Supplemental Environmental Projects
On Monday, June 12, the CEC will sponsor a presentation by Dr. Tom Collins, Chief Inspector of Enforcement with the City of Houston’s Neighborhood Protection Division, and Carlton Collier, CEC Board of Trustees, to explain the “Supplemental Environmental Projects” (SEP) process and how the environmental community can benefit. SEPs are funded with fines collected from polluters. The City, with the collaboration of the CEC, will prioritize and fund environmental projects and other community opportunities identified by Houston area environmental groups. Houston Environmental Center, 6:30 pm.

June 21 Delegate Luncheon
Dan Lundeen, Houston Area Bicyclist Alliance, will be guest speaker at the upcoming CEC delegate luncheon, Wednesday, June 21, Houston Environmental Center, noon. Free lunch will be provided.

May Roundtable Report Using the Future to Create the Present
The myths we use to create the future, the stories we tell ourselves about our lives, and how these stories and myths frame social action and create our sense of reality was the subject of a May 11 CEC Roundtable presented by Betty Sue Flowers, Ph.D.

Flowers is a professor of English at the University of Texas-Austin and the editor of four television tie-in books with Bill Moyers: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth; A World of Ideas; Healing and the Mind; and Genesis.

The four great contemporary myths Flowers defined at the roundtable were the myth of the hero, the religious myth, the philosophical/scientific myth, and the economic myth. Noting that we are currently operating largely within the economic myth, Flowers described that as one of maximizing advantage. The mode of the hero myth is competition, the mode of the religious myth is communication, and the mode of the philosophical/scientific myth is accumulation of knowledge (understanding natural law).

Flowers said communications with the media must be couched in terms of the myth of the hero because the press operates entirely within that myth and needs its heroes, its black hats and white hats. Most people, she said, have enormous difficulty communicating across the barriers of their personal or social myths. Flowers invited each person in the audience to tell their life story (mentally) first as if they were a hero, then as a victim, then as a learner, and to notice how each telling affected their view of the future.

Flowers emphasized that telling stories of the future tends to draw us toward that future, and that each person has a future toward which he or she is advancing and taking the rest of the world there as well.

As an example of this kind of reality creation, she told about traveling in Africa and running into Buzz Aldrin, who went with her group to talk with some tribespeople. A wigman was told that he was meeting a famous American who had been to the moon. The wigman was courteous but not noticeably impressed. In his turn, he introduced the group to a mind-traveling spirit dancer, whom he mentioned had also been to the moon.

In 1992 and again in 1995 and 1998, Betty Sue Flowers worked with an international team to write global scenarios for Shell International in London—stories about the future of the world for the next thirty years. She recently wrote and edited the global scenarios for sustainable development sponsored by the World Business Council in Geneva and is currently working on scenarios for the future of biotechnology.

Locally, she is now collaborating with the Centre for Generative Leadership on a scenario-building project with the Center for Houston’s Future. About 30 people attended the event at the Houston-Galveston Area Council.

Coalition Notes
MfCA Starts Third New Chapter
In September 1999, Mothers for Clean Air (MfCA) received a one-year grant from the US EPA Office of Environmental Justice to establish a chapter in the Fifth Ward. According to Jane L. Laping, who heads the project, this is MfCA’s third local chapter but its first grant from the EPA. Other MfCA chapters are in Woodland Acres on the Houston Ship Channel and Barrett Station near Crosby. They were formed under EPA grants to the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention (GHASP).

The Fifth Ward was selected over other communities in the Houston area because five federal and state Super Fund waste sites are located in the Fifth Ward and because it is sited next to three heavily traveled freeways. Among common air pollutants, emissions from cars and trucks are the single greatest threat to children’s health.

MfCA will train residents of the Fifth Ward to identify local environmental problems, to gather information about pollution sources, and to work collectively to find solutions to those problems. A group of ten Fifth Ward residents and stakeholders has been meeting with the MfCA community organizer since January 2000 to arrange educational activities for the community.

The chapter has scheduled an Environmental Justice Educational Workshop on June 24, at which a panel of speakers will discuss pollution in various media. Following the workshop, Fifth Ward residents will be invited to attend Internet training classes held this summer. Class participants will receive instruction in using such web resources as the ED Scorecard, the Right-to-Know Network, and EPA’s Super Fund website. Interested members of the environmental community are welcome to attend any and all of these sessions.

