You may have been fooled into thinking that older generations were only concerned with property, pensions and a nice pot of tea. Prepare to have that media stereotype blown away. A blast of sanity here as brave campaigners with a sparklingly clear understanding of the danger we all face take action against investment in coal by occupying Bristol Barclays bank. Vive la Revolution.

The post Grandparents for a Safer Earth appeared first on EcoHustler.

Sign the petition here

Naomi Klein: “I am no dash for gas!”

No Dash for Gas Solidarity Action – Oxford EDF Recruitment Event

Last October ‘No Dash for Gas’ shut-down and occupied EDF’s West Burton gas-fired power station ‘ for a week. EDF is now suing the activists for £5million for costs it claims to have incurred.

The new ‘dash for gas’ will leave us dependent on a highly polluting and increasingly expensive fossil fuel for decades to come. While energy companies profit, our chances of a secure and sustainable future are slipping away.

Groups across the UK are now standing in solidarity with “No Dash For Gas” and fighting to protect the right to protest.

Support No Dash for Gas - #iamnodashforgas

The post No Dash for Gas appeared first on EcoHustler.

Watch the long video:

Energy-related economic, security, and environmental threats are intensifying the national conversation about how to regain energy leadership and competitiveness, restore jobs and prosperity, and build a secure and climate-safe energy system.

Yet America lacks a comprehensive vision of how a market economy can achieve these transformational goals.

RMI has that vision, and is now building its detailed roadmap, which we call Reinventing Fire™. This strategy will bring together RMIs 28 years of innovation and engage the world in our most ambitious and important work yet—using whole-system thinking and integrative design to move the U.S. off fossil fuels by 2050, led by business for profit.

Buy the book

The post Reinventing Fire appeared first on EcoHustler.

The Netherlands is well known for its excellent cycling infrastructure. How did the Dutch get this network of bicycle paths?
Read more: here

“The Netherlands’ problems were and are not unique, their solutions shouldn’t be that either.”

The post How the Dutch got their cycle paths appeared first on EcoHustler.

Gasoline Dreams

OutKast -(ft. khujo go)
Song: Gasoline Dreams (Track 2)
Album: Stankonia (2000)

Alright
Alright
Alright

Don’t everybody like the smell of gasoline?
Well burn motherfucka burn American dreams
Don’t everybody like the taste of apple pie?
We’ll snap for your slice of life I’m tellin’ ya why?
I hear that mother nature’s now on birth control
The coldest pimp be looking for somebody to hold
The highway up to Heaven got a crook on the toll
Youth full of fire ain’t got nowhere to go, nowhere to go

All of my heroes did dope
Every nigga round me playin’ married
Or payin’ child support
I can’t cope
Never made no sense to me one day I hope it will
And that’s that, sport, sport

Pray I live to see the day when seven’s happily married
With kids, woe woe
The world is movin’ fast and I’m losin’ my balance
No time to dig, low, low
To a place where ain’t nowhere to go but up
Ya wit me say shit, sho sho
Now let me ask y’all this

Don’t everybody like the smell of gasoline?
Well burn motherfucka burn American dreams
Don’t everybody like the taste of apple pie?
We’ll snap for your slice of life I’m tellin’ ya why?
I hear that mother nature’s now on birth control
The coldest pimp be looking for somebody to hold
The highway up to Heaven got a crook on the toll
Youth full of fire ain’t got nowhere to go, nowhere to go

It’s shitty like Ricky Stratton got a million bucks
My cousin Ricky Walker got ten years doing fed time
On a first offense drug bust, fuck the holice
That’s if ya racist or ya crooked
Arrest me for this dope I didn’t weight it up or cook it
You gotta charge the world cause over a million people took it
Look at me, you outta your jurisdiction now ya lookin’ stupid
Officer, get off me sir
Don’t make me call L.A. he’ll have ya walking sir

A couple of months ago they gave outkast the key to the city
But I still gotta pay my taxes and they give us no pity
About the youngsters amongst us
You think they respect the law
They think they monsters, they love us, reality rappin’
And giving the youth the truth from this booth
And when we on stage we scream
Don’t everybody, everybody

Don’t everybody like the smell of gasoline?
Well burn motherfucka burn American dreams
Don’t everybody like the taste of apple pie?
We’ll snap for your slice of life I’m tellin’ ya why
I hear that mother nature’s now on birth control
The coldest pimp be looking for somebody to hold
The highway up to Heaven got a crook on the toll
Youth full of fire ain’t got nowhere to go, nowhere to go

Officer of the most high you touch me you touch the apple of this eye
If they kick us out where will we go
Not to Africa ’cause not one of them acknowledge us as they kin folk
Still eatin’ pork, abomination, desecration for beating flesh
Penalty for violation is death
Woe, woe, to the man that strive with his maker on judgement day
Hip hip hooray, Mr. Reaper Babylon the great
The mother of heartless is falling, prophecy must be fulfilled
The liquor fire is calling

Don’t everybody like the smell of gasoline?
Well burn motherfucka burn American dreams
Don’t everybody like the taste of apple pie?
We’ll snap for your slice of life I’m tellin’ ya why
I hear that mother nature’s now on birth control
The coldest pimp be looking for somebody to hold
The highway up to Heaven got a crook on the toll
Youth full of fire ain’t got nowhere to go, nowhere to go

The post Gasoline Dreams – Outkast appeared first on EcoHustler.

