Little Green People; The Conscious Consumer; Global Stewards and Product Stewardship

BOOK RECOMMENDATION:

Rising Above Global Warming
by B. J. DeFrancesco.
ISBN-13: 9780980155501
This book is a children’s book on global warming with illustrations. Oddly, it is the first of its kind. The subject of global warming when looked at through the lens of hopelessness is a dark issue, but when the topic is dealt with by creating empowerment in the next generation, the outcome keeps most readers’ attention and develops optimism for the future. The story is about a town called Terra that has to cope with the influence of the shifting climate. Through the interactions of the characters, young readers begin to understand issues surrounding global warming and climate change. The impact of the climate change has far reaching effects that will reverberate through many successive generations and will call countless people to action in an opportunity for humanity to control their own destiny. The book introduces readers to the terminology and issues of global warming; it includes a glossary of key words and games. By sharing adult concepts with young minds, leaders of tomorrow will become better prepared to face the challenges of their day.

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What is a global steward? The Global Stewards Society believes “that humanity is endowed with a sacred responsibility to preserve, protect, and sustain the Earth’s natural systems that support all life on the planet.” Their mission is to provide support through public education, civil engagement, economic initiatives, and applied scientific research and development in order to achieve these goals.

Preserve, protect, and sustain the earth’s natural systems; that does not sound very businesslike. The truth of the matter is that conservation and efficient use of resources benefits the bottom line of any business. The problem with these three concepts is that the beneficiaries of their regulatory implementation are the future generations of humanity, and people today, generally, do not have that long of an attention span. Without preserving the earth’s natural systems, not only do we run the risk of diminishing resources, but we also put society in the precarious position of runaway demand. Without protecting the natural ecosystems, the very environment that provides our bountiful harvests that we depend upon to sustain life will continue to die off from some of our dirtiest business endeavors. Without sustainability, simply, the future seems hopeless.

So, what are the age requirements for being a global steward? To tell the truth, most children are already global stewards. It seems as though we are all born in a state that is prepared to take in everything around us and to be grateful for it. Distractions that come along with maturity convince us that destroying the environment on margin is a rational decision. In order to meet all of our needs today, we are willing to compromise being able to meet the needs of people in the future. Living outside of our societal means is insanity because this decision, in the long-run, will ultimately kill off our species, or more reasonably, kill off billions of people worldwide.

So, how does a society become centered on the principle of environmental stewardship? It starts in childhood. Education can provide an excellent foundation for individuals to base their economic decisions upon. Learning about the different ecosystems and the intricacies of the relationships between plants and animals in order for the planet to continue generating life is something that is a lifelong process. The appreciation for living things is something that needs to be instilled within children as they grow up. Then, as this generation matures and takes over the reigns of adulthood, these strands of environmental stewardship are seamlessly woven into the fabric of economics and politics.

The term global steward is becoming a description of a particular type of person that is bred into a society over the course of successive generations. The Native Americans mastered this standard of education in their societies quite successfully. To become a person who is responsible for managing someone else’s affairs, is something that most people look past in their fulfillment of individual desires and short-term gains. Why should Big Oil change evolve into renewable energy when there is still so much money to be made selling petroleum? Why should they care that the unintended consequences of their product are lowering the quality of life in terms of health and survivability for virtually every living creature on earth?

To ask manufacturers to design products that can be easily disassembled, recycled, and re-entered into the supply chain is an idea, which up until the present, was unthinkable. Most manufacturing and production systems were one way only. The electric transmission grid infrastructure, as an example, was developed to be a one-way system only; make as much electricity as possible and then ship it out to customers unconcerned about how much energy is lost along the wires along the way was the business standard. Now, we are realizing that two-way communication is better; it will allow utilities to conserve energy and ultimately use less resources.

Well, two-way communication with the living world is also better. When humanity finds out that the concentration of agricultural fertilizers in their rivers are creating dead zones in deltas, this should create a feedback loop where society begins to look at the chemicals they are spreading across the globe. When billions of tons of eWaste start piling up, and the heavy metals and industrial chemicals in them begin leaking into the groundwater supply, this should create a new production and recycling process for personal computers and other technologies. When living species on earth start dying off at unprecedented rates, this should cause humanity to rethink its foundation. What is more important to our species, the natural world or our economic system?

Most people would agree that our economic system is pretty important; it just can’t change overnight. Furthermore, to burden the American consumer with the responsibility of discarding their used furniture, appliances, and electronic equipment is unreasonable…right? It is not. Most individuals are programmed to care for their world; it is the reason we have evolved this far as a species. The problem is not that individual consumers do not care. The problem is that caring, as a business strategy, is too expensive. Look at Whole Foods. In order to eat food that is not genetically engineered, sprayed with chemicals, processed, boxed, stored for months, and then shipped, customers are required to pay more. Can consumers afford to pay more? Why does healthier food cost more? Shouldn’t food that requires more fertilizers, pesticides, manufacturing equipment, and transportation fuel cost more than locally-grown organic food? The logic of paying more for natural products is backwards at best.

So, how do you become a steward of a particular product? What are some of the responsibilities that go along with being a responsible consumer in today’s globalized marketplace? The concept of product stewardship is concerned with every aspect along the production/consumption chain, and therefore, includes many individuals working together. Product stewardship requires everyone who is involved in the entire lifespan of a particular product to take on some responsibility in order to reduce its environmental impact. Manufacturers are beginning to plan recycling and disposal costs into their products, they are redesigning their products so that they use fewer toxins, and they are making products that last longer and are more reliable. For consumers, being a product steward means learning about the concept of ‘away’. When we throw something ‘away’, it only goes somewhere else. Consumers need to begin taking a more active role in product choice and the proper disposal of their waste.

The question is the same all across the world, what do my consumer choices have to do with the health of the planet? Of course, one person’s effect will be absorbed into the mainstream of the natural world, but we are approaching 7 billion people and this means ever-increasing demands for more energy and virtual, runaway resource consumption.

Our fossil fuel consumption, as a species, is aiding in the change of the climate on the planet. Our demand for consumer products, as a species, is causing tropical deforestation and ecosystems to begin to fail all across the globe. If population continues to expand and natural resources continue to diminish, humanity is in for a narrowing funnel of sorts in the future. We are not talking about theoretical concerns here; this is reality. As we continue to lose more and more of the biological diversity on earth, new threats to human health and security will continue to be unearthed. Following the consumer model as it currently is set up will result in societal failure in the future.

