Our activities in Central New York

©Janet Allen
Our banner on the day of HGCNY's annual plant sale

Janet is involved with Habitat Gardening in Central New York, a chapter of Wild Ones, and John is involved with Edible Gardening CNY.

Both of these organizations are simply people getting together to learn from each other and from local experts. It's important to learn from people who have been working in their areas and thinking about these issues for a long time.

But that "head knowledge" is useless if it feels too foreign to incorporate into our life, or it feels too threatening to be the only one making changes. That's where fellow community members come in.

It's nice to know other real people who are similarly striving to move toward a more sustainable lifestyle. We've found that the people attracted to these groups are the kind of people we like to know!

And beyond

One organization that we think may be good to contribute to is Kiva.org. This organization provides microloans to individuals in the developing world. Although this investment doesn't yield interest, out of the more than $1,000 we've loaned, we've lost less than $25 due to bad loans, since we choose 4- or 5-star loans. We have only about $500 of our money in the program; the $1,000 results from reloaning the repayment money. As far as we know this organization has a good reputation, and it contributes to sustainability on a larger scale.

Resources

Orion: Household tips from Warrior Mom! by Sandra Steingraber; On the desire to change lightbulbs instead of paradigms

Reflections

Sometimes I hear people respond to the disturbing facts of the climate crisis by saying, "Oh, this is so terrible, what a burden we have." I would like to ask you to reframe that. How many generations in all of human history have had the opportunity to rise to a challenge that is worthy of our best efforts, a challenge that can pull from us more that we knew we could do. I think we ought to approach this challenge with a sense of profound joy and gratitude that we are the generation about which a thousand years from now, philharmonic orchestras and poets and singers will celebrate by saying, "They were the ones that found it within themselves to solve this crisis and lay the basis for a bright and optimistic human future." Let's do that.

~ Al Gore, TED Talk

"In a world of material goods and material exchange, trade is a zero-sum game," says inventor Dean Kamen. "I've got a hunk of gold and you have a watch. If we trade, then I have a watch and you have a hunk of gold. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange them, then we both have two ideas. It's nonzero."

~ Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler
Abundance, p. 46

We can all change the people around us by changing ourselves.

~ Colin Beavan, No Impact Man

Creating the world we want is a much more subtle but more powerful mode of operation than destroying the one we don't want.

~ Marianne Williamson

The name of our present society's connection to the earth is "bad work"—work that is only generally and crudely defined, that enacts a dependence that is ill understood, that enacts no affection and gives no honor. Every one of us is to some extent guilty of this bad work. This guilt does not mean that we must indulge in a lot of breast-beating and confession; it means only that there is much good work to be done by every one of us and that we must begin to do it.

~ Wendell Berry
Conservation is Good Work, 1992

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.

~ Albert Schweitzer

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

~ T. H. Huxley

The revolution starts at the bottom.

~ Yvon Chouinard

When asked "Do you envision a large-scale shift to organic practices in the coming years?" Sandra Steingraber replied:

It’s hard to say. We live in a time of incredible contradiction. We continue to burn petrochemicals and use them as feedstock for cancer-causing substances, including pesticides; at the same time, we are seeing incredible innovations in green chemistry and green engineering. If we want to create a more sustainable place to live, the chemistry and engineering is there to do it. But we have to do more than simply have the right tools; we have to commit ourselves to putting those tools into action.
This is an all hands on deck moment in history. The environmental crisis, which is killing us and killing the planet, is THE human rights issue of our time.
Just as previous generations had to end slavery or defeat global fascism, our urgent task is to end economic dependencies on petrochemicals. It's the human rights issue of our age. Everything has to change. If you want the chance to be a hero—to be a member of the underground railroad, the French resistance—here it is.

Building a broad and passionate popular movement for transformation does not subject us to the sort of risk faced in 1776 by the Founding Fathers of the US. But it does call on us to make substantial commitments of our time, energy, finances, comfort and reputation. It calls on us to have the courage to declare the truths that are self-evident to us, and to then act on that declaration. Building a movement calls on us to get involved—in our communities and workplaces, in our churches and schools, politically and economically.

~ Peter Sawtell, 7/3/15 A Revolutionary Pledge