tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-50412106517727405652024-03-06T01:10:34.969-05:00Climate TeacherElizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.comBlogger87125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-15355600010069964552017-02-18T09:08:00.001-05:002017-02-18T16:22:15.206-05:00Our True Nature<div style="text-align: left;">
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioHrohGcrPiH8_xRCdThrb7JDU2bjQDElexJR33-XC0O_Q3kudxnev-ytLN6ZAHHPIwVd8hEGOLtsV47f4f07LAscf_alQlD-D40OuY4_6BEP4hYcOYjjhL2V4ONfIfCWouNpZqe7UVsyo/s1600/Water.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Between us and the environment there is no separation." border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioHrohGcrPiH8_xRCdThrb7JDU2bjQDElexJR33-XC0O_Q3kudxnev-ytLN6ZAHHPIwVd8hEGOLtsV47f4f07LAscf_alQlD-D40OuY4_6BEP4hYcOYjjhL2V4ONfIfCWouNpZqe7UVsyo/s200/Water.jpeg" title="We are flows of water, soil, minerals, air and energy." width="150" /></a></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">You are not a thing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">You are a process.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Every cell, every tissue, in
constant flux and turnover.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">You drink water. That water
becomes, for a while, you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The air that rushes into your
lungs is not the same air that leaves when you breath out. The air that leaves
was, just seconds ago, you.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">There is no environment that is
not us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Therefore, the Environmental
Protection Agency might better be called the the Agency for the Protection of
Everything That Flows Through Our Bodies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Furthermore....<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">We share this gorgeous planet
with other beings, our relatives. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Who also are not things. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Who also are
processes.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Some of whom regulate processes essential for our own lives. All of
whom endow us with beauty and awe and amazement and wonder.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Even if we decided to sacrifice our
own well-being, we have no right to sacrifice theirs.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">There is a bright side on this
dark day for environmental protection.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Through us water has voice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Through us soil can march on
Washington.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Through us air and climate and
ferns and porpoises can be mad as hell.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: "calibri light"; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">When we fight for our lives and
the integrity of our children's bodies we fight for everything because we are
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</style>Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00888760622160318943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-35546118741687339442015-01-25T17:39:00.000-05:002015-01-25T17:50:29.796-05:00Make Soup Like A Systems Thinker (or Think Like a Soup-Maker)<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">If you know how to
make soup, you already know a lot about systems thinking.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRO7WtcoqtoTtwvOXqfjKQ2T-QojBWxP_Y7FlGXWQEvM3NVuQvLav3D2IJ4sXFVaCIr397LkiSCQ_H9vFnn1Sjx7cM9vlU-jfgfXUuT9yq3-fszc-SDydSsCCERX5CxN9_kwc_egme9CNY/s1600/soupmaking.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRO7WtcoqtoTtwvOXqfjKQ2T-QojBWxP_Y7FlGXWQEvM3NVuQvLav3D2IJ4sXFVaCIr397LkiSCQ_H9vFnn1Sjx7cM9vlU-jfgfXUuT9yq3-fszc-SDydSsCCERX5CxN9_kwc_egme9CNY/s1600/soupmaking.png" height="245" width="320" /></a></b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRO7WtcoqtoTtwvOXqfjKQ2T-QojBWxP_Y7FlGXWQEvM3NVuQvLav3D2IJ4sXFVaCIr397LkiSCQ_H9vFnn1Sjx7cM9vlU-jfgfXUuT9yq3-fszc-SDydSsCCERX5CxN9_kwc_egme9CNY/s1600/soupmaking.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">
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</a></b></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">At <a href="http://www.climateinteractive.org/">CI</a> this month we launched our
MOOC,* <a href="http://www.climateinteractive.org/the-climate-leader/">the
Climate Leader</a>, an introduction to the skills of systems thinking for
people taking action on climate change.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">There’s no
one-size-fits-all definition of a systems thinker, but this afternoon as I
puttered in the kitchen, it occurred to me that soup making offers a pretty
good metaphor. Here’s a short list of things that all systems thinkers and all
soup makers know:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The quality of the whole depends on the health of the parts.</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">
</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The best carrots in
the world won’t save the soup if the cabbage is old and rubbery. The
best-resourced sales team in the world can’t save a business if the engineering
department is stagnating. Pouring more wealth into the top 1% of families won’t
produce vibrancy in the whole society if other families are struggling. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -.25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">To get good results you have to look beneath the surface and
back in time.</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A major factor the
deliciousness of my pot of soup today is that all the ingredients were grown
right in our backyard. The freshness, the taste, the texture, the nutrients,
all derive from the conditions of the soil, the care of the harvest, the
attention to storage and preservation. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -.25in;">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Focus on the health of the parts, and the quality of the
process - then let the results emerge from your efforts.</span></b><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">You might know the individual tastes of potatoes, squash, beans, and leeks and still not quite know how the
soup that melds them all would taste. This is emergence, that quality that is so
mysterious and so fundamental to our lives, our communities, and our
collaborations. Systems thinkers and soup makers both focus on quality, take
care with the process, and then sit back and allow the magic of system (or the
soup) to reveal itself. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Like any art form
there's more to systems thinking, and more to soup making, than these three
simple ideas. But they are a start, and I'd welcome your additions to this
short list. </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw0EZzw8KzT2oo0FCib1X9O2dJ5lKWlmGByeQkDDdrA34q9oR3nQZUfrAW8AYKwJMJH8BMPw60yCPbw1j1LBmFYteXrxVIjsTabxT3DBMmBm7oSPPXsJR2ZqUC7CvbzFVG5EHL8J0oadIG/s1600/soupfinished.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw0EZzw8KzT2oo0FCib1X9O2dJ5lKWlmGByeQkDDdrA34q9oR3nQZUfrAW8AYKwJMJH8BMPw60yCPbw1j1LBmFYteXrxVIjsTabxT3DBMmBm7oSPPXsJR2ZqUC7CvbzFVG5EHL8J0oadIG/s1600/soupfinished.png" height="238" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -.25in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: -.25in;">
<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">*MOOC = Massive Open
Online Course</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"></b></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
</div>
Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00888760622160318943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-51861728925874134852015-01-23T13:52:00.002-05:002015-01-24T08:46:13.971-05:00Warmth in the January Cold<style>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaNb8IWL4ffPpngoLNZy1vKM9HKmRwmUg_PCS2rp7WUYw6YFcFCCR9efQTxy_pK8AsjaOnfAi8ydmceYE5KrbvnldQLpsDVwJgj-YaPQimWetSv691zRiwtwdByHpeEQ1fpRvpiFjxQOMA/s1600/cobb+hill+barns+winter+jsr.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgaNb8IWL4ffPpngoLNZy1vKM9HKmRwmUg_PCS2rp7WUYw6YFcFCCR9efQTxy_pK8AsjaOnfAi8ydmceYE5KrbvnldQLpsDVwJgj-YaPQimWetSv691zRiwtwdByHpeEQ1fpRvpiFjxQOMA/s1600/cobb+hill+barns+winter+jsr.jpeg" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cobb Hill barns and greenhouse. Photo credit Jenna Rice</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
January has been a month of bitter cold with all of the
challenges that brings: cars that won’t start, frozen stock tanks in the barn, and
paths that, without a good coating of sand, are slippery enough to skate on – not
a good idea, given the steep slope of some of them!</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But even in the deep cold and the long nights, there are spots
of warmth and light, all around. </div>
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<br /></div>
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On the most bitter cold days, the sun pours into to our tight
little house and Phil, the girls, and I all strip down to short-sleeves as the
temperature rises towards eighty degrees, even while it hovers near zero outside.
Phil and Jenna pore over seed catalogs and garden visions grow bigger and more
exotic by the day.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIJmdrV0oDkZ7piCrsfO8lPmfnlWR1FkH51ke8v4ZnIX93s5QjOgh8nTTPaYkfSxDd_B7YXudarz0UrWmYGR30XtVBujqdxV-zeKLrHX8KwKx8jzVs6FXYGmFc8ilVKZ3_HCtU0o8nO6Td/s1600/quilts+co.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIJmdrV0oDkZ7piCrsfO8lPmfnlWR1FkH51ke8v4ZnIX93s5QjOgh8nTTPaYkfSxDd_B7YXudarz0UrWmYGR30XtVBujqdxV-zeKLrHX8KwKx8jzVs6FXYGmFc8ilVKZ3_HCtU0o8nO6Td/s1600/quilts+co.jpeg" height="179" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Quilt assembly. Photo credit Coleen O'Connell</td></tr>
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In the common house Coleen has spread beautiful quilt
squares of bold, vivid colors across the dining room tables as she assembles
not one, but two, quilts for the two-month old twin babies of friends.
