The Wealth of Community

Josh Mailman is a founder of the Social Venture Network, Business for Social Responsibility, Threshold Foundation, and a founding investor in Grameen Phone, Stoneyfield Farms, Seventh Generation, Utne Magazine, Stirling Energy Systems, Global Telesystems, Wayfinder Systems, A.B., Motivano, Econergy International plc., the Fund for Global Human Rights, the Sigrid Rausing Trust, U.K., the Joshua Mailman Foundation, and an advisor to the Pema Fund.

To say the least, he's been busy!

He's certainly one of the leaders of the movement and I found the following quote from him in Kenny Ausubel's book "Bioneers" :

"I'm much more sanguine about the impact that we've been able to have, but I don't want to discount the small acts. We have a need for small acts, and I consider the things I have done small acts, hopefully compassionate acts. To the extent that I've been able to make a contribution, it's been out of a desire to build community, realizing that I'm no more important - and I think in many ways less so - than some local activist. The real leaders are the people that are in there day after day, slugging it out, who have chosen something other than monetary gain, who are there because they are fed by the experience of community that they have."

A recently published book "The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom" speaks to this truth, in the context of the internet and our economy...

The book is available onine CLICK HERE.

Our community is our greatest wealth, I would add.

As I reflect on my life, I see that my life depends on a vast network of people 99% who I don't event know, literally. Just think of the number of people it took for you to have your daily cup of tea or coffee, or piece of toast, or oatmeal, or electricity... and that's just people. Add layers of animals, plants, earth, energy, air and water, and the community you live in expands exponentially!

The Wealth of Finding your purpose

Gratitude
Community
Service to others
Family
Meaning

Lynne Twist on Money:
"Q. In conclusion, what is the message about money you most want to convey?

LYNNE TWIST: When the use of money is consistent with our core values, it strengthens the quality of our commitment and our accountability for it. It has a powerful impact on our ethical and moral fiber. We can begin by turning our attention to making a conscious effort to use our money with life-affirming purpose, to nurture those people, organizations, projects and products that represent our most soulful interests. And we can stop the flow of money toward those that debilitate or demean life, or drag us down. We can be more financially generous with organizations and individuals doing good work that we want to support. Some of us may devote ourselves to public service or become advocates for socially responsible public spending on health, education, safety and government. The mindset of scarcity and the longing for “more” will begin to lose its grip when we begin to make different choices. We each have the power to arrange life to take a stand with our money and our life. Every moment of every day we can bring this consciousness to our choices about our money, our time and our talents to take a stand for what we believe in. We have the capacity for much greater lives than just “getting and “having.” I invite you to take a stand. I invite you to separate yourself from the prevailing winds of scarcity, greed and accumulation and use the opportunity that we each have to explore sufficiency and enough – - the true portal to prosperity . I invite you to deepen your values and to live in a new freedom and power in your relationship with money and life."

Price list for polluting - the economics of regulating Carbon Dioxide

A recent article in NY Times discusses issues around Climate Change and regulating carbon dioxide....

The article touches on a very important factor - we must quantify and measure the financial costs of polluting. Money is the driving archetypal language of our current industrial civilization, so when we talk about the perils of pollution as it relates to money, it gets people's attention.

The old adage "money talks" strangely applies in many contexts.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

"Price List for Polluting

'Setting a real price on carbon emissions is the single most important policy step to take,' said Robert N. Stavins, director of the environmental economics program at Harvard University. 'Pricing is the way you get both the short-term gains through efficiency and the longer-term gains from investments in research and switching to cleaner fuels.'

Some academics see an analogy between a global warming policy and the pursuit of national security in the cold war. In the late 1950s, American military spending reached as high as 10 percent of the gross domestic product and averaged about 4 percent, far higher than in any previous peacetime era. A Soviet nuclear attack was a danger but hardly a certainty, just as the predicted catastrophes from global warming are threats but not certainties.

'The issues are similar in that you pay now so things are less risky in the future — it’s an insurance policy,' said Richard Cooper, a Harvard economist. 'And in the cold war, we taxed ourselves fairly highly to mitigate that threat.' "

Read the whole article on NY TIMES here.

BALLE - Business Alliance for Local Living Economies

BALLE is a network of networks of locally owned businesses around the country inspired, in part, by the ideas of David Korten. http://www.davidkorten.org/

Their website is www.livingeconomies.org

"BALLE is a growing alliance of businesspeople around the US and Canada, who join local BALLE networks dedicated to building local living economies. BALLE comprises 37 such business networks with more than 11,000 business members overall. It is our mission to catalyze, strengthen, and connect these local business networks. "

New Book: The Great Turning from Empire to Earth Community

I had the pleasure of meeting David Korten at the SRI in the Rockies conference in Colorado. He spoke about his new book "The Great Turning" Here is a website organized by the community around the book. http://thegreatturning.net/

He spoke about the grand challenge the world faces right now - to continue to manage our affairs along the lines of "empire" through domination or through "earth community" partnership with eachother and other beings in nature.

