Repower at Home: Seattle

The climate crisis is one of the most important issues of our time. There are solutions out there, but our public officials aren’t listening! In order to be heard, we need to speak up. We can demonstrate that millions of Americans are committed to this issue by taking action together. Repower at Home asks people to show their personal dedication by taking action to save energy in their own homes. By wasting less energy, we will directly reduce the need to burn dirty fuels in our communities, and prove that we are continuing to demand solutions to the climate crisis.

We are currently organizing people in the Seattle community. If you would like to be on the front lines of the clean energy movement, contact Brian Ward at brian.ward@climateprotect.org or call (202) 567-6800 to learn more about how you can be a leader!

To learn more about the program, visit www.repowerathome.com

About us Repower at Home is a project of the Alliance for Climate Protection, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. The Alliance was founded in 2006 by Al Gore, Nobel Laureate and former Vice President of the United States. With more than 5,000,000 members worldwide, the Alliance is a unique non-profit, non-partisan organization that is committed to educating the global community about the urgency of implementing comprehensive solutions to the climate crisis.

New Directions

I've had my head down and have been working my way towards a new direction. I'm working on a new campaign at Sustainable Seattle that will anchor our different programs and initiatives and it is rewarding, mentally intensive work. It is a campaign that is coloring our mission in my opinion. I think the new direction is evident in our everyday work and attitude and we just have not expressed it.

The campaign is going to be focused on lowering one's environmental impact through different practices, education and actions while encouraging people to take advantage of the things around them that make life in this region so exciting and wonderful, nature and people.

Sustainable Seattle is involved in a wide scale of projects, actions and events and the sheer volume and width of our involvement makes me proud to be associated with this organization. We've taught people new ways of thinking, behaving and appreciating. We've been part of events that brought a new sense of purpose to lives and we've done it all with an underlying goal to bring about sustainability to the Puget Sound region within our lifetimes. We want the idea of minimizing negative impact to be so much a part of our day to day thinking that it becomes routine.

Scroll down through our blog entries for examples of some of the actions we've been doing and feel free to get involved with us in the numerous ways we need assistance. Thanks for reading and see you soon.

What if we give it away?

I recently read a fascinating article about the Secret Society for Creative Philanthropy. You should read the whole article yourself, but in short it's a foundation in San Francisco that gives grantees $100, on the condition that they use it to do nice things for strangers. It made me wonder about a few things:

It can be surprisingly hard to give away money.
I suppose I shouldn't have been shocked by this--after all, the film based on this premise has been made at least 4 times (1921, 1935, 1945 & 1985)--but the reasons behind it are rather sad. It's all about trust and the complete lack of it between strangers in a city. Perhaps the people turning down free umbrellas in the rain really didn't want one, but I can't think of any other explanation bar suspicion for the people turning down dollar bills that were just being handed to them. It's understandable how this happens, when we live in a society where hardly anything is ever given without hope of something in return, and where almost everyone who approaches strangers in the street does want something, whether its signatures for a petition or money for their next meal. It becomes easier to just ignore everybody and retreat into a little bubble. No-one is a bad person because they do this, but as a whole the community of the city loses something when we get so stuck in mistrust. I always appreciate attempts to break this down a little, like the free hugs people or the Creative Philanthropy group.

Could we replicate this in Seattle?
$100 at a time is not a prohibitive budget - are there people in Seattle who might want to put a counterpart of this society together? If you think this is a great idea, why not try it yourself? And if someone gave you $100 to do nice things for strangers with, what would you do? I'd love to see some creative ideas in the comments.

What can Sustainable Seattle give away?
Unfortunately we have no spare money whatsoever. In fact we're entirely volunteer run while we try to secure stable funding, so one thing that the individuals who make up our organization have been giving away is our time and skills: 1500 hours so far this year. But as an organization, we do have some resources - we have a reputation, a website, a mailing list and a network of contacts. The great thing about resources like this is that we can give of them without diminishing them in any way, so we can keep doing it (a very simple kind of sustainability) and here are some of the ways we do that:

• Featuring other groups' work on this blog (please contact us if you'd like to be featured!)
• Adding other groups' listings to our advertising materials; for instance the STARs program mailshot that's going out tomorrow will include links to some interesting classes at Southside Commons.
• Referring people to the right place; for instance a prospective volunteer came to our office today, and when he described his interests it became clear that Northwest SEED are a much better fit, so we sent him their way (conveniently, up a few stories in the same building).

And finally, what can you give away?
Very few people have spare money these days, but if you think about everything you do have--time, contacts, skills, ideas--I bet every single person who reads this post has something they can give away, at almost no cost to yourself but great benefit to someone else. Take up the challenge, and let us know what you gave away in the comments.

'Celebrate Local' this holiday season

Tell us what you are doing to Celebrate Local!
Report your action today on the pledge form- it will take less than 3 minutes, and you will be eligible for rewards, like a Chinook book, a Celebrate Local book, tickets to local cultural events and more. Help us reach a goal of 300 reported actions!

Get tips from our campaign partners- and see comments added to the blog in these categories:
Celebrate our Community: Healthy People and Communities
Celebrate our Local Economy: Think Local First
Celebrate our Local Environment: Green Your Holidays

Across the country, the holidays have come to be a time of extreme excess and contribute to unsustainable practices that are not healthy for our bodies, our bank accounts, our communities or the environment. Here in King County, for example, we throw away 25% more trash between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. This year, re-think your holidays. Let's Celebrate Local...

Celebrate Local is a community initiative supported by Seattle BALLE, Cascade Harvest Coalition, Celebrate Green, Chinook Book/ecometro.com, Community Alliance for Global Justice, Communities Count, King County EcoConsumer, King County Waste Free Holidays, Puget Sound Community Change Card/The Interra Project, Seattle Free School, SoCoCulture, Puget Sound Fresh, SCALLOPS, Seattle Greendrinks, TeachStreet, and Treeswing. The 2008 Celebrate Local initiative begins NOW (November 2008) and continues through February 2, 2009 tying together the many holidays and special events that occur at this time of year.