Social Entrepreneurs: Telling Stories to Change the World

Terrain: A Journal of the Built & Natural Environments has just published my article on Storytelling and Social Entrepreneurs in their latest issue, No. 19: The Music of It All.

In "Telling Stories to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and a Network Proposition," I've tried to capture my latest thinking about how to promote social change through the stories of the people who are effecting such change. In doing so, I've also taken a look at why stories may be the most powerful vehicle for change.

Included are a number of links to resources, stories, and previous posts from "The Green Skeptic."

Stories about change are narratives of conflict and hope, problems and solutions. A conflict of some kind is set up that leads the reader to hope. And telling these stories helps others make change. In the words of award-winning journalist and author David Bornstein, stories help "a person form the belief that it is possible to make the world a better place. Those who act on that belief spread it to others. They are highly contagious. Their stories must be told."

Please check it out and tell your friends.

Read the complete article in Terrain: Telling Stories

Categories: storytelling, changemakers, socialentrepreneurs

Climate Change: Hansen says we have 10 years...

Sobering news from Reuters/Planet Ark: "NASA scientist James Hansen, widely considered the doyen of American climate researchers, said governments must adopt an alternative scenario to keep carbon dioxide emission growth in check and limit the increase in global temperatures to 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit)."

"I think we have a very brief window of opportunity to deal with climate change ... no longer than a decade, at the most," Hansen said at the Climate Change Research Conference in California's state capital.

If the world continues with a "business as usual" scenario, Hansen said temperatures will rise by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 7.2 degrees F) and "we will be producing a different planet."

On that warmer planet, ice sheets would melt quickly, causing a rise in sea levels that would put most of Manhattan under water. The world would see more prolonged droughts and heat waves, powerful hurricanes in new areas and the likely extinction of 50 percent of species.

Read the complete story by Mary Milliken: Hansen


Categories: climatechange, globalwarming, greenhousegases

Climate Change: Nuñez on California's Climate Landmark

California's landmark legislation on Climate Change, which puts a cap on the state's greenhouse gas emissions, creates a clear path for a market-based approaches to bring the state’s emissions back down to 1990 levels by 2020. The bill encourages the state to work with businesses to achieve such a reduction. The question is, will it work for business. An interview with California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez seems to answer the question.

Nuñez is the co-author (with Fran Pavley) of bill AB 32. Read The Climate Group's interview with Mr. Nuñez. One choice quote:

We’ve already taken action on clean air and tailpipe emissions – you name it, we’ve done it, and our economy continues to hold strong. It isn’t mutually exclusive to have a strong economy and have a green economy as well.

We like the sound of that.

The Climate Group is an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing business and government leadership on climate change. They are based in the UK, the USA and Australia and operates internationally.

Read it here: Nuñez

Categories: climatechange, globalwarming, greenhousegases

Media: Death of "Crocodile Hunter" Hits Home

Like many ten-year olds, my son looked up to Steve Irwin. He looks up to anyone who is passionate about conserving animals and the natural world. The "Crocodile Hunter" was for my son what Jacques Cousteau was to my generation of conservationists: He brought places and species from around the world into our living rooms in a captivating way.

Regardless of what you think of his wacky, over-the-top style, and as dangerous as most of the situations Irwin put himself in on TV, his was always a message of the importance of conserving the animals and natural diversity.

Truth be told, we don't have cable, so catching Irwin in his element was a guilty pleasure in hotel rooms or at grandma's house, where we'd hear the Crocodile Hunter shout his trademark "Crikey" or talk about beautiful "Sheilas" as he held them up to the camera. Irwin achieved "rock-star" status as a conservationist; to my son, he was a hero.

So the news that Irwin had been killed by a fatal encounter with a stingray was quite a shock to our home.

Last year, my son took part in a saltwater crocodile survey in Mexico's Sian Ka'an. He got to hold and tag a baby croc and re-release it into the wild. It was one of his proudest moments. "It's like the Crocodile Hunter," he exclaimed.

I speak for my son and for many kids (and adults!) out there when I say Steve Irwin will be missed. "Crikey," it's hard to believe he's dead and from such a freak accident involving a rarely dangerous animal. Our prayers go out to Mr. Irwin's family in their time of grief.

Read the story in News.com.au

and CNN

Jules Crittenden's insightful Boston Herald column

and a tribute video/slideshow from YouTube

Climate Change: World Bank Brokers Greenhouse Gas Deal

NEW YORK - The World Bank put together on Tuesday the largest greenhouse gas deal ever, where European and Asian companies and others will pay two Chinese chemical companies US$1.02 billion to reduce output of gases believed to cause global warming, as reported by Timothy Gardner in Reuters/Planet Ark.

In the deal, European and Asian companies bound by the UN's Kyoto Protocol to tackle climate change, will pay the Chinese chemical companies to reduce and destroy emissions of HFC23, a heat-trapping gas 11,700 times stronger than carbon dioxide.
The deal will reduce emissions by about 19 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent annually, according to the World Bank.

About 75 percent of the money to purchase the reductions came from private capital, it said.

Additional participants included entities in World Bank managed funds including the Danish Carbon Fund, the Italian Carbon Fund, Deutsche Bank, Mitsui & Co and two entities of Natsource LLC, which calls itself the world's largest greenhouse gas asset manager.

As a developing country, China, the world's No. 2 producer of greenhouse gases, is not required to reduce emissions of heat trapping gases in the first phase of the international global warming pact the Kyoto Protocol, which runs from 2008 to 2012.

Tuesday's deal was done under Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which allows allows rich countries to meet some of their greenhouse gas reduction obligations under the Kyoto Protocol by investing in reductions in developing countries.

"The resources came together from lots of different directions. There was pooling and deployment of capital in a large scale which was good to see that the CDM could do that," Jack Cogen, president of New York-based Natsource, said in a telephone interview.

The Chinese government will recoup 65 percent of the money from the deal though taxes on the two chemical companies and use it cut greenhouse gases and expand the use of renewable energy.

Read more: World Bank

Categories: climatechange, globalwarming, greenhousegases

Katrina Anniversary: Rebuild Wetlands

NEW ORLEANS - New Orleans should embrace its watery environment and restore wetlands as it rebuilds, suggests a prize-winning architect hired to design a modernistic central park in the city's downtown, according to an article in Reuters/Planet Ark. Coastal wetlands, barrier islands, and other coastal ecosystems are the first line of defense against catastrophic storms.

Thom Mayne, known for maverick designs, urged New Orleans to treat the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina last year as a chance to re-imagine the city, adding both technology and a dollop of the nature that has been erased over the years.
"If you build it again, would you do it the same way?" Mayne asked. "The answer is absolutely no."

New Orleans is known for the wrought iron and stone of its narrow French Quarter streets and wooden mansions on oak-shaded Garden District avenues, both in higher areas of town.

But most of New Orleans is below sea level, and many of the areas hit hardest by Katrina were developed from land reclaimed from wetlands -- or swamps. State officials and activists are also focused on restoring coastal wetlands to help soften the blow of future storms.

Katrina hit on Aug. 29, 2005 and killed about 1,500 people in four states, flooding 80 percent of New Orleans, where entire neighbourhoods are still nearly empty.

Putting up fewer buildings, more densely packed with much more open space could help prevent a recurrence, Mayne said.

"What would the open space be? You could even leave huge tracts of property that would return to its original state, a swampland or the estuary, wetlands and they would become sort of future preserves, that actually would draw tourists, by the way," he mused in a phone interview from his office in Santa Monica, California.

"You are literally starting over," he said.

Read the full article here: Katrina