Let’s look at the concept of ‘away’ a little more. The first step to becoming a global steward requires that an individual begin to see the concept of ‘away’ as a mental construct created by an irresponsible consumer society. We all do it. Most of us throw something ‘away’ after we are done using it. In fact, we are told that it is the responsible thing to do. Have you ever thought, though, about all of the products that you have consumed in your life? Depending on your age, this would be a considerably large arrangement of objects if it were to be put on display in a big field. All of the old refrigerators, old furniture, broken fans, malfunctioning computers, used carpet, old tires, motor oil, diapers, bread…now multiply that by the expanding global population and the problem begins to become apparent. The planet will not support consumerism in its current form.

Native American concepts of stewardship were taught as part of the learning cycle. Utilizing the natural world in a way that allows for it to regenerate has been the key to countless societies succeeding over the course of human history. Likewise, environmental abuse has also resulted in numerous civilizations collapsing. In the Native American belief system, protecting the ‘source of life’ is the most important responsibility human beings were given.

According to a Cherokee legend, “the first people came to the Earth from holes in the ground and they had nothing. They were starving, sick, cold, and suffering. The Earth, the plants, and the animals all saw the people suffering and took pity on them. The generous and compassionate earth and living things decided to sacrifice themselves to provide all that the people needed and end their sufferings. So it was that the first people and the Earth trusted in each other, as a mother and child throughout the phases of life. A perpetual trust that the Earth will always provide for the people, and that the people will always respect, conserve, and protect the soil, water, air, trees, plants, and animals in their service was established. The people and the planet are forever dependent upon each other and intertwined as one.”

This story shows the paradigm shift that is necessary in our global society, and more specifically, in American business. While the Cherokee choose to convey their most important lessons through the oral tradition of telling stories, the concept of dependent relationships has serious economic implications. The less respect we show the earth, the more limited resources will become; and the more limited resources become, the more the economy in general spirals out of control; the more the economy spirals out of control, the closer we come to societal collapse. Having respect for the natural world means knowing the limits of our consumer economy and adjusting our energy needs to account for increases in population. Viewing our species as a part of a living system is the key to humanity’s survival.

This call for global stewards is a generational challenge. Changing consumer impulses that have been established over a long period will take a considerable amount of time. Today, there is a growing awareness of the tremendous environmental problems facing our society, and people are beginning to awaken to dangers of our present course of action and the potential of some of the options we have for changing this course. However, as a whole, the effort has been a less than stellar performance. Most of the trends in environmentalism over the past 15 years have been short-sighted or full of arguments and lawsuits. People seem to get caught up in the thinking that we can either have jobs and a healthy economy or we can care for and protect the environment. This kind of reasoning does not connect reality to its analysis. With a minimal investment, the United States can create millions of jobs in the renewable energy sector and contribute substantially to creating a more sustainable global economic system.

Globalization has created a reality where the ideals of an interconnected planet finally have a stage to play themselves out upon. Before globalization, words like interdependence, environmental and social costs, stakeholders, or diminishing resources were just terms that fundamentally tried to describe altruistic concepts that really had no place in a modern society driven by powerful economic forces. With the advent of the digital age, people now have the ability to process information in ‘real time’ and look past their own selfish prisms. People now have the ability to organize and make measurable impacts locally, but this is just the beginning. Human beings are beginning the process of evolving back to the condition in which they were born, that is, as global stewards.

______________________web recommendation
Product Stewardship Institute
www.productstewardship.us
Product stewardship brings together all of the participants involved in the life cycle of a product. Global stewards are interested in the impacts to human health and the natural environment that result from the production, use, and end-of-life management of a given product. People involved in product stewardship cycles include manufacturers, retailers, consumers, and government officials. The product stewardship approach provides incentives to manufacturers to consider the entire life-cycle impacts of a product and its packaging, energy and materials consumption, air and water emissions, the amount of toxics in the product, worker safety, and waste disposal. Not only are manufacturers being asked to clean up their production processes but also to take increasing responsibility for the end-of-life management of the products they produce. Essentially, the objective of product stewardship is to encourage manufacturers to redesign products with fewer toxins, and to make them more durable, reusable, and recyclable, and with recycled materials.

Little Green People; The Conscious Consumer; the Price of Oil Creates a Shift in Consciousness

BOOK RECOMMENDATION:

Crash Course; Preparing for Peak Oil,
by Zachary Nowak
ISBN-13: 9788896035009

Okay, we have all heard about Hubbert’s Peak? ...the graph regarding peak oil. Traditionally the graph is bell-shaped and there is a big arrow pointing to the top of the curve saying You Are Here! Much discussion has always been had on the topic of when exactly the peak will be, but this book offers a unique peek into life after oil has started to run out. What will global societies look like? How will global economies continue to function? Will there be much social unrest? What about managing the increase in property destruction caused by weather extremes? How should a common person prepare for life in a world that is run by an increasingly more volatile commodity? This book tries to play out scenarios in the post-peak world around the topics of food distribution, energy infrastructure, and other basic services. In a world where commodities become more scarce, human suffering will have to increase simply because the planet's resources can not support the human population. This book tries to get readers to imagine as preparation for some of the possible scenarios in the years to come on the backslide of peak oil.

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For the past two decades, corporate America has been fighting the concept of climate change; first it was that global warming did not exist, and now it is that climate change is not proven to be human induced. Regardless of this fact in relation to corporate behavior, the problems associated with a changing climate have continued to develop.

It seems as though public opinion has begun to shift toward more sustainable policies. Corporate America, recently, seems to be banging the drum of renewables and efficiency. What caused the change of mindset in American consumers and corporate executive teams? Was it the increase in frequency of natural disasters, the price of oil, or just another cycle in the market’s or galaxy’s evolution?

The fact of the matter is that it was a combination of events all perfectly sequenced that created the optimal chance for the world to make the shift to more sustainable systems. Obviously, fossil fuel markets have been and will continue reacting strongly to an increase in demand, if not continuously, then at least cyclically. At the same time, globalization is connecting more and more people of similar interests who are otherwise separated by geographical distance. As all of this is going on, advancements in science and technology are coming to the forefront of economic development.

