Editor’s note: So far, I’ve been quiet on the Copenhagen Climate Conference. This doesn’t mean I’m not interested, or don’t have thoughts… rather, there’s so much information coming directly from Denmark that I’d rather let those on the ground do the talking for now. Rolf Nordstrom, the executive director of the Great Plains Institute, is one of those people in Copenhagen, and he generously provided this post for us…
I arrived in Copenhagen on Monday afternoon and am still suffering a little jet lag, but I am awake enough to give you a glimpse of what the climate change conference taking place here these next two weeks looks and feels like, and how you might expect it to impact your life.
First, to give you a sense of scale, I want you to imagine that the vast Mall of America is filled not with shops of every kind, but with hundreds of booths from different organizations, temporary offices for delegates from 192 countries, vast meeting rooms set up with microphones and video screens, cafes, the mother of all cloak rooms, huge banks of computer stations (many with Skype and video capability built in), and the whole place teaming with people.
To get into this global “town hall” meeting, I waited in line with hundreds of others in order to get my picture taken and go through several security check points. Indeed, the elaborate airport-like security system rivals any major airline hub, complete with scanners and sniffing dogs. And all this only hints at the scale of this gathering.
As our good friend Max Gladwell has pointed out repeatedly, the social web provides a wealth of opportunities to change the world through social media. Finnish start-up One Did It is shooting for a spot on Max’s list: this small company, which shared its story with us on the Finnfacts Clean Tech Bloggers Tour, aims to promote European approaches to thinking about sustainability through a decidedly Silicon Valley model. Their platform, which combines lifestyle assessment, action tips, and opportunities for friendly competition among its community, provides users with the means to measure the impact of their lifestyle choices, and to see the effects of behavioral changes on their environmental footprints.
What gets measured gets managed: the Ecological Backpack
It turns out that my use of the term “footprint” illustrates my American perspective on environmental impact; One Did It relies on the metaphor of the “ecological backpack,” which originated in Europe, and has really taken off in Germany. While similar to the footprint concept, the backpack approach provides a bit more comprehensive evaluation of the burden your choices place on natural systems.
Quick: name five Finnish clean tech start-ups. You may have trouble with that one… in fact, you may have trouble naming any Finnish companies beyond Nokia. That doesn’t mean that such companies don’t exist; rather, as I heard from a number of business people and entrepreneurs this past week during the Finnfacts Clean Technology Blogger Tour, modesty is a big part of the Finnish national character (as much as such things exist, anyway). The bold, even brash, tech entrepreneur? They’re in relatively short supply here.
While many Finns may lack a strong desire to self-promote, there’s clearly no lack of innovation here… all of us on the tour saw numerous developments with which we were greatly impressed. That creativity will play a big role in making sure this small country has a role to play in the global shift towards a low-carbon economy. The other big factor that struck all of us in the tour group: Finland’s methodical creation of a infrastructure for knowledge-sharing and financial support.
If you ever found yourself forced to define the term “community,” you might find yourself reverting to something akin to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s attempt to define pornography: “I know it when I see it.” While different communities have different purposes, goals, and activities, they’ve all got one thing in common: resource sharing. You may not give a lot of thought to this idea in your own community life (most of us don’t), but water supplies, waste disposal, police protection, and even economic opportunity are all forms of resources that we share within our various communities.
So, what defines a green community? You may come to the same conclusion that I did: mindfulness about those resources that we share, and a commitment to do so more efficiently, with a eye towards future generations’ access to these resources… natural and other.
As such, I invite you to join me in a multipost (and multiblog) exploration of green community. What are the models? How well do they work? What can we learn from them as we move towards a (natural) resource-constrained world? I don’t know that I can provide all of the answers to these questions… but, as an online community, I’m sure there are ideas we can share…
What is an ecovillage?
The ecovillage concept is a great starting point for this discussion because its likely the most radical, and most holistic, vision of green community out there. Tony Sirna, one of the founder of Northeastern Missouri’s Dancing Rabbit ecovillage, defined this admittedly broad concept as”..places that are aiming for a village-like quality…,” which he defines as
places that allow for a full scale of human activity: “A village is … a place for work and play, birth and death, trading of goods and services, celebrations, and all aspects of healthy lives.”
places that operate on a “human scale”: “…a population where it’s still possible for people to know each other as people and not as anonymous masses…”
How many of the environmental education initiatives that you know of were started by teachers, parents, or non-profit organizations? That’s typical: from artistic approaches to rainwater harvesting to solar boat building, most efforts at teaching kids about environmental issues start with adults. But students often come up with their own programs, too, and the President’s Environmental Youth Awards aims to highlight those efforts that start with schoolkids.
