NextNow and Building the Second Renaissance

NextNow Collaboratory is part of the Renaissance2 Great Shift Gathering which will take place in Perpignan, France from 22nd to 26th October, including a launch of the WorldShift Alliance.

Our partner, Renaissance2, a not-for-profit foundation dedicated to catalyzing global social innovation, is inviting NextNowNetwork members to join the Great Shift Gathering by offering a 30% discount on tickets to the event. The discount code will arrive in an email to NextNow members.  Please use this discount when registering to receive 30% off the fee.

The Gathering is designed around two main events.  Event 1 is on Designing a Resilient Civilization and focuses on new models forming the basis of Capitalism 2.0 and projects that can accelerate their adoption.  Event 2 emphasizes the importance of the role of Conscious Evolution, of shifting ourselves, our organizations and our families and communities to the next level of conscious co-creative capacity and the ability to act collectively intelligent, in harmony with nature’s intelligence.

Links:

R2 website http://www.renaissance2.eu/events/index.php and the t

Registration http://greatshiftgathering.eventbrite.com .

We hope to see you in Perpignan on October 22nd !

State of the World Forum Launches in Brazil: 2020 By 2050

SEE END OF POST FOR EVENT LIVE BROADCAST LINKS

NextNow Collaboratory is an organizational partner of State of the World Forum, launching the global 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign today in Belo Horizonte, Brazil.  This Forum marks the first time people will be coming together from around the world at this scale to strategize plans of action to reduce carbon emissions globally by 80% by 2020 (instead of 2050, widely accepted by governments but acknowledged by scientists as “too late”) not just through a change in behavior (which can be difficult to sustain) but by re-aligning our relationship to ourselves and to our values, to each other, to Earth and to Life itself.  It also marks the first time a major media company launches a national public education campaign on global warming intended to mobilize a nation to take action– from stopping clear-cutting of the Amazon to creating sustainable lifestyles.

Over 200 scientists, political leaders, business executives, academics, civil society activists and artists from 20 nations and across Brazil are in attendance.  But this initiative is about everyone becoming a climate leader, because that’s what it will take. We’re all part of this movement to build a future in alignment with our most deeply-held values, with the natural systems of Earth and all Life.  Increase your awareness by visiting the State of the World Forum 2020 Climate Leadership Media and Resources page, and join us for the next Forum in Washington D.C. February 28 – March 3, 2010.

Below is the press release for this historic meeting in Belo Horizonte:

PRESS RELEASE
August 4, 2009

Globo TV launches unprecedented national public education ads on global warming to support the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign

The Globo Organization, the largest media company in Brazil and the fourth largest in the world, will premiere its national public education ads to support the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign at the State of the World Forum in Belo Horizonte, Brazil August 4 – 7, 2009. The aim is to educate the public about the escalating dangers of global warming and to encourage “climate leadership” in reducing carbon emissions and developing sustainable lifestyles.

This action is unprecedented and marks the first time anywhere in the world when a major media company has taken up the issue of global warming and begun a sustained public educational effort in support of a national mobilization on global warming. “We are delighted at this demonstration of climate leadership,” said Jim Garrison, President of the State of the World Forum. “ We believe it will serve as a model for other major companies to join Globo and begin to educate their constituencies about the escalating crisis of global warming.”

Albert Alcouloumbre, Director of Planning and Social Programs at Globo, said, “We consider our support for the 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign to be part of our responsibility to our viewers. Globo has a long history of social responsibility going back to the founder Roberto Marinho, and we are proud of this tradition.”

Ricardo Young, President of the Ethos Institute, said, “Brazil is ready for a national 2020 mobilization on this critical issue.”

The Globo ads support the launch of a global 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign and a Brazil 2020 Climate Leadership Campaign in Belo Horizonte August 4 – 7, when scientists, government leaders, business executives and civil society activists from around the world and Brazil will meet to begin planning 2020 campaigns.

Says Garrison: “The urgency of global warming mandates that each and every one of us become climate leaders. For the first time in our lives, indeed for the first time in history, all of us must take responsibility for our climate, whether at the individual, community, company, institution, state, or national level. We are all responsible for global warming. We must all share in the leadership required to solve it, for nothing less than the fate of human civilization is at stake. The crisis is that stark, the choice is that clear, the leadership required is that urgent.”

At the heart of the Climate Leadership Campaign and the purpose of the Belo Horizonte conference is resolving the contradiction between what our governments are negotiating and what our scientists are asserting about the accelerating pace of global warming. Our governments are negotiating as if the world has another forty years to solve global warming. The Copenhagen negotiations call for an 80% reduction of CO2 by 2050.  But the more our scientists know, the more urgent the crisis becomes and the more urgently we must act. The current world situation with regard to climate change is worse than the worst cast scenario of the IPCC in its 2007 Report.

