HumanKindMedia

Where I find the economics lesson I've always needed

I'm embarrassed to say I have still been struggling to understand this whole economic crisis in its entirety (and I'm an MBA). I couldn't read enough to make sense of the bailout of large financial institutions when people were losing their homes, so I thought all would be explained when I attended a lecture by Newt Gingrich and Robert Reisch, each touted by their parties as economic experts. Though the lecture was fascinating and they were both profoundly thoughtful and intelligent, I came away worried that all of the solutions and thoughts they had about the crisis were still based upon what I see as a flawed assumption: continued growth of the economy...ad infinitum.

Simply put, when you look at any sustainable system diagram, the arrows go in a circle; when you look at how we talk about our economy, the arrows always want to point up and off the chart. I couldn't reconcile what I knew from my series exploring sustainability and what I recently learned about our global footprint with how the "experts" were talking about the economy.

After the lecture I came back and decided I would keep searching to try to find something that reconciles this question for me. Then I remembered that little money movie someone had sent me last week to watch that I had forgotten.

Canadian Paul Grignon captures in his simple story-telling what he says he learned in high school: "We were studying logarithmic functions such as interest and it struck me that a money system in which money accrues interest at every turn could only function with exponential growth of the money supply." His film, Money As Debt, is to this question of building a sustainable economy as the Story of Stuff is to the question of consumption of our resources. I hope this film makes it around the world twice or more. I can't believe how much I did not understand about our system of money.

Though its longer than most films, I encourage you to watch--it's worth every minute. If you don't know the history of money and banking, or can't imagine how we'll get to the place where there is more equity in who has and who has not, take a look at Money as Debt. And, share it.

How Sylvia Earle, oceanographer, saves me from election media blues

Election media in the US seems a frenzy to me, but I might be over-sensitive. Last week I noticed the headlines have me spinning. The e-mails are flying. Friends, people I've never met--women and men, we're all abuzz and (sigh) divided on what the mainstream media calls the "gender" or the "race" issues. Personally, for me, the problem is the "issue" issue. I worry that many people are listening to headlines and trivial "bytes" instead of researching the issues. Personally, I'm looking for inspiration and leadership on the issues that we global citizens face.

You may not have heard of Sylvia Earle, but I think she's doing more for our children's grandchildren than many political candidates have even considered. Recently, I heard the oceanographer, explorer, grandmother, and now National Geographic's Explorer in Residence speak about her life's work-- exploring, learning about, and teaching about the ocean. She told the story of how she grew up just before scuba diving, became one of the world first "aquanauts", and talked a little about why we should all go get in the ocean or go to the nearest ocean science (aquarium) institution as soon as we can--and take a kid with us, even if we have to borrow one, she says.

With quiet ease and strong conviction she talked about the ocean--what it does for us, what we're doing to it, and what each of us could do to halt the devastating effects man is having on the blue part of the big blue and green planet.

Until I heard Sylvia speak, I had naively failed to connect the ocean's fate with the fate of humans and the other life forms that depend on the oxygen/carbon dioxide exchange. I didn't understand the magnitude of the problems facing the "big green engine" (the video will explain this) inside the ocean. I didn't see the vastly declining fish population as a threat to my survival. I didn't understand that the acidification of the ocean affects the whole system, the very system that makes it possible for humans and other species to breathe the atmosphere. It's what makes the earth habitable, and if it's not working...Well, let's just say hearing her speak was an eye-opener for me. (Check out the video below to see what I mean.)

In spite of the fact that Sylvia has watched the decline of the ocean in her 40+ years as an oceanographer, she had much to say about what's possible. From protection and our Marine Sanctuaries to education you'll find her hand in nearly every organization and effort to save the ocean. She says we have 10 years to turn it around, and she's doing everything she can to make it happen.

Since Sylvia, there's been a quiet revolution in me. I'm not randomly purchasing or ordering fish without checking the Seafood Watch Guide . Now that I've been reminded of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and nurdles, I can no longer let a plastic bag drift across a parking lot or a bottle cap lay on the ground, because I know they'll find their way through the storm drains to the largest "landfill", the ocean. (Sylvia told a story of a recent beached whale autopsy that discovered 400+ pounds of plastic in the whale.)

Also, though I frequently feel saddened and hopeless by the biting divisiveness of the election process and lack of focus on the issues, Sylvia reminds me that history's greatest advancements for the human race rarely have come from the politicians. They come from the Sylvia Earles, Jeffrey Sachs, and Paul Farmers of the world, and the millions of regular people who have found a way to work effectively on the parts of the world they want to heal--inspiring us each to get involved, influencing politicians, creating a better world through their actions.

If you're having your own bout of hypersensitivity to the headlines and soundbytes, try this: Pick something you care about and find its "Sylvia Earle" to swim with--an impassioned, knowledgeable human who's doing their best to make a change and who inspires the best part of you to help. You can find some here at the Academy of Achievement, or here at TED, or just google your subject and look for someone to inspire you to change the part of the world you care about most.

If you're like my husband and LOVE the political circus, enjoy! It looks like it's going to be a wild ride. I recommend tuning out the bytes--go to the candidates pages and read the details on the issues, but stay out of the "us versus them" frenzy if you can. I don't think it's good for us. I long for the day we're all looking at possibilities instead of problems when we go through this process. If you'd like to take more of a global citizen stance in this election, check out One.org and see what they're up to with all the candidates for the US election for some perspective.

If you'd really like to learn more about Sylvia and her crusade to save our oceans, click on the links above, or check out her links here.

Doldrums links

All in a hot and copper sky,
The bloody Sun, at noon,
Right up above the mast did stand,
No bigger than the Moon.

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
--Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

I've been in the doldrums all week. Technically, in sailing terms, doldrums mean windlessness and drifting. That's how I've been feeling. Windless. I've had blog block and project block and I've been sleepy.

This condition could be the result of the Young Man's departure. (Now that he's left and will be on his way to college when he gets back, I've dropped the "Boy A" name.) After months of planning, he left for India for 18 days earlier this week. That was a big effort, and poof, now he's gone and there's nothing to do on that front but wait for him to come home. Sigh.

It's hot here, too. Even the dog isn't his usual peppy self. Also, I had one of those sneaky internal narratives going on about not posting enough, not doing enough, not being enough, not, NOT! ENOUGH! Heavy sigh.

Ever get one of those going in your head? Not a good loop for focusing on what's possible. No wonder there's no wind in my sails.

The best interrupt I know to any "stuck" story is to review, edit, and to get going making more news that I like (about myself and the world). If I review the evidence, there's enough worth sharing here without too much composing or creating necessary:

My Young Man's graduation trip to India came with suggested reading which I did and he did not. The very attractive photojournalism trip also includes many days staying with villagers, farmers (and goats and yaks maybe) in Ladakh, an area near Tibet which many consider to be a model for sustainability (and for trying to stay sustainable under heavy western tourist influences). A good book about this is Ancient Futures.

And yesterday, as I was looking for a link to put on the Boy's (oops) Facebook page in case he's checking his e-mail and has a sudden desire to read about where he's going (hah), I found this fabulous NYT article by one of my favorite writers, Pico Iyer. I wonder what impact this balancing act in Ladakh between a sustainable, connected people and Western globalization will have on an 18-year old California boy.

Speaking of sustainability, this spring I signed on as a part-time volunteer with the Story of Stuff project after I wrote this post about Annie and this about the Story. Let's just say I have become hyper-conscious of what I buy, where things come from, and where they're going after I'm done with them. I was delighted to read this wonderful post by Britt Bravo at HaveFunDoGood about Ari Durfel, a guy who kept his trash for 6 months--a trash meditation (a braver soul than I). If you've been thinking about your own move to zero waste (or something closer to it) his story is a must read.

I've also been putting more of my attention to giving now since June. I reentered the 29-Day Giving Challenge for a second round, hoping someday it will become the natural way of my thinking in everything I do and everywhere I go. I haven't been great about my journal on the site, but I have been pretty consistent at remembering the intention. Some of the highlights are my donation to Camfed, many gifts of non-martyr-like assistance to my sons, free-cycling clothes and household items to anyone and everyone, and I returned a client's payment for a month as a gift. She was surprised. Mostly, the giving has been small, but intentional and, because it causes me to see everyone as someone receiving a gift from me, my relationships and my days seem to be lighter and happier, even in the doldrums.

Well, now that I've put this all down, I can feel a little breeze lifting my sails. Hope you found something here to click and enjoy, and if you've hit your own summer doldrums, I hope you find a different story and your own light breeze soon.

Concerned about our global footprint? Help educate a girl

In an unusual and inspiring conversation hosted by Swissnex last week in San Francisco, Mathis Wackernagel, founder of Global Footprint Network, was not talking about increasing food production, reducing carbon emissions, or lowering consumption. He spent most of the evening talking about co-presenter Ann Cotton's work at The Campaign for Female Education (Camfed) in Africa.

Cotton and Wackernagel came together as part of Swissnex's ongoing program for "connecting the dots" between science, higher education, art and innovation for exchange and collaboration between innovators in Switzerland, the US and other countries.

In this conversation, the two described their first meeting at the Skoll World Forum (both have received Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship). After a chance seating arrangement next to Ann, Wackernagel realized a connection between the outcomes Ann was describing and the goals he was looking at for sustainability. Since then they have been looking at ways to work together to educate leaders, countries, communities, and NGO's about this correlation.

Ann Cotton and Camfed have been HumanKind Media favorites since this interview Liz did with Ann and Camfed graduate Fiona Muchembere. Fiona, you may remember, is now a human rights lawyer, and serves as director of Camfed’s alumnae network of 8,000 African women as well as being a big supporter of those girls herself (she sponsors 22).

Wackernagel is a Swiss native and PhD in community and regional planning from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, where he created the Ecological Footprint, a science-based sustainability tool that measures how much of the Earth's resources we use, how much we have and who uses what.

In 2003, he and Susan Burns co-created Global Footprint Network with a mission to work with countries and cities, companies and individuals to monitor current ecological resource balances and to plan for the future, with the ultimate goal of reducing humanity's worldwide use back down to a "one planet" footprint. Check out the link to see when we passed the "one planet" mark (meaning we exceeded the Earth's bio-capacity.) You can assess your own footprint if you haven't already, here, or for eye-opening world footprint data click here.

Global Footprint Network aims to make the Ecological Footprint as prominent a metric as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to help countries begin to plan for sustainability. By 2015, through its flagship Ten-In-Ten Campaign, they hope to have ten countries managing their ecological wealth in the same way they manage their finances. To date, the list of countries, companies, NGO's and collaborators is growing and the case stories are impressive.

Last month on their 5th anniversary, GFN released their Africa report which examines the possibilities for managing African resources to advance African goals for ending poverty and disease within a sustainable development model. In spite of the fact that individual Africans' resource consumption is extremely small - in many cases not enough to adequately provide for
themselves and their families - rising population is bringing the region close to its ecological limits, according to Global Footprint Network's report.

Using scientific standards for the footprint to measure a country's bio-capacity combined with the UN's Human Development Index as an indicator of socio-economic development, Wackernagel is an evangelist for female education as a way to ensure Africa’s growth and development within the one-planet sustainability window. He says, "For $2 billion a year, just by investing in girls, you could transform all of Africa. This is one of the best investments we could make to achieve human development goals that can persist in the face of, and even help alleviate, resource constraints."

The pair make a compelling argument for the direct impact of female education on Humanity's Ecological Footprint: Girls who receive an education and can make decisions regarding their lives have a higher likelihood of marrying their peers at an appropriate age; they have fewer and more healthy children, are more likely to positively affect the health and education of their children, and contribute to their communities. They also earn significantly higher income than their peers--15 to 20% more per year of high school education.

As an illustration of this, last year Camfed and its alumae organization, Cama, supported more than 408,000 kids in school, had amassed 2,700 partner schools, and developed 380 community health care workers. The over 8,000 alumnae of the organization are sponsoring schooling of over 25,000 African children themselves.

Among the alums are filmmakers and program managers for Camfed in their countries; there are also assemblywomen, physical therapists, doctors, nurses, human rights lawyers, and business owners. In the UN Chronicle Ann says, "For the Millennium Development Goals to become a reality rather than just a broken promise, the rights—and dreams—of rural girls and women must remain at the forefront of policy planning and strategies. The education of girls and young women—with its dividends of poverty alleviation, gender equality, HIV/AIDS reduction—is the single most effective means by which so many of the problems blocking Africa’s development can be overcome."

In March, Goldman Sachs announced their 10,000 Women initiative which includes a partnership with Camfed to provide rural girls with post high school education in business, financial management, and entrepreneurship in a "summer school" program beginning in December.

Today, in my 29-Day Giving Challenge Day 3, Round 2, I added my support of a Camfed high school student, which I can now see not only as an investment in a girl's future, but in the future of a continent and a planet, too. Not bad.

You can help a woman heal the world by donating here. You can contribute to the important work Global Footprint Network is doing around the globe here.

If you're a new reader, welcome to HumanKind. You can get free updates here. Wonder what we're up to? Click on the links on the upper right, or scroll through the topics and archives on the left. If you're a regular, thanks for your support! Let us know what HumanKind can do to keep the media you'd like to see coming your way. You can e-mail me at chris (at) humankindmedia dot com. And please do share HumanKind with your friends.

Carpe Millennium: The Long Now Foundation putting things in perspective

At the Long Now Foundation museum in San Francisco there's a sign on a staff person's computer that says, "Carpe Millennium". For some of us on the planet, Carpe Diem is a tough one. Carpe Millennium, Seize the Millennium, puts every issue, every question, every intention into uncommon perspective.

The Long Now Foundation began as an e-mail from MIT PhD computer genius (paralell processing), Imagineer, inventor and thinker, Danny Hillis. He wrote to some friends,

"When I was a child, people used to talk about what would happen by the year 2000. For the next thirty years they kept talking about what would happen by the year 2000, and now no one mentions a future date at all. The future has been shrinking by one year per year for my entire life. I think it is time for us to start a long-term project that gets people thinking past the mental barrier of an ever-shortening future. I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium."

In 01996 (the extra zero is to solve the deca-millennium bug which will come into effect in about 8,000 years) futurist Stuart Brand, musician Brian Eno, former Wired Magazine editor and author Kevin Kelly, and a long list of other amazing humans, joined Hillis to form the Long Now Foundation. In their words, the Foundation would provide "a counterpoint to today's 'faster/cheaper' mind set and promote 'slower/better' thinking...creatively fostering responsibility in the framework of the next 10,000 years." On New Year's Eve, 01999, this prototype (a much smaller version) heralded the second millennium by chiming twice.

I'd like to write an essay marveling at the Long Now, but Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Chabon wrote this a few years ago, and I'll admit right now, there's no way to top it, unless maybe Michael Chabon does a follow-up piece when they install their 10,000 year clock in the Nevada desert.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Donna and I visited the Foundation's museum not far from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, wandering among the prototypes, browsing through the mind-expanding bookstore, and skirting around the researchers working on Long Now projects. It was a great outing, but not essential as there is almost more to savor on their site on-line.

There's more about the clock--for philosophers, engineers, and dreamers. The Foundation sponsors regular seminars by many interesting people and there's a treasure trove of blogs and essays pondering the possibilities of the future. On one of my recent re-visits I discovered this essay by Danny Hillis about working with Richard Feynman on thinking machines and learned why my space-ship can't go faster than the speed of light.

At LongBets you can read about long-term predictions and bets, or place your own Long Bet. Here, you'll get a sampling of bets and predictions spanning from 02003 until 02203. Though Ted Danson won the bet about whether the US would win the World Cup before the Red Sox won the series, the jury's still out on Warren Buffett's bet about the S&P or the bet that the US Constitution will be ammended to cede to a global government by 02025. Pilotless air travel by 02025? Will at least one human alive in 02000 be alive in 02150? It's a fascinating glimpse into possible futures by some of our brightest minds, and a reminder that everything changes.

I must say thinking about the Long Now and their projects has had an impact on me. I'm pondering small things like imagining some unknown being finding my plastic water bottle during an excavation in 10,000 years. I'm conscious of larger concerns about how my children will contribute to a developing evolution of humans, rather than how much money they can make after college. I'm reimagining my responsibility for electing stewards of a larger future during this election. I think of that clock ticking away back only a few hundred miles from where I grew up, and my imagination goes wild. I am at once excited about the possibilities, and remorseful that I won't be there. What a great job for a person of the future to be a caretaker of the clock! (Maybe I'll come back.)

Hillis had a conversation about the clock with Jonas Salk before he died. Salk asked him about the clock and what problem he was trying to solve, or what he was trying to preserve. I like his response because it mirrors what the whole Long Now Foundation mission evokes in me:

"OK, Jonas, OK, people of the future, here is a part of me that I want to preserve, and maybe the clock is my way of explaining it to you: I cannot imagine the future, but I care about it. I know I am a part of a story that starts long before I can remember and continues long beyond when anyone will remember me. I sense that I am alive at a time of important change, and I feel a responsibility to make sure that the change comes out well. I plant my acorns knowing that I will never live to harvest the oaks.

I have hope for the future."

If you're a new reader, welcome to HumanKind. You can get free updates here. Wonder what we're up to? Click on the links on the upper right, or scroll through the topics and archives on the left. If you're a regular, thanks for your support! Let us know what HumanKind can do to keep the media you'd like to see coming your way. You can e-mail chris (at) humankindmedia dot com. And please do share HumanKind with your friends.

Lamed Vovniks redux

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself. ---Thomas Carlisle

Some bloggers get a little obsessed with their blog stats--how many people visit, how many subscribers actually read the blog, percentages of newcomers, length of visit, and on and on. I'm hoping that over the next several years mine keep going up, but I'm happy with slow, solid growth and trying not to be too affected by the sky-high days and the low trough days. I do watch the stats to see which links people visit and I really enjoy the wild searches that lead to HumanKind Media. In fact, if you're a regular reader that found me from an accidental search, I'd love to hear about it (begging for comments, again.)

I am intrigued by a mystery, though, and the most mysterious and wondrous of all the stats for HumanKind Media are the "lamed vovnik" hits. Way back in the fall I wrote a rambling piece about the Jewish legend of the Lamed Vovniks, the 36 Just Men (just, meaning righteous or good). You can read the whole post here In it, I performed a complex set of steps toward reasoning that, if the Jewish scholars hundreds of years ago thought there were 36 wise men (translated to "humans" by me), we should be at millions or billions of wise humans by now (using math, genetics, and Jewish scholarship, none of which I'm proficient in).

It was my way of saying we all have the potential for goodness and contribution to changing the inequities in the world, and that the prognosis for doing so was getting better every day. "Unabashed optimism" could have been the tagline for the post.

Anyway, it's historically the most visited page on the site--several times a week. It's a complete mystery. Maybe there are more Jewish scholars out there than I could imagine. Maybe somewhere in the world every day, a few people just google "wise men" and up pop the vovniks, or maybe the word "vovnik" means something in every language in the world, and I'm just lucky I put that word in a title.

Since I have this regular Lamed Vovnik reminder in the stats, I've begun looking around for vovniks in my daily travels. We've written about some of the more famous, obvious candidates: Paul Farmer, Jeffrey Sachs, Mohammed Yunus. I think Randy Pausch, the Last Lecture professor, certainly has my vote, and I'd put my Sweet Husband Jeff on the list because he knows just what to do (which is normally nothing) when I'm off balance (or schizoid) and because he has the wisdom to enjoy life to its fullest while I'm over-thinking it sometimes. My friend and meditation teacher, Pam, is one of the wisest humans I've ever met, and, of course, I'd put the Dalai Lama and Jimmy Carter on the list--and all the older, wiser leaders working tirelessly and patiently for peace and understanding around the world.

But, if I knew you, I might put you on the list for saying something to someone who needed just what you said last week, or for being quiet when it was the right time to be quiet. Or, if you reached out and helped a stranger, or if you're thinking about voting this year for your love for the world rather than your fear of the future, I'd put you on the list for your courage--that's got to be a Lamed Vovnik trait. I might put someone on the list for tutoring children, or drilling water for villages that have none. I'd put anyone on the list who had learned to forgive, or let go of a bias. If you've felt that longing to make a difference, and haven't turned away at what seems like the impossibility of it all, you're on the list for sure.

I do think we're all Lamed Vovniks. Every Lamed Vovnik search hit I see in the stats makes me wonder--is it you? What's the wise and just-ness in you up to these days? Do you see yourself as a Lamed Vovnik, a just , good, wise person? I hope so. Imagine the possibilities.

Got any candidates you'd add to the list? Send me a comment! (2nd begging for comments in one post--new record!)

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Tomorrow, June 1, is the first day of the HumanKind Challenge #4, 29-Day Giving Challenge. Everyone is invited to participate. Invite your friends, too. What could be more fun than practicing generosity together for a month? Here's the post with the details, and here's our group page (where I'll post my daily updates and hope you will, too) on the 29-Day Giving Challenge community page. For those of you still absorbing your possible Lamed Vovnik status, it's a great place to start.

If you're a new reader, welcome to HumanKind. You can get free updates here. Wonder what we're up to? Click on the links on the upper right, or scroll through the topics and archives on the left. If you're a regular, thanks for your support! Let us know what HumanKind can do to keep the media you'd like to see coming your way. You can e-mail chris (at) humankindmedia dot com. And please do share HumanKind with your friends.

BigCarrot takes the prize...and does something cool with it

J. Kent Pepper's been enthralled with inducement prizes ever since the NY Times printed a story 10 years ago about Robert Zubrin's proposal for a $20 Billion Mars Prize. After that he watched as prizes for science and technology, the X prize, the military's DARPA Grand Challenge, and the Westinghouse prize, inspired scientists and middle schoolers alike to create amazing advances in many fields.

In J. Kent Pepper's opinion, prizes are the most efficient means to innovation, calling upon a large public to compete and create with freedom, under the inducement of a prize. (For a fabulous trip through a huge array of such space and technology prizes, look at SpacePrize) A cool history of prizes on the Big Carrot FAQ page attributes developments as far back as the 1700's from the food canning process and the parking meter (sigh) to NetFlix's $1M ongoing prize for a 10% improvement in their movie recommendation algorithm to prize-type challenges.

But until now, prizes have largely remained the domain of billionaires, deep-pocketed corporations, and the government.

In 2006, it dawned Pepper that, using the internet, communities of people could collaborate on their own prizes--creating together the desired solutions to challenges faced by the community, creating the design requirements, and collaborating and advocating for the funding--to inspire innovations that serve the community. He spent some time designing a process, getting a patent, and developing Big Carrot, a big-hearted open-source Inducement Prize Generator IPG (I made that up). He calls it the "democratization of innovation". I call it amazing and exciting--the prospect of pulling people together around your community or the globe to participate in solving the challenges we face. With a prize at the end!

His wildly successful beta-test of the Big Carrot concept, the not-Mac Challenge, awarded prize winner, Ben Spink, with $8600, money raised largely by 172 Mac users who were looking for an opensource integration program that normally costs users $99/year for upgrades.

Though the not-Mac challenge met a need of the Mac community, other challenges range from the small to national to global. BigCarrot now has prizes for everything from an Automotive X Prize, in the Environment category, for a super-efficient car that people will want to buy, to a prize in the Computers category to get Linus Torvald (father of Linux) a cameo on the Simpsons.

Pepper is a marketing professional by day who has participated in campaigns for Yahoo, Sun, Lexus and HP among others. He told me that he was influenced early in his marketing career by the work of Tibor Kalman, the famed designer who in the 90's pioneered the combining of marketing with a global awareness/multicultural emphasis in his founding of Beneton's "Colors" magazine.

When I asked him, "Why BigCarrot?", he gave me my very favorite answer: "To change the world." He talked about the possibilities of his current pet project, the Greywater Recycling Challenge which he hopes to see take off among on-line environmental communities. BigCarrot, he says, is a chance to facilitate "the evening out of the playing field for innovation" and gives individuals and communities the opportunity to proactively advocate for and create solutions that are most relevant to them. As he's talking, I'm imagining communities all over who might someday have simple greywater recycling programs, just because BigCarrot had a prize.(I like this idea more than parking meters.)

The possibilities for innovation are endless with this model. If anyone could be as excited about BigCarrot as J. Kent Pepper, it was me after that phone call.

And, the best news: Beginning today, BigCarrot is inviting bloggers and their communities to build their own challenges. Kent is encouraging all of us to rally our readers and communities to pick a topic, waiving the prize origination fee and offering to contribute the first $250 to the prize. The site hosts forums for discussions about potential or current prizes, too, another chance to interact with your readers--a win/win/win.

Would you be willing to contribute a little to see some geniuses tackle a problem that you or your community cares about? Please share this with your friends, your blogger friends, the geniuses in your life, and your communities. This is a Good Idea.

In fact, this gives me an idea for HumanKind Challenge #4. If you're a HumanKind reader, and have ideas for our own HumanKind Challenge #4 ala BigCarrot, email me and we can collaborate on a prize proposal. Stay tuned. This will be fun.

About that Stuff, 5 things you can do to help spread the ripples

A week or two before I met with Annie Leonard, creator of the Story of Stuff and global activist for GAIA, the Global Alliance of Incinerator Alternatives, I became excruciatingly aware of all the "stuff" in my house that is destined for the bin, sooner or later. To my chagrin, I suddenly became conscious of slightly stuffed closets, reproducing junk drawers, and my, oh, my, my shower. After reading her recent blogs about a particularly offensive packaging campaign for a new product, I counted several plastic bottles in my shower and was shocked and slightly ashamed that I had let it get so out-of-hand. I could remember back to a time where one bar of soap and some shampoo was it.

When I blurted out a confession about this, she was gracious. First she gave me a great tip about checking the toxicity of my products at Skin Deep, the cosmetics safety database. Then, she let me off the hook--slightly, by explaining, "It's not your fault, it's the system."

The system in question is the Story of Stuff (surely you've watched the whole thing by now). It's system that Anne's been studying for 20+ years (where stuff comes from and where it goes) put into a clever, entertaining, but serious examination of the materials economy.

Now, 5 months since its debut and 2.5+ million viewings on-line, the Story is rippling out, being translated into many languages, inspiring songs and parodies, and engaging people. For a while, there was even a YouTube video by a Russian in a swingset praising the Story and vowing to be an eco-warrior. (Sadly, it was gone when we looked for it.)

What inspires me most is that she's reaching schools and kids, and they're responding. In Woodside, California, when she visited, they asked for "tips" on what they could do. Her answer, "It's complicated." They responded with a parody video, and soon after that, students at Mendocino High school did their own amazing video, "What You Can Do.". Coming up soon is her follow-on podcast with the Woodside Priory students. About their request for "recommended actions", she provides a thoughtful explanation in her blog, "Why I'm Not Offering 10 Simple Steps to Get Involved."

When I asked Annie if she thought we could change the system, she said she had hope. "This is all propped up on cheap oil. The question is, are we going to resist, resist, resist for 50 years, or are we going to be proactive now?" She mentions Bill McKibben's book, Deep Economy. McKibben explores communities around the world who are creating sustainable living practices together. In his book, she tells me, he talks about decoupling "more" and "growth" from "better." Annie says wryly, "More is not better. We're not having fun, we're stressed, exhausted, debt-ridden, and filled with toxicity. We've got to separate our self esteem and self-worth from stuff."

I think the story of the Story of Stuff is just beginning. I'm hopeful that its simple message will permeate more and more arenas where the sustainability message has yet to inspire and move people. Here are some ideas I've got for creating your own ripples to help our big shift to sustainability:

1. Watch the Story, end to end. Share the Story of Stuff--show your families and friends to inspire those 10% changes for sustainability at home. Tell your friends, teachers you know, local groups and organizations. Spread the word, examine the possibilities, together.

2. Exchange your stuff, recycle your stuff, give your stuff to someone who could use it. (Annie says the most burnable consumer goods in incinerators are also the most recyclable items.) Check out Freecycle for an event near you, or hold a give-away garage sale.

3. I know it's a bumper-sticker, but seriously, think globally about our beautiful planet and and a balance of resources for all the remarkable beings on it; then, act locally--right there where you are around the people you're with. Take on a little 10% change in your consumption. Buy local food (instead of produce shipped by truck from 3,000 miles away.) Start a garden, or better yet, a community or school garden. Stop buying something you don't need. Visit your dump and recycling centers in person to see where your stuff goes. Make it a field trip.

4. Speak up, with your voice and your pocketbook. One of the most poignant moments for me when I met Annie was her genuine concern and disappointment at the response to that egregiously wasteful, stuff-laden packaging/marketing scheme of the new men's shaving gel, NXT. She even had a nightmare about it. There's a good ending to the story though. I hope you'll read it here and here, but the point is that we should never estimate the power of our voices and our purchases (or refusal to purchase) to change the possibilities in the Story of Stuff.

5. Annie's says in her blog "Why I'm Not Offering 10 Simple Steps to Get Involved," "Find any place in the system where you can intervene and follow your passion. " We can all find a way to help. Her most simple suggestions are buy less and buy less toxic stuff.

Story of Stuff: Annie's story

Annie Leonard told me she found her life's purpose standing in the middle of Fresh Kills landfill (one of two man-made structures visible from space--the second is the Great Wall of China) on Staten Island, amidst a sea in every direction of couches, refrigerators, books and banana peels.

In this blog when we began our series on sustainability, we first introduced Annie and her Story of Stuff, the clever and entertaining 20-minute film about our stuff, a short month after it premiered. For Earth Day, it seems natural to return to the sustainability message of the Story of Stuff.

Meeting Annie reminded me of why I wanted to tell stories about people who just start something and stay with it, somehow knowing it will make a difference. They inspire me to keep taking one step at a time toward what I care about. Though it's only four months and 2.5 million views ("Some of those are repeat visits by my mother," she says) since the December launch of Story of Stuff, the real story, the story of Annie the activist, researcher, educator, and mom, started when she was 6.

"MacDonald's came to our school to tell us about the new McDonald's opening in our town. They told us how much they cared about the environment, and I was so excited I did what all the other kids did. I went home and said, 'We've got to go to McDonald's.' I walked in, and in the middle of the store was a big planter with plastic flowers. I was sooo disappointed in them."

Child of "a mother with a strong moral compass" and product of an environmental education in the Northwest, Annie traces her curiosity about where stuff comes from and where it goes to the family's annual camping trip. "I looked out the window as we were driving (that was back before I-pods and DVD's in the backseat). Each year it took longer to get to the forest, and where there once was forest were strip malls."

Certain that she wanted to do something for those forests, Ann set off to New York where she studied city and regional planning. You can read more of what she's done here. What she told me was that, while she was doing graduate work in New York, she would walk from 110th to 116th every day. In the morning the curb would be piled with trash as high as she is tall, all the way down those six blocks. She started to dig around in it and found cardboard, paper, boxes--her trees! At night the piles would be gone. From Fresh Kills and beyond, she decided she would work to prevent waste, fight landfills and incineration. Her idea, and many others', were that if waste began to be harder for corporations to get rid of, "they'll stop."

But they didn't stop. What no one counted on was (the word, "sleazy" was used here) that, as the regulation increased on corporations' waste, they began shipping the waste to third-world countries. She joined Greenpeace and began to work on the UN campaign to stop shipping waste to foreign countries. "Everyone (at Greenpeace) had a piece of the work--lobbyists, researchers. Mine was sampling and documenting the waste sent to other countries--all over the world." Here's where she rattled off story after story of incinerator waste being sent to Haiti as fertilizer, PCB's shipped to a farmer's land in South Africa, of an Indian hospital with an incinerator where demonstrators posted a banner, "Cancer caused and cured here," and of a load of hazardous waste she mixed with fertilizer she tracked down to a Bangladeshi farmer. (The lowest moment she ever experienced was when the farmer asked for reassurance that her country would "fix this".)

She's got a million stories, and deep friendships around the globe--with those who explored with her "the factories where our stuff is made and the dumps where our stuff is dumped." When her daughter went through "her princess phase", she drew beautiful pictures of the prince and the princess, with the dump in the background. After 10+ years her daughter's school started asking for full attendance and she had to figure out how to keep "investigating garbage" but with less travel. It was then she began working for the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA).

For 10 years, Annie's been telling the story of our stuff, fighting incinerators around the globe, and working to create awareness internationally and at home. After years of requests for a filmed version of her talk, the Tides Foundation approached her to do the Story of Stuff. Enter the creative geniuses at Free Range Studios and the rest is...or will be history.

What I love about Annie and her story is that she's just a person (ok, a very smart, cool person) who followed her curiosity and her passion step by step, to a place that will bring about awareness and change that we'll all benefit from. I predict that in a few years we'll look back on Annie and sustainability the way we look at Jeffrey Sachs and poverty or Paul Farmer and healthcare. I can't wait to see what happens.

In the next post, you'll hear the unfolding story of the Story of Stuff (as told to me by Annie). Amazing things are happening. So, if you haven't watched it yet, here's your chance. It's pretty cool. Stay tuned.

If you're a new reader, welcome to HumanKind. You can get free updates here. Wonder what we're up to? Click on the links on the upper right, or scroll through the topics and archives on the left. If you're a regular, thanks for your support! Let us know what HumanKind can do to keep the media you'd like to see coming your way. You can e-mail us at chris or liz (at) humankindmedia dot com. And please do share HumanKind with your friends.

Deep time road trip

"People of today relate to time in a way that is surely unique in our history. The technologies and economic forces unleashed by the Industrial Growth Society radically alter our experience of time. It is like being trapped in an ever-shrinking box, in which we race on a treadmill. The economy and its technologies depend on decisions made at lightning speed for short-term goals, cutting us off from nature's rhythms and from the past and the future, as well. Marooned in the present, we are progressively blinded to the sheer ongoingness of time. Both the company of our ancestors and the claims of our descendants become less and less real to us.

To make the transition to a life-sustaining society, we must retrieve that ancestral capacity--in other words, act like ancestors. We need to attune to longer, ecological rhythms and nourish a strong, felt connection with past and future generations. For us as agents of change, this isn't easy, because to intervene in the political and legislative decisions of the Industrial Growth Society, we fall by necessity into its tempo. We race to find and pull the levers before it is too late to save this forest, or stop that weapons program. Nonetheless, we can learn again to drink at deeper wells." -- Joanna Macy

On my road trip last week I travelled across New Mexico and Arizona, through the lands of 10,000 years inhabitation by the Pueblo Indians, through the Petrified Forest where 220 million year old trees-turned-to-stone look like crystal rainbows in the sunlight (just like they said in grade school.)

I couldn't help but think of Joanna Macy, a teacher/writer/eco-philosopher, who inspires me at a level beneath my consciousness and encourages me to imagine the impossible. Calling upon the wisdom from deep ecology, systems theory and buddhism, Joanna's work centers around what she calls The Great Turning, "the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization."

The Great Turning asks us to relate to time differently, to consider our ancestors, these people who lived in this land before us, the people who travelled here from all the continents to offer a life of abundance to our great-great-great grandmothers and grandfathers. It asks us also to consider our future ancestors whom we hope will find their way from our baby steps toward that life-sustaining civilization and the fulfillment of the best of what's possible for all beings on the planet.

As I travelled with speed across two states and several hundred miles of reminders of deep time, echoes of past and future ancestors, I remembered my 4 Ways to Keep Your Sustainability Mindset. Number 3 on the list was "Appreciate the world in ways you haven't lately." I decided to add "deep time" (this link is worth bookmarking--loaded with good reading) as a way to appreciate the world in a new way. Seeing a two-million year old tree in a piece of petrified wood, imagiing the songs of tribes from ten thousand years ago echoing off the canyon walls--imagining a future as old as this past--has added to my appreciation and commitment to the earth in a way no green advertising campaign has ever managed.

On Joanna's website she offers her own personal guidelines for the Great Turning. Among these great guidelines is one we've been known to mention a time or two: "Roll up your Sleeves: Many people don't get involved in the Great Turning because there are so many different issues, which seem to compete with each other. Shall I save the whales or help battered children? The truth is that all aspects of the current crisis reflect the same mistake, setting ourselves apart and using others for our gain. So to heal one aspect helps the others to heal as well. Just find what you love to work on and take joy in that. Never try to do it alone. Link up with others; you'll spark each others' ideas and sustain each others' energy."

My favorite of all of her teachings? Gratitude is where healing the earth begins.

"Then, ever again, we go forth into the action that calls us. With others whenever and wherever possible, we set a target, lay a plan, step out. We don’t wait for a blueprint or fail-proof scheme; for each step will be our teacher, bringing new perspectives and opportunities. Even when we don’t succeed in a given venture, we can be grateful for the chance we took and the lessons we learned. And the spiral begins again."

You can read more from Joanna Macy in her many fine writings and visit her website for a wealth of inspiration and resources for your own venture into our stewardship of the earth for the past and the future generations.

If you're a new reader, welcome to HumanKind. You can get free updates here. Wonder what we're up to? Click on the links on the upper right, or scroll through the topics and archives on the left. If you're a regular, thanks for your support! Let us know what HumanKind can do to keep the media you'd like to see coming your way. You can e-mail us at chris or liz (at) humankindmedia dot com. And please do share HumanKind with your friends.