What's Your Vote? eBook or Bound Copy?

Here’s a campaign for your vote. Unlike the political campaigns of 2012, we’re not spending any money on this one. Just asking for your vote on whether you’d like to see One Earth Project’s first book published as an eBook or a bound copy?

The manuscript has been edited. An earlier version had a proposal from an e-publisher, but we weren’t quite ready then. Now we are. We’ve solicited some friends, asking whether they have connections with a particular publisher. We’ve drafted a query letter and are about to send it along. So your vote is timely.

By the way, do your read eBooks? only bound copies? both?

We want a publisher that will go both directions. That’s our latest thought unless you can sway us to go a different direction. Go ahead. Influence us. Leave your comment.

Bigger than Republican or Democrat, Liberal or Conservative

Despite my ecological footprint, I am not a Multi Earther in my worldview. I believe that the map of reality taught and followed by Multi Earthers does not sustain life on the planet, but threatens it. For me, the Multi Earth worldview produces a recipe for conquest and domination. Filled with egocentric thinking, Multi Earth ways live outside of nature, rather than within nature’s rich democracy of life. Despite my Multi Earth footprint, when it comes to worldview, I am a One Earther.

An important discovery for me happened when I came to see that a worldview is much larger than whether I am a Republican or a Democrat, an American or Mexican, a Jew or a Hindu, a socialist or a capitalist, a liberal or a conservative, a developer or an environmentalist, a friend or an enemy. These groupings of people, while sometimes useful in daily life, do not distinguish Multi Earthers from One Earthers. Most such groupings can have both Multi Earthers and One Earthers within them. My quest involves getting to a worldview that includes these groupings in a greater whole, even if they think of themselves as polar opposites. Just as our one planet includes the southern and northern hemispheres, and the South and North Poles, so a One Earth worldview holds within its bigger, deeper view all the smaller views of groups. To this end, the word “paradigm” has become an important word for me. I’ll go further into paradigm-land in the next blog.

Untangling the Grip of Multi Earth Tentacles on Us

For much of my life, my consciousness remained too undeveloped to have dissented from Multi Earth living anywhere near the degree that I now believe to be necessary. Getting my ecological footprint from 3.7 planets to 1.0, I now understand, means more than daily dissent from Multi Earth living. It requires that I learn to live as a One Earther, and to do so in movement-building ways with others. Writing here helps me untangle the grip of this Multi Earth worldview that increases the danger of how we humans live. Why, given my greatly increased awareness, and an earnest desire to live at 1.0, have I not been able to shake loose from the tentacles with which Multi Earth-ism grip me? And why, all around our spinning globe, does Multi Earth-ism attract so many into loving money and desiring more?

Deceivingly elusive questions that have carried me into writing a book about them. Others are helping me with final edits. Our One Earth Team is looking for publishers for bound copy or ebook versions, or both. Sending a query letter to publishers is underway. Final titles are being pondered. You can influence this process by leaving your comments here. Weigh in on Multi Earth and One Earth living as you see them.

How the One Earth Project Was Born

It was March, 2009, when Michael Johnson and I met one another after a presentation I gave on “Ecological Economics.” By mid-2012, we had committed to producing a book and video on One Earth living. I would write the book; he’d produce the video. But we’d be full partners in both.

The manuscript of the book is done and getting some edits. What an encourager Michael has been to me! Anytime I was losing energy, he’d say something to infuse me with what I needed to put this book together. On the video side, he brings greats skills as an artist and producer. Just check the website of his company, Industrial Strength Television.

If you wonder about the name, One Earth Project, it states our quest for how to use only one planet’s resources by the way we live. Currently, if all the world lived like the U.S. average, we’d need FIVE Earths. In other words, U.S. lifestyles and the U.S. economy are a Multi Earth Project!

This gets personal for me because my lifestyle requires 3.7 Earths. And that’s what the book is about. How can I get to 1.0? Why does Multi Earth living have such a tight hold on us? And, I tell why I’m convinced that our current global economy will never get us 1.0 living. The U.S. and other leading countries have given up on our planet. We have not. But in this context, how do we live?

This blog will be growing faster than the U.S. economy over in the rest of 2012. Visit again soon. BUT before your next visit find out your footprint on the planet. I so hope you’re footprint is smaller than mine. But, whether it’s smaller or bigger, share what you are learning about One Earth living. Leave your comment and help expand the consciousness we need to live as part of Earth’s magnificent community of life.

Nine Convictions in an Economy for One Planet

The following Nine Convictions are developed in the Eden Series trilogy I am writing as part of the One Earth Project.

1. Earth Community is more than human community.
2. The Commons evokes more mature human capacities than do corporate-led markets.
3. Commonwealth is richer than private wealth.
4. Abundance is richer than prosperity.
5. Limits to growth increase innovation and creativity.
6. Economic democracy achieves fair distribution more effectively than corporate-led markets.
7. Local economies generate life for regions without destroying global connections.
8. Wealth is not the same as lots of money.
9. Wellbeing and happiness happen through One Earth living, not Multi Earth economics.

7,000,000,000 Humans on One Planet? How Does That Work?

It happened somewhere in October, 2011. A baby homo sapien was born and she or he became the seven billionth member of that species alive at that moment. As recently as 1940, the year I was born, homo sapiens totaled a “mere” 2.3 billion. We tripled our numbers in my lifetime!

“With seven billion of us now inhabiting our planet, it is time to reflect on our current path.” So says the introduction of the United Nations report prepared by its Panel on Global Sustainability. That report, “Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing,” has been released in anticipation of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development to be held this summer on the 20th anniversary of the Rio Conference where U.S. President George H.W. Bush said that the U.S. lifestyle was not negotiable. The report makes 56 recommendations for sustainable development and says “we need to change direction dramatically, beginning with how we think about our relationship to each other, to future generations, and to the eco-systems that support us.”

But I’m putting my money on the activists who recently gathered in Port Alegre, Brazil. They, too, were preparing for a conference on the 20th anniversary of Rio. Their People’s Summit will be a counterpoint to the UN Summit. The People’s Summit is far more likely to identify the “dramatic change” that the UN report calls for than is the UN Conference. The reason is that the UN Conference relies too heavily on the global corporations to design the green economy. Because the ruling corporations are committed first to their own profits, not the planet or people, their greening of global capitalism cannot make the sharp turn Earth now requires. Unless the U.S. lifestyle becomes negotiable in 2012, 20 years after Rio, the unequal distribution of Earth’s resources assures a system that will careen off the path for living in right relationships on one planet. As of this moment, there is NO turning from such planetary disaster. The breakdown of the current corporate-driven system in 2008, and the extreme weather episodes it accelerates, will multiply like breakdowns of an overloaded, 30 year old jalopy tagged with a sign “California or Bust.”

The People’s Summit, by contrast, will be resilient, flexible, and driven by scientific information, life-changing commitment, and love. They will decide democratically and act on the hardwiring in us for cooperative ventures that improve the wellbeing of all life in our regions.

Coincident with the time of these summer gatherings, the One Earth Project that I’m part of will be promoting my book about living on one Earth. There I detail how we, the people—the majority of the seven billion—long to live in right relationships with one another and all animal and plant species of our regions. We have the skills to create the economic structures that fit Earth’s resources. At the moment, governments, captured by corporations that are void of democracy and life-sustaining wisdom, make far more policies to hinder us than help us. When will our people’s work reach the tipping point when governments are forced to change and love the people and planet more than the money of corporations?

With 7,000,000,000 billion of our aggressive species now roaming the planet, love compels us to reflect deeply and to act justly and compassionately for one another and all life. Profit compels no such thing.