This
program explores how green leaders are converting to climate activism.
And how you can move from spectator to Earth activist. You'll hear Forest Ethics co-Founder
Tzeporah Berman in a moving speech, going to a new climate group Power Up
Canada. United Church Pastor Bruce
Sanguin gives us a new vision of Gaia-friendly Christianity. And Maureen Jack-LeCroix explains her
calling to "Be the Change" - as host of the recent Be The Change
Circles event in Vancouver. There's
more... Arran Stephens of Nature's Path, and two conference guests - but first,
here are some links to help you dig further.
http://www.bethechangeearthalliance.org/
You Tube
video of founder Maureen Jack-LeCroix - why she devoted 10 years to Gaia and
founded Be The Change Circles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smLyRHo7aS0
BURNING
DOWN THE WEST Wildfires stoke the carbon load. Ecoshock Show 071116 (1 hr)
Interview: Dr. Tom Gower, saying fires in N. Canada make positive feedback;
speech by Temperate Rainforest activist Pas Rasmussen - why she is now a
climate activist as well. Echoes by Andrea Reimer of the Wilderness Committee. New
research on the Rockies burning by Lara Kueppers; were California fires climate
change?
http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock/ES_071116_Show.mp3
CURRENT
PLAGUES - FUTURE FORESTS Can forests keep up with global warming? Ecoshock Show
070706 1 hour
Dr. Clive
Welham on ravages on pine bark beetle in Rockies; Dr. Del Meidinger speech
"Future Forests" to 6th N.A. Forest Ecology Conference.
http://www.ecoshock.org/cfro/2007/ES_070706_Show.mp3
RISING
SEAS, DRYING WEST Ecoshock Show 080815 Top IPCC organizer & U of Arizona
Professor Jonathan Overpeck speech at Washington U. After updating the world
climate report, Overpeck predicts climate impacts on North America. 1 hour CD
Quality Lo-Fi 14 MB http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock08/ES_080815_Show_LoFi.mp3
Drying of
the West with National Geographic author Robert Kunzig; the first Carbon Tax in
North America in B.C. (and what it means for the U.S.); censored Canadian
scientists - speech clip from Dr. John Fyfe, IPCC author. Oh yeah, and some
hope. 1 hour. Ecoshock show 080222
Lo-Fi 14 MB
http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock08/ES_080222_Show_LoFi.mp3
Climate
Conversion - Tzeporah Berman speech Be The Change Un-Conference, Vancouver May
23, 2009. 16 minutes Lo-Fi
http://www.ecoshock.org/downloads/ecoshock/ES_Tzeporah_Berman_090523_LoFi.mp3
A CLIMATE
OF CRASH AND CHOICE Finance & elections. Mike Whitney on Wall Street mess
-Bush's plan to grab the money & run. Voting for climate action. Brianna
Cayo Cotter U.S. PowerVote.org; Tzeporah Berman speech introducing
PowerUpCanada.ca. Also Rep Ed Markey web cast on new Green Jobs initiative.
Plus some fun (e.g. George Carlin) and music. Ecoshock Show 080926 1 hour
Lo-Fi 14
MB
http://www.ecoshock.net/eshock08/ES_080926_Show_LoFi.mp3
Tzeporah
Berman at Bioneers Conference October 2006.
About 20 minutes.
http://www.ecoshock.org/cfro/ES_Berman_Bioneers_061021.mp3
THIS WEEK'S ECOSHOCK
PROGRAM BEGINS....
Dear
extra-terrestrial visitor,
Things
are past serious here on Planet Earth.
Our top scientists, the people who study and measure, warn the web of
life is headed toward utter catastrophe, possibly in just ninety years. The ocean, source of our oxygen and mother
of most life, is turning acid due to our carbon pollution. Our once stable climate, the basis of our
agriculture and civilization, is undergoing violent change.
As I
record this, smoke from forest fires - hundreds of miles away in the mountains,
is filling our great city. I can smell
the distress, and it's only June, not even fire season yet. Last night, as we watched TV news, a
reporter showed the tinder dry conditions on Vancouver Island. "My God" said my companion,
"that is the rainforest. The rainforest,
untouched by fire for a thousand years or more, could burn."
It's only
a matter of short time. The great pine
forests of the Rocky Mountains have been killed by global warming. They stand dead, valley after valley, each
long trough visible from space, waiting to burn. Each great tree is a tower of carbon taken from the
atmosphere. Now it will go back, in
great bursts of fire that nothing can stop.
