You have been telling people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you
must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there are
things to be considered. . . .

Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?

Know your garden.
It is time to speak your truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for your leader.

Then he clasped his hands together, smiled, and said, “This could be a
good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and
swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on
to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer
greatly. Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let
go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes
open, and our heads above the water.

And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in
history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves. For
the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey come to a halt.

The time of the one wolf is over. Gather yourselves!
Banish the word ‘struggle’ from your attitude and your vocabulary. All
that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.

We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to write tonight. A few minutes ago I found myself reading the book review section of the Chronicle. The article “Gender Identity and Phantom Genitalalia” initially caught my attention and ended with a great quote from V.S. Ramachandran, a neurologist and psychologist at UC San Diego and a leading authority on phantom limb sensations, who says it has long been known that some people who are born without arms have vivid phantom arms.

“I expect a lot of criticism,” Ramachandran says. “Those who study transsexuality tend to be territorial because they themselves have made so little progress. There is no literature that illuminates the underlying mechanisms, other than psychological mumbo jumbo. And then someone comes striding in and spends two weeks solving the riddle. It must be infuriating.”

Across the page was the article “Relying on the random” about a book called Predictably Irrational that suggests we are far less rational than standard economic theory assumes. Essentially this professor Dan Ariely is studying and thinks he understands why people do stupid things. [My words not his.]

He has some general findings (“why we often pay too much when we pay nothing?”, “why options distract us from our main objectives”) and then extrapolates to why these tendencies are important.

The first thing I’m thinking is “have I got a test group for you!” I would love to see his analysis on why we continue holding onto this vision of an infinitely globalizing and growing economy based on finite fossil fuels. After all its current incarnation is damaging the life support systems of the planet. I’d like to know why we continue to desperately and predictably cling to a culture that centers on buying things and cars even as the ecological, social, and economic mount unsustainably. Why getting priced out appears to be our only hope of getting off the growth treadmill and how high the prices have to go.

There is an alternative. Check it out later this month at the Ecocity World Summit. I will be speaking on one panel and will be moderating two others. More on the conference in the next several weeks.

Link to cool flash opening Ecocity World Summit.

But as the author suggests, we are predictably irrational.

But first a little background on permaculture:

The word permaculture, coined by Australians Bill Mollison and David Holmgren during the 1970s, is a portmanteau of permanent agriculture as well it is was permanent culture. Through a series of publications, Mollison, Holmgren and their associates documented an approach to designing human settlements, in particular the development of perennial agricultural systems that mimic the structure and interrelationship found in natural ecologies.

This tour shows what some folks in Berkeley are doing to live more sustainably: growing their own food, raising chickens, capturing, heating, and conserving water, and generating electricity.

Only in Berkeley?

Berkeley became a nuclear free zone in 1986. Ironically, more than 20% of Berkeley’s electricity comes from nukes.

My first stop was Fort Awesome on King Street. Notice how the bottom of the sign looks strange. That’s because they painted over the word “DRIVING” which has been stenciled at the bottom of many Berkeley stop signs over past several years.

Zack, one of hosts at Fort Awesome, a cooperative for low-income people.

The front door of one of the two homes at Fort Awesome.

Solar photovoltaic panels at Fort Awesome. These panels feed excess energy back into the grid.

Solar water panels at Fort Awesome. Also known as solar thermal, these panels heat water reducing the need to burn natural gas.

Food not Bombs provided a hearty lunch of sandwiches, pizza, chips, and dips.

The Fort Awesome Community Garden which is several blocks west of Fort Awesome. This particular plot is tended by the Headstart program of a local elementary school.

Their community garden has individual and community plots. Anyone can help out at a community plot without having any responsibility. A good way for the occasional gardener to get their hands dirty.

People often say it sucks to have a billboard in your community garden. They made it a positive. On warm summer nights, they have movie nights. They turn off the billboard lights, hang a screen, and project a movie as a community event.

Christopher Shine hosts the tour at his house. Shine is a permaculture educator.

Shine’s chicken coop. In the morning he brings the hens a bundle of collards from the garden and retrieves 9-12 eggs.

Shine’s grey water system. The water from the washer (using non-toxic soap) is channeled to bamboo along the fence which he uses for privacy and to make things.

That’s right, it’s time for this year’s East Bay Permaculture Guild bike tour in Berkeley.
The complete schedule is listed below.

We still need volunteers to help watch the bikes (one for each site we visit) and also someone to ride in the middle and back to make sure everyone is safe and together. If you donate your time, no need to donate money.

Don’t forget to bring water. munchies and warm clothes – it’ll probably still be cool on Sunday – http://tinyurl.com/234g33

To volunteer or for questions, e-mail Josh – yNaught@gMail.com

For a bird’s eye view of the route on Google maps:

You are welcome to join us for any part of the tour, but please do not arrive at any of the sites when we are not scheduled to be there, thanks.

11:30 Meet at North Berkeley BART Station – 1750 Sacramento St,
Berkeley
www.bart.gov – We’ll meet in front of the main entrance.

12:00 – 12:20 – Private backyard – 2111 7th St.
Sheetmulched by the East Bay Permaculture Guild last year, planted with trees and annual veggies.

