The WorldChanging editors asked the contributors (and many guest writers) to help wrap up the year by participating in this week’s series “What’s next?” The range of responses is amazing and you get a real sense of optimism for what we can all accomplish next year with a little commitment and collaboration. Here’s my response:
In 2006, the sustainability movement has begun to spread beyond blogs and the echo chamber of environment geeks into mainstream media with magazine articles, books and movies. Global Warming is now widely recognized as the greatest danger of our time. Environmentalism has effectively been taken back from the hippies and tree huggers and redefined for a more modern and mainstream society. In increasing numbers, average citizens are doing their part to shrink their ecological footprints.
They are, aren’t they?
Getting out of Los Angeles during the holidays and visiting my family in the suburbs of Philadelphia reminds me just how differently we all live. The majority of Americans are struggling to get by, living paycheck to paycheck, doing all they can to remain in the shrinking middle class. Sustainability simply isn’t at the top of mind.
My sister is a single mother. I’m sure she’d love to spend the time and money to make better consumer decisions but she just doesn’t have it. When she’s rushing from work to the grocery store to the baby-sitter’s, she’s just not thinking about the environmental impact of her choices. To her, it’s all about convenience. She needs to do everything as cheaply and efficiently as possible to keep her household running like the well-oiled machine it is. As we lamented the lack of snow (or even cold weather – the grass was still green in Pennsylvania!) over the holiday, my niece interrupted our conversation, “Mom, when is it gonna’ snow?” “Never, ” my sister joked. “Get used to it.”
We’ve made big strides in 2006 in disseminating information. 2007 must be the year that we turn that awareness into action. My sister knows all about Global Warming and she knows that we all have the power to make a difference. But for that to translate into real action on her part, the choices need to be readily available. She just can’t afford to make major changes in her routine. Sustainable products and lifestyle choices need to become as easy and cheap as the alternatives.
And this is just America. How often do you think the members of the up and coming Chinese middle class think about their environmental footprint? They are more concerned with getting their share of the spoils of their country’s growing economic power. And why shouldn’t they be? We often write here about the need to align the desire for economic wealth with the cause of sustainability. In 2007, I hope we can do this not only on a corporate and governmental level, but also in a way that empowers people of all economic backgrounds to participate in building a better world.
Here are some of my favorite contributions to the series.
L. Hunter Lovins, Time Magazine’s 2000 Hero for the Planet, and author of Natural Capitalism, has recently co-authored LASER, Local Action for Economic Renewal, available for free at www.global-laser.org. She works in such countries as Afghanistan, where she is an advisor to the Energy Minister. She writes about how to build a new model of development to combat poverty.
Emily Gertz runs OneAtlantic.net, an environmental news site for North America’s Atlantic Coast. OneAtlantic seeks to reframe the geography of the east as a unified region from Maine to Florida, laying a foundation for support of policies and projects that create a sustainable environmental and economic future for the Atlantic coast. She writes about the need for a shift in policy on the Federal level to have an impact on Global Warming.
Peter Leyden, the Director of the New Politics Institute, writes about the birth of the new Progressive era.
Cameron Sinclair is the co-founder of Architecture for Humanity, a non profit that seeks architecture solutions to humanitarian crises and brings design services to communities in need. He writes about the birth of the leapback – Western designers and inventors using lo-fi creative solutions from the developing world to help solve our own sustainability issues. Cameron also invites the WC community to join the Open Architecture Network, a collaborative website for designers and engineers to share their ideas and work together to “foster sustainable, replicable, adaptable and scalable design solutions.”
Jason Kottke of Kottke.org writes about a new labeling mechanism to help us make wiser consumer decisions. He envisions “true cost” labels that inform consumers of the real impact of our purchases. Was this garment produced in a sweat shop? What is the environmental impact of my laptop?
I encourage you to check out the other contributions to the series. If you’ve never read WorldChanging before, this is a great introduction to our contributors and types of things we often write about.
So what do YOU think? You’re the person of the year so why don’t you write up a few sentences of what you think 2007 will bring? How will you do your part in making 2007 better than 2006?
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