In today’s program, Andrew Zolli, announced the Pop!Tech Carbon Initiative. This initiative is the second iteration of our commitment to being “carbon negative”. This is not your parent’s carbon neutrality. The idea of being carbon negative means that you are offsetting in excess of your carbon emissions.

Representatives of each benefiting project in Pop!Tech’s listings are participating in this year’s Pop!Tech conference as “Pop!Tech Carbon Fellows.” Fellows include:

* Robert Freling, the Executive Director of The Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), an organization dedicated to helping rural communities in the developing world power a brighter future through innovative uses of solar energy. SELF is bringing solar powered irrigation to Benin’s Kalale District in West Africa where over 80% of the villages do not have a source of surface water. The villages are provided with a source of clean renewable energy, eliminating the need for diesel & gas powered pumps.

* Dr. Sarah Otterstrom, the Executive Director of Paso Pacífico, a non-profit organization seeking to build wildlife corridors along the Pacific slope of Central America by supporting private landowners and small-scale farmers in sustainable land use and conservation activities. She is currently working on the restoration and conservation of endangered forest ecosystems in the Rivas Province of Nicaragua. This project also reduces the vulnerability of local communities to extreme climate events while improving ecosystem services and the viability of endangered species.

* Stefano Merlin, the Director of Ecologica Network and President of Instituto Ecologica, which coordinates several socio-environmental programs including the Bandeira Switching Non-Renewable Biomass Project in the North of Brazil. This project addresses the problem of deforestation and reduces the quantity of biomass decaying which, in turn, cuts down on green house gas emissions.

When you visit the Pop!Tech Carbon Initiative website, you can input some information to get your annual carbon footprint. The average American’s carbon footprint is 9.44 tons of CO2. Mine was 14 tons and to offset that amount towards Paso Pacifico would work out to be only about $77 dollars)

How do you compare to that average?

Also, Mark Anderson of Wired Magazine just wrote a story about the program as a part of Wired coverage of the event.

August 29th marked the two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

To commemorate the event for our community, Pop!Tech selected a very special installment for our August Book Club. This week, many of you will have received a copy of Chris Jordan’s book of photography, In Katrina’s Wake: Portraits of Loss from an Unnatural Disaster.

The book provides an opportunity for reflection on one of the worst natural disasters in the history of our country. All proceeds are being donated to hurricane relief charities, but the Book Club donation will be going to a new member of the Pop!Tech community - a man named Craig Howat.

A few months ago, Craig applied to receive a Participation Grant to attend this year’s conference. Craig has been a teacher in Lousiana for 12 years. When his school laboratory was destroyed by Katrina, he and his dedicated students raised funds to rebuild a brand new science center. Together, they’ve raised over $10,000 to pay for supplies and materials, and they continue to fundraise in order to complete the project. You can see architectural plans of the building at http://www.l00k.org/lulinglandlab/luling-land-lab.

We’re proud to be part of Chris Jordan’s charity and Craig Howat’s vision, and look forward to their participation at Pop!Tech this October.

24 Hours, 7 Continents, 9 Cities, 2 Billion People: the Live Earth Concerts for a Climate in Crisis are coming your way this July 7, 2007.

Part of a global campaign to promote awareness of the current state of climate change, the concerts feature more than 100 music artists from The Police to Snoop Dogg to Metallica to Smashing Pumpkins (for the full and quite impressive list click here). Watch with the world at www.LiveEarth.MSN.com.

And be sure to check out Live Earth’s official guidebook: The Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook: 77 Essential Skills to Stop Climate Change, written by long-time Pop!Tech participant David de Rothschild, founder of Adventure Ecology.

The entire book, from conceptions took 7 months, with the project finding its legs at Pop!Tech 2006. David met publisher Charlie Melcher in the “dungeon” of the Camden Opera House (aka Pop!Tech’s Screening Room). He had just been commissioned to do this book, turn-around time was super short, and Charlie offered to help. They went straight at it in February and were finished by April.

Which tip in the survival guide does David take most to heart? “Number 32: Get lost in nature. .when was the last time you took your shoes off and walked about in nature? It’s important to get yourself outside and re-engaged. In the epic scale of Live Earth, it’s worthwhile to ‘get lost in nature’ in order to remember why we need some new guidelines for living in a changing world.”

