Academic articles on OST - myths

Maya Negev maya.negev at gmail.com
Sun May 4 01:11:17 PDT 2008


Dear Brett,

Thank you for your inspiring letter.

I fully agree, and hope that in the future we can involve international
stakeholders in such process. for the meanwhile, I believe that involving
diverse stakeholders from within Israel (across cultures and professions),
will produce helpful guidelines for environmental education in the Israeli
context.

by the way, in israel we have a "sun heated water tanks law", which obliges
every new flat and house to include such tank and solar panels (since 1976,
and following an energy crisis in the country). according to the Hebbrew
wikipedia, 95% of households in Israel heat water with solar energy, which
stands for 4% of the national electricity consumption.

yours truly,
Maya.

On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 6:05 PM, Brett Barndt <barndtbrett at gmail.com> wrote:

> Maya
>
> this is a very very interesting project you are working on. Very
> important!
>
> In open space, or any other self-organizing process, you may consider
> inviting stakeholders and experts from way outside of Israel. The sad or
> happy reality is, our countries are now all tightly tightly connected to one
> ecosystem on the planet. The wider you can cast the circle, the greater will
> be the unexpected insights and outcomes that result from the process, and of
> course the greater the potential long-term impact. I speak specifically
> about a hot water project being piloted in Cairo amongst the urban poor.
> But, all of us suburban and urban super rich could also significantly reduce
> our carbon footprints by heating water through solar on our rooftops.
> Particularly in sunny places like Herzaliya and Natanya! Those Israelis can
> make a significant and fast impact fast by following the lead of their
> neighbors deep in the depths of medieval Cairo!
>
> I speak for example in America, the water crisis in Georgia is directly
> affecting the people in the Mountain States on the Interiour because Georgia
> wants to find ways, and in fact needs to find ways to get their water for
> 10M people who inauspiciously believed 20-30 yrs ago, that life in the south
> can be sustainable for millions of northerners at a standard that we had no
> trouble affording back then, when we 'mapped' out that plan collectively in
> our minds. In cynical circles, it is called "the great Georgia water grab!"
> (this is a play on words because in America in the 1800s there were many
> scandals described as "land grabs". Of course the whole US national
> formation myth was one giant 'land grab', but we don't discuss that too
> widely now since anyone who might listen is way marginalized at the moment).
>
>
> The same thing is happening to one of the Native American reservations,
> because the millions of (I might say somewhat short sighted or at least not
> very future orientated) Americans have decided to go live in Las Vegas, NV
> over the last 20 yrs. So, who is being dragged into these discussions??? The
> Navajo Nation or something like it (I only know this because the leader of a
> panel at at UN conference I attended a few weeks ago apologised for a
> speaker Chief from one of the Native American Nations, because he was called
> into 'emergency' water negotiations with the City of Las Vegas, NV.
> Emergency for whom? I for one resent that I was unable to hear this
> gentleman's insights into our world challenges from a Native American
> viewpoint, because of the water emergency of some amorphous people in Las
> Vegas, NV that I frankly don't know and don't want to know!
>
> For example, in some of the economic justice work I am doing, I want to
> invite people from Soweto, South Africa, or Favellas in Brazil, because
> these urban populations have self-organized new forms of social services and
> structures that a western educated American would not even dream up with our
> mindset and belief frames. Yet, our working families increasingly compete
> with and resemble families in the global south urban context. So, by
> bringing these people in who do not constitute in any way a normal view of a
> stakeholder, we radically alter the potential outcomes of the Open Space. I
> am vindicated in my thinking because Muhammad Yunus, who founded Grameen
> Bank and micro-credit lending in Bangladesh, is opening his first operation
> in the US in one of the urban working neighborhoods in NYC. He believes that
> Americans need the same opportunities the people in Bangladesh have taken to
> great effect, which of course I find very inspiring.
>
> Anyway, your project sounds so so amazing, and I am sure there is a great
> deal of work to do toward conscious sustainability for all of our
> lifestyles, but the conversation and definition of what constitutes a
> stakeholder is up to your imagination! You might want to look at the UN
> Development Pyramid frameworks about the interconnection between the wealthy
> countries and the global south, and the <$1 (EURO .66) day crowd. This you
> can get from The Earth Institute at Columbia Univ and
> www.stateoftheplanet.org. That crowd is just about equal to the number of
> people at the top with loads in the middle living on $2 and up as you can
> imagine.  Wealthy ones at the top constitute no more than 1B out of a
> population of circa 6.5B on the planet. I became critically aware of just
> who the 'stakeholders' are in my comfy cushy glam self-indulgent and
> atomized Western lifestyle, not to mention the ones who work in shops,
> delis, cleaning, taxis, buses, subways in NYC all on about $8 an hour! Can't
> even go into the workers who make stuff I buy in Asia which is so vast and
> unknown to me. 27M and counting of whom on the planet are living in actual
> real old fashioned slavery! (UN stats again).
>
> UN people say that natural resource competition is directly responsible
> for the genocidal conditions in the Sudan and Darfur, and all ethnic or
> racial strife narrative is created by the major 'stakeholders' and 'string
> pullers' to fuel that.
>
> So, we have a lot of learn about who we're living off of, but when we do,
> we are going to make a difference!
>
>
> Best regards,
> Brett
>
> It is hard not to tell a lie, when you don't know what the truth is.
> Peter Esterhazy
>
>

*
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