How Many Climate Change or Sustainability Events is a Good Thing?

There are so many climate change and/or sustainability conferences taking place in California that it is impossible to keep track of all of them.  In just a two-month period I had the good fortune to attend the recent Bioneers and Tides Momentum conferences, as well as the inaugural Next Agenda climate change event, and, most recently, a sustainability tour event in Berkeley hosted by East Bay Green Tours.  Other recent prominent events that I happened to miss included San Francisco’s annual West Coast Green and the October 19 Social Media for Sustainability Conference. 

A day or even half a day to attend an event is an enormous investment of valuable time.  Is every event really worth it?  
A simple answer would be “no,” but that’s not completely true.  It depends on what knowledge and motivation you bring to the event and what you wish to get out of it.  It brings to mind a favorite axiom of market economists:  The question goes “What is (product X) really worth?”  And the answer is, “Whatever price someone is willing to pay for it.” 

The Bioneers conference in October was rich in thought-provoking speakers and panel discussions, and I wished I had more time to spend there.  On the one day that I attended, I was deeply impressed with the visionary knowledge evidenced by Bioneers CEO and founder Kenny Ausubel and the amazing expertise and sharp mind of watershed expert Brock Dolman.  I was privileged to see a presentation by world-famous food expert Michael Pollan, and I also learned some interesting ideas large and small about breakthrough sustainability practices, trends, and obstacles for businesses during an afternoon panel discussion.  However, three other speakers during the morning plenary, while engaging, were essentially a waste of time if one was hoping to learn hard new facts.

The Next Agenda climate change event, "Clean Energy Challenge," hosted in September by the charismatic and articulate Peter Leyden, featured impressively accomplished speakers and was moving, inspiring, and potentially groundbreaking.  Not one to reach for melodrama, I nonetheless found myself at day’s end standing up and speaking about my love for my two small children and my genuine fear for the safety of their generation.  Other fathers, eyes moist, came up to me afterward to thank me for my heartfelt words.  My life normally isn’t so emotionally charged.  But conference participants with whom I spoke afterward all agreed that, good as it felt, the Next Agenda event was much ado about nothing within the context of the great climate change debate if Leyden and his team couldn’t deliver on their planned next steps for collective action.  The jury is out.

The October 28 Berkeley Green Corridor Tour, hosted by East Bay Green Tours, was an intimate, informal and less evocative event.  I also sense that it represented an interaction with others that ultimately will mean far more to me and my life than the more highly produced conferences mentioned above.  Marissa LaMagna, founding director of East Bay Green Tours, is a native of New York City and has a background in environmental activism.  She’s also smart, articulate, good-humored and efficient.  Marissa’s tour, low-key though it may be, provides myriad benefits, education and inspiration for most anyone – whether for officials from other municipalities interested in program models, business owners seeking best practices, social entrepreneurs looking for collaborative opportunities, values-driven consumers looking for businesses to patronize, building owners looking for money-saving energy efficiency measures, CSR organizations looking for partnerships, and yet more.  The list of inspiring and hard-working people and organizations that this one-day tour offers is far too long to list here.  This well-thought and well-organized tour is a gem.