Ideas for 2009, for greening Nevada County?

Until APPLE-NC or the not-yet-online Community Congress get an online discussion space, feel free to jot down ideas for making Nevada County (or city, or...) more sustainable in the comments below.

How to reach beyond the core group?

• Do "market research" - ask interested people who aren't part of the core group for their opinions as to what you should do, to reach others. And listen.


• Recognize that, to the extent that you convey to the public that joining your movement entails joining a different cultural "tribe" (and internalizing its other beliefs and values), the public will stay away. Tribal identification is powerful, primal stuff.


• Think about how innovations spread, e.g.:
  "Solar Cookers International (SCI) found that, in every village they went into, it was the same story: there were a few "hippies" among the inhabitants who would try anything new; they might be given a free cooker to test. The relatively rich among the inhabitants looked on disdainfully, pretending to ignore the whole thing; but if the cookers worked, the rich would usually buy them. The rest of the villagers only watched the rich. When these village elite began using the cookers, the rest of the village followed suit."
  


• ?

StepItUp 2007 Nevada County brainstorming

Today in Grass Valley (and 1299 other locales) citizens attended a Step It Up 2007 "things you can do to fight global warming" event. Afterwards a group discussion was held, for brainstorming ideas.

Idea: let the brainstorming happen online too, not just at events.

Until there's a better spot on the web - at apple-nc.org or at powerup-nc.org - here's a spot for our ideas.

some to start:

• Nevada County Electric Vehicle Society; people interested in getting an EV would know who to contact, to get an owner's perspective


• "My God is a Treehugger" bumperstickers
• "my next car will be electric" bumperstickers (with a url)
• College and university course registration forms should include an "I'm interested in carpooling" checkbox; software could identify other students that live nearby and are also interested (and have a similar schedule?)
• "Express" bus service between Grass Valley and Nevada City, that takes the freeway
  (and stops only at offramps; see Monbiot's column making this suggestion)
• Maidu blessings that include a moment of silence for our ancestors, should also include a moment of silence for our descendants.
  
• ..."Bulk Item Garbage Pickup" Week, where all manner of manna is left streetside for our perusal and reusal before it gets scooped into dumptrucks and carted to the magical land of 'Away'.
  (in Portland (Maine), from Jokul at The Oil Drum)
  
• (more to come)
  

please add yours in the comments

Culture change, Innovation Diffusion and the Amoeba metaphor

Highly recommended: the "Amoeba chapter" (PDF or HTML; overview) from Alan AtKisson's 1999 book Believing Cassandra: An Optimist Looks at a Pessimist's World.

"Whenever I think about cultural change, I think of the Amoeba."
- Dick Roy

"... What changed? How did Palo Alto go from "S-Word" to S-Champion? "The first thing," said Julie, "was getting the right people on board." She started talking about Innovators with new ideas, and Change Agents who are good at spreading ideas, and finding Transformers who help legitimate the ideas in the eyes of the mainstream -- all of which sounded quite familiar. And then she put up a diagram to explain this strategy: The Amoeba of Cultural Change."

"When you are informed by Innovation Diffusion Theory, you understand -- in practical as well as theoretical terms -- what it takes to move an idea from zero to broad acceptance."

"if you try to interest the apathetic, or convert the opposition, you are in for frustration and perhaps failure. But if you quietly attract the curious and the open-minded, and those hungry for something that addresses a nagging worry they have, you will start building critical mass...."

Miscellaneous suggestions for local action

On Energy Bulletin, a list of actions - "Helping cities, towns and municipalities adapt to peak oil: things you can do on the local level"
(On Energy BUlletin there's no place to comment; article was originally posted by Peak Progress here on MySpace, but you need to join MySpace to comment on it there.)

An Oil Drum commenter summarized the list:
* Change school curriculum for High schoolers in grades 9 - 12 to prepare for a fast changing world
* Create awareness campaigns and encourage homeowners to buy products and services from local companies
* Create "food preparation, storage and nutrition" classes for citizens
* Expand business and residential composting programs
* Mandate energy efficiency inspections for homes and buildings
* Assess local food production abilities
* Encourage neighborhood grown food swaps
* Foster neighborhood food swaps based on produce grown within the city.
* Create program for sustainable year round water usage for urban farming
* Create or expand neighborhood introduction programs
* Continue to encourage use of public transportation, biking, walking, and carpooling
* Foster neighborhood co-op owned fueling stations
* Offer "Earth Shift" support groups
* Create "Wisdom of the Elders" program
* Create a re-use storage program


Is Guy Dauncey's list online?
(I'm guessing not, since it's the core of his "101 solutions" book )

What do you think of these ideas?
(along with Marston's list from Power Palooza)
Are there other lists?

Solar farm sites?

A suggestion -

"the Grass Valley Water Treatment plant...would be a great place for a solar farm-- sunny, publicly owned, and already protected by high fences. If the city can't be pursuaded to invest in such a project, perhaps the surrounding neighborhood would be willing to help finance this; several of us would like to get solar panels on our houses but this area is too heavily shaded."

What would it take and who would you talk to, to suggest this?

(this being GV's drinking water plant, not the sewage treatment plant.)

Power-Palooza ideas?

Please add yours as a comment here.

Transportation ideas

How about a North San Juan to Nevada City bus or rideshare - there's no reason everybody should have to traverse that common stretch of 49 in separate vehicles.
Maybe have the pick-up site be the library, so people can use their 'waiting' time productively; could someday have Gem golf-cart-cars available for rent, for running errands in town.

Gold Country Stage bus schedules (in PDF format); more info here.
(buses don't just run around town; they'll take you to
Penn Valley, Auburn, and (Tuesdays only) to North San Juan.)


Your ideas?

What have you done since you saw A.I.T.?

"the path to a solution lies through changing the minds of the American people. Not just on the facts -- they're almost there on the facts -- but in the sense of urgency..."*

And people do come out of the theater raring to go, wanting to do anything and everything, as soon as possible. (Roger Ebert: "I did a funny thing when I came home after seeing 'An Inconvenient Truth.' I went around the house turning off the lights.")

What have you done since you saw An Inconvenient Truth?

What do you want to do, and what would make it easier for you to do it?

How to get people to see An Inconvenient Truth?

Lincoln said in the darkest days of America's darkest passage: "We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country."*

Lots of people don't want to see the film; some don't even want to go if they're offered free passes. How do we reach them?

Once they see it, some shift straight into "it's hopeless" despair; how do we reach them?

Energy co-op ideas?

At Brad's request ( in comment here; followed by his energy co-op ideas), here's a post soliciting ideas for the energy co-op.

Got some? Post them in comments here.

(FYI, people don't have to register with Blogger to comment; where the comment form asks for your Identity, you can just click on "other" and give the name you wish to be known by.)

And Brad, I love the Pelton Wheel idea! I'm wondering though, how would it work on a creek whose level varied as much as Deer Creek's does?

What's the most important thing we could be doing?

(and why aren't we doing it?)

It's worth taking the time to weigh priorities.

Inconvenient truth - what if you live outside of town?

At the end of An Inconvenient Truth, many "what you can do" options scroll by (and readers are directed to the A.I.T. website, where they're presented online).

But - taking a citizens-of-Nevada-County perspective - what about those of us who aren't in town, who live in Alta Sierra or Cascade Shores or Lake of the Pines or Lake Wildwood, or have a 5 or 10 or 20 acre spread some distance from town?

What actions could you take? What support from your community and/or government would make it easier for you to take them?

Previously...

Previous brainstorms have been posted at http://powerupnc.blogspot.com.