Part 1
- "Will Humanity Rise to the Challenge?" - Flannery, 2008
- How will humanity rise to the challenge?
Part 2
- On Staying Healthy To Be More Effective
-
Cultural Creatives
- Pro-Active Leaders
Part 3
'Bona fide' contributors
- Natural Justice Issues In A Tribunal Hearing
- Noam Chomsky - Who Owns the Earth?
- Reich's 4 American Narratives
- Can changing our human values create a better future?
- What If Preventing Collapse Isn’t Profitable?
- "We are the 99%"
Part 4
Following the money
- The search for "Rent Seekers"
-
The Impossibility of Growth
- Inside Job (2010)
- Lessons from the economic crisis of 2008
Part 5
- The Beauty of Collaboration!
- Science that can uplift and inspire
UNESCO Charter: Since wars begin in the minds of men,
it is in the minds of men that
the defenses
of peace must be constructed.
"It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a higher standard
of living that any have ever known.
It no longer has to be you or me.
Selfishness is unnecessary.
War is obsolete.
It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry."
– R. Buckminster Fuller, Critical Path, 1981
What do we want to do and when will we do it? Q: How many secular, religious, community-based organizations,
non-government and government initiatives have fulfilled their mission to overcome poverty? A: None!
With all of the best intentions, we continue to treat the symptoms of injustice and inequity while ignoring the central economic cause.
And, we've even become co-dependent on these professions,
for the very same reasons - overcoming entrenched economic injustice and inequity.
Studies show a loss of IQ points due to living in poverty: Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function Mani et al. Science 30 Aug 2013: Vol. 341, Issue 6149, pp. 976-980 "it appears that poverty itself reduces cognitive capacity.
We suggest that this is because poverty-related concerns consume mental resources, leaving less for other tasks. These data provide a previously unexamined perspective and help explain a spectrum of behaviors among the poor.
We discuss some implications for poverty policy."
"Nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something." Gil Scott-Heron (1949-2011), poet, activist, musician The organisation and expression of community disapproval
has become incredibly powerful because it is spontaneous, immediate and authentic.
"Will Humanity Rise to the Challenge? - Flannery, 2008" By Maireid Sullivan
April, 2015
Shortly after the catastrophic events of 9/11, on October 29, 2001, Professor Ervin Laszlo's “Macroshift: Navigating the Transformation to a Sustainable World" explained how macroshifts in human history, spanning centuries, allowed our cultural values and beliefs systems to take shape gradually. In comparing the impact of the speed of introduction of technological advances on our entire cultural evolutionary process, he warned that humanity is facing two possible scenarios:
1. Catastrophic "Breakdown," no change in the current unsustainable direction toward anarchy, chaos, and destruction.
2. Resilient "Breakthrough," where thinking and behaviour are collectively transformed to find creative and sustainable solutions to our problems.
In his 2008 keynote lecture celebrating Monash University's 50th anniversary, Australian palaeontologist and conservationist Professor Tim Flannery caught our attention when he stated,
"Sometime this century, after 4 billion years,
some of Earth’s regulatory systems will pass
from control through evolution by natural selection to control by human intelligence.
Will humanity rise to the challenge?"
How will humanity rise to the challenge?
Putting trust in informed common sense can be a positive survival strategy.
When 'truth' around unresolved health and economic crisis hits home - and impacts on our personal lives force us to 'wake up' and start thinking things through, we will learn that there are, in fact, wonderful solutions waiting for our support and advocacy.
In hindsight, from January 1995 to March 2002, I was based in the United States, and during that time, three major environmental research groups shared an online interactive resource-feed (www.formyworld . org), providing listings of industrial contributors to toxicity, with details on output quantities rated according to potential cancer-causing criteria for every region across the US - freely accessed by entering the local area/zip code - with names and addresses of the perpetrator and comprehensive listings of their toxic compounds. At that time, after a thorough search,
I wasn't able to find a single region with a 'clean' environmental record across the entire United States of America. This service was taken offline in January 2001, immediately after G.W. Bush became President.
In September 2013, in Australia, one week after Tony Abbott (b- 1957) was elected Liberal Party Prime Minister of Australia (2013 to 2015), he sacked the Australian Climate Commission. The independent Australian Climate Council was immediately established, led by Professor Tim Flannery.
There is a need for closer examination of the consequences of the carbon tax 'strategy' where polluters could continue polluting by paying a carbon tax to a non-government authority - a F.I.R.E sector entity (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) - which 'trades' in debt.
(I recommend the Pigouvian tax categorisation, per. Frank deJong's well reasoned “Economic Policy Resolution" 2010.)
In September 2018, the European Parliament published a well-illustrated Infographic: how climate change is affecting Europe, on its website, stating that "Climate change is already having wide-ranging consequences for human health, the environment and economies across Europe".
IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT!
It is rather embarrassing that we're still debating the pros and cons around the benefits of 'sustainability'. And to all those people who are only now accepting that global climate might really be 'changing' - to our detriment: It's NOT your fault.
You were/are the target of long-standing multi-billion dollar propaganda campaigns funded by the Big Monopolies, beside the Big MICC "Iron triangle": Big Oil, Big Coal, Big Gas, Big Pharma, Big Agri-Business, Big Tech, Big Media, and, lest we forget, 'Big Religion'!
Being 'taken in' is not your fault.
Fortunately, innovative solutions are emerging in support of the enormous cleanup task we are faced with. We need to be aware that 'vested interests' aka "Rent-Seekers" will continue to lobby and campaign to prevent the loss of their profit sources, without admitting moral or legal culpability. While 'exploitation' challenges every sphere of influence, thankfully, we know there's an elegant economic solution: Change our tax laws.
