American Human Development Report - we're not #1 anymore in US...

For the first time a report has been compiled on the well being of the United States modeled on the UN Development Program. The first time it has been done on an industrialized nation.

I'm sure that some of these stats are not surprising to many of you, here are some findings from there work:

• More than 14% of the U.S. population (30 million Americans) lack basic literacy and math skills
• Of the 30 richest nations, the U.S. ranks second in the number of children (15%) living in poverty
• The U.S. has 5% of the world’s people - but 24% of the world’s prisoners
• The U.S. ranks 24th in global life expectancy - yet spends more on health care than any nation

"For Americans to live longer, healthier lives, it is obvious from the report that progress
depends in large part on a comprehensive resolution of the problem of health insurance. Today, some 47 million Americans lack health insurance, risking negative
health outcomes and shorter life spans. The nation appears unlikely to make significant strides in health until every American has adequate health coverage.
In addition, Americans are at risk from a wide range of preventable causes of death and disease, including obesity and violence. In a reflection of how complex social problems are linked, researchers have found that poor parents, living in neighborhoods they perceive to be dangerous, are often reluctant to allow their children to play outside. Lack of exercise contributes to childhood obesity, which lowers health scores. Restricted space to play can also have a negative impact on school performance, lowering education scores.
• In order to improve access to knowledge, research suggests that intensive intervention in early childhood is necessary to break the pattern by which parents with limited education raise children with limited education—short-circuiting their ability to command decent opportunities and wages in a high-tech, information-intensive, globalized economy. Superior preschool programs and intensive
elementary schooling can offer students from poor families a chance to fulfill their potential, seize opportunities, and lead lives they value. The ideal of American opportunity, grounded in equal access to public education, is threatened by the lopsided educational realities of American schools. In addition, we are asking our schools to solve society’s most intractable problems—social exclusion, chronic unemployment, dangerous neighborhoods, and more.
• For Americans to sustain, or obtain, a decent standard of living, the wages and opportunities of millions of Americans must improve. Growing inequality in income distribution and wealth raises a profound question for Americans: Can the uniquely middle-class nation that emerged in the twentieth century survive into the twenty-first century? Or is it fracturing into a land of great extremes?"

The report was created by the American Human Development Project

The wealth of Biodiversity - 4,600 species of Potato!

Christian Science Monitor reports that Peru's International Potato Center maintains genetic strains of over 4,600 species of potatoes which are indigenous to the Andes, alone!

"But aren’t potatoes from…? Tay understands the question even before you get it out. “Americans think potatoes are from Idaho,” he says. “Ask a European, and they say the potato is from Ireland.”

Actually, it’s Peruvian. Potatoes date back about 8,000 years, to the shores of Lake Titicaca, 3,800 meters above sea level, in what is today Peru. Incan armies ate potatoes centuries ago, and rural communities eat them today. An estimated 5,000 varieties grow in the Andean region; 80 percent of those sit in the CIP."

In fact, the center has maintained this array of potatoes for over 30 years.

With prices skyrocketing in corn, wheat, soy and other essential crops, the potatoe is seen as an essential resource.

"Just a few months ago, these words might have seemed hyperbolic. But the spud has suddenly been thrust into the spotlight, now that prices for soy, wheat, and corn have skyrocketed. The United Nations has called 2008 the Year of the Potato, as has Peru. Governments around the world are turning to the root to help ease hunger. Peru’s military is eating potato bread instead of regular white. And at this humble center in Lima, the phone is suddenly ringing off the hook, journalists are knocking at the door, and requests for expertise are pouring in from around the world.

'Potatoes are being looked at as one of the pathways out of poverty,' says Pamela Anderson, the center’s director general."

Public Policy - Sustainability First? Not yet for Government...

"Government waste is prevalent throughout our daily lives. From the pointless use of Police ATVs patrolling our completely safe beaches, to the quashing of plans for more efficient everything, our governments seem to be avoiding the imminent truth about our environmental crisis. At very least, sustainability does not seem to be on their checklist of mandatory considerations before making a decision. Everything from the policy decisions to the execution of initiatives are often missing the mark on the dire need to transition our society to one that is in alignment with nature, rather than at odds with it."

Article cites sustainability as imperative for Public Policy in government.

Authors Scott Badenoch and Argam Derhartunian are Co-Founders of Creative Citizen, a green wiki for a sustainable lifestyle.

PROUT - input for the Blueprint for new society?

I experience that we must recreate the systems of organizing ourselves, our economy, and our relationship with Nature. The old system has design flaws and many are saying that signs of its demise are evident.

The question of how long the current economic, political, societal, cultural system will last - or whether or not it is even is in jeopardy, is secondary to the imperative for us to EVOLVE from where we are to optimize the current operating system of our civilization.

