Green Options

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If we could all just get along like these three unusual friends, we would live in a much different world.

In human society, people often do not like others simply because they are different. Humans kill over this matter. In more normal and everyday life, people may not kill each other but may not be as friendly or open to those from a different background, with a different color, with different views, or even with a different style.

In the animal kingdom, dangerous predators are not generally friends — they keep their distance. But in some cases (i.e. when being raised together), animals and humans alike can learn to be caring friends with those they might not have ever said hello to.

In the short story below, you can see how a lion, a tiger and a bear (Shere Khan, Baloo and Leo) became true friends, in the real world not a Disney story.

Hudson Clean Energy Partners (HCEP) set a $1 billion target for its first fund, a new clean energy investment fund, and just announced this week that it has reached its target despite the difficult economic conditions worldwide.

Led by two industry veterans with much individual success, HCEP is looking to help spur and capitalize on a great global push for clean tech and clean energy (including renewable power, alternative fuels, energy efficiency and storage). The firm seems to show a lot of faith in solar power technology, in particular.

How do Brits like to be green, and what green behaviors do they still avoid?

That’s what a new survey by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), and the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) is showing us by examining the environmental actions and preferences of 100,000 British people from 40,000 households.

The findings presented below are the first from a new annual household survey in Britain named Understanding Society. The environmental topics are one subset of the whole survey, which also examines the “working lives, relationships, health, finances, neighbourhoods, education, transport and more” of Brits.

What are the main findings thus far?

92% of people think we need to develop and use solar power, but less than 1% of US power is from solar. Where are the gaps?

I can identify three main ones, but they seem to be getting addressed more and more by a wide variety of parties — public, private and non-governmental. So, what is left?

We live in a “global” world now. Corporate globalization is prevalent nearly everywhere. Travel is more common than ever before. We get news in our homes about anyplace in the world seconds after it happens. The internet allows us to connect with people all over the world. It allows us to stay in touch with people as we move all over the world as well — (a friend of mine is in Antarctica and he keeps in touch with people through Facebook everyday). We even have an international language! English is spoken (by at least some portions of the population) nearly everywhere you go.

BUT, what does it mean to be a “global citizen”?

This article marks the first in the author’s series on Sustainable Communities, in which she investigates theories and examples of how we might organize ourselves toward sustainability.  This introductory article examines why it is crucial to focus on the viability of sustainable community prototypes, the likes of which are popping up in both urban and rural settings across the world.  Such efforts look humble and localized at first, but they may contribute more to the structural evolution of a global sustainable society than it seems.

From a humble sprout, a fragile orchid grows.  Not all of the seeds of its parent plant were pollinated.  Not all were strewn, and not all began to grow.  Some did.  Of those that did, one blossomed.  The orchid blossomed, a realized vision of the parent orchid’s design.

Not all efforts toward organizing ourselves for a better future have blossomed.  Communism fell to the stresses of maintaining an absolutist ideology among many individuals.  At this moment in our very own country, capitalism is finally beginning to buckle beneath its own design oversights (infinite growth within a finite planet).  If one examines the human political legacy, it seems that there never will be a final, best solution to our social woes.

But there may be an evolution.

Totalitarianism is better than a monarchy.  Representative democracy is an improvement over a totalitarian society.  Direct democracy is probably even better than representative democracy.  Having civil rights, women’s rights and gay rights satisfied feels much better than widespread injustice.  The only exception here may be class stratification in the U.S., which is apparently justified by the fundamental theory of our economic system.

But maybe capitalism is on its way out too.  New Scientist magazine features in its October 18 2008 issue a section of a half-dozen contributors, entitled “The Folly of Growth: How to stop the economy killing the planet“–which contains a thorough picture of the frankly unpalatable situation we’re in, and yet how appealing alternatives to U.S. capitalism seem.  Tim Jackson’s article “Why Politicians Dare Not Limit Economic Growth” speculates about the social worth of pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into floundering corporations when social trends and urgent environmental trends indicate that the money would be best spent otherwise–such as on the sincere development of green jobs or industry standards and incentives to proactively bring our greenhouse gas emissions within manageable levels (the famous “350″ movement).  According to a chart in Bill McKibben’s article “The Most Important Number on Earth” (Mother Jones, November 2008), it would take just $33 billion to update our major energy providers, reducing our carbon emissions by almost 20% annually.  “Just $33 billion” is not a phrase I would have imagined myself saying, prior to the Wall Street bailout. 

There’s something that’s been made increasingly apparent to me living in an ecovillage for the past year: environmental sustainability requires a change in culture. Society cannot achieve this sustainability through simplified living alone. Growing organic food, using renewable energy, and decreasing one’s ecological footprint are all positive things, no doubt, but true, holistic sustainability comes along with a culture that values cooperation and community.

At Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, there exists a unique culture distinct from that of mainstream society. Of course, this is to be expected: every group develops its own culture over time. (Think of something as ordinary as a college dorm or office: these places too have their own special microcultures.) Although it would be hard to define Dancing Rabbit’s culture and exactly what makes it what it is, there are certain shared values that certainly help to shape it.

Ecological sustainability is the core value of Dancing Rabbit’s culture. Beyond that, cooperation and a sense of community are highly esteemed values, too, and these are achieved in many ways.

More than 90% of Americans are recycling — but fewer than 5% have taken recommended green actions such as driving less or reducing their utility use, according to a new Harris Poll on green living released today.

The poll — for which The Nature Conservancy provided input and advice — found that 53% of those surveyed have taken steps to green their lives.

But it also found a substantial lack of knowledge about how to go green — and skepticism about

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In honor of the impending wedding season, The Nature Conservancy offers tips to make your special day one Mother Nature will celebrate.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something… green? It’s really not as out of the ordinary as it sounds—last year, Brides.com estimated that approximately 33% of future brides and grooms in the U.S. are planning an eco-friendly wedding.

Today, The Nature Conservancy is issuing tips for planning a greener wedding or commitment ceremony, with ideas from invitations through

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This world is founded on some basic laws, including cause and effect. Every action has a reaction. Every cause has an effect. And we may think that we’re all separate beings in this world, separate beings and entities. But in reality, we are all connected, we are all intertwined, and we are all One. And thus it follows: for everything we do, it has an effect not only on us, but on everyone else and everything else around us and even beyond.

So, we are tackling the problem of environmental fragility today. And how did we get to this place? How did we get to this situation?

Of course, there are a lot of scientific explanations, political explanations, systematic explanations, and so on.

But how did we get here, really?

By every action ever made — by us, by others, and by all of us combined.

By every thought.

By every feeling and every want or need in our hearts and expressed in our thoughts, our words, and our actions.

We can see that no matter how hard we try, we will fail to address the problems we face today if we don’t address our own personal sustainability and situation. What do I mean by personal sustainability?

Africans were colonized for hundreds of years. In the process they have lost their culture and religion. There are deep wounds in the collective consciousness of the African continent. Colonization has dismembered people’s culture and religion. Africans went through a lot of the suffering that has ever existed in this world.

Let’s put an end to human suffering and racism by treating each other with respect and dignity. UBUNTU: I am because we are. No individualism. Let history be our teacher. When countries and leaders are fighting over natural resources, when they want to overpower another country, this has a huge effect on the ordinary people on the ground. There is a proverb that explains this very well. “When two bulls are fighting, what suffers the most is the grass.”