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The Berkeley Ecology Center’s November 6^th Green Gathering at Berkeley City College offered a full evening of presentations — both visionary and apocalyptic — as well as serving up great food and good company. Keynote speaker Bill McKibben (Harvard grad, author of The End of Nature and ringleader of the worldwide movement to cap global CO2 emissions at 350 parts-per-million) offered a sobering litany of the latest symptoms of the planet’s collapsing climate. McKibben also delivered a slim message of hope — i.e., that a mobilized citizenry can still avert planetary doom, a message that was reinforced by speakers from a dozen local groups engaged in different forms of world-saving activism. 

Berkeley’s annual Sustainability Summit started four years ago in an effort to bridge the divisions of Town-Gown, East-West, and Large Business-Small Business. As Berkeley Ecology Center Executive Director Martin Bourque pointed out, the city needs to surmount these differences by identifying and working with the “envelope-pushing” organizations that serve everyone’s common purpose. “Every year, we survey the landscape to see what new projects, business, and initiatives are gaining momentum,” Bourque observed. And, as last Thursday’s event demonstrated, “there is no shortage of ideas and solution-oriented people” in the City of Berkeley. 

The evening’s relaxed and convivial tone was clearly established when Bourque stepped to the podium for a sound-check, scanned the front row of seats and asked: “Where’s my time-keeper?” Without missing a beat, someone in the audience replied: “He’s late!” (thereby beating comedian Josh Kornbluth to the evening’s first laugh). Reflecting on an incredible week that saw the Giants win the World Series and the Democrats lose the House, Bourque scored the evening’s first round of applause with the line: “Thank God the Red Tide was held back by the Sierras!” Of course, Bourque went on to observe, “with Washington likely to remain in gridlock for the next two years, the success of local initiatives becomes even more important.” 

Keeping with the event’s theme of sustainability, McKibben was introduced by locally sourced comedian Josh Kornbluth whose affable, laughable routine took “Harvard-envy” to new heights and had McKibben appearing to duck for cover in his front-row seat. 

If there’s anyone of whom it could be said “He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders,” that person would be Bill McKibben. McKibben confessed that he never planned on being a public speaker. He told the audience his preferred lifestyle involves sitting in his study in rural Vermont and writing. “Now,” he began, half-jokingly, “it appears my role in life is to travel around the world bumming people out.” 

McKibben began by recalling a recent phone conversation with a climate activist in Pakistan. Here is a country that recently saw one-third of its land buried under floodwaters that left 7 million homeless and today, McKibben related, the caller from Pakistan announced the local temperature just hit 129° Fahrenheit. The floodwaters that raced down through the Khyber Pass were the result of a global temperature rise of one degree. “One degree of temperature rise has melted the Arctic,” McKibben warned. “We don’t need to find out what 4-5 degrees of added heat will do.” 

Paraphrasing Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s cry that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice,” McKibben declared: “The arc of the physical universe is short and it is bent towards heat.” With the world’s climate racing toward a “tipping point” beyond which no human interventions can reverse calamity, McKibben has reached out to the world’s youth with an unprecedented campaign that demands capping greenhouse gas emissions at 350ppm. (Some environmentalists maintain that 300ppm is a more appropriate goal.) Last October, in the run-up to the historic UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen, McKibben’s group, 350.org, inspired climate demonstrations in nearly every country on Earth. 

As McKibben spoke, photos of those demonstrations flashed across the auditorium screen — pictures of men, women and children from every continent, coalescing to form the image “350” with their bodies, dropping banners with the message “350” from the sides of cliffs, from the summits of mountains, and unfurling banners underwater alongside endangered coral reefs. 

“We need to look beyond linguistic boundaries,” McKibben explained. “That’s the value of Arabic numbers because 350 means the same in Beirut, Bangalore and Barcelona.” Working with seven student volunteers at Amherst Middlebury (where he teaches), McKibben succeeded in giving the world a simple triple-digit mantra for preservation. “Our goal was to take this number and push it through the bloodstream of the planet.” In the end, 117 countries showed up in Copenhagen to demand capping industrial pollution at 350 ppm. Unfortunately, a few powerful industrialized economies (lead by the US) once again managed to postpone action. The situation remains perilous and, as even McKibben admits, “There’s no guarantee we will win this.” 

Celebrating Berkeley: The Rise of Local Initiatives 

The balance of the evening was given over to presentations by local entrepreneurs and activists who are hoping that their local initiatives might help better the odds for planetary survival. Here is a brief introduction to each of the presentations. (Weblinks are included for readers wishing further information.) 

Berkeley City Community Services Specialist John Chung began by praising the work of the Youth Employment program, which has filled more than 25,000 jobs over the past 25 years, mostly “green” jobs. Chung stressed that an understanding of “ecoliteracy” is fundamental to promoting nonviolent, sustainable work. “We try to instill the lesson that Green is the Future. Green cultural activists are pioneers for a Green Economy. The energy of youth is a sustainable and renewable resource,” Chung concluded: “So, inspire them; hire them.” 

