I’m here at the 5th Annual End Mountaintop Removal Week in Washington, joining residents from the coalfields of Appalachia in meetings with our Congressmen, gathering support for the Clean Water Protection Act (HR 1310) and the Appalachia Restoration Act (S 696).  This may be the 5th year, but the momentum is tangible.  We have 166 co-sponsors for the CWPA, bi-partisan support in both Houses and committee chairmen who are receptive to moving this forward. To build even more momentum, today is a National Call-In Day to urge your Congresspeople to support these bills.  Their offices are hearing from us in person and need to hear from even more constituents.

Please, take the two minutes to call your Rep.  Below are some of the most powerful points I’ve heard from local residents to communicate with members of Congress.

• Coal jobs are declining.  Mountaintop removal displaces deep mining jobs by replacing people with giant machines.
• Mountaintop Removal drives away jobs.  What business wants to start up in a place with undrinkable water, coal dust and blasting debris falling from the air and buildings that develop cracks in their foundations from the blasting?  As you can see above, mountaintop removal and poverty are highly correlated.  Coal is not the answer for economic revitalization.

• People cannot live without clean water.  When your water is brown, or black or red, don’t drink it. Don’t shower in it (the mist gets into your lungs).  Appalachia once has some of the cleanest, sweetest water in the country, because the mountains and their forests act as giant water filters.  When coal companies shove mountaintops into streams, not only does this pollute the streams, but it destroys the natural filtration.
• Support is needed from outside the region.  The almost non-existent enforcement of environmental protections, intimidation from coal companies and elected officials who were bought and paid for by coal money have worked to silence this issue.  Appalachia deserves to enjoy its rich natural resources, not destroy them forever.  Mountaintop removal has already destroyed an area the size of Delaware.  How many more states are we willing to sacrifice?

Please call your Rep.  We can change this.

Among the panelists were leaders and experts of the global justice movement like Martin Khor from the South Centre, Maude Barlow from the Council of Canadians, Victor Menotti of the International Forum on Globalization, Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, and Gopal Dayaneni from Movement Generation. You can view the full event online here, or by clicking the image below. I’ll discuss some highlights and possible movement-building lessons.

Movement-Melding in Copenhagen

The experts left very little doubt that the fight to avert climate catastrophe is the fight for the direction of the global economy.

Climate justice + development justice + trade justice = true global justice.

If, as panelists noted, the climate negotiations will eventually lead to the rewriting of the global economy then global institutions like the WTO and other unfair institutions of trade and development will have to change dramatically. For decades, social movements have resisted the globalization agenda of the international corporate elite. With the threat of climate change, the world has been forced to pursue fundamental economic transformation. That transformation presents tremendous opportunity, and so comprises the silver lining on the dark, looming clouds of possible climate catastrophe.

Problem is that too few of us in the global north are connecting the dots between the struggles of the global justice movement with the current fight for a fair climate deal.

Before I say more, here are some highlights from a few leaders and thinkers who are:

- Early on Maude Barlow makes the explicit connection between the unfair and anti-democratic process that played out in Copenhagen as parallel to what we see at the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva. Rich countries ganging up and bullying poorer countries, divide and conquer tactics, and ‘green room’ -esque VIP meetings where the ‘real’ decision are made, without voices of poorer countries or marginalized peoples (min 7:00).

- Martin Khor makes clear that by proposing to cap emissions, that leaders are “negotiating not only the future of humanity and the earth, we are also negotiating the distribution of the future GNP of the world” [emphasis mine]. Because the five major issues areas in the working groups “are no longer about climate science” only, shifting the global economic and development paradigm is explicitly required to avert catastrophic climate change. He then criticizes the exclusive and anti-democratic process, reminiscent of the WTO process, that produced the controversial Copenhagen Accord (beginning around min 11:30).

- Victoria Tauli-Corpuz points out the importance of the historic first inclusion of language regarding human rights and land rights of indigenous and local peoples in the climate negotiation document. Also, like the movement for global economic justice at the WTO, she emphasized the wisdom of using an inside-outside strategy to influence the negotiations inside AND support the social movement mobilizations outside the convention center (min 31:00).

- Victor Menotti notes how the each of the food, finance and climate crises has been caused by neoliberal economic orthodoxy that privileges corporate power over democratic governments, and by capture of global institutions like the WTO by corporate interests (min 38:00).

A spirited discussion followed, delving into a wide array of issues:

- Gopal Dayaneni insisting that a real solution will require indigenous and local peoples winning back rights over their land, ecologies and development paths (min 44:00).

- Maude Barlow pointing out the hypocrisy of countries negotiating new trade deals that further enshrine corporate economic development paradigm that relies on over-consumption and over-extraction, while purporting to green themselves in the climate negotiations (min 51:00).

- Victoria Tauli-Corpuz takes on the question of climate debt, and how indigenous peoples have led the fight to solve the problem by opposing fighting corporate extraction projects and with them the “dominant economic development paradigm” that facilitate it (min 1:06).

