Maria Gunnoe, organizer with Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, shows coal dust she wiped off Frankie Mooney's home in Twilight, WV

congressional newspaper in Washington DC, published a set of opposing op-eds yesterday just as the 5th Annual End Mountaintop Removal Week in Washington wrapped up.  See Blankenship’s here and RFK Jr.’s here.

This follows the televised debate of Blankenship and Kennedy in Charleston, WV in late January, which helped focus national attention on MTR after Science magazine published an article on its destructive effects earlier in the month.   Climate Ground Zero also launched a treesit the same day as the debate, which halted blasting on Massey’s Bee Tree site in Pettus, WV for nine days.

Blankenship is feeling the pressure (and surely realizes Congress is too!) as he alludes to in his op-ed, and he makes clear he believes everyone, including the media, is against “energy producers.”

Here’s a sample of how he paints government and activists:

Yet the Environmental Protection Agency has slowed the approval process and recently pulled 23 surface mining permits in West Virginia for more scrutiny. . . Regulatory shenanigans are just part of the problem. Nuisance lawsuits by environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, which filed 983 lawsuits against the federal government from 2000 to 2009, tie up the legal system and bombard private industry with legal complaints.

So, according to Blankenship, the EPA should just rubber-stamp permits instead of actually evaluating how communities will be affected.   Oh and those “nuisance lawsuits” relate to the violations Massey Energy routinely commits that impact coalfield residents’ health.  As Kennedy writes,

Mr. Blankenship acknowledged, in a recent debate with me, that mountaintop removal cannot be accomplished without violating the law.  His company paid a record $20 million penalty for 60,534 Clean Water Act violations it admitted committing between 2000 and 2006, including spills of deadly chemicals like arsenic and selenium illegally dumped into Appalachia’s waterways . . . But the fines are merely a business expense, which explains why Massey has since admitted to 12,500 more Clean Water Act violations.

Now that sounds like some real shenanigans.  But it doesn’t end there.

I saw firsthand the effects of MTR on West Virginia communities while at Climate Ground Zero in January.  We visited Frankie Mooney, a disabled former coal miner, who lives in Twilight, one of the many small towns that coal is slowly decimating.  Nearby blasting causes coal dust to settle on his house, which is so thick it can be wiped off with your hand.  It’s not surprising then that after years of working in the mines and this continued assault on his health, Frankie is ready to move.  And it just so happens that Patriot Coal, which Massey is rumored to be buying, is ready to buy him out – Frankie’s property is the lynchpin that would allow the company to begin buying out the entire town in order to mine more coal.  Twilight would become another Lindytown, a ghost town the coal companies have demolished in their pursuit of profits.

Massey Energy bought out residents and then demolished their homes in Lindytown, WV

But Frankie is standing up and working with Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition towards a friendly buy-out to protect Twilight.  His work and others’ is why the fight against mountaintop removal is intensifying and putting Don Blankenship on the defensive.

However, we have to keep the pressure up.  Global warming denier Sen. James Inhofe (R-OKla.) trumpeted Blankenship’s op-ed message by issuing a report on behalf of the minority staff of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works committee today.  Only through the continued, collective efforts of residents in Appalacia and allies across the country will we be able to deliver a knockout to mountaintop removal.

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.

Hi, my name is Junior Walk, and my family has lived in the coal fields of southern West Virginia for generations.  It pains me to see my heritage destroyed and defamed, and to see my friends and family poisoned by unclean water.   So, I decided to take a little trip to Washington D.C. to put a stop to it.

Today, I’m in our nations capitol to stop the heinous practice of mountaintop removal coal mining.  I’m here with the Alliance for Appalachia, as an employee of Coal River Mountain Watch; I’m here as an environmental activist; I’m here as an affected coal field resident; but I’m mostly here as someone whom cares about people, and all other living things.

My meetings today were cordial, I met with the offices of three different congressmen.  The first one was on the fence about the Clean Water Protection Act, the second one will probably co-sign, and the third was already a co-signer.  I think we’re making serious progress here, we already have more than 160 co-signers, and we only need 40-50 more co-signers.

When this bill becomes a law, it will effectively end mountaintop removal by making valley fills illegal (which they were in the first place).  This would greatly benefit the people of Appalachia, save lives, and open up mountains like Coal River Mountain for use as wind farms.

