prices will increase soon, so register now!
Read more here.Kate Aronoff, a Brooklyn, NY-based staff writer at The New Republic, is the author of Overheated: How Capitalism Broke the Planet–And How We Fight Back. Aronoff is a former Fellow at the Type Media Center whose work has appeared in The Intercept, The New York Times, The Nation, Dissent, Rolling Stone, and The Guardian, among other outlets, and is the co-editor of We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style.
This Will All Be So Great If We Don’t Screw It Up
As the power, influence, and scale of the major firms that dominate Silicon Valley continue to grow, the collective response might be best described as befuddled. From our mental health to influence on elections to copyright and fair business practices, the impacts are wide-reaching and complex. Bioneers sat down with Cory Doctorow to discuss the overall state of Big Tech at the moment. Doctorow is a prolific journalist, blogger, creative commons advocate, Electronic Frontier Foundation Fellow, and award-winning science fiction writer.
Chacruna Religion & Psychedelics Forum
The Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Medicines is hosting three days of panels and discussions exploring the role psychedelics may have played in the history of religion, as well as the role that religion plays in the modern psychedelic renaissance. Indigenous spirituality, religious freedom, drug policy, and how psychedelics intersect with both Eastern and Western religious traditions. Register now!
The post The New Monopoly Capitalism and the Urgency of Mutual Aid appeared first on Bioneers.
Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition
Ranchers and Environmentalists Working Togetherat the Radical Center
Bioneers - Thu, 03/31/2022 - 07:03
Sarah Wentzel-Fisher is the Executive Director of the Quivira Coalition, a network of family ranchers and farmers, conservationists, scientists and public land managers seeking to build economic and ecological resilience on working landscapes in the American West. Founded on the belief that ranch management can be both ecologically sensitive and economically robust, Quivira brings together historically antagonistic constituencies to work together. Prior to joining Quivira, Sarah was the Editor of the publication now called Edible New Mexico, worked for the National Young Farmers Coalition and at the Montanita Food Co-op in Santa Fe, NM, and ran several farmers’ markets. Those eclectic experiences helped her understand the connection between food production and land stewardship. In this interview with Arty Mangan of Bioneers, Sarah explains how real change on the ground can be accomplished by working at the “radical center.”
ARTY: The work of Quivira takes place at what is referred to as the radical center. How do you define that term?
SARAH: The radical center is a term that Quivira founder, Courtney White, and some of his cohorts coined to describe their efforts to bring, environmentalists and ranchers – who are typically antagonistic – together in conversations motivated by their shared love for the land. When I talk about the radical center, I think of it as a practice or a way of working together that champions coalition-building and is about showing up with a lot of inquiry and real commitment to listening. I also think it’s about having a commitment to prioritizing relationships over what you want the outcomes to be, a commitment to a long-term process, and a process that is focused on land restoration and land resilience, but that doesn’t come at the expense of the relationships of the people who are doing the work.
ARTY: When trying to build relationships between people who may look at each other as stereotypes and who have very different political views and worldviews, how do you bring those disparate constituents together?
SARAH: First, you must recognize the reality of people’s differences. As an organization that is engaged in land-based, peer-to-peer education, good facilitation is paramount. Good facilitation is really a skill, and it’s something Quivira has invested a lot of time and energy in. We recognize that there have been a lot of historical traumas in these struggles over land use, and as an organization that works at the intersection of conservation and agriculture, we need to be able to hold space for conversations about those past traumas. We can’t really move forward on land restoration projects if people haven’t been given an opportunity to go through a healing process together. If they don’t do that, they generally can’t develop deep, authentic relationships with one another.
Sarah Wentzel-Fisher. Photo courtesy of Quivira Coalition
ARTY: I heard you say on a podcast that you like to have your ideas challenged. What do you value about that?
SARAH: I love having my ideas challenged because it makes me reexamine what I think is true, and so it keeps me in a mode of inquiry. It also keeps things interesting. There’s value in discovering you’ve been wrong and having to adapt; it builds resilience.
ARTY: I wish more people felt that way. What, in your opinion, are some of the main blind-spots environmentalists typically have in their approach to conservation?
SARAH: The complexity of rural communities and rural economies and understanding how environmental activity is going to have either a positive or negative impact on rural communities is often a blind spot for environmental groups. It’s changed a little bit since the beginning of the pandemic because more folks became interested in living in rural places, but largely rural America has had a decline in its population, and economies there really struggle. Often the things that are economic priorities in those places are either, to a small degree or a great degree, extractive, and that’s where there is often friction with environmentalists.
There are some interesting shifts happening, though. For example, twenty years ago, the National Audubon Society was extremely adversarial with the ranching community, but they started to recognize that that adversarial approach wasn’t getting them the results on the ground that they wanted. They recognized that they needed collaboration with private landowners to maintain or restore critical bird habitats, so they have created a market incentive-based conservation ranching program to support bird habitat. It’s a certification program with a label that goes on beef that says the beef was raised in a way that is bird-friendly. It’s 180 degrees from their previous approach. They realized their blind-spot and understood that if you want conservation work to happen, you have to think about it, not from just an ecological standpoint, but also from a social and economic standpoint.
ARTY: The next question is about language. If you mention the word “organic” to most Midwestern farmers, they will slam the door in your face. Is there a way that you use language that makes sure the conversation stays open? Do you have to stay away from certain phrases, like climate change?
Quivira Coalition workshop at U Bar Ranch in Northern New Mexico.Photo courtesy of Quivira Coalition
Erosion control materials at Comanche Creek are moved via horse and buggy to reduce impacts, Photo courtesy of Quivira Coalition
SARAH: I think a lot about language, and how the language we use is really important and can be an invitation into collaboration or can become a barrier to it. When I started working with Quivira six years ago, climate change was far more of a taboo in ranching communities than it is now. Today everybody is talking about climate change. Folks are recognizing that there’s not a lot of value in debating the cause, but there is a lot of value in trying to come up with ways we can work together to navigate the intensive variability and the increased temperatures that are a result of climate change.
How we use language comes up in a lot of other places. In the last two years, our organization, like a lot of nonprofits, has been digging a lot deeper and trying to look in the mirror around questions of how racial equity and social justice show up or don’t show up in our work. That’s another place where thinking hard and intentionally about the language that we use can invite people into conversations about the big, deep, systemic issues in our country and in the world, and to do it in a way that folks feel both challenged but also able to show up and be vulnerable and participate in those conversations as an opportunity for learning. I don’t have any good examples of specific vocabulary words, but internally in our organization, we have a lot of conversations about how to begin to introduce some of these concepts and what the words we need to be using might be, so that we can get white ranchers talking about racial equity.
ARTY: There was a radical change in landscape stewardship when colonists came into New Mexico and other parts of the West. Land was usurped from the Native people and fences were put up fragmenting the food-shed of the Indigenous people who farmed but also depended on moving about the land to hunt and gather wild foods. What’s the legacy of those disruptions?
SARAH: That’s such a huge question. There’s no doubt that that was a moment of major disruption that caused a significant shift in land stewardship that has led us to where we are today. There’s a ton of value in Native peoples’ “Traditional Ecological Knowledge,” particularly in the Southwest. It’s important to acknowledge and recognize that when we are talking about things like regenerative agriculture, what we’re really pointing to are practices that Indigenous peoples in this part of the world have been using for a very long time, and that we are in a process of relearning those things and figuring out how to adapt that type of approach to land stewardship in the context of a more variable climate.
