It's Getting Hot In Here » Jon Warnow

How To Be Hopeful: Obama vs. Kingsolver

Jon Warnow — Wed, 28 May 2008 08:16:11 +0000

For 1.5 million lucky people in the United States, the month of May is pretty damn sweet. On college and university campuses from coast to coast, May means Commencement. With a Capital C. It’s a memorable day for all: loved ones gather, snapshots are taken, fond friendships are sealed, and whole chapters of our lives close and open on this critical milestone. It’s a day to reflect on our past and our future, and perhaps more importantly, to wear crazy square hats and a big black dress.

At the nation’s premier institutions, Commencement can be quite the star-studded event. Each May, celebrities descend on the ivory towers and give a speech to provide graduates with a little boost as they venture out of their collegiate bubbles and into the big scary world. The Class of 2008 brought two heavyweights to the floor. Gracing Wesleyan’s campus in place of Senator Ted Kennedy was the one, the only, the inimitable hopemonger from Illinois…Barack Obama! And at Duke University, Barabara Kingsolver unleashed her jaw-dropping eloquence on an audience that included her graduating daughter.

Both of their speeches gave some serious air-time to climate. Obama’s semi-predictable patter was subtly elegant, and enough to make you excited about him totally owning that bully pulpit in ’09.

But it was Kingsolver whose words rang truest for me. Her potent speech, “How to Be Hopeful,” takes on many of the big things: Wisdom, Happiness, Love, Economics, Community, Climate. Please, go read it. But only click through when you have time to absorb it–it’s not really the kind of thing you want to skim.

Speech teasers and an open call for inspiration after the jump…

Obama and the as-yet-unannounced Clean Energy Service Corps:

At a time when our ice caps are melting and our oceans are rising, we need you to help lead a green revolution. We still have time to avoid the catastrophic consequences of climate change if we get serious about investing in renewable sources of energy, and if we get a generation of volunteers to work on renewable energy projects, and teach folks about conservation, and help clean up polluted areas; if we send talented engineers and scientists abroad to help developing countries promote clean energy.

Kingsolver on…the big picture:

How can we get from here to there, without burning up our ship? That will be central question of your adult life: to escape the wild rumpus of carbon-fuel dependency, in the nick of time. You’ll make rules that were previously unthinkable, imposing limits on what we can use and possess. You will radically reconsider the power relationship between humans and our habitat…

The arc of history is longer than human vision. It bends. We abolished slavery, we granted universal suffrage. We have done hard things before. And every time it took a terrible fight between people who could not imagine changing the rules, and those who said, “We already did. We have made the world new.” The hardest part will be to convince yourself of the possibilities, and hang on. If you run out of hope at the end of the day, to rise in the morning and put it on again with your shoes. Hope is the only reason you won’t give in, burn what’s left of the ship and go down with it. The ship of your natural life and your children’s only shot.

This is the kind of thing that gives me the sort of personal fuel that I suspect will last for quite some time–it’s a perfect antidote to burnout. Which brings me to a question that I’ve been curious about: what have you read recently that’s blown your mind and kept you fighting the good fight? It’s May, after all–which means Commencement, and it also means I’ve got to get my summer reading list together. Let me know in the comments…

Green Fingers, Storytelling, and The Making of a Collaborative Video

Jon Warnow — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 04:43:25 +0000

One of the climate movement’s most important (and most neglected) questions is this: how do we tell our story? We’re all taking part in a seriously bad-ass and inspiring tale: people of all stripes, motivated by a wide variety of reasons, coming together with a fierce passion for taking action on the biggest challenge of our day. At the Step It Up action center, we were sitting around trying to figure out new ways to tell the story of the rumbling global movement around climate change. And we were sort of stumped.

But the more we thought about it, the more we started to realize that our culture’s primary mode of communication is becoming more digital, more visual, more personal, and more collaborative. Keeping this in mind, here’s the storytelling idea we just came up with:

The Green Finger – What Are You Voting to Protect?

It’s an ongoing, evolving video project, and if it’s going mean anything at all, we need you to add your voices (and, um, fingers) to the video. So take a minute and let the world know where you’re at—What Are You Voting to Protect? What’s Under Your Green Finger? Post Your Video Response Here. People have already started responding–this group in New York City just took the idea and ran with it. At hundreds of Step It Up actions across the country on November 3rd, fingers will go green and videos will be made…anyone want to transform more fingers at PowerShift?

Personally, I’m fascinated by new ways we can tell our story. What really works? What gets heard outside the choir? What engages people deeply, and what’s just a distraction? What do you all think?

Announcing. . .Step It Up 2007!

Jon Warnow — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 01:42:02 +0000

So here we stand at the dawn of 2007: our erratic climate has the American public positively freaked out, Congress is abuzz with talks of carbon caps, the burgeoning climate movement is better networked than ever before, and the scientists are telling us we have less than ten years to turn it all around.

We’re at the climate precipice folks, no doubt about it. The view from here makes one thing abundantly clear: to make our political leaders take action on what has been called “the greatest threat civilization now faces,” the climate movement must come together in a way that is more united, synchronized, and widely distributed than ever before. In other words, the time has come to Step It Up.

To that end, environmental journalist and all-around climate badass Bill McKibben is working with a crew of youth climate activists to create a new kind of political advocacy. We’re inviting communities across America to take part in Step It Up 2007: a single day of coordinated grassroots action pushing for bold national climate legislation. On April 14^th, there will be hundreds of actions—there will be people rallying on mountaintops, at churches, in city parks, and on Campus Climate Challenge campuses nation-wide. We’ll all be demanding the same thing: that Congress pass laws to cut carbon 80% by 2050. With the latest technowizardry on our side, we’ll be using the internet to funnel our photos, audio, video, and text messages into one strong message to jumpstart Congress to pass climate legislation that is actually informed by the latest climate science.

