Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
21 Worldchanging Principles in 21 Days
Team, WorldChanging
…we’ve had an opportunity to look across our archive at the themes and ideas we’ve developed over time, and to pull out some key elements that, to us, illuminate the changing nature of sustainability in the 21st century.
Over the next twenty-one days, we’ll be running a series highlighting these principles and sharing resources from our archive that delve deeper and provide context for each. At the end, we hope to have a [semi-comprehensive] toolkit of the guiding concepts behind our vision of a globally sustainable future.
So far, WorldChanging has posted:
Principle 1: The Backstory
Principle 2: Ecological Footprints and One Planet Thinking
Principle 3: Cradle to Cradle and Closing the Loop
Principle 4: Life Cycle Analysis, Embodied Energy and Virtual Water
For the latest Principles, see the WorldChanging homepage.
(7 May 2007
There seems to be a lot of overlap with other sustainability principels, such as
The Ethics and Principles of Permaculture by David Holmgren (homepage).
Principles such as these would seem to be an excellent basis for a new worldview — the kind of paradigm shift that the late Donella Meadows said would be so powerful in effecting a system change (Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System – PDF).
-BA
Starting the Riot for Austerity
Sharon Astyk, Casaubon’s Book
In his book _Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning_ George Monbiot makes the compelling case that if we are to stop catastrophic global warming, we must reduce world emissions to 2.7 tons per year by 2030. Right now, the world emits a bit over 7 billion tons. So that means a worldwide reduction of at least 60% (it is probably actually more, because the IPCC figures have risen since the publication of Monbiot’s book). The thing is, however, you can’t just institute across the board 60% cuts – and say, thus to a village in Chad that uses electricity to light their school, clinic and pump water for the communal well, “Oh, sorry, you have to give up the clinic and the well.” The only just solution is to hold the largest emitters proportionately responsible. Which means in the US, a cut of our emissions of 93 or 94% (depending on who you ask).
Monbiot observes that we lack the political will to make this happen, and says “no one has ever rioted for austerity.” By that he means that there’s never been a worldwide political movement demanding “we want less.” As Monbiot observes in his latest London Guardian article, the governments of rich nations have pretty much decided that environmental apocalypse is more politically expedient than actually doing what’s necessary. The most radical plans proposed in the US represent only an 80% cut in emissions by 2050 – which is simply too little, too late. www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2069395,00.html
All of which means one thing – unless we do something entirely unprecedented in our history, that is, demand that our governments take action to give us a world that consumes less and uses less power, our governments will let billions die for reasons of expedience.
But it is important to note that we do have power over our governments. We can make it so that isn’t politically expedient to do that much harm. And one of the ways we can do that, is to stand up and represent a visible reproach to the notion that reducing our emissions that much is impossible, that Americans would never do this. As soon as some of us can stand up and say “I did it.” “I did it.” “My family did it.” “We did it…and you can too.” We can offer living proof to those who believe falsely that we must choose between “the American way of life” and “leaving the next generation a world worth living in.”
(10 May 2007)
Momentum Grows to “Ban the Bulb”
Lester R. Brown, IPS
Australia announced it would phase out the sale of inefficient incandescent light bulbs by 2010, replacing them with highly efficient compact fluorescent bulbs that use one-fourth as much electricity.
If the rest of the world joins Australia in this simple step to sharply cut carbon emissions, the worldwide drop in electricity use would permit the closing of more than 270 coal-fired (500 megawatt) power plants. For the United States, this bulb switch would facilitate shutting down 80 coal-fired plants.
The good news is that the world may be approaching a social tipping point in this shift to efficient light bulbs. On Apr. 25, just two months after Australia’s announcement, the Canadian government announced it would phase out sales of incandescents by 2012. Mounting concerns about climate change are driving the bulb replacement movement.
In mid-March, a U.S. coalition of environmental groups – including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Alliance to Save Energy, the American Coalition for an Energy-Efficient Economy, and the Earth Day Network – along with Philips Lighting launched an initiative to shift to the more-efficient bulbs in all of the country’s estimated four billion sockets by 2016.
In California, the most populous state, Assemblyman Lloyd Levine is proposing that his state phase out the sale of incandescent light bulbs by 2012, four years ahead of the coalition’s deadline. Levine calls his proposed law the “How Many Legislators Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb Act.”
(9 May 2007)
Also at Common Dreams.
For a warmer future, Australia employs Aboriginal wisdom
Nick Squires, The Christian Science Monitor
Faced with its worst drought in history, meteorologists are plumbing the Aborigines’ 40,000 years of lore.
—-
Sydney, Australia – To white Australians, the flocks of red-tailed black cockatoos which flap above tree canopies are a memorable highlight of any weekend hike. But to Aborigines, the parrots are living, squawking barometers.
“A month ago when the cockatoos were flocking and the wattle bushes were flowering, we saw that as signs of rain,” says Jeremy Clark, chief executive of the Brambuk Aboriginal Cultural Centre in the Grampian Mountains of Victoria State. “Sure enough, we’ve just had two weeks of rain.”
Where meteorologists base their prognostications on satellites and synoptic charts, generations of Aborigines have observed the behavior of animals and the continent’s flowering of plants.
More than two centuries after the first British settlement was established in 1788, there is a belated recognition that 40,000 years of Aboriginal lore may contribute to the complicated science of Australia’s capricious climate.
After seven years of scant rainfall – the worst drought on record – have left vast swathes of the country parched and barren, the Bureau of Meteorology’s Indigenous Weather Knowledge Project hopes to harness Aborigines’ ancient understanding of weather patterns.
“Our primary focus is mapping the seasons as they are understood by indigenous people,” says Harvey Stern, the head of the project. “From there could emerge all sorts of gems which will help us better understand the weather and how it impacts on the environment.”
(9 May 2007)
