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THIS MONTH IN EDA                                                       sustaineda.org

August elections
From Loomio to Basecamp
Memberships
Sixth Annual EDA Conference
Correction - Social Media
What is inflation?
Worth Noting
Coming in August EDA News
August Elections

EDA's Election Board will be holding its annual elections from August 15 - 22. In addition to the candidates on the ballot, there will also be two ratifications for minor changes in EDA’s Cooperative Charter.

You will be receiving information about the August elections through email and on Loomio. (By the way, this will be the last time that EDA will be using Loomio for this purpose. See article below.)

Here is the timeline set forth by the Election Board:

July 18 - 31
Call for candidates. You can review job descriptions below:


Aug. 1 - 15
Review of candidates and proposed ratification

Aug. 15 - 22
Election for candidates and ratification of policy

Any member may run for one of the three offices and all members are encouraged to vote. Holding free and fair elections makes everyone accountable and sets a good example for us and for the world!

From Loomio to Basecamp

During the past few years, the Loomio platform has become increasingly unpopular with our members and staff. Instead of facilitating efficient internal communications, it has proven inadequate in helping us to organize and locate the information we need.

Earlier this year, the EDA Board authorized our IMPACT group to explore other possibilities. They recommended that we use Basecamp as our platform for communication. Thanks to some generous donations, EDA is now moving our operations over to Basecamp

On June 23, we formed a temporary subcommittee of IMPACT to facilitate the reorganization of our internal communications and the integration of our archives into this new system. This group includes Brent Terry, Jerry Phillips, Tracy Edmonds, Janice Bobbie, Patti Ellis, Geoff Schaber, James Kolb and James Quilligan.

Over the next few weeks, EDA’s team chairs and teams will be invited to organize their respective departments on Basecamp. In September, all other EDA members will be invited to join the platform.

Basecamp will enable our teams to get their work done in a more streamlined way. It will allow us to:
  • Make announcements to everyone
  • Establish a community center for members
  • Assign tasks to one or more people
  • Add notes, and file attachments
  • Comment directly on assignments and lists
  • Track our work with charts
  • Archive our team reports and other documents all in one place
In general, this new platform will help us improve our flexibility, responsiveness and coordination as an organization. Together, we will climb the virtual mountain to achieve our goals: equitable and sustainable food, water and energy for all people.

Membership Month

This is the busy season for memberships — the time of year when many of EDA’s memberships are up for renewal. We’d like to address a few questions that we are asked every year at this time.

Why didn’t I receive a notice that my membership was expiring?


Well, you probably did. In fact, you may have received several renewal notices by email that could have gone into your spam folder. Please remember to check your spam folder to see if these emails were delivered there. Also, make sure that you have set up your email client to accept emails from EDA.

How do I renew?

Go to Be a Member on the EDA website. There you can easily sign up as either an Active Member or Supporting Member. If you have issues while renewing, please contact membership@sustaineda.org. Someone will reach out and help you complete your renewal.

What’s the difference between an Active and Supporting Member?


Active Members are people who who want to take an active role in our teams and plan to vote in our elections and referenda. Supporting Members are interested in what EDA is working on and want to follow us, but aren’t prepared or able to take an active role.

Why was I switched from Active to Supporting Member?

As an Active Member, we ask that you participate in our elections and referenda, as required by our Charter. If you haven't voted in two consecutive elections or referenda, your membership status will automatically be changed to Supporting, as per our Charter.

Why does EDA make a distinction between Active and
Supporting Members?


We want your vote to count in our elections and ratifications. To encourage your participation, the EDA Charter requires a 60% quorum of our Active Members to vote.

If we were to tally the members who choose not to vote during an election or referenda and include them in our final vote count, we may not meet the threshold of 60% of Active Member participation. If that were to occur, our objective of giving members direct input into EDA’s policies would not be met because the election would not be technically valid.

To ensure that this doesn’t happen, we’ve created the two categories: Active Members for those who intend to vote and participate in EDA, and Supporting Members for those who choose not to vote or actively participate.

Why didn’t I know these things before?

There could be a lot of reasons. It’s possible that someone personally guided you through the membership process in the past and now you can’t recall how to do it. Maybe you got used to registering through our old website and haven’t gone through the process on the new website. Or maybe our renewal notices didn’t reach you and you missed the information altogether.

We understand. Memberships are an ongoing process. Go to Be a Member on the website and If you run into issues, please reach out to membership@sustaineda.org.
We’re here to help!


Annual Conference in October

EDA will be holding its annual conference on Saturday, October 22. This year’s theme is Revaluing the Carrying Capacity of our Commons.

We plan to have several featured speakers, including David Bollier, a renowned expert on the commons and a director of the Schumacher Center for a New Economics.

The conference will also feature reports from the Chairs of our four teams, State Legislation, Advocacy, Research and Education.

Join us to learn about the commons that exist right in front of our eyes. Find out how society has conditioned us not to recognize the common heritage of earth’s systems.

Please put this on your calendar. Registration will open in September.

You won’t want to miss this special event!

Correction:  Social Media officer

Note: there was an omission in last month's article and some text was missing.  Below is the full article.

Stephanie Bell is stepping down as EDA's Social Media officer. Over the last few months, her work and personal schedule has become increasingly busy and she can no longer devote the time and energy to keep our social media presence going.


Stephanie’s journalism background and knowledge of social media was a welcome addition to our team. We will miss her expertise and knowledge of Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and her creativity in getting EDA launched into the world of social media.

Thank you, Stephanie for all you've done for EDA! 

We're now looking for another person to take on this important position. If you're interested, please contact Janice Bobbie.



What is inflation?

What’s really going on?
As the prices of food, water and gasoline escalate, many people wonder what’s actually behind the soaring cost of living.

Our daily news is filled with reasons for inflation, including labor issues, supply chains, taxes, and financial, monetary and geopolitical disruptions. These factors are all true on one level. Yet they are linear interpretations of a deeper phenomena.

Underlying market economics is the principle of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI), which businesses, governments and the press largely ignore. EROEI simply means that a specific amount of energy is needed to produce more energy.

Although modern societies have become adept at measuring the market value of energy, the net yield of energy is a much more important indicator. This can be accounted only by measuring the energy that is expended in the production and distribution of energy.

How did we get here?
During the twentieth century, conventional crude oil was far more accessible than today. The International Energy Agency says that the availability of easy-to-access oil peaked in 2006 and has declined since then. This is why energy companies have been finding new ways to draw oil from unconventional sources, such as drilling in deep ocean water; hydraulic fracturing ('fracking') through rock; and converting tar sands into oil.

With this constant extraction of energy from remote sources, the amount of fossil fuel that is now used in the construction and administration of our energy systems — whether in machinery, production, installation, supply chains or distribution — has increased dramatically. As society expends more and more energy just to produce new energy, the net energy yield decreases and the market cost of energy increases. This forces everyone to spend more money on fossil fuels and the myriad products and benefits that oil brings to us.

So this is the real definition of inflation. Prices rise rapidly because there is a decline in the net energy yield of society, which falls at a rate that is passed on to users of all forms of energy (including food, water, wood, minerals, coal, oil and related products) as a decrease in the value of their money. Hence, people end up spending more for everything.

Where is this leading?
What lies ahead is real trouble. Business and government leaders don’t apply EROEI because it doesn’t fit their narrative of infinite economic growth. This is precisely why energy producers and suppliers are not required to account for the increasing net energy it takes to capture less accessible sources of energy.

Anthropologists tell us that at some point, every civilization faces a similar reckoning: its net yield of energy brings diminishing returns. And history shows that when the expansion of energy resources in a society becomes physically and financially impossible, its policies and administrative structures for economic growth become a liability and the social fabric starts to unravel.

Human civilization desperately needs to develop new ways of measuring the real value of its resources. The fields of ecology, economics and energy must soon combine forces to teach energy producers and suppliers how to measure the actual value of the energy they use in their production and distribution of energy, not just the sale price of this energy.

EROEI is a method for determining carrying capacity value, which can be applied to all resources that generate or are involved in the generation of energy. EDA provides the metrics for the net energy yield of food, water and energy to its partners, clients and the public. We also educate and advocate for State legislation that proposes more self-sufficient and sustainable forms of economic cooperation.


Growing green skills

As surface water diminishes in the Western US, people are drilling deeper wells — and tapping into older groundwater that may take thousands of years to replenish. Check out this easy-to-understand introduction on how aquifers work and why we should care!
A global food crisis may be less than a decade away

Sara Menker quit a career in commodities trading to figure out how the global value chain of agriculture works. Her model anticipates that the world will be short 214 trillion calories per year by 2027. "We could have a tipping point in global food and agriculture if surging demand surpasses the agricultural system's structural capacity to produce food," says Menker. She offers some steps we can take today to avoid this catastrophe.
Announcement of first-ever California offshore wind lease sale

Can wind farming work? Like Bob Dylan, the State of California believes the answer is blowing in the wind. An area for offshore wind development has been proposed for Morro Bay. Spanning 376 square miles, it would produce 3GW of energy and become the largest floating offshore wind project in the United States.
A major UN climate report issues code red for humanity

A new scientific report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that we are on a crash course towards catastrophe if global temperatures are allowed to rise. The window for slowing or even halting some of these worsening impacts is rapidly closing and the message is very clear: we must take action now.
Overcoming the water challenge of green hydrogen production

Once thought of as a niche solution for alternative energy, the solar-water connection is now a rapidly expanding network of applications. This nexus includes practical tools capable of solving issues like water scarcity, as well as newer discoveries like overcoming the water challenge of green hydrogen production. Blake Matich examines the promising future of hydrogen development in Australia and around the world.
Join one of our groups

You're welcome to visit any team and sit in on their meetings. It's a great way to learn what they're working on and see which team you might prefer to participate in. Email one of the contacts to receive a link to the meeting.

Coming in August EDA News
Election Preview
Basecamp is here!

Protect our Aquifer
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