January 2011 Letter from the Board Chair and President

Below is The Overbrook Foundation's January 2011 Letter From The Board Chair and President. It can be read in its original format here.

Starting in early 2009, the Foundation periodically posted letters from its Chair and President outlining steps being taken to address the impact of the global financial crisis on its grantmaking programs (The letters from 2010 and 2009 are below). In October 2009 and, in part, because of the continuing financial downturn, the Foundation began an active strategic planning effort to examine all aspects of the Foundation’s life, with a particular focus on its mission, values and grantmaking. We are writing now to report on the outcomes of our strategic planning efforts and how they will affect our grantmaking
over the next several years.

Over the last three years, our investment portfolio experienced significant volatility and we continue to anticipate significant fluctuations in its performance over the coming months and years although we are cautiously optimistic that it will continue to slowly improve in 2011 and 2012. The Board has decided it will counter that volatility by committing the Foundation to a steady level of funding for its Human Rights and Environment Programs through 2012. We expect that by the end of 2012 the Foundation will have weathered the worst impacts of the financial storm and that we will be able to gradually increase our grantmaking levels beginning in 2013. In 2011 and 2012, our grantmaking will remain approximately 30% below its peak funding in 2008.

The Board has revisited the Foundation’s mission and values statements crafted in 2001 and refined them to reflect its current direction.

Mission
The Overbrook Foundation is a progressive family foundation that supports
organizations advancing human rights and conserving the natural environment.

Values
Honoring the vision and dedication of its founders, Helen and Frank Altschul, The
Overbrook Foundation:

• Honors its role as a steward of both the public trust and the Foundation's mission
• Advances programs ethically, responsibly and respectfully
• Is transparent and open
• Engages in its work in a deliberate and thoughtful way
• Takes measured risks
• Employs diverse approaches to seize opportunities and respond to challenges
• Supports social justice and environmental sustainability
• Promotes advocacy, accountability and reform of institutions and government
Program

The Board recently completed the Foundation’s first comprehensive review since 2005 of its Environment and Human Rights Program.

The Foundation’s Environment Program will continue to focus on biodiversity conservation in Latin America and sustainable production and consumption in the United States. In Latin America, its geographic focus will include Brazil, Ecuador, Mexico and, in certain circumstances, the nations of Central America. Criteria applied to potential projects will include: potential impact, level of innovation, the opportunity represented in the project, benefit to local communities, climatic implications and the strength of the funded group/leadership to accomplish the work proposed. The Environment Program will continue to seek out efforts that support innovative ideas in sustainability, particularly around the production and consumption of materials. The mitigation of climate change,
with a particular focus on energy efficiency, will receive distinct but limited support.

The Human Rights Program will continue to support organizations within the U.S that are advancing the U.S. domestic human rights movement where Overbrook has played a leadership role since 2005. It will also continue its grantmaking to strengthen gender rights in the U.S. where it has a long history of support for women’s rights, LGBT rights and anti-trafficking efforts. Building the reproductive justice movement and advancing marriage equality for same-sex couples will be central elements of the gender rights focus. Media reform and support of non-profit media will continue with support for nonprofit electronic and print media and efforts to reform the media landscape. This represents the Foundation’s contribution to progressive movement building in the U.S. Other movement building efforts not defined as human rights will be phased out over 2011. In the Latin America grantmaking program, the Foundation will continue to support human rights defenders and gender rights organizations.

We will continue to play an activist leadership role in the philanthropic community. Our program officers are heavily involved in organizing and managing funder collaborative partnerships, creating vital new non-profit organizations to advance change and assuming leadership roles in a variety of foundation associations. Through these various efforts, the Foundation believes it is able to influence the direction of significant philanthropic resources to those issues most central to its human rights and environment mission. Moving forward, we will continue using all of these mechanisms to protect and strengthen the fields in which our grantees are active and to learn more about work underway in the Foundation’s fields of interest.

Please note that letters of inquiry and unsolicited proposals will not be considered by the Foundation for funding in 2011 and 2012. Instead, because of the reduced funding available for grantmaking, Foundation staff will invite proposals on a limited basis as opportunities that clearly match the Foundation’s priorities are identified.

We deeply appreciate the difficulties that our grantees continue to face as the nation slowly recovers from the economic downturn of the last several years. Our Board of Directors and staff are sensitive to these challenges and will work diligently to assist our grantees and colleagues as they continue their work.

Sincerely,
Kathryn G. Graham, Chair of the Board of Directors and Stephen A. Foster, President and CEO

Another Victory for The Innocence Project

There's another victory for the folks over at The Innocence Project! Last week in a Dallas courtroom, a judge declared The Innocence Project's client Cornelius Dupree innocent after more than three decades in prison for a crime he did not commit.

DNA testing obtained by the Innocence Project proved that Mr. Dupree had been misidentified and wrongfully convicted of a 1979 rape and robbery in Dallas. Mr. Dupree was 19 years old at the time and sentenced to 75 years in prison. Throughout the trial and since, Mr. Dupree has maintained his innocence and, after serving 30 years, he was released on parole last July while DNA tests were pending. Mr. Dupree served more time in prison than any other person in Texas who was later cleared through DNA testing.

Cornelius Dupree’s case serves as another reminder of the urgency of reforming eyewitness identification procedures. In the U.S. a staggering three-quarters of wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA evidence resulted from misidentifications. Of the 40 people exonerated through DNA testing in Texas, 34 were misidentified by at least one witness.

A bill to reform eyewitness identification procedures in Texas was introduced last year and would require all law enforcement officials to adopt written policies for identification procedures, including lineups and photo arrays such as the one used in this case. Authored by State Senator and IP Board Chair Rodney Ellis and State Representative Pete Gallego, it is our hope that this important bill will be adopted in the next legislative session. Please visit their website to learn more about Cornelius Dupree's case and the proposed reforms in Texas.