12:30 – 12:55 – Berkeley Youth Alernatives garden – Bancroft Way between West and Bonar
After school program, perennials and annuals, community volunteers. -
www.byaonline.org

1:00 – 1:30 – Backyard by Earthly Arts – Mabel St and Derby St.
Guest room made from salvaged materials, water catchment, greywater,
chickens and a rabbit – www.earthlyarts.com

1:45 – 2:15 – Fort Awesome – 3090 and 3088 King St.
2 houses owned by the non-profit Cooperative Roots, garden, solar
electric and hot water, chickens -
cooperativeroots.org

2:15 – 3:05 – Snack Break at Fort Awesome
Rest and munch on lite snacks from Food Not Bombs. Optional tour of
garden on Sacramento – www.ebfnb.org

3:15 – 3:45 – Christopher Shein’s home – 1526 Fairview St
Straw bale office space, bamboo chicken coop and shower, intensive
garden, nursery, greywater – www.wildheartgardens.com -
www.merrittlandhort.com

4:05 – 4:45 – Mariposa Grove – 828 59th St, Emeryville
Cohousing community with garden, chickens, 3 buildings contain
apartments and shared space. – healthyarts.com/mariposagrove

5:00 – 5:30 – Halcyon Commons – Between Webster & Prince St on Halcyon Ct
Community designed and initiated park dedicated in ’96 after 4 years
of community involvement. – www.bpfp.org/affiliate-groups/Halcyon

The Ecology Center is having a greywater tour from 10-11 on Sunday as well:
www.ecologycenter.org/calendar/event.php?eventID=24747
If you are interested, you MUST pre-register.

Rainwater catchment is an ancient practice used widely around the globe to harvest and store rainwater for human consumption and irrigation. Dating as far back as 4,000 B.C., it is now commonly used in Australia, New Zealand, parts of Europe, Japan, India, Sri Lanka and Thailandas well as the Caribbean, Central and South America.

With more than 250,000 practitioners in the U.S. alone, rainwater catchment is experiencing a revival in parts of North America including Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Canada. Hawaii, North Carolina and the more dry regions of New Mexico, Arizona and Texas already boast government incentive programs. Although maintaining water supplies for increasing population demands is one of the California’s biggest challenges, the Golden state does not have government-backed, financial incentives for rainwater catchment.

To get a perspective on California’s water challenges, it is instructive to take a look at the system upon which over 1.3 Million Bay Area residents rely for fresh water – the East Bay Municipal Utility District. EBMUD delivers water to Contra Costa and Alameda County from the Mokelumne River watershed in the Sierra Nevada foothills. The gravity-fed water travels about 90 miles from the Pardee Reservoir via the Mokelumne aqueduct system until it reaches the East Bay treatment plants and terminal reservoirs. The terminal reservoirs minimize flooding in local areas and regulate the river supply in Winter and Spring. They also augment EBMUD’s river supply by gathering watershed runoff and providing emergency supplies during extended drought and facility outages.

The Mukelumne River has been EBMUD’s primary source of water since the 1920s. But officials warn that the reserves and overall water system have many vulnerabilities and insufficiencies will eventually render them unable to meet the region’s growing water needs.

Many conditions affect the viability and reliability of this water system:

• Evaporation and transpiration (i.e., the process by which water vapor escapes from the living plant, principally the leaves, and enters the atmosphere). In dry years, the volume of water they consume can exceed runoff into the reservoirs
• Climate change studies generally conclude that average temperatures will increase in California, exacerbating drought conditions and thereby lowering runoff supplies to the reservoirs
• Terrorism attacks to the levees
• Levee vulnerability due to earthquakes and flood pressure
• Limited reservoir capacity

Currently, EBMUD’s water rights allow for delivery of up to a maximum of 325 million gallons of water per day from the Mokelumne River. EBMUD’s water rights are relatively low in priority compared to prior right holders upstream. As reported by EBMUD, the existing Mokelumne River supply will continue to decrease in the future as diversions by water right holders in upsteam counties increase. Also, EBMUD is required to increase downstream releases for habitat protection as regulated by settlement agreements.

Water rights and these types of challenges facing EBMUD are endemic across California and the United States. Rainwater catchment offers one solution to these conditions by diversifying water supplies while also protecting watershed health. If every building in the Bay Area were equipped with a catchment system of a 1,000 gallon tank, stormwater flooding and (irrigation) water demand for utilities would be substantially lessened. Given the high upfront installation costs of this technology, financial incentives are a vital key for initiating water catchment to mainstream development.

The recent passage of Proposition 84 allows California to sell $5.4 billion in general obligation bonds, the proceeds of which go towards:

• 28% – water quality
• 27% – the protection of rivers, lakes, streams, beaches, and coastal waters
• 19% – sustainable communities, climate change reduction, and forest and wildlife conservation
• 17% – flood control and statewide water planning
• 9% – parks and natural education facilities.

A social benefit organization located in Oakland, Bay Localize, is advocating for a portion of Prop 84 funds to be used to create incentive programs for rainwater catchment on the basis of mitigating stormwater runoff, watershed protection, and increasing localized reserves of water for landscape irrigation, graywater, and emergency drinking supplies.