- Victor Menotti relates how lessons from fighting the WTO teach that we need to call out corporate power and spotlight who wins and who loses under proposed climate solutions and their corollary economic underpinnings. If we recognize that its not a poor country vs. rich country dynamic, but a fight of corporate elites vs. the rest of us (min 1:13).

The overall upshot of the panel was that the proper venue for solving the climate crisis is the U.N. Indubitably. Just solutions will not emerge from a more exclusive and corporate-captured venues like the G-20 or WTO.

Global Justice Movement at the Millennium

The lesson here for movement builders and campaigners is another. These experts, all steeped in peoples’ movements for a more just and sustainable world, call us to act now for justice beyond Copenhagen, and beyond the next climate summit in Mexico. To answer their call we must fundamentally challenge what Victoria Tauli-Corpuz calls the “dominant economic development paradigm” – one that not only causes global warming emissions but one that sews the very injustices and inequities that Gopal Dayaneni points out are what enable over-consumption and over-extraction.

Thus a good climate agreement is not, as Martin Khor mentions, just a matter of climate science or emissions targets. It never really was. There are those within the alter-globalization movement that highlight the need to turnaround failed trade policy in order to actually stave off climate change, and the youth climate movement does as good a job as anyone linking the struggles of people in the global south with those in the global north.

But to create sufficient pressure behind real solutions we’ve still got a long way to go. We need to find common strategies for building a revitalized movement for global justice – a progressively more holistic and vibrant one that bridges all the gaps that have divided us. That means organizing to confront every single global institution that promotes the “dominant economic development paradigm” like the WTO, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (and other development banks), and fight back against corporate control of our governments, especially the G-20 governments key to governance of each of these institutions.

The global justice and climate movements, then, are inextricably linked. In fact they are one in the same. and we must seize the moment and unite. Tuesday night’s visionary voices from the global south, and others representing marginalized people in the global north, proclaimed the need for just this sort of solidarity. We must continue to push the climate fight beyond the science and into the realm of global social, economic, and ecological justice for regular working people across the globe.

We in the global north need to step it up while the planet still hangs in the balance. You can almost feel the forces aligning, and hear the ranks forming. If we continue to grow together, an unprecedentedly vibrant movement awaits us.

(Originally posted at EyesOnTrade.Org)

The panelists touched on the importance of educating the masses, changing mindsets around energy usage, and how creating clean energy jobs could boost the local economy. Congressman Doyle explained how “the US will benefit from a green revolution,” and spoke about Pittsburgh’s importance as a hub for the new clean energy economy saying, “there doesn’t have to be a trade-off between a healthy environment and a good economy,” because clean energy jobs are just “good business sense.” The sentiment shared by all panelist was that even if we’re wrong about anthropogenic climate change, we’ll still have made the best economy in the world.

Angela Wiley, a student organizer at Chatham University remarked, “tonight, there was space for education, discourse, and political action — this needs to happen consistently if climate legislation is to be revived in the Senate to support what local governments and independent groups are already trying to accomplish with respect to a clean energy economy.”

Congressman Doyle went as far as to say that “we need a swell of grassroots support” and encouraged to keep the action going and build the dialogue in our communities. That’s exactly what the Pittsburgh Student Environmental Coalition, a new network of  local campuses and other area youth, did by hosting the forum. Forums like these, and hundreds of Define Our Decade events next month across the nation, will make climate and energy part of a real conversation, taking it from a transient topic in the media, to real solutions in our communities.

The discussion needs to shift, Adamo continued, to climate legislation as national security from an oil perspective to a technology perspective.  There’s widespread worry in the American public about our dependency on foreign oil – but we don’t want to turn this into a reliance on foreign manufacturers for solar, wind, and other renewable energy technologies when we have the capacity and expertise to develop and innovate in these areas within our own nation.

Unsurprisingly, both Adamo and Yates feel that Michigan is primed to take over the role of clean energy manufacturer.  According to Yates, green jobs have recently grown at a rate of 9.1% overall and 10.7% in Michigan. Yates pointed out that Michigan offers a tremendous physical, intellectual, and working infrastructure for clean tech industries to invest in.

Students from Michigan submitted questions for both Adamo and Yates, quizzing them on their bosses’ policies on everything from agricultural subsidies to fee and dividend, from EPA Clean Air Act regulation of CO2 to global regulation.

This last issue is particularly relevant in light of the recent climate change talks in Copenhagen, in which much of the discussion revolved around equity and the role developing nations need to play in comparison to developed nations.  What should the United States do if other countries refuse to impose controls on greenhouse gases?  According to Yates, Senator Levin has consistently argued that the best way to deal with global climate change is through global interaction – and, along with other Senators, has sent a letter to Obama outlining a number of principles to do this.  She finds it heartening that China and India have both submitted their commitments to greenhouse gas emission reductions – but points to the continued need for action to occur now.  Bills currently under consideration in the Senate have a variety of mechanisms to encourage other nations and trading partners to impose limits – one bill stipulates that international offsets should only be sold (to the US at least) from countries that are taking action to reduce either in a multi- or bilateral agreement; another would only provide new clean energy or energy efficiency technologies to those that agree to reduce GHG emissions; and a third would impose a sort of import tax on goods imported from countries that haven’t yet taken action.

