Katie Kurtz of WorldChanging did a great writeup of this project the other day and I wanted to mention one part of it here because it so interestingly describes what I think this project can do:

“Climate commons has slowly revved up since Marsching’s introductory post November 26th, serving as a collective diary by folks with varying backgrounds who are doing something worldchanging within their sector to address the affects of climate change. Contributors include artists, architects, a climatologist and a glaciologist, activists, even an Episcopalian priest, and others (including Worldchanging’s own Sarah Rich)… Rather than forge ahead alone to understand the intricacies of ice, the problem of soot, the science glacial changes, and other Arctic-specific topics, Marsching assembled a dream team that could offer new and alternative perspectives on the site.
Aside from a collective diary, it can also be seen as a text-based panel discussion. Or a potluck conversation. Or evidence of how people from different backgrounds are exploring ways we are connected to a landscape that may be remote in terms of distance but is around the corner in terms of our impact on it.”

Full text of speech given in Trafalgar Square on November 4th.

(Due to the event over-running, this speech was cut a little on the day.)

Here is a sample of the range of stories not in the local press. Your local media may cover one or two, but there are so many not covered at all.

It is easy to create custom Google groups: just click on “Edit this personalized page” and follow your nose. Thanks to Jock Gill for this great new source.

Once the conversation began around arctic Listening Post and Climate Commons, I suddenly found myself having many more interactions and receiving many more emails in my day-to-day about the increasing interest in using art as a vehicle for expressing environmental concerns.

In the last five weeks, our book tour has stopped into eleven cities around North America. In the context of climate change, it’s an interesting time to be traveling around. Everywhere I go, the locals are talking about how “unusual” the weather is for this time of year. At the beginning of December it’s hot in Denver and snowing in Seattle; DC has tornadoes and rain has flooded numerous areas on both coasts.

When I pull up the steel pole containing the core ice sample of what I did in 2006, the unifying element to the work is the idea that only social change halts climate change.

In the summer I did a couple of benefit gigs for this week-long Camp for Climate Action. In September the Camp for Climate Action tried to shut down Drax power station, Britain’s single largest carbon spewer. The benefit gigs were performed in autonomous social centres in the north of England.

I spoke in London’s Trafalgar Square at a Stop Climate Chaos rally ( I’ll post the text soon). There were a lot of young kids there come to see the pop bands that were on, and I’m sure most of ‘em were just thinking: ‘Why is that nasty, unshaven man so angry? Shouldn’t he be happy that we’ve saved the planet already by our judicious consumer choices? In the same way that we ended corporate rule of the Global South with Live 8?’

It’s worth tracking discussions on Weds. Dec 6th, when Senator James Inhofe, the outgoing chairman of the Environment and Public Works committee, holds a hearing examining media coverage of global warming.

Sen. Inhofe has claimed that catastrophic human-caused warming is a “hoax,” while many climate experts see human-caused warming as the keystone environmental issue of the century. Inhofe had criticized my new book on global and arctic warming, The north pole Was Here, in a senate floor speech on climate alarmism, while crediting me with questioning some of the overheated coverage this year.

What I’ve been saying is that, amid all the talk of real-time catastrophe or hoax, people should not forget there’s a huge amount of consensus on on the basics: more CO2= warmer world= less ice= higher seas & shifting climate patterns.

Largest science Teachers Organization Rejects Gore Video … Why?

By: John F. Borowski
t r u t h o u t | Guest Columnist

Tuesday 28 November 2006

Would the world’s largest science teacher’s organization ignore climate change education? (Why did the NSTA say no to free “An Inconvenient Truth” DVDs?)

The National science Teachers Association (NSTA) has spurned 50,000 free DVDs of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and is squandering a golden opportunity to educate tens of millions of youth in the United States! Why? This 55,000-member organization of teachers and scientists could use Al Gore’s film to orchestrate the single most influential educational goal in human history: the awareness and subsequent solving of climate change. There is no denying the escalating list of climate change evidence: from the potential extinction of polar bears and retreating glacial environments to the increase of global temperatures in unison with increased carbon dioxide levels.

When I was up in the arctic for the filming of the NOVA program “Arctic Passage,” I and others of the crew wore cold-weather gear emblazoned with the phrase “Long Live Dreams”® – this had been the slogan of the “American Express Franklin Memorial Expedition,” whose parkas, down pants, and windsuits had been very kindly loaned to the film crew by Rebecca Harris, the leader of the expedition. In an age or corporate sponsorship, such a thing was as much a necessity as a GPS transponder, but the idea of such a phrase being trademarked by a company struck me as enormously strange. At one point after a long day’s shoot, Harald Paalgard, our director of photography, expressed his weariness by reading the phrase out in lugubrious tones reminiscent of the the Addams Family’s Lurch (”You rang?”), like this: Loooonnngg . . . .liiiivvvvve . . . . dreeeammmms. It reduced us all to tears of laughter.

Hi, finally the week draws to an end and I begin to reflect on the recent activities and look ahead to the coming week. I am the executive director of The Regeneration Project which is (most descriptively) a ministry for the religious community to draw on for support and resources when seeking to find solutions to the problem- potentially catastrophic problem- of climate change. We have an affiliated network of religious leaders from many diverse faiths in 21 states in the US. “A religious response to global warming” operates under the banner of Interfaith Power and Light. Each state program operates autonomously, but in collarboation with the others. Our aim is to reduce the US overall dependency on fossil fuel for energy by example in our memeber congregations. We promote energy efficiency, conservation and use of renewable clean resources for electricity. We ask our member congregations of which there are roughly 2000 to preach about the moral responsibility of religious people to care for God Creation. This means all living things with particular focus on the poor and in addition those living things that cannot speak for themselves.

I have done several talks and interviews for media about my this project—Climate Commons—and the other works lately and find myself reiterating a desire for artists to throw themselves into the arena of activism and politics. The follow up questions are usually about things like what are the similarities between science and art, or how does this work function as activism, how can art effect a “real” change. Not bad questions, but are they the point? These fields or endeavors are corralled into their rigidly defined pens and only a specialized Knowledge pass allows one to enter. Why not move from one to the other, insist on permeable states of being, encourage intersection and analogy?
for those who’d like further reading: a great collection of essays on art and activism.

image: ”No Way Back?” poster. design by César Sesio

There are two interesting posts on the environment over at [Greater Democracy]. As one of the organizers of the Greater Democracy blog, I hope these are but the first of many exchanges on environmental issues from a wide range of perspectives.

The first is [Islam: Environmental Protection] by Professor Dr. Farooq Hassan, President Pakistan Ecology Council.

The second is [Islam, Aikido, and Environmental Sustainability] by M. D. McDonald.

I hope you will take the time to read both essays and comment on them, either here or over on Greater Democracy.