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MANNA
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We'd like to welcome you to this edition of the Alliance for Sustainability's tree-free e-newsletter Manna. Like so many, we are struggling with the events around us and overseas generated both before and in the wake of "911." Sometimes it makes us feel small and nearly powerless. Whether in Afghanistan, West Virginia, or our own local post office, regardless of the toxic chemicals and destructive actions used, a war is being waged. But just as the Chinese symbol for danger also represents opportunity,
there has never been a better time for us to stand up and call for a shift
to a sustainable world. It's one step we can all agree upon that will save
our economy, environment and communities. This issue features some of the
leading visions of that world, such as Wendell Berry and Robert F. Kennedy,
Jr. Please let us know what you think. The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we used when we created them. -- Albert EinsteinIn this issue of MANNA... * Overwhelmed by Junk Mail? Join Us in Our New Junk Mail Tree Project * Take Action! -- Comment Now on DEA's Ban of Hemp Products; Take Part in Buy Nothing Day; HR Bill 3005 - GMO Labeling Under Attack * Featured Article -- Thoughts in the Presence of Fear by Legendary Poet & Author Wendell Berry * Personal Sustainability -- A New Line on Terrorism by Jonathan Rowe with editorial response by Terry Gips * Sustainable Sweden (Third article in a series) -- The Greenzone – A Model for the World * Hot Conferences -- Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on Polluters, Free Markets, Democracy, Equity, Spirituality, Communities and Sustainability * Planetary Sustainability -- Gradual Change Can Push Ecosystems into Collapse * Resource of the Month -- Shaping Globalization: Civil Society, Cultural Power and Threefolding by Nicanor Perlas, Alliance Co-Founder * Selected Upcoming Events We'd Like Your Support
Let us know if you would like to make a donation by contacting Krista Leraas at iasa@mtn.org or 612-331-1099. Q: What do bulk mail and an elephant have in common? Each day Americans are bombarded with overflowing mailboxes stocked with direct advertising. Most often these glossy pages find their way to the nearest trash bin, and ultimately the nearest landfill, without even being read or used. The resources consumed in this act of advertising are astounding. Each year 90 million trees are leveled to provide the paper for the mostly unwanted mailings. Approximately 340,000 garbage trucks, and all of the fossil fuels required to power them, are needed to haul away mailings that don’t quite make it to the recycling bins. This is not inevitable. Reducing junk mail can be as simple as sending a postcard or letter to the direct advertiser or source. Many people are not aware of where their junk mail comes from or how the advertiser got their name and address. Educating people on the source of their junk mail is the first step to eliminating this unwanted waste and creating a sustainable society. PARTICIPATE IN THE JUNK MAIL TREE PROJECT We'd like to invite you and any individuals, schools, service clubs, businesses, nonprofits, government agencies and religious institutions in the Twin Cities Metro area to participate in the Project. We hope to expand it to other communities throughout the US. If you're interested, please contact Project Coordinator Krista Leraas at iasa@mtn.org or 612-331-1099. Help us with collecting junk mail, constructing "junk mail trees," providing volunteers for displays at the Mall of America and other venues, and arranging for educational presentations at your organization. Visitors to the display will learn about waste reduction and how to get off junk mail lists. After the public display, the trees will be recycled by All-Paper Recycling into "junk mail wood" tables and construction materials for Habitat for Humanity houses. OTHER STEPS YOU CAN TAKE TO STEM THE JUNK MAIL TIDE
Americans spends 8 months of life opening junk mail. Ninety million trees are leveled each year to provide the paper for mostly unwanted mailings and 340,000 garbage trucks are needed to haul away all the junk mail that doesn't quite make it to the recycling bin. -- Center for a New American Dream Comment Now on the DEA's Ban of Hemp ProductsThe Drug Enforcement Administration has published the Rules and Proposed Rules for "hemp" in the October 9 U.S. Federal Register. While this may only immediately affect the USA, we have seen that the rest of the world often follows. The ruling will stop us all from enjoying the nutrition of hemp food and oil products, including cosmetics. In summary, it bans the sale and use of all food and beauty products containing hemp. The timing, amidst focus on other more tragic matters is another well-planned Government attack on the rights and freedom that we are supposedly fighting for. Your support is needed more than ever - buy hemp products, talk about them, write to the DEA, write to your minister (see www.votehemp.com for US representatives and www.hempfoods.com.au for Australia representatives, Europeans should know their MP's details - just look in the phone book). Link to www.votehemp.com/action.html to send a pre-written letter to Congress. Write to the DEA before December 10. To view the documents of the ruling in HTML form or to download the .pdf version go to www.nara.gov/fedreg.Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. -- Albert EinsteinBuy Nothing Day! Let's get real. Yes, it's a delicate moment. It's time to grieve, it's
time to reflect. But it's certainly NOT time to stifle discussion and
reverse progress on what, though it has been bumped from the news agenda,
remains the world's biggest long-term problem: the unsustainable consumer
binge of Western nations. In fact, now may be the time to take the
sustainable consumption debate to a new plane. Remember: On November 23, don't let anyone call your efforts trivial or treasonous or unpatriotic. At a time like this, getting public attention back on the big picture may be the most charitable thing any of us can do. Those who are willing to sacrifice essential liberties for a little order, will lose both and deserve neither. -- Benjamin FranklinDon't Let GMO Labeling Become Illegal Pro-GMO legislators have sneakily put in language in HR 3005 that would make GMO labeling illegal as well as eliminating the precautionary principle for GMO regulation. (The Democratic "alternative" to this bill, though better in some aspects, has the exact same language regarding GMOs.) If either bill passes, then the US would be able to force European countries to accept unlabeled US GMO products! A vote in the Congress is likely in the next two weeks! Call Congress today. Use the AFL-CIO toll-free number to call Congress (800-393-1082) and ask your representative to oppose HR 3005. Tell them that you do not support the section in HR 3005 and the Democratic alternative bill that would make a GMO label a trade barrier. Even people on our side need to hear that we don't want that provision in the two bills! You can also send a message to Congress NOW by visiting http://action.citizen.org/pc/issues/alert/?alertid=57813&type=CO& enter your zipcode in the Take Action Now field.To read HR Bill 3005 in full, visit the Library of Congress website at http://thomas.loc.gov and search by bill number, "HR 3005."The complexity of our present trouble suggests as never before that we need to change our present concept of education. Education is not properly an industry, and its proper use is not to serve industries, neither by job training nor by industry-subsidized research. Its proper use is to enable citizens to live lives that are economically, politically, socially, and culturally responsible. -- Wendell Berry, "Thoughts in the Presence of Fear" Thoughts in the Presence of Fearby Wendell Berry, Poet, Author and Organic Farmer September 24, 2001 I. The time will soon come when we will not be able to remember the horrors of September 11 without remembering also the unquestioning technological and economic optimism that ended on that day. II. This optimism rested on the proposition that we were living in a "new world order" and a "new economy" that would "grow" on and on, bringing a prosperity of which every new increment would be "unprecedented". III. The dominant politicians, corporate officers, and investors who believed this proposition did not acknowledge that the prosperity was limited to a tiny percent of the world's people, and to an ever smaller number of people even in the United States; that it was founded upon the oppressive labor of poor people all over the world; and that its ecological costs increasingly threatened all life, including the lives of the supposedly prosperous. IV. The "developed" nations had given to the "free market" the status of a god, and were sacrificing to it their farmers, farmlands, and communities, their forests, wetlands, and prairies, their ecosystems and watersheds. They had accepted universal pollution and global warming as normal costs of doing business. V. There was, as a consequence, a growing worldwide effort on behalf of economic decentralization, economic justice, and ecological responsibility. We must recognize that the events of September 11 make this effort more necessary than ever. We citizens of the industrial countries must continue the labor of self-criticism and self-correction. We must recognize our mistakes. VI. The paramount doctrine of the economic and technological euphoria of recent decades has been that everything depends on innovation. It was understood as desirable, and even necessary, that we should go on and on from one technological innovation to the next, which would cause the economy to "grow" and make everything better and better. This of course implied at every point a hatred of the past, of all innovations, whatever their value might have been, were discounted as of no value at all. VII. We did not anticipate anything like what has now happened. We did not foresee that all our sequence of innovations might be at once overridden by a greater one: the invention of a new kind of war that would turn our previous innovations against us, discovering and exploiting the debits and the dangers that we had ignored. We never considered the possibility that we might be trapped in the webwork of communication and transport that was supposed to make us free. This article originally appeared on OrionOnline.org, the website of Orion and Orion Afield magazines. To read this article in its entirety, visit their web site at http://oriononline.org/pages/oo/sidebars/America/Berry.html. When human beings lose their connection to nature, to heaven and earth, then they do not know how to nurture their environment. Healing our society goes hand in hand with healing our personal, elemental connection with the phenomenal world. -- Chõgyam Trungpa, Rinpoche A New Line on TerrorismBy Jonathan Rowe My friend John Francis maintains that we must be the change we want to see. When he witnessed an oil spill in San Francisco Bay in the early 1970s, he swore off motorized transit for almost 20 years. When he saw people spouting opinions but not listening, he stopped talking, too, so that he could learn to listen better. John walked and listened all the way across the United States, and down most of South America as well. He observed how changes in himself rippled out into his surroundings. Since he wasn't talking, family and friends had to communicate by letter - a small step, as it were, for literacy. Since he walked everywhere, others had to adjust their pace to his. Life slowed down where John went. So, when we first spoke about recent events, it was not surprising that John didn't dwell on feckless jingoism and the rest. Instead, the talk turned to clotheslines. Yes, clotheslines. This nation's entanglements in Central Asia and the Middle East arise largely from its appetite for oil. This appetite leads to trouble continuously. Already there are efforts in Congress to use the terrorist attacks as an excuse to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling, supposedly to make us "energy independent." Yet, if terrorists could find a way to blast into the Pentagon, how hard will it be for them to hit a pipeline meandering through hundreds of miles of Alaskan tundra? Besides, the Alaskan oil wouldn't start flowing for up to 10 years; and even then, it would provide gas for only about 2 percent of the nation's cars and trucks. When it ran out we'd be back to the Mideast, more dependent than ever. That brings us back to homely clotheslines. Some 5 to 10 percent of residential energy use in the US goes to washing and drying clothes. Use cold water to wash, and you cut energy use on the washing side by 85 percent. Hang the clothes to dry and that's 100 percent on the drying side. Together it's the British-thermal-unit equivalent of at least a third of the oil in the Arctic refuge. In other words, genuine energy independence. This article orginally appeared in the Christian Science Monitor on October 3, 2001 and is reprinted with permission. To read this article in its entirety, go to our web site at www.mtn.org/iasa/rowe.html. Terry Gips Responds to Jonathon Rowe's New Line on
Terrorism Dear Editor, Thanks so much for the outstanding Oct 3 Op-ed by Jonathan Rowe about John Francis and his creative way of hanging terrorists out to dry. I'd like to add a few more thoughts. First, I worked in the Carter White House during the 1979 oil crisis as a part of the White House Emergency Energy Task Force and wrote about the inspiring municipal and corporate responses to conserve energy. What most Americans don't know is that if we had continued those energy and dollar saving efforts (without the benefit of far more advanced and conserving technology widely used today), the United States would be importing NO foreign oil whatsoever. How's that for national security and saving money? Second, when it comes to washing clothes, how about using a front loading washer? They use half as much energy, half as much water, clean your clothes better and cause less wear and tear on your clothes. No wonder that Europeans have never seen a top loading washer. Third, replace every incandescent bulb in your home with compact fluorescent bulbs available from any home improvement center. While these compact fluorescent bulbs cost $8-12 each, they will save approximately $80 in energy costs over their life, essentially paying you back $70 a bulb. Not only is the light equivalent, but because the compact fluorescents last four to eight times longer, you practically never have to change a lightbulb. Such a deal. Fourth, in many states we have the opportunity to "vote" for energy security by electing to purchase green renewable energy from their utility. As more of us vote this way, it creates further incentives and economies of scale that will make our energy costs even lower. Finally, one practical tool that has saved businesses, government agencies, nonprofits, hospitals and academic and religious institutions huge amounts of energy and money is a simple yet profound sustainability education tool called the Natural Step framework (see www.mtn.org/iasa and www.naturalstep.org). This framework makes it quite clear how we can benefit our bottomline and the world at the same time. Economy and ecology don't have to conflict. Perhaps one of the best ways to honor those who perished September 11 is for us to take the steps to create a new, sustainable world. It's in our hands now. Terry Gips, President Alliance for Sustainability If every household in the U.S. replaced just one bottle of 100 oz Ultra petroleum based liquid laundry degerent with 100 oz of vegetable based product, we could save 728,000 barrels of oil -- enough to heat 30,000 homes in New England for a year! The Greenzone – A Model for the WorldBy Terry Gips This is the third article in our on-going series on what we can learn from Sweden on taking practical steps to sustainability based on our August 4-19 Sustainable Sweden Tour with the Sustainable Sweden Association and Esam (The Human Ecological Corporation). Fast food, car dealers and gas stations are America’s global symbols of environmentally destructive corporate practices. But a unique partnership has brought together a local McDonalds, Ford auto dealer and Statoil gas station (part of a large Norwegian oil company) to create the "Greenzone," a ecologically sound business area in Sweden’s northern University city of Umea, located near the Baltic. The Greenzone opened in April 2000 following an extensive, holistic educational, planning and design effort that brought together scores of businesses, government agencies and nonprofits beginning in 1997. All the contractors and everyone involved went through a one-day Natural Step seminar and an additional full day of education on a sustainable way of doing business. Each company agrees that all new employees will receive similar training. "The aim was to show how to do things in a sustainable way and also to make more money than doing things conventionally," said Ola Borgernas, a manager of the Ford auto dealership. "We have around 50,000 facilities around the world, so if can learn something from this, it will be huge impact." The first thing one notices when driving into the Greenzone is that the roofs are green, with grass growing on the roofs of the McDonalds, Ford and Statoil gas station. Not only are they more attractive, but Ford has found that the green roofs eliminate the need for air conditioning, thus reducing cooling energy needs by 100% compared to a typical dealership. In addition to the insulation benefits for both heating and cooling, the inside air temperature is dropped by the evaporation of rainwater. Instead of a typically paved parking area, there is a permeable surface with pavers inserted in grass. This allows rainwater to penetrate into the earth where it is collected in cisterns, from which it is biologically filtered in a series of attractive streams and ponds and then released as clean water. This is in contrast to typical parking lots from which rainwater is contaminated by oil, car exhaust and atmospheric pollutants which then run-off directly into our waterways. To read the entire article go to www.mtn.org/iasa/greenzone.html We’d Like Stories of Your Steps to Sustainability The answer to pollution, revolution and economic prostitution rises in the east every morning. -- Anonymous Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on Polluters, Free Markets, Democracy, Equity, Spirituality, Communities and Sustainability By Terry Gips The West Virginia Environmental Institute, which is composed of business, government and environmental groups, held its annual West Virginia Conference on the Environment at the University of Charleston in Charleston, WV October 18, 2001. Here follows a highly edited version of my notes from the powerful keynote given by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Chief Prosecutor for the Hudson Riverkeeper and Senior Attorney for the Natural Resources. He is a licensed falconer, co-author of The Riverkeepers, and son of slain US Attorney General Bobby Kennedy. There is often a tension between economy and community. The environment is about protecting our home and how we live. It’s about community and advocacy, not just protecting birds and fish. Economic prosperity versus environmental protection is a false choice. We treat the planet as if it’s in liquidation. Environmental injury is deficit spending and loading onto the backs of future generations. I’m the biggest advocate there is of the free market. However, we don’t have a free market. Polluters evade the free market by making themselves rich at the expense of us. They destroy the value of the asset and rob value from communities. In the long-term, nothing but a democracy can provide protection for the environment and overcome the left and right wing nightmares around the world. Environmental injury has matured into economic catastrophe. As a result of General Electric’s dumping of toxic PCBs in the Hudson,
thousands of fishermen went out of business, barge traffic was restricted
and women have elevated levels of PCBs. The communities accepted all of
this based on the promise of a few years of pollution-based
prosperity. To read this article in its entirety, please visit our web site at www.mtn.org/iasa/kennedy.html. My Brilliant ImageOne day the sun admitted, I am just a shadow. I wish I could show you the Infinite Incandescence (Tej) that has cast my brilliant image! I wish I could show you, When you are lonely or in darkness, The Astonishing Light of your own Being! -- Hafiz, 14th Century Persian Poet Center for Spirituality & Sustainability The Alliance continues gathering materials and contacts to create a new Center for Sustainability and Spirituality that will provide programs, resources and a web site addressing environmental concerns from a spiritual perspective. Krista Leraas has started a section on the Alliance’s web site, www.mtn.org/iasa/spirit.html. We’d love to have you involved in any way, from helping with programs and sharing articles to participating on the Steering Committee or providing financial support. Let us know at iasa@mtn.org. If we had two hearts, we could use one for hating and one for loving. Now that we only have one heart, we have to decide if we want to use it for loving or for hating. -- Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach from Holy Brother: Inspiring Stories and Enchanted Tales about Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach Gradual Change Can Push Ecosystems into CollapseEnvironmental News Network (www.enn.com) October 12, 2001 After decades of continuous change imposed by human activity, many of the world's natural ecosystems appear susceptible to sudden catastrophic change, an international consortium of scientists reported. Coral reefs and tropical forests are vulnerable, as are northern lakes and forests, the team has found. Marten Scheffer, an ecologist at the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands, said, "Models have predicted this, but only in recent years has enough evidence accumulated to tell us that resilience of many important ecosystems has become undermined to the point that even the slightest disturbance can make them collapse." Scheffer is the lead author of the study published Oct. 11 in the scientific journal Nature. He is one of five authors of the paper whose contributors include experts on an array of different ecosystem types. A gradual awareness is building in the scientific community that stressed ecosystems, given the right nudge, are capable of slipping rapidly from a seemingly steady state to something entirely different, said coauthor Stephen Carpenter, a limnologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and immediate past president of the Ecological Society of America. To read this article in its entirety, go to our web site: www.mtn.org/iasa/collapse.html When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race. -- H.G. WellsResource of the Month--New Book by Alliance
Co-Founder By Nicanor Perlas, President of the Center for Alternative Development Initiatives in the Philippines Civil society has become a major power in the world. This has been domonstrated in the stunning defeat of the WTO agenda in Seattle and the controversial and secretive Multilateral Agreement on Investments (MAI) of the OECD. Civil Society joins the State and the Market as the key institutions that are now shaping globalization and sustainable development. Globally, tens of millions of citizens and over a trillion dollars of resources are now involved in advancing the agenda of civil society. Some civil socity institutions are larger than many U.N. institutions. Civil society, however, cannot fully mobilize its resources and power because it has no clear understanding of its identity, its meaning, and its context in larger society. This book shows that global civil society is a cultural institution wielding cultural power. It shows how, through the use of cultural power, civil society can advance its agenda in the political and economic realms of society without losing its identity as a cultural institution. On the contrary, it actually makes its rejection of or engagement with the state and market more effective and profound. From this new understanding, the book draws out the startegic implications for civil society locally and globally. It explains that the key task of civil society is to inaugurate threefolding substance and processes to ensure that globalization benefits the poor, societies and nature. Threefolding refers to the critical engagement where approprate between the key instutitions of the three autonomous spheres of society -- civil society in the realm of culture, the state (government) in the realm of polity, and the market (business) in the realm of the economy. Contact the Alliance is you'd like to order this new book: iasa@mtn.org Out of clutter…find simplicity. From discord…find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. -- Albert EinsteinSelected Upcoming Events (See our Online Calendar, www.mtn.org/iasa/events.htm) October 29-31 Renewable Energy from Organics Recycling, Des Moines, IA October 29 and November 6 Taking the Natural Step to a Safe, Healthy Home, Workplace and Community, TNS Seminar led by Terry Gips, Lakewinds Natural Foods Co-op, Minnetonka, MN October 30 Environmental Imperative: Nature Ethics and Creative Expression, Seminar lecture by Terry Gips, Hamline Univ, St Paul, MN Nov 6 Election Day -- Please VOTE to make a difference November 7-9 Business for Social Responsibility's Ninth Annual Conference: Learning for the Future, Seattle, WA November 14 Steps to Health and Personal Sustainability Workshop: Living the Life You've Always Wanted led by Terry Gips, Lakewinds Natural Foods Co-op, Minnetonka, MN Nov 18 The Natural Step to Healthy, Sustainable Food Systems, homilies by Terry Gips, 9 and 11am, St. Joan of Arc Church, Minneapolis, MN Nov 18 Earthsave Turkey-free Thanksgiving Potluck, Minneapolis, MN November 19 New York Friends of the Natural Step Network Monthly Meeting November 25-December 2, International Solar Energy Society Bi-Annual Conference, Adelaide, Australia Nov 26 and 27 Two-Part Natural Step Sustainable Business and Community Seminar, Pop Sustainability, NYC (6:30-10 pm) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This issue edited by: Krista Leraas and Terry Gips MANNA is the newsletter of the Alliance for Sustainability and is published on a monthly basis with occasional additional editions. The Alliance is a tax-exempt [501(c)(3)] nonprofit organization dedicated to "supporting ecologically sound, economically viable, socially just and humane projects on a personal, organizational and planetary level."If you or others are interested in becoming members (free or contributing) and receiving MANNA, please see www.mtn.org/iasa/join.htm or contact Krista Leraas at iasa@mtn.org or 612-331-1099.Submissions, comments and questions are always welcomed. Please direct them to the Alliance for Sustainability, 1521 University Ave SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414 or iasa@mtn.org. |