The animated film, “The Coalition of the Willing” is an appropriate follow-up to this Tuesday’s post on Paul Hawken’s message of a huge, unprecedented global movement for democracy and human rights gathering steam right now. The movie is a collaborative effort by a group of creative minds who are passionate about empowering people to make changes in our world that governments can’t or won’t. Their website states:
‘Coalition of The Willing’ is a film that discusses how we can use new internet technologies to leverage the powers of activists, experts, and ordinary citizens in collaborative ventures to combat climate change. Through analyses of swarm activity and social revolution, ‘Coalition of the Willing’ makes a compelling case for the new online activism and explains how to bring the fight against global warming to the people.
First, a short excerpt featuring open sourcing on the net as the way of the future:
And here’s the full 15 minute video:
More links:
Claiming Joy & Healing Amidst the Climate Emergency 
6 responses to “It’s Time For A Coalition of the Willing To Tackle Climate Change”
well … more than just a pretty face eh? 🙂 you are something else Christine!! good on you,
this is REALLY good stuff, the Vimeo link by itself doesn’t work very well for me, but the “Watch The Film’ tab at the home site http://coalitionofthewilling.org.uk/ is a bit better – and it goes to the same place (go figgure, doh!?) — ok, got it, KeepVid running under IE works with right-click ‘Save target As’ to download a copy from Vimeo, and then it plays fine with VLC (whew!)
the first thing that comes to mind is that it’s NOT 350.org, you passed over my quibble on Bill McKibben a few days ago, but really – just go there and find your way down to 10/10/10 actions in Toronto (for example), and then see where you get – I have tried it A NUMBER OF TIMES and it goes ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE, nobody home and nobody minding the store, there are reasons aside from McKibben’s “It’s all about ME!” attitude, he really doesn’t get the technology (check out the nonsense he wrote about the Internet towards the end of his book Eaarth if you don’t believe me), and the strategy of forming ‘Work Parties’ leaves out a vital step – what to do exactly?
not to say 350.org couldn’t play a part, just that they are not an effective nexus,
just take a look at the credits of this Coalition of the Willing video – no single name leaps out at all, looks as if it really IS a collaboration … yeah, unfortunately it is mostly filmmakers, ok, not there yet but coming, first step is to get the ideas right, I would like to see the three-pronged web presence they talk about being developed, good good idea, hummm … how to make that happen I wonder?
so – your post came to me just as I was closing up my blog ( http://whoami-whoareyou.blogspot.com/2010/08/let-it-go.html ) for a while and getting ready to wrap it up with a final ‘epistle’ – I think I will leave the blog closed for now, but this will change the epistle a bit at least 🙂
be well, thanks (a million!), David.
Always good to hear from you, David. I know that Vimeo isn’t as user-friendly as YouTube, but I’m glad you got it sorted (at least I think you did!). I’m glad you appreciated the Coalition of the Willing info – those of us that understand the gravity and urgency of this issue need to get too connected to fail.
And you know I have a soft spot for 350.org – after all, they are the ones that motivated me to get active on this issue last fall. And I did check out the TO info (as well as the Wpg ones). The info there is only as good as what the local organizers input, which is why the info is a bit erratic. But you won’t get me to admit they are not an important part of the “Coalition of the Willing” :).
Enjoy your blogging vacation! I’ll be out of touch much of the next 3 weeks as well, as we drive our youngest daughter to the U of Victoria.
I am ready to SWARM! Thanks Christine
Please consider being part of the Coalition Facebook group …
http://www.facebook.com/coalitionfilm
Related sites from Facebook friend Larry Lawhorn:
http://MyooCreate.com/ as an example of an Open Innovation Center http://Atizo.com/ is another example of this kind of platform.
The UK action hub http://OneClimate.net/ is a picture-perfect example of a Catalyst System.
http://Jumo.com/ is shaping up to leading the field State-side.
Great links – thanks for sharing them, Cathy. And when it’s time to swarm, I’ll be there with you!
soft spot!? well, I guess(!) you already know that I have put many hours and a bit of coin into the 350 effort, but soft spot is besides the point
so, one of the central notions in this coalition video is open source, essential I thinks
and yes, thanks for the links Cathy, One Climate Net is good, but still using the action map that they had at 350 in the beginning, somewhat less than user-friendly unfortunately, 350 have cleaned their interface up a bit so you can easily get a concise list of actions in your city, all good except the list is so short & unqualified when you get there … it would be good to put these together somehow – and there’s the problem in a nutshell, it’s not quite open source is it?
and I am in a quandary about Facebook – I don’t want any part of it, seems to me to be right in there with co-opting consumerism, not sure how to go forward on that one(?)
I put off joining FB until last December, when it seemed too good a networking option not to use at this critical time of information sharing. I’d love to have a better option, and there are some in the works, I understand, but right now it’s just too good a place to connect/build community/exchange ideas with other people who are also very committed and concerned about climate change to opt out of, for me. But I have privacy concerns and doubts about the commitment of the FB team to protecting peoples’ info. But you do control the amount of info that you put into your profile. Anyway, I understand your dilemma, David. But if you do sign on, I’ll be your friend 🙂