It\’s Getting Hot In Here

Let me count the ways!

3. The Safety

“I think the bicycle has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives a woman a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. The moment she takes her seat she knows she can’t get into harm unless she gets off her bicycle, and away she goes, the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.” – Susan B Anthony

While we all know that bicycling is a critical alternative mode of transportation, those living in cities of bike lanes and traffic laws often forget just how challenging riding bicycles can be, and just how empowering and emancipating it can be. The following is crossposted from the India Climate Solutions blog, written by Rudmila Rahman of Arohi Cycling

On Friday, February 25, a group of 30 passionate women from diverse walks of life got on their bicycles and rode through Dhaka to promote bicycles as an alternative means of mobility for women in Bangladesh. We cycled more than 5 kilometers together, through the streets of Dhaka, in the rally organized by Arohi – Bangladesh’s first women’s cycling initiative aimed to gather a critical mass of individuals who are interested to promote cycling for women in Bangladesh in order to ride a bicycle to work, school or for recreation, with an aim to break the stigma attached to a girl on a cycle.

They believe this, in turn, will promote freedom of mobility in Dhaka for women, as well as a cleaner environment. Bangladeshi women face significant barriers from family, neighbors and society in getting on a bike a riding around town in bright daylight. Freedom of mobility is seriously curtailed in Dhaka if women don’t feel safe to travel independently in their own city. Over 35% of female commuters in Dhaka depend on a cycle rickshaw and as more major roads ban these rickshaws, daily mobility for women is threatened furthermore. Arohi’s tagline: “Pedaling the way to empowerment” summarizes the links that we plan to draw between cycles, mobility and empowerment.
Continue reading ‘Cycles of Change: Pedaling to Empowerment in Dhaka’

When drought parches wells and streams,
someone must carry water. When storms bring devastation
and disease, someone has to nurse the sick.
Climate change hits hardest on the planet’s vulnerable edges.
If women hold up half the sky, what do we do
when it seems the sky is falling?

- Barbara Kingsolver, Ripple Effect Images

On International Women’s Day, it’s hard not to think about the most vulnerable, the women all around the world whose lives are being most impacted by climate change. As Kingsolver described, it’s women and girls who are travelling farther to bring water to their homes, walking for hours a day, eliminating many girls’ already-slim chance to attend school. It’s women who cook for hours in their kitchens, breathing in the smoke from cookstoves that pollute their lungs and their air. And, it’s women who are often last to eat, even when the first responsible for putting food on their families’ plates, even in the face of increasing food scarcity.

Hillary Clinton recently echoed Madeleine Albright in saying that issues of gender equality are issues of national and global security, and the impacts of climate change are woven tightly between the two. We cannot solve the challenges of climate change without empowering and educating women, and we cannot solve our other global challenges without addressing climate change. As Time recently wrote, “If you want to change the world, invest in girls.”

Empowering female entrepreneurs and political leaders has never been more needed nor more possible. There’s Solar Sister in Africa and Barefoot College in India, training women as solar engineers and entrepreneurs; Wangari Maathai and the Green Belt Movement, planting trees and hope across Africa; dozens of groups of women constructing rainwater harvesting and catch dams. See the impact of giving female leaders better information about development decisions, training women on basic green technologies, and getting cleaner cookstoves into women’s homes.

These programs not only make women stronger, but help their families and communities. The World Food Programme reports that women who earn, invest 90 percent back into their families, and back into their communities. Investing in women means investing in communities, in truly sustainable development. Today, the problems and their solutions are closer than ever: “Help a Woman. Help the Planet.”

Crossposted from Environmental Defense Fund Blog

In Delhi, it’s easy to lose hope in the fight for environmental protection and climate mitigation – a thousand new cars every day; thousands of tons of garbage that make their way to the landfills coming from millions of homes, industries, and street sides; constant new construction of flyovers and widening of roads; and the sensation that it is too big for any individual, even any well-intentioned local politician to make a difference.

An overnight train ride away from Delhi, though, there exists another world. One that is full of enormous challenges in a rapidly changing climate, but also one full of Himalayan hope. The Environmental Defense Fund, in partnership with the Hunger Project and local NGOs in Uttarakhand, are giving female political and community leaders the tools they need to be able to engage in the development decisions happening every day.

