green social culture

nice appearance by the always-amazing naomi klein on bill moyers. 30 min worth watching. i love her analysis of most climate activist messages that target the individual (‘you can do something about it by changing your behavior’) and often neglect the necessity for collective action. this point is the reason i finally became a fan of annie leonard’s story of stuff series when she presented the story of change, and what i love about occupy movement: the realization that we need to break out of the individualistic thinking that keeps us competing against each other rather than working together. we’re all in the same boat and should start acting more like it.

i’m mostly contemplating her point that part of the reason why public opinion on the subject of climate change has been so shaky is the discrepancy between saying ‘this is a huge, armageddon-style problem’ but suggesting that the solutions only have a very minor impact on our lives (‘changing light bulbs’) and do not demand big sacrifices from anyone. maybe it’s because ‘being radical’ has been put in such a bad public light, and the public debate tends to frame climate activists as radical - while it’s actually the other way round, as mckibben so rightly points out: the true radicals are those who are fundamentally changing the composition of the atmosphere.

i’m no historian, but i do tend to agree with her (as i usually do..) that this is the greatest problem we’ve ever faced as humanity. it’s what makes this the most interesting issue to work on and be a part of.

by the way, also just in: 350.org is calling climate activists around the world to join the global power shift kick-off in istanbul from 10-17 june 2013. i’m hoping i can join, and look forward to meet climate activists from around the world!

350.org on the Do The Math Tour: 3 sold-out nights so far, and clear language: 5 times more than is safe to burn.

It’s simple math: we can burn 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2°C of warming — anything more than that risks catastrophe for life on earth. The only problem? Fossil fuel corporations now have 2,795 gigatons in their reserves, five times the safe amount. And they’re planning to burn it all — unless we rise up to stop them.

What we can do? Well, join the tour, join the movement. It sounds very promising, with an interesting program and some great guests, incl. Naomi Klein and Kumi Naidoo. Wish the tour would make it to Europe.

And I like the approach of divestment from the fossil fuel industry to solve this problem:

It just doesn’t make sense for universities to invest in a system that will leave their students no livable planet to use their degrees on, or for pension funds to invest in corporations that will ruin the world we plan to retire in.

The one thing we know the fossil fuel industry cares about is money. Universities, pension funds, and churches invest a lot of it. If we start with these local institutions and hit the industry where it hurts — their bottom line — we can get their attention and force them to change. This was a key part of how the world ended the apartheid system in South Africa, and we hope it can have the same effect on the climate crisis.

the yes men are crowdfunding their next movie on the chamber of commerce, one of the major reasons that effective climate change legislation is not happening in the US! highly worth supporting, they are some of the most inspiring contemporary activists.

(if you don’t know it yet, check out their movie ‘the yes men fix the world’)

they also made significant contributions to the book ‘beautiful trouble - a toolbox for revolution’ which is indeed a book that’s a great resource for anybody interested in activism.

Official Promo Video for the Silent Climate Parade 2012!

This year, we’ll dance to the beats from these DJs: Jake The Rapper (Bar 25), NU (Bar 25), Blenn&Gleich (Plastik Park), Viperflo (Keller).

Please support our crowdfunding campaign via betterplace, either with a contribution or a share/like/report/retweet etc.!

click click clicktivism? push button, save planet? still, the carbon pollution standard would be a step into the right direction.. and it’s really just a click away.