News Feeds | ecology.iww.org (2024)

Green Action Centre - Mon, 06/03/2024 - 11:20

We were honored to help lead a tree planting event to strengthen Greenway School’s Community Forest in May 2024 alongside the Manitoba Eco-Network, Trees Winnipeg, the West End Resource Centre, and Greendrop. This event was made possible thanks to Green Community Canada’s Living Cities Canada Fund, a national initiative designed to increase community-led green infrastructure.

Projects supported by the Living Cities Canada Fund will help Canadian communities to become more resilient, vibrant, and healthy places to live by reducing the urban heat island effect, improving stormwater management, mitigating flood risks, improving local air quality, and supporting the physical and mental well-being of its residents.

We were not only able to assist with planting 51 trees while we were at the school, we also got an opportunity to learn more about Greenway School’s incredible initiatives to create a healthier community for people living in the neighbourhood. Learn more about what they’re up to by watching our interview with Nick Skrabek, one of the teachers at Greenway Community School, below.

It is so hopeful learning about the collective actions Manitobans are taking in an effort to make Mother Earth a safe and healthy place to live for generations to come.

If you’re interested in supporting the long-term sustainability of the Greenway School Community Forest project, you can make a donation through the Manitoba Eco-Network’s website here.

Every June, a charged scene unfolds outside the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) headquarters in Manila. Activists and communities impacted by ADB-funded energy projects gather, a stark juxtaposition to the polished discussions within the Asia Clean Energy Forum which serves as a hub for energy stakeholders, that aims to steer the Asia-Pacific region toward swiftly transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy to mitigate climate change and secure our energy future.

Since its establishment in 1966, the ADB has been tasked with promoting economic and social development across Asia and the Pacific. With 68 member countries, the ADB provides vital financial and technical assistance. Its crucial role lies in supporting developing nations as they transition to sustainable, low-carbon energy systems, aligning with the Paris Agreement’s objectives.

The Billion-Dollar Road to Decarbonization

Between 2016 and 2020, the ADB funneled $8.5 billion into clean energy, bolstering low-carbon transitions and improving energy access in the region. By late 2021, the Bank’s fresh Energy Policy had halted financing for new coal-fired power, acknowledging coal’s environmental and financial hazards. While fossil gas projects remain permissible under the new policy, this marks a significant shift towards cleaner energy. Looking ahead, the ADB has pledged up to $100 billion by 2030 to combat climate change, with a strong emphasis on renewable energy, aligning with their sustainable development and climate mitigation strategy.

Despite these efforts, concerns persist regarding the ADB’s adoption of what many civil society organizations consider ‘false solutions’ like ammonia co-firing, hydrogen, waste-to-energy, and potentially nuclear. These approaches are seen as hindrances to decarbonization, diverging from the goals set out in the Glasgow Climate Pact adopted at COP26. This pact calls for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, phasing out unabated coal power, cutting methane emissions, and offering financial aid to emerging economies.

As of 2023, an estimated 350 million people in Asia, particularly in rural and remote areas of countries like India, Indonesia, and Bangladesh, still lack stable electricity access. Global challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the energy crisis have impeded progress in expanding electricity access. To achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, a significant uptick in renewable energy capacity is imperative. Estimates indicate that nearly tripling global investments in renewable energy, with a target of around 8,000 GW of new capacity by 2030, is necessary to replace fossil fuels and meet global electricity demand sustainably.

The road ahead

Approaching 2030, achieving a balance between equity, urgency, and ambition in energy transformation is paramount. This entails excluding harmful energy solutions, prioritizing equitable investment in renewable energy, and ensuring transparency, accountability, and community consultation.

The pursuit of climate action is not merely about meeting emission reduction targets set under the Paris Agreement; it is about fundamentally altering our development pathway to ensure that our country can thrive in the context of climate change. This transformation must intertwine seamlessly with achieving other development goals, recognizing that robust community ownership of solutions is indispensable for any successful climate initiative. Our journey towards a sustainable future demands that action and progress in climate and development are not only compatible but mutually reinforcing.

To achieve this, the climate movement must lead the charge, relentlessly advocating for financial stimulus to transform our energy systems towards sustainability and equity. Through creative actions that speak truth to power, we must challenge the prevailing narrative that economic development is inextricably tied to fossil fuels. By capturing the popular imagination, we can demonstrate that decarbonization is not only necessary but also entirely achievable. This dual approach of confronting entrenched interests and inspiring hope is essential for a just and sustainable future.

The climate crisis is not just about science, technology, and shifting to meet sustainability goals; it is intertwined with issues of poverty, inequality, and economic injustice. Addressing these challenges entails reimagining energy as part of a larger system that transforms how power is produced, utilized, and distributed.

Central to this endeavor is the redirection of resources towards solutions that prioritize both people and the environment. This necessitates a rapid and fair shift towards a clean energy economy, empowering communities while curbing profit-oriented decisions that endanger individuals and the planet. The Asian Development Bank’s dedication to sustainable development and renewable energy is pivotal in reshaping the energy landscape of Asia and the Pacific, driving economic stimulus and paving the path towards a fossil-free future.

The post Forging the path towards a future powered by the sun, the wind and the people starts with funding equitable solutions appeared first on 350.

Categories: G1. Progressive Green

University of British Columbia Professor of Forest Ecology and bestselling author Suzanne Simard has been at the forefront of research on plant communication and intelligence. Simard is globally renowned for her work on how trees interact and communicate using below-ground fungal networks and has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed articles as well as the bestselling book “Finding the Mother Tree.” But with this recognition has come some pushback. Simard discusses resistance to her work in this excerpt from an interview with Bioneers Senior Producer J.P. Harpignies.

JP: Could you discuss the growing recognition of intelligence in nature and its implications for forest ecosystems, particularly in relation to the concept of the mycelial network and the idea of forests as intelligent and adaptive systems?

SUZANNE: Sure. In biology, we’ve always employed anthropomorphic language to describe natural phenomena. Take, for instance, the concept of plant families, which has been a staple in our discourse for centuries. Similarly, in forestry, terms like “parent trees” have long been used to describe influential trees within ecosystems. When I began referring to these influential trees as “mother trees,” it was to emphasize their crucial role in forest regeneration. Despite facing backlash for this terminology, it’s worth noting that terms like “parent tree” are already common in genetics and have been for some time.

Our language is saturated with anthropomorphic expressions, and that isn’t necessarily negative; it aids comprehension by enabling us to relate to complex concepts more easily.

Regarding the intelligence of forests, it’s important to consider language again. Historically, intelligence has been predominantly associated with humans, reflecting a deeply ingrained anthropocentric worldview prevalent in Western culture. This bias leads to skepticism about the existence of intelligence in nature, as it doesn’t align with our perception of ourselves as the pinnacle of creation. However, when we examine the traits commonly associated with intelligence, such as decision-making and adaptability, it becomes apparent that these qualities are prevalent in natural systems. For instance, in mycorrhizal networks, we observe intricate patterns reminiscent of biological neural networks, suggesting a sophisticated level of organization and decision-making. The collaboration and coordination seen in ecosystems further underscore the intelligence inherent in nature. Despite debates surrounding anthropomorphism, the forest exhibits all the hallmarks of intelligence.

JP: The landscape has shifted in mainstream science. Intelligence used to be a bit of a touchy subject, with some scientists preferring terms like “smartness” or “cleverness” to avoid stirring up controversy. But times are changing. After your book’s success, did it give you more clout, especially with politicians and the media? Did it make people sit up and take notice when you spoke?

SUZANNE: It definitely brought me closer to government decision-makers. It wasn’t necessarily because they sought me out, but rather because the public, inspired by the book, started asking questions. That increased engagement propelled me into higher-level discussions than I’d ever had before, which I see as a positive outcome.

As for the book itself, my goal was to convey the latest research findings to the public. I felt it was crucial for people to understand the implications of our forestry practices, which were jeopardizing the very essence of forests. For instance, a plantation is not equivalent to an old-growth forest. I believed people needed to be aware of these distinctions. Ultimately, a well-informed public is more inclined to protect nature.

JP: Your book’s success and widespread reach undoubtedly opened doors for you, which is a positive outcome. However, as you mentioned earlier, it’s also prompted a significant backlash. Interestingly, this backlash seems to extend beyond the environmental sector, permeating various fields, including social justice and corporate realms. We’re witnessing instances where even Wall Street firms, once vocal about diversity and inclusion, are now retracting their stances. This trend appears pervasive across disciplines.

In your case, what forms has this backlash taken, and to what do you attribute it?

SUZANNE: It’s a bit complex to pinpoint the exact impact in my situation, but I see it as part of a larger dialogue. Anything challenging the status quo of the last century, like the practices of forest companies profiting from converting old-growth forests into plantations, tends to stir up resistance. While these companies may prioritize profits over preserving ecosystems, my research highlights the importance of maintaining complex ecological relationships for a thriving ecosystem. This poses a threat to extractive practices.

Interestingly, the opposition I face doesn’t primarily come from industry players like Weyerhaeuser or other major forestry corporations; rather, it’s more prevalent within academic circles, which is an intriguing dynamic.

