[Dialogue] [Oe List ...] WHAT IS THE RIGHT QUESTION THESE DAYS?

Wed Jul 11 11:09:56 PDT 2012

Thanks George for your comments--good questions...

How do we prepare?--at the risk of this being a circular conversation, I think what the ICA in Chicago is doing is one way to prepare.  The Transitions Towns movement is trying to prepare local communities across the globe to move from non-renewable to renewable energy sources, to help communities re-localize and become more resilent in the the midst of these immense changes, not immune to them.  Check out Rob Hopkins' book The Transition Companion: Making Your Community More Resilient in Uncertain Times (Update of two previous editions:  The Transitions Handbook:  From Oil Dependency to Local Resilence, and The Transition Timeline, for A Local, Resilient Future).  Re corporations:  Check out David Korten's (author of The Great Turning and founder of "Yes!" Magazine) When Corporations Rule the World.  

Yes, it looks like it's going to be a long march...but lots of things are percolating.  

Locally, after facilitating a series of community dvd/discussion events, followed by the Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium (ICA 50th Anniversary Event), we are working with a core of people who want to work on ecological issues in this area--also related to an organic farm/education center in our area.  Next week Carleton is touring an all-green building in St Louis--the Sheet Metal Workers Union Hall--which received a Platinum (highest) Award from LEED.  We are connecting with other St Louis area groups also focused on addressing ecological.  Talking with a pastor at Chautauqua a couple weeks ago, we learned his church, Huguenot Memorial Presbyterian Church in Pelham Park, NY (Westchester Cnty), just installed a geo-thermal heating/cooling system which will start seeing savings in 3-5 years.  These are all small steps, but they represent things that are moving.  The extreme heat, dormant grass, crop failures/food insecurity, increased food prices, water shortages, storms, flooding and fires this summer, as well as increased global temperature and shrinking ice caps hopefully will be another wake-up call.  The awakening needs to continue but also working with people in local communities who want to do something but feel overwhelmed by the immensity of the problem.  Saturday we will participate in a community festival that highlights efforts of community relience and sustainability--again a small step, but it's moving, and we're moving with it, continuing to connect with others, facilitating, and sometimes guiding, as needed.

Globally, I am also working with a network of people nationally and internationally related to heatlh/water and food security/economic issues due to contamination of soil, air, water, animals, humans caused by extractive industries.  This has now taken us to advocacy for examining new/revising old Free Trade Agreements which undermine local communities, judicial processes, economies and give corporations greater rights than citizens and local, regional or national governments.  We are also advocating for the implementation of Publish What You Pay--passed by Congress but not implemented and being lobbied against by corporations (transparency re government's publishing where money received from corporations is going and how it is being spent.  Again, this is often related extractive industries or other transnational corporations who often promise local communities much, but end up relocating populations or destroying their food, water, land.  Profits from these industries bypass the affected local communities and undermine food and economic security as well as cultural identity.  Have any of our efforts had an impact?  Only time will tell.  

As the Awakening the Dreamer symposium states:  If we wait for the government to act, it will be too little, too late.  If we try to do something alone, it will be too little.  If we connect with others and work together, it will be enough, and in time.  I hope that's true... 

Ellie

-----Original Message-----
From: George Holcombe <geowanda at earthlink.net>
To: Colleague Dialogue <dialogue at lists.wedgeblade.net>; ICA LIST SERVE <dialogue at wedgeblade.net>
Sent: Wed, Jul 11, 2012 10:55 am
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] [Oe List ...] WHAT IS THE RIGHT QUESTION THESE DAYS?

Hey Epps, when I used that illustration about the guy in the well,  it was a honeycomb with a crocodile at the bottom. LOL

Anyway, I like Wiegel's quote: "One cannot live in the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie."  Also Parker's reminder of our reliance on Fossil Fuel and Karen's illustration of what's getting done in Chicago as well as everyone else's contribution to this conversation.  I think it's on target.

I keep intending to respond, but things keep happening.  Austin is getting ready to drill down to salt water beneath the area and install desalination plants to supply water to the city because our lakes and other supplies are at about 47% and the city is growing by leaps and bounds.  The city voted back several years ago not to add any more Fossil Fuel generation plants for electricity.  The plan to install solar on roofs has stalled because of finances.  All these costs to consumers are going to jump.  What we used to call "Truck Farms" and Farmer's markets are flourishing, you see a lot grassless landscapes in homes.

ABC TV Evening news yesterday put up an item on Global Warming caused by Fossil Fuel.  A First, as far as I know, for the major media.  Diane handed it off to the morning weatherman to do the piece. 

The Question may be - How do people learn to live in and off of a planet that has gone hot, which implies both the practics of health, sociality, economics and political life.  James Hansen, the climatologist testified in 2008 to the congress that the tipping point was at hand, and other climatologist seem to believe that point is passed.  The extreme weather of the past two years and the recent weather seem to suggest that.  Other experts are wondering how we'll feed a growing population off of less fertile land with more insecticide resistant insects, etc., especially with the growing suspicion that modified seeds and other "scientific" agricultural methods are not panning out all that well.  Now that the corn crop, and I suspect the soy crop in the U.S. has failed and the projection for big increases in the costs of manufactured foods are before us, this may make for more difficulties in the food supply than we've ever known before.  This is going to be especially devastating to the poor and "food insecure" who have depended on cheap food that rely on corn products.  In Austin nearly 50% of our children are considered "Food Insecure." Organics cost will probably jump too because of the demand.  The U.S.'s dependence on fresh fruits and vegetables from other countries may also be experiencing some difficulties as they suffer from climate change.  I say all this to add to our consideration that the situation is not the problem.  I think that's true as long as we know the situation.  My experience tells me that in general we are in denial and are becoming less and less prepared for the future.  The climatologist that I've read, Herman Greene would probably be better to comment here, suggest that the changes will be sudden and dramatic, without much chance to repair or correct.  So when we facilitate, how do we enable a genuine outcome?  How do we prepare to live in such a world?  What would that look like?

I also believe Early's correct about Blessed Unrest, etc.  When we first went to the 3rd World in the 60's there were few if any groups in the villages, when we moved back to the U.S. in 2000 we couldn't find one that didn't have a number of NGO's sometimes competing against each other.  The Corporations and the political structures connected to them maintain their power as well as our dependence upon this system.  If Climate Change damages this as it is projected to do, how does that impact our facilitation?  How do we prepare for that?

George Holcombe

14900 Yellowleaf Tr.
Austin, TX 78728
Mobile 512/252-2756
geowanda at earthlink.net

Hope appeareth, but it is not your Hope—you do not have anything to do with it. It just appeareth. It comes as a stranger, as an alien—it just appeareth! You do not even know why you hope. How in the world could you hope when there is absolutely nothing to justify any hope?    ~Joseph W. Mathews

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