Paxus Calta
Encyclopedia
Biography
Calta was born as Earl Schuyler Flansburgh, or "Sky" as a nickname, in 1957. Calta studied engineering and economics at Cornell UniversityCornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
, where he served as a student member of the Board of Trustees and as a member of the Quill and Dagger
Quill and Dagger
Quill and Dagger is a senior honor society at Cornell University. It is often recognized as one of the most prominent collegiate societies of its type, along with Skull and Bones of Yale University...
society. After wards he worked as a software designer, helping to found and ultimately sell two software consulting firms. In 1982, he changed his name to Paxus Calta. In 1988, he hitchhiked on sailboats across the Pacific, settled briefly in Australia and then moved on to Hawai'i where he worked for Makai Ocean Engineering. After the fall of the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall
The Berlin Wall was a barrier constructed by the German Democratic Republic starting on 13 August 1961, that completely cut off West Berlin from surrounding East Germany and from East Berlin...
, Calta moved to the Netherlands and worked for The World Information Service on Energy (WISE
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
The Nuclear Information and Resource Service is an anti-nuclear group founded in 1978 to be the information and networking center for citizens and organizations concerned about nuclear power, radioactive waste, radiation and sustainable energy issues...
) in Amsterdam.
Calta was invited by a Czech deep ecology
Deep ecology
Deep ecology is a contemporary ecological philosophy that recognizes an inherent worth of all living beings, regardless of their instrumental utility to human needs. The philosophy emphasizes the interdependence of organisms within ecosystems and that of ecosystems with each other within the...
organization, Hnutí DUHA
Hnutí DUHA
Hnutí DUHA is an environmental movement in the Czech Republic, the most prominent in the country...
, to run the international campaign against the Temelín Nuclear Power Station
Temelín Nuclear Power Station
Temelín Nuclear Power Station is located near Temelín, a small village in the Czech Republic. Temelín NPP is owned by ČEZ Group, which employs 1000 workers at this site. The adjacent castle Vysoký Hrádek serves as an information centre.-History:...
from Brno
Brno
Brno by population and area is the second largest city in the Czech Republic, the largest Moravian city, and the historical capital city of the Margraviate of Moravia. Brno is the administrative centre of the South Moravian Region where it forms a separate district Brno-City District...
, Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia or Czecho-Slovakia was a sovereign state in Central Europe which existed from October 1918, when it declared its independence from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, until 1992...
in 1991, which remained his primary home base for most of the 1990s and from where he campaigned against nuclear power. During this time, he "moved up" in the Friends of the Earth
Friends of the Earth
Friends of the Earth International is an international network of environmental organizations in 76 countries.FOEI is assisted by a small secretariat which provides support for the network and its agreed major campaigns...
hierarchy. In 1998, Calta moved to Twin Oaks Community, located in Virginia in the United States.
Calta is a proponent of polyamory
Polyamory
Polyamory is the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved....
and writes on the topic. In 2004, he wrote a chapter of the book The Impossible Will Take a Little While (compiled by Paul Rogat Loeb
Paul Rogat Loeb
Paul Rogat Loeb is an American social and political activist.Loeb was born in 1952 in Berkeley, California. He graduated from Stanford University and subsequently attended New York's New School for Social Research and worked actively to end the Vietnam War...
), in which he detailed a successful campaign launched by an 18-year old to overthrow the Bulgarian government
Politics of Bulgaria
Politics of Bulgaria take place in a framework of a parliamentary representative democratic republic, whereby the Prime minister is the head of government, and of a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the...
.
Political activism
Throughout the 1990s, Calta was involved in campaigns to stop nuclear power plants in 6 countries in Central Europe. Calta was the Chair of the international campaign commemorating the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl disasterChernobyl disaster
The Chernobyl disaster was a nuclear accident that occurred on 26 April 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine , which was under the direct jurisdiction of the central authorities in Moscow...
. and co-managed the FAIRE project (Free & Applied Internships in Renewables and Efficiency) which trained Central European activists in English language skills, campaigning and then placed them in western environmental groups as interns. The FAIRE project was funded by the Heinrich Böll Foundation
Heinrich Böll Foundation
The Heinrich Böll Foundation is a German, legally independent political foundation. Affiliated with the German Green Party, it was originally founded in 1987 and rebuilt in 1997...
, which is affiliated with the German Green Party. Hnutí DUHA
Hnutí DUHA
Hnutí DUHA is an environmental movement in the Czech Republic, the most prominent in the country...
invited Calta to be the lead international anti-nuclear campaigner after he left WISE
World Information Service on Energy
The World Information Service on Energy is an anti-nuclear group founded in 1978 to be an information and networking center for citizens and organizations concerned about nuclear power, radioactive waste, radiation and sustainable energy issues...