Started in 1971 by the EPA, this awards program “…recognizes young people across America for projects which demonstrate their commitment to the environment.” Awards are given for one project in each of the EPA’s ten regions. After 38 years, the winning projects have run the gamut — everything from peer environmental education to recycling efforts to wetlands restoration. Recent winners have included
The Green Books Project in Lewisville, NC: Student Cory Adkins saw textbooks being thrown away at his school, and started his program to sell these books… and use the funds generated to support recycling in his community.
Have trouble getting up early on Saturday morning to get to the farmers market? Yeah, me too. And while more supermarkets are featuring more selections of local food on their shelves and in their stalls, there’s nothing quite like that straight-from-the-farm produce. What’s a late sleeper to do?
A new web service, Local Dirt, is out to make the connection between the local farmer and buyer more convenient. Say you’re looking for local peaches during the season. Local Dirt’s interface allows you to set search criteria based on location, product, and even venue (if you choose), and find a farmer from whom you can buy online. Sleep in on Saturday, get to the market late, and your peaches are still there… the service provides you with a purchase order to take to the vendor. Some of the farmers may even deliver…
Picture a bowling alley, and you likely come up with images of tacky shoes, greasy food, and lots and lots of beer bottles. Energy efficiency, reuse and recycling, and local food probably don’t come to mind at all — we’re talking about The Big Lebowski, not Garbage Warrior. Brooklyn Bowl, which opened in July in New York City’s Williamsburg neighborhood, is out to change those associations, though. On Tuesday, the bowling center, music venue, and restaurant got a boost in those efforts from the U.S. Green Building Council, which awarded Brooklyn Bowl LEED certification.
So, what’s does it take to get a bowling alley certified as a green building?
Bamboo lanes? Organic cotton bowling shirts? Low-VOC antiseptic spray for the rented shoes? Nope… Brooklyn Bowl took practical steps to create a chic entertainment venue with a low impact.
Editor’s note: This review is part of the Green Books campaign. Today 100 bloggers are reviewing 100 great books printed in an environmentally-friendly way. Our goal is to encourage publishers to get greener and readers to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books. This campaign is organized by Eco-Libris, a a green company working to green up the book industry by promoting the adoption of green practices, balancing out books by planting trees, and supporting green books. A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on the Eco-Libris website.
Thinking about giving gardening a try? While the traditional growing season has ended in most parts of the US for this year, it’s not too early to start planning for next Spring. You may want to check out books on starting a backyard garden, and there are plenty of them out there. You may also want to find some of the books that offer suggestions and recipes for the produce you grow. And, if you need encouragement to grow organically, there are still more books on that subject.
If you want a book that covers all three of those areas, though, your choices get much more limited. Janette Haase’s From Seed to Table: A Practical Guide to Eating and Growing Green* not only provides readers with gardening instructions and tips, recipes and menus, and essays on the environmental issues surrounding agriculture and food production, but does so in a month-by-month structure that gives you the information you need when you need it.
Ray Anderson’s epiphany about his own role in environmental destruction after reading Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce has taken on mythic status in the fifteen years since. The “spear in the chest moment” he experienced transformed Anderson into a leader in sustainable thought and practice within American industry, and his company, Interface, Inc. (which manufacture modular floor covering primarily for business and institutional customers) is now recognized as a model of transformation. Named a “Hero of the Planet” by Time magazine in 2007, Anderson is constantly sought out for speeches, interviews, and even documentary film appearances (THE CORPORATION, and the new SO RIGHT SO SMART)
In September, Anderson (with Robin White) published his second book, Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: Profits, People, Planet - Doing Business by Respecting the Earth. This wide-ranging work not only tells Interface’s story in detail, but also provides a blueprint for how a large, well-established company can literally reinvent itself as both a profitable enterprise and a business that learns to operate in harmony with natural systems.
The word “confessions” in the title is very appropriate: Anderson is very frank about Interface’s successes and setbacks in its climb up “Mt. Sustainability” (a phrase he coined). He also discusses the efforts of other companies, and makes bold, and hopeful, cases for environmental and social responsibility as pillars of successful business strategy in the 21st century. The book is an engaging and thoughtful read for business people, environmental activists, and consumers concerned about the impact of industry on the planet’s future.
Buying your first home is both nerve-wracking and exhilarating. Imagine the heightening of both of those emotions if you choose to 1) buy an older house full of character, and 2) jump right into green updates and renovations upon purchase. You’ll then have a good sense of what journalist, professor, and good friend of sustainablog Simran Sethi is going through right now… she recently purchased an 84-year-old home in her adopted home town of Lawrence, KS. Unlike the rest of us, though, Simran’s inviting the world in to watch the process of greening her new house: on Monday, she posted the first entry on a new blog at Oprah.com.
Home renovation isn’t a task for the feint of heart, and Simran readily admits that her own hands-on experience is limited:
