Please find below a link to the discussion last night on Change the Narrative, regarding to issues we would like to be addressed in the domain of International RElations/National Security, Globalization and Culture, Energy and Environment.
You can see the details of this event by going to: http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/gpt7m5
Premiere California water activist Dorothy Green's plea for a reformed water policy appeared in the Los Angeles Times on October 8th, a week before her death.
Heal the Bay's founder lays out her vision for a clean and sustainable state supply.
by Dorothy Green October 8, 2008
To everything there is a season; but water is eternal. Or it was, until we started disturbing its natural rhythms. We penned it behind dams and diverted it to aqueducts, starving the life out of rivers and creating an unsupportable addiction to using more water than we need to live. Despite the looming crisis in water, we have enough to live on, but not enough to waste. And waste it we have, with great enthusiasm for lush green lawns in a desert and a penchant for backroom deals with agribusiness. These deals end up as sweetheart ones for the moneyed corporate farmers, providing them with essentially a bountiful private water supply, which they sell off at a profit, while the rest of us are carefully metered and potentially rationed.
Welcome to our brave new post-Capitalistic world.
Today our leaders in Washington announced (all the details to come later) that the Federal Government is going to rescue the financial system from total collapse.
You can read the story as reported by The NY Times here and, of course, more details of this plan will come out in the hours and days ahead. But I want to address the very first part of The NY Times' report: the reaction of the markets around the world...
Stocks shot wildly upward Friday morning after the federal government moved to try to restore confidence in the financial markets. The Dow Jones industrial average rose more than 400 points only moments after the opening, and later settled up more than 300 points. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 was up nearly 3.5 percent. Markets in Europe and Asia also traded significantly higher, with stocks in London and Paris up more than 8 percent.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose more than 400 points only moments after the opening, and later settled up more than 300 points. The broader Standard & Poor's 500 was up nearly 3.5 percent. Markets in Europe and Asia also traded significantly higher, with stocks in London and Paris up more than 8 percent.
There is a celebration going on. This doesn't surprise me. But I'd like to raise the following point from the world of Systems Thinking:
Just because you stop something old that is bad, doesn't mean you will automatically start something new that's good.
Our government has stopped something it considers to be bad. It saw the collapse of the economic system coming. The action it has taken has - and this is me talking, not our government, of course - ended Capitalism here in America.
Actually, its not just me talking. Here's a report from The NY Times on what financial leaders in the rest of the world think about what we are doing here. They know America is no longer a Capitalistic society either. From this September 18th report...
"I fear the government has passed the point of no return," said Ron Chernow, a leading American financial historian. "We have the irony of a free-market administration doing things that the most liberal Democratic administration would never have been doing in its wildest dreams." The bailout package for A.I.G., on top of earlier government support for Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has stunned even European policy makers accustomed to government intervention -- even as they acknowledge the shock of the collapse of Lehman Brothers. "For opponents of free markets in Europe and elsewhere, this is a wonderful opportunity to invoke the American example," said Mario Monti, the former antitrust chief at the European Commission. "They will say that even the standard-bearer of the market economy, the United States, negates its fundamental principles in its behavior." Mr. Monti said that past financial crises in Asia, Russia and Mexico brought government to the fore, "but this is the first time it's in the heart of capitalism, which is enormously more damaging in terms of the credibility of the market economy."
The bailout package for A.I.G., on top of earlier government support for Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has stunned even European policy makers accustomed to government intervention -- even as they acknowledge the shock of the collapse of Lehman Brothers.
"For opponents of free markets in Europe and elsewhere, this is a wonderful opportunity to invoke the American example," said Mario Monti, the former antitrust chief at the European Commission. "They will say that even the standard-bearer of the market economy, the United States, negates its fundamental principles in its behavior."
Mr. Monti said that past financial crises in Asia, Russia and Mexico brought government to the fore, "but this is the first time it's in the heart of capitalism, which is enormously more damaging in terms of the credibility of the market economy."
We no longer have a "market economy" here in America. Capitalism is dead.
But what are the people on Wall Street and other financial centers celebrating? The end of something bad. But - I assert - not the start of something new that is good.
Our government literally sees that the Titanic is sinking. And it is using its extraordinary power to raise the Titanic out of the ocean, shake all the water out of it (literally bailing it out), and place it back in the ocean hoping it will then sail on.
But the Titanic cannot sail on.
