Transition Albany

The groundbreaking film The Age of Stupid will receive a special showing at the Albany Twin Theatre on Solano Avenue on Sunday, March 7, 2010 at 11:30 a.m.  Transition Albany has organized this one-time-only showing to stimulate both discussion and action to address the challenges of climate destruction and the imminent end of the age of cheap oil.

Writing in Britain’s The Guardian, George Monbiot called The Age of Stupid “a captivating and constantly surprising film: the first successful dramatization of climate change to reach the big screen.” Grounding the film is a fictional character who looks back upon our time with full knowledge of the environmental and social upheavals of the first half of the twenty-first century. This device distinguishes the film from more conventional documentaries and arguably provides a drawing card for the film.

In the film, Academy Award-nominated actor Pete Postlethwaite stars as the Archivist, the lone caretaker to the collected knowledge of humanity.  In the year 2055, the Archivist looks back upon video clips of the early years of the climate crisis from within his tower in the now-melted Arctic, his refuge from a world devastated by storms, starved by droughts, and consumed by violence.  As he views the videos, he seeks answers to the question that haunts him: Why did humanity fail to save itself?

Postlethwaite, whom Steven Spielberg named “probably the best actor in the world today,” delivers a strong performance, but it is the lives of real people from our time whom he observes in videos in his archives that make the film so compelling.  Through these videos, director Franny Armstrong follows the struggles and aspirations of several intriguing people in often uncomfortable relationships to oil and global warming.  From Iraqi refugees to a British wind farm developer, from an Indian airline founder to a French mountaineer, we see the emerging possibilities of humanity’s future with all their complications and contradictions.

Amidst resistance to change in countries such as the U.S. and U.K. and growing aspirations elsewhere to “live like Americans,” can we avoid the fate that the film depicts? Or is our time destined to be remembered as the “Age of Stupid” for our failure to heed repeated warnings?

It’s been said that the best way to predict the future is to create it.  Consider this showing an invitation from Transition Albany to begin doing just that.

Age of Stupid: Trailers: Original Theatrical Trailer from Age of Stupid on Vimeo.

This theatrical showing of The Age of Stupid is expected to be the only one of its kind in the San Francisco Bay Area in the coming months.  Tickets will be available for purchase at the box office of the Albany Twin both in advance and on the morning of the 11:30 a.m. showing on Sunday, March 7, 2010.

One of the things I appreciated about the Soviet Union when I spent a year as nanny to a British attaché in Moscow in 1973 was the appearance of the storefronts. While I would never have called myself a communist, the stunning lack of artifice in a store named “Produce” or “Shoes” or “Books” deeply appealed to me.

I was reminded of this as I reviewed my experience at an Awakening the Dreamer Symposium last Sunday in Oakland’s Chinatown.

Awakening the Dreamer is a masterfully compiled multimedia collection of video excerpts, music, photographs, quotations, animation, live presenters, dyads, group processes and wisdom snippets – from Joanna Macy, Thich Nhat Hahn, John Robbins, Paul Hawken, Wangari Maathai and Vandana Shiva, among others – that, in only four hours, clearly distils the facts and elicits and presents answers to four questions:

I had just watched the climate docu-drama The Age of Stupid and was keenly aware of the precariousness of our position on the edge of collapse as cheap oil, the fuel behind our consumer society, runs out and its effects as climate change grow more severe.

A key concept of the symposium is that we have been “entranced” by years of “marketing” to believe that we need something outside ourselves to be satisfied and that ever-increasing consumption is the answer. Although it is clear that our addiction to consumerism is driving climate change, perhaps we are not so much “stupid” as hypnotized. Stores and manufacturers in our capitalistic world proclaim their wares with brand images and logos that we have been conditioned to feel we cannot live without.  What does the name “Safeway” actually have to do with food, for instance, or “The Territory Ahead” with clothes?

The Awakening the Dreamer Symposium was put together several years ago by the Pachamama Alliance in response to a heartfelt plea from the indigenous Achuar people of Peru/Ecuador, whose shamans had predicted that the world was on the verge of a terrible catastrophe, which only industrialized countries could avert. The version I experienced was a recent improvement that is taking the Bay Area (and beyond) by storm as more and more attendees are inspired to become facilitators and bring the symposium to their own groups and associations.

At the crux of the event is the revelation of one basic assumption under which we have been operating for centuries, the reversal of which will make it inevitable that we reduce our consumption, care more for the earth and each other than for profit, and rebuild our lives in resilient communities. Can you guess what it is?

I saw the Symposium as offering a beautiful, compact introduction to the Transition concept, so I was delighted to hear this morning that the Pachamama Alliance and the Transition Network are currently formalizing a partnership to do just that.

Is your yard kind of overgrown, neglected or unsatisfying? Not really what you’d like to look at out the window? Perhaps it’s your physical condition that prevents you from getting out there or perhaps you believe you have a brown thumb. You might have a vague feeling for you what you want, a detailed plan, or no idea at all.

On the other hand, you might be an avid gardener struggling to satisfy your passion with a container garden or in a tiny space with inadequate sunlight. Or perhaps you’ve done as much as you can in your own yard and you’re itching to transform another patch of ground.

Whichever person you are, think about this: as cheap oil gets scarcer, so will cheap food. Consensus among geologists has it that we’ll reach a Global Peak in oil production somewhere between 2008 and 2012, and, because it’s hard to tell until after you’ve got there, we may be at that point already. I find it interesting that Chevron is closing their Richmond plant; they say it’s because of a lack of downstream demand, but I wonder.

So, if food is getting too expensive at the store, let’s grow our own! Small mixed vegetable plots – with flowers for the pollinators – are more productive than large commercial fields by a large margin, and we can grow exactly what we like and only have to walk out into the yard to get it. How about that for reducing your carbon footprint!

If we have too many carrots, peas, potatoes, onions, beans, beets, turnips, leafy greens, lettuce, radishes, plums, apples, pears, lemons, kiwis, oranges  …  we can give them to our neighbors or trade them at the Albany City Share produce swap (Tuesday nights at the Albany Community Center, May through October).

Albany now has its own garden sharing website on the new Hyperlocavore social network. Sign up, then find someone or some few who can work your plot and transform it into a beautiful haven – where you can sit and enjoy the peace of a well-nurtured garden, serviced by the bees and butterflies – while providing you both with delicious produce.

Throwing a gardening party is the best of all. Neighbors donate their good hard work in the morning (tear up that front lawn and put in beds?), then share a potluck meal and camaraderie afterwards.

What if all of Albany reduced 10% of its emissions during 2010, through personal action?

The 10:10 project is an international campaign for individuals, businesses, schools, and organizations to publicly commit to taking responsibility for their person contribution to global warming by reducing their greenhouse gas emissions 10% in 2010.

If all of Albany participated, we would get well on our way to the City-wide greenhouse gas reduction goal of 25% by 2020!

Transition Albany is supporting this campaign by spreading the word and encouraging people to do the same. Here are 4 easy steps to participate!

1. Commit. Sign onto 10:10 online and tell Transition Albany that you’re committing, so that we can add you to the list in Albany.
2. Count. Measure your baseline greenhouse gas emissions with one of the many online carbon footprint calculators. We recommend the one at coolclimate.berkeley.edu because it is more comprehensive than some others out there. Note: Click “click here to continue” after entering California as your state.
3. Act. Start reducing! Find a helpful and fun list of tips on the 1010uk.org site. Read Albany’s Climate Action Plan to get some ideas. Share and discuss action ideas on the Transition Albany forum.
4. Share. Spread the word about the 10:10 campaign to others in Albany. Volunteer to contact and sign up 20 friends. Or pick a business or block of businesses to sign up. Or go after your school or your child’s school. Let us know through the comments below. The more we talk about it, the more people will be aware of 10:10!

Join the list of those participating in Albany!

(in alphabetical order)

Arkin Tilt family, Marge Atkinson, Dorothy Bevard, Gerhard Brostrom, Marge Brostrom, Allen Cain, Christopher Carter, Patty Chin, Jess Cosby, Heather Cunningham, Linda Currie, Len Edmondson, Edward Fields, Andrew Frankle, Evan Frisch, Tree Gelb Stuber, Chester Godfry, Clara-Rae Jenson, Miya Kitahara, Robert Lieber, Dan Lieberman, Ly / Williams family, Allan Maris, Peggy McQuaid, Claire Norris, Caryl O’Keefe, Brian Parsley, Nick Pilch, Beth Pollard, Suzanne Schrift, Janet Smith-Heimer, Amy Smolens, Catherine Sutton, Carol Swan, Karina Tindol, Ellen Toomey, the Utedskis, Meera Valdez, Wynette Weaver, Buddy Williams, Tony Wolcott, Florence Wahl…

This list is updated every week or two. Please alert us if you see a misspelled name.

Get on the list by filling out this quick form or by commenting on this post!

Read more about each step… Read the rest of this entry »

“THE WORK THAT RECONNECTS”

www.joannamacy.net

Joanna Macy is a Buddhist teacher, writer, activist, and scholar who has been developing teaching tools to help us respond to the perils and suffering of our world for three decades.  She is giving a one-day workshop on The Work That Reconnects on February 14th at Common Circle, Berkeley, from 10 to 6pm. This is a very special opportunity to spend time with one of the elders of our age, someone whose life has been dedicated to helping people feel connected to the world they live in, fully in touch with their own emotions, and warmly connected to one other.

A group of 15 of us, mostly from Transition Albany and Transition Richmond (the Richmond Rivets), had a touching day experiencing some of Joanna’s tools on January 24th, courtesy of Pam and Tatyana at Sarana Community Acupuncture Center, 968 San Pablo Avenue, Albany. Anne Symens-Bucher, an accomplished workshop leader in her own right and assistant to Joanna Macy for four years, introduced deep and inclusive exercises designed by Joanna to put us in touch with the power, liberation, and solidarity that come with owning our collective grief.

Joanna’s work has been embraced by the Transition community, which is well aware that, as we let in the information coming our way about climate change and the end of cheap oil, we can be sideswiped by fear, grief, anger, helplessness – the whole gamut of emotions. If we have no place to air these feelings we are likely to stuff them and gradually deaden our response instead of letting our creativity and resilience come up with solutions.

Joanna is leading a day-long workshop in Berkeley on February 14th, 2010 – sign up at http://commoncircle.com/wtrevent. The cost is $95 before Feb 10th, and $145 thereafter. I attended a weekend workshop on The Work that Reconnects in Bolinas with Joanna in December 2009. I was thoroughly impressed with the potency of the simple exercises we did. I’m usually rather skeptical of workshops but I “warmed up” in the room of mostly people I hadn’t met before very quickly.

Every Transition Town has a “heart and soul” element, and we are starting our own group for airing feelings and lending mutual support during challenging times, on Thursday, February 18th at 943 Madison Street, Albany. Come for a potluck at 6:30 pm if you would like, and please RSVP to transitionalbanyca@gmail.com or call 510-528-2261.

“The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world – we’ve actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other”. Joanna Macy