Paul Hawken Commencement Address May 2009

Thanks to Dave Hampton for reminding me of this.
In May of this year Paul Hawken delivered this address. It is inspiring and I really hope he doesn't mind me posting it here in it's entirety. I don't usually do that but it would be a shame to leave any of it out. So by way of apology I recommend that you go to his website, read his books, and follow his advice. The emphasis in bold is mine.

"The Commencement Address by Paul Hawken to the Class of 2009, University of
Portland, May 3, 2009

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” No pressure there.

Let’s begin with the startling part. Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation... but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, civilization needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food—but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: You are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring. The earth couldn’t afford to send recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are
working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown — Granville Sharp, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood — and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, non-governmental organizations, and companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time rather than renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. And dreams come true. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe, which is exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your
body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are
free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. You can feel it. It is called life. This is who you are. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those
molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. Our innate nature is to create the conditions that are conducive to life. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every
thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would create new religions overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead, the stars come out every night and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, stupefying challenge ever bequeathed to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hope only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

……….

Paul Hawken is a renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental activist, and author of many books, most recently Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. He was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane letters by University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., in May, when he delivered this superb speech.

Our thanks especially to Erica Linson for her help making that moment possible.

www.paulhawken.com "

New Study; Organic is Healthier and More Nutritious

A French study, like so many before it, has found organic food to be more nutritious and healthier. Read more about this study over at Organic Consumers Association.

The major points of The French Agency for Food Safety study are:
1. Organic plant products contain more dry matter (more nutrient dense)
2. Have higher levels of minerals
3. Contain more anti-oxidants such as phenols and salicylic acid (known to protect against cancers, heart disease and many other health problems)
4. Organic animal products contain more polyunsaturated fatty acids (protect against heart disease)
5. Carbohydrate, protein and vitamin levels are insufficiently documented
6. 94-100% of organic foods do not contain any pesticide residues
7. Organic vegetables contain far less nitrates, about 50% less (high nitrate levels are linked to a range of health problems including diabetes and Alzheimer's)
8. Organic cereals contain similar levels of mycotoxins as conventional ones

The full scientific report can be found at http://swroc.cfans.umn.edu/organic/ASD_Lairon_2009.pdf"

The Able Project

Closing the loop. It's a fish farm, it's an allotment, it's an orchard, it's a biomass farm, it's an educational project. No, it's all of these.
Check out this project in Yorkshire. I especially like the way they use the fish poo to feed worms which produce compost and are then fed back to the fish. Also, a nearby sewage treatment plant produces sewage sludge which is applied to a field to grow willow to be used for fuel.

The Able Project

Thanks to the One Planet podcast for the heads up on this project.

Video-Eco Worriers #1

Eco-Worriers: Episode 1 from Daf Palfrey on Vimeo.

Thanks to Rob Hopkins at Transition Culture for the heads up.

The Green Economy, If we don't do it, someone else will.

With the certainty of peak oil relentlessly drawing ever nearer and the damage from climate change growing ever more obvious there is no doubt that the future will be green. If we want a vibrant sustainable economy we have to create it. Read Tom Friedman's take on this over at Worldchanging.

Here is an excerpt;

"The jobs argument is a core message for winning the public debate about the clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill.

Friedman is a centrist who advances the argument because he knows it is true, because he understands climate science is real, and because he is a hard-core capitalist who sees the tough dynamic the U.S. is facing in the global economy. If you’re not first, you’re probably last.

The importance of the clean energy jobs message is evidenced by the fact that the corporate polluters and their right-wing allies in the media will do anything to kill it, from publishing phony studies attacking clean energy jobs to pushing their vile assault on Van Jones, who has been a leading articulator of the message (see “Fox News blurts out its agenda: “Now that Jones has resigned, we need to follow through…. First, stop cap-and-trade, which could send these groups trillions,” and then put “the whole corrupt ‘green jobs’ concept outside the bounds of the political mainstream”).

How else do we know the clean energy jobs message is crucial? Obama also uses it at every opportunity, including his recent Labor Day speech. In spite of the media’s strong desire to push the message that Obama has lost interest in the climate and clean energy bill, once again he said:

We have to build a new foundation for prosperity in America….An America where energy reform creates green jobs that can never be outsourced and that finally frees America from the grip of foreign oil.

And here’s yet another way to frame the job message — from Obama again (4/22):

The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline… We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc across the landscape, or we can create jobs working to prevent its worst effects…. The nation that leads the world in creating new energy sources will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy.

And Obama again (3/19):

We can let the jobs of tomorrow be created abroad, or we can create those jobs right here in America and lay the foundation for our lasting prosperity.

Another way to frame the message that polls well is :

Opponents of bill – oil companies, special interests – fighting against energy reform
• They’ve made America less secure, and more dependent on foreign oil.
• They’ve protected corporations that pollute the air our children breathe and water they drink.
• This bill protects the American people – by creating 1.7 million new jobs and reducing our dependence on foreign oil.

The international competitiveness argument works — but as it turns out, it works best if it is linked directly to the loss of American jobs. This paragraph tests very well in polling of swing voters:

China has a million workers in the clean energy economy. India is doubling their clean energy market in 4 years. Germany is creating nearly three hundred thousand clean energy jobs. If we do nothing, America will lose its competitive edge and American jobs will continue to go overseas" - Joe Romm

Video - James Balog - Time Lapse Ice Loss

From TED 2009;

Thanks to Rob Hopkins over at Transition Culture for the heads up on this.

