An excellent insight on how our money system is failing us and some leads on how to fix it:

"The purpose of money was and should be to serve the human community as well as the Earth community. However, it appears that the original purpose has now been reversed. Instead of money serving people and planet, now people and the planet are put into the service of money. Natural resources are converted into consumables to make money. Whether these consumer goods are necessary or not is irrelevant. As long as money is made, all and everything is justified; the money machine has to be kept in motion at all costs." (Satish Kumar)

"Money is not a god-given fixture: it was designed by us, therefore it can be changed by us. Unless we reform and redesign our money system the idea of sustainability, social justice and spiritual renewal will remain a mirage. Therefore the reform of the money system is an urgent imperative." (Satish Kumar)

Read "The Money Delusion" by Satish Kumar >>

(Image by rbbaird. Some rights reserved)

"For many of us, design is invisible. We live in a world that is so thoroughly configured by human effort that design has become second nature, ever-present, inevitable, taken for granted. And yet, the power of design to transform and affect every aspect of daily life is gaining widespread public awareness." (Bruce Mau of Massive Change)

"If you keep your focus on the key design criteria -- building community resilience and reducing the carbon footprint -- you'll watch as the collective genius of the community enables a feasible, practicable and highly inventive solution to emerge." (Ben Brangwyn and Rob Hopkins in 12 Key Steps for Transition Towns)

"Collaborative design over the internet is tremendously powerful, and likely the best way forward."
Omar Yaqub from Nigeria commenting on Open Architecture Network)

"We need the moral resources to expect nothing less than design that will make this world safe for the next generation." (Jody Boehnert of EcoLabs)

If global problems like the inevitable peak oil, ongoing climate change, crumbling global economy, business as usual worries you, and you wish to do something about it from the local, or the cyber-global, Jody Boehnert pointed us to the solution: community collaborative design, which is based on systems thinking and the democratization of design.

In his paper, Should Change be Radical?, he explores three projects that tries to address the problems of the world by harnessing the collective genius of the community in designing and implementing solutions themselves.

Read the full paper at EcoLabs >>

Further readings

Here's a list of further readings for each of the projects featured in the paper:

Open Architecture Network

1. About Open Architecture Network | Read >>
2. What Housing Crisis? at ArchitectureForHumanity.com | Read >>
3. A TED Talk Video about Open Architecture Network | Watch >>

Massive Change

1. About Massive Change | Read >>
2. Stories from Massive Change in Action | Read >>
3. A Bicycle for Life. How a custom bicycle design is used to save lives in Africa | Read >>

Transition Towns

1. Natural Born Survivors by Harriet Green at The Guardian | Read >>
2. How to Wean a Town Off Fossil Fuels by Hana Loftus at WorldChanging.com | Read >>
3. 12 Key Steps to Embarking on Your Transition Journey at TransitionTowns.org | Read >>
4. Transition Initiatives Primer at TransitionTowns.org | Read >>
5. Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan, a detailed plan on transitioning | Read >>

(Photo by by Thomas Hawk. Some rights reserved)

Quoted from the article:

"Postindustrialism is all about closing resource loops and directly meeting human need--for nutrition, access, shelter, illumination, entertainment, community, and self-actualization--in the most elegant and efficient ways possible."

"... we want 'hot showers and cold beer' and not necessarily power plants and fossil fuels. The latter are just means-to-the-end, and usually not very sensible means... by focusing on real needs, and working backwards to find the most elegant and efficient ways of meeting those needs, one could routinely dispense with lots of unnecessary supply."

"... a core characteristic of green development [is] to substitute human creativity for resources. Some have described a green economy as labour-intensive. But "people-intensive" better suggests that green work is a very different, more developmental, kind of labour than the body- and soul-destroying cog-labour endemic to capitalism."

"A holistic focus on end-use takes us beyond simple efficiency to questions of the purpose of production... In the eco-service economy, manufacturing would be kept local and subordinated to service; stuff would simply be means to the end of satisfying needs for nutrition, shelter, entertainment, illumination, communication, etc."

"Postindustrial or qualitative wealth--in contrast of the quantitative industrial wealth of standardized mass production--is specific to place and circumstance... Community is the nexus through which a green economy's qualitative wealth, organizational efficiencies, and participatory democracy revolve."

"Just as a green economy features distributed or decentralized food, energy and goods production, so also it needs distributed regulation, expressed in finance, certification, communication, education, community design, civic culture, and many forms of participation. The scale of a green community-based economy is, in itself, a key factor encouraging democracy, participation and accountability. It is no panacea, but it makes most of the other positive elements more possible or effective."

"Small values-driven businesses, while they can put social and eco-values in command, need support networks, access to finance and information, and markets. Big business has more resources and access to information, but it is far more constrained by the single bottom line. So it too needs help from the outside--be it via regulatory rules, new enterprise networks, stakeholder pressure, or certification systems."

