Albert Einstein once said that “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

But at this moment, as we stare, overwhelmed,  at the perfect storm of economic and environmental degradation, we are doing just that.

We all seem to agree that our economy is in a big mess and there is a lot of consensus that Wall Street is to blame.  But when it comes down to doing something about it, we are pretty much resigned to moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic,  confining even those futile, if expensive, actions to the passengers in first-class.  We continue to feed the propagators, starve the victims, and kick people with good ideas to the curb  (like Elizabeth Warren).

This is bad, but not as bad as the fact that we don’t agree that the  global climate crisis even exists –– a state of affairs that is so maddening to Australian climate scientists that they were compelled to bust out a rap song (I’m a Climate Scientist) in their own defense.

What we really need now are tools that can help us re-discover and re-invent the purpose of the economy; to understand its necessary dependencies and responsibilities  to the planet; and to debunk, once and for all, the myth that economics is a neutral math-based science.
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Our climate is destabilizing, and we are drastically unprepared. As of October, the atmosphere’s carbon dioxide levels were at 388 parts per million, higher than anytime in the last 650,000 to 800,00 years, depending on how you count. Consequently— the earth is starting to seriously heat up, weather is growing more unpredictable, and extreme storms are more frequent. Nine out of the ten hottest years on record have occurred since 1990, and the impacts of these shifts are starting to hit cities hard. The recent earthquake in Japan is only the most recent example. According to UN Habitat, the number of natural disasters that have impacted urban areas has climbed over four-fold since 1975.

Yet Japan is especially uncanny because nature’s havoc is amplified by a crisis in the production of nuclear power, one that has already lead to the radioactive contamination of tap water for the tens of millions of people living in and around Tokyo.  Following the March 11^th earthquake, vital nuclear reactors near Tokyo were breeched and radioactive plumes started to make their way across the country, as well as across the Pacific Ocean. So the devastation that was initially triggered by Japan’s earthquake and tsunami, has been multiplied many times over by the ways that one of the world’s greatest cities was generating its energy.

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Once upon a time I was lucky enough to move into a house with a small and completely overgrown garden. So my then-partner Manny and I decided we would reclaim it and try to grow as much of our own food as possible. Just to learn what that would take.

We grew some delicious vegetables — and if you know me that will make you laugh — but I deeply enjoyed them after they were cooked. We had loquats and kumquats and pomegranates. We had fresh eggs from the chickens we also raised up there in the Forgotten Edge, perched between Echo Park and Chinatown. But what we managed to grow? I’m afraid it was nowhere near enough to sustain us and this is partly why (apart from size, as of course that does matter).

Grocery stores have brutally erased the agricultural seasons for us, so you have to relearn a lot (which also means your diet and your cooking repertoire have to completely change). You can’t plant seeds all at once, rather you have to do it in waves, so as to have a continuous harvest. Preparation of the ground is key: digging deep, breaking up clay (of which we had tons and it sucked but it sure as hell was better than caliche), adding what you can to improve its lightness along with your organic fertilizer which should come as much as possible from your own compost pile.

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The year is 1984 and I am on a bus riding through the green pastoral landscape of Northern Spain’s Basque country with about 30 other American educators, organizers, and social entrepreneurs.

For most of us, this wasn’t just a study tour. It was a Quest. We were on our way to visit the Bali Hai of cooperation, a place where the logic of “capital hires workers” has been turned on its head. A place whe workers have been hiring capital for the past 55 years.

We were on our way to Mondragon.

Twenty-five years later, while other “advanced” economies in Europe and the U.S. spiral into a tail-spin, there has been a revived interest in learning from Mondragon’s network of 100,000 workers and 100 worker-owned cooperatives which, in turn, own the Caja Laboral –– a bank that finances their current and future economic endeavors.

Back then, we pull up to the Polytechnic, where it all started, hoping to receive secrets of the universe. The lady who was starting a cooperative micro=brewery asked the instructor leading our tour:

“What do you teach here?”
“Accounting”, he responds, simply

Dissatisfied with this response, one of the educators probes further:

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What does hip-hop legend J-Live have in common with the billionaire ultra-conservative Koch brother?

Not much. Expect perhaps that they both work hard and are here to stay.

J-Live’s “Give It Up” is basically a hip-hop anthem for the climate action movement. It runs through the core concepts of climate change, warns that if we don’t wish to live on Mars then something serious has to change.

You can listen to it here, and I highly suggest that you do. Through powerful lyrics, flow, and production, the longstanding indie MC boils down everything you need to know about global warming into 5 minutes of eye-opening entertainment. It’s art meets science at its highest.

