In 1787, the Delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the governing framework in which, “all legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States.” Simply put, laws are constructed and determined by an elected body, not directly by “We the People.”

On February 1st, we kick off the 2012 Illahee Lecture Series with Christopher Phillips, author of Constitution Cafe: Jefferson’s Brew for a True Revolution (2011). In his unique project, Phillips asks average Americans how they would rewrite the constitution, if given the opportunity. As Phillips details in his book, the best democracy (according to Thomas Jefferson) is one where every citizen is an acting member of government. Jefferson, often mistakenly included as a Founding Father of the Constitution, believed that the type of democracy outlined by the Delegates to the Constitutional Convention sidelines citizens via elected representation, making them “inattentive to public affairs” and leaving the “professional politicians [to] all become wolves — doing as they will because of an apathetic citizenry.”

This type of apathy brings out the worst in politics and politicians, leaving our public discourse mired in pseudo-facts and deliberately distorted points of view. How would the upcoming presidential campaign look if Americans were more active participants in our democracy — not just bodies to make phone calls and run internet “hope” campaigns? What if we were able actively rewrite our constitution to better suit the needs of today’s citizens, rather than live by a blueprint for democracy that is over 200 years old?

We encourage you to dust off that copy of the Constitution sitting on your bookshelf and read it from start to finish (presumably for the first time since grade school). Then, join us for our exciting 2012 lecture season as we tackle a few sacred cows — democracy, jobs, education, health care, and national defense.

Visit the Illahee website to find out more on our speaker and topics, as well as to purchase your Illahee 2012 Lecture Series Passes today!

Debt: Debt has out-shadowed our GDP and as a result, financial institutions have grown — both in size and in relative power. Heinberg maintains that there is an enormous amount of hidden debt that continue to fuel toxic assets. We may never know the true amount as long as our government continues to allow banks to lie about the exact amount that was lost.

Depletion: U.S. has reached peak oil production, even with new discoveries, and a shortage in precious metals and minerals is on the horizon. This is problematic with our “faith-based” energy policies, relying on undiscovered sources for a lot of our future supply. Our food systems overwhelmingly rely on oil for production, which drive up food prices that cut further into our already dwindling bank accounts.

Disaster: China is an example of a country headed for disaster with its growth at 10% a year (doubling every seven years). They consume over one half of the world’s coal every year. Like China, our economic future is “heading for a brick  wall” with declining tax revenues, persistent high unemployment, declining household income, and financial instability.

Deep breath. Here comes some optimism.

The end of growth doesn’t necessarily mean the end of happiness, but we are going to have to work for it. We need to replace GDP as a measure of success with social measures and goals. We’re also going to have to build up our local resilience by consuming less, planting gardens, and investing locally.

As it turns out, there’s a great opportunity this weekend to start building a stronger local economy: November 5th is Bank Transfer Day. Do the research, then choose where you want your money to reside — on Main Street or Wall Street?

As Heinberg notes in his new book, The End of Growth, we live in a finite world of resources, yet we’ve created a society that requires continual growth or else risk total collapse. I know, I know, last season we called for innovation to solve some of our most wicked problems, but Heinberg argues that humans have a fixed ability to invent truly new activities; we can’t innovate our way out of this one, the End of Growth (or End of Days if you prefer) is coming. It may not end in a giant earthquake followed by the universe melting in fervent heat, but as long as industrialized societies refuse voluntarily self-restrain, individuals and local organizations will have to hunker down and prepare for the transition.

Yesterday, when asked to give advice to those who are not sure how to prepare for the End of Growth, Heinberg suggested that we get to know our neighbors, because we’re all going to suffer together. So, why not come out and reconnect with your Illahee neighbors (at the last Illahee event you may ever attend) and maybe meet some new faces? You will need them when the earth declares its final judgement.

Richard Heinberg: The End of Growth

Tonight, 21 October 2011

PNCA Commons | 1241 NW Johnson| 7pm

For tickets and information: click here.

In a New York Times piece this week, Thomas Friedman discusses our third speaker this fall, Paul Gilding, that these great disruptions “are a sign that the current growth-obsessed capitalist system is reaching its financial and ecological limits.” Gilding sees the ecological, economic, and democratic crises as an integrated system — a system that is breaking down and “eating itself alive.” Gilding, however, is an optimist and thinks the disruption is an opportunity. Fortunately, he offers more than doom and gloom, reminding us that crises often bring out the best people have to offer: compassion, innovation, and resilience.

Richard Heinberg will certainly deliver a wake-up call this Friday, but we look forward to Gilding’s talk next month as he makes the argument that this crisis will only push us to rise to the challenge.

SELCO operates on three principles: the poor can afford sustainable technologies; the poor can maintain sustainable technologies; and one can run a commercially viable venture serving the needs of the poor.  At a time when affordable, marketable solar technology in America has garnered headlines for failure rather than success — the recent collapse of Solyndra, Inc. — Hande’s vision and approach is refreshing. Interestingly enough, Hande admits that the environment is not the motivation for his customers. They see his technology as a cheap and reliable way to access electricity that directly affects their income an lives — helping the environment is an added bonus. 

SELCO’s impact did not happen overnight; it took years of hard work and innovative strategies. It also wasn’t funded by hundreds of millions in government subsidies, but rather operates on a rather modest annual budget supplying the technology, installation, and financing to its end users. Tonight, Dr. Hande will speak about SELCO’s efforts to put solar power technology in the hands of the poor, through their social enterprise that brings customized, affordable, and sustainable electricity to India’s vast rural populace, encouraging the poor to become asset creators. In the mean time, you can check out this short six minute video on Dr. Hande’s work in a small town in southern India.

Harish Hande: Democratizing Electricity

PNCA | 1241 NW Johnson | 7:30pm

To date, Ostrom’s work has examined existing social-ecological systems, of which many scientists fear may collapse by the end of the 21st century. But worrying their demise isn’t enough; we need to start developing strong methods for analyzing the complexities that make up our ecosystems and institutional arrangements. Although many policy makers may lead you to believe otherwise, there is no quick fix or one solution. We need to attack our problems with long-term, multi-tiered, interdisciplinary approaches.

That’s where resilience — the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks — comes into play. According to Ostrom, the key to resilience in social-ecological systems is biological and institutional diversity.

But how do you plan for resilience when demise is imminent? Many big thinkers and policy makers aren’t faced with the prospect of relocating the entire population of a disappearing island. Planning for the next 30 years, President Anote Tong of Kiribati is facing just that challenge and is not doing it silently. He is challenging the global community — especially the biggest polluters — to act, but faces the daunting task of preparing his citizens to relocate with dignity rather than as refugees.

Friday evening, Illahee is kicking off our 2012 Lecture Series: Sacred Cows with a pre-season event hosted by Ecotrust,  Resilience: An Operating System for the 21st Century? Resilience ecologist C.S. Buzz Holling, President Tong, and a panel of regional leaders from around the globe  will explore how the practice of resilience can create economic opportunity, social equity and environmental well-being in the times ahead.

The event is free to early subscribers to our 2012 Lecture Series: Sacred Cows (only a few seats remaining). Tickets for this individual event can also be purchased through Ecotrust.

Resilience: An Operating System for the 21st Century?

PNCA Swigert Commons| 1241 NW Johnson St

6pm Reception | 7pm  Panel Discussion

That world is at our door-step. In the year 1900, 7,100 types of apple trees were grown in the U.S.  Now 6,100 of them are extinct. In 1949, Chinese farmers grew 10,000 wheat varieties. By the 1970s about 1,000 varieties remained in cultivation. A decade ago, seed companies were largely independent. Now more than 200 of them are owned by a handful of pharmaceutical/chemical companies (an excellent visualization of this can be found here – slow it down by hitting stop/play, so you can really see the dynamics of global consolidation).

Can Jefferson’s  PatentLens initiative, and David Bollier’s advocacy for the commons, and Beth Noveck’s open government projects help us steer away from this future at this late date? Hope so.

Not to denigrate specific products or processes, but will the iPhone 5 — which we’re eagerly awaiting — really increase human well being? Likewise with all the social media action out there. OK, maybe social media has facilitated some of the Arab Spring uprisings, but let’s not forget, it had to start in a very non-virtual way: with a guy lighting himself on fire. So communication innovation can be a force for change, but so far it’s mainly a way to waste time, with the convenient cover of “connecting to friends.” We’re open, however, to the evolution of connectedness.

Currently, many thought leaders are infatuated with the network model of innovation, perhaps because digital networks are a dominant part of our lives. Prior to that, we thought of innovation in a much more linear text-based way, because physical texts were the technology we had at hand. And before that we transmitted ideas and practices orally, person to person. But no matter how we transmit information, connectedness without purpose or meaning doesn’t just lead nowhere, it leads to information entropy — the diffusion of meaning into cultural white noise.

Our presenters this past season have offered some structure to our thinking about innovation. From Roger Pielke’s admonition that we’re not going to innovate our way out of climate change just by focusing on carbon dioxide targets, to Richard Jefferson’s insistence that agricultural innovation has to be open-sourced to the actual growers of food for it to benefit the rest of us. David Bollier extended this open source paradigm to the rest of the planet’s common resources.

Beth Noveck spoke with us about “tipping over the sacred cow” of government by helping to transform the way it works. Her ideas and initiatives have already put digital networks, social media and expert crowdsourcing to work to help government agencies do their jobs more effectively. This is innovation with purpose and meaning. It’s innovation that first asks the question, what do we want to get out of government? Rather than, look at this neat tool; what could we use it for?

We’d like to apply that same filter to some of our own environmental sacred cows — green building, local food, recycling, bicycling, and of course the big one, sustainability. Not that there’s anything wrong with these things. Just the opposite. We’d like to see more of them. No, our concern is two-fold: First, what do we want to accomplish, and which green tools will get us there most effectively? Second, how do we avoid over-promising and under-delivering? We don’t know the answers to these questions — and we suspect many “green experts” haven’t thought them through either — that’s why we’re asking.

This is where you can help.  As we’ve been saying for years, ticket sales cover only 1/2 of the costs of producing the Illahee Lecture Series.  That’s why additional contributions from Illahee Society members are so important. One logical response we might expect: “Well, then raise your season pass prices! Or, cut costs. Or both.” Believe us, we’ve considered the former, and have cut costs to the bone over the last two years (that doesn’t mean we’re still not trimming costs — have you seen our web site?).

We have a mission — providing a forum for evidence-based, policy-relevant inquiry — that goes beyond the bottom line. And we want to make that forum affordable to as many of our region’s citizens as we can. So, we’ll continue to ask questions and look for partners who want to leverage the answers we may uncover. To a large degree, those partners are you; the organizations and individuals who support Illahee beyond the lecture season.

As our fiscal year winds down, we need your help by June 30th in order to launch next season’s line of inquiry, keep it affordable for a wide spectrum of citizens, and yes, to keep us in business.

Why are we, and much of the media, being so tough on him?

It’s not merely because he’s delusional. A lot of people wander our streets in some kind of delusion, and we don’t pick on them. Rather, we give them our sympathy, or we should anyway. No, we’ve been tough on Camping and his rapture for two reasons, quite apart from his prediction being absurd.

First, he has duped a significant number of people into believing this fantasy, disrupting their lives to make arrangements to leave the rest of us behind in a fiery hell.

Which leads us to the second reason for our scorn: this misanthrope has decided that most of us deserve a fiery hell! Sorry, but we can’t see much difference between this guy’s attitude toward humanity and Osama bin Laden’s, except that the latter was more selective in targeting “bad people.” Both believe the world is full of infidels who deserve no mercy. Worse, we sinners deserve to suffer. Worse yet, in the case of the rapture, we deserve to suffer for eternity.

So yeah, we’re being tough on Camping and his followers. But not as tough as they’re being on the rest of the world. Most of us don’t believe they should suffer more than a few laughs at their own expense.