Woman Aloud

Sharing Resources in an Intentional Community

June 11, 2014 by Marika Stone, posted in environment, activism, localizing, Transition Movement

So much to like here!

In 2005, I moved to an intentional community. My best friend’s husband calls it a hippie commune. That’s not quite accurate, but it’s getting warm.

The Fellowship for Intentional Community defines this type of community as:

An inclusive term for ecovillages, cohousing communities, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives, intentional living, alternative communities, cooperative living and other projects where people strive together with a common vision.

A new-agey church with an eastern bent runs the intentional community where I live. Now before you start thinking “cult,” this church focuses on yoga and meditation. It’s not the zombie-sex cult as a local paper once described it (too bad—zombie-sex cult sounds fun).

Although my kids attended the church’s school, and I live in the community, I’m not a member of the congregation. As a recovering Catholic, I can’t fathom under what circumstances I would ever join any church…

View original post 674 more words

Personal Energy Descent Plan

June 9, 2014 by Marika Stone, posted in Air conditioning, Carbon Footprint, environment, activism, localizing, Transition Movement

Relocalizing, resilience and community-building are hallmarks of the Transition Movement, but at the heart of it all is energy descent. This recognizes that 1. global warming is real and threatens not only our way of life but life itself, and 2. easy energy is history (aka Peak Oil). Absent a technological breakthrough that can be scaled quickly enough to fill current needs, energy shortfall is the reality we are all facing, sooner rather than later. Energy, including our own human energy, is something we have some control over, so it behooves us to experiment, here and now, in order to become better able to handle it and other challenges, e.g. food and potable water shortages, that could arise further down the road.

‘Cheap’ energy has created our civilization and continues to drive it forward (although the costs will soar once externalities become accounted for). So in one sense, people who already ‘make do’ with far less energy have a leg up on us. To take one example: as difficult as it is to imagine in the Southeastern U.S., with millions of square feet artificially cooled, many people around the world have developed other strategies for dealing with extreme heat. Think mud walls. Strategically placed trees and landscaping. Minimal clothing. Communal watering holes. Siestas. Evening strolls (paseo). Even spicy foods. Hold these in your mind while you recall that the thousands of people who succumbed to the ‘killer’ heat wave of 2003 were all in the developed parts of Europe, many housed in apartments during power outages, many isolated from family and friends.

What might we be able to learn from our ancestors and extant native traditions about cooling it?

As I sit here in my home office, feeling over-cooled though the thermostat reads 79°F, I find myself thinking about fellow Transitoners and artists, Beju Lejobart and Sherryl Muriente – he from France, she from Puerto Rico – who defy conventional wisdom that AC is best and have devised any number of methods to cool their single-family home in a neighboring town, including strategic positioning of fans to encourage cross-ventilation and a swimming pool they happily use in the middle of a hot night. Sherryl also teaches urban planning at FAU, and dreams up ways of making small urban spaces more human-scale, walkable and liveable. See C’est La Via.

Although we’re far from a Net-Zero existence, we keep adding to our personal energy descent plan in as many ways as we can. This morning, we got an invoice for $108. from Pear Energy, the renewable resources company that powers our home and EV. In May, our power was supplied by Superior Wind Project, in Iowa, which came on-line in Spring 2009. We have previously been powered by Lakota Wind, also in Iowa, and now have the opportunity to switch to solar energy via Gainesville Regional Utilities for an extra $.01 per kilowatt-hour. When people who attend one of my rants, uh, presentations on global warming ask me, What can I do? I suggest the 10% local foods challenge, composting, and switching to Pear Energy as three very doable choices. No martyrdom here.