But what do those changes to the land mean in more practical terms? It means we have fewer large ungulate herds moving across the landscape. It means that we’ve done things to our water systems that have had a really profound impact on the health of watersheds. I think you can look under any stone and find the consequences. The actual changes are hard to imagine because their scale, both geographically and temporally, have been immense.
Erosion control materials at Comanche Creek are moved to via horse and buggy to reduce impacts of motorized vehicles.
Photo courtesy of Quivira Coalition
ARTY: One of Quivira’s legacy projects is Comanche Creek. Where is it located? What’s the ecosystem there? What was it like in 2001 when you started? What does it look like now? What were some of the barriers that you had to overcome? And ultimately, what does success look like?
SARAH: Comanche Creek is a watershed in the Carson National Forest in the northeast corner of New Mexico. In 2001 it was a landscape that had a ton of logging, a little bit of mining, a lot of grazing, and a certain amount of oil and gas exploration. It was sorely abused and very degraded. Quivira started working with Bill Zeedyk who had a career with the forest service and had a deep passion for community-based watershed restoration. He wrote a book called Let the Water Do the Work, which I highly recommend. It’s all about riparian restoration work and letting actual creek and stream flows do the work of restoration. The type of ecosystem that is the primary focus of the work that we have done in Comanche Creek is called a slope wetland. It’s a type of wetland that is unique to high mountain meadows. There are just a few places in the world where those types of wetlands exist. The creeks in that watershed had been tremendously incised by grazing and logging and mining activities.
The work that we did was about slowing water down in those systems and spreading it out. Thousands of linear feet of stream and hundreds to thousands of acres of riparian areas have been rewetted as a result of the work that we did there. When we started working there, one of our biggest barriers to overcome was trying to establish a relationship with the Valle Vidal Grazing Association that has deep roots in land-grant communities in that part of New Mexico. There’s a legacy of land theft there that points back to some intense historical trauma, so they were really reticent about coming to the table, but there were folks in our organization at the time who just kept working on building relationships with those folks.
Finally, in year four or five of our work in the Comanche Creek, they decided to come to the table. It’s now been two years since we’ve done active work there, but over the course of about 15 years of working together, the grazing association has become one of the biggest champions of good stewardship of those wetlands. There was a terrible drought in, I believe, 2018, that caused the elk to come down into those pastures early and graze everything. Quivira went up to do monitoring of some of our work a few weeks before the grazing association was going to put their cows out into those particular pastures. If the grazing association had moved their cattle into those pastures, 15 to 20 years of work would have completely unraveled, but because of our good working relationship, they made a huge effort and figured out a different place to put their cows and thereby saved the work that had been done there.
To me, that is sort of at the heart of what success looks like: when we’ve got multiple stakeholders who recognize how critical these slope wetlands are and they’re working together to come up with solutions, even when situations get really hard, such as in that drought situation.
Shuree Ponds, Comanche Creek Watershed. Photo courtesy of Quivira Coalition.
ARTY: What are some threats to water security for all species in New Mexico. What are some of the conflicts around that?
SARAH: I think that the biggest threat to water security in New Mexico is development. Everywhere in the world is experiencing development pressure. Where I live, we have very finite groundwater, and we don’t have surface water resources, but there’s a lot of unchecked growth. There just aren’t sufficiently robust planning and zoning rules to help regulate how many folks can put in wells. Our political entities are under-resourced and are constantly scrambling to catch up, and they are up against immediate economic needs and often feel that they have to address those rather than think about long-term repercussions.
There’s a lot of complexity around your question about water security for other species. For example, in the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, there’s always tension between the City of Albuquerque and downstream irrigators. About 80% of water resources in New Mexico go to agriculture, and while I think that there are opportunities for more efficient irrigation, I think that many urbanites would like to see more water allocated for recreation areas. They often advocate for species such as the silvery minnow and want to make sure that there is enough water in the river for those species, which I too think is critically important, but the Rio Grande corridor is also critical for cranes. The Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge is an over-wintering site for thousands of sandhill cranes, and farms in that area south of Albuquerque have essentially become the wetlands and food source for a lot of migrating birds, so when you talk about decreasing irrigation water to farms between Albuquerque and Bosque del Apache to meet other needs, that might help some fish species, but it can have a negative impact on a critical stopover site for migrating birds.
So, when we get into conversations about the tension about where water resources get allocated, it gets very tricky, particularly when we think more broadly about ecosystem health and what the needs of a variety of other species are. We’re in the thick of it right now, and we need a deep and significant cultural change around how we think about water. Potentially, water is going to be a place of a lot of hurt and anxiety even more than it is currently unless we shift what our thinking and relationship to water is.
ARTY: Another crisis Quivira is addressing is the aging of farmers in America.
SARAH: Yes, our New Agrarian Program is an apprenticeship program for young people with the passion and the desire to go into ranching or farming as a career. We place them on working ranches so they can learn how to be good land stewards and how to operate those types of businesses in a way that will enable them to make a living and contribute to their communities. This year we are working with ranches in Montana, Colorado, New Mexico and California.
Quivira values intergenerational knowledge exchange, and the New Agrarians program is where that’s happening. Today less than 2% of our working population practices agriculture as a primary profession, while a hundred years ago it was over 30%. The people producing our food are the frontline folks engaged in land stewardship, and of that 2% of the population engaged in agriculture, 80% of them are 60-years-old or older. That represents the potential for some really critical knowledge loss, because if we’re not passing on the depth and years of lived experience and land management knowledge that that diminishing number of people hold, and really figuring out ways to keep it vibrant and healthy in practice, we stand to have a very steep learning curve in the midst of a climate crisis.
I feel like there’s not a more critically important job that a person could choose. I hope that in the work that we’re doing and the way that we’re championing it, that the apprentices find all the support they need to engage in that work and learn how to be with those landscapes in a way that helps us understand how humans are a part of the ecology.
ARTY: Yes, there is no more critical job, but farming is very hard work, often with low pay. What do you say to young, aspiring agrarians about the challenges and opportunities of a career in farming and ranching?
SARAH: It is extremely hard work and it often doesn’t pay very well. We have consolidated marketplaces that are absolutely at odds with being able to be a family farmer or rancher. What I say to individuals who are interested in doing this is that we need you. We need to tackle the deep structural issues that prevent people from having a meaningful life and livelihood producing food and stewarding land because there definitely are some significant barriers, but if we don’t start to address some of those, everybody will lose.
The post Ranchers and Environmentalists Working Togetherat the Radical Center appeared first on Bioneers.
Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition
Restorative Food Systems at Bioneers 2022, May 13-15
Bioneers - Wed, 03/30/2022 - 19:27
Food culture – the attitudes, beliefs and practices around the production and consumption of food – pervades our daily lives. Eating is a biological necessity, and it’s also a cultural ritual. But what happens to the culture of food when flavor, nourishment, and pleasure are pushed aside by the industrial priorities of efficiency and profit? The consequences are far reaching: greenhouse gas emissions, degraded soil health, lower nutritional content of food, loss of biodiversity, pollution of air and water and exploitation of people, animals and land.
At the upcoming Bioneers Conference (May 13-15) we are proud to feature front line activists whose creativity, vision and courage are helping shape a healthy and equitable food system.
