Did I say I was prescient?

I undertook my fast when a barrel of oil was about $80. I did it when no one but the peak oil cognoscenti were anticipating a massive shift in air travel. All year, though, the reasons for not flying have sunk from a noble experiment, a spiritual exercise, an eco-lenten public virtue to just plain smart. Read this from the NYTimes:

May 21, 2008

Airlines' Cuts Making Cities No Fly Zones
By MICHELINE MAYNARD

Earlier this decade, city officials in Hagerstown, Md., started making the case to build a longer runway at their airport to lure service by regional jets, instead of the turboprop planes that provided its only flights.

Several years and $61.4 million later, the city opened its concrete welcome mat, a new 7,000 foot runway, last November — two months after the airport lost scheduled air service altogether.

Despite its costly investment, a dogged marketing effort by local officials and even help from Congress, the airport has had no luck attracting a new carrier, as the industry struggles under soaring fuel prices.

“Could we pick a worse time to go out and get commercial service? Probably not,” said Carolyn Motz, director of the Hagerstown Regional Airport, which had 10 daily flights a decade ago.

The airports have grown quiet in many other communities, too.

Financially strapped airlines are cutting service, and nearly 30 cities across the United States have seen their scheduled service disappear in the last year, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Others include New Haven, Conn.; Wilmington, Del.; Lake Havasu City, Ariz.; and Boulder City, Nev.

Over the same period, more than 400 airports, in cities large and small, have seen flight cuts. Over all, the number of scheduled flights in the United States dropped 3 percent in May, or 22,900 fewer flights than in May 2007, according to the Official Airline Guide.

And the service cuts are far from over, as jet fuel prices rise, airlines shut down and companies consider mergers, like the Delta-Northwest deal.

For American travelers, the shift means that they can no longer bank on scheduling flights to reach their destination within a single day, said Robert W. Mann Jr., an industry consultant in Port Washington, N.Y.

“Everybody expects frequent, convenient, high-quality service with great connectivity to the rest of the world,” Mr. Mann said. But given the steep rise in fuel prices, which are up 84.5 percent from a year ago, airlines have to make difficult choices on service.

Fewer passengers are expected to fly this summer, traditionally the peak season for air travel — partly because of the soft economy, of course, but the difficulty of traveling may also be a factor.

The Air Transport Association, an industry trade group, predicts 211.5 million people will fly between June 1 and Aug. 31, down more than 2 million passengers from last year’s record of 213.5 million.

Flights seem to be disappearing by the day.

Last week, Mesa Air Lines, a regional carrier based in Phoenix, said it would shut down Air Midwest, a regional subsidiary, on June 30. The move will eliminate service to 16 small cities in the 10 remaining states where Air Midwest, which had already cut flights, still operated.

Eliminating flights is the latest move by the airlines in a cost-cutting drive that also has led to ticket prices climbing 10 times this year and new fees, from charges for checking extra bags to changing itineraries.

Almost every major carrier, from American Airlines to Delta Air Lines and US Airways, is crossing cities off its list, leaving passengers with fewer choices than a year ago.

Some travelers have no choices, but it is not for lack of trying by city and state officials. After Hagerstown briefly lost its eligibility for a government program called the Essential Air Service last year, Maryland’s Congressional delegation helped win an extension that allowed Hagerstown, as well as Lancaster, Pa., and Brookings, S.D., to remain in the program until Sept. 30.

The Essential Air Service program was created in 1978, when the airline industry was deregulated, to ensure that communities in rural and remote areas would be linked to the nation’s air system.

Under the program, the government provides subsidies of about $100 million a year to the airlines, resulting in service to 102 communities.

But the subsidies have not risen fast enough to cover the jump in jet fuel costs, and passengers have resisted paying higher prices for plane tickets, prompting carriers to pull out of a number of cities, including Hagerstown.

Now, some lawmakers are pushing for more money for the air service program as part of a broader funding bill for the Federal Aviation Administration that is before the Senate. The House passed the measure last year.

Even with the longer runway, and the federal subsidy, Hagerstown has not been able to persuade another carrier to take the place of Air Midwest, which discontinued its two daily flights to Pittsburgh last fall.

Ms. Motz says that is now unlikely to happen before the extension expires, given the time an airline needs to start new service. “With airlines going out of business and capacity being reduced, it is very difficult,” she said.

Lacking flights, Hagerstown residents must drive an hour and a half to Baltimore-Washington International Airport, or face even longer trips to Washington’s two airports.

Without passenger service, the airport’s revenue comes primarily from military and private aviation.

“We would love to have service here, especially since there have been millions of dollars in improvements,” said Lewis Metzner, a city council member.

Plattsburgh, N.Y., is also hoping to get more flights. And it has more than just a longer runway — it has a brand new airport, built on a former air force base.

The airport offers three flights a day on a nine-seat Cessna to Boston, via Cape Air, as well as three flights a week to North Carolina on Myrtle Beach DirectAir and four weekly flights to Fort Lauderdale and Orlando on Allegiant, a low-fare carrier.

Plattsburgh had a daily flight to Albany under CommutAir, a commuter carrier linked to Continental Airlines that operated 19-seat aircraft. But CommutAir discontinued service to Plattsburgh last year, before the airport moved to its new location.

Now, the town’s only current connection to a major airline is through Cape Air, which has partnership arrangements with Continental and JetBlue.

Cape Air service is provided under an Essential Air Service contract that gives Cape Air with a subsidy of $650 a flight, or about $73 a passenger for a trip that costs $94 one-way, said Christopher D. Kreig, the airport’s manager.

But the subsidies have not ensured stability. Cape Air is the third airline in a year to hold the contract. After CommutAir pulled out, Big Sky Airlines served Plattsburgh for just seven weeks, leaving in January, when the airline dropped service to East Coast airports.

However, Myrtle Beach and Allegiant came in without government assistance, attracted in part by the airport’s proximity to Canada, which Plattsburgh emphasizes in its marketing campaign.

Mr. Kreig acknowledges the service is an odd mix for Plattsburgh’s passengers.

But Mr. Mann, the industry consultant, sees only one way that small cities like Plattsburgh can attract new business — and it is probably one that passengers will not like. “You can profitably fly small airplanes only if the people on them pay very high prices,” he said.

Mary M. Chapman contributed reporting.

Ethics of Air Travel?

I'm not judging anyone else re air travel. I'm just doing an experiment - and it seemed extreme and quixotic when i started. A bit of hair shirt. Frankly it feels like that sometimes. It's revealing my low-tolerance for a no-thrill way of life. Couple that with just signing up for Senior Aerobics (really really cheap) and I'm in major self concept makeover zone. But read this from a recent Christian Science Monitor article... we're gonna have to find a way to make staying home really hot and sexy:

Sparks Fly Over Ethics of Air Travel

Why some say travelers should think twice before boarding.

By G. Jeffrey MacDonald | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the April 28, 2008 edition

Correspondent G. Jeffrey MacDonald talks about environmental groups around the world that advocate a reduction in passenger aviation to cut down on greenhouse gases.

Travelers troubled by rising airfares, canceled flights, and overcrowded tarmacs are hearing yet another reason to reconsider air travel.

Some say it's unethical to fly.

Earlier this month, neighborhood and environmental activists staged events across Britain to dramatize concerns about commercial aviation. Donning masks of Prime Minister Gordon Brown and waving cardboard airplanes, they called on government to keep track of carbon emissions from planes and raise fees to discourage frequent flying.

Behind this action lurks an ethics-based argument that's trying to shame routine fliers in developed nations into flying less. The nub: The planet should not have to suffer the consequences of a fast-growing (if now troubled) air-travel industry. Hence, the argument goes, an ethical consumer should think twice before buying plane tickets.

"If we're going to reduce aviation's contribution to climate change, then the onus is on people in the rich world to look at their flying habits," says John Stewart, chair of AirportWatch, a Britain-based coalition to curtail flying and airport expansion. That's because most fliers don't live in developing nations, he says.

Estimates for significant growth in air travel are fueling today's ethics debates. The World Tourism Organization projects the number of international leisure travelers to nearly double from 842 million in 2006 to 1.6 billion in 2020. Most of those travelers are expected to go by air.

Science hasn't put the ethical issue to rest. Airplane emissions currently account for about 3 percent of greenhouse-gas emissions worldwide, according to Daniel Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. He says taking a train across the United States generates about 20 percent fewer emissions than an average cross-country flight.

