environment
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Visually representing human rights violations to build awareness

The Lebanese Greenpeace office mapped environmental violations in order to educate the Lebanese population about the toxic industrial waste problem along the entire coast of the country.

Using technology to share information on environmental hazards

Environmental Defense created www.scorecard.org in 1998 to inform people about the level of pollution in their area and to encourage them to lobby the offending industries and their elected representatives to put a stop to it.

Distributing air quality testing equipment to community members to promote environmental justice

Since 1995, many communities across the United States have begun or joined “Bucket Brigades,” programs that instruct communities near industrial polluters how to build and use simple air monitoring devices, or “buckets.”  In the absence of strong environmental laws, standards, or environmental enforcement bodies, buckets give communities the means to independently monitor the air quality of their neighborhoods and provide them with the evidence to affect environmental and industrial policy change.

Blog: Four leverage points on the money

Philippe Duhamel's picture
Posted May 18th, 2008 by Philippe Duhamel
LeveragePhoto cc: macca.

 

Do you feel the Earth is getting trashed faster than we seem to be able to save it? Do you sometimes share in the despair that our dependance on Big Oil & SUV's — with their attendant wars, food to ethanol follies, and other tar sands insanities — will bring down civilization faster than the ice caps and Greenland are melting?

 

Petroleum, mining and other corporate interests are in a head-on collision against local, land-based cultures, in a conflict so deep the whole world is its battlefield. Solutions based on morality, human values, respect for nature, and sheer common sense appear more inaccessible now than ever.

 

It's a battle of two worlds, simply said. A global clash: Earth and living creatures on one side, Cash on the other.

 

Well, here's how leverage works:

 

1. Find a place to stand (the support base, also called the fulcrum, or pivot);

 

2. Find a lever (a long enough stick);

 

3. Locate the pressure point (where you stick the lever);

 

4. Work like hell from your end of the stick;

 

5. Move the world (...thanks Archimedes!)

 

Because it funds and underwrites all large-scale projects, when you want to save some corner of the planet, you may find yourself in need of moving the world of Finance. That's when knowing about the following four leverage points could come in handy.