The outcome of our choice will lead to either the "great unraveling" of our world based on the centuries of organizing our affairs "Empire" or the "great turning" a return to a more integrated and sustainable way of living on planet earth.
He writes:

"Empire organizes by domination at all levels, from relations among nations to relations among family members. Empire brings fortune to the few, condemns the majority to misery and servitude, suppresses the creative potential of all, and appropriates much of the wealth of human societies to maintain the institutions of domination."

"Earth Community, by contrast, organizes by partnership, unleashes the human potential for creative co-operation, and shares resources and surpluses for the good of all. Supporting evidence for the possibilities of Earth Community comes from the findings of quantum physics, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and religious mysticism. It was the human way before Empire; we must make a choice to re-learn how to live by its principles."

He elaborates in an article based on the book:
http://www.yesmagazine.com/article.asp?ID=1463

David points to the grand moment we are in, and the opportunity we all have to change the course of our time through telling new stories of ourselves, our world, our history and our relationships to eachother and other living beings on the Earth.

He emphasizes that this turning need happen in our politics, our culture and our economy:

"Cultural Turning
The Great Turning begins with a cultural and spiritual awakening—a turning in cultural values from money and material excess to life and spiritual fulfillment, from a belief in our limitations to a belief in our possibilities, and from fearing our differences to rejoicing in our diversity. It requires reframing the cultural stories by which we define our human nature, purpose, and possibilities.

---

Economic Turning
The values shift of the cultural turning leads us to redefine wealth—to measure it by the health of our families, communities, and natural environment. It leads us from policies that raise those at the top to policies that raise those at the bottom, from hoarding to sharing, from concentrated to distributed ownership, and from the rights of ownership to the responsibilities of stewardship.

---

Political Turning
The economic turning creates the necessary conditions for a turn from a one-dollar, one-vote democracy to a one-person, one-vote democracy, from passive to active citizenship, from competition for individual advantage to cooperation for mutual advantage, from retributive justice to restorative justice, and from social order by coercion to social order by mutual responsibility and accountability."

At the Socially Responsible Investment Conference he spoke to us in financial side of the equation about the importance of recognizing the problem of our economy dominated by the unhealthy model of centrally run publicly traded mega-corporations, which are disconnected from it's employees, environment and communities. ( he wrote about this at great length in his prior book "When Corporations Rule the World.")

He emphasized that we must not only reform, and eventually replace what he calls the "death economy" but also must focus on the creation of a "living economy" based on local and regional commercial relationships of businesses based locally and large corporations which are responsive to welfare of the environment, workers and the community.

Xigi.Net and Springfield Open Exchange a storm of ideas for a new economy and new capital

Three of my friends (and heroes) have created very cool things around new forms of capitalism

New ideas, networks and collaborative brainstorming are some of the most important tasks at hand to create the underpinnnings of the new economy.

I'll let them speak for themselves:

One is http://www.xigi.net/
"xigi is a new kind of research tool for the market that invests in good.

What's unique about xigi is that it interlinks a database of structured information about the organizations, players, and deals in this market with an unstructured conversation (a group blog) about them. It's now in Beta test phase."

and the other is Springfield
http://www.csrwire.com/springfield

The Springfield Open Exchange

The Springfield Open Exchange was inspired by a chemically contaminated, abandoned street in the city of Springfield, Massachusetts in the United States of America, where the need was felt to give value, to that which had been abandoned.

Further inspiration is the collaboration by millions of people to develop computer software for free use and distribution - the 'Open Source' software phenomena. The fundamentals of this collaboration will be used for The Springfield Open Exchange.

The Springfield Open Exchange will be a place to introduce, create, explore and collaborate on innovative and evolving financing mechanisms and economic models. The core of these mechanisms is the principles of triple bottom line returns and complete transparency throughout all business activities.

If we all agreed to give greater value to economic models that improved our lives - we could. Some of the models and experiments being contemplated include:

• Employee Stock Ownership
• Cooperatives
• Green Business Development
• Local Living Economies
• Bottom of the Pyramid Commerce
• Private Stock Exchange
• Mirco Loan Connection
• Alternative Currencies
• Patient Capital Connection
• Sovereign Nation Stock Exchange
• Traditional Financing Instruments
• General Agreements

In the event you are interested in any of these models or are interested in introducing another, please contact us. This part of the site is under development and will be ready soon.

call us at +1.802.251.0110

or by e-mail at help@csrwire.com"

Making conservation profitable... from less harm to restoration

To say that we need to reduce pollution, or slow the damage to the world's climate and ecosystems is akin to saying to a child abuser "you must beat your children less."

Simply put, less harm is not good enough. We have to restore ecosystems!

For our economic endeavors, the pioneering work is being done to actually figure out ways to make money while restoring and conserving ecosystems.

In order to do so, we have to define measures to actually show the economic benefits of natural systems and define ways to profit from their protection and restoration.

A group at the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford is developing the field of Conservation finance which integrates biology, business, economics, engineering, law, and a good dose of real world practicality into the design of conservation investments.

Gretchen Daily and other researchers at CCB are creating a framework for conservation finance, in order to how to accomplish two primary outcomes:

• increasing the flow of resources into conservation
  
• allocating that flow most efficiently.
  