But doing the trip solo in a car would produce about 66 percent more carbon per passenger mile than an average flight.That flying has a detrimental effect on the environment is widely accepted. The ethical debate hinges instead on such questions as: How much damage is acceptable? When is a flight justified? And when do the benefits of cross-cultural interaction, made possible by flying, outweigh the costs borne by the environment and those who live near runways?

Moral authorities of varied stripes have weighed in. In 2006, London's Anglican Bishop John Chartres said flying abroad to vacation is a "symptom of sin" because it ignores "an overriding imperative to walk more lightly upon the earth." Environmentalists have also framed flying as a moral issue since it allegedly causes harm in pursuit of unnecessary ends. "You can be an environmental saint – drive a hybrid car, recycle, conserve your water – and if you take one air flight, it actually blows your carbon budget right out of the water," says Elle Morrell, director of a green-lifestyle program at the Australian Conservation Foundation. One round-trip flight from Sydney to New York City, she says, generates as much in carbon-dioxide emissions per passenger as an average Australian would generate in an entire flightless year.

"We ask people to take this seriously," Ms. Morrell says, "and avoid air travel where they possibly can."

Against the prospect of vilification, the airline industry is pushing back. The Air Transport Association, a trade group whose members include most US carriers, contends the industry is constantly improving fuel efficiency and reducing noise. And employing some 11.4 million people may have some ethical value in its own right, says ATA spokesperson David Castelveter. "Would it be a logical or practical recommendation to suggest that people fly less, given the amount of jobs and economic activity that the aviation industry drives?" Mr. Castelveter says. "We say the answer is, 'No. Allow us to continue to focus on ways to reduce emissions.' "

Airlines aren't alone in making an ethics-based case for flying. Another defender is Martha Honey, executive director of The Center on Ecotourism and Sustainable Development, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization. She notes that nature preserves in many developing countries can sustain their missions only with support from foreign visitors who fly there.

"Of everything involved in tourism, airplane travel is doing the most damage in terms of climate change. That's absolutely true," Ms. Honey says. "But the movement in Europe saying, 'Stay home; don't get on a plane' is disastrous for poor countries … whose most important source of income is from nature-based tourism. It's also disastrous for us as a human race to not travel and see the world. The question is, 'How do you do it, and do it smartly?' "

Honey recommends taking other steps to minimize climate impacts. Once in a destination, she says, travelers may opt for energy-efficient ground transportation. They can also buy carbon offsets, which usually support either tree-planting initiatives or alternative-energy sources, in an attempt to neutralize the environmental impact of their journeys.

Some advocates for responsible travel, however, remind fliers that offsets don't neatly and easily remove the carbon generated by their jaunts.

"Offsetting is too often used as a bargaining tool [with one's conscience] to say 'Hey, I can fly, I just have to offset,' " says Tricia Barnett, director of Tourism Concern, a Britain-based advocacy organization for local peoples and environments affected by travel. "That's not necessarily a solution." She encourages fliers to also make extra efforts on their trips to eat locally raised foods, use public transportation, and limit water use.

At the Climate Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based group focused on climate-change solutions, Director John Topping feels no great need to make fliers feel guilty. He sees the marketplace as already driving some behaviors that ease pressure on climate change. Business travelers save money by hosting virtual meetings, he says, and short-distance fliers find they can sometimes spend less time and money on travel by riding buses and avoiding airports. Looking to the future, Virgin Atlantic airlines is exploring the use of biofuels in planes. For now, fliers are limited to those powered by petroleum-based jet fuels.

But since Americans generally drive cars more than they fly, some advocates suggest they fix their road habits first.

"What's the point of not taking a flight," asks Julia Bovey, federal communications director for the National Resources Defense Council, "if you're driving to work every day in a vehicle that gets 12 miles to the gallon?"

1

Couldn't be a better time to not fly

Was I prescient? Could I even gloat a little about my excellent timing to undertake the rigors of staying on the ground and out of airplanes?

First there is inconvenience. Not only the long lines to check the shanks in our shoes and our toiletries, but the wiring failures that have grounded many airlines for days, leaving people stranded. Ha! One form of suffering I'm spared by going local.

Next there's the cost. Since it first occurred to me to undertake this fast, the price of a barrel of oil has gone up $40 - a 50% increase in 6 months. Some flights are simply more expensive now.

Finally there's those runway incursions... beep beep beep, news flash...

April 25, 2008

For Airlines, Runways Are the Danger Zone
By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — The recent groundings of thousands of flights have raised flags about skipped airplane inspections and botched repairs to wiring.

But what really worries aviation specialists? Runway collisions.

“Where we are most vulnerable at this moment is on the ground,” the chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, Mark V. Rosenker, said. “To me, this is the most dangerous aspect of flying.”

For the six-month period that ended March 30, there were 15 serious “runway incursions,” compared with 8 in the period a year earlier. Another occurred at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport on April 6 when a tug operator pulling a Boeing 777 along a taxiway failed to stop at a runway as another plane was landing, missing the tug by about 25 feet.

I am slowly adapting to the limitation I set. I am slowly discovering little pathways and pleasures accessible by foot or car. I am slowly getting used to the idea that if I want to go further afield than a few hundred miles, I may be spending a few days on a train - and liking it. So I look on the madness of travel with some remove - and yes, a bit of immature disdain. These signs of decline in our air travel infrastructure aren't good, and I do feel for the inconvenienced travelers. But I can't help being glad I'm not someone whose plans are in a tizzy because I am subject to the airline industry.

Airplane Fast Month Three

It seems quite easy to not get into an airplane. It's much harder to stumble into flying than to break a food fast with a midnight cookie. But by not flying for a year I am forcing myself to look at what needs travel fills and how to fill those differently. It's not easy for a travel junkie to stop.

I'm seeing that travel - especially to distant places that require flight - fills so many needs that it's no surprise that I say yes so readily to invitations to go elsewhere. Here are a few:
stimulation (hear new people, ideas, languages)
a break from routines
admiration and respect (when I speak)
socializing (conferences are a big party)
aimlessness (reading novels, poking around)
perspective (i see my life through the eyes of a different culture)
inspiration (i often change direction from insights on my trips)
gratitude (for what i have at home)
new friends (the delights of beginnings and discovery)
learning (history, culture, language, art)

Getting all these needs met locally can be quite a challenge! Color me chuckling.

You see, my life metaphor has been "on the road". I actually lived on the road for 10 years in a motorhome and even after living in Seattle for 16 years I thought of it as temporary. I considered it a spiritual truth - we are all brief travelers on a journey from birth to death and all stability is an illusion since everything changes.

But it seems my signature is changing from "on the road" to "less, local and love" which are my guiding principles for the future when Climate Change and Peak Oil and Resource depletion will require us all to settle down to a smaller footprint. It's also, probably, a recognition that at 62 my will for novelty and adventure is being balanced finally by a desire for rootedness and stability. So this "airplane fast" is actually a crucial practice for this life shift.

As my stone stops rolling I'm gathering a bit of moss and it feels good. I live in a community where many friends have the means and the careers that send them traveling for work and pleasure. Being a homebody this year I notice how hard it is for community to become really solid, regular and predictable. The people here become all the more important to me when I am not out and about collecting new ones.

In this month I've started one new friendship and deepened some others intentionally. A group that was a work group has evolved into a monthly witness group, holding one another's journeys. I've come to appreciate even more those who host regular events I can attend and contribute to - my choir and ecstatic dance class - and have started with two friends what will become a regular local Conversation Cafe (thus becoming a source of stable quality connection for others). Over Easter Weekend I participated in several spiritual opportunities - all the more precious because they were on my doorstep and available. One friend hosted a Day of Mindfulness, others hosted a sweat lodge and others an Easter Service and I drank deep and appreciatively of them all.

Seattle has become as exotic as it gets! I'm volunteering with a team of facilitators to host a "space of compassion" during a five-day Seeds of Compassion event during which the Dalai Lama will inspire and educate tens of thousands on the art and science of compassion, especially how to teach it to our children. Meeting with these people who've been on my radar, but peripherally, for years and planning how we will host the space is quite moving. I feel grateful to have such mighty colleagues within a short drive and want to give more energy to working with them. I'm also speaking at the Green Festival here (did it last year in DC).