Register NowFriday, May 13Panel | 2:45 pm
Decolonize Your Diet: Healthy Food Pathways in the City
Featuring:
- Crystal Wahpepah, Wahpepah’s Kitchen
- Ben Shleffar, American Indian Child Resource Center
- Moderated by Cara Romero
About this panel
The revitalization of traditional Native foods is part of a “re-indigenization” renaissance happening from coast to coast. Many people are unaware that a key strategy of the American genocide against Indigenous peoples was to destroy native food sources, create dependency, and replace healthy diets with nutrient deficient commodities. In this panel, Native leaders in the Bay Area will discuss how they have been shaping this movement to revitalize Indigenous foods. In addition to improving health, Indigenous foods local to place foster community wellness and intergenerational healing by bringing people together, providing fun activities for youth, and decolonizing urban spaces. Join us to learn what you can do to be a part of this movement and how to decolonize your own diet.
Panel | 2:45 pm
The People’s Food & Farm Project: Building a Just and Sustainable Bay Area Food System
Featuring:
- Julian Mocine-McQueen, Senior Fellow with Center for Whole Communities
- Kristin Rothballer, Senior Fellow with Center for Whole Communities
About this panel
“The People’s Food and Farm Project” is a multi-stakeholder effort growing across the San Francisco Bay Area to address gaps and injustices in the food system. What will it take to build food sovereignty across the region? What policies can be enacted to ensure all residents are nourished? What is working well that should be invested in? This community visioning process may result in a ballot initiative for a new public funding mechanism that would support a bioregional governance entity for regional food and farming. This session is for you if you are a resident of the Bay Area, if your work is related to food, or if you simply have a desire to contribute to a vision for a just and sustainable food system! Join Julian Mocine-McQueen and Kristin Rothballer, Senior Fellows with Center for Whole Communities and community engagement leads for this effort, along with other members of the broad coalition behind this effort.
Panel | 4:30 pm
Regenerative Agriculture 2.0: The Pie Ranch Model
Renewing Ecosystems, Rebuilding Communities, and Healing Historical Harms
Featuring:
- Jered Lawson, co-founder, Pie Ranch
- Valentine Lopez, Chairman of the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band
- Nancy Vail, co-founder, Pie Ranch
- Leonard Diggs, Pie Ranch Director of Operations and Farming Education
About this panel
In this session we will hear about the inspiring model of Pie Ranch, an exemplary socially and eco-conscious enterprise that incorporates: cutting-edge land management; working with disenfranchised urban youth; recruiting BIPOC farmers (historically most often left out of equity-building in agriculture); becoming a distribution hub for local farmers to feed farmworker and other food insecure communities during the pandemic; and building reciprocal relationships with the Amah Mutsun tribe, drawing on its long-lived land stewardship and regeneration prowess to repair some of the ranch’s ecosystems damaged by recent fires.
Film | 7:35 pm
The Need to Grow
About this film
With an estimated 60 years of farmable soil left on Earth, The Need To Grow offers an intimate look into the hearts of activists and innovators in the food movement – an 8 year old girl challenges the ethics of a beloved organization – a renegade farmer struggles to keep his land as he revolutionizes resource efficient agriculture – and an accomplished visionary inventor faces catastrophe in the midst of developing a game-changing technology.
Narrated by Rosario Dawson (Marvel’s The Defenders, The Lego Batman Movie), TNTG delivers alarming evidence on the importance of healthy soil – revealing not only the potential of localized food production working with nature, but our opportunity as individuals to help regenerate our planet’s dying soils and participate in the restoration of the Earth.
Sunday, May 15Keynote | 9:51 am
Karen Washington: 911 Our Food System is Not Working
About this keynote
Many of us have reached a point in our work at which we realize the food system is not working. Leaders keep on relying on band-aid solutions, autocratic jargon and political hypocrisy to tackle the problems of hunger and poverty. Yet our society’s way of feeding and treating people just isn’t sustainable, especially when the United Nations predicts that by 2050 we will have an additional 2 billion people on this planet, most ending up in urban areas. The simple truth is that we can’t talk about a fair, just, and equitable food system without radical new thinking and putting in a lot work. What sort of work needs to be done and who will be the people to do it? Karen Washington, one of the most renowned and influential food activists of our era shares her wisdom and her analysis of why the food system doesn’t need to be fixed but has to be dramatically transformed.
Panel | 2:45 pm
Black Food: Celebration and Struggle
A Bi-Coastal Conversation
Featuring:
- Bryant Terry, Chef-in-Residence, Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD)
- Karen Washington, Co-Owner and Farmer, Rise & Root Farm
About this panel
Chef/author extraordinaire Bryant Terry joins renowned, pioneering New York urban farmer Karen Washington in a conversation about the influence of Black culture on American culinary traditions and farming and what we need to do to radically transform our food system so it can bring health and equity rather than disease and deprivation to communities of color. This is a historic occasion: two of the leading lights of the movement to bring healthful food to disenfranchised urban communities and revitalize Black culinary traditions from opposite coasts come together on a stage for the first time. Bryant, in the Black vegan vanguard for many years, Chef-in-residence at MOAD (Museum of the African Diaspora) in San Francisco and the revered and highly influential godmother of urban farming, Karen Washington, will discuss their work, the current situation of our food system, and their strategies to build a movement that will take us where we need to go.
The post Restorative Food Systems at Bioneers 2022, May 13-15 appeared first on Bioneers.
Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition
Daughters for Earth launches to raise $100 million for women-led efforts to protect and restore the Earth
Bioneers - Tue, 03/29/2022 - 09:04
Daughters for Earth, a new campaign to mobilize women around the world to engage in climate action, launched today at SXSW. The initiative is co-founded by female leaders in women’s rights, climate and philanthropic sectors who recognized that women-led efforts to protect and restore the Earth continue to be undervalued and drastically underfunded.
The founders include Jody Allen, CEO of Wild Lives Foundation and co-founder of the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, Zainab Salbi, founder of Women for Women International, Justin Winters, Executive Director & Co-Founder of One Earth, and Rachel Rivera, COO of Wild Lives Foundation.
Daughters for Earth is raising $100 million dollars from a movement of women to put more capital into the hands of women working on climate solutions on the ground, recognizing both the disproportionate impact of the climate crisis on women and girls and the powerful, sustainable impact they can have on their communities. Daughters for Earth is made possible through One Earth, an organization driving collective action to solve the climate crisis through groundbreaking science, inspiring storytelling, and an innovative approach to scaling climate philanthropy.
Women-led community development has the greatest financial impact, and women have proven to be the most responsible custodians of the land. Yet less than 2% of global philanthropy is directed towards the environment, and only 0.2% of all charitable funding goes to women-led environmental action. Daughters for Earth will address this shortfall by scaling and amplifying women-led climate solutions.
“The latest United Nations IPCC report is clear – we are running out of time to preserve essential ecosystems and change the trajectory of global warming,” said Allen. “A shift in funding is what will truly move the needle and we are confident that with enough capital, women will drive scalable impact across land and marine conservation as well as regenerative agriculture.”
“Women are the most impacted by climate crisis. They have been frontline warriors fighting to protect and restore earth. Yet their voices are not heard, their efforts not supported, and their contributions not seen. We are here to change that story,” said Salbi.
“Science shows that all the solutions to the climate crisis exist today. We must act quickly to radically scale funding for women leaders who are driving the change we need and actively creating the vibrant, just future that’s possible. This is an opportunity we simply cannot afford to miss,” said Winters.
The campaign has already made its first round of grants to over 20 inspiring women-led, and women operated projects that work to protect and restore nature, and regenerate the Earth. Grantees include the Ceibo Alliance, whose Indigenous, women-led efforts resulted in protecting over 280,000 acres of pristine Amazonian rainforest; Akashinga, an all-women anti-poaching effort protecting elephants in Zimbabwe, and Swayam Shikshan Prayog, an organization in India that is scaling regenerative farming practices that build soil health, support biodiversity, and sequester carbon.