JP: Do you think there’s a sophisticated network at play here? We’ve seen PR firms, once aligned with the tobacco industry, transition to working for fossil fuel companies. This suggests a powerful infrastructure geared towards protecting vested interests. I’ve come across scientific critiques of your work authored by individuals with ties to mainstream forestry and fossil fuel industries. Considering this, do you believe there’s a deeper connection driving these criticisms, perhaps beyond direct involvement from companies like Weyerhaeuser?

SUZANNE: It’s an important aspect to consider. Funding in universities often involves diverse sources, including industry partnerships. Federal grants increasingly require co-funding, which may come from industries like forestry or fossil fuels. While researchers may not be fully aware, this funding dynamic subtly influences their work. Collaborating with industry funders can impact research directions, albeit unintentionally. This influence has gradually permeated scientific endeavors, particularly in applied sciences, shaping outcomes even without researchers’ explicit recognition.

My book offers an alternative perspective on forests, diverging from mainstream forestry ideologies. Traditional forestry promotes the notion that replacing old forests with managed plantations, utilizing techniques like tree breeding, pesticides, and fertilizers, leads to enhanced productivity. However, I advocate for a different approach, one that prioritizes working with natural systems rather than imposing industrial methodologies. Comparisons between naturally recovering ecosystems and managed ones consistently reveal the superior condition of the former. Embracing this natural approach challenges the decades-long research supporting the industrial model, presenting a significant paradigm shift in forestry practices.

JP: So, it seems to me that what you’re advocating for is a holistic, whole-systems approach rather than a reductionist efficiency model. This appears to be more than just a debate within forestry; it seems like an ideological struggle spanning various fields. It’s almost as if it’s a battle for the soul of our civilization.

SUZANNE: Yeah, managing a complex adaptive system is much more challenging than simplifying it into rows of trees. However, the long-term consequences of the latter approach are far more difficult to address. A holistic systems-level approach involves considering multiple scales of interaction, cross-scale dynamics, energy flows, and socio-ecological principles. It’s a comprehensive approach that integrates bottom-up and top-down perspectives, rather than imposing a predetermined model on the forest.

The industrial model might seem easier, with its clear-cutting and uniform planting, but it often leads to unfavorable outcomes. Working within complex systems, despite their challenges, holds the key to addressing climate change and biodiversity loss. This requires collaboration with those who intimately understand these systems and their interconnections, as well as employing sophisticated strategies that respect both cultures and ecosystems.

JP: From my perspective, embracing a holistic worldview offers a much richer and more diverse way of understanding the world. However, delving into philosophical concepts, metaphors, and ethical considerations has long been frowned upon in the scientific community. Yet, to garner support for holistic science, it’s crucial to engage with the broader public using language that’s more accessible and less metaphorical. Striking the right balance is tricky because veering too far risks facing criticism and backlash. It’s a challenging dilemma to navigate.

SUZANNE: It’s true. The backlash can be unpredictable and come from unexpected places. But despite the challenges, I see it as part of the broader societal change process. The first responders to new ideas often face resistance, but they pave the way for further progress and open up new conversations. I’m encouraged by the shift I’ve witnessed in discussions over the past decade. Now, we recognize forests not just as ecosystems but as ecocultural systems. This marks a significant departure from the mindset prevalent when I began my forestry journey, where culture was rarely considered. So, while some may bear the brunt of initial pushback, it sets the stage for future advancements. If that’s what it takes to move forward, then so be it.

JP: And what about the ramifications for the forestry industry’s products, such as lumber for construction and everyday items like toilet paper? Decades ago, there were significant campaigns led by organizations like the Rainforest Action Network aimed at shaming companies for harvesting old-growth trees for products like toilet paper. Is this area within your purview, or do you collaborate with groups focused on reducing demand for forestry products that contribute to such practices?

SUZANNE: I can only do what I can do, but I support people who focus on that aspect. Canopy Planet, for example, works to reduce demand and promote more sustainable alternatives. So I endorse those efforts, although I’m not directly involved myself.

We need to consider the entire chain of events and identify pressure points. I concentrate my efforts where I can make an impact and support initiatives aimed at reducing demand for wood products. The forest industry has been driven by this demand for profit, leading to the unsustainable exploitation of our forests. We need to shift this demand and reduce consumption.

Changing how we perceive forests is crucial. We’re still depleting old-growth forests for various products like shingles, sawdust, and wood pellets for overseas burning. This practice needs to stop. I’m involved in reevaluating the value of forests. While I’m not an economist, I endorse emerging markets that value forests for their ecosystem services such as water provision, carbon storage, biodiversity preservation, and cultural significance, including the protection of indigenous peoples’ rights. These markets represent a shift towards recognizing the forest’s true worth beyond solely timber products.

JP: One thing we often fail to anticipate in the environmental and social justice movements is the intensity of the reaction from vested interests. It’s shocking. The attacks on you are part of this broader pushback. People get excited about holistic science and rich, fungi-filled soils, then they’re surprised when the mainstream business community doesn’t adopt these practices.

In the environmental movement, we say each victory is temporary and each defeat is permanent. Once they clearcut and destroy a landscape, it’s gone.

I don’t want to be pessimistic. We just have to keep doing what you’re doing: putting out the best research and promoting a richer worldview. We hope the functionality and aesthetics of this approach will eventually triumph because they offer a better model.

SUZANNE: Yeah, and it’s important to remember that these ecosystems are regenerative. When we cut an old growth forest, we’ve destroyed that specific forest, but a new one will grow in its place. It takes a long time to regain what was lost, and the new forest might be different, but we shouldn’t lose hope. It just means more work for us to help these forests rebuild. These ecosystems are resilient and can bounce back in different ways. They’re designed to do that.

The post As Recognition of Intelligent Forest Systems Grows, So Has Pushback appeared first on Bioneers.

Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

Clean Energy Canada - Thu, 05/30/2024 - 12:23

Canmore, Alta., and Golden, B.C., are less than two hours apart. Both are scenic mountain towns, and one can imagine their residents live relatively similar lives. But when it comes to the question of energy, the citizens of these provincial border communities – like many across Canada – have vastly different relationships with energy.

And far from finding common ground, those differences could soon grow even more extreme, bringing about implications for affordability and economic development.

Since 2016, the federal government hascovered 80% of the costsof combatting climate change in Canada, despite holding the purse strings on only20% of all public spending. If the Liberal government falls next year, as current polls suggest, living in different provinces could soon feel more like living in different countries, at least when it comes to one’s experience with energy.

Consider the past few years. AfterOntario scrapped its provincial electric-vehicle purchase rebate, Ottawa stepped in with a nationwide incentive to even the playing field for all Canadians. Similar stories could be told around heat pump programs, the federal government’s requirement for automakers to improve EV availability across the country, its regulations to clean up our electricity system, and yes, thecarbonprice and rebate. Combined, these nation-building efforts are intended to get the country rowing in a common direction.

There’s a real risk the oars are about to slip off. And if the boat starts to drift, Canadians will be reminded thatenergy, affordability and economic development have always been largely provincial responsibilities.

This spring, Clean Energy Canada evaluated each province’s progress toward building a sustainable economy, and what we found was a country of leaders and laggards. We assessed everything from macro-level policies such as electricity planning to household measures such as rebates forEVsand heat pumps that enable residents to save money and cut climate pollution. And while some provinces are actively building more resilient futures, others have largely ceded that responsibility to the federal government – or outright resisted it.

There are bright spots. Quebec was the only province to earn an overall A grade on our scorecard thanks to its clean electricity ambitions and investments in clean industries such as EV batteries, while British Columbia, a leader in EV adoption and energy efficiency, came in second with a B. Indeed, the policies pioneered in these provinces, once focused on emissions, are now yielding affordability benefits for families and business opportunities for new and old industries alike.

At the other end of the rankings, certain Prairie provinces are failing to live up to their potential. Alberta and Saskatchewan could have thefastest-growing clean-energy sectorsin the country, but Alberta’s D grade reflects its lack of action – and even aggression – toward this opportunity. Despite being the wind and solar capital of Canada, the province has imposed restrictions on renewables development, a recent move that’s already scaring off investment in Alberta. Earlier this month,TransAlta cancelledone renewables project in the province and put another three on hold, citing these changes.

In contrast with Alberta, Progressive Conservative-ledOntarioreceived good grades for its industrial strategy after making big moves to expand its EV supply chain. While Canada’s most populous province has room for improvement elsewhere, Premier Doug Ford is clearly seizing an opportunity whileAlberta Premier Danielle Smithis putting up roadblocks.

Beyond Canada’s industries, the fragmentation of our energy reality can be felt on our streets. EVsmade up19% of new car sales in Quebec last year compared with 7% next door in Ontario, and while it would be easy to chalk this divergence up to provincial choice, we don’t choose the world we live in.

The simple reality is that whatever provinces do or don’t do over the next few years, the global economy, energy prices, technology curves and our climate will change with or without provincial consent – and the trajectory is quite clear. Portions of the country could find themselves playing catch-up in a future they didn’t plan for, losing out on economic opportunities while paying more for energy.

Unless, of course, provincial governments realize that their higher purpose isn’t to fight the feds. It is, as it’s always been, to seek safety, prosperity and affordability for their citizens in a sea of change.

This post was co-authored by Mark Zacharias and originally appeared in the Globe and Mail.

The post If the Liberals fall, Canadians may experience a deeply fragmented energy future appeared first on Clean Energy Canada.

