Get inspired!

Read stories of what others have done to help beat climate chaos.

• Get ideas. Build on others’ ideas. Find ways to challenge yourself.
• What sounds fun to you?
• What sounds easy?
• Do you want to challenge yourself or choose something you’re confident you can stick with and accomplish?
• How are you going to measure your accomplishment?
• What can you pick that you know you can stick with as your routine?
• What change can you turn into a habit?

After you figure out what change you want to commit to, go to the commit-to-change page, get more ideas from what others are committing to, then submit your commitment. After you’ve had time to work on your commitment, come back here and submit your story.

Kids who visited the Beat Climate Chaos booth at recent local events drew the pictures below to represent their ideas and stories about how to beat climate chaos.  They drew the pictures using crayons made from soybeans on 100% post consumer recyclecd paper.

What change will you make to help Beat Climate Chaos?  Start small or to challenge yourself, whatever works for you.  Read about the commitments other folks made.  Use or build on their ideas or create a new change commitment to challenge yourself.  Get a group of friends or colleagues to each sign up – you can encourage and challenge each other. Make it fun!

Click on the Submit Your Commitment button and fill in your commitment to change. Then get going to help Beat Climate Chaos!

When you commit to a change to help beat climate chaos and also when you tell your story about how you’re helping to beat climate chaos, you receive discounts, deals and offers from local green organizations.  These are intended as an immediate reward.  Your larger reward is intrinsic – knowing that you are working together with your community and making a difference to help beat climate chaos.

Once we receive your commitment or story form, review it and perhaps ask you clarifying questions, then we will send you instructions for receiving your discounts, deals and offers from local green organizations.

Read below for examples of some of the discounts, deals and offers from local green organizations

Note – We’re always looking for local green organizations to offer deals and encourage community members to help beat climate chaos.  If you or an organization you know can offer a deal, please contact us.

in 2007, 165 Mountain View residents participated in a Santa Clara county composting workshop, the Mountain View Voice reported.
In 2008 let’s see how many people in and around Mountain View are composting or will commit to start composting before Thanksgiving.

Why compost?

• Santa Clara County estimates its landfills will be full in 15-17 years.

• Composting reduces green house gas emissions.

Methane, which landfills produce, has 72 times the global warming potential as carbon dioxide over a 20 year period according to The Nobel Peace Prize winning United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Working Group I’s Fourth Assessment Report.

Waste in landfills slowly decomposes anaerobically, without air, and thus produces methane.  Many locals know that landfills produce methane based on personal experience.  You may remember the methane gas from the Shoreline landfill that filtered through the grass at Shoreline Amphitheatre and that would catch fire when people lit cigarettes.

When waste is appropriately composted it decomposes aerobically, with air, and does not produce methane, though it does produce carbon dioxide.

Overall sending kitchen scraps, yard waste and other compostables, to your compost pile instead of to the landfill significantly reduces green house gas emissions.

After cars and transportation, landfills are one of our areas’ biggest contributors to climate chaos.  The more each of us reduces methane from landfills, the better off we all are.

So let’s get to it -
Tell us about your composting experience or commit to start composting.
Let’s see what a difference we can make all together.

Has your voter registration been purged?  Will you be able to vote November 4th?

Make sure your voter registration hasn’t been purged.  Yes, you should check.  As CBS news reported on September 9, 2008, thousands, probably millions, of registrations are being purged across the country.  As the New York Times reported October 9, 2008, page A1in the article Actions to Block Voters Appear Illegal, “Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.”  Make sure your registration isn’t purged.  

Check that you are still registered and will be able to vote on November 4th.  The National Association of Secretaries of State created a website to help you check: www.canivote.org.  Another website that helps you check your registration and find your polling place is: www.votersunite.org.

To learn more about how your vote may be stolen and what you can do about it, read Greg Palast and Robert Kennedy, Jr.’s comic book “Steal Back Your Vote” that describes 6 ways your vote may be stolen and 7 ways you can steal it back.

Take a look at this sneak preview of a page from the book -

“Mom!  The recycle bin is made out of recycled material!”

• Bringing reusable grocery bags when they go shopping
• Packing waste free lunches.  To make it easier, they took advantage of our 50% off deal on compartmentalized lunch holders
• Changing light bulbs in their house to compact fluorescent bulbs
• Recycling batteries appropriately, not throwing them in the landfill