Today’s discussion was the first in a series of discussions hosted by the Bard Center for Environmental Policy in the “Let’s Talk” initiative. Similar calls are being scheduled throughout the United States – giving students an opportunity to ask questions of their elected representatives about the issues surrounding climate policy that are important to them.  For more information, or to participate in this initiative, visit http://www.bard.edu/cep/lets_talk, or e-mail the Let’s Talk team at climate@bard.edu.

Coming up next …. a conversation with McKie Campbell, speaking about Alaskan Senator Lisa Murkowski’s policies on climate and environment.

The World Bank wants your opinion. No, seriously.

On February 9th, I attended a civil society consultation with representatives of the Bank’s social development and environment divisions, hosted in the middle of the United Nations Commission for Social Development. The Bank is preparing only its 2nd ever Environment Strategy, and is accepting input from pretty much any organization that either fills out their online form or attends one of their consultation meetings held throughout the world.

The first phase of consultations ends February 15, but you can keep making submissions and comments through August 15, both on big picture stuff like funding fossil fuel projects and details like economic modeling and surveying methodology.

It’s Getting Hot In Here bloggers and commenters have had a few things to say about the Bank recently, so here’s your chance to tell them directly.

Learn more about the consultations: wwwr.worldbank.org/environmentconsultations

Or jump straight to the submission form.

But talk to one of the many dedicated climate activists in this state, and they’ll tell you Oregon still has a ways to go.  Perhaps most glaringly obvious, there’s that tiny little coal plant in the city of Boardman, which spews out a hulking five million tons of carbon each year.  Then there are the three liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals which energy giants are trying to build on the Oregon coast, and which would serve as import sites for a new foreign, high-carbon fuel into the western United States.  Meanwhile, poorly planned transportation projects intended to accomodate Oregon’s fast-growing population are threatening to negate many of the emissions reductions made so far with new emissions from increased driving. 

Oregon is now in a position to continue building on its climate achievements, and truly become a national (perhaps world) leader in providing high living standards on a low-carbon budget.  But we’ve got a lot of challenges in front of us, and earlier this week several Oregonian climate activists had the chance to discuss Oregon’s bright green future with one of the state’s foremost political advocates of clean energy: 2010 gubernatorial candidate Bill Bradbury.

Convened by the Bill Bradbury for Governor campaign, Tuesday night’s Climate Change Round-Table was a chance for climate activists, the majority of us tending toward the younger end of the age spectrum, to join in a discussion with candidate Bradbury about the most important climate issues facing this state.  Questions from the dozens of people watching the Round-Table’s live stream on Facebook turned the discussion in new and sometimes surprising directions.  In the span of one hour (watch the live recording here), we covered the Boardman Coal Plant, proposed LNG imports, local farming, and the best ways to encourage renewable energy development.  Here are a few of the themes which emerged from this discussion:

1) Ending Oregon’s coal dependence.  As a participant in the campaign to shut down Oregon’s only in-state coal plant, I can’t say how good it felt to hear a serious candidate for governor talk about the Boardman Plant as “challenge number one” that Oregon must confront to claim its green future.  The coal plant’s owner, Portland General Electric, recently proposed shutting the plant down by 2020, but ten more years of burning coal at Boardman is simply too long.  A coalition of environmental groups continues to push for shutting down the plant by 2014 at the latest, and replacing the coal-generated energy from Boardman with renewable electricity sources.

2) Keeping Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) out of the state.  During his time as Oregon Secretary of State in 2008, Bill Bradbury became the first elected official chosen at the statewide level to publicly oppose LNG in Oregon.  Shipping LNG imports in from parts of the globe like Indonesia, Russia, and the Middle East gives this fuel a much higher carbon footprint than ordinary natural gas.  Further, opening Oregon’s gates to LNG would flood western US markets with a new foreign fossil fuel that has the potential to displace investments in truly renewable energy sources.  As if that weren’t enough proposed LNG pipelines would cut through and permanently degrade some of Oregon’s most fertile farmland which we need to produce food for a sustainable, local economy.  A clean energy future for Oregon is absolutely contingent on keeping LNG out of the state.

3) Investing in renewable energy and efficiency.  Oregon has already become a national center for clean energy industries – a bright spot in grim economic times.  A continued committment from our next governor to jobs-creating renewable energy and efficiency programs will be essential to weathering the rest of the recession, and putting Oregonians back to work.  Prompted by questions from those watching the Round-Table on Facebook, Mr. Bradbury discussed some of the hitches renewable energy tax credits have encountered in Oregon, which need to be smoothed out to create the most sustainable programs possible.  Yet everyone at the table clearly agreed that green energy development is important not only to Oregon’s environment, but our economy as well.