Categories:

Public Advocates - Thu, 05/30/2024 - 11:38

As housing costs continue to skyrocket across California and the United States, a recently released new report “Building Our Future: Grassroots Reflections on Social Housing” examines a growing movement to create permanently affordable housing that is publicly, collectively or non-profit owned and under community control.

Authored by leading grassroots organizations—spread out from California to Washington, D.C—at the forefront of the fight for housing justice, the report highlights how communities are increasingly turning to social housing campaigns as a solution to address the root causes of the housing crisis.

Public Advocates is excited to have written about the first ever legislatively mandated social housing study being conducted in California and to support our partners across the country who created this important landscape analysis. Read the full report here.

The post Report: Building Our Future: Grassroots Reflections on Social Housing appeared first on Public Advocates.

Categories: E2. Front Line Community Green

Clean Energy Canada - Wed, 05/29/2024 - 21:05

TORONTO — Canada is experiencing a heavily fragmented energy transition with consequences for household affordability and economic development, finds a new Clean Energy Canada scorecard that ranks provincial efforts to help citizens and businesses shift to clean energy.

While provincial action ranges greatly, it’s clear that provinces in general need to step up—some a lot more than others. Since 2016, 80% of climate spending in Canada has been at the federal level, despite the fact that the federal government is responsible for roughly 20% of all public spending. With an uncertain future facing a number of nationwide climate measures, the provincial fragmentation that exists today could grow even more acute tomorrow.

On the positive end of the spectrum, Quebec is leading the pack with an A grade thanks to its support for EVs and heat pumps and a growing battery supply chain. B.C. also scores well on clean buildings and transportation, but poor electricity planning earns it a B overall.

On the other hand, Alberta and Saskatchewan—the only two provinces to receive D grades—are failing to live up to their potential in a significant way. Despite being the wind and solar capital of Canada, Alberta has imposed restrictions on renewable power development, a recent move that is already scaring off investment.

Ontario, meanwhile, received good grades for its industrial strategy after making big moves to expand its EV supply chain, but it ultimately scored a C due to weaker efforts around clean transportation and buildings. And next door, Manitoba’s brand new EV rebate improved its clean transportation score, helping it become the only Prairie province to earn a C.

Finally, living up to its small but mighty reputation, P.E.I. is the regional winner in Atlantic Canada, receiving a B for strong levels of support provided to residents to adopt cost-saving EVs and heat pumps.

To see how the grades break down and how Clean Energy Canada came up with its criteria, check out Making the Grade.

RESOURCES

Report | Making the Grade

The post Canada is undergoing a fragmented clean energy transition with radically different levels of provincial effort: report appeared first on Clean Energy Canada.

Categories:

Green Action Centre - Wed, 05/29/2024 - 13:58

Are you an organization or region wanting to offer transportation options beyond driving alone? GoManitoba connects users to carpool, bus, bike or walk, and mentors to help those biking or busing for the first time.

Become a GoManitoba Network!

Thanks to the support of the Province of Manitoba, we are offering SIX MONTHS FREE for you to become a GoManitoba network. You will get access to all of the great tools that come with GoManitoba as well as support to build your program from Green Action Centre. After six months, you can choose to stick with a low subscription rate, or to become a full network partner.

Check out more details and pricing: GoManitoba – NEW info sheet

Why consider GoManitoba at this time?

• Emergency Ride Home: “I’d love to carpool/bike/bus BUT what if _____?” With your GoManitoba subscription, you get FREE access to the Emergency Ride Home program, administered by Green Action Centre. This is a fantastic benefit to offer your employees!
• Custom Branding and URL: Your workplace’s branding, text and images.
• Multi-modal Solution: Supports all sustainable travel options like carpooling, cycling, walking, transit and telecommuting.
• Advanced Matching Technology: RideAmigo’s matching algorithms match users based on proximity to origin, destination, actual travel route, and personal preferences.
• Incentives & Gamification: You can reward your employees for participating and logging their trips. You set the rules and incentives!
• 24/7 Administrative Portal: Access your information at any time securely. Filter, map, export your data at any time.
• Trip Logging Calendar: RideAmigo’s trip logging calendar allows users to log their trips – a diary for commute activity! GoManitoba offers syncing to many fitness apps and Live Tracking.
• Data Privacy and Security: Database security is RideAmigo’s priority. Using the latest technologies available, they make sure that your data is protected and stored in Canada.

Our commuting research shows the RISE in interest in sustainable commuting, especially biking, since the pandemic. While we bid farewell to this health crisis, the reality is the economic and environmental crisis are of deep concern to many Manitobans, and both are entrenched in our transportation system.

Did you know:

• The average Canadian spends $8,000 – $12,000 a year to commute via personal vehicle. Reduce the stress those in your organization face when driving alone.
• During the pandemic, most don’t miss their commute … except those who travel sustainably. Bring joy to your organization by offering choices for folks to love their trip!
• 91% of Canadians say climate change is a serious issue. Help your team make a positive impact by traveling sustainably, even just once or twice a week!
• Active travel has many mental and physical health benefits. Help to reduce the barriers your team is facing to find routes, buddies and motivation!

GoManitoba continues to grow and we would love to work with you to find all of the benefits for your region or organization. Connect with gohappy@greenactioncentre.ca to set-up a time to chat.

Happy travels!

Throughout history, the most significant movements for positive change have nearly always been accompanied by powerful artistic expressions that shed light on injustices and offer visions of a more equitable society. We are currently facing unprecedented challenges as our climate unravels and reactionary authoritarian movements gain in momentum. In the following panel discussion, held at the 2024 Bioneers Conference in Berkeley, California, leading activist/artists discuss whether navigating these seemingly perpetual existential crises necessitate new strategies from the “engaged” creative community.

This panel discussion was moderated by Arturo Méndez-Reyes, a cultural producer, curator, visual artist, musician, and community organizer advancing cultural equity in San Francisco. It features Devon Bella, co-founder of Art + Climate Action, a Bay Area collective committed to fostering a sustainable and environmentally-conscious arts community; David Solnit, renowned direct action organizer, author, puppeteer, and co-founder of Art and Revolution; Orion Camero, former Brower Youth Award winner and Spiritual Ecology Fellow; and Favianna Rodriguez, world-renowned interdisciplinary artist, cultural strategist, and social justice activist based in Oakland, California.

Note: This is an edited and shortened version of the session’s transcript.

FAVIANNA RODRIGUEZ: Hi everybody. I’m thrilled to be here. Welcome to the homelands of the Ohlone. I am an artist and a cultural strategist, and I was born and raised in Oakland in a very polluted community, and I grew up during the era of the height of the “war on drugs,” so I witnessed and experienced all kinds of violence, including from the state, and also, of course, the invisible violence that is pollution. I also experienced the birth of hip hop, so early on I learned that art and culture can show us the light, can show us what’s possible. It inspires us. It shapes our imaginations. Culture is a very important part of any kind of social change.

Growing up I could see how the narratives around who was perceived as criminal shaped the war on drugs. I learned very early on that people who shape culture also shape policies, so that we need to shape our own culture. If we want to win on anything—on reproductive justice, climate justice— we need our stories and our art.

I grew up in the ‘80s, a time when Reagan had dismantled the National Endowment for the Arts. The rightwing and the forces of colonialism and white supremacy have long tried to crush our artistic practice. It has made it so that most of what we have seen in the world—films, TV, visual art, musical performance, everything, the entire cultural sector—has been dominated by white men with a particular worldview. And my work is around changing worldviews through art. It’s not just about one issue. It’s about an entire worldview shift, because the climate crisis is a product of colonialism, and colonialism is about the exploitation of all of life. Art and culture can change our imagination. We need to change entirely the way we relate.

What has facilitated the extractive economy is a set of stories that has allowed the exploitation of all life—human life, animal life, ocean life, forest life— for the consolidation of wealth and power. We need to change the core story, and that is the work that artists can do. Engaged art is a necessity, one we urgently need because our reality is so overwhelming and so harsh for so many people that we need the power of the imagination to make us feel that real positive change is possible. It gives us courage. It moves our emotions.

Data doesn’t move people. There’s a lot of data on the climate crisis. That doesn’t move people. Art and culture can move people. When we don’t see any genuine representation of groups that have been shunned, such as Black trans people or Immigrants, it facilitates their dehumanization. When we create culture and stories about all that is alive, and we value the biodiversity of humans and of all life, there will be a worldview shift.

That’s what I believe the work of art is. It’s what I do as an individual artist, and I also have created an organization, the Center for Cultural Power, to build the field of artists working to end systems of oppression. Because we’re not just artists; we need to be organizers and activists to confront these huge systems. We have to undo the stories that have gotten us here, and we have to create the new stories. And so that’s the work that I do. I look at how we can support artists, especially those from the most impacted communities, around being able to actually win on policies, but I also know that policies take a long time to catch up to cultural change. Our behaviors and values and the way we see each other can be shaped faster, and then politics will catch up…

DAVID SOLNIT: I grew up in the Bay Area and in Portland, Oregon. When I was in high school, the government told men turning 18 that we had to register for military draft, and we were pretty sure at the time there was going to be a war for oil, so that introduced me to activism. My life has been sort of going back and forth between reactive battles to try and stop our government’s wars around the world, and proactive efforts to try and create an ecological, just world for everybody. And that’s sort of where I’m stuck.

