Mobilizing Community against Ecological Decline

On this blog I have posited the concept that new and powerful Internet tools like the GeoWeb, SemanticWeb, SocialWeb, MobileWeb, ImageWeb, and OpenSourceWeb have become available and are being refined to allow individuals, small groups with common interests, and larger communities to become more involved in environmental issues. Consequently more people than ever before should now begin to become more effective in making better decisions that are critically related to the local and global ecosystems we all depend upon. The sooner this involvement becomes standard practice the better chance we have for sustained ecological balance for the future when humans might be friendly rather than toxic to the natural world around us that we depend on for our own survival.

Even though we in America represented by many powerful and popular environmental organizations who have been attempting to protecting ecosystem values over the past 30-40 years, clearly many more of us individual citizens have to become much more involved in new and innovative approaches to environmental decision making in the immediate future. A 2008 Forest Voice Newsletter presents a number of disturbing articles outlining different perspectives on how representative environmental organizations have too often compromised and collaborated with industry and government to soften ecological decisions. Rather than reversing ecological decline these compromises may just be slowing the process down, sometimes.

I personally believe the time is right, and it is critically important for everyone to immediately start learning about, and acting positively on, our human responsibilities to each other and to our natural environments and ecosystems, local, regional, and global.

I have also just seen a detailed excerpt from a very interesting book written by Roy Woodbridge in 2004. The title is The Next World War: Tribes, Cities, Nations, and Ecological Decline. In this book he focuses on actions the people of the world must take in the next 25 years.

In the preface Woodbridge notes that "I begin this book by talking about the fact that ecological decline is the enemy of all peoples - in fact, it is the only enemy that is common to all peoples."

"The book is a call for all societies to wage war against global ecological decline." He argues, that even though the word "War" is not a great metaphor it is important for people worldwide to understand that "anything less than mobilizing with the same intensity and commitment that we bring to all-out war will produce the kind of effort required."

Interestingly Al Gore has more recently stated in a speech titled "A Generational Challenge to Repower America" on July 17, 2008 -- "Today I challenge our nation to commit to producing 100 percent of our electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years."

Environmental events caused by humans during my lifetime, and especially in the recent past, clearly indicate that we have a lot to do and we can't waste any more time. Is this a real global "war" that requires great sacrifices and mobilization from everyone? Or are each of us content to continue to believe that we witness tiny environmental skirmishes from time to time that are reported by the popular news services and that our elected leaders and will solve problems by passing meaningful legislation without much of our personal involvement? I am afraid the dramatic ecological degradation we are experiencing today is the result of the latter.

Any comments or suggestions or links to projects that can help us learn quickly how to effectively mobilize as individuals and communities against local, regional and global ecological decline are welcome.

A Network Where No One is in Charge

I intended this post to be related to the previous post "Public vs. Private Benefit." The most glaring example of a "Public Benefit" process in modern times is the tremendous cooperative and sharing attitude of people who developed the modern Internet. This same open source process is growing stronger via social networking tools and provides an obvious and logical alternative to the "Private Benefit" organizations that have controlled the environmental and social justice economies of many cultures worldwide.

Today, John Markoff wrote an interesting article about this topic in the Business Section of the New York Times titled: "The Team That Put the Net in Orbit." He describes the cooperative spirit of the open source software networking movement in the 1980s that lead to the Internet as we know it today.

The article credits Al Gore, then a U.S. Senator, "with introducing legislation in 1988 to finance what he originally called a "national data highway.... Ultimately, in 1991, his bill to create a National Research and Education Network did pass. Funded by the National Science Foundation, it was instrumental in upgrading the speed of the academic and scientific network backbone leading up to the commercialized Internet." Markoff quotes Lawrence H. Landweber, one of the pioneers of "internetworking" who said of Al Gore, "He is a hero in this field."

Markoff notes that "Some 220 of the original Internet pioneers met here at the end of November to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the NSFnet, the scientific data network that was originally constructed to tie together the nation’s five supercomputer centers and that would ultimately explode into today’s Internet. By the time the academic network was shut down in 1996, it connected 6.6 million host computers and extended to 93 countries."