Ok, so where do the Koch brothers fit in? They are wealth meets politics at its lowest. While J-Live deploys the power of hip-hop to inspire people to protect mother nature, David and Charles Koch are busy deploying the power of their incredible wealth to fund attacks on any environmental regulations that might threaten their oil regime. In a recent New Yorker article, investigative journalist Jane Myer exposes the downright nasty funding strategy of a family that gives philanthropy a bad name. A real bad name.

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At the same time that protests have erupted all over France regarding national cutbacks of the country’s historic social safety net, there is a local example of experimenting with policies to redress inequality.

I recently visited the French city of Lille where I was struck by the citywide initiatives to create a more socially and spatially just place for its residents.

(Wikimedia Commons-Author: Manchot Sanguinaire)

Situated in the North of France, practically on the Belgian border, Lille is at the heart of a region that boomed during the industrial revolution primarily through its word-renowned textile industry as well as important coal, mechanical and chemical production. The region essentially knew steadfast economic growth until the deindustrialization crisis hit in the 1960s-1970s, when jobs moved to Asia and left the northern textile region in ruin. It has been struggling ever since to recover its economy and its declining population as well as dealing with an important legacy of environmental degradation born out of its heavy industrial production.

Aerial view of Lille  (Wikimedia Commons – Author: JÄNNICK Jérémy)

Lille has faired better than most other industrial cities in the region thanks primarily to a slow conversion to a service-based economy with the arrival of the Eurostar in 1993, but also, thanks to a string of ambitious socialist mayors who have governed the city since the late 19^th century. (Note: “socialist” in the French context refers to the main leftist party of France, The Parti Socialiste, and not to what U.S. tea-party-people would call socialism…).

Euralille: the symbol of Lille’s conversion to a service-based economy (Wikemedia Commons – author: Ad62)

Despite huge efforts to rebuild the economy and reclaim an identity for itself however, Lille and its surrounding urban region continue to suffer from higher than average unemployment rates and lower per capita incomes than the national French average. There are still many poor ex-industrial areas which suffer from poor housing, poor services and infrastructure as well as the repercussions from is sometimes refered to in France as the “lost generation” – the generation of factory workers who lost their jobs during the post-war crisis and never got them back.

However Lille’s mayors, particularly the current one Martine Aubry, have made important efforts to ensure that the redevelopment of the city and its economy benefit all “lillois”, rather than accepting the first offer that comes in order to make a few quick bucks (see for example the way Detroit has been run since its automotive collapse)

In this way, important efforts have been made to create a more inclusive and more sustainable city for all.

Last July, my research took me to Lille where I interviewed several local actors, including Ari Brodach, the City’s Director of Sustainable Development.  He told me an anecdote that beautifully encapsulates Lille’s efforts to create an “eco-social” city.

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Since BP’s Deepwater Horizon explosion this spring, over 5 million barrels of oil have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. Animals, humans, states and entire industries have been devastated. Meanwhile, the conditions which lead to this catastrophe have gone largely unaddressed.

Off shore drilling is still seen as a legitimate way for us to meet our energy needs, and we continue to burn through unbelievable amounts of this finite fuel. What does this tell us about the world we live in today? For starters, it shows that the real crisis goes much deeper than any single disaster.

Our entire economy runs on the consumption of fossil fuels, a dependence which places us at the mercy of companies like BP and endangers the sustainability of life as we know it. This last oil spill is one overwhelming indicator that this way of life cannot last, that our culture and economy must change.

Fortunately, the change that we need so badly can begin in our homes, and it can begin with us. According to experts like Energy Savvy, the energy lost in the BP spill is roughly equivalent to the energy wasted every year by 75,000 homes. By weatherizing our homes and retrofitting our neighborhoods, we can start to take meaningful actions that reduce our dependence on oil. And weatherization is only one example.

In this video explaining the BP oil spill, Lisa See Kim and Ryan Hollon illustrate alternative routes to meeting our energy demands.  Crude Awakenings points to changes we can make as a society to reduce our dependence on oil, whether that means changing where we get our food or investing in solar and wind power.

Whether these actions are supported the government or come from grassroots coalitions, what matters most is that they happen. For the more energy-efficient our world becomes, the less power Big Oil has over how we live our lives.

For more information on the problem and solutions check out:

Gulf Spill is Largest of It’s Kind, Scientist Say, New York Times

Energy Action Coalition is a coalition of 50 youth-led environmental and social justice groups working together to build the youth clean energy and climate movement.

Chicago’s Energy Action Network expands winter heating assistance services in neighborhoods and encourage residents to save money year-round through energy efficiency measures and programs.