The Innocence Project staff in New York City spoke with Cornelius Dupree by phone shortly after the court hearing. He expressed his deep appreciation for the organization's hard work. “Without you,” he said, “I wouldn’t be free.”

The Foundation would like to extend its congratulations to The Innocence Project. Each post-conviction DNA exoneration creates a learning moment able to bring about meaningful and lasting reform. Moreover, significant media coverage of the exonerations like this galvanizes public support for policy reform. Overbrook is proud to have supported The Innocence Project for a decade. Its been an honor to watch the organization to protect the public against wrongful prosecution and convictions.

Electronics Recycling Gets Easier

Considering the three billion electronics products filling American households, as well as the 400 million individual units that are disposed of and replaced each year, consumers are starting to expect safe and easy recycling options. Indeed, e-waste laws are gaining momentum as states sign on; New Jersey began mandating e-waste recycling last Saturday, and New York will follow suit in April of this year. Click here for a list of the 20-plus states that mandate electronics recycling and details of the states' laws.

An article in this week's New York Times lists a number of options for responsible recycling, "responsible" meaning the toxic metals and chemicals embedded in the guts of our computers, ipods, cell phones, printers and more are not incinerated or dumped. The article references Demos and the Electronics Takeback Coalition, both Overbrook Foundation grantees. Click here for a pdf of Elizabeth Grossman's report for Demos, "Tackling High-Tech Trash: The e-waste Explosion and What We Can Do."

Check out this short article (click here) for a sobering account of what happens to electronics that are not disposed of responsibly.

New Climate "Normal" for a New Year

If you were booked on one of the 4,000-plus flights delayed or canceled due to last weekend's storm, chances are you shook your fist at the sky at least once. True, sitting in an airport with a magazine and a Starbucks latte is not half as bad as weathering a storm must have been in pioneer days, but it's easy to lose perspective when you're already two days delayed with an unknown number of hours to go.

Snow in winter is a given, but was our latest storm "normal?" Was the wind speed and quantity of precipitation something we should have expected? The National Climatic Data Center is attempting to answer that question, as well as a slew of others comparing day-to-day weather with expected norms of years past. NCDC will soon publish a new "normal" for weather conditions based on 10,000 United States locations, an average the Center publishes once every ten years.

Meteorologically speaking, "normal" refers to an average of temperatures and precipitation levels over a thirty-year period. For the 2000-2010 decade, "normal" was based on the thirty-year period from 1971-2000. Excessive rains, droughts and the warming trend of the 1990s alerted climate scientists and people all over the U.S. that what we were experiencing was not "normal." The data set for the new decade will be based on averages from the thirty-year period of 1981-2010, a period that will exclude the cooler 1970's and include the hotter 2000s. The new "normal" will result in less drastic discrepancies between current temperature spikes and precipitation, and could have implications for the general acceptance of climate change. For instance, a particularly hot summer with excessive flooding, like 2010's summer, will not seem so bad compared to "normal." People will not see as great of a difference, and thus will be less alarmed, about what is and what used to be.

Of course, no one likes an alarmist, and there's plenty of data to support the theory that people won't change their behavior anyway, even when it is linked to climate change. (See my post "Changing the Climate Conversation" from November 2nd.) And it is interesting to note that 2010 saw more deaths worldwide due to natural disasters than to terrorist attacks over the past forty years combined. As we walk through airports, we're constantly updated on the color of the perceived "terror alert." But are we warned about climate anomalies? Not until they hold up our holiday plans.

Click here for an interesting take from the CEJournal, with links to editorials and posts discussing the climate change vs. "normal" debate.

Grist Talks to Jonathan Franzen

I have not yet picked up Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom, but it is getting rave reviews among Overbrook staff who have! Aside from being touted as a great novel with an engrossing story, Freedom is being praised for its merits as an honest and rousing profile of the contemporary environmentalist struggle. Franzen himself is an avid birder, and talks to Overbrook grantee Grist's Amanda Little about the inevitable conflict weathered by conservationists who live in contemporary society, yet rail against the negative impacts our lifestyles inflict on natural surroundings. Franzen tells Little of his own personal transformation from environmental cynic to optimistic lover of birds.

From the Grist interview:

A. I used to have a really angry, despairing sense that the world is screwed, that people have screwed the world, and so we should just let it all end. Let's have the great plague that will reduce the population by 90 percent, and let the land regenerate and nature catch its breath. I've moved away from that sort of deep-ecological extremism, which I found to be not personally tenable. It was time for me to stop thinking about apocalypse, time to move to New York City, time to start enjoying life. And from there I moved on to loving wild birds, which was a much more positive mode of engagement. I started to think, what can we do for wild birds right now? I don't want these particular species to disappear. So what can I do practically? If you're trying to save your child's life, you might make certain compromises that you would have found morally insupportable at a younger age. Love leads to pragmatism in a way that anger doesn't.



Click here to read the whole interview.

Happy holidays!

December 2010 Human Rights Program Grants

At its last Board of Directors meeting of 2010, The Overbrook Foundation's Human Rights Program awarded $485,000 in grants to 13 organizations in the categories of Reproductive Rights, Trafficking, International Human Rights, Movement Building and "Other."

For its work supporting Reproductive Rights, Overbrook awarded grants to three organizations: a $40,000 grant to Groundswell for the Catalyst Fund, a $40,000 grant to the Third Wave Foundation for its Reproductive Health and Justice Initiative and a $30,000 grant to the Western States Center for its program, Uniting Communities, Advancing Strong Families. In support of its anti-trafficking work, the Foundation also awarded a $30,000 grant to the Freedom Network for its project, Training, Advocacy, and Mentoring: A Comprehensive Approach to Human Trafficking and Modern Day Slavery.

