"When Are We Going To Get Serious About Climate Organizing?"

[villager]

The Great Conversion




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Are We Going to Get Serious This Year About Climate Crisis Organizing?

From: Andy Caffrey
Climate Action NOW!
[e-mail]


January 11, 2006



Dear friend or activist,

You are getting this letter either because you're a friend of mine, we connected up along the activist road at some point, or we're on an e-mail list together. And because this is the most important letter I've ever written. We've all watched in horror as nature obliterated most of New Orleans. We've all been frightened by an unrelenting onslaught of terrifying news, images and experts telling us that greenhouse gases from industrial production are changing the entire planet to the point where our very existence is threatened. And many of us are paralyzed about this.

It's all too much! Way beyond what a three-million-year-old evolving primate mind can grasp and manage! So I guess we should all give up and keep our heads buried in our single-issue campaigns until climate destabilization, parcel-by-parcel, peoples-by-peoples have everything and everyone they ever loved destroyed before their very eyes.

Personally, over the last thirty years, I've seen too many of the alternatives to honestly believe that it is impossible to make the shift away from fossil fuels and nuclear power sources. Unfortunately, there are over a million ways to convince ourselves that it can't happen (e.g. as long as Bush and the Republicrats are in power, as long as 9/11 isn't exposed as a Bush administration plot, as long as humanity hasn't converted to biocentrism and Deep Ecology en masse, as long as capitalism exists, etc.)

Tragically, we didn't get a climate movement up to speed back in 1980, when NASA's James Hansen first sounded the alarm. So now it is too late for reforms, compatible with capitalism's endless growth on a finite planet ideology, to save us. But that doesn't mean we and many of Earth's precious habitats can't be saved. It just means we have to look outside the box to the solutions and plans that brilliant groups and individuals have been developing for 35 years and more.

Every day, more an more people are calling for a new Marshall Plan, or an effort to convert "at wartime speed." It means we have to get serious about organizing our Climate Crisis action movement. It means we have to get serious about taking these solutions out to the duped masses, even in the red states, and teaching them. Most people have never even heard of bioregionalism, green cities and permaculture. How could they possibly get serious about these environmental initiatives if they have never even heard about them?


Isn't it time to bring the hoop together and make it whole?

*****

So I hope you will give serious consideration to the following project: the effort to organize The Great Conversion. Even if it is not a project you want to fund or help organize personally, there are still many ways you can help us. Maybe there are people you know of that we should contact. Maybe you have some expertise in an appropriate field or area of thought and can write that up for us. You can subscribe to The Great Conversion Conferences listserve (see below) and keep an eye open for new needs that pop up. Maybe at some point we'll need something or some person and you can help out at that point.

Climate Crisis/Conversion Road Show needs


We do have an immediate need to raise $500 in the next two weeks. It's for bureaucratic things we need to do to get the ball rolling on the conferences and to start up a road show. I'm arranging to bring my organizing partner Craig Stehr up to Garberville and need to feed him, so we can set up our Climate Crisis/The Great Conversion road show of California and head out on March 15.


We have a goal to do at least one road show event in each of California's 58 counties to plant a seed for an organizing core in each county. In the summer we'll head up to Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Nevada. If you would like to produce an event in your area, or can put us in touch with appropriate groups that would like to do that, please drop us a line or give me a call. For less than the price of one ticket to the Montreal conference, we'll get a three month road show of the west and a conference up and running.


As we travel, we also plan to shoot videotaped interviews of climate scientists, and examples of Ecotopian solutions already established in different regions for our "Virtual Ecotopia" video. Many groups and places have already solved parts of the problem. If we put these parts together into one video, we can see how The Great Conversion will look, as we take a tour through a whole, virtual Ecotopia. Do you know of some place we should capture on video? Please let us know. Or shoot the video yourself and send it in as a contribution to the project

For the immediate future, donation checks have to be made out to me, Andy Caffrey. Any amount is an appreciated contribution. If you would like to get a tax deduction, you can make your check payable to Earth Regeneration Society. Thanks for your help.




Prepared by Andy Caffrey, Climate Action NOW!
P.O. Box 324, Redway, CA 95560
[e-mail] [phone]

[texastoast]

1. It's too late

Curmudgeon opinion begin.