She wrote a book in 2002 which outlines some of the issues:
Here's excerpts from a review on her sight:

"Through engaging stories from around the world, the authors introduce readers to a diverse group of people who are pioneering new approaches to conservation. Daily and Ellison describe the dynamic interplay of science, economics, business, and politics that is involved in establishing these new approaches and examine what will be needed to create successful models and lasting institutions for conservation.

Dan Janzen, a biologist working in Costa Rica who devised a controversial plan to sell a conservation area's natural waste-disposal services to a local orange juice producer.

We meet Adam Davis, an American business executive who dreams of establishing a market for buying and selling shares in environmental services such as water purification by forests and flood protection by wetlands.

There's also John Wamsley, a former math professor in Australia who has found a way to play the stock market and protect native species at the same time."

Here's an article I found on and the company he formed. Althought it is no longer in business, the sites he was operating are now healthy wildlife sanctuaries - thus he accomplished a degree of restoration.

http://www.cis.org.au/Policy/summer03-04/polsumm0304-3.htm

"Private efforts to conserve native species, on the other hand, have proven highly successful. One sterling example is Earth Sanctuaries, Ltd. (ESL), a company which has had some dazzling successes bringing back species from the brink of extinction and changing the way that both conservationists and governments think about endangered species protection in Australia.

Earth Sanctuaries, Ltd. (ESL) was incorporated in January 1988. Revenues would be generated by attracting visitors and through consulting work. The goal of the company would be 'to ensure the survival of remaining Australian native flora and fauna within a commercial environment, [and] to maximize the returns to shareholders.'
As of 2002, ESL had successfully reintroduced 25 mammal species to their former range and eradicated feral cats, foxes, rabbits, and goats from more than 10,000 hectares.At its peak of land ownership in 2001, ESL owned 10 sanctuaries covering more than 90,000 hectares Since restructuring in 2002, ESL has sold most of these properties, but they remain wildlife sanctuaries of note.

Warrawong remained ESL's most popular and lucrative site, featuring tent-style accommodations (local planners would not permit permanent lodgings), a restaurant, gift shop, native plant nursery, and dawn and dusk nature walks. It has won numerous tourism awards, including runner up in the Conde Nast Travelers Choice Awards in 1997. In 2001, about 50,000 people visited Warrawong."

Robert Kennedy Sr. on the limitations of our way of measuring national well being: GNP

Consider this beautiful message from the late Robert Kennedy (father of leading activist Robert Kennedy, Jr.) :

"The Gross National Product includes air pollution and advertising for cigarettes, and ambulances to clear out highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors, and jails for people who break them. GNP includes the destruction of the redwoods and the death of Lake Superior. It grows with the production of napalm and nuclear warheads... and if GNP includes all this, there is much that it does not comprehend.

"It does not allow for the health of our families, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. it is indifferent to the decency of our factories and the safety of our streets alike. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, or the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials... GNP measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."

Have you actually read, or even heard of, the UN Millenium Development Goals?

Many of us are attuned to the idea of "you have to have specific goals to achieve what you want" or new movies like "The Secret"( http://thesecret.tv/home.html )to help align us with the alchemy of manifestation...

Well, as a community of human beings all around the world, we are to gain by having specific goals to increase well being of our human family. And by putting our mind to these goals as a human family, they can be achieved!

Along those lines, global leaders gathered at the UN in September 2000 to set goals for a better life for our brothers and sisters around the world.

The Millenium Development Goals are a set of goals made for a just and sustainable civilization on this planet.

They stated it is our "collective responsibility to uphold the principles of human
dignity, equality and equity at the global level."

I would agree. Who wouldn't? Many don't.

Let's hold this vision for a better world by envisioning and learning more about how we can support the attainment of these goals:

1- Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.
2 - Achieve universal primary education.
3 - Promote gender equality and empower women.
4 - Reduce child mortality.
5 - Improve Maternal health.
6 - Combat HIV/AIDS, Malaria, and other diseases.
7 - Ensure Environmental Sustainability.
8 - Develop a global partnership for development.

The goals target dates are 2015

Learn more:

Detailed Progress report 2006 : http://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Resources/Static/Products/Progress2006/MDGReport2006.pdf

http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/

Evolve? Or learn to Be Evolution?

YOU are the edge of evolution.

What does evolution have to do with Wealth? Sustainability? Happiness? Quality of Life?

A close friend of mine just sent me some clues in an article by great thinker Tom Atlee who is founder of The Co-Intelligence Institute.

I'll give you a hint of my thinking from Tom's article below "flourishing." Now think about it, isn't the aim to flourish is at the heart of much of our striving?

Hmmm.... read below, and the article in the following link, and I'll let you decide for yourself....

Tom's article is titled "Learning to Be Evolution" enjoy!

"Learning from evolution how to be evolution

Lessons from our long evolutionary journey offer rich sources of guidance about how to consciously participate in the evolutionary process. Taking this guidance seriously can help us transform ourselves, our consciousness, our social systems and cultures, and our technologies in ways that serve our long-term collective flourishing as part of a flourishing Earth.

Here are just a few of the evolutionary dynamics and opportunities we can explore and use, which are described further at the end of this article. A major project of the Co-Intelligence Institute now is researching more of them, and how to best apply them all, and spreading that new old knowledge.

