Lo, there rises a new religion, and it bears witness to environmental harm so that it might be mitigated and incorporated into morality so that we and our children and our children's children may live in a world with stable weather to feed humanity and protect our infrastructure and plentiful biodiversity to enjoy, explore and learn from.

With the power of science, community, art, business and engineering, may we reinvent our infrastructure, cities and agriculture to provide experiences for all humanity in perpetuity.

Our Story 

We’ve been trying to mitigate climate change for years, each in our own way: through pushing cleaner technologies down a cost curve, aligning economic & green incentives, making green products aspirational, hiding green features behind comfort features - or whatever it is that seems to sell, facilitation sustainable decision-making through clever financial & insurance tools, convincing investors to take lower returns for a greater good and through personal purchasing decisions.

We realize that there’s only so far we can go in mitigating climate change given economic and political systems that doesn’t value long term externalities. Our aim is to change that situation. To modify our collective moral system to put more weight on future results as well as non human life and its support of our civilization, and to institute a set of evidence based laws and economic systems that support such systematic change.

We needed a construct that:

  • Augments individual and societal moral systems

  • Creates multi generational communities and structure around those morals

  • Action oriented

Longest running example of this combination is religion. And so Witnesses of Climatology was formed. Unlike climate change conversations we've had in the past, this one was oddly fun: maybe it was re-imaging infrastructure and communities from scratch, maybe it was making parodies of holidays, maybe it was deep discussions of the awe we felt towards biodiversity and human ingenuity, or maybe it was the mojitos. Either way, the movement started growing and creativity from the new members flowed to form a richer movement.

 

The format (work in progress)

  • Holidays and rituals

    • Valentine’s Day - where we write (e-)love letters to the environment and send them to our elected representatives

    • Fossil Fuel Independence Day - where we have a solar cook-off

    • Battery Trick or Treat - while the kids ask for candy, we pick up used batteries and dispose of them properly

    • Reverse Christmas - when we plant a tree instead of cutting one down

    • For birthdays, our tradition is to gift an experience rather than an object

  • Weekly services (tribute to the many religions for whom this format worked). Hug thy neighbor, toast a stranger. 15 minute reading from The Book (Of Nature), 15 minute Homily. Singing, eating and discussion. Examples:

    • Catching the sun - The Book: chemistries and evolution of photosynthesis. Homily: Concentrated Solar, Solar Panels, and their combination

    • Electricity - The Book: Electric Eels and the Human nervous System. Homily: Work to electricity conversion and transmission

    • Knowledge transfer- The Book: genes and epigenetics. Homily: written words, libraries, education systems, traditions, religions.

  • Special Educational Congregation:

    • ARPA-e fellows fast pitches

    • Planet earth showings

    • Current events discussions

  • Religion formation congregations:

    • Ritual generating ritual at Ritual’s Coffee

    • Iconology working group

    • Services research and writing group

  • Online discussion group (previous religions didn't have that luxury eh? We started with Twitter, since like religions, it has followers and some of us enjoy bad puns)

  • Community Service - group volunteer with the many local organization doing fantastic work to mitigate climate change

  • (future) Funding - leverage our collective expertise to direct money to fill gaps where it may do the most cumulative good for climate change mitigation.

  • (future) Education - Sunday Schools that teach systems thinking and how various systems work: agriculture, economic, transportations of goods and people, work in the form of heat or electricity and political.