"The story of the network and its impact on the world is a case study in the role of serendipity in technology design and in the power of a deftly managed public-private partnership."

Markoff also states in the article that "According to a wide range of conference participants, NSFnet ultimately succeeded because of both the hacker culture of engineers that built the system and the very nature of the network they were creating; it fostered intellectual collaboration in a way not previously possible.

“The model of a network where no one is in charge is a model that can scale,” said Douglas E. Van Houweling, the chairman of the Merit Network when the NSFnet backbone was constructed."

A Wikipedia page notes that open source software "is often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Open-source software is the most prominent example of open source development and often compared to user generated content."

In previous posts here I have tried to connect social networking concepts that promote user generated content with the concept of Common Adventure projects. The open source networking where "no one is in charge" fits well with my experiences and thoughts. The increasing use and value of the Geo Web and the Semantic Web also fit into what I see in the future. I will continue to try to clarify these ideas in future posts.

Al Gore's holographic opening of live earth 7.7.7

I found an interesting article written by Cintra Wilson in Salon.com on July 8, titled "Al's big day." Wilson makes an interesting point that I have also noticed whenever I have heard Al Gore talk about Global Warming. "The concerts themselves assiduously avoided any mention of political agenda,... -- it was just a smiley-face, rockin' good time: proud, happy, respectful and, above all, hopeful --..."

I am convinced that most people want to have the best information available on environmental issues and are tired and wary of the constant partisan politics that flood the popular news services. Hopefully this new found public energy Al Gore and many others are stimulating will lead to much better environmental decision making in the near future. Social, community and environmental networking tools are becoming increasingly sophisticated and available. Anyone can now start learning how to use these new tools if we want to become active citizen participants. I hope this blog provides some related interesting information that is helpful toward this new era.

An example of 3-D I mentioned in my June 19th Blog entry can be seen in the YouTube video of the Al Gore Hologram opening the Live Earth 7.7.07 Concerts.

This YouTube video is shown in 2D, but at the Live Earth Concerts people saw the real hologram. I am interested in knowing if and how we can see holograms like these on our personal computers, and how they might be delivered on web sites in the future.

Does anyone reading this have any suggestions or links we can look at?

Live Earth Concerts 7.7.07 & Google Earth

It is already 7.7.07 in Australia and Live Earth - The Concerts for a Climate in Crisis - are about to begin. This one day hopefully will lead to years of new social networking on global climate issues and will change the way humans think about the real and total cost of greenhouse gases we are producing.

Today, Frank Taylor (Google Earth Blog) posted a Google Earth KMZ file of the locations for each of the concerts. I was curious about the places where the events would be held and after doing some research I added some additional links to more information and created another

KML file that I uploaded to the Google Earth Community - Environment and Conservation topic. Here is a link to the page where you can download the file and use it in Google Earth to fly to, and explore, these places on every continent, including a special event in Antarctica.

I saw Al Gore on the Larry King Live show last night and he commented that the Live Earth Concerts are only one event to raise Global Awareness to billions of people. He has a plan to work with The Alliance for Climate Protection to keep education, information and public involvement going strong for at least three more years. One of these efforts includes inviting climate related video submissions from the public that, when approved, could be available on Current TV.

I will write more about these plans as I find information about them.

Al Gore will testify at U.S. Congress on March 21, International Equinoctal Earth Day - 2007

The International Equinoctal Earth Day, March 21 is a time when it is possible to create an awareness in Idaho, in America and around the world that this was a special day and a special time of year - Spring - when new living organisms (and ideas) can begin to grow and flourish.

I have written about Al Gore's rousing reception in Boise last month. Two days ago his movie An Inconvenient Truth, received two Academy Awards. Now he is asking people to add their voices to another big effort to bring the Global Warming message to Congress. Of all the people in the world no one is creating a more positive attitude about networking for positive solutions. We should all try to add to his efforts with our own commitments for action starting now.