Humanity can rise to this challenge. In the West, our troubles go back to the origins of Land Speculation – the enclosure of the European commons - "Feudalism" (Duby, 1983) due to the formulation of laws that allowed privatisation of commonly owned lands "in perpetuity" - when
entire populations were forced to leave their traditional lands and, in order to find employment, were forced to settle around medieval monasteries and castles.
The Origins of Classical Political Economic Theorem Adam Smith (1723-1790), the reputed founder of Classical Political Economics, visited the Physiocrats in France while touring across Europe (1764-1766) as tutor to the young Scottish nobleman Henry Scott, 3rd Duke of Buccleuch. Smith was influenced by the Physiocrats' economic theorem: "the wealth of nations was derived solely from the value of land agriculture or land development."
The Law of Rent Theorem
Around 1809, English Economist David Ricardo (1772-1823) defined the income derived from the ownership of land and other free gifts of nature as "The Law of Rent" (aka Economic Rent, Ricardo's Law, Resource Rent), with collection methods referred to as Single Tax | Resource Rent | Land Value Tax | Site Value Tax, and more: A philosophy and economic theory that follows from the belief that although everyone owns what they create, land, and everything else supplied by nature, belongs equally to all humanity.
... without a knowledge [of The Law of Rent], it is impossible to understand the effect of the progress of wealth on profits and wages, or to trace satisfactorily the influence of taxation on different classes of the community. – David Ricardo
The Bottom Line - the pattern continues:
In the United States, 96% of the rural population had moved to cities - "suburbia" - following WW2. Public services and infrastructure required to support those growing urban environments fostered the 'Big' corporate monopolies which include the recent Public Private Partnerships (PPP), where Public Sector Comparator (PSC) estimates calculated by 'vested interests' demonstrated savings and efficiencies to be expected from 'outsourcing' public sector funding to private sector entities: While the ultimate aim of the 'private sector' is focused on "The Bottom Line" (TBL) - overseeing perpetual growth to meet quarterly profit targets for shareholders has left the whole of society vulnerable under an 'economic aristocracy'. The Triple Bottom Line - because greed is not good:
The concept of the "triple bottom line" aka 3BL, which emerged in the mid-90s, was inspired by the environment movement as an antidote to the 1987-1993 "Real Estate & Banking boom-bust cycle". The aim was to help establish clear guidelines for financial, social, ecological concerns.
Following the GFC of 2007/8, debate around Single Bottom Line (SBL) vs Triple bottom line (3BL) agendas has entered public awareness, with attention been directed to examining the consequences of the mid-1980s "Boomer generation" popular swing to Wall St. where investment 'portfolios' require Public corporation board members to focus on the 'Single Bottom Line' or be dismissed. Why? Because shareholder profits are prioratised while those same shareholders continue to ignore the wide-scale impacts of their influence.
The Triple Dividend "The triple dividend might become the main motivation for climate policy."
Climate Change Mitigation, Justice and Investing in Capabilities
Financing Global Public Goods, Workshop at MCC
26 June 2013
Professor Dr. Ottmar Edenhofer
Read the full report here: Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research "The triple dividend might become the main motivation for climate policy."
Conventional economic wisdom perceives rent taxation as neutral.
Therefore, this "just“ tax has the largest potential to overcome the trade-off between justice and efficiency. Additionally, only reproducible factors in production should earn income (labor and capital).
The taxation of rents is perceived as a way to "socialise“ the commons even with private property rights.
However, the potential of rent taxation is not neutral. Therefore, the potential for reaping a triple dividend is widely underestimated:
Rent taxation can be combined with intergenerational transfer schemes in which the newborn are endowed with assets financed by rents.
Additionally, rent taxation can be used to finance public infrastructure.
Infrastructure can be seen as an investment in capabilities for the reduction of poverty.
Climate policy enhances the "Climate Rent“ which does not only mitigate climate change but also provides additional sources for infrastructure investments and intergenerational transfer schemes.
The triple dividend might become the main motivation for climate policy.
Summary A
close study of the development ofClassical Political Economic Theorem, (Quesnay, 1758; Smith, 1776; Ricardo, 1809, leading to "Ricardo's Law" aka The Law of Rent theorem), will show that the suppression of that theorem has been the leading cause of our environment, public health, economic, and governmental troubles: Collection of Economic Rent instead of taxing productivity represents a well-engineered government business model which could have been in place by now, but for key historical and ongoing points of suppression by vested interests. Consequently, urgent sustainability issues across the spectrum continue to be inadequately managed.
Professor Flannery's 2019 Update:
On 4 September 2019, Professor Flannery announced a crucial and far-reaching achievement for the Climate Council.
Excerpt: "Just two years ago, we set out with a plan to give communities the opportunity to take climate action into their own hands. We started with a small, dedicated team, recruiting a handful of councils who were ready to give it a go.
Now, we are celebrating the second birthday of the Climate Council’s Cities Power Partnership, which has grown to become Australia’s largest local government climate action program . . . Cities Power Partnership has grown to represent 110 councils, over 300 cities. . ." >>>more
On
that same day, 4 September 2019, the Political editor at The Guardian, AU edition, Katherine Murphy, pointed out, "Just 15% of voters are watching events in Canberra intently - and 15% have no interest at all." That leaves 70% - 'touch and go' - smothered by all of the issues that have piled up over the years of neglect plus not knowing who to believe.
Part 2 On Staying Healthy To Be More Effective Back to top
To put it simply, we must breath clean air and eat nutritious foods to nurture a strong 'immune system'. Maintaining a healthy body and mind, and a calm, yet highly energized, well informed and engaged advocacy for justice, equity, and sustainability takes a strong will and focus –a passion, and the rewards are great. First, Health Matters!
