All Images ©Robert vanWaarden

Images ©Robert vanWaarden

Noting the degree of consciousness shifting society around us, our media focused on what people are doing for the movement toward sustainability: activism, alternative energy, and green jobs. Everyone on our team agreed that it was more productive and inspiring to look at solutions rather than listen to dooms-day predictions, and that made the pursuit of our stories charged with excitement. It was a lot of fun to work hard with a group of people driven by meaningful purpose, and the result of our efforts was very rewarding.

We used borrowed gear, shared our skills, and supported one another in jumping hurdles along the winding way between idea and product. It wouldn’t have worked just fifteen years ago– our team was spread across the Eastern United States, brought together by virtual technologies like Skype and Google Docs. To move large video files across distances, we used Wistia media server technology, with an account donated by the good folks at Animal LLC, a digital media design studio in Providence, Rhode Island.

I’m proud of what we have accomplished so far, but I also feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are so many more stories that need to be told, and the urgency of learning to grapple with the effects of climate change is increasing daily. In the quest for a sustainable civilization we need to work together, harness technologies, share our resources, and survival will be our profit. Project Survival Media is a prime example of people doing that, and I’m grateful for having been a part of it.

Larry Lohmann seems to think he has an answer, and he elaborates on it in his very interesting paper called Climate as an Investment where he states that the future of the world lies in locally produced energy using sustainable methods.

In order to make this transition, our notion of industrialization has to completely change, which in turn means that we must move further and further away from fossil fuels as well as fossil fuel substitutes such as agrofuels. Why are agrofuels included in this category, you might ask? Two reasons: Firstly, they have a massive impact on food productivity since they will end up eating a lot of our land (yes the pun was intended) and secondly (and more importantly), they provide security to the fossil fuel infrastructure which many view as a crucial hindrance to our future.

His proposal might seem radical to many, but this idea isn’t new. In fact it has been put to practice for over 2 decades in a tiny village in rural Rajasthan called Tilonia in an establishment called the Barefoot College. Barefoot College, and it’s founder Bunker Roy, have received immense praise for the work they have been doing. Apart from a college for the poorest of the poor, it is also a self-sufficient community which produces its own energy using the ample sunlight that it receives. It maintains its own water supply through rain water harvesting which is stored in hundreds of underground tanks and recycles its own waste to create fodder. The 100,000 people who are taking part in this probably don’t realize that they are leading by example for the whole world to see.

Tilonia is a stunning example for 2 reasons:

Firstly, the location is far from paradise, at least not in the conventional sense. When the project first started out, it was a wasteland, a desert. But now, through their energy and water systems, they are getting some of the green cover back.

Secondly, necessity is the mother of invention. As Seth Godin says, today being innovative isn’t a luxury, its a necessity. And that’s what Bunker Roy has been doing for the last thirty years. He didn’t wait for the government to help him. He took matters in his own hands for his community’s survival depended on it.

So while such a project can work in developing nations and small communities, for a city things can quickly begin to look very different.

As Lohmann puts it:

[Decentralized energy production] can only happen through a process that involves ‘taking over the City’. These include campaigns to reduce the overwhelming influence of Wall Street in Washington; increase workers’ and farmers’ participation in management; disallow banks’ claims about the value of the ‘toxic’ assets they hold; roll back limited corporate liability; challenge shareholder primacy; halt public handouts for CCS and nuclear development; force the World Bank to obey its review panel’s recommendations to stop investing in fossil fuels

I am not saying that this is the only solution to the climate change problem. What I am saying is that with more and more nuclear reactors being set up (and that waste isn’t going to get disposed on its own), with more and more people with less land at our disposal, with Big Oil working overtime to ensure that the laws won’t be giving them a real deal, with geo-engineering suggesting that we send sulphur-packed rockets every now and then to prevent global warming, we need to start having more discussions and weigh our options. We need to really consider whether out if our leaders’ plan for our future is really going to make it better, for our survival depends on it. Perhaps investing our time in what some communities have already been doing to support themselves might be answer to some of the developing worlds’ climate problems.

photo creative license: <div xmlns:cc=”http://creativecommons.org/ns#” about=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/barefootcollege/310046570/in/photostream/“><a rel=”cc:attributionURL” href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/barefootcollege/“>http://www.flickr.com/photos/barefootcollege/</a> / <a rel=”license” href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/“>CC BY-NC-ND 2.0</a></div>

During the conference some American and Australian youths decided to stand up to this unfair process and assisted several under-represented delegations. It appeared to be a win-win situation: the youths felt connected with the conference and the under-represented delegations had more manpower to cope with the enormous amount of work at the conference. Project Survival NL blog to learn more!