Matthew Savage's Blog

In Memory of my sister, Jessica Brigida Stevens.

When my sister died last summer suddenly, I was struck by the most amazing realization. She had lived in Alaska with her family, my brother lives in Sydney, Australia with his family, and the rest of the family lives here in San Francisco. It seemed ridiculous to be so spread out as a family. How could the most important people in your life be the ones that you saw the least?

Asian cultures view the family differently. It is not uncommon to support your parents in China, for example. Actually, many people don’t have a choice. But, in our western culture with everything at our fingertips and supposedly little free time, how did we separate so much from our families and friends?

Everything can change in an instant. I know that when I came into close proximity with death, my priorities changed. My whole outlook changed, actually. I wanted to be close to family and friends. I wanted to get more involved in the community and build something special right where I lived.

If you are wanting to see change in the world, you need to become more proactive. Become a leader and lead by example.

I encourage everyone to get informed. Do lots of reading about the issues and try to get a good picture of what’s going on in the world. Many of us are solely dependent on media to hype up the latest trends and news. This is why we are in the “Green” revolution and feeling overwhemed with it all.

We need to read on our own and become informed citizens. Become an inspiring local organizer and leader. Get involved in your local communities to work on things that you feel are important. Make it your job to be as educated as you can. Don’t be complacent.

This post was authored by my friend, Lee Hwang.

chezpanissefoundation.org

Last week, I attended a lively panel discussion in San Francisco titled “How We Eat and the Slow Food Nation.” The panel featured Alice Waters, one of the most famous chefs in America and founder of the Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California. Her talk highlighted the ways in which we can strengthen and revitalize our sense of community through a more mindful approach to food. She recounted that when she was a teenager in the 1960s, she visited France and observed that the people there visited the market every morning, buying only the freshest ingredients available that day. No processed food, no food shipped from far away. She noticed how food connected family and friends together in the “rituals of the table,” making life so much more enjoyable and vibrant. Thus inspired, she returned to America with a mission: to bring back that same sense of community, enlivened through delicious food bought directly from farmers and cooked with an emphasis on letting the simple, natural flavors predominate. Eventually, this approach became known as California cuisine, and history was made.

These days, Alice is promoting edible education in the schools. Her program, called the “Edible Schoolyard,” provides urban schoolchildren with a hands-on, concrete learning experience in growing their own organic food and cooking it in a kitchen classroom. In the process, the kids learn about ecology, biology, and nutrition, while also enjoying the tangible fruits of their own labors. As described on the “Edible Schoolyard” website, the program’s mission is two-fold:

Children learn about the connection between what they eat and where it comes from, with the goal of fostering environmental stewardship and revolutionizing the school lunch program.

In this way, not only do kids learn important lessons about taking care of themselves and the larger world through a more direct experience of food, but they also eat more nutritiously. Sounds like a win-win to me!

If edible education sounds like a good idea to you, I urge you to take action. Discuss this idea with others in your community and persuade your local school to establish its own “Edible Schoolyard.” The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Start now and you can make a difference, too!

The evolution of social networking sites show they develop new functionalities.

1. First generation sites only let users manage friends’ lists. There are mainly flat, single entry lists by schools or classes you attended. Examples: Copainsdavant (FR), Classmates.com
2. Second generation sites can be seen as the first social networks. They are centered around an individual and his friends, and friends of friends : they follow the 6 degrees rule. Examples: LinkedIn (US), Viadeo (FR), Xing (G).
3. Third generation sites could represent the first social media sites. They allow multi-dimensional connections, real conversations between users, in compliance with the social graph theory *. Examples: Myspace (US), Facebook (US), Bebo (UK).
   
4. Fourth generation sites are what I am proposing already exist and will flourish in the future. They would represent social media sites that facilitate face-to-face meetings. They allow people to come together off-line around common interests, building real communities and friends in the real world. Examples: Meetup.com (US), Match.com (US).

We are already seeing a huge amount of green social network sites that are flooding the market place. I think that we are already maxxed-out on these sites. Most of my friends use Facebook and LinkedIn, but are unwilling to belong to any more social networks.

Unless…the rules change. The climate is right, we just need the right solution that might integrate into these pre-existing sites. Why reinvent the wheel?

There is still a huge opportunity here to provide some real value to people through the internet. People are craving to be heard and to interact with people off the computer. This is not regression, but progress facilitated by technology.

Sources: faberNovel analyses, Stanley Milgram (1967) Facebook; 03.10.2007 – Facebook study;
FaberNovel Consulting.

* As exposed by Mark Zuckerburg (US).

I think the word “Green” should just be replaced with “Community” – that is what is lacking the most.

Maybe we needed to wake up to how much damage we are doing to our surroundings, but are any of us really that surprised? We have been over-worked and have not invested properly in family life, nor our local communities. If we prioritized theses things, given an example by the right leaders, we might be able to start from the bottom up. Nobody has taken the leadership reigns in this country to show us values beyond mindless consumerism and the hunt for wealth.

Talk to the guy in the check-out line. Reach out to someone. Start small and build up confidence to lead by example in your local area. Do all you can to audit your ecological footprint [http://www.myfootprint.org/en/], but don’t feel you need to make it a career unless you have some true value to bring to the table.

Check out BetterTogether.org, which was founded by Robert Putnam “calling for a nationwide campaign to redirect a downward spiral of civic apathy. Warning that the national stockpile of “social capital” – our reserve of personal bonds and fellowship – is seriously depleted, the report outlined the framework for sustained, broad-based social change to restore America’s civic virtue.”

So you may be wondering: what can I do to make a difference to the planet? (See below for the 5 THINGS THAT YOU CAN DO).

Well, besides changing your lightbulbs, consciously using less water and energy, buying a hybrid or installing solar power on your roof, there is something called Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) that could prove to be very promising for some areas. The problem is, not many people know about it. The two major sources of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions are from cars and buildings. Community Choice would focus on the buildings part.

Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) is a system that was made into law in the states of Massachusetts, Ohio, New Jersey, Rhode Island and California (AB 117) which allows cities and counties to aggregate the buying power of individual customers within a defined jurisdiction in order to secure alternative energy supply contracts.

Essentially, cities get together and form what’s known as a Joint Powers Authority (JPA) to buy renewable energy mostly from wind, solar, geothermal and biomass and your local utility would still transmit the power and maintain the lines. The best of both worlds, right? Therefore, you would still get your same utility bill, although the power would come from renewable energy instead of coal, natural gas and other non-renewable sources.

Marin County, CA – one of the most liberal and wealthiest counties in the nation – is looking at CCA in depth, calling it Marin Clean Energy (MCE) [www.marincleanenergy.info]. This could be a perfect test bed for CCA and serve as a successful example for other counties and cities in the five eligible states. There are successful models of CCA already in place in various counties and cities across the nation, with about 1 million people receiving their power this way already.

That’s not to say that only the wealthy could afford CCA. The prices for CCA would be comparable to the prices we pay currently, maybe slightly higher at first, but as the cost of natural gas and other non-renewable sources goes up, the fixed price of fuel that renewable energy affords will be stable and much cheaper than most alternatives in the long run. What’s more, it would encourage money to stay more in the local economies and would promote renewable-based businesses.

Marketing gurus know that the “It’s good for planet” ticket only gets you so far. Actually, money is the bottom line for mass adoption of almost any new product, service or structural change. It has to be as good or better than the current option. Luckily, CCA achieves both affordability and eco-friendliness.

The MCE plan could reduce CO2 emissions by 70,000 tons per year by 2010 and 350,000 tons by 2019! Compared to other reduction efforts like encouraging community car-sharing and improvements to public transportation, this would be THE single most important effort for a rapid reduction of GHG emissions in our local communties.

Time is of the essence. Most of our local energy utilities simply cannot meet their renewable energy goals or Renewable Production Standards (RPS) as quickly as we could under CCA. It is up to us to tell everyone we know. We must act now!

5 THINGS THAT YOU CAN DO:

1. GET INFORMED. If you live in Marin or in any of the other proposed CCA areas, find out when there is a presentation in your town or city. Sign up for the mailing list. If there is not an upcoming event, start one!

2. SPREAD THE WORD. Tell everyone that you know about CCA. Get excited and spread the enthusiasm to others!

3. GET INVOLVED. The most important step of all. Write or call your city council members or county supervisor to tell them that you support this initiative. This is the single most important thing you can do because they will vote on your behalf.

4. START ONE. If there is no CCA planned for your community and you are located within one of the five eligible states (Massachusetts, Ohio, New Jersey, Rhode Island and California), call your city council or mayor and get as many people as you know to do the same to show interest for Community Choice Aggregation.

5. FORM A COMMUNITY ACTION GROUP. Use meetup.com to meet people in your local area with common interests. The keys to forming a group are consistency and small group size. Download our action pack from cleanroots.com for help starting a group and for other ideas to work on in your local community.

California Communities currently considering CCA:

• Marin County, Marin Clean Energy (MCE)
• San Joaquin Valley CCA formed; Contract finalized
• San Francisco CCA business plan complete
• Oakland
• Berkeley
• Emeryville
• Chula Vista drafting CCA business plan
• West Hollywood
• Beverly Hills
• Pleasanton
• San Luis Obispo
• Davis actively considering CCA

More detailed feasibility studies can be found on the Local Government Commission website [http://www.lgc.org/cca/].