That's because the Titanic that is our global economic system is fundamentally flawed. It is based on a belief that we are still sailing in a zero-sum world, a world of scarcity, a world where there will always be too many people chasing too few resources. The sustainability scientists... and those schooled in advance social and managerial sciences as well... know this is no longer true. They know an abundance-based world is what we live in now, from an objective reality point of view. They know that the only thing in the way of that becoming the reality we all live in is the design of our political-economic system.. because it is still a scarcity-based design.
The American government's effort is very impressive in scope... but not in sophistication. It is an 800 pound gorilla approach, involving a huge willingness to throw money at the problem. But, intellectually speaking, it is "the blind leading the blind". It is "experts in the past" attempting to solve a problem whose root cause they cannot see. None of them has ever even heard of - as best I can tell - that scarcity is an objectively obsolete way to view the world. None of them has ever seen what is at the foundation of the work of people such as William McDonough, Amory Lovins, or the late Buckminster Fuller.
It is a tragedy in the making, because they are missing a huge opportunity to truly do the right thing... to take a sophisticated - rather than 800 pound gorilla - approach to this crisis.
A sophisticated approach.... one led by people who know how to work with the fact that the present is different from the past - ie. designers - would address the fundamental fact that our economy is based on a zero-sum mental model in a global reality that is actually an abundance-based world waiting to be born.
As a designer myself, I saw this situation when there was a smaller - but still very visible - challenge to the stability of the global economic system. This was in October of 1998. At that time, BusinessWeek published an editorial called "The Age of Uncertainty". In that October 26, 1998 editorial, BusinessWeek said:
In the blink of a summer's eye, the psychology in America has changed totally. People suddenly don't know what to think about the economy, their investments, or their future. Before July, the U.S. had economic nirvana. Now confusion reigns. Volatility dominates markets. Hedge funds blow up. Deflation looms. The Asian contagion spreads. Russia defaults. The dollar plummets. CEOs worry. And Washington fiddles with impeachment. Yet the economy still feels pretty strong. So what is really going on out there?
In response to that editorial, I wrote a letter which BusinessWeek published on November 16, 1998. Here's what I wrote back then:
IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY, ALL PARTS NEED TO PROSPER 'So, what is really going on out there?'' you ask, in ''The age of uncertainty'' (Editorials, Oct. 26). For a more complete answer, look to the principles of systems thinking. A ''confluence of events'' is not the only thing masking the true fundamentals of the global economy, creating this ''fog'' you refer to. The ''fog'' is being created by the tendency to see globalization from a perspective grounded in our history of living in a world of separate, independent nations. The world's economy has become one interdependent system, yet we continue to view it through independent eyes. What's really going on, from a systems perspective, is that a new, single, global system is struggling to be seen for what it is--a system that can prosper only if all of its parts prosper. It is a single system, one that innately knows that either all of it will make it or none of it will. That's the way healthy systems work. The business world will prosper beyond its wildest imagination once it cuts through this fog and stops viewing the future through ''past-focused eyes.''
'So, what is really going on out there?'' you ask, in ''The age of uncertainty'' (Editorials, Oct. 26). For a more complete answer, look to the principles of systems thinking. A ''confluence of events'' is not the only thing masking the true fundamentals of the global economy, creating this ''fog'' you refer to. The ''fog'' is being created by the tendency to see globalization from a perspective grounded in our history of living in a world of separate, independent nations. The world's economy has become one interdependent system, yet we continue to view it through independent eyes.
What's really going on, from a systems perspective, is that a new, single, global system is struggling to be seen for what it is--a system that can prosper only if all of its parts prosper. It is a single system, one that innately knows that either all of it will make it or none of it will. That's the way healthy systems work. The business world will prosper beyond its wildest imagination once it cuts through this fog and stops viewing the future through ''past-focused eyes.''
I still believe everything I wrote almost ten years ago.
The business world will prosper beyond its wildest imagination once it sees the future for what it can be. Some businesses will have to change more than others to take advantage of this new opportunity, but that's what the best businesses do, right? (Weapons manufacturers will have to change the most, as war is finally seen as the obsolete "international development tool" that it is. But that's okay. The skills of those corporations can easily be used to study, analyze, and produce constructive solutions - especially highly scientific ones - to our sustainable development challenges.)
This business world mindset is why the business strategy book "Blue Ocean Strategy" has been a global best seller since its release in 2005... because business leaders are always looking for the "blue ocean" of "no competition"... the economic landscape where they can operate first.. offering new products and services that do and offer things that no other business is selling.
Well, there is a huge blue ocean available to all the world's businesses now. It is the post-scarcity, post-zero sum Capitalism world that is waiting out there.... just waiting for us to reach out for it.
I hope at least some of our business and political leaders are in enough of a shock that they will look for new ideas and new answers such as those I am talking about here.
We don't have to settle for 800 pound gorilla thinking. We can innovate our way out of this crisis, with our eyes completely open to the true nature of the challenge we face... open to understanding the root cause of the challenge we face. And by understanding the root cause of the crisis we are in - that we literally see fighting as the "first principle" of living when cooperation and collaboration should be the first principle - we can design our way to a better future... to an economic system that will provide all businesses - and all the people on Earth - with more prosperity than they ever believed possible.
We must not just stop something old that is bad. We must start something good that is new.
The US was accused last night of trying to derail a global agreement on climate change by proposing that it becomes a voluntary agreement where countries set their own targets and timetables for reduction of greenhouse gases, rather than a legally binding one. [...]The proposed text, tabled late last night and leaked at about midnight local time, would effectively allow any country to opt out of the next round of the Kyoto agreement. Observers said last night it could take climate change negotiations back more than a decade. [...]"This is an extraordinary attempt by the Bush administration to kill off the fight against climate change," said John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK. "If they get this text through, then it will give a free pass to any nation that wants to keep polluting."
The US was accused last night of trying to derail a global agreement on climate change by proposing that it becomes a voluntary agreement where countries set their own targets and timetables for reduction of greenhouse gases, rather than a legally binding one. [...]
The proposed text, tabled late last night and leaked at about midnight local time, would effectively allow any country to opt out of the next round of the Kyoto agreement. Observers said last night it could take climate change negotiations back more than a decade. [...]
"This is an extraordinary attempt by the Bush administration to kill off the fight against climate change," said John Sauven, director of Greenpeace UK. "If they get this text through, then it will give a free pass to any nation that wants to keep polluting."
This attack on the health and wellbeing of future generations is flagrant and, frankly, incomprehensible at this moment in history. In November 150 global corporations called for mandatory emissions caps, knowing that the costs of climate change are already mounting and that everyone will pay for the lag of any element within the global economy that fails to meet the moment.
What happened in New Orleans in 2005 could happen in hundreds of cities around the world simultaneously if warming is not slowed and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet breaks apart, causing sea levels to rise more than 6 meters. The US economy can and must begin now, at all levels, to transition to sustainable resources with real elasticity built into the system, in order to be a world leader in coming decades, as these as yet unseen events take their toll on the global economy and on international political stability.
We need all responsible adults in the United States, especially political leaders, strong senators and presidential candidates, to put maximum immediate pressure on Pres. Bush to reverse course, withdraw this outrageous proposal, and enter comprehensive negotiations for a global emissions treaty, with legal penalties and economic sanctions for significant violations.
The time to run our country and our economy with this sort of hamfisted and pathological lack of imagination, is over. We are the most dynamic and resource- and idea-rich nation in the world; it's time we started acting like it. Stalling all budgetary activity, legislative debate and any activity other than oversight of the executive branch, would be a good first step for Congress to express its outrage at the current Executive's once more all too apparent disregard for human life and wellbeing.
The Pentagon has taken a leading role in exploring new technologies for fueling old-style hunks of metal and innovative deployment and weapons systems. It is doing this because traditional combustible fuels pose a number of economic problems which amount, over time, to major security risks, if our military is dependent on them: petroleum is a case in point.
The White House doesn't like the idea of raising taxes on Big Oil, apparently because they think the immense, parasitic record profits being taken by the oil companies as a result of pricing volatility in oil markets, stemming from the spreading cancer of international Islamist terrorism and the disastrous Iraq war, should go to the oil companies and to them alone.
So, let's help the military go green by making its dollars go a little further; use part of the Pentagon's research and deployment budgets to incentivize the implementation of green technologies across the US economy. This will speed the adoption of major new technologies, and the rate at which the Pentagon can shift away from dependence on oil from places like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Venezuela.
We can also offset the taxation of corporations with major new fines for oil companies that unfairly use influence to try to prevent other fuel providers or new industries from competing fairly in the marketplace. We can also implement a zero-tax for ten years policy for all business done with green energy, where producers earn at least 50% of their revenues from that green energy production.
No carbon-based or nuclear-based system can be fully tax exempt under this system, and ethanol must be considerd a sticking point... it is not 100% clean, and it is a combustible, which means pollution and environmental impact. This must be accounted for and long-term thinking should situate ethanol as a transitional fuel option, not a long-term boon for US farmers.