For a peek at some of survival tips from the book and a look at the great illustrations, you can visit the Live Earth site at http://www.liveearth.org/crisis_solutions.php.

People have staged concerts, speeches and rallies on Second Life but this was the first time that a group staged a cataclysmic flood. That’s exactly what Adventure Ecology, founded by Pop!Techer David de Rothschild, did to remind of the real world outside of their computers and the real climate crisis that we face.

Creating the flood that covered cities like London, The Netherlands, and Ibiza is much more than a geeky hack. Because locations in Second Life are owned and created by hundreds of individuals, Adventure Ecology had to get property owners to agree to create the flood at a specified date and time.

Read the National Geographic account for the full story. Apparently avatars were calm, some pub going avatars just climbed into boats and continued on with their pints while the conversation shifted to global warming.

“People have a lot to learn about ecology—but first you have to get their attention” said David. This surely grabbed our attention.

Here is a YouTube video showing the flood in Second Life.

Also, if you are in New York City this Saturday (April 14th), don’t miss the Sea of People rally. Thousands of people will dress in blue and make a line around lower Manhattan defining the projected coastline of the City under a 10 foot sea level rise scenario. It will look amazing and sobering.
via:: Treehugger

I flew up to Camden, ME this week to meet up with my fellow Pop!Techers. As I waited for my flight at New York’s JFK, I decided to ease myself into an outdoorsy frame of mind and bought the latest issue of Outside Magazine.

The banner across cover model, Governor Schwarzenegger’s chest, reads The Green Issue. In the magazine, they list some of the Green leaders and innovators from politics, health care, architecture and Hollywood.

Entrepreneur, explorer, eligible bachelor and Pop!Tech friend David de Rothschild is featured as one of these Enviro All-Stars. David is the founder of Adventure Ecology, a program that gets kids excited about adventure and fosters an appreciation for global responsibility.

“The environment is an area that requires a great deal of energy and optimism,” David says, “and, to my mind, kids have these features in abundance.”

Here is another feature from 2006 on David and how he started Adventure Ecology (also from Outside Magazine).

CoolHunting had a nice feature on Pop!Tech friend Edward Burtynsky. The award winning documentary about Burtnysky’s work Manufactured Landscapes has just been released on DVD on March 6th. In conjuction with the release, Mongrel Media is holding a contest with the Grand Prize being an original Burtynsky print.

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Edward Burtynsky’s photographs a world changing for the purposes of industrial development. His most recent book, China, is a glimpse into the massive social and economic transformation currently underway as China tries to join the ranks of more industrialized nations.

Burtynsky says that “these images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire, a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times.”

His images of the Three Gorges Dam project on the Yangtze River (which is bigger by 50% than any other dam in the world, displacing more than one million people) look post-apocalyptic. Pictures of factories and the people who work in them are filled with endlessly repeating patterns and colors. In cities like Shanghai, massive urban renewal can be seen as countless skyscrapers and roadways replace traditional dwellings. See more images here.

Jennifer Baichwal followed Burtynsky as he traveled through China making these pictures and produced an award-winning documentary called Manufactured Landscapes, a riveting film that was just released on DVD. You can see a trailer for it here.

You can also visit Edward Burtynsky’s website for a very organized introduction to his work, including images, links, videoclips, and a schedule of exhibitions worldwide throughout 2007-2008. Signed copies of the book are available through Photoeye, unsigned copies from Amazon.

by Jonah Samson

These two images, separated by nearly half a century, represent the dreams of human exploration of space. Together they tell a story of lost opportunity and future promise.

Forty-five years ago today astronaut John Glenn completed an epoch space mission making him the first American to orbit the Earth. The Port Arthur News reported: “Glancing at the Earth at altitudes ranging from 100 to 160 miles, Glenn had a breathtaking panoramic view stretching 1,800 miles from horizon to horizon. He described the view as ‘tremendous’ and a ‘beautiful sight.’”

Just a few weeks ago the Cassini spacecraft snapped the above picture of Titan, the biggest of the 56 known moons orbiting Saturn and the second largest moon in our solar system. The Cassini spacecraft is the first to explore the Saturn system of rings and moons from orbit.