The post Daughters for Earth launches to raise $100 million for women-led efforts to protect and restore the Earth appeared first on Bioneers.
Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition
Madrid’s Cañada Real: cold and darkness for the urban irregulars
Undisciplined Environments - Tue, 03/29/2022 - 01:17
By David Amado-Blanco González Residents of the Cañada Real settlement are deprived of access to electricity and basic services because of their homes’ irregular status and the stigma against them. A tale of socio-ecological discrimination. In January 2021, Madrid had its biggest snowstorm since the 1970s, with up to 50 centimeters of snow and sub-zero temperatures. The airport and roads were closed and moving around the city was impossible. I stayed home, turning the heating up. But for thousands of residents of the Cañada Real […]
Categories: B4. Radical Ecology
Child-Centered Planning: A New Specialized Pattern Language Tool | Jason F. McLennan
Bioneers - Mon, 03/28/2022 - 12:56
With the rise in the global human population, the urban population is growing rapidly alongside new innovations in city design and development. However, with new concepts in urban planning on the horizon, our most vulnerable citizens are being left out: children. In the excerpt below from his book of essays, Transformational Thought II: More Radical Ideas to Remake the Built Environment, Jason McLennan lays a blueprint for designing Child-Centered cities that ultimately benefit the general population by centering designs and concepts good for social, emotional, and environmental health.
Jason F. McLennan is one of the world’s most influential visionaries in contemporary architecture and green building, is a highly sought-out designer, consultant, and thought leader. A winner of Engineering News Record’s National Award of Excellence and of the prestigious Buckminster Fuller Prize (which was, during its 10-year trajectory, known as “the planet’s top prize for socially responsible design”), Jason has been showered with such accolades as “the ‘Wayne Gretzky’ of the green building industry and a “World Changer” (by GreenBiz magazine).
Jason McLennan will be delivering a keynote address, “From Reconciliation to Regeneration,” at Bioneers 2022.Register to see him in May.
This last year global population crossed the seven billion mark, and within less than two decades another billion are projected to live on planet earth. The hidden statistic is that almost all of the last billion and likely the majority of the next will be city dwellers. It was only in the last several decades that we moved from a predominantly rural civilization to an urban one. As megacities grow, even as small and midsized cities grow around the world, our technologies, especially our cars and other modes of transportation, continue to have the largest impact on the nature of the City: how it looks, functions and is experienced. What’s obvious is that nature is continually being squeezed out of our urban experiences, as are the kind of experiences that are good for people. Especially telling is the lack of attention placed on our most vulnerable and important citizens: our children. We might design communities fit for auto transport and auto storage, but too many cities are cruel and inhospitable to our most impressionable.
I have written previously about the wisdom of designing buildings and communities that deeply consider children first as a way of ensuring that communities are well designed for people of all ages. (See “Our Children’s Cities: The Logic and Beauty of a Child-Centered Civilization” in my first book in this series titled Transformational Thought: Radical Ideas to Remake the Built Environment, 2012.) What can be more important than ensuring that our urban habitats are nurturing and supportive of human development, and that we create environments that maximize human potential?
Recently I returned to my decades-old copy of Christopher Alexander’s seminal work, A Pattern Language, which had a profound influence on the design world (and on me) following its publication in the late 1970s. With child-centered design on my mind, I began to think about how one might apply an Alexander-esque pattern language to plan children-centric cities that are safe, beautiful and enjoyable for children of all ages. After all, if great places share common patterns as Alexander asserts, then great child-oriented communities also should reveal certain patterns that can form the basis of planning. The beauty of planning cities for their youngest inhabitants stems from the idea’s simplicity. Designing places for our most vulnerable citizens allows us to create places that better serve everyone. The focus on the young has particularly strong benefits for the elderly. Rather than constructing communities around the automobile, we should treat our children as our highest priorities. Doing so will keep them safe and keep us sane. What follows is a preliminary list of 40 patterns that I have identified as necessary for a child-centered community to be successful. Over time we hope to expand and add to this list as an important new design tool for architects, planners and community leaders to use wherever civic engagements are happening.
Child-Centered Patterns
The Child Centered Patterns are organized into the following categories. Many of the patterns relate to multiple categories at the same time, and are especially important.
- Education
- Beauty
- Resilience
- Connectedness
- Biophilia
- Accessibility
- Safety
- Playfulness
- Joy
- Health
Pattern 1: The Story of Place
Education, Beauty, Resilience, Connectedness, Biophilia
The more children who understand the places where they live, the more committed they will be to celebrating and protecting their regions. In child-centered communities, youth must be taught the social, ecological, climatological and even architectural histories of the areas so that they can fully grasp the complexities–and make the most of the unique offerings–of their homes. Tools such as community weather stations and public interpretive elements will help children place their communities in a global context while rooting them more solidly in place.
Pattern 2: The Child’s-Eye View
Beauty, Safety, Connectedness, Accessibility
Respecting a lower ground plane lets us all see what children see. To enhance visibility, safety and beauty, accommodate individuals who stand 3-4 feet tall rather than following the old standard that assumes everyone walks or wheels 5-6 feet off the ground. Sight lines are clearer, barriers are less restricting, and spaces are more open.
Pattern 3: Humane Scale
Beauty, Safety, Joy, Connectedness, Biophilia, Accessibility
This is another way of thinking how to keep things at a child’s-eye view. Any component of the built environment that is disproportionately scaled can make even a tall adult feel diminished. Imagine how oppressive such elements are to a child. When a community’s infrastructure is outsized, it makes all residents feel insignificant. Retaining a humane scale means that building heights, parking lot footprints, signage square footage and more all stay within reasonable limits. See the Living Building Challenge for more specifics on what constitutes humane scale.
Pattern 4: Safe Crossings
Beauty, Safety, Playfulness, Joy, Accessibility
Painted cement doesn’t do much to keep pedestrians out of harm’s way.
Develop more interactive crossing signals with sounds, colorful flags, visual pattern changes and a host of other features. This will do more to keep people engaged, entertained and protected when crossing the street.
Pattern 5: Finding Home
Safety, Playfulness, Joy, Connectedness
Identify pathways or individual neighborhoods using dedicated iconography or color palettes to help children navigate safely and independently through communities. A certain animal species’ footprints could lead to schoolyards, or certain city blocks could use common front door colors.
The idea is to help children find their way while making them feel celebrated instead of simply tolerated.
Pattern 6: Revealed Systems
Education, Beauty, Resilience, Playfulness, Connectedness
When we expose occupants to the systems that power their buildings, we help connect them to their built and natural surroundings. Reveal water, energy and transportation systems within structures and communities to provide living classrooms (that never close) for students of all ages. Don’t hide vital operational functions; show them, study them and celebrate them so that our children can discover how to improve upon them.
Pattern 7: Tamed Commercialism
Beauty, Joy, Biophilia
Children, like all of us, deserve to walk down the street without being barraged by advertising. Cities that cater first to children and prioritize nature over marketing will limit commercial signage that barks at residents about what they should buy, do and prefer. Choosing products and services will then emerge from a more organic decision-making process based on needs instead of manufactured wants.
Pattern 8: The Child and the Seat
Beauty, Safety, Playfulness, Health, Joy, Connectedness, Biophilia, Accessibility
Since children need and want to sit with greater frequency than other people, their cities must feature a variety of seating options. Such amenities will also serve the elderly, individuals with mobility challenges and anyone who chooses walking as a primary mode of transportation. Offer seating at multiple heights, similar to the way drinking fountains and even urinals are situated in many public spaces. Seating should be located frequently on every street.
