]]>. . . 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,
]]>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
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.
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]]>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
- 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.
]]>Available at: http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/index.php?menu=40
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>[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)
]]>]]>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.
]]>“Deploying Renewables 2011: Best and Future Policy Practice” (International Energy Agency) reports that renewable energy is the fastest growing energy sector, projects renewables will become cost competitive with fossil fuels over the next decade, and makes recommendations for developing effective renewable energy policy.
]]>A growing number of municipal governments across the country are aiming to become beacons
Although the scientific method triumphs, the dialogue is still based on a misunderstanding of the implications and use of science for public policy decisions. The notion that global warming must be "proved" to some irrefutable level of all-consuming consensus, or that it matters whether the source is natural or human-made, or that it is "too expensive" to do something about are all points that do not have a scientific answer, but a political, policy-based answer, the best of which would reflect humanity's highest intelligence and wisdom, and on probabilities and consequences.
Hopefully, this progress on the science of global warming will help the world's citizens focus on defining the smart response. When many intelligent people examine the issue deeply, one of the conclusions is that the costs of reversal mitigation now are small and inconsequential to the costs of doing nothing and being wrong (earth/human systems collapse).
Many also find that the reversal mitigation path may even be the best path for economic development and international security for not only a warming world, but for an increasingly flat and crowded one as well (see the powerful synthesis by Thomas Friedman, Hot, Flat, and Crowded).
A deeper dive into this arena leads one to the power and potential of creating regenerative economic prosperity by mimicking the economic and engineering design principles of the earth's living systems that have evolved over 3.5+ billion years of evolution. In fact, that was the insight 20 years ago of some of the smartest businesses, communities, and people on the planet, from Dupont, Coca Cola, Interface Corporation, IKEA, Nike, and others to The Natural Step, Paul Hawken, and a variety of regional and municipal ecological initiatives. Inspiring innovations in this emerging integrative arena of strategic sustainability have been expanding since. The Rocky Mountain Institute's recent Reinventing Fire Initiative represents a current culmination of this thinking in a voluntary program that will move the U.S. off fossil fuel by 2050 because it is now cheaper and the best competitive business move.
The real tragedy over the climate denier agenda is not the healthy scepticism upon which science should be based, but the exploitation of society's confusion over the legitimate basis for public policy decisions in light of science, which will always have some element of uncertainty in it. Precious time was diverted from clarifying the legitimate basis for public policy action in this case and identifying the smart response. When the probabilities for devastating consequences are high, but perceived as low, and the costs are relatively inconsequential, and the response is a better business model and would likely be ultimately required in the future anyway, what is the rationale for denial and procrastination? Particularly when the actual probabilities of devastating consequences are extremely high and avoiding them requires instant mass mobilization. What is the down side? To whom? And why are we letting them drive the public response? What exactly is the legitimating basis for that approach to public policy? It certainly is not free-market economics producing maximum social welfare in an world full of imperfect price information, particularly for the information that would be the game-changer in the markets!
It's time to get smart and get going. The data is in. The choices are clear. It can be constructed as a win-win, and any other option is a lose-lose.
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Pro-business devotees would probably claim an anti-business foul, but
]]>Think we might need to tune up our industrial, design, production, and urban livabiltiy capacities, not to mention radically improve resource and energy productivity to support more people while reversing environmental impact and ultimately creating an environmentally restorative and wildly prosperous economy?
]]>Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifestom by Adam Werbach. Published
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