In high school, I loved making art and wanted to be an artist. I got to work with a lot of amazing people, but I also entered activism, and it made me think about the role of art. If I’m going to be successful and have a gallery show and somebody buy my pieces and hangs them over their couch, is that going to stop nuclear war or the arming of death squads in El Salvador, etc.? So, instead of trying to be an artist, I chose to spend most of my adult life as a carpenter doing construction to support myself and using that to feed my full-time organizing, direct-action habit. But, after 15 years or so, I realized that our demonstrations and the way we communicated weren’t inspiring us, let alone others, and that we actually needed artists, performers and musicians, so I started to recruit some of them to start to rethink how we communicate as movements. After years of recruiting puppeteers and artists and musicians, I realized that I wanted to do that part too.

I’ve come to believe that, as Favianna was saying, we need new stories. Our battles for the kind of world we want to live in are battles between stories, and the sharpest storytelling tools we have are the arts. If we don’t use art, we will lose the battle, and a lot of people will die unnecessarily, and our communities will suffer.

I’ve spent the last 13 years working primarily on climate justice struggles, trying to support communities both here in refinery corridors and around the world. Some of it is reactive, just trying to stop fossil fuel projects and pipelines, but a lot of it is actually getting all the movements to work together to weave a positive vision of how the world could be.

And then after October 7, I shifted to trying to throw down to stop the war on the civilian population in Gaza, realizing that, as climate activists, we can’t get what we need to be done to protect our communities and our ecology if most of our resources are going towards war and militarism. We live in an empire and the resources we need to protect our communities and the planet are being spent on 700 military bases in 130 other people’s countries. So as climate activists, we have to figure out how to undo the empire, and what a blessing that were if the empire is a bulldozer, we have the luxury of being in the control cab where the steering wheel and the keys are. We’re actually in a really wonderful and privileged place to shut down the empire and free up those resources.

People around the world know what to do. People in our communities know what to do. If we can get our government’s knee off our own communities and the world’s neck, we will be able to live in a far more just world and save our climate.

DEVON BELLA: I’m here on behalf of Art & Climate Action, which is a nonprofit artist-run, artist-led initiative. And before I begin, I just want to thank everyone for joining us this afternoon and to thank my fellow panelists. I’m just in awe of the work you all are doing on the ground as artists, as community members. It’s really a privilege to be here with you and to be in community with you.

I’m a curator and an arts organizer, and much of my career has been shaped by working with, collaborating with, and learning from artists, particularly artists who have been historically underrepresented in Western art. I’ve learned a lot from them and their practices, and it’s helped me take a deep, critical look at the infrastructure and institutions of the art world and how they control which artists get presented to large audiences.

We’re a collective of arts professionals—arts workers, art handlers, art advisors—and we got together during the peak of wildfires here in California under orange smokey skies, and it no longer seemed rational to sit indoors and do nothing. A fellow arts producer sent out a call asking what the art sector could do to have a positive impact. During the pandemic we had been having conversations over Zoom, and that evolved into Art & Climate Action. We had started to really think about the art world’s infrastructure—our institutions, our museums, our galleries—and their environmental impact, their climate impact. What could we do to clean up our own house?

We started knocking on doors, reaching out to our connections in institutions and spending a lot of time in listening sessions, learning from one another and from other initiatives like ours across the U.S. and the world, some in countries far ahead of us. We consulted climate scientists and engineers because we were very knowledgeable in art history and artistic practices but didn’t know the first thing about our carbon footprint.

Once we got a more solid grounding in the science, we started to bring this information to museums, institutions and arts organizations to help them better understand their carbon footprints and the steps they could take to start improving in this area, including getting detailed energy audits. We also started to offer workshops online for artists to show them how to take practical steps in their everyday practice, including as regards the materials they were using.

Some of the biggest shocks for me when I first started this work was discovering that: museums were just as energy intensive as hospitals and skyscrapers, if not more so; nearly all art materials are petroleum-based and extremely toxic; the emissions generated by the global art market from the incredible amount of transporting art all over the world is far from negligible. Fortunately, there are now starting to be more and more artist-led initiatives looking at those systems, interrogating them, questioning them, and exposing how they operate.

And a really great movement has emerged of artists who are thinking about alternative, regenerative materials and uplifting practices to try to design waste and harmful materials out from our practices. There’s an initiative in the Netherlands called the Future Materials Bank in which individual artists experiment and tinker and create new materials and recipes, and they put them into an open-source archive, where everything is there for sharing and you can even contact each artist if you need advice on how to use one of these products or processes.

ORION CAMERO: It’s so great to see everyone here and be in the community of such powerful human beings in this ensemble story. I am an arts organizer and cultural strategist. I was born alongside the San Joaquin River in Stockton, California, east of here, and I came into the Climate Justice movement through struggles in my region over water privatization. I went to hearings of the local Water Board, and I could see that major decisions were being made without future generations in mind. I was one of the youngest people in these rooms, and I was wondering what I could do to have an impact and make a difference.

So, I decided to make art about these really boring but intense battles around water, and that sort of led me into the climate justice movement as I began to see the connections between social, ecological, and economic injustice. In downtown Stockton we have a dried-up riverbed, and a number of folks in our unhoused community are in it, struggling to survive. We have the same culture of disposability for our ecosystems and for human beings, and it’s something we need to interrogate together.

Art can be a universal language where all shapes of the human imagination meet. It’s one of the closest things in the world to magic. I would venture to say it is really magic. It creates the capacity to create empathy across identities. It soothes our nervous systems. It allows us to weather the difficulties of life’s challenges and to be able to have a story that mirrors our experience. And it permits us to feel things together and to give us the hope that we’re going to be able to make it through together. Arts and culture have continuously been a medicine for our emotional and spiritual illnesses across the centuries of human existence.

I feel that creativity at its core is about divergent thinking, thinking outside of the status quo, beyond the lines and norms we’ve been given. It can give us the ability to serve as bridges and catalysts between sectors, between people, between identities, so we can gather the collective ingredients we need to build the mosaic of collective liberation that we need right now.

I feel called to that intersectional work, and a lot of my pieces showcase the different but interrelated issues that I’ve tried to tackle during my decade-plus of organizing. One of my pieces, Learning Liberation, highlights mass incarceration, but through an ecological and youth-centered frame, and it uses a wide range of imagery to inspire the possibility of an exponential liberation cycle. Much of my work is created to contribute to specific campaigns, whether trying to expose the corruption behind the big corporations’ push to privatize water resources in our state or in support of the California Youth vs Big Oil campaign, and I’ve organized around the U.N. climate negotiations for a long time, and we worked with Greta Thunberg on an action to center Indigenous and frontline struggles at the most recent COP meetings. I really believe we can use art to shift our culture’s direction and begin to build a world we want to live in.

ARTURO MENDEZ-REYES: I’m a cultural producer who’s been living in San Francisco for the last eight years. I’m originally from Mexico, where I started my activism with a big student movement in 2012 that gave me the opportunity to travel around the country talking to people who were doing politics in their colleges, so I learned a lot about different forms of organizing, and that led me to collaborate with the Zapatistas who really showed me that it’s important to break the overused models that have been presented as alternatives.

I started an organization called Arts.Co.Lab, where I train artists to apply for grants and funds, because none of these big visions can happen without some money. To date we have trained 170 artists and secured around $1 million for their individual projects, which is not nothing. This has allowed me to see that art-making should be a human right. Art-making gives us the opportunity to contextualize ourselves, to look around and see what’s happening, what our society looks like, what our reality is, and then to speak back with our art, to address our reality through our work.

With that idea in mind, I created a “zine” called Urban Prophets Illustrated, Art Will Set You Free. Its concept is that we, the artists, are the urban prophets. We dedicate our lives to witness society, and then we speak back in the form of art, and those are our prophecies, and in them, we see, and say what is broken and rotten to the core, and we point to where we can go when we come together to work for a dignified future.

For the most part people are disengaged from the political process and really from reality. Our phones and all of this technology that we’re surrounded by are giving us a very easy way to turn away from reality. And the only way to really support people to engage is by opening spaces where they can reclaim their sense of dignity.

An example of that is an altarpiece I made, one inspired by the Olmec cosmovision, an altar to fire, to the direction of the south, that’s on display here at the conference, and that’s designed to help us reconnect with our ancestors and empower future generations. When we engage in ritual, we’re creating a rip in time and space and connecting to others who have practiced these same rituals for thousands of years. This is a space where people have been embedding their love, their energy, and we can come and contribute to and receive some of that energy. It’s really important to tap into that part of people. We have to re-awaken our bodies and our spiritual senses.

When we’re just reciting talking points and citing data, it becomes a battle of warring egos. You have to admit that you’re wrong and that I’m right, but art can move people spiritually and engage their emotions and awaken their deeper values.

I would like to ask our panelists what their thoughts are about how to engage people who are overworked, trying to survive, suffering, alienated? Can art do anything to reach such folks and encourage them to take action?

FAVIANNA: I think we need to make room for the people who are most impacted by these systems of oppression to share their stories. We saw how MeToo created a space for survivors to share their stories, and that in turn helped start a whole shift, and I think that creating spaces is something that art can do so well. It can get people to talk about what they’re experiencing and then make something to share that reality with the wider world.