"Absolutely fundamental to creating ecological or knowledge-based economies are measures of qualitative value. It's an apparent paradox that qualitative development requires more quantification than old-line accumulation which was a pretty simple matter. Qualitative wealth requires complex information on ecosystems, communities and economies: from mass-balance accounts, to eco-footprints, genuine progress indicators, to life-cycle assessment, to social and educational indicators, to local economic multipliers, to sustainable community indicators, and many more."

Read the full article >>

Other writings by Brian Milani

1. From Opposition to Alternatives: Postindustrial Potentials & Transformative Learning (read >>)
2. Mindful Markets, Value Revolution and the Green Economy: EPR, Certification and the New Regulation (read >>)
3. Beyond Environmental Protection: Ecological Alternatives & Education for a Green Revolution (read >>)
4. (Book) Designing the Green Economy, The Postindustrial Alternative to Corporate Globalization (read review >>)

(Photo: Some rights reserved by kenwood)

GreenEconomics.net has this enlightening article on what constitutes a green economy. It begins with the following statement:

"Green economics is the economics of the real world--the world of work, human needs, the Earth's materials, and how they mesh together most harmoniously. It is primarily about 'use-value', not 'exchange-value' or money. It is about quality, not quantity for the sake of it. It is about regeneration--of individuals, communities and ecosystems--not about accumulation, of either money or material."

It then list the following interrelated principles that cover key dimensions of a green economy:

1. The Primacy of Use-value, Intrinsic Value & Quality
2. Following Natural Flows
3. Waste Equals Food
4. Elegance and Multifunctionality
5. Appropriate Scale / Linked Scale
6. Diversity
7. Self-Reliance, Self-Organization, Self-Design
8. Participation & Direct Democracy
9. Human Creativity and Development
10. The Strategic role of the Built-environment, the Landscape & Spatial Design

It also stresses the importance of community by saying "The basis for self-regulation in a green economy would be community, and intelligent design which provides incentives for the right things." And, in another article, "Community is the nexus through which a green economy's qualitative wealth, organizational efficiencies, and participatory democracy revolve."

Read the full article >>

(Photo by Thomas Hawk)

"In A Conservation Economy, Economic arrangements of all kinds are gradually redesigned so that they restore, rather than deplete, Natural Capital and Social Capital."

What does a sustainable society look like?

On ConservationEconomy.net, fifty-seven patterns provide a framework for an ecologically restorative, socially just, and reliably prosperous society. They are adaptable to local ecosystems and cultures, yet universal in their applicability. Together they form what we call a Conservation Economy.

Together, the patterns form a visual and conceptual framework that can be used to inspire innovation, focus planning efforts, and document emerging best practices. A conservation economy comprehensively integrates Social, Natural, and Economic Capital to demonstrate that a sustainable society is both desirable and achievable.

What is a pattern language?

A pattern language is a structured method of describing good design practices within a field of expertise. It is characterized by

1. Noticing and naming the common problems in a field of interest,
2. Describing the key characteristics of effective solutions for meeting some stated goal,
3. Helping the designer move from problem to problem in a logical way, and
4. Allowing for many different paths through the design process.

When a designer is designing something (whether it is a house or a computer program or a stapler), they must make many decisions about how to solve problems. A single problem, documented with its best solution, is a single design pattern. Each pattern has a name, a descriptive entry, and some cross-references, much like a dictionary entry. A documented pattern must also explain why that solution is considered the best one for that problem, in the given situation. When design is done by a team, pattern names will form a vocabulary they can share. This makes it necessary for pattern names to be easy to remember and highly descriptive.

A Pattern Language for Sustainability - Toward a Conservation Economy

In A Conservation Economy, Economic arrangements of all kinds are gradually redesigned so that they restore, rather than deplete, Natural Capital and Social Capital. While A Conservation Economy functions on a global scale, it can be imagined as a healthy mosaic of Bioregional Economies forged within coherent biological and cultural units. Even in a globalizing economy, diverse Bioregional Economies that are more self-sufficient in meeting their own needs will be more competitive and less vulnerable.

Pattern Index

A Conservation Economy

Social Capital

• Fundamental Needs: Subsistence Rights, Shelter For All, Health, Access To Knowledge
• Community: Social Equity, Security, Cultural Diversity, Cultural Preservation, Sense Of Place, Beauty And Play, Just Transitions, Civic Society

Natural Capital

• Ecological Land-Use: Connected Wildlands (Core Reserves, Wildlife Corridors, Buffer Zones), Productive Rural Areas (Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable Forestry, Sustainable Fisheries, Ecotourism), Compact Towns And Cities (Human-Scale Neighborhoods, Green Building, Transit Access, Ecological Infrastructure, Urban Growth Boundaries)
• Ecosystem Services: Watershed Services, Soil Services, Climate Services, Biodiversity