PROUT Institute offers some very compelling ideas:

"Mission Statement
The PROUT Institute works to bring new life and a bright future to humanity by applying progressive social theory and concepts - and those of the Progressive Utilization Theory (PROUT) in particular - that provide deep solutions to social problems and give holistic expression to human potentialities.

PROUT's Fundamental Premise
PROUT is based on the fundamental premise that all people should have equitable scope to develop and express their physical, mental, and spiritual potential, while maintaining balance between individual and collective interests, and while maintaining harmony with the rest of life on the planet.

PROUT Design Principles
PROUT does not seek to promote an ideology but to offer a system of practical design principles that are intended to bring balanced progress and vitality to the human society. Read More

Four Essential Conditions
for Creating a New Society
The PROUT Institute identifies four essential conditions for undertaking a transition to a sustainable and equitable future:

* Hope: a rational and grounded sense of hope for humanity's future
* Vision: a comprehensive vision to guide enduring social transformation
* Empowerment: personal vitalization and empowering ideas
* Solutions: a theory based, solution-oriented approach to social renewal

Future Vision

While recognizing that humanity faces unprecedented problems, and that significant disruptions in social life are now upon us, PROUT holds a positive outlook on humanity's future. It sees the difficulties of the present forcing shifts of consciousness and creating conditions for the rapid emergence of a universal humanity, able to work together to develop the rich potentialities of the human species potentialities long suppressed by a materialist culture.

PROUT seeks to help open a path through the darkness of the present to this new stage of human existence and to provide a socio-economic paradigm in which humanity's emerging new consciousness and unity can take root in fertile soil and flourish. It seeks to open a cleared vista, without dogma-created impediments, to the comprehensive fulfillment of human potentialities."

Read all about PROUT here.

Ecuador is first country to include Nature's rights in constitution!

The recent New Moon update from the Pachamama Alliance announced that just a few weeks ago on July 7th, Ecuador adopted a new constitution which includes the rights of Nature.

Ecuador is the first country to recognize the value of ecosystems officially. It's aim is to foster a new model of develop with humanity in harmony with our natural systems.

"Chapter: Rights for Nature

Art. 1[N2] . Nature or Pachamama, where life is reproduced and exists, has the right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.

Every person, people, community or nationality, will be able to demand the recognitions of rights for nature before the public organisms.* The application and interpretation of these rights will follow the related principles established in the Constitution.

Art. 2[N3] . Nature has the right to an integral restoration. This integral restoration is independent of the obligation on natural and juridical persons or the State to indemnify the people and the collectives that depend on the natural systems.

In the cases of severe or permanent environmental impact, including the ones caused by the exploitation on non renewable natural resources, the State will establish the most efficient mechanisms for the restoration, and will adopt the adequate measures to eliminate or mitigate the harmful environmental consequences.

Art. 3.[N4] The State will motivate natural and juridical persons as well as collectives to protect nature; it will promote respect towards all the elements that form an ecosystem.

Art. 4[N5] . The State will apply precaution and restriction measures in all the activities that can lead to the extinction of species, the destruction of the ecosystems or the permanent alteration of the natural cycles.

The introduction of organisms and organic and inorganic material that can alter in a definitive way the national genetic patrimony is prohibited.

Art. 5[N6] . The persons, people, communities and nationalities will have the right to benefit from the environment and form natural wealth that will allow wellbeing.

The environmental services are cannot be appropriated; its production, provision, use and exploitation, will be regulated by the State."

Colony Collapse Disorder connected to Pesticides?

Duh!

LA Times writes an article which implies that there is increasing belief that the massive die off of bee colonies is tied to pesticide use.

Why are we spending billions of dollars to put poison on our food, and endanger our planet's fellow inhabitants?

There's a simpler way - ORGANIC!

Here's some excerpts from the article:

"No independent government testing is required before a pesticide is registered for use. Large gaps in basic scientific knowledge about pesticides remain, including their environmental "fate" (where they end up) and their toxicity to humans and to wildlife. A problem pesticide may be removed from the market only after a long process and full trial -- something that should be done before. The Food Quality Protection Act of 1996 improved control of residues in our food. That didn't help the bees.

Rachel Carson was vilified by an industry smear nearly 50 years ago, after the release of her book, "Silent Spring." "If we were to follow the teachings of Miss Carson," said American Cyanamid, the maker of DDT, "we would return to the Dark Ages ... insects, vermin and disease would once again inherit the Earth." But, as Carson so eloquently put it in a CBS documentary in 1964: "Man's attitude toward nature is today critically important simply because we now have acquired a fateful power to alter and destroy nature. But man is part of nature, and his war is inevitably a war against himself."