We cannot wait to see how the White House initiative on ‘carbon pollution’ will play out (or what kind of reframing will make global warming more easily digested by more people.) There is much we ordinary citizens can do about our own energy usage, and in Southeast Florida, that means paying attention to AC. Here are a few random facts and observations

Most indoor spaces are too cool for comfort (ask most women). We need smarter thermostats and zoned HVAC in our homes, and more responsive retailers, restaurateurs and public officials.
“Air conditioning takes indoor heat and pushes it outdoors. To do this, it uses energy, which increases production of greenhouse gases, which warm the atmosphere. From a cooling standpoint, the first transaction is a wash, and the second is a loss. We’re cooking our planet to refrigerate the diminishing part that’s still habitable.” William Saletan
Refrigerators and air conditioners are the largest consumers of energy in American homes today. Find ways to cut down.
AC use for the average American home emits over 6,600 pounds CO2 a year. Maybe smaller spaces are an answer. See LifeEdited. Or the Tiny House movement.
The U.S. uses more air conditioning than the rest of the world combined, but that is about to change as the developing world catches up. Let’s hope not.
Even Eskimos are purchasing AC units.

Final note: I added a Solar Charger to my sunny East window this morning and plugged in the iPhone I’m trying to rely on less. Two hours later, 100% charged. One small step for energy self-sufficiency…

Other Sources:

EPA, Clean Energy Calculations — very useful for an energy audit

Carbon Rally — take the challenge

So Happy Together

May 26, 2014 by Marika Stone, posted in cohousing, environment, activism

Co-housing, a form of communal living launched in Denmark, sans the back-to-the-land 60’s hippie vibe, has interested me for close to 20 years, and it coming up on my radar once again, a combination of my age and my realization of how closely the principles of cohousing – community, shared resources, resilience, environmental values – align with those of the Transition movement. And also because, via Transition, I’m learning about urban planning and even participating in some ‘interventions.’

Suburban sprawl, even as pretty as the lushly-planted, pool-and-tennis-court sprinkled complexes such as the one I live in, doesn’t support a healthy, well-functioning community, let alone enlightened society. A shopping mall is not the village green, although Teens and Tweens do their best to make it so. We became successful as a species because we are social animals, and that may be how we will figure a way out of the mess we’re in now. So I find it puzzling that we have accepted design that expresses a preference for privacy, even anonymity, over community; that values speed and efficiency – cars and service vehicles at the expense of pedestrians or bicycles; that submits to conformity and obedience. (Checked your HOA rules lately?)

Being in my early 70s with an older spouse and many friends in the same age cohort, has sharpened the focus on issues of isolation and loneliness, and what it looks like when the care (cleaning, repairs, financial management, etc.) of a home you once shared becomes your sole responsibility. In cultures (including the one I was born into) where elders are valued, these issues don’t exist.

I never want to wind up in an assisted-living facility or senior residence. These artificial environments are like permanently moored cruise ships, with every need attended to, except the need to feel needed, to contribute to something bigger than yourself, to feel connected.

We have to design for the way people really want to live. And, in many instances we are beginning to. Senior cohousing, ‘granny’ flats, i.e. moving in with the kids, and NORCs – naturally occurring retirement communities — like the Beacon Hill Village in Boston, to name a few, where people remain not only in their homes, but as contributing members of the larger community. Whenever we can share space and not duplicate infrequently-used possessions, we all benefit, and so does the Planet. For this aging yogi, for all those reasons, an ashram looks good.

On the other end of the age spectrum, it is no accident that the Millennial generation is flocking to walkable cities, inventing ways to live and share space, equipment, work, that seem more inspired by Seinfeld than The Brady Bunch. Think also of AirBnB, and even Couchsurfing (for the truly adventurous traveler), two more recent variations on the sharing theme. For Angelo, a young Italian I was chatting with last night at the Transition meeting, enjoying a year of study in the U.S., courtesy of his host family, is just how things are done back home. Humans are endlessly creative in response to change, and the evidence of this lifts me whenever the news about climate change, peak resources, and corrupt regimes gets too dire.

As much as I quake at the idea of another move, I find myself thinking more deeply about what would support us better in the next phase of our life. Where to next? And when?