For the past ten years, most businesses have adopted a strategy of fighting most of the regulations suggested in order to improve the health of the earth’s ecosystems. While alternatives to fossil fuels were allowed a window of opportunity initially, recent developments in the world’s political and business communities prove that renewable energy is facing more trouble than just innovation challenges. Central to the sustainable movement is this shift in the public’s consciousness, and this takes time. Without a shift in the public’s mindset, there is no catalyst for business and politics to initiate their metamorphosis.

Renewable energy has been working on becoming cost competitive with fossil fuels over the course of the last two decades. Within the first ten years of the twenty-first century, innovation finally seems to be allowing renewables to catch up. As oil passed $100 per barrel, then $125, then $140, and the price of all resources continued to rise, renewables started to look like a more economically viable option for the long-term. Even if oil comes back down to $100, Americans have become aware of their most volatile of addictions.

While psychics and astronomers generally rely on cosmic explanations, most businesses won’t make decisions regarding long-term costs unless the new technology has a relatively short payback period. Today, with oil approaching $150 per barrel, renewable energy’s payback period is now equal or shorter than that of a new coal or petroleum power plant. With a carbon emission market, both coal and oil will be on their way out.

Today and into the future, business executives realize that one way to gain a competitive advantage is to get out of the fossil fuel energy market with its spikes and huge fluctuations. These ‘heart attack’ markets will become the norm as global demand outpaces supply in the coming decades and people panic and react to short-term trends along the volatile downslide.

The mere fact that the price of oil has risen so high has resulted in corporate executives taking an interest in cutting costs in the long-term. With many executives getting on the renewable bandwagon, energy conservation is beginning to make its way into business plans and marketing strategies. Common dinner discussions around average American households are being held discussing energy development and consumption. This heightened awareness by Americans regarding their own consumption is directly attributable to the price of oil.

To an environmentalist, it seems to make sense that the higher the price of oil is, the better it seems to be for the environment. I am sure the whales in the 1860s breathed a sigh of relief after whale oil became too expensive and petroleum began to replace it as the preferred energy source. In the same way, many plants and animals will breathe a sigh of relief once oil becomes too expensive to try to extract and coal too expensive to burn, though plants will probably miss the rich CO2 atmosphere.

Soaring fuel costs affect virtually every industry. High fuel prices drive up transportation costs and, therefore, tend to reverse globalization trends. With rising oil prices, the age of shipping without consequences is over. High shipping costs will over time lower global trade and, ultimately, allow a more responsible, local view of economics to settle over the planet.

All of these societal advancements like local economics, renewable energy development, cleaner air and water are all becoming possible because the price of oil is making the cost of consumption as usual too high for most Americans to afford; something has to change, and Americans are starting to evolve.

Perhaps there are countless reservoirs of oil trapped under the surface of the earth waiting for us to find them and extract them; perhaps the cosmos is playing a clever trick on us to get us to stop polluting the planet by hiding the oil while at the same time revealing renewable energy technology to us. What we have to gain from living responsibly today far outweighs the costs associated with continuing down a path that has shown signs of beginning to be able to destroy the earth’s ecosystems.

A shift in human consciousness has been under way for some time now. The shift is a term used to describe to coinciding of several exponentially larger forces interacting in alignment to create conditions conducive to conscious evolution. There are a multitude of resources on this topic from every school of religion in the world. The process generally goes slowly working its course like a meandering river over the course of successive generations, but sometimes the river's force can be channeled or an elevation drop can speed the transition of power.

Using nature to innovate product design is nothing new. This particular manufacturing strategy has always been successful. Like it or not, humanity's evolution is tied to our use of petroleum; there is simply not enough petroleum to fuel the population of the future.

As the world reached for renewable energy, the single most contributing factor to alternative fuel enterprises making it on the main stage on Wall Street is the price of oil; as the price of oil goes, so will the investment money into renewable energy. The price of oil will either usher in a century of evolution and innovation or it will mire humanity in its own waste and pollution.

There is a more natural way to meet our energy needs than by burning fossil fuels. By burning fossil fuels, human beings trap themselves into a smaller, more isolated world of scarce resources. These kinds of worlds are usually littered with war and illness, hunger and suffering.

Nature's rules of thumb, in general, are regeneration and abundance. Oil can not be regenerated on a timescale that is useful to human beings. Oil is also no longer abundant. Algae, if grown and extracted on the scale that Big Oil currently is, could meet all of our petroleum demands and clean CO2 from the air. The simple fact of the matter is that there are alternatives to fossil fuels, and humanity is at a critical moment in terms of evolutionary triggers. The next stage in the human evolution chain awaits us as we end our use of petroleum. Will we have the courage to sensitively manage our delicate interrelationships with the natural world?

Regardless of how it turns out for humanity, the natural ecosystems will continue to evolve in the direction of seeing themselves as a functioning part of a healthy planet. Is the human species ready for the challenges of their next evolution or will their addictions to money muck the whole thing up by allowing it all to get too big for its own good? One thing is for certain, the price of oil is a powerful force and holds the key to human evolution.

________________________________________________________________web recommendation
K21st-21st Century Must Have Knowledge
www.k21st.wordpress.com

There are millions of brilliant ideas being posted on the internet every day, but the problem is that they are being posted in different locations making reference difficult. K21st enters the picture and tries to bring together the community of webusers around topics such as biology, physics, energy, nanotechnology, the environment, futurism, the singularity…you get the picture. We need be curious, curious not only about that which was, and that which is but more importantly curious of that which we are becoming and that which we may or will become, individually, as a society, and as a species. Oh, did I mention one of their topics is philosophy? At K21st they believe that the future promises to be not only more fantastic than what we have imagined, but probably more interesting than what we could have believed just a few years ago.

Little Green People; The Next Generation; A Planet's Distress Call

BOOK RECOMMENDATION:

Environmental Economics & Indicators: The Little Green Data Book,
published by The World Bank.
ISBN: 9780821369678
This is a book of figures that comes out every year and provides economic, political, and environmental data upon which analysts and common citizens can draw conclusions. In it, you can find figures on all things relating to economics and the environment. It seems that professionals in many differing fields are beginning to clue in to the data presented in this book and use it in their own reports. This year, carbon dioxide emissions stemming mainly from the combustion of fossil fuels and the manufacture of cement stood out. This was true especially for industrialized countries and for quickly developing economies like China and India. To find this data is like looking for a needle in a haystack, though. The book has a section on fossil fuel use by region of the world. That particular report found that emissions have been growing faster in countries with lower GDPs, with a higher concentration of them occurring in Eastern and South Eastern Asia. The United States and Japan show very high increases in CO2 emissions also, thus throwing the environmental Kuznet’s curve into a tailspin. Rich countries, as a group, are on track to miss their 2012 Kyoto commitments. In Eastern Europe and Central Asia, emissions have decreased due to the recent recession there. There is so much data in a book like this.