As planetary scientist (and 2005 Pop!Tech speaker) Carolyn Porco writes in a fabulous New York Times Op-Ed piece published today, in the 1960s the possibilities for human space travel were intoxicating: plans were laid for the establishment of a 50-person lunar base, a 100-person Earth orbiting space station and human landfall on Mars by the 1980s.

Instead, by abandoning the Apollo space program the country lost a capital investment of close to $160 billion and the collective knowledge of the tens of thousands of space engineers and scientists.

Yet Porco also paints an amazing vision: one of a revitalized NASA with plans to return to the Moon with a party of humans by 2020, a solar-powered human-tended research outpost by 2025 and preparations for a Mars trip soon after.

As she says: “Humanity’s future need not be confined to mere survival on our home planet. Other worlds beckon, we know how to reach them and we will once more be outward bound.”

It’s an ambitious and inspiring vision of the future–and one that maybe this time around, we can get right.

On December 18th, in the mind-blowingly beautiful Soho loft of world-class designer, Cheryl Heller, our friends and NYC neighbors gathered to celebrate the very first music release from Pop!Tech.

Pop!Tech CEO Thomas LeVine and Producer Beth Cohen

Andrew started off the evening speaking about Pop!Tech and how this amazing project came together. Losang Rabgey, director of Machick - the charity to which 100% of the CD price is being donated- offered a few words about the work that she and her organization do in rural Tibet. And then there was the much anticipated live performance of Yungchen Lhamo and Reggie Watts. Completely improvised and completely amazing, the two artists unique sounds filled the loft space.

Reggie and Yungchen perform live

Projects like “AntiBabel” and Pop!Tech Giving (A website to make donations to the many amazing organizations featured at this years conference) help us to carry out our mission to “amplify weak signals” as Andrew put it. Pop!Tech is dedicated to supporting and calling attention to organizations that are enforcing real change in our word. We encourage you to purchase an “AntiBabel” CD for yourself, your friends and family. Also visit Pop!Tech Giving to make a tax-deductible donation to any or all of the featured charities.

amshied Sharifi, Yungchen Lhamo, Andrew Zolli, Reggie Watts and Losang Rabgey

Thanks to Yungchen Lhamo, Reggie Watts, Jamshied Sharifi, Larry Braverman, David Meinert, Ben Arons, Andy VanDette

And a special thanks to the generous financial support from Banana Republic and Etymotic Research, Inc.

Photos by HeuiChul Kim

(Trumpet Fanfare!)

AntiBabel Album Cover by Hamilton Hughes Design

Here it is…the first ever music release from Pop!Tech. And we couldn’t be more thrilled. Pop!Tech recently brought two of our favorite performers from 2006, Yungchen Lhamo and Reggie Watts together to record “AntiBabel”.

And with the generous support of Banana Republic and Etymotic, Pop!Tech is donating 100% of the purchase price to Machik, the innovative charity directed by Pop!Tech 2006 Speaker, Losang Rabgey.That means that every dollar that you spend on this cd will go directly to building schools and supporting sustainable initiatives in rural Tibet.

So this holiday season, please consider giving a gift - to yourself, your friends, family members, and colleagues — that truly does a greater good in the world.

You can buy copies of “AntiBabel” for just $10 (plus shipping) exclusively at The Pop!Tech Store

The tracks on this album defy description so listen to these samples for a taste<:
World in Transition
Integration

Also, check out the official AntiBabel Press Release

Photos by Evan Sung

Peter Durand, Director of Alphachimp Studio creates works of art inspired by the Pop!Tech Speaker’s presentations in real time.

The resulting images give a life to the ideas generated that resonate long after the participants have gone their separate ways. Ben McConnell, author of Creating Customer Evangelists, describes the experience as such:

Having Alphachimp create a visual document of your meeting or conference is like being handed a photograph that explains the meaning of love. Alphachimp Studio’s visual guides explain in moments what took days or weeks to understand.

This year, Peter has kindly offered to donate his posters to the Pop!Tech Auction benefiting the annual scholarship program.

There is an online archive of all the images with wiki text and a link to the speakers’ bios and websites here

You can also download a zip file of the entire 2006 Pop!Tech poster collection here