So, here I am, I’ve never been into any city, never really had any experience outside of my neck of the woods, and I’m walking up the stairs to the legislature to talk to our representatives about what’s going on in out back yards.

I care about mountaintop removal, and by extension this bill  because it affects me directly as someone who lives in the coal fields, and someone who has seen and worked in the devastation.  There are plenty of people here  with me though that don’t live in the thick of it, or aren’t from Appalachia, and I am very grateful to them.  You can help too; call and urge your congressman to co-sign the Clean Water Protection Act – HB 1310.  Then call and urge your senator to act on the Appalachian Restoration Act – SB 696.  Also, to learn more about mountaintop removal and get involved, click here.

©Stuart Matthews

Guest post and photography essay from photographer Stuart Matthews

In November, 2009, I visited Bangladesh to document the impact of global warming on the country and its’ people. I focused on how NGO’s such as Oxfam Great Britain are collaborating with the communities to develop initiatives like the ‘Cash for Work’ program. This provides an income to the individual workers who participate in developing the climate defenses around their community.

Bangladesh has an extremely vulnerable landscape with 80% of its land made up of low-lying deltaic plains with an altitude of only 10 meters above sea level or less. This land is subject to frequent flooding during the Monsoon season, with large quantities of water flowing down the Jamuna and Padma rivers, causing catastrophic erosion along the banks of a fragile, predominantly silt, landscape.

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© Stuart Matthews

The unpredictable weather shifts have made it hard for the communities of Bangladesh to cope with changing climates. In May 2009 Cyclone Aila tore across the south-western coast of Bangladesh destroying more than 700km (434 miles) of coastal embankments and wiping out thousands of homes, leaving the people marooned or forced to take refuge in shelters. Seven months later the people are still forced to live on the embankments of the rivers.

Workers throughout the country, have been adapting the landscape by raising land and repairing the embankments to combat the rising tides, allowing residents to move back to some of the land that was made uninhabitable by the affects of Cyclone Aila.

I met Sardar Babu, who is one of the 1,300 workers building a 9,500ft Ring Dam in Shekaribari, Koira. This will cross 3 canals and create a barrier against the rising floods during the Monsoon season. In Sardar’s own words: “I am very happy to join this kind of work, I do not see myself as a construction worker, more as a worker for the people of Koira. We are concerned about what the future holds, this dam will allow us to return to our land and rebuild our homes.”

The Shekaribari community have been living on the river embankments since their houses were destroyed by Cyclone Aila in May 2009. Living on these embankments, however, is illegal and many residents have been forced to find shelter elsewhere because of eviction notices from the Bangladeshi Government.

Clearly Bangladesh is on the front line of climate change. My work has therefore been to introduce the viewer to the people that are actually being affected by climate change, every day, and how they are developing their landscape to protect their homes and adapt to the threats that climate change brings.

Click to see slideshow

In recent weeks James Cameron himself has been calling Avatar a catalyst for environmental action saying he now wants to “use the spotlight that’s been put on him by Avatar’s success to bring attention to environmental causes“. This caught the eye of Rainforest Action Network’s Becky Tarbotton. On yesterday’s San Francisco Chronicle website Tarbotton started a call to Mr. Cameron to help expose the “real-life Avatar” that Chevron continues to enable in Ecuador.

In the article Tarbotton asks:

“What if in his acceptance speech James Cameron mentioned the real-life Indigenous Ecuadorean heroes who are battling the real-life evil oil corporation Chevron?

She then continues:

If Director James Cameron accepts an Academy Award next month, he should let his faithful fans know that while Pandora is fictional, what is happening to communities in Ecuador because of Chevron’s actions is as real as it gets.”

Now THIS seems like something worth watching on Oscar night, help us spread word on Facebook and Twitter (where it’s already gaining) by retweeting and posting “I want Avatar director James Cameron to mention real-life Ecuador struggle against #Chevron at #Oscars: bit.ly/9Rvut8 #realavatar RT Please”.

My personal two cents is that, after taking his narrative from the all-to-familiar struggles of indigenous communities and their fights against resource extraction, colonialism, and the corporations that perpetuate the destruction of these communities, James Cameron has a responsibility to use the global venue of the Oscars to highlight communities that are more real than any 3d glasses.