One cold but warming day in mid-January, I had the honor to join Richie Ahuja to visit a leadership program, bringing together more than 100 of these female leaders from throughout the Kumaon district. Some of these women (and three generations of their family members) travelled by bus for more than 2 hours to reach this workshop, through winding mountain passes from their villages. Many of these women were Sarpanches (elected heads of villages) or members of their panchayat (an elected board of community representatives), while others were community leaders of other kinds, working with Self-Help Groups in their village. Continue reading ‘Himalayan Hope: Sustainable Development in India’

Today is a hot, sticky day in Delhi, almost 90 F in the shade, and in my apartment, less than ten years old, I’m sweating as I type underneath the fan. In fact, I’m sweating even when I turn on my air conditioner. And yet, outside, in Delhi’s most beautiful park, Lodhi Gardens, I can sit outside in an open air tomb built almost five hundred years ago, and I feel cool.

If I were in Jaipur right now, in hot, dry western India, where it is more than 100 F, and yet feels like 70 inside the forts of the ancient Rajput kings. Admittedly, it may be hotter now than it was in the summer of 1734, when it was built, but these palaces were designed to keep their residents cool without electricity, conditioned air and refrigerants. How? By recognizing some fundamentals of heat and physics. If we want to design for the future, we need to learn from the past. Continue reading ‘Learning from the Past, Designing for the Future’

If recycling launched the environmental conscience of a generation in the 70s, perhaps upcycling can launch the next. From TerraCycle‘s incredible model of reclaiming waste and turning it into beautiful products to waste paper bead necklaces being made in Kenya and Nigeria, from Haathi Chaap making poo paper from elephant, camel and rhino dung to the newspaper bags, earrings, and paper baskets being woven and folded in India, the beauty of upcycling is self-evident. In India, organizations like Conserve, Thunk and Green the Gap are creating art from value-less waste, including plastic bags, Mother Dairy milk packets, and poly-al chip packages.

While innovative, upcycling is not new. The idea of “kabaad se jugaad” (making good from waste, or best out of waste, depending on how you translate it) is common practice in India. Whether making roofs from tarps or vinyl advertisements or turning every piece of valuable waste into a recycling commodity with every street’s kabaadi-wallahs (waste collectors, recyclables’ purchasers), India has long known how to convert waste into gold.

Composting, making khadh, is common in villages, where all waste is biodegradable, or at least, until a few years ago (or a few months from now). The process of plastic integration into these communities is not a question of if it will enter but when it will enter (sadly), and waste can no longer be managed in khadh piles in village corners. Yet, kabaad se jugaad can still apply for food waste – if we open our eyes to the value in every banana peel. The organizations that are looking into urban and rural composting and biogas generation from food waste are actively attempting to transform the perception that food scraps are waste into the understanding that these scraps are just raw compost!

Last Sunday, in the center of urban consumerism in Delhi, Khan Market, Manzil launched its composting system. With a street play in Hindi, bollywood songs with compost-focused rewritten lyrics, and great dancing, the compost party was the first step to young people feeling that waste was something to be discussed, even celebrated. Using Daily Dump units, Manzil has begun a small step towards sustainability for the market — one we’re working towards replicating on a much larger scale.

But why share it on IGHIH, a climate blog? Because every kilo of food waste composted is one kilo not transported for 15 kilometers to the landfill. It’s one kilo that doesn’t decompose creating methane emissions. And it’s one kilo that creates organic fertilizer to replace energy intensive and environmentally damaging chemical fertilizers.

And, most importantly, it’s one kilo of change. Change is addictive. Waste is a way for us to transform communities that allows them to see ways to change the even more challenging problems: of energy resources, of water recycling, and of our consumption patterns.

Plus, it’s one step closer to us living kabaad se jugaad — to take the wastes we are given and to turn it into value — whether an inherited energy system, governmental failures to regulate industry, or physical “wastes” and find a way to create transformation. Are you ready? Kabaad se Jugaad.

