No Impact Man Makes a Big Impact

Posted on October 31, 2008 by zoeweil

In my last blog post, I wrote about how making MOGO (Most Good) choices not only makes a difference for the world, but also brings hope.  Colin Beavan, author of the blog No Impact Man decided to do something in the face of escalating ecological degradation.  Here’s how he describes it:

“The way I see it, waiting for the senators and the CEOs to change the way we treat the world is taking too long. Polar bears are already drowning because the polar ice is melting. In fact, research shows it’s worse: they are so hungry, they are actually starting to eat each other.

I can’t stand my so-called liberal self sitting around not doing anything about it anymore. The question is: what would it be like if I took the situation (or at least my tiny part of it) into my own hands? I’m finding out.

For one year, my wife, my 2-year-old daughter, my dog and I, while living in the middle of New York City, are attempting to live without making any net impact on the environment. In other words, no trash, no carbon emissions, no toxins in the water, no elevators, no subway, no products in packaging, no plastics, no air conditioning, no TV, no toilets…

What would it be like to try to live a no impact lifestyle? Is it possible? Could it catch on? Is living this way more fun or less fun? More satisfying or less satisfying? Harder or easier? Is it worthwhile or senseless? Are we all doomed or is there hope? These are the questions at the heart of this whole crazy-assed endeavor.”

Visit No Impact Man and get inspired to make a difference, too!

~ Zoe

Image courtesy of No Impact Man.

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Claude and Medea Wins Moonbeam Children’s Book Award

Posted on October 29, 2008 by zoeweil

I was very pleased to learn that Claude and Medea: The Hellburn Dogs has won the 2008 Moonbeam Children’s Book Award for juvenile fiction. The award is designed “to bring increased recognition to exemplary children’s books and their creators, and to support childhood literacy and life-long reading.” You can read a complete list of the winners.

Claude and Medea: The Hellburn Dogs is the first in a series of children’s novels (ages 9 & up) promoting humane values through an exciting mystery. Claude and Medea are two very different Manhattan 7th graders who become clandestine activists seeking out opportunities to right wrongs and do good in the world. In The Hellburn Dogs, the duo and a group of friends team up to solve the mystery of a rash of dog thefts.

~ Zoe

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Hope is a Verb With Its Sleeves Rolled Up

Posted on October 29, 2008 by zoeweil

David Orr, professor of environmental studies at Oberlin College once wrote, “Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up.” I love this quote.  It reminds me of Joan Baez’ famous comment, “Action is the antidote to despair.”  We don’t have the luxury or the time for despair and hopelessness.

Many will say that hope and despair are not only nouns, rather than verbs, they are also emotions, not actions.  True enough.  But we cultivate either hope or despair, either apathy or action, either myopia or wisdom by our behaviors.  Commitment and motivation may come from internal resources that seem mysterious, but self-discipline is something we can practice, and we have the capacity to choose to roll up our sleeves and act.  When we do, we discover that hope accompanies us, attached at the hip to our MOGO (Most Good) deeds.

MOGO choices feed our faith that we can succeed in creating a healthy and peaceful world, and enliven our spirits as we do the work it takes to solve our challenges.

So make some MOGO choices today.  Get involved in changing systems while you take steps to maximize the good and minimize the harm your daily choices have on yourself and others.

~ Zoe

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We Are All Indigenous

Posted on October 27, 2008 by zoeweil

For a long time I’ve had an ambivalent relationship with the concept that indigenous peoples and cultures are essentially better than others enmeshed in industrialized civilization; that indigeneity is essentially good while industrialized civilizations are essentially bad. While I’m deeply impressed by many indigenous cultures and their healthier, more sustainable manner of living, and think that our modern culture has much to learn from indigenous peoples in order to restore our world and lead saner, more peaceful lives, I also know that some indigenous cultures have not acted sustainably or peaceably. (See Jared Diamond’s book Collapse: Why Societies Choose to Fail and Succeed.)