Last month Josh Schrei wrote a great piece on how Avatar’s dialog mimics the rhetoric of so many corporate hacks and unfortunately there are all too many real-life Avatar plots, from India to Peru. However the case against Chevron resonates with me for two reasons. One is has the potential to share some commonalities with the films ending in the very near future. Chevron and CEO John Watson are facing a potential guilty verdict in the next 6 months for their dump and run in the Ecuadorean Rainforest. Granted this battle will not be won with majestic trees, or flying dragons; it will be won with a communities unending will for survival, and a global rally for justice. While the means may be different, the result will be the same in that one of the world’s most powerful corporations (Chevron) will be held accountable to their crimes. Which leads to my second reason to why the Chevron/Avatar connection resonates with me.

The Chevron case is already sending ripples through the oil industry on how they are operating in communities, don’t get me wrong they are still destroying communities for the black gold but they have taken notice. Now we need these corporations to move beyond “taking notice”. As the Chevron case builds to a crescendo, and if Chevron is found guilty of the over $27 billion in damages, oil corporations worldwide will be forced to take measures to rethink their operations and their consequences, and communities will have an unprecedented momentum to fight back against the likes of John Watson who enable some of the most atrocious operations and crimes in the world.

This trial is a legal catalyst and Avatar has the potential to be the pop-culture catalyst. Something as simple a mentioning the ongoing fight in the Ecuadorian Amazon would be an enormous act of solidarity with communities that inspire his narrative, and bring the real-life stories of corporate corruption and colonization to an entirely new audience waiting to take action after being inspired by Avatar.

Help ask James Cameron:
Repost this blog, the SF Chronicle, or better yet write your own blog and post on Facebook.
Help spread the word about this group
Retweet “Avatar director James Cameron should mention real struggle of Amazonians against #Chevron at #Oscars http://tinyurl.com/ybd6d72 #realavatar” on Twitter.

Additionally, Public Radio International traveled with indigenous communities in Ecuador as they bused to Quito to see Avatar. Here is there reaction to James Cameron’s film.
You can find the full PRI article here.

“If you gave me only one wish for the next 50 years,” declared the world’s wealthiest man during last week’s TED 2010 conference, “I can pick who is president, I can pick a vaccine… or I can pick that [an energy technology] at half the cost with no CO2 emissions gets invented, this is the wish I would pick. This is the one with the greatest impact.”

Bill Gates is right. And he is not just talking about the impact on climate change, which does of course present a major threat. He is also talking about one of the most critical global imperatives to make poverty history: making clean energy cheap.

“If you could pick just one thing to lower the price of to reduce poverty, by far you would pick energy,” said Gates in his introduction. Gates should know as well as any development expert, since the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – the world’s largest transparent private foundation – has invested billions of dollars in extreme poverty alleviation since 1994.

Nearly 1.6 billion of our fellow human beings have no access to electricity, and around 2.4 billion people – over one third of global population – meet their basic cooking and heating needs by burning biomass, such as wood, crop waste, and dung. “Without access to modern, commercial energy, poor countries can be trapped in a vicious circle of poverty, social instability and underdevelopment,” concludes the International Energy Agency.

The direct health consequences of using primitive solid fuels like biomass and coal are severe. According to the World Health Organization, solid fuel use causes 1.6 million excess deaths per year globally, especially among women and children — the fourth largest risk factor in developing countries after malnutrition, waterborne disease, and unsafe sex, and the second greatest environmental cause of disease overall.

These numbers are staggering. Energy poverty is an extreme and dangerous condition, and its elimination must be one of the highest development priorities for the 21st century. Nobody on this planet should be forced to burn dung to feed their family and heat their home, and access to modern energy sources should be considered a basic human right.

The implication is that energy technology innovation today should be considered one of the world’s most important social and economic justice movements. The growing movement to make clean energy cheap, and to deliver that energy globally, has the potential to alleviate as much human suffering and injustice as some of the largest, concerted social movements in history.

Of course, driving down the price of clean energy technologies is also essential for reducing global carbon emissions. Until the price gap between low-carbon and high-carbon energy is bridged, poor and rich nations alike will continue relying upon coal and other fossil fuels to power their development. This would virtually assure climate destabilization.

