Environmentalism is nothing new. From Al Gore to Greenpeace, Earth Day to the Kyoto Protocol, Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs to Hybrids, our lives have been sprinkled with small tastes of environmentalism. Yet even as we watch the grim television reports on climate change, we let our kitchen faucets drip and leave our bathroom lights on.

In my experience, people fail to take action for one of three reasons: lack of trustworthy and practical information about sustainable living, lack of peer support, and lack of tangible results. We desperately need a model for environmentalism that addresses these barriers in a way that is both personal enough to relate to the individual and extensive enough to produce visible results.

Fortunately, that model may have finally arrived.

The “We Are Many,” or WAM, festival, provides a new solution to overcome these barriers to environmental change. An arts and environmental festival focusing on realizable outcomes, WAM has two main goals: to equip individuals with the tools to fight climate change effectively and to build environmentalism into the local community culture. WAM will be held for the first time this summer, August 22 – 24, in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

Thanks to history, location, and size, Saskatoon is the perfect community to launch such an environmental movement. A history based on farming has led Saskatchewan residents to value practical solutions; a tradition of progressive politics and social capital has produced, among other results, the Federal Co-op Organization; and as the birthplace of Canada’s universal healthcare system, the province is no stranger to creative and successful social movements.

Saskatoon is also the hometown and residence of the likes of Joni Mitchell and Life of Pi’s Yann Martel, feeding a tradition of arts that WAM organizers have not overlooked. Popular bands, including the Barenaked Ladies and the Weakerthans, have agreed to give free performances at the festival, building enthusiasm set to culminate in environmental action. An interactive display pathway connects the concert grounds to an exhibition hall with symposia, an Ecofair, and workshops covering practical solutions to overcome the common barriers to action. These solutions will include the how-tos of home and apartment composting, fixing a bike, and using Saskatoon’s recycling program.

The most innovative component of WAM, however, is the We Are Many Pact. The pact comprises 40 opt-in items designed to require the least individual input for the maximum environmental output. The only mandatory part of the Pact is the last item: each person is asked to get at least five other people to sign on. Since signatories are most likely to go to their family and friends, the Pact is designed to create the support network necessary to sustain community-wide changes of environmental habits.

Saskatoon’s small population of 220,000 means that a significant proportion of the city—50,000 anticipated participants—can be mobilized at once, creating changes that will be immediately noticeable. If successful, We Are Many and the WAM Pact will result in fewer traffic jams, less garbage on the streets, and even less light pollution, starting the very day after the festival. These changes will be the seeds for the long-term shift in the community towards environmentalism—a cultural shift jumpstarted by the visible impact of collective action.

The beauty of the WAM model is not only its potential as a successful environmental festival, but also its design as an exportable model that can be tailored to other locations. WAM has already generated talk and excitement in cities including Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Boston, New York, and New Haven, and events in these cities are being planned for the public launch of the We Are Many Pact on Earth Day on April 22. While many items of the Pact will be universally relevant, other Pact items will be customized to each city and open to local feedback, highlighting WAM’s vision of integrating sustainable environmentalism into the existing community culture.

By relating their kitchen faucets to their community reservoirs and by linking their driving habits to the friendliness and cleanliness of their streets, individuals will no longer be able to argue that they are “only one person.” We Are Many is a solution that can build environmentalism into the public consciousness of every citizen, saving the environment one community at a time.

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