“What I’m talking about is Carbon-negative habitat. And eco-villages as vehicles for experimentation: food, buildings, energy, livelihoods that are branded carbon-negative. Let’s go beyond thinking of reducing 20 per cent this or five per cent that. Let’s think about 110, 120, 180 per cent changes in some of the things we do.” Albert Bates

For more information, visit www.ecovillage.org

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Ecovillages are engaged in the transformation of values in four ways that may make the transition to sustainability easier and more graceful: delinking growth from well-being, reconnecting people with the places where they live, affirming indigenous patterns and practices, and offering a holistic and experiential vessel for social experiments, educational methodologies, and transition paths.

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An animated interview of John Perkins, author of ‘HoodWinked‘ and ‘Confessions Of An Economic Hitman‘
Copyright of the audio belongs to John Perkins.
For more visit www.studiojoho.com
email info@studiojoho.com

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According to his book, Perkins’ function was to convince the political and financial leadership of underdeveloped countries to accept enormous development loans from institutions like the World Bank and USAID. Saddled with debts they could not hope to pay, those countries were forced to acquiesce to political pressure from the United States on a variety of issues. Perkins argues in his book that developing nations were effectively neutralized politically, had their wealth gaps driven wider and economies crippled in the long run. In this capacity Perkins recounts his meetings with some prominent individuals, including Graham Greene and Omar Torrijos. Perkins describes the role of an EHM as follows

Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly-paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars. They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign “aid” organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet’s natural resources. Their tools included fraudulent financial reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder. They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization.

Source: Wikipedia

Texas populist, commentator, and author Jim Hightower has a few words of wisdom for us: Question authority, trust your values, seek alternatives, break away, stand up for your beliefs, and swim against the current!

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His latest book, Swim Against the Current, which features worker cooperatives, introduces readers to people across the country who have actually done this-people in business, politics, health care, farming, religion, and other areas who are taking charge, living their values, doing good, and doing well.

Hightower and co-author Susan DeMarco show how they are doing precisely what the elites want us to believe can’t be done: changing their lives and making a difference. He tells the stories of these people and offers inspiration and information that will help readers tap into their own maverick potential in order to navigate a different, more satisfying course of their own.

Whether they are young and just starting out or older and searching for a different path, the commonsense folks in this book have escaped the corporate tentacles to find their own way toward a richer life and a better American future. They are creating a new, deeply democratic model for the country, edging it back onto the long road toward egalitarianism and the common good.

Tony Andersen, co-founder of the Danish civil-society climate justice conference, Klimaforum, gave two talks at Klimaforum09: Activist to Grassroots, and 10 000 Trees: A Practical Strategy for Climate Change.

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Tony Andersen, Klimaforum co-founder, gives a presentation and workshop at Klimaforum09 in Copenhagen, December 2009 during the COP15 climate circus.

• THE 1 TON CO2 10.000 TREES PROJECT – overview of the problem and the solution
• Permaculture – the idea, practice and global and local success
• Climate Change – the massive catastrophic problem
• Carbon sink – a new category for locking, permanently ecology as carbon sinks in forest and soil
• More than 10,000 TREES per. person per. lifetime – a requirement for local-global perennial polycultural replanting
• Less than 1 TON CO2 pr. person pr. year – global energy descent and emissions reductions targets
• The U.N. Climate Conference 2009 / COP 15- the failure of the official process, danger of carbon finance
• Parallel activist and grassroots Conference – Klimaforum as user-centered permaculture design
• The Permaculture network – massively expanding a global, democratic, locally-controlled permaculture network

http://permaculture.tv/save-the-planet-with-permaculture-tony-andersen-of-klimaforum09/
http://gaiapermaculture.com/projects/permaculturecooperative/blog/2009/11/20/klimaforum09-mandate-spectrum-of-coverage/
http://permaculture.tv/10-000-trees-climate-justice/
http://permaculture.tv/?s=tony+andersen
http://permaculture.tv/?s=klimaforum
http://permaculture.tv/permaculture-international-pioneers-klimaforum09/

The Evergreen Cooperative Initiative of Cleveland OH was launched in 2008. Its mission is to stabilize and revitalize six low-income neighborhoods (43,000 residents; median household income of $18,5000) of the Greater University Circle areas of Cleveland, Ohio.

Filmed by Patrick O’Conner of Oaklandsol.org for permaculture.coop

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The cooperative development strategy leverages a portion of the multi-billion dollar annual business expenditures (related to procurement and supply-chain) of anchor institutions (such as hospitals and universities) into the surrounding neighborhoods to create new businesses and jobs. The first two Evergreen cooperatives (Evergreen Cooperative Laundry and Ohio Cooperative Solar) launched in October 2009; two more businesses are in the pipeline for 2010. The near-term (3 year) goal is to develop an integrated network of 10 cooperatives with approximately 500 worker-owners.

This presentation will focus on three topics: (1) the overall Evergreen strategy and how it is being financed and implemented; (2) building a culture of ownership within the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry; and (3) Evergreen’s approach to governance, patronage, and long-term institutional viability.

Ted Howard is the founding Executive Director of The Democracy Collaborative, a research and policy center at the University of Maryland focused on community stabilization and wealth building. He is an architect of the Evergreen Initiative and has been appointed the Cleveland Foundation’s Steven Minter Senior Fellow for Social Justice. Medrick Addison is the Operational Supervisor of the Evergreen Cooperative Laundry in Cleveland, Ohio. He was a member of the first group of worker-owners to join the coop and serves on the senior management team.

Source: usworker.coop

In April of this year, Movement Generation and the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center convened nearly 30 activists and organizers representing various grassroots and social justice organizations from throughout California to participate in a two-week Liberation Permaculture Design Course.

Filmed by Patrick O’Conner of Oaklandsol.org for permaculture.coop

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Liberation Permaculture, a framework and design science that invokes the traditional knowledge of land-based peoples, provides organizers with a methodology to resist systems of oppression through building resiliency in our communities. It is a means to prepare oppressed communities for the oncoming environmental disasters while building the world we want and need now.

Come hear these course participants report back about how they are implementing Liberation Permaculture into their organizing work and how it can provide us with a critical framework for the necessary and just transition from a carbon, consumption, and profit-based economy to the participatory and life-affirming, need-based society we envision for the future.

Presentations will be provided by individuals representing Movement Generation Justice & Ecology Project, Urban Tilth, Asian Communities for Reproductive Justice, Ella Baker Center, Catalyst Project, People Organized to Win Employment Rights, Communities for a Better Environment and others.

Source: Oakland Local

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Sustainable Productions LLC is a New York based independent production company. Founded in Bozeman Montana by Eric Chaikin in 2005, the company operates on the premise that media has the ability to provoke change in the world and may therefore be used as a tool to perpetuate ideas of sustainability.

http://sustainablepro.com

This Survive & Thrive film is one of 4 case studies telling the stories of rural social and community enterprises across South West England. Survive & Thrive helps rural community and social enterprises to build better businesses, make more money, and achieve better social and environmental impacts through training, events and learning from others.

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Survive & Thrive is a project of the Development Trusts Association in the South West, funded by Capacitybuilders until 2011, and is one of four social enterpise programmes co-ordinated by RISE; the voice for South West Social Enterprise.

Stroudco provides local people with a new way of linking with local producers to buy good food and drink at fair prices for consumers and producers.

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