Tag Archives: Sustainability

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: IT IS TIME TO CUT THROUGH THE RHETORIC SURROUNDING SUSTAINABILITY.

06 Friday Oct 2017

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( A Ten minute read:  That could change the world and all of us that live on it.)

For millions, 2017 is a year of unrelenting misery and fear, as governments and armed groups abused human rights in a multitude of ways.

Large numbers of people continued to flee conflict and repression in many regions of the world.

While billions of dollars are spent every year by the world’s space agencies, but does this money bring us any benefit, or should we pull the plug and spend it elsewhere?

Canada: $488 million, India: $1.1 billion, China: $1.3 billion, Italy: $1.8 billion, Germany: $2 billion, Japan: $2.4 billion, France: $2.5 billion, Europe: $5.5 billion Russia: over $7.7 billion, United States: $18 billion.Countries Who Spend The Most On Space Exploration

Some of these figures may seem mind-blowing when you take a pragmatic look at the current state of the global.

The standard list of threats/factors affecting the globe is getting bigger and bigger not smaller and smaller. 

Why?

I suppose the simple answer is that us humans are incapable of acting as one, and if we do manage to do so its only in small groups in the short-term. For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.

Combine this with conflicting interests and you have a concoction of good doers all competing for limited funds to address what ever.

The problem is man is said to have evolved from monkeys and apes…but we still have monkeys and apes.

Take for instance Climate change which is now emerged as one of the most serious threats impacting on universal values.

With global environmental changes locked into our future you would think as intelligent humans we would act as one to avoid the obvious consequences.

Our best efforts to do us fall by the way side because of, not because what is obvious, but because of the costs to profit.

Hypocrisy is the Vaseline of political intercourse.

We are left with a world that is represented by what we call The United Nations.

Country names and little flags of identity rather than one unified group called humans. Perhaps if they we removed prior to passing any resolution’s that effect the Glob we might see humans acting as one.

But this will achieve nothing unless we get Capitalism to do the right thing when nobody’s watching.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of earth from space probes"

So here is a solution:

Why not impose an International legal world aid commission on all activities that produce profit for profit sake. (See previous posts)

AND.

While we are at it why not impose a 0.0005% commission on all tweets, on all smart phone inquirers, on all internet purchases, on all social media posts.

Either of the above would produce a perpetual fund of billions to tackle the coming natural disasters, the coming technology inequality, the malnutrition that is now the underlying cause of nearly half of all under-5 deaths worldwide. The list is endless.

There is no simple solution to creating a more equitable world.

The world community has accepted the need to limit the increase in the earth’s temperature to 2°C and initiate changes to achieve this objective.

This will require the world to move away from burning fossil fuels and effectively reach a stage of zero carbon emissions. This will require a radical change in the way humanity lives as we move forward.

The earth has limited resources. Also, there are limits on the renewability of some of its renewable resources. Humanity is using substantially more resources than the earth can renew. We all need to change the way we live to achieve a proper balance.

In order to face the challenges posed by these dual issues, the world has to act in unison.

TAKE TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE. ( See previous posts)

There are a number of disparities to be addressed. There is a very wide range of per-capita emissions—generally, the wealthy countries having higher per-capita emissions.

There is a perception among the emerging economies that the world has reached the current situation due to the past emissions by high emitters and that they should be willing to share a higher cost of moving to low-carbon economy.

Further, different regions will be affected differently—some may not feel the consequences; at least immediately. Such countries may not want to join the worldwide efforts in a meaningful way. Getting all countries to follow a common path will be the biggest challenge in the years to come.

Doing nothing will not be an option.

Sustainability is defined as a requirement of our generation to manage the resource base such that the average quality of life that we ensure ourselves can potentially be shared by all future generations. … Development is sustainable if it involves a non-decreasing average quality of life.

For all our sake’s we need to get a grip.

We must deal with problems on Earth first, before we can leave it.