Each of the squares was made a by a different friend, and Coleen is lovingly
stitching them together. These will be lucky babies, nestled into works of art
that also embody stories from the past and hopes for the future. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Seed catalogs and quilting projects, cozy houses, and warm cups of tea -
there are all sorts of ways to be warm even in the coldest days of
winter. </div>
<br />Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00888760622160318943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-12196990246587333502011-07-19T08:27:00.000-05:002011-07-19T08:27:09.672-05:00Reducing Energy Demand: It’s Not Only About Technology And It Doesn’t Always Require Experts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOOelTrykzu-BmJXeFmV7j7MMvaky60YVt0KTOY1UHFaCs1RX0F-kEVjpBzUAoTDoIwcTmnCFgbqADyJcMw6lK6KOjEoGdswxfHMzWBPfu7J0KWmx1YjJf8rSPg6ML4TE6iCbla71nUzI/s1600/kids.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOOelTrykzu-BmJXeFmV7j7MMvaky60YVt0KTOY1UHFaCs1RX0F-kEVjpBzUAoTDoIwcTmnCFgbqADyJcMw6lK6KOjEoGdswxfHMzWBPfu7J0KWmx1YjJf8rSPg6ML4TE6iCbla71nUzI/s320/kids.png" width="320" /></a></div>In transforming our world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions there’s room for the creativity of all of us.<br />
<br />
In our simulation modeling of the transition to a low-carbon economy, we find plenty of policies and actions with huge potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon prices, investment in renewable energy, and investment in a new energy infrastructure all have a part to play. But most of the successful scenarios we find in our simulation runs also have another element – reductions in energy demand.<br />
<br />
Technology, from more efficient appliances to highly fuel efficient vehicles, has a lot to contribute to reducing energy demand.<br />
<br />
But that is only part of the story.<br />
<br />
<b>People are also, without any new technologies or inventions, coming together to create systems that accomplish the same goals with less use of energy.</b><br />
<br />
One of my favorite examples from recent months was <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/kids-solve-the-carpool-problem/2011/05/20/AGODRdFH_story.html">reported</a> in the Washington Post.<span id="more-4018"></span><br />
A class of second-graders, concerned about climate change, looked at the line of cars picking up children in front of their school each afternoon. If only we could make the pick-ups go more quickly, they reasoned, there’d be less idling, less waste of gas, and less greenhouse gas pollution.<br />
<br />
Thinking and learning together, the kids came up with a system where pick-up times were staggered, every few minutes, based on the first letter of a family’s last name. Not only did the amount of idling decrease, but parents reported less hassle and less stress from waiting in long, slow-moving lines of traffic!<br />
<br />
There are similar examples in most communities, if we’d just take the time to stop and look. In my neighborhood, for instance, we use an email listserve, which often has requests for “anyone going grocery shopping who could pick up one thing”, cutting done the number of trips by car we all need to make.<br />
<br />
Urban design that makes cities more walkable. Bike sharing systems that make it easier to get around without a car. Ideas like these don’t need scientific breakthroughs (although we could use a few of those too). Thinking smarter about our energy use mostly requires imagination and a willingness to experiment.<br />
<br />
And, if the quotes from the second-graders are any indication, we might just discover that coming up with new ideas is very fun and satisfying too!Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-76646853291762918352011-07-13T15:09:00.013-05:002011-07-14T09:17:33.837-05:00Three Reasons To Keep On Working on Climate Education and Energy Policy<style>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">“Wow. I just want to cry. Please tell me we are making a difference.”’</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">Those were the words of a colleague today after she watched a <a href="http://www.grist.org/climate-change/2011-06-11-the-most-powerful-climate-video-youll-see-all-week"><span style="color: blue;">video</span></a> illustrating a recent Bill McKibben essay about a rising tide of climate change symptoms around the world.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">Many months have passed since the disappointments of Copenhagen and the failure to pass climate legislation in the United States.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">Facing urgency from the planetary physics and gridlock in the political process, it is probably natural to feel discouragement at times.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRt89_AQYWLYu2C_fgtAurpOLT0GmXjbjvMgZmWkPUkggRpu0fRxlQkiD3H3taFk8ImGTYsNTMFEyXU182HXMaZiyNLiRXcLysUUsA-aEFgTnA_s8drid8-fVBNqIOTbWQV-C8IUiCWAs/s1600/beth+cop-16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRt89_AQYWLYu2C_fgtAurpOLT0GmXjbjvMgZmWkPUkggRpu0fRxlQkiD3H3taFk8ImGTYsNTMFEyXU182HXMaZiyNLiRXcLysUUsA-aEFgTnA_s8drid8-fVBNqIOTbWQV-C8IUiCWAs/s320/beth+cop-16.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">But there are good reasons to believe we are making a difference, and good reasons to keep on going.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">Here are three that keep me going:</span><b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;"> </span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">While it may feel like time is running out, time is also on our side.</span></b></div><ol start="1" style="margin-top: 0in;" type="1"><li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; margin-top: 0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;"> Climate symptoms will become stronger and more convincing with the passage of time, and so will the lessons from those trail-blazing communities that have already leaped into the transition to clean energy and begun to reap the benefits in cleaner air and better jobs. If we keep moving ahead and doing our best, the dynamics of the system are destined to provide us with lift and support. Keeping going means that we are planting our seeds, strengthening our networks and building our capacity to seize the moments that a changing climate and cutting edge energy experimenters will offer as time passes</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; margin-top: 0.1pt;"><b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">No one can predict the evolution of attitudes and beliefs.</span></b><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;"><br />
Just like the climate system, human systems of attitudes and beliefs are complex and non-linear, with tipping points where change becomes unstoppable. If you made a graph of these patterns there would be a long, flat ‘tail’ rising suddenly and steeply when a critical threshold is passed. We can’t know where those thresholds are until we’ve crossed them, but they are one reason to keep on writing, speaking, teaching, analyzing, organizing, voting, lobbying, and doing whatever we can. Keeping going means adding, little by little, to the cumulative total of small actions that could someday carry us over a critical threshold.</span></li>
<li class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.1pt; margin-top: 0.1pt;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;"> <b>There isn’t a point where it makes sense to stop trying, saying ‘all is lost.’</b><br />
Every tenth of a degree of temperature increase prevented means better odds of survival for some species somewhere, or some community sometime in the future. When it comes to climate change, making a difference isn’t so much a matter of solving the problem once and for all as it is tilting the odds and keeping more options open. </span></li>
</ol><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">So there you are, three ideas that keep me going, convinced we are making a difference. Without doubt there are more than these three.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0.1pt 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;">What are some more? Why do you keep going?</span></div>Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-76650346957893076332011-02-25T20:53:00.005-05:002011-02-25T21:05:58.306-05:00In place of certainty - learningI've spent the past weeks deep in data and competing theories on the transition to clean energy. So many people are so certain they know what is needed, but the more I learn, the more humble I feel.<br />
<br />
Depending on which report you read, we need everything from technical brilliance and breakthroughs to new definitions of happiness. We need political reform and the removal of money from politics. We need behavioral change or a massive build-out of a 'smart grid'. We need to redesign cities, cut the price of renewable energy, or charge the full costs of polluting energy sources. Or maybe we need to electrify transportation, redesign the electric grid, change our habits, invest in clean energy R&D. <br />
<br />
Some of the proposals make more sense to me than others, especially those that influence the core structures of systems - internalizing the price of greenhouse gas pollution for example or restoring health to democracies in order to produce better decisions for the long-term and the common good. But I find myself with less and less faith in any proposal or plan. For better or worse, in this interconnected world it begins to feel impossible to predict what will happen next, let alone try to direct events toward a specific end result. Technical breakthroughs in China ripple through to mix with political factors in the US, to combine with attitudes about mountaintop removal, to mix with revolution in the Middle East and the changing price of oil, to combine with falling costs of renewable energy, to mix with rising evidence of climate change to produce conditions never seen before in the world. Who, really, knows whats coming next? <br />
<br />
In uncertain times it is so tempting to try to discern the right course of action and to denounce all the other possibilities. But, because of the very uncertainty of these times, I suspect we need to cultivate the opposite response. We need to pursue our piece of the puzzle with focus and determination,while remaining aware of and grateful for all the other paths. When the activists change the political landscape the engineers need to stand ready with the clean technology. Or maybe its the other way around, when the engineers have their breakthrough, the activists need to be organized to take it to scale.<br />
<br />
We also need, it seems to me, openness to possibility, willingness to experiment, willingness to be wrong, and wilingness to share what we are learning. We need tools to track how we are doing, tools that help us see the collective impact of all the little local changes that are happening, tools that play out the trends into future, illuminating not specific predictions but a general sense of direction. <br />
<br />
I'm biased of course, because those are exactly the sort of tools our team has been producing for years, but, still, I feel grateful that my day's work doesn't ask me to pronounce what we should do, but rather asks me to help people look forward into all the futures that could emerge from this moment and connect those futures to the choices we have before us today. Step by step, if we take the next hundred years on that way, looking far forward and doing what we can with what we have at hand today, perhaps we will learn our way into a sustainable future and something that might even come close to wisdom.Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-8911801533768986192011-01-16T16:16:00.004-05:002011-01-16T16:26:19.565-05:00Lessons From Climate Change - OneWhen I started this blog, I decided to call it "Climate Teacher" largely to remind myself of my belief that as much as it is a problem to solve, climate change is also a teacher for humanity, reflecting back to us important lessons about our own nature and the nature of our home, the Earth.<br />
