Year 2, Month 5, Day 3: Niiiiiice.

The Christian Science Monitor does an Earth Day report on a woman named Erin Barnes, and her group, which is named IOBY (“In Our Back Yards”). Good for her:

Dowser: What is unique about ioby’s mission as an environmental organization?

Erin Barnes, co-founder and executive director: It’s part of the values that we have as an organization to work locally and be invested in the community. Ioby, the name, comes from the opposite of “nimby” (Not In My Backyard).

We started the organization because we felt like the environmental movement had long been concentrated on places where people don’t live. We felt that the interaction between people or communities and the environment was meaningful.

Every project we support through our site has to meet our environmental criteria. They have to be doing something that benefits the community too.

It’s nice to see somebody doing the right thing for once.

Sent April 25:

Ms. Barnes’ group has the right name. The effects of global warming cannot be relegated to other places; we are all in this together. Since climate change manifests locally, regionally, nationally and globally, we need to tackle the problem in the same way. Personal efforts must combine with the work of neighborhood groups; statewide initiatives and a national movement for environmental responsibility need to go hand in hand. Furthermore, it’s not enough for our response to this imminent catastrophe to be polycentric; just as the greenhouse effect is going to continue to influence Earth’s climate for centuries to come, our thinking must be polytemporal, extending beyond the narrow short-term. It is time for human civilization to begin imagining the distant future — and to recognize that “business as usual” is going to render that future a dystopian hell in short order.

Warren Senders