Sustainability is not “about” the integration of ecological, social and economic issues, nor is it “about” widespread consultation nor is it “about” improving quality of life.

It’s about maintaining or sustaining something called Earth.

Sustainability must be a destination, not just a journey. 

It is worth noting that treating a sustainable state as a destination doesn’t mean that society cannot revise or refine its idea of what sustainability is at a future date.

Even with everyday destinations an initial intention to go to the fruit and veg shop doesn’t preclude a later decision to go to the bank as well or to go to the supermarket instead!

Space and the Higgs-Boson can wait, when every day, 17,000 children die before reaching their fifth birthday.

A future with no fresh water, clean air, energy and food, you can rest assured no one will remember the Internet, or artificial Intelligence.

So what price are we willing to pay for knowing that in the future, humanity can be saved because there are other planets out there capable of sustaining life?

Our priority surely is to take care of our planet before we go roaming around others.

For things that don’t matter we can please ourselves how we approach the sustainability effort (ie. as a destination, journey or both, or an issue of total disinterest!).

O! By the way if we did create a World Aid Commission there would be no need to stop any exploration. Today, both Voyager 1 and 2 are the farthest man-made objects in space.

Our message in a bottle was in the form of a gold-plated sonograph record containing compilations of music, images and greetings best representing Planet Earth, affixed on the outer surfaces of both the Voyager spacecrafts, if we are careful long before, “A billion years from now, when everything on Earth we’ve ever made has crumbled into dust, when continents have changed beyond recognition and our species is unimaginably altered or extinct, the Voyager record will speak for us.”

Carl Sagan’s declaration above without a doubt holds true, not just on the frailty of the ‘pale blue dot’ we call home, but also on the life it sustains. 

 

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It is time to give fundamental rights to the planet itself.

11 Saturday Apr 2015

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Most of today’s decision makers will be dead before the planet feels; the heavier effects of acid precipitation, global warming, ozone depletion, or widespread desertification and species loss.

Most of the young voters of today will still be alive.

The consumer cultures will have to be re-engineered into cultures of sustainability, so that living sustainable feels as natural as living as a consumer does today.

Two-thirds of the world’s energy is used to-day is for the production of commodities.

This new reality, from which there is no escape, must be recognized – and managed.

Sustainability cannot be achieved by simply switching technologies.

We need to see instead the possibility for a new era of economic growth, one that must be based on policies that sustain and expand the environmental resource base.

We all know that  industries most heavily reliant on environmental resources and most heavily polluting are growing most rapidly in the developing world, where there is both more urgency for growth and less capacity to minimize damaging side effects.

Humanity’s inability to fit its activities into a less must have now orientation for the sake of short-term pleasure and profit – from I am alright Jack attitude to recognizing our true values can not come soon enough.

Our Common Future, cannot be a prediction of ever-increasing environmental decay, poverty, and hardship in an ever more polluted world among ever decreasing resources. Which is changing planetary systems, fundamentally. Many such changes are accompanied by life-threatening hazards.

We need a new description of the possibilities ahead of us.

We have been for centuries and still are borrowing environmental capital from future generations with no intention or prospect of repaying. It may show profit on the balance sheets of our generation, but our children will inherit the losses.

The onus for change lies with no one group of nations.

Every day, we are presented with a range of “sustainable” products and activities—from “green” cleaning supplies to carbon offsets.

Is it time to abandon the concept altogether, or can we find an accurate way to measure sustainability? If so, how can we achieve it? And if not, how can we best prepare for the coming ecological decline?

Given that consumerism and the consumption patterns are not compatible with the flourishing of a living planetary system, either we find ways to wrestle our cultural patterns out of the grip of those with a vested interest in maintaining consumerism or Earth’s ecosystems decline will bring down the consumer culture for the vast majority of humanity in a much crueller way.

A change has to be started to put us on the path to prosperity without diminishing the well-being of future generations.

