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

Digital Earth and Re-Engineering for Green (Imaging Notes/Foresman)

We missed a few, but here’s the latest Imaging Notes commentary from NextNower and NextNow Collab/ISDE5 team lead Tim Foresman, courtesy of NextNower and Imaging Notes publisher Myrna Yoo of Blueline Publishing (thank you, Myrna!):

Infrastructure Stimulus: Green Economy and Green Jobs

A new era is upon us, with palpable tension for 2009.

Citizens in Washington and around the country appear to have focused, finally, on seriously working our way out of the mess we have gotten into. And what a mess it is. Al Gore’s message on global warming is now being accepted as reality by most citizens at a time of competing crises and economic implosions that simply boggle the mind. Our saving grace appears to be that intelligent leadership, under the Obama administration, is ready to take charge and tackle the litany of challenges and issues facing our nation and the world.

Spatial data and decision support systems will serve a crucial role in re-engineering a green and sustainable society.

Rome was not built in a day, but it was built by engineers. And we can expect to see a lot of green and sustainable engineering projects at state and local levels working to rebuild America while providing new impetus for the creation of green-collar jobs. Aligning and funding The Green Jobs Act (passed in 2007) with the Infrastructure Stimulus Package, and perhaps tying mortgage refinancing schemes with energy conservation retrofits, would help to educate, empower, and engage a whole generation of young citizens, leading them into productive green collar careers.

If you haven’t already, I suggest you read Van Jones’ book, The Green Collar Economy, along with a series of reports by the Center for American Progress (www.americanprogress.org), to delve more deeply into the economics involved in creating a blueprint for green-engineering our way out of city decay and social pathos. Positive thinking for the New Year: The good news is that the remote sensing and GIS communities recognize the credible and crucial roles they must play in this new era of green hope.

Green engineering encompasses a wide range of civil engineering and public works operations. Improved building codes for new construction seen in U.S. Green Building Council (www.usgbc.org) and LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards are often viewed as the poster children for green buildings. However, significant work is required immediately to retrofit existing homes and other buildings for energy conservation to save money and reduce energy loads from fossil-fuel-driven electric grids (Figures 1 and 2).

Figure 1 Satellite imagery-based spatial information system used for inventory and field survey assessments for Waynesburg, Pennsylvania (courtesy of JMT).

Over two decades, research and operational experience have proven that remote sensing with infrared scanners is a cost-effective approach to assessing thermal losses in residential and industrial facilities. Integrating thermal loss imagery with GIS parcel and district databases can be used to investigate energy audits and to assess options for engaging industry and homeowners with conservation and retrofitting campaigns. Retrofitting campaigns will require large labor pools of caulking and insulation workers, as well as people trained in solar panel installation.

Currently, energy audits are being conducted throughout the state of Maryland and the City of Baltimore using utility billing information combined with computational models and selected onsite instrumentation. Spatial data information systems and aerial measurements can provide a more meaningful and quantitative approach to energy audit initiatives.

Transportation is another green engineering domain that has a document history of applied remote sensing and GIS technology. The challenge is to accelerate the use of spatial data and information systems to help design and re-define environmentally sound and sustainable transportation systems. Bikeways and pedestrian pathways, given short shrift in the past, are increasingly being considered serious options for reducing CO2-polluting car miles and for promoting healthy and sustainable lifestyles in urban centers. The $4-dollar-a-gallon experiment in the summer of 2008 demonstrated a significant and continued increase in ridership on mass transit buses and trains.Increased application of aerial coverage and spatial analysis is required to work with the planners and communit-ies to find new alternatives for moving the masses. From impervious surface assessment to hydraulics to National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) reporting, transportation engineers and planners require more remote sensing and better integrated spatial database systems to do their jobs more effectively.

Figure 2 VAIO field data collection recorders for house-to-house survey and inventory (courtesy of JMT).

Tree planting, biological corridors, waste water and water systems, landscape architecture, airports and harbor construction, wetlands protection, and community planning are all components of the new green engineering enterprise philosophy that is required to design and construct a healthier and more sustainable world around us. Remote sensing and GIS are paramount for both creating and integrating the spatial information technology framework for engineers.

Importantly, these spatial technologies are critical for engaging decision-makers and other citizens in visualizing and comprehending the scope and magnitude of green engineering operations. Citizen support is mandatory to maintain comprehensive infrastructure re-building. Scientific visualization, using remote sensing and GIS, was credited by Maryland’s Governor Glendening for the historic passage of the Smart Growth legislation. We know it works. Now is the time for this community to unabashedly promote spatial technology for the new green engineering revolution. President Obama’s Infrastructure Stimulus package will require nothing less to succeed.

