7gen Bloc

help me guys - I live or is it work or is it play in this 7th Gen world of multi-leveling-happenings that both hum in the present and mold in the future, and I want the hum to leak out into the world so others can grab a moment and carry it out into their moments until we all reach that one moment where we are... ...not sure, haven't been there yet... ...and so I think let's make the hum buzz strong on this blog, And, the 7th Geners within the hum are still a bit blog-shy, probably still listening to their 6th grade English teacher flogging them for thinking outside of

Last Thursday Andy Grossman Executive Director of Wal-Mart Watch headed up from Washington DC, the center of what some people think of as the political universe, to our headquarters in Burlington, Vermont, which we we like to think of as the center of another universe altogether. After writing up my visit with Lee Scott, Wal-Mart CEO, in the last issue of the Non-Toxic Times, it was like holding on to the other end of a long metaphorical branch.

The office is now quite as all have shifted their minds from here to there. There, the great and glorious weekend where we are now allowed to do time as we-please. And this weekend we get one-free-paid-day where we can again do time as we-please...funny how we all just do the weeks and then the weekends as if that is some profound pattern leading us Somewhere.

Treehugger comes to our corner of the planet for an adventure in the far northern hinterlands of Vermont. Come with us as we break free of the office box to journey among giant puppets and contemplate how to move human nature to the next level.

Friday we convened a group of leading Vermont businesses, NGO’s, and politicians to explore new visions and possibilities for accelerating the process of creating a more sustainable future for our state. We talked a bit about the Earth Charter and about connecting our work in some way to the template for a healthier society it provides. We discussed how we can generate new patterns for how we work together, think about the future, and engage the public.

There is most excellent news from the hallowed halls of Congress this morning: The Pallone-Solis Toxic Right-to-Know Amendment was passed by the House of Representatives yesterday by a vote of 231 to 187. The amendment to the Interior Appropriations bill prevents the EPA from spending so much as one thin dime on enacting changes that would dramatically reduce the effectiveness of the Toxic Release Inventory.

It’s the end of a great week. We had dinner Wednesday night with the Treehugger team who joined about 9 folks from Seventh Generation at my home for a meal made from ingredients that come from within 100 miles of our home in Charlotte, Vermont on Lake Champlain. We had a great discussion on the state of, fate of, and what’s needed to create a more effective sustainability movement. We then spent yesterday taking a wonderful journey up to Glover, Vermont to visit the Bread & Pupet Museum, an amazing creative and activist inspiration. More on all that later.

Graham Hill, Nick Aster and Megan O'Neill from TreeHugger.com came to Burlington to meet with Seventh Geners to talk about making the world a better place and how we could collaborate...here is our first night discussions and our first V-log.

We, (me included) chase with great and even desperate passion more and more and more stuff. A bigger pay check, a nicer house, a cooler car, new clothes. Now we sort of know better. We know that we can’t have both a sane and sustainable world with all that stuff. What we don’t seem to know, despite all the research that clearly lays it out, is that once we’ve met our basic human needs more stuff has nothing to do with more happiness. Community, conversation, participation, involvement, trust, passion? Yes. More stuff? No.

This just in… Congress is set to vote on an amendment to the Interior Appropriations Bill that would prohibit the EPA from gutting the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), the annual program that forces companies to tell you and I what pollutants they’re exposing us to in our communities. The Pallone-Solis Toxic Right-to-Know Amendment would preserve the TRI by preventing the EPA from spending any money to change it.