This idea may be moot after all the forced evictions of the Occupations from public spaces but I thought I’d share it anyway.

I’ve visited the Occupations in Wall Street, Boston, and Providence, RI.  Every time I go to one of them, I try to connect with somebody about making the Occupation green with, as yet, little success.  In New York, I saw the greywater treatment system Mobile Research Labs set up and talked to a couple of people about using some simple solar techniques.  In Boston, I’ve tried to connect the winterization team with the student Energy Clubs at some of the local colleges and universities and alerted my own network of solar enthusiasts to Occupy Boston’s  efforts.  I’ve also tried to do the same by contacting OWS’s Sustainability Group.  In Providence, I talked with the only occupier I saw up and around early on a Sunday morning.  He was picking up trash around the park and was disappointed that the group hadn’t organized themselves enough to do recycling.  I gave him my card and my elevator pitch for a green occupation and he said he’d pass it on.

I look at the Occupations and see economic refugee camps and a possible test-bed for emergency response and sustainable economic development around the world.  Some may say that’s crazy but the links are there if you look.

The Climate CoLab is part of MIT’s Center for Collective Intelligence.

In both 2010 and 2011, the primary activities have been a pair of online contests, where teams of community members are invited to propose actions to key aspects of climate change.

The 2011 contest poses the question:

How should the 21st century economy evolve bearing in mind the risks of climate change?

In the initial stages of a contest, teams develop proposals on what should be done. Expert judges assess and select finalists among these proposals.

In the final round, Climate CoLab members are invited to vote. Winners are chosen based on voting and on a second review by the judges. A group of policy makers are briefed on the winning proposals.

On the national level, my proposal made the final cut:

How to Change US Energy in One Growing Season

http://climatecolab.org/web/gu…

You can vote for it or other proposals in the contest until November 15 at the URLs above.  Please take a look.

This weekend, the Right to the City ( http://www.righttothecity.org/ ) is having their annual conference in Boston, being hosted by MassUniting ( http://massuniting.org/ ) and City Life/Vida Urbana ( http://clvu.org/ ).  You can read about it at http://thephoenix.com/boston/n…

Right to the City (RTTC) emerged in 2007 as a unified response to gentrification and a call to halt the displacement of low-income people, LGBTQ, and youths of color from their historic urban neighborhoods. We are a national alliance of racial, economic and environmental justice organizations.

The Boston area seems to be one of the few in the country where homeowners have been (somewhat) successfully fighting back against the banks’ foreclosures and evictions.  They have been successful because they have organized and stood up for their rights together.

My visits to the Occupy Boston site have confirmed that connections have been made between Right to the City, MassUniting, and City Life/Vida Urbana.  I expect some of the occupiers downtown will be participating in eviction blockades out in the neighborhoods.  I also expect that organizers from across the country will be taking back effective tactics and strategies to save peoples’ homes from the chicanery of such banks as Bank of America.

We need more organized solidarity like this to expand the effects of each of our separate groups.

The Conference for a Constitutional Convention at Harvard Law School on September 24 and 25 was supposed to be an opportunity for the Left and Right to talk together about the possibility of ending our broken political system through a discussion of a new Constitutional Convention.  Lawrence Lessig of Rootstrikers (http://www.rootstrikers.org/), represented the Left and Mark Meckler of the Tea Party Patriots (http://www.teapartypatriots.org) represented the Right.

From my point of view, the conference wasn’t really the advertised meeting of the Left and the Right.  Lessig himself was a Reagan delegate to the Republican Convention back in the day;  and although there was a good bit of representation from the Tea Party Patriot group, there was nobody there explicitly from MoveOn or anything really  further left than the ADA wing of the Democratic Party, with the exception of a couple of folks from the Revolutionary Communists who were hawking their Constitution For The New Socialist Republic In North America (pdf alert:  http://revcom.us/socialistconstitution/SocialistConstitution-en.pdf).  It did, however, reveal a subculture that has been working towards a Constitutional Convention for decades.

Solar water disinfection

http://www.sodis.ch/index_EN

A two liter plastic bottle can be made into a water treatment system simply by filling it with contaminated water and exposing it to the sun.  Sodis is an organization that promotes this technology around the world.  

The disinfection process can be speeded by turning aluminized mylar snack food bags inside out and making them into reflectors as two young students in Belo Horizonte, Brazil discovered:  http://calais.phase2technology…

Solar bottle bulbs for daylighting

http://www.elliottlemenager.co…

In 2002, during a long electrical shortage, at Uberaba, São Paulo, Brasil, Mr Alfredo Moser discovered a way to gather sun light in the house through plastic bottles hanging from the roof. First shown at the Globo Reporter in the 25th May 2007.

Alfredo Moser was pressed by a scarce electricity substitution and found out that he could light his house with a bottle of water filled with water and a protection cap made of camera film.

The bottle is just refracting sunlight very effectively and produces an equivalent light power compared to a 50/60W lamp. In a rainy day, even without much light and direct sun, one still have some light. Scientist have now visited Moser and are looking into ways to take this concept to maximize its potential.