Photo/Video Tactics 101, Power Shift '09 ((C)Robert vanWaarden

A little more about the workshop:

Generations Ahead: A new legion of eco-activists shares about how
 leadership is inspired, activated and sustained.
 What are the specific elements that drive new generations of young leaders 
to find their paths and galvanize others to take action to create a more
 sustainable world? Join some inspiring emerging leaders at the forefront of
 environmental and social change movements for a lively conversation.

The Bioneers conference will be in San Rafael, CA, from October 15-17, with intensives on October 14 and 18. Project Survival Media will be tabling at our booth, showing videos, selling T-shirts, and helping Bioneers to document the conference through video. So stop by and say “hi”!

PSM members who register for Bioneers will receive a 10% discount. Go to http://www.bioneers.org/conference to register, and use the coupon code ACE10. If you would like to become a PSM/ Earth Island Institute member, please make a donation of $25 or greater using our easy online donation form, or contact Madeline.

We are very excited for the event, and hope to see you there!

[One of] the other things that keeps me going is knowing that one of my great aunts and my great uncles [had] respiratory problems. Their breath was taken away slowly inch by inch, feeling like they were being suffocated. When they died, thinking about them and thinking that how much better it would be for the rest of the people here. I don’t want them to die that way anymore, I want them to be able to breathe.” Fern Benally, Navajo Activist.

Shadia and I just finished an assignment in Arizona, covering an incredible group of activists that are working hard to stop dirty energy on the Navajo Reservation and pushing the envelope on clean energy development. We are focusing on the closing of one of the coal mines in the area, the tactics that were used and what this means to the people affected by the closure.

The former coalmine is in the Benally’s backyard, land that has been the families for thousands of years. For the last 30 years, 24 hours a day, the large coal trucks would rumble by the house and the coal crusher would drown out nature. Now, thanks to incredible co-operation and dedication amongst groups like the Black Mesa Water Coalition, Grand Canyon Trust and the Sierra Club, the life of mine permit was revoked in January. Now, the Benally’s can hear the birds sing and watch the stars like their ancestors did long before Europeans came here.

There are still many examples of environmental racism here in Arizona and across our planet. But, it is important to celebrate victories and share the knowledge so that we can all move towards a sustainable future. More to come on this project in the future.

Help us bring our new program Solutions for Survival to life on Wednesday May 19th, at the SF Women’s Building: 3543 18th St.

You can expect a full night of festivities for Project Survival Media’s 2nd Annual Fundraiser & Launch Party!

Solutions for Survival is a global youth media program that will uncover local, tangible, and equitable solutions in the face of climate change. With so many lives already at stake, and our world leaders failing to take strong action, S4S will lead by example, and demand that our governments do more. Scroll down to read more about the program.

Where: The Women’s Building in SF –  3543 18th St, Mission District
When: Wednesday, May 19, 7:30pm-10:30pm
Who: Open to the public!
What: 2nd Annual Fundraiser and Launch of S4S
Free food and wine

Silent Art Auction- art donated by Favianna Rodriguez and other local artists
Local DJ’s – Featuring PSM’s own DJ LN
A live performance by Ashel Seasunz Eldridge– local bay area hip hop artist

The evening will be hosted by:
Joshua Kahn Russell from the Rainforest Action Network.

Guest Speakers on media, climate change, and women including:
Sharon Lungo from the Ruckus Society
Brianna Cayo Cotter, Communications Strategist
& Shadia Fayne Wood and Madeline Kovacs, Project Survival Media

All ages are welcome, program begins at 7:50pm

That’s right: six dollars. The price of a sandwich, or a couple of lattes from you can help PSM raise $6,000 by May 20.

If our supporters donated six dollars today, we’d raise enough money for Project Survival Media to focus full time on building our new program Solutions for Survival (S4S).

The reason? If you donate, your contribution will automatically DOUBLE. That’s right: we already have two donors who have generously committed to matching donations up to $1,000 each. The thing is, we don’t receive the additional $2,000 if we don’t raise $2,000 first. So we need your help. Please donate $6 (or $60? or $600?!) today.