For those of you who have stayed put most of your lives this must seem pretty ho-hum, but for me these normal activities like making local friends, going to local events and serving on local committees with the intention of my life belonging to a people and a place is quite radical. I get antsy and want to start planning my next trip - and then channel that energy into yet one more quality experience within walking distance or a short drive.

My friend Kurt Hoelting inspired me last Fall with his "circling home" intention to not get into cars and to bike or bus or kayak his intimate region. We are starting to compare notes, seeking whether we are learning similar things and have something to offer from the experiment. But we're only 3 months in. Check me out in November. Mossy. Maybe bored. Possibly pale as a ghost. Narrow minded. Who knows. How are you going to get them back to the farm after they've seen Paris... and Madrid, Sao Paulo, Moscow, Beijing, Dharamsala, Quito, Macchu Picchu, Cuba and...

It's also been a cold month - we had hail on Easter and snow two days ago. It takes a bit of endurance to stay put when the world closes in a bit and isn't hospitable to expansive outdoor play. So the pleasures I am finding are smaller and more contained. The stay-put-ness is actually digging my inner well deeper.

Airplane Slow...

Now the challenges begin.

I thought this morning that I should schedule a retreat after Conversation Week. Somewhere beautiful, relaxing, uplifting, surrounded by grand people.

This afternoon an invitation came in for all that - for free. The only hitch is... it's in upstate New York. I checked the train. It would be 3 days from here to New York City. Only $312. Sitting up all the way. I wrote the organizer, thanking him but guessing I might pass on it. He wrote back:
"i took a sabbatical earlier this year and to get to europe i sailed. let's just say that i will forego europe entirely before sailing there again!"

So where can I go closer to home? There's the Korean Spa in Lynnwood. No joke. It's total self care for under $100. I could organize a gaggle of girlfriends to take a day together there and maybe go to a show in Seattle. Then I checked out Breitenbush. Yep, I could take two days there ($100 plus gas and massage) before speaking in Vancouver, WA.

In the old days (and maybe the future) I'd travel if the destination, purpose and the people appealed and somehow it was 'free'. I hid from myself that it wasn't free to the earth and it wasn't free really as it took those two travel days and two pack/unpack days to make the days away happen. I was a tad enthralled with these unbidden opportunities for high play, good work and deep conversation. In the new days of this Airplane fast I'm discovering it's like most other 'diets.' You substitute one pleasure for another and discover tastes for things that formerly seemed ordinary or invisible. Like people who now vacation in their cars because flight and hotels and exchange rates are through the roof, will I gush eventually about all the beauties close to home?

I also recognize that this constraint is voluntary for me and imposed for most others. I understand that fasting in this way is as much an expression of my privilege as flying. We all live in the ambiguity of the times.

Airplane Fast. Part 2

What's so dramatic. I haven't gotten in an airplane this week either. Pretty soon it will be no news.

But here are some observations...

• A question for Conversation Week was submitted from Mauritius. Not sure where it was, I flew over there via maps.live.com. It's an island off the East Coast of Tanzania. Well, back in the old days two months ago I could have imagined myself putting Mauritius with it's beautiful beaches (I could see them in my Internet fly-over) on the "Bucket List" - somewhere to go before kicking the bucket. If my fast goes longer than a year, or if in this year conditions change such that the cost of flying goes into the stratosphere, I'm pretty certainly never going to Mauritius. By land and sea, it is probably 3 months away.
• A deeper sense of belonging is creeping in here on my island. I am becoming part of those who stay put, who make the invisible web that holds the life here while others come and go. I bumped into a woman who was in the Vagina Monologues with me last year and she said with surprise, "You're here!" I replied "I live in Langley." "But you are always off somewhere," she said, "You're never here." I am beginning to feel the difference between my friends who are here and the ones who travel a lot. I really miss my traveling friend... just when i want to take a walk or have a cup of tea, they're answer machine says, "Off to Mauritius (my new code word for far afield), back in two weeks for a week, then off on a cruise in Arctic, gotta see it before it melts."
• Today I realized I'm going to have a challenge in the Fall. There's a conference in Austin I've long wanted to attend, the National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation. Is that when I do a road trip in my Honda Insight for a month, visiting friends all along the way? Do I go by train and treat myself to 10 books on tape for the journey? Do I by then figure our a way to attend electronically? Or host a regional gathering here for all the "left behinds".
• Thanks to Leif Utne's work on Conversation Week, I'm entering even more fully the world of Web 2.0, the internet swarms on Facebook, Skype, YouTube, blogs, surveys, webcams, virtual meetings and more. Here in cyberspace, the world is vast and within reach. The future is in the conversation, the infinite permutations and combinations. Decisions aren't made per se, they are born in one conversation and raised in another and become all stars or weaklings as people around the world starve them or feed them attention.
  

Stay tuned.

What is a host?

The Conversation Week month of searching for the most important questions in the world today is coming to a close. In a week, the top ten will be selected, though the top 50 should live on somewhere... and even the 600 amazing questions submitted.

Now the month of getting 400 or more hosts signed up to bring Conversation Week to their communities (hopefully on all seven continents) begins. Thousands of people in our networks (the Conversation Cafe, Conversation Week, Global Mindshift, Gaia.com, Facebook, YouTube, QuantumshiftTV and Lord knows where else) will be encouraged to sign up to host. Last year there were probably hundreds of conversations we had no idea were happening - people just participated. Signing up makes them part of the annual global experiment to learn how people around the world can be in respectful dialogue about the worlds most important questions.

But what is a host? How can we communicate what a host is or does so that people realize that's precisely what they do or want to do - but never knew there were others worldwide also persistently holding space for brilliance to arise in human conversation.

Hosts do it in Conversation Cafes, of course, but they also do it in the streets. They talk to people. They invite their views. They ask questions. The observe out loud the world of the bus stop or grocery line or conference break in such a way that others want to add their own views. They make conversational "stone soup".

As the "stone soup" story goes, a group of dirty, weary bums in a railroad yard were standing around a fire and a pot of boiling water, wishing they had something to eat. One guy says, "Hey, we can make stone soup. Here. I've got a few great stones I've save to put in." and he pulls some stones from his pocket, puts them in the pot and sniffs. Mmmm. Another guy then pulls out some carrots he scavenged from Dumpster Diving. Seeing that, someone else takes a few potatoes out of his sack, cuts them with a pocket knife, mumbles "here's some taters" and puts them in. Moments pass and another guy who'd hung back pulls out a whole roasted chicken he'd been intending to eat when the others weren't looking. He borrows the knife, cuts it up and tosses it, bones and all, in the pot. Finally a kid throws in some wild greens he'd just picked... and they enjoyed Stone Soup. When it was all gone but the stones, the first fellow took them back. Never know when you'll need to start another pot.

Hosting is gathering at the fire, inviting people to warm themselves around it, putting on a pot (a container like the process and agreements of the CC) and drop in the first stone - a powerful questions. Conversation Cafes are soul food for hungry minds. They are intelligent conviviality for hungry souls.

I host conversations - at cafes, in my home, with strangers - because it's who I am, not what I do. I can't help it. I am always hosting. I am always inviting others to make meaning with me. I am always asking questions and listening to the answers, always wondering what others think and feel. The world of bustling humans is to me like a vast ocean of hidden meaning. I want to know what people understand of the events of their lives. I want to know the stories others tell themselves about this world we live together in. I want to go out of my mind, to fall out of my certainties for a while and into the conjectures of others. I am willing to be humbled, again and again, by how narrow and harsh and demanding my mind can become, because on the other side of that brittle, lonely place is love. Okay, there it is. Last year in Conversation Week one participant mused, "This feels different than I imagined. This is more than conversation. More than friendship even. This feels like love." I host because I love.

Here are some other thoughts about who you and I are as hosts:

• Hosts aren't made, they're born... whenever one person listens to another without interrupting and discovers that warm witness inside is actually listening to them listen to the other.
• Hosts aren't born, they're made... we can host a Conversation Cafe by the book and discover that at some point we aren't doing hosting, we are hosting. It's like learning to dance. At first you're all feet. And then you're flying.
• A host brings everyone to the table to have the conversation none can yet imagine yet all know must be had.
• A host is the grown up in the room, the one who shines by allowing others to shine.
• A host invites others to break bread and make meaning.
• A host has the courage to not know. And admit it. And ask.
  