It is for these reasons that when he accepted the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri said “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” Thousands of scientists around the world agree. Lester Brown, who will keynote the Belo Horizonte Forum, states “The situation is so urgent it has come down to mobilizing to save civilization.”

Says Garrison:  “Climate leadership must be based on what is scientifically urgent, not on what is politically expedient. Thus our strategic intention and call is a very simple one: ‘2050 by 2020.’ What our governments are negotiating for 2050 must be accomplished by 2020 and we must all be prepared to demonstrate the climate leadership required to accomplish this.”

For further information: Leandro Grandi at FSB Communications at leandro.grandi@fsb.com.br or Jim Garrison at jgarrison@worldforum.org

For further information on the State of the World Forum in Belo Horizonte:
http://brasil2020.com.br

For further information on the State of the World Forum:
http://worldforum.org

TO WATCH LIVE BROADCASTS OF THE BELO HORIZONTE STATE OF THE WORLD FORUM:

6:00- 8:00 PM EST ON TUESDAY, AUGUST 4

9:00 AM- 5:00 PM EST ON WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 5

NextNow’s Zann Gill on Evolution, Sustainability, and Collaboration

Our own Zann Gill recently recorded this video preview of her book, What Daedalus Told Darwin:  Darwin’s Dilemma and Designing Intelligence.

Zann was exploring evolution as a way to help understand the creative process, and ultimately was led to flip her inquiry:  might an understanding of design help shed light on the process of evolution?  Asking this question instead eventually helped her build on the case that Darwinism may have misrepresented Darwin (by attributing to him an extreme view–that all evolutionary change was a product of “survival of the fittest,”–which he apparently never held), that socioeconomic paradigms can and sometimes do shape the interpretation of scientific findings (and not just vice versa), and that if we dare question the logic of “survival of the fittest” (and examine its relationship to the tragedy of the commons,) we may find that elevating the status of collaboration to equal competition is as natural as accepting the importance of a balance between left and right brains–and as critical to our survival.  My favorite phrase for this balance is Elisabet’s Sahtouris’ “negotiated self-interest,” which she coined more than ten years ago to describe the need for self-interest to be tempered by a recognition of and respect for the common interest.  As obvious as this idea seems today, as a society we have still not embraced it–evidence of this is everywhere–which is likely a reason why Zann wrote this book.

The following 10 minute clip captures key ideas from recent talks at Google, NASA Ames Research Center, Stanford University Media X & SRI Artificial Intelligence Center. More at http://zanngill.com and http://desyn.com; also, see the 48 minute video from her November 2009 presentation on the Google Tech Talks Channel (abstract included below).

Here’s a description of the talk she gave earlier this year at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute at National University of Ireland:

WHAT DAEDALUS TOLD DARWIN
social nets, semantic webs & evolving systems

Researchers have analyzed how social networks operate, from small organizations to nations and networks of people connected by similar values and objectives. But insufficient attention has been paid to harnessing social networks for cross-disciplinary, collaborative problem-solving. 2009 is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth and 150th anniversary of his publication of Origin of Species. The theory of evolution is seen by many as the greatest theoretical breakthrough of all time.

Zann Gill will introduce findings that call for a more complete interpretation of Darwin’s theory (Stephen Jay Gould thought “Darwinism” misrepresented Darwin) and argue that this more complete interpretation of Darwin’s theory would drive sustainable development and offer a model for seeding and evolving “innovation networks” to develop smart systems for eco-sustainability at the intersection of ICT and green tech.
Here’s the abstract from Google Tech Talk:

Google Tech Talks
November 20, 2008

ABSTRACT

Highly innovative organizations face a constant challenge to process a flood of good ideas, both generated by employees and submitted from outside. In the wake of Google’s Tenth Birthday Competition, this talk describes how innovation networks apply principles found in life’s origins and evolution to “processing innovation.” Debates about how novelty emerged in the origin of life and its evolution toward complexity demand revising assumptions that we’ve taken for granted. Steven Jay Gould said that “Darwinism” misrepresents Darwin.

A more complete interpretation of Darwin’s theory of evolution could inspire new problem-solving methods with a range of practical applications, from multi-agent systems able to learn and improve their performance to cross-disciplinary decision support systems designed to address environmental sustainability challenges. Objective. To discuss nine principles of innovation networks and the problem-solving method they support.

NNC and 2009 State of the World Forum in Washington, D.C. Nov. 12-14

“Gaia’s main problems are not industrialization, ozone depletion, over-population, or resource depletion. Gaia’s main problem is the lack of mutual understanding and mutual agreement … about how to proceed with those problems. We cannot reign in industry if we cannot reach mutual understanding and mutual agreement based on a worldcentric moral perspective concerning the global commons.” – Ken Wilber

NextNow Collab is collaborating with The 2009 State of the World Forum to inspire a global network of people and organizations committed to transforming the way we live.  Global challenges are both too systemic and too personal to be left to government and business alone; it really is time for each of us to “be the change.”  (Sorry; it’s well-worn but nothing says it better.)

