Sea change SRI now beginning to drive corporate change!

A recent article stated: "Investors today have now become as concerned about corporate ethics as they are with how profits have been earned. Following this trend, industry surveys by organisations such as KPMG and Business in the Community (BITC) confirm that more than half of the world's 250 largest companies now issue separate Corporate Social Responsibility reports as standard."

This is consistent with my experience - last year at the SRI in the Rockie's conference a friend who runs Progressive Investment Management. He shared with me that he is getting calls from corporations who want to know the changes that are needed to be made in order for my friend's company to include them in his Portfolio 21 mutual fund.

This represents a sea change - that investment managers' concerns are driving corporations to make changes in the way that they behave.

LOHAS Conference, good news about Bees, and questions on the media.

I attended my fourth LOHAS Conference this week, and kudos to the organizers for improving the event over last year! Although the conference was full of all the "late and great" thinking in the sustainability space, it still didn't feel that it was the "latest and greatest" - like other conferences I have attended like Bioneers, and Green Business Conference.

Even so, it is people and ideas that inspire me to attend as many such conferences as I can. As I was quaffing some an Acai Martini I mentioned what has been known in green circles as "the bee situation" with a fellow green business enthusiast.

We were discussing the recent reports in the media that beekeepers in 24 states are experiencing record losses of honeybees. Some states have reported up to 70% disappearances of commercial bee populations. Researchers are struggling to find the causes of this mysterious collapse.

My fellow organic quaffer shared with me a story he heard citing good news - the catastrophic bee colony collapse is not affecting organic hives.

I read this same account morning on an email from the organic consumer association that a blog on Guerilla News Network revealed a crucial element of this story, missing from reports in the mainstream media. They found that organic beekeepers across North America are not experiencing colony collapses.

OCA writes: "The millions of dying bees are hyper-bred varieties whose hives are regularly fumigated with toxic pesticides by conventional beekeepers attempting to ward off mites. In contrast, organic beekeepers avoid pesticides and toxic chemicals and strive to use techniques that closely emulate the ecology of bees in the wild. Researchers are beginning to link the mass deaths of non-organic bees to pesticide exposure, genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and the common practice of moving conventional bee hives over long distances."
Learn more: http://www.organicconsumers.org/bees.cfm

On a separate, yet related note - why is this news about organic bees not being reported in the mainstream media?

That is the question which comes to mind for me!

We are best served not only by seeking the correct answers, but to ensure that we ask the correct questions. Anais Nin's comment "We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are."

Meanwhile, as we collective cogitate on all things bees, I am heartened that Nature has revealed a pathway for us to continue feeding ourselves - with a strong message: "GO ORGANIC!"

For further reading on media, I recommend Thomas de Zengotita' book "Mediated" .

GOOD NEWS: 120 countries agree on Climate Action. Why does the US still sound ridiculous?

Today, I read in the International Herald Tribune that delegates from 120 countries came together.

Here's the first paragraph:
"BANGKOK, Thailand: Delegates from 120 countries endorsed a report outlining urgent steps needed to avert some of the most catastrophic results of climate change, but the United States warned that strict emission caps could cause a global recession."
read on here

Now, this is really good news! The absolute insanity that I hear, however is the last line: "the US warned that strict emmission caps could cause a global recession."

Please let me translate the entire paragraph:

"Delegates representing the leadership of the entire planet agreed that we need to take significant, life changing action now to stop climate change before we lose civilization as we know it, but the United States whined that they would not make as much money if we started doing something right away."

Hmmm... does this sound ridiculous to you too?

Also, I read in Forbes the following paragraph on the matter:

"But US officials defended nuclear energy as an important option for reducing dependence on fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases, saying scientists would develop technology to deal safely with radioactive waste." More here.

Yes, nuclear power has no emmissions... Yet Helen Caldicott just wrote her latest book "Nuclear Power is Not the Answer."

She just stated in a recent interview on Democracy Now:

"DR. HELEN CALDICOTT: Well, I have just discovered from the Department of Energy's data, that the enrichment of uranium produces 93% per year of the C.F.C. gas in this country, which is currently banned under the Montreal Protocol because it produces destruction of the ozone layer. In Australia, we've got an epidemic of skin cancer because the ozone is so thin. C.F.C. gas, which is the refrigerant gas banned, is up to 20 times more potent global warmer than carbon dioxide, which accounts for 15% of global warming. But also, to enrich uranium, they use 2 two 1,000 megawatt coal power plants to enrich the uranium itself for nuclear power. Massive quantities of carbon dioxide are produced in that very process but also in building the reactors, storing the radioactive waste for hundreds of thousands of years. The other thing is that nuclear power releases millions of Curies of unregulated radiation into the air every year of noble gases and of Tritium, which is very biologically dangerous and very carcinogenic. And it also creates massive quantities of radioactive waste, which lasts for up to half a million years, which inevitably will leak into the Ecosphere, bioconcentrate in each step of the food chain--the algae, the crustaceans, the little fish, the big fish. We can't taste the radiation, we can't smell it, we can't see it. Cancer takes years to evolve. If I sneeze on you, you're sneezing in two days because the incubation time for a cold is two days. But for cancer, when you've been exposed to radiation, its anytime from 5 to 60 years. Cancer doesn't wear a little flag saying what it was caused by years ago. What is predicted medically because of the nuclear wastes from nuclear power is epidemics of particularly childhood cancer, because they're very sensitive to radiation, leukemia, and genetic disease for the rest of time. And we're not the only species that have genes and get cancer. All other species do as well. So, a nuclear power is extraordinarily biologically dangerous. It produces filthy air with radioactive isotopes, carbon dioxide, and C.F.C. gas. The nuclear industry has been lying in its advertisements, being put out consistently on N.P.R. and P.B.S. and the like. You mustn't lie when you're talking about medical and environmental conditions. That's scientifically inappropriate and unethical to lie.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Scott Peterson, your response and also, given the fact that in the United States there hasn't been a new nuclear plant started to be built in decades, why would you expect the American public to suddenly want to change their perspective on the dangers of nuclear power?

SCOTT PETERSON: The American public's perspective on nuclear energy has actually been supportive for many years now, because they recognize the benefits that they get from nuclear energy, and they also recognize the safety of our plants, particularly over the last decade. 64% of the U.S. Public believes that we should build more nuclear plants, and we are now setting the stage in this country, working both with industry and government to begin building advanced reactors that have even better safety features. They're going to be more cost effective to build so the consumer electricity rates are going to be lower. They're also going to be built in a manner they're takes advantage of existing nuclear power plants so we're building them at the same sites, and actually, using less land, and taking advantage of the land and the transmission systems that we already have. So, we're taking a number of steps to make sure that we can meet consumer electricity demands as they continue to rise in the future. But meet them in a way that also protects the environment, and recognizes that we need to make changes in how we look at our air quality and how we combine the imperatives of having electricity and also protecting our environment. If you took the nuclear plants that we have today out of the electricity-

JUAN GONZALEZ: But if I can interrupt you for one second. What about the other part of my question, which is your response to Helen Caldicott's claims of the actual polluting nature of nuclear plants?