. In 1994, Calta presented materials before the US House of Representative Subcommittee on International Development to block the Export-Import Bank of the United States
Export-Import Bank of the United States
The Export-Import Bank of the United States is the official export credit agency of the United States federal government. It was established in 1934 by an executive order, and made an independent agency in the Executive branch by Congress in 1945, for the purposes of financing and insuring...
from funding the Temelín reactor
Temelín Nuclear Power Station
Temelín Nuclear Power Station is located near Temelín, a small village in the Czech Republic. Temelín NPP is owned by ČEZ Group, which employs 1000 workers at this site. The adjacent castle Vysoký Hrádek serves as an information centre.-History:...
.
Calta initiated the Clean Energy Brigade project in the Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....
in which local activists installed energy saving hardware in residential homes and public buildings at materials cost in exchange for documentation of reduced energy use. This program was expanded to 11 Central and East European countries and is now called the International Energy Brigades. In aggregate, the efficiency upgrades from this project are abating literally thousands of tons of CO2 each year.
More recently, he campaigned against a planned new reactor at North Anna
North Anna Nuclear Generating Station
The North Anna Nuclear Generating Station is a nuclear power plant on a site in Louisa County, Virginia. The site is operated by Dominion Generation company and is jointly owned by the Dominion Virginia Power corporation and by the Old Dominion Electric Cooperative .The plant has two Westinghouse...
in Virginia and was arrested
and jailed for protests there. On December 4, 2009 Calta critiqued Steward Brand on NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...
on the merits of using nuclear power to stop climate change. Calta served on the board of directors of the anti-nuclear group NIRS
NIRS
NIRS can refer to:*National Institute on Retirement Security*National Indigenous Radio Service in Australia*Nuclear Information and Resource Service in the US*Near infrared spectroscopy...
from 1997 til 2010, and as the president of the board for the last 3 years.
After the August 23, 2011 Virginia earthquake
2011 Virginia earthquake
The 2011 Virginia earthquake occurred on August 23, 2011, at 1:51 pm EDT in the Piedmont region of the U.S. state of Virginia. The epicenter, in Louisa County, was northwest of Richmond and south-southwest of the town of Mineral...
which closed down the North Anna nuclear power plant, Calta and others founded the organization "Not on Our Fault Line", for which Calta has been repeatedly a spokesperson.
Lifestyle activism
Calta authored a pamphlet about polyamoryPolyamory
Polyamory is the practice, desire, or acceptance of having more than one intimate relationship at a time with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved....
which has been translated into 5 languages. Calta considers himself an anarchist and is the principal organizer of the Fingerbook Propaganda Project, which produces and distributes "Fingerbooks" (small handbooks) on consensus decision-making
Consensus decision-making
Consensus decision-making is a group decision making process that seeks the consent, not necessarily the agreement, of participants and the resolution of objections. Consensus is defined by Merriam-Webster as, first, general agreement, and second, group solidarity of belief or sentiment. It has its...
, designing revolutions, polyamory and intentional communities.
He has also been a member of Twin Oaks Community since 1998, serving as the communities recruiting manager, manager of outside work and a general manager of Twin Oaks Hammocks, Inc.. He has appeared on both CNN and Voice of America videos discussing the community.
Family
Calta is the son of Earl R. FlansburghEarl Flansburgh
Earl R. Flansburgh was an architect known for his extensive work in the Boston area.Flansburgh graduated from the Cornell Architecture School in 1953, where he was also a member of the Quill and Dagger society...
, a retired Boston architect. He is the older brother of John Flansburgh
John Flansburgh
John Conant Flansburgh is an American musician. He is half of the longstanding Brooklyn, New York-based alternative rock duo They Might Be Giants, for which he writes, sings and plays rhythm guitar...
, of rock band They Might Be Giants
They Might Be Giants
They Might Be Giants is an American alternative rock band formed in 1982 by John Flansburgh and John Linnell. During TMBG's early years Flansburgh and Linnell were frequently accompanied by a drum machine. In the early 1990s, TMBG became a full band. Currently, the members of TMBG are...
. Calta's mother, Polly Flansburgh, is the founder and president of Boston by Foot
Boston By Foot
Boston By Foot is a non-profit organization offering guided architectural and historical tours of Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1976, Boston By Foot offers daily scheduled tours from May through October. Tours are conducted by a trained corps of over 200 volunteers...
, which gives architectural walking tours of the city of Boston
Boston
Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...
.
Calta and Hawina Falcon are parents to Willow Star who was born in 2002.