As a rule of thumb, each 1,000 square feet of roof area can produce up to 623 gallons of water per inch of precipitation. A newly designed home in San Francisco led by Lorax Development, features the city’s first approved rooftop rain catchment system that collects an average of 18,000 to 20,000 gallons of annual rainwater for residential and landscaping use. With this potential volume of water harvesting, large-scale cisterns could provide a sustainable resource for water supplies in our region.

Bay Localize’s Rooftop Resources Project explores the feasibility and promotes appropriate designs for mainstream use of rainwater catchment. The project is investigating the development of rain harvesting systems such as collective cistern use for multiple buildings in urban areas.

For more information or to volunteer, contact Ingrid@baylocalize.org. Internships are also available.

One possibility for counteracting the fundamental economic barrier to action presented by the split incentive is to create a situation in which the landlord can more easily gain some financial benefit from her/his investments in building energy and water improvements so long as the tenants receive an overall reduction in expenses. But this has proven much easier in theory than in practice.

The draft Berkeley Climate Action Plan suggests that the Rent Board along with the appropriate City departments, community agencies and other stakeholders begin a process to examine potential incentive structures and/or mandatory requirements that enable both the landlord and the tenant to benefit from building energy and water efficiency improvements.

Another possibility that merits consideration and examination is the development of a Community Solar Cooperative (CSC). The CSC eliminates the owner/tenant split financial incentive by enabling anyone to purchase shares of a community-owned pool of solar photovoltaic and thermal installations. In this model, tenants and owners can buy into the pool of community owned solar installations that may or may not be installed on the roof of their home. Building owners could receive a nominal amount for hosting solar installations, but most would probably be happy to have solar on their building at no cost.

The agreement between the building owner and the cooperative could be structured so that it would endure any sale or transfer of the building with an exit buy out clause in case the owner would like to purchase the solar system. Tenants in buildings with solar systems would sign a power purchase agreement with the cooperative that defines the amount they pay for electricity generated by the solar system. The rate could be level or increasing such that it mirrors (or is even fixed to) the applicable rates charged by PG&E.

The cooperative would be structured as a for-profit commercial entity so that it qualifies for the full 30% investment tax credit (ITC) established by The Federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 for the purchase and installation of solar electric and solar water heating systems. Currently, people who pay the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) cannot claim this tax credit which happens to expire December 31, 2008. In the current and proposed revisions to the act, individuals are subject to separate $2,000 caps for photovoltaic and solar water heating systems.

In addition to the full 30% ITC, the cooperative would use an accelerated 5-year depreciation and take advantage of the 50% bonus appreciation. The cooperative could also develop financing relationships with banks and credit unions, as well as potentially work along with municipal financing plans such as Berkeley FIRST. The cooperative would perform ongoing monitoring and maintenance of its systems which could be outsourced to a local solar installation company or cooperative.

The cooperative would focus outreach, organizing, and installations on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis in order to get a community discount on the installation. Solar installers including Solar City and REC Solar typcilaly will offer discounts from 10-30% on the cost of a solar system to neighborhood-based cooperative buying programs. Cooperative buying programs have been done in Atherton, Castro Valley, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Novato, Portola Valley, San Carlos, San Jose, Santa Monica, and Woodside and are currently being discussed in Oakland and Santa Rosa. All installers working with the cooperative would agree to a master requirement agreements that covers, cost, quality, warranty, and equipment.

The cooperative would focus outreach, organizing, and installations on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis in order to get a community discount on the installation. Solar installers including Solar City and REC Solar typcilaly will offer discounts from 10-20% on the cost of a solar system to neighborhood-based cooperative buying programs. Cooperative buying programs have been done in Atherton, Castro Valley, Menlo Park, Mountain View, Novato, Portola Valley, San Carlos, San Jose, Santa Monica, and Woodside and are currently being discussed in Oakland and Santa Rosa. All installers working with the cooperative would agree to a master requirement agreement that covers, cost, quality, warranty, and equipment.

The cooperative would offer or perhaps require a basic energy audit before installation as well as follow on advanced energy efficiency services which could be outsourced to a local solar installation company or cooperative.

Anyone (possibly within applicable geographic constraints) could buy into the cooperative. The amount they invest would determine their ownership share in the cooperative and therefore their return.

While such a cooperative could be developed for a specific neighborhood, it would be more cost effective at the municipal or regional level. It is also conceivable that such a cooperative could be part of a Community Choice Energy program.

In 1986 I participated with 400 others in the cross-country Great Peace March from Los Angeles to Washington, DC. It is the event which started me on my exploration of co-intelligence. I want to tell you about the moment the peace march was born.

A man asked his seven-year-old niece what she was going to be when she grew up. She replied, “I’m not going to grow up. I’m going to die in a nuclear war.”

The uncle, David Mixner, was so stricken by her statement that he set aside a lucrative political PR business to create the Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament, which ultimately involved thousands of people for over a year.

And what was the impact of all that conversation? What happened when the march was “over”?