Al Gore is testifying at Congressional Hearings on March 21, 2001 on the Climate Crises. Today he sent out a "Our Next Step" message to everyone on his mailing list to ask people to send an e-card to their representatives in Washington D.C. demanding real action on global warming. He also asks everyone to send a copy of the e-card form to at least 10 people for them to sign as well.

Al Gore also has a Blog Journal where he is providing important news articles and links to valuable Global Warming web sites.

I plan to expand on this topic in the next few days as it relates to Spring 2007 and Earth Day activities in Boise and Idaho.

National Day of Climate Action

I am seeing many efforts on the Internet to engage people in Global Warming actions now and in the future. Al Gore's book and movie, "An Inconvenient Truth" is one of the most well known. An associated effort is the web site "Stop Global Warming.org" where over 600,000 people have already joined a "Virtual March." It is encouraging to see efforts to organize action groups in local communities starting in the next few months. The links below go to a specific effort to organize a National Day of Climate Action in cities across the U.S. I hope this day will extend out to actions by everyone every day of the year in the future.

I plan to attend the organizational meeting in Boise and, as I noted in my recent February 5, post, to suggest we should organize some local social networking tools to help this important action continue.

Visit the national Step it Up 2007 web site for for information about 675 similar events that are already planned in 48 states across the country!

In Boise a group of people have registered for Boise to participate in this important nationwide day on April 14, 2007 to begin to reshape our Global Warming future. If interested in attending an organizational meeting there is an online RSVP form you can send in or you can ask questions by e-mail.

An e-mail notice has been distributed that notes "Our first organizing meeting will be held on Thursday, February 22nd, at 7pm, at the Boise Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, located at 6200 N. Garrett St., in Garden City. This meeting will be to decide on what type of event we would like to have here in Boise, and then making the plans to make that even a success! We hope to see you all there!"

Global Warming and mitigation using a Common Adventure Process

In a "Declaration of INTERdependence" in 1975, Henry Steele Commager wrote ..."that all people are part of one global community, dependent on one body of resources, bound together by the ties of common humanity and associated in a common adventure on the planet earth.

That humans continue to negatively affect earth's ecosystems is not news to anyone. A stark public reminder that we are causing significant amounts of Greenhouse Gases and this is related to the dramatic increase in Global Warming was issued by a 4th Assessement of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last week. Former Vice President Al Gore and many others have been warning for years that all citizens have to take more responsibility for changing our personal, governmental and corporate behaviors in an attempt to mitigate the climate change that is accompanying Global Warming.

I suggest that there is recent evidence that this change can explode into Common Adventure action groups starting with our families, friends, and social groups and organizations we belong to, or soon join or develop. During the 1960's and the 1970's many of us will remember that the impetus for the "Modern Environmental Movement" in the United States did create the kind of social networking movement that is now needed again. Today, in contrast to 40 years ago, almost everybody can have instant and comprehensive communication using cell phones, e-mail, blogs, wikis and other social networking tools provided by the growing Internet infrastructure.

If we as individual citizens have the will and the interest we can all start to put heavy pressure on our politicians and business leaders and on local, regional and global corporations we will have an opportunity to thoughtfully, scientifically, and truthfully attempt to mitigate our human effects on global warming, climate change and general deterioration of earth's ecosystems.

I am preparing to initiate a Common Adventure Social Networking project in an attempt to help stimulate a discussion about how to increase the citizen interest and participation in this mitigation. One target time frame I expect to put forward to begin this effort in 2007 is the time before the International and Equinoctial Earth Day, celebrated on the Vernal Equinox March 20-21, to include the more popular Earth Day started in the United States, April 22, 1970. Hopefully the discussions that result will also stimulate local and regional interest and participation in these observances and many other events during the year 2007 and into the future.

I have written about my experience with the "Common Adventure Process" in earlier posts on this blog (August 18, 2006). In the near future I expect to start another project to include a Wiki and possibly a Blog with discussion options.

Comments are welcome ! Stay tuned!