Riders in London (credit: Matt Mellen)

For twenty years, in an increasing number of cities around the world, cyclists have united on the last Friday of the month to take over the streets. Known as Critical Mass, these mobile, social and celebratory events involve a sufficient number of bicycles to dominate road space; a safety in numbers approach comparable to giant shoals of fish or flocks of birds.

Refueling (credit: Matt Mellen)

The self-organizing nature of such phenomena, where group behaviour emerges spontaneously through the interaction of individuals, is part of the thrill for riders. They move from being solo and vulnerable to becoming part of a surging, whooping herd.

Emily Woodhouse at the South Bank (credit: Matt Mellen)

“The whole ethos of the ride is that it is spontaneous, organic, and non-hierarchical,” says Emily Woodhouse, an environmental anthropologist at Imperial College and a regular on the London events. She sees cycling as a positive force for good in the world. “Critical Mass is a direct action expressing how I want the world to be.”

For many participants, this global, cycling phenomenon is an important and highly symbolic gesture in support of a switch to human-powered mass mobility, which they believe could contribute to making cities healthier, happier and freer flowing. For others, it has simply been about the fun of the ride.

The first Critical Mass took place in San Francisco in 1992 and it has since spread to hundreds of cities around the world, with the London event sometimes attracting up to 2,000 cyclists. The highest attendance at a critical Mass event was in Budapest in April 2008, where an estimated 80,000 cyclists took part. All the rides have a local flavour but share the same sense of camaraderie, purpose and fun.

Karta Healy, founder of TheBicycleLibrary​.com and a veteran of many Critical Mass events in cities including Portland, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Paris, sees the urge to unite with others and show solidarity against the dominance of the car as a major motivation for riding. “It’s an empowering way to feel justified as a daily cyclist in your city,” he says.

Karta Healy in his London HQ

‘The Mass’ is diverse, composed of people of all shapes, sizes, colours and affluence, bound together by the shared love of self-propulsion and the desire to reclaim the streets and celebrate their freedom of movement. There are often mobile sound systems creating a party atmosphere and for many the ride will end in a favourite park or pub.

The meeting spot in London is in front of the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank at about 6:30pm. The air buzzes with excitement as friends reunite. Drinks are cracked open, bikes admired and tales of surviving on the city’s mean streets traded. Soon the crowd swells like water behind a dam and the air is filled with a crescendo of dinging bells.

Anticipation gives way to urgency and the cracks in the dam appear as the first riders head up the ramp to the Imax cinema roundabout and off into the heart of the city. The hive-mind has been engaged and without an agreed route or leader, the peloton surges forth to find its way to an unknown destination.

Once beyond the safety of the South Bank participants find themselves in a sometimes-hostile environment of hooting cars and bemused pedestrians. ‘Corkers’ physically block the traffic allowing the giant, mobile herd to roll across London on streets freed from the normal congestion of fossil fuel-powered machines. For some motorists this seizing and holding of space is an inconsiderate and illegitimate protest.

The Joy of Corking (Credit: Matt Mellen)

The response of the Metropolitan Police has varied. For many years the Met would provide a phalanx of police outriders on bicycles who would actually stop the traffic. However, tactics changed in 2006 and police no longer accompany the rides; a development the riders I spoke to suggest may have led to an increase in confrontations with drivers.

However, the police presence has also been controversial. Emily Woodhouse reports a bad experience, saying she was pushed over by a policeman, but she feels strongly that cyclists should avoid confrontations.

“Critical Mass is a more powerful force for social change as a completely positive, non-violent, carnival-type phenomenon,” she says. “That kind of atmosphere promotes cycling and dialogue between people.”

A difficulty for the police was the seeming lack of structure to the rides, with no single organisation behind the events, no spokespeople and no agreed route. But for many taking part, it is exactly this freewheeling, collaborative spirit that draws them in.

Many participants are increasingly encouraging the rides to become more explicitly positive, with a message based around the improved lifestyles that cycling could bring about for city-dwellers. Setting an example for the way forward, a new Leicester ride has been described as “a two-wheeled charm offensive,” with a different theme and dress code every month.

Approximately 2% of journeys in London are by bicycle. Copenhagen, in comparison, sees almost a third of all journeys in the city being taken by bicycle. It is also consistently rated as one of the world’s happiest places to live.

These two statistics will be seen as directly linked by many participants of Critical Mass. And after twenty years, as this global phenomenon continues to grow, the riders are more determined then ever to congregate in the name of fun, friendship and freedom, spontaneously collaborating to create streets without cars.

The author in a stylish hat (Credit: Tom Amos)

Critical Mass @ Buckingham Palace (Credit: Matt Mellen)

Bike Salute @ Buckingham Palace (Credit: Matt Mellen)

You might also like:

• Riders of Rohan Assemble! here
• Fresh Air Flash Mob Debrief here
• Flash mob 4 fresh air here
• The Solution to Pollution here
• Why bikes shouldn’t have to follow the rules of the road here
• A Critical Mass of dissent… on wheels here
• The Royal Wedding goes CRITICAL here
• Regulators…mount up! here

The post 20 Years of Critical Mass appeared first on EcoHustler.