<br />
Yesterday, snowshoeing through our woods in the midst of snow flurries and wind, I decided that, with the start of the new year, it would be a good time to reflect on and try to articulate some of those lessons, at least as I see them.<br />
<br />
Here's the first one:<br />
<br />
<b>Climate change teaches us that the destinies of all people and all nations are tied together. </b><br />
<br />
When Brazil cuts is deforestation rate we all benefit by the additional carbon dioxide that Brazil's forests can sequester. When the US misses the opportunity to adopt climate legislation that could have catalyzed the beginnings of a clean energy revolution, the whole world suffers from the additional greenhouse gasses that will be emitted in the coming years and decades as a result.<br />
<br />
One thing that people always discover when they test emissions reductions scenarios with <a href="http://www.climateinteractive.org/">our</a> climate model, C-ROADS, is that without every region of the world participating, its not possible to limit emissions enough to keep future temperatures within safe bounds.<br />
<br />
In the old world, the world before climate change, it might have been better if nations worked together, but they didn't HAVE TO. In the old world, nations expected to solve their own problems. Climate change is a challenge that solve together or not at all.<br />
<br />
In the process, our attitudes and our institutions will need to slowly (or not so slowly!) shift until they come to reflect the physical truth that our single atmosphere, for better or worse, ties us all together.Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-77166902856011261742011-01-04T07:47:00.002-05:002011-01-04T07:50:25.003-05:00Visions, Part Two<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2gNa7wLZfKfuc-c-lYvGe7CFYdyEfkMfrZQcvXYhFQk7QprgotWG4FtQzPgPlMXfxyY0T-Ie5tgnITHYS_zv5CH_3Pduu_wrsI7M3Qy-oQnCrC__qxidM64bs753R4E4Z1UpeeW_b4Yw/s1600/sambucus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2gNa7wLZfKfuc-c-lYvGe7CFYdyEfkMfrZQcvXYhFQk7QprgotWG4FtQzPgPlMXfxyY0T-Ie5tgnITHYS_zv5CH_3Pduu_wrsI7M3Qy-oQnCrC__qxidM64bs753R4E4Z1UpeeW_b4Yw/s320/sambucus.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo credit:Wikipedia</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Here's what can happen with visions:<br />
<br />
In a previous <a href="http://climateteacher.blogspot.com/2011/01/visions-for-gardens-and-for-world.html">post</a>, I wrote about time spent thinking and sketching about a flower garden in need of rejuvenation and a new goal of making space for more medicinal plants, including the European black elderberry, whose flowers and berries can be used to make a tincture which really helps fight off colds and flu. Right now we buy our elderflower extract from Israel, and I've been thinking that it would be another step towards meeting our own family's needs more locally to grow our own. Plus elderberry bushes are beautiful, and attract pollinators and butterflies.<br />
<br />
So, there on my little map of the north garden sits a single circle where the elderberry, once we find it, will someday grow. Some years ago when we tried to start a black elderberry bush, seedlings were very hard to find. The more common Canadian elderberry was easy to find, but not the black variety, which is another species. <br />
<br />
But, just one day after my sketching and dreaming, Phil tells me he has some news. He decided to go looking online for black elderberry and found a source right away. And, you can't plant just one black elderberry, it turns out. First of all, every plant needs a companion for pollination if you want to harvest any berries. And then, there are varieties to try, with interesting foliage and different growth habits. So we need at least three. And, did I realize, they grow to be 10 feet high?<br />
<br />
So now we will have elderberries in the spring! But not just one, and not in the spot I imagined, which is much too small for a full grown bush. I'm not sure we have room for three, but maybe a neighbor will want to experiment with one of them. Now there are conversations to have and sketches to redraw.<br />
<br />
That's how it goes with visioning, at least in my experience. The simple act of stating what I would like to see happen opens possibilities and and quickly presents new questions. It works that way with little visions, for bushes and gardens, and with bigger ones, for revitalized economies and cooperation on global challenges. One needs to be willing to work with whatever comes our way, be it three ten-foot shrubs, or three new partners from across the world.Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-59124596702951410892011-01-03T20:59:00.003-05:002011-01-04T08:08:04.416-05:00Looking for Hope? A Book Recomendation<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL-cjrw4Ea3cJYwfrWwSrgfIupUDFpKwlVHLiRebz5M9N-cvRzX9vd8ree_-QGVP4c8xjxrJza8HucnfCKYiwuQ5U63WXRnQPil0sZn1cIox1UmeKrz5Rh9dae-Su2hWSXnw-UBv6YiSMZ/s1600/hope.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5558070689485678386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL-cjrw4Ea3cJYwfrWwSrgfIupUDFpKwlVHLiRebz5M9N-cvRzX9vd8ree_-QGVP4c8xjxrJza8HucnfCKYiwuQ5U63WXRnQPil0sZn1cIox1UmeKrz5Rh9dae-Su2hWSXnw-UBv6YiSMZ/s320/hope.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 320px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 214px;" /></a>In a time of environmental crisis, how can we live right now?<br />
<br />
That's the question posed by editor Martin Keogh in a new collection of essays,<a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781556439193"> Hope Beneath Our Feet</a>, that I've been reading, bit by bit, since I unwrapped it Christmas morning.<br />
<br />
The book is full of beautiful, short, often meditative essays, by well known writers like Barry Lopez, <a href="http://www.350.org/">Bill McKibben</a>, Barbara Kingslover, Michael Pollan, and Vandana Shiva, and others who aren't quite household names, but have an important message to share, like my friend <a href="http://www.ktwotrees.com/">Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees</a>, or fellow Vermonter (and recent candidate for governor) Susan Bartlett.<br />
<br />
As I make my way through the essays in this book each one so far has spoken to me, offered me a little gift, an insight or a reminder of something important.. <br />
<br />
One of the themes of the essays gathered here is acceptance. The Earth is changing, by virtue of human activities. We can accept the changes, see the resilient ways in which the earth rebalances itself, and do our best to work along with that power. Opeyemi Parham puts it well in the closing words of her essay, <i>Waking Up From Despair</i>: "I choose to feel power in the earth as it responds and reacts to humanity's actions. I choose to take my fear and breathe it into excitement. The earth, older than I can even imagine, is reshaping itself."<br />
<br />
Another theme is the clarity that can emerge for us in facing up to the extent of our current crisis. We are being forced to choose to recognize our interconnection and interdependence. In her essay, <i>Do the Will of God, Come What Ma</i>y, Alice Walker writes that "our suffering on this small planet is about learning enjoyment. Choosing peace over pain and destruction. Growing into a<br />
comfortable universality. Letting go of pettiness. Dissolving tribalism, nationality, speciesism."<br />
<br />
And several of the essays remind us that nothing, including dire predictions of our failure to meet the current challenges, is certain. Historian Howard Zinn puts it particularly well in <i>The Optimism of Uncertainty</i>, "We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible."<br />
<br />
I'm going to keep this book handy this year, as the kind of antidote to discouragement and cynicism and as a reminder that it's not over until it's over and that none of us are really alone in these challenging times.<br />
<br />
Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00888760622160318943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-31386162664230414852011-01-02T20:52:00.004-05:002011-01-02T21:16:44.976-05:00Visions, for gardens and for the world<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVzk8HTOpfIUIXJrdBSoBdohFIZ6_XgRU58S5ztD8-gVWAS2_OI0hefvnSqzcnd5QD86UNVR2sMVG-HTHrpRY2jW9QATHQof7G6r6w_7N9a6FAQns0D_cKQN1Lh8-iE3ZRu3gys0raZf4/s1600/gardenvision.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2EU9CJKH4JLOOPmMr_h-XU4QW0VF8dYQCasnB8VK0l9Z4Y5CPeDz-ZuW1e24A27oZsuWV_qhcx8GHpKy5ziJtZqGvSFqd4VP20Fqsk137HnNWbvP2sLASPRDLpCjM4cgIpOOzMEQp1tc/s1600/redjournals.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2EU9CJKH4JLOOPmMr_h-XU4QW0VF8dYQCasnB8VK0l9Z4Y5CPeDz-ZuW1e24A27oZsuWV_qhcx8GHpKy5ziJtZqGvSFqd4VP20Fqsk137HnNWbvP2sLASPRDLpCjM4cgIpOOzMEQp1tc/s320/redjournals.jpg" width="258" /></a>My sister-in-law and brother gave me a journal for Christmas. They know that this is one of my favorite things, all those blank pages, waiting to be filled in with notes, or observations, or new ideas. A blank journal, to me at least, is ripe with possibilities.<br />
<br />
Today, I initiated my new journal. On the first page is now a (long) list of 2011 projects. They range from the very practical and urgent (paint the house, fix the rotting board by the basement door) to the more optional and fun (build a wood fired oven for baking bread). Following the list are sketches of gardens and plans for changing and improving them (fewer perennial flowers in the north garden, more berries and medicinal herbs, more cooking herbs, closer to the house).<br />
<br />
The list is, without doubt, much more ambitious than one family could accomplish in one year. Based on past growing seasons and past lists, we'll take care of some items, do some things that never made it onto the list, and carry some things forward to 2012. The vision of fewer flowers and more berries and herbs will be a gradual transformation that will unfold over several years. But having the ideas in my head and the sketches in my journal helps me work with the gardens and see the possibilities. The iris that have spread out of control are really in the cranberry bed, I see that now from my afternoon's sketching, and when the snow melts and the ground thaws, I'll know what to do. And I now know to keep my eyes open for a black elderberry seedling, which is hard to come by, and I know where I will plant it when I find it.<br />
<br />
My friend and teacher, Donella Meadows, said that she never started a project, whether it was a sweater to knit, a book to write, or a garden to plant, without first envisioning the finished project in her mind. Her devotion to the <a href="http://www.sustainer.org/?page_id=107">practice of visioning</a> influenced me, and I try to hang on to that practice, not just for gardens, but for the projects we undertake at <a href="http://www.climateinteractive.org/">Climate Interactive</a>, and for the world that those projects are aiming to contribute to.<br />
<br />
For me, visioning is easiest for gardens, and still pretty easy for grant reports or model sectors (though neither the gardens nor the models ever come out looking exactly like my vision for them; both gardens and computer models are not, it turns out, precisely controllable).<br />
<br />
