21st Century Plowshare

On Not Breaking Someone Else's Sidwalk

I stole this image from Colin Purrington's Flickr account.

When I was a visiting artist this week, I had an interesting conversation with an student at MICA who wanted to take bricks out of Baltimore sidewalks and plant destructive weeds in the spaces left behind--weeds that he hoped would grow so perniciously that he hoped they would destroy the rest of the sidewalk. He thought it would be a great environmental gesture.

As an artistic gesture, it's right on the money. It's got tension; it's edgy; it's clearly oppositional.

But you know, artists don't innovate enough, and are way too invested in doing something that reads like an artistic gesture. And so I hope he keeps trying, and goes further in his mind to find a gesture that isn't oppositional.

If there is one aspect of our environmental woe that separates it from all the other problems we face, it's that there is no us and there is no them. It's fundamentally not an oppositional problem. While it is true that climate change deniers, oil lobbyists and other stakeholders confuse this truth by being against sane climate change policies, the bottom line is that there is nobody who exists (or who can exist) outside this climate. It's not like Ghandi fighting for India. We can't take people who don't agree with us and put them Somewhere Else. And for that reason, it makes no sense to act as if this Somewhere Else exists when we debate policy.

Just as people who own property don't have a choice but to be invested in the state of their sidewalk, everybody who consumes energy has a huge stake in the existing energy infrastructure. We also enjoy representative government. So if a specific climate policy is going to work, a strong majority has to be on board--there can be no unilateral climate policy revolutions. This means that the way things work now has to change, and it has to change in a way that's at least somewhat consensus based. There can be no breaking of anyone else's sidewalk.

Now, to be honest, what I just wrote reads to my own eyes as frustratingly namby-pamby. I am ready for my revolution, dammit, and don't want to go considering the needs of anyone else, because I have effectively demonized coal in my own mind and have moved on. But it's more complicated than that.

Michael Shellenberger has been writing interestingly about Sherrod Brown, democratic congressman from Ohio. Brown clearly sees the threat--he's no denier. And he clearly sees that he's got the most to gain from good climate policy in the form of manufacturing jobs, as Ohio's unemployment is significantly worse than average. The man wants good climate change policy. But he also sees that he's got the most to lose from a Cap and Trade program or any other form of taxing carbon. His state is highly dependent on coal, and so just making carbon expensive will simply make his state's economy unlivable. He wants change, but his people are already too poor to absorb a transition.

It's an interesting dance that requires monumental (if wonky and subtle) creativity. Brown understands the need to make carbon expensive, but the reality is that there can be no stakeholder that's left with a broken sidewalk. Shellenberger points to Brown and his colleagues in Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania and other carbon-intensive states and sees an opportunity to make climate policy that actually passes and actually works because it focuses exclusively on addressing their needs: on jobs and lowering the cost of clean energy. He argues that this amounts not to selling out or being weak, but to putting the horse before the cart.

But of course, I went to art school myself, and know that bold action is oppositional, and must admit that I have been looking forward to the bold, oppositional gesture of a Huge Carbon Tax, even though life just doesn't work that way.

In fact, what's been getting me out of bed in the morning these days is all this overwhelming evidence that life doesn't work in a lot of the ways we have been thinking it did. In fact, you could look at the modern era, with its Industrial Revolution and all its world-warring and its relentless drive to individual expression and its reliance on an avant garde and maybe breathe a sigh of relief because maybe we are starting the next phase, in which we all just admit that bold opposition is a spent tactic, and come up with something more interesting and more useful.

It's going to continue to be an interesting ride.

Beaters to Batteries!

When Joe Romm, the terminally grouchy Grand Poobah of Climate Change Bloggers, is spreading good news about environmental policy, you know that the news is genuinely good. He's calling Obama the Green FDR, and has compiled a list of things Obama has already done to turn this boat around.

I really like it when Joe Romm focuses on good news. I think it's good leadership on his part. The organizing principle of 21st Century Plowshare is that good begets good, that the biggest problem with environmental activism is that the news has been so dismally bad for so awfully long that our minds and souls got stunted. The future sounded so hopeless that it became impossible to see that the environment is worth making less poisonous and disgusting right now, for selfish reasons, and that the moral and economic imperatives of fixing the climate are both more urgent and more satisfying than previously marketed.

All in all, it's an amazing time to be alive. Not only is there a company that has actually committed to deploying electric car infrastructure in Israel, Denmark, Australia, Canada and Hawaii...

...and not only will this infrastructure lower the cost of driving to the point that it is cheaper to use an electric car than an internal combustion engine...

...but we seem to be at a moment in history when it is actually possible to implement this technology across the entire United States.

In the last 100 days, CO2 has become a pollutant. Green jobs are no longer an idea, they are becoming policy. And to top it all off, Ford and GM are on life support! It's an amazing stroke of luck that the Federal Government cares a lot about when you are going to buy your next car.

Here's why. Personal vehicles represent almost 25% of the carbon emissions in the United States. And even if global warming didn't exist, internal combustion engines emit all manner of nasty particulate matter and ozone that leads to asthma, sinus headaches, and other upper-respiratory problems. A world without internal combustion engines is a healthier world--it's that simple. And since the economy seems to have the American car industry by the balls, we have an amazing opportunity to help the Obama administration truly affect large-scale change.

I pledged to myself some time ago that my 91 Nissan Pickup would be my last internal combustion engine. And right now, I think that if every single person in America who wants an electric car effectively communicates that they are holding on to their dollars until they get one, then there is no political or economic reason not to create the kind of electric infrastructure that Shai Agassi and Better Place proposes.

Do you want electric cars, which emit nothing and are as carbon-neutral as we can make the grid? Do you want them to cost less per mile than gas-powered combustion engines and travel effectively over long distances? We have the technology, political will and economic reality to actually make this happen. All that's missing is a clear message from me and you.

The first thing you can do is sign Better Place's petition. You can also do more. And it will be fun. Over the coming weeks, 21st Century Plowshare will be rolling out a comprehensive campaign in which your personal pledge not to buy a car until you can buy a low-cost electric car will be broadcast to the people who need to know: everyone from the major auto companies to your congresspeople to the President himself, because there is simply no reason not to.

Finding Yes

So I gave a talk Thursday at MICA that was all about my own transition from making sculpture about environmental ideas to doing environmental activism. The questions were good ones. And the best questions revolved around the nature of the protest.

For the record: I cannot overstate how important I think it is that environmentalists stop using protest as a strategy. I believe this for two reasons. First, it's a strategy for getting what you want that frames your need or desire in terms of taking something away from someone else. Second, the way protest reads in our culture has changed tremendously. We have neutered protest by commodifying dissent. It's only useful as a way to express onself. Think Not In My Name!, the most honest and lamest rallying cry against a war that I can think of:

You have the power here and I don't, and I won't pretend I do. But dammit, I do have the power to stand up and wash my hands of the evil my government is perpetrating! This war will not happen in my name!

Protest is not always a bad strategy. We used to live in a culture in which dissent was incredibly meaningful, and there are conflicts that have clear, correct winners and losers. Ghandi was right to take India away the British. It was right to take away the political will to be in Vietnam. Racism used to be a problem that required protest (and Nate Silver has a great, short talk about why this is no longer the case). But in each example, there was a winner and a loser.

Ghandi: 1. British Empire: 0.

There can be no losers in the Environmental Revolution. There must be total inclusivity, and this is not for namby-pamby politically correct reasons, but for simple, practical ones. We must all become environmentalists because we are all actively using this environment. We shouldn't create Environmental Enemies because we can't put our Environmental Enemies someplace else. And we must all become environmentalists because each individual person is so totally powerless. We literally need every single hand on deck. We literally cannot afford to alienate anyone, and protest works because it alienates the enemy.

The most pernicious aspect of protest is that it looks like it works. I showed this slide of the kids protesting Victoria's Secret catalogs. To me, this slide represents every single thing that's wrong with environmentalism. This image to me looks downright Victorian, and these kids look like prudish scolds who have no compelling story. I see this as a total marketing disaster. The message is off the tracks. The only thing anyone who doesn't already agree with you is going to see here is:

1. Environmentalists don't understand that sex is good, and that's eggheaded and I don't get it.

2. And I don't like getting scolded about forests when all I am trying to do is buy some sexy underpants.

I got a great question about this slide. A student countered that the protest was very effective. That it got Victoria's Secret to change the way they deal with their catalogs. And my answer to that is great. But at what cost? Victoria's Secret is one company that was targeted and bullied into changing one practice. But what about every single customer who saw this protest? What about every single anti-environmentalism website that has downloaded this very photograph and used it to (rightly) mock environmentalism's Victorian finger-wagging? Wouldn't it be much more powerful to attack this Victoria's Secret Catalog problem in a way that was self-reinforcing, in which lots of companies decided to get on board because they were worked with instead of threatened? I mean, is the goal to be right, or is the goal to convince companies to use less paper and convince individuals to make better day-to-day choices?

If the goal is to convince as many people as possible, then it's important to privilege Convincing People over every other strategy. These protesters are visible not just to Victoria's Secret, but to everybody. And they are focusing on one message at the expense of a hundred others. They are winning a battle, and losing a war.

There are rhetorical strategies that are powerfully persuasive, and have nothing to do with dissent. There are terms of engagement that are strictly win-win. It is our practical imperative to find and deploy those strategies. The only responsible thing to do is delight and engage people. To stop relying on individual action and band together. To strip away the guilt, shame and finger-wagging that has so far done nothing but stunt our growth as a global species of environmentalists. Let's say Yes instead of No!

More Responsible Graffiti

Ted Dewan at euroGel 2006 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

Electric Cars: Foreshadowing The Next 21st Century Plowshare Action!

Passenger vehicles represent about 25% of CO2 emissions, and even if they didn't, they make all kinds of other pollution that gives people asthma, sinus headaches and other upper respiratory problems.

I own a 91 Nissan Pickup, and every single time I get in it, I say to myself that it's the last internal combustion engine I am going to buy. It's time to start saying it out loud, in number. Stay tuned for details. Forward this TED talk to everyone you know. Visit Shai Agassi's website. Think about your own car and your own needs.

Do The Green Thing

Anyone visited Do The Green Thing? Anyone a member? Thoughts?

Mad Max, Little Sprouts, Earth Day and More Meadow Action

So my mail lady told me that ever since she heard about the Meadow on News 12 Brooklyn, she's been watching all the tree pits for signs of life, and this warmed my heart. She says she's seeing tiny sprouts everywhere, and if anyone is an East Bed Stuy authority, this woman who walks it five days a week is.

The media hubub surrounding Bed Stuy Meadow continues, with a feature story that's scheduled to run in the NY Daily News tomorrow, for Earth Day.

This time the weirdest question, the one that might not make it into the story because I forgot momentarily I was talking to a reporter, was what kind of advice I could give people on Earth Day about the environment.

I think (hope?) I said that if I had any advice to give on Earth Day, it would be to allow Earth Day to be a huge, serious celebration for you. A celebration that's so big that it allows you to rise above your fear. And then it all fell apart because I invoked Mad Max... as in:

I don't want the children I know to live in a Mad Max kind of world

and went on and on about why the situation is so genuinely scary, and I don't think I was wrong to do this... but I think the reporter kind of tuned out at Mad Max and the larger point might have been lost.

But I still think it's important to say. Joe Romm posted a distressing rant against Earth Day this week, and I totally disagree. I think that the most important thing anyone can do, since this is the way humans work, is to actually take Earth Day seriously, and celebrate it thoroughly, even though it really does seem like a hypocritical one-day feelgood bash at this point.

I think it's important because it is in celebration that humans generally find the strength to become larger than themselves, and do grand things. Dumping Earth Day is taking away the only easy gateway environmentalism has.

Meadowmentum

Whether flowers grow remains to be seen, but the event seems to be taking off as a metaphorical activity, a positive replacement for the depressing and martyrous Earth Hour, at least in Brooklyn. If you live in Greenpoint, Bushwick or the Gowanus and want to sow seed next weekend, shoot me an email. It looks like there are organizers for these neighborhoods, but we are going to have to act quickly. The April rain is really important if the goal is to get actual flowers to grow.

Moving forward, I am going to be seeing how well this works, practically and organizationally, and seeing how and whether it's possible to shape this into an actual Meadow Movement for next year. In order to do that, I need as much information from as many places in the world as possible: what are your native flowers? What are your invasive species? What are your shared green spaces like? Would something like this work? If not, what would you do instead? Maybe it's not about wildflowers in most places. Maybe it's about an orgy of tree planting. I don't have enough information. I need your help!

Please hit the comment button to post your thoughts, and spread this post around to your friends. Let's see if we can generate a really wide-ranging discussion about all the ramifications and benefits and problems of doing a local event at a really large scale.

New Idea Brewing

Would you be more likely to do one of those niggly little Steps To Change The Planet, like turning off your lights, if you could see a global map of other people who were making similar choices?

A google map of all the people who chose not to drive on Tuesday in the whole world?

A pie chart that shows how many people remembered to unplug their phone chargers on different days of the week?

I don't know... just throwing it out there.

Turning It Down A Notch, So As To Turn It Up A Notch

Or... "Moving Away From This Kind of Imagery Without Avoiding The Truth Of It Seems Like The Single Most Important Thing We Can Do'

Joe Romm is sounding the alarm, again, this time in conjunction with the LA Times, and it's about Australia, which is, increasingly, uninhabitable.

I grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and moved not just because Tucson is boring and I hate being hot, but because there's no permanent source of water anymore, and I couldn't see myself getting comfortable when I couldn't count on my next shower. So I get it. I understand from personal experience that the deserts of the world are in big trouble, because they are really fragile ecosystems. And I want to slap Joe Romm's hysterical-sounding face anyway.

Get a fucking grip, Joe! Stop scaring people! I am not saying this because I don't believe you but because I do! You are not helping!

When I read Joe Romm these days I want to ask him if he's ever been in a real emergency before. Real emergencies require calm, collected, strong and optimistic action. Romm has the facts, but he's not providing the leadership required to get anyone on board. I can't imagine anyone but an adrenaline junky or a misanthrope reading this article. Not the narrow demographic you want to reach if you really want to do something about the problem.

Here's my question for everyone engaged in the environmental movement: Is a detailed list of all the apocalyptic things that are going to happen a good way to get anyone on board any cause?

For the good of the planet, I call on Joe Romm to hire a brilliant and honest PR person, who will take every single post he writes and turn it into a few different posts for a few different audiences. This message needs to be shaped into a positive story about stewardship. A story about Australia turning into a dustbowl-slash-hellhole is so important that it needs to be sitting on a strong armature of actions that can be done about it. These actions must be serious, achievable and positive--no sitting in the dark for an hour. No getting rid of your refrigerator. No spending tons of money.

If we really want to solve the climate change problem, then there should be no story about climate change that doesn't make that journey from planetary to individual scale--that links your call to your senators, your composting and your choice to ride a bike instead of drive to a volume of people who are similarly making that decision, and that links that volume of people to fixing the problem. Visually. With a simple graph.

Nobody is going to listen unless they can do something.