SCOTT PETERSON: I wouldn't know where to begin with some of the claims, because a lot of them are just not factually correct.

DR. HELEN CALDICOTT: But they are you see, because I have the data from the Department of Energy--They're correct. "

More here.

So, how does nuclear power address global warming?

U.S. Department of State to Host 2008 Washington International Renewable Energy Conference

U.S. Department of State to Host 2008 Washington International Renewable Energy Conference

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced today that the State Department will host the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC 2008) March 2008.

WIREC 2008 is the third global ministerial level event on renewable energy. It will be an important opportunity for world ministers to show their commitment to renewable energy. The ministers will discuss how renewable energy advances our shared goals for climate, sustainable development and energy security. The Secretary noted that, "Diversifying our energy supplies is a key foreign policy objective of this Administration," and that, "Renewable energy sources can go a long way toward breaking the 'addiction to oil' that President Bush cited in his 2006 State of the Union Address."

WIREC 2008 goals include:

* - Advancing energy security, climate change, air quality, and sustainable development goals, including agriculture and rural development;

* - Demonstrating global leadership in renewable energy research, policy development, technology innovation, commercialization and deployment; and

* - Fostering industry and government collaboration to help solve global energy challenges.

The U.S. Department of State will host this event, assisted by other relevant Departments and agencies including; the: U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. Department of Interior, and the U.S. Department of Commerce. The intergovernmental team welcomes the strong support of the American Council On Renewable Energy and looks forward to cooperating with REN-21 and other relevant stakeholders.

For more information about the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference 2008, please contact William Armbruster at (202) 647-1247.

2007/360
Released on May 1, 2007

Heart of the Rainforest Speaks at OXY Shareholder Meeting in Santa Monica

This Friday morning, at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica, leaders of the deeply affected Achuar people will speak at the Occidental Petroleum shareholder meeting. They will be joined by activists in a press conference and rally to demand that LA Based OXY clean up their home, the Peruvian Amazon - "the Heart of the World" as described by Atossa Soltani, Executive Director of Amazon Watch.

Despite the corporation's announcement in December 2006 to pull out of the Amazon, a report released by Amazon Watch today reveals that for over 30 years OXY ignored industry standards and employed out-of-date practices for over 30 years. Briefly, they conducted drilling practices which are illegal here in the US - dumping over 850,000 barrels per day of toxic oil by products directly into rivers and streams resulting in severe cadmium and lead poisoning among the communities of the Amazon.

Andres Sandi Mucushua, President of the Federation of Native Communities of the Corrientes River said "We have seen our rivers, farms and animals sicken and we have become ill and died from the contanimation. We have opposed oil drilling in our territory. It is important that Oxy shareholders are told what Oxy has done and continues to do in the Peruvian Amazon."

Meanwhile, as they backpedal on their agreements with the forest, the Executives of the company, living in our LA neighborhoods, are making extraordinary amounts of money. The CEO made over $400 Million last year - at the very direct expense of the people, plants and animals in a forest critical in the life-support of every one of us on the planet.

This reminds me of the "non-locality" of every issue. As I get in my car and drove home from the event last night, I wondered how much of the gas in my car came from the Amazon, and the wood in my home, the food in my fridge, etc. etc.

We as shareholders, and purchasers of goods, play a direct role, and have a direct responsibility, since we are truly connected to everything that is going on on the planet.

So, I decided to head down to the corner of Wilshire and Ocean this Friday morning and speak with the Heart of the Earth at Oxy's Shareholder meeting. Maybe you'll join me?

$8 Trillion Dollars moving the right direction!

Globalpensions.com just reported that the United-Nations-Developed standard for investments called "Principals for Responsible Investing" have been adopted by investment groups worldwide representing over $8 Trillion dollars in capital.

The PRI was assembled by the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative and the UN Global Compact last year.

That's a very good start!

The article quotes an executive involved with the effort: “We believe the PRI has an extremely important role to play in encouraging major asset owners and mainstream asset managers to fully integrate ESG issues into their investments. We are proud to announce the publication of our first annual report on responsible investment.”

Last year when the intiative was brought about the UN Press release stated the following:

"In joining with institutional investors to develop the Principles, the United Nations collaborated with some of the world’s most influential institutions -– many of them public pension funds -– involved in investment activities worldwide. It is estimated that pension funds alone -– public and private –- account for up to 35 per cent of total global investment.

More than 20 pension funds, foundations and special government funds, backed by a group of 70 experts from around the world, held meetings in Paris, New York, Toronto, London, and Boston over an eight-month period to craft the Principles.

“We are proud to endorse the Principles, which recognize that social and environmental issues can be material to the financial outlook of a company and therefore to the value of our shares in that company”, said Denise Nappier, Treasurer of the State of Connecticut, who is the principal fiduciary of $23 billion in pension fund assets. “Financial markets tend to focus too heavily on short-term results at the expense of long-term and non-traditional financial fitness factors that could affect a company’s bottom line. For many institutional investors it is the long-term that matters and in this context environmental, social and governance issues take on new meaning.”

The six overarching Principles, which are voluntary, are underpinned by a set of 35 possible actions that institutional investors can take to integrate environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) considerations into their investment activities. These actions relate to a variety of issues, including investment decision-making, active ownership, transparency, collaboration and gaining wider support for these practices from the whole financial services industry.

“We manage assets for future generations and acknowledge the link between long-term return and the governance of companies, markets and economies”, said Knut N. Kjaer, Executive Director of the Norwegian Government Pension Fund, which holds assets of more than $250 billion. “We engaged in developing these Principles to help broaden the understanding of what drives long-term fund performance. Investors must collaborate to support well-regulated markets and sustainable development” Kjaer said."

Reality Check for the Environmental Movement - Make this Earthday YOUR LAST!

Okay Kids.

Let's get real for a moment.

According two recent articles published by respectable online publications, Orion Magazine and Worldchanging.com, it appears that the 'plan A' of the environmental movement's roughly four-decade effort to meaningfully engage the "mainstream" to drive an "ecological u-turn" isn't really succeeding. Consider how and why the combined membership of most major environmental groups comprises something like 1-3% of the US population.

Meanwhile, since we as a civilization are consuming far beyond the carrying capacity of the planet - then have we really done anything different than we did 50 years ago? Other than to be aware of how much more stuff we are consuming, and how much worse off Nature is?

I am reminded of what Bill McKibben recently said in a local talk at the regal Downtown Los Angeles public library. He shared with us a research study that although our GDP (gross domestic product), and our associated collective environmental footprint, has tripled in the last 50 years, it does not appear that we human beings are any happier as a result.

Although, there is good news - the "the mainstream" has begun to become aware of the environmental crisis on the planet,and the role that we humans have played in creating this crisis. Even so, we still need somewhat of a "reality check" about the consequences our consumer-focused culture. Consider, according the non-profit Redefining Progress "Ecological Foot Print Test" - if every person on the planet consumed as much stuff as we in America do right-now, our species' collective "gaping-mouth" would need 4-5 planets of stuff to keep the ponzi scheme going.