Art can’t just be about the “no;” it also has to be about the “yes.” We know what we are against, but then what does yes look like? How do we move towards that vision of a better world? In some of the workshops I do, I provide art images and words, and I encourage people to create a picture of what their yes looks like in terms of an issue that really matters to them. Providing spaces for people to actually make things is so fun and empowering, and when you do it in groups and you create a space for storytelling, it’s very healing.

ORION: Most human beings love music, movies, and ways to engage and cultural artifacts that reflect back people’s stories. Anybody who has performed at an open mic and had something vulnerable they wanted to say and felt really nervous but then felt so good when they shared it understands that impulse. We all have that impulse. There’s so much in our lives that we want to give witness to. As cultural workers our role is to invite that portal and that opening for people and whole communities to have that experience, and then to connect those experiences to broader systems that we’re impacted by together, and then through noticing those systems together, being able to build the infrastructure, the relational networks that can enable us to be able to take action to solve those issues.

I work for a group called Narrative Initiative, and we talk a lot about the differences between stories and narratives. Stories are individual experiences. Narratives are collections of stories that all together tell a bigger collective story and make us see the world in a particular way. We work to try to unmask harmful narratives that impact all of us. Imperialism, colonialism and capitalism are all built on powerful but destructive narratives. We need to help people understand that the fact that you can’t pay rent or put food on the table is part of a system of oppression. Your story connects to a bigger narrative. How do we witness those narratives and then do everything that we can to uplift and prop up the helpful narratives—the revolutionary and imagination-based narratives that show us the possibility of a better world? It’s not about storytelling anymore; it’s about story shaping to help create the conditions for change.

DEVON: We have to identify the barriers to participation, the obstacles in the way of someone being able to tell their story. And one future-forward solution is to have more artists involved in all levels of decision making. Art should not just be sectioned off in its own sector. It’s so important to have that lever in the system, because artists can be not only great problem solvers but creative thinkers, and they’re also often deeply connected to the communities they’re coming from. They can provide much-needed interconnectivity, which is often the missing ingredient in terms of moving forward.

DAVID: I think of making art with our hands or a song as like a prayer, and as I get older, I see less and less difference between when I’m at a faith-based ceremony or service, or a demonstration, or a performance. In all those places we’re all trying to shift consciousness. And just like we don’t want to create a professionalization of people who engage in decision making, there’s certainly a role for people who do art as their full-time thing and build up their skills, but actually, everybody can sing and perform and make art, and they should. And the most powerful art is often very simple, made by ordinary people expressing themselves.

I work with a lot of big movement organizations, and some of them have 50 or 100 staff, and I ask them: “Do you have anyone that does arts or cultural work?” And they say no, so I ask if any of their organizers can lead an art build or lead a song or put together a theater skit? And the answer is almost always no, so we also have to really transform what our social movements look like. I wonder if artists and performers had been leading our organizations and movements against the big oil industry that hired PR firms and advertising agencies to confuse people about climate, maybe we’d be 10 or 20 years ahead of where we are.

ARTURO: First and foremost, art provides us with tools that go beyond the essential, the visual, the evident, so when artists are called to step up and sit at tables where decisions are being made, they can bring a lot to the discussion because the artistic process often requires us to be honest about our lived experiences and that of our communities.

And another thing art can do in these heavy times is to make space for joy, to help us replenish ourselves to continue this journey, because it’s not easy, so my next question for the panel is: Where do you go to replenish your joy, your rest, your self-care? Is there any spiritual practice you’re engaged with?

FAVIANNA: I’m a board member of Amazon Watch, and we work with land protectors in the Amazon. And just before I came here, I was with some of the women land defenders from Brazil who are here at the conference, and one thing they say a lot is that we need to reforest our minds. We are deeply connected to our Mother Earth, and colonization severed that connection. Indigenous wisdom teaches us to be stewards and to relate to all that is alive, to tap into our deep connection to the whole web of life.

As I mentioned, I live in a very polluted community, in the Fruitvale. The 880 freeway has been polluting my community since 1970. I was born in 1978, so my entire life it’s been polluting my neighborhood, and I feel sometimes very powerless because people in my community live eight years less on average than people up above the 580. The 580 doesn’t have the level of emissions that our freeway has because white people organized to not have trucks go through their communities.

But in the last five years, I’ve learned how to garden. I got some corn seeds from the Zapatistas in Mexico (where, by the way, they just actually, finally, made GMO corn seeds illegal). It’s helped me really lean into knowing that for this time that I’m on the planet, I can connect, I can heal, even surrounded by cement and toxic industries. I can heal my body in connection with healing the land, because the land needs healing too. She needs us to pay attention to her, and putting my hands in the dirt, gardening is a good place to start. And I have rituals where I try to connect to all types of life and redouble my commitment to protecting the planet.

Another really important thing for me has been to get away from extractivism, which is the norm. We live in an economy based on extraction, and we extract from people too, so I try really hard not to extract from the people who work for me in my art studio. How do I regenerate instead? We need to work like that with each other, to help support each other over the long term, and that’s why I’m really down with the growing CARE movement, folks caring across generations when the state is leaving us to die, as they did in Katrina, in Hurricane Maria. How do we create systems of mutual aid and support that include all the species. That’s part of what that expression of “reforesting our minds” means to me.

ORION: It’s a hard world we live in. There are so many crises, and they are blocking our view of a liberated world that we know is possible. Some of the ways that I try to connect to joy is to try to integrate instead of dissociating. Some of the hardest parts of ourselves, some of the most difficult struggles we have personally are reflections of a deeply broken and deeply blessed world, and we have to work to mend those broken pieces.

And for me, I experience a lot of grief, but I try to hold space for it and create practices that help me honor that grief instead of running away from it or being scared of it. I think we live in a world where we go through so many emotions at once looking through social media feeds. You’ll be happy one minute that your cousin got a puppy and then you’ll see the bridge in Baltimore collapse, and then you’ll see that one of your friends was diagnosed with cancer. We move through emotions so fast we don’t have time to process and reflect, so I advise us all to try to integrate and not dissociate.

Another helpful approach is to remember that we’re part of an ensemble story. We all carry pieces of collective liberation, and we need to include ourselves in those collective liberation visions but also to recognize that we just carry a piece of it, and many people carry it with us. If we can anchor ourselves in that mindset, it can help us dismantle the individualist culture that we’ve been conditioned to accept. That can help take weight off your shoulders.

ARTURO: As we reach the end of our time together, I would like everyone here on the panel to just name one idea that you’re keeping from this space.

DAVID: For artists, I encourage you to find practices you can do with other people and partner with movement organizations fighting the good fight. For activists, try to figure out how can you integrate the arts into every stage of your organizing.

DEVON: Build relationships, take the time to slow down to really afford yourself the opportunity to get to know the person sitting next to you and who you’re in community with and actively listen to their story.

ORION: Our creative projects are living beings, and so we should tend to them to reflect the worlds that we want to live in.

The post Artivism in the Age of Climate Chaos and Societal Instability appeared first on Bioneers.

Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition

Navdanya International - Wed, 05/29/2024 - 08:17

On the eve of Biodiversity Day, May 21, 2024, Navdanya International hosted the webinar, Biodiversity is Life: Rights of Nature vs Financialisation of Nature. The webinar was moderated by Ruchi Shroff, International Director of Navdanya International and featured Dr. Vandana Shiva, President of Navdanya International; Dr. Jessica Hutchings of Papawhakarirtorito Trust, New Zealand; Frederic Hache of Green Finance Observatory, Brussels; and Silvia Francescon of the Italian Buddhist Union.

The webinar covered the dominant mechanistic narrative of the Global North that considers Nature as a resource for extraction to the efforts of the Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities in living with nature, caring and protecting nature. Ruchi Shroff began the webinar explaining, “Through this discussion we hope that we are able to go beyond the reductionist industrial narratives of techno fixes of financialization of nature, and instead show what true solutions are, but also showcase the true stewards and guardians of biodiversity. Those that keep the systems of biodiversity alive.”

What we must recognise is that biodiversity, far from being an asset or a commodity, is a continuum. In resistance to the extractive worldview of the financial sector stands the worldview that recognizes the interconnectedness, interrelatedness, and interdependence of all facets of Creation and Life. Dr. Hutchings began by reminding us that, “Indigenous Peoples are 6% of the global population. Yet we care for and protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity….. The Earth is our teacher, as Indigenous people we are always listening to her.” Mother Earth is sentient and not isolated from the whole, protection of biodiversity means being in communion with the Earth.

Biodiversity is Life. Biodiversity weaves the web of life and is not a financial asset or commodity of corporations. As Dr. Shiva stated, “All of life is about flows, there is no static entity. That is why biodiversity weaves the infrastructure of life. Biodiversity is not a thing, object, a number. It is what defines us.”

But in the name of biodiversity “conservation” and “protection”, the financial sector is increasingly making calls for a new form of bio-imperialism through the false solution of financializing nature and biodiversity through a number of market mechanisms like biodiversity credits, and Nature Asset companies (NACs). These are the financial sector’s attempts to commodify whole ecosystems, in territories where there is the greatest biodiversity, the territories of indigenous peoples. As noted by Frederic Hache, “By creating biodiversity credit we are transferring our sovereignty to corporate actors that have no accountability.”

