Ecology

Editor's note: This post is part of a series. We'll be releasing one of Worldchanging ally Andy Lubershane's original comics each week until the end of the year. While many of the issues covered in the comics have been discussed on Worldchanging in the past, we hope that you'll be able to use this new medium in a different way … whether it's in your classroom, on your office wall, or to help explain ideas to friends and family.

This week's cartoon describes Wild Lawns. As we've discussed several times here on Worldchanging, the manicured, green grass lawns that are popular across the U.S. are inappropriate for many climates, and resource-intensive to maintain. Luckily, there are lots of better solutions for that space in front of your house! Alex Steffen's summertime post, Kill Your Lawn!, asked Worldchanging readers everywhere to contribute their own ideas for replacing the standard swaths of turf grass. A recent video post, This Lawn is Your Lawn, is a grassroots suggestion to the Obamas about replacing their White House lawn with a food garden. And for more inspiration, check out our 2005 post on Wild About Gardens, a non-profit initiative that is still working to spread awareness about nurturing backyard biodiversity.

Click image to enlarge

Andy Lubershane researches, writes and cartoons about sustainability from his home in Boston. He can be reached at alubershane[at]gmail[dot]com.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Columns at 10:32 AM)

Andy says, as we say here, it's all one big problem with millions of interlocking solutions needed to solve it:

Q. Obviously climate change is the biggest story on your plate right now, but looking ahead what do you see?

A. My coverage has evolved. Climate change is not the story of our time. Climate change is a subset of the story of our time, which is that we are coming of age on a finite planet and only just now recognizing that it is finite. So how we mesh infinite aspirations of a species that’s been on this explosive trajectory — not just of population growth but of consumptive appetite — how can we make a transition to a sort of stabilized and still prosperous relationship with the Earth and each other is the story of our time.

And it’s a story about conflict. It’s a story about the fact that there are a billion teenagers on planet earth right now. A hundred thirty years ago there were only a billion people altogether — grandparents, kids. Now there are a billion teenagers and they could just as easily become child soldiers and drug dealers as innovators and the owners of small companies in favelas in Brazil. And little tweaks in their prospects, a little bit of education, a little bit of opportunity, a micro loan or something, something that gets girls into schools, those things — that’s the story of our time. And climate change is like a symptom of the story of our time, meaning our energy choices right now come with a lot of emissions of greenhouse gases and if we don’t have a lot of new [choices] we’re going to have a lot of warming.

This is why carbon blindness and other forms of single-issue obsession are bad ideas, and why learning to see this as one long historical moment of peak population is useful. It's also why real worthwhile sustainability thinking looks completely different, and makes much more comprehensive demands on our society, than past approaches.

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Imagining the Future at 8:36 AM)

This poem hit me deep the first time I read it, back when we were just starting Worldchanging. Simran Sethi reminded me of it today, and since it is so perfect for a holiday based on gratitude celebrated in difficult times, I thought I'd quote it.

THANKS
by W.S. Merwin

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridges to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water thanking it
smiling by the windows looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
looking up from our tables we are saying thank you
in a country up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and elevators
remembering wars and the police at the door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
we go on unchanged saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the wires going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Arts at 2:48 PM)

The babies born between 1965 and 1970 were historic. They were part of the highest global population growth rate ever achieved, 2.1 percent a year. As Joel Cohen writes,

Human population never grew with such speed before the 20th century and is never again likely to grow with such speed. Our descendants will look back on the late 1960s peak as the most significant demographic event in the history of the human population even though those of us who lived through it did not recognize it at the time.

Put another way, you might say that the birth of Generation X (which more or less book-ends those years) was the beginning of our planet's era of peak human population.

It's easy to get blase about demographics; big, abstract numbers thought about over numbing time-periods, and recounted by people who love statistics. It would be a mistake, however, to fail to see peak population as a hugely important insight, because when we know that we are riding a wave of increasing numbers (and increasing longevity) that will crest sometime after the middle of this century, we can also see that

1) The longer population growth rates remain high, the more total people there will be on the planet when we reach peak population, so one of our biggest goals ought to be seeing to it by every ethical means possible that the wave of population growth crests sooner rather than later.

2) If we are successful in reaching peak population sooner, at a lower number of people, rather than later with more people, we will be much more able to confront the myriad interlocking crises we face -- a comparatively less crowded planet is an easier planet on which to build a bright green future.

3) Since we know the single best way of bringing down high birth rates is to empower women by giving them access to reproductive health choices (including contraception and abortion), education, economic opportunities, and legal protection of their rights, empowering women ought to be one of our highest priorities. (As Kim Stanley Robinson puts it, empowering women is the best climate change technology.)

4) Our other main task is to preserve natural systems and transform human economies in order to best withstand this wave of human beings, avoid catastrophe and leave behind as intact a world as we can -- to save the parts (including not just biodiversity but also the diversity of human cultures and histories) so that future generations have as many options as possible.

5) Our best hopes for both avoiding catastrophe and preserving our heritage all hinge on our actions over roughly the next two decades. In that time we have enormous work to do: create at least the model of a zero-carbon, zero-waste civilization; begin deep and widespread impact reduction here in the developed world; sustainably raise the prospects of those (especially women) living in the developing world; and preserve as many working parts of our planetary heritage as we possibly can. After that time, all of these jobs will grow progressively harder, trending quickly towards impossibility.

Add all of this information together, and a generational imperative emerges. Generation X can be seen as the beginning of peak population; many of us (born between roughly 1960 and 1980) may live to see population peak in the middle of this century; and much of the most important work to be done to see us through to the other side of that watershed will need to be done in the next twenty years, when Generation X'ers are in their professional prime. We did not cause the crisis we face -- unless you count us guilty at birth -- but if the crisis is solved, it'll have to be in large part through the leadership of people born in my generation. Our historic call is to save the planet during peak population.

I am optimistic that we can do this. We have our first Gen X U.S. president in Barack Obama. We have a rising network of brilliant and dedicated worldchanging leaders. We live, despite the financial crisis, at a moment of great wealth. We have the motive, means and opportunity.

None of this is to say that Gen X will do it alone. In particular, if you're young today, you have a huge choice to make: this transition will be unfolding your entire career, and the role you choose to play in making it happen will be vitally important to your life, the planet and the future. You too are called.

At the same time, few 18 year-olds have the mix of experience, energy and resources for changing the world that, say, a 35 year-old has. Since the moment is now, it's those of us at the height of our powers that will have to lead the way.

Contemplating this journey beyond peak population, and the duty we have to lead it -- well, it can weigh on you. I find it useful to remember that by changing the world today, we're building a better future beyond the crisis, that we work not only on our own behalf, but for children who will not be born within our lifetimes, and their children, and their's: that we'll make great ancestors.

But I also find it helpful to remember that these are our lives, and this is our adventure; and though times are tough and the planet demands our hard work, it also needs people who are happy, healthy and creatively energetic. The world needs our best-lived lives, not our martyrdom.

Or, as the great American poet Gary Snyder wrote, back in the early seventies, when we were just small,

For the Children

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down.

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it.

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children:

stay together
learn the flowers
go light

Or, as you might say, "Keep climbing. Share tools. Have a good time on the way."