We discovered cohousing around 1997 while living in Hoboken, NJ, a small town that, in those days, was best known for being the birthplace of baseball and Frank Sinatra. The town hadn’t completely outgrown its somewhat seedy past and wasn’t without issues. But we loved our 100-year-old redbrick townhouse and the town itself for its walkability – a word yet to be invented – the friendly neighborhoods, the mom and pop stores, and easy access to New York where I had a strong client base. But change was happening fast as long-promised waterfront development began, bringing rising home values and a soaring real estate tax that would soon become unsustainable, even for a two-income couple. Gentrification has its price. A lot of people like us cashed in and moved out, making room for a younger professional crowd.

So that Spring, we attended a cohousing conference at the Liberty Village Cohousing in Libertytown, MD, to learn more about this new way of housing ourselves. A few months later, we had organized visits to four other cohousing communities, including two in Canada. Three of the four were in early stage development; one, a couple of years old. In retrospect, we might have taken the plunge then had we come across an established community. Most take years not months to go from idea to reality, and many enthusiasts claim that it is the process of dealing with whatever comes up – difficult local ordinances or neighbors, a failure of the group to gel, integrating new people – gives a community its particular character. But most important, the consensus-based approach to planning, designing, managing and maintaining your cohousing community requires a lot of patience. Perhaps this time around, we might be ready.

I was able to check up on the four we actually visited, a prerequisite for membership. Cantine’s Island in Saugerties, NY, is a village within a village on the Esopus River. Trillium Hollow, which won a spot in the cue because our married children lived nearby in Portland, Or. Windsong, in Langley, about 45 minutes outside Vancouver, an architecturally designed cohousing community where we were invited to share a meal and spend the night. The entire community was under glass, a reminder of those cold Canadian winters. Finally, Quayside, a brilliant joining of existing buildings on a corner of a block in North Vancouver. Of all, the best fit: urban, no two spaces alike, a great intergenerational vibe. Glad to say, all are thriving!

History of Cohousing

Senior Cohousing

On Being Prepared

May 19, 2014 by Marika Stone, posted in environment, activism, environment, activism, localizing, Transition Movement

We are having a family conference this week on climate change and including grandchildren, three boys, 15, 13 and 11, and as it happens, all Boy Scouts. The subject, while not exactly the elephant in the room, has been off-limits to date, even among the adults — as uncomfortable as money, politics, or the fact of death. Environmental education exists in Florida, see Pine Jog Environmental Educational Center, despite deniers in high places. But I wanted to know how global warming/climate change was being presented to young people by various groups, including the Boy Scouts of America. So this morning I did some research (see links at the end of the post). Laurie David, a global warming activist and the producer of the Academy Award-winning film An Inconvenient Truth and the HBO documentary Too Hot Not to Handle, has collaborated with Scholastic publishing to produce an excellent guide to the science of global warming and what families can do to mitigate its impacts. The graphics are delightful and on target.

There is a measured tone to this guide (and others) that reminded me of President Obama’s response to NBC 6 Chief Meteorologist John Morales’ ‘what now’ questions (upon the release of the National Climate Assessment): more fuel efficient cars and Energy Star appliances and letting one’s elected officials know ‘this is important.’ It all seems so sensible and doable, like doubling up on recycling and changing out lightbulbs, and in some ways easier to swallow than adaptation*, which is where most climate experts and savvy political leaders are beginning to put their attention. For their part — and I commend them for it — the Boy Scouts of America have added a new Sustainability Merit Badge to the existing one covering the Environment. Eagle Scout candidates need at least one of the two to qualify. Not so surprising given the 100 year old organization has been devoted to nature and conservation throughout its history. There are 100 million scouts worldwide, making it the largest youth organization on the planet, so this is big news.

What lit a fire under my seat about getting the family together now was the release of the National Climate Assessment with its segments on regional impacts. For Floridians, as I’ve noted here before, preparing for hurricane season is an annual ritual, albeit some people have been reassured by a succession of relatively quiet years. Preparedness is a mindset one can work with when it comes to serious talk about climate, simple as the Boy Scout motto. Because as the Southeast regional report makes clear, Florida is exceptionally vulnerable to all the impacts of global warming, among which flooding due to sea level rise and salt water contamination of our drinking water and soil, are perhaps the most immediate and most worrying. First, we have to be willing to get it all out on the table: confusion, denial (whatever form that takes), fear, distrust. What will be important is to recognize that every day we waste politicizing the facts of climate science is a day we don’t take action. We need to leave the ‘debate’ to those whose interests it serves, and get on the same page in terms of risk assessment. You can bet the insurance industry IS paying attention.