Alliance for Climate Education educates high school students on the science behind climate change and inspires them to take action to curb the causes of global warming.

Report: Energy efficiency can save oil, avoid dangerous drilling, Grist

Farm Together Now is a new book (December 2010) by Amy Franceschini and Daniel Tucker who visited 20 urban and rural farmers around the country to provide a vision of real alternatives to oil-dependent industrial agriculture.  We’ll let you know when the book is available, but meanwhile, you can check out Amy and Dan’s website.

This week I read in the paper that the Los Angeles City Council was awarding $18 million to finish a project that has been a redevelopment site in my neighborhood for years. The goal? To build a Costco. Then to build a Costco with a Home Depot on top. Then when both of those pulled out, to build a Lowe’s home improvement store, which is a lot like a Home Depot.

And that same week I received an email from the Los Angeles Public Library (News You Can Use) with their new schedule consisting of shorter hours and no longer being open on Sundays and Mondays.

Libraries in my mind, are the last of the great public sector products. They are safe spaces for children, for homeless, for women, for families, and for the curious of all stripes — not to mention they are full of books. And they are free. You can stay there as long as you like. All day if you want. They are peaceful.

And as the public sector has crumbled around them, many libraries have stepped up to fill the gap. Last year I read a headline that was something like “Head Librarian Bans Shushing,” for an article about Chicago, I believe, where the head librarian acknowledged their last-public-sector-standing-role and explained “We are the last community centers. People need to talk. We can’t tell them to be quiet any more.”

Although I don’t generally follow architecture awards, which tend to favor the male divas of that profession, I am excited to see that this year’s European Prize for Urban Public Space, is shared, with one of the two winners being the inventive Open Air Library in Magdeburg, Germany that was created by the residents themselves, built out of the debris of a demolished building, and is open 24/7 for people to enjoy the space and borrow books.

The partner winner is an Opera/Ballet house in Oslo, Norway that includes a ramp up to the roof which serves as a public plaza.

It is still not too late.  Maybe our neighborhood Lowe’s can support a public plaza on its roof (instead of parking) or a public library at its base.  Or something else that engages the idea of a public in exchange for our hard-pressed public investment.  Something of value besides shopping.

Every Sunday and holiday, about 80 miles of the main streets of Bogota are blocked off from cars for most of the day so that bicyclists, runners, skaters, and pedestrians can take over the streets.  The ciclovias are used by about 2 million people – about 30% of the population and are surrounded by other events on park stages – concerts, yoga and aerobic instructions, and other performances.

And now, Los Angeles, the least likely suspect, whose endless concrete and streets have been the butt of urban critique for devoting most of the public space in the city to cars instead of people is on the verge of launching its own – CicLAvia – an event to be held on September 12 if all goes as planned.

“L.A. doesn’t have enough public space…of the largest cities in the U.S., L.A. is the most park-poor,” says Aaron Paley, CicLAvia advocate, in a video on Kickstarter, the social entrepreneur venture capital network. (What could be more Do-It-Together?  Venture capital from anyone who can give $1 a more).

“But we do have these fantastic streets.  And the streets already belong to us.  And by turning the streets over to the people on a Sunday we create temporary parks overnight without any large investment.”

Aaron is a professional animator of public spaces and runs a company that is, ironically, called CARS (Community Arts Resources).  He makes festivals, events, and turns concrete in L.A. into places where people dance, and, sing and play together.  He’s a friend and we were Stanton Fellows together (a great program that helps social entrepreneurs create their own project – sorry, only in L.A.).  He was researching and investigating and noodling about a new idea for public space, ended up in Bogota, and came back as a ciclovia evangelist.

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The Native Green Landscaping and Gardening Cooperative, has been organized with the support of the Instituto de Educación Popular del Sur de California (IDEPSCA). The cooperative is comprised of IDEPSCA members, day laborers and household workers, all of whom have completed a green gardening training course and received a certificate in sustainable landscaping from the City of Los Angeles.  Want a to use less water and have a beautiful garden made out of native plants?  Give them a call at: (213) 252-2952 or shoot Raul an email at gro.acspedinull@evronar.  They’ll answer any questions and provide a free consultation.

Native Green’s website, brochure, and business cards were designed and produced by the UCLA Community Scholars team of Brenda Aguilera, Sara Martin, and Alex Stevens.

Here’s a shot of the brochure:

This fold-out brochure was created by the team of Daniel Gonzalez, Jaime Lopez, Mathew Palmer, and Cathy Person and shows you how to save utility costs (as well as the environment) with simple retrofits.  Information about Los Angeles’ resources for assistance and subsidies is also included.  Images from the brochure are provided below and an 11 x 17 printable version (outside and inside) may be found here.