Increased application of aerial coverage and spatial analysis is required to work with the planners and communit-ies to find new alternatives for moving the masses. From impervious surface assessment to hydraulics to National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) reporting, transportation engineers and planners require more remote sensing and better integrated spatial database systems to do their jobs more effectively.

Tree planting, biological corridors, waste water and water systems, landscape architecture, airports and harbor construction, wetlands protection, and community planning are all components of the new green engineering enterprise philosophy that is required to design and construct a healthier and more sustainable world around us. Remote sensing and GIS are paramount for both creating and integrating the spatial information technology framework for engineers.

Importantly, these spatial technologies are critical for engaging decision-makers and other citizens in visualizing and comprehending the scope and magnitude of green engineering operations. Citizen support is mandatory to maintain comprehensive infrastructure re-building. Scientific visualization, using remote sensing and GIS, was credited by Maryland’s Governor Glendening for the historic passage of the Smart Growth legislation. We know it works. Now is the time for this community to unabashedly promote spatial technology for the new green engineering revolution. President Obama’s Infrastructure Stimulus package will require nothing less to succeed.

60 Earth Hour / Vote Earth March 28 8:30 p.m.

I’ll finally be adding posts in April, including on TEDxUSC (the first independently-organized TED conference in the world), on the new Clean Economy Network, and on our upcoming program in Santa Cruz on EcoSentience, which, not coincidentally, falls on March 28, the day you can “vote Earth,” the real subject of this post:

If you aren’t participating in Earth Hour / Vote Earth (Vote for the Earth–your switch is your vote in the world’s first “global election”), please watch the clips below and consider taking part.  It may not have an effect on global warming, but it can do amazing things for shifting awareness.

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.

NextNow Collab Helps Launch First Summit of Ecological Creditor Nations

Lynne Twist, Mathis Wackernagel, and Freddy Ehlers. Photo courtesy of Simone Bastianoni.

NextNow Collab helped launch the first Summit of Ecological Creditor Nations (to be held in 2010) by stepping up in October of last year as the Summit’s first financial contributor.  The Summit is a project of Global Footprint Network, Pachamama Alliance, and CAN (Community of Andean Nations).  The first formal gathering to benefit the Summit was earlier this month, hosted by Bill and Lynne Twist (Pachamama).

Ecological creditor nations are those with biocapacities greater than their ecological footprint.  In other words, the bioregion regenerates itself faster than it is consumed.  Only 20% of the world is in this category; the rest are ecological debtor countries, regions whose ecological footprint exceeds the regions capacity to regenerate itself.  Most of the developed world is in this category.  For example, according to Global Footprint Network 2005 research data, the United States has an ecological footprint of 2,810 million global hectares, and a biocapacity of only 1, 496 million global hectares.  China’s footprint is 2,787, with a biocapacity of 1,133.  Contrast this to Chile whose footprint (at 48.9) is still less than its biocapacity (67.4), or, dramatically, to Madagascar, with a footprint of 20.1, but a biocapacity more than three times greater, at 69.7.  (Someday, “Escape to Madagascar” may be a newspaper headline instead of a movie title.)  It’s disheartening to see the data, including for the Amazonian Rainforest country of Ecuador, which only a few years ago saw its biocapacity fall below its ecological footprint.

As developing nations pursue their development goals, a conversation of what constitutes real wealth is necessary to avoid the train wreck that is “ecological debt.”

The point is to create education, communication, and cooperation.  According to Mathias Wackernagel, executive director of Global Footprint Network, “By promoting negotiation between nations that have a surplus of ecological assets and those that do not, we can shift 21st century economic thinking from “developing versus developed countries” to ecological debtors and creditors.”  This is a necessary shift in awareness to create a necessary shift to One Planet Living.

For at least 20 years many of us in the sustainability movement have been working with corporations to help them embrace new definitions of wealth creation, ones in which the creation of real value–as reflected by how their activities advanced the health and well-being of communities they served–took its proper place.  (I still remember the first time I learned that new prisons and alarm systems increased our nation’s “wealth” as reflected by GDP.)  With the launch of the Summit of Ecological Creditor Nations, the whole world will have the opportunity to re-examine the concept of wealth, on the most critical scale, and not a moment too soon. If you’re a NextNow member and would like to offer resources, please contact me cwelss@nextnow.org.

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. ]

2008 Living Planet Report, New Water Footprint Index, and the Direct Link Between Financial and Ecological Crises

Late last year, NextNowCollab was part of a conversation marking the launch of the Living Planet Report 2008 at Global Business Network in San Francisco. Conversation starters included Mathis Wackernagel of Global Footprint Network, Greg Searle, Executive Director of Bioregional North America (who gave a great presentation on “One Planet Living“), and Dr. Jean Rogers of Arup.

