Quick access to key sustainability resources from an emerging whole systems and critical-path perspective: pioneers, leaders, powerful ideas, path-breaking initiatives, beyond best practices, important events. Comment. Search. Go to the Sust-Clips Index of categories. See also: the Sustainability Perspectives Journal for commentary.
February 15, 2012 at 10:32PM The World Resources Simulation Center (WRSC) is a large format visualization and simulation facility. As part of our ongoing research and development efforts, we are compiling an inventory of world resources to help analyze and assess historical and projected trends.
February 15, 2012 at 10:11PM February 15, 2012 at 09:16PM Two Books by Timothy Beatley at each end of the first decade of the 21st century extract lessons from leading european cites on sustainable urban development: (1) Green Cities of Europe, 2012, and (2) Green Urbanism--Learning From European Cities, 1999. Excerpts follow:
February 15, 2012 at 09:05PM . . . oblivion is [not] necessarily the destiny of urban areas. Instead, . . . intelligent planning and visionary leadership can help cities meet the impending crises, and [the book looks] to existing initiatives in cities around the world. Rather than responding with fear (as a legion of doomsaying prognosticators have done), [the authors] choose hope. First, they confront the problems,
February 15, 2012 at 08:56PM Tim Beatley has long been a leader in advocating for the "greening" of cities. But too often, he notes, in Biophilic Cities, urban greening efforts focus on everything except nature, emphasizing such elements as public transit, renewable energy production, and energy efficient building systems. While these are important aspects of reimagining urban living, they are not enough,
February 14, 2012 at 10:59AM Transportation WILL Change: Are You Ready?
The U.S. burns 13 million barrels of oil a day for transportation at a cost of $2 billion, half of it imported. That oil dependence also incurs hidden costs totaling roughly $1.5 trillion a year or 12 percent of GDP. Making transportation oil-free by 2050 can
January 28, 2012 at 01:10PM Wow. Good one Sylvain (see Linked in Discussion and referenced issue-Port vs Ag in Metro Vancouver). What a classic land use conflict: current suicide economy conflicting with old economy and "no change" populist sentiment! Framed as it is, the winner will just be whoever has more political muscle and legal rights/resources. But that won't necessarily be the "best" solution for society (if that even matters any more).
January 26, 2012 at 04:42PM There are a few programs that have evolved over the years that my cursory knowledge of would preliminarily certify as delivering serious sustainability training, that is the accurate understanding and powerful skills and tools required to truly design/develop effective progress and solutions. These would include at the top of the list, the Masters in Leadership for Strategic Sustainability, Blekinge Instiute of Technology, Karlskrona (TNS), the Columbia University masters and PhD programs of its Earth Institute, and the Presidio Graduate School Sustainability MBA and MPA programs.
However, now there is a new one on the global "block," the Master's (and PhD) in Programme in Social-ecological resilience for sustainable development at the Stockholm University and its Stockholm Resilience Center (research for governance of social-ecological systems). Check it out. It's quite a systems-based transdiciplinary integration of relevant knowledge and research methods for advancing understanding and practice.
January 23, 2012 at 02:10PM Solar Frontier and enXco, an EDF Energies Nouvelles Company, have signed a module supply agreement for up to 150 megawatts peak (MWp) of Solar Frontier’s CIS solar modules. A firm order for 26 MWp was completed and delivered in the last quarter of 2011 for the Catalina Solar Project located in Kern County, California. When completed, the project is set to become the world’s largest CI(G)S installation and will rank among the largest solar installations of any type globally. Read more. . . .
January 12, 2012 at 03:39PM Most approaches to sustainable transportation involve incremental "greening" changes to the existing auto-dominated transportation-land use-urban form systems and settlement patterns. Often they are no more than minor per-capita VMT reduction programs that will only slightly slow the systematic increase in carbon, thereby NOT contributing to climate change solutions or adaptation. As such, they also do NOT address other planning, livability,
January 11, 2012 at 08:24PM January 6, 2012 at 04:52PM As nice as it is that San Franicisco (SF) is leading the way on sustainabilty in the most recent round of city rankings (see also the Seimen's Green City Index) how close is SF or any of the other cities to sustainability? How would we know? This is the million dollar question of sustainabilty. Without being able to answer it, one has no legitimate claim to sustainability assessment. (see other S2030 Clips post here).
January 5, 2012 at 02:34PM The marketing review (Amazon) for the book says the following:
In Green Gone Wrong environmental writer Heather Rogers blasts through the marketing buzz of big corporations and asks a simple question: Do todays much-touted "green" productscarbon offsets, organic food, biofuels, and eco-friendly cars and homesreally work? Implicit in efforts to go
December 22, 2011 at 03:26PM If you missed TNS Network USA's Dec. 6th (2011) introductory webinar on strategic sustainability, here are a few additional resources for you that would be good substitutes.
- Workshop Follow Up Resources Document, provides links and short discussion of a range of next-step resources, mostly no-cost. See also the list of references in the Resources Section at the end of the Presentation, Part 1 (see link below), pages 92-93.