As opposed to the commodification of biodiversity is the recognition of the Rights of Nature, as the cultivation of biodiversity through honoring the complex web of relationships in nature and in living in harmony with it. Silvia Francescon highlighted, “Rights of Nature is not just a legalistic thing. It is very much the relationship of communities, how they live their interaction with the elements of nature.”

It is this relational paradigm that has gifted the biodiversity of soils, and the interrelationships of plants and animals, and that over millennia co-evolved into diverse cultures and knowledge systems based on health, resilience and care for the land. Nature’s rights and people’s rights are inseparable and fundamental to the health and the well-being of both humanity and the Earth.

At the end of the discussion the speakers gave advice for how young people should get involved in the protection of biodiversity. Dr. Hutching recommended, “the first place to start is with ourselves in our own relationship with nature.” With Silvia Francescon complimenting stating, “Make alliances, but I think with your own heads. Changing the narratives means to be critical towards what society is telling you to do and to think.” Frederic Hache also added that the narrative is, “ a battle for public opinion, and once you reach a critical mass then you can alter the course of this over these schemes. History again shows that a minority of dedicated people can also have a significant impact.”

This webinar marked the beginning of a longer collaborative campaign in the lead-up to the Convention on Biological Diversity COP 15, to stand against the greater destruction of biodiversity and the greater financialization of nature.

Also see:

Biodiversity, Financialization of Nature and Biodiversity Credits

The Convention on Biological Diversity must resist the commodification of all life

Is the Kunming-Montreal Global biodiversity framework enough to protect biodiversity?

BIODIVERSITY IS LIFE – illustrated booklet

Biodiversity is Life – Graphic Novel

Bio-imperialism vs. Bio-diversity

Resisting GMO Imperialism – Events in Mexico – March 2024

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The Attempted Destruction of Biodiversity-based Cultures

Safeguarding Biodiversity for the Regeneration of the Land

Making Peace with the Earth – Through Diversity, Mutuality, Non-Violence & Care – An Ecofeminist Manifesto

Joint Declaration in Defense of our Biodiversity, Seed and Food Freedom – Resisting GMO Imperialism

Categories: A3. Agroecology

Public Advocates - Tue, 05/28/2024 - 18:25

Concord’s new Rent Stabilization and Just Cause for Eviction Ordinance limits the amount your landlord can raise your rent and protects you from unfair evictions, if you are covered.* This law went into effect on April 19, 2024.

View the full handout here.

The post Your New Rights as a Concord Renter (2024) appeared first on Public Advocates.

Categories: E2. Front Line Community Green

Duwamish Cleanup - Tue, 05/28/2024 - 12:05

Categories: G2. Local Greens

NW Energy Coalition - Tue, 05/28/2024 - 11:42

The transition from gas to electricity is well underway in Washington state in response to both climate change and bold state policies designed to address it. State climate policies set progressive targets, like the Clean Energy Transformation Act requiring 80% of electric utilities’ resources to be clean (renewable or non-emitting) by 2030 and 100% clean by 2045. And, the Climate Commitment Act, which utilizes an emissions trading market to reduce economy-wide emissions, including from gas utilities, to 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, 70% below 1990 levels by 2040, and 95% below 1990 levels by 2050. But the exact path to get there is left up to regulators and utilities.

This implementation phase is critical to making these state climate policies a reality. The Washington legislature took the next step to providing a pathway for fossil gas utilities to begin to decarbonize. The Gas Utility Decarbonization policy, HB 1589, passed this year and supports the state’s largest electric and gas utility in planning the decarbonization of its gas system and establishes the programs and regulatory tools that will enable a managed transition of the gas system as customers choose to electrify their homes and businesses.

What does the Gas Utility Decarbonization policy do?

For example, typically gas and electric utilities like Puget Sound Energy (PSE) submit separate plans for their gas and electric businesses to the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (UTC). This law directs the UTC to consider PSE’s proposed electric and gas plans as an integrated whole, to inform decisions that support reliable, affordable and decarbonized energy at the lowest reasonable cost to customers.

Additionally, the law provides a process for PSE to obtain regulatory approval of new clean energy projects, essential to replacing gas in its system. The purpose of this new process is to allow for more certainty for the company and customers about which new clean energy resources will be built during a new phase of building and procurement of resources to meet state clean energy goals.

The law also allows for the accelerated depreciation of PSE’s gas system, which ensures its gas assets are fully depreciated by 2050. Some advocates have raised concerns about the rate impacts on low-income customers, and the law’s failure to address the utility’s “obligation to serve” customers with gas. However, the language gives the UTC ample discretion to adjust the depreciation schedules to address affordability and require a reduction in PSE’s rate base. Ultimately, we believe that setting gas utilities on a path to fully depreciate gas infrastructure is a necessary step to fully transition to a decarbonized energy system.

Importantly, the law also strengthens requirements for PSE’s energy efficiency, demand response, and targeted electrification programs, including more stringent planning standards, and new incentives and rebates for low-income customers to transition from gas to electricity. While this law only applies to PSE, we are hopeful that its implementation will provide valuable lessons learned that can inform a comprehensive policy for all gas utilities in the future.

A managed transition is the lowest-cost approach

As PSE notes in its factsheet on the law, this transition is already happening with gas demand declining 7% and 3% for its residential and commercial customers in 2023, respectively. With this trend expected to continue in the coming years, now is the time to plan accordingly to support this transformation.

The transition from gas to electricity won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. It is up to advocates, policymakers, and regulators to work with utilities and shape when and how it will unfold. Research from Synapse and Climate Solutions used modeling to compare various cost scenarios of starting a managed transition in 2025, 2030, 2035, versus an unmanaged transition. As you can see in the figure below, a managed transition now is most effective at keeping costs affordable and reducing the risks of stranded assets for utilities.

Residential Average Gas Bills in Four Scenarios through 2065

Misinformation is fueling pushback from critics

This report helps to counter some pervasive misinformation about the law. Some of the Gas Utility Decarbonization policy’s detractors have filed ballot measures to not only repeal the law, but to make it harder for gas utilities to reduce gas service. Critics falsely claim that the law will ban gas, and require current gas customers to switch out their appliances.

NWEC has joined Climate Solutions and Washington Conservation Action in challenging several approved ballot titles to ensure that the information provided to voters is clear and accurate. If the proponents are successful in qualifying for the November general election ballot, voters will be faced with a choice: retaining meaningful policies that allow for a timely, managed transition of the gas system, coupled with supportive electrification programs; or saddling customers with the risks of costly stranded assets.

It’s worth noting that PSE itself supported this law, asking for the regulatory and planning tools to make a sensible transition. Notably this law could have gone further to amend PSE’s “obligation to serve” to allow the company to decline to provide gas service when it is not economical to continue to invest in the gas system. While the “obligation to serve” was left intact in the final policy, we believe that this law remains a positive step towards the strategic planning needed to successfully switch from gas to electricity.

At the end of the day, the UTC has an essential role to play in implementation – reviewing PSE’s plans to protect customer’s interests and ensuring progress towards PSE’s winding down of its gas business. The writing is on the wall, and it’s imperative to support planning for gas utility decarbonization to achieve Washington state’s climate goals.

The post The path for gas utility decarbonization in Washington state first appeared on NW Energy Coalition.

Categories: G2. Local Greens

Undisciplined Environments - Tue, 05/28/2024 - 06:00

By Future Natures

‘Strange Natures’ is a zine that brings together art, stories and essays by multiple authors, from different places, times and vantage points, different ways of noticing, seeing, listening and inhabiting reality.

Drawing from a series of contributions that responded to a call issued by the Centre for Future Natures in 2023, ‘Strange Natures’ is a zine that brings together art, stories and essays by multiple authors, from different places, times and vantage points, different ways of noticing, seeing, listening and inhabiting reality.

A fascination with the strangeis a fascination for that which lies beneath the surface, beyond ordinary ways of seeing, sensing and perceiving.Embracing the strange can create portals to other worlds.These can open up new ways of seeing that can help us historicize, recast and subvert binary ways of thinking, dominant framings and anthropocene politics of ecology, crisis and control. They can help us to make sense of alienating and unsettling effects that globalisation has had on bodies and embodied experience.

The zine shows many ways of understanding and experiencing ‘strange natures’, from nomadic river islands and the call-and-response of bullfrogs in India, to the haunted floodplains of Texas; from strange patterns in bird flights off the Scottish coast, to stories and poems that challenge the boundaries of selves and bodies.

‘Strange Natures’ invites us to abolish the rational, to find re-enchantment, to embrace the weirdness of the world as we know it, and accept the inevitability of transformation in a changing, vastly-more-than-human universe of possibilities.

The zine is published by the Centre for Future Natures under a Creative Commons licence. It is available to download for free in online and self-printable versions. Visit the web page to find out more.

https://futurenatures.org/zine-strange-natures/

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The Future Natures initiative is hosted at the Institute of Development Studies, UK.

Future Natures builds on lessons, insights and infrastructure developed over fifteen years of interdisciplinary research, methods development and international partnership associated with theESRC STEPS Centre(2006-2021) based at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex.

The post Zine: Strange Natures appeared first on Undisciplined Environments.

