Capitol Green Girls

I wanted to plug a fellow blog site that's help making the world a safer place for Green.

Capitol Green Girls is a blog about Conservation meeting Commerce. The authors have a particular insight into the ENGO community, environmental businesses and environmental legislative developments in Washington, DC. CGG also serves to unveil greenwashing in our fair city of Washington and its environs. Greenwashers discredit those trying to make real progress towards long term sustainability, and as a result, undermine the health of the planet.

Consider subscribing to Capitol Green Girls.

Thinking about Ecological Integration - Fungi

Consider the fungus. 

Fungi are the natural world's ultimate recyclers - returning the energy and resources trapped in waste and death back into the ecosystem.  The fact that they can even decontaminate brown fields (i.e. parcels of property contaminated with poisonous or toxic waste), makes them something of a meme-model for ecological regeneration.  Recycling waste (material, water, etc.), restoring and renovating under-performing buildings and even downcycling all grow (no pun intended) out of this meme.

Moving humanity and our economic systems out of an ecologically dislocated state, and back into an ecologically integrated state, requires us understanding this sort of meme model.  Why?  Because if you want to play the game well, you need to understand the rules first.  Our current way of living is massively inefficient and ineffective at transforming potential energy into realized outcomes.  We constantly fight uphill to accomplish what we want, and leave piles of detritus in our wake: detritus we rapidly disown and remove from human ecosystem.  If we want to do things better (even do them sustainably) and are looking for a role model, looking to Nature is the place to find it.  Our socio-economic systems are only a few thousand years old, the planetary ecosystem is several billion.

Do you think that perhaps the later might have had more time to work out the kinks?  Hmmm.

The fungi meme-model invites us to look at every item of waste as a new potential opportunity.  Our grandparents chide us for the things we so callously discard, instead of repairing or finding new uses for.  Their justification is frugality, but the outcome is still particularly fungal.  They minimized waste in their lives, and ensured that things that left their own material ecosystem had been broken down to the greatest point possible.  Building upon that, if we ensure that everything that leaves our lives does so at the termination of its effectiveness to us, and transitions into its appropriate economic/ecologic niche for renewal (like a recycling facility), we become more intentionally ecologically integrated - and therefore much more effective organisms.

America - Too Big to Fail

I was thinking something in a very similar vein, but this other blog (Common Dreams) has put forward something quite similar - so I felt that it was worth sharing the worthy work of another.

America: Too Big to Fail?

Viable Earth asked to guest blog for 1Sky!

So Viable Earth recently had the honor of being asked to provide a guest blog for 1Sky, an organization dedicated to getting the Federal government to act on climate change.  Their board of directors contains two of my personal Green heroes - Van Jones and Bill McKibben - and they (alongside 350.org) constitute one of the most powerful drivers of action on climate change in the US. 

So when Emma Fernandez from 1Sky approached me (as the owner of a business dedicated to helping prevent catastrophic climate change) to be their first ever Green business guest blogger I did the only sensible thing possible...

I said "of course!". 

You can check out my blog post here: Empowering people key to cutting climate pollution.

-Andrew

An Era of No More Direct Action?

As a quick extra for those who read my lovely little blog, I wanted to add some thoughts onto my podcast about the British Petroleum oil catastrophe in the Gulf.

You see, it strikes me as unbelievable the sheer lack of direct action by environmental protestors against BP. I mean, yes - there have been all sorts of things from an attempted citizen's arrest of BP executives at their lobbying HQ in DC, to protesters pouring oil on themselves (even inside the Senate), to coordinated nation-wide efforts like Hands Across the Sand.

But to be blunt - this all seems pretty weak to me.

Once upon a time, organizations like Greenpeace were willing to risk death to protect the planet.  Who doesn't remember when the French military sank the Rainbow Warrior in New Zealand's territorial waters?  (Here's the link for those who like their wiki look-ups spoon-fed to them).  And to be fair, groups like the Sea Shepherds are certainly willing to put themselves in harm's way (South Park parodies aside), it feels like environmental groups simply aren't willing to take risks the way they used to.  Where's the massed flotilla invading the Gulf to protest BP?  The takeover of other oil rigs?  People chaining themselves to BP gas stations?

It seems to me like the era of direct action is over.  Either people in the environmental movement decided that direct action was more grandstanding than transformative... or the current generation carrying the planet's torch is a little too well-heeled and a little too law-abiding to want to stir up too much commotion. 

I'd say that if we can put together a dozen ship flotilla to try to lift the blockade of Gaza, then maybe we can scrape together a couple of boats to harass some deepwater oil rigs that should be out of commission until they undergo a safety review?

Oh - but that might get someone in TROUBLE.  *Gasp!*

Podcast #2 - BP, Greenwashing and Real Green Change

Follow the link below to access my podcast server.


Equilibrium Nova Podcasts

Equilibrium Nova Podast #1!

Equilibrium Nova Podcasts

For your listening pleasure. A discussion about the Unsustainability of Post-Newtonian culture, on an Einsteinian planet that isn't a giant, logical, controllable machine.