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Citizen Renaissance
Jules Peck and Robert Phillips, citizenrenaissanceblog
Introduction
Seismic Shifts, Consumerism & Citizenship
Our world is at a crossroads. The global ecosystem is being wrecked by the depredation of increasingly needless consumption and economic growth. World population is growing in volume and inequality, just as food becomes scarcer and more expensive due to a host of man-made ecological disasters. Addicted as we are to fossil fuels, we have now to confront the reality of peak oil. We have soiled and despoiled enough. Society needs to change fast or condemn those who come after us to a dying planet.

How do such catalysts change Consumerism, economics and the relationship between Citizens, brands, companies and politics? What are the wider implications for the way that they communicate with each other? And what does this mean for Communications as a discipline? We live now in a post-Inconvenient Truth world, and we increasingly accept that the traditional Corporate-Consumer model of Capitalism will no longer work within our needs and the means of our planet.

Climate Change, the Wellbeing Imperative and the emergence of a Digital Democracy have collided to generate a profound socio-cultural shift
We contend that three seismic shifts – The Perfect Storm surrounding Climate Change; the inevitable rise of lower-consumption economics and the Wellbeing Imperative; and the emergence of a truly global Digital Democracy – have now collided to generate a profound socio-cultural shift.

The reverberations from this shift are only just now beginning to be felt. We are sensing a return to Citizen, rather than Consumer, values – proof positive that it is Citizenship, not Consumerism, that is the more enduring ethos. In short, we are sensing a Citizen Renaissance.

This new generation of Citizens will demand that we all live within our means if we are to save our planet and ourselves. They will be not only accepting of the principles of lower consumption economics, they will most likely be passionate advocates. Fuelled by the power, accessibility and immediacy of the web, they will insist on new levels of transparency and authenticity and will hold Governments, Corporations and Brands (and each other) to account. This has profound implications for us all. The Socratic Method of Enquiry – borne in the ancient City States – reaches new heights in today’s world. The questions come more rapidly. The conversation is bigger, more compelling – and more urgent...
(26 Jan 2010)
The authors have placed the e-book as a draft on the internet and invite "crowdsourced" contributions on their blog. -KS

TN green crusader puts ecovillage message to work worldwide
Anne Paine, tennesean
As delegates to last month's climate change summit in Copenhagen debated a possible carbon reduction treaty, one Tennessean at the assemblage was talking about practical ways communities can go ahead and make a difference.

And no, it wasn't Al Gore.

Albert Bates, who has lived on The Farm in Summertown since 1972, has emerged as an internationally recognized leader in the ecovillage and sustainable design movement.

A lawyer by training who has argued civil rights and environmental cases before the U.S. Supreme Court, Bates offers groups around the world practical solutions for green living. His work, along with several books on the subject, has drawn the attention not just of those wanting to learn from him, but also of groups like the United Nations itself.

"He is a true visionary who sees patterns and where we need to head in the future, and at the same time he's a manifester, taking the visions and bringing them into on-the-ground reality," said Liora Adler, president of Gaia University, which offers bachelor's and master's degrees in fields promoting eco-constructive and socially just development and living.

Bates said he was glum at first from the weak response at the U.N.'s Copenhagen summit but soon was ready to push on.

"The Farm is like a base camp for me," Bates said in a recent interview. "I foray, battle the beast for a while, then go back and recharge."

The Tennessean interviewed Bates through an online video chat from Casa Sanarte, an urban ecology and health center in Cancun, Mexico, where he had gone to set up an infrastructure for thousands of large nongovernmental organizations, activists and protesters who will arrive for the 2010 U.N. climate change summit. The event, set for Nov. 29-Dec. 10, was shifted there three weeks ago from Mexico City...
(31 Jan 2010)
Albert Bates is a contributor to Energy Bulletin. -BA

The Case for 'Gray Power'
Lisa Margonelli, The Nation
The Midwest and South have become the Colossus of Carbon: coal-dependent, with resistance to climate change legislation from the left and the right. Progressives from the region are caught in a dilemma: despite wanting to fight global warming and usher in a green economy, they know that these initiatives act against their region's economic interests. Placing a price on carbon in a state like Ohio, which gets 86 percent of its electricity from coal, hurts its citizens more than those of, say, California, which gets only 1 percent of its electricity from coal.

Then too, the region wonders how "green," as it's currently defined, will mix with its notorious rust. Every dollar of GDP created in Ohio requires the emission of 37 percent more greenhouse gases than the US average, which will make it hard to compete in a green system. Wind and solar, which make sense in the West and on the coasts, are a tough sell in the Midwest, with its relatively placid, gray skies. Even green jobs, which have made a splash elsewhere, cannot keep up with the state's hemorrhaging employment rates.

... The Midwest and the South do have an abundant supply of untapped, low-cost, low-carbon power--it just hasn't been defined as green yet. The solution to some of the woes of nineteen of these states can be found right in their high-carbon infrastructures: old manufacturing plants, municipalities and agricultural produce waste energy that can be profitably "recycled" onto the grid to create power as clean as that from solar and wind but far cheaper. In fact, energy now lost as steam and gases by the region's manufacturing plants, as well as municipal and agricultural waste, could create as much energy as sixty-nine nuclear power plants, according to figures commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency. This power could strengthen the region's electrical grid and preserve jobs by making local manufacturing plants more economically stable, while making the region a leader in greener technology. But in order to accomplish this, and steer that potential through the maze of financial and regulatory barriers that currently encourage waste, we'll need to create a federal regional stimulus program, a Clean Power Authority somewhat analogous to the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Smokestacks are the Pyramids of the Rust Belt, both product and symbol of how we built our modern economy on cheap energy.

Lisa Margonelli, who directs the New America Foundation's energy initiative, is the author of Oil on the Brain: Petroleum's Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank (Broadway).

(28 January 2010)
Lisa Margonelli spoke at ASPO-USA's 2008 and 2009 conferences. -BA