Categories: B4. Radical Ecology

Land Workers' Alliance - Tue, 05/28/2024 - 05:12

The post SMALL FARMS IN ENGLAND TO BE ELIGIBLE FOR FARMING SUPPORT AFTER TEN YEARS OF CAMPAIGNING appeared first on Landworkers Alliance.

Categories: A3. Agroecology

The EU elections are fast approaching and most countries head to the polls on June 9th. We know if we want to have an EU Parliament that will respond to our calls for climate action, we need to ensure that everyone we know manages to go vote that day.

The best way to do this is make our own plan to go vote and then support others to do the same. Below are some handy tips for making your plan and some guidance for how you can talk to others about what’s at stake and why it’s important to vote.

Tips for making a plan to vote:

• Check the hours of your polling station and consider what time of day would be best for you to go. Do you need to request time off work? Or plan childcare?
• Consider how you will get there and how much time you will need for that.
• Add the day and time to your calendar using our handy tool!
• Think about who could go with you and invite them. It’s more fun to vote together.
• Check you have all you need to bring with you to the polling station and put it somewhere you’ll find it easily on the day.

Resources:

1. Find all the information you need about how to vote in your country including where to go and what to bring.

1. Our Partner, Climate Action Network has created a scoreboard where you can check out the track record of the whole EU Parliament on climate action.

Encouraging others to go vote

If you have a lot of like-minded friends, the chances are they’re interested in voting for the same things you care about. But are all your friends and family aware of the election and planning to vote? Encourage them to make a plan together with you and if they seem reluctant here’s some suggestions for ways you can try to motivate them – and try to link these points to things you know they care about.

• I’m very worried about the predicted outcomes of the EU elections. Explain how you’re feeling and make it personal to you….
• Every year we’re seeing hotter summers and more devastating floods and droughts. It will only get worse, unless we act now and demand that international bodies like the EU take climate action.
• We need the next European parliament to prioritise the climate and the social justice issues we care about. If it doesn’t, it will have knock-on effects for all of the changes we want to see in our countries, and in Europe as a whole.
• Some people who share our values feel skeptical about voting. They wonder if voting will create change. But if lots of people feel this way, and do not vote, it could affect the election result. That’s why it’s so important we take our values to the polls.

We are running some online ads to help increase voter turnout but internet giants like Facebook and Google are making it hard to promote anything related to elections, which is affecting our reach. That’s why we need your help to spread the word. Will you help us promote the tool we created to help get out the vote?

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The post How to vote in the EU elections appeared first on 350.

Categories: G1. Progressive Green

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The post Protected: Our Pawa: Why Australia’s energy transition matters to the Pacific appeared first on 350.

Categories: G1. Progressive Green

Public Advocates - Fri, 05/24/2024 - 17:32

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 24, 2024
Contact: Zack Deutsch-Gross

Voices for Public Transportation Applauds Senate for Passing Connect the Bay Bill

Sacramento–Today, the California State Senate passed the Connect the Bay Bill, SB 1031 (Wiener, Wahab), which will provide operating funding for Bay Area public transit through a regional ballot measure slated for the 2026 election. The Voices for Public Transportation Coalition—a broad group of 40 community, rider, labor, and policy organizations—celebrated this critical step towards protecting and expanding transit service, walking, and biking to meet communities’ needs and climate goals.

The authorizing legislation is a critical step toward achieving our vision of transformative transit service in the Bay Area. The bill sets a goal of raising $1.5 billion in annual funding, with at least 45% going to transit operations. It also includes two progressive revenue sources, a payroll and per-square-foot parcel tax, and caps a regressive sales tax option at half a cent. As the bill advances in the Assembly, Voices for Public Transportation will continue to advocate for additional funding for public transit and to limit roadway expenditures to state of good repair and safe and complete streets.

“We are happy to see this essential legislation move forward,” said Zack Deutsch-Gross, Policy Director at Transform. “SB 1031 has the potential to improve transportation for everyone in the Bay Area, but we must stay focused to ensure public transit and safer streets, not highway expansion, are at the forefront of the measure.”

“Bay Area residents strongly support improving and transforming public transit — SB 1031 enables the Bay Area to advance a ballot measure that addresses transit agency’s fiscal challenges while also advancing the reforms that can deliver a seamless, rider-focused system.” said Ian Griffiths, Co-Executive Director, Seamless Bay Area. “It’s critical that this bill move forward, as there is no credible alternative plan to prevent service cuts or make the necessary investments in our system needed to address our housing, climate, and equity goals.”

“SB 1031 is the Bay Area’s only plan for ensuring frequent, reliable, and affordable buses, trains, and ferries. We are glad the bill advanced out of the Senate, and we will continue to work in the Assembly to ensure it provides enough funding for transit service and to maintain the progressive revenue sources and limits on the regressive sales tax,” said Laurel Paget-Seekins, Senior Policy Advocate for Transportation Justice at Public Advocates.

“The Bay Area deserves a world-class transit system, and SB 1031 is an essential step towards that goal. This measure will help maintain and transform public transit service for our entire region. We look forward to working with the Assembly to ensure the final legislation supports the Bay Area’s values around climate action and equity,” said Dylan Fabris, Community & Policy Manager at San Francisco Transit Riders.

“We’re pleased SB 1031 is moving forward with more progressive revenue sources being part of the conversation for funding an improved and hopefully more accessible and equitable transportation system,” said Marjorie Alvord, Community Leader at Genesis.

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Voices for Public Transportation Coalition is a group of 40 community, rider, labor, and policy organizations. Coordinating Committee members include:

• Public Advocates Inc. is a nonprofit law firm and advocacy organization that challenges the systemic causes of poverty and racial discrimination by strengthening community voices in public policy and achieving tangible legal victories advancing education, housing, transportation equity, and climate justice.
• TransForm works to ensure that people of all incomes thrive in a world safe from climate chaos. We envision vibrant neighborhoods, transformed by excellent, sustainable mobility options and affordable housing, where those historically impacted by racist disinvestment now have power and voice.
• San Francisco Transit Riders is the city’s member-supported, grassroots advocate for excellent, affordable, and growing public transit. We believe that empowering everyday transit riders to speak up for rider-first policies will bring us the world-class transit system we need for a livable, sustainable, and accessible San Francisco.
• Urban Habitat is a movement support organization working to democratize power and advance equitable policies to create a just and connected Bay Area for low-income communities of color.
• Seamless Bay Area is a not-for-profit project whose mission is to transform the Bay Area’s fragmented and inconvenient public transit into a world-class, unified, equitable, and widely-used system by building a diverse movement for change and promoting policy reforms.
• Genesis aims to impact structural racism through our issue campaigns. As the Bay area affiliate of the Gamaliel Network, we center our work on those who are the most vulnerable (youth, elders, people with disabilities).

The post Press Release: Voices for Public Transportation Applauds Senate for Passing Connect the Bay Bill appeared first on Public Advocates.

Categories: E2. Front Line Community Green

Public Advocates - Fri, 05/24/2024 - 14:29

Public Advocates is partnering with impacted students, families, educators, and grassroots community organizations across the state to call for an equitable education bond this November to fund billions of dollars in unmet facility modernization needs in schools across the state. California students urgently need this school facility funding from the state to modernize outdated and unsafe facilities.

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The post Videos: Equitably funding school facility modernization appeared first on Public Advocates.

Categories: E2. Front Line Community Green

May was a month of sadness and dismay in Brazil. Extreme rainfall left two-thirds of the state of Rio Grande do Sul underwater. This is a territory larger than that of the entire country of the United Kingdom.

To date, 161 people have died and 81 are missing due to unprecedented flooding of rivers and lakes in this state in southern Brazil, bordering Argentina and Uruguay, after torrential rains in that area. Almost 600,000 people lost their homes and more than 80,000 had to be rescued from rooftops, on boats or in security force helicopters.

How to support people affected by extreme rains in Brazil

Besides, more than 12,000 pets had to be saved from death by rescue teams, including a horse that was left stranded on a roof and became a symbol of the surreal impact that a tragedy like this represents.

“I’ve seen things that no one should go through as a human being. I’ve seen people surrounded by children searching for refuge”, said Juan Romero, a Venezuelan migrant affected by the floods. “Maybe some died like this”.

At 350.org, we also had employees and partners personally affected by the disasters. A community leader who, two years ago, played a fundamental role in the fight to end a coal mine project in the region and thus helped prevent the environmental degradation of a huge area, lost her home and saw her neighborhood destroyed. A freelance colleague in the Communications area had to hurriedly leave her apartment, on the first floor of a building in the state capital, because the water level accumulated in the street rose so quickly that it reached the height of her doors and windows. Fortunately, both of our friends are safe, but the scare and damage caused to them – and the hundreds of thousands of people affected – will last a long time.

The individual effects of the tragedy are also reflected on a collective scale, and the economic impacts will be felt not just at the state level but nationally. One of the country’s main financial analysis companies, MB Associados, estimates that the disaster will reduce Brazilian GDP growth by up to 0.5 percentage points in 2024, due to the massive destruction of infrastructure and the loss of goods and services in Rio Grande do Sul. Company analysts say a climate event has never caused so much economic damage in Brazil.

And it is worth remembering that, as often happens in times of great collective loss, poor communities and families made up of black and indigenous people were disproportionately harmed. Environmental racism and climate injustice have once again become clear.