1. LOVE AT THE CORE. Our common past makes us kin, and deep inside we know it. We are wholeness enroute to new wholeness. This deep truth can be called forth to help us resonate with each other. Much of what we need to do next taps into this powerful fact of life.

2. A NEW DANCE OF COOPERATION AND COMPETITION. Evolution has evolved with cooperation enhancing competitiveness. As we become a global society, competition will necessarily evolve to support cooperation.

3. SYNERGY BETWEEN SELF AND WHOLE. Life on earth finds novel ways for self-interest and the whole to serve each other. We are called to create new ways to design this dynamic into complex 21st century societies.

4. HIGHER LEARNING. Evolution is, itself, a vast learning enterprise -- and emergence is its learning edge. That edge involves new forms of ongoing collective intelligence and wisdom, and reframing education to meet the challenges of conscious collective evolution. By its nature, learning on the edge requires a growing capacity to embrace the unknown.

5. SELF-ORGANIZATION AND EMERGENCE. Evolution starts simple and brings forth increasing complexity. At the same time, it creates remarkable ways for life to self-organize without top-down direction. Our social and technological complexity is now calling forth new forms of creative, conscious human self-organization.

6. EVOLVING CONSCIOUSNESS. Consciousness shapes social systems and culture -- and social systems and culture shape consciousness. This insight, combined with new and ancient methods of expanding consciousness, offer tremendous leverage for humanity's conscious evolution.

7. THE JUICE OF OUR DIFFERENCES. A major driver of evolution is the creative use of diversity, conflict, crisis and dissonance. And our uniqueness -- our individual specialness -- is a vast nascent resource for the world. These insights challenge us, in times of collective trauma, to move beyond peacemaking and crisis management to catalyzing inclusive evolutionary breakthroughs.

8. IT'S ABOUT PROCESS. The essence of evolution is the emergence of outcomes from powerful interactive processes. But it isn't about being attached to particular outcomes, since they, too, will change and evolve. If we want to become evolution, we would be wise to learn how to let go and focus on manifesting powerfully interactive, life-serving processes."

I strongly encourage you to read the entire article and more here at Tom's website:

http://www.co-intelligence.org/Evolution-Learning2BEvol.html

A for-profit non profit? Google.org blurs the lines...

Google's choice to make it's foundation www.google.org a for-profit entity is the latest example of a new trend: mission driven business.

I'll let you read all about it by simply "googling" news on "google.org" and also go to www.google.org

While the idea that making money while doing good is not novel, the idea of creating a charity designed to engage in business ventures to achieve a non-monetary end is novel.

This is not in conflict with the model of business, but it is a very new approach toward actually engaging in game where everyone else is playing to MAKE MONEY, and google.org is playing to DO GOOD.

This points toward the underlying issue, yet again, their message appears to be "IT'S NOT ABOUT THE MONEY PEOPLE!"

I would tend to agree, more money or profits doesn't necessarily end up with more wealth (true wealth) and quality of life for the participants in the business game.

Kudos to Google for breaking new ground.

Mr Formenski has some interesting points in discussing the google model as a "not for loss" moniker model as opposed to "for profit" vs "non-profit" (he also discusses one of my favorite business models in mentioning Grameen bank)

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Foremski/?p=120


For more on Mission Driven Business:

I recommend Mal Warwick's and Ben Cohen's book "Values Driven Business"
http://www.amazon.com/Values-Driven-Business-Social-Venture-Network/dp/1576753581


and Jeff Hollander's "What Matter's Most"
http://www.seventhgeneration.com/about_us/company/what_matters_most.html

Life, Liberty and the pursuit of (Gross National) Happiness

The Buddhist government of Bhutan has been set on pursuing the goal of "gross national happiness" instead of pure GNP (gross national product). This goal was announced by the king of Bhutan when he took the throne in 1972, and in the last 20 years the government has been incorporating the philosophy in development and economic policy.

Naturally, I think they are right on track and completely in line with the Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators which I wrote about in an earlier post

http://sustainablewealth.blogspot.com/2006/08/what-is-quality-of-life.html

http://www.calvert-henderson.com/

"The Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators are a contribution to the worldwide effort to develop comprehensive statistics of national well-being that go beyond traditional macroeconomic indicators. A systems approach is used to illustrate the dynamic state of our social, economic and environmental quality of life. The dimensions of life examined include: education, employment, energy, environment, health, human rights, income, infrastructure, national security, public safety, re-creation and shelter."

The term Gross National Happiness was first expressed by the King of Bhutan His Majesty Jigme Singye Wangchuck.

Bhutan’s minister Dasho Meghraj Gurung put the Bhutanese philosophy succinctly: “The ideology of GNH connects Bhutan’s development goals with the pursuit of happiness. This means that the ideology reflects Bhutan’s vision on the purpose of human life, a vision that puts the individual’s self-cultivation at the center of the nation’s developmental goals, a primary priority for Bhutanese society as a whole as well as for the individual concerned”.

Now, one can argue this is not a case of separation of "church and state" since Bhutan is a Buddhist monarch- but if you think about the Founding Father's vision of "pursuit of happiness" as a cornerstone of our society, the Bhutanese view is not far off, and we can gain from it.

This all underscores how much our modern economic system of measures and definition of "progress" has taken a big detour from the basic well being of individual citizens in our country.