The wild ride has begun. Everyone should have listened 30 years ago when we had time to do something about it. Whoredom won.

Curmudgeon opinion end.

[phantom power]

2. "Great Conversion" is at least less gloomy-sounding than "Long Emergency"

Although they are words for the same fate bearing down on us.

[phantom power]

3. The use of the word "Ecotopia" in a non-ironic context is...

well, a bit utopian.

[Dead_Parrot]

5. Actually I like the cunning juxtaposition...

of the 1975 word "ecotopia" with the phrase "1980, when NASA's James Hansen first sounded the alarm".

At least, I hope it's cunning juxtaposition. It might just be bollocks.

[Dead_Parrot]

4. Oh goody, a roadshow.

OK, I'm going into sarcastic mode for a minute. Sorry

I really don't think we need another environmental group, and particularly one that going to "do at least one road show event in each of California's 58 counties in a van". How much fucking CO2 and particulate death is that going to spew out? Way to start a revolution, pal. Why not go the whole the whole hog and drive door-to-door in a hummer?

Ah, but you're going to film "examples of Ecotopian solutions already established in different regions for our "Virtual Ecotopia" video". Yeah, I can see how a bunch of californian architects living in stylish million-dollar permaculture homes in going to swing the Chinese power generation industry on it's axis. Moron.

So you want to "make the shift away from fossil fuels and nuclear power sources", do you? Good for you. You must own a candle company, or are that illusive genius who can actually make it work: do tell, none of the other braniacs have managed it.

If I have any spare money, I'll give it to the WWF. Or buy shares in an outfit like Stirling energy or Toyota, that actually make something useful. or even, god help me, FOE or Greenpeace (At least FOE negotiate reductions on insulation and alt. energy for it's members).

Last on my list would be some half-wit who wants a driving holiday in California.

OK, I'm done. Sarcastic mode off.

BTW, I've always liked "Clusterfuck" as a description, although I've been toying with "Cataclysm" of late.

[villager]

6. remind me not to post stuff in this forum in the future.

n/t

[Dead_Parrot]

7. Well, that's why I don't work in PR :-)

Don't take it personally. But if this guy is actually going to drive to every county in CA to tell people they're using too much fuel, he's got a screw loose.

[villager]

8. I think the idea was to have a lot of local shows other people

...wouldn't have to fly to, as with the big Climate organizing conference.

Spread a lot of seeds, as it were.

But the hostility here -- unmatched by any viable alternative solutions -- was surprising...

[Dead_Parrot]

9. To be fair...

...I think I'm the only one being outright hostile :) I just don't see the need to blow that amount of resources: We have letters, telephones, the internet... I can share my pearls of wisdom with you from 7,000 miles away without having to go down to U-haul and blowing a half-dozen barrels of oil in the process.

I'm sure he could organise a grassroots campain from the comfort of his own desk, with a little well placed effort and maybe a smattering of advertising (which he'd have to do anyway). It would be faster, cheaper - and a lot less hypocritical.

[villager]

10. well, he's looking for ideas...

drop him an email and see what he has to say... he's a long time organizer, and we need people to do something instead of whining about what other folks are doing...

thanks for somewhat ameliorating smiley...!

[Dead_Parrot]

11. Well, obviously...

I'm better at whinging than I am at helping ;) But I'll see if I can come with something a bit more constructive...

(edit: I'd better. If he turns up in Shasta saying he's driven 4,000 miles to tell them to cut back, they'll chase him up a tree and set fire to it...)

[Township75]

12. I would have to share the other poster's disapproval of this...

This guy is proposing something that countless enviromental groups have been doing in one form or another for decades....educate the public through grassroots efforts and they will change.

There isn't anything this group has proposed that looks different than the others. I am skeptical of this because it sounds more like this person wants to have a fun vacation rather than do some help for the environment.