At Bioneers, I attended the lectures of several indigenous people, including Jeannette Armstrong, a member of the Okanagan Syilx Nation, who spoke about “re-indigenizing everyone,” and who described indigeneity as “understanding what the local land needs.” As I absorbed this definition, I wondered whether one can be indigenous to the Earth, whether one’s sense of indigeneity can be planetary. After all, the kinds of solutions we need to solve our environmental, species, economic, social, and human rights crises are global in nature and require an appreciation for and understanding of a borderless world. While understanding what the local land needs is part and parcel of global solution-making, I believe that our sense of indigeneity must not end at our local doorstep.

Later, I listened to Oscar Miro-Quesada, a Peruvian shaman and UN Observer to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, say that we are all indigenous. I breathed a sigh of relief. Yes, we are all indigenous to this Earth and our places on it, and it’s up to each of us to take responsibility for our participation in restoring what we have damaged by living with awareness, respect, compassion, and creative service. We cannot help but be indigenous, but we can make choices that revere our indigeneity or ignore it.

As always, the connection to humane education is obvious. We can and must teach the lessons that those who have embraced their indigeneity to live peacefully, humanely, and sustainably have deeply cultivated and ignite a passion among our students to take these lessons and, with enthusiasm, bring their growing knowledge and their modern lives to the great task to learning to live as grateful indigenous peoples of this Earth, solving our crises with their ingenuity as well as their indigeneity.

~ Zoe

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Spread the Word About 350.org

Posted on October 24, 2008 by zoeweil

Bill McKibben spoke at Bioneers this past weekend introducing the 13,000+ participants to 350.org, a viral effort to influence government leaders around the world to commit to reducing carbon in the atmosphere. As they describe it on their website:

“350 is the red line for human beings, the most important number on the planet. The most recent science tells us that unless we can reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, we will cause huge and irreversible damage to the earth.

But solutions exist. All around the world, a movement is building to take on the climate crisis, to get humanity out of the danger zone and below 350. This movement is massive, it is diverse, and it is visionary. We are activists, scholars, and scientists. We are leaders in our businesses, our churches, our governments, and our schools. We are clean energy advocates, forward-thinking politicians, and fearless revolutionaries. And we are united around the world, driven to make our planet livable for all who come after us.”

Please visit 350.org, sign up and spread the word!

~ Zoe

Image courtesy of 350.org.

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Solvability vs. Despair

Posted on October 22, 2008 by zoeweil

I’m back from Bioneers full of new ideas and information, and in the coming days and weeks I’ll be sharing some of my thoughts from this amazing annual conference. Today’s post was inspired by a comment made by David Orr, environmental studies professor at Oberlin College and leader in environmental education, who spoke at the conference. He said that he worried more about despair keeping us from solving our environmental problems than about their inherent solvability. I find this a profound and critical observation. Given the massive ecological crises we face that will require the collaboration of nations, the commitment of governments, the action of individuals, the full alignment of educational systems, the attention of global media, and the ingenuity and genius of inventors, builders, farmers, healers, economists, and systems thinkers, it is interesting to consider the greatest threat to success to be despair. I would add to that apathy and myopia.

Like David Orr, I have confidence that we are absolutely capable of solving our escalating ecological problems, but we will fail if we succumb to despair and apathy, and if we remain stuck in short-sighted thinking. Confronting these – our greater challenges to success – is not easy. We must work to retain hope, vigilance, and commitment, and to cultivate long-term, wise thinking. These don’t always come easily to us.

Not surprisingly, this is why I’m so committed to humane education as the underlying answer to all our challenges. Humane education cultivates the very qualities we must embody (both individually and societally) to retain our hope, motivation, and creativity and get to work in a host of fields – from engineering to politics to economics to farming to architecture – that actually solve the problems we face.

As we teach about the crises of our time, we must do so engendering the hope and inspiring the commitment to create meaningful and utterly doable change.

~ Zoe

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Zoe’s at Bioneers – Back Next Week

Posted on October 16, 2008 by zoeweil

Hello, Everyone,

I’m off for the Bioneers conference this weekend in San Rafael, California. I’ll be really busy attending sessions, networking, and tabling for the Institute for Humane Education, so I won’t have a chance to do any blog posts until next week. In the meantime, in case you don’t already know about it, please visit IHE’s Humane Connection blog, which is updated 4-5 times a week.