Since we base the measure of quality of life based on what material goods we produce and consume, the oversights and ills of this country are a natural result, you get what you focus on...

I suggest further reading on any of these sites:
http://www.globalideasbank.org/site/bank/idea.php?ideaId=3257

Gross International Happiness - a website of an organization wanting to take this philosophy global: http://www.grossinternationalhappiness.org/gnh.html

http://travelbhutan.tripod.com/druk.html

Rescuing A Planet Under Stress... rethinking and retooling our commerce

Lester Strong of the World Resources institute wrote an article in The Futurist magazine at the beginning of July with a clear statement of the severe challenges our overconsumptive industrial society faces at this time.

I want to focus on the upshot of what he's writing - that we have a grand opportunity to re-orient our economic and capital thinking to create new businesses, new industries by first recognizing the problems that we face. Once we embrace the reality of the current situtation, despair or denial are not necessary, but inspired engagement in new ways of operating our businesses and our lives.

He writes:

"The key to building a global economy that can sustain economic progress is the creation of an honest market, one that tells the ecological truth. The market is an incredible institution, allocating resources with an efficiency that no central planning body can match. It easily balances supply and demand, and it sets prices that readily reflect both scarcity and abundance."

"Accounting systems that do not tell the truth can be costly. Faulty corporate accounting systems that leave costs off the books have driven some of the world’s largest corporations into bankruptcy. Unfortunately, our faulty global economic accounting system has potentially far more serious consequences. Our modern economic prosperity is achieved in part by running up ecological deficits, costs that do not show up on the books but that someone will eventually pay."

"Once we calculate the indirect costs of a product or service, we can incorporate them into market prices in the form of a tax, offsetting them with income tax reductions. If we can get the market to tell the truth, then we can avoid being blindsided by faulty accounting systems that lead to bankruptcy."

"As Øystein Dahle, former vice president of Exxon for Norway and the North Sea, has pointed out,
'Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth.' "

"We are entering a new world. Of that there can be little doubt. What we do not know is whether it will be a world of decline and collapse or a world of environmental restoration and economic progress. Can the world mobilize quickly enough? Where will the wake-up calls come from? What form will they take? Will we hear them?"

"Participating in the construction of this enduring new economy is exhilarating. So is the quality of life it promises. We will be able to breathe clean air. Our cities will be less congested, less noisy, and less polluted. The prospect of living in a world where population has stabilized, forests are expanding, and carbon emissions are falling is an exciting one. It should inspire us to make the difficult but necessary decisions ahead."

Dive in and read the entire article here: http://www.energybulletin.net/17779.html

The Rainforest and your well being...

Over the holiday weekend, I participated in a symposium entitled"Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream" hosted by Lynne Twist who wrote the book Soul of Money.
( http://www.soulofmoney.org/ BTW - I recommend this book all the time to friends and clients - I'll revisit other material in this book in future comments.)

The workshop is an outgrowth of the work that of a group that Lynne created called The Pachamama Alliance. The Pachamama Alliance has a twofold mission :

"To preserve the tropical rainforests by empowering the indigenous people who are its natural custodians.

To contribute to the creation of a new global vision of equity and sustainability for all."

The experience of the day was transforming for many of the participants and I recommend it VERY HIGHLY to anyone reading this column. You can learn more at http://www.pachamama.org/atd/


The workshop is based on many generations of indigenous wisdom, born out of deep relationship with the earth. The material in the workshop is a clarion-call from the ancestral wisdom to our modern civilization to restore our balance with the planet we live on.

What does the workshop and the rainforest have to do with sustainable wealth?

I found a part of the answer when I "randomly" cracked open Lynne's book today, seeking the answer

Here's what I found - it speaks for itself!

Chapter 4 "Sufficiency"

She writes - "When you let go of trying to get more of what you don't really need, it frees up oceans of energy to make a difference with what you have. When you make a difference with what you have, it expands."

In the chapter Lynne speaks of her encounter with the Achuar people in the Ecuadorian rainforest in the early nineties. She refers to them as "naturally prosperous" since they hadn't "won some economic game to be prosperous"

She continues by saying

"With no money, no accumulation of goods, and none of the conveniences of our Western lifestyle, still there was no suggestion of scarcity; no lack and no fear that there wouldn't be enough of what they needed. There was no chase for more, no resignation or belief that they were living lives of less-than."

"They lived (and still do) in the experience and expression of enough, or what I call sufficiency. Instead of seeking more, they treasure and steward thoughtfully what is already there."

"for the Achuar, wealth means being present to the fullness and richness of the moment and sharing that with one another."

Naturally, we don't have to live in a rainforest to experience the same state of being.

These ideas point me to an innate fullness of being that is right here and always available to us.

They are a reminder that we don't need to live in the rainforest in order to return to the natural state of abundance-consciousness which we can share with eachother so fully.

Obviously, we can embrace the state of sufficiency and express throughout our relationships no matter where we live - to me this is true wealth and the hallmark of well being.

Ecological Economics and Creole Cooking...

I came across a wonderful group called "Earth Economics" today that is doing amazing work in a number of areas relating to the areas of understanding ecosystems and how the proper interaction with them can create long term economic benefit and/or avoid serious economic loss.