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Columns at 10:57 AM)

It's a holiday weekend, so this is a lazy post: I was recently asked what kinds of technological developments I found interesting. Here's the list I sent back.

URBAN TECH

We're getting close to good models of the land use-transportation-energy-climate emissions interactions, and these are pretty much all saying that land use is at least as important a transportation task as clean energy/new vehicles, if not more important
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007800.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007898.html

but wire those cities tightly and ubiquitously and all sorts of mayhem gets possible
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007897.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007929.html

including making buildings themselves a lot smarter
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007965.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//006421.html

infrastructure could get really weird
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007838.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//008211.html

URBAN DATA USES

Walkscore
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//008231.html
Not because it's perfect -- far from -- but because it sorta works, and it's really popular, which strikes me as a good leading indicator of the combination of urban proximity and digital precision.

people mentioned transit mapping for iPhones, but iNap is critical
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//008687.html
if you don't want to miss your stop
(and I more and more think that divergent innovation's a real thing)

And packstations for your deliveries
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007854.html

dynamic parking metering?
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//008113.html

ENERGY

Energy mortgages: someone else puts in the distributed energy equipment, you pay them back (plus interest) from the savings:
Fabio Rosa wiring rural Brazil
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//003295.html
Berkeley paying for its citizen's solar
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//008094.html
Locavolt/ district energy
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//008596.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007986.html

OTHER COOL STUFF

Front Design air-sculpting chairs
http://www.core77.com/blog/technology/front_design_sketch_furniture_wow_4865.asp
Talented Swedish designers using motion-capture and fabbing to design chairs in the air.

Bruce Sterling's story Kiosk about cheap fabbers and copyright and revolutions and cultural crazes and everything... well, it used to be available free, and it stuck in my head (though now I can't find it).

Outquisition Technologies
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008208.html
Some parts of the developed world are collapsing slowly, and some of those are going to get hit hard by economic transitions and climate change: what sort of tech would help folks who live there?

Remote sensing to do cool things, like find ghost nets
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//002656.html

FarmSubsidy.org still thrills me
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//006272.html
heck, I like all the tech+ farming stuff
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007018.html
fish-farming
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//008375.html
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007998.html
cowpooling
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/008187.html
Jonathan Harris' whalehunt
http://www.worldchanging.com/archives//007688.html

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Emerging Technologies at 6:57 PM)

The Living Planet Report 2008, a study published by the WWF, offers the organization's most in-depth study of global ecosystem decline to date. The report combines data from the Living Planet Index (a survey of 1,313 vertebrate species from both land and water habitats around the world), global ecological footprints, and also studies of water resources (we've covered previous editions of the Living Planet Report).

According to Pavan Sukhdev, lead author, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity current studies show that we are losing between 2 and 5 trillion dollars in natural capital per year:

WWF video courtesy of YouTube

On an analytical map indicating which nations are "eco-debtors" (with ecological footprints greater than their biocapacity), a bright red swath cuts across much of the developed world indicating nations in debt. Striking is the comparison between the same map made with 1961 data, and the much redder 2005 version.

Looking at this map, it's hard for me to not wonder about the strain that such uneven resource use will have on international relations as irreplaceable natural capital continues to disappear and the harmful impacts of climate change continue to affect everyone without regard to which populations are more to blame.

But the devastating news must have an upside: the sophisticated analysis allows researchers to determine the world's most pressing problems: excess carbon emissions, the WWF says, remain the most harmful effect that humans have on the planet. And knowing that gives those who want to change the pattern of destruction a place to start:

Using a wedge approach (as pioneered by Pacala and Socolow in 2004) the report illustrates how, for example, moving to clean, efficient energy generation based on current technologies could allow us to meet the projected 2050 demand for energy services with major reductions in associated carbon emissions.

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(Posted by Julia Levitt in Biodiversity and Ecosystems at 1:04 PM)

by Alan Durning

$100 billion for green jobs. Billion!

The Associated Press reports plans for a massive new green-collar federal stimulus package:

Obama has also embraced calls for a "green jobs" program that invests as much as $100 billion in projects to slash harmful emissions. This could include projects such as retrofitting buildings to make them more energy-efficient, upgrading the electrical grid and improving mass transit.

"It turns out that putting money into green technologies ... has a very large positive employment effect relative to tax cuts," said Robert Pollin, a University of Massachusetts-Amherst economist who has written extensively on what he calls the "green recovery."

"It's very efficient in terms of creating jobs for a given amount of spending, and it has the added benefit that the short-term effects are compatible with long-term needs in the economy," Pollin said.

Exactly as I’ve been saying!

On Monday morning, December 1, from 9 to 10:30 a.m. (Cascadia time), the Center for American Progress in Washington, DC, will webcast a forum including some of the nation’s leading voices on green recovery. RSVP for the webcast.

You can sign this letter asking Barack Obama to take action on climate change here.

This piece originally appeared on The Sightline Institute's blog, The Daily Blog.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Bright Green Economy at 10:01 AM)

My friend and colleague Evgeny Morozov is spending a year as an Open Society Institute fellow, working through some of his ideas about cybernationalism and cyberwarfare, and organizing events to discuss the future of the Internet at OSI. I was lucky enough to be included in the first of these events, a presentation by Columbia University and Berkman Center researcher John Kelly and a panel discussion on the role of the blogosphere in closed societies.

Darius Cuplinskas, head of OSI’s Information Program, framed the discussion by outlining three stories we tell ourselves about online media and their effect on society:

- A picture of sunny optimism, articulated by writers like Don Tapscott, who see the opportunity to contribute and collaborate online as creating a generation of citizens who are more involved and creative than a previous generation of passive media consumers

- A dystopian vision advanced by folks like Andrew Keen, suggesting that the unedited blather of user-generated content will cause us to devalue and neglect expert content and may decrease meaningful participation

- A nuanced view, advanced by thinkers like Cass Sunstein (perhaps more in “Infotopia” than in Republic.com 2.0″) that suggests that new media likely enhanced democracy, but entails new risks, like the isolation and polarization that might come from ideological echo chambers.

These theories, Darius argues, are largely based on research in open societies, especially in the U.S. But there’s lots less work on the effects of new media in other parts of the world, especially in closed societies, and much of the work that’s done is incomplete and sometimes inaccurate.

John Kelly has been advocating some interesting new methods to explore the blogospheres of open and closed societies - he’s best known for his work visualizing clusters of blogs in the Iranian blogosphere. His method creates fascinating maps of the connections of blogs, clustering blogs together when they link to the same media sources. (If you and I both link to the Christian Science Monitor on a regular basis, we’ll appear close to each other in his maps.) John’s PhD research at Columbia focused on the English-language blogosphere, where he was able to cluster blogs into four major “haystacks” - left and right-leaning political blogospheres, a tech blogosphere, and a UK cluster. (The blogs considered were the 8,000 top blogs as ranked in terms of incoming links, so the patterns displaced are likely very different than from a random sample of blogs.) Smaller clusters exist around science, environmentalism, law, international security and parenting.