We mentioned in our previous post that we’d give you the low down on S4S in the days to come…and that day is today!

Solutions For Survival

As people around the world work to solve the climate crisis, politicians in the United States continue to obstruct the official UN process and attempt to pass weak legislation.

It’s clear that we’re battling way more than climate change: dirty energy corporations are dumping billions of dollars into our political system–and citizens all over the globe are misinformed about the fundamental elements of the climate crisis.

Here at Project Survival Media we’ve decided to address these two obstacles.

First we’ll address the political obstacles in the US that are preventing wide-scale implementation of renewable energy. We’ll be working on a short documentary inspired by President Obama’s recent statement: “No matter how fast we ramp up those [clean] energy sources, we’re still going to have enormous energy needs that will be unmet by alternative energy.”

We want to dive into this. What does America’s energy usage really look like? What does our renewable energy potential really look like? Can we dramatically scale up our renewable energy production given the financial limitations of a recession? How much money are we currently spending on subsidies for big oil and big coal? And, lastly,

The answers to these questions can blow the doors off the current energy debate in the US. If we can break down the realities of regional renewable energy potential (a very wonky topic in and of itself), and juxtapose this information with an expose of the subsidies the US government gives to dirty energy, we’ll have done something profound.

S4S will assemble media teams from 6 regions: the West Coast, South West, Midwest, North East, South East, and the South. These teams will work alongside an even bigger team of researchers and editors that will help find and synthesize the relevant information and put it into a cohesive and compelling story. And when we begin the production of the documentary, we’ll give you a backstage pass. You can expect monthly updates from the field reporters and filmmakers.

With this film, we’ll be able to show what is actually possible given the existing financial and technological resources. By doing that, we’ll help change the political reality that is currently holding our future hostage. We are partnering with communities, organizations, and activists to equip campaigners throughout the US with a powerful educational tool, a moving narrative of real people in every region in the US, and research that they can stand confidently behind–and we’ll give the public inspiration to call on their legislators to do more.

Second, we’re designing a web-platform and global offline journalism program to address the lack of resources available to citizens world-wide on climate solutions.

Our governments are simply taking to long to enact real solutions. And there’s no time to lose: with an increasingly unstable climate we must make solutions available to communities world wide. Through new media, this global sharing is made infinitely easier.

This part of S4S will uncover how communities our coping with this huge challenge, and how others can follow their lead. S4S will focus on the implementation of tangible, local, and equitable climate solutions. Youth journalists all over the world will apply to be on a regional media team in this 18 month program. The entire program will be broken up into 3 month sections where the regional teams will focus on solutions in the following areas: Women, Water, Solar, Agriculture, and Urban Planning/Transportation. At the end of each month regional teams will submit a video, photo montage/essay, or blog.

PSM reporting is particularly good at creating powerful narratives that evoke an active emotional response; we know how to get people involved through our inspirational media. To amplify our impact even more we will partner with organizations, who specialize in blueprinting climate solutions step by step. And by creating an ongoing media buzz on our website, in the blogosphere, and potentially in some big traditional media outlets, we will help communities worldwide implement these survival solutions.

We will do our utmost to put these survival solutions into the hands of people and organizations, connecting real people who can inspire and teach one another. We plant the seeds for ideas to take root in many places at once, and grow the global civil movement to fight climate change.

We want to get started, we have so much work to do. But we need your help.

Please make a donation of just $6 today.

With so many lives already at stake due to climate change, and our world leaders failing to take strong action, we must make available local and tangible climate solutions being implemented in communities all over the world. We must lead by example, and demand that our governments do more.

Project Survival Media (PSM) does this through journalism. Visual Journalism, in particular, has been a critical campaign tool for organizers throughout landmark cultural and political struggles for hundreds of years. With new technological advances, we are able to reach more people than ever before in new and creative ways. As media makers on climate change, journalism is a powerful vehicle to mobilize those not yet activated. Like the civil rights journalists in the 1960’s, we will show that those opposing climate justice will find themselves on the wrong side of history. And as our climate becomes more unstable, we will show how communities can safeguard their future by proactively building climate solutions.

