The 999 team have identified 9 Action Areas in which we can all effect positive change with remarkably little effort. Far better than attempting to prescribe what you do, we intend to create a national debate over the coming months: what are the most effective actions that we can all take in these 9 areas? To join this debate, please choose an Action Area from the menu above.
Together with our Ambassadors, we will then synthesize and distil the most credible and popular ideas into the core 999 Manifesto, mobilizing as many people as possible to get involved. This will suggest a range of actions and activities that individuals can take up day-to-day, every day, between now and 999 DAY. Actions will range from political lobbying to petition signing, campaign joining to telling your friends, writing poems to fundraising, to organising an event, to switching to a renewable energy supplier.
On 999 Day itself, thousands of people across the UK will show their solidarity in the face of our current crisis and realize that it is also a tremendous opportunity. By collectively taking simultaneous actions on 9 September 2009 we will generate a critical mass and a critical volume to send an irresistible signal to all those in power that action must be taken – and taken now – if we are to avert disaster. 999 needs you to be part of the (re)evolution.
"We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now... There is such a thing as being too late... We may cry out desperately for time to pause ... but time is deaf to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones... of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words - 'too late'." - Martin Luther King
Please feel free to add your responses and suggestions (use the comment link at the bottom of each Action page - you need to login first).
Your Future Needs You Now
We intend to create a national debate over the coming months: what are the most effective actions that we can all take in this Action Area? Together with our Ambassadors, we will then synthesize and distil the most credible and popular ideas into the core 999 Manisfesto, mobilizing as many people as possible to get involved. To start the ball rolling, 999 It's Time founder Rory Spowers has presented some of his own ideas below.
"For many, the word 'activism' has often had a negative association, implying radicalism, conflict and confrontation. However, like with many key words in modern use - democracy, eco-nomics, religion - I believe we are in the process of redefining 'activism', bringing it back to it's roots. As Sam has shown, with her protests about Burma, or Tamsin with Climate Rush, activism can and should be fun, celebratory and creative. By being so, it becomes non-confrontational and thereby immune to the traditional criticism of being purely anarchic, or somehow nihilistic. I propose that we need to define and present a new form of 'positive activism' and hope that this forum can be used to give birth to multiple new possibilities for us all to get involved with. Post your ideas for a new breed of activism and let's have fun while we change the world!"
Respond now by adding your views to this page (see the comment link below - you need to login first), by visiting our discussion board on Facebook, or by send an email to actions@999itstime.com with Activism in the subject line.
We intend to create a national debate over the coming months: what are the most effective actions that we can all take in this Action Area? Together with our Ambassadors, we will then synthesize and distil the most credible and popular ideas into the core 999 Manisfesto, mobilizing as many people as possible to get involved. To start the ball rolling, 999 It's Time founder Rory Spowers has presented some of his own ideas below.
"In contrast to the eight other personal Action Areas, which all advocate a more proactive engagement with the major issues of our time, I see the Awareness area as a counter-balance, an opportunity for us to take time out for ourselves, go for a walk and reconnect with natural world. As John Muir, one of the forefathers of the US conservation movement, once said, 'going out, I found, was really going in'. By immersing ourselves more deeply in nature, we can live with her cycles and become more in tune with our surroundings. We see what food is local and seasonal; understand where our water and our energy sources come from. This is the essence of 'bioregionalism'. I see this as fundamental in redefining our current relationship with the planet.
Also, as activists or 'agents of change', we need to balance our concerns with the external world with our own inner peace. As the mystic Thomas Merton pointed out, 'The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.' I hope to use this forum to debate and discuss various paths, techniques and practices that can help us nurture this reconnection with the natural world."
Respond now by adding your views to this page (see the comment link below - you need to login first), by visiting our discussion board on Facebook, or by send an email to actions@999itstime.com with Awareness in the subject line.
We intend to create a national debate over the coming months: what are the most effective actions that we can all take in this Action Area? Together with our Ambassadors, we will then synthesize and distil the most credible and popular ideas into the core 999 Manisfesto, mobilizing as many people as possible to get involved. To start the ball rolling, 999 It's Time founder Rory Spowers has presented some of his own ideas below.
"We all know how the dynamic of a group can shift our actions to another level from acting as lone individuals, creating something that 'is more than the sum of its parts'. Although all our individual lifestyle actions are important, there is no doubt that when we act as a group - as a family, a business, a community - something else emerges. After many years of working in this area, I believe that this is where real, deep and systemic change has to occur. We need to shift gear, from acting purely as individuals to acting as 'complex co-operative communities', be it on-line, or with our neighbours, or in the work-place.
There are numerous initiatives out there that can easily be replicated in this context, many of them highlighted on The Web of Hope database, from Common Ground's Community Orchards initiative to Denmark's wind power co-operatives. The most exciting new initiative in this area is the Transition Towns movement. Check it out and get your local community involved."
Respond now by adding your views to this page (see the comment link below - you need to login first), by visiting our discussion board on Facebook, or by send an email to actions@999itstime.com with Community in the subject line.