One thing which struck me during the conversation with Mr. Bradbury is that to maintain its position as a leader in all things green, Oregon will have to take this leadership to a new level.  With states and cities across the country entering the clean tech race and reducing greenhouse emissions, and national climate legislation on the horizon, the competition to capture the green market is a lot more fierce than it was a few years ago. 

With a governor committed to winning this competition, Oregon can stay on the cutting edge, attracting clean tech businesses and creating thousands of jobs retrofitting homes and buildings for greater efficiency.  It’s no time to rest on our laurels.  Oregon must demonstrate its committment to cleaner energy by phasing out the Boardman Coal Plant by 2014.  We must protect the clean energy market from a money grab by the liquefied natural gas industry.  And we must create government-supported programs to develop clean energy and make our use of energy more efficient. 

President Obama has said, correctly, that the country which leads the clean energy race will dominate the world economy in the years ahead.  Likewise, the states which begin the transition to clean energy as fast as possible will be positioning themselves to become centers of prosperity in a transformed United States of America.  It gives me hope for my home state that at least one serious candidate for governor understands this reality deeply.  It’s my hope that, whichever candidate for governor wins the election this year, they’ll continuing leading Oregon toward the bright green future I caught a glimpse of on Tuesday.

Minnesota is moving to encourage renewable energy by slapping a tariff on coal energy produced in North Dakota, and challenging the global economic order in the process.

And so opens another front in a much larger battle for the legal and policy space to enact common sense public interest regulations and curb the corporate profit crusade. It’s a fight that’s vital to the creation of a economic model that averts climate catastrophe and provides dignified living for workers.

Penalizing unsustainable or unethical products, or supporting sustainable and
ethical ones, is seen by public interest groups across the globe as a key tool for improving labor conditions and environmental standards. But free-market fundamentalists have long insisted that ’similar’ products, in this case electricity, must be treated ’similarly’.

Disgracefully, substantial differences in the ways a product is made are purposefully erased for policy-makers so corporations can hunt for cheaper inputs and thus higher profits. A toy made by a toxic-pollution dumping factory vs. a clean factory? Same. Clothes made with slave labor vs. union labor? Same. Energy generated in a way that fuels climate change vs. renewable energy? Its all the same under corporate free-market logic.

Correction: the original post said South Dakota, when it should have been North Dakota – changed above.

But the corporate types have been winning. They’ve gotten their faulty logic inscribed in our global trade pacts like NAFTA and the WTO, which provide harsh penalties for transgressions. In so doing they’ve been able to use the bogeyman of trade sanctions to stifle innovative, quality of life-improving policy tools.

Like the climate legislation passed in the House last year, which also would impose penalties on imports with insufficient carbon regulation, this time from other countries, the proposed Minnesota policy rubs up against the same profit-hungry logic by ‘discriminating’ against high-carbon energy.

But, even experts from vastly differing philosophical bents agree that in order to address the climate crisis, this logic is no good. Not only should the government intervene in the market to penalize high-carbon goods to stave off climate catastrophe, but it will have to do so in order to change failed trade rules to do so.

The corporate market fundamentalists won’t go down without a fight, and neither should we. That’s why groups like Public Citizen, Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club, the United Steelworkers union, the Teamsters, and a broad array of other unions and family farm groups are pushing to take back the space to protect workers and our environment with the TRADE Act. It’s a comprehensive blueprint for fixing our failed trade policies and restoring space for democratic policy space needed to trump corporate power. put people back to work, and save the planet.

Whether or not the Minnesota policy is implemented and upheld, the fight is on to take back the policy space necessary to win concrete improvements in production methods and labor conditions. The more we fight to shift the paradigm in favor of a sustainable global economy, the better.

(CrossPosted from EyesOnTrade)

Introduction
In August 2007, I participated in the Sierra Student Coalition’s annual leadership gathering, Shindig. At Shindig, I connected with dozens of inspiring youth leaders from around the nation. Leaving that week I saw myself as one person in a network of groups and individuals leading the way to a carbon-free future. I knew that by organizing our fellow students and communities to demand clean energy from the powers-that-be we could secure a sustainable and prosperous future. It was with this conviction that I returned to Michigan and threw myself into my new role as student coordinator of the Michigan Student Sustainability Coalition on the eve of Power Shift 2007.

On an unusually warm November 5, 2007 afternoon I stood with thousands of young people on the capitol lawn in Washington DC. Proudly, we wore prop green hardhats and waved “no new coal” signs as we listened raptly to the rousing speeches of Carol Browner, Edward Markey, Van Jones and others. Following the rally, the hundreds-strong Michigan contingent marched to the office of the aging John Dingell, who’s chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee was identified as a barrier to progressive climate legislation. One-hundred-and-fifty of us packed a room with his staff and voiced the urgent need for climate solutions and investments in greening Michigan’s decrepit industrial infrastructure. Despite the energetic optimism of the day, I boarded the bus back to Michigan asking myself “what if all of the organizing effort channeled into creating that weekend had been channeled into transforming our communities?” and was troubled by a thought I was unable to articulate at the time: by organizing Power Shift 2007, our movement invested more energy in projecting the image of young people demanding change, than it did in actually creating change. I was entirely complicit.