Meanwhile, there are environmental fire alarms every day in the news - what are you going to do?

First thing I suggest, is to breathe, and relax. And enjoy reading these interesting, articles:

Orion Magazine April/March 2007 "The Idols of Environmentalism --- Do environmentalists conspire against their own interests? First in a two-part series."

And...

This excellent WorldChanging.com article: "Make This Earth Day Your Last!" posted today at exactly at 11:11 AM by Worldchanging.com Founder Alex Steffen and Managing Editor Sarah Rich.

Very, very thought provoking, indeed!

( for some good news, see my previous entries!)

Elves are back in action creating youth wealth out of "waste youth"

Well, Elves?

Council of All Beings?

Supremely Intelligent Children?

This video is about how a group of social entrepreneurs in British Columbia's Sunshine Coast are creating a wealthy future of sustainable world for themselves. I'm moved.

I know two of the instigators of this effort Delvin Solkinson and Sobe Wing who are pioneering work in restoring a vibrant life with troubled youth.

You will also find the video on the Tribe.net profile of Delvin Solkinson - a lead instigator of this youth rennaissance we are in - "Sunshine Coast" style. (BTW - I understand that the Sunshine Coast portion of British Columbia is spectacular - its above Vancouver on the mainland coast behind Vancouver Island... less precipitation from the ocean thus more sunshine!

Anyway, I'm Inspired! Truly.

Another view of Tom Friedman's Green article in NY Times Magazine

I just read Tom Friedman's NY Times Cover article "The Power of Green" which was an excellent article reminding us of the grand opportunity to embrace the Green Revolution for a better world. I found the article hugely positive.

and I found this response to the article... The main point that I found is that there are alot of new buzzwords and ideas being thrown around as solutions - which sound better, and address part of the solution, but have SERIOUS downsides like "clean coal and ethanol." For example, is the fuel from GMO corn grown in monoculture factory farms laced with pesticides and herbicides really good for the environment? Since many countries consider GMO corn unfit for human, or animal consumption Ethanol is an excellent solution... or is it? Similarly similarly GMO soybeans grown with pesticides and herbicides that are replacing virgin rainforest is an equally challenging faustian bargain.


http://www.freepress.org/columns/display/7/2007/1528

Is "Green" Tom Friedman the new eco-Orwell of Solartopia?
By Harvey Wasserman
April 19, 2007

Not long ago, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was America's top op ed cheerleader for George W. Bush's attack on Iraq, portraying it as a "war for democracy."

Now, in a landmark Times Magazine article, he claims naming rights to a "green" movement for nuke power and "clean coal," portraying them as part of the answer to global warming.

This is VERY dangerous stuff.

But before we proceed, this Earth Day we can welcome the fact that major media types like Friedman finally do concede that we have a global climate crisis. The din of Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" has corporate big-wigs lining up to be washed green. For that much, we can all be grateful.

There is much that's positive in Friedman's writings about the need for emission-free energy. Most of it derives from countless concerned citizens seeking a Solartopian system based on solar, wind, bio-fuels, efficiency and a truly Earth-based culture.

Friedman never acknowledges them. But tens of thousands of grassroots activists have contributed decades of loving labor, often including jail time (mostly at reactor sites), to give birth to that vision.

Normally, a social movement would welcome the embrace of a New York Times columnist. For a major establishment mouthpiece to start spouting ideas for which so many have marched should be a deeply gratifying accomplishment.

But Friedman's sales pitch also sanctifies nukes and coal. In a single horrifying phrase, he writes in the Times Magazine that "to reach the necessary scale of emissions-free energy will require big clean coal or nuclear power stations, wind farms and solar farms."

Thus, in Tom Friedman's new eco-Orwellian "greenspeak," atomic energy and "clean coal" have become the equivalents of solar and wind power.

This is a suicidal double deception.

"Clean coal" is the ultimate atmospheric oxymoron. Fossil fuel corporations justify it with "carbon sequestration," the idea of pumping CO2 emissions into caverns and other underground storage facilities.

In other words: Yucca Mountain for the coal business. The technology is unproven and the gas is certain, sooner or later, to leak out. Continued coal mining---even with a green veneer---will devastate landscapes, kill miners, cause acid rain and prolong the world's dependence on fossil fuel.

Worse is the proven 50-year failure of nuke power. Atomic reactors are pre-deployed weapons of radioactive mass destruction. Nothing can guarantee their safety from a terror attack.

Fifty years ago the Price-Anderson Act gave federal protection to save reactor owners from paying for a major disaster. No private insurer has stepped into the void, not for the past generation of reactors, nor for the future.

There is also no solution to the waste problem. Yucca Mountain, the multi-billion-dollar alleged storage dump, cannot open for at least two decades. It is capped with perched water, marbled with an earthquake fault and surrounded by (so far) dormant volcanoes like itself. If it opens at all, it will be a casino, in one form or another.

Nukes also spew huge quantities of radioactive radon from the billions of tons of tailings that that sit near uranium mines and mills. That uranium is in increasingly short supply, with prices bound to skyrocket.

The enrichment of reactor fuel creates huge global warming emissions. The nukes themselves pump out direct heat, harming air and water. Radioactive emissions kill billions of fish and other life forms, including humans. Near-misses, as at Ohio's Davis-Besse, which was a bare shred of thin metal away from a catastrophic melt-down, are all too frequent. Sooner or later, by terror or error, we must expect the worst.

Friedman mourns that the melt-down at Three Mile Island caused huge quantities of carbon-emitting coal to be burned for replacement power. But if the $900 million it took to build TMI had been invested in real green energy and efficiency, all those emissions could have been cheaply and safely avoided, then, now and into the future. Take the additional $2 billion required to deal with the seething radioactive mess and we could have had a countryside layered with safe, clean, cheap solar and wind farms.

Friedman never interviews the thousands of central Pennsylvanians who demanded the nuke not be built in the first place. Nor does he mention the 2400 locals who've tried for two decades to get a class action trial on the death and disease caused by the 1979 melt-down's radioactive emissions. To this day, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission does not know how much fallout escaped from TMI, where it went, who it affected or what harm it did.

Friedman instead talks to TMI's newly greenwashed corporate biggies. More nukes would be a great solution to global warming, they say. But they complain that a new reactor could not come on line for, perhaps, fifteen years. And private investment won't do the trick. Government loan guarantees will be required, they moan, because when it comes to energy, the market "doesn't work."

That's an amazing admission for a free market ideologue like Friedman. What he can't face is that the market DOES work for nuclear power, because nobody in their right mind will invest in it without gargantuan subsidies and insurance protection. Only a Bush-style intervention like the one for "democracy" in Iraq will finance new reactor construction.

The real numbers on both existing and new nukes are disastrous. The current generation only looks profitable because the wave of utility deregulation that swept the US a few years ago forced the public to eat the true capital costs.

Back then Friedman yelled that a free market in energy would yield competition and lower prices. But with fake shortages and market manipulations, Enron and its corporate cohorts gouged California and other states for more than $100 billion. Nowhere in the deregulated US is there meaningful competition in electricity. Nor is there an accurate accounting for the true costs of atomic power.