In support of International Human Rights, the Foundation awarded a $40,000 grant to Front Line, for its work protecting Latin American Human Rights Defenders, a $30,000 grant to Reporters Without Borders for its work fighting for press freedom in Latin America, a $40,000 grant to Global Fund for Children and a $50,000 grant to Disability Rights International for its Americas Advocacy Initiative.

In the Foundation’s category of Movement Building grants, four organizations received support, including a $40,000 grant to the Center for Community Change for general operating support, a $10,000 grant to Demos for the continued support of Jared Duval’s book Next Generation Democracy: What the Open Source Revolution Means for Privacy, Politics and Change, a $50,000 grant to New Press for their work in progressive book publishing, and a $50,000 grant to People for the American Way for its Youth Leadership Program.

One other grant not in a specific program area that was awarded was a $35,000 grant to Channel Thirteen/WNET for the Online Education Guide to WIDE ANGLE: Women, War & Peace.

If you’re interested in learning more about what these organizations do, click on the links above to learn more.

December 2010 Environment Program Grants

At its last Board of Directors meeting of 2010, The Overbrook Foundation's Environment Program awarded $730,000 in grants yesterday to 12 organizations in the categories of Latin American Biodiversity Conservation, Sustainable Production and Consumption, Media, and "Other." Eleven are either renewals or from organizations previously funded, and one is a first-time request.

For its work supporting Latin American Biodiversity Conservation, the Foundation awarded $135,000 in grants. Organizations awarded were: AlTROPICO, for its work consolidating the Cotacachi Cayapas Ecologica Reserve and Chachi territories in Ecuador; Amazon Watch, for its work protecting the Ecuadorean rainforest from oil exploitation; IMAFLORA, for its work promoting sustainable cocoa harvesting in Brazil; and the ISEAL Alliance, for its work clarifying and lending credibility to sustainability standards.

For its Sustainable Production and Consumption work, the Foundation awarded $500,000. Organizations awarded were: As You Sow, for its corporate watchdog work promoting shareholder action for sustainable production and consumption; Catalog Choice, for expansion of its work to reduce paper waste and combat climate change; Clean Air-Cool Planet, for the expansion of its Community Catalyst Fund; GreenBlue, for general support of its projects in packaging, sustainable product design, greener chemicals and more; ioby.org, for the redevelopment of its web platform, crucial to its operations; and the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City, for the continuation of GreeNYC's project to identify and implement the most effective greenhouse gas-saving behaviors for NYC residents.

For its work supporting Public TV, Radio and Other Media, the Foundation awarded $35,000 to Island Press for continued general support of its environmental science and conservation publications and for its outreach efforts.

The Environment Program also supported the Gulf Coast Fund for Community Renewal and Ecological Health for its work helping grassroots, local communities in the Gulf Coast region respond to the ongoing effects of the BP oil spill disaster.

Once again, the diversity of its grantees reflects the Environment Program's commitment to conservation and innovation. Click on the links above to learn more about these wonderful organizations!

Measuring a Plastic Footprint

Just as the term "carbon footprint" has become common in the business and consumer lexicon, a new footprint (one we also want to shrink!) is on the horizon. Through an alliance between The Association for Sustainable and Responsible Investment in Asia, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and Overbrook grantee Project Kaisei's co-founder Douglas Woodring, the Plastic Disclosure Project will provide a centralized web space for the tracking and reporting of plastics.

Kicked off by former President Bill Clinton at an opening plenary of the Clinton Global Initiative earlier this fall, the Plastic Disclosure Project will encourage awareness of the ubiquitous use and "linear system" trashing of plastics, and the vast environmental impacts of this practice. (Check out the difference between a linear system and a closed loop system on Overbrook grantee Story of Stuff's online glossary.)

Disclosure and comparisons of plastic footprints among companies will encourage investors and stakeholders to value their brands not just in terms of today's profits, but also in relation to toxicity, pollution, waste, and human health. Annual surveys of industry participants will be voluntary, with the hope that new businesses will join once the value of PDP becomes clear to investors and consumers. The first go-'round for the PDP will create a baseline for waste, design inputs, and recycling rates, and subsequent surveys will compare plastic footprints between years and among participants.

Why is the Plastic Disclosure Project necessary? The PDP site relays the following information, showing that even modest cut-backs in plastic footprints could yield significant results:


"Industry estimates state that 300 million tons of virgin plastic are made every year. If just one tenth of one percent can be saved through efficiencies, better design, or increased recycling, then 3 million tons could be saved, which is roughly what some conservative estimates say are floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean."

A yearly summary report of the PDP will be available online to industry groups, governments, educational institutions and the public.

Mayors Commit, Sending a Pre-Cancun Message

One week before the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Cancun, over 130 mayors from cities all over the world signed a voluntary pact to reduce greenhouse gases and adapt to climate change. The World Mayors Summit, which convened in Mexico City yesterday, aims to set climate change mitigation and adaptation goals for global cities that are, in the words of the pact, "measurable, reportable and verifiable." Cities that sign the pact will join an online registry where climate data, goals and progress will be logged and easily accessed by government officials as well as city residents.

After sustaining the disappointment of a lackluster Copenhagen agreement, (described here, post-Copenhagen, on Grist.org), city leaders from around the world decided their constituents could no longer wait for national leaders to act. The timing of the Mayors' agreement immediately preceding Cancun could inspire (or possibly shame) global leaders into taking concrete action against climate change. At the very least, if no binding treaty comes out of Cancun, the mayors are hoping for increased financial support, and the open acknowledgment that climate change has become an overwhelming issue requiring immediate, ongoing, large-scale attention.

