Saturday Morning Linkfest - Mad as hell, and not going to take it anymore?

Good morning oh timid environmentalists. Question: Is it time to stop pretending this is much other than a life and death struggle now, or should we still keep quiet, maintain our western-style peer approval ratings, and not bother the neighbors? No? NO!

We need to take the fight right to the doorstep, and I mean that, right to the very personal doorstep, of those funding the fight against climate change action. We cannot allow them to dictate this. We simply cannot sit on our hands on this anymore.

Here's some stuff that I've found interesting in the past little while:

• "I wrote the first book for a general audience on global warming back in 1989, and I've spent the subsequent 21 years working on the issue. I'm a mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday school teacher. Not quick to anger. So what I want to say is: This is fucked up. The time has come to get mad, and then to get busy." (by Bill McKibben in Tom Dispatch  via Grist)
• And our highlighted link on environmental leadership issues today. "When leaders want to influence people to make significant changes, they need to help them connect the changes to their deeply held values. This establishes a moral framework that shifts people's experience of the new behaviours. If leaders fail to engage people's values, they must compensate for a lack of personal motivation with less profound and sustainable sources of motivation, such as carrots and sticks. Although personal motivation can be powerful, it's rarely enough. Successful influencers find ways to engage personal  motivation, but then combine it with several different additional sources of influence." (How to Have Influence, from MIT Sloan Management School, via Annie Hu)
• "Musing about what it would take to get more people in other cities to hop on bikes, Notaras mentions some of the many initiatives in Japan to promote cycling, including the Green Pedal Map, which provides information in English and Japanese "on bike lanes, danger zones, rental locations, bike parks and so on," as well as the leadership role that needs to be played by government and businesses. Cultural change is required too, so that people begin to see bicycles as the domain of "people of all ages, genders, and social statuses," as they do in Tokyo." (via treehugger)
• Check out the PUMA Mopion bike: I'll buy their claim of a "serious cargo hold", but when they say it's "stylish", I have to ask, "Compared to what, guys in 1960s horn-rim glasses and girls in 1980s leggings?"  (via inhabitat)
• "Technological developments [such as electric cars etc.] are welcome, but maybe it's time we started rethinking our car culture as whole. The average car in North America carries 1.5 people, which means that most cars on the road only have a driver in them. Is it really efficient to use more than 1,000 kilograms of metal to transport 100 kilograms of human?" (David Suzuki via treehuggger)
• Nothing illustrates how we are well prepared for the past, but not preparing for the future, like the ten day traffic jam in China. In a world of seven billion people, could we purposely design a more fouled-up transport system than highways designed primarily for single occupant cars? (via The Independent or via China.org)
• Environmentalists and environmental scientists have been punching "below their weight" for better than two decades now. Can we punch above our weight, when the chips are now really on the line? According to Forrester Research (a major consultancy), just 6% of online adults generate 80% of the online "influence impressions" (via Forrester Research blog)
• In seeking green behaviours, another MIT Sloan Management School paper asks, "Instead of highlighting how existing practices are harming the planet, shouldn't managers focus on what employees have already been doing to preserve the environment, such as turning off lights and computers at the end of the day, recycling paper and so on?" AND ALSO "The impact of peers increases during periods of uncertainty. Intuitively, this makes sense. After all, when people are unsure what is happening around them, they don't look inside themselves for answers, because all they'll find there is confusion."  (via Carlson School of Management, University of Manitoba)
• Finding environmentally sound products is hard, and requires lots of internet research, right? Apparently, not so much. There's an app for that now. (via GoodGuide)