I’m writing this from New Delhi, thousands of miles away from the tragically polluted Gulf Coast, and I’m crying. This crisis has felt so far away from me over the past few weeks, as I’m sure the droughts of Andhra Pradesh and the water crises in Karnataka have felt far from people in Washington D.C. for so many years. Last night, someone asked me why the United States was so slow to act when a global crisis was already affecting so many people here. That’s just it — it’s affecting people here. Climate change isn’t affecting Americans in the same way, yet.

But the Gulf Coast oil spill IS. So why don’t they get it? When Barack Obama sent Organizing for America an email this morning, why did he first make me cry with the sadness of the real impact of communities there – the destruction of ecosystems, of livelihoods, of entire communities – and then make me cry with the deep sadness of his misunderstanding of what the real crisis is. The email said, “That is why, from the beginning, we have worked to deploy every tool at our disposal to respond to this crisis.” He’s wrong:

I have not seen a real response. I have not seen ambitious energy policy that will remove America from fossil fuels. I have not seen a ban on offshore drilling (which cannot be done without risks, no matter what BP says). I have not seen fierce speed in responding to a leak, nor fire in response to a company which did not plan for a disaster. This same email said, “If laws are inadequate, they will be changed.” All laws are inadequate that do not get the United States towards an clean energy economy and off of our fossil fuel addiction.

However, last night, on World Environment Day, I heard Farooq Abdullah, India’s Minister of New and Renewable Energy, (remind me why the US doesn’t have one?) say very clearly: You’ve seen the crisis in the Gulf Coast, and while it is far away, the same crisis could happen close to us if we continue our dependence on oil. “The time has come that our dependence on fossil fuels must end.”

India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has made a bold step, committing to 20,000 MW of solar in the next 10 years. Why can’t Obama? As Friedman said really nicely, “Mr. President, this is your time, this is your moment. Seize it. A disaster is an inexcusable thing to waste.” If Manmohan isn’t wasting the oil spill, why is Obama? If Farooq Abdullah gets it, why can’t America?

Area fire and ambulance crews arrive near the scene in Middletown, Conn., Sunday, Feb. 7, 2010. Multiple people have died in an explosion at a power plant in Connecticut and an unknown number of people are injured. (AP Photo/Richard Messina, Hartford Courant)

This morning, at 11:30 am, Middletown’s Kleen Energy Power Plant suffered a major explosion,  believed to be when a gas line caught fire during testing. Friends who work at the plant said that there were 50 – 100 construction workers, engineers, and plant managers who were inside. As of 12 pm, Middletown firefighters had only found 9 individuals. Since then, five* have been reported dead, with casualties and injuries expected to be many more. Firefighters from around the state came into the plant, with Hartford and Boston’s search-and-rescue teams both coming to Middletown to help clear the wreckage and free workers still stuck inside.

Workers at the plant were working long shifts, trying to finish the plant on a tight schedule. Matthew Lesser, Middletown’s representative to state government, said, “As I understand it, they were testing a gas line when the explosion took place but we’re not sure. Our first priority is making sure that everyone there is safe.” Continue reading ‘CT Gas Power Plant Explosion Reminds Fossil Fuels are Deadly’

It’s been incredible to read many of the reflections during this month’s Climate Generation series, and I’m honored to have a chance to think about the movement and where we stand now. I’m so grateful that so much of my history in the movement has already been shared in the telling of our history in this series – from meetings in college basements to meetings on Capital Hill; from the hundreds at the Northeast Climate Conference to thousands at PowerShift; from Stepping it Up on campus to stepping it up worldwide on October 24; from first singing “It’s Hot in Here” while marching in Montreal to a vigil of thousands in Copenhagen. I am so grateful to have shared the growth of the movement with you.

It’s also been wonderful to read about what the movement here in the US has been mulling over the past two years, while I’ve been on the other side of the planet, working in India with the Indian Youth Climate Network and the early stages of so many other international youth movements on climate change. I have been so lucky to learn so much from my peers globally and to have been forced to rethink all assumptions, particularly about how change happens. In many ways, our theories of change differ dramatically worldwide, as do the tactics that feel most natural to create change. If we want to continue to build a global movement, we must continue building our respect for these diverse approaches and diverse tactics.

Continue reading ‘Climate Generation: Diverse Tactics Driving Change’