21st Century Plowshare

Fear

Image from The Day After Tomorrow, 2004

Climate change is a scary problem. I have a very young niece. I think that if we don't do something about climate change right now, she'll grow up in a very intense, Mad Max kind of world, and that legitimately frightens me.

But my fear about the climate is not the kind of fear that's motivating, and I know from all the talk and the paucity of action that I am not the only one who feels this way.

I think this confounds many environmentalists, who are strongly motivated by the fear, and assume that anyone who isn't panicking and rushing to shut off lights and get off the grid whenever they look into the eyes of the babies they know is a total fool, and so they structure their message thusly, around this fear.

The fear is valid. But there are problems with creating a movement that is organized around fear that are as long as my arm. It's a good way to arrive at a kind of well-meaning fascism, and so people rightly mistrust the fear as fearmongering. It's not a good way to ensure that you use climate change as an opportunity to seriously upgrade as many people as possible. It's hard to be thoughtful and fearful at the same time.

In fact, it's entirely possible that organizing around fear gives people like Freeman Dyson an enormous free pass. The man is talking about some profoundly silly ideas, like replanting forests with genetically engineered carbon-eating trees, and that idea is probably none too smart. It's probably an idea that relies too much on the Human Ingenuity that got us into this mess in the first place. But the New York Times is taking Dyson seriously because he's got a track record as a smart fellow and he isn't the slightest bit hysterical.

Environmentalists who really want to do something should read the entire Dyson profile, even though it contains many opinions of Dyson's that are factually untrue and yet are presented as fact. And then read Joe Romm's response to the Dyson profile, which is 120% more factual, and think about who you would want to get behind if you were in a plane crash.

Romm is right, but he's also doing a fair amount of hair-pulling and character assault, and I never trust this kind of hysteria about anything. I would rather follow the calm, confident guy, and I am saying this knowing with every fiber of my being that Dyson is calm and confident because he's wrong.

This means that Romm has a marketing problem. What does it take to make Romm the calm, confident guy that he needs to be if we are going to follow his plan? If fear isn't working as a marketing plan, then what will?

Citizen or Consumer

First, a Project Update:

Bed Stuy Meadow is almost 140 volunteers strong as of today, and almost 100 have RSVP'ed and been put on the map! Thanks to our latest sponsor, Lab 24/7, there will be an afterparty! I have raised almost enough money to afford lunch for the afterparty! Keep consulting the map if you want to watch this army of do-gooders grow! Email me to volunteer--it is going to be really fun! If you can't volunteer time, donate ten bucks and receive your own mini-meadow in the mail!

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The flowers are going to be beautiful, but ultimately this project isn't about wildflowers or Bed Stuy as much as it's creating a smaller version of how things should be. The Meadow is really an environmental allegory.

Environmental action should be large-scale and positive, it should link local actions to a global context, and it should be all about incentives. It should feel really good. It shouldn't be about fear or lack. It should be about doing something specific instead of shunning something. Even token actions, like the Meadow, should be absolutely concrete.

Bed Stuy Meadow is the opposite of Earth Hour. Earth Hour is turning off your lights for one hour along with everyone else in the world. It's a good way to visually link everyone on the globe, but as a gesture, it's problematic. Sitting in the dark is the kind of thing a martyr would do, or a grieving person. It's negative, it's passive and it's vague. It's also about what you consume under the existing consumption regime--it doesn't fundamentally change the small-consumer-choices model.

Strong environmental actions can work on a lot of different levels. They can incentivize good outcomes so much that it doesn't even matter whether or not the person buying in believes that global warming even exists. They can improve quality of life in tangible ways that make people want more similar actions. They can present models that are more powerful than the existing Popular Environmentalism Model, which is basically about knowing the ingredients and supply chain of every single thing you purchase, and applying this information each time your hand reaches out to consume something.

I understand why the Popular Environmentalist Model came about, but it's got real limitations, because in this model there is only the Education Axis and the Consumption Axis. It's all self-oriented, and this creates a frustrating problem of scale. Doing the work to choose the right soap does not delight me. It's more like a tax on my empathy and intelligence. In fact, I wish that I did not know that most of the products in the grocery store are poisonous. This knowledge makes me into a finger-wagging tightass, mostly because I have very little power--all I can do is say no. We're back to sitting in the dark.

When I stop being a consumer and start being a citizen, my power increases dramatically. I am able to say that there should be no poisonous products in the freaking supermarket in the first place! Plants and trees are beautiful, and I can work to ensure that we all live with many, many more of them. Walking and biking is good for us and feels good. I can work with groups like Transportation Alternatives, and actually make biking and walking safer and easier. Food that's raised locally tastes better than food that's been shipped forever, and I can be a consumer at a farmer's market, or I can get even more involved in a CSA. Efficient homes are easier and cheaper to heat comfortably, and there is no reason not to agitate for higher efficiency standards in rental apartments in this city.

Whether or not global warming is ever ameliorated, we have an opportunity to make enormous positive aesthetic and lifestyle shifts. Wind and water turbines will reduce NYC's carbon footprint, but I think it's more important that they will reduce childhood asthma rates. Solar cells on every appropriate surface would reduce our carbon footprint, but they could also save a lot of people a lot of money, so what does it take to get solar panels on the projects and other kinds of subsidized housing? Green roofs would help our storm runoff problem, respire CO2 and reduce urban heat island effect, but we should do it because they are pretty--because they give you a new place to go sit and think and look at the sky.

Environmental action could consist of nothing but these kinds of legitimately delightful, totally tangible upgrades. And yet we sit in the dark and scare people and parse soaps and falsely make environmentalism into a Luxury Calamity that is best solved by purchasing a really expensive car, the most expensive vegetables, and doing an expensive renovation on your house.

Manifesto v. 1.0

For those who missed it, here is a slightly condensed version of the talk Monday night at Pecha Kucha NYC.

Welcome New Meadow Sponsor: Lab 24/7

Lab 24/7 is a unique social network because it exists simultaneously on the internet and in the real world--a sympathy with 21st Century Plowshare that I especially appreciate. The usefulness of this kind of real-world space to Bed Stuy Meadow is incalculable, seeing as how there are, as of this morning, 76 confirmed adult volunteers, 86 counting the amazing-yet-nebulous "+10" in Zone 2.

There are still about thirty people who haven't RSVP'ed, and new folks are still trickling in steadily.

And now we know where the Afterparty's at--thanks to Lab 24/7!

If you haven't decided to volunteer yet because you don't want to get too involved or do too much work, now's the time to pounce! We are watching many hands making light work here!

Pecha Kucha: The Aftermath

If you are here because you were at Pecha Kucha last night, WELCOME!

Your energy was inspiring! Saying that my inbox is "crammed" this morning would be hyperbole, but there are a nice big handful of new Meadow Volunteers, and a new Sponsor, who will be added to the map, and thankfully introduced, forthwith, and I haven't even had coffee yet. Keep it coming!

If you weren't at the talk, I'll be posting it in its entirety, with the images, this evening. Big thanks to Pecha Kucha for forcing me to basically formulate a manifesto. Bed Stuy Meadow is just the beginning!

Pecha Kucha Tonight!

Sure... go to Pecha Kucha because you love 21st Century Plowshare! I'll be linking Bed Stuy Meadow to the rest of this beautiful globe we live upon, and our vision of environmentalism as a movement that does as much as it talks.

But don't forget to revel in the glory of the entire lineup:

Daniel Perlin
Viraphon
Eric Sanderson
Mannahatta Project
Allegra Burnette
MoMA
Tina Roth Eisenberg
Swissmiss
Jonathan Harris
Number 27
Jay Parkinson
Hello Health
Dickson Despommier
Vertical Farm
Glen Cummings
MTWTF
Eviana Hartman
Bodkin Brooklyn
Dan Fogelson
Emeco
Deborah Fisher
21st Century Plowshare
Paul D. Miller
DJ Spooky

Planting Day: April 11, 2009

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This is a map of planting zones with RSVP'ed, assigned volunteers, it's getting updated as folks confirm their participation, so check back in regularly and see the progress. Next weekend, this map will be updated to include the Rendezvous Points, Team Leaders, and other necessary tactical information like known vacant lots.

If you have not yet volunteered, it is not too late! If everything goes according to plan, each volunteer will receive their very own reusable tote bag with Bed Stuy Meadow logo, in addition to good karma and free fun on a Saturday!

Human Artifice As A Living Thing

Welcome New Meadow Sponsor: Saratoga Associates!

I am particularly stoked about Saratoga Associates' support of Bed Stuy Meadow because a lot of employees want to volunteer, and are active in other projects that are right up this website's alley. Right now the volunteer count is pushing seventy, and Saratoga Associates could make it push eighty.

Thank you, Saratoga Associates!!!

With this many volunteers, the planting is going to be able to happen in one day, which is spectacular!

If you have been sitting around waiting to see how many others would volunteer, I think it's safe to get in the pool yourself. Everybody's doing it! Send an email to 21stcenturyplowshare@gmail.com to get signed up!

Why Meadow

I've been talking to a couple of journalists, and am going to be speaking briefly about 21st Century Plowshare and Bed Stuy Meadow on Monday night, and all this framing and reframing has been a great opportunity to think in terms of why.

But first, The Facts: The volunteer count at this writing is at around 66 and still climbing, and there are forty-two more people who have given money instead of time. The Meadow also has a brand-new sponsor, who will get a serious thank you post as soon as I know what they want to be called.

In addition to this impressive outpouring of time and money, I have been able to start no less than ten discussions with people about other projects. There have been more opinions about making the Williamsburg Bridge into a real greenway; a small army of individuals who want to plant forest gardens, make parks or otherwise cultivate vacant lots in Brooklyn; ideas about community-based recycling and reusing; and one really complicated idea about datamapping that I can't flesh out in this run-on-sentence format.

And what I do when I look at my inbox is gasp elatedly and clutch my heart, because it seems that folks are getting it. It's great that people are sending $10 from far away, so that they can get their seed bomb in the mail and watch their own little patch of wildflowers grow, and thereby link their patch of Indiana or California or Rochester NY to this project.

It's great that people are taking all this big talk about Google Earth re-photographing the neighborhood for what it is--a totally necessary scale shift from local to global.

Bed Stuy Meadow is an environmental action. It succeeds when one-hundred-plus-and-counting individuals manage to turn the environment into a Celebrated Place instead of an Agonizing Concept. And it succeeds again when that sense of place is transcended, when the scale shifts from local to global.

I am ordering seeds, sending out emails to volunteers and drawing up a map of planting zones. And I want you to keep the great ideas, criticisms, tangents and support flowing.