One of the major insights Kelly was able to offer in the Iranian blogosphere was the idea that there were lots of blogs that didn’t feature the voices of pro-Western reformers. In fact, the reformers celebrated in Western media were a small cluster, significantly smaller than a pop culture community, a community focused on Perisna poetry, and a number of conservative clusters. One conservative cluster included political bloggers strongly supportive of the Iranian state, but often highly critical of Ahmedinejad. Kelly refers to another conservative cluster as “the 12ers”, adherents to a branch of Shia theology which is awaiting messianic appearance of the 12th imam. It makes sense that western media focused on the liberals, as they’re a group that frequently wrote in English and engaged with Western media, but we’ve got an inaccurate picture of the Iranian blogosphere if we concentrate on that sector.

A new generation of Kelly’s maps overlaws data from the Open Net Initiative, showing which blogs get blocked by Iranian authorities. While lots of liberal blogs are blocked, there’s a decent number of conservative and poetry blogs that get blocked as well - Kelly explains that some of the love ghazals get pretty passionate, and that fervent support of the institution of “temporary marriage” occasionally gets some conservative religious bloggers into trouble.

The maps can “pivot” around a term - it’s possible to see which blogs refer to a term like “America”: religious blogs drop out and political ones will stay. Certain terms - “the 12th imam” - show up only in certain blog communities and are essentially invisible in others. It’s also possible to use the maps to show who’s linking to what - there’s far more linkage to international media like the BBC’s Persian service from pop culture and left-wing blogs than from the right blogs, for instance.

Each language community Kelly has studied shows different patterns and clustering. Arabic blogs appear to cluster geographically, with large, identifiable Saudi, Egyptian and Kuwaiti communities, and some small “trading zones” where there’s lots of cross-linking between globs from different nations. Other blogospheres are harder to explain in terms of clustering - a map of the Russian blogosphere looks incredibly isolated and separated - this is likely a result of the fact that most Russian bloggers use LiveJournal, and the service makes it easy for communities to have small, closely linked circles of friends, which lead to different graphs than blogospheres that evolve on traditional blogging tools.

Kelly is cognizant of a possible critique of his work - these maps are pretty and fascinating, but so what? He suggests that the maps help show the conditions necessary for a healthy online public sphere. We need bloggers, memetrackers and search engines, but we also need rewards within the community to participate. These rewards are generally social capital - attention from other bloggers. High-profile bloggers in the US are motivated by the network of peers they’re relating to online. It’s likely that these motivations are constant across blogospheres and that mapping can help show how social capital flows in different online spaces.

I’m fascinated by John’s work, but I always wonder how to resolve his data-based generalizations with the sorts of observations I make based on our work with Global Voices, looking at a comparatively smaller number of blogs in some detail. I talked briefly about:

- the Ethiopian blogosphere, and how a government-led crackdown on online speech turned off a critical part of the blog ecosystem - the attention bloggers were able to get from readers. With no readers, bloggers gave up, even if they were able to edit their blogs through proxy servers.

- the tolerance for opposition speech in the Zimbabwean blogosphere (indeed, the near absence of speech supporting the current government), which might reflect a commitment to public debate, an inability to effectively filter the web, or the belief that online speech isn’t going to reach beyond an elite audience that’s already unlikely to support the ruling government.

- Michael Anti’s concern that widespread surveillance and pervasive censorship in the Chinese online world is sending activists away from Web2.0 tools and towards an earlier generation of tools which are less powerful, but harder to control.

- the encouraging examples of Kenyan bloggers ability to become an alternative to traditional journalism systems during political crisis, where bloggers who rarely addressed political issues previously became engaged in reporting the news. It’s possible that healthy, thriving blogospheres like Kenya’s are resources that can be activated for social and political purposes when social conditions dictate.

Porochista Khakpour, an Iranian-American journalist and novelist based in NYC, offered a reaction to Kelly’s talk as a regular reader of Iranian blogs and social media. She points out that the book sharing site Goodreads has become a huge social space for Iranians - roughly 20% of the site’s users are Iranian. The site’s managed to stay off the radar of Iranian authorities because it’s not explicitly political, though it’s now starting to be blocked by some Internet service providers.

Khakpour’s traces her personal fascination with the Internet to her conservative upbringing. “I wasn’t allowed to sleep over at other kid’s houses or go to school dances. So I got obsessed with chat rooms” as a space in which she could socialize online, even if she couldn’t be social offline. She’s been obsessed in the past with Friendster and with blogs, and now with Goodreads, and is preparing to check herself into a residential facility for internet addiction… but only because she thinks it will make a good magazine article.

She tells us that the Iranian obsession with the Internet is a recent manifestation of a general fascination with communication technology. During the 1979 revolution, modern technologies - cassette tapes and fax machines - brought the Islamist government into power. Now the Internet has provided spaces not available in modern Iranian society. When a crackdown on the independent press put 1500 reporters out of work in 2001, it helped spark Iranian interest in blogs as an alternative space for reporting and political discussion. Now services like Yahoo 360 - enormously popular in Iran - are serving as a public space for youth who have no spaces where they can congregate. (This resonates with danah boyd’s observations about the internet as an alternative public space for American teens.)

One of the blogs Khakpour is most fascinated by is Life Goes on in Tehran, a photoblog put together by an Iranian determined to challenge stereotypes about his nation and people. Shooting primarily with a cameraphone, the author - “A” - is able to document spaces like house parties where contemporary Tehranis carve out social spaces in what can be a very constrained society.

“The internet is a tool for combating cultural isolation,” she suggests, explaining that Iran now has higher internet penetration than any other nation in the region, including Israel. She points out the irony that Iran is 9th in the world in terms of blogs hosted, but is also on the list of 15 enemies of the Internet. The truth is that the Internet is perfect for an Iran “taken hostage by fundamentalists” - the anonymity of the medium “is good for passive aggression… or just aggression. And it reflects Iran’s obsession with safety, which precedes the events of 1979.

I’d love to hear Khakpour speak at more length at some point - she drops an amazing wealth of details in her talk. Two that struck me in particular - “Tehran is filled with graffiti that includes URLs - it’s probably the nerdiest grafitti ever.” But it’s important to remember that cultural values in Iran can be very different than in the US. She tells us that an intern with Goodreads started receiving a flood of complaints about the profiles of women with Persian names. Over time, the intern figured out that the complaints were coming from Iranian men - the women in the profiles were photographed without scarves over their hair. Goodreads concluded that this didn’t constitute an inappropriate profile by their rules and left the profiles in place.

Evgeny Morozov, whose wide-ranging interests center on the transformative power of the internet - suggests that in observing communications in closed societies we need to consider government use of technologies as well as activist uses. Referencing the “50 cent party” in China, he suggests that governments are finding ways to use the same tools as activists to support government ideology, creating astroturf campaigns and clogging spaces for dialog with propoganda.

He suggests that, just as Goodreads has emerged as a social space in Iran due to the fact that it’s not obviously political or social, we can expect much of what’s interesting in closed societies to be hidden from easy view or analysis. This is a possible shortcoming in Kelly’s analysis - it’s easy to study blogs, but in countries where blogs are regularly censored or blocked, the interesting conversations are going to be carefully hidden and may defy easy analysis.

Governments, Morozov warns, are developing more subtle and sophisticated ways of discouraging people from blogging than the ham-handed Ethiopian approach I described. The most credible voice in the Ossetian war, he tells us, was a Georgian blogger who’d fled Abkhazia for Russia. His LiveJournal account was highly critical both of Moscow and of Sakashvili, and was widely read in the Russian blogosphere. But a flurry of denial of service attacks, launched by a set of zombie computers likely controlled by Russian hackers, disabled LiveJournal for an hour, and forced the owners of LiveJournal to ask the blogger to leave the service so that future attacks wouldn’t take down the platform. He moved to Wordpress, but had the same experience. If governments are able to unleash attacks that can disable whole platforms, it’s likely that they’ll successfully silence many online voices.

Darius summarizes a lively discussion and question and answer period with the observation of two major themes in our discussion:

- Alongside the emergence of explicitly political and activist behavior online, there’s a much larger set of banal, “hedonistic” form of online behavior, which might serve as “dark matter”, capable of becoming political or journalistic if there’s a demand for such behavior

- State responses to social media are getting increasingly subtle, moving beyond simple censorship and blogger intimidation to more nuanced responses, like targeted DDoS attacks. Truly sophisticated approaches are trying to marginalize political speech and suggest that the appropriate use for online tools are these more banal uses, making dissidence socially deviant and less desirable online.

This piece originally appeared on Ethan Zuckerman's blog, My Heart's In Accra.

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(Posted by Ethan Zuckerman in Media at 9:27 AM)

The topic of wildlands is an emotional issue for many residents across the United States. Immortalized in iconic photographs, timeless paintings and oral histories, these lands make up a large part of America’s collective identity. From the boggy marshlands of the Florida Everglades to the jagged peaks of Idaho’s Sawtooth Mountains and California’s Old Growth Sequoias, the landscape of North America has become a main character in U.S. cultural and factual history.

Those lands are now in trouble. Species are disappearing at an alarming rate, the threat of natural disasters are continuing to loom, and as stress increases on the most vulnerable pieces of the interconnected puzzle, the big picture is becoming harder and harder to salvage.

Wild land means different things to different people, and there is a strong need for dialogue between the groups working to keep it intact in order to devise a consistent policy for managing these vital natural resources. Various innovative approaches are constantly being tested as a means of conveying what's at stake, and how the state of our land affects us all. (Look to our archives for examples, including a recent NRDC program uniting scientists and journalists at Yellowstone, and our local blog coverage of a Washington state organization that's put ecosystem services in economic terms for the more numbers-minded.)

To create healthy, sustainable wildlands, we have to do more than just talk about the tragic state of their degradation and disappearance. Our desire alone for it to be different does not paint a clear enough picture for what we want to happen. So, in addition to conservation and restoration techniques, we must also imagine and define what the world will look like if we succeed.

With the help of our friend and ally Terry Tempest Williams, we recently hosted a roundtable teleconference with some of the brightest minds working on public lands issues across the American West: Emily Goodwin, program officer, Marine Conservation Initiative, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; Bill Hedden, executive director of the Grand Canyon Trust; Daryn Melvin, a Hopi conservationist with the Black Mesa Trust; and Nicole Rosmarino, wildlife program director for WildEarth Guardians. Jacob Smith, mayor of Golden, Colo., joined the conversation via email.

Alex Steffen, Worldchanging: If in 20 years, we really do our jobs right as a nation, and we have a really healthy, sustainable wildlands policy, what would that look like? What would real success be?

Bill Hedden, Grand Canyon Trust: One obvious part of it is that we are now very actively looking to our public lands to produce tremendous amounts of energy, oil and gas, increasing pressure to develop tar sands and oil shale. Given climate projections for the public lands in the West, if we actually go in that direction, not only will we be tearing up that public lands resource as well as water, but [mining] those energy sources implies greatly expanded greenhouse gas emissions.

I think in 20 years, success would mean that we had, in the short term, protected those wild places and roadless areas, but also that we had developed different ways of living and different energy sources that did not push climate change over the brink. I think solving that energy picture, and at the same time protecting wildlands, and roadless forests and so on, is really a survival move for us.

Emily Goodwin, Moore Foundation: I think success in 20 years would be a paradigm shift for how we approach natural ecosystems and value natural capital. In order to really reach people from all walks of life, we need to include a very frank discussion of what we get from the Earth and how we can actively work to maintain that natural capital over time. The main goal is resiliency of ecosystems -- not a set endpoint, as we know these systems are very dynamic -- but to maintain the functions and services they provide, such as flood protection, clean water, and clean air.

Nicole Rosmarino, WildEarth Guardians: In 20 years, I want to see fully functioning native ecosystems with a full suite of wildlife intact. It's pretty Pollyanna, given climate change projections, but I think we need to do the best we can to preserve the whole tapestry of life.

To get there we certainly need a paradigm shift in how we perceive nature, and also in how we perceive the role of federal law. I think that federal environmental legislation is our greatest hope of achieving our short term goals of preventing further ecological decline. In addition, we need to make sure that private lands are protected along with the public lands. And I think that the land trust movement must be fully engaged with the broader conservation community so we have biodiversity protection being emphasized in the land trust movement. Right now I see the land trust movement being very agro-centric.

I also want to mention that it's not just about preserving public lands; it's about healing. In the western U.S. in particular, I think there is more and more conversation about transitioning from an extracting economy to a healing economy, where the work of ecological restoration actually helps local communities, and undoes the decades or centuries of damage that has been done.

Jacob Smith, Mayor of Golden, Colo.: Success would presumably include strong protection for a sufficient number, distribution, and quality (with adequate linkages) of key habitat areas for at-risk species and ecosystem types. It would also include appropriate management regimes in less critical but still important habitat areas, presumably with less protection and more intensive land uses.

Politically, I suspect it will mean that we have succeeded in reestablishing conservation values as deeply embedded, bipartisan political values. Our public opinion research consistently shows high levels of support for basic conservation values but we are very uneven in converting this generalized public support into concrete political support. Some of this will be about activating more fully those underlying conservation values in more populous urban areas because of the number of voters in those areas, but it's hard to see us getting there without building strong relationships in rural, agricultural areas, at least in the western United States. Even as their numbers decline, the political strength of the agriculture and ranching constituencies remains prominent. I also suspect that success over a 2030 timeframe will require a great deal more effort on community sustainability. In addition, the conservation community will need to do a better job of helping communities chart economic development routes that are consistent with the land conservation vision it is forwarding.

The experts agreed that to achieve their collaborative picture of success within this timeframe, we’ll need help from the top. Encouragement and strong support from the Obama administration could greatly influence how the United States gets from where we are now to this picture of success.

The top priorities for the new president, according to this expert panel, includes steps that can be taken more immediately, such as reinforcing laws like the Endangered Species Act and the Forest Roadless Rule; as well as the creating new policies, like strict no drilling laws in ANWR, developing catch share programs to restore fisheries, and a policy that would aid in the development of regional ecosystem councils to implement integrated marine spatial planning.

Some of the experts recommended longer-term and broad scope policies, like creating a pro-science policy that supports scientific exploration and learning as well as explanation and interpretation for the public. Another idea was to instate a precautionary principle policy: for example, in a situation where we suspect a new form of land use will put the environment at risk, but there is scientific uncertainty, policy-makers should err on the side of caution and not allow that land use to proceed.

The broad definition of "real success" as identified in this conversation would be a wildlands policy that resulted in a full complement of native habitats and species, complete with re-established linkages and corridors that they can use to safely migrate and coexist. Achieving this end will require major restoration efforts to return areas of land, water and air to resilient systems that will thrive and sustain themselves into the future.

Photo credit: Sarah Kuck

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Features at 8:49 AM)

Worldchanger Dina Mehta's doing an amazing job providing information about the Mumbai crisis on her blog and on her Twitter feed. A remarkable woman, with remarkable things to say.

Our thoughts are with Dina and everyone there, with the hopes that we not only help and stand by the people of Mumbai, but remember to keep terrorist attacks in perspective.

The world needs calm, sensible thinking and hard work in times like these. Thanks to Dina for providing it.

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Nonviolence at 2:25 AM)

The day after Thanksgiving, when I wake up from my Celebration Roast-induced food-coma, I'll be playing football in the park. But I know lots of people who will be hitting the stores to get a jump start on their holiday shopping.

Shopping on the day after Thanksgiving, a.k.a. "Black Friday," means you'll probably be waiting in line, sitting in traffic or dealing with "competitive" shoppers on a quest for this year's it item. (If you're reading this from abroad perhaps you might substitute "Boxing Day" for "Thanksgiving".)

Those who are deliberately deciding to skip Black Friday either wish to avoid this scene all together or want to step away from the consumerist carousal that the holiday season has become. For the latter category, the day after Thanksgiving is known as Buy Nothing Day, an informal day of protest against consumerism. Buy Nothing Day has been heavily promoted on the eye-catching pages of the anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters, but has been shunned from more corporate publications.

It's a tricky time of year for those of us who want to consume less, but still want to be respectful and reciprocal to those loved ones who insist on buying us presents. Also, this year is a different kind of tricky, as buying nothing means buying nothing from local, sustainable businesses who are already suffering from the economic downturn.

If you're taking this chance to cut back or go DIY, then I applaud you for it. But local businesses do need our support. So if you buy, buy local. And buy from local, independent producers who share your desire for responsibly produced products. (Note: as we've said before, just because it says local doesn't mean it is. Be sure to ask if a store or product meets your standards.)

Buying this way keeps more of your dollar circulating in your local economy, helping small businesses to keep their doors open and their employees paid. Loads of local business districts are currently campaigning to get people to spend their money where they live. Not only does it keep dollars invested in your community, but it also encourages the qualities that make dense environments exciting and livable.

So what do you think? Is it better to buy nothing or buy local?

Image credit:Sustainable Connections

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(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Business at 9:49 AM)

Prices for corn and oil are falling in tandem.

If you've driven by a gas station recently, you've probably noticed that gas prices are tumbling.  What you may realize is that the prices of some food commodities -- corn in particular -- are falling at about the same pace.  Take a look at the image below, which I've borrowed from tradingcharts.com, a veritable treasure trove of commodity price data. 

Clearly, price movements in the two commodities have been quite comparable, particularly over the last two years.  But experts are of different minds about why they've followed such similar trajectories.

One school of thought holds that the remarkable correlation between corn and oil prices is mostly a coincidence; they point out (correctly) that correlation is not always evidence of causation.  The US Department of Agriculture in particular denies that there's any significant link between the corn ethanol industry and the apparent link between corn and oil prices.  Instead, they say that a combination of factors unique to each industry, coupled with a generalized speculation bubble that affected the global commodity market, led to a simultaneous (and coincidental) boom and bust in both commodities.

But another school of thought holds that the corn-ethanol industry is the single most important reason that corn and oil prices now seem to rise and fall in tandem.  On this view, the fact that corn is now a substitute for oil means (almost by definition) that an increase in oil prices will cause an increase in corn prices. There's plenty of extra ethanol refining capacity out there now, so when oil prices rise, ethanol distillers bid up the price of corn.

This op-ed in yesterday's Seattle Times mentions both perspectives.  I tend to buy the latter point of view; there's a clear, plausible mechanism that links corn and oil prices, and the price trends seem too close to be coincidence alone. 

But to settle the debate, I suppose we'll have to wait to see if corn and oil prices continue to walk hand in hand in the coming years.

This piece originally appeared on the Sightline Institute's blog, The Daily Score.

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(Posted by Clark Williams-Derry in Food and Farming at 8:25 AM)

Photo by Ashley Bristowe

Change is a boutique marketing firm based in Vancouver – or, as per its requisite website mission statement, “a green branding and communications company.” Sounds pretty hazy. Actually, if it sounds like anything, it sounds like maybe they specialize in the fine art of the corporate greenwash. And if you merely glanced at their latest piece of work, a marketing study called “MapChange,” you might find such a prejudice confirmed.

I’m about to suggest that there might be more to Change – and “MapChange” – than that, but first I’ve got to unpack a bit of marketing-biz wonkery. Bear with me.

Okay. So “MapChange” is a “classic perceptual map” – a tool used by marketers to measure consumer perceptions of their products. In this case, the study gauged the “actual” vs. “perceived” sustainability of 20 major Canadian and international brands. Each brand was graded on 50 objective, yes-or-no criteria (everything from whether the company’s CEO had “identified” sustainability “as a priority” to whether it submits to a third-party audit of its environmental impact), and then 2,000-plus Canadians were surveyed as to their perceptions of the sustainability of each brand.

The result was an intriguing muddle. Toyota, buoyed by the walk-the-walk rep it’s earned via Prius sales, scored No. 1 on the perception scale, even though GM actually scored three places ahead of Toyota on the actual scale, with the highest marks in the whole field on the sustainability scorecard. (GM ranked 18th out of the 20 companies on the perception scale.) In a similar vein, trendy, progressively branded Apple ranked far better than sweatshop-tainted Nike on the perception scale – No. 5 vs. No. 17 – even though the two companies scored almost the exact inverse on the actual scale (Nike was No. 5, Apple was No. 15).

“There are many surprises,” the report concluded, “that suggest that better action doesn’t equal better perception. In general, there is a randomness to the findings that suggest very few brands have successfully branded sustainability.”

To which you might reasonably respond: So what? I mean, damn their oily greenwashing hides and let’s get on with the real bright green deal. Right?

I’d invite you instead to take a closer look. Start, if you’ll indulge me just a bit further, with the fact of this Vancouver-based boutique marketing firm called Change, and a few curious things about its origins.

Change was founded in 2005 by a corporate ad agency vet named Marc Stoiber. My first encounter with Stoiber was this riff under the eye-catching title of “Making Sustainability Sexy.” The core of his argument went like this:

Sustainability. Sexy. Two words you don't often see together. . . . A very big opportunity awaits if we – marketers, producers, and media – manage to somehow join these two words at the hip. . . . sustainability presents an opportunity to profit. Even better, it's an opportunity that hasn't been very well tapped. Sounds like a recipe for success. But how do we make sustainability sexy?

In the three years since Stoiber posted his riff, he has dedicated his career to answering this question. His boutique marketing firm – operating out of offices on Vancouver’s elegantly repurposed Granville Island – began by pestering the city’s growing cluster of green-minded entrepreneurs to rethink the way they sell themselves. Change scored some early successes in this crowd, but then the ghosts of Stoiber’s past came calling, and they’ve become the focus of his work and the inspiration for stuff like this “MapChange” study.

See, before 2005, Stoiber was a high-flying corporate pitchman – a creative director at award-winning, global-reach ad agencies like BBDO and Grey Worldwide. One of his most successful pre-Change exploits was the rebranding of Mr. Clean for Procter & Gamble. And one of his first lessons for the bright-green industrial world was that they could learn a lot from the way consumer goods behemoths like P&G think about marketing.

After all, these companies and their ad-land adjuncts have spent literally billions of dollars over the past half-century figuring out the art and science of persuasion. They know how to create desire where none exists, how to supplant one set of priorities with another, how to quickly convince millions of consumers to change their behavior. If they’ve used these tools mainly to persuade us to spend too much on sneakers and buy disposable junk we don’t need, that doesn’t mean these are the only uses of their techniques. In fact, wouldn’t such techniques be essential to the project of replacing an unsustainable economic order with a sustainable one? Especially in a fast-forward time-frame of, say, a quarter century?

I like to think of it as the Wal-Mart Supposition. To wit: if we take the world’s climate and energy experts at their word – and I do – then we have, as I said, maybe a quarter century to engineer this wholesale shift from our recklessly unsustainable, carbon-based socioeconomic order to a sustainable one. So imagine we succeed. It’s 2033. The globe’s greenhouse gas emissions are less than 20 percent of their 1990 levels, and the internal combustion engine is a museum piece. Are there supermarkets in this vision? Large consumer goods emporia? Are there, in short, still Wal-Marts in this version of 2033?

If there are not, then I’m curious – genuinely so – what miraculous mechanism managed to completely dismantle globalized, corporatized mass-market capitalism and build something wholly new in its place inside of 25 years that was capable of engineering such a radical transition so quickly (and on peaceful and prosperous terms, no less). If, however, there is still a recognizable model of mass-market consumption, then it follows that our entire approach to consumer goods, from how items are packaged, to how long we expect to own our "stuff," to where stores are located, has been re-engineered, presumably by those consumer goods behemoths, for sustainability.

Back to Stoiber. He is again working with said consumer goods behemoths (Unilever, for example), and he’s quickly learned that this whole sustainability thing is exciting but anxious terrain for these companies, and his notion is that you will only convince them to make deep, thoroughgoing changes in the way they do business if you convince them on their terms.

This is, I'd argue, a potentially very significant role in the move to sustainability. It could indeed be the most effective way to awaken the big-business mainstream to the idea that sustainability is not just a second-tier department for organizing feel-good projects or a trendy marketing pose but a fundamental shift in the way a business is organized and operated - and moreover that this shift represents not just a boost to short-term profitability but the key to long-term competitiveness in a drastically altered twenty-first century economy. Greed and fear - those two great engines of the free market - might in the end prove more persuasive than green-minded altruism.

This is why the "MapChange" study's conclusion is important. Stoiber and a growing number of the corporate clients he works for and tracks are wide awake now to the enormous business opportunity buried under sustainability's altruistic sheen. So far, though, as the study explains, it's been difficult to translate sustainable practices directly into a fattened bottom line. But once someone does, I'm betting that's when the metaphorical rubber'll hit the road. And I think the smart money's on a guy like Stoiber figuring out how to make that translation pay.

Chris Turner is the author of The Geography of Hope: A Tour of the World We Need, a global tour of the state of the art in sustainable living. He lives in Calgary. He keeps a poorly maintained blog and can be reached by email at cturner [at] globeandmail [dot] com.

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(Posted by Chris Turner in Columns at 8:00 AM)

Photo credit: flickr/Daleberts, Creative Commons license.

By Rachel Botsman

Besides changing our perceptions of the world and how we operate within it, the buckling of the “old system” of business is rapidly restructuring the relationships between employees, companies and society. The current convergence of global market failures and changing societal expectations of corporations is creating a widespread realization that we can’t continue with “business as usual.”

By shifting their current perceptions of sustainability, companies can re-inspire employees (who are hungry for change) to play their part in bridging the gap between business value and societal needs. If they succeed, they could emerge from this crisis as trusted and sustainable 21st century brands.

In order to capture this opportunity, companies need to build a business culture that truly embraces sustainability and innovation. This is not about “greening” an employee base or organizing one-off community days. Nor is it about setting a target to reduce a carbon footprint or viewing sustainability in the narrow environmental sense. It is about building a cultural ethos that understands and embraces all the dimensions of sustainability -- planet, community, people, business and brands –- and the interactions between them.

A survey of companies with reputations for nurturing best-in-class cultures of sustainability such as Timberland, Seventh Generation, Eileen Fisher, Patagonia and Stonyfield Farm, as well as less niche (and nimble) multinationals like Nike, Wal-Mart and the leading British retailer Marks & Spencer’s which are staying relevant by transforming their old business mindset, reveals some common principles that permeate entire companies in ways that permits employees to experience and view sustainability as an integral part of everything they do and how they do it. So, what are these sustainable companies doing right? Put another way, what are they doing differently?

Abolishing the term or notion of “Corporate Social Responsibility”
Even if the CSR nomenclature still lingers in specific shareholder reports, these sustainable companies do not view sustainability as a responsibility, as “risk and reputation management” or as a reporting requirement. Rather, they embrace it as a (if not the) source of innovation for a better and more profitable company. Eileen Fisher actually uses the term “Corporate Consciousness,” and Unilever istransitioning to “Corporate Social Vitality.” Both terms signal that sustainability should be the source of energy, experimentation and inspiration that fuels a company’s growth and culture.

Sustainable companies are also generally opposed to having a separate CSR department –- a move that can signal to employees that responsibility for sustainability is limited to the job of the designated and knowledgeable few.

Shifting from linear to systems-based thinking
Sustainable companies are committed to enabling their employees to change the way they think about things towards a new culture of systems thinking where everything is connected. This perspective allows employees to see not just their organization as a larger whole (instead of compartmentalized departments) but it also empowers them to develop an innate understanding of how their company is interconnected with the world around them.

For example, Wal-Mart recognized that about 90 percent of its environmental impacts occur deep within their supply chain. To address the inefficiencies at the root, Wal-Mart formed networks across formerly disparate business units from buildings to fleet, to waste to packaging, to food and agriculture. This example helps train employees to address systemic barriers to sustainability that are interconnected.

Teaching employees new types of collaboration
Sustainable businesses require a whole new level and type of engagement with local communities and governments, non-profits and even (at times) competitors. To support this collaborative “open source” way of working, employees should be given new channels of knowledge-interchange and encouraged to open up best-practices and learning to the rest of the industry.

This often requires repeated reassurance that competitors will eventually share back and that it is in the company’s longer term interests to get the whole industry designing better products and services as a whole. For example, M&S has started the “M&S Supplier Exchange,” which is used to share best practices, stimulate innovation and even to help suppliers secure the funds needed to develop more sustainable production methods.

Showing respect for employees
As Jeffrey Hollender, CEO of Seventh Generation recently noted, “It starts with how you answer the phone, how you treat the people who clean the office…these are the easy things we can do.” A culture of respect helps imbue employees with a holistic approach to business, environment and society.

For example, Wal-Mart introduced its “Personal Sustainability Project” (PSP) in 2007 to help its Associates integrate sustainability into their lives by making changes to their everyday habits. Progress toward PSP goals is measured by counting daily activities like healthier eating and lifestyle habits, replacing old appliances with energy-efficient ones, using environmentally-friendly and non-toxic home cleaning products, and getting involved in projects in one's community. PSPs reflect the “shift in Wal-Mart's perspective towards understanding how physical health, psychological wellbeing, social connections and lifelong learning about one's environment feeds the health of a business.”

Empowering employees by helping them to make a difference
From the very first interview until the exit interview, sustainable companies continuously reinforce the need for all employees to be responsible and accountable for sustainability, and to view their efforts in a larger company context. For example, Timberland's “Path of Service” program allows employees 40 hours of annual paid time off to work on service projects in communities.

Setting goals that challenge the imagination
Though practical goals are important, it is also important to set goals that raise the bar for sustainability in business. For example, Nike has set its ‘North Star’ as “becoming a totally ‘closed loop’ company where materials from a Nike shoe, for example, will end up becoming the materials for a Nike shirt.” Imagining this as the end result shows employees that their steps along the way are positive progress on an ultimate journey toward ideal sustainability, and encourages constant innovation rather than resting on the laurels of previous accomplishments.

Using transparency to solve problems
Sustainable companies make transparency work for them by involving their employees, shareholders and customers in the process of exposing and solving problems. This wider community helps by asking questions, challenging assumptions and devising solutions.

For example, the opening page of Seventh Generation’s 2007 Corporate Consciousness Report leads with a frank admission of the company's failure to reveal to consumers and key stakeholders the problems with purging dioxane from Seventh Generation products. As Hollender states, “by exposing problems, transparency begins to solve them.”

In summary, we are in an acute time of change where the wider business community is just beginning to realize the extent to which the health of a company’s core values, beliefs and traditions (i.e. its culture) affects the health of their long-term ability to sustain a healthy business on all fronts. The change represents an opportunity to embrace “enlightened capitalism” and revitalize companies with a new type of connected corporate consciousness: a consciousness that helps businesses to consistently create value by consistently competing on the values of sustainability and innovation.

Rachel Botsman specializes in the intersection between brand, innovation and sustainability. She is Director of Strategy for OZOlab, a leading sustainable and innovation think tank and business incubator. She can be reached at Rachel@ozolab.com.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Columns at 10:40 AM)

Photo credit: International Boreal Conservation Campaign Original and remaining intact forests of the world - the Boreal Forest in Canada contains 25% of the world's last intact forests

This summer, after receiving an insistent letter from more than 1,500 Canadian and international scientists, the government of Ontario agreed to strictly protect or sustainably manage all of the boreal lands within the province.

The boreal forest is a vital resource for Canadian provinces, as well as an essential weapon in the global fight against climate change, sequestering billions of tons of carbon every year.

Now it appears as if other provinces may be looking to follow in Ontario's footsteps, listening to the well-educated voices of leading scientists and protecting Canada's boreal forest. According to a recent article by Deborah Zebarenk, an environmental correspondent for Reuters:

Last week, Quebec Premier Jean Charest, now campaigning for re-election, pledged to do the same if he wins. Canadian businesses also have endorsed the plan, and (Steven) Kallick (of the Pew Environmental Group) said there is a good chance most provincial governments will as well.

This is good news not only for the forest, but also for us. The boreal forest is massive -- it's bigger than the Amazon, and stretches across 1.4 billion acres from Newfoundland to Alaska:

This continent-wide swath, covered mostly with fir trees and wetlands, is the world's largest carbon "bank" on land, storing almost twice the carbon per square yard (meter) as tropical forests because of the rich composition of its soil.

The area now holds 186 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to 27 years worth of global carbon emissions. If all of the boreal carbon was released, it would theoretically accelerate global warming by 27 years.

To monitor these efforts and to encourage further protection measures, a new team of Canadian and international scientists, called the International Boreal Conservation Science Panel, has voluntarily formed to work with the Pew Environmental Group to protect one of the world's largest intact forest/wetland ecosystems left on the planet.

Politicians listening to scientific advice and recognizing the value of ecosystem services seems like a new and welcome occurrence worthy of being enthusiastic about. We can only hope this trend continues.

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(Posted by Sarah Kuck in Planet at 1:14 PM)

Taken together, a handful of numbers are adding up to a powerful HIV/AIDS lifeline along South Africa's northeastern coast. Of the six million South Africans infected with the disease, just one in ten are currently in treatment. The HIV infection rate in KwaZulu-Natal province (KZN) stands at a breathtakingly 39 percent. Meanwhile, a whopping four-fifths of all South Africans have access to a cell phone.

But a new program called Project Masiluleke -- Zulu for "wise council" -- is using the 120 characters commonly left over in cell phone text messages to connect South Africans who desperately need testing and treatment with the nation's HIV/AIDS resources.

But let's back up a bit. The cost of making a cell phone call in southern Africa can be, as it is in many spots on the globe, prohibitively expensive. But text messages are, by comparison, cheap. Resourceful mobile owners in South Africa have figured out a workaround to the air time problem by texting friends and family the simple message of "Please Call Me" -- a tactic similar to how American teenagers once avoided collect-call charges by using names like "Brian PickMeUpAtSchool."

PCM messages, as they're known, are enormously popular. South Africans send an amazing 30 million of them a day, which is about one daily ping for every one and a half citizens. Phone carriers like Vodacom, finding their networks swamped with PCMs, made a decision. They'd let customers send a handful of them each day, for free. But they'd use the space left over by the short messages to subsidize the service through advertising.

And that clever marketing use of the white space left on the table by PCMs has, in turned, inspired a life-saving application in KwaZulu-Natal. During a trial run of Project Masiluleke this fall, mobile customers found that advertising given over to texts pointing them to the National AIDS Helpline (0800-012-322) and HIV911 (0860-448-911).

The results of the demonstration were promising. During the six week run, some 20 million Please Call Me messages went out with the HIV/AIDS hotline information. (Of course, that 20 million represents just a small slice of the PCMs sent during that period. It would be interesting to know who was selected to get the special messaging -- keeping in mind that targeting recipients for HIV info carries its own baggage.) Calls to the national hotline in Johannesburg jumped a remarkable 350 percent.

HIV and AIDS carry a nearly debilitating social stigma in South Africa, with even government officials at the highest level of government in Pretoria holding on to some warped views of the disease. That social reprobation means that many potential carriers of either HIV or TB (diseases that are closely twined in South Africa) resist getting tested.

Intimate and discrete, text messaging can be a powerful solution: at once both more immediate than an email and less invasive than a phone call. In a place like KwaZulu-Natal, where a Motorola RAZR might be someone's primary way of communicating with the world, texting can be a powerful lifeline that sits comfortably in nearly everyone's pocket.

Project Masiluleke grew out of the Pop!Tech conference held each year in Camden, Maine. In 2006, South African HIV and TB advocate Zinny Thabethe spoke about the disconnect between HIV carriers and treatment. The Pop!Tech Accelerator project teamed with the South African Praekelt Foundation's SocialTxt program, frog design, and others to launch Project Masiluleke.

The Please Call Me announcements are just the first step in Project Masiluleke's mobile response to HIV/AIDS. Once the PCM texts are relaunched as a full-fledged program at the start of 2009, they will be followed by texts geared toward reminding patients of scheduled anti-retroviral therapy and other medical treatments, "virtual call centers" staffed by HIV carriers, and at-home HIV testing augmented will mobile-phone based support.

(Credit for original photo: Pop!Tech)

Nancy Scola is a Brooklyn-based writer, blogger, and editor who focuses on the place where technology meets culture. She's worked in the past on Capitol Hill, in presidential politics, and in progressive radio.

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(Posted by Nancy Scola in Columns at 12:46 PM)

Compostmodern is beginning to roll out its 2009 line-up, and it looks like a winner. Worldchangers Dawn Danby and Joel Makower, and allies Allan Chochinov and Emily Pilloton have already been announced. That alone would make it a conference worth going to, but you can expect more in days to come. I spoke at Compostmodern last year, and had a great time.

Keep it on your calendar: February 21st, 2009, San Francisco...

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Events at 11:08 PM)

Photo courtesy Evergaldes Earth First! Members of Everglades Earth First!, a Florida-based environmental group, block the construction site of a natural gas-fired power plant in February. Lynne Purvis and seven other members face charges next month for trespassing onto the site.

Lynne Purvis stood apart at a Ritz Carlton cocktail party Thursday night.

Surrounded by coal, oil, and natural gas executives at a Bank of America energy conference in Key Biscayne, Florida, Purvis and her six friends had not been invited. Armed with banners and signs, they still made their presence known.

"Bank of America forgot to put alternative energy into the agenda," Purvis, a member of the activist group Everglades Earth First!, said into her megaphone. "So as the clean energy transition team, we were asked to speak to you all tonight."

The party guests were less than impressed with Purvis's sense-of-humor. One guest allegedly wrestled the activists' banner out of their hands. During the melee, Purvis said, two of her associates were doused with beer.

"We did commit trespassing," Purvis said. "But is trespassing truly a crime as opposed to putting the entire planet in turmoil?"

Climate activists worldwide are raising the stakes, with many turning to civil disobedience to make their voices heard. Actions in recent months have ranged from chaining themselves to coal conveyor belts in Sydney, to forming port blockades in the Netherlands, to scaling smokestacks in the United Kingdom.

The rise in activism reflects growing frustration against the continued, and expanding, use of coal as a source of energy. The fuel, while affordable, is directly linked to climate change and air pollution.

"What I see is - in the last year - it just exploded and went from being a sizable amount of people, several thousands of very active youth all around the country, to just hundreds of thousands of young people," said Brianna Cayo Cotter, communications director for Energy Action Coalition, a network of North American youth climate activists. "I feel like the floodgates are about to open. We have the numbers. We have the skills. We have the passion."

In Europe, where some 50 new coal plants are being planned, Greenpeace is leading a continent-wide campaign [PDF] to halt eight upcoming projects in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. In the United Kingdom, plans are under way to build the country's first coal plant in 34 years. Activists have escalated their opposition to the proposed construction this year.

In the United States, a nationwide fight against 150 proposed new coal-fired power plants that began four years ago has put a serious dent in the coal industry's plans. Through the courts, government lobbying, and acts of civil disobedience, activists have helped cut in half the number of new coal power stations.

The movement achieved a major victory last week. In response to a Sierra Club lawsuit, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ruled that a proposed coal plant in Utah would need a plan for controlling its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions before being granted a federal operating permit. The ruling essentially delays all such permits for the time being. "In the immediate future, no new coal plant will be moving forward," said Virginia Crame, a Sierra Club associate press secretary.

Meanwhile, the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has staged campaigns targeting two of the largest funders of such coal projects: Bank of America and Citibank. Last weekend, RAN and Greenpeace organized more than 50 events across the country to protest the banks' financial support of the fossil fuel industry.

"A lot of people are jazzed up about it because global warming was such an important issue in the election on the state and federal level," said Mary Nicol, the Greenpeace student network coordinator. "The cleanest coal plant is the one that isn't built. The youth generation really understands that."

Environmental author Bill McKibben organized 1,400 simultaneous call-to-action events, known as Step It Up, in 2007. He has since founded 350, an organization that raises awareness of the 350 parts per million of CO2 equivalent that many climate scientists consider the maximum level necessary for a stable climate.

Following a rally at the U.S. Capitol on Nov. 18, McKibben said that plans for a fall 2008 global day of action would be announced at the climate conference in Poland next month. "Hopefully there will be rallies on every corner of the planet. We have organizers working on every continent except Antarctica," he said. "We need people to realize that coal is the dirtiest fuel on our planet."

McKibben also said he expects more acts of civil disobedience in the next year. "It'll happen. Keep your eyes open in D.C.," he said.

The Energy Action Coalition is expecting 10,000 participants at its second annual Powershift, a conference of climate workshops, lobbying, and protests in Washington in February. Similar "climate camps" have been held this past year in London, Hamburg, and Newcastle (Australia).

The large-scale campaigns rekindle memories of effective grassroots campaigns from the 1960s and ‘70s. But a saturation of information has made it more difficult now for organizers to attract attention, said Paul Wapner, director of the Global Environmental Politics Program at American University.

"There is a changing landscape in which activism in general, not just environmental, finds its expression," Wapner said. "With the Internet and all sorts of media, it's hard to figure out how one makes a difference and not just have their message get lost in the virtual world."

Regardless of whether the world is watching, more activists are risking arrest for the cause, and more support is coming their way.

In the U.K., six Greenpeace activists faced criminal charges this past summer for damaging a coal-fired power station on the Kent coast. With the support of NASA climatologist James Hansen, an Inuit leader, and other environmentalists, the defendants argued that they were acting on behalf of the world - specifically the Pacific island state of Tuvalu, the Arctic ice cap, and China's Yellow River, they said.

The jury ruled that their actions were indeed protecting property in England and across the globe. The activists were cleared of all charges.

In the United States, 11 protesters who formed a human barrier to a power plant construction site in Virginia in September faced 10 criminal charges and a maximum penalty of 14 years in prison, until a plea bargain was reached last month. Hansen again offered his support.

"If this case had gone to trial, I would have requested permission to testify on behalf of these young people, who, for the sake of nature and humanity, had the courage to stand up against powerful ‘authority,'" Hansen said in a prepared statement [PDF].

Next month, Lynne Purvis will appear in court as well. She faces charges of trespassing, unlawful assembly, and resisting arrest following a protest earlier this year against the construction of a natural gas-fired power plant in the Everglades. She, too, requested that Hansen testify on her behalf, but he has yet to respond.

Stories of climate activists who have avoided punishment did not, however, influence Purvis, she said. "I honestly don't pay too much attention to that kind of stuff. My personal motivation is that whatever the consequence, it's better than the massive consequence that will be felt by the entire community and the entire planet."

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

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(Posted by Ben Block in Movement Building and Activism at 11:48 AM)