Each meeting of the Environmental Change-Makers is packed with resources - local, area-wide, state, national, worldwide.  Rather than allow these collections of resources to disappear after our meetings, we are archiving them here.

Thus, even if you are not in our area, or if you missed a meeting, you can still access some of the information we shared among ourselves.

Additionally, online resources is a way we can cut back on hardcopy paper handouts at the meetings, thus saving trees, the water and toxins it takes to manufacture the paper, the toxins in ink/printer cartridges, greenhouse gasses to haul all that, landfill space from excess handouts ... need we say more?

• Attracting beneficial insects
• Hands-on Composting workshop
• Container edibles
• Feral vegetables
• Fruit tree pruning
• Good bug / bad bug (garden insect identification)
• Rainwater harvesting
• Seed saving

• Seedling care
• Soil building
• Vegetable garden design series (overall site design, vegetable plant needs & seasonality, crop rotation schemes, companion planting)
• Water wisdom in the garden

Topics are offered seasonally, as appropriate for our Southern California gardens. 

Some classes are written up online.  See the list here.

With so many people out of work or under-employed, it's time to go local.  This session was a precursor to our launch of the Ballona LETSystem.

• Resources for this event are online in the right sidebar ("The Economy") of our Neighborhood Sharing page

Seedy resources:

• a delightful article about Seed Swaps by Heather Coburn, author of Food Not Lawns - we'll be following her "potluck" version of organizing
• Suzanne Ashworth,Seed to Seed (available in LA Public Library system)
• read about the Safe Seed Pledge here and here
• why not ornamental flowers
• a fact sheet on Genetic Engineering from Californians for GE-Free Agriculture (pdf) (html)
• Greenpeace's webpage on genetic engineering
• an article about seeds and biodiversity which has tons of resources at the bottom

Animated video explaining global warming and 350 (VIDEO 90 second, multilingual)

Peak oil visually explained (VIDEO 3 minute, English)

 

explanation:  Future Scenarios by David Holmgren

Transition resources at Transition Los Angeles

The new documentary about the international Transition movement.  Learn more about what's happening here in Los Angeles via Transition Los Angeles.

Guest speaker Vidya Chaitanya discussed various models for how to create change within society.

Resources here and here

Resources

Resources

We hosted Marilyn Stoner, a student of Joanna Macy, for a workshop on The Great Turning.  Resources:

• Joanna Macy's Findhorn talk about The Great Turning
• Joanna's writings about The Great Turning
• the book that was the source of many of the exercises we did that day Coming Back To Life:  Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World, Joanna Macy

We held a winter garden celebration event, including a garden class on Seedlings, a community potluck, and a Seed Swap.  We had live music from local musicians The Praties, and HeyTanksLA brought water barrels and a display of large-scale rainwater harvesting equipment.

• How to organize a seed swap, by Food Not Lawns

The Transition Towns concept is a way of organizing communities to prepare for the sweeping changes coming with peak oil and climate change.  Read more about it here.  Graduates of the December training gave an overview of the Transition concept for the general public.

• What is Transition?
• Our list of Transition resources
• Transition Los Angeles

The Environmental Change-Makers hosted UK trainers Sophy Banks and Naresh Giangrande as they taught 34 community leaders from throughout the greater Los Angeles basin (and beyond) about the Transition concept.  The Transition Los Angeles city hub, together with several local pods, were the exciting result.

• What is Transition?
• Our list of Transition resources

"Power down" is the term for changing to lifestyles that demand less energy.  Guest speaker Dr. Brian Treanor, Chair of Environmental Studies at Loyola Marymount Univesity, added a philosopher's view.

• resources here

We talked about many aspects of more sustainable cooking:  locally sourced ingredients, fresh in-season ingredients, and cooking with more sustainable techniques. 

• "How to Make a Cooking basket..." Hay Box cooking
• Rocket stoves link 1 ... link 2
• Solar cooking resources
• "What Will We Eat as the Oil Runs Out: Food Security in an Energy-Scarce World"
• Scroll down to Jan. 2008 meeting for local food resources.

what to use instead of those toxic household chemicals

Resources:

• Clean and Green, by Annie Berthold-Bond
• Jude's Herbal Home Remedies, Jude C. Williams
• " Non-Toxic Household Products Fact Sheet" from the Tennessee Valley Authority (now only available on ghost sites like this one or this one )
• Washington Toxics Coalition has long been active in eliminating toxins from our landscapes and lifestyles
• "What's Wrong with Using Pesticides?" (pdf) from the Washington Toxics Coalition

This month, rather than a "listen to people talking" meeting, we got on our bikes and pedaled around our neighborhood!

Resources:

• "How Not To Get Hit By Cars"
• ReLocalizing Your Urban Lifestyle (pdf)

This meeting, several of our Change-Making children spoke, sharing things they do to help the environment.  Kids told about recycling, using recycled paper for their schoolwork, using reuseable water bottles, helping hang laundry to air-dry, riding bicycles as transportation, growing vegetables, and much more.

Resources:

• "10 Things You Can Do About Global Warming (Yes, even if you're not yet an adult)" - A booklet for children.  Reading level: grades 4-8
• The Environmental Change-Makers book list for children

We swapped much more than seeds in this evening focused on growing edible and functional plants.  When local gardeners gather, there are always stories to share!