In the 1990s, California's REAL green power movement wanted to install some 600 megawatts of solar, wind and efficiency. That was killed by John Bryson, the "green" chair of Southern California Edison. Bryson then used deregulation to write off the multi-billion-dollar capital costs of four reactors. And then came Enron, to gouge and go bankrupt.

Now Friedman and his fossil/nuke cohorts ask that we repeat the experience in the name of global warming.

We can certainly say "thanks" to him for finally waking up to the climate crisis. But we must also say "no thanks" to fossil fuels and nuclear power.

The Solartopian solution embraces wind, solar, bio-fuels and other truly renewable sources, along with increased efficiency. Wall Street is lining up to invest in these technologies, which have high rates of real return, both financial and ecological.

We've seen the horrific results of Tom Friedman's advocacy of utility deregulation. We've tasted the bitter fruits of his cheerleading for the war in Iraq.

Why would we now buy his fossil/nukes, which are no more green than the climate crisis itself?

Between the lines of Friedman's columns there's a lethal brew of carbon emissions and radioactive crud. Every dime spent on "clean coal" or "safe nukes" will only make things worse.

We're glad so many corporate moguls finally feel compelled to line up at the media greenwash. But there's no need to buy in to their proven failures.

The real solution to climate chaos is the Solartopian Trinity of solar, wind and bio-fuels, with increased efficiency and the return of mass transit. Accept no substitutes.

--
Harvey Wasserman's SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030 is at www.solartopia.org. Long ago he pondered the true meaning of being green in jail cells near the Seabrook and Diablo Canyon nuclear plants.

Kerry and Gingrich agree on Green

Kerry and Gingrich Hugging Trees -- and (Almost) Each Other
___

By Dana Milbank
Washingtonpost.com

Wednesday, April 11, 2007; A02

Yesterday's global-warming debate between John Kerry and Newt Gingrich was, as the moderator put it, "advertised as a smack-down and a prizefight." But those labels were too modest for Kerry.

"Welcome to our environmental version of the Lincoln-Douglas debates," the former Democratic presidential nominee told the crowd in the Russell Caucus Room. "We flipped a coin, and I picked Lincoln."

But something funny happened on the way to 1858. Gingrich, a former Republican House speaker, refused to play Douglas to Kerry's Lincoln, instead positioning himself as a tree-hugging green.

Before Kerry got a word in, Gingrich conceded that global warming is real, that humans have contributed to it and that "we should address it very actively." Gingrich held up Kerry's new book, "This Moment on Earth," and called it "a very interesting read." He then added a personal note about saving vulnerable species from climate change. "My name, Newt, actually comes from the Danish Knut, and there's been a major crisis in Germany over a polar bear named Knut," he confided.

more here

Having More Won't Make You Happy

http://www.worldchanging.com/local/losangeles/archives//006353.html

I included the comments from the website as well:

Having More Won't Make You Happy

Greg Wendt
March 22, 2007 8:15 AM

As a financial advisor, I regularly meet the "haves and have-mores," and one thing is for sure: More does not necessarily mean more happy.

Barbara Walters interviewed billionaire media mogul David Geffen in a conversation published in More Than Money magazine: "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. Today, Alternet posted an excerpt of Bill McKibben's recent book Deep Economy: The Wealth of Community and a Durable Future. I recommend the excerpt highly; it explores the idea that the foundation of our economic assumptions must be re-evaluated and re-tooled for our modern context.

Bill speaks to the heart of the matter: Our civilization has conditioned ourselves to believe that more is better, because we believe simply more makes us happy. We all know it's not true, but many of us are not willing to face our inner shadow work to really embody this truth in our day-to-day lives.

On a similar note, I find many in our circle of friends in the sustainability movement -- myself included -- living lives of accumulation and consumption even with a "modest" lifestyle. Yet as human beings, we know that more "stuff" won't make us happy.

I was speaking about this matter with my friend Marc Barasch, an accomplished author and current Executive Director of the Green World Campaign. Marc said: "The Buddhist tradition states that craving keeps the world of Samsara [eternal suffering] turning."

He continued: "What people want is love and community and the society tends to systematically undermine the means of attaining that, and consumerism is the addictive substitute. The pleasure of the addiction becomes dry and insipid and becomes simply maintenance dosage to avoid greater and greater pain. And it is this collective maintenance of our consumerism addiction that habitually and automatically devours the planet's resources."

So, since you and I have grown up in this system, we are best able to recognize the heart of the matter and begin to deal with the problem at its core. Simply put, in order for us all to manifest the sustainable world built on loving kindness to all beings, we just have to get down to this crucial "shadow work" inside of our own heart of hearts.

You know what I am talking about: inside yourself. You don't need anyone else to know what I am referring to, and you don't need anyone else to do this work inside yourself, right here, right now.

I am very excited that Bill McKibben will be here in Los Angeles on April 4 to discuss his new book with Tom Curwen, editor and writer at the Los Angeles Times. The talk will be at the LA Central Library at Fifth and Flower in downtown Los Angeles. Get more information here; RSVP here.

I look forward to seeing you at the event on the 4th!
Comments

I believe "consumer addiction" is a replacement for feeling alive and buying stuff seems to be a reaction to a missing human need.

Noted Chilean ecological economist Manfred Max-Neef defines nine distinct human needs that are both essential to us all and intrinsically related.

The Max-Neef categories of need are: SUBSISTENCE, PROTECTION, PARTICIPATION, IDLENESS, CREATIVITY, AFFECTION, UNDERSTANDING, IDENTITY, FREEDOM.

He points out that whenever we are systematically deprived of the opportunity to meet these individual needs we have a poverty in our lives. As we move forward with the "green" sustainable economy we must be mindful of the difference between needs, wants, and satisfiers. If we don't examine these distinctions along the way we may end up with different "stuff" in our lives and still lack one or more of the basic human needs.

Max-Neef, M. "Development and human needs." 1992. In Real-life economics: understanding wealth creation. Ekins, P. and Max-Neef, M. (Ed.) Routledge Publishers.

Posted by: Ron Durgin on March 23, 2007 8:02 AM

Outstanding perspective Greg. Glad to have a spokesperson for wealth management acknowledge the realities expressed here-that money does not, and never has, made anyone happy. It is love, community and positive contributions for the future of all living things that brings happiness. Thanks for such a correction to the consuming mentality.

Posted by: Dan Lavery on March 23, 2007 11:01 AM

Squandering our Wealth? It appears so....listen to the bees!

Most of us who are thinking about sustainability are aware that our civilization is living beyond the planet's means to support us. See my earlier blog entry for details. Furthermore, the systems and institutions operating our civilization and our business are borne out of a thinking structure which does not consider the needs of Nature. We are only considering short-term human needs while overlooking both the web of life and the simple fact that we have myriad of plants and animals as our bunkmates on this "spaceship Earth" to use a Bucky Fuller phrase.

I am particularly concerned about a recent news story which is evidence of the aforementioned regarding the rapid drop in bee population. See the article below.

If we humans don't heed the call of such "canaries in the coal mine" then the species extinctions can be drastic, and rapid. With catastophic effects on plant, animal and human well being.


Here's the article I mentioned:

Are GM Crops Killing Bees?

A mysterious decimation of bee populations has German beekeepers worried, while a similar phenomenon in the United States is gradually assuming catastrophic proportions. The consequences for agriculture and the economy could be enormous.

and another

Colorado beekeepers stung by mysteriously vanishing colonies.

Like other Colorado beekeepers, Jeff Theobald knows that between 2 percent and 10 percent of his bees typically won't survive winter, but this year, the loss rate is 40 percent and rising as entire colonies vanish without a trace.

"It's just bizarre," said Theobald, who runs Grand Mesa Honey Farm in Delta. "I've had hives that had dead bees in them - 4,000 to 5,000 dead bees - and hives that were completely empty. The bees were just gone."

Regional disasters have afflicted beekeepers in the past, but baffled entomologists and agricultural experts call this the first national crisis, with potentially grave consequences. Approximately $14.6 billion worth of U.S. nut, fruit and vegetable crops depend on bee pollination.

Go to the original to read the entire article

Wanna do something?
Then here's what you can do to help the bees, and other insects:
(1) take steps to be aware of GMO foods and the harm they do to ecosystems
Click here
(2) vote your voice through organizations like Organic Consumer's Association and NRDC click here to learn more

Bill McKibben - Why Having More No Longer Makes Us Happy

AlterNet
Why Having More No Longer Makes Us Happy
By Bill McKibben, Mother Jones
Posted on March 22, 2007, Printed on March 22, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/49593/

This article is an excerpt from Bill McKibben's new book, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. It first appeared in Mother Jones.

For most of human history, the two birds More and Better roosted on the same branch. You could toss one stone and hope to hit them both. That's why the centuries since Adam Smith launched modern economics with his book The Wealth of Nations have been so single-mindedly devoted to the dogged pursuit of maximum economic production.

Smith's core ideas -- that individuals pursuing their own interests in a market society end up making each other richer; and that increasing efficiency, usually by increasing scale, is the key to increasing wealth --have indisputably worked. They've produced more More than he could ever have imagined. They've built the unprecedented prosperity and ease that distinguish the lives of most of the people reading these words. It is no wonder and no accident that Smith's ideas still dominate our politics, our outlook, even our personalities.

But the distinguishing feature of our moment is this: Better has flown a few trees over to make her nest. And that changes everything. Now, with the stone of your life or your society gripped in your hand, you have to choose. It's More or Better.

Which means, according to new research emerging from many quarters, that our continued devotion to growth above all is, on balance, making our lives worse, both collectively and individually. Growth no longer makes most people wealthier, but instead generates inequality and insecurity. Growth is bumping up against physical limits so profound -- like climate change and peak oil -- that trying to keep expanding the economy may be not just impossible but also dangerous. And perhaps most surprisingly, growth no longer makes us happier. Given our current dogma, that's as bizarre an idea as proposing that gravity pushes apples skyward. But then, even Newtonian physics eventually shifted to acknowledge Einstein's more complicated universe.

1. "We can do it if we believe it": FDR, LBJ, and the invention of growth

It was the great economist John Maynard Keynes who pointed out that until very recently, "there was no very great change in the standard of life of the average man living in the civilized centers of the earth." At the utmost, Keynes calculated, the standard of living roughly doubled between 2000 B.C. and the dawn of the 18th century -- four millennia during which we basically didn't learn to do much of anything new. Before history began, we had already figured out fire, language, cattle, the wheel, the plow, the sail, the pot. We had banks and governments and mathematics and religion.

And then, something new finally did happen. In 1712, a British inventor named Thomas Newcomen created the first practical steam engine. Over the centuries that followed, fossil fuels helped create everything we consider normal and obvious about the modern world, from electricity to steel to fertilizer; now, a 100 percent jump in the standard of living could suddenly be accomplished in a few decades, not a few millennia.

In some ways, the invention of the idea of economic growth was almost as significant as the invention of fossil-fuel power. But it took a little longer to take hold. During the Depression, even FDR routinely spoke of America's economy as mature, with no further expansion anticipated. Then came World War II and the postwar boom -- by the time Lyndon Johnson moved into the White House in 1963, he said things like: "I'm sick of all the people who talk about the things we can't do. Hell, we're the richest country in the world, the most powerful. We can do it all.... We can do it if we believe it."

He wasn't alone in thinking this way. From Moscow, Nikita Khrushchev thundered, "Growth of industrial and agricultural production is the battering ram with which we shall smash the capitalist system."

Yet the bad news was already apparent, if you cared to look. Burning rivers and smoggy cities demonstrated the dark side of industrial expansion. In 1972, a trio of mit researchers released a series of computer forecasts they called "limits to growth," which showed that unbridled expansion would eventually deplete our resource base.

A year later the British economist E.F. Schumacher wrote the best-selling Small Is Beautiful. (Soon after, when Schumacher came to the United States on a speaking tour, Jimmy Carter actually received him at the White House -- imagine the current president making time for any economist.) By 1979, the sociologist Amitai Etzioni reported to President Carter that only 30 percent of Americans were "pro-growth," 31 percent were "anti-growth," and 39 percent were "highly uncertain."

Such ambivalence, Etzioni predicted, "is too stressful for societies to endure," and Ronald Reagan proved his point. He convinced us it was "Morning in America" -- out with limits, in with Trump. Today, mainstream liberals and conservatives compete mainly on the question of who can flog the economy harder. Larry Summers, who served as Bill Clinton's secretary of the treasury, at one point declared that the Clinton administration "cannot and will not accept any 'speed limit' on American economic growth. It is the task of economic policy to grow the economy as rapidly, sustainably, and inclusively as possible." It's the economy, stupid.

A sea change in the relationship between corporate america and green

A business week article "Hugging the Tree Huggers" discusses the sea change in the relationship between NGO's and Corporations...

THE ENVIRONMENT

Hugging The Tree-Huggers
Why so many companies are suddenly linking up with eco groups. Hint: Smart business

The article is about how the private equity firms reached out to enviros to make the deal of buying TXU green...


As to why it was important for the capitalists to reach out to the tree huggers the article states:

"Why was that so important? "We all swim in the same culture--and the culture is going green," explains Reilly. Indeed, Americans find nongovernmental organizations, like green groups, more credible than business, according to the Edelman Trust Barometer, an annual survey. That's a switch from five years ago, and it gives activists additional clout. "Companies have to be seen as responsible," says Karen Van Bergen, vice-president of McDonald's Europe.

"The TXU takeover is a sign of a remarkable evolution in the dynamic between corporate executives and activists. Once fractious and antagonistic, it has moved toward accommodation and even mutual dependence. Companies increasingly seek a "green" imprimatur, while enviros view changes in how business operates as key to protecting the planet."


Examples of this new relationship are as ubiquitous as Al Gore at the Academy Awards. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (WMT ) turned to Conservation International to help shape ambitious goals to cut energy use, switch to renewable power, and sell millions of efficient fluorescent bulbs. When the CEOs of 10 major U.S. corporations converged on Washington on Jan. 22 and issued a call for mandatory carbon emissions limits, sitting with them at the table were Fred Krupp and the president of the NRDC. And after Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition activists got Dell Inc.'s (DELL ) attention by chaining themselves to computer monitors, they worked with the computer maker on a groundbreaking recycling plan. "Companies have decided it is better to invite us into the tent than have us outside picketing their keynote speeches," says Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition founder Ted Smith. "It's a long way from where we started."

IT'S ABOUT TIME!

Great Dragon goes Green?

China's Wen Seeks to Curb Pollution, Sustain GrowthBy Yanping Li and Zhang Dingmin

March 5 (Bloomberg) -- China will crack down on polluting factories and boost spending on farmers and low-income earners as the government seeks a more balanced expansion of the world's fastest-growing major economy, Premier Wen Jiabao said.

``We need to adjust the balance between investment and consumption,'' Wen said in his annual policy speech to the National People's Congress in Beijing. China must curb loans to ``highly polluting'' enterprises, the premier said.

Wen's speech highlights the shift in government priorities from pursuing economic growth targets to addressing the costs of expansion, including environmental damage and a widening income gap. Excessive investment fueled by cash from China's record trade surplus may spur the construction of too many factories, leaving the economy vulnerable to a slowdown in demand.

More here

Capitalists getting Green!

note the excerpt that "the capital markets are becoming increasingly
sensitive to the climate change issue. But the country and the
environment cannot depend on good sense or even good business sense
to persuade other corporate leaders to follow Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
and Texas Pacific. Congress needs to move briskly toward legislation
that would put a price on carbon, either by taxing it or capping
emissions."

=====

NEW YORK TIMES

February 28, 2007
Editorial
A Green Deal on Coal

People who worry about global warming and want the United States to
do more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions received some very good
news over the weekend from a very unlikely source. As part of an
ambitious buyout deal, TXU, a Texas utility that has long been a
target of environmentalists, will abandon plans to build eight old-
style coal-burning power plants, which would have dumped huge amounts
of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The buyers — two private equity companies, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
and the Texas Pacific Group — also agreed to invest $400 million to
help their customers use energy more efficiently, and to explore
cleaner ways to burn coal. In a gesture of potentially broad
political consequence, they pledged to join other forward-looking
companies in backing federal legislation imposing mandatory limits on
emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.

The deal represents a shrewd reading of the political waters by the
new owners. TXU had come under heavy fire from influential members of
Congress, the courts and even the local citizenry. The companies also
knew that plants using older technologies and producing heavy
emissions could be severely penalized if Congress ever chose to
regulate carbon dioxide. It also helped that Texas Pacific’s co-
founder, David Bonderman, is himself an ardent environmentalist who
was willing to reach out to TXU’s opponents, including influential
environmental groups, for their help in negotiating a deal.

Though the deal could be trumped by another offer, it is already
being hailed as a pivotal moment in the fight against global warming.
We shall see. It is certainly further evidence that the capital
markets are becoming increasingly sensitive to the climate change
issue. But the country and the environment cannot depend on good
sense or even good business sense to persuade other corporate leaders
to follow Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and Texas Pacific. Congress needs
to move briskly toward legislation that would put a price on carbon,
either by taxing it or capping emissions.

The Energy Department says there are 159 new coal-fired power plants
on the drawing boards; of these, only 32 are considering — though not
committed to — technologies that could significantly reduce carbon
dioxide emissions. What’s needed is federal legislation that would
drive them in the direction TXU’s new owners have promised to take.

---

The Modern Wizard of Money Bernard Lietaer speaks!

http://www.yesmagazine.com/article.asp?ID=886

SARAH : So you're suggesting that scarcity needn't be a guiding principle of our economic system. But isn't scarcity absolutely fundamental to economics, especially in a world of limited resources?

BERNARD : My analysis of this question is based on the work of Carl Gustav Jung because he is the only one with a theoretical framework for collective psychology, and money is fundamentally a phenomenon of collective psychology.

A key concept Jung uses is the archetype, which can be described as an emotional field that mobilizes people, individually or collectively, in a particular direction. Jung showed that whenever a particular archetype is repressed, two types of shadows emerge, which are polarities of each other.

For example, if my higher self - corresponding to the archetype of the King or the Queen - is repressed, I will behave either as a Tyrant or as a Weakling. These two shadows are connected to each other by fear. A Tyrant is tyrannical because he's afraid of appearing weak; a Weakling is afraid of being tyrannical. Only someone with no fear of either one of these shadows can embody the archetype of the King.

Now let's apply this framework to a well-documented phenomenon - the repression of the Great Mother archetype. The Great Mother archetype was very important in the Western world from the dawn of prehistory throughout the pre-Indo-European time periods, as it still is in many traditional cultures today. But this archetype has been violently repressed in the West for at least 5,000 years starting with the Indo-European invasions - reinforced by the anti-Goddess view of Judeo-Christianity, culminating with three centuries of witch hunts - all the way to the Victorian era.

If there is a repression of an archetype on this scale and for this length of time, the shadows manifest in a powerful way in society. After 5,000 years, people will consider the corresponding shadow behaviors as "normal."

The question I have been asking is very simple: What are the shadows of the Great Mother archetype? I'm proposing that these shadows are greed and fear of scarcity. So it should come as no surprise that in Victorian times - at the apex of the repression of the Great Mother - a Scottish schoolmaster named Adam Smith noticed a lot of greed and scarcity around him and assumed that was how all "civilized" societies worked. Smith, as you know, created modern economics, which can be defined as a way of allocating scarce resources through the mechanism of individual, personal greed.

Upside of Down

The Upside of Down a new book by Thomas Homer-Dixon is part of the new ground-breaking trend in my view of the zeitgeist toward "we have problems - let's deal with them and get on with it!"

Also the article below from Kuntsler - one of our favorite and most erudite on the topic of peak oil has also posted the following on his website


From Alternet:

Ten Ways to Prepare for a Post-Oil Society
By James Howard Kunstler, Kunstler.com
Posted on February 10, 2007, Printed on February 14, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/47705/

Editor's Note: James Howard Kunstler is a leading writer on the topic of peak oil the problems it poses for American suburbia. Deeply concerned about the future of our petroleum dependent society, Kunstler believes we must take radical steps to avoid the total meltdown of modern society in the face looming oil and gas shortages. For background on this topic, read Kunstler's essay, "Pricey Gas, That's Reality."

Out in the public arena, people frequently twang on me for being "Mister Gloom'n'doom," or for "not offering any solutions" to our looming energy crisis. So, for those of you who are tired of wringing your hands, who would like to do something useful, or focus your attention in a purposeful way, here are my suggestions:

1. Expand your view beyond the question of how we will run all the cars by means other than gasoline. This obsession with keeping the cars running at all costs could really prove fatal. It is especially unhelpful that so many self-proclaimed "greens" and political "progressives" are hung up on this monomaniacal theme. Get this: the cars are not part of the solution (whether they run on fossil fuels, vodka, used frymax™ oil, or cow shit). They are at the heart of the problem. And trying to salvage the entire Happy Motoring system by shifting it from gasoline to other fuels will only make things much worse. The bottom line of this is: start thinking beyond the car. We have to make other arrangements for virtually all the common activities of daily life.