Pattern 9: Biophilia and Unstructured Play
Beauty, Playfulness, Health, Joy, Connectedness, Biophilia
Add plentiful opportunities for children and adults to interact with nature, even in the midst of urban settings. Design around fishponds, water features, fountains, climbing trees, sandboxes and anything else that allows citizens to expand on their relationships with the environment, particularly in spontaneous ways. This is one way to protect our children from what writer Richard Louv calls nature-deficit disorder. Children want to get dirty because it’s fun, and it’s good for them. Let’s show them we approve, and then we should join them.
Pattern 10: Access to Nature
Beauty, Playfulness, Health, Joy, Connectedness, Biophilia, Accessibility
Nothing should stand between children and the natural world. Ensure that they have direct and ongoing access to non-design-based water, sunshine, trees and vistas wherever they live. Give them opportunities to visit the natural world, support their rights to nature and never let the built environment stand in the way.
Pattern 11: The Sense of Danger
Education, Resilience, Safety, Playfulness, Joy
We need to reintroduce elements of “safe danger” to our cities so our children learn how to test and master suitable boundaries. Give them balance beams, zip lines and climbing apparatus that offer them experiential knowledge of what they can and can’t do. Children are better able to distinguish between real and imagined danger when they’re occasionally allowed to fall.
Pattern 12: The Engineering Child
Education, Resilience, Playfulness, Connectedness
Give children opportunities to participate in their cities’ changing systems so that they can observe simple cause-and-effect dynamics. Let them serve as junior hydrologists by experimenting with how a waterway alters its course when dammed. Show them the modulations in a photovoltaic array’s energy draw on sunny versus rainy days. Enrich them with the option to take part in what’s happening around them.
Pattern 13: The Hunter-Gatherer
Education, Beauty, Resilience, Health, Joy, Biophilia
Surround children with edible landscapes so that their cities become agricultural classrooms. Start with urban farms, then extend the concept into all public spaces so that residents are able to pick and snack at any point during a stroll down the street. Plant only edible, non-toxic species, mixing fruits and berries with herbs and hardy plants that are native to the region.
Pattern 14: The Farmer
Education, Beauty, Resilience, Health, Joy, Connectedness, Biophilia
Expanding on Pattern 12, involve children in local food production efforts. Public gardens, p-patches and other resources connect people to the food they eat while also connecting them to one another and enhancing community resilience. Providing children with farming-related roles and responsibilities gives them the gift of sustainability.
Pattern 15: Decentralized Amenities
Beauty, Playfulness, Health, Joy, Connectedness, Biophilia, Accessibility
Distribute child-friendly amenities throughout a city to ensure that all citizens have ready access to them. Sprinkle bike racks, sport courts, public art, water features, revealed systems and natural playgrounds throughout the community (and not just in concentrated mega-parks). This will keep citizens of all ages healthier, happier and more likely to spend their leisure time in the outdoors rather than in front of a computer screen. If amenities are centralized its more likely that children have to be driven to use them.
Pattern 16: Amenities at the Heart
Education, Beauty, Resilience, Connectedness, Accessibility
Consider placing key community resources at the center of the community. Schools, playgrounds, gardens and other amenities offering the most advantages to the greatest portion of the population should be located in the core, with less critical services and residential structures radiating outward. This pattern stands in contrast to Pattern 15, so planners must determine the ideal approach for each community and balance between a decentralized network with key amenities that are central.
Pattern 17: Non-Toxic World
Resilience, Safety, Health
Eliminate poisonous substances from the built environment that surrounds our children. Adhere to the requirements of the Living Building Challenge’s Materials Petal by using only Red List-approved supplies and substances for all community structures and infrastructure materials.
Pattern 18: Programs for Children
Education, Resilience, Joy, Connectedness
Curate activities and curriculum in schools and community centers that educate and inspire kids. These programs might be overseen by municipal parks and recreation departments and/or private non-profit organizations. Nest them with other initiatives designed to engage and support citizens of all ages as a way to bring the city’s youngest and oldest citizens closer together.
Pattern 19: Universal Children’s Design
Beauty, Safety, Playfulness, Joy, Connectedness, Accessibility
Expand on the concept of universal design, which caters primarily to the elderly and the physically challenged, by thinking first of how to adapt buildings and communities to children’s needs. Just as universal design benefits users of all abilities, universal children’s design makes things easier and more enjoyable for users of all ages.
Pattern 20: Sheltered Waiting Areas
Education, Beauty, Safety, Connectedness
Protect every generation by designing sheltered public waiting areas. Turn these structures into mini classrooms with interpretive historical information on the neighborhood, mini galleries with student art from nearby schools or mini communication centers where people can interact in writing.
Pattern 21: Public Drinking Fountains
Beauty, Safety, Playfulness, Health
Children love moving water, and everybody needs to stay hydrated. Offer this fun and healthy service throughout the city. Drinking fresh water is essential to health and reinforces appropriate hydration over drinks like soda.
Pattern 22: The Hill
Beauty, Playfulness, Health, Joy, Connectedness, Biophilia, Accessibility
Every child knows that there is something uniquely enjoyable and empowering about being on higher ground. Hills of any elevation offer endless opportunities to run, sled, roll, and take in more of the view. Reshape parks to create a modest hill in an otherwise flat region if necessary, but give people an opportunity to climb, toboggan or slide down.
Pattern 23: Swings for All Ages
Playfulness, Health, Joy, Connectedness
Swinging is intoxicating. Cities need places where everyone can experience such dizzying exhilaration, whether for stress relief, family togetherness or just for the sheer fun of it.
Pattern 24: Sound Parks
Education, Beauty, Playfulness, Joy, Biophilia
Help community members hear the music of nature by creating dedicated places where sound is celebrated and multiple senses are engaged. Imagine drums powered by fountains, wind chimes powered by the wind, or simply opportunities for musicians to regularly perform.
Pattern 25: Crazy Art
Education, Beauty, Playfulness, Joy, Connectedness
Install public art that starts by identifying place and continues by inspiring children to think beyond the ordinary. Instead of creating intersections merely with numbered roads, establish artistic navigational tools that support whimsy such as public clocks, colorful paintings and interactive sculptures.
Pattern 26: Patterned Sidewalks
Beauty, Playfulness, Health, Joy, Connectedness
Encourage childhood games in public places for all community members. Design beautiful patterns of hopscotch squares, sidewalk skipping lines and other modules into the walkways of the city. It will invite sport, encourage rhythmic activities and allow children to lead the way.
Pattern 27: Six-Story Max
Beauty, Resilience, Safety, Health, Connectedness, Biophilia, Accessibility
Places where children live should be limited in height to six stories. This will keep residents close enough to the earth to allow them to stay connected to the natural and human elements on the ground level. Even from the roof of a six-story building, children can still see and call to their friends who pass by on the sidewalk below and make out facial features, beyond that a distinct human connection is lost. A six-story building is also walkable, children can walk the stairs to the top floors or they can scurry down to join in a street-level activity. They are never far from anything that grows in the soil. And, crucially, all buildings can be net zero living buildings.
Pattern 28: House Size Mix
Beauty, Resilience, Connectedness, Accessibility
Any city celebrating children has to include a reasonable blend of house sizes and types. Plan a mix of residential structures that accommodates every resident and family grouping. Keep all larger ‘family’ style units as close to the ground as possible.
