Unconventional Sources

In a quick survey of online activism in North Carolina, there are some worrying signs for those who work against war. Two groups, the North Carolina Peace Hub and the High Country Citizens for Peace and Justice, have abandoned their posts on the Internet over the last couple of years. The North Carolina groups Community for Peace and Duct Tape for Peace now also appear to be defunct. North Carolina Peace Action hasn’t put out a newsletter since March 2008. I wonder, do the people who once made up these organizations not care about peace so much when it ceases to be an easy campaign issue for the Democrats?

Is this a sign that North Carolina is less peace-loving today than it was just a few years ago? Not necessarily. Where these peace activist sites have faltered, two other activist sites have risen to take their place. The Charlotte Area Green Party and the Buncombe Greens are now online, and looking to support candidates for public office who will promote the politics of peace.

With the election of Barack Obama, Americans have assumed a new habit of passivity: Hope has become hoping that people in Washington D.C. will make things better. The thing is that while ordinary folks sit around and hope things get better, there are corporations and powerful organizations with paid lobbyists going to work in Washington D.C. every day to make sure that things don’t change.

If there is to be hope, we have to stop just hoping, and begin acting. We can’t count on elected officials to do what’s right. We have to force them to do what’s right, by taking action ourselves to help create the kind of public pressure that elected officials cannot resist.

That’s what the people at Force Change had in mind when they created their site, a place that informs citizens about environmental policy so that they’ll understand enough about environmental issues to apply intelligent pressure on the government and private organizations to make a real difference. Thanks to the people at Force Change. We’re reading.

The hour of the Earth is not quite yet here… It’s on March 28th at 8:30 PM. That’s the time of Earth Hour this year.

During Earth Hour, people across the world will make a simple act: They will turn off the lights. Wherever they are, at home or at work, they will choose not to participate in the unsustainable economy of artificial energy.

Will this one hour make a big difference, in the economy or in the ecology of the planet? Well, for that one hour it will.

Think of it as a warmup exercise. Right now, the idea that we can exist without artificial lights after dark is perceived as something radical. In fact, it’s the most natural thing there could be.

With 6 billion people on Earth, an Earth Hour is something we need a lot more of. Maybe after this year, people could celebrate a true Earth Day, expending no artificial energy. In 2010, we could extend that to an Earth Week, and from there on in, we might start to actually make a difference.

Thank you to the activists of Sea Shepherd for showing the world what real commitment looks like. Instead of just bemoaning environmental decline in the world’s oceans, Sea Shepherd gets active, and directly confronts those who, like those on the Japanese whaling vessel Yushin Maru, break the laws that protect the seas.

When the whalers aboard the Yushin Maru took two activists from Sea Shepherd prisoner, the world responded with well-deserved anger. Now, on their protest ship the Steve Irwin, the people of Sea Shepherd are giving inspiration to all of those who are tired of seeing the riches of their planet harvested from beneath them for the sake of temporary profit.