EcoLocalizer

Sunday night and time to knock out an Ecolocalizer post! Melia is safe at her mama’s house. I just got out of a friend’s hot tub. I am still a little tired from last night but had the best time! I know this may seem a bit off topic, but I had the opportunity to watch an amazing, all-Maori roots reggae band out of New Zealand. Katchafire is about to blow up! Meaning that they are gonna make it big. Massive ups to my girl G Fizzle who introduced me to their music!

After the show, I was backstage hanging out with several of the band members. I was telling them that they really needed to play Reggae Rising - the world’s largest reggae festival (five hours North on Highway 101 where Eel River snakes along the highway). They had just put on an amazing show at Moe’s Alley in Santa Cruz, that often felt like a massive sing along.

As I was chatting backstage, my mind flashed to Melia (as it often does) and our earlier visit to the Lawrence Hall of Science:

Lawrence Hall of Science (LHS) is the public science museum and research center for K-12 education at the University of California, Berkeley. LHS offers hands-on science exhibits, discovery laboratories, computer labs, planetarium shows, after-school classes and summer camps, family workshops, special events, school programs and teacher education.

I was talking to one of the band members, trying out a new explanation for what I do. It seems like I am ALWAYS trying a new elevator pitch about what I do or a refinement to the existing one. I told him:

“we collectively and individually need to examine and fundamentally alter virtually every aspect of how we live on the planet. We all need to look for opportunities as we live our daily life. My work is to create such opportunities to work with public benefit organizations [aka nonprofits], local enterprises, and municipal government towards positive change.”

As an example, I mentioned our outing to Lawrence Hall (as I affectionately referred to it growing up in Berkeley). It had good exhibits but nothing front and center on climate change, oil depletion or localization.

They had a wonderfully produced exhibit on Speed which focused almost exclusively on the top speeds achieved by humans variously assisted by fossil fuel powered machines. The exhibit did not address the impact of all this fossil fuel-assisted speed on the plant with respect to climate change or depletion of resources.

It did not showcase the speed of a person on a bike or on their own two feet. No, it was about cars, rockets, planes, supersonic barriers, rapid deceleration, relativity, drag racing and crash test dummies. If they had a bicycle exhibit, it “was currently exhibiting a problem.”

[They may also want to start thinking about how people are going to get up the hill to the Hall in the post petroleum future. Gondola, cable car?]

I explained that, as a father, I am astounded that THE public science museum and research center for K-12 education FOR the University of California, Berkeley does NOT have an emphasis on climate change and resource depletion. What’s up with that?

Shouldn’t their mission be figuring out how to educate our kids (i.e., our future) in the science of sustainability? Shouldn’t one of the top priorities for our kid’s science education be using and expanding our understanding of science to make our ecological, economic, and social systems more sustainable?

I would venture to say that any such museum should develop its mission, strategies, and exhibits within the context of climate change and resource depletion. And localization as well since it will almost certainly be a key organizing principle for the conscious evolution of our economy and culture [stay tuned for a future post]. How else are we collectively going to make the ginormous shifts necessary unless, for one, our present and future science curricula on all levels address our pressing ecological, economic and social predicaments.

And if Lawrence Hall did rethink itself within this essential context, the changes would reverberate through the globe since their science and mathematics teaching materials and curricula are used in schools across the U.S. and worldwide. Of course, its not just the Hall that needs to change; I just happened to go there Saturday. It’s pretty much everything. Every building we enter, every entity we are involved with, every routine we adhere to…

In the Speed exhibit, one thing that particularly captured my attention was the crash test exhibit. They were explaining the physics of rapid deceleration in the car crash context and the use of crash test dummies to evaluate the relative safety of automobiles. The presence of the crash test dummy brought me back to my first public speech (see my previous post on Why I localize)
where I read the following stanza of poem called The Peak is Nigh:

are we but crash test dummies
mimicking sentient beings
about to hit the wall
failing an evolutionary experiment
in consciousness and wisdom
will we brace for impact
and watch wasteful lives
flash before our eyes
or will we relax
our adherence to
the script proselytized
by the corporate oligarchy
and oil-a-garchies
and change our course early enough
to prevent our children and collective future from
becoming collateral road-kill

Are we crash test dummies?

My favorite stanza of that poem is the last one:

we are strung out on fossil fuels
and when production wanes
you may find yourself
unable to afford your commute
and you may find yourself
far from public transportation
and without access to local goods
and you may find yourself
rationing food and fresh water
and you may ask yourself
how do I work this
this is not my lovely life
how did I get here

remember this moment

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