No one will ever know the full story. But I know a part of it. I wrote The Tao of Democracy, for one thing, and most of the articles on the co-intelligence.org website. But there were many other offspring of the Great Peace March. There were several other books, as well. And hundreds of lives were radically changed — including mine, in many ways. And several Russian-American peace marches were carried out, some in the U.S., some in Russia. And the people who took the mobile kitchen that fed the marchers not only served food at other peace demonstrations for years afterwards, but also fed rescue workers in the devastating 1989 earthquake where it had collapsed a section of freeway in Oakland, California. And another marcher organized a “March for a Livable World” across the U.S. and has now built an ecocity with people she meet on her march. And the list goes on. It could easily fill a book all by itself. All from a small seven- year-old’s response to her uncle.

David Mixner’s niece, in her wildest dreams, could not have imagined the impact her comment would have. She was like the proverbial chaos- theory butterfly whose flappings — under the right conditions — can trigger a hurricane. Her destiny was perhaps a bit like Rodney King, a black man who was beaten by police and the beating was videotaped, and that tape was played over and over on prime time TV news. And when the police who beat him were found innocent, Los Angeles exploded in riots. Rodney King’s experience became a symbol of black experience in America. But he never dreamed he would have the impact he had, especially when he was being beaten.

Likewise, little did David Mixner and his niece and the hundreds of peace marchers realize the role they would play in the advent of co- intelligence. And who can tell what will happen next as the ripples of their influence spread. A song written on the march proclaimed “echoes of our care will last forever…” It has proven prophetic, so far.

Sometimes, when I imagine you reading these pages, I get the vivid feeling that each of you has done something which led to them being written. At the very least, most of you have played some role in creating these exciting and terrifying times that have impelled me into this work and given me so much hope and such deep concern. We are all creating it all.

Our impact in the world unfolds, often without us even knowing it is happening.

This insight can be overwhelming or wondrous, depending on how you look at it. We are all playing roles in the development of gravitational fields, children, economies, planetary weather, the health of people in Tasmania in the year 2053. Every single person in the world unknowingly conspires with every single green plant to maintain the right mix of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to sustain life. Every citizen who stays home on election day participates — along with every voter — in electing their President. Everyone who picks up trash on the street — or leaves it lying there — plays a role in determining whether the next piece of trash falls on the street or not.

We are active participants in everything that happens — even when we think we’re “doing nothing” — even when we’re totally ignorant of what’s going on. We are never merely irrelevant observers, spectators or bystanders. We are — each of us, right now — yes, right now, as I write this, and as you read it — actively participating in the unfolding of the world into its future.

I think of this as “intrinsic participation.” We can’t avoid participating.

But it’s not just us. Everything and everyone is co-creating everything and everyone else. Everything is bringing the next moment into being. As David Spangler says, we live in “a co-incarnational universe“. This, it turns out, has profound implications for who we are, how we are in the world, and how the world is.
It is an assumption, a way of looking at the world.

EVERYTHING IS CO-CREATING EVERYTHING ELSE.

If we accept this as a valid perspective, then certain other things become true as well. I’ve listed some of them below. The first we’ve already talked about. The others are no less remarkable.

* INTRINSIC PARTICIPATION: We are inevitably participating in everything — and thus we are never fully innocent nor uninvolved. Our task, therefore, is not to “get off our duffs and start participating” — because we’ve already done that, simply by being born — but to become more conscious and intentional about the roles we’re playing — to try to choose our present and future roles more wisely. For example, when someone discovers how much chocolate is made with child slave labor and tons of pesticides, they may decide to switch to chocolate bought from organic cooperative farms using fair-trade arrangements, even though it costs more to buy that kind of chocolate. Now, I want to make it clear that I don’t think that choice makes them particularly pure. I don’t actually see purity as possible — or relevant — or even desirable. What I do see as desirable and important is to make an ongoing effort to be conscious and to choose. Sometimes we even transcend choice by becoming so aware of the interconnectedness of life that the sensible path simply becomes obvious, and we just do it, even while recognizing its inherent limitations and moral ambiguities. After all, our actions are only part of the picture…

* RESPONSIBILITY WITHOUT GUILT OR CONTROL: We are not the only participants — and so we are never fully in control. Because of that, we are never fully guilty — but then, again, neither is anyone else. Everybody has more or less influence, but no one’s actually fully responsible. From this perspective, blame, shame and regret start to look odd. Rather than blaming ourselves or others, it begins to make more sense to figure out who or what else is significantly involved here, and try to work consciously and creatively with them — and not be too attached to what happens then, since nothing is fully predictable or controllable. For example, I can’t control what you will do with what you read here. But I can do my best to help you see what I’m seeing, and I can be open to what you might have to say about that, and then be open to whatever might grow in your life, or in mine, or in our shared life as a result of that openness. Responsibility, it turns out, is more about responsiveness than about whose fault it is or who’s in charge.