“You won’t find many climate change doubters these days within the property insurance business.” ~ David Kodama, senior director of research and policy analysis for the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America, or PCI. (Bankrate)

Our strategy so far has been to show more than tell (although we’ve done some of that, too), and it is by now quite clear to everyone in our immediate and extended family and circle of friends, that we are tree-hugging climate activists. None of the things we have done so far — KXL protest march, EV, renewable energy for our utilities, tree-planting, vegetables from a local farm, no CAFO’s, organizing for Transition, feels like a big deal sacrifice. It’s child’s play compared to what we — and that means every capable person — may yet be called to do.

*Mitigation and adaptation

Down to Earth (Scholastic), Laurie David’s guide

The National Science Foundation’s Exploratorium, great for older kids

The EPA’s Climate Change and Kids site, multi-age groups

Seeds of Change

May 12, 2014 by Marika Stone, posted in environment, activism, localizing, Transition Movement

Garden Song
Inch by inch, row by row,
Gonna make this garden grow.
Gonna mulch it deep and low,
Gonna make it fertile ground.
Inch by inch, row by row,
Please bless these seeds I sow.
Please keep them safe below
‘Til the rain comes tumbling down.
~ Pete Seeger

With this chorus still ringing in my ears, I spent Mother’s Day weekend in Sarasota with my spouse/best buddy, meeting up with Don Hall, executive director of Transition Sarasota, to learn how he built the group through “experimenting with many things and seeing what stuck.” Sounds familiar. Don came to Florida from Boulder, CO, site of the first Transition Town in the U.S. He is a Transition trainer and running the nonprofit organization is his full-time job and his passion. Sarasota proved to be fertile soil for the ideas of Transition, and today it’s hard to know what came first: the active farm to school program, an established Saturday farmers market, a gleaning group whose members include Transition volunteers, restaurants — even those at the local hotels, Indigo, where we stayed and the nearby Hyatt — that proudly display their

support of local food. Of course, none of this would be possible without the interest and support of local chefs, growers, purveyors and the population. Sarasota’s Saturday farmers market is a happy mob of people bearing cloth and string bags!

This cultural shift around food has been building for some 40 years, and is often credited to Alice Waters, a pioneer of the organic food movement that argues “cooking should be based on the finest and freshest seasonal ingredients that are produced sustainably and locally.” Chez Panisse, her Berkeley, California, restaurant still caters to a knowledgeable, well-heeled crowd of ‘foodies’ while her foundation takes the message (and funding) into schools. Waters is also a Slow Food vice-president. Although there remains just a hint of elitism in the movement — Van Jones calls it Whole Foods, whole paycheck — the good news is, the idea that good tasting, healthy food as a right is beginning to sink in with the general public. You could call it a democratizing process that will benefit us all. Food is where Transition often begins in a community because it is easy to make the case that local grown is good not only for taste and health, but can lead to a healthier, sustainable local economy and lower carbon footprint.

For me, it was both inspiring and a little daunting to see how the movement is coming alive on Florida’s West Coast in partnership with Transition. One of the first successful Transition Sarasota projects was the Eat Local Guide, a directory to farmers markets, buyers clubs, groceries featuring local foods, restaurants, and community gardens, that Transition Palm Beaches would do well to emulate. The Guide also offers a changing menu of relevant articles gleaned from around the country that capture the strength of the shift to sustainable agriculture. Transition Sarasota also spearheaded the 10% local food shift challenge, inviting people to switch just 10% of their food purchases to local growers and purveyors. The impact speaks for itself:

While a 2006 study found that only 0.7% of the $797 million Sarasota County residents were spending every year on food was purchased directly from a local farmer, a shift of just 10% in this direction would add $80 million a year to our local economy, potentially creating thousands of new green jobs.