Pattern 29: Bedrooms to the Street
Education, Beauty, Resilience, Safety, Joy, Connectedness, Biophilia, Accessibility
Residential buildings must give children (and the adults who care for them) visual and physical access to the world outside their rooms. While this pattern is particularly important for urban apartments and multistory housing, it is important to consider in any living space. Children need a visual connection to the life of the street so that they can see people and nature in vibrant action. Design bedrooms with views of the street rather than internal courtyards.
Pattern 30: Courtyards for Reflection
Education, Beauty, Resilience, Safety, Joy, Connectedness, Biophilia, Accessibility
In the hustle and bustle of the city, it’s important to have places that are sanctuaries of quiet and personal reflection. Include frequent courtyards linked to public spaces that offer acoustical and visual privacy from the street.
Pattern 31: A Place for Dogs
Joy, Biophilia
Children need dogs! Create places in the city where dogs can safely run off leash. Dog parks bring communities alive. Install dog-walking infrastructure such as bag stations throughout the city and signs to keep pets on leash and safe.
Pattern 32: Small Egg Business
Education, Resilience, Joy, Biophilia
What better job than allowing children to raise chickens and collect and sell eggs? Ensure that local community bylaws allow for a small brood of chickens for each family and designate chicken spots within each development, even if on a rooftop.
Pattern 33: Ground Level Fountain
Education, Beauty, Joy, Biophilia, Accessibility
Having the ability to actually run through water is a sheer delight. Fountains should be active and invite you in rather than being off-limits for play. Design public fountains that are inviting and accessible, even for wheelchairs.
Pattern 34: Neighborhood Treehouse
Joy, Biophilia, Beauty, Playfulness
Every child loves a treehouse. It encourages sociability and activity, and allows for prospect over the neighborhood. Design safe and accessible treehouses into public parks and encourage private treehouses in developments.
Pattern 35: The West Sidewalk
Connectedness, Safety
We’ve all walked along those narrow sidewalks that don’t allow two people to walk side-by-side. Generous sidewalks create valuable urban space for childhood activities and games, compelling street furniture and spaces for trees. Sidewalks should be at least eight feet wide to be truly social.
Pattern 36: Bike Path Network
Connectedness, Safety, Joy, Biophilia
Nothing worries parents more than their child being hit by a car, whether crossing the street or biking on the side of the road. A bike path network separate from the automobile system encourages biking and walking, and changes the pace and enjoyment of being outside. Establish a bike network that allows people to move through a community away from automobiles for long stretches.
Pattern 37: Short Blocks and Short Cuts
Connectedness
Long city blocks diminish the quality of experience of pedestrians especially people who have short strides like children. Designing short blocks or interrupting long blocks with bisecting pedestrian pathways allows for shortcuts and reduces distances to various destinations.
Pattern 38: Clock Tower
Connectedness, Education, Safety
Having a sense of time, even if not wearing a watch, is good for children to orient themselves relative to getting home at the right hour. Perhaps more importantly, creating a local icon that helps to identify a community and provide a place to meet is essential. Meeting ‘under the clock’ can be a great community identifier.
Pattern 39: Community Meeting Place
Connectedness, Education, Playfulness
A children’s center, community center or centralized structure where groups of children can meet for activities, birthdays and events helps to nurture a family-friendly environment. Include at least one classroom-sized building in each neighborhood that can be rented or signed out by the community. The community meeting place should have outdoor covered structures as well as an indoor climate controlled space for greater summertime use.
Pattern 40: Kid Food Vendors
Joy
Ice cream trucks, french fry vendors and other informal and mobile food concessions breathe life and periodic excitement into a neighborhood. Allow for and encourage street-side vendors to frequent neighborhood amenities and parks.
How to Use the Child-Centered Planning Tool
This tool is meant to stimulate thought and reflection when designing any piece of urban fabric. It’s not intended as a ‘checklist’, although it certainly can be used that way. It is more important to be thoughtful in how the various patterns can be used. Each community and place should feature a different mix and proportion of patterns. Intentionality is the key to child-centered planning.
Currently, the International Living Future Institute is involved in master planning the final phase of the UniverCity development at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby Mountain. Our team is using the Child-Centered Planning approach in the design in order to create a positive community for people of all ages. The plan illustrated above shows the master plan where over 1,000 units of housing are being planned as part of a mixed use urban village. Areas where we are integrating the patterns we’ve identified are clearly shown on the diagram. This community, that houses a childcare pursing the Living Building Challenge, will be a pioneering model of a new way to approach community design.
We surround our children with love and do everything we can to protect them from harm. But we tend to dismiss them when we plan the communities where they live, which makes no sense. It’s time to nurture our cities the way we nurture our children. Following a pattern language catering to little ones will yield significant long-range benefits for everyone. Children-centered cities will be more enriching, stimulating, educational, secure, resilient and sustainable. And they will be more likely to remain thriving cities when our grandchildren–and theirs–need places to call home.
The post Child-Centered Planning: A New Specialized Pattern Language Tool | Jason F. McLennan appeared first on Bioneers.
Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition
Alternatives to mainstream publishing within and beyond academia
Undisciplined Environments - Thu, 03/24/2022 - 03:00
By ephemera, ACME, Chto Delat, degrowth.info, Ecologia Politica Network, Journal of Peer Production, Radical Housing Journal, Undisciplined Environments, and Uneven Earth.In a forum for the 20th anniversary issue of the journal ephemera on “Pasts, presents and futures of critical publishing”, eight independent collectives discuss ways in which they challenge the status quo of knowledge creation within and beyond academia.
Categories: B4. Radical Ecology
Healthy fruit, sick bodies
Undisciplined Environments - Tue, 03/22/2022 - 03:00
By Soledad Castillero Quesada.The voices of workers in the production of red fruits in the province of Huelva (Andalusia), make visible the social costs of the prioritization of agriculture as a global commercial product and workers as exploitable bodies.
Categories: B4. Radical Ecology
Fruta saludable, cuerpos enfermos
Undisciplined Environments - Tue, 03/22/2022 - 03:00
Por Soledad Castillero Quesada.Las voces de los y las trabajadoras en la producción frutos rojos en la provincia de Huelva (Andalucía), visibilizan los costes sociales de la priorización de la agricultura como producto comercial global y los trabajadores como cuerpos explotables.
Categories: B4. Radical Ecology
Congressional Progressives Call on Biden to Declare a Climate Emergency and End Fossil Fuel Development
Build Back Fossil Free - Mon, 03/21/2022 - 10:36
Congressional Progressive Caucus Calls on Biden to Declare a Climate Emergency and Ban Fossil Fuel Leasing on Federal Lands and Waters
Congressional Progressives follow the lead of climate, frontline, and progressive groups who have been making the same demands
Washington, D.C. – The Congressional Progressive Caucus today called on President Biden to declare a climate emergency, jumpstart just renewable energy production, ban federal fossil fuel leasing, end fossil fuel subsidies, and take executive actions aimed at advancing environmental justice and making clean air and water accessible for all.
Since Biden’s inauguration, declaring a climate emergency, igniting a just renewable energy revolution, and ending fossil fuel expansion have been the top demands from climate, Indigenous, social justice, and progressive groups, including the Build Back Fossil Free Coalition. The growing coalition of more than a thousand groups is dedicated to pushing Biden to use his executive authority to act on climate and fossil fuels.
In October 2021, the Build Back Fossil Free coalition organized a weeklong mobilization at the White House where thousands of Indigenous, frontline, and allied activists put their bodies on the line to demand Biden declare a climate emergency and stop permitting fossil fuel projects.
Earlier this year, the coalition sent a letter, signed by more than 1,100 organizations, to Biden urging him to quickly deliver on his campaign promises by declaring a climate emergency, stopping the federal approval of new fossil fuel projects, and initiating a just transition to a distributed, renewable energy future.