The 2009 State of the World Forum will vision and launch a 10-year plan to make more sustainable both our economies and our lives by 2020, including through

• Using Ken Wilber’s Integral Framework as our “operating system,” allowing for organizing knowledge and action plans that recognize personal and cultural values, resulting in truly empowered action
• Debuting Version 4.0 of Lester Brown’s Plan B
• Drawing inspiration from action-oriented, forward-thinking organizations such as the Presidential Climate Action Project, Apollo Alliance (who gave a powerful presentation at Social Venture Network conference in October), Friends of the Earth, Global Urban Development and many others
• Leveraging the concept of “social artistry,” as embraced by the United Nations Development Programme, towards creating real leadership for social change
• Releasing the latest data supporting the rise of the “new progressives,” a culturally creative worldwide demographic reflecting global values
• Demonstrating new technologies that enable us to envision, and participate in, sustainable systems.

NextNower’s that will be in the Washington, D.C. area and wish to collaborate please contact NextNow Collab.

Ken Wilber's Integral Framework

Featured speakers include:

Ray Anderson, Founder and CEO, Interface Inc. www.interfaceglobal.com Esperide Ananas, International Coordinator, Federation of Damanhur, Italy, founded in 1975. Damanhur  is a U.N. agency award-winning sustainable society numbering 1,000 citizens; it is a member of G.E.N.; and an active supporter of the Earth Charter Initiative.   www.damanhur.org Bill Becker, Executive Director, Presidential Climate Action Project; Project Director and Senior Consultant, National Leadership Summits for a Sustainable America; and former Director, Department of Energy, Central Regional Office. www.natcapsolutions.org Barrett C. Brown, Co-Director, Integral Sustainability Center, organizational consultant, author, and specialist in leadership development for global environmental and social sustainability. www.integrallife.com Lester Brown, Founder, Earth Policy Institute, World Watch Institute, author of numerous books, including Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization. www.earth-policy.org Brian Castelli, Executive Vice President for Programs and Development, Alliance to Save Energy. www.ase.org Michael Cox, Chair, Executive Committee, California Student Sustainability Coalition. www.sustainabilitycoalition.org Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, Chair, Integral Theory Department, John F. Kennedy University; Executive Editor, Journal of Integral Theory and Practice; co-author, Integral Ecology. www.integralinstitute.org Morel Fourman, Founder, Gaiasoft; author Managing in the New Economy – Performance Management Habits; and The Book of Personal and Global Transformation. www.mindofmany.com Vasilis M. Fthenakis, Senior Scientist, Head, National Photovoltaic Environmental Research Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory; Director, Center for Life Cycle Analysis, Earth and Environmental Engineering Department, Columbia University www.bnl.gov Jim Garrison, President and Chairman of Wisdom University, a graduate academic institution that explores both ancient wisdom traditions and the wisdom culture shaping our future today. He is also founder and president of State of the World Forum, a San Francisco based non-profit institution with a global network of leaders dedicated to developing a more sustainable global civilization. Richard Hames, Distinguished University Professor, Founding Director, Asian Foresight Institute, Dhurakij Pundit University, Bangkok, Thailand www.richardhames.com Marilyn Hamilton, Founder, Integral City Meshworks Inc.; author, Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligence for the Human Hive. James Hansen, Director, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Adjunct Professor, Department of Earth and Earth Sciences Division, Columbia University. www.giss.nasa.gov Johannes Heimrath, Executive Director, Club of Budapest. www.johannesheimrath.de Jean Houston, mythologist, philosopher and researcher in human capacities, long regarded as one of the principal founders of the human potential movement; author of 19 published books, including The Possible Human, A Mythic Life: Learning to Live Our Greater Story, The Passion of Isis and Osiris, and Jump Time. www.jeanhouston.org Ross Jackson, Founder and Chairman, Gaia Trust, a Danish foundation which since 1987 has supported over 300 sustainability products in over 40 countries, especially in the ecovillage movement. He is also a major shareholder in the Urtekram International, the largest organic wholesaler in Scandinavia. Jurriaan Kamp, President, Editor-in-Chief, Ode Magazine www.odemagazine.com Chuck Kutscher, Principal Engineer/Group Manager, Thermal Systems Electricity, Resources, and Building Systems Integration, National Renewable Energy Laboratory www.nrel.gov Osprey Orielle Lake, Founder/artist of the International Cheemah and Mari Monument Projects, which are dedicated to environmental sustainability, cultural diversity and societal transformation. www.ospreyoriellelake.com Ervin Laszlo, President, The Club of Budapest; Founder and University Chancellor, The Institute at GlobalShift University. www.clubofbudapest.org Pierre-Yves Longaretti, Theoretical astrophysicist, Astrophysics Laboratory of