The many topics you will find within the ClimateCorps website are all gathered together and contained within this one page…

Paradigms are the patterns which exist in our societies.  They are patterns of behavior that are so common, so ordinary, so usual that they are invisible to most of us most of the time.  They only become apparent when we perhaps return from travel abroad, where we have beome accustomed to different paradigms for the same daily activities.  Paradigms are our habits among other things.  They are ‘business as usual.’

A paradigm shift is a time period when change comes to one or many paradigms. Paradigm shifts can be shaped by the choices we make, by forces beyond our control, or a combination of the two.  We can choose a new way to ‘see’ something, or a new way to do a task.  Or we can be forced to see and do things differently by irresistable forces… such as global warming.  And surprisingly, major paradigm shifts with global effects can be the result of small actions by individuals.  Such is often the case by a scientific discovery, a spiritual revelation, or by the action of one person who stands up for what they believe in. 

Until now most of our societies around the world have had wasteful paradigms for energy use, for the excessive consumption of both of material things and the energy needed to create and transport them.  We have neither recognized nor taken account of the burden upon the planet of this unbridled consumption.  The inadvertent product of this paradigm of waste has been the colorless, odorless, ‘non-toxic’ gas carbon dioxide (CO2).  It has been what is called an ‘externalized cost’, or externality, a cost which businesses ignore because they can, much the way that other toxic wastes were ignored, and inappropriately disposed of, before the legal and regulatory climate forced them into the accounting equation. 

But now society’s burdensome emissions of CO2 has taken on a life-threatening twist. 

We can and must change our paradigm for our economies, our personal behaviors, and our educational systems to recognize the cost to us all, and the potentially devastating cost to the next generation and all generations to come.  The changes are occurring NOW, not 50 years from now!  We must, perhaps for the first time in human history, engage in a conscious, aware paradigm shift from waste in all forms to conservation of resources, especially of energy at the present moment.  Conservation in general is the goal, since a the very sustainability of human life on this planet will require conservation of ALL resources (water, air, energy, minerals, love and compassion…)