- Mock South Bay Community Strategic Sustainability Plan, refines and extends the results of the workshop exercise into a partial mock plan to illustrate how a strategic approach begins to differ from a traditional approach.
- The powerpoint presentations for the Strategic Community Sustainability Planning Workshop and some other resources are also on the main page.
If you want to follow up with TNS in particular, I highly recommend checking out the TNS Network USA's and TNS Canada’s work; in particular,
OK, that does it. Comments, questions, etc. are always welcome.
Of course, i also highly recommend the 1-hour e-learning course (or 3-hour, but the 1-hr was recently updated) too.
December 18, 2011 at 05:12PM Volume 2, Issue 22 of Rio+20: Making it Happen focuses on the impact of rapid urbanization on the sustainable growth of cities, one of the seven priority issues to be addressed at Rio+20. Meanwhile, the Second Intersessional Meeting of Rio+20 will soon take place on 15-16 December 2011. This newsletter highlights the compilation document and events relating to the meeting. It also features the launch of the Portuguese version of the Rio+20 website, an event hosted by the Mayor of Rio de Janiero.
Available at: http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/index.php?menu=40
December 18, 2011 at 04:54PM For a Sustainable Future, just published a pocket guide to sustainable development (see home page), and has resources on the Blue Economy, the Bonn Conference, the Earth Debates, and EarthSummit 2012.
December 5, 2011 at 09:53AM See the NYT Article:
Emissions rose 5.9 percent in 2010, according to an analysis released Sunday by the Global Carbon Project, an international collaboration of scientists tracking the numbers. Scientists with the group said the increase, a half-billion extra tons of carbon pumped into the air, was almost certainly the largest absolute jump in any year since the Industrial Revolution, and the largest percentage increase since 2003.
The increase solidified a trend of ever-rising emissions that scientists fear will make it difficult, if not impossible, to forestall severe climate change in coming decades.
The trend bodes ill. According to IPCC modeling, which may be conservative, the business-usual-scenario (BUA) will result in a global temerature increase of 6 degrees C by the end of the century), an increase associated with catastrophic climate change for human society. Most scientists fear average warming scenarios above 2 degrees, some consider anything above 1 degree will have highly likely catastrophic results. The IEA's annual report released last week took the position that humanity has five more years to get on a sufficient 100+ year mitigation path or perilous climate change will result.
December 5, 2011 at 09:10AM Renewed studies of Himalayan glacier melting in response to the errors involved in the 2007 IPCC conclusion that they would be gone by 2035 show substantial melting, 22 percent over the past 30 years.
This trend is a huge threat to one of the worlds' most vulnerable ecosystems and one-sixth of the world's current population. The ecosystem provides food and energy for 1.3 billion people living in downstream river basins.
November 29, 2011 at 09:19PM [Conversation, beginning of 1975]. You ask, "where will the world be in 2025?" . . . Whether or not humans will be alive on our planet will however probably be resolved by cosmic evolution as early as 1985. We don't have to wait until 2025 to find out. Human beings, unlike any other known phenomena, have been given minds with which to discover abstract, weightless principles operating in Universe and employ those principles . . . to solve evolutionarily occurring unprecedented metaphysical as well as physical problems. . . . Universe is eternally regenerative. Universe is everywhere continually inter-transforming in accordance with the abstract, weightless principles of which (so far as we know) only the human mind has cognizance. . . . Whether human beings will be on our planet in the 21st century depends on whether mind has come into complete control over muscle and physical power in general and as a consequence of which the world will at last be operational by humans for all humans. . . . Whether humanity will pass its final exams for such a future is dependent on you and me, not on somebody we elect or who elects themselves to represent us. We will have to make each decision both tiny and great with critical self examination — "Is this truly for the many or just for me?" If the latter prevails it will soon be "curtains" for all. We are in for the greatest revolution in history. If it's to pull the top down and it's bloody, all lose. If it is a design science revolution to elevate the bottom and all others as well to unprecedentedly new heights, all will live to dare spontaneously to speak and live and love the truth, strange though it often may seem. (from Co-Evolution Quarterly)
November 29, 2011 at 03:16PM The Unconventional Documentary
SYNOPSIS
THRIVE is an unconventional documentary that lifts the veil on what's REALLY going on in our world by following the money upstream -- uncovering the global consolidation of power in nearly every aspect of our lives. Weaving together breakthroughs in science, consciousness and activism, THRIVE offers real solutions, empowering us with unprecedented and bold strategies for reclaiming our lives and our future.
INTERVIEWS in THRIVE
Duane Elgin, Nassim Haramein, Steven Greer, Jack Kasher, Daniel Sheehan, Adam Trombly, Brian O'Leary, Vandana Shiva, John Gatto, John Robbins, Deepak Chopra, David Icke, Catherine Austin Fitts, G. Edward Griffin, Bill Still, John Perkins, Paul Hawken, Aqeela Sherrills, Evon Peter, Angel Kyodo Williams, Elisabet Sahtouris, Amy Goodman, and Barbara Marx Hubbard.