We intend to create a national debate over the coming months: what are the most effective actions that we can all take in this Action Area? Together with our Ambassadors, we will then synthesize and distil the most credible and popular ideas into the core 999 Manisfesto, mobilizing as many people as possible to get involved. To start the ball rolling, 999 It's Time founder Rory Spowers has presented some of his own ideas below.
"There are obvious overlaps between all nine Action Areas, but perhaps most acutely between Conservation and Environment. In the context of 999, I see Conservation as being about recognizing the importance of the world we have inherited and what we are leaving for our children - as we outlined in the brief to Polly, it covers 'biodiversity, heritage and stewardship'. In contrast, I see the Environment section as dealing more with the major issue of our time - namely climate change - and other 'waste' issues that have arisen from our linear systems, like toxic pollution.
Another example of our atomized modern lives is the extent to which we have become dissociated from the immediate area in which we live. I would like to see actions and initiatives that enable us all, but perhaps especially the younger generation, to re-engage with local habitats and community centres, reawakening a sense of pride in local heritage and thereby encouraging a sense of responsibility and stewardship.
For example, the Walking School Bus immediately springs to mind, allowing children to walk to school safely, chat along the way and learn about their local heritage at the same time. Like so many of the solutions we seek, this is 'systemic', reducing pollution and congestion, while giving kids exercise and stimulation, bringing them to school more settled, attentive and ready to learn."
Respond now by adding your views to this page (see the comment link below - you need to login first), by visiting our discussion board on Facebook, or by send an email to actions@999itstime.com with Conservation in the subject line.
We intend to create a national debate over the coming months: what are the most effective actions that we can all take in this Action Area? Together with our Ambassadors, we will then synthesize and distil the most credible and popular ideas into the core 999 Manisfesto, mobilizing as many people as possible to get involved. To start the ball rolling, 999 It's Time founder Rory Spowers has presented some of his own ideas below.
"'Consumerism' has become such a 'dirty word' in modern times but we tend to forget that it is not so much consumerism per se that is the problem, but what we consume and the rate at which we consume it. All biological organisms depend on consuming something, be it an amoeba or an elephant, and however ascetic our existence, we are always having an impact somewhere, through what we eat, drink and wear. Sadly, most of what we consume these days, we consume at a totally unsustainable rate, from non-renewable sources, usually creating toxic by-products in the process and generating waste products that cannot be safely 'sequestered', or digested, by natural processes. Hence we have global warming, toxic landfills and depleted fish stocks.
However, if all the packaging at the supermarket were made from biodegradeable materials that could help make compost and rebuild topsoil, we would have created cyclical processes that mimic the natural world, rather than linear processes that have 'changed the rules' and 'stepped outside the system'. Collectively acting as 'conscious consumers' we can have a huge impact on how the world works, such as avoiding products with unnecessary packaging, supporting local businesses, sourcing food from local growers and visiting farmers markets.
One of the great successes in this area is the Slow Food movement, which has done wonders in promoting bioregional pride in local produce and shrinking the gap between producer and consumer."
Respond now by adding your views to this page (see the comment link below - you need to login first), by visiting our discussion board on Facebook, or by send an email to actions@999itstime.com with Consumerism in the subject line.
Ambassador for Culture, Misty Oldland takes action on the morning of 9/9/9 and performs:
'Beggin the G-20': The Copenhagen Climate Summit remix
The song is a reworked version of 'Beggin' by Frankie Valli and Misty hopes it will raise awareness of the importance of the Climate Protocol (climate agreement) is, which is due to be signed by the G-20 at the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December. The CP will decide what CO2 emissions reductions will be instated by the industrialized countries of the world. Leading scientists warn that only a 25% reduction in CO2 by 2012 will prevent global warming from reaching the 'tipping point': where runaway climate change will become potentially irreversible and catastrophic.
(P.S. the first line of the song is inspired by Rory Spowers' fantastic book Rising Tides.)
LYRICS
Rising tides
Retreatin' ice
We intend to create a national debate over the coming months: what are the most effective actions that we can all take in this Action Area? Together with our Ambassadors, we will then synthesize and distil the most credible and popular ideas into the core 999 Manisfesto, mobilizing as many people as possible to get involved. To start the ball rolling, 999 It's Time founder Rory Spowers has presented some of his own ideas below.
"Arts, culture and creative media have always gone hand in glove with activism and social movements looking for change. As writer and activist Arundhati Roy has said, writers and artists are almost morally obliged during times like these to take a stand and reflect on what is happening in the world around them. Perhaps most importantly, as Misty said at the 999 launch, there is a huge untapped possibility for using arts and creative educational media to help engage children and the younger generation with the critical issues of our time. They are not only the ones who will inherit the mess created by previous generations, but also the ones who most need a voice to help us all transcend the current crisis.
Back in 1992, at the first Earth Summit in Rio, a 12-year-old Severn Suzuki made an impassioned plea to the assembled on behalf of children around the world, leaving many in the audience visibly shaken. It later transpired that her speech had a major impact on many world leaders. Maybe we can use creative media to encourage more youth leaders to make such an impact in our current climate?
The extraordinary success of the Room 13 arts project, started at a Fort William school in Scotland, shows just how capable and undervalued the younger generation can be, running the entire arts studio by themselves."
