Just in time for Valentine's Day!

A new dating site exclusively for corporate polluters, industry lobbyists,
and politicians. Now it's easier than ever for big polluters to buy and sell influence in order to sabotage America's clean energy future! PolluterHarmony.com

Hear Jeff's success story:

Olly The Octopus - A Call To Arms

Climate Ground Zero:: After a week, they're still in the trees.

Here's an interview (audio - complete with blaring tortuous airhorns) with Eric Blevins, on day 6 up in a tree to halt blasting on Coal River Mountain.  Incredible.

 "Tell them if they stop sinning, we will forgive them!" - Eric, from up in the tree.

ClimateGroundZero.net

These Mountains are Divine Creations

While Eric Blevins is holding out up in the trees with fellow activists Amber and David to successfully halt blasting at Coal River Mountain, I’d like to share with you some inspiring words which he delivered this past December at a protest at the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection in Charleston. Eric spoke on behalf of Mountain Justice, and was joined on the stage by the likes of former WV congressman Ken Hechler and Robert Kennedy Jr. The genuine and profound framing and delivery of Eric’s speech has stuck with me since that day. And as he sits up there, defending this mountain, I hope his words inspire you, as well.

Mountain Justice is a regional movement, moving to abolish mountaintop removal. And this region unites us. Whether we live in West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Ohio, North Carolina, Georgia or Alabama, we are united by these mountains. Appalachia unites us.

These mountains are divine creations. They deserve our love and respect. The people who live in these mountains are divine creations. They deserve our love and respect. The plants and animals who live in these mountains are divine creations. They deserve our love and respect. The fresh mountain air and fresh mountain spring water are divine creations. They deserve our love and respect. We must love the creator and all of the creator’s creation. If we all give them the love and respect they deserve, then they will heal us every day, for generations and generations into the future. If we continue to desecrate and destroy them, they will leave us, probably within a generation.

Coal River Mountain is a divine creation. It deserves our love and respect and it deserves to live.

Massey Coal is a corrupt corporation, [Eric had to pause here for a big applause] with over two thousand documented violations of the Clean Water Act, and the government continues to allow them to poison our divine living water and to blow up our divine mountains like the terrorists they are, and to bury our loved ones in their waste.

They are turning our loved ones into waste. This is criminal activity and it must be stopped. Massey Coal has said that they are going to kill 998 people in the Coal River Valley if their coal waste dam fails, and the government has given them permission to blast within 200 feet of it, and the blasting has begun. Massey dams like this one have failed in the past and there is no reason to think they won’t fail again. The government must step in now to stop this killing, and if they don’t, we will keep getting in Massey’s way until this madness ends, and we will save Coal River Mountain and the Coal River Valley and our deep connection to divine creation.

Thank you.

Are you listening?

"But the question remains: 'Are these things which are now so familiar to us actually true?' Let us then ask ourselves, 'what is the principle predicament that faces us?' Well, one of the very prime answers to that is, 'difference of opinion.' ...I think it is safe to say that at the present time, most of the muddle is mental." ~Manly P. Hall

The Faded Glory of the Goddess Shall Return :: cveitch

Charlie Veitch, (from the "Everything is OK" /Love Police from London), with an important message and call to action.

It started as an email on "The Law of Two Feet."

"The Law of Two Feet" came up in a side discussion tonight (at a very traditional committee-style meeting for climate action). I thought I would share this, as it relates closely to another topic of another side discussion that deserves further (and central) consideration (by this particular group): that topic being Transition Towns. (I started to right this as an email to a few members of the group, then it seems to have turned into a blog post, so... enjoy!)

The Law of Two feet is part of a scalable organizing approach for groups "focused on a specific task". It's called Open Space Technology (OST) as wikipedia defines it,

"The approach is characterized by five basic mechanisms: (1) a broad, open invitation that articulates the purpose of the meeting; (2) participant chairs arranged in a circle; (3) a "bulletin board" of issues and opportunities posted by participants; (4) a "marketplace" with many breakout spaces that participants move freely between, learning and contributing as they "shop" for information and ideas; and (5) a "breathing" or "pulsation" pattern of flow, between plenary and small-group breakout sessions." ...The approach is often defined by its lack of an initial agenda.

The Law of Two Feet promotes the "breathing", "the flow" of the gathering. It is a critical operating instruction, which states:

“If, during the course of the gathering, any person finds themselves in a situation where they are neither learning nor contributing, they must use their feet and go to some more productive place.”

This is an example of an organizing process that can maximize the creative output of a large and diverse group of people, WITHOUT the need for hierarchical power structures and it's related ego-battles. In fact, as this Transition Culture website puts it,

"If you are a control freak, you will hate organizing an Open Space event! It involves a lot of trust that the process will work but at the same time I have never seen or heard of one not working."

I've been part of open space activities, and can personally attest. By simply setting an intentional tone for a gathering with simple rules, one can allow people to express and synthesize their ideas to their greatest potential as a fluid yet cohesive group. That is why this organizing tool is central to Transition Town model. One way I define the Transition Town (or Transition Initiative) model is as an organizing model for community-scale climate action, based in the principles of permaculture, that builds community resilience and decreases dependence on fossil fuels. With this scale of intent, and in the context of our climate emergency, we can see how such efforts to maximize the creative potential of a group (and to abandon dysfunctional interpersonal dynamics) seem most appropriate.

I would strongly suggest to anyone who is concerned with climate change and/or peak oil: look at the Transition Initiative model. They can borrow the book from the library, read the pages and forums online, or start with this 49-page primer. Then all they have to do is find someone else in their community and turn them onto it. Then... they're ready to start.

Transition Initiative, as an organizing model, gets at the root causes of climate change. It addresses the ways in which we relate to each other, to ourselves, and to the planet. It helps us to think about the climate and energy crises in a more holistic context, with sensitivity to the psychological and emotional reality of our situation. And even if a person is not ready to start an Initiative herself, the principles, theories, and tools will surely be useful in the years ahead.

more useful links:
A Brief User's Guide to Open Space Technology, Harrison Owen
http://transitionus.org/ - Transition United States