A period of burnout followed. Thankfully, with burnout comes questioning and reflection. As I learned more about climate change and the physical and social infrastructure at its root, my old assumptions crumbled, making room for the emergence of new understandings. My definition of the crisis our movement must address expanded to the ecological crisis, of which climate change is one intensifying variable. The ecological crisis, however, is facilitated by the exploitative flow of power within society and the greater biosphere. These power dynamics emerge from cultural relationships of alienation, which in turn stem from consciously-and-unconsciously-held collective metaphysical assumptions about the nature of ourselves, our fellow humans, and our biosphere. Together, these construct the foundation of systemic exploitation between humans and of the biosphere.

This introduction has presented glimpses of catalyzing moments and ideas that led to the formation of the backdrop upon which I work today. In the following section I ask: if this is the crisis we face, where does it point us? What are practical considerations for the path ahead? In answering these questions, I will discuss the operation of cultural relationships and collective metaphysical assumptions and strategies for changing them. This however will bring us to a dilemma: cultural relationships and metaphysical assumptions change over a long timescale, while averting the worst of the climate and ecological crisis requires swift action. I will attempt to resolve this dilemma by forwarding a new approach to movement strategy which emphasizes tactics that halt destruction of the biosphere and  reshape the flow of power in society.

A Primer on Collective Metaphysical Assumptions, Cultural Relationships, and Flows of Power
An example of a metaphysical assumption is “I am separate from the biosphere.” Whether or not it is consciously articulated, such an assumption is reinforced on a daily basis – chasing success in an office building, finding pleasure on a TV screen, and enjoying “nature” because it exists apart from the “real world” of modern life. When such an assumption is commonly held, it becomes a collective metaphysical assumption: “We are separate from the biosphere.”

Cultural relationships reflect collective metaphysical assumptions. The alienating collective metaphysical assumption of separation from the biosphere is reflected in our cultural relationship to the biosphere – exploitation and domination. In turn, this is manifested by the flow of power between society and the rest of the biosphere: systemic physical degradation and liquidation of ecosystems for resources. This is not to say that all members of our culture seek to dominate the biosphere, but that on the whole our culture exploits the biosphere because of alienated collective metaphysical assumptions.

Cultural relationships and collective metaphysical assumptions form and change in response to persistent conditions. Our culture creates its own persistent conditions, such as a constant electricity supply, which shape and produce new collective metaphysical assumptions. Thus, collective metaphysical assumptions and cultural relationships reinforce one another as they co-evolve.

It is also important to think of interactions between assumptions, culture, and power in terms of race, gender, class, and other oppressive expressions of hierarchy.

The Conundrum of Transforming Cultural Relationships and Metaphysical Assumptions
The purpose of transforming cultural relationships and metaphysical assumptions is to create a world in which the wrongs of the past are unimaginable. Many political movements have stated cultural change as a goal; some have created it. The abolition, feminist, and civil rights movements all achieved measures of equality, but have not fundamentally altered the flow of power in society. Branches of the environmental movement seek to foster cultural changes such as increasing conservation, or environmental awareness. While noble goals, these too fall short of transforming cultural relationships or the metaphysical assumptions that facilitate systemic destruction of the biosphere. I have seen calls for deep cultural transformation in our movement, but few discussions of how to bring it about.

Perhaps the sparsity of “how to”s on cultural transformation is indicative of the cultural transformation conundrum: there is no recipe for the cultural transformation we seek. If someone tells you there is one, don’t trust them. The best we can strive for is to create conditions from which non-alienating metaphysical assumptions can emerge to create cultural relationships that shape mutually empowering flows of power in society. It is up to us to imagine the conditions under which such a transformation could occur.

Attempts to transform culture without altering the persistent conditions that create and reinforce metaphysical assumptions will fail. Such is the fate of utopian movements. The hippie movement sought to bring about a cultural revolution of peace and harmony, but aside from its persistent drug use, did not employ tactics to alter the persistent conditions that shape people’s lives. The daily experience of reality is a far stronger force than the idealistic messages, whether from the mouths of hippies or youth climate activists.

To begin the conversation of what conditions could spur the emergence of non-alienating metaphysical assumptions, I’ll offer two ideas. First, the most important units of social organization could be federated neighborhood-sized communities. The cultivation and preparation of food is a part of every person’s daily routine. Both of these ideas would emerge not from a movement’s utopian ideals but as adaptive strategies to changing conditions; in this case the adaptations would be in response to the decline of nation-states and industrial food production.