Since it was just a year ago this week that we saw the destruction of New Orleans, I thought I'd report on the topic of how the application of ecological economics could have benefited the home of Dixieland Jazz and Creole Cooking. (incidentally, New Orleans is the birthplace of my paternal Grandparents - my Grandpa was born in the French Quarter in the famous building with rod iron balconies...)

Case in point is the management (or lack thereof) of the vast watershed and wetland system in the Mississippi delta. Had it been managed better, the enormous costs of building levees, etc. would have been reduced and also the damage to the city could have been reduced dramatically. This is real money we're talking about (of course if FEMA would actually spend it, but that is another matter!)

Here's what they Earth Economics wrote on their website about the matter and the work that they are doing in New Orleans:

"In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, it is clear that flooding, storm damage and loss of life in Mississippi and Louisiana could have been less severe. Decades of damage to wetlands in the region had damaged the natural storm buffering capacity of barrier islands and local ecosystems.

Earth Economics is working with a team of scientists from Louisiana and around the nation to research Hurricane Katrina using tools from ecological economics.

• New Orleans and the Gulf Coast will be more vulnerable to hurricanes with warmer Gulf of Mexico waters, sea level rise and subsidence. This threatens the ecosystems, communities, economy and lives of people in coastal Louisiana.
  
  
• If the fresh water and sediment of the Mississippi River were diverted back into the wetlands they would clearly expand and provide storm buffering.
  
  
• Earth Economics is examining the dollar value of storm protection, carbon sequestration and other ecosystem services provided by the wetlands of the Mississippi Delta.
  
  
• Protection and restoration of wetlands with smaller levees is more economically efficient in providing hurricane protection than levee construction alone."

Read more on their website http://www.eartheconomics.org/projects/HurricaneKatrina/index.html

In the New Orleans theme, I'll also report on the work that they are doing to analyze and maintain what will hopefully become one of the first fully sustainable shrimp fisheries.

Shrimp harvesting is considered to be more environmentally detrimental....and important part of creole... keeping with the theme:

Here's what they're doing in the area of shrimp

"Our current efforts focus on the spot prawn fishery. Shrimp, harvested in the wild or produced via aquaculture, are one of the most unsustainable seafoods, involving vast amounts of bycatch, habitat destruction, mangrove deforestation, and dislocation of coastal communities.

Earth Economics has brought together a coalition of spot prawn fishers, NGOs, and government agencies from California to Alaska in creating and implementing a strategy for sustainable spot prawn production. This coalition aims to certify the spot prawn as the first sustainably-harvested shrimp fishery in the world."

Earth Economics is doing other work in the areas of forestry, toxics, reforming finance and trade, and education of business, government and policymakers.

Their website also has a great list of "key concepts" which are very much worth a read, if you're interested.

See below:

http://www.eartheconomics.org/ecolecon/ee_centralconcepts.html

From time to time, I'll elaborate on some of these ideas.

California grows economy, but not per capita energy use!

Just saw this statistic on my friend, Gil Friend's blog:

"California's environmental leadership is critically important, both because of its size (as 5th or 7th or 10th largest "country" in the world) and because of its repeated demonstration that environmental and economic performance can go hand in hand. Another case in point: per capita energy use has stayed level in California over the past 30 years -- of major economic growth -- while doubling in the US as a whole."

http://radio.weblogs.com/0109157/

It's another example refuting the myth that what is good for the environment is bad for economy.

More on this later.

Is More GDP sustainable?

Fundamentally growing GDP, by the way we measure it, is not sustainable.

If we're consuming too much and the only measure of growth is how much more we consumed this year vs last, then GDP is not a good measure of how we are managing the earth's resources.

Hazel Henderson spoke on the matter far better than I can:

"HAZEL HENDERSON: The GDP became our official report card back in World War II. We used it to measure war production. It still tracks our output of goods and services in money terms.

But that calculation ignores about half of all goods and services in this country that are unpaid or don't generate instant income. That includes everything from owner-built housing, to volunteering, child-rearing, care of the sick and elderly. Without these services, our output would collapse.

The GDP values all paid goods and services. But the value of our human capital, infrastructure like roads and schools, and our environmental resources like land and water, are valued at zero. GDP adds instead of subtracting costs and paid services like cleaning up pollution and other collateral damage from production.

GDP only counts increases in production and average incomes, obscuring how many people became poorer and how many grew richer.

GDP could include broader measures of quality of life. Why not take into account statistics on education, health, public safety, our energy grid, water supplies and the environment? These indicators complete the picture of national trends, real wealth and progress.

All such investments in our infrastructure should be booked on GDP accounts as investments. Instead, they're all "expensed" in one year like money down a rat hole.

Relying on GDP to steer our country is like flying a Boeing 777 with nothing on the cockpit dashboard but an oil pressure gauge, no fuel gauge or altimeter. Crazy.

It's time to broaden GDP so we can steer national policies toward less wasteful, more sustainable resource use, and invest more wisely in our people and our future."

Measuring how much is too much.

Redefining Progress www.redifiningprogress.org is doing some groundbreaking work in this area to measure the impact of our industrial civilization on the planet's carrying capacity. Basically they say that it takes the earth to one year and three months to restore what our global human civilization is using in one year.