The task is clear: to eliminate energy poverty and avoid climate catastrophe, we must unleash our forces of innovation – namely, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs – to develop a portfolio of truly scalable clean energy technologies, bring these technologies to market, and ensure they are affordable enough to deploy throughout the world.

If you gave me only one wish, then, it would be for the United States to launch a major public-private project to make clean energy cheap (or as Google puts it, “renewable energy cheaper than coal“).  This requires the development of a comprehensive, strategic roadmap for technology development and deployment, including the identification of specific technical hurdles and the various financial and human resources needed to overcome them. It will then require large-scale public-private investment in each stage of the energy innovation pipeline – from basic research and development, to applied R&D, demonstration, direct deployment, infrastructure, and education – eventually on the scale of $50-80 billion per year of federal investment.

The clean energy investments in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act were an important first step. Congress should take the next step today with a bipartisan plan to increase the federal energy R&D budget to $15-30 billion per year, on par with the National Institutes of Health, and to develop a comprehensive federal energy education program. If these investments are funded by a modest carbon price, then all the better, but we can no longer make energy technology policy dependent on the carbon pricing agenda. Clean energy innovation is an economic, national security, and human development imperative, and these public investments should be made with or without cap and trade.

The United States was a driving force behind the worldwide expansion of prosperity and security in the 20th century. Today, a new American project to make clean energy cheap can alleviate untold human suffering and injustice, develop the world’s strongest clean energy industry, and help save the world from climate destabilization. In short, it may be our generation’s single greatest opportunity to advance global prosperity in the 21st century and secure the lives of future generations. As Bill Gates put it, “This is the one with the greatest impact.”

Teryn Norris is Director of Americans for Energy Leadership, Public Policy major at Stanford University, and Senior Advisor at the Breakthrough Institute.

The idea is premised on the belief that  among climate leaders and concerned citizens in communities across the country exist the collective understanding, observations, and ideas needed to scale up citizen involvement in and support for climate action and to hone our strategies for change.  The next best role for some of us will be to bring them all together, and then to listen well.

This citizen climate summit or series of summits would be unique in two key ways:

1-Many summits perpetuate a one-way flow of ideas and information.  Many events necessarily focus on sharing a “top-down” message, policy ask, brand, and/or campaign with citizen climate leaders.  However, this can also mean lost opportunities for a reciprocal emphasis on collecting valuable information from those participants.  In contrast, this summit would take advantage of participants’ wealth of local knowledge and on-the-ground experience through a unbiased facilitated feedback process.  The summit would not promote a piece of legislation, it would not plug them into a campaign, it would not form a new organization.  It would give self-identified local climate leaders an opportunity to give feedback and recommendations–via the innovative facilitated feedback process–to national organizations, federal agencies, and the like that do work (or would like to work) with citizen leaders in communities across America, to help ensure those collaborations are more effective and resonate with  more climate-concerned citizens across the political spectrum.

2-Many summits also aim to attract the maximum possible number of participants, and/or overwhelmingly attract participants with the most natural access (geographic proximity, ability to pay their own way, etc.).  In contrast, this summit would engage a diversity of voices from all regions, with even representation at two participants per Congressional district and tribal community.  Outreach and selection would need to be very carefully managed and  well-resourced to help ensure fair and effective representation.

Pulling together an effort of this magnitude will no doubt be an undertaking, and will require a lot  of work by many people and organizations behind the scenes.  And it will require, at the outset, a lot of as-of-yet unidentified financial support.  But at the end of the day, we can’t afford not to do it.

So if reading this has provoked a thought, a worry,  or enthusiasm, if you’re a whiz kid at models of stakeholder engagement, if you’re  working on most any national or global issue in local context–in other words, wherever you’re coming from–I’d be very grateful for your feedback–feedback on whether this kind of summit would be helpful from your perspective, feedback on what kinds of questions the summit should ask of participants, advice on organizations and individuals who might be interested in supporting the work moving forward, folks who may be thinking along the same lines, anything from your experience we should note, etc.  Please leave a comment here or shoot a note to imaclimateleader[at]gmail.com.  Oh, and please ask a friend or so to take a look, too.    Looking forward…

These mountains in the depths of district of Chamba in the state of Himachal Pradesh (India) used to have a lot more snow.