Al Gore - Positive Idaho News

Kudos to the Idaho Statesman for their positive editorial today on Al Gore's speech and a "Call to action." Hopefully this will simulate more local citizens to become more actively involved in personal and local organizational efforts to control pollution causing Global warming. I am considering trying to start a Wiki group to help share project ideas and efforts that already exist and to stimulate ideas for new projects. I will write more about this as time permits. Comments are welcome!

On January 23, the morning after Al Gores speech in Boise this week The Idaho Statesman published an article by Anne Wallace Allen titled "Gore charms, daunts crowd of 10,000 at Taco Bell Arena." Even though the article accurately reported that the crowd was cheerful and raucus, I wondered about the word "daunt" in the title, a few paragraphs about a "half dozen" protesters and a final negative sentence from one student, leaving the speech halfway through, that "He's not a scientist; he's a politician."

I looked at the online version of the paper today to see if anyone was commenting about this first, article and the slight impression of despair and pessimism I felt was implied by the earlier Anne Wallace Allan article. I did not find any public comments yet, but was encouraged to see the Idaho Statesman has written a new and very interesting Opinion > Editorial titled, "Our View: This is the time for action on warming."

The new statesman opinion does not apply the term "daunt" (discourage) to Al Gore, but did apply the words "denial and despair" to our politicians and those people who are convinced that we do not need to change our behavior - "in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence" that global warming caused by human activities is real. This opinion states a much more positive review of Al Gores speech quoted below:

This is no time for denial or despair. It's a time for action. If it originates at the local or state level, so be it. In a 105-minute speech on global warming Monday night, former Vice President Al Gore took on the skeptics and the doomsayers — and challenged Idahoans to lobby on behalf of the planet they'll pass on to their children.

The opinion article also noted that Gore argues effectively that "Idaho is not immune." "Climate change contributes to disease and wildfire in the forests. Global warming could bring drier summers and lower streamflows — while early snowmelt and spring storms provide a recipe for flooding. On top of that, he says, Idaho soil could lose up to 30 percent of its moisture, essential to growing." The article also notes that Gore gave examples of companies, cities (including Boise), and the global community that is already creating examples by making contributions. The article continues with the following comments that I quote.

"As Gore aptly puts it, political will is a renewable resource. Boise's political will poses a model to other Treasure Valley cities, and to state leaders."

"A Republican Legislature and a Republican governor may be tempted to scoff at the Democrat Gore's challenge to tackle global warming. But they should not dismiss Boise City Hall's commitment."

"And they would be foolish to ignore a sellout crowd of 10,000, engaged enough to pack a basketball arena on a Monday night to hear a presentation on global warming. It was the largest audience to hear Gore's presentation in one sitting, said Garry Wenske, executive director of Boise State University's Frank Church Institute, which sponsored the speech."

As I am about to post this I also read another interesting online story in the "New West" - The Voice of the Rocky Mountains. Dated 1-22-07 and written by Jennifer Gelband the article is titled "Gore Speaks; Now's Your Chance to Respond." Several comments are available.

Standing Ovations for Al Gore and Bethine Church

Former Vice President, Al Gore received several standing ovations in Boise, Idaho last night at the 2007 Frank Church Institute Conference on Public Affairs. Bethine Church also received standing ovations as she introduced Gore and noted that their families had been close friends for many years. For me and many of the "age 50+ crowd" it was a heartwarming and stimulating remembrance of the environmental movement in action 36 years ago.

As early as 1970, at the first Earth Day Idaho's Senator Frank Church warned of the "Green-House effect" and the melting of the polar ice caps. Al Gore has been publicly involved in trying to promote citizen and congressional attention to this issue since the early 1980's.

Gore encouraged a full house of 10,000 enthusiastic people to do everything possible to affect changes in attitudes and behavior related to the negative changes taking place all over the world because of human related "Global Warming" activities. The Keynote presentation was powerful and parts were tailored to an Idaho audience. It was also similar to the recently Academy Award nominated movie "An Inconvenient Truth," that has become one of the best documentary feature films of our times and has been viewed by many millions of people worldwide.