* FIELDS OF CO-CREATIVITY: There is never only one single cause for anything. Everything has multiple causes, collective causes, contextual causes. The single, linear causalities of the laboratory and the rational thought experiment and the moral code — as useful as these are for understanding isolated relationships — simply don’t translate adequately into the nuanced and multi-facetted complexity of real life. Once we understand that everything is co-creating everything else, we realize that the greatest power lies in influencing the things that shape or mediate that co-creativity — things like relationships, systems, dialogue, story, vision, contexts, and habit patterns. These things generate causal fields we can recognize, understand, use and influence. Consider, for example, this causal field in action:

In a beautiful, just community with walkable destinations and a non-toxic natural environment with inviting places to hang out together creating and pursuing common dreams, people find they don’t need to invest so many resources on disease and crime. Far less disease and crime happen. There is just too much good, healthy life happening in their place.

* MUTUALITY: The world influences us as we influence the world — and vice versa. Mutuality is unavoidable, a fact of life. Even competing teams and enemies co-create their mutual outcomes and transform each other’s lives. And there is no starting place and no end; there are always prior influences and reverberating ripple effects. And everyone changes everyone. We can use that understanding to develop conscious, intentional mutuality. We can use democracy to create social realities that influence us all in positive ways. We can learn together and from each other. We can cooperate for mutual benefit, even when we are competitors. More often than not, I need your cooperation to pursue my self-interest, and you need mine to pursue yours. There are very few pursuits that are best pursued alone. Furthermore, I can use my awareness of my mutuality with the world to open myself to learning about the physical, biological, cultural, psychological, experiential, and other influences that have shaped how I see and relate to the world. People call this “making the unconscious conscious,” “overcoming cultural bias,” and “suspending our assumptions.” I can try to work with these things — individually and collectively — to heal my own life and to help create more life-affirming communities and cultures.

* HUMILITY: Given all this mutuality, co-creativity and uncertainty, it behooves us to be humble and open to each other and life — because things are complex. There is so much we don’t know and can’t know. Perhaps we should be more curious than judgmental, more observant than pushy, more patient than frustrated. There’s a lot going on. Most of it we’ll never know. We need each other — all our different viewpoints and intelligences and sources of information — to paint as big a picture as we can manage — and even that will be only a small piece of what’s real. In our efforts to be as big and nuanced as the complexities we face, our mutual inadequacies can become a resource, a way to connect with each other, as we seek to be, see and act with that greater wholeness which is accessible only through each other. This is why I think it unwise for us to seek perfect wisdom as individuals, but rather to seek to be with each other in ways that help us see beyond our diverse blindspots into greater wisdom, simply because our differences are able to paint a reality that’s bigger, fuller and more life-like than any one of us alone could possibly imagine.

Co-intelligence challenges us — and empowers us — to play our roles more consciously, more collaboratively, more congruently with the needs and resources of the whole systems in which we live — our relationships, our communities, our bioregion, our world. “Being more conscious” involves becoming more aware of the roles that we and others play, more aware of the dynamics involved in our lives and of possible consequences of what we do or participate in, and making choices (or letting our actions arise spontaneously) from the center of our aware being, without shrinking from the fullness of reality, the complexity and ambiguity of real life as we have to live it.

Our ability to play our role consciously depends, of course, on our ability to know the effects of our actions. But in practice it isn’t always easy to track what our impact really is. Most of the impact we have on the world is not individual and direct, but happens as a result of the larger systems we are part of. I am speaking of those impacts we have by reason of our individual, everyday participation in systems of industry and commerce, consumption, transportation, media, governance, and so on. I’m speaking of the impact I have by buying chocolate, passing on information, doing what I’m told, driving a particular car. Now that the impact of these vast collective systems we’re part of is so complex and far-reaching, we can no longer track all the influences we have on the world around us. Our individual role is camouflaged in the vast, diffuse field of systemic impacts. Some of it may be buried in the future, some deep in our cells, some in the atmosphere or in distant lands — all impacts we can’t individually, directly perceive — and it’s all mixed in with everyone else’s. The systemic nature of our influence makes responsibility fuzzy, obscuring the moral nature of our everyday actions and making it hard to be sure when we’re acting ethically as individuals.

However, we can together create the COLLECTIVE capacity to COLLECTIVELY perceive, evaluate and modify our COLLECTIVE impacts. That’s what “quality of life statistics” and “citizen deliberative councils” do. They aren’t about individual behavior and change. They’re about collective, social behavior and collective, social change. They’re about all of us, and how the systems we live in cause us to have positive or negative impacts on the world simply by living our lives. If we have ways to track our collective impact, to reflect on that together, and to act together on what we learn, we can together create or modify the systems that shape our lives, so that the way we live naturally has a more positive impact when it’s all added together.

So a big part of co-intelligent agency, co-intelligent participation, and co-intelligent morality is shifting our attention from our individual actions and impacts to the impacts of the collective systems we’re part of — and doing something to improve those systems.

Perhaps our biggest impact is the role we individually and collectively play in co-creating our culture’s collective intelligence and its capacity to bring forth and use real wisdom. If, for example, we could co-create the sort of holistic politics and culture of dialogue described in “Co-Intelligent Political and Democratic Theory” we would be able to alleviate poverty, itself, not just the suffering of individual poor people. We would envision and create communities that are delightful for us all to live in, not just fret about whether we’re individually being good neighbors. We would have more environmentally and socially benign production and distribution systems, so we wouldn’t each have so much garbage and recycling to handle, nor have to wonder whether our daily consumption is damaging some natural or human community hundreds or thousands of miles away.