Grenoble, France. http://www-laog.obs.ujf-grenoble.fr/~pyl/ Amory Lovins, Chairman and Chief Scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute; focuses on transforming the hydrocarbon, automobile, real estate, electricity, water, semiconductor, and several other sectors toward advanced resource productivity. He has authored or co-authored twenty-nine books and hundreds of papers, and consulted for scores of industries and governments worldwide. www.rmi.org Hunter Lovins, President and Founder, Natural Capitalism Solutions. She is currently a founding Professor of Business at Presidio School of Management, one of the first accredited programs offering an MBA in Sustainable Management. www.hunterlovins.com David Martin, Executive Chairman, M∙CAM, Fellow, Batten Institute, Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia. www.m-cam.com Peter Merry, Founding partner of Engage! InterAct; Chair of the Board of the Center for Human Emergence; author, Evolutionary Leadership. www.engage.nl Caroline Myss, Author of five New York Times bestselling books, including Sacred Contracts, The Interior Castle, The Anatomy of the Spirit; founder, Caroline Myss Education Institute. www.myss.com Karen O’Brien, Chair, Global Environmental Change and Human Security Project Professor, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo  http://www.iss.uio.no/instituttet/ansatte/karenob.xml Mary Otto-Chang, Consultant, UNICEF Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, Children and Climate Change; UN Secretariat for the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (2003-2007); UN Development Program, Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (2000-2003).  UNICEF and UNICEF in Latin America and the Caribbean Rajendra Pachauri, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate (2007); Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; Director, Tata Energy Research Institute; author of over twenty books and numerous articles on ecology, climate change and technology.  www.climatescience.gov Sandra Postel, Director, Global Water Policy Project and Center for the Environment at Mount Holyoke College.  www.globalwaterpolicy.org James Quilligan, Economic development policy advisor and writer for many international politicians and leaders, including Pierre Trudeau, François Mitterand, Jimmy Carter, Edward Heath, Julius Nyerere, Olof Palme, Willy Brandt, Tony Blair, and His Royal Highness Prince El Hassan bin Talal.  www.global-negotiations.org Sally Ranney, CEO, StillWater Preservation LLC. www.stillwaterpreservation.com Paul Ray, Sociologist; Director, Institute of the Emerging Wisdom Culture, Wisdom University; author, The Cultural Creatives.  www.wisdomuniversity.org Jerome Ringo, Chairman, Apollo Alliance; Associate Research Scholar “ Yale University; former Chairman, World Wildlife Fund.  www.jeromeringo.com Rustum Roy, Evan Pugh Professor of the Solid State Emeritus; Professor of Science Technology and Society Emeritus, Pennsylvania State University www.rustumroy.com Robb Smith, CEO, Integral Institute; Chairman, CEO and co-founder, Integral Life. www.integrallife.com Richard Tarnas, author of The Passion of the Western Mind and Cosmos and Psyche; Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies. www.cosmosandpsyche.com Marc Weiss, Founder and CEO of Global Urban Development. www.globalurban.org Herman Wijffels, Member, Office of the Executive Director, World Bank, representing Armenia, Bosnia and Herzengovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Georgia, Israel, Macedonia, Moldova, Netherlands, Romania and Ukraine; former Chairman of Rabobank; Chairman, Economic and Social Council of the Netherlands. www.clubofbudapest.org Ken Wilber, Author of 25 books translated into some 30 foreign languages, he is the most widely translated academic writer in the United States. Ken is the internationally acknowledged originator of Integral Theory and co-founder of Integral Life.  www.kenwilber.com Michael Zimmerman, Director, Center for Humanities and the Arts, and Professor of Philosophy, University of Colorado, Boulder; co-author, Integral Ecology.  www.colorado.edu Ken Zweibel, former Program Leader for the Thin Film Photovoltaic Partnership Program, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and is often credited with the success of thin film photovoltaics in the U.S. Zweibel also cofounded a thin film CdTe PV start-up, PrimeStar Solar and became the founding Director of the Institute for Analysis of Solar Energy at George Washington University. He has written two books on photovoltaics and co-authored a Scientific American article (January 2008) on solar energy as a solution to climate change. solar.gwu.edu

Rethinking Green: How Information Can Replace Energy (Stewart Brand)

NextNow Collab is a charter member of LongNow Foundation. The following event announcement seems particularly relevant to our community (and it’s right in our backyard this time, an asset whose value cannot be overstated).

The premise makes intuitive sense to me, since I hold information as energy in~formation.

Stewart Brand speaks at U.C. Berkeley
March 16th, 02009 by Danielle Engelman

Stewart Brand will be speaking about Rethinking Green: How Can Information Replace Energy and Finesse the Biosphere? on Monday March 16, 02009 from 7:30 pm to 9:00 pm.

This lecture is part of the Berkeley Center for New Media’s Art, Culture and Technology Colloquium.