The writing is on the wall; it could not be any more clear, yet the waste and pollution from our global society keeps piling up. Solid waste can now be considered a renewable resource in that it is a reliable feedstock for the foreseeable future; the marine ecosystem is on the verge of collapse from overfishing and CO2 poisoning; the world’s glaciers are melting and the polar ice caps are breaking apart; an unprecedented variety of natural disasters seems like a perennial occurrence; we are in the midst of an accelerating mass extinction event. Every ecosystem in every corner of the globe is using all of its faculties to communicate to the human race the need for them to change their economic policies and their consumptive ways.

The fact that solid waste is a renewable resource is a comically ironic concept, but when you realize that solid waste also has the potential to be converted into electricity through waste-to-energy processes, the potential for turning trash into cash becomes a realistic scenario. After landfills are equipped with waste-to-energy facilities, success in the world’s waste industry depends upon generating waste. There are some hypotheses out there that say if we develop waste-to-energy, theoretically, conservation practices will decrease. Reality, most probably, will be more in line with what we are doing today.

In terms of air pollution from burning coal to generate electricity, America and China are the worst. Coal is not only dirty to burn, but it is also dirty to get. Mining practices surrounding extracting coal devastate the environment where it is located. The idea of sloughing off hilltops into valleys below so as to get at the sedimentary layers of coal located below the surface, though, seems less destructive than burning it. The pollution from burning it is causing the largest ecosystem on the planet, the ocean, to begin to show sign of distress. Now, coal advocates want to bury the pollution underground; didn’t that stuff poison the air and the ocean? Wouldn’t it poison the soil and the ground water?

Speaking of the land, agriculture has been on the rise since the dawn of civilization. The problem we are encountering today is a result from an excessive prolonged use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. By spreading these substances across the planet, we are killing the very life that supports us. As rainwater washes the farmland, chemical fertilizers and pesticides enter into the natural drainage systems. The toxins are carried and concentrated in to their resting places, the river deltas of the world. Here, they kill off plants and animals with no discrimination.

Some oil executives are content to run all of the oil reserves on the planet dry even though air pollution from burning it causes health problems and is at least partly responsible for melting glaciers and melting ice caps. For the time being, oil executives have their attention directed at price, and environmental regulations seem to have fallen by the wayside. Drill, drill, drill is the slogan.

In the present, oil pays out handsome consistent multiple billion dollar quarterly profits. Pressure to drill for more oil seems to generating along a crescendo curve. In the meantime, the environmental future of the planet gets dimmer for the younger generations like a function heading toward zero. The younger generations are generally more hopeful and, therefore, more innovative. The older generations are better funded.

The assault on the environment by the oil industry stands out in many ways, most prominently in regards to their infringement upon basic human rights of people all over the globe. The effects of the oil industry’s disregard for an individual’s basic right to clean air, clean oceans, and a federal land system that has room for wilderness. The current energy policy that the United States employs is threatening the entire global population for several succeeding future generations. Some day, these people should be held responsible for their crimes against humanity.

If an individual conducted the same actions as the coal, fertilizer, or oil industry has as a whole over the duration of their history, they would most likely be in jail, or more probably, if they were convicted of some of the more grotesque offences, put to death. Oil spills alter the ecosystem where they occur, burning coal poisons the air and causes respiratory disease and slower cognition in people who live near the power plants, nuclear waste is radioactive and in cases where it is not has to be stored underground, and chemical fertilizers are poisoning our fresh water sources like never before creating dead zones at the mouths of most major rivers. An individual who would poison the water, air, or land on a similar scale to what fossil fuel firms have would be considered a societal deviant and would be dealt with harshly, more in line with criminal prosecution. Why then do we allow our corporate executives to conduct business in ways contrary to what we allow individuals? Why would we permit the destruction of our most valuable resource for successive generations?

In the case of spills, oil executives have asserted their corporate rights, and since they have always been protected from personal liability to an extant, and their responsibilities have been minimal in terms of dollar amounts spent on environmental protection and clean-up, the general public will continue to suffer downgrades in their quality of life while fossil fuel, and perhaps nuclear supporters become more wealthy.

It is easy to find a picture of an oil spill from every corner of the globe. It is just as easy to look up the effects of mining for coal and of burning it. Likewise, the public can observe the effects of fertilizers in delta regions and those of excessive levels of CO2 in the world’s oceans. Individually, some of these images can look worse than others, but what hurts all of the life on earth is the accumulative nature of our actions. All of the spills put together over time, all of the fertilizers we spray off of the world’s farmland, all of the coal that we burn, these have a substantially negative effect on living creatures and plants on earth. It will take a long time for our ecosystems to begin to recover, if that is something that we begin working toward.

It is becoming obvious to the average global citizen that the planet is entering a state of distress. What we do about that is up to us. Energy service providers will make the switch to renewable energy sources only if the public demands and ultimately funds the expensive cross-over of technology and operating systems. In the meantime, all life on earth continues to cry out, hoping that we hear the desperation in its voice. It is we, the little green people who are the ones that ultimately will hear this call; the call of a new generation of optimists who take over the reigns of politics and economics and drive this world toward sustainability is this latest phase of our global civilization’s last best chance for survival.

Business and making money was invented as a way to make one’s life better over the long-term. In today’s world where money is made at the expense of our basic resources, water/air/land, it seems as though something has gone horribly wrong with the design of our economic system. How can life be better in a world where everything is polluted and toxic, or where only the rich can afford a clean environment? How can this possibly be better over the long-term?

We now live in a world of serious environmental consequences thrust upon us by the governments and businesses of the world over the entire course of history. Exploiting people and the environment in pursuit of economic profits has been a part of every society, but not until the late twentieth-century, did global population reach a tipping point. The accumulative effects of the planet’s growing global population together with the spread of capitalist economic principles has had a predominantly negative impact on the environment in virtually every square mile on the earth. Our species is in danger of tipping the natural ecosystems of world out of balance. What shall we do then…try to survive? How is that better in the long-term? Shouldn’t our money be used to fund a world that is worth living in?