And Maintaining "Basic" pH Balance is essential
Our emotions impact our health.
The gut-brain connection is subtle. Research on intestinal GUT bacteria confirm impacts on mental health are cross-disciplinary.
For example:
Conclusion: Mental health is not narrowly located in the head but is assimilated by the physical body and intermingled with the natural world, requiring different methods of research to unfold the meanings and implications of gut thinking for conceptions of human selfhood. >>> more
Excerpt: Companies selling ‘probiotic’ foods have long claimed that cultivating the right gut bacteria can benefit mental well-being, but neuroscientists have generally been sceptical. Now there is hard evidence linking conditions such as autism and depression to the gut’s microbial residents, known as the microbiome. And neuroscientists are taking notice — not just of the clinical implications but also of what the link could mean for experimental design.
“The field is going to another level of sophistication,” says Sarkis Mazmanian, a microbiologist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. “Hopefully this will shift this image that there’s too much commercial interest and data from too few labs.” >>> more
Abstract
This review looks at the role of an alkaline diet in health. Pubmed was searched looking for articles on pH, potential renal acid loads, bone health, muscle, growth hormone, back pain, vitamin D and chemotherapy. Many books written in the lay literature on the alkaline diet were also reviewed and evaluated in light of the published medical literature. There may be some value in considering an alkaline diet in reducing morbidity and mortality from chronic diseases and further studies are warranted in this area of medicine. >>> more
Learn - Unlearn - Re-learn
Imagine our biological reality as individual cells in the whole body of the earth: We need, and can create, the right environment for 'peacefully behaving cells' which lead to healthy bodies and creative, productive, happy, active lives.
We, as secular individuals, need no longer feel left out of the communication link. The fact that there are ancient cultural precedents for individuals to live creative and independent lives, not as slaves to 'corporate' fiefdom, but as explorers in our own universe of creation, is the message that is being promoted by reconstruction and revision of historical information.
There are only two choices - action or inaction One way of supporting climate and environment is to introduce policies that recognise the gift that land and resources is to ALL humanity. It is not for the few, and the starvation of the many, including wildlife and degradation of the earth itself. Please recognise that with all people being equal under the law, then all people also have equal access to the bounty of the land and her resources. Personal slavery may have been abolished, but now there is slavery to the banks because of private wealth in land. Please make land a community asset, as it is in the ACT [Australian Capital Territory / Canberra], where people can take leases on it, essentially 'owning it', and please make the leases payable to the community - not individuals.
– Anonymous
On treating symptoms - to hide causes of social ills.
"the lucrative “mindfulness” industry, ... encourages a preoccupation with the symptoms of mental illness, rather than their social causes."
"How mindfulness privatised a social problem:
Governments often opt for treatments that focus on the individual rather than social maladies.
by Hettie O'Brien, New Statesman, 17 July 2019
EXCERPT: In December 2008, while forcibly evicting tenants from a concrete high-rise in south London, Southwark Council pulled off a remarkable feat of complacency. Though residents didn’t know it at the time, every flat in the development that replaced the Heygate Estate would be sold to foreign investors, despite the council’s repeated promises of new social housing.
Recognising that people were “stressed”, councillors hired life coaches and “spiritual ministers” to run workshops teaching residents how to progress emotionally. ... >>>more
Emerging 21st century popular movements Paul Ray, a sociologist researching the development of the most consequential social evolution of our era, the emergence of the “Cultural Creatives”, named them that because they are already creating a new culture. He described them as both 'inner directed' and 'social activists'— people who care deeply about ecology and sustainable energy, organic and local, peace and social justice— but also about authenticity, self-actualization, spirituality and relationships. Strangely, most feel oddly isolated in society. If they only knew how large their numbers are, and how promising their creativity is—if they could get past their isolation and interact with each other in economic and organized ways, many good things might follow.
Core Cultural Creatives This segment comprises the more educated, leading-edge thinkers, including writers, artists, musicians, feminists, psychotherapists, alternative health care providers and other professionals. They combine a serious focus on their spirituality with a strong passion for social justice and equity.
Green Cultural Creatives: The more secular and extroverted wing of the Cultural Creatives follow the opinions of the Core group.
The international Transition Town movement:
In the coastal town of Kinsale, Co. Cork, Ireland, England's now legendary permaculture teacher Rob Hopkins taught a course at Kinsale Further Education College, from 2001. In 2004, with the growing concern over PEAK OIL, Hopkins began to explore ways in which 'local' communities could transition away from dependence on oil. Two of his students, Louise Rooney and Catherine Dunne developed what became the "Transition Towns" concept when they presented their ‘Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan' (pdf) to the Kinsale Town Council, which led to the Council's historic decision to adopt the plan, thus becoming the world's 1st PEAK OIL Transition Town. See detailed insight into the launch of the effort: Transition Town Kinsale (TTK) was formed in 2006.
In 2005, shortly after Rob Hopkins returned to his hometown, Totnes, England, he launched the international Transition Network movement which continues to spawn many small 'healthy' enterprises.
July 2024
Australia:
Law student Kathleen "Katta" O’Donnell - "The new climate heroine on the block!"
Podcast: Katta O’Donnell on why she believes direct action is the way forward on climate. July 26, 2024
Climate activist Katta O’Donnell sued the Australian government for failing to disclose how much climate change would impact the value of government bonds. It was a world first case, and she won. But the experience left her feeling more disillusioned than ever and determined to find another way to make change. Today, Katta O’Donnell on why she believes direct action is the way forward on climate.
Case History:
October 2023 Australian and Pacific Climate Change Litigation This database records litigation (including settled cases and court orders) on issues of climate change in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands.
