Localization, Sufficiency, Resilience
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BALE (Building A Local Economy) sees its work, along with many other inspiring collaborators, as building new resilient models grounded in a new story of how we live on the Earth. We know we have so much to learn, and seeing that so much creativity is awakening in this time, we focus on such things as gratitude, conscious living and valuing what is important to the human spirit (which we know is not money… and not scarcity). Deep change awareness, grieving a broken world, facing our traumas, and being engaged in community with hands-on solutions.
Reservation for Sept. 20 Program HERE Reservation for Oct. 4 Program HERE
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Video link to all past programs (available about two weeks after live program) HERE
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Hoodwinked in the Greenwashed Mountains
Why Vermont Gets Climate Action Wrong
In the past decade, we have seen a massive increase in activism to tackle the climate crisis. Indigenous Peoples’ resistance to destructive industrial projects – from stopping oil and gas pipelines to blocking mega-dams, has been on the rise world-wide. Young people have mobilized against the inaction of governments and farmers have rallied to stop policies that favor polluting corporations. More than ever before, the center-of-gravity of the climate movements have shifted to a climate justice narrative – where we do not distinguish between the global war on biodiversity waged by corporate greed and the wars waged against the cultures, cosmologies, communities and bodies of oppressed peoples world-wide.
The same is true here in Vermont, where false solutions are finally coming under grassroots scrutiny. A climate justice framework does not reduce the climate crisis to a puzzle simply focused on counting carbon. Grassroots, community-led movements around the world look across the economy – at the exploitation of land, labor and living systems, and not just those here in Vermont. We are all part of one Earth and we cannot create systems that exploit peoples and lands far away in order to benefit our lifestyles. That is the definition of a supremacist, colonized mind… and it must cease.
Regrettably, Vermont’s actions, so far, fail the essential climate justice framework and must be challenged. This series of a dozen programs over the next five months will confront the greenwashing and false solutions that have been brought forward (some even enacted into law), so that we can begin to shift the public’s awareness of what is being done in their name. Vermont citizens have been hoodwinked and that, too, must stop.
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Renewable Natural Gas: A Greenwashed Poster Child
Wed., Sept. 20 at 7 PM, BALE Commons, South Royalton
The fossil fuel industry is pushing hard worldwide for incentives for “renewable natural gas” (RNG) and it is having success in Vermont, most recently with this past year’s Affordable Heat Act. Find out why incentives for RNG will serve to continue the burning of fracked gas in Vermont, while frontline communities within and outside the state suffer from degraded air and water quality. Former BALE board member Stuart Blood will examine why this greenwashing scheme is worse than a dead end.
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Why Nuclear Power is Still the Wrong Answer
Wed., Oct. 4 at 7 PM, BALE Commons, South Royalton
Brian Tokar Reservation HERE
While proponents insist that nuclear power, as a form of “carbon-free” energy, is a necessary part of the climate solution, their assertions are based on the same mythical claims that have sustained the nuclear industry for over 65 years. Nuclear power is costly, inherently hazardous and not truly carbon neutral. It is intrinsically tied to the production of nuclear weapons. We will examine the myths and realities of nuclear power and why they will never be part of a just and sustainable climate solution. Brian Tokar is an author, educator and a long-time faculty and board member of the Institute for Social Ecology.
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