• A host isn't a not-know-it-all.
  
• A host puts others at ease with their thoughts.
• A host removes what’s in the way of people offering their brilliance to the world.
• A host listens on behalf of the collective.
• A host is hospitable, makes space for others to be at ease.
• A host hospices the brittle, dying ideas that arrive, exhausted to the table.
• A host is a leader of those who will lead once she is gone

What is a host to you?

Pick the Questions for Conversation Week

Hey everyone, please go to http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=vZIiOzEV1pL0LV_2f17vLcLQ_3d_3d and rate the 50 questions there (selected from 600 submissions from around the world) to help select the 10 most important questions in the world today. And then send the link to 10 more friends... and ask them to send it to ten more. Imagine hundreds of thousands of people in the next two weeks voting on these questions. Imagine knowing the list we'll use for Conversation Week includes questions people the world around really loved! And then imagine hosting a conversation where you live.

Watch more videos like this at www.quantumshift.tv

Why conversation matters

You'd think with all the words spoken every day we'd have this "conversation" thing down. But conversations that really matter, that change a mind or heart or course of events, are rare. I live for those moments of shift, when my own or another's certainties fall away and something fresh and true-er is spoken. I love to rattle my own cage gently until something stuck breaks loose - and really listening to what another says without any need to say anything back is a great way to do that. That's one reason why I started the Conversation Cafes in the Summer of 2001. To chew on good ideas with others. To feast on insights. To relish discovery. To invite the muse of conversation to light once again in this land of babble.

Babble. I got curious about how many words we do say in a day. Here's two estimates:

• The average woman speaks around 5000 words per day whereas the average male speaks around 2000. Apparently. (Source: Men are Lunatics, Women are Nuts)
• Working males average 2000-3000, females from 10,000-20000. However, both average about 500-700 words of actual value (i.e. words which have intent to communicate to another person an item of importance to both). (Source: book "Men are Pigs)

So women say about 5000 words a day but only 500 matter? No wonder I wanted to increase the meaning per minute in my days, the value of the words I hear and speak. No wonder I joined with two friends, Habib and Susan, in the summer of 2001, to invent the Conversation Cafes.

So here we are, over 7 years later, doing Conversation Week again, hoping tens of thousands more people will join us figuratively at the table to feast on conversations that matter. Hoping that thousands of people will take on the experiment Habib, Susan and I did - what if we took ourselves into public places like cafes and invited others to our tables and surfaced important questions and listened deeply and explored with curiosity and openess and discovered a kind of friendship and wisdom that's rare.

These seemingly simple, sometimes a bit awkward, conversations do something so important for us.

• They open and change our minds. We rally around "change" but deep, sustained and real change is not a spectator sport or armchair travel. It requires real honesty and humility.
  
• They expose us to people not like us and our friends. If we are lucky, people will come to our Conversation Cafes who actually see the world differently - shocking us into realizing that we do not know everything. To know something, you have to first know nothing - be hungry for answers. God we are so sure of ourselves, our words being used mostly to deBAT one another or to impress one another or to simply treat one another like empty receptacles to be filled with our ongoing narration of daily life.
• We make new friends. When it comes to being truly seen and understood, many of us are darn lonely - even if we have parties... and are the life of them. Building up layers of respectful listening can bring us into real relationship with others who may never be our lovers or our pals, but can be friends to our thoughts.
• We are listened to without argument. People give us a chance to gather our thoughts and finish our sentences and when we are done, the just nod and hold silence for a bit before speaking.
  

More on this later. for now, please do go to www.conversationweek.org and see what's cookin.

What is the Most Important Question in the World Today?

Watch more videos like this at www.quantumshift.tv

Here's my post inviting people to submit and vote on questions, posted at www.conversationweek.org

What is the Most Important Question in the World Today?

admin | Questions | Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

Talk about herding cats. It’s hard to know if we humans will ever agree on who we are, what we believe, where we are headed and how to get there. But with over 30 significant wars raging globally, a human population topping 6.6 billion and oil, water and other reserves dwindling there are some very important conversations we just need to have. Conversation Week is that one time a year when the table is set for people to talk with strangers and friends about the most important questions in the world today. Of course, who can agree what those questions should be? That’s why we are asking thoughtful people — like you — to suggest potential questions, and asking people who care — like you — to vote on them and then inviting people who can listen and be curious — like you — to host conversations.

Conversation Week began in 2002 to launch the Conversation Cafes in Seattle, Washington. Then, 9-11 was on everyone’s mind. Since then we hosted CWs in 2003, 2007 and now 2008. The questions from last year (with some answers from around the world) are later on this blog. Reports from prior CWs are at www.conversationcafe.org.

Don’t pass up the chance to submit a question before Feburary 12, vote on your top pick questions from February 14-27 and host a conversation during Conversation Week March 24-30.

• How can we bring the world together across all of the traditional boundaries that have divided us to address the issue of climate security for ourselves, our children, and future generations?

  Comment by Juanita Brown — February 10, 2008 @ 5:48 am

• One thing we all have in common - even if to different degrees - is technologies based on science. All the time since the renaissance and indeed much earlier too , the aim of science has been to understand nature and so to control it. That dominance over nature is what all nations are following; and while it hase done so much undoubted good - most of us would not be here today without it - it has also brought us to this brink of wrecking life on earth. Take farming as an example: fantastic progress in green revolutioon and breeding new varieties based on the science of fertilisation of crops. Alongside this has been another science; that of the life of the soils and the fungal and bacterial associations with plants and their nutrition. This science has been largely neglected in application. There is no purely scientific way to choose between the two scientific appproaches - the first to overcome and short-circuit natures’ mechanisms, the other to harness them. To make this more popularly appreciated, I am proposing that we need another name for the second science, to contrast with conventional science. And I propose ‘convivial science’, meaning ‘with life’. Since this word has so many other connotations, maybe someone can come up with another. Meanwhile I am writing up this argument more fully.

  Comment by Ulrich Loening — February 15, 2008 @ 6:16 pm

BE THE CHANGE

The primaries are not so much a national referendum on issues as a national Rorschach test. For those unfamiliar, that's a psychological tool to reveal the subconscious conflicts and desires. The client looks at ink blots and free associates. No, I'm not saying Obama or Clinton are merely symbols. They are real passionate human beings willing to be in the hottest fire there is. I'm saying if we don't watch out, we'll be polarizing and vilifying based on symbols, not facts.

People around me and "like me" (Progressive Cultural Creatives, Green Liberatarians, Spiritual Pragmatists, something like that) are overwhelmingly Obama supporters. I am too for reasons i said in the last post.

But people like me also sign their emails with Gandhi's quote: Be the change you want to see in the world. So if we mean that, if we support Obama precisely because he is promising a change in the polarized politics of class, race, party, gender, religion, and abetting terrorism by labeling whole populations as terrorists, then we need to find some way to be that change in the next 5 months. We can't support Obama by unleashing hatred against Clinton.

In reviewing 600 questions submitted for Conversation Week (www.conversationweek.org), i came across a very poignant one from a conservative christian who wondered how he and others like him might express their views about non hetero people without being labeled a bigot. There were many questions in there - the one i pulled out was: "What is the difference between holding strong convictions and being prejudiced?"

I think about this for our election. Important issues hang in the balance. If we don't get national health care, if we don't get out of Iraq, if we don't change our energy policy, if we don't take swift action towards drastically reducing climate pollution - we are in deeper trouble than the deep trouble we are in now. It's no joke. But it's also not just about if we like Obama and hate Clinton or vice versa.

I just hope we don't expend our political energy and bank account in the next five months and arrive at the supposedly real debate between the GOP and Dems with only slogans and battle scars and whoever the standard bearers are, they are stale and weakened by the drubbing they just got from their supposed allies.

Maybe my "being the change i want to see in the world" is hosting Conversation Week with a great group of colleagues, trying to bring civility and dialogue into a world of debate. Pronounce da BAT - like the kind you hit others over the head with - and you are closer to what substitutes for conversation in America.

My 2008 Airplane Fast

Kurt Hoelting http://www.insidepassages.com/ last Fall told me his plan to not travel more than 60 miles from home in 2008, and not drive anywhere. I knew the minute I heard him that my goose was cooked. The worst thing I do in terms of Global Warming is fly around the world educating people on lifestyle change. I decided that in 2008 I would not fly - and promptly went to Brazil, then California, then Florida. Enjoying them all the more knowing that in weeks I'd be grounded.