Here's an excerpt from their "Sustainable Economics" program. http://www.redefiningprogress.org/newprograms/sustEcon/index.shtml

"The myth that environmental protection must come at the expense of economic growth is dead. Short-sided policies and approaches to producing the energy and other products we need can and do have harmful impacts on society and the environment. Pollution, traffic congestion, and health risks are examples of such impacts which often disproportionately effect communities of color and people living in poverty. RP’s Sustainable Economics Program works to develop and promote creative, market-based policies that protect the environment, grow the economy, and promote social equity."

They offer an ecological footprint analysis on this web page:

http://www.redefiningprogress.org/newprojects/ecolFoot/concepts/sustainability.html

For example here is the analysis for MY ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT:

Category Acres
Food 3.7
Mobility 2.7
Shelter 7.7
Goods/Services 7.2

Total Footprint 21 Acres

	IN COMPARISON, THE AVERAGE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT IN YOUR COUNTRY IS 24 ACRES PER PERSON. WORLDWIDE, THERE EXIST 4.5 BIOLOGICALLY PRODUCTIVE ACRES PER PERSON.
	IF EVERYONE LIVED LIKE YOU, WE WOULD NEED 4.8 PLANETS.

Interpretation of Darwin Seeds the "problem" of today's economics

If we look at the problem of our modern system of economic assumptions, you will recognize a structural and systemic set of policies, ideas and mathematical models which create separation.

The most obvious example is the concept that pollution, ill health of workers and ecosystem damage are considered "externalities" and never recorded on the balance sheet or income statement of any corporation or GDP calculation.

From "The Darwin Project"

"The shift from the emphasis for the first half to the full Darwinian theory and story — and your understanding and involvement — can not only help move us toward the better future. In the long run, it may help save ours and all other species.
What primarily drives human evolution, Darwin wrote in page after page of the long ignored writings that complete his theory, are “the moral qualities.” These, he said, are “advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, by our reasoning powers, by instruction, by religion, etc., than through natural selection.”


Hazel Henderson - an economist leading the discussion in many ways of new forms of thinking writes on the topic:

She writes:

"Reappraisals of the work of Charles Darwin together with new evidence from historians, archeologists and anthropologist now clearly point to the evolution of human emotional capacity for bonding, cooperation and altruism.

"Political economy studies, as they were originally termed, rose to academic prominence after the publishing in 1776 of Adam Smith’s great work “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”. Invoking the scientific knowledge of the day, Smith related his famous theory of 

“an invisible hand” that guided the self-interested decisions of business men (sic) to serve the public good and economic growth. Smith drew parallels ascribing this pattern of human behavior to Sir Isaac Newton’s great discovery of the physical laws of motion.

"These principles of Newtonian physics can still be used to guide space craft to land on distant celestial bodies – most recently, Titan, one of Saturn’s moons.

"Economists of the early industrial revolution based their theories not only on Adam Smith’s work, but also on Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man and The Origin of Species (www.thedarwinproject.com). They seized on Darwin’s research on the survival of the fittest and the role of competition among species as additional foundations for their classical economics of “laissez faire” – the idea that human societies could advance wealth and progress by simply allowing the invisible hand of the market to work its magic. In class-ridden Victorian Britain, this led economists and upper-class elites to espouse theories known as “social Darwinism:” the belief that inequities in the distribution of land, wealth and income would nevertheless produce economic growth to trickle down to benefit the less fortunate.

"Charles Darwin saw the human capacity for bonding, cooperation and altruism as an essential factor in our successful evolution.

"So as we have evolved into our complex societies, organizations and technologies of today – we need to re-examine our belief systems and the extent to which they still may be trapped in earlier primitive stages of our development. Why for example do we underestimate our genius for bonding, cooperation and altruism – seemingly stuck in our earlier fears and games of competition and territoriality? Why do we over-reward such behavior and still assume in our economic textbooks and business schools that maximizing one’s individual self-interest in competition with all others is behavior fundamental to human nature?"

Well put, Hazel!

Sustainable Wealth Creation

Wealth creation? Sustainable?

Some of our most pressing needs in society: clean air, healthy food, educated children, informed adults, living vibrant ecosystems.

Wealth Creation for so much of our modern history has been at the expense of the aforementioned basic necessities of life.

So, what can be done to create money which will produce "clean air", "healthy food", "vibrant ecosystems" etc? Well, until relatively recently in our history, these things were not scarce commodities... now they are becoming so.

In the "Natural Capitalism" - Hawken and Lovins point out that nature provides essential "services" to us which are the backbone of our economy. i.e. forests - clean air and water, provide habitat for insects that pollinate our crops, and spawning grounds for our wild fish stocks, oceans - food, carbon sink, etc. the list goes on.

Since we are now at the point where we can no longer simply take for granted that these services are available, there indeed are 'wealth creation' opportunities for entrepreneurs involved with restoring nature's ability to provide these "services."

Challenge, of course, is how are such entrepreneurs going to generate money - as who will actually pay for the restoration of a forest, or cleaning of a river, etc.

Well, therein lies the problem, no?