A Wall Street Journal article from last month describes the "peer pressure" element of environmentally friendly behaviors. Researchers found that people respond most effectively, and in greatest numbers, when their behaviors are compared to those of their peers. Signs on doors informing homeowners they should use fans instead of air conditioning on hot summer days were most effective when they used an "everyone's doing it" approach as opposed to a "use a fan to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions" approach. The mayors' online registry of city climate data could benefit from that psychology. Cities that can track their own progress in relation to others' will, with luck, have a similarly persuasive effect.

As the UN Climate meeting in Cancun approaches amidst a sea of bad news, the Mayors Summit is a sign that tides may be turning.

Story of Stuff Project Launches a New Video

In collaboration with the Electronics TakeBack Coalition and Free Range Studios, the Story of Stuff Project launched its newest video early this week: The Story of Electronics.

Following in the footsteps of the Project's previous four videos, (click here to browse and watch them all), the Story of Electronics pulls no punches in its explanation of the "designed for the dump" mentality under which computers, phones, power cords -- you name it -- are manufactured. The video also illuminates some of the toxic chemicals used to make these devices, and calls into question what really happens when a computer is "recycled." Project creator, spokeswoman and movie star Annie Leonard tells it all with humor and ease.

Another Setback for Renewables

The Wonk Room posted a run-down late last week (cross-posted here by Overbrook grantee Grist.org) on the prospective Republican Representatives vying to lead the House Energy Committee. Until now led by Representative Henry Waxman, co-author with Rep. Edward Markey of last year's ACES (American Clean Energy and Security Act), the House Energy Committee had been poised to influence substantive change in the Federal regulation of greenhouse gases. Not so any longer -- perusing the cast of characters lining up to fill Waxman's spot, it is a disheartening day for environmentalists and businesses promoting renewable energy.

Michigan Representative Fred Upton, as the most senior member of the contenders, is a likely choice to head the House Energy Committee. Although Upton is not a blatant climate change denier, he has characterized proposed energy legislation as "job-killing," and his top donors are energy utilities. Other contenders are John Shimkus, who described proposed climate legislation as a threat greater than terrorism and war, Cliff Stearns, an ardent proponent of drilling in ANWR and Joe Barton, the Texas Republican who bizarrely apologized to BP this summer for what he perceived to be unfairly harsh treatment by Congress in the aftermath of the Gulf disaster.

This news coupled with two New York Times stories this weekend prove once again the growing need for grassroots watchdogs and activists. One article discusses the competitive trouble wind power companies are having against fossil fuel utilities, because the upfront costs of wind are higher. A line from the story explains, "a growing number of projects are being canceled or delayed because governments are unwilling to add even small amounts to consumers’ electricity bills." This, while consumers seem willing (if chagrined) to pay steadily rising bills for cable television.

The other weekend Times story profiles individuals who, in exchange for payment, have leased their private land to oil companies for hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," one of the most environmentally-destructive methods of extracting oil and natural gas there is. Read about fracking here on Overbrook grantee Earthworks' web site.

It seems as though a main obstacle to weaning off of fossil fuels toward a renewable economy is, once again, the behavior and attitudes of consumers and voters. A challenge for environmental groups in coming years will be to shift focus away from the instant gratification of cheap energy, (which, considering oil spills, blow-outs, carbon emissions, deleterious health effects and more, is far from "cheap") toward a longer-term view of the greater benefits to come through clean energy. This is no easy feat in the midst of an economic crisis, for sure. But once voters begin to view a clean environment, health, and greater savings over time as rights and expectations rather than special "perqs," national energy trends will surely change, along with the congressmen and women who represent us.

Changing the Climate Conversation

In a new study out of the University of Michigan, researcher Andy Hoffman attempts to answer the question many conservationists have been asking: why, with scientists worldwide corroborating that climate change is: 1) happening, and 2) caused by human activity, are people so slow to demand policy and behavioral change? Scientists have been researching and quantifying climate change scenarios for decades, yet comparatively little has been investigated from a sociological standpoint. And with today's election predictions warning of a U.S. government even more resistant to greenhouse gas regulations, it may be time to try a new angle in communicating climate change. Perhaps it has been a cultural issue all along, rather than a scientific one.

Hoffman compares lackadaisical responses to climate change to societal battles we've already fought in this country, battles such as the abolition of slavery or the sweeping bans on public smoking. While allowing slavery exists in a whole other realm of offense than public smoking, Hoffman bundled the two examples because they both represent practices that at one time were common, accepted, and economically beneficial to some. Both smoking and slavery took years to overcome, and continued as accepted practices even after large factions of the public denounced them.

"The issue was not just whether cigarettes cause cancer. It was whether people believed it. The second process is wholly different than the first," Hoffman said.

Hoffman is hoping conservationists can look back at these two examples to inform the fight against climate change. The issue now is not whether biking to work or weatherizing your home make a difference, the issue is whether people believe it.

The National Academy of Sciences recently published a similarly-focused study, a series it calls "America's Climate Choices." Risk communication relating to climate change has been comparatively ignored, so the NAS determined to get to the bottom of the societal factors that have been preventing meaningful progress. One of the study's findings describes the majority of Americans as feeling apathetic about their own contribution to mitigating climate change, while a significant percentage (though at 34 percent far from a majority) described themselves as "disengaged," "doubtful" or "dismissive" of the idea of climate change.

One recommendation from the study is to change the way climate change action is framed, to emphasize immediate individual benefit. For example, a person trying to lose weight would be more likely to bike to work if the action were framed as saving emissions as well as preventing obesity, rather than serving only as an altruistic act with long-term results that are unmeasurable on an individual basis.