I will still travel as the need or desire arises, but only by car, boat, train or bus. Mostly, I wanted to do this fast to see what would show up in by slowing down an activity I'd come to count on for stimulation, novelty, respite, a bit of admiration when I'd speak, and the sense that despite the evidence of daily life, I was making a difference. Not flying felt more radical in this era of excess than anything I'd accomplish by flying. Not only that but my average of 10 trips a year meant at least 20 days of travel and 20 more days of packing and unpacking. That's over a month i'll get back. For what? good question. Beyond that, those days are fairly mindless and increasingly uncomfortable. If I want to be mindless with less impact, there's plenty to do at home.

Will my apartment be cleaner? Will i write more? Will I spend more time with my local friends, developing those intimacies i truly desire? Will I read and learn more, seeking the stimulation of great and rich minds rather than mindless novelty of ... what? another airport, another rental car, another city with Green and White Interstate signs. Further, can i keep connected with the people and cultures I love through other means? More phone calls (I've got my Skype set up and the videocam is coming soon), more letters (with stamps?). We'll see.

When I bounced up and down in silver sausages with wings on behalf of YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE I used to do a prayer for take-off and one for landing. On take off I'd express gratitude for this great gift of soaring above the earth, viewing her beauties from on high. On landing I'd pray that every person on this plane would achieve their highest intent for travel - even if they are all self-canceling. Even then I knew I could stay home and if the guy beside me going to a sales meeting for marketing useless widgets that pollute the earth in each moment of their brief life from oil, to factory to WalMart to the dump would stay home. But his drive to make a living by making a dying for the earth seemed to require us to file together onto planes and do our work. I'm finally acting on that irony. Of course, I also don't have a best selling book to tout, but even if I did - or do in the future - is there a way to stay home physically while traveling electronically?

I'm just 7 weeks into the experiment. I've canceled one teaching trip, the result of which was the organizers "discovered" someone in their hometown who also teaches YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE. Hmmm. Does flying famous people around diminish our capacity to see the rich intelligences in our hometowns? I've declined to fly to CA to a quarterly meeting with a think/feel/be tank I've been with for 7 years. I'll go once on the train. But amazingly, at least one member of this group is going to be in my area and I've been invited to an afternoon of deep reflection with her. And I'll hang out with others more on the phone.

I've already been on the web and plotted my next trip to Brazil. A train to Miami and a boat to Rio will take me a few weeks, but then it's not 'traveling' in the dessicated sense of flying hither and yon, but rather a road trip, a cruise, an adventure all by itself. I'm even thinking of getting in my car a bit more and driving to vacation locally.

Pablo Neruda's poem applies...

KEEPING QUIET

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would not look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.

Life is what it is about...

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with
death.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go

OBAMA+CLINTON+EDWARDS

What our nation needs is Obama+Clinton+Edwards - and the money we’ll waste between now and the Convention.

A blogger wrote that his son didn’t know the difference between baseball and politics. Why couldn’t the Dems just trade Bill for the Repubs’ John M? He has a point. Two points really. This election season is too long, too expensive, to divisive and too much like Ford vs Chevvy vs Prius.

First the cost vs benefit of these primaries. A year and a half ramp up to the Conventions tips elections out of democracy and into spectacle. Other democracies spend far less time and money on candidate selection and far more time hashing out a shared platform. Election season is short and to the point. Our process promises to top a billion http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.asp by the time all the media buys, travel, staff, printing, venue and consultants costs are paid off. A once every four years injection into the economy for… the airlines, media companies, venues (stadiums and auditoriums and theaters) and high paid operatives. Affordable housing anyone?

This campaign feels more like a national focus group for a product than a debate on substantive issues. It’s now framed as experience vs hope. Policies align almost exactly http://www.grist.org/candidate_chart_08.html?source=weekly. So the nation is getting, for the millions allocated to campaigns rather than something functional (like paying down the debt that’s drowning us), a sustained study of our psyche and voting on who WE are, not what the candidates promise and will produce. It’s more like the Mac vs PC debate than the Single Payer Health Care System vs Private Health Care Paid for by Private Insurance debate.

If I were anywhere near my caucus place I’d vote for Obama because he will give us a window of opportunity for making amends to the world for our atrocious and alienating end of Empire behavior. He can heal. And we sorely need that. However, right after that window we’ll need Clinton and her whole machine to ram through legislation that will fix problems. Looking at the voting patterns, I see that many of the people with real needs – elderly, women, poor, latinos – are voting Clinton. The hope they want is results. We need a mother and a preacher. An operative and an inspirer. Working together.

This is my second point. The Repubs team has shrewdly closed ranks around McCain and is going to stand by looking like grown ups while the Dems rip one another to pieces in the next few months and exhaust their campaign chests. Eventually one will win the nomination, but the other one will have given the Repubs all their talking points about what’s wrong with the winning candidate. The Dems in the next months will run the Repubs focus groups for free.

The shrewd and wise move would be for Clinton, Obama and Edwards to work out a deal right now. I’d opt for a Clinton/Obama ticket. Both for President. And Edwards for VP. Let’s face it. The nation needs balanced leadership. We’d have in the co-presidents and VP all the polarities held in a unified group we need. Masculine and feminine. Black and white. Fighter and uniter. Maturity in these times is all about reconciliation of opposites. Eventually we need to figure out how to have a wise council of leaders in such complex times, not a decider. Without the party uniting now we’ll have:

• McCain looking mature and the Dems looking like brawling kids
• A man who went to war and will continue war looking like the wise elder
• Hundreds of millions more wasted on in fighting when it could be spent on a consequential campaign
• Acrimony and disappointment and disaffection among currently mobilized Dems who dearly want to participate in a democracy that works, fixes what’s wrong, heals the nation, serves all interests and gets American back to being our best.

By uniting NOW Dems could upstage this Repub move and produce an end run (hmm, football again) and a big Goal. That being wisdom, not winning. That being prudence and frugality, not outspending. Okay, I know it’s unlikely and I’m just one voice and few will read this, but on this Washington State Caucus day I needed to say it.

Brazil photos

BRAZIL, WOMEN, TRANSITIONING AND TALKS

I am writing this on the long flight home from Brazil, just 6 hours into a 16 hour haul. Given that air travel shoots my Ecological Footprint from eco-heroine to eco-hog, from the decency of a Northern European to the gas-hog habits of North America, I have wondered often in this trip if it is my last. I am considering going on an airplane fast for a year and with oil prices rising, by the end of that experiment I might not be able to afford the flight, even if the planet could.

As with all my inner and outer conversations about resource constraint in the future, I've gotten a lot already just by contemplating life after air travel. I have actually lived through the air travel boom. My first flight was when I was about 7 years old. I was dressed in MaryJanes and white gloves and a dress with a white peter pan collar. It was elegant to fly. My first trip to Europe when I as 16 was on a Flying Tiger prop plane left over, I was told, from WWII. It took nearly a day and we had to stop for fuel in Iceland. Today that flight takes about 6 hours. The next time I went to Europe at 19 for a year of study in Spain, I went on a student ship which took, I believe, around a week - but what a week. We partied and had classes and flirted and by the end of the journey I had new friends and a boyfriend. Not bad. Several years after college, I took my Great American Road Trip with guy, dog and van which became the Great American Alternative Life with "back to the land" living and spiritual exploration and deep inquiry into the cultural and political norms and community. For 20 years I didn't fly. Then YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE came out and off I went again into the wild blue yonder, flying so much that for a while I had United Airlines Elite status. So flying became a habit. Leaving the earth's surface in an aluminum sausage at first felt like that early experience of luxury, but became a norm. So it is within my life experience that airplane travel is rare and special - and traveling the globe is possible without leaving its surface. So returning to Brazil might mean a train to Miami and a boat to Rio. That would likely take 2 weeks. Not 2 weeks of cramped suspension of normal life, but 2 weeks of adventure, relaxation, reflection. Of course that would require a less crammed to the gills life. I think the phenomenal wealth of resources we've learned to transform into daily comforts has given us, rather than the leisure society, the overworked society.

