Cross posted from It’sGettingHotinHere.org

During PowerShift 2009, I was lucky enough to be able to speak these words to Representative Markey’s Select Committee on Global Warming:

“The $100,000 Clean Energy Revolving Fund I helped build at Macalester College invests in efficiency projects on campus and puts the savings back into the fund. In its first year, we got a 40% annual return on investment. That’s a bunch of college sophomores with no financial training doing four times better than the stock market – when it’s not collapsing! What would it be like if we harnessed these opportunities, which a green economy provides all across the country?”

In this third post in the series (you can also check out Part 1 and Part 2), I’m going to cut to the chase:

If we want to get real, fundamental, and adequate action taken on climate change, it’s not enough to make it clear that we (even tens of millions of youth in that we), think it’s a good idea.

We have to make it clear that it’s 1. possible, and 2. a good thing all around.

This sounds like a no-brainer, but making that case convincingly can be hard.

A lot of the solutions that are most readily apparent – solar panels on roof-tops, hybrid cars, less consumption – are either way out of the reach of most people (and thus sound elitist), or are framed as a sacrifice. The mentality that a green economy is costly frequently creeps into our own thinking. It’s easy to advocate for spending more money on wind energy electricity or on a super-cool green building because it’s the right thing to do. Scaling up, I’m quite sure a lot of the debates you’ll hear at Copenhagen will revolve around how much wealth various countries should give up for the greater good of a sustainable planet and the well-being of future generations (us and those to come).

Sure it’s right, but is it smart?

I’m not arguing that smart is more important than right, or that we should ever advocate for things that are smart and not right. I’m simply suggesting that if we can’t demonstrate in actual real life that our vision is right AND smart, we’re going to lose.

I hope the insight of how to do so may be helpful as hundreds of youth climate leaders converge on Copenhagen and the struggle for a green economy continues on a thousand campuses and communities.

Read on for what the examples of the Clean Energy Revolving Fund and the Macalester EcoHouse – tales from my own experience that reflect the great work thousands of people across the globe are doing –  have to say about being right and smart. Continue reading →

Around the world on Saturday tens of thousands of people brought awareness to the issues and effects of global warming and the climate negotiations going on in Copenhagen in the beginning of December.

With this as context, I wanted to present a solutionary approach to Saturday the 24th of October 2009.

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Cross posted from: It’s Getting Hot in Here.

How do we take our calls for clean energy, climate justice, and a sustainable economy from being seen as neat ideas to being seen as the game plan?

Getting the institutions we are working with to see a green economy as their game plan is key to the big picture changes we are working for. When we demonstrate a solution as a route to success on existing goals, rather than just a cool side-project, we open up whole new reserves of commitment, ingenuity, and resources to make it possible. It also becomes much more important: conceding to obstacles is no longer acceptable.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about Macalester College’s sustainability plan and the how that it provides to make big ambitious goals both meaningful and realistic. In this post, I’ll explore the importance of moving from neat ideas to game plans in creating the commitment to that process in the context of Macalester’s journey. I recognize that this is just one tiny microcosm of the bigger picture, but I hope that it will serve as an example about how we move much larger institutions towards viewing the green economy as a game plan for success, and thus working with us as collaborators. They might even go outside the traditional sustainability boxes to think about broad institutional strategy.

So let’s get started:

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I am so excited to get this years effort off and running! I have had an amazing time with the NICE for the past 2 summers and there are a variety of possibilities on the horizon for the NICE this year. The partnership with Grand Aspirations to host Summer of Solutions programs was a great learning experience and continues to grow. Grand Aspirations is working to develop a series of local hubs across the country and is working to create a mutually beneficial partnership with the NICE.

Our local programs experienced a variety of struggles and successes. The major success of the NICE-Summer of Solutions ’09 for me was in developing a better understanding of the real value of engaging in these types processes as an active participant in an ongoing and self-determining learning experience. I often find myself gauging success in terms of self imposed deadlines met and tangible improvements in peoples’ lives created. While these types of successes are truly valuable, they are not the limit to the value of our efforts. Sitting here and looking at where we are now compared to where we were in the spring of 2008, or even 2009, I am seriously blown away by our bold tenacity and ability to make progress toward materializing a somewhat hazy and beautiful vision.