Came home to find more news that feeds my optimism about local food growing, including today’s New York Times article on the topic. From Lincoln, NB, yoga student and friend, Betsey Shipley, enclosed an article from the Journal Star about the explosion of community gardens thanks to a program not only to support local farms and farmers, but to train new ones. Over 170 people signed up for the Growing Farmers Program that began in 2005, and 35 have started farming.

But it’s a 2014 initiative in the Lincoln community that really got my attention: a partnership with a local church to create Nebraska’s first food forest, “a woodland eco-system that yields food for people.” If there is one thing I love more than trees, it is trees that bear fruit! As it turns out, First UU of the Palm Beaches is already well on our way. On Earth Day, this small, multi-generational team, including our minister, CJ McGregor, launched our own food forest with donated trees along strip of land on church property. A growing (!) Tree Fund promises there will be more planting parties like the one pictured here. Inch by inch.

Turn, turn, turn

May 5, 2014May 7, 2014 by Marika Stone, posted in environment, activism, Katherine Hayhoe, Occupy

The activist’s activist, Pete Seeger, left behind a legacy of standing up for social justice and the environment, and a collection of protest songs that still pack an emotional punch. Yesterday, at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Fort Lauderdale, at a sold-out celebration performance of Pete Seeger’s music by local musicians, it was déjà vu all over again for me, and I suspect many of the mostly gray-haired Seeger fans. As heart-felt and enjoyable as the event was, the fact that the issues that Pete Seeger spent a lifetime addressing are still with us — only more so — is not good news for the weary.

But that’s exactly why we need to celebrate our ‘preaching to the converted’ moment, in solidarity with street theater peace activists, Raging Grannies, Matt Schwartz of South Florida Wildland Association (raising the alarm about fracking), Occupy Ft. Lauderdale, Broward Move to Amend, Pax Christi (economic and social justice and respect for creation), the National Lawyers Guild, (lawyers, law students and legal workers for change in the political/economic system), and SOA Watch, (ending oppressive U.S. foreign policy in Latin America), among others.

I draw a lot of energy from a love-in like this one; we all do, whatever our political leanings. The inconvenient truth is, we prefer to be with like-minded people and the more the merrier. It’s another form of confirmation bias, that is, our tendency to surround ourselves with people and information that confirms what we already believe. Uh-oh. It may be hard-wired into our species in service of the survival instinct, but it’s not working anymore..

I wasn’t thinking about this particularly when I landed hard last evening with a particularly unnerving episode of Years of Living Dangerously, but it’s coming up for me now as a major element of our difficulty as activists, and the challenges we will face.

If you’ve been paying attention to climate change, the Leslie Stahl segment in Living Dangerously carried few surprises, with the possible exception of actually hearing what ice sounds like as it begins to break apart. Terrifying. But it was the other report, about the stubborn (or I could say steadfast) denial of basic climate science by one large, well-funded religious sect, was especially disturbing for me, because 1. I am surrounded by and constantly reminded of this kind of thinking here in mega-church-land, 2. Florida is exceptionally vulnerable and denial now will be very costly later, and 3. I fear for my grandchildren, indeed, all grandchildren. So I have the deepest respect for climate scientist/evangelical Christian, Katherine Hayhoe, the star of an earlier Living Dangerously episode, for modeling a way of reaching out to those whose views differ from her own. The world we have created in ignorance will demand nothing less.

Pete Seeger would approve.

Food Fight and Seed Bombs*

April 28, 2014 by Marika Stone, posted in environment, activism, environment, activism, localizing, Transition Movement, food as social action

“Seed is not just the source of life. It is the very foundation of our being.” – Vandana Shiva

If the name Vandana Shiva doesn’t ring a bell, you probably don’t know jack about why saving and sharing seeds from your organic produce is the ultimate act of rebellion against the corporatocracy. No matter. Just know that this food fight is anything but a frivolous venting of teenage high spirits. In fact, with California’s drought worsening and threatening crops, and Monsanto scoring big in legal battles to continue privatizing nature, the timing couldn’t be better. If you eat, this fight is your fight. Consider yourself enlisted.