Another recommendation from the NAS study is for local, web-based movements to keep up the good work. When people see others in their own communities making positive change, they are more likely to step up and pitch in. And while individual actions can feel like a drop in the bucket, people do have quite an influence on emissions in their daily lives. The Environmental Health Perspectives article on "America's Choices" quotes a finding by Michael Vandenbergh, director of the Climate Change Research Network at Vanderbilt University: eight percent of the entire world's total emissions come from individual households in the United States.

It seems like some facts should be able to speak for themselves. But as skeptics abound, it may be time to change the conversation.

Sustainability Victory for Seattle and Overbrook Grantee

Due to long-term goals and often complex measures of success, many sustainability and conservation projects tend to progress slowly and incrementally. So a clear "green victory" is always cause for celebration -- and even more so when an Overbrook Foundation Environment grantee is at its center!

The Product Stewardship Institute, supported for the first time by Overbrook in June of this year, just participated in a major victory for resource conservation in Seattle. The City Council passed a phone book opt-out ordinance last night, requiring directory publishers to pay for phone book recycling costs and making it easy for consumers, through a registry, to prevent unwanted yellow pages from appearing on their doorsteps. Seattle's is the nation's first phone book opt-out program, and with vigilance its influence will spread to other cities.

Overbrook directed its PSI funding last June toward the consumer opt-out campaign for phone books, a project PSI has been working on for a number of state and local governments since 2006. Although Seattle passed legislation the battle continues; it is estimated that discarded phone books account for 660,000 tons in the waste stream each year, and opt-out programs are critical for saving trees and money spent on recycling costs.

Catalog Choice, also an Overbrook grantee, partnered with PSI on the phone book registry.

Read the Seattle City Council ordinance here.

Environment Program Grants Awarded September 2010

At its September 2010 Board Meeting and Retreat last week, The Overbrook Foundation's Environment Program awarded $583,400 in grants to 10 organizations in the categories of Latin American Biodiversity Conservation, Sustainable Production and Consumption, and Public TV, Radio and Other Media. Nine are either renewals or from organizations previously funded, and one is a first-time request.

For its work supporting Latin American Biodiversity Conservation, the Foundation awarded $158,400 in grants. Organizations awarded were: Nature and Culture International, for its expansion of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) and carbon financing programs in Ecuador; the New York Botanical Garden, for its work creating a certification program and tree species inventory in Brazil; and People and Plants International, for its biodiversity conservation and sustainable community work in central Mexico.

For its Sustainable Production and Consumption work, the Foundation awarded $345,000. Organizations awarded were: American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), to further its continued research on consumer behavior and sustainability; Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA), for the continuation of its work advancing a new materials economy in the United States; Global Green USA, for the expansion of its Coalition for Resource Recovery's paper food packaging recycling program; ForestEthics, for general operating support of its work promoting sustainable forestry; Health Care Without Harm, for its Healthier Hospitals Initiative; and The Story of Stuff, for continued operating support of The Story of Stuff Project.

The Environment Program also supported the Consultative Group on Biological Diversity for the development of a communications framework to address the problem of ocean acidification.

Once again, the diversity of its grantees reflects the Environment Program's commitment to conservation and innovation. Click on the links above to learn more about these wonderful organizations!

Environment Viewed in Opposition to Economy

As the international community faces mounting costs of oil spill clean-ups, unseasonable natural disasters and health issues linked to toxic air and water supplies, the perpetuation of the idea that going green is bad for the economy is perhaps one of the worst examples of doublethink. But increasingly, shifting away from fossil fuels and toward clean, renewable energy systems is pitted against the more immediate gratification of economic gain.

An article in today's Independent quotes New Economics Foundation policy director Andrew Simms decrying this reality: "We have submitted control over our own environmental destiny to a set of economic ideas that parade as if they were unquestionable, natural laws," Simms said.

Simms seems to be hitting on a troubling zeitgeist shift concerning environmental stewardship. While converting to a green economy could spur job creation and ultimately save money, the message that conservation is fiscally irresponsible is increasingly pervasive. Last week's New York Times quotes a spokesman for emerging Republican leader John Boehner attempting to reassure voters Boehner is not concerned with "environmentalists who support job-killing policies."

Organizations like Overbrook grantee Green For All have the facts to refute such statements. Check out their blog post on China's wind energy initiative (quickly on its way to surpassing the United States) here.

Grist, also an Overbrook grantee, referenced stories from the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal proving fears of catastrophic job loss from a drilling moratorium in the Gulf were unfounded. (Not to mention BP's exploitative use of prison labor to work on clean-up efforts instead of paying newly out-of-work locals a fair wage!)

Last Friday, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund hosted an informational session on the Ecuadorian government's unprecedented new program to "keep the oil in the soil." The Yasuni-ITT initiative will prevent drilling in the incredibly biodiverse Yasuni National Park, if the international community will repay Ecuador half the forgone funds it would have gained from drilling and exporting. Minister of Heritage Maria Fernanda Espinosa explained the $3.6 billion fund will be used to convert Ecuador to a green energy economy. Success of the Yasuni plan has yet to be proven, but its implementation could signify the beginning of a needed backlash to the erroneous "green=poor," or "green=job-loss" mentality. Amazon Watch, yet another Overbrook grantee, has been monitoring the Yasuni initiative from the beginning.

Federal Agencies Submit Sustainability Plans

The White House released the Federal Agency Strategic Sustainability Performance Plans yesterday, with the goal of melding environmental, economic and energy goals to reduce emissions, create jobs and save taxpayers money. This marks the first time ever that federal agencies will submit sustainability goals, but it won't be the last. Following an executive order from October 2009, the agencies will have to set a greenhouse gas emissions target for 2020 and submit a plan for sustainable use of energy, fuel and water, to be updated annually and submitted for review to the Office of Management and Budget.