This lecture is free, un-ticketed and seats are available on a first come first serve basis. Here is the location of the 250 seat Sibley Auditorium, Bechtel Engineering Center on the U.C. Berkeley campus.

U.S. Senate Committee on EPW Press Blog Post: NASA’s Theon on Global Warming

THIS is an important reason why I favor focusing attention on the concept of Ecological Footprint vs. man-made global warming.  So far I have seen no debate around the science showing that the developed world is using Earth’s resources faster than Earth is capable of regenerating them.  (See Global Footprint Network and numerous posts in this blog, including yesterday’s.)  Whether the causes of global warming are man-made or not, science shows that our carbon footprint represents half of our total ecological footprint, which is unsustainable.  From the Global Footprint Network website:

Global Footprint Network

Ecological + Carbon Footprints

“Global climate change is one of humanity’s greatest challenges and one of the most important indicators that we are in ecological overshoot. Since the carbon footprint is 50 percent of humanity’s overall Ecological Footprint, reducing our carbon footprint is essential to ending ecological overshoot.

Today the spotlight is on carbon, but climate change is happening as we approach other critical limits in fisheries, forests, cropland, and water. Unless we focus on ending overshoot as a whole-systems problem, some of our solutions to global warming could cause large, unintended impacts. In the rush toward biofuels, for example, we are in many cases shifting pressure to cropland and forestland.”

Consider supporting the Global Footprint Network and share this information to circumvent the debate on global warming. Urgent attention to our ecological footprint and to rallying for creative innovations towards “One Planet Living” will allow us to avoid costly delay’s caused by protracted debates on global warming.

Below is an excerpt from the Senate Committee blog post; here’s the full text. Note that it’s on the Minority Page.

Washington DC: NASA warming scientist James Hansen, one of former Vice President Al Gore’s closest allies in the promotion of man-made global warming fears, is being publicly rebuked by his former supervisor at NASA.

Retired senior NASA atmospheric scientist Dr. John S. Theon, the former supervisor of James Hansen, NASA’s vocal man-made global warming fears soothsayer, has now publicly declared himself a skeptic and declared that Hansen “embarrassed NASA” with his alarming climate claims and said Hansen was “was never muzzled.”  Theon joins the rapidly growing ranks of international scientists abandoning the promotion of anthropogenic global warming fears. [See: U.S. Senate Minority Report Update: More Than 650 International Scientists Dissent Over Man-Made Global Warming Claims & See Prominent Scientist Fired By Gore Says Warming Alarm ‘Mistaken’ & Gore laments global warming efforts: 'I've failed badly' - Washington Post – November 11, 2008 ]

“I appreciate the opportunity to add my name to those who disagree that global warming is man-made,” Theon wrote to the Minority Office at the Environment and Public Works Committee on January 15, 2009. “I was, in effect, Hansen’s supervisor because I had to justify his funding, allocate his resources, and evaluate his results. I did not have the authority to give him his annual performance evaluation,” Theon, the former Chief of the Climate Processes Research Program at NASA Headquarters and former Chief of the Atmospheric Dynamics & Radiation Branch explained. [Note: Here are the results a Google Scholar search on Theon. - Theon's complete written correspondence to EPW reprinted at the end of this report. ]

Citizen Action Items: change.org Top Ten and NEW change.gov Citizen Briefing Book

If you haven’t already checked it out, please consider going to change.org and voting on your favorite ideas for Change In America. (VOTING ENDS 5 PM ET JANUARY 15.)  It’s too late to submit your own ideas to change.org, but the Obama-Biden Transition team just announced a Citizen Briefing Book in the Open Government section on change.gov:  “an online forum where you can share your ideas, and rate or offer comments on the ideas of others.  The best-rated ones will rise to the top, and after the Inauguration, we’ll print them out and gather them into a binder like the ones the President receives every day from experts and advisors. If you participate, your idea could be included in the Citizen’s Briefing Book to be delivered to President Obama.”

Below are the top ranking ideas on change.org (showing current numbers of votes), but there are many others to choose from, in many categories, including Global Warming, Domestic and Global Poverty, Energy, Environmental Conservation, Economy, Healthcare, Social Entrepreneurship, Education, Technology Policy, and Civic Engagement:

• 14,416
• Legalize the Medicinal and Recreational Use of Marijuana

• Legalize the Medicinal and Recreational Use of Marijuana. “Marijuana has been proven to relieve the suffering of the chronically ill, as well as disabled patients undergoing chemotherapy, and other forms of medical treatments, yet using it for medical purposes conti…

  - posted by Jose Torres (Unemployed / Disabled / Activist / Supporter), Newark, NJ 1st Place   (3634 comments)

• 11,442
  Free Single Payer Health Care

  Health Care is a fundamental human right.  No one should have sell their house to pay for their mother’s cancer.  No one should have to choose between food and medicine. Free basic health care for all! Why? 1) Its the most efficient approach 2) It works.&…

  - posted by Jared S (activist), Los Angeles, CA 2nd Place   (779 comments)