The brochure looks great printed out on 11×17 newsprint.  Contact gro.poprdnull@ofni for a higher resolution version.

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This poster was created by Nick Cranmer, Sam Filler, and Uyen Le to promote the kinds of policies that can expand construction career opportunities, reduce poverty, and create a better environment.

Snapshots of the poster panels are presented below and you can also download a printable version of the poster here.

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Report and popular education scripts, curricula, poster, and brochure to engage workers, youth, and families in creating a more green and equitable economy. For download, print, or to read on the site.

Tools for a Greener Economy: A Popular Education Strategy

When thinking about urban environmental repair, there is perhaps no better place to start than in what may seem to be the most unlikely of places: Detroit, MI.  Yes, the ex-capital of the auto-industry is rewriting the rules of urban regeneration as we know them and Detroit residents are creating a whole new way of thinking city-life.

As Rebecca Solnit says, Detroit’s best-known recent history is one of urban apocalypse characterized by “deindustrialization, depopulation, and resource depletion”

One third of the population lives beneath the poverty line and local officials estimate unemployment to be near 50% (the official figure is 30%).

Since the mid 1950s, the population has gone from nearly 2 million people to less than 900,000. Thirty percent of Detroit’s land is currently vacant – roughly the size of San Francisco in square miles. On top of this, the entire city of Detroit has become a  “food desert” — there is not one produce-carrying supermarket in the City. The endless rows of abandoned buildings and houses of what was once Motor City offer an eerie glimpse into a “post-American” future.

Flickr/tronics

Flickr/bobjagendorf

But out of this land, another story is emerging, in which the people of Detroit are re-inventing their city as the urban agriculture center of the country.

I recently met Asenath Andrews, the principal of the Catherine Ferguson Academy, a high school for young mothers and pregnant teens who raise animals and organic fruits and vegetables.  The school also offers classes on beekeeping and more to the community..

The conversation opened a window for me upon Detroit Green.

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Do-It-Together Energy

The next bubble is bound to be green. Stock markets will rise and fall based on how people relate to new energy technologies. So why not learn to master these technologies ourselves? This post reviews a few promising trends in the renewable energy sector, and talks about how ordinary folks can learn to master our own energy futures. Only a few short examples are highlighted here, so please leave comments with inspiring examples of your own.

Make Your Own Windmill At the age of 14, William Kamkwamba built his own windmill to power his house in rural Malawi. After discovering a book called Using Energy, he simply started experimenting with discarded local materials and designed an energy solution to help meet his family’s needs. His story was quickly picked up by NGOs across Africa, and celebrated at global thought forums like TED. William’s story teaches us that you can control your own energy future, and that you don’t have to have much money to do it. You don’t even have to be an adult! Sometimes, you just need the basic knowledge, a knack for experimenting, and the ability to find leftover materials from the area where you live.

Here is an excerpt from the work-in-progress documentary about William’s story:

Find out more on the Moving Windmills site.

Solar-Powered Internet

How much energy does it take to power internet usage in the world? A whole bunch. Getting connected, powering communication and searches, and storing information online all require tremendous energy resources. When we think about the internet’s billions of users, where this energy comes from starts to matter in a major way. As more people get connected every day, we need to be creative with how we power our lives online. One emerging example of powering our web time with renewable energy comes from Project Focus , a group that is partnering with leaders from rural Uganda to build a solar powered internet café.

Check out their short video.

New Tools for Living Off-the-Grid

Getting our energy from the sun and wind will mean that people no longer have to be dependent on major electricity companies to live our lives. Rather than plugging into a privately-owned network of energy providers, technology is emerging that can help folks light up their own lives, literally. The Solar Pebble is an awesome demonstration of how people anywhere in the world can harness the sun’s power by day, to bring light to their night-time activities. As more technologies like this emerge, it will be vital for people to learn how they can develop and reproduce them on their own. Check out Shervin Saedinia’s story about the Solar Pebble on four-story.

This Saturday, April 17, in honor of Earth Day, there will be activities in South L.A. This is a good thing, of course, as all of us should be concerned about the fate of our environment and what we can do to not kill our world and us. Now I’m not going to enjoin the debate about whether climate change is happening or not, I mean, it seems to me the evidence is clear that Polar bears are losing their ice floes, but hey, I’m no expert.