Economic Capital

• Household Economies
• Green Business: Long-Term Profitability, Community Benefit, Green Procurement, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Materials Cycles, Resource Efficiency, Waste As Resource, Product As Service
• Local Economies: Value-Added Production, Rural-Urban Linkages, Local Assets
• Bioregional Economies: Fair Trade, True Cost Pricing, Product Labeling

Here's an excellent definition and explanation of the concept "Sustainability":

"Sustainability is a systemic concept, relating to the continuity of economic, social, institutional and environmental aspects of human society. It is intended to be a means of configuring civilization and human activity so that society, its members and its economies are able to meet their needs and express their greatest potential in the present, while preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystems, and planning and acting for the ability to maintain these ideals indefinitely. Sustainability affects every level of organization, from the local neighborhood to the entire planet."

Accompanying this description is "a number of common principles [which] are embedded in most charters or action programmes to achieve sustainable development, sustainability or sustainable prosperity", synthesized by Hargroves, K. and M. Smith (2005) in their book "The Natural Advantage of Nations: Business Opportunities, Innovation and Governance in the 21st Century". These include:

• dealing cautiously with risk, uncertainty and irreversibility;
• ensuring appropriate valuation, appreciation and restoration of nature;
• integration of environmental, social and economic goals in policies and activities;
• equal opportunity and community participation;
• conservation of biodiversity and ecological integrity;
• ensuring inter-generational equity;
• recognizing the global dimension;
• a commitment to best practice;
• no net loss of human or natural capital;
• the principle of continuous improvement; and
• the need for good governance.

Read more at PermaWiki >>

(Photo by bb_matt)

"If you combine the increase of the oil prices and the increase of food prices then you have the elements of a very serious [social] crisis. . . ." (Jacques Diouf, head of the FAO)

Our global food system faces a crisis of unprecedented scope. This crisis, which threatens to imperil the lives of hundreds of millions and possibly billions of human beings, consists of four simultaneously colliding dilemmas, all arising from our relatively recent pattern of dependence on depleting fossil fuels.

• The first dilemma consists of the direct impacts on agriculture of higher oil prices: increased costs for tractor fuel, agricultural chemicals, and the transport of farm inputs and outputs.
• The second is an indirect consequence of high oil prices - the increased demand for biofuels, which is resulting in farmland being turned from food production to fuel production, thus making food more costly.
• The third dilemma consists of the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events caused by [fossil]-fuel-based greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change is the greatest environmental crisis of our time; however, fossil fuel depletion complicates the situation enormously, and if we fail to address either problem properly the consequences will be dire.
• Finally comes the degradation or loss of basic natural resources (principally, topsoil and fresh water supplies) as a result of high rates, and unsustainable methods, of production stimulated by decades of cheap energy.

Each of these problems is developing at a somewhat different pace regionally, and each is exacerbated by the continually expanding size of the human population. As these dilemmas collide, the resulting overall food crisis is likely to be profound and unprecedented in scope.

I propose to discuss each of these dilemmas briefly and to show how all are intertwined with our societal reliance on oil and other fossil fuels. I will then argue that the primary solution to the overall crisis of the world food system must be a planned rapid reduction in the use of fossil fuels in the growing and delivery of food.

As we will see, this strategy, though ultimately unavoidable, will bring enormous problems of its own unless it is applied with forethought and intelligence. But the organic movement is uniquely positioned to guide this inevitable transition of the world's food systems away from reliance on fossil fuels, if leaders and practitioners of the various strands of organic agriculture are willing to work together and with policy makers.

Read the full article at richardheinberg.com >>

(Photo by trazmumbalde)

"Today's organizations face complex challenges in fast and global environments. Knowledge and excellence based on past experiences have lost their valid promise for future success. What we learned about organizations, systems, management and processes and what worked for us up till now does not necessarily give answers to the diverse problems of today and less so of tomorrow. And although managers and leaders world wide try to face these challenges, usually with costly organizational changes on structure and process levels and with a high investment in training and human resource development measures, they still draw from the (known) past - for an unknown future."

"Letting go of the past and the patterns in which one is thinking and acting and creating the future from how it emerges is the maxim of Theory U. Leaders, argues organization research shooting star C. Otto Scharmer, are like artists in front of a pure canvas - they must sense the painting long before the brush touches the varnish. They must feel and see it emerge, long before it is put on the fabric. Only then it can turn from a mere drawing into a piece of art. Good leaders are creative artists, they know, see and sense by more sources than the traditional ways what is emerging. They can sense the presence (presencing) holistically and can draw from knowledge beyond the past and learn from the emerging future for their strategy and actions." (Barbara Schratz-Hadwich)

(Click title or "read on" below to read the full summary.)

(Photo by somewhereinak)

Humanity is living one of its most crucial moments. The time of the great empires is in decay. There is no specific culture or country arising as a new empire, but instead there is a Global Emerging Culture. It seems that the planet is growing a new social body where all humans are connected giving birth to a global brain.