Solutions for Survival (S4S), PSM’s new program, is unafraid to challenge the industry-sponsored myth that we just can’t meet our energy needs without investing in dirty energy. We will do this by creating a documentary series in the US on current clean energy potential and current dirty energy subsidies.

We will also run a web-based platform and an offline journalism program that will share some of the most innovative solutions being implemented around the world. S4S will paint a realistic but hopeful picture for the future, advance youth journalism on climate, and spark further innovation among viewers. We’ll share more on the program in the coming weeks.

Since Project Survival Media started off as a one-time media campaign with Copenhagen as our end-date, we are now in the thick of fundraising. Our work to cover the climate crisis and survival demonstrated that our presence was filling a much-needed gap. We engaged nearly 100 youth journalists all over the world, worked with a team of 18 young people in Copenhagen, and produced blogs, photo essays, and 6 mini-documentaries. And because PSM was so successful, we’re getting a great response from funders.

But, as we all know, it’s easier to get money when one has money. That is why we are appealing to our supporters.

We’ve set a challenge for ourselves for a little over a month to raise $6,000 dollars from April 20 – May 20th. We looking for donations of any size, whether it’s $5 or $500, all of it goes a long way. One large donor has stepped up ready to match donations up to $1,000.00. We’re looking for 2 more folks so if you know anyone who’d be interested please let us know.

Over the past couple years, we’ve engaged a lot of you to donate. We are so grateful our community has made our dreams grow. Your generous support has shaped and changed lives. Throughout the next 5 weeks, you’ll hear directly from folks all over the world you have impacted.

We are also very sensitive to respecting our community’s space– if you’d rather not receive solicitation emails anymore, no worries, just let us know.

Will you support Solutions for Survival by making a donation you feel comfortable with today? To donate visit this link.

Part of our Team in Copenhagen

Project Survival Media launched forward in August 2009 after a successful launch party that raised nearly $1000.00 and celebrated the birth of a global youth journalism network.

Our first Team Leader conference call represented India, Singapore, Lebanon, Egypt, Togo, Argentina, Brazil, England, the Netherlands, Australia, the US, and Canada. We soon released our application for the general teams and within 16 days we received 200 applications, testament to the need our program was beginning to fill.

By November we had raised $46,000.00 and at the end of our program we had engaged nearly a hundred youth journalists, brought a team of 18 young people to Copenhagen, and produced blogs, photo essays, and 6 mini-documentaries.

Even though Copenhagen was an extreme disappointment, failing to secure a fair and binding international climate deal, the negotiations were an important step in building an international civil movement. PSM was an important player in this effort, using new-media tactics and tools to urge passage of policies that “safeguard the survival of all countries and peoples.” Our bottom line: To make sure that the survival message of peoples around the world penetrated the political dialogue.

Project Survival Media was created for young people to report on these very issues and strengthen the dialogue on what is possible in order to ensure our survival. We are launching a new part of the program focused on solutions, which we hope will draw some big attention on the cutting edge technologies, ways of thinking, and opportunities out there for our local communities and national governments to replicate. We hope to answer the all too important question of the year, “Do we have to invest in dirty energies because we just don’t have enough clean energy available.”

Project Survival Media’s success on a tight time line and shoe string budget in mobilizing youth journalists, shows that our new program Solutions for Survival is also set up for success. The youth we worked with are hungry for a program like this to continue.

We will take their enthusiasm for reporting on climate change and combine it with new direction and a new program to focus on solutions, especially, solutions of women. With the talent of our story tellers, we will create transformative media that could not come at a more important time.

Join us. Support us.

All Images ©Robert vanWaarden

Images ©Robert vanWaarden

At the Bella Center metro station (Sara Engström)

Since I live just an hour’s train journey away from Copenhagen, I decided to commute between Lund (my hometown) and the COP15 conference. The morning trains were full of people with UNFCCC badges of all colours hanging around their necks – there were delegates, press people, IGOs and NGOs.