• 10,823
  Appoint Secretary of Peace in Department of Peace and Non-Violence

  Our planet, our media, our social interactions, our homes all suffer from the epidemic of inter-personal violence and warfare that plagues America. With the establishment of a Department of Peace and Non-Violence, with a respected Secretary of Peace in the Presi…

  - posted by Stephen Zendt (I am a Senior Citizen, work in Financial Services), Walnut Creek, CA 3rd Place   (901 comments)

• 10,522
  Health Freedom IS Our First Freedom

  Health Freedom – Our First Freedom! More information: http://www.HealthFreedomUSA.org/index.php?p=1733 Health Freedom means the right to control what happens to your body, choosing your own health path, making our own health choices as you see fit. Please vote for…

  - posted by Bill Pleasants (Aspiring farmer, retired engineer) 4th Place   (612 comments)

• 10,516
  Save Small Business From the CPSIA

  A Proposal From the handmadetoyalliance.org: In 2007, large toy manufacturers who outsource their production to China and other developing countries violated the public’s trust. They were selling toys containing dangerously high lead content, unsafe small parts…

  - posted by Cecilia Leibovitz (Founder, CraftsburyKids.com) 5th Place   (896 comments)

• 10,450
  End the war on drugs

  We have the highest non-violent incarceration rate in the world. We need to free up our police, jails and courts to deal with people who actually pose a clear and present danger to life and liberty. Stop persecuting non-violent drug users. Prefer regulation to prohib…

  - posted by dan b (realist) 6th Place   (256 comments)

• 10,303
  Make the grid green in 10 years

  Al Gore has made it his mission to get the U.S. electrical grid off of carbon-based fuel (coal, oil, etc.) in the next ten years. Make this the centerpiece of a national energy plan.

  - posted by Liz Rose (1Sky Campaign), Washington, DC 7th Place   (97 comments)

• 9902
  Pass Marriage Equality Rights for LGBT Couples Nationwide

  All people should be allowed equal rights when it comes to civil marriage no matter the sexual orientation or gender identity of the spouses. This is the ultimate civil rights battle of our time. We need to make sure our friends, brothers, sisters, mothers and father…

  - posted by Jen N. (Editor, Women’s Rights Blog), Washington, DC 8th Place   (300 comments)

• 9877
  Get FISA Right, repeal the PATRIOT Act, and restore our civil liberties

  Update, January 12: please check out Steve Elliot’s Get FISA Right: Last Chance To Vote Against Domestic Spying and consider voting for it on digg FISA and the PATRIOT Act strike at the core of our Fourth and First Amendment Rights and institutionalize a surveillanc…

  - posted by Jon Pincus (strategist, activist, writer) 9th Place   (106 comments)

• 9557
  Pass the DREAM Act – Support Higher Education for All Students

  The problem: Many American students graduate from college and high school each year, and face a roadblock to their dreams: they can’t drive, can’t work legally, can’t further their education, and can’t pay taxes to contribute to the economy just because they were bro…

  - posted by Dream ACTivist (MA Graduate Immigrant LGBT Student), San Francisco, CA 10th Place   (1353 comments)

• 7758
  Develop & Implement a National Strategy for Sustainability

  The Obama Administration needs to lead our country in developing and implementing a National Strategy for Sustainability. With only 5% of the world’s population, the US consumes 1/4 of the natural resources. Meanwhile humanity uses 30% more of the earth’s bio-capac…

  - posted by Rob Wheeler (Organizer – Campaign for a Sustainable America), Scotland, PA 11th Place   (112 comments)

• 7034
  Forgive Student Loans: Stimulate the Middle and Lower Middle Class

  Forgive Student Loans!    ^ The American middle and lower classes are crippled under the weight of educational debt; in these unusual times, as we bail out lenders and executives, we encourage the Obama administration to forgive student loans, provid…

  - posted by Sarah Szalavitz (Entrepreneur), Beverly HIlls, CA 12th Place   (238 comments)

• 7001
  Bridging the Empathy Gap – Yes We Can!

  Obama says, “Empathy strikes me as the most important quality that we need in America and around the world.” Mutual understanding and awareness result in effective resolution of conflicts, bridging of ideological divides, and wise use of our resources. Practica…

  - posted by Jori Manske (Catherine Cadden, Inbal Kashtan, Kathleen Macferran, Miki Kashtan, Sylvia Haskvitz – NVC Trainers) 13th Place   (358 comments)

• 6731
  Vegan school lunch options

  Require USDA to facilitate healthful plant-based (vegan) school lunch options to promote public health, freedom from hunger, environmental quality, nonviolence, and kindness to animals. ———————— The Problem Under the mandate from the U.S. Depar…

  - posted by Alex Hershaft (Advocate for healthful nonviolent diets), Bethesda, MD 14th Place   (771 comments)

• 6701
  Appoint a Special Prosecutor for the Crimes of the Bush Administration

  President-elect Obama recently said, “if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the la…

  - posted by Bob Fertik (President of Democrats.com), New York, NY 15th Place   (665 comments)

• 6094
  ReBuild and RePower America with a Green Stimulus Package.