I have to work harder and look deeper to imagine a sustainable world, to envision the world that I and so many others are working to create. But it's not actually that hard. The seeds of the future are, after all, around us all of the time. Out of the actions of the young people I met in Cancun I can see the wave of grassroots organizing that could produce the political will for change. Watching my neighbor Stephen drive the horses across new snow I see the revitalized agro-economy of our region. Warmed by wood heat, my computer powered by electricity made from cow-manure, I see and sense the renewable energy revolution.<br />
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I've never yet pictured perfectly the finished garden from the depths of winter, and I don't believe I or anyone else can really see how a sustainable world will look and work. But even in dark times, one doesn't have to look that far to see seeds of possibility, calling for our energy and attention. And those are good starting points, for choosing next steps, for little garden plots, and for big wishes for the future, too.Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-89792575930367782232010-12-27T12:14:00.006-05:002010-12-27T13:09:46.091-05:00Making Things<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2YCanGkSemZ_deHOfrFrnzW-qXVvDvaj3Tsx1BH44Y2JHUksLwu1WgVMgkvECOLoutEg0MaUQ5GIhaSrjP2YrwwQpH5YKF1jSJMApxhM6rEjguDaLqTXrYOg-zh7RpRGu_3NCXvVSVbI/s1600/jknitting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2YCanGkSemZ_deHOfrFrnzW-qXVvDvaj3Tsx1BH44Y2JHUksLwu1WgVMgkvECOLoutEg0MaUQ5GIhaSrjP2YrwwQpH5YKF1jSJMApxhM6rEjguDaLqTXrYOg-zh7RpRGu_3NCXvVSVbI/s320/jknitting.jpg" width="241" /></a></div>There are deep snowdrifts outside and fierce, blowing winds. Inside the family is busy with projects. Phil is braiding a piece of wool fabric to patch the rug that sits in the middle of our living room, a giant ten or more feet in diameter that my grandmother made thirty years ago. The girls are busy with projects they started over Christmas weekend - a lacy turquoise scarf and a warm earth-toned striped one, each perfectly matched to the personalities of the knitters.<br />
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Our Christmas was rich with hand-made gifts, too, My parents worked together to make beautiful wooden boxes for each of the grandchildren: sturdy tool chests with wrought iron hinges for the boys, delicate angled boxes for the girls. Phil's knitting needles were flying through socks and hats that weren't quite finished in time for wrapping. Spread across the kitchen table are the parts of a secret present for grandparents, aimed to be finished by New Year's when we'll see them next.<br />
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The pure satisfaction around here when the last stitch is knitted and the scarf is draped around a neck or the hat is pulled onto a head is a thing to behold. From the four year-old weaving pot-holders with his new loom under the Christmas tree, to his grandpa unveiling his beautiful wooden boxes, the desire to create things that are beautiful and useful runs strong and deep in most of us, maybe all of us. The products of this desire are as varied as the individuals with the compulsion to create: well crafted sentences, paintings, patchwork quilts, six-layer cakes, or well-executed computer code. When I look at the people around me, it's the act of creation that brings the pleasure, as much as the finished product. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKOra97r9wIN9O8ADWG3j4ZSPz3o-6D-jrBQbW74LtUTA6-YINsup9YfWVp-GTytceig_LBNj6X-sJbFBZyKPBolxLkqTxwvijY4dJ8NN3IP0z9CmifT9ZATp_6IOybVisIz8z4OfRmOs/s1600/nknitting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKOra97r9wIN9O8ADWG3j4ZSPz3o-6D-jrBQbW74LtUTA6-YINsup9YfWVp-GTytceig_LBNj6X-sJbFBZyKPBolxLkqTxwvijY4dJ8NN3IP0z9CmifT9ZATp_6IOybVisIz8z4OfRmOs/s320/nknitting.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>In the transition to sustainability we are going to need to call upon and depend upon all sorts of new 'high-tech" inventions, from smart-grids to super-efficient materials, but we are also going to need to shift to a world focused on quality rather than quantity, on designing things to be patched and fixed and re-used, rather than tossed away when a plastic part snaps or a circuit burns out. In the world we need to be moving towards, making thing will be not just a pleasure but, it seems to me, an integral part of life. Therein lies a blessing: the forces pushing us to more sustainable ways of living seem to be pushing us towards more satisfying ways of living, at the same time.<br />
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Our younger daughter and her friend just came up the stairs to the room next door to my office. "I'm in a project mood" announces the friend. While I write these few paragraphs, yarn and needles are coming out, the ideas are taking shape, and I keep overhearing snatches of conversation: a serious disagreement about the definition of knit and purl and finally agreement:('the swirling things are knit and the things that look like braids are purl.' There's some sort of struggle with the 'darned slip knot', a quick lesson in casting on ('you point a gun and then go up with the yarn') and then the needles are clicking in earnest, and the two are chatting away like grandmothers on a front porch.<br />
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I worry about these children and their generation a lot of the time. But, along with the messes they are inheriting, they are, in the changed world they will inherit, going to discover gifts, as well. If they dig deep enough into themselves, they will find, they obviously already are finding, aptitudes and attitudes that will carry them well through turbulent times. Or so I hope.Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-25883350931113553302010-12-20T09:45:00.009-05:002010-12-20T12:45:25.372-05:00Borrowing and Sharing<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF0bc8CjX06hr6_S2SueELl2cPl5FEG622BqgFNlqjEMGLknvill1u_bZuNLcgm1J_oNDZXua3GJblmNypQ0erhpAHak0dG9QOl2YpPsA1D0jnJvda33Es_I7Mwz-6h-sNC9TsKF8QeCEr/s1600/tools.png"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 176px; height: 104px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF0bc8CjX06hr6_S2SueELl2cPl5FEG622BqgFNlqjEMGLknvill1u_bZuNLcgm1J_oNDZXua3GJblmNypQ0erhpAHak0dG9QOl2YpPsA1D0jnJvda33Es_I7Mwz-6h-sNC9TsKF8QeCEr/s320/tools.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5552820341091893474" border="0" /></a><br />In yesterday's <a href="http://climateteacher.blogspot.com/2010/12/radical-act-of-defining-enough-for.html">post</a> I wrote about studies of happiness that show people tend to define what they need to be happy in relation to what they see around them and discussed how this can lead to escalating consumption and escalating environmental impacts. The more stuff in a community, the more people feel the need for more stuff, or so the logic of this feedback loop goes.<br /><br />But in real systems no feedback loop exists in isolation. Today scanning through my Cobb Hill community emails, I was struck by the evidence for the exact opposite process, at least in our little community of 23 families, where borrowing, lending, and sharing often saves us from needing more stuff of our own.<br /><br />Here, from the emails over the weekend is a sampling of the evidence:<br /><br /><ul><li>I’m looking for a small piece of wire mesh, about 5x5” – could be a scrap of window screen or something heavier.<br /></li><li>Does anyone at Cobb Hill have a soldering iron suitable for electronics, that I could borrow for a few days?A short length of flux-cored solder would also be helpful.<br /></li><li>Does anyone at Cobb Hill have a socket set with 1/4-inch drive or similar, with sockets going from about 3/16 to 7/16 inch, and from 4 to 10 mm, that I could borrow for a few days? It doesn't have to have a rachet, a driver will do just as well.<br /></li><li>Anyone have a bulb for a mudroom florescent light they would lend us until we can get a new one? 2 tubes, four prongs. Your neighbors in the dark.</li></ul><br />On top of the borrowing and lending there are four or five emails about activities this week that require no (or hardly any) consumption, from gingerbread house building for kids, to a weekly photography class for teenagers, to Christmas morning waffles in the common house.<br /><br />All sorts of new habits are needed to move from a world where more abundance around us leads us to us want more and more material goods of our own to a world where more abundance around us means we can be happy with less of our own.<br /><br />From learning to ask for help to remembering to return things in cleaner, better shape than we received them, none of this seems to be second nature for folks raised in modern industrialized societies. But, ten years into the experiment of Cobb Hill, informal trades and sharing seem to work much more often than they fail. And from simple community email lists to websites specializing in car sharing or barter, new twists on the kind of sharing our grandparents took for granted offer one of the lowest cost, most efficient solutions to the sustainability challenge.Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-54300186403387804752010-12-19T22:24:00.002-05:002010-12-19T22:29:53.253-05:00The Radical Act of Defining Enough For Yourself<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBgMIrIMLM29OR6ubIDFiBYgbtdx_DpWLKaoo2SsDoKgPjSPE4B81yIUG1U8rHLGmPs7yLq0qRmP1CBGmlXXoft2WFxUoeeP-EOZkrzKJxMkdDnHZv4LDMqO7KuQ_Vwdv8X_5xfjNoAhQ/s1600/snowyhemlock.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBgMIrIMLM29OR6ubIDFiBYgbtdx_DpWLKaoo2SsDoKgPjSPE4B81yIUG1U8rHLGmPs7yLq0qRmP1CBGmlXXoft2WFxUoeeP-EOZkrzKJxMkdDnHZv4LDMqO7KuQ_Vwdv8X_5xfjNoAhQ/s320/snowyhemlock.png" width="320" /></a></div>Not long ago, a colleague sent around some results from studies of human happiness which show that despite strong increases in the amount of stuff in people's lives in the developed world in recent decades, self-reporting of happiness hasn't increased all that much. The research shows that people tend to base their sense of what they need to be happy not on some absolute internal sense of well being, but instead on a sort of mental comparison between themselves and others. With such mental calculus, the feeling of "enough" is never constant, but instead is ever-rising. In systems terms, this way of searching for happiness has the same dynamics that drove the Cold War search for security through assembling ever larger stores of weapons.<br />
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System dynamics teaches that there is one way out of any arms race, be it the race to obtain security by stockpiling more weapons than your enemy or happiness by acquiring more stuff than your neighbor. Arms races loose their fuel as soon as one party stops participating. The enoughness race, and its relentless impact on the Earth, would slow if more and more people found a way to set their own definition of enough and live by it. <br />
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Easier said than done, as seems always to be the case for true leverage points.<br />
