Notes from the 2007 California/Oregon Roadshow

In early September, Beth Sawin and Phil Rice, co-developers of Our Climate Ourselves, traved with their children through northern California and Southern Oregon, offering their tools and approach through a series of workshops and informal meetings.

Day 1 — Vermont to California

Distance traveled: approx 3000 miles
CO2 produced: 5.2 tones
Pints of maple syrup distributed: 1

After 10 hours on various modes of transportation - bus, plane, "air train", rental car – we arrive at a tiny little oasis in the city of Palo Alto where we'll be staying for the next few days - Karen Harwell's fraction of an acre filled with fruit trees (citrus, fig, apple, peach, pear, plum) gardens, herbs, ducks and honey bees. Soon we are settled in and helping to cook a much welcomed dinner from Karen's garden and local farmer's market - tomatoes, beans, potatoes, sweet corn, and watermelon - all of it some consolation for the garden we've just left behind.

Taking a quick tour through Karen's neighborhood we find that being introduced as, "visiting scientists teaching about climate change" leads to interesting conversations in people's front lawns and by the snow cone stand on the corner (all profits to the humane society). In the space of forty-five minutes we hear everything from vivid dreams of a bicycle powered Palo Alto (like Amsterdam without the rain), get a glimpse of the PV installation waiting to be put up on a neighbor's roof (it should pay back in 7 years, given California electricity rates and sun levels) to a sophisticated conversation about the impact of Chinese politics on climate change (the Chinese government owes its acceptance to it's ability to deliver economic growth- they can't afford to risk that compact with the people).

And so, one stroll down a single California street reconfirms what we already knew. When it comes to climate change, it's all there right at the surface: the fears, the visions, the search for WHAT TO DO, the worry that whatever that is, it might not be enough.

Day 2 — San Francisco

Distance traveled: 60 miles (30 by car; 30 by train, bus, and foot)
CO2 produced: 10 kg for the car portion; 2.2 kg for the 
train and bus

No meetings or talks scheduled for Day Two (Labor Day) so we give the kids sole authority to plan the day, because most days they are going to need to go along with our grown-up goals. They pick the San Francisco Zoo, and we find we have plenty of time (when our East Coast bio-rhythms wake us up in the early morning darkness) to figure out a way to get to the zoo via public transportation.

The Zoo website, while full of detail of all that we might see and do once we get there and also containing very clear driving directions to the Zoo from all points of the compass, doesn't offer a word of advice about how to reach the zoo by public transportation (at least that we can find), so we are forced to plan our route by scouring the Bay Area Rapid Transportation maps online and the the San Francisco Municipal Bus schedules.

We discover that the #23 bus will deliver us right to the zoo entrance, and plan backwards from the bus route to an electric train route and then a subway route, all starting in a suburb about 15 miles north of where we are staying. Our plans and maps serve us pretty well, though the kids seem a little disconcerted as their parents spin slowly in circles in the subway station, searching for non-existent signs for the "K" line (we were understandably thrown off by the fact the train labeled "T" has on this day been pressed into service on the K line.)  It seems that on their own both transportation systems work pretty well, but at least at the Balboa Park station, the interface between the BART and the MUNI remains shrouded in mystery, at least as far as the first time tourist is concerned.

The #23 bus really does go straight to the zoo entrance, and, at $4 for the whole family, is cheaper than the $6 the signs say it costs to park at the zoo for the day, but as we hop out of the bus right beside a huge parking lot full of people unloading babies and strollers and coolers from their shiny cars I realize that we are the only family in sight arriving at the zoo via public transportation. Our other bus-mates, all young people without the backpacks full of pretzels and baby wipes and cameras of the rest of us, look as though they are heading off to spin the cotton candy rather than eat it, to collect the tickets rather than to buy them.

I think about this later as we notice all the wonderful efforts to educate about conservation and habitat protection woven throughout the zoo exhibits - the signs at every napkin dispenser that say "napkins come from trees"; the signs on the benches that say "this bench was made from recycled aluminum." I'm happy to see all the signs, especially somehow the "napkins come from trees" which gets both kids talking, but I can't help but think of the lost opportunity of the #23 bus. If only 10 percent of those cars had been replaced by bus riders, think of the boon to biodiversity and habitat protection over the long term. What would it take to make that happen? A helpful sign where the BART meets the MUNI? A paragraph or two on the Zoo website?

I'm feeling a little glum about this, but later when I recount our day to Karen, she finds the silver lining.  All the infrastructure is in place - the miles of track, the fairly empty subway cars, those are the pieces that take time and capital to create, and there they are already, the seeds of possibility. With that already begun, paragraphs on websites and a clearer sign here and there should be child's play....once we find the collective will to take them on.

Day 3 — Los Altos

Distance traveled: 20 miles by car
CO2 produced: 3 kg
Pints of maple syrup distributed: 2
Baby/Kid gifts distributed: 2

The theme for today seems to be connection or reconnection, starting with a meeting with Carol Olson a program officer from the Morgan Family Foundation, whose support has enabled OCO to grow and expand this past year. While we've 'talked' with Carol by phone and email, this is the first time we get to meet her in person and see the Foundation's offices in Los Altos. Funders enable so much of our work, and so it feels good to be able to share our excitement and results (and questions and challenges) more informally and with more nuance and detail than a typical grant report allows. And it's nice to discover that the sense we've always had in our long-distance relationship that Carol is gracious and thoughtful turns out to be even more true in person.

Then it's back to Karen's house (which is already starting to feel like home to all of us) to throw tennis balls with Summer, Karen's joyful and  irrepressible yellow lab, eat lunch, and prepare for a meeting with two members of an organization called Hooked On Nature, which is part of a growing movement that some are calling No Child Left Inside. Convinced by evidence from all directions (health care, test results, child development) that plenty of unstructured time in nature is essential to the development of heathy people and a healthy society, Avery and Mary are trying to find ways to bring together groups across the Bay Area who are already engaged in this work, from city planners, to teachers, to pediatricians, and parents. Like climate change, this seems to be a 'hot' issue, one that almost everyone cares about and sees the importance of, and one that, in the end, can't be addressed as an isolated issue but instead forces us to look at our culture, at what we really value, at  what a 'good life' is, and at our commitment to future generations.

After a little bit of down in time in which various family members either paint their nails with very smelly and probably quite unhealthy 'kids" nail polish purchased at the San Francisco Zoo, iron rumpled clothing needed for tomorrow's presentation, or draft hurried
emails, we head off to the city of Mountain View for dinner with our friend Richard and his family. It's a good way to end the day, as the daylight slowly fades and the strings of lights in on their garden arbor sway in a gentle breeze. We laugh a lot, at the antics of the kids, and at Richard's funny stories about his neighbors, and drive home to our familiar beds in Karen's house in time for a good nights sleep.

Day 4 —

Distance traveled: 10 by car; 80 by train
CO2 produced: 1.5 Kg by car; approx 6Kg by train
Pints of maple syrup distributed: 2
Baby/Kid gifts distributed: 2

Day Four is our fullest day yet: a breakfast meeting in Palo Alto followed by a train ride to Berkeley where we volunteer for a few hours with our friend Jessica Prentice at her CSK, Three Stone Hearth. CSK stands for community supported kitchen. It's based on the same model as a CSA, but instead of baskets of vegetables, subscribers receive already cooked dishes made from the produce of local farms. We are put to work sticking labels on pans of fritata (summer squash and onion), cobbler (peach-berry), soup (chicken and vegan bean), and fermented drinks (lemon-hazelnut, Douglas fir, and hibiscus-rose hip).

Three Stone Hearth is set up as a worker owned cooperative and seems to really take advantage of working subscribers. By the time Phil and the kids sit down with the other volunteers for a lunch break, there are 28 people around the table. From our brief glimpse of it, the CSK seems to be thriving, (although, as Jessica says over her shoulder as she dashes between soup pot and cooler, "every week we are doing things a little bit differently as we get our systems set up.") No one knows what a sustainable world will look like, but amid the bustle and the laughter and the good smells at Three Stone Hearth it is not difficult to recognize some of the seeds of that future - seeds that are innovative, practical, and already operational.

While Phil and the girls eat lunch at the CSK I walk to another meeting at a coffee shop on a sunny Berkeley street corner, where we talk about schemes for amplifying the voices of those who are not traditionally turned to for solutions to climate change - especially people of color, women, and people from low income communities. No answers, but good food for thought, and rising excitement that, looked at in this way, climate change and culture change might be one and the same.

Then we hop back on the train south and arrive in Palo Alto just in time for a hurried dinner before we leave the kids with a sitter and a video and head off to lead a two-hour workshop: Four Capacities For Responding to Climate Change.

Our audience consists of about 45 people all very eager to talk about and grapple with the issue of climate change. Their energy is infectious, and even though it is the end of a long day, Phil and I find ourselves really engaged and have a great time. Unless you've experienced it, it may sound odd to hear it, but really sinking deep into the topic of climate change with a group of people can be a very positive experience. There's so much caring and passion and energy, just searching for an outlet, a place to act. It always leaves me convinced that if we could just collectively face this problem there would be no shortage of solutions.

At the end of the session, we pass out an evaluation sheet which asks, among other things: what are you taking away as you leave this workshop? I'll close Day Four's report with a few highlights.

  • A sense of community
  • More ways of talking about problems and solutions, more resolution to live the way I know I should
  • A need to act
  • Thinking about what more I can do
  • I intend to speak up more
  • I am more hopeful
  • I have renewed urgency and appreciation for expressing grief, anger, hope and vision

We're too keyed up to go to sleep when we get back to Karen's, which turns out to be a good thing as our many bags and suitcases have disgorged most of their contents, and we are resolved to be all packed up for an early start for Day Five, as we drive north, through San Francisco.

Day 5 — San Francisco to Point Reyes Station to Sebastapol to Santa Rosa by car

Pints of maple syrup distributed: 1
Baby/Kid gifts distributed: 2

We drag the kids out of bed long before they are ready and drive north thru San Francisco toward Marin County.  Our first stop north of the Golden Gate Bridge is Muir Woods, a patch of silent and majestic coast Redwoods that grows only miles outside of the noise and bustle of San Francisco itself.

The ten years scientists tell us we have to make deep cuts in CO2 emissions seem shorter than ever here in the presence of beings that have lived for 1500 years.  All our recent human drama, starting with our industrial revolution a few hundred years ago, is reflected just in the outermost layers of these giants.

After Muir Woods, we stop in Point Reyes National Park, right on top of the San Andreas fault line and the kids have fun “straddling” a continent with one foot on the North American Plate and one on the Pacific Plate.

Then we travel on for a meeting at the home of Tara Brown of the Hidden Leaf Foundation, the first funder to support Our Climate Ourselves.  While Tara’s son invites the girls into his domain of forest forts and rope swings we sip tea with Tara on her porch and talk about climate change as it relates to Hidden Leaf’s mission- promoting inner awareness practices to increase the effectiveness of social change movements.  Two themes emerge- the need to amplify our impact to influence larger numbers of people and – the need to bring forth the voices of people who are not traditional environmentalists. 

The central question, we agree, is how to maintain the depth of personal connection that we are able to foster in one-on-one interactions like workshops, while expanding the numbers of people we influence.  No answers, but it is fascinating to see how this question is rising to the surface not just in our work but as a theme in many of the “spirit in action” projects that Tara is connected with.  There is, it seems to us, an important paradox here – the sustainability revolution, as Dana called it, seems to require depth in terms of lasting inner change AND breadth, in terms of reaching across all groups and sectors of our society.

Day 6 — Santa Rosa to Sacramento to Red Bluff by car

Pints of maple syrup distributed: 1
Baby/Kid gifts distributed: 1

On day six, we drive east, through Sonoma and Napa Counties on our way to our friend (and former Donella Meadows Fellow) Ellen Wolfe’s home and office.  The roads are quiet and empty as we wind our way through the vineyard-covered hills but signs warning of congestion and other home signs in driveway proclaiming “No Winery Here!” suggest that this isn’t always the case.  After a quick lunch with Ellen, her family and her colleagues (an overlapping set since Ellen and her husband Rick work together in the consulting firm they’ve created, Resero and Rick’s son Alex works with them).  Ellen has invited 9 of her colleagues from the electric utility industry to an Our Climate Ourselves Presentation.  Besides being smaller than the Palo Alto Group, this group has a different “feel” from the start, and the further we get into the material the deeper my compassion is.  A system where the incentives are perverse is such a brutal place to live and work, and with the short term interests of electric utilities having them scrambling to make sure that California’s developing energy policy doesn’t “unfairly” burden their sector, we begin to see a picture of people numbed and overwhelmed by the challenges they are trying to navigate. 

What a difference it would make if the full costs of coal where internalized in this system.  Then all the creativity and good will of Ellen’s colleagues and the thousands like them across the country could be put to work addressing climate change rather than resisting the efforts of policy makers.  It becomes more clear than ever that this numbness they describe – while a natural defensive reaction to the pain of functioning within a system that is not serving the long-term good – is the condition that allows those perverse incentives to continue.  The group is eager to talk and share, and while Phil and I don’t try to offer any “easy answers” people seem to feel better for the chance to talk and when Ellen mentions as we are leaving that a few of them are thinking of starting up a women’s group within the industry to keep the conversation going I find myself hoping that they follow thru with the idea.  The difficult roles they fill seem likely to be easier with some mutual support. 

Day 7-10 — Red Bluff to Lassen to Arcata to Lincoln City, OR

After the Sacramento presentation we have some time off from meetings and workshops to explore parts of California and Oregon, and we pack in a lot, starting with the bubbling mud pits and sputtering geysers of Mount Lassen National Park.  It is a real treat to be able to meet up there with Paul Krafel the naturalist, writer and educator whose work I have admired for years.  He’s a natural teacher drawing the girl’s attention to features of the landscape and little mysteries along the trail.  As we walk we talk as well about his use of Donella Meadow’s writing with the 8th grade students he teaches and about the questions and choices facing his school as it has, after 10 years of existence, obtained its own site – a former ranch of several hundred acres.  After Lassen we drive West again to Redwoods National Forest for more encounters with stunning trees and to explore miles of the Northern California/ Southern Oregon coast.  The force and power of the Earth is more visible and present on the West coast than in the rolling hills and gentle rivers of Vermont.  On this trip we have seen the evidence of volcanoes, earthquakes and tsunamis.   We’ve seen giant waves thunder into rocky cliffs, and deep channels cut through mountains by the flow of little creeks.  With all the force in such display it is sobering to realize that it is this Earth, so huge, powerful and unstoppable that we are provoking as we tinker with the climate.

Day 11 – Lincoln City to Portland

As we pack up for our last full day of the trip the kids minds are on the fact that tomorrow we say good-bye for a month – with Phil, Jenna and Nora flying home to Hartland and me returning to the coast for a month-long training with Joanna Macy.  The thought of saying good-bye is hanging over us but we make the most of the day, driving slowly westward, stopping in downtown Portland for coffee with Donella Meadows Fellows Julia and Brooke, and then on to a pot-luck supper at the home of Dick and Jeanne Roy – founders of the Northwest Earth Institute. 

They’ve invited twenty or so people to their home and we have great conversation about everything from organic farming to voluntary simplicity to the practice of hope (neither optimism or pessimism but an orientation toward possibility) to leadership.  Almost everyone in the group has studied with Joanna Macy who has been an inspiration and mentor to the NWEI for years, and so it feels just right when at the end of the evening in the Roy’s backyard beneath the first stars in the night sky we dance the Elm Dance, the dance that Joanna has taught around the world, and the dance we danced each morning of the workshop she led at Cobb Hill.

Day 12

The alarm wakes us from sleep at an airport hotel at 4:45am, and we scramble to return the rental car (getting lost in the process), check Phil and the kids’ bags (long lines) and send them off toward home.  The girl’s, sleepy and hungry, are sad to say goodbye and I’m crying a little bit too as the three of them disappear into the throng of people taking off shoes and wristwatches and jackets and filing through the metal detectors.  I buy a cup of tea, and two post-cards, one for each daughter, and wait for my ride to thirty-days of I am not sure what.

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