Organizations within the Fifth Ward have been very supportive of the objectives of the new MfCA Chapter. In addition to the Lyons Health Clinic, which has provided space for meetings, the Fifth Ward Community Redevelopment Corporation, Partners/5 West, the Pleasant Hill Community Development Corporation, and the 5th Ward Enrichment Program have also contributed to the project’s success. To assist, to participate, or for more information, contact Jane L. Laping, 713/526-0110; mfca@hern.org

EcoNotes
Upper Texas Coast Water-Borne Education Center
In 1998, the Chambers/Liberty Counties Navigation District created the Upper Texas Coast Water-Borne Education Center to offer trips into Galveston-Trinity Bay at no cost to a variety of targeted groups, including schools and nonprofit environmental organizations.

The Center, which is located in Anahuac at the mouth of the Trinity River, operates several boats equipped with teaching facilities, galleys, and restrooms. The purpose of the project is to provide a mobile facility to allow educational groups access to environmental features that would be inaccessible by land, including thousands of acres of swamps, marshes, and hardwood river bottoms. For information or to schedule a trip, call (409) 267-3541.

From Earth Day to Election Day
The League of Conservation Voters has launched a campaign to raise the profile of environmental issues in the 2000 elections. The bipartisan effort aims to inform voters about the records of members of Congress and federal candidates. The six million dollar information campaign features TV advertising along with polling and grassroots education in order to move environmental issues to the forefront of this year’s elections. Details of the campaign can be found at www.lcv.org.

Arizona First to Require Solar
In March, Arizona became the first state to require electric utilities to produce a portion of their power from solar energy. Under the Solar and Environmentally Friendly Portfolio Standard, electricity providers may have to derive 1.1 percent of their total product from renewable resources by 2007. At least 27 other states also mandate renewable sources for utilities, but Arizona is the first to require that solar energy make up a specific portion of that power.

The Standard requires providers to produce at least 50 percent of their renewable power from solar generating facilities. The remainder will come from other renewable sources, including methane from landfills, wind power, and biomass generators. (ESN 4/27/00)

Poll Looks at Environmental Movement
Thirty years after the first Earth Day, which some mark as the beginning of the environmental movement, a new Gallup poll finds 83% of Americans still support its goals. Of those polled, more than three quarters said that among major institutions they “have the most trust” in national and local environmental groups to protect the environment. When polled on participation, 16% considered themselves environmental activists while 55% were “sympathetic but not active.” According to the Associated Press (4/17), among presidential election issues the environment “ranks in the middle with such issues as gun control and tax reduction.” (ENS 4/18/00)

Secret Trade Talks
A coalition of 91 environmental groups are demanding an end to “closed door” negotiations between the US, Canada, and Mexico to “change key parts” of NAFTA guidelines that determine how the groups can “protest when environmental laws are not being enforced.” The North American Free Trade Agreement is the only trade agreement with such guidelines and the groups contend that the purpose of the secret talks is to weaken wildlife protection. (Reuters 4/28/00)

Conserving Biodiversity
An article in the March issue of Nature argues that population stabilization is necessary to the “long-term conservation of biodiversity” in 25 hot spots and 3 tropical wildernesses. According to the article’s authors, one-fifth of the Earth’s six billion humans live “within the most species-rich and environmentally threatened areas.” Any “hope for the permanent sustainability of these ecosystems lies” in combining conservation work with policies “that end up slowing population growth.” (Reuters 4/26/00)

World Kicking the Habit
After a century-long buildup in cigarette smoking, the world is turning away from cigarettes, following the US lead. In 1999 cigarettes smoked per person in the United States fell by a staggering 8% and for the world as a whole by more than 3%. The US trend is driven by a deepening awareness of the health-damaging effects of smoking, rising cigarette prices, rising cigarette taxes, aggressive antismoking campaigns in several states, and a decline in the social acceptability of smoking. Ironically, the land that gave the world tobacco is now leading it away from tobacco.

In the United States, the number of cigarettes smoked per person has been falling for two decades, dropping from 2,810 in 1980 to 1,633 in 1999, a decline of 42%. Worldwide, where the downturn lags that of the United States by roughly a decade, usage has dropped from the historical high of 1,027 cigarettes smoked per person in 1990 to 915 in 1999, a fall of 11%. Indeed, smoking is on the decline in nearly all the major cigarette consuming countries, including such bastions of smoking as France, China, and Japan. (www.worldwatch.org/chairman/index.html)