2. We have to produce food differently. The Monsanto/Cargill model of industrial agribusiness is heading toward its Waterloo. As oil and gas deplete, we will be left with sterile soils and farming organized at an unworkable scale. Many lives will depend on our ability to fix this. Farming will soon return much closer to the center of American economic life. It will necessarily have to be done more locally, at a smaller-and-finer scale, and will require more human labor. The value-added activities associated with farming -- e.g. making products like cheese, wine, oils -- will also have to be done much more locally. This situation presents excellent business and vocational opportunities for America's young people (if they can unplug their Ipods long enough to pay attention.) It also presents huge problems in land-use reform. Not to mention the fact that the knowledge and skill for doing these things has to be painstakingly retrieved from the dumpster of history. Get busy.

3. We have to inhabit the terrain differently. Virtually every place in our nation organized for car dependency is going to fail to some degree. Quite a few places (Phoenix, Las Vegas, Miami ...) will support only a fraction of their current populations. We'll have to return to traditional human ecologies at a smaller scale: villages, towns, and cities (along with a productive rural landscape). Our small towns are waiting to be reinhabited. Our cities will have to contract. The cities that are composed proportionately more of suburban fabric (e.g. Atlanta, Houston) will pose especially tough problems. Most of that stuff will not be fixed. The loss of monetary value in suburban property will have far-reaching ramifications. The stuff we build in the decades ahead will have to be made of regional materials found in nature -- as opposed to modular, snap-together, manufactured components -- at a more modest scale. This whole process will entail enormous demographic shifts and is liable to be turbulent. Like farming, it will require the retrieval of skill-sets and methodologies that have been forsaken. The graduate schools of architecture are still tragically preoccupied with teaching Narcissism. The faculties will have to be overthrown. Our attitudes about land-use will have to change dramatically. The building codes and zoning laws will eventually be abandoned and will have to be replaced with vernacular wisdom. Get busy.

4. We have to move things and people differently. This is the sunset of Happy Motoring (including the entire US trucking system). Get used to it. Don't waste your society's remaining resources trying to prop up car-and-truck dependency. Moving things and people by water and rail is vastly more energy-efficient. Need something to do? Get involved in restoring public transit. Let's start with railroads, and let's make sure we electrify them so they will run on things other than fossil fuel or, if we have to run them partly on coal-fired power plants, at least scrub the emissions and sequester the CO2 at as few source-points as possible. We also have to prepare our society for moving people and things much more by water. This implies the rebuilding of infrastructure for our harbors, and also for our inland river and canal systems -- including the towns associated with them. The great harbor towns, like Baltimore, Boston, and New York, can no longer devote their waterfronts to condo sites and bikeways. We actually have to put the piers and warehouses back in place (not to mention the sleazy accommodations for sailors). Right now, programs are underway to restore maritime shipping based on wind -- yes, sailing ships. It's for real. Lots to do here. Put down your Ipod and get busy.

5. We have to transform retail trade. The national chains that have used the high tide of fossil fuels to contrive predatory economies-of-scale (and kill local economies) -- they are going down. WalMart and the other outfits will not survive the coming era of expensive, scarcer oil. They will not be able to run the "warehouses-on-wheels" of 18-wheel tractor-trailers incessantly circulating along the interstate highways. Their 12,000-mile supply lines to the Asian slave-factories are also endangered as the US and China contest for Middle East and African oil. The local networks of commercial interdependency which these chain stores systematically destroyed (with the public's acquiescence) will have to be rebuilt brick-by-brick and inventory-by-inventory. This will require rich, fine-grained, multi-layered networks of people who make, distribute, and sell stuff (including the much-maligned "middlemen"). Don't be fooled into thinking that the Internet will replace local retail economies. Internet shopping is totally dependent now on cheap delivery, and delivery will no longer be cheap. It also is predicated on electric power systems that are completely reliable. That is something we are unlikely to enjoy in the years ahead. Do you have a penchant for retail trade and don't want to work for a big predatory corporation? There's lots to do here in the realm of small, local business. Quit carping and get busy.

6. We will have to make things again in America. However, we are going to make less stuff. We will have fewer things to buy, fewer choices of things. The curtain is coming down on the endless blue-light-special shopping frenzy that has occupied the forefront of daily life in America for decades. But we will still need household goods and things to wear. As a practical matter, we are not going to re-live the 20th century. The factories from America's heyday of manufacturing (1900 - 1970) were all designed for massive inputs of fossil fuel, and many of them have already been demolished. We're going to have to make things on a smaller scale by other means. Perhaps we will have to use more water power. The truth is, we don't know yet how we're going to make anything. This is something that the younger generations can put their minds and muscles into.

7. The age of canned entertainment is coming to and end. It was fun for a while. We liked "Citizen Kane" and the Beatles. But we're going to have to make our own music and our own drama down the road. We're going to need playhouses and live performance halls. We're going to need violin and banjo players and playwrights and scenery-makers, and singers. We'll need theater managers and stage-hands. The Internet is not going to save canned entertainment. The Internet will not work so well if the electricity is on the fritz half the time (or more).

8. We'll have to reorganize the education system. The centralized secondary school systems based on the yellow school bus fleets will not survive the coming decades. The huge investments we have made in these facilities will impede the transition out of them, but they will fail anyway. Since we will be a less-affluent society, we probably won't be able to replace these centralized facilities with smaller and more equitably distributed schools, at least not right away. Personally, I believe that the next incarnation of education will grow out of the home schooling movement, as home schooling efforts aggregate locally into units of more than one family. God knows what happens beyond secondary ed. The big universities, both public and private, may not be salvageable. And the activity of higher ed itself may engender huge resentment by those foreclosed from it. But anyone who learns to do long division and write a coherent paragraph will be at a great advantage -- and, in any case, will probably out-perform today's average college graduate. One thing for sure: teaching children is not liable to become an obsolete line-of-work, as compared to public relations and sports marketing. Lots to do here, and lots to think about. Get busy, future teachers of America.

9. We have to reorganize the medical system. The current skein of intertwined rackets based on endless Ponzi buck passing scams will not survive the discontinuities to come. We will probably have to return to a model of service much closer to what used to be called "doctoring." Medical training may also have to change as the big universities run into trouble functioning. Doctors of the 21st century will certainly drive fewer German cars, and there will be fewer opportunities in the cosmetic surgery field. Let's hope that we don't slide so far back that we forget the germ theory of disease, or the need to wash our hands, or the fundamentals of pharmaceutical science. Lots to do here for the unsqueamish.

10. Life in the USA will have to become much more local, and virtually all the activities of everyday life will have to be re-scaled. You can state categorically that any enterprise now supersized is likely to fail -- everything from the federal government to big corporations to huge institutions. If you can find a way to do something practical and useful on a smaller scale than it is currently being done, you are likely to have food in your cupboard and people who esteem you. An entire social infrastructure of voluntary associations, co-opted by the narcotic of television, needs to be reconstructed. Local institutions for care of the helpless will have to be organized. Local politics will be much more meaningful as state governments and federal agencies slide into complete impotence. Lots of jobs here for local heroes.