Understanding that we are intrinsically participating in a fundamentally co-creative world can lead us to design together cultures and systems that will empower us to co-create our lives more consciously and weave us into the healthy co-creative energies of our world.

The New Green Deal of 2009*

The incoming US Federal administration of 2009 will have an important opportunity to launch a New Green Deal that promotes locally directed efforts to solve many of our urgent problems. This is a time of economic and environmental crisis, and we need to demonstrate authentic leadership in pursuit of a vibrant, healthy society that is sustainable and equitable. A New Green Deal can address domestic economic, social and ecological problems in a way that also has a positive impact on foreign policy and relations.

The New Green Deal focuses on developing basic requirements for moving towards sustainability such as green collar jobs, regional ecological restoration, and inclusion of under-represented communities. Its mission is to enable comprehensive long-lasting social, economic and natural resource policies. The New Green Deal can become the foundation for healthy, productive domestic programs that reduce our nation’s oil dependence and provide proactive responses to global warming.

The New Green Deal’s founding principle is there needs to be regional improvements to local conditions and carried out by local people, businesses, and communities. This means the overall approach to accomplishing programs will vary according to the places where applied: New York City will have a different emphasis than Los Angeles, and Puget Sound from Chesapeake Bay. The New Green Deal should then be applied in five general directions:

1. Survey, inventory and evaluation of local/regional renewable and non-renewable assets. These include but are not limited to food, water, energy sources, building materials and methods, open space, and transportation alternatives with an emphasis on a North American, inter-regional railway system.
2. Public participation in designating and implementing priorities for projects and activities.
3. “True cost” analysis to evaluate and select the most sustainable alternatives.
4. Green Collar employment programs in the following areas:
   a) Ecosystem restoration,
   b) Remanufacturing that maximizes use of recyclable and/or post-consumer materials,
   c) Renewable energy production and use,
   d) Regionally-based sustainable agriculture,
   e) Converting all wastes into resources,
   f) Water conservation and reuse,
   g) Energy efficiency,
   h) Green building, living roofs, and landscaping,
   i) Ecology and conservation education,
   j) And special Green Collar job training programs in vulnerable communities.
5. Create or transform governmental institutions and agencies with policies that promote localization and embody principles of sustainability.

*A genuine “stimulus package”, on the scale of the 1930’s New Deal, for the present day. The New Green Deal promotes positive programs to replace catastrophic activities that underlie climate change, economic inequities, water and food shortages, habitat destruction, and species extinction.

COMMITTEE FOR A NEW GREEN DEAL
Email: mail at planetdrum dot org
Postal address: Committee for a New Green Deal, P.O. Box 31251, San Francisco, CA 94131

Collective

The show will be produced, hosted, and engineered by a local media collective that reflects a diverse collection of voices, cultures and opinions not currently represented in the media today. The collective will aim to work on a consensus basis that reverts to a supermajority when necessary. The collective aims to have 5-15 people covering the executive producer, producer, host, engineer, DJ, web work, events, and promotions roles. Each week, one producer, an engineer, DJ, and one or more hosts will produce and broadcast a show. The web content person will work in tandem with the executive producer to get the appropriate information on the website ahead of time and the engineer will upload the audio afterwards. People will pitch topics in advance and the collective will arrange a fluid audio magazine format.

Social Benefit Organizations

Most social benefit organizations would like access to local radio to promote and share information about their events, initiatives, and campaigns. They do not generally, however, need a full 30 minute show on a weekly basis. This flexible news magazine will enable social benefit organizations to get access to radio in 5-8 minute segments on a schedule that meets their specific needs. So that the show is sustainable, social benefit organizations are expected to sponsor their segment, providing the means to pay for time of the people who produce, host, and engineer the show. For highly produced segments, the cost will be approximately $55 per minute. There may be a lower cost for live segments. Social benefit organizations can either pay directly for the segments and/or can donate time of someone who is in the collective or has been approved to work with the collective. The collective may work in coordination with social benefit organizations to submit grant applications to foundations for supporting this work. The collective may also seek fiscal sponsorship so that it can directly apply for grants.

Timing

We would like to start the regular radio broadcast of the show in September 2008. We would like to submit an application (see below) and a demonstration show for KPFA by May 1st, 2008. Between May and September, we will consider doing a podcast from the show’s website.

Feedback and in particular the Name

Please feel free to post any feedback below; you may need to click the Comments link. One area we know we need help is the name. One suggestion is “Local Eyes” – say it out loud to get the full effect. Please let us know what you think of “Local Eyes” and post any suggestions you may have below.
KPFA ON-GOING PROGRAM PROPOSAL

Name: To be determined
Address: To be determined

Phone: TBD
Email address: TBD
Program Hosts: TBD, Babak Jacinto Tondre, David Room, etc
Program Producers: TBD
Program Engineers: TBD, Tondre
Proposed Length of the Series: Weekly, September 2008 through December 2009
Proposed Length of the Program: 30 Minutes
Recorded or Live: Live and Recorded

One line description of the Program:
NAME HERE is a weekly 1/2 hour radio program committed to covering Northern California/ Bay Area ecological concerns and community health issues spotlighting local solutions and strategies for building a more sustainable future society.

Create a Mission Statement for the Program: NAME HERE is a collective of journalists committed to produce an engaging multi-cultural ecological radio program. The Bay Area public needs local strategies and stewardship principals for ecological, economic, and cultural regeneration in response to global warming and a variety of other community and ecological health issues. NAME HERE provides a weekly 1/2 hour radio magazine/ web archive format that serves local communities and social benefit organizations by providing access to public radio as a forum for sharing strategies and solutions for mobilizing communities. NAME HERE provides the Bay Area, as well as the worldwide internet audience, a radio program that exemplifies the importance of developing local response initiatives, security measures, disaster preparedness models, public policy, design and practices that protect and expand the ecological commons.

How will the Program further KPFA’s mission?
NAME HERE furthers KPFA’s mission by continuing in the legacy of non-violent pacifism and by working to bridge the environmental and social justice movements. We plan to explore international models for community self-sufficiency and self determination and introduce the listener to local models. What community does this Program represent?

NAME HERE fosters local organizations and communities to represent themselves on the issues that affect them most. It is inclusive of all communities striving to change the economic, social, and ecological conditions of their homelands, homes, common space, neighborhoods, workplaces, play spaces, schools, etc. NAME HERE respects the public’s right to inclusion in the political decision making process and advocates for social and economic equity with a focus on the Bay Area.

How would airing the Program on KPFA provide a voice for this community?
NAME is committed to focusing on the power of local community mobilization to regain control of our collective lives, our common resources, and our common responsibilities to our planet and future generations. News and public affairs need to be balanced in providing the community listeners positive news and stories that inspire communities to engage in the decision making processes and community development processes. As Howard Zinn states, “News is just a contemporary version of history. Yesterday is history. History has a major affect on the future. We need good news now more than ever.”

What experience, expertise or skills do you bring to the Program?
As a collective we bring these skills to the program;
• A wealth of community relations and organizational alliances
• A diversity of talents; experienced engineers, producers, hosts, researchers
• Training and experience in radio production from KPFA’s First Voice Apprenticeship Program
• Multi-cultural and multi-lingual perspectives
• Experience working in all aspects of localization including policy, mobilizing, and analysis
• Experience working in a wide range of grassroots environmental justice community projects
• Working relationships and recording contracts with several social benefit and
community organizations

Who are the intended listeners?
Communities involved in localization work as a strategy for dealing with industrial & agricultural pollution, the side effects/consequences of globalization, environmental racism, employment discrimination, the exclusion of communities from land development, legal and political decision making processes as well as the communities who stand in solidarity with localization, environmental justice, and global ecological struggles.
All human beings and all species are affected by the harmful consequences of ecological degradation, global warming, industrial pollution and our current global economy. Ecological education and stewardship is critical for all generations and cultures to build a common understanding and analysis in order to work together towards a regenerative multi-cultural economy and a healthy future planet.

Topics to be covered:
Localization initiatives, climate action plans and initiatives, eco-city development, conscious evolution, community/human health and education issues, environmental justice issues, appropriate technology, sustainable development, fair trade issues, cooperatives and local businesses, local community impacts of war, local logging-fishing-mining-agriculture issues, community food security, renewable energy sources, urban ecology, social justice struggles and tribal sovereignty and indigenous rights issues.

Possible guests:
HOPE Collaborative, Communities for Family Farms, People’s Grocery, Oakland Food Connection, Local Clean Energy Alliance, Grid Alternatives, BALLE, Post Carbon Institute, Co-Intelligence Institute, DIG Cooperative, Bay Localize, Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Green for All, Greenlining Institute, Ecology Center, Berkeley Biodiesel Collective, Permaculture Institute of Northern California, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, East Bay Permaculture Guild, Mo Betta Food, Communities for a Better Environment, Willits Economic Localization, Indigenous Mining Campaign Project, WorldWatch Institute, Ecology Center, Indigenous Environmental Network, Clinica de la Raza, Making Changes Freedom School of Richmond, The Valley Cares, Solar Living Institute, African American Environmental Justice Network, Black Mesa Water Coalition, Indigenous Youth Coalition, Seventh Native American Generation, Barrios Unidos, Llomies Unidos, Tloque Nahuaque Tonalli, Alameda County Waste Management Authority, Aquatic Outreach Institute, Drug Policy Alliance, Just Transition Alliance, Ruckus Society, Detroiter’s Working for Environmental Justice, Campaign for Sovereignty, West County Toxics Coalition, South Bronx Clean Air Coalition, Native Movement/Alaska, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Southwest Network for Environmental and Economic Justice, Alaska Native Oil and Gas Working Group, Northwest Environmental Justice Alliance, Buffalo Field Campaign, Public Citizen, People of Color Summit, Bioneers Conference, Center for Genetics and Society, West Harlem Environmental Action, Northern Manhattan Environmental Justice Coalition, Green Resource Center, Native American Health Center, Berkeley Biodiesel Collective, Permaculture Institute of Northern California, Occidental Arts and Ecology Center, School for Social & Environmental Justice,

What type of resources- will you use to promote the Program?
Carts, fliers, e-mail lists and monthly updates, cross program promotions, website, podcasts, youtube videos, events, rolodex mailings, Internet broadcasts, audioport uplinks, partnerships with social benefit organizations.

What criteria will you use to evaluate the effectiveness of the Program?
Community polls, e-mail correspondence, feedback from community events and actions,
live call in shows, regular six month report back sessions with organizational alliances.

Cooperative purchasing agreements are a mechanism for aggregating a community’s purchases of solar photovoltaics and thermal arrays. By pooling their purchasing dollars and buying in bulk, people can save 20% or more on their installation. In this arrangement, individuals own their solar arrays. Coupled with the federal and state rebates, this can considerably lower the out-of-pocket cost of solar arrays to such an extent that they are cheaper than purchasing electricity or gas from the utility when the time value of money is taken into account.

Solar City – a solar installation company – was the first in the U.S. to implement community purchase programs whereby homeowners get volume discounts when their neighborhoods go solar and continues to use this as their primary business model. In October 2006, Solar City aggregated a Portola Valley neighborhood’s purchasing power to receive bulk purchase discounts on a total of 343kW of photovoltaics. The threshold for receiving the bulk discount was 175kW. The solar panels were installed on 78 homes within four months with an average residential installation of 4.3kW. The savings for the community aggregating their orders was 20-30% per array installed. After the bulk discounts as well as the CSI incentives and Federal tax credits, the fully amortized monthly cost of these installed systems is less than their previous utility bills. Such programs can be controversial since the “discounts” are being offered by one company in a non-competitive bid situation.

Recently, a neighborhood group – the Downtown San Jose Solar Project – banded together to purchase solar in bulk and find their own solar installer through a competitive bidding situation. They put their collective requirements for three solar systems out to bid by several solar companies to get the best price, quality, etc. As of February 20, 2008, the project includes 24 San Jose homes producing 99kW of electricity. The 24 systems in San Jose will produce 3,560,000 kWh over the systems’ lifetime and will eliminate, according to today’s current fuel mix, about 5,055,861 pounds of carbon dioxide. The community group wants to see this program spread across the Bay Area and hopes the training will inspire people interested in setting up their own community discount programs.

Eight people from San Jose’s District 3 have been working consistently outside of the regular jobs for 3-4 months. The first thing they did was contact their city council person. The District 3 council member Sam Liccardo was very supportive from the start. His staff arranged meeting logistics and a designated staffer attended all the group’s meetings. The meetings were mostly promoted through email lists including the Liccardo’s e-newsletter and several articles in local media.

The largest amount of the group’s effort – about 3 and a half months – was selecting a vendor among those that bid upon the job to install solar voltaics on the first three homes in the project. Following the lead of Marni Kamzam, who writes RFPs for living, they put together an extensive RFP with weighted attributes (e.g., cost is important and therefore rates 5 on a scale from 1-5). Kent Haliburton of REC Solar, the eventual winner of the installation work, said the community group’s RFP was as extensive and professional as any commercial job.

The individuals in the group had the choice of buying their solar system outright or signing onto residential Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) whereby a financing company purchases the equipment, monitors and maintains it, and sells the customer the electricity generated. 75% of the Downtown San Jose Solar Project customers have chosen a residential PPA model from a private solar company called Sun Run, specialists in financing and tax structuring.

Sun Run offers a residential PPA that can be used in cooperative purchasing agreements. It reduces the upfront cost of solar by half and fixes the cost of electricity produced by the panels at a cheaper rate than the customers would pay currently from PG&E for a 20 year period of time. At the end of the 20 year contract, the system can be purchased for an average of $2,000 or the contract can be renewed for a rate that is 10% less than baseline from PG&E at this time. Other companies are scrambling to build this business model (which is very complicated on the backend) and there will be competition in this arena within the next 12-18 months.

Sun Run is able to offer a lower overall price with less money upfront than the householder could get on their own because businesses receive the full 30% federal solar tax credit whereas homeowners are capped at $2000 and those that file the Alternative Minimum Tax can’t participate at all. To increase their margins, Sun Run accelerates the depreciation of the system and does additional proprietary financial wizardry.

After the group selected REC Solar as the installer with the Sun Run residential PPA as a financing option, the group started a 60 day period for District 3 residents to sign up. They deliberated on whether to allow residents from outside District 3 to participate. In the end, they did not market the program outside the District and handled requests from outside the District on a case by case basis.

Overall, it was thought provoking workshop. This effort provides a good model for organizing cooperative buying of solar photo voltaics in the neighborhood context. From what I gather from the example numbers provided by Sun Run, participants got a “community discount” on average of about $2000 or 10%. My main takeaway is that the process is relatively pain free and short (60 days or less) if you already have the installation partner selected. In the conversation with Leah and Kirsten on the way back, I had an idea about cooperative ownership of neighborhood solar that I will follow up with soon.