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But, after a weekend of simple pleasures, from cheering for 8th grade basketball players, to walking in quiet woods, from listening to Christmas music, to cooking good food, it seems to me that defining enough may not be as hard as we sometimes think. And, not long home from the most recent UN climate conference, a simple fundamental solution, like defining what is enough, seems like it just might accomplish what geo-engineering, carbon markets, and new technologies might not. It might help us create societies that recognize and embrace the reality that our beautiful planet is also finite.Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-51243988167192424902010-12-13T17:54:00.002-05:002010-12-13T17:57:58.544-05:00It's Not Our Planet, It's YoursA slow cold rain is falling, I've spent the day catching up on paperwork and emails with one eye on the headlines as the world analyzes and reacts to the 'Cancun Agreements'. The rush of travel and analysis is behind me for now, the <a href="http://www.climateinteractive.org/scoreboard/press/cancun-cop16-press-release">press release</a> analyzing the Cancun Agreements is posted on the <a href="http://www.climateinteractive.org/">Climate Interactive</a> website, and, finally, there is a little time to reflect.<br />
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No one expected tremendous progress in Cancun, to say the least. But still, when a journalist asked me today if I found it 'worrisome' that the Cancun talks didn't make progress to close the gap between the level of effort countries are willing to commit to and the level of effort that science tells us is needed, it was all I could do not to snap at her. Worrisome? Of course its worrisome. I've got young children who need us to do better than this. They need us to hand the planet over to them in better shape than we are on track to do so far.<br />
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I hung up the phone and watched again a video someone pointed me towards in Cancun. In it, the UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres answers a group of young activists who ask her what inspires her to do the work that she does. "It's you," she says, fighting back tears. <br />
<blockquote> Look: We’re doing this but this has nothing to do with us. It’s all about you. It’s all about you. We’re the ones that have caused the problem but you’re the ones that are going to have to pay for it, right? The fact is, I’m the mother of two women about your age, and I realized many years ago that I had inherited a planet that was a diminished planet. And that if I didn’t do something about it, my daughters would grow up in a planet that had been severely diminished by what we’re doing. And <b>I just can’t look at my daughters in the eyes and not do whatever I can</b>. </blockquote><blockquote>So, it’s you. It’s about the kind of planet that you’re going to have. It’s honestly not my planet. It’s yours, okay? <b>We borrowed it from you for a few minutes</b>. But you will take it over very soon, because it’s yours. And you’re going to have to give it over to your children. </blockquote><blockquote>Honestly, there’s no perfect job here, okay? Nothing that we are going to do in Cancun is going to be perfect. Don’t expect perfection. <b>Nothing is going to be highly ambitious. Nothing. Everything here is going to be one step, and everything is going to be insufficient</b>. But it is the best that this group of people in these circumstances, with these political constraints, in this economic environment, can do for the time being. And as soon as this finishes we have to start pushing for the next step. And so it goes. But <b>each one of us that is here has the moral responsibility to do the absolute best that we can</b> at that moment under those circumstances. So what inspires me? It’s you.</blockquote> Many people are finding reasons for hope in the outcomes of the Cancun Agreements. I'm not sure, that Christiana's words make me hopeful exactly, but the fact that our world has chosen someone to lead the global climate treaty process who is in touch with her heart and grounded in current reality is, at the very least, a reason to keep on going. Like Christiana, how can we not do whatever we can?<br />
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Please, take a moment, and take in the UNFCCC leader's words and spirit.<br />
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<object height="385" width="640"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qzOwjFYXG4I?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qzOwjFYXG4I?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-67767256092451451052010-12-12T17:30:00.003-05:002010-12-12T18:58:16.219-05:00At COP-16: Some Progress, Further to Go<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQjJNijE_zcZGq7srRqkvc52eDVaJ2P-VkKAlnJaudMU2g8IK-LVQUE6w_WBmsl8L5ndUXY4sBaQ11xx2DRVLAMu0l7oItKHYzgy4lmuPzWGurl-0ht7zAEVuJHxL4bm-frgdXug2oHbU/s1600/beth+cop-16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="269" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQjJNijE_zcZGq7srRqkvc52eDVaJ2P-VkKAlnJaudMU2g8IK-LVQUE6w_WBmsl8L5ndUXY4sBaQ11xx2DRVLAMu0l7oItKHYzgy4lmuPzWGurl-0ht7zAEVuJHxL4bm-frgdXug2oHbU/s320/beth+cop-16.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Last year in Copenhagen, our team's message was "we've made some progress and have further to go."<br />
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Whenever we were interviewed by the press or had a chance to brief a policy-maker about our analysis of the pledges for emissions reductions, we stressed that if the pledges were implemented, future generations would experience somewhat less warming than under "business as usual" but that current pledges were not sufficient to avoid dangerous climate change within the century.<br />
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Now, one year later, back home after the conclusion of the Cancun round of UNFCCC negotiations, the message of our analysis is still the same.<br />
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No countries increased the ambition of their pledges, and the body as a whole did not set forth targets for emissions reductions beyond 2020. The end of the conference had some steps that most observers consider progress, and the Mexican hosts are widely recognized for their skilled diplomacy and consensus-building. The negotiators agreed to keep on talking, and to take up, in 2011, the challenges of increasing the strength of 2020 pledges and making commitments for longer-term reductions. They reaffirmed the goal of limiting global temperature increase to 2°C and agreed to revist the goal in a few years to decide if an even lower target might be appropriate.<br />
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With many speculating that the whole process might become deadlocked in tensions between rich an poor nations, the fact that the Cancun Agreements emerged at all signifies that commitment to global cooperation on climate change is still strong. The rounds of standing ovation for the Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs during the final sessions were more about celebrating the ability and willingness of countries to keep on talking rather than any decisive actions on behalf of the climate.<br />
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One oft quoted Greenpeace campaigner summed up the results well when he said that the talks represent "a victory for the process more than a victory for the climate".<br />
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And so, as in the days after Copenhagen, the message still seems to be: "We've made some progress, and have further to go."<br />
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The glass is half empty, and also half full.<br />
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It's not so surprising that this is the case, much as we may wish things were different.<br />
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We are living through some of first moments in human history when people are trying to come together as inhabitants of a single planet to anticipate a problem that has not yet occurred, trying to work out a solution together. There are moments especially in the plenary with hundreds of delegates and observers speaking many languages, wearing many traditional dresses, that I marvel that we are, as a species, doing this at all. With our agriculture revolution only 10,000 years behind us, with an ugly past 500 years of colonization and injustice, it is a marvel that we can even imagine stewarding our shared planet together. It is a wonder that, from satellite imaging to sophisticated monitoring we can see and understand our planet as a whole, and that our wired world is connecting us together in new and powerful ways. The glass is half full.<br />
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And yet, the process is flawed, unfair, short-sighted, bogged down by local politics and narrow interests. It hasn't managed yet to even agree to the magnitude of effort that the climate demands, let alone achieve the massive mobilization that will be needed to implement any agreement. The glass seems, at times, to be almost totally empty.<br />
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With time so short, with emissions needing to peak in under 10 years, progress seems painfully, worryingly, heart-breakingly slow. The halls of the conference were filled with talk of other solutions, outside of a global treaty. Everyone seemed to have hopes for cities, or businesses, or local initiatives leading the way. But a global problem calls out for global solutions. The businesses and cities and initiatives need the lift of a global cap on emissions or a global price on carbon.<br />
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Only time will tell, I guess, whether our species is up to the challenge of bringing itself below the limits of the planet, whether we can come together fast enough, and whether we can recognize our common interests and act on them in time. I do know that thousands of passionate, intelligent, creative folks, and millions more behind them at home around the world, were, over the past two weeks, giving it their best shot. I have no doubt that most of them are now headed home to regroup, reflect, and re-engage, marking the progress that has been made and getting organized to build upon it.<br />
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We've made some progress.<br />
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We have further to go.<br />
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Time to get to work.Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-81410613305847070492010-11-30T21:23:00.001-05:002010-11-30T21:24:15.745-05:00Chosing to Feel Hopeful About the UN Climate Conference<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjGEYF55rx6PAfWUR4eKP7r3R-32YLZFWa1UqYpEyips9hs524gnWmNcN4b_1nahyphenhyphen8BY60NqUorm92E9qjVbT0S-37vxmJJcBNQhYiYEPdEa0rJbnuG2jfVSEePMJ4Xlzud4I8XkyoEzE/s1600/cop16.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjGEYF55rx6PAfWUR4eKP7r3R-32YLZFWa1UqYpEyips9hs524gnWmNcN4b_1nahyphenhyphen8BY60NqUorm92E9qjVbT0S-37vxmJJcBNQhYiYEPdEa0rJbnuG2jfVSEePMJ4Xlzud4I8XkyoEzE/s1600/cop16.png" /></a></div>I'm sitting tonight in an airport hotel, preparing for an early morning flight to Mexico to attend COP-16, the follow-on international negotiation to last year's Copenhagen conference.<br />
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For weeks the commentary in the press has been gloomy on prospects for progress in Cancun. With the changes in the make up of the legislature in the US, prospects for the negotiations overall are widely viewed as dismal.<br />
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It's hard to leave home and family for a giant conference center in a resort city for a meeting that seems already been written off by many. There may not be a global treaty at the end of Cancun but, based on the other UN climate conferences I've attended in the past few years, I think there will be progress on several fronts, no matter what the negotiators themselves accomplish.<br />