The challenge is our economic assumptions. These "services" provided by nature have always been assumed to be free and always available. And problems like pollution, ecosystem damage, unhealthy workers, etc. have always been considered "externalities" in the corporate equation.

What are some examples of innovation in the marketplace?

Carbon credit exchanges to create money by limiting pollution incentivizing

- reforestation - improve breeding and cultivation of wild tree species customers: logging and forest management companies
- pollinator insect breeding. beekeepers, and others customers: organic farms
- biodiversity - heirloom seed companies
- ocean health -

Money and Happiness

There's an excellent article on Money and Happiness from "More than Money" Magazine


Here are some juicy excerpts:

MTM: You’ve worked with a lot of people to help them become happier. Some
of them have a lot of money. So tell us, does money make people happy?

BAKER: I know a lot of people who, from the outside, look in and say, “Boy,
it would be great to have lots of money.” Barbara Walters once interviewed entertainment mogul David Geffen. She said, “O.K., David, now that you’re a billionaire, are you happy?” He shot back without hesitation: “Barbara, anybody who
believes money makes you happy doesn’t have money.”

It’s a brilliant insight, because money doesn’t make you happy.


ON HAPPINESS:

"MTM: What is happiness and how do you find it?

BAKER: Happiness is a side effect of living life in a certain way. It’s not a
mood—moods are biochemically regulated—and it’s not even an emotion, because emotions seem to be somewhat event-dependent. What I’m talking about is a way of living a meaningful, purpose-focused, fulfilling life. When we wrote our book, What
Happy People Know, Cameron Stauth and I studied the literature on happiness
and identified concepts or characteristics most frequently identified with happiness.
Of course, love is at the top of the list. But the list also includes qualities
like optimism, courage, a sense of freedom, proactivity, security, health, spirituality, altruism, perspective, humor, and purpose. These are qualities associated with people who are essentially happy. So happiness is both about living
well in your own situation and also about living meaningfully and fully in relationship to others."

ON INDIVIDUAL HAPPINESS AFFECTING SOCIETY

MTM: In your book you say that you think the quest to achieve happiness can
change a whole culture. What do you think that new culture will look like?
BAKER: When people are in a positive state of emotion they are generally civil
and even kind and caring human beings. To ascertain the validity of this
observation, think about your own personal experience and that of the people
you know. You will never see a truly happy and simultaneously hostile person
because those two states are essentially neurologically incompatible. This is
because positive emotions evoke activity in the frontal lobes of the brain. The
frontal lobes allow us to see abstract possibilities and to understand concepts of
good and evil; they are essential to the understanding of ethics, morality, and
civility. This is why I believe that positive emotions, such as appreciation, happiness, joy, and love—with all their power for good health physically, mentally,
emotionally, spiritually, and socially—are extremely important to civilization
and its continued evolution. It is true that war is a “statistical norm”
for humanity. Human beings have been at war with one another somewhere on
this planet almost constantly since time immemorial. However, we have within
us the capacity to build a more constructive future civilization by virtue of this
“higher order moral brain.” Though we always carry with us the capacity to live
in fear and engage in massively destructive acts, I believe that human beings
will ultimately choose civility over destruction and will benefit from all the
consequences of this choice, including creativity, ethics, and morality."

What is "quality of life"?

Some of the components of "quality of life" - real wealth - are loving relationships, supportive and vibrant community, good health, cultural and creative stimulation, healthy and vibrant natural environment, contributing to society in a meaningful way and spiritual fulfillment.

How does money interesect with the quality of life for us individually and collectively? How can our financial resources be stewarded in such a way to maximize "quality of life" for all?

Calvert has made an effort to quantify "quality of life" for national well being through - Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators.

http://www.calvert-henderson.com/

"The Calvert-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators are a contribution to the worldwide effort to develop comprehensive statistics of national well-being that go beyond traditional macroeconomic indicators. A systems approach is used to illustrate the dynamic state of our social, economic and environmental quality of life. The dimensions of life examined include: education, employment, energy, environment, health, human rights, income, infrastructure, national security, public safety, re-creation and shelter."

For the well being of individuals, a friend of mine has created the "Wellnes Inventory"

http://www.wellpeople.com/

The Wellness Inventory is a pioneering "whole person" wellness program designed to help one to gain personal insight into their state of physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. The program, developed by HealthWorld Online and wellness pioneer John W. Travis, MD, MPH, offers guidance and tools to transform this new awareness into lasting changes in ones life, and a renewed sense of health and well-being. The program can help to:

• Discover your wellness profile in 12 dimensions of life.
• Identify the areas in life one ise most motivated to change.
• Create a personalized wellness action plan.
• Access tools and resources to help one reach his or her goals.
• Create the desired changes in ones life.
• Track progress in reaching a higher level of wellness.
• Achieve a higher level of health, wellbeing and aliveness.

What does "sustainable" mean?

The term "sustainable" was first used in relation to the environmental crisis when 1987 by the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (UNCED) in the groundbreaking report "Our Common Future."

"Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Sustainable Development is a term which means "meeting the needs of the present without comprimising the needs of the future" a guiding principal for this time when our civilization's economic activities are polluting the environment, destroying wilderness, exploiting workers and leaving the resource-rich in an endless cycle of unfullfilling consumerism.