In recent times I’ve been reading a lot about climate change not being real. First the climate gate scandal followed by the many articles attacking the IPCC for incorrectly publishing information on the glaciers melting in the Himalayas by 2035. Climate scientists, economics, politicians and business persons are being interviewed left, right and centre.

The question on the lips of the public is – what is the truth? The truth is such an interesting thing – where more often than not, it is a human tendency for a person to believe what they want to hear.

I pose a question to all people who are jumping on the bandwagon of denying the Himalayan glacier melt due to an error made by the IPCC, and denying the existence of climate change. How many of you have been to the Himalayas? How many of you have spoken to the citizens in the mountains of India and Nepal who have spent their whole lives there?

Very few of you – if any.

I do not say this to accuse anyone of being a immoral or irresponsible, however before we make accusatory remarks and write articles of great consequence, we must get our facts straight. I am not a climate scientist, economist, business person or a politician. However I have been to the Himalayas and met some of its people.

I was up near Haridwar, at the foot of the Himalaya’s in northern India only weeks ago, speaking to friends and colleagues who have grown up in the mountains their entire lives. Every single person spoke with sadness at how quickly the glaciers have receded in their lifetime. Some mentioned to me how many of them have had to move homes in search of better soil, because the melting glaciers have meant changes in water access and there for loss of agricultural productivity. For those of you who are farmers, I’m sure you can understand how painful that process can be.

Furthermore, in a recent interview, the Prime Minister of Nepal, Madhav Kumar, spoke about the Himalaya’s melting around Nepal: “The snows are melting. Glaciers, many of the glaciers, Himalaya glaciers, has evaporated, has disappeared. Many glacial lakes are emerging… We have seen many landslides there and no regular land or rainfall there. Droughts and all these problems relating to the health of the people has been seen… And the impact on the mountainous region is much more in the downstream, where 1.3 billion of the population live in India, in Bangladesh. So the problem of Nepal is not only the problem of Nepal’s people, rather the problem of at least 1.3 billion of population.”

And he is right. It’s not only a problem of ice disappearing in the mountains, and sea levels rising. For us in India our major rivers are dependent on the Himalayas, our monsoons are dependent on the Himalayas. Although it is great they won’t disappear by 2035, even the current rate of change is going to be problematic due to the imbalances it creates.

We all make mistakes – we are humans. And if we’re going to focus on the IPCC’s mistake of over estimating the speed of the glacier melt, then we should also focus on the major understimations made by the IPCC on the melting rate of Greenland and the Western Antartic ice shelfs.

It’s easy to ignore reality, and choose which truth we want to believe. Especially when we’re sitting in in the comfort of our homes in front of our television or computer, thousands of miles away from the people that suffer. I understand that the idea of a world without coal and oil is scary to many people, because that is the world we’ve grown up with. However before you write an article or propagate that climate change isn’t real – please come to the Himalayas first. Look at what is happening, and look the Himalayan people in the eyes and tell them that climate change isn’t real. See, we can’t negotiate with mother earth. The people who live with the land and in the mountains know this best. So please don’t negotiate their future.

I’m glad that the Himalayan Glaciers won’t melt by 2035, because now hundreds of millions of people in South Asia have a chance at survival. However we can’t go back to questioning the existence of climate change when so many have already died and suffered. Humans are the same everywhere, they all have families, they all have hearts, and they all grieve when they lose their homes, their livelihood and their loved ones. And that is what climate change is doing. It is destroying families.

Have compassion for these families who have already suffered from glacier melt, and those who face the such threats. The time is to stay strong, think big, and cooperate.

I have faith that humanity will pull through, not only this bout of scepticism, but will also pull through in protecting our planet from irreversible, dangerous climate change.

While Robert Kennedy Jr. and Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, debated mountaintop removal coal mining last night, the momentum against coal is building across the country and world.  Beginning yesterday, three activists with Climate Ground Zero halted blasting on Coal River Mountain, and they are continuing their tree sit today despite Massey’s intimidation efforts which include felling trees near the activists and deafening noise machines.  Delhi, India, with a population of over 12 million residents, announced that it will shut down all five of its coal-fired power plants over the next four years.  Earlier this month, Rising Tide in Australia blocked coal trains in protest of the weak outcomes of Copenhagen.

Help amplify Iowa’s call to action on coal by urging your state to press the EPA for coal ash rules.  Wherever you are, there is work to be done to fight coal.  Go!

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.