[Cross-posted at Red, Green, and Blue]For the last few months I’ve been keeping an eye on an excellent project called On Day Onewhich seeks to assemble the top user-submitted policy proposals for the next president and help set the agenda for our new fearless leader. Ever since I was approached by Mark Goldberg of OD/1 and UN Dispatch a few months back to participate in a ’salon’ to discuss climate change ideas at Grist, I’ve been hooked. The whole project epitomizes the kind of democratic transformations being ushered in by the new tools of web 2.0.
Now that the team of expert judges (including yours truly) have sorted through heaps of excellent submissions and narrowed them down to a manageable 81, the contest voting has opened up to the general public. And that’s where you come in. Head on over to OD/1, take a gander at the submissions and vote up the ones you like.
The idea with the most votes not only gets presented to the Obama transition team, but the winning submitter also wins a trip to Washington D.C. for January’s presidential inauguration.
Newsweek has published a multi-part project called Secrets of the 2008 Campaign, where some very interesting behind the scenes tidbits are being made public. One particular comment about global warming from Barack Obama caught my eye, because it showed me that he not only gets it (which I already knew), but that he is human. When he was preparing a televised debate during the Democratic primaries, Obama was recorded saying:
“I don’t consider this to be a good format for me, which makes me more cautious. I often find myself trapped by the questions and thinking to myself, ‘You know, this is a stupid question, but let me … answer it.’ So when Brian Williams is asking me about what’s a personal thing that you’ve done [that's green], and I say, you know, ‘Well, I planted a bunch of trees.’ And he says, ‘I’m talking about personal.’ What I’m thinking in my head is, ‘Well, the truth is, Brian, we can’t solve global warming because I f—ing changed light bulbs in my house. It’s because of something collective’.”
I couldn’t agree more. While important, changing your ‘f—ing light bulbs’ to the more energy efficient compact fluorescent ones is not going to solve global warming/climate change. Personal choice is part of what got us into this problem and collective action is what has to get us out.
On Wednesday night, Al Gore sat down with Jessy Tolkan, Executive Director for Energy Action Coalition and Power Vote for a webcast to raise awareness and get people to pledge that they will make “clean, just energy” a priority in the upcoming election. Watch it (30 mins.):
When asked about climate change at the vice-presidential debate, Gov. Sarah Palin said, “I don’t want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?”
Generally speaking, if we don’t know what the cause of a given problem is, but we know there is indeed a problem, how do we devise a strategy capable of adequately addressing it? Or, in the words of Gov. Palin, “…how are we going to get there to positively affect the impact” (whatever that means).
[Cross-posted at Red, Green, and Blue]For the last few months I’ve been keeping an eye on an excellent project called On Day One which seeks to assemble the top user-submitted policy proposals for the next president and help set the agenda for our new fearless leader. Ever since I was approached by Mark Goldberg of OD/1 and UN Dispatch a few months back to participate in a ’salon’ to discuss climate change ideas at Grist, I’ve been hooked. The whole project epitomizes the kind of democratic transformations being ushered in by the new tools of web 2.0.
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