Green Options

As our country is mired in creative destruction, a massive grassroots effort is spreading throughout our nation that can help to positively reshape our economy. Millions of people are moving their money from huge, self-serving corporate banks into locally owned community banks and regional credit unions. The Move Your Money Project is growing faster than our country’s rapidly increasing unemployment numbers.

Filmmaker Eugene Jarecki directed this Move Your Money video, utilizing the classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” as a metaphor for how our banking system has deteriorated.

“People all over the country are choosing to move their money out of bigger banks and into smaller, community-oriented financial institutions that generally avoided the reckless investments and schemes that helped cause the financial crisis.“

Two hearings are being held this week at San Francisco City Hall so that the public can register their comments on the massive Draft Environmental Impact Report (EIR) document for the proposed Bayview “redevelopment” project. The first opportunity to voice your comments is today, December 15, at the SF Redevelopment Agency Commission meeting at SF City Hall, Room 416 (the meeting starts at 4:00 PM). We all can also make an EIR public comment this Thursday, December 17, at the Planning Commission meeting, also at City Hall (this meeting starts at 1:30 PM).

The Draft EIR is a behemoth document, at well over 4000 pages. Scores of groups and citizens are demanding a ninety day extension to the public comment period, in order for all of us to be able to actually be able to read the massive volumes. You can download the entire EIR document here on the SF Planning Department’s website. The plan is entitled: Candlestick Point-Hunters Point Shipyard Phase II Development Project (formerly known as the “Bayview Waterfront Project”) Draft EIR.

Today is 350.org’s International Day of Climate Action, during which people around the world are trying to call attention to our need to bring the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere back down to 350 parts-per-million (ppm). A noble cause, to be sure — but can we actually do it?

Florida Rep. Alan Grayson has just utterly transformed the health care debate in the United States with his speech from the House floor. “I’m just saying what everyone else has been thinking,” explains Grayson.

Poachers have slaughtered two rhino in Chitwan National Park - bringing the total since January to at least nine.

Chitwan National Park authorities were dismayed to discover the carcasses of two greater one-horned rhino (Rhinoceros unicornis) in the span of just ten days. On September 2, a male rhino was found in the Temple Tiger area, and on September 12, a female rhino was found in Krishnasar Community Forest of Nawalparasi.

Both rhino had their horns hacked out.

San Francisco Bike Coalition member Rick Baraff produced this short video documenting how the grassroots advocacy work of thousands of SFBC members led to last Friday’s historic victory at the SFMTA hearing.

Meatout (now in its 25th year) has become the world’s largest and oldest annual grassroots diet education campaign.

Every year on the first day of spring, thousands of supporters in the United States and several other countries participate and encourage others to go meatless for a day (or a lifetime), and discover a more compassionate and healthy diet.

Many mainstream health advocacy organizations such as the American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute, the American Heart Association, and John Hopkins University promote the consumption of more plant-based foods.

Changents provides the platform for Down2Earth and the City of Boston to promote the semi-finalists in the Pitch the City contest aimed at engaging the community to think up new ways to make Boston greener.

The mega-trends of social media and sustainability share plenty of the same DNA.

The Arnold Palmer is an exceptional beverage. It takes two individual beverages, iced tea and lemonade, each very good in their own right, and creates an even better one. That’s how we feel about social media and green living i.e. sustainability.

There is nothing inherently green about social media. The Web 2.0 revolution is driven by code and the Internet as a platform. According to Wikipedia, it describes this as a trend in “technology and web design that aims to enhance creativity, information sharing, and, most notably, collaboration among users.” This is largely a virtual world.

The move toward sustainability, on the other hand, is taking place entirely offline in the actual world. It is about balancing our impact and more wisely managing our natural resources. The United Nations describes it as commitment to “the provision of a secure environmental, social, and economic future.”

As different as they are, these two trends share one key quality: they’re changing the world for the better. They are changing politics, business, culture, and society. In the following we explore 10 ways that the trends of social media and sustainability intersect as well as align.

Special Note: Sustainablog and Max Gladwell are supporting Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C). By clicking this link and signing up for SocialVibe, once featured in our Ten Ways to Change the World Through Social Media, you’ll effectively donate $1 to the cause. We also encourage you to watch the live telecast on ABC, CBS, and NBC, September 5th, at 8:00pm ET/PT.

For many, this Sunday will bring the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet Dr. Jane Goodall. Participants in the Los Angeles event will join Dr. Goodall and hundreds of others in celebrating peace, while around the world dozens of other groups will host similar events. If you’d like to attend the L.A. event (free admission), visit the event’s website, or simply arrive at the location pinpointed on the maps below.

If you’re not in the Los

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Thursday I attended the birth of what sponsors Yahoo! and AC Nielsen hope will be a grassroots movement to upgrade incandescent light bulbs to a new generation of CFL bulbs on a national scale, saving billions of dollars in the process. A grassroots campaign with corporate sponsors? Weird.

GO Contributor Michael d’Estries (who moonlights with us from Ecorazzi and GroovyGreen) was Johnny on the

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