What caused such a disaster?

Such a destructive event was only possible due to a combination of several factors, including the relaxation of environmental protection legislation in the state, the geographic position of major cities in the state (the capital and the surrounding towns are located in plain terrains in the margins of various rivers and lakes) and the lack of maintenance in river water containment structures. Not to mention long-term structural causes, such as the waterproofing of soil in cities and the lack of a housing policy that provides housing in safe areas for everyone.

A few scientific papers and climate models alerting that Rio Grande do Sul is an area particularly susceptible to the impacts of the climate crisis were issued in the past few years, but governments at all levels failed to acknowledge and address this issue. Adaptation measures such as moving families from the riskier areas to other locales, creating better evacuation routes, and planting more trees in the margins of rivers and lakes, to prevent these water bodies from being silted up, could have reduced damages.

Plus, a consensus among those climate experts who analysed this case is that the rains over the state were bizarrely concentrated. Cities in the region recorded a volume of rainfall up to ten times greater than the historical average for the period.

A “rapid attribution study” by ClimaMeter, that is, research carried out by scientists to identify what caused such intense rains, showed that the climate crisis worsened the precipitation that led to the deadly floods by 15%. The researchers responsible for the assessment, led by the University of Paris-Saclay, even pointed out that El Niño, a natural climate phenomenon that usually worsens rainfall in this region of Brazil, is not enough to explain the amount of rain that formed. What they are saying is that the human-caused climate crisis played a prominent role in this catastrophe.

Since the main cause of the global climate crisis is the burning of oil, gas and coal, it is therefore evident that the current destruction of Rio Grande do Sul bears the imprint of fossil fuels, as do so many other recent disasters around the world.

Can we avoid new traumas?

The trauma, lives lost, and suffering caused will never be fully repaired, and what can be rebuilt – buildings, bridges, hospitals – will take months or years to return to operating as before. Infrastructure experts predict that recovery could take ten years or more.

To get an idea of ​​the scale of the task, the state government predicts that it will be necessary to move entire cities from the places where they were, to rebuild them in safer areas.

Woman in a center for donations to the families affected by the floods in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Credit: Rafa Neddermeyer/Agência Brasil

The costs of this reconstruction will be impressive. The Brazilian government has already allocated 11 billion dollars to help the state, but the economic consultancy BRCG predicts that the need for spending could easily reach around 21 billion dollars.

This is not an isolated case. Analysis published by the massive news website UOL, based on official numbers from the past ten years, estimates that the damages caused by extreme rains in Brazil in a decade reached 27 billion dollars.

And since, unfortunately, it will be necessary to rebuild a large part of the state, what can we do better this time? What lessons can we learn and put into practice? From 350.org’s point of view, at least three aspects stand out:

1. Rio Grande do Sul – Locally, governments urgently need to put into practice mechanisms for building public policies together with the communities affected and those potentially affected by climate events. In short, municipal and state governments must listen to people and respect their needs when rebuilding what was destroyed. Furthermore, it will be necessary to consider that the climate crisis has established a new “normal” for the climate, full of extreme events, which requires serious investment in climate adaptation.
2. Brazil – Nationally, the tragedy in its own territory makes it even more obvious that Brazil needs to take advantage of its temporary leadership role in the G20 (group of the 20 largest countries and economies in the world), in 2024, and host of COP30 (the conference of the UN climate committee), in 2025, to push for a more ambitious agenda for global climate. We need much stronger national emissions’ reduction targets (NDCs), as well as a concrete global commitment to financing the energy transition, with resources flowing from rich countries to poorer ones. Brazil is demanding this and has the opportunity to sew effective commitments in this regard. Additionally, it needs to show leadership, declaring the Amazon a fossil fuel exploration-free area and taking genuine energy transition measures in the country.
3. Other countries – All governments need to accelerate their fair energy transition and deforestation reduction policies, especially those in rich countries, as they are most responsible for the climate crisis. For this to happen, the world needs to allocate large volumes of resources and implement effective ways for the richest to finance the transition in the poorest communities. If we direct the subsidies that currently support the fossil fuel sector towards renewable energy and tax great wealth to finance adaptation and mitigation measures for the climate crisis, this change is possible.

Ultimately, this Brazilian tragedy shows us that in times of climate crisis, extreme events are taking on a force previously unknown. It also confirms that acting to prevent the large-scale disasters that the climate crisis brings is much easier and cheaper than remedying the situation when these tragedies happen. Most importantly, we can save lives and prevent enormous suffering if we act now.

The trailer for this climate dystopian film was already difficult to watch. The entire film detailing the full-blown impacts of the climate crises, will be undigestible if we do reach that stage. But for now, we still have a chance to rewrite a better script for our future.

The post Climate neglect is destroying entire cities in Brazil appeared first on 350.

Categories: G1. Progressive Green

In the vast expanse of the ocean, beneath the gentle sway of waves and the dance of sunlight filtering through azure depths, sperm whales are engaging in a dialogue that has long captivated human curiosity. These oceanic giants, with their intricate social lives and complex communication, embody a world of mystery and wonder that continues to intrigue scientists and researchers.

Among them is Shane Gero, an author of a recent study by Project CETI that used machine learning to decipher sperm whale vocalizations. Gero, the biology lead for Project CETI, discussed this fascinating field of research at the 2023 Bioneers Conference. The project’s recent study, which was published in the journal Nature Communications, identified variations in sperm whale calls that show they are more expressive and structured than previously believed, forming the backbone of a phonetic alphabet. The findings open a window onto the deep underwater world of sperm whales and could be a key to someday deciphering their language.

Sperm whales are social beings, forming tightly knit communities and bonds that transcend generations. Within their pods lies a society rich in culture and tradition. Long-term studies have unveiled a matrilineal hierarchy, where knowledge and customs are passed down from grandmothers, mothers and aunts to calves, shaping the fabric of their existence.

At the heart of this society is their language, which is made up of short bursts of clicks of varying patterns, known as codas. These sequences of sounds are the threads that bind sperm whales together, conveying a wealth of information that scientists have been observing, recording and cataloging for decades. But until now, researchers have been able to take only baby steps toward anything remotely close to comprehension.

The new findings from the purposefully broad and interdisciplinary team of scientists gathered together by Project CETI are providing tantalizing glimpses of progress toward a deeper level of understanding. By using machine learning to analyze thousands of sperm whale calls, researchers found that variations in the codas were contextual rather than random, forming the basis of a phonetic alphabet capable of complex communication. The findings challenge previous notions about the simplicity of sperm whale communication and the paradox it represented.

The Paradox of Sperm Whale Communication

Complex societies, whether among human or non-human species, typically depend on advanced communication systems to navigate intricate social dynamics, including tasks such as strategizing and teaching. In the case of sperm whale societies, where researchers have documented cooperative hunting and foraging strategies, the transmission of intergenerational knowledge, and cultural diversity among pods, one would expect the complexity of their communication to parallel the sophistication of their collective behaviors.

However, despite a wealth of knowledge regarding sperm whale behavior and social dynamics, researchers have encountered a puzzling paradox regarding their communication systems. While the societal complexity of sperm whales hints at a rich and nuanced language akin to human languages, historically, researchers have not been able to identify the same level of complexity within sperm whale vocalizations.

This discrepancy has raised questions about the nature of their communication and the potential existence of undiscovered layers of complexity within their vocalizations. Unraveling this enigma promises to shed light on the intricate world of sperm whale communication and deepen our understanding of the parallels between human and non-human intelligence.

Deciphering the ‘Sperm Whale Phonetic Alphabet’

The study by Project CETI, which utilized recordings from the Dominica Sperm Whale Project, reveals a fascinating complexity within sperm whale communication — one that is much more in line with what would be expected of a complex society. The study illuminates a previously unseen depth in sperm whales’ vocal repertoire.

By analyzing the different codas, or click patterns, of the Eastern Caribbean sperm whale clan, the researchers were able to identify specific variations in the codas. For any given coda, the whales might slow the clicks down, speed them up, or add an extra click or clicks on the end.

With the ability to analyze thousands of codas, the project leveraged machine learning to discover that rather than being random, the variations were sensitive to the conversational context in which they occurred. In short, the codas give the sperm whales their own phonetic alphabet, and with it, the ability to convey meaning. Just as humans can combine the same sounds in different patterns to create various words and meanings, the codas represent a tool the whales could use to describe their world.

As we continue to learn more about the mysteries of the ocean and its inhabitants, the symphony of sperm whales serves as a reminder of the vastness of life forms and their unique methods of expression. The journey to decode their language is far from over, but with each new insight, researchers inch closer to unraveling the depths of connection and communication among these oceanic giants.

Shane Gero, one of the report’s authors, has recently discussed Project CETI’s sperm whale research with the Bioneers audience in these fascinating discussions:

• Shane Gero – Preserving Animal Cultures: Lessons from Whale Wisdom (VIDEO)
• What Sperm Whale Communication Can Tell Us About Communities & Cultures Beneath the Ocean’s Surface (ARTICLE)
• Deep Listening: Whale Culture, Interspecies Communication, and Knowing Your Place (PODCAST)

The post Decoding the Symphony of Sperm Whales: New Study Dives into Complex Vocalizations appeared first on Bioneers.

Categories: B5. Resilience, Third Nature, and Transition