Video; A New Sound, Green For All

A cool little video produced by Green For All
Thanks to Worldchanging for the heads up on this;

Inner Work at Transition Training

I've just returned from the Transition Training weekend in Totnes. As I've posted here before, Transition is a movement designed to assist communities make the transition from oil dependence to local resilience.

The training was good. We covered many techniques to use in developing a Transition Initiative as well as went through some inner work that was surprising in it's intensity. What I'd like to talk about here is that inner experience rather than the nuts and bolts of piecing an initiative together.

As one might expect most of the attendees were already engaged with the threats posed by climate change and peak oil and fully accepting of the concept that deep changes are necessary in the way we carry out our lives. What I didn't expect was the depth of emotion I encountered, in the attendees and in myself. The strongest emotion seemed to be centered around family and the possible consequences to them should we continue to get it wrong as a society.

My wife and I don't have children and have no intention of ever having children. This means that my motivations for pursuing change have been rather intellectual in nature. I want to do the work because it is work that so desperately needs to be done, not because I get up every day and watch my children grow and learn and make their way in life facing a scary future. In fact, I have been rather coldly calculating about the whole thing. I tend towards misanthropy and have just as easily accepted the potential suffering of innocent children as guilty parents, particularly those in the west who are part and parcel of the problem. Our voracious consumption patterns in the west have brought us to this state of affairs, with a vast proportion of the damage being caused by the rapacious capitalism of the US. As an US citizen I have to accept my share of the guilt. My usual response was the normal one of placing myself above those who do not accept this guilt and refuse to see reason and make the necessary changes in their lifestyles. Once that "us and them" leap has been made it is easy to consign "them" to their fate.

Rationally I could see the problem with this approach but internally nothing changed. My anger supported the status quo. While I could feel great empathy for the amazonian children poisoned by Texaco and Chevron in Ecuador, and even more empathy with the animals mowed down along with their living breathing habitats, I found it hard to feel empathy for those children living the high life now while innocently and blindly hurtling towards privation due to the apathy and ignorance of their parents.

This began to change on the weekend.

We did some visioning around our own plans and projects, seeing them through to successful conclusion far in the future. I imagined the little town of Hickory NC, specifically the neighborhood where my wife and I own a house. The yard was a vibrant permaculture garden, the house was completely off grid and renewables powered. The surrounding homes had followed the same path and the occupants all worked collaboratively to produce food, energy, culture, education, and entertainment for one another. As this was a visioning of the future, I saw not myself but my niece and nephew living there as grandparents. We were told to visit from the past and ask them questions and observe. In the final moments of the visualization I waved and smiled goodbye as they thanked me for starting this project in the first place. They watched as I faded back to my time. This was amazingly gratifying and motivating.

We next did an exercise where we envisioned ourselves as the founders of the movement that turned the world around and successfully established a sustainable and resilient economy. We imagined that the person in front of us was a descendant from the future. They, busy imagining themselves as grateful researchers from the future, asked us questions about what motivated us and how we managed to to accomplish so much. The gentleman opposite me I envisioned as the grandson of my nephew. I found this easy to do and it made the connection with the previous visualization. While I found it difficult to discuss my own actions as somehow being significant in the long run, it seemed kind of egotistical, I stuck with it because it really was motivating and helped to clarify my plans. The best part was imagining that I was talking to a descendant who was benefiting from my actions. Suddenly I could feel the motivation so many of the parents were feeling. Suddenly the tears of emotion welled up in my eyes as it was doing in theirs. We rotated through 6 cycles of this as we played both sides of the visualization, descendant and ancestor. One lady, pregnant and already a mother of one, was in a flood of tears, another mother was almost incapacitated with tears. She had spent much of the morning out of the training as it was too much for her. One gentleman like myself was red-eyed but more stable, the difference between he and I was that he is father and had been close to tears repeatedly for the entire training. I was grateful when I finished the exercise with a young lady who was merely cheerful. My eyes dried.

My motivations have shifted. While still intellectually involved I now feel a sense of connection to the human cost of our trajectory towards disaster and more committed than ever to work to create a new path, one that will take all those westerners as well as the innocent victims of witless consumerism to a healthier, more sustainable and resilient life. My anger is eased for now. For that alone I thank the trainers and the transition movement in general.

Bernadette and Naresh, and all the participants I shared this with, thank you.

Namaste.

Commit to 10:10

I just committed to 10:10. Shouldn't you?

Abundance

A lovely profile of a lovely guy, doing good works here in Sheffield.
Check it out at Shooting People

Money-Driven Medicine

Thanks to the Organic Consumers Association for the heads up on this film.

“ Money-Driven Medicine is one of the strongest documentaries I have seen in years and could not be more timely. The more people who see and talk about it, the more likely we are to get serious and true health care reform.”

- Bill Moyers

Synopsis

Money-Driven Medicine provides the essential introduction Americans need to become knowledgeable participants in healthcare reform, now and in the years ahead. Produced by Academy Award winner Alex Gibney ( Taxi to the Dark Side; Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room) and based on Maggie Mahar's acclaimed book, Money Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much, the film offers a behind-the-scenes look at how our 2.6 trillion dollar a year healthcare system went so terribly wrong and what it will take to fix it.

The U.S. spends twice as much per person on healthcare as the average developed nation, fully one-sixth of our GDP - yet our outcomes, especially for chronic diseases, are very often worse. What makes us different? The U.S. is the only industrialized nation that has chosen to turn medicine into a largely unregulated, for-profit business. " - Alex Gibney OCA

New oilfields don't change a thing.

While the mainstream media gushes on about "huge" new oil discoveries it is appropriate to do a reality check about the possible impacts they will have on Peak Oil. Check out this post over at The Cost of Energy.