One day last week I was sitting next to two delegates from the Swedish delegation, and the next day in the seat next to me was a delegate from Congo (I don’t know which Congo he meant though). As fellow passengers, all three of them were genuinely nice people. I could sit there and have a small chat and even ask them to keep an eye on my things while I went to the toilet. No problem. When sitting next to somebody in the train, you are playing the role of yourself – usually a quite polite and friendly figure.

However, as soon as the four of us – the two members of the Swedish party, the delegate from Congo and myself – got inside the Bella Center, we were immediately divided into separate blocs. We isolated ourselves in the contexts that we belonged to and focused on what we wanted. Sitting down and having a chat with somebody in another position like that is just out of question.

I went to Bonn in August. This was the first UNFCCC negotiation that I participated in. I was then at a quite early stage in my involvement in the youth movement, and travelled down to get some useful experience. I really did learn a lot. It was in Bonn that I realised what a limited perspective I had had (and probably still have) on climate issues: strongly influenced by attitudes of the Western society. At that conference, I had the ability to speak to basically all the delegates and it suddenly became so clear to me how developed and developing countries were lining up on opposite sides – constantly blaming each other for inhibiting progress. They both think that the other side is not showing enough will and commitment. Developing countries think that developed countries are not taking the lead as they should, developed countries that this is impossible to do due to the attitudes of developing countries. Having understood this vicious circle, the problem suddenly became a much more complex one to me as well.

When speaking to delegates, I always get the impression that they are doing the best that they can in their positions. When they put forward their arguments and explain how they reason, everything seems to make perfect sense to me. In Bonn, I found myself having full understanding for both the delegate from Lichtenstein, who said that basically all of his country’s emission cuts will be made through offsets, and for all the delegates from developing countries who emphasised that developed countries should really start by cutting their own emissions (and increase funding, of course).

This was absurd. When I think about it, I realize that I find Lichtenstein’s position absolutely wrong. I don’t think offsetting is the way to combat climate change, and I fully agree with poorer countries that rich countries must take some responsibility and focus on their own emissions.

However, I find it difficult to win that argument. When speaking to the delegate from Lichtenstein, or listening to what the politicians in Sweden are saying, I don’t know what I could say or do to prove them wrong. The reason being that they are using arguments based on values that are the core in our society, values that I have been brought up with and am not used to questioning.

Everyone has started saying that the situation is getting increasingly more dangerous. Everyone is talking in terms of saving humanity and saving our planet. Everyone says that they are committed to taking action.

Still, developed countries again and again show out to be more anxious about saving the economy and – what comes with it, our way of life. And naturally with this attitude, a lot of measures that need to be taken become impossible. Hence, to question what politicians in Sweden, the EU, the USA and so on are saying is difficult. Not because there are no counter-arguments, but because these question basic values – the core principles of society.

When politicians in the EU discuss whether emission reductions should be 20% or 30% by 2020, even though at least 40% would be required, I find myself in some way accepting that. Even though I know that this is not close to being sufficient, and will probably have catastrophic consequences. However, I’ve learned that everything except these proposed targets is economically impossible. Which equals absolutely impossible in every aspect.

So this is one of my big dilemmas. How can I express my opinions on how I think that developed countries should act, without sounding unrealistic or naïve? I don’t want to be seen as a radical when I’m arguing that we must set up targets that, according to science and not to the economical frames, will avoid disastrous climate change. I know that such goals are realistic, but they require a change of attitudes. What is then the best way of changing attitudes?

I asked the delegate from Congo about how he thought that the negotiations were going. He said that the whole thing was arranged by rich countries beforehand already. That was his immediate answer, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The delegates from Sweden were like most people in general. I actually thought they seemed really friendly. Still, right now it is people like them – who could just as easily have been my neighbours – who are not being ambitious and daring enough, and are thereby denying people in other parts of the world their right to live.

After some in-depth contemplation of this complex dilemma, I’ve found out that there is still just one solution. It is obvious that the developed world must change its values – some of the core principles in our society. After all, it is a question of either putting money or lives at a risk. Surely, no civilised human being should hesitate with that decision.

There is no chance that dangerous climate change can be stopped if developed countries are not willing to change their way of life and their values. Therefore the most effective thing that one can do as a citizen in one of these countries is, simply, to dare to be critical.