The Federal Government is the single largest energy consumer in the United States, with about half a million buildings and even more vehicles operating for a federal agency. About 2 million civilians are employed by the government. With luck, the new Sustainability Performance Plans will do more than set goals for government agencies -- the plans could also bring a new consciousness to agency employees. The ubiquity of Federal employees throughout the country could extend this commitment to sustainability to their home lives and behaviors as consumers. Either way, it is heartening to see the Federal Government "walking the walk," so to speak, in support of sustainability.

For a list of all the agencies involved and a look at the individual sustainability plans, click here.

A study just out of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative argues along the same lines, namely that conservation must be incorporated into the daily patterns and thought processes of consumers if any progress is to be made. Conservation must be viewed as a "global public good," according to the study, if biodiversity loss is to be stopped. It must go beyond policy and extend to individual's every-day choices. See the Eurekalert press release here.

A Tribute to Franz Schurmann

The following is reprinted with permission from New America Media. It is a tribute to Franz Schrumann, the co-founder of Pacific News Service:

Franz Schurmann, the foremost scholar of communist China during the Cold War, an early opponent of the US war in Indochina, and the co-founder of Pacific News Service, died at his home in San Francisco on Aug. 20. The cause was advanced Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. He was 84.

Schurmann taught history and sociology at UC-Berkeley for 38 years. Nevertheless, he chafed against the confines of the academy, and preferred to describe himself as an explorer-journalist rather than as an academic. He was fluent in 12 languages.

His first great exploration was a trip on horseback through Afghanistan in the late 1950s—a journey of two years that led Schurmann to discover what, until then, had been considered by anthropologists a mythical tribe of blue-eyed, blond-haired Mongols who descended from the military expeditions of Genghis Khan. (“The Mongols of Afghanistan”, 1962)

In contrast to the Cold War polemics that dominated China studies in the U.S., “Organization and Ideology of Communist China” (1968) drew heavily on Schurmann’s interviews of Chinese refugees in Hong Kong—interviews that enabled him to convey to western readers how Chinese society and governance truly worked.

Schurmann’s knowledge of the histories and cultures of the Far East gave him an expertise within the anti-war movement few other critics of American foreign policies of the time commanded. In 1966, he coauthored, with Reginald Zelnik and Peter Dale Scott, “The Politics of Escalation”, documenting a parallel chain of command operating within the US military and intelligence agencies that intended to thwart White House diplomacy.

An inveterate reader of the world press, Schurmann often told the story of a great WWII spy whose primary sources were daily newspapers. Schurmann tracked the rise of the post-Cold War global economy in “The Logic of World Power” (1974) and went on to challenge the almost universal demonization of Richard Nixon by America’s intelligentsia with “The Foreign Politics of Richard Nixon” (1987).

Despite the acclaim his early writings had achieved, and his reputation as a rigorous if provocative scholar and thinker, no one would publish Schurmann’s Nixon book, until Seymour Martin Lipset intervened on the book’s behalf. Even then, the book – which credited Nixon rather than Kissinger with Machiavellian brilliance in creating the architecture of the post-Cold War world-- never won an audience among official Nixon watchers, let alone academics.

Schurmann’s last book, “American Soul” (2001) was a personal narrative, a view of the world from 29th Avenue in San Francisco, at the shore of the Pacific. He described an America that was transforming the world and being transformed by the emergence of a one-world culture and economy.

Herbert Franz Schurmann was born on June 21, 1926, in New York City and raised with his younger sister, Dorothy, in Bloomfield, Conn., just outside Hartford. He described his childhood home in “American Soul” as divided by silences that resulted from the meeting of separate cultures. His father –a migrant tool and die maker from Slovenia—had found work in Germany, Poland, Greece and Italy before immigrating to America. His mother fled starvation and the chaos of post-WWI Germany and found work as a housemaid with a German Jewish family in New York.

Schurmann, inheriting his father’s gift for languages, absorbed the languages of the immigrant families of Hartford. He recalled fondly his Italian godmother, his French Canadian friends, and the meals served forth at his “Polish mother’s” table.

A combative misfit at school, he papered his bedroom walls with maps of the world and kept a meticulous stamp collection. His father died when he was fifteen. He left high school early with a scholarship to Trinity College in Hartford. But he was a working-class commuter student, and he felt out of place.

During WWII, he was drafted and assigned to language school. While waiting in line to get his papers, he switched places with a Japanese-American soldier and ended up studying Japanese instead of German. Shipping off from San Francisco, he joined the US occupation forces in Japan, where he worked as a censor in the offices of a Japanese newspaper. He would later recall this as the beginning of his fascination with newspapers.

Thanks to the GI Bill, he entered Harvard after his discharge to pursue a doctorate in Asian studies, without ever having earned an undergraduate degree. While in the army, he formed what would be a lifelong friendship with a fellow draftee, Stefan Brecht, son of the German playwright Bertolt Brecht and the actress, Helene Weigel. During summer breaks from Harvard, where the younger Brecht was also a graduate student, the pair would hitchhike to Santa Monica to join the Brecht household. Schurmann’s intellectual life, he later would say, began at the Brechts’ dining room table, in conversation with Thomas Mann and other European intellectuals who had forged an exile colony in and around Hollywood.

For his Harrvard Ph.D., Schurmann translated into English the Chinese Mongol dynastic tracts. Schurmann returned to Japan after completing his doctorate to study Chinese agricultural economics for a year at Kyoto University. A two-year fellowship allowed him to pursue his studies of the Mongol tribe in Afghanistan and later to learn Turkish and Persian in Istanbul. He lived for a time in Paris, before returning to the United States, to San Francisco, which he remembered from his Army days.