The Urgent Long Term Change Dilemma
Clearly, creating the conditions for the emergence of non-alienating collective metaphysical assumptions is a long term endeavor – perhaps measured in centuries – but climate change and  ecological collapse are happening now. We are in a dilemma. By focusing solely on long term transformation we will miss our window of opportunity to avert the worst of the ecological crisis. By focusing on short term mitigation, we will only slow the ecological crisis and fail to address the flow of power in society. As a movement, we must adopt tactics that directly halt destruction of the biosphere and create momentum towards reshaping the flow of power in society.

Three Critiques
Such a focus would entail a radical departure from our current movement strategy. Our movement has three fatal flaws in our strategy for bringing about sustainability. Each merits in depth discussion, but at this juncture I will only identify them.

1. Our movement has focused on mobilizing a small constituency of socially conscious people with privilege (like me) for whom the status quo promises shelter from the worst of the ecological crisis. There is no urgent impetus for them to affect revolutionary change.

2. Alchemy, a predecessor of the scientific method, was a medieval practice in which people tried impossible feat of transmuting common materials into valuable minerals, such as led into gold. Our movement structures its strategy around alchemical assumptions about the interaction of advocacy and power. For example, if our goal is an ambitious and binding climate treaty and we gather 25 million petition signatures, generate 5 million phone calls, thousands of press hits, hold citizen lobby weeks, wine and dine key climate champion senators, publicize studies on green jobs, release green job video advertisements, and hold photogenic citizen day of action, there is still no reason to think it will produce the desired result. A leap of faith stands between our tactics and our goals.

3. The dominant economic and political institutions create the ecological crisis. Yet our tactics, such as legislative advocacy, consistently legitimize the institutions, flows of power and assumptions that produce the problem in the first place! Even if by chance our alchemical metaphysical assumptions proved true, and we brought about the creation of an ambitious and binding climate treaty, the result would be the mere slowing of climate change and the ecological crisis. We base our tactics on utopian dreams of what the state and economy could be rather than holistic assessments of what they are and how they act in the world.

Each of these flaws will prevent us from reaching our near term goals of mitigating climate change and staving off the worst of the ecological collapse and fail to put us on the path to long term transformation.

Suggestions
As a movement, we must develop adaptable long term strategies to halt destruction of the biosphere and reshape the flow of power in society by exploiting vulnerabilities in the physical and cultural infrastructure that maintains the status quo. I hope that this essay can spark discussion on what such a strategy would entail. Lets start with direct action.

The term direct action is often misunderstood as illegal actions. While direct action can at times fall outside of the realm of state-sanctioned actions – such as a blockading access roads for equipment on strip mines – but what distinguishes direct action from indirect action is the way in which the action uses power. Direct action is when an individual or group uses its own power to affect their desired change. Indirect action is when an individual or group tries to influence power they do not control (such as activists trying to influence state power) to affect the change they want. One can ask their grocery store to carry organic foods (indirect) or one can grow their own (direct).

Direct action strategies can combine economic development projects that increase a community’s capacity to meet its needs with its own resources and power with actions that physically reduce dominant political and economic institutions’ capacity to expand the exploitative flow of power and destruction of the biosphere. If effectively employed and proliferated such a direct action strategy has the potential to profoundly alter the flow of power in society.

It is important to note that our movement is not necessarily the most powerful engine of change in the time ahead. Indeed, today we are a blip on the political radar. We make it look sort of democratic. Don’t get me wrong, I love us, but with love comes honesty. From the Tea Party Movement to the World Trade Organization, many are actively planning the world of the future. In addition to these institutional forces, we know that the centuries ahead will be characterized by increasing climatic variability and geopolitical destabilization. In developing strategies for bringing about favorable conditions for non-alienating metaphysical assumptions, we must consider the dynamic interplay of state and non-state actors seeking to expand or maintain power in the face of an increasingly inhospitable world. The shifting terrain ahead will bring challenges and opportunities for direct action interventions and our movement and we must be poised to make the most of them.

A Caveat
To abandon all indirect action strategies would be FOOLHEARDY in the extreme. Current strategies to end mountaintop removal, which combine direct and indirect action tactics, seem to be gaining ground and moving dominant institutions towards a ban on mountaintop removal. However, strategies such as those employed by the mountaintop removal abolition movement must be better oriented towards building momentum towards our ultimate goals, otherwise, we’ll find that the draglines are right back at it come the next political cycle.

Risk Inversion: A Cogintive Barrier
I use the term risk inversion to convey the following observation. It feels safer to use ineffective  tactics that  keep us on track towards ecological collapse than it does to use tactics that have the potential to reshape the flow of power or directly halt destruction of the biosphere. Guaranteed loss feels safer than taking a chance at victory. In order to create and employ a direct action strategy, we must dismantle this cognitive barrier. Lets start a conversation on where this barrier comes from, how it operates to persistently disempower change agents, and how we can incorporate practices for overcoming it in our organizing.

Conclusion?
There is much more to be said and considered about each of the topics discussed in the post. Please join the conversation, online here, or email me anromu@gmail.com.