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Deeper ties will be woven, between individuals and groups, especially civil society organizations who send representatives to share and learn. People from different countries, different sectors, and different age groups will be thrown together for these two weeks, based on their shared search for fair and lasting solutions to climate change. The momentum that these groups continue to build and the network they continue to weave is changing the world, in subtle and not always predictable ways.<br />
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Scientific and technical exchange will continue. At the edges of the conferences are dozens of 'side events' where groups talk about the research and policy experiments. What's working in Africa to help farmers adapt to changing weather? What does the latest science say about needed reductions in greenhouse gas emissions? What are the latest ideas about how to finance those emissions reductions? Whether the negotiators find any points of a agreement or not, the exchange of ideas will go on, and will lead to new ideas, new collaborations, new experiments.<br />
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In the end we do need a global agreement to reduce emissions and the sooner the better. But getting to that agreement is not only a matter of the immediate politics of an agreement. It is also a matter of creating the right conditions, in each country, to allow leaders to lead toward sound climate policy and to allow negotiators to seal a deal to implement it.<br />
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Perhaps the negotiations will surprise all of us with a stronger than expected outcome, but if they don't, it makes the rest of the work of Cancun – the learning, the relationship building, the exchange – that much more important. That is the work that prepares the ground for the kind of global agreement we need.Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-37152886259219717152010-11-23T17:58:00.001-05:002010-11-23T18:12:58.154-05:00Measuring the gap is an essential (but only a first) step toward steering a system<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt4CRCYr81h8uRz3zyaxJmbQ8G4NSUNhGiUXG-BgRVatS0ROnKImfQaDl6-lV2hMkIaEz0-9cVIY6mJNOkl-JUK4s9A5VjcrcSK26MhyphenhyphenY3R_kbIX5RwyZm0L3d-NngxakzY31z5rkHogw/s1600/Emissions+gap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt4CRCYr81h8uRz3zyaxJmbQ8G4NSUNhGiUXG-BgRVatS0ROnKImfQaDl6-lV2hMkIaEz0-9cVIY6mJNOkl-JUK4s9A5VjcrcSK26MhyphenhyphenY3R_kbIX5RwyZm0L3d-NngxakzY31z5rkHogw/s320/Emissions+gap.jpg" width="292" /></a></div>This morning, a new report was released by the United Nations Environment Program. It represents about half a year of work by dozens of scientists, including me, who were asked by UNEP to assess the expected global greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 if countries fulfill the pledges they made last year in Copenhagen.<br />
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It was a challenging task for reasons ranging from lack of clarity about what exactly some pledges meant, to differing historical data sources, to differing projections of future emissions in different parts of the world, and, of course, due to the uncertainties inherent in our imperfect understanding of the climate itself. But given all of the challenges, I think the report does a good job of giving us a snapshot in time of the best scientific answer to a complex question: if we desire to limit temperature increase to 2°C over pre-industrial temperatures, do the Copenhagen Accord pledges go far enough? You can read the report <a href="http://www.unep.org/publications/ebooks/emissionsgapreport/">here</a>, if you want all the details, but the bottom line answer is: no, there's a gap between where we are headed and where we need to head. We filled about 60% of the gap, and have another 40% of the way to go.<br />
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As someone who has made a career of studying systems, I know that registering a gap is an essential step in self-regulating feedback. Whether it is the drop in blood sugar that sends an animal in search of food, or the increase in body temperature that leads to sweating, all self-regulating systems keep themselves in balance by measuring the gap between where some parameter is and where it needs to be, and reacting to the difference with corrective action.<br />
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It could be that the Emissions Gap report is, like the gap detected by a thermostat that turns on a furnace, a signal that spurs self-correcting, balancing action, in this case global resolve to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.<br />
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But, not every gap that can be detected by a system triggers self-corrective feedback. My mentor, the systems analyst, Donella Meadows, once said jokingly about the increase in standardized testing in schools: "trying to improve learning by increasing testing, is like trying to cure a fever by taking your temperature." Measuring a gap, without the determination to act on it, is unlikely to change a system.<br />
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The Emissions Gap report is, like a test, or a thermometer, an effort to measure the size of a gap, the amount of deviation of a system from healthy conditions. But the assessment of the gap alone can't bring the system into balance any more than a thermostat can warm a room if it is disconnected from the furnace.<br />
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A gap is an essential part of any self-corrective feedback loop, but only a part, a trigger. To create change, there must be something to act on the news of the gap.<br />
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So where might we find the rest of the self-corrective feedback loop that seems to be struggling to emerge as humanity grapples with it's overshoot of the planet's limits?<br />
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There's nowhere for it to lie, really, except in us. Individual human beings, from environment ministers to ordinary citizens. In the everyday personal choices we make, and more importantly, in our coming together to change the prices of energy, the rewards for efficiency, the design of cities, and the vision of a good life for an individual or a whole society. <br />
<br />
The good news of the emissions gap report is that the gap could be closed, brought to zero, given reasonable assumptions about technological progress and investment and the pace of change.<br />
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The hours of thinking, analysis and editing will seem well worth it, if the news of the Emissions Gap helps, in small ways or large ones, to trigger the the systemic self-corrective action we know is needed to keep the climate with in safe bounds.Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-68117511853748420742010-11-22T14:36:00.000-05:002010-11-22T14:36:44.391-05:00Seeing with new eyes thanks to the space station and twitter<div class="photo-comment-message" style="clear: both; color: black;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTjiVKdCmng8jf2WGJDyxWbgq73jRDqnmQ8WL_rwg0VxtVHNkT1K295JssI-YbTFI8majur3hwtvLnGdGQ5s30Ky6IBY9yeT3vpFKqVQjdb0-5CKD50_wFlrQgBucEXUa_H4Pv90rYGtw/s1600/japan+at+night.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTjiVKdCmng8jf2WGJDyxWbgq73jRDqnmQ8WL_rwg0VxtVHNkT1K295JssI-YbTFI8majur3hwtvLnGdGQ5s30Ky6IBY9yeT3vpFKqVQjdb0-5CKD50_wFlrQgBucEXUa_H4Pv90rYGtw/s400/japan+at+night.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-size: small;"><i>The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world — we've actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other. --- Joanna Macy</i></span><br />
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I'm as likely as the next mother to tell my kids to get off the computer and go outside, but I have to admit that one source of hope for me is the way that new developments in global communications seem poised to bring the people of our planet closer together than ever before.</div><div class="photo-comment-message" style="clear: both;">I notice this in my work all the time. Tomorrow, for example, I'll be offering a '<a href="http://climateinteractive.wordpress.com/2010/11/17/the-emissions-gap-a-webinar-briefing-by-climate-interactives-elizabeth-sawin/">webinar</a>' briefing on a climate study that will have me, in my home office in Vermont, connected to people not only in the US, but Europe, Asia, and South America. For 30 minutes, aided by <a href="http://www.gotomeeting.com/">GoToMeeting</a> technology and the internet I'll be able to share important results about the implications of the Copenhagen Accord with concerned, knowledgeable people from around the world, people who will be able to do something with the information. And none of us will have spent a dollar on a plane ticket or burned any jet fuel to come together. </div><div class="photo-comment-message" style="clear: both;">I've also recently begun to follow the 'tweets' of <a href="http://twitpic.com/photos/Astro_Wheels">Astro_Wheels</a>, an astronaut on the international space station who has been taking photos of the Earth from his vantage point and sharing them via "twitpic" (Did you know there is internet access on the space station, somehow?)</div><div class="photo-comment-message" style="clear: both;">The photographs are breathtaking, but even more moving to me are the mixture of languages (and alphabets!) in the dozens of comments beneath each picture. Seeing our shared home seems to elicit the same expressions of wonder and appreciation across cultures, nations, and languages.</div><div class="photo-comment-message" style="clear: both;">Here are few of the comments in response to the photo above, of Japan at night:</div><div class="photo-comment-message" style="clear: both;"></div><div class="photo-comment-message" style="clear: both;"><i>wow coooooooooooll! im on this planet.</i></div><div class="photo-comment"><div class="photo-comment-body"><div class="photo-comment-message" style="clear: both;"><i>Thank you! Astro_Wheels! キャ~!!待ってましたよ。日本!綺麗ですね。海岸線が光のラインではっきりわかります。私の住んでる名古屋も輝いてます☆</i></div></div></div><div class="photo-comment"><div class="photo-comment-body"><i>que bella foto! gracias! increible saber que estoy en Güemes,Salta,Argentina y poder disfrutar</i></div></div><div class="photo-comment"><div class="photo-comment-body"><div class="photo-comment-message" style="clear: both;"><i>うわー!北海道から山陽山陰四国まで見えますね!I live 2cm point from the top of this photo!!ThanQ so much♡♡♡</i></div></div></div><div class="photo-comment"><div class="photo-comment-body"><div class="photo-comment-message" style="clear: both;"><i>huau muy buenas fotos¡¡¡ espero alguna de argentina</i></div></div></div><div class="photo-comment"><div class="photo-comment-body"><div class="photo-comment-message" style="clear: both;"><i>wow!!! very pretty!</i></div></div></div><i>maravilloso y sin igual esta imagen te deja sin palabras ....gracias</i><br />
<div class="photo-comment"><div class="photo-comment-body"><i>amazing</i></div></div><i>"It's my home country! I'm glad! I am hoping for safety of your voyage! Thank you! :-)"…From:One of these light."</i><br />
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These responses show who we are as a species, just as much as the needless wars, the painfully slow march to a global climate treaty, the unacceptable gap between rich and poor.<br />
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So yes, cooooool!! amazing, gracias, Astro_Wheels. Keep the glimpses of our wholeness coming.<br />