“My life was a series of fortunate accidents,” he would later recall, describing how a visit to UC Berkeley led to an offer by the Dept. of Oriental Studies to teach Turkish and Persian, filling in for a professor who was on sabbatical. Schurmann subsequently earned a tenured appointment in both sociology and history.

Schurmann’s work on Communist China and the accuracy of his prediction of a Sino-Soviet split prompted offers from RAND and US intelligence agencies. But the growing US involvement in Vietnam caused him to become a critic of U.S. foreign policy.

A founding member of the Faculty Peace Committee at UC Berkeley in the fall of 1964, Schurmann immersed himself in the nascent anti-war and Free Speech movements. He gave—along with anti-war intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, Richard Barnett, Seymour Melman and Richard Falk – an intellectual backbone to the movement. In the spring of 1968, he traveled to Hanoi with Mary McCarthy for a two-week fact-finding trip at the invitation of the North Vietnamese government. Deplaning later in Phnom Penh, Schurmann’s belligerant confrontation with US Ambassador William Sullivan over America’s secret war in Laos earned him headlines at home: “UC Berkeley Professor Squares off with US Ambassador” (Time Magazine). On his return, he was debriefed by Sen. J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The government is perpetuating so many lies,” Schurmann reported. “I wish it were that simple,” Fulbright responded (according to Schurmann). “The government lies so much it no longer can tell the difference between what’s a lie and what’s the truth.”

To promote independent research and writing, Schurmann founded the nonprofit Bay Area Institute and later, with a former student, Orville Schell, the Pacific News Service, in 1970. After President Nixon’s breakthrough diplomacy to China and the subsequent end of the Indochina War, Schurmann expanded the scope of his inquiries beyond East Asia to domestic affairs, especially the transformation of American cities with the onset of the global economy. A background session with Huey P. Newton about Newton’s upcoming trip to China led to an intellectual assocation. Schurmann wrote the introduction to Newton’s book, “To Die for the People.”

Schurmann’s devotion to Pacific News Service reflected his passion for newspapers. In 1974, his partner, Sandy Close, a former Hong Kong-based journalist and founder of the Flatlands newspaper in Oakland, California, took over the news service. For more than 35 years the couple ran PNS as a shared enterprise.

Schurmann’s columns reflected the range of his inquires – he translated the poetry scrawled by student demonstrators on the walls of Tiananmen Square; he analyzed the manifesto of the Taliban, which he translated from Pashtun long before the group had even surfaced as a political movement of interest to the US press; he warned in 1996 of the spreading of desertification of the globe: “I can taste the sand of the Gobi Desert on the streets of San Francisco.”

A one-time director of the Center for Chinese Studies at UC-Berkeley, Schurmann bridled at any official designation of himself as a “China expert”—as if such a designation would proscribe his intellectual freedom.

“I’ve moved on,” he would say, restless as always to resume his intellectual journey—to quantum physics, and then—in the early 1990s—to the study of written Arabic and to Islam. He mastered the script sufficiently to be able to read the Koran and the Arab language press which became his source of information for hundreds of columns, tracking the spread of militant Islam and America’s deepening engagement with the Muslim world.

Schurmann retired from UC Berkeley in the mid-1990s, a move he believed would free him to travel and to write. Stung by the rejection of his writing on Nixon by the East Coast publishing world, he slowly cut his ties to academia and many intellectual circles. Though in the 1960s Time named him one of America’s 50 most influential thinkers, by the 1990s he returned to his roots—traveling, observing, listening. His late travels took him to Latin America, Africa, India and China. On his last trip to China, Franz was accompanied by his younger son, Peter, and his son’s friend, a fellow New York bike messenger at the time, a young man with bright red hair who towered over everyone they met.

He mentored colleagues at PNS—from noted author and essayist Richard Rodriguez to young writers at YO! and the Beat Within, more than a dozen of whom shared, at various times, the Schurmann’s home. He served as the intellectual inspiration for the founding of New America Media by his partner, Sandy Close. “Franz was constantly shifting and expanding his lens, drawing on his readings of foreign-language media. PNS would never have made the breakthrough to NAM had it not been for his example,” said Close.

In those same years, not a day passed when he did not walk miles through San Francisco, often walking the eight miles from his home in the Sunset to the PNS offices downtown in less than 90 minutes.

Schurmann gradually withdrew to his study, acquiring an early facility with the computer and masking the onset of Alzheimer’s disease with a prodigious flow of ideas. His last five years were lived in seclusion, though he was visited faithfully by many students and PNS colleagues, even after he could no longer communicate. “This thinker and explorer whose gift was his ability to listen and learn from so many ordinary people all over the world finally retreated to the world of his mind, a universe by itself,” said Close.

Schurmann is survived by his partner of 42 years, Sandy Close; two sons, Mark Anderson Schurmann of Olympia, Washington; and Peter Leon Schurmann and his wife Aruna Lee,and grandson Leon of San Francisco; a sister, Dorothy Schurmann of Oakland; and a godson, Hanif Bey of San Francisco.

Update from the Community Catalyst Fund

Last December, Overbrook grantee Clean Air-Cool Planet launched the Community Catalyst Fund, a small grants program for sustainability projects in Connecticut, New York and New Jersey involving environmental preservation and energy-use reduction in small towns. Since then the CCF has been working hard to get the word out to grassroots organizations, many of which just need that extra little push to make great strides forward. Read below for an update on a star CCF project, cross-posted from Clean Air-Cool Planet's blog:

Community Catalyst Fund helps Groton student garden expand and grow

By Chad Devoe
Guest Blogger
Groton Central School, Groton, NY

Groton Central School is a rural district in the Finger Lakes Region of New York, with an enrollment of about 1,000 students. 2010 represented the third growing season for the GCS “Student Farm”. A year prior to its inception, we started a school-wide composting program (“Rot-in-Groton”) and composted on-site behind the school.