We are living in the peak of an evolutionary leap. The past century we started riding horses and ended riding to the moon. We have reached a high level of development in technology, but we haven't evolved in the same proportion in the development of our consciousness. That is indeed a dangerous formula for our planet.

Taking that in consideration the guidelines I suggest for the Emerging Global Civilizations are the following:

1. Personal Mastery
2. Social Technologies
3. Global Collective Intelligence
4. Citizens of the World

(Click "Read on" below to read the full message. Photo by big-e-mr-g)

Wealth in a Nutshell

Wealth is access to well-being.

There are at least three levels of wealth:

1. Tradable Wealth: Food, shelter, services, time, are all forms of tradable wealth. We are all familiar with tradable wealth--it is the stuff we need and want, the resources that we compete for. Things we can trade are the products or the components of systems.
2. Measurable Wealth: My health is non-tradable--I can't give it to you. I can give you my blood, which may affect both of our health, but I can't give you my health itself. It is a property of my body as a whole. However, you can measure my health in lots of objective ways: the miles I run or the number of times I see a doctor. Another thing that is non-tradable is the productive capacity of a factory. I can sell you the products of the factory, or the factory itself, but not its productive capacity. But you can measure its productivity by comparing its output to the inputs it requires. Similarly the health of a forest is non-tradable. Its diversity, resilience, etc. can, as with bodily health and productive capacity, be affected and objectively measured, but it can't be traded. Bodies, factories, and forests are all examples of systems. Things we can measure but not trade are properties of systems as a whole.
3. Acknowledgeable Wealth: Friendship, beauty, freedom, civility, culture, happiness, integrity, reputation--these are all forms of acknowledgeable wealth. They are neither tradable nor objectively measurable because their impact is only felt subjectively. I can have friendships of different strengths--from an acquaintance to a best buddy--and though I can tell the qualitative difference between them, that difference is not measurable using any external scale. Rather, it is a difference in quality of relationship between one system (me) and two other systems (my acquaintance, and my buddy). Similarly my professional reputation comes from my relationships with my previous clients. As a potential client you can get a subjective sense of my reputation by talking to my previous clients, but there is no one objective standard to go by in making your choice. Those things that we can acknowledge but cannot measure or trade are inter-systemic resonances.

These levels of wealth are interdependent. Many communities are resource-poor but health- and culture-rich, but this is only possible up to a point: at some point lack of resources will degrade health and culture. Communities that are resource-rich but don't maintain their other levels of wealth will eventually degrade their capacity to maintain their tradable wealth.

Wealth Acknowledgement

When I barter a dozen of my eggs for a pound of your carrots, wealth acknowledgment happens in the act of haggling: It's where we determined how many eggs for how many carrots. When I pay you a coin for your carrots instead (because you don't want my eggs), the coin itself is the acknowledgment of the wealth transfer. The advantage is that the wealth-acknowledgment token, the coin, is redeemable elsewhere in the community. And when communities start using paper notes as wealth-acknowledgment tokens instead of precious metal, the number of transactions is no longer limited by the amount of metal available. When communities invent wealth-acknowledgment tokens for investment, like stock certificates sold by entrepreneurs, they further unlock the potential for growth of wealth.

These examples show how the evolution of wealth-acknowledgment systems prepares the ground for the growth of wealth. They also show how wealth-acknowledgment systems are adopted by communities to reduce their risk in making transactions. Bartering is not risky because the wealth is immediately exchanged, but what if I don't need your carrots? Accepting a token allows me to give without immediately getting wealth in return, because I know I can use the token to get wealth later. Stocks and bonds work similarly in higher-risk situations. Thus wealth-acknowledgment systems evolve in a feedback spiral with social cohesion and trust. They require some level of trust and cohesion to function, but they generate much greater cohesion and trust, which allows new wealth-acknowledgment systems, and the loop continues.

Grant-making, endowments, charitable trusts, and donations (what we call philanthropy), are all efforts to increase measurable or acknowledgeable wealth. Organizations that seek to increase measurable and acknowledgeable wealth in communities almost always suffer from the lack of money. To increase our ability to cultivate these levels of wealth, we need a wealth-acknowledgment system that moves beyond money. That's where open money comes in.

(Click the title or "Read on" below to read the rest of the article)

Money as a Manifestation of Fear

Most of us think that we understand the facts of money: money is good, lack of money is bad; having more money is better than having less money; competition and scarcity are normal because it's a jungle out there; the way to cure economic depression and hunger is to throw more money at the problem; and so on.

In other words, most people have an innate sense that there is simply not enough: that explains not only why they are always striving to get a bigger piece of the pie, but why some people suffer in poverty and hunger. However, basic analysis of the situation shows that there is more than enough food to feed the world--and more than enough stuff in your life to bring happiness.

This myth of scarcity breaks down into three parts:

1. There's not enough. This is a myth that we use to delude ourselves into believing that there is a 'pie' of a certain size that can't grow any larger and that if we don't grab a bigger slice of it, someone else will. This belief creates a fear base that underlies many of our decisions and actions.
2. More is better. This belief causes us to always grab for that bigger piece of pie, even to the exclusion of others. It drives us into a competitive culture of accumulation, acquisition and greed that heightens fears and quickens the pace of the race, but doesnt make life more valuable.
3. Thats just the way it is. This gives us a very weak excuse to act upon our fear and greed. It creates an environment of hopelessness and disempowerment and prevents us from re-examining the first two myths.

The truth? All of these are complete myths--there is enough resources for all. We use these myths to justify our fear and our greed.

To counter these myths, we need to look deeply into the human needs that are associated with money. Not just the needs of human beings in what she calls "resource poor" (developing) countries, but the needs of people who have resources, abundant resources, but who still struggle with their relationship with money and its meaning in their lives. This is because, it doesn't matter whether you're rich or poor, you still have the capacity to make decisions that don't truly reflect your ideals, and it is those repeated wrong decisions that leave people feeling empty and hollow.

When talking about sufficiency and contentment, scarcity and fear, the following question naturally arise, wouldn't the poor all over the world be better off with more money in addition to gratitude for what little they do have?

Absolutely they'd be better off. There certainly are places, people, and times where the authentically appropriate thing is to reallocate resources to those who need it, but not always. Even in the poorest of the poor countries, and certainly those in Ethiopia or other places that need more money, more help, more resources, people are much more in touch with the context and grace of sufficiency than are those of us who have excess. It's a real paradox. What we really need to do is to reallocate resources from fear to love. And often, what that really means is moving money!

More important than that however, is to understand that what people all over the world, including the poor, are longing for is an experience of sufficiency--which will not come from having more money. So, though we need to move money around in a way that helps people and makes the world more equitable and just, at the same time, we don't want poor people in Ethiopia who need more money to look to money for their happiness in life, like so many of us in wealthy countries do. Even the rich have terrible, rooted feelings about scarcity and being rich has its own vicious cycle, often worse than the cycle of poverty's grip. The conclusion remains the same, the psychology of scarcity is a real toxic myth.

So, we need to realize that so many of us separate our soulful life (the one centered around our values) and our financial life (the one centered around our money). Within each world, we behave differently: the soulful life is usually full of following the things that really matter, being fair to others, helping people, cooperating and so on, while the financial life is full of greediness, petty behavior, compromises to our values and more ofthen than not, full of unhealthy competition.

But why does this dichotomy have to exist? Why can't the soulful side be on the same page as the financial side?

(Click the title or "Read on" below to read the rest of the article)

If we are to slow and ultimately reverse the social and environmental disintegration we see around us, we must change the rules to curb the pervasive abuse of corporate power that contributes so much to those harms.

Taming corporate power will slow the damage. It will not be sufficient, however, to heal our relationships with one another and the Earth and bring our troubled world into social and environmental balance. Corporations are but instruments of a deeper social pathology revealed in a familiar story our society tells about the nature of prosperity.

Empire Prosperity Story

The prevailing prosperity narrative has many variations, but these are among its essential elements:

• Economic growth fills our lives with material abundance, lifts the poor from their misery, and creates the wealth needed to protect the environment.
• Money is the measure of wealth and the proper arbiter of every choice and relationship.
• Prosperity depends on freeing wealthy investors from taxes and regulations that limit their incentive and capacity to invest in creating the new jobs that enrich us all.
• Unregulated markets allocate resources to their most productive and highest value use.
• The wealthy deserve their riches because we all get richer as the benefits of the investments of those on top trickle down to those on the bottom.
• Poverty is caused by welfare programs that strip the poor of motivation to become productive members of society willing to work hard at the jobs the market offers.

This money-serving prosperity story is repeated endlessly by corporate media and taught in economics, business, and public policy courses in our colleges and universities almost as sacred writ. I call it the Empire prosperity story.

Few notice the implications of its legitimation of the power and privilege of for-profit corporations and an economic system designed to maximize returns to money, that is, to make rich people richer. Furthermore, it praises extreme individualism that, in other circumstances would be condemned as sociopathic; values life only as a commodity; and diverts our attention from the basic reality that destroying life to make money is an act of collective insanity. In addition to destroying real wealth, it threatens our very survival as a species.

Earth Community Prosperity Story

Consider these elements of a contrasting life-serving prosperity story that looks to life, rather than money, as the true measure of wealth.

• Healthy children, families, communities, and ecological systems are the true measure of real wealth.
• Mutual caring and support are the primary currency of healthy families and communities, and community is the key to economic security.
• Real wealth is created by investing in the human capital of productive people, the social capital of caring relationships, and the natural capital of healthy ecosystems.
• The end of poverty and the healing of the environment will come from reallocating material resources from rich to poor and from life-destructive to life-nurturing uses.
• Markets have a vital role, but democratically accountable governments must secure community interests by assuring that everyone plays by basic rules that internalize costs, maintain equity, and favor human-scale local businesses that honor community values and serve community needs.
• Economies must serve and be accountable to people, not the reverse.

I call this the Earth Community prosperity story because it evokes a vision of the possibility of creating life-serving economies grounded in communities that respect the irreducible interdependence of people and nature. Although rarely heard, this story is based on familiar notions of generosity and fairness, and negates each of the claims of the imperial prosperity story that currently shapes economic policy and practice.

Read the full article @ YES! Magazine >>
(The High Cost of Making Maney, Putting Life First, Rules for Conserving and Sharing, Community-Based Economics, The Essential Choice)

Nature is nothing if not extravagant. Four billion years of natural design, forged in the cradle of evolution, has yielded such a profusion of forms we can barely grasp the vigor and diversity of life on Earth. Responding to unique local conditions, ants have evolved into nearly 10,000 species, several hundred of which can be found in the crown of a single Amazonian tree. Fruit trees produce thousands of blossoms-an astonishing abundance of blossoms-so that another tree might germinate, take root and grow. Birds, too, seem to have a taste for the extravagant: Who could say the wood duck's plumage is restrained?

For most of our history, the human response to the living earth, to particular places, has expressed the same flowering of diversity. Bearing the unique human ability to imagine and create, we entered the show and developed our own extravagant gestures. We built not just shelter, but beautiful, elegant responses to locale; the breathing, shade-providing Bedouin tent along with the ornate, aspiring temples of cool, coastal Japan. We designed not just wraps against the wind but tailored garments for ritual, celebration, and our own delight. We spoke and moved not just for utilitarian ends but to make drama and poetry, Balinese dance and Shakespearean verse-human creations stoking the fire.

Though human industry in the past 150 years has resorted to brute force rather than elegant design, commerce, too, could become a wellspring of creativity, productivity, and pleasure. Think of the thriving marketplaces that have enlivened the world's great cities, the cherished objects and materials that transform shelter into soulful dwelling. These need not be sacrificed to protect our forests, rivers, soil and air. Indeed, human industry and habitations can be designed to celebrate interdependence with other living systems, transforming the making and consumption of things into a regenerative force. Design can perform and preserve the extravagant gesture-in the marketplace, in the human community, and in the natural world.

Read the full article >>>

Buy and watch the movie: "The Next Industrial Revolution" >>>

This article takes us on a journey from the destructive Industrial Revolution, to Eco-Efficiency as a futile measure to mend it, and into the NEXT Industrial Revolution that will harmonize Equity, Economy and Ecology. Some quotations from the article:

If someone were to present the Industrial Revolution as a retroactive design assignment, it might sound like this:

Design a system of production that:

• puts billions of pounds of toxic material into the air, water, and soil every year
• measures prosperity by activity, not legacy
• requires thousands of complex regulations to keep people and natural systems from being poisoned too quickly
• produces materials so dangerous that they will require constant vigilance from future generations
• results in gigantic amounts of waste
• puts valuable materials in holes all over the planet, where they can never be retrieved
• erodes the diversity of biological species and cultural practices

Eco-efficiency instead:

• releases fewer pounds of toxic material into the air, water, and soil every year
• measures prosperity by less activity
• meets or exceeds the stipulations of thousands of complex regulations that aim to keep people and natural systems from being poisoned too quickly
• produces fewer dangerous materials that will require constant vigilance from future generations
• results in smaller amounts of waste
• puts fewer valuable materials in holes all over the planet, where they can never be retrieved
• standardizes and homogenizes biological species and cultural practices

The Next Industrial Revolution can be framed as the following assignment: Design an industrial system for the next century that

• introduces no hazardous materials into the air, water, or soil
• measures prosperity by how much natural capital we can accrue in productive ways
• measures productivity by how many people are gainfully and meaningfully employed
• measures progress by how many buildings have no smokestacks or dangerous effluents
• does not require regulations whose purpose is to stop us from killing ourselves too quickly
• produces nothing that will require future generations to maintain vigilance
• celebrates the abundance of biological and cultural diversity and solar income

Read the full article >>>

Buy and watch the movie >>>

100 Friends

The 100 Friends Project is a small, informal grassroots project dedicated to helping people in Third World Countries facing myriad problems. We collect the donations from donors and then we bring the funds overseas to distribute as directly and intelligently as possible. The recipients are always delighted that there are a group of strangers reaching out to help them with no strings attached.

Sometimes we make micro-loans that can be utilized over and over again as they are repaid. But usually funds are used to pay for education, small businesses, medical costs and other uses and in those cases they do not have to be repaid.

However, we usually suggest that they use part of it to help others. For example, if we give a needy person 1500 Rupees (approximately $33.00) for some good purpose, we will often suggest that they give something like 50-100 Rupees from the donated funds to some one who is perhaps even more needy than them. They always seem to brighten when I suggest this, perhaps because it makes them feel part of a larger cycle of giving and receiving. Occasionally when we are involved in a small income-generating scheme (purchase of a sewing machine, setting up a bicycle repair service, etc.) the person may repay the money over a long period of time so that someone else can use the money to start a small business in the future.

The project began in 1990. I had a dream about going to India as a boy and then I had the same dream as an adult. When I first went to India in 1990 I met a Tibetan family in the Himalayas. I was able to restore the hearing and arrange for a cure of a terrible ear infection for a Tibetan woman for very little money. I was shocked that something so important could be accomplished with a small amount of funds.

The disparity in income and lifestyle between the industrialized world and the Third World had been profoundly disturbing to me for a very long time. I realized that my experience as a project coordinator (I?fve worked in AIDS prevention, substance abuse treatment and as a teacher in inner-city schools) could be used to generate funds for this project. The next time I went to India (1992) I wrote a simple letter to 100 people I knew asking for any support they were willing to give. I expected to raise $300-$400. To my surprise I raised over $2,100. That is a lot of money over there. Since the project began, I have raised $46,230. That is approximately 2,100,000 Rupees. That is a lot of money, over two million rupees!

So, what can you do with $64,530?

That is the amount of money I have raised since 1989 for the 100 Friends Project. About 12% of the funds went for newsletters, mailing, website costs, etc. I pay all of my own travel expenses. So the approximately amount that was actually used for helping needy people in the Third World is 88% of $64,530 which comes to $56,786. Here?fs what I did with that amount. I think it?fs astounding how much you can do with so little:
1. 1989. Purchased antibiotics to save the life of a Tibetan woman with ear infections. ($1)
2. 1989. Restored hearing of Tibetan woman with a hearing aid. ($35)
3. 1992. Medicines for Mother Teresa program in Calcutta, India. ($100)
4. 1992. Medicine for Dr. Jack Preger?fs street clinic in Calcutta, India. ($100)
5. 1992. Support provided for a school for blind children. Calcutta, India. ($100)
6. 1992. Support provided for medicine fund in a pediatric unit hospital in Aurangabad, India. ($100)
7. 1992. Support provided for baby orphans in Mumbai, India. ($50)
8. 1992. Major heart surgery for a woman in Trivandrum, Kerala, India. ($75)
(Click here to see all 166 uses of the money or read more about Marc Gold)

Three Cups of Tea

Do you know anyone who would be willing to sell everything they own and live in their car just so they could save every dollar for someone else? Greg Mortenson, a great American hero, did just that when he followed through on his promise to an impoverished Pakistani village to build a school for its children, and in the process has found himself playing a major role in one of the most historically and culturally pivotal areas in the world today.

In Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace. . . One School at a Time (Viking/On-sale date: March 6, 2006) Greg Mortenson, and acclaimed journalist David Oliver Relin, recount the unlikely journey that led Mortenson from a failed attempt to climb Pakistan's K2, the world's second highest mountain, to successfully building schools in some of the most remote regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan. By replacing guns with pencils, rhetoric with reading, Mortenson combines his unique background with his intimate knowledge of the third-world to fight terrorism with books, not bombs, and successfully bring education and hope to remote villages in central Asia. Three Cups of Tea is at once an unforgettable adventure and the inspiring true story of how one man really is changing the world -- one school at a time.

In 1993 Mortenson was descending from his failed attempt to reach the peak of K2. Exhausted and disoriented, he wandered away from his group into the most desolate reaches of northern Pakistan. Alone, without food, water, or shelter he eventually stumbled into an impoverished Pakistani village where he was nursed back to health.

While recovering he observed the village's 84 children sitting outdoors, scratching their lessons in the dirt with sticks. The village was so poor that it could not afford the $1-a-day salary to hire a teacher. When he left the village, he promised that he would return to build them a school.

From that rash, heartfelt promise grew one of the most incredible humanitarian campaigns of our time: Greg Mortenson's one-man mission to counteract extremism and terrorism by building schools?\especially for girls?\throughout the breeding ground of the Taliban.

Mortenson had no reason to believe he could fulfill his promise. In an early effort to raise money he wrote letters to 580 celebrities, businessmen, and other prominent Americans. His only reply was a $100 check from NBC's Tom Brokaw. Selling everything he owned, he still only raised $2,000. But his luck began to change when a group of elementary school children in River Falls, Wisconsin, donated $623 in pennies, thereby inspiring adults to take his cause more seriously. Twelve years later he's built fifty-five schools.

Mortenson and award-winning journalist David Oliver Relin have written a spellbinding account of his incredible accomplishments in a region where Americans are feared and hated. In pursuit of his goal, Mortenson has survived an armed kidnapping, fatwas issued by enraged mullahs, repeated death threats, and wrenching separations from his wife and children. Yet his success speaks for itself. This year the schools will educate 24,000 children.

Room to Read

Room to Read was founded on the belief that "World Change Starts with Educated Children" - and that education is the key to breaking the cycle of poverty. We strive to provide children access to education, one child at a time, one school at a time, and one village at a time. Through partnerships with local communities we work to create educational opportunities and establish educational infrastructure. Our efforts are currently focused in Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, and South Africa - all countries with a desperate lack of resources to educate their children. In addition to these countries, we continue to take on new countries and new projects each year.

The Room to Read story begins in 1998 with Founder & CEO John Wood. In 1998, John was an overworked Microsoft executive looking for the quiet solitude of a trekking vacation. While backpacking in the Himalayas, John met a middle-aged Nepalese man who invited him to visit a school in a neighboring village. Hoping for a chance to see the real Nepal, rather than his tourist's trek, John agreed. Little did he know this short detour would change his life forever.

The man John met was a Nepalese "Education Resource Officer." However, John soon discovered that despite his huge heart and tremendous work-ethic (traveling mountain passes on foot to visit his schools), this man had very little resources to offer the schools in his charge. At the school John came face to face with the harsh reality confronting millions of Nepalese children - there were almost no books. John was stunned to discover that the few books they had - a Danielle Steele romance, the Lonely Planet Guide to Mongolia, and a few other backpacker castoffs - were so precious that they were kept under lock and key... to protect them from the children!

As John left the village that day, the school headmaster made a simple request: "Perhaps, Sir, you will some day come back with books." His request would not go unheard. After returning from his trek, John emailed friends to ask for their help in collecting children's books, and was overwhelmed with the response - over 3,000 books arrived within the next two months. The following year, John returned to Nepal, rented a yak, and returned to the village to deliver the books.

On that trip, John made a decision. He would leave the corporate world in order to devote himself to starting a new non-profit. In his memoir, Leaving Microsoft to Change the World, John explains, "Did it really matter how many copies of Windows we sold in Taiwan this month when there were millions of children without access to books?" In late 1999, John quit his executive position with Microsoft and started Room to Read.

With Room to Read, John sought to marry the corporate business practices he learned at Microsoft with an inspiring vision - to provide the lifelong gift of education to millions of children in the developing world. He contended that with 750 million illiterate adults worldwide and 100 million children without access to school, a non-profit "with the scalability of Starbucks and the compassion of Mother Theresa " was required.

Beginning in Nepal, John and future Nepal Country Director Dinesh Shrestha began working with rural communities to build schools and establish libraries. To date, we have created over 4,100 schools and libraries.

In 2000, recognizing that in addition to the economic difficulties facing students in the developing world, many girls are also overlooked due to cultural bias, we began the Room to Grow Girls' Scholarship Program. This scholarship fund is targeted at young girls and provides a long-term commitment to their education that lasts an average of 10 years. There are now over 3,400 girls on Room to Grow Girls' Scholarships.

In the summer of 2001, Erin Keown Ganju joined the team as Chief Operating Officer and was instrumental in our expansion into Vietnam, where she had previously worked for two years. Erin quickly became John's partner as the two of them continued to push hard to expand Room to Read's geographic and programmatic presence. With growing demand for our programs, we further expanded our work in Cambodia in 2002, followed by India the following year.

In 2003, Room to Read also began publishing local language children's books, in addition to the donated English-language books we use to stock our libraries. Because the children's book publishing industry is generally nascent in the countries where we operate, we work with local authors and local illustrators to develop new children's books and publish them in-country. To date, we have published 146 local language children's book titles.

2004 was another very significant year for Room to Read. We celebrated one of our first major milestones on April 29th when we opened our 1,000th library in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Later that year, just days after the December 24th Asian tsunami devastated thousands of villages, we made the bold decision to launch operations in Sri Lanka in order to rebuild schools and help ease the suffering of children there.

In addition to expanding into Sri Lanka in 2005, we began operations in Laos - our 6th Asian country of operations - in the middle of the year. Then on September 2nd, we opened our 2,000th library, once again in Cambodia - only less than 18 months after our 1,000th library ceremony. We ended 2005, with another big milestone - the donation of our millionth book.

2006 has been an important year for us thus far. In addition to completing a five-year strategic plan (see Our Vision for the Future), we expanded to a new continent by beginning work in South Africa.

What We're Capable

"If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves." (Thomas Edison)

"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance." (Robert F. Kennedy)

"Living integral lives is daunting. We must achieve a complex integration that spans the contradictions between inner and outer reality, that supports both personal integrity and the common good. No, it is not easy work. But, by doing it, we offer what is sacred within us to the life of the world." (Parker Palmer)

Also read A Life Lived Whole by Parker Palmer