Tällberg

by Amy Lenzo | Jul 6, 2007 | Co-Evolution, Questions That Matter

The Tällberg Forum is an open conversation that has been going on annually in Tällberg, Sweden for the last 25 years – gathering business leaders, politicians, artists, scientists, and leading thinkers around the world (including Juanita, David, and many others from our communities this year) to explore questions of great importance to us all.

Like the inspiring new public access to TED talks, they’ve done something really innovative this year. Every day they posted a new video from the previous day’s session on their website, each illustrating one of the 9 crucial themes they used as ‘Tracks’ for 2007’s "How on Earth can we live together?" Forum: Do we care? Can we share? What is sustainability? Can we stay healthy? Can we stay safe? Can we agree? Can we do as we do? Is one earth enough? Does only money count?

Sign the Pledge

by Nancy Margulies | Jul 6, 2007 | Climate Change

Live Earth is a 24-hour, 7-continent concert series taking place on 7/7/07 that will bring together more than 100 music artists and 2 billion people to trigger a global movement to solve the climate crisis.

Concertclimate_blurb

Live Earth marks the beginning of a multi-year campaign led by the
Alliance for Climate Protection, The Climate Group and other
international organizations to drive individuals, corporations and
governments to take action to solve global warming. Former U.S. Vice
President Al Gore is the Chair of the Alliance and Partner of Live
Earth.

Join the global movement and take action against the climate crisis:

Sign The LiveEarth Pledge

Check out the climate crisis tools and news compiled by the experts at LiveEarth.org

Findhorn Conference: Going Carbon neutral

by Nancy Margulies | Jul 4, 2007 | Announcements

Saturday 22nd March, 2008 (7 days): Findhorn Foundation Easter Conference

The
Findhorn community was recently found to have the lowest ecological
footprint ever measured in the industrialised world – just half the UK
national average.

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The week begins by encouraging us to open to our creativity. Joanna
Macy will lead a two-day exploration of deep ecology while Richard
Olivier will lead a one-day workshop on Green Leadership using the
themes in Shakespeare’s As You Like It. We then transition in the
second half of the week to look at the many positive responses that are
already emerging from communities around the world.

Among those presenting at the conference are:

Joanna Macy teacher and author, is the creator of the
Work That Reconnects. Drawing from Buddhist practices, systems theory,
and love for life, her workshops empower environmental and social
activists worldwide. Her many books include Coming Back to Life:
Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World; World As Lover, World As
Self; Widening Circles, A Memoir; and translations of Rilke’s poetry. www.joannamacy.net

Dorothy Maclean is a co-founder of the Findhorn
Foundation and community and continues to dedicate her life to teaching
and supporting others to make their own inner connection to God and to
nature’s intelligence.

Richard Heinberg is widely regarded as one of the
world’s foremost peak oil educators. He is a Research Fellow of Post
Carbon Institute, a member of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil
and a core faculty member of New College of California where he teaches
a programme on Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community. Richard is
the author of seven books including The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the
Fate of Industrial Societies, Powerdown: Options and Actions for a
Post-Carbon World, and The Oil Depletion Protocol. His monthly
MuseLetter was nominated in 1994 for an Alternative Press Award and has
been included in Utne Magazine’s annual list of Best Alternative
Newsletters. www.richardheinberg.com

Richard Olivier is Artistic Director of Olivier
Mythodrama – a unique leadership development consultancy. He was a
leading theatre director for 10 years and directed Henry V for the
opening of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London in 1997. He has worked
extensively in the fields of organisational and personal development.
He works today at the leading edge of bringing theatre into the
development of authentic leadership. Richard is the founding voice
within Mythodrama – a new form of experiential learning which combines
great stories with psychological insights, creative exercises and
organisational development techniques to explore issues faced by modern
leaders. www.oliviermythodrama.com

Richard Lochhead, MSP is Member of the Scottish
Parliament for the constituency of Moray, where Findhorn is located. He
is a former convener of the European and External Relations Committee
of the Scottish Parliament. He currently holds the Scottish National
Party’s portfolios on Environment, Energy, Fishing and Rural Affairs in
the Scottish Parliament.