This huge issue and the many subtopics involved illustrates the growing need for Social Networking communication projects I have advocated on this Blog. If all of the 10,000 people who listened to Al Gore last night were to redouble their efforts to be actively involved locally, regionally, nationally and globally I feel it would make a difference. Add the millions of people around the world who have also seen the slide show or the movie and this would be a powerful force to dramatically affect changes in the political will needed to effect changes in Global Warming trends.

I will look for Social Networking Internet opportunities on this issue and report them in this blog as time permits. A few web sites that encourage education and participation include; stopglobalwarming.org, climatecrises.net, Union of Concerned Scientists, and Wikipedia (lots of information and references) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has changed its web page title from Global Warming to Climate Change and also provides interesting information and sections on "What you can do".

Al Gore's active and highly visible involvement in the late 1980's and 90's promoting public computer networks, the Information Highway and the Internet should also be noted in this context. A good condensed source of information about Al Gore's life and work is found on Wikipedia.

Boosting Social Environmental Networking in Idaho

Al Gore and David C. Korten:

This month these two important speakers will be in Boise, Idaho and large crowds are expected to listen to their arguments for citizens to become more involved in public environmental affairs. Social networking tools I have been writing about here can dramatically increase these opportunities if we learn how to use them more effectively. I suggest that public discussion and action groups could form after these two influential speakers leave Boise. This effort could tie in with the topics presented at the Idaho Environmental Summit in December would be a good starting point. On this Blog I wrote about these possibilities on November 29 and December 12, 2006.

Former Vice President, Al Gore will be the keynote speaker at the Frank Church Institute Conference on Public Affairs in Boise, Idaho January 22, 2007. The conference is titled "Global Warming: Beyond the Inconvenient Truth" and will be held at Boise State University. Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" has become an outreach effort to mobilize local citizens to fight global warming.

Also well known as a person who popularized the term "information superhighway" in the early 1990's, Al Gore was the keynote speaker at the 1992 Frank Church Conference, where "Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit" his newly released book at the time was the theme.

On January 19, David C. Korten will be speaking about his new book "The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community." Sponsored by the Boise Unitarian Fellowship and many co-sponsor groups, the book and lecture are part of a plan "to advance Earth Community Dialogues aimed at changing the conversation about our local, national and global possibilities."

Both of these men have already been promoting the development of local civic action groups during their lectures and on their web sites. I am interested in identifying groups that do actually form and how they communicate using the Internet. Anyone else reading this Blog is welcome to participate in this effort.

Social Networking for Climate Change Threats

What Social networks exist related to the possibilities of climate change threats in the near future? Everything in our social, economic, political and environmental ecosystems will change dramatically if climate change happens faster than expected. As a high priority I will try to locate sources of good information to post here. Meanwhile here are some of my thoughts today.

The current U.S. administration does not provide citizens with adequate information regarding these threats even though people like Al Gore (An Inconvenient Truth) and many others are trying to alert us to potential problems. This is one of the most important topics for citizens around the earth to start building "Social Networking" concepts to try to learn and educate our friends and neighbors, and also to create much stronger communication networks with our community, state, and federal elected officials.

Below is an article about a scientific study that definitely confirms "recent carbon dioxide has come from fossil fuel sources and must be due to human activity."

"A CLIMATE change timebomb may be just 10 years away from detonating, according to the latest global warming evidence." An article with this statement was published in The Age.com, today, by John Von Radowitz. Titled "Ice cores hold threat of climate timebomb."

At the same time we need more information to be shared on all kinds of topics, including climate change, some in the U.S. government are alluding to the problems that the free use of the Internet may cause for national security.

Should we be alarmed about the future of our opportunities to use the Internet to organize groups for social activism? Who is talking about this on the Internet?

In the New York Times on September 5, David Sanger and John O'Neil wrote an article titled "Political Season Opens with Focus on Security". In the article they note that The White House Report, titled "National Strategy for Combating Terrorism" In the last sentence of this article they state 'The report notes the "increasingly sophisticated use of the Internet and the media" that has allowed terrorists to recruit and communicate.'