Resources about seed-saving:

• a delightful article about Seed Swaps by Heather Coburn, author of Food Not Lawns - we'll be following her "potluck" version of organizing
• Suzanne Ashworth,Seed to Seed (available in LA Public Library system)
• read about the Safe Seed Pledge here and here
• a fact sheet on Genetic Engineering from Californians for GE-Free Agriculture (pdf) (html)
• Greenpeace's webpage on genetic engineering
• an article about seeds and biodiversity which has tons of resources at the bottom

Guest Melanie Foster, a local practitioner of Energy Medicine.  We discussed concepts of Ecologically Sustainable Medicine.

Resources:

• "Healing Without Harm ," by Joel Kreisberg, DC
• "Eight ways that modern medicine is oil dependent," by Paul Roth

Resources:

• A gastronome who does not have an environmental conscience is a fool, because without it he will be deceived in every way possible and will allow the earth, from which he draws the essence of his work, to die. In the same way, it may be said that an ecologist who is not also something of a gastronome is a sad character, who besides not being able to enjoy nature and missing out on the pleasure of eating, is indirectly prepared to do serious damage to the ecosystem by the simple act of eating incorrectly.  
  -- Carlo Petrini
• Slow Food USA
• The High Cost of Cheap Food (pdf)
• 10 Reasons to Eat Local Food (pdf)
• Find your local Farmer's Market. Gives times and locations by city.

Resources:

• "Facilitate the Great Reskilling" by Rob Hopkins
• "Is Peak Oil Pessimism a Generation of Men Coming to Realise How Useless They Are?" by Rob Hopkins
• ReLocalizing Your Urban Lifestyle (pdf)
• Knitty.com

Resources:

• Alternative gift options http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=244
• Unshopping concept, from Co-Op America
• The Simple Living Network which is a network based on the ideas of Duane Elgin's book Voluntary Simplicity

We screened the movie "Contested Streets" http://www.contestedstreets.com/about.html  which tells about how Copenhagen, London and Paris are reclaiming city streets for pedestrians and bicyclists.  Following the movie we held a community discussion about how the ideas in the movie could be applied to Los Angeles.

Resources for the evening included:

• Post Carbon Cities: A Guidebook on Peak Oil and Global Warming for Local Governments by the Post Carbon Institute.  Their #1 principle for the long term reads:  "Deal with transportation and land use (or you may as well stop now)"
• "Descending the Peak: Navigating the Transition from Oil and Natural Gas " report from City of Portland Peak Oil Task Force.
• California Global Warming resources http://www.climatechoices.org/ca/index.html
• Peak Oil resources http://www.energybulletin.net/primer.php
• ReLocalizing Your Urban Lifestyle (pdf)

2nd Annual 100-Mile Potluck (Aug. 2007)

What's a 100-mile potluck?  Find out here http://legacyla.net/transformation/?p=241

Bob Galbreath, a Westchester neighbor and a part of the City of Santa Monica's Environmental Programs Division, gave an excellent PowerPoint presentation.  He covered water conservation, preventing urban runoff, drought tolerant landscaping.

Resources from this meeting included:

• Santa Monica Environmental Programs Division handouts
• 12 Water Saving Tips
• LADWP's Free Residential Shade Trees program
• TreePeople's T.R.E.E.S. water conscious design handbook
• Gardening Without Irrigation by Steve Solomon, an online book about growing vegetables in ULTRA low water situations
• Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands, by Brad Lancaster (Amazon)
• Oasis Design website, some of the best graywater information available.  Be sure to read their "common mistakes" page.
• Since it's summertime, we'll throw this one in for good measure:  Passive Cooling resources (pdf)

The Amazing Car-Lite Lifestyle (May 2007)

The founders of C.I.C.L.E. (Cyclists Inciting Change through Live Exchange)

Click here to read about this event.

Edible Landscaping Garden Tour (May 2007)

Click here for resources

What You Can Do About Global Warming (Apr 2007)

LADWP Green Power program, Free Shade Trees program, and other environmental programs www.ladwp.com/library/statichtml/homepage_greenla.html

Two handouts from this meeting are available through Joanne's website, www.LegacyLA.net

• "15 Things You Can Do About Global Warming"
• A booklet for children: "10 Things You Can Do About Global Warming (Yes, even if you're not yet an adult)"

Step It Up March for Climate Action (Apr 2007)

Read about our local action and see photos http://la.indymedia.org/news/2007/04/196838.php

Read about national actions http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/16/222128/336
  or www.StepItUp2007.org

Ed Begley, Jr. Speaks (Mar 2007)
"Live Simply So That Others May Simply Live"

Click here for photos.

A recording of this event will be available through KPFK radio.

Planning Your Spring Vegetable Garden (Feb 2007)

Click here for resources from this talk.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Rebuy (Jan 2007)

Click here to read about this event.

Greener Gifting (Nov 2006)

Click here for resources from this event.

Teach Your Children Well (Oct 2006)

This meeting focused on our children, the Next Generation, and how we can cultivate the habits of Sustainability in the midst of a more-more-more world.  Resources included the Children's Booklist, items from the Next Generation booth at the Earth Care Fair, and more.

The Earth Care Fair (Oct 2006)

Click here for photos.
The Earth Care Fair showcased local green resources and earth-wiser ideas.