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--from another one of these lights.Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-87152693321123648522010-11-20T19:48:00.001-05:002010-11-20T19:55:20.443-05:00A Good, Low-Carbon Day<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2w3xLN_Zdr35IxWz-6Vy_u43LMP50ilLpfxgXczae_9fTZxQxwD_YLPm3H9JD32bgzHbvP2vq8JNEgkxd5ohplwNknOCyEkn2zYspxy-vgD_0lZtjG0ovW0XMX-Q9vIdXYtcqR-ENOP8/s1600/soil.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="308" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2w3xLN_Zdr35IxWz-6Vy_u43LMP50ilLpfxgXczae_9fTZxQxwD_YLPm3H9JD32bgzHbvP2vq8JNEgkxd5ohplwNknOCyEkn2zYspxy-vgD_0lZtjG0ovW0XMX-Q9vIdXYtcqR-ENOP8/s320/soil.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>A satisfying simple November day today.<br />
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It started with community workday, the one day per month we set aside for those jobs that need - or are just more fun - with a group of people. I helped move wood up to the shed and caught up with some of the news in some of my neighbors lives at the same time. When we couldn't cram another log into the shed, I wandered down the hill and started preparing the herb garden for winter, pulling a few late weeds, and cutting the dead growth off the oregano, thyme, tansy, and yarrow. A fragrant, pungent job.<br />
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Then, a pause for a fine warm lunch, set up by a neighbor and some of the kids, a little more conversation about grandchildren and politics and the rest of the workday list, and back to the garden to finish it off in the good company of a neighbor armed with pruning shears and some news of old friends.<br />
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A walk in the woods, a simple supper of roasted root vegetables, green beans from the garden, and a sampling of chocolate and strawberry frozen yogurt, the result of the newest business venture of some Cobb Hill neighbors. <br />
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Now, I'm warm and cozy in our house, with a cup of tea and a moment to think.<br />
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It's not the only 'low-carbon' way to live, and it certainly isn't as low carbon as it will need to become as we navigate the challenges our changing climate is thrusting upon us, but, with my warm cup of tea at my side I just can't shake a certain sense of confidence. When we, as a nation, as a world, turn to renewable energy (all those loads of logs), local food (the herbs, the roasted vegetables, the chocolate frozen yogurt), and finding pleasure and relaxation without fossil fuels to transport us around quite so much (the walk in the woods, the watching as the light changes over the hills during the course of one day on the land), we might just find ways of living that, far from being a sacrifice, bring unexpected richness and warmth and the honest satisfaction of tired muscles to our lives.Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-46340597326015262452010-11-19T19:27:00.004-05:002010-11-19T19:35:45.347-05:00If you want people to believe that climate change is real, talk about solutions<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1S1sID1ZYu5GwdSBfDqQxSbgLJN7xnFERIypszzE08mrnlQPd_EOcei1juf9k007prl7RJK1BxQovA_CYoIPDTTCbJyYAN1ZTHYnAna1frDtHi3xD4aY2Fc8tLsK-pG3Ypgtn9uAa5fI/s1600/windturbinecopenhagen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1S1sID1ZYu5GwdSBfDqQxSbgLJN7xnFERIypszzE08mrnlQPd_EOcei1juf9k007prl7RJK1BxQovA_CYoIPDTTCbJyYAN1ZTHYnAna1frDtHi3xD4aY2Fc8tLsK-pG3Ypgtn9uAa5fI/s320/windturbinecopenhagen.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><span id="goog_931425865"></span><span id="goog_931425866"></span>There have been press reports this week about an interesting new <a href="http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2010/11/16_globalwarming_messaging.shtml">study</a> on people's attitudes towards climate change.<br />
<br />
In the experiment participants were given one of two factual articles about climate change. Half the participants received articles that ended with "warnings about the apocalyptic consequences of global warming." The other half read articles that ended with "positive messages focused on potential solutions to global warming, such as technological innovations that could reduce carbon emissions"<br />
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Here's the interesting part:<br />
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"Those who read the positive messages were more open to believing in the existence of global warming."<br />
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At first that sounds counter-intuitive -- people become more convinced of a problem when they have evidence that it can be solved? But it does make a certain kind of sense. If a problem is devastating and unsolvable there are all sorts of self-protective mechanisms that help us block the problem out.<br />
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I think this study has some interesting implications:<br />
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Cynicism is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If we act as though there are no solutions to climate change, our fellow citizens will be more likely to ignore the problem all together, making solutions even less likely to emerge.<br />
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And, more importantly, daring to envision solutions and talk about them and implement them, at whatever scale we can, is a self-fulfilling prophecy as well. Helping people see solutions helps them bear the truth of what is unfolding during their lifetimes and opens the way for them to help build solutions, which maybe opens the way for some one far removed from you to accept the problem and create solutions, and so on, and so on.Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-67993634991622428412010-08-30T20:44:00.003-05:002010-08-30T20:59:54.190-05:00Time Affluence<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8JkRUZOlAOc_TLLWoBPVQj6z6KMs9YMUt8sQsWYJxu_ouo5yffvYiY3LUXmonmm5NMvwXRYbtI6fRKVmURdxzM6Tjm0xUP6RlQmS1Fmta5SGF3nFa6qqC5gHKYp2WvTdet1k_zuvcqdk/s1600/reading+pools+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8JkRUZOlAOc_TLLWoBPVQj6z6KMs9YMUt8sQsWYJxu_ouo5yffvYiY3LUXmonmm5NMvwXRYbtI6fRKVmURdxzM6Tjm0xUP6RlQmS1Fmta5SGF3nFa6qqC5gHKYp2WvTdet1k_zuvcqdk/s400/reading+pools+2.jpg" width="376" /></a></div>School starts tomorrow, and so the girls and I and two friends of theirs had a final summer fling this afternoon.<br />
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Following the directions of a friend – "turn right after the General Store, then turn down a narrow road that looks like a driveway and park at the edge of a path that leads through a patch of brambles" – we came to the most lovely hidden stream with deep pools, gigantic boulders, and slippery water slides that the girls were soon shooting down like little otters.<br />
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We had a picnic, laid on the rocks until we got too hot, then plunged into the water until we got too cold. There was a rope to swing on, cliffs to climb, and rocks to leap between.<br />
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I, without doubt the most sedentary of our little group, tended to favor sitting in the shade with my feet dangling in the water and, as I did, a phrase I read in a computer modeling paper earlier in the day came to life in my mind: 'time affluence'. <br />
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The paper, from the <a href="http://www.tellus.org/">Tellus Institute</a>, was about the dynamics of the transition to a sustainable world, which the paper argues will require a values shift on at least three dimensions: human solidarity, ecological resilience, and quality of life. And quality of life, the authors argued, is deeply tied to time affluence, to the amount of time one has to spend in leisure, with family, or in community. Policies that improve our affluence with regard to time tend to make us happier and healthier, while reducing consumption and pressure on the Earth's systems. Like organic farming that builds the soil and feeds people or renewable energy that improves air quality and provides good jobs, time affluence is at once a solution to the sustainability crisis and its own reward.<br />
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I can't think of a better example of affluence than spending the last hot afternoon of school vacation in cool water, not far from home, surrounded by laughter and splashes and fun. Real affluence lives not far out of our reach, so much of the time.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDtzO9O3YQm1qzsib0jjsCFalLspstPdTWZ-8t0zTbtF4CeamSc0t4NJo5SXmfQ7h13D2xZmz3iGAct1tfEV6upMb_8j7Th8jFlpfJ3EeUSqTJQ1-wMjYnb93ElE_j0ez2kgvwxiQNd-U/s1600/reading+pools+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDtzO9O3YQm1qzsib0jjsCFalLspstPdTWZ-8t0zTbtF4CeamSc0t4NJo5SXmfQ7h13D2xZmz3iGAct1tfEV6upMb_8j7Th8jFlpfJ3EeUSqTJQ1-wMjYnb93ElE_j0ez2kgvwxiQNd-U/s400/reading+pools+3.jpg" width="311" /></a></div><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-75324744900226647492010-08-25T19:47:00.003-05:002010-08-25T19:58:41.829-05:00Shifting Consciousness, Starting With My Own<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfRSp4OtdfO9S_4zUwtAd2VEeXhIb7CNk9xLPbJTvTg9l_ZANrBIK27lB0hdHxu35d8hjR1W4x6yxkaE8bELKOXi2Zun_4UxOLXxDofwFC1Ra5zrkwMvAoEO-YOvAoDtGC7HJiMlfIZKo/s1600/aster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="341" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfRSp4OtdfO9S_4zUwtAd2VEeXhIb7CNk9xLPbJTvTg9l_ZANrBIK27lB0hdHxu35d8hjR1W4x6yxkaE8bELKOXi2Zun_4UxOLXxDofwFC1Ra5zrkwMvAoEO-YOvAoDtGC7HJiMlfIZKo/s400/aster.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Sitting in my post-vacation inbox was a very tantalyzing email inviting me to join a distinguished group of sustainability thinkers and doers, including some old friends I'd dearly love to see and some folks I've always wanted to meet.The agenda looked inspiring, all expenses were paid, and I've spent the past few days badly wanting to reply with an enthusiastic "count-me-in" while simultaneously thinking how crazy that would be, having already committed to workshops and conferences in Burlington, Boston, Geneva and San Fransisco between now and November.<br />
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The allure of the invitation is a strong combination I'm somehow deeply susceptible to – a mix of intellectual curiosity, gratitude for being recognized and included, and the hope that somehow maybe this group could make a big difference, change the world, halt the damage, open the way to new possibilities. If you tell me I could do something to accelerate the shift toward sustainable human communities on this Earth, I will be putty in your hands.<br />
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But, this time, I haven't sent that enthusiastic reply, at least not yet.<br />
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Instead I left the computer long enough to walk a little in the wet late summer day, breathe the moist air, and think about all the not-so-glamorous things I need to do this fall, from finishing some scientific writing projects, to planting the winter greenhouse, to helping a ten year old adjust to a new school, to helping a new team at a new organization find its stride.<br />
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None of that is likely to be the unitary key to a global shift in consciousness, but some of it might be a small part in a greater shift that is already underway. The scientific paper, if done well and met with receptive conditions, could help expand the time horizon of climate decision makers. The growing team, with the right mixture of hard work and good luck, has a chance to help people understand the urgency and the possibility of the shift to a low carbon economy.<br />