Dressed in her beautiful saris and signature bindi, physicist, author, ecofeminist and seed activist, Dr. Shiva hardly looks the revolutionary. But spend a few minutes in her company – there are plenty of videos to choose from – and she will make a powerful case for why you absolutely must 1. Support your local organic farmer and grow what food you can sustainably and 2. Save your seeds – see links below on how to do that – and/or start a small seed-sharing circle. The goal is nothing less that long-term food security and reclaiming your rights as a world citizen. It is food democracy that benefits everyone in the food chain.

“We need to build the direct relationship between those who grow the food and those who eat it. Care for people has to be the guiding force for how we produce, process, and distribute our food…We need to shift the paradigm of economics to measure the well being of people not the profits of the oligarchs.”

Shiva’s organization, Navdanya, is a network of seed keepers and organic producers across 16 states in India. It has helped set up 54 community seed banks across the country, and has trained half a million farmers in sustainable agriculture. According to Dr. Shiva, these actions were also aimed at stemming an epidemic of farmer suicides as farms and livelihoods were lost to Big Ag’s invasion of India.

Maybe farming isn’t in your blood or your future. Perhaps converting a patch of your lawn into a vegetable garden isn’t your thing. Don’t expect an automatic deferral. You can still be a part of the support corps, carefully conserving seeds from your produce — easy in the case of squash, pumpkins, melon and peppers – and a little more challenging with tomatoes. Tip: just cut a small section from the next great organic tomato you eat and put it in a pot to sprout. More specifics from Organic Gardening. Organic potatoes and sweet potatoes give you a clue about what to do next by sprouting conveniently in your vegetable bin. Plant one in a pot and follow these directions from Container Gardening.

All of this seems pretty mild mannered as revolutionary action goes, although you may encounter some strong resistance from HOA’s that love pouring your money down the drain (into the water system) to maintain large expanses of grass, or communities hell-bent on upkeeping standards of conformity. (Backyard chickens, hold the fort.)

You could waste a lot of time fighting city hall. So here’s one of my favorite weapons of grass destruction: the seed bomb. These come in many forms – balls of clay embedded with seeds and organic fertilizer, eggs filled with the same, and seed pills, all the above in miniature. These little projectiles are perfect for challenging locations, “spontaneous floral attacks,” and vegetable gardening below the radar. You can carry a seed bomb (or pill) in your pocket and launch an attack of edible landscaping in the least expected public places. Think of this as a time-bomb that does some good in the world. Sneak back for the harvest, if you dare.

*Seed bombing is a technique of introducing vegetation to land by throwing or dropping compressed bundles of soil containing live vegetation (seed balls).

More Techno-Fixes for a Hot Planet?

April 14, 2014 by Marika Stone, posted in environment, activism, localizing, Transition Movement, food as social action

What’s Good for the Navy * Louis CK, Truth-Teller * In My Own Backyard

OK, I admit it. I squandered the first hour of my Monday writing day on Facebook, and I have my daughter’s post to blame for it. Seems that the US Navy has developed technology to convert seawater into energy. The headline: The U.S. Navy Just Announced the End of Big Oil and No One Noticed. Because the ‘no one noticed’ resonated, I decided to check out the source of Justin “Filthy Liberal Scum” Rosario’s article. But first, I read the comments. Whoa! If we could only tap the energy of all that misplaced rage.

You won’t be surprised that the Navy’s April 4 press release is anything but emotional, but it made my heart beat a little faster just the same. Here’s the lead:

WASHINGTON (NNS) — Navy researchers at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Materials Science and Technology Division, demonstrated proof-of-concept of novel NRL technologies developed for the recovery of carbon dioxide (CO2) and hydrogen (H2) from seawater and conversion to a liquid hydrocarbon fuel.

Wow, party on!

