Well, not quite. But this is pretty cool. The Climate Project is organising for Al Gore and climate scientists to present about global warming, based on Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth presentation. ACF are helping organise a training event in Sydney.

Priscilla points to the Be the full stop campaign site. I decided to give it a whirl.

Firstly, it has to be said using Google maps to select your location is a very, very time-consuming operation. The facility they provide for non-UK residents took about 2-3 minutes just to find my location. I also got my location wrong on the first attempt, and I had to completely delete my profile to update my location.

But the biggest usability issue is this one:

Firstly, I think there are probably many users of the site that wouldn’t get the subtle distinction between these two icons.

Secondly, this type of icon/widget is used on the Mac OS (and I suspect other sites/operating systems) to signify an avatar (an icon you can use to identify yourself - usually a photo or some kind of character icon). I initially missed that it was a question about gender and thought it provided the ability for me to upload an image.

Lastly, what do you need to know my gender for?

Anyways - it’s a good cause, so worth checking out despite these flaws - just be sure to get your location right first go

I meant to post this a while back, but remembered it today and wanted to pass it on.

Abe pointed to a podcast of Majora Carter’s talk at TED. She talks at 100 kms an hour, but packs an hour’s worth of impacting, pertinent and hard hitting commentary into her 30 minute slot.

She links the issues of urban renewal, environmental degredation, poverty and race and shows that there are solutions available if we think more about what we’re doing and how we do things.

I especially like the story she relays about meeting Al Gore.

Anyways, if ya got a few minutes check it out.

Update 20-Oct-2006 The video of the speech is also available on Google Video.

Greenpeace have launched Green my Apple [via Total Tactics].

I can’t find the reference, but I do remember calling Apple in Australia about their recycling plan - i.e. they didn’t have one. At the time I thought it would be a great action to set up, but, alas, I didn’t have the time to put it together. Good to see someone’s onto it.

(Update: It seems they’ve been hacked by some Apple-lover - all the forms are pre-filled with attacks on Greenpeace.)

Doc Searls points to and posts extracts from an interesting article I haven’t had a chance to read yet. But the following got me thinking:

In the end Americans wanted to be consumers. And they were willing to pay a great deal to be consumers. This is an economic trade off the hours that people have spent skiing and reading porn and watching television and mowing the lawn that they would otherwise have spent being involved in community and government, and feeling responsible for the consequences. However, the question is is that free time worth $16 dollars an hour ­ because that is what the ordinary person is paying for it. Watching an hour of Law and Order or 24 might be amusing. But is it worth $16/hour. The answer for a long time, for the majority of Americans, was “yes”.

Now it is becoming “no”.

It’s an interesting perspective - that our want for pursuing leisure activities is responsible for the decline in political benefits flowing to us. I often complain about the decisions of government or actions of corporations, but apart from my soap box (i.e. this weblog), what am I doing about it? Well - in the past I used the excuse “I don’t have time for that” - I was too busy with music, Xbox, DVDs, movies, socialising, smoking pot, drinking - many, many things that got in the way of civic involvement. (I did try a few things - volunteering for Amnesty International, and donating to them when that didn’t work - but not much in the grand scheme of things).

I think there are two additional factors at play when thinking about the lack of civic engagement - 1. most people don’t know how to engage (what options are available) and 2. we don’t feel that our actions will achieve anything. There’s probably more - any thoughts?

I don’t agree that the answer is now becoming “no” - I think that some people are wanting to engage in the process more, though I don’t think it’s a majority. Perhaps it’s those other two factors stopping many folks from jumping into the civic process when they get a “bee in their bonnet” about something (be it WorkChoices, refugees, the war on Iraq, or whatever issue someone is passionate about).

Certainly, back when I was thinking about what I could do, I didn’t feel I had many options - working for an NGO was one of them (which I’m now doing). And if it wasn’t for my job, I don’t know how much I’d really be doing - I feel very fortunate to be in a position where my “day job” is (hopefully) working towards a better future. If I wasn’t here, what would I be doing? I honestly don’t know…

The Global Rich List - puts things in perspective.

Apparently I’m the 213,582,609 richest person in the world - that is in the top 3.55%.

(I used xe.com to work out my annual income in USD)

At work I’ve learnt beyond a shadow of a doubt that global warming is real and societally we need to change the way we generate electricity. Australia is the largest greenhouse gas emitter per-capita, but overall our impact is minimal on the global scale.

The U.S. is the biggest emitter of the greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. TXU, Texas’ largest electricity provider, is planning 11 new coal-fired power stations in the coming months, which will emit 78 million tons of carbon dioxide. (For comparison, Australia has around 32 coal-fired power stations - this map shows some of them.)

U.S. based Environmental Defense is running an email campaign urging the head of TXU to not build the coal-fired power stations.

This decision will impact all of us - not just Texans - so it’d be great if you could consider sending an email, as a concerned global citizen, to TXU.

Thanks…

No doubt blocked in China, Tibet Online TV has presentations by the Dalai Lama, what appears to be video of the Tibetan government in exile and other videos related to Tibet.

The Democrats have released the results of their latest youth survey, reported by AAP.

It’s interesting that water in the Murray, refugee detention and global warming are high on the mind of young people. I knew that trust in the mainstream media was low, but the last two sentences even had me surprised:

The survey also uncovered an overwhelming distrust of politicians among Australia’s youth, with only four per cent saying they trusted politicians.

However, politicians beat the media, which came in last in the trustworthy stakes, with a paltry three per cent of the vote.

What I think is the warning bell for media companies is that this is their future audience speaking. Perhaps they think they can just keep putting out entertainment masquerading as news and get away with it. But with the advance of social media and citizen journalism, maybe they need to think again…

Oikos - Climate change: the jury is still out?!:

Now imagine you’re concerned about climate change. You want to find out more and you want to do your bit. You read the newspaper and notice that the two scientists interviewed disagree on whether it’s happening and how bad it will be. You watch the news and notice the politicians disagree on whether it’s happening and what if anything to do about it. You go to dinner with your friends and one of them makes some interesting arguments about Antarctica getting snowier and environmental worries always being there and never amounting to anything. You weigh up the information you have and - well, the debate.

An interesting piece on how confusion about global warming is sown in the greater public.