Ahead of the State of the Union, organizers gathered at the White House with an art piece depicting a giant pen and executive order, urging Biden to act on climate “with the stroke of a pen. And last week, groups in the coalition sent another letter to Biden urging him to use the Defense Production Act to jumpstart the deployment of clean energy solutions, like heat pumps, across the country as a response to the crisis in Ukraine.
President Biden has the authority today to use the Defense Production Act to create well-paying, union jobs building just, renewable energy technologies; begin to phase out the quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas pollution created by fossil fuel production on federal lands and waters; and declare a climate emergency to reinstate the ban on crude oil exports, which would have health and climate gains equivalent to shutting down 42 coal plants.
Below are statements from leading climate, social justice, and environmental organizations:
Quotes:
Grassroots/Frontline Groups
“Biden must take bold action by declaring a climate emergency and investing in real clean energy and actually sever the dependence of fossil fuel economy. Indigenous, frontline, youth and grassroot led movements have been demanding that the federal fossil fuel leasing program be reformed to ensure that communities have equity access to clean energy grids and participation in planning processes. It’s important for this administration to adopt the principles Environmental justice movements have thoroughly implemented as their center frontline communities and equity to further meaningful climate solutions,” Julia Bernal, Executive Director for Pueblo Action Alliance
“Those living in the Arctic are on the cutting edge of the climate crisis. The CPC agrees with us, thousands of organizations agree with us, now is the time to declare a climate emergency and stop the expansion of fossil fuels. The Biden Administration needs to follow this grassroots-led movement and the science backing us and stop approving fossil fuel projects like the Willow Master development plan,” Siqiniq Maupin, Executive Director of Sovereign Inupiat for a Living Arctic
“Biden is failing to support Tribal sovereignty each day he allows the Dakota Access pipeline to flow. This CPC announcement is another reminder for Biden to stand with the people, declare a climate emergency, uphold Indigenous rights and protect the water.” Waniya Locke, Standing Rock Grassroots
“The climate crisis is rooted in lack of oversight of extraction that is happening in frontline communities. It is time for Biden to go beyond performative politics and show communities of color that we will be represented. He needs to declare a climate emergency and stop fossil fuel destruction, including extraction on federal fossil fuel leases that pollute in communities like ours.” Cesar Aguirre, Senior community organizer, Central California Environmental Justice Network
National Organizations:
“President Biden has demonstrated his lack of commitment to the very communities who elected him to office. He has stalled on climate action, abandoning Black, Indigenous, communities of the global majority, and other frontline communities who don’t have time to negotiate with neoliberals, capitalists, and white supremacists because their very existences are at stake. This is why we stand alongside the CPC to demand Biden use his executive powers to declare a Climate Emergency and ban drilling on federal lands and waters. Our collective futures depend on bold climate action now.” Ashley McCray, Green New Deal Network Organizer, Indigenous Environmental Network
“There’s no question that we’re in a climate emergency. The caucus is absolutely right that President Biden should declare it so we can build the energy security that only renewable energy can bring,” said Jean Su, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s energy justice program. “Biden can act quickly, without Congress and without Joe Manchin, to stop oil and gas drilling on public lands and unlock his emergency powers to end the era of deadly fossil fuels. He must answer the caucus’s call and turbo-charge the renewable energy transition with the Defense Production Act.” Jean Su, director, Energy Justice Program, Center for Biological Diversity.
“As communities across this country are facing the realities of a rigged economy, a public health crisis, racial injustice, and climate change, Congress and the Biden Administration must use every tool at their disposal to deliver comprehensive, transformative, and immediate change. The announcement of the CPC Executive Action slate is a bold and exciting phase of progressive power that demonstrates Progressives understand there is no time to waste. Declaring a national climate emergency and working to end our reliance on fossil fuels are two critical steps in addressing the climate crisis our communities are facing and Indivisible is thrilled to see these priorities included in a slate that works to address climate change, invest in good paying union jobs, and prioritize a just and equitable society.” Ann Clancy, Associate Director of Climate Policy, Indivisible
For more information or to be connected with experts and spokespeople reach out to Cassidy DiPaola, cassidy@fossilfree.media.
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Categories: A2. Green Unionism
Green New Deal Network Applauds Congressional Progressive Caucus Push on Biden to Declare a Climate Emergency
Green New Deal Network - Thu, 03/17/2022 - 08:44
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 17, 2022
Contact: Sumer Shaikh, Green New Deal Network, sshaikh@greennewdealnetwork.org, 774-545-0128
WASHINGTON D.C. — Today, in a move supported by the Green New Deal Network and other progressive organizations, the Congressional Progressive Caucus urged President Biden to issue an executive order that recognizes the climate crisis for what it is: a code red emergency. Not only would such a measure mitigate one of the greatest threats of our time, but it would also invest in a healthy, green economy, modern and reliable power, and, most importantly, a country where future generations can thrive.
Our country’s dangerous over reliance on fossil fuels to power the most basic of functions is built on the backs of people who have consequently endured polluted air and water, extreme natural disasters, and chronic health conditions. To make matters worse, by failing to transition to a sustainable infrastructure, the US is missing an opportunity to create new, dignified union jobs, reduce the cost of energy, and be independent of foreign energy. Instead of pandering to corporate polluters and their profit margins, our lawmakers should be putting all our resources, technology, and innovation behind creating a just transition to a world that is protected from climate change
Activists, volunteers, and impacted communities have labored for decades to have their voices heard in Washington and, today, have found allies amongst the Congressional Progressive Caucus as these leaders continue the fight for executive and legislative climate action that is as bold and urgent as the crisis. As organizations collectively representing millions of members and supporters, including Indigenous, Black, Brown, and frontline communities, the Green New Deal Network urges President Biden to use his executive authority to end the expansion of fossil fuels, protect our communities from the climate emergency, and rapidly scale up production of renewable energy.
In response, members of the Green New Deal Network issues the following statements:
Ann Clancy, Associate Director of Climate Policy at Indivisible said, “During the presidential campaign, Joe Biden identified the devastating impacts of climate change as one of the major threats facing our country, and deemed it as a top priority for his presidency. Even as we continue to push for Congress to pass bold climate change legislation, President Biden must do everything within his power to enact bold policy proposals to address this crisis. Indivisible applauds the CPC's call for sweeping executive actions to address the multiple and overlapping crises our communities are facing. We urge President Biden to use the full authority of his office to transition us to a clean energy future, invest in millions of good paying jobs, support clean and healthy communities, and prioritize a just and equitable society.”
“The Biden administration talks big about confronting the climate crisis, pandemic, and economic crisis, but has expanded fossil fuel extraction in the US and failed to deliver on critical climate and social investments in his first year. President Biden still has a chance to mobilize a historic response to meet the scale of today's overlapping crises. He must use the executive powers at his disposal to declare a Climate Emergency, ban fossil fuel extraction on federal lands and waters, and deliver on all the promises he has made to stand up for Black, Indigenous, communities of color, and working class people,” said Adrien Salazar, Policy Director at Grassroots Global Justice Alliance.
Ashley Nicole, Green New Deal Coordinator at Indigenous Environmental Network said, “President Biden has demonstrated his lack of commitment to the very communities who elected him to office. He has stalled on climate action, abandoning Black, Indigenous, Brown, & other frontline communities who don’t have time to negotiate with neoliberals, capitalists, and white supremacists when their very existence is at stake. This is why Indigenous Environmental Network stands alongside the CPC to demand Biden use his executive powers to declare a Climate Emergency and ban drilling on federal lands and waters. Our collective futures depend on bold climate action now!”