So let me put this in the context Louis CK’s recent Oh My God monologue (we’re huge fans of his in my humble abode). Of course, the Navy’s NRL technology is an energy hog, but maybe no more so than tar sands technology or fracking, when you add back all the externalities like health impacts and clean up costs after accidents, to name just two. Of course, there’s a Plan B for Planet Earth, but maybe we would be better off not counting on business-as-usual. (Not everyone is, incidentally, see IKEA’s big investment in wind energy, snide comments aside.)

This past week, I screened the urban farming documentary, Growing Cities, at my UU congregation and at the successful urban intervention, C’est La Via: Rethinking the Alleyways, as part of my work to get traction for Transition Palm Beaches. (If you’re interested in having me bring it to your organization or school, give me a shout at yogimarika at gmail dot com.) The comment I always make by way of introduction isn’t original with me, but I keep repeating it because it just makes sense: even if climate change wasn’t already disrupting life as we’ve known it, switching to a slower, lower-carbon, localized, community-centered life will make us happier and healthier, and contribute to environmental justice for all. By the same token, even if a techno-fix is just around the corner and we could continue to live our high-powered, fast-paced, mindless, wasteful lives, transitioning offers an alternative that more and more people, by choice or circumstances, hunger for (see Blessed Unrest). That’s the Plan B I am putting my faith in.

In my own backyard, plans advanced this week for our composting experiment and planting of a mini food forest. Edible landscaping! Bring it!

Here’s what my minister, CJ McGregor, just posted on Facebook:

Imagine growing our own avocados, mangoes, guava, papaya and other tropical fruit…..right here in our congregation’s back yard. Imagine abundance and offering fresh and organic fruit to migrant workers and their families. Imagine children who are hungry when school is not in session being offered a place to help grow and enjoy the literal fruits of their labor. Imagine inspiring the next generation to understand and respond to the real and devastating effects of climate change such as food shortages. Imagine the connections. Imagine vacant spaces on our campus becoming a grove of plenty. Imagine healing a bit of our community.

IMAGINE.

What the Frack?

Climate Fixes and Plan B’s: The IPCC’s Guide

Cinderella Technologies

The Energy Collective

If You Build It…

April 2, 2014 by Marika Stone, posted in environment, activism, localizing, Transition Movement

First, it was avocados we’d have to learn to live without. Now, it could be coffee. I like both…a lot, but I have an inkling that when coffee starts getting as expensive as Dom Perignon, it just might spark a million person save-the-biosphere march in Washington. Hey, I can dream, can’t I?

I’ve been around long enough to remember a few marches, and even marched myself. Sometimes, it had the desired effect, e.g. the anti-Vietnam War that effectively ended it. Civil Rights, although it didn’t wipe out racism. The equality for women movement, although we still earn significantly less than men. As a participant in the 2013 Walk for Our Grandchildren, I feel solidarity with student protests against the KXL pipeline, even though marching is nowhere near enough. In fact, perhaps it draws time and energy from more practical things you can do to reduce your personal carbon budget.

For our local Bike to Work Day last week, a friend of mine rode her bike 10 miles to and from her office, over an hour each way. She was sore and elated. Who wouldnt be? But like a march, this is a one-off, a gesture, more demanding than recycling our plastic waste but, in the long run, less effective than, e.g. giving up driving entirely; stop flying; shopping only at thrift stores; growing your food; creating a sharing network, time bank, or Transition Initiative.

As if the news (well, it was hardly that!) wasn’t dire enough, I am concerned that it might spawn an outbreak of fatalism. One of the most chilling quotes came from Mark Bittman’s Op-Ed April 1: “I guess I can stop worrying about my grandchildren,” as in, it’s now time to worry about ourselves.

In response to the latest IPCC report, Rob Hopkins did an amazing roundup of Transition activities around the world, what seems to be working, what isn’t quite there yet, and what could be more effective. I urge you to click on the link and read it in its entirety, especially if your spirits, like mine, are in the basement. For one thing, there are now over 1,000 Transition Initiatives, and 75% of them consider themselves successful. An independent study noted that:

“… these initiatives have been shown to be effective in bringing about behavioural change and in helping to establish new norms in society. The wider application of these approaches must, therefore, be seen as an essential element of any broader strategy on climate change.”