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I still I haven't hit 'reply' but I think the answer is arising for me, in me. I think I'll be staying home that week in September, a week that is among the most beautiful of all the weeks of the year on a farm in Vermont.<br />
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I can't say for sure whether the faint voice I am hearing is the voice of wisdom or the voice of exhaustion, but one principle of complex systems is coming to mind, finally after all the soul-searching: systems work because of the diversity of their parts. Each part has to do its part, but no part has to do the whole job. The heart cell just has to do the work of the heart cell, the aster in the meadow just has to be an aster, not a milkweed, not a grass. <br />
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There's something restful in that idea, and something that leaves me grateful to know that such a fine group will be meeting in California, without being desperate to be there myself. And that's a new kind of acceptance for me, one that just might qualify as a shift in consciousness.Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-75166668412437100582010-08-24T20:16:00.008-05:002010-08-24T20:33:46.120-05:00A Celebration of Agriculture<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIDkTPQwNmbBAO6F-QUxvE-ESUoTrk-EnzBY8DY0ZNhu0qFRLaZFkZxjzldyDoXKfH0MUEPddTiX5NdcTX2C-e8sYPfTy84gxmkFOwpMpccDUxxVyaFsUvoi0L9U8lWgkii5pPt7o3vFM/s1600/nora+fair.2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIDkTPQwNmbBAO6F-QUxvE-ESUoTrk-EnzBY8DY0ZNhu0qFRLaZFkZxjzldyDoXKfH0MUEPddTiX5NdcTX2C-e8sYPfTy84gxmkFOwpMpccDUxxVyaFsUvoi0L9U8lWgkii5pPt7o3vFM/s400/nora+fair.2.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>Thanks to our younger daughter, we had a welcome respite from computers, emails, conference calls, and weighty decisions in general last week.<br />
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Instead, from Thursday through Sunday the four of us more or less lived in a 10 foot by 10 foot corner of one of the cow barns at the <a href="http://www.cornishnhfair.com/">Cornish Fair. </a><br />
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Our kids have been helping take care of <a href="http://cedarmountainfarm.org/">Cedar Mountain Farm's</a> Jersey cows since they were 5 and 8. And this year our younger daughter went so far as to become a member of 4-H and bring a young calf and a year-old heifer to the fair. Over the course of four days she showed her animals six different times, being judged variously on the quality of the cows and the quality of her care and handling of them. She won a few ribbons, made a few friends, learned a lot, and declared the whole event one of the best things to ever happen in her life. The rest of us played supporting parts, ate a year's worth of french fries and ice cream, and cheered her on.<br />
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A few impressions stand out in my mind as memories of the whole experience:<br />
<ul><li>Watching a toddler in a stroller connect the dots between the udder of a giant Holstein cow and the milk in his sippy cup with a 'you've got to be kidding' look on his face.</li>
<li>Noticing the wistfulness on the face of an older Hartland neighbor of ours, whose family sold their last cows some years ago, as he sat at ringside and watched the judging.</li>
<li>Watching the wild soccer game under the judging tent late at night when the showing was over, the chores were done, the fair visitors were off in the other world of the midway, and the kids who had been so focused and disciplined all day were suddenly just kids again.</li>
<li>Seeing again and again the toughness, sweetness, confidence and full-out strength of teenage girl after teenage girl muscling, coaxing, and cajoling giant animals who outweighed them many times over. The boys were great too, but I was very happy to have our two girls looking around in awe at strong, smart young women who were definitely in charge of their destinies.</li>
<li>Noticing the links between farm families, and figuring out that some of the littlest kids leading calves around the ring had grandparents who had shown cows in the very same ring, and realizing that, though struggles abound, we are blessed to live in a region where family farms continue not only to exist but to thrive. </li>
</ul>We are back to the world of emails and deadlines again, but I think we are going to remember the fair for a long time to come. And I know for sure that those who say that the world is forever addicted to easy entertainment and conspicuous consumption and that people will never sign up for the challenge of more sustainable ways of living have never spent a long weekend in cow barn at a fair.<br />
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If they had, they would have to agree that some families have never stopped being rooted in the land and in the care of animals and that those families are, in fact, having a pretty good time in the process of keeping those traditions alive.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg80vOdV2k7Q7YN22yGk-sIApvKF1ERF0k0ErZz73mnADTTAUuvAUVgPTJbJWRaTV87Aqi49R-qyhrKut-0ZNBGyK4xwyqfU1DEN0v7hlGT0bXQFsHT9N0aOozRfEqTcCAwzGnP2CE2WuE/s1600/nora+fair.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg80vOdV2k7Q7YN22yGk-sIApvKF1ERF0k0ErZz73mnADTTAUuvAUVgPTJbJWRaTV87Aqi49R-qyhrKut-0ZNBGyK4xwyqfU1DEN0v7hlGT0bXQFsHT9N0aOozRfEqTcCAwzGnP2CE2WuE/s640/nora+fair.jpg" width="595" /></a></div>Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-4898950044939170702010-08-16T15:47:00.003-05:002010-08-16T15:55:19.595-05:00Cheap Gas - Even With a Voluntary Tax<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrU5nw4rGbtVvIDK3ySb09IhYnC8oejJep6jtct0QShOh92G3xr-v7-dU6KKk98XizBPDHrRvWx3Hx4mu35bI6BPO16PGUu1r1LryPuNoX6-itszNtnebQpGpPrbsD57Yy-Co6cp-oee4/s1600/cobb+hill+gas+tax.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrU5nw4rGbtVvIDK3ySb09IhYnC8oejJep6jtct0QShOh92G3xr-v7-dU6KKk98XizBPDHrRvWx3Hx4mu35bI6BPO16PGUu1r1LryPuNoX6-itszNtnebQpGpPrbsD57Yy-Co6cp-oee4/s640/cobb+hill+gas+tax.jpg" width="508" /></a><br />
I wrote yesterday about the experimental voluntary 'carbon tax' at Cobb Hill - where many of my neighbors have agreed to pool $1/per gallon of gasoline that we use during August and September.<br />
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In Bonn a few weeks ago I picked up a <a href="http://www.gtz.de/en/themen/29957.htm">flyer</a> with the picture shown above in it (from GTZ (German Technical Cooperation) on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Coperation and Development). It shows international gasoline prices for 2009.<br />
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The figure shows, from the lowest price at the top to the highest at the bottom, the average price citizens pay for a liter of gasoline in each country. <br />
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I added the big yellow arrows for the US average (just between Angola and Jordan) at 56 cents per liter, and the US average plus the Cobb Hill voluntary tax (which moves us up to the company of the Republic of Congo and Pakistan), but still in the bottom half of the price distribution.<br />
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If you follow the <a href="http://www.gtz.de/en/themen/29957.htm">link</a> to the actual data, you'll see that the countries with the most expensive gasoline are not monolithic. You'll find some of the wealthiest countries that have excellent public transportation and walkable cities, like Denmark or the Netherlands, and some of the poorest countries, like Burundi and Eritrea. What I don't think you will find are countries whose cities have reputations for excellent public transportation or biking or walking amongst those countries in the top fourth of the graph, where the US currently sits.<br />
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You get what you pay for, as my grandmother always said. Somehow our $1 tax isn't seeming so steep anymore.Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5041210651772740565.post-58504109457996698122010-08-15T09:59:00.006-05:002010-08-15T10:17:17.308-05:00Carbon Tax Passes, At Least A Voluntary One in My Community<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPgNQpquyvbwB7VgxD2ePgqWLLlJf9_jlv_np7Rx4OMMPFUS1ToDqxWdHX9EBJyzu1U3xD3n3XbitmCr2wOscG-V0BUHw-RnRnwYhomP4QSD6BVxRMe2IRDCk1sWN8tJJWv6X0ppPXCFI/s1600/gs+pump.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPgNQpquyvbwB7VgxD2ePgqWLLlJf9_jlv_np7Rx4OMMPFUS1ToDqxWdHX9EBJyzu1U3xD3n3XbitmCr2wOscG-V0BUHw-RnRnwYhomP4QSD6BVxRMe2IRDCk1sWN8tJJWv6X0ppPXCFI/s400/gs+pump.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>I love the experimental attitude of Cobb Hill, something that I think traces directly back to Cobb Hill co-founder, Donella Meadows, who wrote and spoke often of her belief that no one knows how to create a sustainable world and that therefore we must commit ourselves to experimentation, be willing to make mistakes, and share what we learn along the way.<br />
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This experimental spirit showed up in my email box the other day, in the form of a note from my neighbor, Tom, with recommendations for a two-month experiment with a voluntary carbon tax within our community.<br />
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The idea was simple. Any family who wanted to participate would keep track of the number of gallons of gasoline consumed for two months, and commit to paying a 'tax' of $1 per gallon, the proceeds of which would be collected and invested in yet-to-be-determined ways that would enhance the sustainability or fossil-fuel independence of the community.<br />
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I signed up (though I gulped when I saw the recommendation that air-miles be 'taxed' as well, knowing that my fall schedule of flights to climate meetings is quite high; the irony of this which is a topic for another post someday!)<br />
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There are all sorts of questions about our voluntary tax, pretty much the same ones that play out on the national and international scale.<br />
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Fairness:<br />
How do we ensure that the tax is not an unfair burden on those with the lowest incomes?<br />
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Priorities;<br />
How to invest the revenues towards our long-term goals?<br />
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Specifics:<br />
What about other fuels, like propane for cooking? <br />
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If the past ten years at Cobb Hill are any guide we will talk about all these questions and more. We will try things out. The plan will change. It might even be abandoned in the end, and that would be OK with me. The plan itself is not the point. What is important is, as Dana Meadows said, the willingness to admit that we don't know exactly what to do and then get down to the work of trying things out.<br />
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So, stay tuned for the debate, the lessons, and, of course, the answer you might be most interested in: how big will the Sawin/Rice August/September voluntary carbon tax bill be?<br />
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And, who knows, maybe your family or your neighborhood will get sick of waiting for the Senate and decide to try something similar, yourselves.Elizabeth Sawinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06289847900579821685noreply@blogger.com1