For even the experts are divided…just look at the debate between climatologists who pretty much agree that global warming is happening versus meteorologists, some of whom are TV weather forecasters, who are skeptical. There’s a recent study done by George Mason University and the University of Texas on this divide, with something like a fourth of the weathercasters surveyed agreeing with the statement, “Global warming is a scam.”

But back to South L.A. I’m sure one of the aspects of the celebrations will be about green jobs and green job training. For as this Great Recession has affected the middle class and those with technical skills, it has devastated the job prospects for youth of color, particularly black and brown young folks. The jobless rate for whites in the United States in March was 8.8 percent. For blacks it was nearly double – 16.5 percent; and for Hispanics 12.6 percent. These unemployment rates increased for both minority groups from the previous month – while it stayed steady for whites.

There are efforts here in Los Angeles to create a wellspring of green jobs opportunities in new construction and in regards to retrofitting existing structures, and apprenticeship programs partnering with the building trades. Mindful too that the building trades has traditionally been a white male bastion of workers where it was somebody you knew or your brother or cousin who got you on the job. Though there has been work buy some of the forward thinkers in and outside of organized labor to break down that good ol’ boy system We even have Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa trying to push through his and Councilman Richard Alarcon’s Green Energy Compromise Plan. The plan relies on a one-time only rate increase, and setting aside certain earmarked monies for renewable energy.

Yet the City of Los Angeles is in the midst of one of the worst budget deficits in its history while simultaneously the state of California is damn near broke. On top of forced furloughs and layoffs abounding, there are at least 4,000 city jobs are on the chopping block or facing further curtailing of work hours. Added to that, the Department of Water and Power (DWP) is in a pissing contest with the City. The DWP didn’t turn over some of their surplus to the general fund because it didn’t get the rate increase it wanted from the City Council. As this matter gets wrestled out, notions like a green tax seem like an awfully big rock to push up the deficit hill and get cash-strapped, future uncertain voters or their elected to approve.

Let alone then where does the money come from to fund green jobs programs, particularly as this relates to inner city youth? Is all this green talk just feel good rhetoric? I don’t know, but in my next post, I’ll go looking for a few answers.

Until then, check out these L.A. efforts:

L.A. Apollo Alliance

Black Workers Center

poster Seth Tobocman

While health insurance and bank lobbies vie for the comic-book-villain-of-the-year award, there is nothing more insidious than the invisible health threats that attack us daily without our consent or knowledge — through our water, our food, and our air.

For parents, the very notion that the homes in which our children play, eat, and sleep might be silently poisoning them, gradually causing nerve and brain damage to developing bodies, is a very hard pill to swallow. Yet for tenants who are trapped by high housing costs in slum housing, this is often the case.  The cause is chipping and peeling lead paint, and the uber-villians are the slumlords who profit, often hugely, from dangerous, unhealthy housing conditions.

Although lead paint has been banned from the U.S. since 1978, existing lead paint that chips and peels in neglected homes flake into dust that contaminates the air that children breathe indoors and the soil where they play outside.  (intact paint is not a hazard).

In Los Angeles, it is estimated that 48,000 families are living in extreme slum conditions and getting sick as a result, from exposure to lead and other hazards in their homes.  In New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina washed chips of lead paint from the homes into the soil, where it remains as a constant threat to children’s health.

The ecological principle that “diversity ensures resilience” applies to the business of solving intractable urban problems.  It is not simply a matter of how many eyes and brains are brought to bear on difficult problems, but rather,it is  the diversity of those eyes and brains that lead to the best solutions.  In the case of childhood lead-poisoning, the solutions are available, but hampered by lack of political will, commitment, alignment, and intelligent resource allocation.

What follows are stories about two efforts, the Healthy Neighborhoods, Same Neighbors Collaborative in Los Angeles and the New Orleans-based Fundred Dollar Bill Project that employ diverse methods and thinking to transforming homes and neighborhoods from sources of poison to healthy sanctuaries for our nation’s children.

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Plan for London Olympics 2012 Village Photo: ecofriend.org

In 2012, London will be hosting the Summer Olympics, “the greenest games to date” according to the Olympic Delivery Authority chief executive, David Higgins.

London authorities are gearing up to win the gold in sustainability, with claims of cutting carbon emissions, lighting a carbon neutral Olympic Flame, using recycled materials and cleaning up the brownfield upon which athletes will compete. But that’s not the only legacy the city hopes to accomplish. London is also looking to implement a robust social agenda to accompany the physical regeneration projects. As the Strategic Regeneration Framework report hopefully proposes:

The true legacy of 2012 is that within 20 years the communities who host the 2012 Games will have the same social and economic chances as their neighbours across London.

London Olympics Photo: gadiss.com

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