“Our elected officials can’t keep phoning it in when it comes to the climate emergency. Generations of expanded fossil fuel reliance made extractive policies the norm–and now we’re all paying the price for polluter greed. President Biden needs to listen to the Congressional Progressive Caucus and use his power to deliver for our communities, especially the poor, Native, Black, and brown communities hit first and worst by the climate crisis and environmental racism,” said Ben Ishibashi, Lead Climate Justice Organizer at People’s Action.
Maurice Mitchell, National Director of the Working Families Party said, "These orders would help millions of hard-working people make ends meet while addressing the threats of climate change and COVID-19. Meeting the scale of these challenges will require Congressional action, but President Biden can give working families much-needed relief by taking executive action now. These orders are a testament to years of grassroots organizing led by frontline communities, and we’re proud to stand alongside the Congressional Progressive Caucus as they once again lead the fight to deliver for working people."
###
About the Green New Deal Network
The Green New Deal Network is a 50-state campaign with a national coordinating table of 15 organizations: Center for Popular Democracy, Climate Justice Alliance, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Greenpeace, Indigenous Environmental Network, Indivisible, Movement for Black Lives, MoveOn, People’s Action, Right To The City Alliance, Service Employees International Union, Sierra Club, Sunrise Movement, US Climate Action Network, and the Working Families Party.
Categories: A2. Green Unionism
Common Ecologies has launched!
Undisciplined Environments - Tue, 03/15/2022 - 04:00
By Common Ecologies. TheCommon Ecologies Schoolisa platform for movement learning with two first online courses and a summer school. The school's aim is to facilitate conversations across different struggles, grappling with our present context of socio-ecological crisis by learning from different practices and debates - to build the transversal & translocal power and care we need.
Categories: B4. Radical Ecology
Our Letter To President Biden
Build Back Fossil Free - Thu, 02/24/2022 - 03:37
For a PDF of this letter click here.
February 24, 2021
Dear President Biden,
As 1,140 organizations collectively representing millions of members and supporters, including Indigenous, Black, Brown, and frontline communities, we urge you to use your executive authority to speed the end of the fossil fuel era, protect our communities from the climate emergency, and address the severe harms caused by fossil fuels.
Your first year in office was marked by historic climate disasters, another alarming surge in domestic greenhouse gas emissions, and increasingly dire warnings from the leading scientists around the world. From hurricanes and floods, to wildfires and droughts, tens of millions of Americans are directly confronting the dangerous consequences of a warming world. Indigenous, Black, Brown, AAPI and working-class communities are disproportionately harmed not only by fossil-fueled extreme weather, but also targeted by oil, gas, and coal corporations and suffer from toxic pollution and ongoing environmental injustices.
You have repeatedly identified the existential threat posed by climate change, calling it a “code red” for humanity, and stated in your first week in office, “In my view, we’ve already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis. We can’t wait any longer.”
You further promised “environmental justice will be at the center of all we do addressing the disproportionate health and environmental and economic impacts on communities of color — so-called ‘fenceline communities’.” And you elevated the respect of Indigenous sovereignty and ordered federal agencies to strengthen nation-to-nation relationships with Tribes.
These statements must be backed up by bolder action. You have the authority under existing law to wind down fossil fuel production and catalyze a just, renewable energy revolution to deliver healthier communities, a livable future, and millions of good-paying jobs. It’s critical that you use that authority as quickly and broadly as possible.
Together, we call on you to take these steps:
- Follow through on your promise to ban all new oil and gas leasing, drilling, and fracking on federal lands and waters.
- Direct federal agencies to stop approving fossil fuel projects, including pipelines, import and export terminals, storage facilities, refineries, and petrochemical plants. Direct the Department of Energy to halt gas exports to the full extent authorized by law.
- Declare a climate emergency under the National Emergencies Act, unlocking special powers to reinstate the crude oil export ban, redirect disaster relief funds toward distributed renewable energy construction in frontline communities, and marshal companies to fast-track renewable transportation and clean power generation, creating millions of high-quality union jobs.
The U.S. must contribute its fair share to the global effort to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius in line with what science, justice, and equity demand. Your administration’s legislative and regulatory climate proposals have not addressed limiting the production and burning of fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change. As fossil fuel lobbyists and politicians continue to block real climate action in Congress, bold executive action is desperately needed.
President Biden, you are the chief executive with immense powers to address our communities’ concerns.
You showed what serious climate leadership could look like in your first week in office when you canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and paused oil and gas leasing on federal lands. The urgency of the moment requires you to return to that original ambition. Fully deliver on your climate and environmental justice promises by using your executive authority to keep fossil fuels in the ground and build a resilient and affordable renewable energy system.
Sincerely,
For a full list of organizations see click here.
Categories: A2. Green Unionism
California regulators reject petition request to immediately initiate rulemaking to end credits for factory farm gas, despite adverse local pollution impacts
(Central Valley) Leadership Council - Wed, 01/26/2022 - 14:37
SACRAMENTO— Executive Officer of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) Richard Corey unilaterally rejected a petition request from a coalition of environmental justice, animal protection, and community groups to immediately initiate a rulemaking to eliminate credits for factory farm gas from one of California’s premier climate programs, the Low Carbon Fuel Standard. The decision, which was released this morning, ignores ample evidence that the lucrative credit system is dramatically overstating the climate benefits of using methane sourced from factory farms as a transportation fuel, and illegally disregards the disproportionate environmental and health impacts that dairy digesters inflict on low-income communities and communities of color.
Advocates suggest that instead of investing millions in a credits system that incentivizes factory farm expansion and the use of more polluting manure management practices, California should instead use its climate dollars to invest in renewable energy solutions that cut pollution in environmental justice communities.
“The California Air Resources Board’s decision to delay the rulemaking our petition asks for represents a failure to meet its environmental justice commitments. The continued development of factory farm gas schemes will only serve to entrench a system that illegally and disproportionately harms low-income communities and communities of color,” said Brent Newell, senior attorney, Public Justice Food Project.
“Some of the largest and most polluting dairy operations in California may already be making more money from factory farm gas than they do from milk. This manure gold rush incentivizes factory farm expansion, which increases air and water pollution — not to mention increased odor and flies — in environmental justice communities, all while failing to address the impacts of climate-warming methane emissions. It’s extremely disappointing that California regulators have decided not to address with adequate urgency the significant deficiencies and injustices inherent in this particular pollution subsidy, as petitioners requested,” said Phoebe Seaton, co-executive director, Leadership Counsel.
“Incentivizing factory farming and Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO) — and rewarding the industry for the mass amounts of pollution it causes — is a dangerous position for The California Air Resources Board to take. It is vital that government agencies work toward solutions to the climate crisis — not exacerbate it,” said Cristina Stella, managing attorney, Animal Legal Defense Fund.
“Governor Newsom and CARB have rejected this opportunity to stop California’s flagship climate program from incentivizing and entrenching the factory farm industry and the hosts of harms that come along with it. CARB’s decision to keep factory farm gas in the Low Carbon Fuel Standard and kick the can down the road ensures that the program will remain fundamentally compromised and California will fall further behind its climate goals,” said Tyler Lobdell, staff attorney, Food & Water Watch.
###
Interview contact: Chloe Zilliac, 650.644.8259, chloe@sunstonestrategies.org
The post California regulators reject petition request to immediately initiate rulemaking to end credits for factory farm gas, despite adverse local pollution impacts appeared first on Leadership Counsel.
Categories: G2. Local Greens
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