A burp of carbon worse than the Indonesian rainforest fires of
'97-'98. Greenpeace predicted this in
1994, in a report called "The Carbon Bomb". Now, it's happening. Here
in the Rockies, all from California right up to the Yukon. Even the boreal forest, clothing the North,
is burning out more carbon than new trees can gather. Vast forests will convert into grasslands or scrub deserts.
We don't
know how far all this new carbon, coming in the next decade, will push the
climate.
The
carbon whirlwind is still of our own making.
Will you be a witness? Or will
you be the change we need?
This is
Radio Ecoshock. I am your host, Alex
Smith.
What is
this program about? Is it horrible fear
about the future? Not really. We're
going to delve into vision and conversion.
Yours and mine.
How do
we change from passive viewers, to become actors for the Earth?
As governments fail, as society cracks wide open, how can we be what
Earth needs?
What if
you are already type-cast, maybe even successful and well-known in your
role? Could you drop all that to start
up again? Just because an inner voice
calls it the right thing to do?
This is a
story of three lives changing. They all
call on you - not to follow them.
No. To realize your own
mission. To do what you were born to
do.
Tzeporah
Berman is an iconic forest activist.
OK, she's one of THE green media stars of the woods. While executive director of the eco-group
Forest Ethics, Berman has a hard-won realization: the largest forests are
already dying and burning not from loggers, but from coal plants and car
exhausts. Climate change is now the
biggest killer in the woods. We'll hear
a hot new speech about her conversion to a new climate activism.
Maureen
Jack-LaCroix produced movies and organized big music festivals. One day, Maureen says she got a spiritual
call to devote ten years to Gaia, the life force of Earth. She started "Be The Change
Circles" - small groups of self-motivators. That became an organization, the "Be The Change Earth
Alliance". On May 23rd, 2009, I
took my recording equipment to their latest so-called
"un-conference." Yes there
were two short speeches - but people grouped at intimate round tables. Everyone got a chance to speak and
share. This was not a place for
learning from authorities, but each other.
There was no passive audience.
It was "You get involved."
I came
away thinking "This is it. This is
how it can happen - across North America and around the world." That is why I'm doing this radio
program. To invite you - yes you! - to
convene a little group of people, pointed toward a living world. Be the change.
Somewhere
along the way, I'll toss in a bunch of resources to learn about our drying,
burning forests. So you can educate
yourself, and prepare some psychological readiness for tomorrow's shocking
news.
Then
we'll wrap up with the most difficult conversion of all. Christianity still dominates the mental
majority of the worst carbon polluters - in the United States and Europe. Some blame the Judeo-Christian-Muslim
separation of God, from the living Earth, for our rapacious culture. Fundamentalist Christian teachers continue
to deny the sciences of evolution, geology, and now climate.
Can
Christianity become compatible with science?
The science that warns us of a new sin that will burn our living
world? In a short speech, Pastor Bruce Sanguin
proposes a new Reformation - a vision of green Christianity. Is it possible?
We'll
also squeeze in a few words from Arran Stephens CEO and co-founder of the
cereal and whole foods company Nature's Path.
He was one of over twenty table leaders at Be The Change. I also have a sample un-conference conversation
for you, two women in the hallway, walk-by audio.
Great
Gaia! All that in one hour? Let's be going.
Tzeporah
Berman knows big change. She could have
been a middle class success at anything.
Instead, she popped up on Canadian TV screens, and then around the
world, as the passionate and photogenic spokeswoman for the anti-logging
protests at Clayoquot Sound, a gorgeous old-growth inlet on Canada's far
West Coast.
There
hasn't been any environmental protest quite like Clayoquot, before or since 1993.
Canadians are generally a quiet, law abiding lot. Yet over 850 people were arrested at this protest, perhaps more
than at any other green protest anywhere in the Western world. Businessmen in suits bussed up to get
themselves a criminal record. Grandmothers
and even children were dragged away to police vans and jail. Twelve thousand people joined the protest in
the remote woods. The big rock band
Midnight Oil came for a free concert, held in the infamous "black
hole" of burned out stumps.
Clayoquot
Sound was designated a World Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations in 2000.
