And now for some Art

The retreat was a pretty incredible experience and I am looking forward to reflecting on the whole thing and pulling major outcomes from it. In the meantime, I'd like to share this great new short film from Oscar-nominated animator Cordell Barker, courtesy of the NFB.

From the North, from the East, from the South, from the West

It's 12:20am and I am sitting in the dining area on the second floor of the Ashram main hall. I have a cup of chamomile tea and a piece of apple pie, and faintly from downstairs I can hear the mellow strains of Feist. Almost everyone, I think, by now is in or near their beds, at the end of our opening evening for the retreat, one which was energizing, inspiring, and invigorating, and overall a giant piece of affirmation that this was exactly the right thing to do. Several people have said to me how happy they are to be here, that they are excited by the content, by the delivery, and by the spirit of everyone who has come to the table in a spirit of sharing and discovery. One of the greatest things for me has simply been to settle into the guidance of our facilitator, Mike Balkwill, who has, since the moment we began planning this retreat together, consistently reassured, calmed, and inspired me to keep the faith and find solutions to whatever roadblock or mini-crisis popped up.

Mike is the father of my good friend Dan, which is how he got involved in this process in the first place. Dan and I met almost 4 years ago, at the founding summit of the CYCC in Toronto. Immediately I felt a special vibe from Dan - groundedness, positivity, open-mindedness, up-frontedness (sorry for all the adverbing, it's late). Dan and I haven't had the chance to work much together over the years, but we've stayed in touch and the result was that when I wrote a short essay asking questions about the state of the youth climate movement in Canada and outlining some ideas for building it, Dan passed it along to his dad, who then got in touch to think about turning those ideas into plans.

I could provide a brief bio of Mike here, but why not just surf over to the page on him on this very website? Even after just a few short hours of facilitation tonight, I could not be more sure that Mike was the man for the job. A blend of really fun icebreakers, insightful activities, straight talk on the goals of the weekend, and education on the history of strategy kept the energy high, the attention focused and the minds sharp. Personally I felt like a racehorse chomping at the bit to dive in and figure out all the stuff we want to know - and we came up with a healthy list. Eryn Wheatley, from Greenpeace's Toronto office, made the observation that our goals are ambitious - but I was heartened to feel everyone agree and our determination to realize them. I think everyone also feels like we couldn't have a better person than Mike to keep us on track.

We are also benefiting immensely from our setting. The Ashram is beautiful in every way, from the warmth of the people, to the elegant design, to the environmental consciousness reflected in things like signs for minimizing consumption and wood heating. I am excited for the talk the Art of Living will give us tomorrow evening, on spirituality and activism and their approach to climate change.

More to come. Namaste,
Cameron

p.s. Comments are very, very welcome!

p.p.s The title for this post came from an activity we did called the Celtic wheel, where we explored the qualities of each cardinal direction and connected them with ourselves and each other. It was powerful and grounding and something which will stay with me for a long time. I'll work on getting a copy of the information up in our resources section!

Leadership, Leadership, Leadership

I keep seeing it, hearing it everywhere, this call for leadership.

"Today, more than ever, we need political leaders who can see the big picture, who understand the relationship between the economy and its environmental support systems." –Lester R. Brown, Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization

That's the most recent. I'm reading Eco-Economy, Lester's 2001 treatise on the reconciliation required between people and planet. I'm just cracking into it but I suspect I will be largely familiar with the content, that it will echo classic works on the subject that I've read over the past 6 years on this journey towards understanding that magical, elusive idea of sustainability: Marilyn Waring's If Women Counted (1989), E.F. Schumacher's Small is Beautiful (1973), Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962). Throw in Our Common Future, better known as the Brundtland Report from the 1987 World Conference on Environment and Development. They all say the same thing: we need change, and we need it now. And we need leaders to bring about change. Leaders galvanize people, they energize them, they paint a picture of what's possible. Some say leaders are born, not made, but I think that misses a social and ecological reality: If you don't water the plant or nourish the person, they will not grow. I believe leadership is cultivated and developed, and that a truly healthy society is one which nourishes every single person to become a leader in their own right, bravely following their own path, forging ahead, helping others, confident, grounded, enthusiastic.

So where does this support come from? Well, you find a lot of emphasis on leadership in business school. Business schools have institutes dedicated to the development of leadership qualities, towards creating strong teams that have the ability to work together to... what? Generally, to rape the planet and exploit others. Bold terminology I know, but at this point, let's not kid ourselves about the modus operandi of capitalism as widely practiced. Yes, there is an emerging consciousness that is challenging the business-as-usual mindset of margin maximization, externalization, and single-bottom-line balance books. But it has yet to crack the code that guides the practices of every major corporation in the world and the governments that regulate society to allow them to continue 'doing business'. Generally, it's the Arts & Sciences and the Humanities that churn out the revolutionaries, the people analysing the underlying structures and philosophies that maintain the system as is. That's where you'll find the analysis, the morality, the bigger picture thinking... but it's not, generally, where you'll find the leadership development, the team building, the executive authority and surety of purpose that allows business people to just get so much done. And engineers? Don't get me started about engineers. My brother is one, and I've gotten to know a few others. At Concordia, my alma mater, Sustainable Development constituted half of a course - 1.5 credits. And, talking to the few engineers I knew that were concerned with the health and future of the planet, most engineers didn't take it seriously. It was a bird course.

Carl Sagan has a great quote: "Nothing else is going to matter if you can't breathe the air or drink the water. Don't just sit this one out. Do something." I come back to that again and again. No awards, no salary, no accomplishment is going to matter if you can't live. If that was taught at the beginning of every single class in every single discipline, perhaps we would see a better world emerging out of those institutions of higher learning.

David Orr has a good follow up: "Tonight the Earth will be a little hotter, its waters more acidic, and the fabric of life more threadbare. The truth is that many things on which your future health and prosperity depend are in dire jeopardy: climate stability, the resilience and productivity of natural systems, the beauty of the natural world, and biological diversity. It is worth noting that this is not the work of ignorant people. It is, rather, largely the result of work by people with BAs, BSs, LLBs, MBAs, and PhDs." It comes from a landmark essay called What is Education For?

So how do we blend the best of both worlds? How do we take all the good stuff from each faculty and discipline and blend it together to come up with a generation of individuals who can address the challenge of radically changing our entire civilization pronto, in the timeframe our scientific and moral authorities (few and besieged though they are) are calling for? Mark Taylor, Dean of Religious Studies at Columbia University, put it eloquently in an Op-Ed he wrote in April last year, calling for us to End the University as We Know It, and to bring people around a table to tackle the issues the world is facing, rather than writing useless theses documents on ever more obscure theories and topics for professors only concerned with their tenure-track status and the number of published, peer-reviewed works. Yes, it is time to get down to business and take care of these myriad, inter-connected social, environmental and economic crises currently threatening to undo us from every angle. (On a side note, I think there are quite possible benefits to the global south from the dissolution of the northern global economic hegemony, but I want to save that for another post, which will also focus on the film 2012).

So, we need leaders to help us transition. They need to come from different disciplines, sharing skills, approaches, and understandings. And we need them now. Yet try to find funding for leadership development programs and institutes and you find foundations are all hanging the same sign on their doors: "Closed for the recession. Sorry." The metaphor I've come up with is this: There is a space ship with a limited amount of fuel which needs to get back to Earth. The space ship requires a certain amount of momentum in order to break through the atmosphere. Yet the pilots are slowing down to conserve fuel. What if the current value systems continue to denigrate such that financial wealth, as represented by stock investments, dwindles more and more, so that the 'spending power' of the foundations' endowments shrinks and shrinks? Why not use that power now? In his brilliant and concise 'Powerdown' Richard Heinberg warned of the importance of using the remaining oil wealth on earth to organize and implement the transition to sustainability, rather than just burning it up in a blaze of fire. But is anyone in a position of power anywhere on Earth proposing such a program?

We know there are fundamental changes that need to be made to our economic system, changes in what we value and how. These foundations fund the scientists and policy analysts that tell us this. We need a transition strategy to go from this system to a sustainable one. If we don't employ the resources of the current system to transition to the next one we anticipate some kind of disaster. That is the anxiety we feel right now. Foundations should be giving it their all right now to catalyse this massive transformation, but instead they are playing by the same rules of the system their funding recipients decry. As if there is going to be a world needing funding for research activities if there is no food, water or oxygen! Leadership development is a supposed priority, but where are the resources, programs and support to do so? Answer me that McConnell, Metcalfe, Gordon, Packard, Gates...

A call to get together: From the lone woods to the living forest

I just found out about shale gas yesterday.

My professor was talking about how a foreign company is appropriating land in her county in the Richelieu Valley in order to drill for shale gas. More fossil fuels will be exploited to feed the consumer habits of millions of Americans south of the border, who themselves will pay top dollar for the stuff and contribute to the pollution of millions of liters of water in the process.

So yes. Land appropriation is happening less than fifty kilometers from Montreal in 2010. After Copenhagen. Of course, who expected otherwise? Reactions to this can range from dazed incomprehension to abject cynicism. Or maybe shale gas really is less polluting than the tar sands—though that is like saying the lesser of two evils is a darn good choice. Most people would sigh in resignation and change channels. Like it or not, we really do live in such an upside-down world.

A lot of rhetoric about greening the economy has been thrown around in the past few years. But fundamentally, we still remain bound to this idea of economic growth, that it is somehow good for all of us. This is one reason why, in spite of social and environmental injustices, mega-projects still get the go-ahead and wars are still waged overseas.

Sometimes, when I’m not feeling too optimistic about the state of the world, I feel like we are the sick puppies of a lost generation, the lone wolves who have been weaned on corporate media and consumer excess. We shuffle around like proud animals, showing off our clothes or our ideas or our good looks, or maybe even our passion for change and justice.

Other times, in more inspiring moments, I see how awesome we are through our hard work, our convictions and talents, our resilience in the face of struggle and our grace in the midst of hardship. Humans are marvelous; we are far from the virus or vermin that the cynics say we are. Have you looked at some of the incredible things we can do lately?

Many of us having been doing a lot—and I think we all sort of feel that we need to do a lot more. And the sooner the better. But just like an orchestra, if everyone is doing their own thing without listening to the others, the result is a cacophony that few want to listen to —and with a message as important as ecological justice, can we afford to not get the message right? I am leery of using economic metaphors for something so precious, but this economy is bankrupting our future, and only people who care enough to act can help shift directions.

Let’s face it. We’re really hung up on fossil fuels, and extracting them at such a rate that we can maintain an economic growth rate between two and five per cent. That’s the bottom line—we are eating the hand that feeds us, folks. The longer this savagery continues, the more difficult it will be to clean up the mess later. Dangerous climate change is just one symptom of a system that is killing our future, but one that needs to be addressed seriously.

How do we break the pattern of social addiction and transition into a clean and green future? What can we do to help facilitate this process? There is much to be sad, angry, depressed and frustrated about, just as there is a lot to get really excited about. I don’t think there’s any point in sugar-coating reality—at least amongst ourselves, it’s probably better to be honest than polite. At the same time, the changes we want to see (along with the many initiatives that are already happening that need more support) are so hopeful and inspiring, so powerful and positive, how can we not get pumped if we are speaking together coherently?

Many people have been wondering where have all the green promises gone—it all sounds like green-washing to me. Maybe those promises are at the bottom of the St-Lawrence with all the methane hydrates they plan to suck up to feed our addiction to fast gas and cheap oil. But I think we are the green promises of our generation and the ones who will come after us. Many of us have been telling ourselves to be the change we want to see in the world. I don’t think we can do it alone.

And we have a long way to go. There is an African proverb that says if you want to get there fast, walk alone. I think more important than getting there fast is going far—really far away from where we are today. I think we’d all agree, we need some major changes. And the proverb says that if you want to go far, walk together. That’s why I think a weekend retreat in the forest with dozens of passionate, different people is a good idea, so we can come together and listen to each other’s concerns and learn how to move forward together.

-kgarooo (aka Kristian Gareau)

The Curse of the Hyperationalist

I once read Carl Sagan write "Nothing else is going to matter if you can't breathe the air or drink the water." For some reason that stuck with me, and I guess it is one of the thoughts that is running through my head each day. I wonder who else is thinking about it, consciously or unsconsciously. W.E.B Du Bois, one of the first black intellectuals, wrote about a kind of veil hanging over everyone's consciousness, blinding them to the truth of life... he wrote about it in the context of slavery, looking at how people were treated and how it all just a bunch of secret rules that people were following that missed the point of life. The hidden assumptions that structure our perception. And yet, if we look, the truth is evident. Is it not thus with climate change? There is the theoretical reality that continuing to increase the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air while simultaneously destroying the earth's forests and oceans is going to turn the planet into an inhospital wasteland. Let's take it down to the small scale: a garden. Say you have this beautiful garden, producing all kinds of good food. But underneath there is a barrel of oil. You cut down all the plants and consume or burn them. You don't save any seeds. You grab a shovel and start tearing up the earth and roots. By accident you hit the oil barrel. Some oil comes spurting out, covering the earth and killing any life that might be in it. It gets all over your hands, which begin to hurt. But you grab the barrel and dump the precious dark liquid into the gas tank of our Ferrari, spilling more along the way. You throw away the can and tear off in a blast of flame, which catches on to the oil and starts the whole thing ablaze. The next day, oil all spent from a crazy night of joyriding, you get back to your home - the garden. You are tired and hungry. You want some food. But it's all gone, and the plants are all dead, and the soil is destroyed. Eventually it'll come back, but long after you've starved to death. So you start looking around and see your neighbour's garden. And rather than requesting some food because you are hungry, you decide to just climb in and steal. And we know where that ends.

I titled this piece 'The Curse of the Hyperationalist' because it seems to me that is what I have. I can see. I can read. I can feel. The logical outcome of the current system is clear. I know why there is so much cancer in the world. I know why there is so much unhappiness. Yet it's so subtle, so ingrained, it is hard to cope. There are days I want to shout. But I was raised to be polite. So I try to do my work, bring about change, take time to fill my well. Probably the single most beautiful thought that keeps me alive is the Rainbow Gathering, which happens every year in a different forest, and where everyone lives together more or less in peace, under the sun, amongst the trees, just living. Solar panels have started to appear, though for the most part we don't really need them. Fire, water, fresh air, good earth, food all around, and something deeper at the heart of every day. It's an incredible experience, one I can only compare to childhood. I think it is the secret destiny of our species, to learn to live in peace.

"The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said 'This is mine,' and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civilian society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754

And so, day by day, I strive for change. I know we will get there.

I was reading up on the civil rights movement the past month, for a talk we had at Concordia, and I remembered a song that I love, that I had a feeling was connected to it all, so I looked into the history. When he wrote A Change is Gonna Come, Sam Cooke was a hugely popular black pop singer in America, penning many major hits such as You Send Me and The Chain Gang. He wrote the song after two major events in his personal life; the death of his 18 month year old baby the June prior, and then being denied entry to an 'all white' motel while on tour with his band. I found this video while looking up the song online, and it helps me remember how far we have come, in all directions. I am grateful for the equality we now recognize, even if we don't always honour it. But I am nostalgic for a simpler time, when the Earth was in better shape, the air a bit purer, the birds more numerous, the cities quieter at night. I dream of achieving the balance, of making the right choices now, to transform society and restore our precious planet. And I know I'm not alone.


Sam Cooke A change is gonna come
envoyé par hopto. - Découvrez des webcam de personnalités du monde entier.

The Time of the Lone Wolf is Over

The words of the Hopi Prophecy ring true to us now. It is time to come together and share in deep circle of introspection and exploration. This site provides an overview of the Weekend Climate Strategy Retreat, an opportunity to join together and explore what it means to bring about a stable climate in these unstable times. Use the links at right to learn about the retreat, see the agenda, and register. Peace!