I have gone on about this as I think our imagination about life with less - less oil, less natural gas, less convenience, less variety of ready made products - has become impoverished. We become panicked like a smoker who's run out. We forget that people just like us - and even us - lived 60 years ago with far less and actually had interesting, intellectually stimulating, loving, happy, challenging lives. My father, for example, was the classic 1950's do-it-yourselfer who subscribed to Popular Mechanics and had a full shop in the basement. He built the furniture for my bedroom. He fixed everything. He even assembled from either a kit or a set of plans our first television which had a 5 inch screen with a magnifier in front of it to make the picture big enough for a family viewing experience. If we view the luxuries of highly technological existence as habit and not necessity and recall that less won't mean being bombed back to the stone age but rather put into a situation just 3 generations ago found normal, we might be willing to engage creatively in the changes that are coming due to resource constraint.

Why this meditation on the plane? I am so deeply imbued with the "living well on less" idea - from my mother's depression era training to my rural hunting/foraging/gardening days to my teaching frugality days - that I think about this the way an artist might notice how the afternoon light brings out the ochres. These days that conversation has gone from alternative to mainstream. Less is the order of the day. Of the future. Living in the US we may feel the constraints later than countries that have neither the money nor the military power to commandeer others' bootie much less protect their own from the global piracy called capitalism. On a finite planet, though, logic says even the last man standing eventually falls.

In Brazil there is greater recognition of coming collapse and of the insane strategies being used to delay it. Taxi drivers - the great popular informants about what is really going on - talk of Lula's folly of making a deal with the US to turn Brazil into a sugar cane plantation to feed ethanol into the world's cars. Productive orchards and farms are being transformed into mono crops. Cattle production is being driven deeper into the rain forest so more acres of the earth's lungs are being cut down.

I was surprised by how many end-times conversations I had in Brazil. The three questions are:

How soon will the collapse come?

How many will die?

What are you personally doing?

I think about these things, but do so mostly in secret as the dominant conversation is still so bullish on technology and growth. Even the Ecological Footprint, which is a clear, sharp mirror of our condition of overshoot (using more than the earth can restore), is not inspiring sufficient adaptation and planning. There is a wide gap between what a fair share for every human would be and the tinkering going on in most public and private enterprises.

The general answers to the questions are:

Within five years

Over half of all humans

Moving to rural communities

God, I don't know. As if to underscore the point, though, after writing the above the second film of the 9 hour flight came on. EVAN ALMIGHTY is about an unlikely congressman being chosen by God (Morgan Freeman as God) to build an ark to save us from a flood. Maybe it really is the end of the world as we know it time. Maybe, it is as unbelievable to us that life could REALLY change, that we could REALLY be thrown back on local resources with our current communication and transportation and technology luxuries cut down dramatically by the coming constraints. I've joked with some seriousness that we are in a frantic game of Musical Chairs but can't afford to stop dancing as most of the chairs now have disappeared while we've invited more and more folks into the dance. "Pick your chair" I've said, because soon you're gonna sit down and stay there. I've not so much picked mine as having followed an intuitive trail since getting cancer that landed me in a small village on a semi-rural island. As for timing, my guess has been that we will be in transition for several decades and that life and the global money system are far more elastic and resilient than 'doom and gloomers' would predict. As for die off, yes, I do think global populations will be decimated, though my hope would certainly be that

1. the decrease is through people my age and older kicking the bucket naturally rather than hanging on through resource intensive medical interventions (yes, I do get the implications) and making room for stronger, younger and less addicted to stuff people. and

2. that enough people wake up and change voluntarily in communities to build local arks.

I also found that people who asked these questions were, like me, beyond rage at having this predictable and preventable outcome here upon us and were into a sort of unreasonable lightness of being. Not giddy. Indeed, with much sorrow about the pain ahead. But engaged in the changes, and in opposing further destruction, with love instead of hate.

Well, even though I am probably more vigilant and informed than most on the topic, I am still on an airplane returning from my beloved Brazil.

The final week was 4 back to back lectures, three long interviews (Istoe, the Brazilian TIME, Folha-the NY Times of Brazil and Vidas Simples magazine) and several fascinating meetings.

My primary sponsor was AKATU, a Brazilian organization concerned with conscious consumption, in cooperation with my publisher, CULTRIX. In preparation AKATU did a study linking three values - simplicity, environment and post-materialism (think new cosmology or integral spirituality) - with consumption choices and found that committed to and interested in these values were of conscious consumption - voluntary simplicity, environment and post-materialism (think new cosmology or integral spirituality) - to consumer choices. Their event on Wednesday was very high class wtih simultaneous translation and half a dozen VIPs coming to the stage to welcome and praise and take a bit of credit. Helio Mattar, founder and honcho of AKATU leads a team of several dozen, nearly all women, and his comments on the panel and the event reflected that. He said feminine values were the key to conscious consumption and it was quite by design that women were presenting today. Here was reference to the feminine again, so frequent in Brazil. Was I attracting it? Was it a particularly Brazilian take on the future? Or was it a pointer to some key?

As always in Brazil, we started late but that didn’t blunt people’s openness to a fascinating morning of lectures. Samyra Crespo, President of GreenPeace of Brazil offered the history of the environmental movement and an analysis of the deep ecology vs policy and technology types of consumers. Lia Diskin offered a rousing history of the Universe, Western thought, and perplexities of the science of consciousness. I wound up the morning with a brief overview of the "voluntary simplicity" and YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE, which the Brazilian publisher changed to "Money and Life" (and will hopefully change back with the next edition).

Afterwards i went out lunch with four AKATU employees - yes, all women - and we reflected on what, if anything, feminine values had to do with the transition to conscious consumption. We tallied the feminine values that seem so important now: household resource managers, nurturers, whole systems thinkers, care, and cooperation. These values can't compete in the masculine world of commerce, ambition, winners and losers - indeed, when imposed through domination techniques they seem to lose their inherent beauty and generosity and become simply different cards in the same game. Then we looked at what ways Brazil itself is feminine - flow, spontaneity, affection, warmth, ease, the capacity accept/include it all. Perhaps this is another reason why the feel of that country is so dear to me.

My thoughts turned to why Brazil – which was also the “new world” exploited by Europe – turned out so differently from the US in spirit. Last year friends pointed out that it’s the difference between the British and the Portuguese. The British were spreading Empire. The Portuguese were getting in, getting the gold and getting out. So you have the difference between Northern and Southern Europe. And then there were the slaves. Brazil has, as with everything else, less inner conflict about that time in their history. In the US we are so wedded to our ideals and our founding documents are nearly biblical to us. Brazil has no such illusions about itself as a nation – it’s culture is where it hangs its hat, and the African influence in Brazilian culture is very well loved.

I did two other talks in Spanish (I’m fluent having lived in Spain), one where no one was around to translate the Portuguese for me. Imagine being on a panel where the audience and other panelists speak a language you can barely understand. Imagine it’s a very animated discussion. The topic is one where you are something of an expert. People in the audience are sharing deep insights. And suddenly the microphone is handed to you for your comments on it all. Good thing I was Brazilian enough by then to just flow with it J.

The final presentation was in a huge downtown theater as part of an every Saturday inspirational seminar where a popular talk show host brings in speakers. Very professional, very fun and very good it was the end of the trip as I was ready to stop!

So now I’m back, still infused with the perfume of Brazil. Boat next year?

And I’m deep into Transition Whidbey. Sign up at http://twhidbey.collectivex.com to see what we are doing.

BRAZIL, BRUNTLAND AND THE POWER OF THE FEMININE

Last night in Sao Paulo I heard Gro Harlem Bruntland speak, invited by the BANCO REAL, a Brazilian bank that is leading the financial institution pack in implementing sustainable development.

For those who don’t know Bruntland’s name, she led the UN World Commission on Environment and Development in the mid 80’s in the search for win-win-win rather than zero sum solutions to economic growth, social justice among a growing population and environmental integrity. They held hearings around the world (not in the US as here there was no support) and published 20 years ago the watershed OUR COMMON FUTURE which brought forth the global conversation about and conversion to sustainable development. She went on to head the World Health Organization and participated in the UN Commission on Global Threats.

I encountered this report in 1989 at the Globescope Pacific Assembly – the first US hearing on it – and it changed the direction of my life. I learned there from the UN and NGO glitterati that the biggest driver of unsustainable development was the level and pattern of consumption in North America, but, given our economy’s addiction to consumerism, that problem couldn’t be touched with a ten foot pole. Yet there I was, in the back row, knowing that Joe Dominguez’s financial program had, for a decade, helped thousands of Americans lower their consumption by 20% and have a better life. I was on a mission!