The 2008 report was released by Global Footprint Network, World Wildlife Federation and Zoological Society of London and offers a look at “nature’s balance sheet,” with new figures on how humanity is using resources, how that compares among nations, and how ecological debt is mounting.

An important development in this year’s report is the adoption of a new index created (finally!) to measure human demand on water: the water footprint, developed by University of Twente, Netherlands Professor Arjen Hoekstra, who also founded the Water Footprint Network, aimed at promoting the transition toward sustainable, fair and efficient use of freshwater resources by advancing the science and application of the water footprint.  The “Water Footprint” measures human demand on fresh water and complements the Ecological Footprint’s measurement of human demand on (other) living resources to give a much fuller footprint.

“The water footprint enables us to more clearly understand the role that global trade plays in addressing local water scarcity. By tracking the flow of water and living resources in our globalized economy through the water footprint and the Ecological Footprint, we are able to advocate for the effective management of these resources.”  Global Footprint Network Manager of Research and Standards Shiva Niazi

The mounting ecological debt data is relevant not only to crises such as climate change and shrinking biodiversity, but also to the current economic crisis:

Protecting the True Fundamentals

A Sustainable Investment Firm’s Response to the Financial Crisis

Environmental concerns tend to take a back seat in tough economic times. But at least one asset management firm is taking exactly the opposite tack – stressing that now, more than ever, sound investing means adequately valuing the underlying natural assets upon which all our economic systems depend.

“So far, the economic crisis we are facing has been explained by financial leverage,” said Carsten Henningsen, co-founder of the global sustainability fund Portfolio 21. “However, there is a direct link between the financial crisis and the ecological crisis. To the extent that ecological limits place limits on the growth rates of earnings, stock prices will fall.”
———————

Now that the Footprint of the world economy exceeds what the planet can regenerate, Henningsen said, “Investors need to readjust their return expectations, because the earth does not have the ecological or financial capacity to sustain unlimited growth” if that growth is linked to increased resource consumption. “Growth of real wealth is restrained by scarcity of natural resources like oil as well as the capacity of the planet to absorb CO2.”

Companies that understand the ecological crisis and are implementing environmental strategies to gain a competitive advantage are those that will be best poised in the long term, Henningsen said

But the issue goes beyond that, according to Henningsen and Portfolio 21 co-founder Leslie Christian. Ultimately, they say, protecting one’s 401K means safeguarding the very viability of the U.S. and world economies. And that means investing in a way that shifts these economies as a whole in a more resource-efficient direction. For example, Portfolio 21 has created investment vehicles to help localize economies, investing in “businesses based on local manufacturing and distribution as a healthy alternative to energy-intensive multinationals shipping goods around the globe.”

What the Meltdown Can Teach Us About Resource Debt

In a recent letter to shareholders, Henningsen and Christian drew a parallel between the financial industry meltdown and the dangers of our rapidly compounding ecological debt.

In the U.S. in the past few years, instead of a sound economy based on products and commerce, they wrote, “We have a financial economy evolving into a casino-like scheme, with money being used to make more money that has little or no connection to underlying functional economic transactions. Without self-imposed limits, the financial system has expanded beyond its means, making it vulnerable to seemingly insignificant disruptions that serve to topple the entire structure like a game of Jenga.”

Just like the financial markets, the world economy has expanded well beyond what the ecological bottom line can support. “Considering the damage that has occurred within an arguably superfluous element of our economy, it is difficult to imagine the severity of the situation as it relates to an absolutely essential element of the economy – the ability of the earth to provide critical ecosystem services like clean air and water, as well as natural resources like timber, crop land and, of course, food.”

That is more reason than ever, Henningsen and Christian say, why smart investing means addressing our underlying resource challenges. Says Christian: “For the planet, there is no Federal Reserve Bank, no lender of last resort unless we can figure out a way to borrow from another planet. The real bottom line is the ecological bottom line that supports the foundation of life and our livelihoods.”  Global Footprint Network blog post

Celebrating Inauguration Day

A few of my grainy images from our great nation’s capital, on and around January 20, 2009, celebrating “Renewing America’s Promise.”

Tomorrow is Day One.  It’s going to take all of us.

Yes We Can!

"You'll Never Walk Alone" at the Lincoln Memorial--what a concert!

One of many Martin Luther King, Jr. Day events, this one with Ben Afleck

Downtown store window--"Presidential Cool"

Our Capitol; current estimates are approx. 2 million attended the inauguration

The First Couple at the Western States Inaugural Ball

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?