THE ASSOCIATION FOR THE TREE OF LIFE

The ATL is the organization to execute a national grassroots campaign leading to national climate legislation. The ATL must educate and persuade the American public, which must be organized into a large enough and passionate enough movement to catalyze effective policy response. The ATL has the team strategy and tactics ready to go right now. The ATL has over 1,000 social halls and auditoriums committed to hosting the grassroots education and advocacy part of the campaign. The decisive parts of a national organization and the concomitant components of its implementation are prepared and ready to be quickly deployed.

WHO IS ATL?

The ATL is climate scientists and religious leaders. Executives of ecological organizations, environmental organizations and students—many from the youth climate movement wondering if it makes sense to complete their undergraduate degrees. The ATL is educators and platform presenters. Groups willing to take direct action and activists not willing to go that far. The ATL is more church communities than can be counted. Many former colleagues who helped build a successful national grassroots campaign for ecological restoration and are willing to re-up.

Individuals and groups in the ATL have helped thousands of the most poor, and leveraged billions (yes billions) of dollars for those in need. Hundreds of us each have done several years of social justice work, most also committed to clean air, clean water and a livable future for our children. We are thousands of people ready to fan out over the nation and execute a dramatic national teach-in combined with the fire of street action. The ATL is this and more; it is thousands of different people and perspectives united in wanting our next generations to have a habitable world.

Much of our optimism about the potential for changing the climate trajectory emerges from the experience of principle actors within the ATL, who produced national policy change through a large-scale grassroots effort before—in turning the tide on coastal wetlands loss. That movement started in church halls in the late 80's, designed to restore the ecologically devastated Mississippi River delta. The national grassroots campaign produced transformational environmental and ecological change in the form of state and national legislation, a constitutional amendment, funding for the massive restoration, and much more. The entire effort was started, and the transformational policy legislations enacted, in some three years. Moreover, the tide of that effort has continued to grow since the beginning of the restoration. In many ways, the fight to preserve coastal wetlands was an opening skirmish, but a very instructive one, in the global climate campaign.

More recently, following the hurricanes of 2005, an infusion of support from the Walton Family Fund through their “Ensuring Healthy and Resilient Freshwater Systems” initiative has mobilized an intensive effort by national NGOs, including the National Audubon Society, Environmental Defense Fund and National Wildlife Federation to enhance the efforts of the local grassroots organizations that initiated the restoration work, as well as those engaged in social justice work.

WHAT ARE WE?

ATL is Environews, a modern broadcasting network committed to being a conduit for news related to environment, energy and ATL. ATL is Trunity, a fully hosted social publishing platform that gives both organizations and individuals the power to easily create world-class websites and build online communities across the US and across the world. Trunity can handle the entire nation convening simultaneously, working across a myriad of ideas and issues in real time.

Within its umbrella, ATL has over a thousand “communities of meaning” ready to consider social and environmental justice. We have over a thousand public spaces ready to host our message, our dialogue and our workshops. Most of these can host and handle hundreds of people. Examples would be church sanctuaries or social halls—places where communities convene to consider important questions of morality, social justice and our heritage. Nor are the communities unprepared. They are primed to welcome the message by their very principles, ready to help and ask others to help, ready to be prophets for a world that can endure. The ATL can hand-off the meaning and message of green justice—expecting to find many partners who will carry forth the green torch. The ATL has the curriculum and media, the proven organizing methods, the track record of transformation embodied in several key parts of its large tent of talent. Many of the individuals and groups in the ATL have brought about positive changes in principles and practices—some world class and some local.

ATL MEMBERS AGREE TO THESE PRINCIPLES:

• We agree on the need for universal social and climate justice—assuring the rights of all people to a dignified level of development, while also reducing CO2 emissions to achieve climate stabilization targets.
• We agree on emergency climate stabilization, limiting CO2 levels to keep within the 2º Emergency Pathway.
• We agree that it is essential to internalize CO2 costs by requiring an increasing carbon fee that is steep enough for alternative energy to become cost competitive and for carbon fuels to be phased out.
• We understand that we must stop coal and leave unconventional carbon fuels in the ground—such as tar sands and oil shale.

WHY DO WE DO WHAT WE DO?

The ATL is designed to bring the message that we are utterly dependent on our biosphere and ecosystems, such as oceans, coastal estuaries, forests and grasslands. Only if the biosphere is stabilized and balanced can humans survive. It is ATL’s function to remove our blindness to that utter dependency. We believe that the message must be delivered with catalyzing drama, and motivating information, clearly asking our audiences and families to join us and help us build societies run on wind and sunshine while leaving fossil fuels buried. Constructing healthy societies will be based on peaceful cooperation, but direct action may be required to open our eyes and awaken our collective conscience.