This is not what I intended to write next. However, when I ran across the webcast the Ed Mazria did this past week, I have no option but to focus the rest of this on just that It only takes 30 minutes to watch, but you could learn how to save a planet.

Before you watch this, I will point out that the webcast was intended for student. Maybe Mazria has given up on the policy wonk type adults and realized that you can affect real change by addressing student. So, a musical intro. You really should watch the whole thing before you read my comments. Just click here.

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Now that you are back, let me note why I think that this is important. To begin with, I have never seen one person so clearly and directly outline the problem of global warming and provide such a clear cut, easily understood plan for how to deal with it.

There are those, even in the Green Party, who consider that ecological thinking is essentially a spiritual tree-hugging type experience, rather divorced from real life. If you paid close attention to Mazria, you will note that he never mentioned Eco Villages even once.

What he did do was to make it abundantly clear that it is absolutely essential to stop coal. I mean stop it dead in it's tracks. Just that. No more coal. Full Stop.

The second thing that is unique about this presentation is the fact that Marzia does not subscribe to the belief that this would be a major hit on the US Economy. Rather, he sees this as an opportunity for building our way out of the current recession.

Given these two fact. Given further the work that Jesse Johnson and the Mountain Party of West Virginia is going to eliminate the horribly destructive practice of mountain top removal related to coal mining, it is absolutely essential that Green Party candidates build one section of their campaign around this issue. Every candidate who does has an issue that they can use to attack the duopoly in any way that they want.

• We are in a recession. We can build our way out. We will anyway, so why not accoring to Architecture 2030?
• Current mining practices are terribly destructive to the environment. That should bring in the tree-huggers as well.
• The entire "global warming is a hoax" rhetoric is yet one more example of the way that corporate money is ruining politics and this country. So that issue fits in as well.

I think that this is imporant enough that we should start a grassroots movement around this video. Have a party, invite you neighbors to walk (not drive) over and watch it together and then ask each other a few questions:

• Why are our politicians not dealing with this since the solutions are so easily understood?
• What can we do in our own neighborhood I know of neighborhoods who have pooled their resouces to bring in solar electric service to entire blocks at a time.
• And while you are at it, get the to change their registration to the one party that will do something.

Here is another step. Whether or not we accomplish what Architecture 2030 shows that we need to do all depends on a series of local actions. This is not something that can be legislated from Washington. It will come when local communities start changing their building codes and permitting processes to make it happen. We need to raise the level of involvement in every community. It is great organizing issue. It will keep us going for a long time, working with people to make change happen. It means going to planning commission and city council meetings. But if it is doen right, it puts the Green Party right in the middle of building a new America. I can not think of a better place to be.

Coose your future.

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