O’Donnell v Commonwealth SUMMARY
The class action was filed in the Federal Court of Australia on 22 July 2020. It alleges that climate change and its associated risks will have, or are likely to have, a material impact on Australia’s standing as an issuer of sovereign bonds and the market value of bonds. It alleges that risks arising from climate change should be disclosed to retail investors like Ms O’Donnell. A strike out application was heard and dismissed. On 21 March 2023, the Court made orders referring the matter to mediation. The mediation took place in May 2023. On 7 August 2023, the parties informed the court that they had reached a confidential settlement in the matter and on 23 August 2023, orders were made with the proposed settlement annexed. The settlement was approved at hearing on 11 October 2023.
In obiter, Murphy J made the following remarks: >>>more
September 2023 How one student forced the government to admit the economic risks of climate change The Conversation
Excerpt:
Last month, a significant victory for climate change was won behind closed doors. In 2020, Katta O’Donnell, then a 23-year-old university student in Melbourne, launched a world-leading class action lawsuit against the Commonwealth government.
O’Donnell alleged that she and other investors in Australian-issued bonds had been misled because the government failed to disclose how climate change might impact their investments.
O’Donnell’s lawyers also suggest that investors increasingly expect governments to try to manage their climate risks.
...
Under the terms of the settlement, agreed on August 7 and to be approved by the court next month, the government will likely acknowledge on the Treasury website that climate change presents a risk to the country’s “economy, regions, industries, and communities”, and that there is uncertainty around the global transition to net zero emissions.
...
Beyond taking policy measures to support the transition to a “net zero” economy, it has tasked Treasury with developing a national sustainable finance strategy. ...>>>more
April 2022
Katta O’Donnell's "strong moral imperative"
"Having experienced the Black Saturday bush fires in primary school, Katta has felt the fear of knowing that her home and loved ones could be taken away from her at any moment.
13 years on and Climate chaos is unfolding around us. Katta has learnt in her law degree that there are political, legal and economic systems that have upheld and allowed this damage to the environment to occur.
Katta is speaking about how we can empower ourselves as individuals to stand up and challenge systems that are causing harm."
July 2021
Sweden Greta Thunberg (b. 2003) "A teenager working on her anger management problem." “How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.” – Greta Thunberg, Addressing the UN in September 2019
Greta Thunberg:
Who is the climate campaigner and what are her aims? By Daniel Kraemer, BBC News. 28 July, 2021
Greta Thunberg is an 18-year-old activist from Sweden.
She has become one of the world's best known climate campaigners.
~ Three moments that made Greta Thunberg a global figure...
The Evolution of Extenction Rebellion
By Matthew Taylor, The Guardian, 4 Aug, 2020
In its first year of existence, XR transformed the global conversation around the climate crisis. But then it was gripped by internal conflicts about its next steps. Can the movement reinvent itself for the post-pandemic world?
Excerpt:
In November 2017, Roger Hallam looked up from his cup of tea in a central London cafe and made a bold prediction. He had been walking me through the principles behind a new air pollution campaign he was organising, which involved small groups of activists blocking some of London’s busiest junctions, when he paused, mid-sentence. “Of course, this is just small-scale stuff compared to what is coming,” Hallam said. “The scale of the ecological crisis is a different thing. It is going to change everything.”
The air pollution campaign, Stop Killing Londoners, had yet to gain traction with politicians or the media, but Hallam didn’t seem too concerned. He explained that it was partly being used to “road-test” civil disobedience tactics. “Within a year or so we will have thousands of people on the streets, blocking large parts of central London for days on end,” he said. “Hundreds will be arrested and the government will be forced to sit down and tell the truth about the climate emergency.” >>>more
Young people in the global south have been tackling the climate crisis for years. They should be celebrated too.
Ridhima Pandey was just nine years old in 2017 when she filed a lawsuit against the Indian government for failing to take action against climate change. Pandey’s fierce, astounding passion for the environment is not accidental. Her mother is a forestry guard and her father an environmental activist; and the whole family was displaced by the Uttarakhand floods of 2013, which claimed hundreds of lives. >>>more
Uganda: Leah Namugerwa is a 14-year-old climate activist and student striker with Fridays for Future – Uganda who has been striking every Friday for greater action on climate change, plastic pollution, and more since February 2019.
India: Aditya Mukarji - is a 9th grade student who has been urging various restaurants to stop using plastic straws: “In India, a trio of unlikely heroes wages war on plastic”.
Associated Press, June 4th 2018
Ecuador: Nina Gualinga is an indigenous woman leader of the Kichwa community of Sarayaku in the Ecuadorian Amazon, is the recipient of this year’s WWF International President’s Youth award.
WWF, Cartagena, 8 May 2018
Kenya: Kaluki Paul Mutuku holds a Bsc. Degree in Environmental Conservation and Natural Resources Management. He is “keen on environmental communications running a blog on the same, and previously volunteered as a communications lead with 350.org-Kenya team and AYICC-Kenya”.
November 2018
Coming together "ten young participants coming from as far afield
as Kenya and Bangladesh"
World Children's Day
(20 Nov. 2018), UNICEF Youth Ambassadors and Youth Advocates, called on countries around the world to celebrate their young advocates. “Elevating the voices of young people to protect the future of our planet”
“We are the last generation that can end climate change. We can and we will.” - Khishigjargal, 24, Mongolia.
“The sea is swallowing villages, eating away at shorelines, withering crops. Relocation of people ... cries over loved ones, dying of hunger and thirst. It's catastrophic. It's sad ... but it's real.” - Timoci, 14, Fiji.
“You might think that we are too young to know about the risks and realities of climate change. But we see its effects in our daily lives.” - Gertrude, 16, Tanzania. >>>more
“Why did it take a Thunberg for the UN to organise its first youth climate summit? Those most affected should not be exiled to the fringes of the conversation. These other activists are being told their works, their contributions, don’t matter.” - Chika Unigwe is a Nigerian writer. Her latest book is Better Never Than Late.
Polly Higgins - Making Ecocide an international crime Pauline Helène "Polly" Higgins FRSGS (1968-2019) was a Scottish barrister, author, and environmental lobbyist, whose dream to make ecocide a crime may soon be coming true. Very sadly, she died with cancer at age 50.
"In a way what we’re doing is we’re realigning law with higher law, and natural law says first do no harm, and that’s really what ecocide law is all about. It’s a ‘first do no harm’ principle that underpins it - to prevent what could be the most catastrophic disaster of our time." – Polly Higgins Video Library
Jonathan Watts, who wrote her obituary in The Guardian, stated,
"Higgins, a British barrister, led a decade-long campaign for “ecocide” to be recognised as a crime against humanity. She sold her house and gave up a high-paying job so she could dedicate herself to attempting to create a law that would make corporate executives and government ministers criminally liable for the damage they do to ecosystems".... "one of the most inspiring figures in the green movement".
UPDATE: September 2021 Earth’s lawyer: Barrister’s dream to make ecocide a crime may soon be coming true
Excerpts
Few believe that just one person can change the world but if anyone came close, it was Polly Higgins.
The late barrister, who passed away after a short battle with cancer in 2019, gave up a successful law practice in order to pursue the campaign for “ecocide” to be recognised as a crime by international courts – and now her decade-long dream is achingly close to becoming reality.
…
“a prosecutable crime is essential for tackling climate change and holding the world’s biggest polluters to account.
The Stop Ecocide International executive director says without the power to hold corporations to account at the highest legal level, such as in the International Criminal Court (ICC), targets set by the Paris Agreement may remain out of our reach.
…
The draft law states ecocide is “unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and widespread or long-term damage to the environment caused by those acts”.
If added to the Rome Statute of the ICC, ecocide will sit alongside the court’s four current prosecutable offences: genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression.
…
“There’s a shortage of really convincing solutions emerging. Ecocide could be one. The consequences of ecocide are at least as deadly as genocide if not more so.
“We’re not just talking about destroying part of a people, we’re looking at threatening the entirety of civilization as we know it.
“When you put it in that light, you can really see why it belongs among those most serious crimes.” >>>more
Wangari Muta Maathai was born in Nyeri, a rural area of Kenya (Africa), in 1940. She obtained a degree in Biological Sciences from Mount St. Scholastica College in Atchison, Kansas (1964), a Master of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh (1966), and pursued doctoral studies in Germany and the University of Nairobi, before obtaining a Ph.D. (1971) from the University of Nairobi, where she also taught veterinary anatomy. The first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctorate degree, Professor Maathai became chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy and an associate professor in 1976 and 1977 respectively. In both cases, she was the first woman to attain those positions in the region.>>>more
Rachel Carson (May 27, 1907 – April 14, 1964)
American award-winning and best-selling author, marine biologist in the U.S. Bureau of Fisheries, became a conservationist during the 1950s. and died with breast cancer shortly before her 57th birthday.
Rachael Carson Quotations:
"These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes-nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the 'good' and the 'bad,' to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil-all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called 'insecticides,' but 'biocides.'" - Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).
“Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species -- man -- acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.”
Excerpt: "Perhaps the finest nature writer of the Twentieth Century, Rachel Carson (1907-1964) is remembered more today as the woman who challenged the notion that humans could obtain mastery over nature by chemicals, bombs and space travel than for her studies of ocean life. Her sensational book Silent Spring (1962) warned of the dangers to all natural systems from the misuse of chemical pesticides such as DDT, and questioned the scope and direction of modern science, initiated the contemporary environmental movement."
Bill Moyers Journal: PBS, September 21, 2007
Excerpt:
...
The EPA's official history site states: "There is no question...that SILENT SPRING prompted the Federal Government to take action against water and air pollution — as well as against the misuse of pesticides — several years before it otherwise might have moved."
But the common view of Rachel Carson's impact goes far beyond government bureaucracy. Carson and her most famous book, SILENT SPRING, are credited with no less than inspiring the modern global environmental movement. In its collection of the 100 most important people of the 20th Century, TIME magazine said: "Before there was an environmental movement, there was one brave woman and her very brave book." In 2007, the centenary of Carson's birth is being celebrated around the world — and her work is still making waves — just as it did in 1962. >>>more
Wikipedia excerpt:
Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides. It also inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedomby President Jimmy Carter. ... four chapters detail cases of human pesticide poisoning, cancer, and other illnesses attributed to pesticides. About DDT and cancer, Carson says only: In laboratory tests on animal subjects, DDT has produced suspicious liver tumors. Scientists of the Food and Drug Administration who reported the discovery of these tumors were uncertain how to classify them, but felt there was some "justification for considering them low grade hepatic cell carcinomas." Dr. Hueper [author of Occupational Tumors and Allied Diseases] now gives DDT the definite rating of a "chemical carcinogen." Carson predicts increased consequences in the future. >>>more
Silent Spring, 1962 The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson
Summary excerpt:
Silent Spring began with a “fable for tomorrow” – a true story using a composite of examples drawn from many real communities where the use of DDT had caused damage to wildlife, birds, bees, agricultural animals, domestic pets, and even humans. Carson used it as an introduction to a very scientifically complicated and already controversial subject. This “fable” made an indelible impression on readers and was used by critics to charge that Carson was a fiction writer and not a scientist.
Serialized in three parts in The New Yorker, where President John F. Kennedy read it in the summer of 1962, Silent Spring was published in August and became an instant best-seller and the most talked about book in decades. Utilizing her many sources in federal science and in private research, Carson spent over six years documenting her analysis that humans were misusing powerful, persistent, chemical pesticides before knowing the full extent of their potential harm to the whole biota.
Carson’s passionate concern in Silent Spring is with the future of the planet and all life on Earth. She calls for humans to act responsibly, carefully, and as stewards of the living earth.
Additionally Silent Spring suggested a needed change in how democracies and liberal societies operated so that individuals and groups could question what their governments allowed others to put into the environment. >>>more
Natural Justice Issues In A Tribunal Hearing
by the Hon John von Doussa, President,
Australian Human Rights Commission, 10th March, 2005
Excerpt:
On 10 December 1948 the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, marking the first time in history that human rights and fundamental freedoms had been set down in detail in a document adopted by an inter-governmental body.
The declaration has prompted the elaboration of more detailed international instruments which identify particular human rights in more detail, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic Social And Cultural Rights. Those conventions and the Universal Declaration together are now known as the International Bill of Rights. They legally bind the contracting State parties (Governments) to ensure all people within their territories are free to enjoy the enumerated human rights and fundamental freedoms.
There are important, indeed fundamental, rights where tribunals in all their forms are recognised as a human rights process tool. A sufficient starting point to demonstrate this is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states in the preamble:
Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.
[...] I think both the bias rule and the hearing rule represent a distillation of good practical common sense over many years by our superior courts. If you are presented with a natural justice argument made complex by the parties and their counsel, remember that common sense is the foundation of the rules and let your commonsense guide you to your answer.
Support for this broad approach may be found in a judgement of Justice Brennan, who has been a leading proponent of natural justice principles. In the leading case of Kioa and West (1985), his Honour said that a decision-maker will observe the principles of natural justice "by adopting a procedure which conforms to the procedure which a reasonable and fair repository of the power would adopt in the circumstances when the power is exercised".>>> more
Noam Chomsky, Who Owns the Earth?
5 July 2013, Truthout OP-ED Excerpt: That the Earth now desperately needs defense from impending environmental catastrophe is surely obvious to any rational and literate person. The different reactions to the crisis are a most remarkable feature of current history. At the forefront of the defense of nature are those often called “primitive”: members of indigenous and tribal groups, like the First Nations in Canada or the Aborigines in Australia—the remnants of peoples who have survived the imperial onslaught. At the forefront of the assault on nature are those who call themselves the most advanced and civilized: the richest and most powerful nations. The struggle to defend the commons takes many forms. >>> more
"If the whole human race were to work forever, they could not make the Earth one atom heavier or lighter. Nor could they augment or diminish the forces that produce all motion and sustain all life." Henry George, Progress and Poverty (1879)
Julian Savulescu Professor Savulescu is Director, Institute for Science and Ethics, University of Oxford Can changing our human values create a better future?
June 2012 interview.
Published to YouTube, September 2012
2:18 Minutes
Human choices and our behaviour are ultimately the causes of climate change, poverty... and the world around us. Julian Savulescu considers whether changing human values and making different ethical choices can create a better world.
Partial transcript:
"For the first time, our fate is in our hands, and our world will be the result of our choices. … Our institute is interested in the role of peoples’ values and psychology in those choices. So, we don’t study the environment, itself, we study the individual actor or the human animal. Why do people have the values they have? And how can those values be changed? … In this century we need a new set of values that can be shared all around the world. … We want to understand what our obligations are to people in a different way. So, capitalism, free-market economics have all been extremely valuable drivers of change and development. And I’m a great libertarian in support of those. But today we need a new set of values. We can’t just say what’s good is what people want. We have to understand what is good, and how we should relate to each other: What levels of sacrifice we should have; What our obligations are to take responsibility - not just for what we do, but, now, for what we allow to do - what we allow to happen. This century offers possibilities of unparalleled levels of well-being, around the world. But it also offers the possibility of annihilation. And it’s up to us how we make those choices and we need an understanding of our psychology, not just to taylor policies, but to try to influence people’s behaviour. And we need ethics. We need a new set of values - around equality, around tolerance, and around the appropriate levels of sacrifice to enable everyone to have a decent chance to have a decent life.”
– See more of Professor Julian Savulescu's video links HERE
Richard Heinberg The BIG PICTURE: What If Preventing Collapse Isn’t Profitable?
As Senior Fellow-in-Residence of the Post Carbon Institute, Richard Heinberg (b. 1950-) has authored hundreds of essays, articles and lectures and has appeared in many films and documentaries on energy and climate issues. Heinberg's monthly MuseLetter, in publication since 1992, has been included in Utne Magazine’s annual list of Best Alternative Newsletters.
In economics lingo, an externality is the impact of an economic transaction that is not priced into that transaction. No one sets out to produce externalities, in the sense that no one pollutes just for the sake of polluting. Pollution is a byproduct of doing business, and industry typically assumes that society as a whole will either learn to live with the mess or pay to clean it up. Only rarely does industry foot the bill (that’s what might be called internalizing the externality). Most of the time, industry profits, while nature bleeds and society pays.
…
Another set of problems issues from our laws regarding private property. If a corporation buys land that happens to contain a major coal deposit, the corporation owns that coal and can mine and sell it. (In some cases, corporations can even buy rights to resources below land owned by others.) But no business made the coal, or the soil above it. Industrialists simply claim ownership by paying a fraction of real value, and then profit from the extraction of whatever valuable minerals may exist. Resource depletion is always our grandchildren’s problem, never ours. And our grandchildren have no seat at the table.
