A deserving organization for the ChangeSomething $1000 giveaway

It's easy to be overwhelmed by the size of the challenges facing us from an environmental perspective. And many pundits would have us believe that the only solution to our problem is going to be returning to the (literal) Dark Ages - to a world that's uncomfortable, unpleasant and depressing. We'll be staggering from oxygen bar to oxygen bar in vast, polluted cities or living underneath a hermetically sealed dome eating protozoan pate squeezed from a tube and spending our days in a somnambulant state gazing at organic vegetable porn on the inside of our eyelids (which are wired to the computer/sedative dispensing chip embedded in our cerebellum). I can hardly wait.

But there is another way! We can (gasp) work together to change the world because enough of us have got the message that this is not just an important issue but that it is THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE of our lifetime. Yes, there are other issues on the front page of the paper every day but if we don't address this central core issue - what we as a species are doing to our planet - everything else is really irrelevant. And, not surprisingly, when you scratch the surface of many other issues - civil war, famine, poverty, disease, hunger - you find that humanity's effect on the environment is often a contributory cause and many times at the very root of seemingly unrelated problems.

So what to do? Making personal change, as many contributing to this site have done, is an excellent start. And writing about it is great too - it helps to inspire others and aids in creating a community of people whose attitude is 'We can do this!' instead of 'There's nothing that can be done'.

But after you've made personal changes what then? Consider joining the BCSEA (pronounced BEE-SEE-ESS-E-A, not BEE-SEE-SEE), a three-year-old dynamic organization that already has chapters all over British Columbia. The British Columbia Sustainable Energy Association is an organization of practical, intelligent, task-oriented people who are already walking the talk. Many of them own or work for sustainable energy companies. These people are your neighbours and friends - not some pie-in-the-sky dreamers with fantastic goals but no sensible plans on how to reach them.

There may be a chapter of BCSEA in your area. If not see their chapters page for instructions on how to start one. BCSEA membership may just provide the jump start (renewable of course) you require for your own personal change.