Each year I get more and more disenfrachized with the environmental movement. The majority of people in this seem to be more interested in protesting (aka social get together) that offer no results than doing something creative...instead of complaining about fossil fuel consumption and the need for corporations to make hybrid vehicles and such, why not get an education in a hard science or engineering and actual develop a system that runs on renewable fuels? My impression of many enviro groups is that they are filled with college kids getting worthless degrees that hang out in coffee shops, complain about companies, and play guitar in some lousy garage band no one has ever heard of or ever will.

Because of all the constant chatter of enviro groups, and their emphasis on protests and "education events" that only attract their own members, improvements to the state of the enviroment are now dependent on companies and a few profs in academia...and the former (as well to a lesser extent the latter) will do it when the customer decides they actually want it (and not just tell people what they want, only to purchase something else when the time comes).

This road trip, in my opinion, just appears to be another repackaged education event.

[Odin2005]

13. It really is sad.

The enviromentalist movement has been highjacked by eco-mystics, college students wanting to be hip, and eco-luddites who protest when NASA puts plutonium in a space probe. I am a Biology major who grew up in a rural area, and it is appaling how little many people know about the natural world.

[Township75]

14. I agree...

the environment won't improve by writing better songs or giving better speaches, but so many people in the movement seem to be more interested in being the next Dave Matthews writing about how bad the enviroment is being treated.

That market is pretty saturated and we don't need more people telling us how bad it is. We also don't need more people getting together to trade stories about how bad it is.

What we need are people discovering the science and engineering principles that will actually allow us to be more efficient with energy and materials, as well as produce them in more environmentally sustainable ways...and none of that will be found in the next great song or poem about the enviroment.

But science isn't sexy like a guitar or a megaphone to many.

The road trip just appears to be more of the same to me. Someone spouting off info, hoping to get people to change their ways, even through the individuals we need to change the most likely won't attend the rally.

A more realistic approach, at least with our self centered populace, would be to try and make their all consuming life style more enviromentally adaptable, by making big strides in renewable energy production and efficieny, more efficient transportation, and making materials from environmentally friendly sources, among other things.

[villager]

16. No one disagrees with that. Question is: How do you start this

at a grassroots level? Model here is more akin to early civil rights organizing -- which, I suspect, few of the nay-sayers on this thread have a retroactive problem with...

[Township75]

17. For the people who want to talk or write songs...

how about they motivate people to donate money so that scholorships can be given to students in return for them purseing degrees, particularly at the graduate level, focused on hard sciences and engineering with an environmental focus. This way we can have a larger work force geared towards solving some of our environmental issues.

Let's see some of the rock and movie stars donate money to research at universities with the aim of tackling environmental problems, instead of thinking these problems can be solved via politicians.

I think this would be a more effective approach, and it's one I am following. It's not as glamorious as rock star life, or protester back-patting, but over the long term, it can deliver (and has) concrete results.

But from the academic perspective, I can tell you there is more money going into other areas besides enviro applications. Additionally, I am willing to bet if you ask the students at a univeristy who want to work to improve the environment (and likely high school seniors as well), they are in environmental science and in some cases political science. Almost everyone I know with those degrees is either back in school looking to get another degree, or working with children at a summer camp. Scholorships for the majors that actually put people into work that protects the environment would help address this.

[villager]

18. These are good, but again, "they" won't necessarily do them

Will you?

At least A.C., in the original post, is trying to do something...

[Township75]

19. I am trying to do something...

I am working on developing materials from renewable feedstocks instead of petroleum, coal, and natural gas. I could be making almost 2x my salary working on developing the same materials using those nonrenewable products, but I would really like to see the renewable feedstocks work.

AC's heart and intentions are in the right spot, but what is he doing that hasn't largely been done before? In my opinion, these methods which focus on efforts of educating the public (which usually turns out to be the already environmentaly educated) have reached the point of diminishing returns. The enviro movement needs to change its attack strategy rather than relying on the same outdated one.

[villager]

20. good for you! I think we need myriad approaches, all at once...

...rather than a single strategy. Grassroots in many directions, again, like the Civil Rights movement (i.e. direct action, electoral, legal strategies, etc., all working/overlapping at the same time...)

[villager]

15. I know a lot of "eco-mystics" who have been arrested, had their

lives threatened in rural areas, etc.

What are you doing to help bolster the "environmentalist movement?"