“The $100,000 Clean Energy Revolving Fund I helped build at Macalester College invests in efficiency projects on campus and puts the savings back into the fund. In its first year, we got a 40% annual return on investment. That’s a bunch of college sophomores with no financial training doing four times better than the stock market – when it’s not collapsing! What would it be like if we harnessed these opportunities, which a green economy provides all across the country?”

In this third post in the series (you can also check out Part 1 and Part 2), I’m going to cut to the chase:

If we want to get real, fundamental, and adequate action taken on climate change, it’s not enough to make it clear that we (even tens of millions of youth in that we), think it’s a good idea.

We have to make it clear that it’s 1. possible, and 2. a good thing all around.

This sounds like a no-brainer, but making that case convincingly can be hard.

A lot of the solutions that are most readily apparent – solar panels on roof-tops, hybrid cars, less consumption – are either way out of the reach of most people (and thus sound elitist), or are framed as a sacrifice. The mentality that a green economy is costly frequently creeps into our own thinking. It’s easy to advocate for spending more money on wind energy electricity or on a super-cool green building because it’s the right thing to do. Scaling up, I’m quite sure a lot of the debates you’ll hear at Copenhagen will revolve around how much wealth various countries should give up for the greater good of a sustainable planet and the well-being of future generations (us and those to come).

Sure it’s right, but is it smart?

I’m not arguing that smart is more important than right, or that we should ever advocate for things that are smart and not right. I’m simply suggesting that if we can’t demonstrate in actual real life that our vision is right AND smart, we’re going to lose.

I hope the insight of how to do so may be helpful as hundreds of youth climate leaders converge on Copenhagen and the struggle for a green economy continues on a thousand campuses and communities.

Read on for what the examples of the Clean Energy Revolving Fund and the Macalester EcoHouse – tales from my own experience that reflect the great work thousands of people across the globe are doing – have to say about being right and smart.As a freshman at Macalester in 2005, I noticed an ongoing treadmill of students developing and promoting campus sustainability solutions. A lot of these were really good ideas, as summarized in From Neat Ideas to Game Plans, but they tended to follow a predictable pathway. A team of students would get an idea, do research, build support, somehow get the logistics and funding figured out, actually implement the project, and be back to square one. Overall, it tended to emphasize that sustainability means a lot of work, hassle, and money – the task for the truly dedicated. In my mind, that was no way to shift a system.

It struck me that while  discussion tends to focus on how costly sustainability is, most of the truly meaningful actions save energy, water, or some other resource, which cut costs. If only we could find a way to channel that savings into a self-sustaining engine that would grow while supporting one project after another after another. Better yet, it would get people thinking “hey this makes sense, why did we never do this before?” and thus unleash the floodgates of creativity and innovation.

I started the Clean Energy Revolving Fund with a couple of other students – we talked with economics professors and managers of other college funds, built support from the student body and academic departments, and hammered through a charter for the fund during long late-night sessions. In retrospect, we made lots of mistakes – not the best financial return mechanism, small horizons (our goal was $100,000 seed funding at a school of 1900 students), and ambiguity in tracking and management. At the time it was heady and innovative.

I drafted the fund’s charter in March 2006, and by the end of April, we had secured $20,000 from the student government – one of the largest single capital requests in its history – and $7,000 from the Environmental Studies Department. In both cases, CERF was recognized as a risk, but a risk with huge potential, and that the alternative was to keep pouring resources into one-time events that did not lead to something greater (like our current energy system one might say). We approached these sources first because we felt that the college administration would be hesitant around such a big idea without commitment from other parties.

In October 2006, we got an additional $40,000 from the administration (later supplemented in late 2007 by another $35,000 for an all-campus lighting retrofit). In May 2006, we held our first meeting of the Clean Energy Revolving Fund (CERF, pronounced “surf”) Board – yeah, it’s the CERF Board – which has students, faculty, staff, and alumni members.

The concrete outcomes of the fund have been great: insulating campus buildings, installing water-saving equipment, and doing a full-campus retrofit of 18,000 four-foot light-bulbs (a $70,000 project with $30,000 annual savings and a roughly 5% impact on Macalester’s energy use).  Despite a number of early monitoring and accounting glitches, the fund is growing.

The biggest impact, was the shift in mentality. Students started to think strategically about project impacts, built valuable career skills, and pursued their campus sustainability work along a clear path to success. The administration shifted too – rarely do you hear concerns that it’s too hard, too bold, or too costly anymore. Instead, they look at big ideas for how we revamp our campus (and hopefully soon help surrounding communities to do the same) and ask ‘is it smart?’ The message is no longer ‘please spend resources on this.” It is:  “invest here, and get returns in $, sustainability, learning, justice …’ A conversation with our college president hit me with the significance of our strategy. To paraphrase, he said ‘this is the kind of academic and civic engagement opportunity that a school like Macalester would love to support anyway, it’s just a question of prioritizing resources. But here, you’re arguing that you can do it for negative cost. Makes sense.’