Essentially, the idea is this: Bush will have two options... either tax the oil companies heavily and prosecute executives criminally for price gouging, or fine them for working against the open competition of clean energy sources in a fair market environment, and transfer Pentagon cash from Iraq to green technology, now.
All members of the US Senate who have held meetings with oil industry executives, representatives or lobbying firms over the last 12 months (first of all those who voted with the Exxon-Mobil crowd) should be named publicly and asked to account for the content of those conversations and their view on the long-term benefits thrown out by their pro-polluter votes.
Moves by some in the Senate to defend big oil interests and to push the continued use of contaminating carbon-based fuels puts the future integrity of the American economy, but ecologically and in terms of long-term pricing stability, at risk, in exchange for the short-term benefit to a few powerful lobbies. The fact is, the bill needs to be much stronger than it was: fuel efficiency standards should be at 50 mpg by 2012 and at 120 mpg by 2020, while electric utilities should be generating fully 50% of all power from renewables within 5 years.
All of this is doable, and there's no reason why profitable American corporations can't weather the transition. No one is better-suited to doing so, given the record profits flooding the energy sector in recent years. The question is short-term spending priorities, and the Senate has just given a potent and historically dangerous vote of confidence to energy companies' policy of not wanting shed one dollar to take responsible steps to green the US economy while it's still a forward-thinking idea and economical, and not a last-ditch effort to stave off disaster, and out-of-control expensive.
If the US does not start on a comprehensive nationwide economic overhaul in the next few years, it will begin to lag perilously behind other wealthy nations in taking up this new industrial revolution. The result will be that world leaders in green industries will be elsewhere, their products will cost more, the transition will be more difficult, and the US will be foolishly languishing in a 19th-century industrial model (coal, for instance, continues to be a major threat to public health and ecological sustainability).
The recent vote against the energy bill in the Senate should be a wake-up call to anyone serious about an environmentally responsible agenda: it's time to get serious and to stop listening to the cowardly cries of those in industries afraid to make the transition. Let's present a far tougher, far more sweeping brand of energy-policy reform; let's be the wave of reformers that push on George W. Bush the demand of basic human decency and common sense, that the US economy be remade to be green and elastic, for the health and wellbeing of future generations.
Florida and Alabama will both be adversely impacted as water flow is reduced. The situation is dire and ecosystems and some species are in a perilous state as a result. The result is a tri-state political conflict which were they national borders would amount to an "international incident". Tensions are high, and evidence from other parts of the world suggests that mismanagement of this crisis could lead to a vicious cycle in which water resources are poorly protected, over-exploited and increasingly scarce.
India has set up an inter-state water-conflict resolution tribunal, that helps state governments resolve issues of competing interests across state borders. India's water scarcity problem is much more severe, and the population affected much poorer and more numerous, but the nature of political, economic and environmental conflict arising from water scarcity is the same. One state's actions can adversely impact another state's long-term economic outlook, quality of life, and habitat conservation.
Let's get out ahead of other candidates on this, show that we have a serious interest in securing the nation's hydrological resources and ensuring sustainable use practices, especially where local decisions affect populations in across state lines.
Ecological factors are undeniably a major influence: desertification across northern China and at the edges of the Sahara, the heating and drying of southern Europe, aquifer depletion and the economic impact of rising global demand for meat, put a continuous strain on world grain supply.
What's more, shortages in water, which is increasingly over-consumed and wasted on poorly planned or even long-term-detrimental irrigation strategies, mean water put into the production of grain is spurring competition for that grain, so countries in need can dedicate their water to other uses.
Beyond charitable giving and international food aid, via UN agencies or other bodies, there is little serious planning taking place on the global stage to secure the food supply and ensure that the globalization of trade does not inadvertently bring about an expansion of chronic hunger.
If China's ability to feed itself is already outpaced by its size and economic growth, the economic calculus for other parts of the world will be thrown into disarray. Prices will soar, and even the wealthiest economies will feel serious pressure from a demand-driven world food economy.
This issue also touches on the problem of international peace and security. You cannot secure hungry populations from factional infighting, and you cannot overcome tribalism or sectarian conflict when 'peace and security' is synonymous with starvation or chronic dehydration.
We need to face this question as a society, as a civilization, as a government of involved citizens, and we need a visionary campaign, that takes this problem into account, understands what it means to our allies and to our enemies, and takes steps to improve everyone's chances.