So, that's the task list for now. Forgive me if I left things out. Quit wishing and start doing. The best way to feel hopeful about the future is to get off your ass and demonstrate to yourself that you are a capable, competent individual resolutely able to face new circumstances.

Shades of Grey

Enjoyed the following article by David Vogel:

When do 'good' firms go 'bad'?
Ranking corporations by ethics is popular, but telling the good guys from the bad is not clear-cut.
By David Vogel, DAVID VOGEL teaches business ethics at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and is the author of "The Market for Virtue: The Potential and Limits of Corporate Social Responsibility."
February 13, 2007

SUSTAINABLE FIRMS. Green businesses. Socially responsible corporations. A growing number of magazines, activist groups and websites publish such lists, suggesting that one can distinguish the good companies from the bad.

The claim that such distinctions are possible is likewise central to ethical mutual funds, indexes and stock rating services that recommend "responsible" investing — with some even asserting that "better" firms have superior financial performance.

But corporate social responsibility isn't such a clear-cut matter. People are rarely consistent in their ethical behaviors, as numerous psychological studies have shown. An individual can cheat on his spouse and file an honest income tax return, or be a model employee and an irresponsible parent. Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were ruthless businessmen yet also generous philanthropists — a category in which some also place Bill Gates. Interestingly, the work of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — criticized in The Times recently for "irresponsible" investing — reflected so well on Microsoft that the company topped the Wall Street Journal's Reputation Quotient survey.

So if it is difficult to judge the overall ethics of an individual, it is certainly more so in the case of complex business organizations. Few firms widely regarded as socially responsible consistently exhibit ethical behaviors, while even the most criticized are not without virtues. The more closely one looks, the harder the determination gets.

Consider, for example, British Petroleum — long entrenched in the pantheon of corporate responsibility because of its leadership on the issue of global climate change. Yet after a major oil leak last year, it was revealed that BP had not maintained its pipelines in Alaska. Corporate cost-cutting also contributed to a 2005 oil refinery explosion in Texas that resulted in 15 deaths and 180 injuries. How, then, should we rank BP's overall environmental record?

Another icon of corporate responsibility is American Apparel. This firm has been widely praised for manufacturing all of its products in the United States and for the high wages and other benefits it provides employees at its Los Angeles factory. Yet its marketing uses images of women that border on soft pornography, and its founder and chief executive has been repeatedly accused of sexual harassment. On balance, is American Apparel a virtuous firm?

Merck has been widely and appropriately applauded for its decision to develop, produce and distribute without charge the drug Mectizan, which prevents river blindness. Since 1987, Merck has distributed more than 250 million doses, and its programs currently reach 40 million patients a year. Yet this same pharmaceutical firm aggressively marketed the anti-pain drug Vioxx, which increased the risks of heart attacks and strokes. In measuring Merck's overall corporate virtue, how should we assess the millions of individuals saved from river blindness against the firm's belated response to the health risks of its highly profitable, bestselling drug?

On the other hand, consider Altria, which owns Philip Morris. It's shunned by virtually all ethical funds because it makes cigarettes, a product that is inherently harmful. Yet Philip Morris has long been a generous contributor to the arts as well as to the Congressional Black Caucus. Tobacco is still grown primarily on family farms, many of which are minority owned.

Wal-Mart, another corporate villain, is widely condemned for its low wages and unwillingness to provide adequate healthcare coverage for its employees. Yet by using its low costs to lower prices, Wal-Mart is estimated to save American consumers $30 billion a year — the equivalent of a gift of $270 to every family in the U.S. It has also embarked on a number of potentially far-reaching environmental initiatives.

No energy firm has been criticized as vehemently by environmentalists as Exxon Mobil, which refuses to acknowledge, let alone ameliorate, the risks of global climate change. Yet, in contrast to BP, since the 1979 Exxon Valdez oil spill, Exxon Mobil has had an exemplary record on both workplace safety and pollution control. And unlike Shell, another energy firm applauded for its commitment to "sustainability," its financial reporting has been a model of probity. How then should we rank Exxon Mobil's overall ethical behavior?

These examples are hardly atypical. Few "virtuous" firms are without sin, and few business "villains" have no good qualities. That does not mean we should give up comparing companies' social or environmental performance. But we shouldn't expect to find many black-hatted corporate villains or heroes on white steeds. In corporate America, it's usually shades of gray.

UN panel finds 'unequivocal' evidence for global warming

UN panel finds 'unequivocal' evidence for global warming

Interesting that this is being broadcast from the city of the vatican, cool!

From Monsters and Critics.com

Nature News
UN panel finds 'unequivocal' evidence for global warming
By DPA
Feb 2, 2007, 11:29 GMT

Paris - Human activity is unequivocably driving climate change and unless it is modified, it will cause temperatures to rise by as much as 6.4 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in a report issued Friday in Paris.

'Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global mean sea levels,' the United Nations-overseen IPCC said in a summary of the lengthy report,

The report, entitled Climate Change 2007, also known as the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), was made public after a four-day meeting of ICPP scientists in the French capital.

Eleven of the past 12 years (1995-2006) rank among the warmest years on record of global temperatures, the report noted, and concluded, 'Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.'

The report continued, 'Global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide have increased markedly as a result of human activities since 1750 and now far exceed pre- industrial values.'

The increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are primarily due to the use of fossil fuels, the report said, while those of methane and nitrous oxide were primarily due to agriculture.

'Continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates would cause further warming and induce many changes in the global climate system during the 21st century that would very likely be larger than those observed during the 20th century,' the report continued.

According to several estimates, these changes will raise global temperatures by an average of 1.1 to 6.4 degrees, depending on the scenario used by the scientists.

As a result or rising temperatures, glaciers and snow cover have decreased in both hemispheres, with glacier and ice-cap melt leading to a rise in sea levels, the report said.

In addition, 'Numerous long-term changes in climate have been observed,' the IPCC noted.

These include changes in Arctic temperatures and ice, precipitation amounts, ocean salinity, wind patterns and aspects of extreme weather, including droughts and the intensity of tropical cyclones.

Arctic temperatures increased at almost twice the global average rate in the past 100 years, the report said, while satellite data since 1978 reveal that the extent of the Arctic sea ice has shrunk by 2.7 per cent per decade on the average.

According to Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), as a result of the report, 'February 2, 2007 will be remembered as the date when the question mark was removed from the question, if human activity had anything to do with climate change.'

Steiner told reporters in Paris that the report must produce the 'shift from doubting to having to act ... Science is now unequivocal, but it is looking for an unequivocal commitment from policy-makers.'

Calling the ICPP report 'an extraordinary scientific consensus that climate change is already upon us, and that human activities are its cause,' the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) demanded, 'Governments must negotiate deeper emission cuts for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.'

The IPCC report was produced by some 600 authors from 40 countries. More than 620 expert reviewers and a large number of government reviewers also participated.

© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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