This is a homegrown, do-it-yourself action, and we need everyone on board—from veteran climate organizers to small-town ministers, from EJ activists to green-tech entrepreneurs. But maybe more than anything, the youth voice must come through as loud, clear, and uncompromising. So check out our website, get your community on board, and then spread the word far and wide. Tell your Mom. Tell your professors. Tell your entire list of e-mail contacts. Together, we’ll all tell congress. Then in 50 years, you can tell your grandkids: I stepped it up and helped turn the tide on climate change, rallying with my community and my country on a sunny spring day way back in 2007.

To read a piece about Step It Up 2007 by Bill McKibben, click here to be taken to the Grist.
To sign up to organize an action, click here to get started.

The Concrete Canvas & Creative Media Channels…

Jon Warnow — Thu, 02 Nov 2006 09:07:38 +0000

If we’re going to convey the urgency of acting on climate change to a diverse audience, we need to start coming up with creative new ways to get our message out. Writing letters to the editor is still a worthwhile and necessary pursuit, but we must take advantage of every medium available to us. This means sometimes working outside of the important but traditional channels of newspapers, radio, film, and even the internet. Tonight, one London group that calls themselves The Prophets of Hope is executing what they call “a daring night time art attack” by turning urban icons into canvases for poignant messages about climate change. The group will use powerful light-projection equipment to emblazon otherwise drab and underused concrete with glowing, thought-provoking text. A bad ass action, and inspiration to get us all thinking a bit more creatively about grabbing people’s attention…

What other overlooked media can we use to get our message out?

A Few More Travelers on the Road Less Traveled

Jon Warnow — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 21:23:14 +0000

(Guest Post by Will Bates)

For years now we have been calling for action on global warming. We have been calling for a movement to stir up change and demand leadership on this, the most urgent and pervasive of issue of our time. Throughout many of those years, hope was a limited resource. Global warming is showing no signs of subsiding. But this past weekend, we learned that neither are the people. Hope is increasingly becoming infused into our lives and our action.

This past Labor Day, hundreds of Vermonters completed a five day trek across west-central Vermont on a walk called “From the Road Less Traveled: Vermonters Walking Toward a Clean Energy Future.” (For Bill McKibben’s notes from the walk check out his dispatches in The Grist. The walk was a success on every level. Those who walked the full five days, or even part way, though fatigued and warn from countless steps across the unforgiving asphalt, enjoyed the creation of a new community of passionate friends. Our walk was not simply a political act. It included music, local foods, laughter, adventure, spiritual enrichment, and worship. A profound energy and spirit guided our walk as we grew and grew in numbers approaching Burlington, Vermont’s largest city.

Monday morning we started off with roughly 450 or 500 folks walking from Shelburne Farms turning north for the final 8 miles of our journey into Burlington. As we neared our destination our numbers swelled to around 700, stringing out over half a mile through the Burlington streets. The group flowed into Battery Park overlooking Lake Champlain, mountains and hills glowing in scattered sunlight, and we gathered around a stage to engage our Vermont political candidates on this most critical issue. At walk’s end with fifty miles of concrete behind us, memories and support abound, over 1000 people stood together to witness our political candidates sign a pledge committing to real action. Democrats and Republicans alike complied in responding to us, the people, and committed to working for 80% carbon reductions by 2050, 20% renewable energy by 2020, and automobile mileage standards of 40 miles to the gallon. We created a new minimum standard for what serious political candidates in Vermont must do to be elected.

It was a glorious sight, and generated a new hope. The movement is taking off. Let’s run with it. Let’s make our road less traveled the mainstream. We won’t make it a highway. It will remain the beautiful, friendly roadway we enjoyed here in Vermont, but it will be filled with hopeful, thriving communities. Our politicians will come take this road with us if we build it. Onwards…

From the Road Less Traveled…And the Many Variations of “Ruckus”

Jon Warnow — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 20:44:33 +0000

Perusing the archives of It’s Getting Hot In Here, one thing becomes abundantly clear: there is no single perfect way to raise a ruckus about climate change. Every direct action, every media campaign, and every political initiative is shaped by the talents of the activists, the nature of the audience, and the resources of the specific environment. Ruckus, in other words, has many interpretations. Australia is surrounded by water, so they raise a ruckus by kayaking for clean energy. In Montreal, they have an unhealthy appreciation for ice hockey, so their ruckus demands us to “Drop The Gloves On Climate Change.” In Ontario…well, in Ontario, they have an abundance of natural groove, so they all shake their collective ass.

Here in Vermont’s Chaplain Valley, we have a disproportionate number of beautiful roads, and are blessed to have central outdoor meeting spaces in every major town. So, it only make sense that we would come together on labor day weekend to embark on a five-day walk, stopping at five towns along the way to hold community discussions about climate change on each town’s green. It’s a journey Gandhi would be proud of…

The walk, dubbed “From the Road Less Traveled: Vermonters Walking Toward a Clean Energy Future” (we can’t get enough Robert Frost in Vermont), will take place from August 31–September 4, and everyone’s invited. Walkers can expect a good deal of blisters and body odor, and…oh yeah, incredible discussions about climate change, live music, and the chance to stand with your neighbors next to guys like Bill McKibben and John Elder to grill some politicians about climate change and a clean energy future.If you need more convincing, Bill McKibben has taken the time to pass on this personal invitation. If you’re already sold, click here for a detailed schedule or click here to sign up. Join us to raise a uniquely Vermont-style ruckus, and fall into step on the road less traveled…