Needless to say, I was thrilled to have the chance to hear her assessment 20 years later.

Overall, she was firm, clear and determined. Given how deep we are now into unsustainability, I found her measured positive outlook inspiring – if only for the dignity of it.

She started by talking about Al Gore and the IPCC winning the Nobel Peace Prize (in her country) 10 days ago. Gore, she noted, awakened the conscience of the world. The IPCC demonstrated what a respected international institution, working steadily for years across boundaries and cooperatively, can do in creating change. She seemed to be saying need morality, good science and resolve to change in these times of threat.

She then reviewed other recent Nobel Peace winners – Wangaari Mathai, Shirin Ebadi and Mohammed Yunus – pointing out that now Peace in this world is far beyond simply resolving conflicts, but has to do with environment, human rights and closing the gap between the rich and the poor. Peace is now connected to every issue facing us – they are all connected. She also pointed out that these three laureates mobilized women for peace – and the essential role of women as both the victims of “man-made” crises and the strongest voices for a more whole-system way forward.

She went on to talk about her roles after the WCED. As the head of the WHO she participated in the first global convention on health regarding tobacco. Having worked on both UN and US government consensus documents that involved hours of debate over every word only to have the final reports gather dust, doing nothing to change anything in the short term, I have sworn to never again pour months of my life into such apparently useless palaver. Yet hearing her I saw that work from the view of a woman and bureaucrat who stakes her life and reputation and hope for the future on building institutions with good governance practices that can, over time, with patience and resolve, move the world steadily towards justice and sustainability. I could see that forming commissions, developing clear principles of operation (respect, transparency, fairness and such), developing clear objectives/targets/timelines, engaging the research community in providing high integrity, accurate information, issuing recommendations that are then monitored and hopefully resourced – all of this slowly moves the human enterprise towards comprehensive solutions. In short, I admired and went to school on her maturity, patience and reason.

She told the story of the WHO’s response to SARS. She called the outbreak a ‘sharp, short shock’ and as such it mobilized a collaborative effort across normally competing governments and labs which, in 6 brief months, eliminated the threat. This story showed how human systems, once mobilized to address a clear threat, are capable of miracles.

In her view, Global Warming is such a whole system shock that must be addressed. It creeps upon us so response has been too little by a very long shot, but now the sharp short shocks of Katrina and the IPCC report and the Stern Report and the rapidly melting glaciers and ice caps has the world on alert. She recounted her work on Global Threats that showed that there is no such thing as an isolated threat anymore – that terrorism for America is not isolated from starvation or environmental refugees or droughts. We are in an interconnected world and Global Warming is the perfect expression of how we need shared solutions to this biggest threat to our collective survival.

She recounted as well the story of smokestacks in the industrializing UK. Health officials showed how the smoke was affecting the health of the villages around factories so they solved the problem by building taller smoke stacks. The villagers’ health improved… however the downwind countries like Norway were now feeling the effects. A great deal of debate and demands and denials ensued until the science minister told Margaret Thatcher that beyond a shadow of a doubt the downwinder’s claims were correct. She could no longer assert the science was equivocal and not be caught with her knickers down. Soon she promised to reduce sulfur by 30%. In other words, Bruntland was showing us again and again how solid science coupled with consistent pressure from public and private sectors coupled with democratic processes can and will solve our problems.

But, she absolutely added, we haven’t a moment to lose. What is now different is that we know that we have a global warming problem. That debate is over. Even Bush, she said, has changed some of his tune this last year (though with great restraint she did not add “but not enough by a long shot”). So we must mobilize the world community to face this threat while strengthening democratic institutions.

On the face of it, this was nothing new, nothing bold, nothing dramatic. But as a wise global grandmother she was taking us all by the ear and sending us upstairs to wash our faces of lies and clean up our dirty hands (our actions).

THE RETURN OF THE FEMININE

This message so resonated with insights I had over the weekend in Florianopolis. Three days ago I engaged in an all-night ceremony with musicians and singers chanting and praying and seeking visions for their lives, supported by the most amazing lightening and thunder storm that sent buckets of purifying rain down upon the hut we were in. Pachamama, Mother Earth, they said, was calling us. The phrase “longing for limits” came to me in the night as I contemplated the very global, interconnected and seemingly out of control problems that Bruntland feels we can address through good science, good governance and good will. Our Western Enterprise looked to me like children – boys mostly – out of control on a playground, exhausting themselves, engaging in ever more destructive games, sensing danger but unable as a gang to stop themselves. A sort of Lord of the Flies scenario but instead of sticks and stones we are playing with weapons and wealth and carving up the spoils of the earth while ignoring the obvious longer term consequences. Deep inside, like spent children, we know we have to stop but as long as the frenzy continues, stopping seems more dangerous than keeping on. I could see that the mature feminine – the mother or grandmother – needs to bring her full compassion coupled with stern rebuke, saving the boys from their mounting violence by telling them they must stop, come inside and go to bed. Now! Some aspect of humanity must call a halt to the dangerous games and men in gangs are notoriously unable to stop themselves from collective evil that no one of them would ever commit on his own. Mob violence unleashed. Only the grandmothers – the mature feminine – can call these boys to account. Only the grandmothers can forgive them their excesses – knowing they themselves are heartsick, spent and lost - while making them face the consequences and clean up their damage.

Many these days recognize that the feminine – be it in women or men – is the antidote to the hyper-masculine domination of the earth and her peoples. Women are finding in themselves new strength to confront the wrongs without vengeance or fear. Women are finding their voices, singing sweetness as well as saying in no uncertain terms what must be done. Women are exercising the power of the mature feminine, unmovable yet full of love. Women are the creators and preservers of life. They care for the family. The steward the resources so all the children flourish. They are wired for whole system thinking and connectivity – the very qualities that Bruntland in her own way both demonstrates and calls for. The woman knows how to hold, contain and constrain with fair, no nonsense love. I could feel in myself, in this most warm and feminine place – Brazil – a call to be in my own way a grandmother to my rowdy tribe of guys. And I got from the gathered group a profound reflection of this same energy I carry – of warmth, compassion, love and clear calling to account. These don’t feel like marching orders. These feel like rocking orders. Like gathering in with love those I might touch through my words and actions, making them safe and also making them look at, mourn and correct the messes we’ve made.

OTHER CONVERSATIONS

The evening before this powerful ritual I spoke to a dozen people about consumerism and the YMOYL approach to recovering from this powerful addiction. These days, as I pay more attention to the complex issues around Peak Oil, I see how oil has been our binge food of choice. It has enabled this massive expansion beyond our social and biological limits. I used to see credit cards - unsecured debt - as the biggest enabler of excess but I now see below that the gush of oil through the human enterprise and of course, the ideology of 'freedom as no limits' as key components.

A fascinating dialogue ensued between a sociologist and an Earth Mother artist woman. It was about Bolivia. In his view, a social and political approach is needed to the wealth gap to lift the poorest people out of poverty. He cited Bolivia where apparently the poverty is comparatively profound. He had statistics to prove it. The artist, who had traveled extensively in Bolivia, begged to differ! In her view, the subsistence way of life there supported rather than inhibited people's survival. To her, the culture was rich, the communities strong. To him, infant mortality was high and diets were restricted. It showed me again how our worldviews influence our strategies for 'fixing' what is clearly going wrong globally. Were these people my artist friend saw as rich impoverished? It reminded me of my first trip to Latin America when I had an opportunity to take take a journey with a shaman in Ecuador. A sociologist would have judged his family and tribe in the worst condition possible - all sleeping on one platform bed in a hut without walls, the children dirty, the women clearly serving men who lounged around 'doing nothing.' Yet within the space of the ceremony was the richest, more lavish experience of the divine one could ever imagine. One way I resolved that incongruity - and still do - is to ask myself, an educated and relatively well off westerner, to use my knowledge, capacities, intelligence, skills and connections to make sure the way of life the Achuar prefer continues to be available to them. To make sure they have the money to send representatives for their interests to international meetings, to make sure their stories are told in ways that bring respect and protection to them. And all the while, making sure i am open to what they have to teach me so that my life can be ever more beautiful and useful and humble.