It will and is being resisted by myriad interests that have a huge stake in sustaining the global consumer culture— from the fossil fuel industry and big agribusiness to food processors, car manufacturers, advertisers, and so on.

Consumerism is not a viable cultural paradigm on a planet whose systems are deeply stressed and that is currently home to 7 billion people, let alone on a planet of 8–10.6 billion people, the population the United Nations projects for 2050.

So what can be done?

We all know what has to be done but every few of us are willing to do anything.

In a majority of societies today, consumerism feels so natural that it is hard to even imagine a different cultural model.

Consumerism—now propped up by more than trillions in annual advertising expenditures, by hundreds of billions in government subsidies and tax breaks, billions more in lobbying and public relations spending, and the momentum of generations of living the consumer dream—will undoubtedly be the most difficult part of the transition to a sustainable society.

The only question is whether we greet it with a series of alternative ways of orienting our lives and our cultures to maintain a good life, even as we consume much less.

You must ask yourself if there is any chance for us to come through the trials of climate destabilization in a nuclear-armed world with 10 billion people by 2100.

How can we soon reckon with the thorny issues of politics, political theory, and start governing with wisdom, boldness, and creativity.

We can all see our present danger, and we can also see our future potential: a stable human population of some 7–9 billion, living cleanly and well on a healthy biosphere, sharing Earth with the rest of the creatures who rely on it.

Or

Has humanity already overshot the carrying capacity of Earth so badly that we are doomed to a horrible crash after oil, or freshwater, or topsoil, or fish, or the ozone layer, or many other things—after one or all of them run out? So that no matter what we do in the meantime, it’s a foregone conclusion that we’re in for a fall?

I don’t believe so.

Provided we locked the global economy and global ecology together in new ways there is a way out for our beautiful home planet. There is no point reaching for the stars if we are bring with us Greed and Profit.

This is not just a dream but a responsibility, a project. The things we can do now, to start on this project are all around us, waiting to be taken up and lived.

Our problem stems from decades of engineering of a set of cultural norms, values, traditions, symbols, and stories that make it feel natural to consume ever larger amounts—of food, of energy, of stuff.

Policymakers changed laws, marketers and the media cultivated desire, businesses created and aggressively pushed new products, and over time “consumers” deeply internalized this new way of living.

For example, the United States, now suffers from an obesity epidemic in which two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. This obesity epidemic—which has spread around the world.

McDonald’s did not just create a cheap and tasty food, it effectively targeted children to get them to eat at McDonald’s early on—shaping their palate for both the company’s food and the high-sugar, high-salt, high-fat consumer diet.

Or

People spend more than $58 billion on pet food each year around the world. ( There are 133 million dogs and 162 million cats in just the top five dog and cat owning countries in the world),

Or

Globally, military expenditures total about $1 trillion a year and continue to grow.

Nothing will change unless our cognition’s change.

Even Professional sport promotes consumerism.

 

 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. believed that “we must rapidly begin to shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society.” By living “deliberately”—as Henry David Thoreau understood—we spend less, work less and enjoy life more.

Through collective action inspired by creativity we can build a vibrant environmental justice movement and reform the institutions that are driving “climate collapse”: the military and unchecked consumer capitalism.

Imagine if we had lists of “Ten Things to Save the Planet”

The problem would be that we have nowhere to hang the list.  Even if we did we there is no way of making anything on the list to stick.

So there is only one solution. We will have to use the most basic weakness of mankind – his own self-interest to effect change.

Rewards/Payment that are felt in his pocket.

Where do we get the funds to make these payments.

By Placing a world Aid Commission of 0.05% on all Foreign Exchange Transactions ( Over 20,000$) on all High Frequency stock exchange transactions and on all Sovereign Wealth Funds Acquisitions.

With this Perpetual Fund by greed we could then redesign Consumerism into Savvy consumers and Sucker consumers. Create a new consumer culture which would be truly a step in the right direction.

We could start to address Climate Change by granting home solar panels.

We could pay to protect to safeguard our, fresh water, our forests, our seas, our environment and give fundamental rights to the planet itself.

The faster we use our talents and energies to promote a culture of sustainability, the better off all of humanity will be.

This is what we have achieved so far. Have a look.

( https://youtu.be/MrqqD_Tsy4Q)  It takes two minutes.

We need to create a new centralization of power that specifically looks after our planet >  not a United Nations gossips shop that can do nothing because of its veto corset.

But an Earth Court that must be heeded or suffer the consequences, or no rewards or grants.

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The Future of the Consumer Society will decide our Future.

02 Tuesday Dec 2014

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Consumerism quotes

The world-wide spread of extremely resource-intensive lifestyles and economic practices has become one of the most important challenges we face.

There is an increased awareness of human impact on the environment, however, the rate of environmental degradation is still on the rise.

Although many people are uncomfortable with the way things are, they are not motivated to act on their beliefs because they see no other way.

The environmental discourse is still confined to a relatively small minority
of elites and ‘experts’, and it remains incredibly top-down but there are no experts as we are all dancing on the edge of acceptable risk.

Is economic growth making us happier?

What type of change is possible?

By addressing things such as human well-being and the meeting of the needs in environmentally in a sound way, the discourse brings economy down to the grass root level of everyday life.

It enables us to ask questions such as:

How do we change the present day short-shortsightedness which is the source of most modern environmental and economic problems?

Messages of environmental risk should be effective in relaying seriousness and immediacy, but arguably, they are also in danger of breeding hopelessness and fatalism. Although many people are uncomfortable with the way things are, they are not motivated to act on their beliefs because they see no other way.

This is tragic because the way in which we perceive the future has a significant influence on the choices we make.

It affects our values, attitudes, coping mechanisms, expectations feelings, motivations and behaviors. The very act of articulating a future presents a tendency and inclination, which increases its likeliness of occurrence.Consumerism quotes

Could it therefore be possible to produce a set of different outcomes by providing engaging, lucid and optimistic alternative ecological future narratives?

I have posted many posts on the Subject but let’s try an other approach.

Suggest an inexpensive tool that could make a difference.  

Sufficient living questions the connection made between growth and quality of life.

The last time climate change happened was approximately 55 million years ago and it took 1000 years to recover from the level of elevated carbon after the extinction of dinosaurs.

Imagine a world without pollution and waste: Products are made from materials that are beneficial for humans and their surroundings. Imagine a world where humans can be glad that their actions benefit those around them.

It seems that people are not good at providing (quasi) exact statements of the future, but they can be better in stating whether the past trend will change and in which direction.

Over a hundred species are still becoming extinct everyday.  One and a half acres of rain forest is still disappearing every second.

These problems are link to a lack of ideas concerning how to deal with environmental problems and the future of our society.

It is always useful to conceive futures in a generational paradigm, because we find it easier to think of futures in terms of our children and grandchildren’s lifetimes. The decisions we make in the next 20 years will determine the fate of the earth and human civilization for centuries to come.

In this context, online news gives a quick overview on what is happening in the world and the use of the Internet as information source has become an inherent part of everyday life  leading to a sort of “big brother feeling” of being observed.

Unfortunately, most of our ecological future narratives are ambiguous or inherently pessimistic.

For instance, one of the most popularized means of living within nature are ‘sustainable futures. However this vision lacks clarity or a consensus over what it means to live ‘sustainably’. Moreover, a proliferation of ‘sustainability’ definitions leave some to regard it as a landfill dump for everyone’s environmental and social wish list.

In a sense of powerlessness. people perceive the environment to be a single totalising entity that is ‘out there,’ enabling them to remain emotionally distant, despondent and in a state of resignation.

High levels of non-engagement are further exacerbated by the lack of faith in the institutions tasked with combating the problems. People are choosing not to dwell on ecological problems by using reflexive strategies of non-engagement with global issues including the future.

The apparent lack of desirable alternatives is highly dangerous.

Could it therefore be possible to produce a set of different outcomes by providing engaging, lucid and optimistic alternative ecological future narratives?

In other words, if governments continue to think in four-year election cycles, businesses work from one financial year to the next and stock markets re-start everyday there is no hope of achieving anything.

When imagining futures, we also need to invent time for change.

What is needed is long-term thinking that reconciles itself to a planet that is 4.6 billion years old?

We support in the capacity to imagine and articulate preferred outcomes, which in turn mobilise action and creates an opportunity for the visions to embed themselves as possibilities in reality.  As opposed to the current approach of endlessly treating symptoms of a much deeper problem that is both out of sight and out of control.

Each and every individual needs to be actively (and creatively) involved by, possibly, visualising, spreading and implementing ideas of alternative societal models. We need a method that enables us to think beyond existing societal models.

While Industrial welfare state mainly defends business-as-usual change can only be achieved in the world to-day by what I call,

– An Universal Electronic Voice that demands change –
# UEV- Universal Electronic Voice.
When we want to enable consumers to execute truly effective change it is central to empower them to understand their role as important actors in the field.

This is beyond governments, and our present day world institutions.

Governments:  Because before they can mend a road there is an other government.  Institutions:  Because they have turned into gossip shops with no funds, run by the market.

We need to re-define what it meant by people power.

A unified electronic voice will do just that resulting in a movement that unified our cohesive efforts. That will enable the ‘democratisation’ of modern environmentalism that are fixated on finding solutions to one that imagines entirely new possibilities

The debate over climate change and whether it is being influenced by man’s activity has ceased. The prevailing view is that climate change is real and that it is influenced by human activity. The link between rising consumption and climate change is becoming clear and opposition to consumerism is growing.

Images of the future in which the Universal E Voice should be used as tools for making images become part of reality, it can be used to direct actions and decision-making.

Of course none of the above has any hope of becoming a reality unless we tap into the world of greed.

This can only be done by a collective demand to place a world aid commission of 0.05% on all High Frequency trading, Sovereign wealth funds acquisitions and foreign exchange transactions over $20.000, creating a perpetual funded fund. ( see previous posts)

As such UEV(universal electronic voice) does not describe the actions needed to achieve the described future however it would be the first step in the right direction to be heard.  We all know timescales are the best until after the critical period is over and we have the benefit of hindsight.

Now it the time to combine all of those how are Whining on the Internet and Social Media into one voice.

With the rather elusive and volatile character of the Internet creating a focus point for the over strain user of the Net when it comes to selecting individually important and relevant information to establish a collection pool offering one voice has many difficulties to over come.

Perhaps # UEV- Universal Electronic Voice might to the trick.

I am all ears to any suggestions.

The mere fact that more of these devices are constantly introduced to the market and the ways in which they are advertised show that yet again a different perception of the future.

This is only the top of the iceberg.

What more ecologically benign consumption and production patterns would mean in practice? is another question to be discussed.

And to what extent it is fruitful to talk about economy beyond the social? Is another in dire need of serious discussion.

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Capitalism vs The Climate: This Changes Nothing;

19 Friday Sep 2014

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You hear these day cry’s from lots of different quarter for the need of an ideological change if we are to tackle the numerous problems the world currently faces.

In Naomi Klein new book titled – This Changes Everything; Capitalism vs. the Climate. She advocates exactly this.  http://youtu.be/WPQI1Lui42c

While I admire her efforts with every thing these days we are bombarded with so much information that the hard facts disappear in a haze of communication resulting in a quagmire of confusion as to what is true or what is not true.

The bare fact is that if Humanity was faced with a Meteorite that was going to hit the earth and extinguish all known life we would not be able even if it wanted to change our ideology to save ourselves because of GREED.

There can be no Ideology change without equality of opportunity.

To create a world of equal opportunity for all requires unfortunately more than just aspirations.

It requires Money lots of money.

With the unbridled Privatization/ Consumerism of the world natural resources forging ahead unopposed for the sake of profit for profit sake by Sovereign Wealth Funds it’s no wonder that it is impossible to have any Ideology change that will make a difference.

The disillusion that we have some privileged position on earth are challenged every day.

ISIS is already in Europe, Alibaba is on the New York Stock Exchange, Climate change is already effecting world poverty, world economics, migration, and YOU.

” We can’t see the wood from the trees,” as the saying goes.

What we have done in the past gives has given rise to what is happening now.

There is only one solution:  The people of the world must find a way of getting Greed to contribute to the planets survival without greed’s awareness. ( See previous posts)

The planet will have 11bn people by 2100 according to a new study.

Traditional methods for fighting for change have proved fruitless. We must put people before Capitalism and Politics.

In short, there are so many cars in the world today that the fuel burnt on the world’s roads by those many cars emits 1.73 billion metric tons (equivalent to 3.81 trillion pounds) of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year. As of 2012, there are 1.1 billion automobiles on the earth. The 1.1 billion automobiles in 2012 already average a set of new tires about every 2 years, or 2.2 billion tires annually, and those 2.2 billion tires consume over half of the earth’s rubber production, which of course burns even more fuel.

The fight of our time has begun. The Scramble for Sustainability is still possible. Our immune systems need re-education. We need to heed the Language of Money.

If we want it we must pay for it.

There is no point in saving a Tiger, a forest, a river, or anything for that matter,even a child if they or it have no where to a full and sustainable live.

We must make the things we value more valuable than the things we don’t value by paying for them with money.

I agree with Naomi that Capitalism is on the way out but life exists in individual moments and it is up to us to make sure those moments are vital. Sharing wealth is the Mechanism. Cap Greed.

(See previous posts; 01/9/2014,23/08/2014.16/08/2014,14/08/2014, 22/07/2014, 03/07/2014)

Have a look at the below.

THE SCRAMBLE HAS BEGUN-IS SUSTAINABILITY STILL POSSIBLE

08 Thursday May 2014

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We are all living in an age where the word Sustainability more typically lends itself to corporate behaviour.

The question is whether civilization ( what ever civilization mean these days) can continue on its current path without undermining prospects for future well-being.

Can humanity alter current behaviors that are leading to self destruction.

The North America’s Iroguis had a proverb ” We have not inherited the earth from our fathers,we are borrowing it from our children.

So what’s going on? and can it keep going on in this way, on this scale, at this pace.

It will almost certainly take more cooperation and more sharing that we can imagine in a world driven by competition and individual accumulation of wealth.

Societies are unlikely to enact policies and programs that favor the future, at the expense of people living in the present, especially the poorer among us.  We have little choice but to give priority to the needs of human beings alive today.

On the other hand we classify ourselves as a Smart and adaptive species which might explain why so many important economic and environmental trends seem headed in conflicting and even opposite directions. 

To help with measurement, we should look without blinking at what is unsustainable—at practices and patterns that,  if we don’t stop them, will stop us.
The rarely voiced reality of environmental unsustainability is that we may have not just less prosperous and comfortable lives in the future but shorter and fewer lives altogether.
If it proves too challenging to feed the projected 2050 world population of more than 9 billion people, for example, it is quite possible we will not have to—for the worst of reasons.
The same can be said of “business-as-usual” greenhouse gas emission scenarios: by the time global thermometers register a hike of 4 degrees Celsius, business-as-usual will have ended a long time ago.
So to answer the Question.  It is my belief that we are all incapable of Sustainability, due to Greed.
The only way is to harness greed into contributing by Placing a World Aid Tax or commission on all Stock Exchange transactions world-wide.
This will creating a sustainable fund to distribute wealth to tackle the present day unsustainable inequalities in the world.