Tuesday, December 20 at 7pm (doors open at 5:30 for dinner)

Carbon nation is a documentary movie about climate change SOLUTIONS. Even if you doubt the severity of the impact of climate change or just don’t buy it at all, this is still a compelling and relevant film that illustrates how SOLUTIONS to climate change also address other social, economic and national security issues. You’ll meet a host of entertaining and endearing characters along the way.

•  carbon nation is an optimistic, solutions-based, non-preachy, non-partisan, big tent film that shows tackling climate change boosts the economy, increases national & energy security and promotes health & a clean environment.
• Public opinion is sliding the wrong way – far fewer people are concerned about climate change than even a year ago. We’ve made carbon nation to give a majority of people an entertaining, informed and pragmatic primer about why it’s incredibly smart to be a part of the new, low-carbon economy: it’s good business.
• carbon nation’s optimism and pragmatism are appealing across the political spectrum. While other good films have been about problems, blame and guilt, carbon nation is a film that celebrates solutions, inspiration and action.

Provenzo's installation makes new mental connections.

Yesterday the other “fishbowl” at 107 West Beverley Street in downtown Staunton may have looked like an offbeat art project itself, one of those quirky performance art gigs where pedestrian movements are carried out in a tight space.

In reality, it was author/artist Gene Provenzo and myself installing, through sweat and laughter, THINK, the video advocacy piece Gene made in collaboration with Transition Staunton August for the Minds Wide Open Filling the Glass Half Full: A Storefront Art Initiative project in downtown Staunton.

Provenzo’s piece, a gestalt-driven rapid imagery glance at the modern cultural elements pertinent to our Transition group, sits inside a black box “peep show” style image bank we constructed using black paper, lifts, black foam core, tape and crossed fingers.

Covering energy use and consumption, food production and food waste, cognition, education, sprawl, oil and coal disasters, and the life of Staunton, THINK loops again and again, ending with a question about how we will determine the future of this town amidst larger questions of society and economy.

The short film also uses language, albeit sparingly, in a recapitulating manner, urging the viewer to think on the issues rather than turn away. But one can easily turn away from these questions, not only in ordinary life, but also in relating to the installation.

Disappearing into a black box, the almost secret installation requires the viewer to step into a willing process of engagement. Simply to encounter the piece, one has to be an already aware walker, moving eyes wide open through the Staunton streetscape. Should the viewer happen to see the video hiding in plain sight, he or she must stop, fixing his or her view directly into the screen in its shadowbox home.

Just like the issues of our times that are as plain as the nose on our faces, yet disappearing into the circuitry of our daily lives, buried by the foreground of myriad concerns commandeering our attention, this installation requires conscious encounter to rouse awareness and concern. When will we stop the frantic pace long enough to take a good long look into the deeper issues of our times, issues that will assert themselves inescapably if we do not take them on first?

THINK on it. We invite you to see the Provenzo-TSA collaborative installation until July 27, 2010.

Richard Heinberg says that high oil prices caused the current recession.

We need to burn fewer fossil fuels and release less carbon to slow down climate change. And because of rising demand from developing nations and decreasing supply, it’s easy to see that our economy needs to kick its addiction to fossil fuels for purely economic reasons.

Richard Heinberg and others argue that it was not the subprime mortgage crisis that led to today’s recession, the worst downturn since the 1930s, but that high energy costs were the true culprit.

We all remember paying $4 for gas just before the collapse of September 2009. Similarly, the previous half dozen recessions were all preceded by high energy costs.

Coincidence?

If energy spikes causes recessions, then, in a time of depleting supply and rising energy costs, the only alternative to a stomach-churning ride of economic ups and downs is to start to wean the economy off of fossil fuels.

Indeed, if energy is the basis of today’s economy — even the standard of value for the U.S. dollar, as some have argued — then no lasting recovery will be possible as long as we rely on depleting fossil fuels.

No amount of bank bailouts, stimulus spending, or low interest rates will make much difference unless we kick our coal and oil habit.

The sooner the better for our families and communities, especially in Staunton and Augusta County, where more than 95% of our energy comes from sources outside of our area.

That means dollars leaking out of the community. But even worse, it means local families and businesses are held hostage to national and international energy markets.

It’s time to declare local energy independence, the only path to energy security  with good jobs and lasting prosperity.

NASA's Jim Hansen has a better plan than cap-and-trade.

The Obama Adminstration and its allies in Congress think that cap-and-trade will help us transition towards clean energy and conservation by making fossil fuels more expensive.

They’re right about the second part — oil and coal will become more expensive under this scheme.

But NASA climate scientist Jim Hansen,who’s become an outspoken policy advocate, says that what he calls cap-and-tax won’t help get the economy off of fossil fuels.

Instead, as they become more expensive, the public will just have no choice but to pay more, because cap-and-trade will not encourage alternatives. All the extra cost generated will simply go into the pockets of Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs that developed cap-and-trade in the first place.

Hansen has a solution that’s simple and that should appeal to conservatives and liberals alike: impose a fee on all fossil fuels at the wellhead and then distribute the proceeds as direct payments to all legal U.S. residents.

Washington could define a path that would lead the world toward a clean energy future. And, incidentally, it would solve the climate problem – without requiring anyone to agree that there even is a climate problem.

Hansen outlines his idea in an essay sent to his email list where he also throws some sharp barbs at the New York Times.