And this is being accomplished with “a markedly non-adversarial approach.” It’s Gandhi-like, modeling what is possible and letting people see that it works, and how it works.

“The most radical thing sometimes that you can do is actually vote with your feet and vote with your dollars,” says Andy Lipkis, founder and president of Los Angeles-based TreePeople, quoted in an interview with Hopkins. “We’re hacking the system and making it so much better.” This would be worth doing even if climate change wasn’t on our doorstep. If you build it …

Dog Days for Deniers

March 31, 2014 by Marika Stone, posted in environment, activism, localizing, Transition Movement

It has been a rough week for professional climate change deniers, and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of people! By professional, I mean those business interests whose deep pockets fund the status quo in all its forms, at the expense of the rest of us.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science—the world’s largest general science society—released a public information campaign called What We Know, to “present key messages for every American about climate change.” Then, The New York Times, which is increasing its coverage of the issue, weighed in, stark visuals of disappearing deltas and threatened islands included: Borrowed Time on Disappearing Land, Rising Seas and Worst is Yet to Come. If you donate to the Environmental Defense Fund or other environmental group, you’ve seen plenty of photos of endangered species. But how do you respond when it is our own kind in the cross-hairs? Example (albeit extreme): a Bangladeshi mother who loses her land and livelihood to rising seas, sells her son into indentured servitude.

“Climate change will soon be everyone’s problem,” is one comment to the Times reports. “It already is,” says a friend and Transition colleague who heads up an ecological arts nonprofit organization. She spends her time, much as I do, focused on ways to inspire and motivate community resilience in our vulnerable and deeply-in-denial adopted state of Florida. We are both grandmothers, informally members of the local chapter of Grandmothers Against BS.

Yet who, on a tennis-perfect day in Miami, watching Novak Djokovic beat Rafael Nadal for the championship, can be blamed for indulging in a little amnesia?Drive down to the recently opened Perez Museum and its neighbor, the under-construction science museum, check out a luxury, 154-unit condominium twin-tower with prices that start at more than a $1 million, all located on high-end Biscayne Bay. What data points are developers using that underpin such hubris?

Real estate is big business here, so I am riveted by some of the strangest examples of business-as-usual in full view, inspired by a real-estate craze on the California coast. You could be fooled into thinking this photo depicts the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy or an earthquake. In fact, it is a teardown, a way to keep a high-value location — waterfront property, this being Florida — to destroy in order to create. Is this any way to prepare for High Tide on Main Street? Is any attention being paid to information readily available at the touch of a keyboard, e.g. a report to Congress by David W. Titley, Read Admiral USN (Ret.), Ph.D.? “Today in Miami Beach at high tide,” Dr. Titley told the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Subcommittee on the Environment, “storm sewers routinely back up and flood seawater onto the streets they are supposed to be draining.” Whatever you are building, doesn’t this sound like a good time to adapt to the risk of flooding, consider raising your structures on stilts, not to mention installing solar panels to capture all that free sunshine? Inside the business-as-usual bubble, no one is aware of risky behavior or motivated to consider a different set of possibilities for the future. I used to live in a similar bubble myself, albeit on a smaller scale.

Full disclosure: Once upon a time, we had a vacation home on the San Andreas Fault. Our kids thought we were nuts. But we got used to frequent tremors, made it through the Northridge Quake, and after things returned to ‘normal,’ went back to casual speculation about The Big One. It was a California thing.

Call it maturity or becoming an elder. I don’t feel quite so light-hearted about my current home in coastal Florida, or the prospects for my family, friends and neighbors here, or anywhere, for that matter. That’s why I do what I do, knowing that Transition is a social experiment with no guarantee of success. That’s why I keep Rob Hopkins’ Cheerful Disclaimer in my mind.

• if we wait for the governments, it’ll be too little, too late
• if we act as individuals, it’ll be too little
• but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: