BeFriending Creation
Two books to creatively inspire the climate change movement
If you are finding yourself daunted by the challenge of harmful climate change, here are two books to inspire you (and help you sleep at night…). Whether you are a budding revolutionary itching to organize and take to the streets or you just want some new ideas of practical ways to reduce your own carbon footprint, you have to get your hands on: 1) Bill McKibben's, Fight Global Warming Now: The Handbook for Taking Action in Your Community and 2) The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook: 77 Essential Skills to Stop Climate Changeor Live Through It, by David de Rothschild, the official companion to the Live Earth concerts,
Fight Global Warming Now speaks to all levels of activists. For those new at raising a ruckus (including those with no prior experience whatsoever), this is an indispensable text. Consider it your new guide to committing your community to joining the movement to stop climate change. And even those of you who got started organizing during the early environmental movement or the Vietnam War era and know quite well the feeling of those plastic cuffs on your wrists, this book provides a much-needed update on the Internet-based organizing tools of today's tech-savvy activists.
I left reading McKibben's book believing that organizing a movement to curb the effects of climate change does not have to be seen as an onerous or overwhelming task. To the contrary, McKibben shows that diving into organizing for this movement can (and in fact should) be creative and joyful and involve a lot of fun! He provides timely and specific advice for how to craft an action that is credible, quick, collaborative, meaningful, creative, lasting, appropriately tech-savvy, and catchy (for the media). Before you plan your next (or first) action, make sure to give this a read.
The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook provides a lively and practical review of 67 things you can do in your own life to help stop climate change. The changes suggested are all quite realistic, and are aimed at tweaking or redirecting our common habits and needs in order to cut their carbon cost.
The last 10 suggestions are somewhat frightening: They are billed as "survival strategies" to be used "if all else fails" and we reach total climate meltdown. This section aptly points out the absurdity of our current misuse of natural resources; applying the first 67 tactics to reduce climate change seems far more reasonable than resorting to these bizarre alternatives.
The Global Warming Survival Handbook isn't so much something you have to sit down and read cover to cover, but rather something to pick up when you have five minutes to spare to digest a few of the recommendations. Each idea is only a page or two long and contains images, graphs, and helpful tips. Something I particularly appreciated was that each recommendation includes a rating of its cost, time required, effort involved, and relative impact on carbon reduction. It is an easily accessible book and a much-needed resource for those of us who may feel overwhelmed and need a place to start.
Temp to staff QEW office during Peace for Earth Walk
Meredith Dowling, 23, will be staffing the QEW office in Vermont while Ruah Swennerfelt, QEW's General Secretary, is away on the Peace for Earth Walk, November 2007 through April 2008.
A 2006 environmental studies graduate of Oberlin College, Meredith worked for the past year as Oberlin's Assistant Sustainability Coordinator. Last summer she did social psychology research for an environmental consulting firm.
Meredith was part of Atlanta Friends Meeting from early childhood and frequently attended FGC Gatherings. She met Ruah in a nature workshop that Ruah led at the Gathering in 2004. Her interest in ecology goes back to a first grade teacher's demonstration of the difference between biodegradable and non-biodegradable materials. "It was so amazing to see how something considered waste could turn into something beautiful and life-giving." •