  The inevitable economic stimulus package proposed by the new administration should be used to start solving our economic and climate crises simultaneously – putting Americans back to work with Green Jobs that rebuild our nation’s infrastructure using clean technology…

  - posted by Jake Brewer (PowerShift09.org), Washington, DC 16th Place   (70 comments)

• 6060
  Fully Fund Medicaid Waivers for the Developmentally Disabled

  ***ALERT:  Make sure your VOTE counts.  Click on the number to the left with “Vote” under it – it will change to “Voted”.  Registering on this site and posting a comment is not a vote!*** National Priority for the Economic Stimulu…

  - posted by Renee Beauregard (Mom, advocate, small business owner), Aurora, CO 17th Place   (528 comments)

• 5820
  End the Genocide in Darfur

  President-Elect Obama must create a peace surge for Sudan, focused on ending the crisis in Darfur rather than managing it.  Supporting a U.N.-authorized peacekeeping force that actively protects civilians and holding the perpetrators of the genocide to account a…

  - posted by Jerry Fowler (President, Save Darfur Coalition) 18th Place   (220 comments)

• 5757
  END CORPORATE “PERSONHOOD”

  An 1886 Supreme Court clerk’s headnotes misreading (Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad) applied the 14th Amendment to corporations, extending to them all the rights, but none of the responsibilities, of human persons.  The result has been…

  - posted by ED CIACCIO (RETIRED TEACHER/CURRENT ACTIVIST) 19th Place   (152 comments)

• 5730
  Protect Our Food Supply – Stop NAIS!

  The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) poses the greatest threat to local and sustainable agriculture since the Nixon administration. NAIS was originally designed to give huge corporations help with export markets. It will not stop animal disease or impro…

  - posted by Pamela Matlack Klein (Writer/Farmer/Slow Food Eater), Appomattox, VA 20th Place   (518 comments)

HeartMath emWave Wins 2009 CES Show Award; Special Offer for NextNow

(The Institute of HeartMath is offering all NextNowNetwork and Collab members a 10% discount on emWaves.  A coupon code will be sent to members via email.)

The Institute of HeartMath (IHM)–the organization behind NNCollab’s collaboration project Global Coherence Initiative–just announced that the emWave Personal Stress Reliever WON the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show Last Gadget Standing People’s Choice Award, and came in second in the CES auditorium award.  From PRWeb:  Prior to the People’s Choice Competition, expert judges, including tech expert and Last Gadget Standing host Robin Raskin, and eight editors from NetShelter Technology Media network partner sites, such as Geek.com, Slashgear.com, MobileBurn.com, PhoneArena.com, FixYa.com, I4U.com, TechEBlog.com, and TGDaily.com, reviewed more than a hundred products. The experts narrowed the list to the top ten world-changing technologies of today that are sure to stand the test of time. Judges selected products most relevant to consumers’ lives, as well as those that fit the direction that the consumer electronics industry is headed. emWave PSR was selected by the judges as one of these top ten technologies and was then voted on by consumers.

The emWave will be a featured technology at the NextNowNetwork and Collab meeting in late February in Santa Cruz on Vizualizing EcoSentience (details TBA).

An earlier NNCollab post, Collective Heart Intelligence, introduced IHM’s De-Stress Kit as a resource for managing personal stress, a critical step in having access to our own highest intelligence.  Stress inhibits cortical activity.  When this happens, the higher capacities of the brain (i.e., creativity) are less available to us.  To be individually intelligent (and create opportunity to be collectively intelligent), we need access to the higher capacities of the brain.  The emWave is a bio-feedback technology that helps create this condition by focusing on heart rhythms, since the heart communicates with the brain.  In fact, both Rollin McCraty at IHM and Dean Radin, a colleague at the Institute of Noetic Sciences, have shared with me that the heart sends more information to the brain than it receives—and it’s the only organ where that’s true.  The emWave teaches us to bring ourselves into a coherent state where higher order functioning of the brain is possible.  From the IHM website:

Stress creates incoherence in our heart rhythms. However, when we are in a state of high heart rhythm coherence the nervous system, heart, hormonal and immune systems are working efficiently and we feel good emotionally. emWave Personal Stress Reliever helps you reduce your emotional stress by displaying your level of heart rhythm coherence in real time. But emWave does more than just display coherence levels. It guides you toward stress relief by training you to shift into a coherent, high performance state.”

View the CES Video:

Press Release can be seen on PRWeb or BusinessWire.  For another NNCollab post on IHM, see Why Wait for Earth Day?

