Mass PowerShift lobbied in the Statehouse in Boston (see previous article) to encourage lawmakers to pass the Global Warming Solutions Act before the end of the legislative period. And they did!

A few days ago, right before the summer break, Massachusetts committed to reducing its carbon emissions by 20% below 1990 levels by the year 2020 and 80% by 2050. It is a good first step, a statement of intent that allows investors, industry, government, scientists and all citizens to focus their efforts towards a carbon free economy and can make Massachusetts, with its overflow of brainpower and technological capabilities, one of the leaders of new development in the country.

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Carrotmob is an innovative group creating innovative ways for concerned individuals to come together and create real change in a lighthearted way, and I’m proud to say that I will be working with them and an awesome team of volunteers to create an event in New York City this fall!

What really excites me about Carrotmob is that it is about bringing people together for a shared, do-able goal that has a lot of impact. It’s somewhere between remembering to bring your reusable bags to the store and re-inventing our entire infrastructure and it also looks like a really good time.

This video explains what Carrotmob is about much better than I could so please check it out! I’ve started a Facebook group (search for Carrotmob NYC) which anyone can join to stay current on dates, events, and opportunities to get involved.

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

Personal development is a topic tailor-made for the web. Alone in an office at a boring job, or in a quiet moment in an otherwise hectic day, reading practical tips on how to improve our lives is both a balm and a beacon—such stories make us believe that we can improve ourselves, or at least we can feel better by reading about how.

From increasing productivity to picking up more and hotter chicks, advice and how-tos abound, and there’s a lot of great stuff out there—I myself am particularly fond of Steve Pavlina’s experimental, experiential, sometimes esoteric take, and I’m supergeeked for his book to come out in the fall.

But for years I read these articles without my life ever dramatically changing. And, judging from forum postings and the continued popularity of PD material, I don’t think my experience is unique.

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Lately I’ve been dreaming about where I want to live in the near future, what sort of home environment I envision creating, including the physical structure and people around me.  I know that I don’t want to live alone in an apartment.  The kind of space I envision living in is one with other adults in a community where resources are shared and more importantly where ideas, dreams and hopes are welcomed for the purpose of evolving ourselves and our natural and built environments. This is what the kind of space I want to create and abide in looks like. 

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Food is probably one of the first things people think of when they are trying to save money and when they are trying to save the planet. It is probably the largest of our easily controlled expenses and with food prices rapidly rising a lot of people are looking for ways to eat a healthy, more sustainable diet for less. You can have some serious impact on your wallet, your waistline, and the planet, but you need to be flexible. Eating like royalty on a budget really does call for some compromise.

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I met Robert Bisson at the first Move On! event I ever went to. We were to gather in Hudson, NY on a steamy summer afternoon at a gas station to let voters know about the connections between John McCain and the big oil companies and the difference in the presidential candidates’ energy policies. “Bring an umbrella,” Robert had written to the participants, “it’s likely we’ll get a thunderstorm.”

When I got there, this lively activist with the energy of a mischievous and optimistic ten year old was setting up signs. Only later, when contacting him for this article did I find out, that he is about to turn 78. 

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This article is number 100 on The Sunny Way, and we couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve accomplished so far, nor more excited to see what unfolds in the future. For anyone who may be new to the site, I wanted to take a step back today and encapsulate our mission, and also invite your contributions and ideas.

The Sunny Way is a radically optimistic website whose mission is to bring the possibility of a magnificent future alive in our readers, and to awaken responsibility for creating it. Our goal is create a new conversation around the future of humanity—one focused on optimism and responsibility instead of OMG, things suck! But what can we do about it? *Shrug, consume.*

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Since I have a healthy hang-up with trash and how to keep reducing it, I thought I’d take another look recently to see what was in there. I found mostly bits of unrecyclable plastic. I decided to find out how I could recycle just 1 item of this motley crew: plastic dry cleaning bags. After searching online, I did not find any dry cleaners or small recyclers that would accept them, but I did find was a great DIY site that offered a tip: tie the hanger end into a knot and use it as a large garbage bag—great, a way to reuse them, even better than recycling… But what about everyone else’s bags? I doubt most people are planning to tie knots in theirs or make fluffy plastic DIY Christmas wreaths.

To my surprise my search also turned up a piece of pending legislation on this very subject: Bill # A.11725/S.8643. This is a NY state plastic bag recycling bill that, should it pass, would override the more stringent NYC plastic bag recycling law that was signed last January. 

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Over the last few weeks, Worldchanging has been hosting a contest/conversation centered around imagining what’s next after green. They asked readers to participate by completing this thought: “Imagine no ...” And there have been a bunch of excellent and surprising responses.

I added a few which I will paste in here. The comments for Worldchanging’s entry will close today, so if you want to add your own response, high-tail it over there and do so, then leave us a comment to let us know we should go check it out. 

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If anyone embodies the spirit of The Sunny Way, it’s Carnegie Mellon professor Randy Pausch, who as of this morning has gone on to the great Imagineer workgroup in the sky. I am so grateful for the wisdom he delivered in his Last Lecture, and I think of his courage every time I hit a brick wall—I remember that it’s only there to give me a chance to prove how badly I want what’s on the other side of it.

He came back to CMU to speak to graduates 2 months ago. Here’s what he had to say about how to live, something he obviously knew a great deal about.

A few weeks ago, I attended a new play called “Current Changes in Empire” by Sarah Moon of the NYLovesMountains project, which is working to establish connections between communities which are being impacted by mountaintop removal (MTR) coal-mining, and the cities (like New York) which get their power from that coal.

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I am a pianist, music teacher, photographer, and writer. But of all the mediums of communication, music for me is the most authentic and natural.  Music at its best is arguably humankind’s most potent conveyor of transcendent beauty. When you hear truly beautiful music, it dissolves all boundaries between self and other, self and world It is ephemeral and yet utterly real. I recently found a quote from the great Russian writer, Feodor Dostoevsky. He said, “Beauty will save the world.” I humbly submit that as the context for this blog post and others to come.

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With oil prices on everyone’s mind it feels a bit like the future we were all wondering about is actually here – no doubt things will not stay the same. Here are a few news items of projects, people and events who are ahead of the curve, climbing the next mountain.

If you have seen pictures of mountain top mining in Appalachia, you know what distressing sight this is, let alone the enormous costs to wildlife, rivers and humans this brutal method of coal mining occurs.

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Ever since I moved out on my own I have been doing a balancing act between my resources (money, physical energy, time), my values and my dreams. It has not always been pretty, I can tell you that. There are days I feel like I’m not doing very well at any of it and days where everything clicks along happily, but overall I feel like I’ve made some pretty good progress on all fronts.

The good news is that in many ways my efforts to live frugally and my environmental efforts go hand in hand. For example, not turning on the A/C is good for both my pocketbook and the earth. In other areas, like food, it requires a lot of compromise and a lot of incremental adjustments. Admittedly in some areas both frugality and the environment end up taking a backseat to some other priority, like my drives to the country to visit an elderly relative. Family is really important to me.

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