People started asking what would be done with the finished compost and a school garden seemed like the logical answer so students could see and take part in the complete recycling loop. We started with a 25’ x 25’ plot of grass that was roto-tilled into a decent garden. It was a rough and weedy start but it paved the way for future improvements. The garden attracted many volunteers since this was (and still is) the only community garden in Groton.

“Rot-in-Groton” Composting Video (dated back a few years)

Teachers and students volunteered their time as well as the Groton Girl Scout Troop, Rotary Club, and Youth Department to improve this valuable asset. Some produce was (and still is) used at the student-run Groton Farmer’s Market. Most produce, however, is planned so that harvest occurs in spring and fall so as much food as possible is used in the school cafeteria, offering students fresh and local organic produce at no additional charge to them. This year we are providing lettuce, spinach, garlic, melons, string beans, peas, winter/summer squash, beets, corn, potatoes, peppers, onions, and tomatoes to the cafeteria. Our food service director is very supportive and appreciative of our efforts since he is a gardener himself. Some preparation will be done by study hall students this year to minimize any extra work for the food service workers. This is a great learning experience in itself.

After two successful growing seasons, it was time for an expansion of the garden so that we could make a larger impact on cafeteria food choices. Clean Air-Cool Planet’s Community Catalyst Fund helped bring about major improvements this year including a 20’ hoop house so we could extend our growing season by at least two months, a garden expansion to 45’ x 45’ with 23 raised beds, a new fence and gate, and the beginning of a fruit orchard. Additionally, the high school has added a 1/2 year science/health elective titled “Food, Land, and You”.

Learn more about raised garden beds from Earth Easy

This spring-semester class will focus on gardening and our food supply through the lens of sustainability. Funding will go towards purchasing supplies for this hands-on class including canning materials, fresh produce and ingredients for healthy cooking recipes, and seeds. These improvements would not have been possible without this funding! Future plans are to expand the fruit orchard, establish a bed of asparagus, and further integrate garden-based education into the curriculum.

NRDC Asks Government to Strengthen Seafood Safety Regulations

The Natural Resources Defense Council, an Overbrook grantee, sent letters yesterday to the Food and Drug Administration and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, demanding more stringent data and criteria for the safe consumption of Gulf seafood. The letters, signed by almost two dozen Gulf Coast organizations, also asked for full disclosure of everything the government agencies discover and decide about Gulf seafood in the wake of the BP oil disaster.

NRDC's letters come only a couple of weeks after the federal government declared much of the oil gone, either through skimming, use of dispersant chemicals or natural evaporation. Non-government scientists say that assessment is not completely incorrect, but does depend on consensus around the definition of the word "gone." Even non-scientists had reason to question the government statement after spending a spring and summer watching millions of gallons gush unfettered into the Gulf. Surface oil that broke up and sank to deeper waters may be out of sight, but is it truly "gone?"

Scientists who were not involved in the government study are currently doing their own research. Marine scientist Charles Hopkinson, asked by CNN about NOAA's statement said, "That is just absolutely incorrect in the opinion of the scientists."

When oil sinks its deleterious effects may not be as visible, but they are equally destructive. Oil degrades more slowly at colder temperatures found below the surface, and plankton at the base of the food web are vulnerable, affecting every step along the food chain.

Scientists at the Universities of Georgia and Florida have found evidence of oil in the soil of an undersea canyon in the Florida panhandle, as well as poisoned plankton. The next step in their research will be to determine whether that oil can be linked to the BP spill.

In the meantime, shrimping season is open and new fishing areas are being reopened every day. Can we trust government pronouncements that the seafood is safe to eat, when NOAA asserts most of the oil of the months-long spill is "gone?" NRDC, along with Gulf Coast communities, is making sure we all reach agreement, at least on the word "safe," when it comes to seafood.

AC Culture and Global Warming

An article out of The Independent today looks that the increasing ubiquity of air conditioning worldwide, and its implications for increased greenhouse gas emissions and related warming.

Artificial cooling is becoming a status symbol in developing countries, where individual home units are among the most common purchases once people reach a certain income bracket. Air conditioner use in China tripled between 1997 and 2007, and India is expected to dump at least ten times more energy into air conditioning by 2020 than it did in 2005. A growing urban population that increasingly equates manufactured temperature with status and luxury does not bode well for the planet's already record, rising temperatures.

But before pointing fingers, it's important to recognize the United States as the biggest culprit in over-use of air conditioning, a one-time luxury that has somehow become a "necessity" Americans demand. Americans eat up 15 percent of our country's annual energy consumption just on cooling homes, office buildings, shopping malls, movie theaters, etc, etc. This is the highest rate of energy consumption for air conditioning in the world, more than all of the combined energy used to fuel the entire African continent!

As we shiver "luxuriously" in our office buildings, homes and shopping malls, and Dubai's in-progress Palazzo Versace promises the world's first air conditioned beach, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association is coming out with some sobering (if not unexpected) news. Click here for NOAA's State of the Climate Global Analysis, which tells us in no uncertain terms that June 2010 was the warmest month on record, as well as the 304th consecutive month with a global temperature above the 20th Century average.


Most Americans have had the experience of shivering inside on the hottest days of summer, bringing sweatshirts or scarves to movies, office buildings and restaurants. Scientist Stan Cox, author of the book Losing Our Cool, makes a case for going ac-free, something that has become increasingly (and perplexingly) unthinkable in the US and beyond.