In other words, whether the problem is related to pollution or depletion, the incentives and advantages are all on the side of industry and growth, never nature and conservation, unless government steps in with a regulation or two.
… So, what would actually be required to stop the bleeding?
First, we would have to abolish externalities. That would mean requiring industrialists to pay all the real costs of their activities—from mine to landfill. No more free pollution,
including the free dumping of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Then we would have to change laws related to the ownership of land. As American economist Henry George proposed back in the 1870s, and as Native Americans have always believed, land should be the common property of all people, and other species should have the right to habitat and survival. Workers should own the products of their labor, but no one should unilaterally own our common inheritance of nature’s bounty.
… There is advantage to be had in ending our assault on the planet; just not profit in the financial sense.
You see, the real downside of the green-profit narrative has been that it created the assumption in many people’s minds that the solution to climate change and other environmental dilemmas is technical, and that policy makers and industrialists will implement it for us, so that the way we live doesn’t need to change in any fundamental way. That’s never been true. The sooner we get that through our heads, the more time we will have to get used to living happily within limits—without nature imposing those limits in ways that aren’t so pleasant. >>>more
David Graeber (12 February 1961 - 2 September 2020) "We are the 99%" David Graeber, the celebrated American professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics, who had a leading role in the Occupy movement - and coined the slogan, "We are the 99%", died suddenly, from necrotic pancreatitis, on September 2, 2020, while on vacation with his wife and friends in Venice. During his “Academic exile" in London (2005–2020), he wrote Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011); Bullshit Jobs (2018); and The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, (2021), celebrated by the British Library. Introduction:
Since historical events are by definition unpredictable, it seemed more scientific to study those phenomenon one could in fact predict: the things that kept happening, over and over, in roughly the same way. In a Senegalese or Burmese village this might mean describing the daily round, seasonal cycles, rites of passage, patterns of dynastic succession, or the growing and splitting of villages, always emphasising how the same structure ultimately endured. Anthropologists wrote this way because they considered themselves scientists (‘structural-functionalists’, in the jargon of the day). In doing so they made it much easier for those reading their descriptions to imagine that the people being studied were quite the opposite of scientists: that they were trapped in a mythological universe where nothing changed and very little really happened. When Mircea Eliade, the great Romanian historian of religion, proposed that ‘traditional’ societies lived in ‘cyclical time’, innocent of history, he was simply drawing the obvious conclusion. As a matter of fact, he went even further.
In traditional societies, according to the Eliade, everything important had already happened. All the great founding gestures go back to mythic times, the Illo tempore, (1) the dawn of everything, when animals could talk or turn into humans, sky and earth were not yet separated, and it was possible to create genuinely new things (marriage, or cooking, or war). People living in this mental world, he felt, saw their own actions as simply repeating the creative gestures of gods and ancestors in less powerful ways, or as invoking primordial powers through ritual. According to Eliade, historical events thus tended to merge into archetypes. If anyone in what he considered a traditional society does do something remarkable - establishes or destroys a city, creates a unique piece of music - the deed will eventually end up being attributed to some mystic figure anyway. The alternative notion, that history is actually going somewhere (the Last Days, Judgement, Redemption), is what Eliade referred to as ‘linear time’, in which historical events take on significance in relation to the future, not just the past.
And this ‘linear’ sense of time, Eliade insisted, was a relatively recent innovation in human thought, one with catastrophic social and psychological consequences In his view, embracing the notion that events unfold in cumulative sequences, as opposed to recapitulating some deeper pattern, rendered us less able to weather the vicissitudes of war, injustice and misfortune, plunging us instead into an age of unprecedented anxiety and, ultimately, nihilism. The political implications of this position were, to say the least, unsettling. Eliade himself had been close to the fascist Iron Guard in his student days, and his basic argument was that the ‘terror of history’ (as he sometimes called it) was introduced by Judaism and the Old Testament - which he saw as paving the way for the further disasters of Enlightenment thought. Being Jewish, the authors of the present book don’t particularly appreciate the suggestion that we are somehow to blame for everything that went wrong in history. Still, for present purposes, what’s startling is that anyone ever took this sort of argument seriously.
George Monbiot The Impossibility of Growth
Why collapse and salvation are hard to distinguish from each other.
By George Monbiot
The Guardian, 28th May 2014
Let us imagine that in 3030BC the total possessions of the people of Egypt filled one cubic metre. Let us propose that these possessions grew by 4.5% a year. How big would that stash have been by the Battle of Actium in 30BC? This is the calculation performed by the investment banker Jeremy Grantham(1). Go on, take a guess. Ten times the size of the pyramids? All the sand in the Sahara? The Atlantic ocean? The volume of the planet? A little more? It’s 2.5 billion billion solar systems(2). It does not take you long, pondering this outcome, to reach the paradoxical position that salvation lies in collapse.
To succeed is to destroy ourselves.
To fail is to destroy ourselves.
That is the bind we have created.
Ignore if you must climate change, biodiversity collapse, the depletion of water, soil, minerals, oil; even if all these issues were miraculously to vanish, the mathematics of compound growth make continuity impossible.
Economic growth is an artefact of the use of fossil fuels. Before large amounts of coal were extracted, every upswing in industrial production would be met with a downswing in agricultural production, as the charcoal or horse power required by industry reduced the land available for growing food. Every prior industrial revolution collapsed, as growth could not be sustained(3). But coal broke this cycle and enabled – for a few hundred years – the phenomenon we now call sustained growth.
It was neither capitalism nor communism that made possible the progress and the pathologies (total war, the unprecedented concentration of global wealth, planetary destruction) of the modern age. It was coal, followed by oil and gas. The meta-trend, the mother narrative, is carbon-fuelled expansion. Our ideologies are mere subplots. Now, as the most accessible reserves have been exhausted, we must ransack the hidden corners of the planet to sustain our impossible proposition.>>> more
The
search for "Rent Seekers"
- the stockmarket connections
The terrible truth of climate change
by Joëlle Gergis, August, 2019
“The latest science is alarming, even for climate scientists. In June, I delivered a keynote presentation on Australia’s vulnerability to climate change and our policy challenges at the annual meeting of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, the main conference for those working in the climate science community. I saw it as an opportunity to summarise the post-election political and scientific reality we now face.”
Inside Job(2010) - Lessons from the economic crisis of 2008: When money is like cocaine Official website
Excerpt - 38:31: These people are ‘risk takers’. ... It’s part of their behaviour - part of their personality. Neuroscientists have done experiments where they’ve taken individuals and put them into an MRI machine and they have to play a game where the ‘prize’ is money. And you notice that when the subjects earn money the part of the brain that gets stimulated is the same part that cocaine stimulates. A lot of people feel that they need to really participate in that behaviour to ‘make it’ to get promoted, to get recognised.
Summary
From Academy Award® nominated filmmaker, Charles Ferguson ("No End In Sight"), comes INSIDE JOB, the first film to expose the shocking truth behind the economic crisis of 2008. The global financial meltdown, at a cost of over $20 trillion, resulted in millions of people losing their homes and jobs. Through extensive research and interviews with major financial insiders, politicians and journalists, INSIDE JOB traces the rise of a rogue industry and unveils the corrosive relationships which have corrupted politics, regulation and academia. Narrated by Academy Award® winner Matt Damon, INSIDE JOB was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China. See detailed Wikipedia notes HERE
On Saturday, May 19, 2012, the German protest group Blockupy called for blocking the access to the European Central Bank, which is located in Frankfurt's business district. "A subset of the people cannot
claim title to the planet." German police officers escort an anti-capitalism protest march with the people of Frankfurt, Germany, Saturday, May 19, 2012. Protesters peacefully filled the city center of continental Europe's biggest financial hub in their protest against the dominance of banks and what they perceive to be untamed capitalism, Frankfurt police spokesman Ruediger Regis said. See
YouTube footage HERE
"The latest scientific and technological developments are so consequential
they can’t be left in the hands of scientists alone." Back to top
Excerpt: An anxious recognition is dawning: the latest scientific and technological developments are so consequential they can’t be left in the hands of scientists alone. Philosophers, artists and others who think outside the algorithm need to be engaged to fathom what it all means for the human condition. That was a key theme that emerged from a panel on science and art at Frieze Los Angeles last week.
“We are entering an age where we can build our own DNA from scratch. We will create a series of beings that are natural but do not exist in nature,” anthropologist Tobias Rees observed. “What then happens to the distinction between nature and technology when we enter post-human land?”… “All we have to address it are 19th century concepts. Maybe a more interesting thing to do will be to open to this unknown future and bring in artists and philosophers to help us rethink this future.”
The artist Agnieszka Kurant echoed this point: “Our current concepts are inadequate to deal with the disruptions we face. We have to create new models, vocabulary and tool kits to think about this with a new logic. We have to reconstruct our worldview from scratch.”
Drew Endy couldn’t agree more. “What are the implications for the future human,” he asked, when you can “combine biology wherever you can print DNA, decoupling from [genetic] lineage and disconnecting from location in time?” For this synthetic biologist, such advances present the “opportunity to consider a new operating system for culture — the connection of science and engineering with philosophy and art.”
Indeed, these leaps on the frontiers of science are reawakening the poetic, artistic, philosophical and even religious imagination since they raise anew foundational questions of origin and destiny that define the place of humans in the cosmos.
As Henry Kissinger (yes, that Kissinger) has perceptively posited, “The Enlightenment started with essentially philosophical insights spread by a new technology. Our period is moving in the opposite direction. It has generated a potentially dominating technology in search of a guiding philosophy.”
. . .
Here, the concept of objective spirit turns into the principle of information. Information enters between thoughts and things as a third value, between the pole of reflection and the pole of the thing, between spirit and matter. Intelligent machines — like all artifices that are culturally created — eventually also compel the recognition of “spirit.” Reflection or thought is infused into matter and remains there ready to be re-found and further cultivated. Machines and artifices are thus memories or reflections turned objective.
“In such a reconceptualization,” the German philosopher argues, “the constellation of ‘I’ and ‘world’ loses much of its luster, not to mention the worn-out polarity of individual and society. But above all, the metaphysical distinction between nature and culture withers. This is because both sides of the distinction are only regional states of information and its processing.”
For Sloterdijk, this information ecology gives humans a new fused identity with each other, with their world and their tools. Humans are no longer an identity apart. >>>more
"It’s wonderful to realize that we are all in a family,
we are all children of the Earth.
We should take care of each other
and we should take care of our environment,
and this is possible with the practice of being together as a large family.
A positive change in individual awareness
will bring about a positive change in the collective awareness.
Protecting the planet must be given the first priority.
… make your decision and act to save our beautiful planet.
Changing your way of living will bring you a lot of joy right away and,
with your first mindful breath, healing will begin." – Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, (2008)
The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology
"Something from just beyond the horizon calls us forward,
to become who we already are, but do not know it yet. ... "The future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before it happens. The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things. Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always."– Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)
FREE Download: Letters to a Young Poet More information here
Put it this way:
Jazz is a good barometer of freedom… In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country. – Duke Ellington (1899-1974)
