I've been working on global warming now for fifteen years and have worked with all kinds of folks; business leaders, anarchists (the peaceful kind), church leaders, mayors, students, you name it.  But as an organizer/activist by profession and maybe DNA - I thought I had seen it all - until I went to a global warming conference that my friend Bill McKibben invited me to at Middlebury College a couple of years ago.  It was a wild mishmash of diverse thinkers on how to jump start activism on global warming.  All sorts of activism grew out of this conference, presentations I hated, ones I loved, nothing was predictable. 

The Happy Radical in sheep's clothing, Middlebury Economics Professor Jonathan Isham was behind much of it, luring people out of their comfort zones and into the big think.  McKibben broke off with one of the environmental movement's great organizing events, thousands of actions on global warming at what they called Step It Up '07 rallies.  I love all this, especially the great stuff that seems to come out of nowhere. Isham is impossible to say no to, so I promised multiple times to give him a chapter for his book Ignition, detailing a bunch of the stuff presented at the original conference. Having missed deadlines for two years, I thought I was off the hook. But no, Isham has such an infectious spirit, that I woke one morning at three a.m,, several days before missing another deadline, and wrote my strongest piece for why and how to work to stop global warming. It was supposed to be easy, just submit my old speech . Unfortunately, I worked 90 percent from notes and then veered from them most of the time.

Now I'm proud to be part of this collection and hope it inspires action. One of my favorite authors of all time, desert rat Ed Abbey once said about a book of his, &quoton't just read this book, throw it at something big and glassy."  Bravo, I say, just do it non violently, the way John Lewis of the Civil Rights Movement taught us.

Buy Ignition now at a discount