There are many choices to make in the next few decades. Human civilization has evolved over the course of the last 10,000 years or so and will continue to do so after us. This global society we have created can only survive through sustainable practices. There are just too many people and too much waste that will be produced if we do not close our manufacturing loops so that they approach the point where they are producing zero waste…zero waste is sustainable!

Many civilizations have come and gone over the course of human history, and likewise, this one too will fade into dust. We are, however, being offered an opportunity to give our economic engine an upgrade and continue running this classic for another hundred years or so. Hopefully, we will seize the opportunity we are being offered; life ‘as we know it’ depends on it.

_______________________web recommendation
World Population Awareness
www.overpopulation.org
The goal of this website is to preserve the environment and its natural resources for the benefit of people, families, and future generations. Unfortunately, with exploding population growth, excessive consumption is on the rise. The environment is in trouble and the sustainability of the people of our planet is threatened. The solutions seem simple, empower families to have fewer children, have people develop simpler lifestyles, tax pollution of any kind, and set up government programs to enable these things to happen. Overpopulation is a serious problem getting worse every year. If we continue at the current rate, population will double to over 11 billion by 2035. Overpopulation is the root of most environmental and many economic issues including timber harvesting, loss of arable land, ocean depletion, food shortages, water shortages, air pollution, water pollution, flooding, plant and animal habitat loss, global warming and immigration. We are the most powerful force on the planet.

Little Green People; The Next Generation; Environmental Policy and Energy Choice

BOOK RECOMMENDATION:

Environmental Policy Analysis: Learning from the Past for the Future,
25 Years of Research
by Peter Knoepfel
ISBN: 3540731482
This book is relevant with respect to many of the issues being discussed concerning the environment in political arenas across the globe today. Environmental policies in America continue to develop from the passage of the Wilderness Act in 1964, to the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts that have been endlessly updated since their creation and bogged down with litigation regarding corporate rights and conservation policies, to here, in the beginning of the twenty-first century, we are evolving these initial environmental policies through a series of Global Climate Policy Acts. Traditionally, policies have taken the form of going through an evaluation period where they are monitored while a small-scale implementation period ensues where improvements can be made upon the policy. The government aids corporations in adjusting to the new regulations through credits, subsidies, or attractive financing. While fossil fuels have enjoyed this position in the past, renewable energy technologies are starting to claim government funds. This book also looks at the concept of property rights at the local level and makes claims that are in line with sustainable resource extraction. The political scientists who produced this work, through their study of the evolution of policy over the past 25 years have presented the public with poignant lessons at a time when the current leaders of world are struggling to draft history’s first truly global treaty in an effort to protect the planet’s ecosystems.

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How do governmental policies affect the environment? More specifically, how do governmental policies affect corporate behavior? Some would argue that the hand of government does not have a role to play in regulating business. Of course, this is logical and irrational at the same time. Human behavior shows a tendency for the stronger to prey upon the weaker; there are countless examples in business of this type of behavior. Some say that the Big Leagues of business have no room for sympathy or sensitivity, but corporate behavior in certain instances crosses a line of acceptability with regard to ethics, specifically in relation to environmental degradation. The recent collapse of the mortgage financial giants shows that hyperactive short-term gains neglect a higher sense of responsibility to society. Cashing-out by dumping debt, to the detriment of society in general, leaves capitalism weaker. Like sporting events, professional business games need a referee to make the game more fair and enjoyable for those who wish to participate in it; and the way environmentalism works is simple, the more people who participate, the more the environment benefits.

So, if we accept that the government is going to regulate business so that the environment will benefit, we need to start asking what policies we can initiate that will have the potential to leave the natural world in a better state than it is currently in. How can we alleviate some of the distress that that the earth is currently experiencing? Without regulation of any kind, human behavior generally will take individual gains usually at the expense of the environment. It was true in colonial America and it is true today, but we do not have to go so far back into history to find an example; let’s take a moment and look at a current regional example in Mexico regarding industrialization without regulations and the environmental degradation that ensued.

Oftentimes over the course of the last eight years, the American government has held up their relations with Mexico as a free trade success story. The talk has been about how an 'open borders' approach has allowed Mexico and America’s respective gross domestic product figures to rise. Free trade is good for business, right?

It might be good for business in the short-term, but we are finding out that free trade, without regulation in the form of rules of environmental conduct, is not sustainable past the short-term. In the long-term, Mexico is left with a degraded environment and mountains of debt and lawsuits regarding the clean-up and pollution, and America is left with millions of environmental refugees and a broader consumptive appetite. Of course, this story weaves into it all of the intricacies of the NAFTA agreement with all of its advocates and critics, but the simple, gross fact of the matter is that, according to the most reliable professional figures, almost every environmental problem in Mexico has worsened since the late eighties when North American trade opened up new markets to Mexico.

What caused these problems in Mexico? Why did the environment in Mexico get so ravaged by industrial corporations? Surely, in the past, America and Europe have been able to freely set up models of corporate industrialization. Today, many countries in the world are in the process of implementing their industrial age at a time when the world is already full of emission litigation and climate regulations.

It is surprising to learn how directly applicable Kuznet’s Environmental Curve is when it is used to analyze this example from Mexico. As Mexico continued liberalizing its trade policies, their ecological communities began dirtying and dying. During this time, municipal solid waste, air pollution, water contamination, and soil erosion all rose significantly. The cost of cleaning up Mexico’s environment after their industrialization period was in the range of billions per year. China’s figures dwarf those from Mexico; India is not far behind China in terms of pollution; the United States continues along with business as usual in the face of domestic consumption figures and apparent culpability for contributing to the inducement of climate change.

According to Kuznet’s curve, the rising incomes spawned by industrialization were supposed to offset environmental contamination much more quickly than is actually happening in reality. In regards to many of America’s laws pertaining to environmental contamination, corporate legal teams have portions of the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act of the 1970s locked up in litigation so as to prolong the free ride they have enjoyed since the beginning of this country in terms of using the environment as a dumping ground. This legal stalling is the preferred strategy of business litigation; meanwhile, business grows unsustainably, and the environment goes deeper into distress. It is only after the poisoning of the environment reaches a certain level that it becomes necessary to start cleaning up the mess because human health begins to falter, and long-term costs start to eat into short-term gains. The economic costs associated with cleaning up the environment in Mexico keeps a ceiling on the overall economic growth of the country; we won’t even delve into the health issues in Mexico here or into the topic of environmental refugees for that matter.

