PEOPLE POWER ALWAYS WINS

A New Era

Sustainability Star 

For several decades grassroots people around the globe have been engaged in protecting nature and fighting climate change. Two recent articles refer to the success of those efforts:

1. The globe has reached the tipping point where clean energy is now as cheap as or cheaper than energy from fossil fuels.

2. A planetary paradigm shift has occurred from mindless use of resources to a concerted effort to engage in sustainable development.

It is precisely because private citizens are succeeding in the fight to stop using fossil fuels for energy consumption that corporate America used hook and crook to gain access to the United States federal government. At the very moment that newly elected federal government officials will attempt to quash the environmental movement is exactly the time when each of us must accelerate our engagement in protecting the one planet that is known to support human life. Now is the time to maximize people power at the home, community, and state levels.

Early Adoptors

Twenty-five years ago my commitment to a reduced carbon imprint involved dedicating myself to demonstrating that an individual could live, work, and even prosper without owning a car. I live in a community that has an exemplary public transit system. That’s not to say that it can’t be improved, but to point out that my choice of residence was predicated on having access to public transportation. The money I saved from this one lifestyle choice enabled me to invest in a small condominium and save for my senior years.

Many of my friends also made carbon reduction lifestyle choices. Some committed to no longer flying in airplanes. Some were first to buy energy efficient cars. Some did home energy audits, changed all lighting to LED, made their homes and businesses more energy efficient, and became directly involved in the environmental movement. Some are actively engaged in divesting of fossil fuel stocks while others went to North Dakota to support Standing Rock in its fight to protect the priceless resource of clean water.

The Task Before Us Now

During a recent visit to my art gallery in Seattle, I met with a colleague who volunteers with the Sierra Club. I pressed him to tell me the most critical action I can now take to insure that climate change deniers do not stop the momentum of the environmental movement. He said that all the environmental and economic problems have to be addressed at once. When I asked for a summary of these problems, he agreed to send me a list compiled for the Sierra Club by Court Olsen in 2013.

When Olson’s list of twenty Available Major Public Policies That Would Help Curb Greenhouse Gases arrived, I summarized the list into the following five arenas of People Power Action to Renew the Earth. Then I created the above Sustainability Star. Everything below is summarized on the Sustainability Star. I created the star as a small poster to have in my kitchen as a daily reminder of actions I can take. Contact me for a printable version.

Protect Health, Land, Water, and Forests (think community jobs)

• Promote a vegetarian diet to free up grazing land and reduce methane emissions from cattle.
• Promote organic farming and fertilizers to enrich soil, incentivize a transition away from corporate farming and synthetic fertilizers. In the last decade the number of careful small-scale farms has increased.
• Subsidize organic farming labor wages and organic foods for low-income families through actions such as organizing local CROP HOPS where people go to an organic farm during high labor times and work for free. If you think of all the millions of dollars raised for not-for-profit organizations through running, walking, and biking marathons, you get an idea of how great the desire is to be out in nature doing something that will benefit others.
• Incentivize planting trees and forest preservation.
• Buy farmland and return it to managed forestland. 

Increase Energy Efficiency Training & Requirements (think community jobs)

• Set up free and widespread training and classes for adults and children regarding energy efficiency.
• Change to LED lighting everywhere.
• Require more energy efficient appliances and incentivize retirement of inefficient appliances.
• Promote automatic monitoring/shut off controls for lighting and appliances.
• Establish nationwide (think city and state-wide) high-energy efficiency requirements for all new buildings.
• Require minimum of 50% energy efficiency improvement of existing buildings by 2030. With proper tax-based or utility billing paybacks, this creates local jobs.

Maximize Clean Energy Production (think community jobs)

• Decentralize utility power generation by promoting local neighborhood energy production alliances.
• Start community solar/wind/hydro power projects.
• Increase utilities’ use of renewable energy generation sources: solar hot water/steam, photo voltaic solar, energy storage (salt tanks, pumped storage, etc), geothermal, wind, hydropower, bio-waste fuel burning, algae based oil). 

Eliminate Fossil Fuels (think ending dangerous unhealthy jobs)

• Divest of fossil fuel stocks.
• Tax fossil fuel consumption.
• Restrict natural gas and oil fracking.
• Subsidize the phase out of coal power plants rapidly, oldest first.
• Protest federal anti-environmental actions.
• Prevent export of fossil fuels to foreign lands.
• Stop fossil fuels exploration subsidies.

 Accelerate Clean Transportation (think community jobs)

• Use, promote and incentivize mass transit.
• Transition mass vehicles to all electric power.
• Use federal (state) incentives to build national (state) high-speed transit network to eliminate short distance airplane flights.
• Accelerate increased fuel efficiency in new cars and trucks.
• Offer incentives to destroy low-mileage vehicles.

Happy New Year! 

In the past I have often felt overwhelmed by the wide breadth of issues related to climate change. But being able to summarize concrete actions into five specific arenas has given me a grip on what I can do to have an impact. If you email me I can send you a printable pdf of the Sustainability Star. In 2017 I hope you will join me in making the Sustainability Star shine brightly in local communities everywhere.