I got an email yesterday from the We Can Solve It campaign, the multi-million dollar ad and activism campaign founded by the Alliance for Climate Change (i.e., Al Gore’s baby). The email contained a link to the We campaign’s newest ad, which they are trying to get in front of 50,000 eyes by the end of the weekend.

The piece is nicely produced and has a clear message: Americans demand a solution to the energy crisis. We want all renewable energy with 10 years. And of course I share this desire.

But I have a serious problem with the tone of the ad. “Free us from our addiction to oil,” it implores. “Save our economy. Save us from this climate crisis.” I understand that political solutions are critical to any real solution—heck, we’ve been pushing the political process all month here.

But this ad seems to put the entire onus on government to save us from ourselves. Where is the ad imploring Americans to make their homes more energy-efficient, drive fewer miles, and eat less meat? Where is the ad questioning whether consumerism—the demand link in the chain of behavior that causes greenhouse gas emissions—is really the highest expression of our humanity?

Policy shifts are necessary, but only one part of the sea change we are going through. We can’t downplay our role in creating this problem or in fixing it. Everyone at every level has a contribution to make.

By all means, let’s push our elected representatives to invest in clean technologies and build up the renewable energy infrastructure. But let’s not forget to push ourselves, too.

By Sebastian Bulldog

Over the last two weeks I have been contacting my representative and my senator with a clear goal in mind—procuring appointments with both so I can present clear objectives for addressing our climate crises. I have made some good progress and have learned so much through this challenge. I see that it takes a clear intention of what I want to accomplish paired with keeping my nose to the grindstone.

I feel a little like a bulldog as I’ve been calling and emailing the offices of my congress member Carolyn McCarthy and Senator Schumer roughly a half dozen times each. I also sent both offices a letter of request by snail mail for a meeting to speak with them about climate change, renewable energy and creating green jobs.

But following up has paid off—I have a confirmed appointment to speak with Congress member McCarthy next week. Yeah! I’m excited about this and will be reading up on the 1sky platform for solutions to climate change, specifically: reducing pollution, stopping new coal fired power plants from being built, and promoting green jobs and green energy initiatives.

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Art Class, By Charles Mosby

I’m so pleased to include Phyllis’s piece on her work with incarcerated individuals, teaching them about positivity, responsibility, and creative self-expression through the vehicle of art. Through her belief in and expectations for her students, she creates a space of excellence and invites them into it. I would imagine for many of her students, this is a brand new experience that opens their eyes and hearts to what is possible in their lives. The beautiful future we want to create isn’t just for people who already have it all together. The work Phyllis does gives us a model for how we can go about widening the circle of acceptance and hope for everyone. -editor

Following my education, I began teaching art in various traditional venues. I was never quite satisfied, or enthusiastic, about any of them until I took a job teaching painting and drawing in Oklahoma State prisons to men and women incarcerated in medium and maximum-security facilities. That clicked. That was where my heart found its home, and that is the population I’ve been working with ever since, for the last twenty-five years.

“Art Teacher” didn’t seem the right job description after a few weeks of working behind bars. Some of the men and women had already created strikingly fresh work without benefit of an art program or decent materials.

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Our newsreel focuses on news about progress and possibility – and it is in that spirit that this one also includes a call to action - incidentally right in line with our democracy challenge this month!

The U.S. Congress left the legislative session without extending important tax credits due to expire in December which enable companies to reliably plan the construction and development of solar and wind energy projects. This lack of action has far-reaching results.

And it is not too late to voice our concern and put some pressure on Washington! It would be good if our representatives heard from us during their break, and writing a letter to the editor too can help make clear, that this topic won’t just slip under the table. Can you do that? There are tools to help you with both actions here.

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“In framing an ideal, we may assume what we wish, but should avoid impossibilities.”
—Aristotle

Aldous Huxley begins his utopian final novel, Island, with the above quote, which intrigues me. Is he saying that the culture he describes fails Aristotle’s test or passes it? Could the practical, spiritual, thriving island of Pala really exist?

These are questions we will address starting September 15th, when we begin The Sunny Way’s first book club with Island.

