2020people co-creating a sustainable world

Thanks to Steve Kurtz for this editorial by Frosty Wooldridge that appeared in the Denver Post. See http://neighbors.denverpost.com/blog.php/2008/09/18/rescuing-earth-from-...

September 18, 2008
Connecting the Dots
Rescuing Earth from Humans
Posted by thunderhorse

By Frosty Wooldridge

www.frostywooldridge.com

Re: High, Dry and Devastated Pankratz/9/17/08 Denver Post

2020people.com aims to evolve the process of innovation itself. I feel that decision making is often of a very poor quality even when all participants have the best of intentions and no matter how inclusive the process I am not confident that organisations such as government, NGOs and businesses identify, define and analyse problems competently, work to understand causes, effects and the root of the issues, linkages to other problems and positive and negative feedback loops.

The 13th October will mark the 100th anniversary of the day the Sufferagettes rushed UK parliament in Westminster. A Climate-Rush is planned to mark the occasion and to focus political attention on the urgent need for societal and environmental change.

More info here: http://www.climaterush.co.uk/index.html

Robin Bew, Chief Strategist at the Econmist's Economic Intelligence Unit says that now is the time for more radical innovation in order to pave the way for recovery, but there will still be blood on the floor well into 2009.

http://w3.cantos.com/cantos/dyn/org.php?o=3952&s=57902650&psid=cantos&u=*|CUSERID|*&e=paul@bipedal.co.uk&uid=&CantosSID=8284499ed62ebfae85fdc96d88e49a35_C

Wake Up, Freak Out – then Get a Grip - is a wonderful 10 minute film which explains systemic climate failure and its consequences.
http://wakeupfreakout.org/film/tipping.html

On September 23rd this year we mark an unfortunate milestone: As of today, humanity will have consumed all the new resources the planet will produce this year, according to Global Footprint Network calculations. For the rest of 2008, we will be in the ecological equivalent of deficit spending, drawing down our resource stocks  in essence, borrowing from the future.

The present disorder in the financial markets and the cascading failures of
financial institutions come as no surprise. Those who recognize the
impossibility of perpetual exponential growth and who understand how
compound interest is built into the global system of money and banking
expect the continuation of periodic "bubbles" and "busts," each of
increasing amplitude until the systems shakes itself apart.

Engineers call this phenomenon, "positive feedback." Such a system cannot
find equilibrium. Imagine a heating system in which the thermostat, sensing

According to scientists we are currently in the midst of a mass extinction of wildlife more rapid than the descent of the dinosaurs. Representative democracy on its own is insufficient to organise societies in the 21st century. The powers needed to couterbalance the trans-national private enterprises such as international banks cannot ever be achieved via representative democracy alone.

I came across an article today which I think embodies many of the assumptions and myths I believe underpin some of the wretched state the human world is in at this time.

The article begins:
Tribal war drove human evolution of aggression

Wars are costly in terms of lives and resources so why have we fought them throughout human history? In modern times, states may fight wars for a number of complex reasons. But in the past, most tribal wars were fought for the most basic resources: goods, territory, and women.