In 2007, my friend Asa Diebolt and I wrote a guide for  students seeking to build revolving funds, published with the help of AASHE. Since then, dozens of college campuses have used it to launch revolving funds in colleges nationwide. That’s the promise – it works at Macalester. It should work at thousands of other campuses. It should work in communities nationwide (more on that in a future post).

Even before CERF was really on its feet, Macalester student leaders were taking the concept of demonstrating this innovation in a new realm – creating an EcoHouse. High-tech eco-themed buildings had already sprouted up on campuses around the country, most costing hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars. We wanted to start from a different premise – that the greenest building is the one you don’t build. Since 75% of the buildings that will be around in 2050 are already standing (in the US), our greatest impact, we reasoned, would be by finding a cost-effective, replicable, and compelling way to make a green building out of an existing building.

The idea sparked in Fall of 2006, was refined, developed, and advanced through Spring 2007, overhauling the actual building was done in summer 2007, and four students were living in it by Fall 2007. The $50,000 project budget included replacing the decaying roof (from asphalt shingles that leach petrochemicals to a steel roof that lasts twice as long), insulating the building, buying high-efficiency appliances, installing a bathroom solar tube, adding edible forest landscaping (sounds cool, right?), worm composting, and installing a solar hot-water heater on the adjacent garage. While the paybacks for different improvements vary, this was a pretty inexpensive overhaul for a building that was already in need of repair. You can read more about the EcoHouse here.

The EcoHouse is an evolving space – it hosts campus and community tours on how to replicate its success, and students develop new projects around it on an ongoing basis. Particularly, it “looks normal” – serving as a great model for everyday people who are on a budget and don’t want a futuristic house. A recent visitor from another campus was delighted because the big obstacle he was facing was that the administration didn’t want to impose some new-age design on the community. Green doesn’t have to be expensive, unexpected, or even look all that different, it’s the way human systems cycle with broader ecosystems that matter.

For a moment, imagine the contrast if our first step had been to ask Macalester to pay $100,000 per year to fund sustainability projects. Or if we had said we wanted hundreds of thousands for a high-tech green dorm with new-fangled architecture and landscape design. The potential for scale, the mentality of collaboration, and the vision of accessible, pragmatic, and sweeping solutions would all have been much reduced. Through our method, both those things and much more are within the realm of feasibility at Mac. We created the possibility.

A key closing point here: These and many other victories weren’t results of policy. They generated the momentum for policy. Macalester’s innovative sustainability plan, which I highlighted in part 1, was derived from the insights and innovations gained through these and other projects. Innovative implementation isn’t the outcome of bold policy action, it’s what forms the dream and informs the mechanism by which bold policy is created – and it is what gets replicated when bold policy works. It’s what verifies that the bold visions we are pushing for are 1. possible and 2. a good thing all around.

In the essential film The Story of Stuff, Annie Leonard says, “Our primary identity has become that of consumer.” This is certainly a disturbing notion for those of us who are trying to steer our society toward sustainability.  Perhaps even more disturbing, though, is the way that environmentalists endorse and ultimately perpetuate this mutation of our humanity.

The vast majority of times green groups ask people to act, it centers on changing our consumption habits.  At first glance this makes sense.  If consumption is the problem, shouldn’t we try to change the way people consume?  The catch is that every time we focus on how individuals can change their consumption, we are sending the message that their real power to make a difference lies in how they shop.  This simply reinforces the cultural myth that the most important part of who we are as people is our role as a consumer.

That myth is a lie.  We are much more than consumers.  We are citizens of what was once the greatest…

democracy on the planet, citizens with the ability and responsibility to change our government.  We are human beings with the power to inspire others through our creativity, our sacrifice, and our courage.  These are the parts of humanity we must point to when we call others to action.

The focus on individual consumption habits comes from the notion that changes on any level start with personal transformation.  That is certainly true, but not all personal transformations are created equal.  Changing people from being obsessed with consumption to being obsessed with green consumption is not going to get us to real sustainability.  We need transformations away from consumer-centered identity into human-centered identity.  We need personal evolution into engaged and demanding citizens and into bold and creative activists.  We need the kind of transformations that awaken us to our own potential and remind us that we are not helpless.

Of course, those consumption habits do need to change if we’re going to have a livable future.  But to get that sustainable culture, who we are as consumers will have to become a small part of who we are as human beings.  When we start people on that road of personal transformation, we automatically attack that pathological overconsumption.  The spiritual void which begs for material consumption begins to be filled by a more human identity.  In order to truly be the change we want to see in the world, we environmental leaders might have to stop talking to people about their consumption so much.

When I ask people to take action against climate change, they often think what I’m asking them to do is impossible.  If someone only sees herself as a consumer, it makes sense that she cannot see her potential to be an agent of fundamental change in our society, economy or political system.  I suspect this is responsible for much of the helplessness many people feel when addressing huge issues like climate change.  Our job in Peaceful Uprising is to show people that they are not helpless.