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I saw this gorgeous video a few days ago via No Impact Man’s blog. The soundtrack is an interview done by 14 year old Beatle fan Jerry Levitan after he snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in 1969. The animation has just been added recently.

In their discussion, Jerry tries to turn the conversation to Beatle gossip, but John turns it into a discussion of peace and becoming non-violent ourselves so that we can live non-violence. “Work on the good bit of you” is his advice.

I especially love his response to Jerry’s question about “messages” in Beatles songs: “Everything you hear is there, it’s all there ... the same as in a flower, everything’s there. It just is, and if you look long enough, all answers are in it. It’s the same with the music.”

Hope you enjoy hearing John’s voice as much I as did.

Last Friday I hopped the subway out to Crown Heights to the office of my Congressional Representative, Yvette D. Clarke, to meet with one of her legislative aides, Jehmal Hudson.

I had prepared myself by reading 1sky’s platform statement and familiarizing myself with their 3 requests: no more coal-fired plants, 5 million new green jobs, and emissions reductions of 20% of 1990 levels by 2020, and 80% by 2050.

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One of the areas I feel I could do a lot better on both in terms of money and the environment is transportation. I am pretty much glued to my car. I don’t actually drive all that much, not having a commute, but I do drive everywhere I go. I think I could save myself a chunk of money on both gas and wear and tear to my already old and well-loved vehicle. Both reducing my emissions by not driving and extending the life of my vehicle will be good for the environment.

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Following links around the web lately, I’ve been finding more and more posts about how, if we want to succeed at creating an awesome future for everyone, we absolutely must bridge the cultural gap between the political left and the right in the US.

Of course, I couldn’t agree more: the Culture War is the biggest roadblock in the process of solving problems in a holistic and sensible way. So it gives makes me very happy to hear so many bloggers talking about this issue from so many different points of view.

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One of the topics discussed at our last meeting for The Sunny Way last Saturday was the focus of the site, which is admittedly wide-ranging. While this makes perfect sense to us, in our discussion we wondered if it might not be clear how it all fits together. From my article on The Wire and organizational hierarchy to Victoria’s concise record of the trash she’s diverted by composting to Stella’s account of the simple and lovely 4th birthday party she threw for her daughter, we cover a lot of ground.

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Victoria sent me this video about the Bronx Zoo’s composting toilets and I loved it. They are dealing with human waste in a light-hearted and practical way. Why not have a giggle as we change the world?

Enjoy your weekend!

Chris Jordan’s photographic gallery, Running the Numbers, shows in startling detail what American consumerism looks like. From Jordan’s site:

Running the Numbers looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: fifteen million sheets of office paper (five minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (thirty seconds of can consumption) and so on. My hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

These photographs are mind-blowing for several reasons…

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Every August, Senators and Congressional representatives return to their districts, and we have the chance to meet with them to express our opinions on the issues that matter to us and how we want to work together to affect change.

Last Tuesday, I dialed in to a conference call set up by 1sky.org. The reason: to bring together some of the many voices of the 1,600 people in all 50 states (WOW!) who signed up to lobby their representatives during the August recess.

The conference call lasted for one hour, during which the biggest thing I learned is that this lobbying effort is the beginning of an ongoing relationship with or elected officials, not a 1-shot deal. The other big refreshing idea from the call is that I don’t have to be an expert on climate change, green jobs, and renewable energy—I just have to read information on what the issues are, what solutions are available, and push my elected officials to support them.

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Today I am harvesting my first batch of compost from the worm bin. It’s surprisingly fun to dump in a bunch of fruit and veg scraps and come back a week later to find rich, useful compost!

I’m harvesting by the single bin method. After not feeding the worms for more than a week, I pushed all the worms and the compost to one side of my bin. Then on the other side I put in fresh bedding (newspaper torn into strips) and new food scraps that have been sitting in my freezer for a while. I took them out last night to thaw them. I read that if you freeze your scraps before you give them to the worms, it cuts down on fruit flies in the bin and I have definitely found this to be the case.

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Election season is in full swing, and I’m hearing more heated political conversations every day. Consequently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the ideas we discussed earlier this year in Sitting out the Culture War—namely, how much we share as human beings living in the year 2008 on Planet Earth, and how we can focus on our shared humanity when the political fur starts flying.

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