Ed Church, representing the Institute for Environmental Entrepreneurship (IEE), narrated an animated exploration of how Slow Money (www.slowmoney.org) can transform both work and society by re-directing money that might have gone to a bank into community based projects that invest in local soil banks — so that interest becomes directly visible in the swelling of a harvest as food fattens on the vine. The IEE also promotes “R&D for the Triple Bottom Line” and has created a Green MBA program to “teach business practices that achieve environmental and social sustainability while maintaining a solid financial bottom line.” 

Kemi Amin, the energetic and animated director of Buy Local Berkeley, explained the simple arithmetic behind the economic impacts of community-based commerce: “68 of every 100 dollars spent remains in the community” — and that translates into local prosperity and local jobs. Janelle Orsi, co-director of the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC), tackled the new challenges posed by citizen initiatives that seem to lie midway between grassroots activism and traditional business practices. Accompanied by a guffaw-prompting PowerPoint animation, Orsi addressed questions like: What if you’re producing homemade organic marmalade and your neighbors want to buy some jars? Does that make you a business and do you need to file papers and pay business taxes? Or what if a group of neighbors chip in to collectively purchase a wind turbine to produce electricity for their block of homes? Do they thereby become a “public utility”? These are some of the intriguing new questions that the SELC was created to help answer. 

Berkeley Public Library Manager Suzanne Olawski described the process that is slowly refurbishing the city’s libraries and creating a constellation of LEED certified “green library buildings.” (www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org) 

Terrance Womack, the Assistant Manager of the Berkeley Farmer’s Market, couldn’t make the event but the program was represented by a Berkeley High School official who explained how the Herb Singer Green Scholar program works to provide internships to juniors and seniors so they can develop the skills needed for the emerging new Green Economy. 

Lisa McNeilly, Director of UC Berkeley’s Office of Sustainability, shared recent findings about the use of water resources by the UC campus. Surprisingly, it was not the steam-heat plant, the laboratories or the landscaping that consumed the most water. Instead, it was the residence halls where many students were apparently in the habit of taking “20-minute showers.” Some students have responded to the newly perceived problem by installing radios next to the showers and entreating bathers to “shower for the length of just one song.” UC has installed retrofits that will increase efficiencies, reduce use and promise a financial payback in just 6-7 years. 

Kirstin Henninger, explained how the Green Café Network was working to “harness the power of café culture” by mentoring a network of 34 local coffeehouse and café owners. Successful practices include shopping for “direct trade” coffee that benefits growers, discouraging the use of paper cups, increasing the efficient use of water, electricity, and heat, and adding environmental speakers and screenings to the daily menu. 

Billi Romain, Berkeley’s Sustainability Coordinator, extemporized on the city’s ME2 Energy Efficiency Rebates and offered a quote of caution from a Japanese proverb:”Vision without action is a daydream; Action without vision is a nightmare.” In most cities, the flood of Federal money for Energy Efficiency block grants flows to municipal projects. Because Berkeley’s municipal projects are already well-funded, up to $5,000 in rebates have been made available directly to local homeowners. Added money from a PG&E program brings the rebate potential to $8,700 per household. So far, the program has succeeded in reducing electricity use 5% and natural gas consumption by 15%. Romain concluded with the news that Berkeley’s Climate Action Plan (CAP) “has just won a national award.” (In May, the CAP won the 2010 Outstanding Planning Innovation in Green Community Planning Award.) 

Steven Grover, of SGA Architecture and Engineering, brought the audience up-to-speed on the progress of biking in Berkeley. In addition to the new Bike Station near the downtown Berkeley BART station, new state-of-the-art bike storage shells are being introduced at major transit hubs and a “bike-sharing” program is well underway. 

Aekta Shah, from the Wangari Maathai Center, spoke about the introduction of Green Academies at local schools. The program’s success relies on municipal, corporate and nonprofit support. 

Ms. Victory Lee, the founder of the Victory Garden Foundation was still revved-up from the success of the October’s 10-10-10 planet-wide volunteer effort for “green projects.” She urged everyone in Berkeley to “grow at least one thing at home” and, “if you’re already growing a garden, share the excess produce with your community.” A flurry of slides opened some eyes to the surprising number of community gardens — including Casa Zimbabwe, Kenny Cottage, Oxford Plaza, Castro Arms, Lorin Station — that have sprung up in empty lots, backyards, and even on roof tops. 

The Solution Requires Mass Action 

Those are just a few of the many tools available to amplify one’s voice and efforts in defense of a sustainable Earth. We already have the talent and energy and Bill McKibben has shown what can happen with the right catalyst. Using little more than three numbers (and the hope for a better future), McKibben and seven student volunteers planted the seed for a global outpouring that triggered 5,200 demonstrations in 181 countries. That global enthusiasm continues to grow. 

Note: “Cool It,” a lavish new documentary (funded by wealthy but unnamed sources and based on a book of the same name) starts burning up the movie screens this week. The film (intended as a rebuke to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth”) stars global warming skeptic Bjorn Lomborg. In this film, Lomborg dismisses the dangers of climate change, disparages solar and wind power and maintains that the world would be better off spending money on DDT to fight malaria. Instead of capping pollution and greenhouse gases, Lundborg suggests spending billions of federal tax-dollars building “flood-adaptable buildings” and financing corporate-backed geoengineering projects. Suddenly, the work of grassroots organizers is about to become much more difficult.