* An end to planned obsolescence. We're smart enough to build things to last and to be easily repairable.
* Ecological remediation and restoration. We need to start putting feedback loops to work for us instead of feeding the ones contributing to the rapidly converging crises.
* An end to empire and the militarization of local police. With a population whose needs are being met, neither are necessary. This does not, however, mean the need for police and defense will go away.
* Integration of carrying capacity into local planning, zoning, and land use
* Instant Runoff Voting, proportional representation, a paper audit trail on open source voting machines, election day a national holiday, public oversight on exit polling, public campaign financing, and reinstatement of equal time laws.
Global warming is indeed something all of us, and all of our movements, need to be concerned with. It's a fight we must all take on. Even more important, however, is what we're all building toward--a sustainable future that improves quality of life (for all life) and enhances the project of human progress. These are not mutually exclusive; they are complimentary and reinforce one another.
A common mindset of liberal greens is that all we need to do is make some personal changes (get your veggies from a farmers market or buy a green global warmer... err... I mean hybrid or electric vehicle) but don't address the system causing the problems because of all the negative energy you'll subject yourself to and besides the system won't allow it anyway--we just need to make overconsumption and shallowness sustainable and peacefully commit ecocide.
Here's the thing. There is a controlling paradigm that is destructive to life and desire. It thinks love is just a marketing slogan and not the underlying force in the universe. This paradigm must be stood up to and stopped. Since we could both stop the system and replace it with something better, according to the Bodhisattva ethic, if we don't we'll earn some of the bad karma from all the suffering it's causing, and we'll deserve it. Of course, the individual and lifestyle changes are actually part of a rational response to mitigating global warming. They are necessary but not sufficient. Analysis shows that they only get us about 20% of the way to where we need to go just in the realm of greenhouse gases.
We have a whole set of tools at our disposal to carry out this work that are based on or congruent with natural systems principles. There are non-hierarchical methods and processes for organizing (organizations, teams, events, communities even), for communicating in inclusive ways that bring out the quiet voices among us, for sharing leadership, and for making democratic group decisions and running meetings. You never have to suffer under Robert's Rules of Order again--unless you're just masochistic, I guess.
For those who worry about the economic cost, or who even have the audacity to openly complain that doing the right thing is just too expensive, I have a question. We managed to "find" trillions of dollars to bail out the banksters (sold to the public as a matter of collective survival), we fund the surveillance state and the militarization of local police, and there's lots of money made available to wage wars to get more oil so we can wage more wars. But to fund an actual crisis of collective survival, you say the money can't be found? Sorry, folks, but money is not an actual object, it's just a set of agreements. It has all the substance of fairy dust. We can print all we want and arbitrarily declare that it's not inflationary. The financial spinmeisters of the current administration are pros at this.
Conclusion
The positive energy generated by this weekend's events must not only survive, but be channeled into productive actions that address these issues in a manner that contributes to a sustainable future. This starts by stopping the factors contributing to both global warming and to social and resource inequity. These factors include exploitation, empire, industrialism and their underlying worldview of dominator hierarchies and disconnection from ourselves, each other and the rest of the natural world. From this worldview emerges a pathological sense of the other. We have been intentionally separated (it's not a conspiracy, it's a philosophy) from all that is naturally fulfilling in order to keep us addicted to substitutes for emotional and spiritual health and well-being.
So, the bottom line is that since we now know we're already the majority, let's start acting like it and stop compromising with the forces of evil (that which doesn't support the web of life) under the mistaken belief that political feasibility (no change, but a bit of window dressing reform) is necessary to keep civilization from collapsing. This is merely one way the status quo protects itself.
One necessary action is from this day forward, commit to only voting for candidates who promise to restore sovereignty to the people. The climate crisis is also a democracy crisis. This means an integral aspect of any rational response to global warming is reclaiming sovereignty from the elites who have usurped it. For the toadies of the elite, vote them out--better yet, don't wait for elections and just start recalling them. Get the organizations you belong to to start advocating the same to their general membership.
Because we can't scare our leadership into removing themselves from power. They are not going to be suddenly instilled with a fear of ignoring our demands simply because we managed to turn out 100,000 (or however many) people from a thousand organizations. They're happy as clams as long as we restrain ourselves to free-speech zones and just march around in circles instead of to anywhere of any significance.
Corporations won't be removed from the political process when they own the politicians, the regulatory process, the media, and just to add insult to injury, the voting machines. The current congress won't remove corporate and financial influence until we remove them. Fossil fuels will not be removed from the energy mix until fossil fools are removed from power.
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