Then, on my way back to Sao Paulo from Floripa I was stuck in the airport waiting for two hours, fortunately by a young man who spoke flawless English. He's a middle class Brazilian who has taken to studying and playing the stock market to better himself - a real critic of central government planning (that's spelled corruption, by the way) and a real booster of the free market's capacity to create wealth and well being. He gave as an example iron mining in Brazil, a major extractive industry. He criticized the locals for their resistance to the big corporation engaged in mega extraction. If they aren't getting enough money, well, it's their leader's fault for filching it, not the corporation's fault since they are being quite generous with the local people. I told him two stories from my own experience. First, how the American military, when negotiating treaties with Native Americans, had to first rearrange the Indian's culture of decision making since they had no leaders who were empowered to negotiate with the hierarchical army - they decided as a community using consensus. Eventually the army had to find those in the tribe most willing to sell the others out for a price, name them chiefs and having them sign papers that held up in hierarchical American courts of law. And so the West was lost to those who lived there. The other was how tribes in Ecuador are successfully resisting the oil companys' claims on the oil under their parts of the jungle. To whom do resources belong? To the people who live in the land, or to corporations with money to exploit whatever resources there are wherever they are? The young man smiled at both stories. "Of course you are right" he said. Here again are the clashes of cultural norms that reveal very different stories about fairness and the good life. I am ever with the question of a way forward that has integrity.

IN SAO PAULO
These next few days I will give several talks in and around Sao Paulo to large groups of people. I now have copies of the Portuguese translation of YOUR MONEY OR YOUR LIFE in hand; it is beautiful … and I can even read it. I hope to mobilize my masculine capacity to make waves with my feminine capacity to make hearts melt – we shall see.

Plans A and B at Visao Futuro

Plans A and B in paradise

I am sitting on the veranda that surrounds the dining area here, feeling the peace of the air, the rolling landscape, the pond with the windmill. Murals of a jungle paradise are painted on the walls where the food is served – vines, flowers, animals and if you look, a small person as much a part of the landscape as the colorful birds. The columns holding up the tiled roof are wound with bright mosaics of vines and flowers. Paradise.

But wait. The water catchment pond where the windmill lazily turns is half empty. Yesterday we had a brief thundershower, but not enough. It’s been dry here for far too long. The rains usually begin in august. Now it is October. And its hot. The pond reminds me that this exquisite retreat center that has awakened the hearts of probably thousands of Brazilians depends on the rains. The climate. Has enough of the rainforest been taken down to affect the weather here, far, far away? Amalia da Souza who works with Global Greengrants is here again (we shared a room last time I was here) and she confirms that the American appetite for biofuels (enabled by a deal between Lula, formerly the champion of the workers, and Bush) is turning so much cattle land into crop land that cattle ranching (for McDonald’s burgers) is encroaching further into the jungle. No, she said, it is not anywhere near a tipping point, but the destruction continues.

Susan Andrews, the visionary and source for this whole center, told me as we talked about the underpinnings of the global economy, that she and her staff are thinking about Plan A and Plan B. Plan A is that everything continues more or less working over the long haul. It simply acknowledges that no matter how bad the signs and signals of ecological or economic collapse, both nature and financial markets are far more elastic than we can imagine. In Plan A, people from all over Brazil still drive and fly, still have disposable income, still come here for restoration and spiritual education. The rains still come, the students still come, everything works. But they are now developing Plan B. In Plan B oil production diminishes year by year, disrupting the basics of the industrial way of life. With transportation more expensive, people’s livelihoods and lifestyles become more local and possibly more difficult, time consuming and closer to the bone. Global financial institutions and money flow is disrupted. In that scenario, this center might be less a retreat for city dwellers and more of a survival unit for the people in this area. I can look around and see that here as well. The dormitories become living quarters. Some of the meeting rooms become production factories for necessities – cloth, rope, clothes, building materials, etc.

When I met Susan at the airport just two days ago, she was returning from Fortaleza where there is a VisaoFuturo center and also where Neem trees grow. The Neem tree is knows for its many uses, including medicines. Vandana Shiva has taught us all a great deal about this tree as it is crucial to village life in India yet it is being patented (not sure the status of this fight). Susan is increasing the production here of Aryuvedic medicines, as this treatment system is part of her teaching. Growing the Neem tree works in both Plans A (this becomes an Aryuvedic teaching, treatment and medicine center) and Plan B, these medicines are used to treat those who live here.

While my friends and I don’t talk that much about it, I do think about plans A and B for where I live, Whidbey Island. Plan A would be business as usual – a growing tourist and commuter economy, a shrinking agricultural economy, land prices increasing as more and more people with wealth buy up retirement and second properties, young people moving off ‘the rock’ to seek their fortunes elsewhere because housing gets ever more expensive, a place known for the arts where artists can little afford to live… you know, the development story everywhere. In the midst of that, people like me will create home based businesses using their minds and their technology to create value for others scattered around the world. The arts will flourish because every other person sings or acts or dances or writes poetry. In Plan A, all the relocalization efforts we engage in will, of themselves, add value. More gardening means more fresh food means more health. More local currency and local businesses and local exchanges will weave tighter the bonds of community. More bicycles and solar electricity and heating and wind power will mean more health and self sufficiency. More catching water from roofs in cisterns to water gardens will mean protection for limited island water supplies. None of our efforts will be wasted and life for those who pay attention to these shifts to “less, local and love” will simply have more wonderful lives. Plan B will for a while look like Plan A, but eventually be necessary, not just nice.

And that is it for today. My lecture went famously this morning. I am now officially half Brazilian as everyone has welcomed me into this softer more loving culture with open arms.

Visao Futuro - Dreaming the Future Center Brazil

I am at Visao Futuro again and feeling so at home in many ways. Greeted by a soft, spacious landscape, friends from past years, some familiar routines and discovering that somehow my Portuguese has ripened even while on the shelf and I can speak and understand far better than practice would predict.

This is a rural yoga/meditation/spiritual education retreat center about 2 hours from Sao Paulo, drenched in natural beauty and the years of love invested by the founder, Susan Andrews, and the staff and the maybe thousands of students who've refound themselves here. Susan and I met 'by chance' on a ferry when she was attending a future visioning events in Seattle nearly 10 years ago and we created a sisterhood in that short water crossing. We are the same age and bent - passionate about spiritual/social transformation. Her path post Harvard led her to India and PK Sarkar, a guru in the tantra tradition and social philosopher (google PROUT). After his passing she was inspired to live and teach in Brazil and create what he called a Master Center, a self sufficient rural, ecological and spiritual community - what we might call and ecovillage.

Engaged as I am in "relocalization" - imagining a flourishing future with less oil and therefore more local production of "the good life" - I am looking with new eyes at this center. The teaching of profound spiritual truths here happens as much via the arts as it does via traditional spiritual practices. There are always actors and dancing and ceremony and play mixed in with Susan's lectures on biopsychology and principles of yoga and long meditation, yoga and changing sessions. Right now on the lawn in the spring sunlight and heat perhaps a hundred people have just done a patty-cakes game and are now doing a joanna macy exercise.

To decorate for this spring festival (it's the day of the child here in Brazil so the spirit is childlike), they painted old 2 liter pop bottles and then sliced them like peeling an apple in one piece so they hang like bright corkscrew streamers from the trees. A "bulletin board" was made by lashing bamboo poles together with twine (made from coconut shells) and stretching fabric over the frame. Flowered fabric was also cut in strips and has wrapped all the building poles. In other words, an oil-depleted world may be an art-rich world where the leftovers from industrial society become the art materials. While I haven't been to Bali, I am told everyone there is an artist. We humans have had paint and fabric and twine - not to speak of hugging and laughter and games - for thousands of years. We have to remember that easy cheap oil has brought us new and easier ways to do what we have always done - communicate, create, care for one another, grow and harvest food.

The design of this center is also a model of ecological living. They process gray water through purification ponds and reuse it for everything but drinking. They have dug several water cachement ponds to supply the center which hosts a hundred or more people every weekend. Organic gardens grow most of the food we eat and the growing, cooking and cleaning employs dozens of locals who otherwise might have migrated to the favelas of sao paulo to survive. They have photovoltaics and solar hot water. i believe many of the bricks for building were made here.

Ahh, everyone is dancing now towards the next activity. it's a day of theater and play celebrating spring and to the degree i can understand (sometimes I'm helpless but someone will point me right) I will participate.

Ate mais! Seeya soon.