I feel like some possibilities are beginning to clarify within this vision. Local programs are ongoing and thus there is a need for year round involvement in these efforts. Summer of Solution (SoS) programs are a powerful tactic when utilized as the continuation or catalyst of student involvement in local solutionary efforts. I would like to see the NICE develop into a hub for learning, innovation, entrepreneurship, community building, and solutionary action throughout the year through coordinating programs such as SoS. In order to accomplish this, the regional team is tackling the process of identifying organizational, business, and legal models that fit our aspirations (no pun intended).

Today, I am feeling the extreme urgency and excitement that comes from chasing these types of dreams. As I snoop around the internet community and sift through my various list serves, to avoid the homework pile of my third week of the term, I am reminded of a thought I had over the summer. It seems that the argument for renewable energy vs. fossil fuels is often set in a difficult framework for the proponents of renewable energy.

If I strip all value from the arguments, I find the fossilites’ side saying, “Hey we have been serving the population for 200 years! Yeah, we might have a few problems, but we can fix them. We can be cleaner.” The renewable energy side gets stuck trying to prove that the current system is so broken that we need to develop something completely new and relatively untested (compared to the amount of time we have invested into fossil fuel combustion as an energy source). This is a hard argument to make. But it is one that must be won!

I feel we need a surge of community based solutions to socio-eco-economic challenges which support the argument that something completely new is possible and preferred. These community solutions will also reduce the demand for fossil fuels by beginning to tangibly transition neighborhoods and cities onto more sustainable, prosperous, and just alternatives. A solutionary effort improving living situations and creating jobs in the district of every elected official would be a huge step in creating a more favorable political landscape. The NICE is capable of playing an important role in the creation of these community solutions in the northwest. Its time to roll up our sleeves and get solutionary!

I look forward to all of the learning and innovation that this community will share as Grand Aspirations, the NICE, community solutions, Summer of Solutions, and our partnerships strengthen and grow. This is going to be a year to remember!!!

~nathan jones

NICE Regional Organizer

Cross-posted from Its Getting Hot in Here

Macalester College, a small liberal arts college I attend in Saint Paul Minnesota, released its Sustainability Plan on September 15th. In the midst of a flurry of action on the national policy level, internationally around Copenhagen, and in the local fights against mountain-top removal and other dirty energy, one more college sustainability plan seems almost insignificant. What’s important about this plan, however, is not what its goals are (though they include carbon neutrality by 2025, zero waste by 2020, and more) but how it plans to achieve them. I hope this focus on the method as well as the goals can inform and inspire the climate movement – with some pretty strong resonances with what it means to be solutionary. Here’s a brief synopsis of the key features of the how, which I’ll explore in more detail below the fold.

1. Going carbon neutral will be revenue positive, meaning a carbon-free future is as much commonsense smart decision-making as it is a moral imperative.
2. Designing the vision was participatory – 400 students, faculty, and staff contributed at a college with a student body of 1900 – and implementation will continue to be. The plan clearly states that it is a baseline platform, not a ceiling.
3. The changes really matter – with a few exceptions, the plan identifies strategies to that make actual change, rather than check the boxes of conventional practice.
4. The college plans to create ripples of change that extend far beyond campus – emphasizing pathways to broader change through the supply-chains, education process, and community relationships it engages.
5. Sustainability is defined holistically as the ongoing process of nurturing a healthy environment, social justice, and a strong economy. It is a guiding quality of all the institution’s core values, not an addition to them.

I’m using this post to encourage movement leaders to dig deeper into figuring out the how, and to introduce future posts exploring what it really means to deliver the visions of a sustainable society that we advocate for constantly. To guide the story, I’ll use the case study of Macalester and the efforts I’ve been involved in that now extend far beyond it, not because the method is limited to this example (the network of amazing solutionaries nationwide clearly highlights that, and any method would be flawed if so limited), but because I know them well. These posts will explore how campus leaders made success not only broad but also deep, meaningful, and transformative, the expansive horizons to which similar methods have grown our work far beyond campus, and the implications that each step has for the broader climate movement over the coming decades. Stay tuned for more stories from the process.

In the meantime, check out more details on what’s important about how Macalester seeks to achieve sustainability below.

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