Rob Hopkins is founder of Transition Town Totnes, the
first transition town project in the UK, as well as the newly formed
Transition Network. He publishes TransitionCulture.org, a blog
exploring these issues. A teacher of permaculture for 10 years, Rob has
built with strawbales and cob and has a particular passion for walnut
trees. Transition Towns are an emerging approach to enabling towns to
prepare for peak oil and climate change and act as catalysts for the
community to explore how the end of the age of cheap oil will affect
them, and what they can do to prepare. They are based on the simple
assertion that life beyond cheap oil and gas could be preferable to the
present, but only if we engage in designing this transition with
sufficient creativity and imagination, and with a previously unseen
level of engagement. www.transitiontowns.org

Megan Quinn is the Outreach Director of Community
Service, Inc and has been writing and speaking on Peak Oil for more
than four years. She served as Master of Ceremonies for the first,
second, and third US conferences on Peak Oil and Community Solutions in
Yellow Springs, Ohio, and at the Peak Oil and Environment conference in
Washington DC in May 2006. Megan graduated with a degree in Diplomacy
and Foreign Affairs from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where she
studied Peak Oil and its implications for US foreign policy, and
studied abroad at the University of Havana in Cuba. Megan co-wrote and
co-produced her organisation’s new documentary, The Power of Community:
How Cuba Survived Peak Oil. www.communitysolution.org

Jonathan Dawson
is a sustainability educator, teaching up to undergraduate level at the
Findhorn Foundation ecovillage in Scotland. He is also President of the
Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) and Executive Secretary of GEN-Europe.
Jonathan has spent much of his working life promoting community
economic development in Africa and is the author of several books
including the recently published Ecovillages: New Frontiers for
Sustainability. He is also a gardener and a story-teller. www.gen-europe.org

Dianne Feinstein’s Climate Change Bills

by Nancy Margulies | Jul 4, 2007 | Politics

Global Warming: A Time to Act

From the web site of Senator Dianne Feinstein

Senator
Feinstein discusses her five-part package of global warming legislation
at a hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on
January 30, 2007 .

An international consensus has been forged: Global warming is real. It
is already happening. And greenhouse gas emissions produced by human
activity, such as the burning of fossil fuels, tropical deforestation,
and agriculture – are the leading cause of that warming….

That is why I am working on a comprehensive package of legislation to
reduce greenhouse gas emissions – the leading cause of global warming –
from all sectors of the economy. Every business, home, and industry
will have to do its part.

There are five bills in total:

First: a bill to establish a cap-and-trade program to reduce emissions from the electric utility sector by 25 percent of anticipated levels by 2020. It is the most aggressive bill supported by industry to date. (S.317)

The second bill will be a mandatory cap-and-trade program
for industrial and corporate polluters, modeled after the electricity
sector program. (in progress)

Third, a bill to raise the average fuel economy of all cars and light trucks from 25 miles per gallon to 35 miles per gallon over 10 years. This would cut emissions by 18 percent by 2025. (S.357)

Fourth, a bill to increase the supply of bio-diesel, E85, and other low-carbon fuels.
This bill would also effectively nationalize California’s landmark
tailpipe emissions law. Together, this would cut emissions by 21
percent below projected levels by 2030. (S.1073)

Finally, a bill to establish a national energy-efficiency
program, modeled after California’s program. By 2020, the bill would
reduce emissions from electric and natural gas utilities by 9 percent
below projected levels. And the updated building codes would reduce
emissions from new homes and new buildings by 25 percent below
projected levels. (in progress)

It is an ambitious agenda, but I believe it is the right way to go.

Congress has a window to act. If we act boldly and quickly, then perhaps we can make a difference.
The earth has already warmed 1 degree Fahrenheit – and scientists
predict that the warming trend will continue in the decades to come.
The simple truth is that the warming cannot be stopped, but it can be
slowed. We are at a tipping point: If the earth warms 1 to 2 degrees
Fahrenheit, the impact will be manageable, and we can adapt. But if the
earth warms 4 to 10 degrees, the effects will be catastrophic. The
question becomes, what can we do? The reality is that there is no
silver bullet. There is no single solution. We need many answers and
people of common purpose working together.

Good News

by Amy Lenzo | Jun 29, 2007 | Announcements

Jerry Brown writes us with the encouraging news "Republican Governor Charlie Crist is hosting a Global Climate Change Summit on July 12-13, with CA Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger as a keynote speaker. This is encouraging since CA has passed the most aggressive controls on CO2 in the nation, calling for a 25% reduction by 2020, and Crist is looking to CA as a model."

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Here’s more news on Global Warming from today’s Science section of The New York Times… including a link to archives on Global Warming articles from the last year.

World Café Graphics

by Amy Lenzo | Jun 28, 2007 | Graphic Recording

To use the following images, graciously donated by Nancy Margulies, click on them once to make sure you have the full size, then right-click on them and choose ‘save image as’: