Neighborhood Solar-Energy Co-ops: Seeds for a livable future
Dear friends,
If we are to succeed in our effort to heal our wounded Mother Earth from the effects of global scorching, there are two complementary things we need to do:
We need to dissolve the top-down pyramidal power of the Carbon Pharaohs, and we need to bring into full being a new economy, a new society -- based on renewable energy, loving care for the web of life, and joyful celebration of YyyyHhhhWwwwHhhh – the Interbreathing Spirit of the world.
I have written recently about strong challenges to the Carbon Pharaohs, including the March for a Clean Energy Revolution that will take place in Philadelphia on July 24, the day before the Democratic National Convention. We at The Shalom Center have been actively engaged in organizing for the Faith Contingent of that March.
Today I want to share with you the work The Shalom Center has been doing to create the alternative -- to embody the future we imagine in the actual present. And we welcome you into that work as well – both by assisting our efforts and by undertaking your own, in your own communities.
We are pursuing the creation of neighborhood solar-energy co-ops.
We decided to pursue this work for several reasons:
1. What made the sit-in and Freedom Ride movements such a powerful form of social action is that they did not begin with seeking new laws or by attacking desegregated businesses. They began by direct nonviolent action: “We want public places to be racially integrated. So here we are, integrating these places. You will have to decide what to do with us: arrest us, beat us and kill us, or change your ways.”
That way of embodying the future in the present created great waves of social change.
What, we asked, would it mean to do that in the face of the climate crisis? If we want a world of renewable energy, then we must actually create the pieces of that world. As the sit-ins began with specific places, and with clusters of people, not only lonely individuals, so must we.
2. That meant neighborhoods. Neighbors could work together to create