The Pleasant Revolution is a set of evolving ideas, a loose set of principles designed to help answer the question, “What next? How do I live fully and restore the planet in the process?”

Some principles of the Pleasant Revolution:
slow is beautiful, local is profound - sustainable living is richer - we can free ourselves from the culture of fear that drives our consumerism and apathy - fundamental change is necessary and possible - to change the world, we must change our own consciousness and lifestyle - humanity now, perhaps more than in any previous time, has an opportunity to create a new, saner, more loving world - the bicycle liberates

Let’s get a better look into the Ginger Ninjas’ environmentalism!

Touring
The Ginger Ninjas do most of their touring by bicycle. This includes the band, the roadies, the system engineers, and all staff. No support vehicles are used when on the bike tour. Why wouldn’t you ride by bike? They don’t consume oil, don’t emit exhaust, take up little space on roads and parking lots, don’t make noise, and don’t consume a bunch of energy to manufacture.
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<!--[endif]-->A less obvious environmental benefit of bike touring is that we don’t buy, transport, plug-in, or dispose of nearly as much “stuff,” whether it be clothes, trinkets, electronics, equipment, extra guitars, etc. This is a simple reality of “whatever you buy, you carry.”

Electricity
The band powered 98% of their shows in the past year with the audiences’ legs. It would probably be more accurate to say “they powered.” At concerts, touring bicycles get propped up on kickstands; little generators make electricity that goes into the sound system. No nukes, no coal, no dams, no pollution.

Also, because the electricity is in limited supply, the Ginger Ninjas are forced to conserve it. This means that they use hyper efficient amplifiers, efficient stage lighting, and don’t plug in a lot of extra junk. The scarcity of a resource makes you think way more about how you use it. People who live off the grid in solar-powered houses never forget to turn out the lights because they know if they do their whole system might be completely dead in the morning! This band also travels with folding solar panels for recharging batteries, laptop, cell phone, etc.

Posters and Fliers
Like many bands, they use the same poster for the whole tour, leaving a spot blank for adding info about tonight’s show. After the show, they make an effort to collect posters and use them again in the next city.

The band also tries to print fliers on already-used office paper. Virgin paper is incredibly energy intensive to make, as is recycled paper. Paper manufacturing is dirty business too, often using chlorine to bleach. Re-using it before it even goes away to be recycled (hopefully) is basically getting something for nothing.
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<!--[endif]-->Merchandise
The Ginger Ninjas buy used t-shirts at thrift stores and silkscreen them to sell. Merchandise is a way for them to support themselves so selling used t-shirts or other items is a compromise. Plus, each one is unique! Also, in Mexico the group collected used grain bags at the mercado and had a seamstress cut and sew them into re-usable grocery bags with the Ginger Ninja’s logo screened on.

Buy Used
When the Ginger Ninjas do have to get clothes and gear, they try to find it used. This saves the energy of manufacturing and overseas shipping, plus the waste of new packaging, and ultimately means less stuff in the landfill. Plus, used clothes are almost always more cool...

Local/organic/slow
The Ginger Ninjas eat organic, locally grown, mostly veggie, lovingly prepared food whenever possible.

Other travel
When not riding bikes, they try to use public transportation or hitch. Buses and trains use less energy than cars and planes. Combining the long-distance capabilities of buses and trains with the self-sufficiency of load-carrying bicycles, you can get almost anywhere without a car. Once you feel this confidence, you’re likely to sell your car. And once you do that, your whole impact and outlook on the world changes.

Hitchhiking takes advantage of a vehicle that’s already burning gas whether you ride in it or not, so in essence your emissions while hitching could be considered zero. This assumes that you hitching has no impact on whether or not people choose to drive, i.e., that you’re not increasing demand for empty car seats that results in drivers trying to increase supply. (This is why hitching is different from, say, taking a plane. When you buy a plane ticket, you increase demand for seats—even though the plane is already flying—and make it more likely that total air travel will increase over time.)

When and if the group takes a plane flight on a tour, they will try to stay wherever they fly for a long tour, rather than get in the habit of quick there-and-backs.

Discouraging jet-set pop-ins
One of the problems with doing a really cool tour by bicycle is that it makes your friends want to come join you, which is great except that usually they want to “fly down for the weekend.” On the last tour, the band started to feel like these kinds of visits damaged the integrity of the trip and that in some way they were responsible for the emissions of the people who came to see them. So they made a rule that all visitors have to come for at least two weeks and all are encouraged to hitch, bus, train, rideshare, or bike to meet the gang. The rationale for the two weeks part is quite simply to help their friends slow down.

Check them out at:
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZbAIiTZ9bk
Article: http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2008/julaug/pc/gingerninjas.html
MySpace:www.myspace.com/gingermyninja

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