Be well,

~ Zoe

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Michael Pollan’s Letter to the President-Elect on Food Security

Posted on October 13, 2008 by zoeweil

The cover story of Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, “Farm-in-Chief” by Michael Pollan, is a letter on food to whomever is our next president. What impresses me most about this nine-page “letter” is that Michael Pollan draws so many connections between food and other crucial issues of our time, such as health and healthcare, global warming, fossil fuel costs and future availability, environmental preservation, financial stability, and animal cruelty. While Pollan advocates an omnivorous food system in which animal agriculture plays a significant and pervasive role (which may not be MOGO), and while he presses for regional agriculture as a final goal (as opposed to an interim solution to a clean energy challenge), his letter is exactly what we need to be talking about and what our future president needs to place as a centerpiece of policy change.

Food? A centerpiece of policy change? When our economy is tanking and we’re hemorrhaging money in Iraq and al-Qaeda gains strength and people don’t have health insurance and our world is warming and species are becoming extinct at an unprecedented rate, why should our next president turn his attention toward transforming food policy? Because doing so would help solve many of our problems, including (to greater and lesser degrees) some of these that are most on our minds.

Michael Pollan gives the president-elect a great place to start.

~ Zoe

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The 7th Key to MOGO: Strive for Balance with Your Relationships

Posted on October 10, 2008 by zoeweil

When we choose to learn about the effects of our choices (on ourselves, other people, animals, and the environment), and when, as a result of our commitment to learning, we adopt the MOGO principle to do the most good and the least harm in relation to everyone, we inevitably make changes in our lives. We might change our shopping habits, our diet, our recreation and entertainment choices, our work, our parenting, our activism, and more. And our new choices – positive though they may be – may be imposed (to greater and lesser degrees) on our family members, associates, and friends. Or, if not imposed, our choices may certainly impact our loved ones.

It’s one thing to choose to change; it’s another to have unasked for change suddenly thrust upon you. And so, an individual in the process of using the 3 Is (Inquiry, Introspection, and Integrity) to make MOGO choices faces a quandary: How can we live with integrity and respect the different path our loved ones may be on?

In my upcoming book, Most Good, Least Harm: A Simple Principle for a Better World and a Meaningful Life, I describe 7 Keys to MOGO. The last key, and perhaps the one that knits the others together, is “Strive for Balance.” We will face both internal and external challenges in choosing a MOGO life — one of which is respecting the different perspectives of our friends and family. By compromising, accepting limitations, and striving to find a balance that preserves and strengthens our relationships while making new choices in our lives, we allow ourselves to embody MOGO more fully.

~ Zoe

Image courtesy of Brent and MariLynn.

Filed under: MOGO (Most Good), positive choices | Tagged: , , , , , | 9 Comments »

Model Your Message AND Work for Change

Posted on October 8, 2008 by zoeweil

There are people who strive vigorously to make MOGO (Most Good) choices in their daily lives. They choose foods, products, transportation, clothing, housing and furniture, family size, and recreation all with the MOGO ethic in mind. They live simply (that others may simply live). They model their message of sustainability and compassionate living, and this is their primary effort at creating a better world. They may assiduously avoid activism and politics, content to be doing their individual part in living a humane life.

There are others who strive to create systemic change as activists, thought-leaders, writers, policy-makers, and legislators. They may point out that simple living – though admirable – won’t change dangerous and destructive systems, and that taking action against unjust systems and transforming policies is the primary way that we create abiding positive change. They may pooh-pooh a focus on daily choices as largely irrelevant to real change and argue that whether they themselves drive an SUV or have more than two children or eat at McDonald’s is not relevant.

I think you know what’s coming.

Modeling our message and working for systemic change are both necessary components of creating a humane world. Without effort to create structural changes, our individual choices are very small components of changemaking. But without modeling our message in our daily choices, our policy efforts become empty rhetoric. Neither approach can be fully successful on its own. Without changes that create just, peaceful, and sustainable systems we’ll always be faced with daily choices that cause harm. We won’t truly be able to model our message to the greatest extent. And without modeling our message, we will lose our integrity and our credibility, crucial ingredients in successful social change.

To the greatest degree possible, we must each strive to model our message and work for change, and to do so with humility, humor, and honesty.

~ Zoe

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