No Impact Man Blog

Dear Friends--

I've decided to run for US Congress representing central Brooklyn in an attempt to bring our crises and the possibility of real solutions into the pubic discourse (see press release below). I feel that our politicians are not having the national conversation we need to have. I hope with your help, we can use this campaign as an opportunity to help bring crucial issues into the conversation.

One way to do that is to talk online and in person with people about what I, and a group of great volunteers, are doing. We are trying to model citizen politics. We could all do this everywhere. Decide that we want to be the poiticians instead of leaving it to the people who are backed by big, corporate money.

If you're interested in this, please share about the campaign on Facebook, Twitter and anywhere else. You can follow the campaign on Facebook here and Twitter here.

Please feel free to copy and past the image above and share it on your social networks. Meanwhile, check out the campaign website at votecolin.org and tell me your thoughts here.

It's our planet. Let's bein in charge of it.

With love,

Colin Beavan

INTERNATIONALLY RENOWNED ENVIRONMENTALIST LAUNCHES RUN FOR U.S. CONGRESS CITING NEED FOR MASSIVE REORGANIZATION OF GOVERNMENT AND BUSINESS TO DEAL WITH WORLD CRISES

A New York City author whose book and documentary film No Impact Man helped bring climate change into popular consciousness today announces his candidacy for the United States House of Representatives. Colin Beavan PhD will run on the Green Party ticket in New Yorks 8^th Congressional District, following the vacancy left by the retirement of Representative Edolphus Towns.

Beavan rose to prominence as a spokesman for the international environmental movement after worldwide press and media interest followed the release of his film and book. His campaign, citing growing world crises in climate, environment, economics, and energy production, calls for a complete change in priorities including an end to consumption-based economics, massive decentralization of government and business, and huge investment in local communities.

The economic system is supposed to make people safer and happier, but it can no longer do that because it wasnt designed to deal with our new planetary crises, says Beavan. The tired old Democratic/Republican debate over taxation isnt going to fix it. We need to create a new, more stable system based on investment in people and local communities instead of shareholders and corporations. We have to face up to climate change, the end of oil, and the failure of consumption to make people happy. Robust local economies help solve all these problems.

Government investment in local businesses creates ten times more jobs than investment at the national level. Local economies have lower reliance on foreign oil and create less climate pollution. Creating conditions to allow people, talent and profits to stay within their communities lowers crime, increases access to education and provides support to at-risk populations like children and the elderly.

We have a crazy system where our communities human and financial capital are siphoned away by far-away corporations and government. Then, we beg the same institutions to send us jobs and services. What if we strengthened our communities and didnt have to send our wealth away in the first place? Wed have healthier communities, happy and safer people, much less crime and a greater quality of life for all.

Colin Beavans campaign organization is an all-volunteer group of citizens who have decided to leave their previous party affiliations out of disillusionment with the lack of solution-based conversation in American politics. Beavans campaign will issue a series of policy positions in the coming weeks, all of which will be based on strengthening community health, happiness and security in the 8^th Congressional District. The campaign will launch a series of listening meetings, to solicit the views of the community in two weeks.

Meanwhile, basic campaign policies, based on strengthening local community include:

• Corporate money out of politics
• A constitutional amendment making the right to vote inalienable
• Massive voter registration and civic engagement promotion
• Keeping youth out of prison (treatment not incarceration)
• An end to stop and frisk
• Food stamps for use at farmers markets
• Tax breaks for sole proprietorships
• Massive shift of military spending towards education
• U.S. leadership on climate change mitigation and adaptation
• Community-based assisted living programs for the elderly
• Encouragement of service rather than product-based economies
• Prioritizing human connection before goods consumption

The non-electoral goals of Beavans campaign include:

• Instigating conversation about emergent world issues effectively ignored by Democrats and Republicans
• Modeling civility and cooperation in politics
• Massive voter registration
• By running a volunteer campaign organization, modeling renewed civic participation to community, nation, and world
• Promoting community self-determination

All the relevant documentation has been filed with Federal Elections Commission to make Beavans candidacy official. He is uncontested in his congressional districts Green Party primary and will go straight to general election in November. The Green Partys ballot status in New York State means his name will appear on the ballot.

Posted by Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man on 08/05/2012 23:39:45

A video written by my friend and colleague Tim Kasser. It presents a unifying theory of what's wrong and what to do about it.

Posted by Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man on 29/02/2012 11:38:37

Why were we born? What is really important in life? Are we living in line with that? Or are we distracted from the point of our existence? Is there a way to get people to wake up and ask these crucial questions?

Is there a way to get governments to do so?

Because if we are wrecking the place in fulfillment of our human purpose, then so be it.

But if we are wrecking the place while sleepwalking our way from birth to death? Living unconsciously and wrecking the place in that process? That seems like such a terrible tragedy.

How can we wake up?

God bless us. Kwan Seum Bosal.

PS One way to help is to get involved with 350.org.

PPS. Another way is to help make people aware by running a No Impact Week in your community.

PPPS To read the NASA article, go here.

Posted by Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man on 19/01/2012 15:32:14

Dear Mr and Mrs Borah,

I am writing to tell you that you should be so incredibly proud of your amazing daughter. This is what I read about her in today's New York Times:

[The American climate envoys] statement to delegates from more than 190 nations at the annual climate conference was disrupted by a 21-year-old Middlebury College junior, Abigail Borah, who told the assembly that she would speak for the United States because Mr. Stern had forfeited the right to do so.

I am speaking on behalf of the United States of America because my negotiators cannot, said Ms. Borah, who is attending the conference as a representative of the International Youth Climate Movement. The obstructionist Congress has shackled justice and delayed ambition for far too long. I am scared for my future. 2020 is too late to wait. We need an urgent path to a fair, ambitious and legally binding treaty.

 Ms. Borah, who is from Princeton, N.J., added: We need leaders who will commit to real change, not empty rhetoric. Keep your promises. Keep our hope alive.

Scores of delegates and observers gave her a sustained ovation. Then the South African authorities threw her out of the conference.

That must have taken her so much courage to do that. She did a wonderful thing on behalf of us all. I feel as though she stood up for me, personally. Please tell her she is a hero.

Love,

Colin Beavan

Posted by Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man on 08/12/2011 16:56:12

Hi Friend--
Please consider this your invitation (on December 14, see below) to what promises to be a wicked fun time.

The cost will benefit our charitable effort  the No Impact Project and help get thousands of citizens to begin taking charge of the destiny of this habitat we all share and depend on. Indeed, not only will be the dinner by fun, it's an investment in a world worth living in!!

Please come! And bring friends (and grandparents and cousins)!

Also, we need to give the restaurant numbers very soon, so it would be a great help if you could purchase your tickets this week.

Thank you!!!!

Colin

PS Click the invite below and it will get larger. :)

Posted by Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man on 01/12/2011 14:54:21

A monk asked a master, "I just became a monk and would like to know how to enter Buddhahood."

Posted by Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man on 28/11/2011 11:30:50

I am curious about people who wanted to have a child or children but decided to have none or fewer because of concerns over population growth. I'm *not* interested in hearing from people who condemn the choice to have chidren but rather from people actually feel and understand the tug towards parenthood but have chosen not to.

Have you had feelings of loss? What ways have you found to satisfy the tug without actually having children?

I'm asking because there obviously needs to be a real cultural conversation about population growth and how many kids we should all have. But I don't think that a conversation about how much damage more children would cause is the answer. I don't think guilting and shaming each other helps.

For one, I personally find it a downer. And for two, I don't think it helps people who are struggling with the choice.

What would help people who are struggling with the choice is stories of others who have struggled with it before them. Aspirational stories of struggling with the choice and finding ways of resolving the struggle happily. Perhaps in creative ways that made your life or the life of someone else better.

If you have a story like that, perhaps you'd be willing to share it with us in the comments?

Posted by Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man on 08/11/2011 23:12:48

I will hope you will join me on September 24 in the No Impact Project's mini-march from the George Washington Statue in New York City's Union Square up Broadway and then across town the Dag Hhammarskjold Plaza for a rally in front of the United Nations.

This is part of 350.orgs Moving Planet event which is taking place in over 168 countries. All across the planet citizens will move by foot, bike, skateboard or scooter to demonstrate to world leaders that citizens demand a solution to the world Climate Crisis.

And if you can't join me, look for your local Moving Planet action here.

But if you can join me, come to

Where: The George Washington Statue, south side of Union Square, NYC

When: 11:30 AM

Bring: A garbage bag because we'll be collecting street litter along the way

You'll find our Facebook event page here.

See you there!

Posted by Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man on 20/09/2011 17:36:29

I spent much of this morning on the phone with a friend who is one of the top leaders in corporate sustainability. He wanted to know my thoughts on "innovation" and "progress."

Did I think they were good or bad? Did I think the drive for both helped or hindered the quest for a life that is both happier for the people and happier for the planet?

After a long long conversation, I realized that the whole thing could be summed up so simply. I wrote:

The question is over the use of the innovative, simple or techno. Does that use cause aspiration (the filling up with spirit--see etymology) or desperation (the emptying out of spirit).

No matter where you stand on the sustainability scale, by the measure I've just described, where does a brand fit that attempts to frighten a women into believing she is not a good mother if her child's shirt is not as white as the next child's?

Love,
Colin

Posted by Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man on 21/07/2011 16:36:46

And also for the organizations that partnered with New York's finest to make this happen, like Transportation Alternatives (of which I am a proud board member).

Hip hip hurray!

Hip hip hurray!

Hip hip hurray!

Biking, where we can do it, is better for the planet and better for the people.

Images via Transportation Rules BikingRules.Org website:

Posted by Colin Beavan aka No Impact Man on 23/06/2011 12:23:17