Stanford Social Innovation Review

NNCollab met some of the people at the Stanford Social Innovation Review at last fall’s SoCap08 in San Francisco and Social Venture Network member gathering in La Jolla.  Here’s SSIR’s Top Five Articles of 2008 that posted today.  They include one called, “Rediscovering Social Innovation”–close to our hearts:

Highlights of 2008: Top Five Articles

In the spirit of awards season, SSIR brings you the best of 2008—starting with the top five most-read articles (as measured by hits on our Web site). We’ve listed them in order of popularity.

Achieving Breakthrough Performance
From the Girl Scouts, to Partners In Health, to the city of Providence, R.I., great organizations have one thing in common: great managers. These managers, in turn, share four simple management principles that they use to guide organizations from mere mediocrity to stand-out stardom.

The Greening of Wal-Mart
For much of its history, Wal-Mart’s corporate management team toiled inside its “Bentonville Bubble,” narrowly focused on operational efficiency, growth, and profits. But now the world’s largest retailer has widened its sights, building networks of employees, nonprofits, government agencies, and suppliers to “green” its supply chains. Here’s how and why the world’s largest retailer is using a network approach to decrease its environmental footprint—and to increase its profitability.

More Bang for the Buck
Scores of pundits have written books, research reports, and articles about how business leaders extracted greater productivity from their companies. Yet few have paid attention to this topic in the nonprofit sector. Recognizing that increasing productivity could be a powerful way for nonprofit organizations to multiply the impact of their work, the authors explore how three nonprofits succeeded in reducing costs without sacrificing the quality of their services.

Rediscovering Social Innovation
Social entrepreneurship and social enterprise have become popular rallying points for those trying to improve the world. These two notions are positive ones, but neither is adequate when it comes to understanding and creating social change in all of its manifestations. The authors make the case that social innovation is a better vehicle for doing this. They also explain why most of today’s innovative social solutions cut across the traditional boundaries separating nonprofits, government, and for-profit businesses.

Collective Heart Intelligence

At last month’s Program for the Future (the NextNow-born initiative focused on reinvigorating the development of tools and technologies to support collective intelligence), one of the most interesting movements I observed emerging out of those who chose to be there was toward creating a broader definition of “intelligence.”  My opinion, which seemed widely supported, is that real collective intelligence isn’t a product solely of human thinking–it actually requires that we tap in to ALL of the human intelligences, as well as the intelligence of Nature. It must include the intelligence of the heart.  If this were truly and sincerely accomplished, I believe collective intelligence would represent a Whole greater than the sum of the parts–something not at all guaranteed by a collective intelligence that is the product of thinking minds alone.

So to balance the good thinking we’re all doing, this post is the first in a series to shift focus away from thinking, and starts at a very essential level–using the intelligence of the heart to manage human stress.  After all, how “intelligent” are we capable of being when we’re under chronic or extreme stress, including at a collective level?

Several of the most active members of the NextNow community have experience with the Institute of HeartMath, the organization that NextNow Collaboratory is working with in support of the Global Coherence Initiative.  HeartMath is a non-profit stress research institute that has been provideing stress solutions to the military, government, hospitals, police, Fortune 500 companies, and school systems for over 17 years.  They received a $1 million US Dept of Education grant to develop programs to reduce test anxiety and improve emotional resilience and academic performance that achieved significant results within 3 months. Based on the effectiveness of HeartMath for resilience training, they recently were awarded a grant to train soldiers pre-deployment and in Iraq and are applying for other grants to help military families post-deployment. They also have support in Congress.

In Informal Learning (Pfeiffer, 2006) by NN’er Jay Cross, there is a paragraph about my early experience with HeartMath tools as a director of executive development at the Haas School, UC Berkeley:

In 1995, Claudia brought Heartmath into the executive program at UC Berkeley.  The participating CEO’s and business unit heads were expected to return to their organizations with hard solutions to complex global problems, not theories about “soft stuff” like the role of heart intelligence in decision-making.  When the topic was introduced there was a stunned silence and the usual signs of withdrawal—heads turning to look out windows, people suddenly realizing they needed to use the restroom.  But when the technique was offered and the biofeedback technology was hooked up to a few willing volunteers, seeing was believing. The implications of the internal coherence they observed were obvious, but what to do with this new awareness given the prevailing paradigm, was not.

HeartMath’s published research has identified a measurable psycho-physiological state called coherence that enables individuals to better manage their emotional energy, take the drama out of stressful situations and connect with a deeper awareness. As people learn simple practices to create this state of psycho-physiological equilibrium, which brings order to the heart rhythm pattern, they can quickly improve cognitive function, regain emotional balance and improve personal health and well-being.

To become collectively heart intelligent, we need to care for our own individual level of coherence.  To that end, Heartmath has written a De-Stress Kit for the Changing Times that provides a few simple coherence-building practices to help people intercept and manage stress during this period of challenge and uncertainty. It’s included under the “Resource” heading for review, where you’ll find a link to a free download from HeartMath.