The North American Free Trade Agreement, NAFTA, without environmental standards attached to it, has significant problems regarding sustainability. In this example, the Mexican government cut environmental protection as they increased favorable industrialization policy, and the U.S. was more than happy to take advantage of the situation. It seems as though the Kuznet’s curve must be adjusted in this example to take into account some of the less than desirable human traits that come to the foreground during times of limited resources. Perhaps, wealthy societies will figure out a way to export environmental degradation. Perhaps progressive societies, instead of adopting environmental policies, will choose to stand idle and not pass environmental legislation so as to keep wealth concentrated. Perhaps, we will destroy even more ecosystems in a panic to save the planet. Perhaps Kuznet was right, though, and over the long-term our society will realize the importance of keeping our air, water, and soil clean.

In terms of environmental sustainability AND hyperactive industrial growth, the green energy sector is starting to show its promising potential. Green power can come from many different renewable sources, and many of these sources are actual energy choices that consumers have today; many of us already burn a 10% blend of ethanol in our cars, solar panels are becoming common on more and more homes, electric cars are closer to reality than they have ever been before, many utility companies are realizing the long-term cost saving from building wind farms, superconducting wire and smart grids are replacing the old electrical transmission system, to name just a few.

Of course, even renewable sources year after year have an effect on the environment; some are less dependable in terms of intermittency than others, while some are more environmentally damaging than others. The U. S. Department of Energy advocates energy efficiency, wind, solar, and geothermal power as our best sources of power domestically. Other sources, like some forms of ethanol and hydrogen, are less desirable at the moment because according to experts, they are either unsustainable or too expensive, respectively, at the moment. The point being made here is that we have energy choices and the availability of more choices in the future comes directly from sustainable government energy policies.

In relation specifically to renewable energy choices and sustainability, public policy is a long way behind public opinion. There seems to be an increasing demand for environmental sensitivity, and many innovative technologies are on their way to market to meet that demand. Here, in the United States, our energy policy still supports oil and coal with price supports. What this means, essentially, is that people are demanding renewable energy sources, but their government is not building the infrastructure to meet that demand. Instead, the United States government is still tinkering with record-breaking oil executive pay while they neglect their obligation to even figure out how they will play catch-up to the rest of the world in terms of energy development later on.

In many cases, consumers have taken the power of energy choice into their own hands, and those that can afford it, are paying higher energy prices in order to heat their homes and meet their power needs with a clean conscience. In some cases like Massachusetts and California, States have taken the issue of environmental policy and energy choice into their own hands and passed comprehensive legislation that is more in line with the growing environmental standards across the globe. In these states, the prices of different renewable energy technologies have become competitive or only slightly higher than traditional fossil fuels. This cost parity gives renewable energy a boost, but as long as renewable energy technology remains such a small share of the entire energy market, it will not be economically competitive. Economies of scale tend to bring down production costs and increase efficiency overall when they are specifically applied to energy production.

So, consumers are searching for alternative energy sources, and the Environmental Protection Agency, while stalemating the American public with respect to greenhouse gasses, has created the Power Profiler in order to assist customers with finding renewable sources of energy in their area. Using a zip code, customers can find out about the fuel mix used by the local utilities in their area to generate energy. They can also compare the air emission rates from electrical power generation and compare the rates from their local area to national averages. Some people are surprised to see that coal and nuclear are the predominant fuel in their area. Other people are surprised to find out that renewable sources are so insignificant in overall power generation. As the demand for renewable energy rises, the government and the business world will have to submit to the general public’s demands for a cleaner environment; this is a democracy after all, isn’t it?


________________________________________web recommendation
NRDC, Natural Resources Defense Council
www.nrdc.org
NRDC is an environmental action organization with 1.2 million members. NRDC was founded in 1970 by a group of law students and attorneys at the forefront of the environmental movement. NRDC lawyers helped write some of America's bedrock environmental laws. Today, they have a staff of more than 300 lawyers, scientists, and policy experts and are well respected in media. NRDC is currently working at curbing global warming, getting toxic chemicals out of the environment, moving America beyond oil, reviving our oceans, saving wildlife and wild places, and helping China go green.

Little Green People: The Next Generation; Changing People's Thinking

BOOK RECOMMENDATION:

Environmental Sustainability; A Consumption Approach
by Raghbendra & Murthy.
ISBN: 978-0-415-36346-4.

This book uses its pages to explain the idea of sustainable consumption. It then tries to apply some of the principles of the sustainability campaign in its approach to globalization. It goes on to try to explain the economic forces behind the apparent environmental degradation going on globally. The book addresses some of the main problems proposed by a spin off from the original Kuznets curve; the Environmental Kuznet's Curve states that rapid economic growth in many developing countries should be environmentally unsustainable, for the world’s ecosystems are already under considerable stress and more countries industrializing will inevitably cause more strain on the environment and ultimately push climate change past the tipping point. Only after the wealth from an industrial age is spread throughout the public, Kuznet's Curve suggests, only then do environmental regulations show up in public concerns. At a time when India and China, the world’s two most populous countries, are industrializing at a rapid pace, the ideas presented in this book are directly applicable to today’s world. The book emphasizes the importance of addressing the cause of environmental degradation and tries to relate this measure to economic achievement; in other words, by making a cost associated with pollution and by placing a price on clean air, water, land, and the living biosphere, the author of this book argues, the environmental degradation will begin to subside. The author proposes the revolutionary claim here that environmental protection is a sign of economic achievement; now how is that? … the basic explanation is that until food, shelter, and educational needs are met, environmental protections do not fall on the economic or political radars of developing nations. The idea of fundamentally changing the notion of economic achievement to be in line with the design of environmentally sustainable communities is central to the environmental movement's goals.

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Figuring environmental costs into a business strategy twenty years ago would have resulted in being labeled crazy or from another world, but those ‘cavemen' environmentalists are the people who did the groundwork; that is, they are the ones who went out changing people’s thinking around the ideas of consumption and sustainability, getting the public ready for policy and industry changes heading toward us here in the future. Without this initial movement raising the public’s awareness of issues regarding the environment, perhaps, just maybe, the world would not have been ready for its very own economic metamorphosis.

Now, economists have picked up on the approaching tsunami of public sentiment and are feverishly studying charts and graphs trying to draw conclusions about the relationship between the industrialization of a country, the ensuing wealth, and the environmental measures undertaken to repair damage from the initial industrialization.
The data they are studying are what is known as the Environmental Kuznet’s Curve. The EKC implies that some environmental degradation is expected along a country's economic development path, especially during the initial years of industrialization. It also suggests that when a country earns enough wealth, its own economic growth helps to undo some of the damage done in earlier years of industrialization so as to keep environmental feedstocks in plentiful conditions.

The key point that economists are studying here is the relationship between economic growth and the state of the environment. They are trying to accumulate data to support the relationship between a government’s policies regarding natural resources, the subsidies they pay out, their trade policy, and they are trying to relate all of these regulations to an environmental resource limit. Should the field of Economics be concerned with the state of the environment? How much money will a company be willing to pay out to secure the future of their business’ own particular feedstock? As economics reaches the limits of global demand and environmental supply, there seems to be reason to expect even more interest from the public in the area of sustainable business.

The EKC does not definitively conclude that improving the environment depends primarily on profits and the policies of major institutions during an industrial age. Rather, in a post-industrial society, major improvements in environmental quality tend to depend more upon governmental policies regarding a free competitive market. Governmental policies means more subsidies. In the past, more subsidies have been paid in the form of pollution exemptions than for industry innovation. This is exactly the thinking that needs to be reversed. More money should be going into encouraging innovation than goes for providing exemptions to polluters.

In a free market place, where carbon markets are allowed to naturally develop, a cost will be established regarding environmental pollution or degradation. This new natural cost is what will then ripple through economic markets helping free markets become more fair for more businesses; more business with environmental costs figured into the ethics of conduct is better is better for the environment, therefore, the new value-based economics can provide the same excessive financial gains and is still good for the environment.

Economics is good for the environment. The interaction most people ascribe to the relationship between economics and the environment is usually contrary in nature. Putting aside the contrary components of the argument, what the EKC does actually get at is the point that for many of the world’s industrialized nations, the public is already on the back of the bell curve in terms of environmental degradation. Innovation, today, is centered around a seamless blend into natural components; our society is being asked to evolve into one that utilizes sustainable principles.

The excitement surrounding this new relationship where the field of economics is used to meet consumer demand by upholding environmental principles and policies that help reduce the human footprint and sustain the living systems of the planet is self-generating. It is not hard at all imagining a world where clean renewables are the preferred method of energy development by all of the nations of the world in the future.

Environmentalists and economists are talking together to see if there is a more mutually beneficial relationship that can be arranged between the two schools of thought that they represent. According to the EKC, this collaboration is a positive advancement in a society’s development. While the EKC concludes that environmental regulations come after industrialization, and this is true on a historical timeline, it seems as though governmental policy is currently subsidizing self-interest, and they are not enacting the environmental regulations that they are entrusted to initiate. America has already gone through its industrial age; is there any room for stubbornness in the EKC?

Environmental economics sets the stage with a new rulebook, though. The new trend in business seems to be toward energy efficiency and resource sustainability. Banks are beginning to look to renewables as a way of defining long term industrial investment loan guarantees; many executive do not realize that they have a limited amount of time left to get ahead of the curve regarding emission markets. Globally, humanity is reaching a limit in terms of its consumptive habits.

At no other time in the world’s history has the relationship between industrialization and environmental degradation been so important. With close to one-third of the world’s population living in a country going through an industrial period, the earth is getting dirtier fast. China and India, the two population giants of the world, are entering the world’s stage and producing more waste and emissions than they have in the past. The world is reaching its toxic limit.

Perhaps somewhere in this relationship is the answer that will push humans past the tipping point, and headed in the direction of a sustainable future. The relationship between profits and perspective is an important one to consider. Can the world afford to care for the environment? Can we afford not to? When natural disasters happen close to home, they tend to have life changing effects. When is the next one going to happen in a neighborhood near you? No harm meant, but what does it take to make a society decide to change something as fundamental as energy production.

For now, just talking about the relationship between the environment and economics is a step in the right direction. Over the course of the next century, though, a smart person wagering on human evolution would bet on a more sustainable way of doing business establishing itself through the present into the future. If the last fifteen years of global climate fluctuations are any indication of the effects that ignoring the problem will have, then people on into the future will have to change in the midst of a disaster, simply as a matter of survival.

It does not seem crazy to want to protect our society against plausible scenarios in the future. Environmentalism is rooted in this world; there is nothing alien about hijacking economics in order to serve humanity’s desire to protect themselves from disaster. It is a matter of survival. If that is too dramatic for you, then it is a matter of quality of life, and improving that will be an economic achievement in its own right.

What is most important here is the relationship between what we value and what we throw away. We are currently working through a society’s thinking on that relationship and trying to establish the right cost structures to place upon the market place. It seems as though public opinion is already beginning to change, and we are as close as ever to the creation of a sustainable form of economics; a form where clean air, water, and soil, as well as a living diverse ecosystem are given a fair market price and polluting practices are assessed their proper market cost.

Little Green People; The Next Generation; Preserving Biodiversity

BOOK RECOMMENDATION:

Sustaining Life; How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity,
by Chivian and Bernstein
ISBN: 9780195175097
The diversity of life on earth is intimately tied to the health of human beings living on it. Of course, the public has read the stories in the news about the disappearance of species on earth at an increasingly alarming rate. Seems like the arctic, the rainforest, and ocean currents (to name a few) are all changing due to human activity. As these ecosystems fail, so do the animal communities that depend on them. Of course, the public is aware of the consequences of continuing down the path of more ecosystems collapsing. This book puts the decision to preserve natural biodiversity in the hands of its reader by showing how human health and the health of the global ecosystem are connected. This book contains case studies from different biota that document advances in medicine, nanotechnology, energy, and in general human health. In the twenty-first century, preserving biodiversity will continue to remain an important issue.

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Talking about the importance of biodiversity seems like a no-brainer, a ‘duh’ moment. Why would we attempt to kill off the natural systems that support our existence? The question we should be asking ourselves is, through what method would the most ecosystems benefit from my individual support?

The global economy runs the world, and so, the economic engines of the world would be the most powerful forces that environmentalists might use to permanently protect the parts of the planet that sustain life by putting price tags on the the most valued resources on earth...clean air, water, and land. The consumer has become more powerful than the voter. Seems like capitalism has slowly replaced democracy as the preferred method of government in the world. All those in favor of democracy or capitalism?...All those opposed?...

Now that it is settled that democracy and capitalism are here to stay, it is time to put global markets to the task of preserving biodiversity and protecting ecosystems from total collapse by generating ingenuity in how to harvest, manufacture, and consume energy more efficiently. To do this we need a price tag on contaminating clean water, land, and air. Why do we need a price tag? Without any costs associated with pollution, our most valuable resources have become virtual dumping grounds for all sorts of waste.

Why do we need to protect biodiversity? How is biodiversity connected to business cycles? What generates ingenuity? How is innovation tied to business? What do politics have to do with biodiversity? If we do not put a cost on defiling the environment, there is nothing set up in America's current economic structure, except for some magical wand from an invisible hand, that will keep businesses from exploiting the free resource.

In order to understand biodiversity more thoroughly, consider multiculturalism and globalization. Here, in the beginning of the twenty-first century, it has become a societal norm to value cultural diversity. Multicultural events are seen as opportunities to broaden an individual’s perspective and to consider another’s point of view. We are currently, as a society, in the process of putting firmly in place in American culture the idea that more similarities exist between cultures than ideas, principles, or interests that separate them. In the same way, environmental responsibility is making its way into the American psyche. Much like multiculturalism, environmental principles will become dominant in economics and politics in the coming future.

Using the civil rights movement of the past half-century as a model, it is not too far of a leap to land in a world where plants and animals are respected more than is currently being shown in our business practices. Animals, in general today, are not respected very much; their plant cousins are disrespected even more. These disrespectful acts, collectively, are driving world markets more and more, over the long-term, into distress. This is because as the population of world continues to expand exponentially, so do the amount of resources needed to satiate human desires. Forests can be harvested, crops grown, energy developed, and businesses can generate wealth for years into the future by adopting strategies that are more in line with energy efficient policies and natural systems in general. By the middle of the twenty-first century, the world will have evolved past fossil fuels out of necessity.

This futuristic world of ‘living-kingdom-equality’, contrary to popular opinion, is not without its economic benefits. More and more businesses are coming to find out that protecting the environment from extraction, manufacturing, and transportation impacts saves them money in the long term. It would be nice if businesses could limit atmospheric pollution on their own, but it seems as though regulation of emissions in some form is coming. The establishment of a carbon market in America will be the sign of the beginning of the ‘green revolution’ that is being talked about in the media.

The birth of Americas renewable industry will provide untold wealth to a new generation of Americans in the form of investment and in new jobs. Restoring the natural world to be more in balance with human existence has the potential to restore the cracking American psyche. Energy efficiency and renewable energy is nearing its tipping point; that is, we have reached the point at which the cost of the environmental degradation from the fossil fuel industry is creating market conditions in the present that are conducive to renewable energy development. Americans, at the beginning of the twenty-first century are starting to show signs of evolution; an evolution that leans toward respecting diversity in general.

The flood of innovation surrounding renewable energy technology is dependent solely upon the diversity of the living species on the planet. By studying the natural world, whether it is insects or photosynthesis, human beings can improve upon the democratic and capitalistic societies that they have set up. All of the answers to today’s most complex questions are preserved in the biodiversity of the planet; by destroying biodiversity, we are destroying hope.

Whether the resource is extracted directly from nature or nature’s processes are reproduced on the nanoscale, the planet’s natural biodiversity is an integral component of every product manufactured. Business depends upon an abundance of natural resources to maintain its yearly forecasts of growth. Innovators depend upon the sheer volume of inspiration that nature affords its viewers. It only makes sense that these corporate conglomerates would seek to protect the very source of all of their feedstock and virtually almost every innovation ever made across every industry.

Each living creature has a specific role in helping to keep ecosystems functioning.

There are many different approaches that people can take toward preserving biodiversity. The argument that biodiversity is important to ensure new medications is somewhat limited in scope. Another pro-biodiversity argument is one that emphasizes the value of maintaining healthy ecosystems for recreations like hiking or sightseeing, although this reason is even more self-centered in scope. Biodiversity, by its definition, requires a multitude of forms for survival.

We all end up using any one of these kinds of arguments when talking about how and why to preserve the earth’s biodiversity. We all do not want to have to watch the polar bears die, but the simple fact of the matter is that our lifestyle is killing them. The more discussions that are had about the importance of maintaining healthy ecosystems like the arctic and the importance of species migration, the more species will be protected. Defending biodiversity is a valuable learning tool for people of any age.

Most recently, the term environmental economics has been created to define a shift in traditional economic theory. Under this new heading, environmental and social costs are figured into the bottom line as much as financial figures. Under the branch of environmental economics, recycling, waste disposal, and energy efficiency are incorporated into the business model. Companies that follow this kind of business model are invested in protecting biodiversity because they have realized that their inspiration and innovation, as well as their resources come directly from nature…either that or it is good for public relations and marketing.

Without the natural world and its diversity, virtually every business would be left without the resources that produce growth. Take for example the bees; without bees, a lot of U.S. agriculture does not reproduce on the scale we are used to. Harvests drop, commodity prices rise, and there is a food shortage. It seems like common sense to look into why certain bees went into distress last year. Or look at ants and the efficiency they employ in their transportation systems; and don’t forget the importance of photosynthesis…if we could just figure out how to get the ‘H’ away from the H2O like plants do so easily every day. Of course, we can not protect every bee or ant or plant, but we can use our industrial manufacturing facilities to produce widgets that are more in line with the principles of survival. Protecting the web of life within our ecosystems is central to our civilization’s survival.

Environmental economics has the potential to offer global markets a prolonged period of economic growth. Manufacturing renewable energy technology, retrofitting cities’ infrastructure, educating an entirely new workforce, and then making the utility-scale shift in power generation to renewable energy will take decades. The amount of resources and the number of jobs in the future that will be put into renewable and sustainable business practices is unimaginable. It is the evolution of industry; and in the future, innovation will continue to come from the biological diversity on this planet.

________________________________________________web recommendation
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.
www.oecd.org
The OECD brings together the governments of countries committed to democracy and the market economy from around the world to:
• Support sustainable economic growth
• Boost employment
• Raise living standards
• Maintain financial stability
• Assist other countries' economic development
• Contribute to growth in world trade
The OECD also shares expertise and exchanges views with more than 100 other countries and economies, from Brazil, China, and Russia to the least developed countries in Africa.