Respond now by adding your views to this page (see the comment link below - you need to login first), by visiting our discussion board on Facebook, or by send an email to actions@999itstime.com with Culture in the subject line.
We intend to create a national debate over the coming months: what are the most effective actions that we can all take in this Action Area? Together with our Ambassadors, we will then synthesize and distil the most credible and popular ideas into the core 999 Manisfesto, mobilizing as many people as possible to get involved. To start the ball rolling, 999 It's Time founder Rory Spowers has presented some of his own ideas below.
"As someone once said, 'You can always build an economy out of an ecology, but you can never build an ecology out of an economy.' Although we all know this to be true, we conveniently overlook it and continue to run an economic system that excludes all social and environmental impacts from our calculations. We are very good at putting a price on things, but ignore the real cost, still living under the illusion that infinite growth is possible on a planet with finite resources. As the novelist Edward Abbey once said, 'growth for the sake of growth is the philosophy of a cancer cell.' Herman Daly, one of the first eco-economists, first made the important distinction between 'growth' and 'development'. A growing economy is only getting bigger - a developing economy is getting better.
If a truly sustainable society is ever to emerge, we have to integrate these principles within our economics. Otherwise we will continue to use obsolete indicators to measure our prosperity and quality of life. What good is GDP if it increases with each hospital bill, car accident, insurance claim and environmental disaster? Why do we tax what is supposed to be good for us, like jobs, capital and income, and not what is bad for us, like pollution and resource depletion?
The good news is that new economic thinking is highly evolved and the mechanisms are all there to be implemented. Look at the work of Paul Hawken in the US, or the New Economics Foundation in the UK. At the same time, the proliferation and popularity of fair trade initiatives, or local economic mechanisms like alternative currencies that allow us to unplug from the corporate global casino. As the old economic paradigm crumbles around us, surely we need to embrace these new models more than ever before?"
Respond now by adding your views to this page (see the comment link below - you need to login first), by visiting our discussion board on Facebook, or by send an email to actions@999itstime.com with Economics in the subject line.
We intend to create a national debate over the coming months: what are the most effective actions that we can all take in this Action Area? Together with our Ambassadors, we will then synthesize and distil the most credible and popular ideas into the core 999 Manisfesto, mobilizing as many people as possible to get involved. To start the ball rolling, 999 It's Time founder Rory Spowers has presented some of his own ideas below.
"For most of us within this 'movement' it has been evident for some time now that THE most urgent issue facing humanity is climate change. Clearly, nothing that we do is of any use without a habitable biosphere. However, the issues surrounding climate change are so complex that many find it hard to see any hope of a solution. Many still deny that it is happening it all, citing solar sunspot cycles and natural variations within the earth's climatic systems, overlooking the incontrovertible link between atmospheric CO2 and average global temperature.
Systemic problems require systemic solutions and every one of our 9 Action Areas has relevance to climate change, be it economic, political or community related. Your future needs you NOW and we need to be active and mindful in every area.
We are entering a pivotal year in human history, since what is decided by the world's political leaders in Copenhagen at the end of this year will determine the future of global climate change policy and, therefore, the fate of civilization at large, along with most of life on earth. It is imperative that we force these few powerful men and women to make the right decisions. George Monbiot has called for a 25% cut in emissions by 2012 if we are to avert runaway climate change. As one of our 999 goals, we are calling for a 9% cut every year for three years.
This is the scale of what is required. It is non-negotiable. Either we take the steps necessary to avert disaster, or go the way of the dinosaurs. As we have seen, billions are made available for going to war, or to bail out crumbling economies. Isn't it about time the same resources were mobilized to preserve the very systems that support life on earth?"
Respond now by adding your views to this page (see the comment link below - you need to login first), by visiting our discussion board on Facebook, or by send an email to actions@999itstime.com with Environment in the subject line.
We intend to create a national debate over the coming months: what are the most effective actions that we can all take in this Action Area? Together with our Ambassadors, we will then synthesize and distil the most credible and popular ideas into the core 999 Manisfesto, mobilizing as many people as possible to get involved. To start the ball rolling, 999 It's Time founder Rory Spowers has presented some of his own ideas below.
"Apparently, it only takes a few letters on a particular issue for politicians to sit up and take notice. I have always found this hard to believe, but if it's true, it does give us a sense of hope. When I first spoke to Zac Goldsmith about 999, the aims of which he fully supports, he reiterated time and again the need for us all too be as proactive as possible in this way, highlighting the need for us all to write to our MPs as an integral part of the movement's aims.
We can all start this process now, by going to WriteToThem and having direct access to your local councillors, MPs and MEPs. Are there ways in which we can co-ordinate this on a collective scale and create a bigger impact? What do we want from those that represent us? How can we make it obligatory for them to put the pressure on our political leaders to make the decisions we need to see come out of Copenhagen in December? More than ever, we need to see people put before profit. We no longer have the time. If not us, then who? If not now, then when? If not this, then what? If not here, then where?"
Respond now by adding your views to this page (see the comment link below - you need to login first), by visiting our discussion board on Facebook, or by send an email to actions@999itstime.com with People Power in the subject line.