Tzeporah
worked some years for Greenpeace, helping to organize negotiations between the
big logging companies and several environmental groups, including Greenpeace,
The Sierra Club, and Rainforest Action Network. Meanwhile, Greenpeace offices around the world organized not just
media-catching protests, but one of the first and largest corporate boycotts in
history. Paper companies, and lumber
companies began calling B.C. corporations, like MacMillan Bloedel, to cancel
orders. The consumer pressure was just
too hot. Finally, years later, in
another big step for environmental action, the largest companies joined the
government and private foundations in signing a protective agreement for the
Great Bear Rainforest. Huge virgin
rainforest valleys were saved for the future, while other logging had to meet
sustainable standards that included wildlife protection.
During the battle, Berman joined another organization set up by the three groups, called "Forest Ethics." Note, despite her later claims, Tzeporah did not found Forest Ethics, but joined as an employee under then Executive Director Michael Marx. But this green dynamo, Tzeporah Berman, certainly took Forest Ethics to new heights, becoming Executive Director and it's guiding light. She continued her forest activism with a single-minded heart that few could match.
But then
something happened. Tzep, as she is
know to her many friends, ran into the wall of fire, climate change. She'll tell us in her own words, after a
lively introduction by Maureen Jack-LeCroix of the Be The Change Earth
Alliance.
[Tzeporah
Berman]
That was
famous forest activist Tzeporah Berman, recorded by Alex Smith of Radio
Ecoshock, from "Be the Change" May 23rd, 2009. Now she is Executive Director of a new
organization aimed at weaning Canadians from fossil fuels. It's called Power Up Canada at powerupcanada.ca
[More
Crosby Stills and Nash “Long Time Gone”]
Back in
1968, when David Crosby wrote that song, it seemed a long time coming. It was.
Now over 40 years later, it seems to me the time has come. The Great Turning, for better and for
worse, has come.
Let's get
back to being the change. Here is my
quickie interview in a doorway, with Arran Stephens, CEO and co-founder of the
big natural cereal and whole foods company "Nature's Path". He was humbly leading a circle table, one of
the 270 giving up their whole sunny Saturday to thrash out grass roots change.
[Arran
Stephens interview]
That was
Arran Stephens, CEO of Nature's Path.
We're at the Be the Change un-conference in Vancouver May 23rd. Each circle had a leader, but everyone got
two chances to speak, holding the talking stick. It was a mass participation event. I tried to record a table with Vancouver's Deputy Mayor, and long
time Western Wilderness activist, Andrea Reimer - but the background of so many
people exchanging overwhelmed my equipment.
I wanted to grab it all, I heard so many intriguing conversation. We'll have to settle for this audio walk-by
in a hallway, between two women participants, one fairly fresh from Rumania. Let's listen in.
[Two
Women talking]
Our time
to consider conversion is running out.
We'll go to the grand-daddy of green problems: can Christians accept
the new climate science? What kind
of stories bring us together, to make the changes we need to survive? Our host Maureen Jack-LaCroix, conference
organizer for Be The Change Earth Alliance, introduces pastor Bruce. Don't run away. Bruce Sanguin has a vision that just might make this work.
[Bruce
Sanguin]
That was
Pastor Bruce Sanguin, a United Minister in Vancouver, at the Be the Change
event May 23rd, 2009. Find out more at bethechangeearthalliance.org. You'll find helpful links in the Radio
Ecoshock blog entry for June 4th. Just
go to ecoshock.org and click blog. I've
added a listing of all our radio shows on the drying West, the dying trees, and
the risks of a climate conflagration.
Those are mp3 files for your download, free and commercial free. Climate and forests are tied in a divine
dance. Find out more.
I'm Alex
Smith. Thanks for tuning in to Radio Ecoshock - and let's talk again next
week.
===========
Lyrics
for Long Time Gone
David
Crosby, 1968
It's been
a long time comin'
It's
goin' to be a long time gone.
Appears
to be a long time,
Yes, a
long, long, log time
Before
the dawn.
Turn,
turn any corner.
Hear, you
must hear what the people say,
You know
there's something that's goin' on here,
That
surely, surely, surely won't stand the light of day.
And it
appears to be a long,
Such a
long, long, long time before the dawn.
Speak
out, you got to speak out against
The
madness, you got to speak your mind,
If you
dare.
But don't
try to get yourself elected.
If you do
you had better cut your hair.
'Cause it
appears to be a long time,
Before
the dawn.
It's been
a long time comin',
It's been
a long time gone.
But you
know, the darkest hour,
Is always
just before the dawn.
And it
appears to be a long time,
Such a
long, long, long time before the dawn.