Looking forward to...

... moving from basic science to social science in class this week. I like the basic science work, but I'm really eager to see how the social sciences work into it all. As far as the natural science goes, it isn't too hard to come to consensus -- at least on the basics -- when you get people in the room who really know their stuff. Social science is a little different.

I'm a bit behind in my reading, so I really don't have anything that will really get you fired up today. If that's why you're reading... sorry. The weather has been too great and the homework assignment too long. Weather-wise, it ranges from 55 to 68... from 5-9 in the AM there is not much wind, and then it picks up during the day as the air over the land warms and rises. Sunday morning I went for a 3 hour run, walk, sit excursion... I'd jog for a while, then sit down and watch the ducks and cranes land and take off... they're really fun to watch. When they begin to take off, their wings flap against the water creating a clapping sound... the clapping becomes less and less as they begin to get lift. And when the land, they throw their head back and put out their webbed feet... for just a second they look like they are water skiing.

I'm plotting a hydroponics garden... I think that I can grow vegetables in my bedroom this winter, and having a little fresh produce in January will be worth the effort. Hydroponics means that it will be water-based rather than soil based... which means 1) I won't need any dirt, and 2) the plants will grow and produce much faster than if they were in dirt. It's also a bit challenging to find the things that I need -- when I went to the garden store on Saturday and asked if they had any seed, they looked at me like I was crazy... the only thing they had was blueberry seed... since you plant them in the fall. I've tried to order seed from a place in the UK, but they are not responding to my online order nor my email... so I'm not sure where that leaves me. Guess I'll have a nice little fountain if I don't have a garden...

Ok. I'm going to go read now... have two chapters in our textbook and 7-8 articles to read this week, and my calendar is filling up quickly with extracurricular activities and extra group discussions.

Going upstream

Ok, before I start talking about going upstream, let me just say that this is the most ridiculous article that I've seen in quite some time: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/CNBC/Dispatch/LowGasolineMaybe.aspx?GT1=8579 The title of the article is "Why $1.15/gallon gas isn't a fantasy." And there are sooo many flaws in thinking and so little understanding of world dynamics….it's ludicrous. But it'still on MSN in a place where millions of people will see it. One paragraph goes like this:

"But things are starting to change. Drivers are changing their habits. Global tensions are easing, and more supply is on its way."

Things are starting to change, eh? That's optimistic -- optimism is good. As far as drivers changing habits - perhaps. But if gas drops back to early 2001 prices, I'm not optimistic that we'll see that "habits" have really changed - but rather that maybe "actions" have changed. And I don't know where Charley Blaine gets his information, but I'm sure not optimistic about things settling down in the Middle East -- even IF Iraq settles down, the situation with Iran - and Venezuela's support of Iran -- doesn't look good for the world's oil market and particularly the US's access to oil. And even if his facts are correct about a couple of new oil fields increasing supplies -- it's short term.

If you'd like to read something on the opposite end of the extreme, check out http://www.peakoil.ie/downloads/newsletters/newsletter55_200507.pdf Be warned, though -- this is as bleak as it gets. I particularly like sections 572 and 573.

Projecting how much oil is left in the world and the length of time that oil will last is very complicated science. There are so many variables and unknowns… chief among them are the amounts of oil and the price (as largely affected by the amount available). In reality, it isn't important about whether oil will last 20 years or 50 years or even 100 years. We know that we are reaching peak oil -- perhaps even DID reach it over the last couple of years… that production capacity can not continue to grow at the same rate as the human demand for energy. And that in and of itself is enough to demonstrate that even if we have a year or two of low-cost gasoline, it is not going to last. With an increasing demand for a finite resource (and I haven't even mentioned the increasing cost of extracting oil) the cost of that resource will go up. As will territorial disputes for access to that resource.

This leads nicely to what I initially wanted to talk about: the need to take an upstream view. What got me started on this today was a comment by our professor about how silly it is from a high-level perspective that Sweden ships milk to Norway while Norway also ships milk to Sweden. (Or a more extreme example with absolutely no logic -- mineral water from Australia being available in Sweden.) So we use an incredible amount of energy just for the transportation of that milk… what sense does it make? From a company's perspective, it might make sense… managers are smart people and when operating within their systems and with the information they have… it works. But from a higher-level perspective, it's absolutely assanine.

Here's something to ponder: "Royal Dutch Shell has begun pumping natural gas from its wind- and solar-powered Cutter micro-platform, sited on a marginal-production gas field underneath the southern North Sea." So it uses renewable energy - wind and solar - but it pumps natural gas. "The use of renewable energy generation equipment not only provides green power, but reduces the cost of providing a subsea cable to power the platforms. The platform’s US$143 million fabrication cost alone is around 40% of that of traditional platforms." More information and pictures at ::Green Car Congress, ::First gas from Cutter using renewable energy technology (this paragraph from http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/04/natural_gas_pla.php)

Ok - now I'm out of time to actually talk about upstream in detail… maybe another time…

Tipping Point

It's a beautiful Sunday morning... I'm sitting in my bed waiting for laundry to finish... looking out the window to a calm sea and a slowly awakening city. In an hour I'll head for the downtown area, where I'll get on a ferry along with a dozen or two of my classmates... we're going on a boat ride to see the archipelago. It's looking to be the perfect day for being outside!

Last night, about 10 of us got together for a small bonfire... Fiona brought bread (I think she learned to make it during her time in Sierra Leone) that you wrap around a stick and hold over the fire to bake; I brought the makings for s'mores, and Merlina brought an apple cake in celebration of David's birthday. After that, we went to Michelle and George's and Dan's and Richard's and Jeff's and another's (Ian, I think) apartment for a party... it was a wonderful couple of hours of meeting, greeting, and getting to know several more people who are in the area.

Last week was a rather long week with exams and presentations... first an individual exam, then a group presentation, then a group exam. The individual exam went very well for me -- it was fairly straight forward regurgitation of the facts that we've learned over the last couple of weeks. My group's presentation -- something we worked on for a little less than a week -- was about making western weddings more sustainable... so we talked about all of the things now that are typically involved in a wedding, and how a wedding that is in compliance with the four sustainability principles might be different. It's a very interesting exercise in coming to understand the process of moving from current state to sustainable state... and thinking through how to make that happen. Most weddings today have aspects of them that are indeed sustainable, and certainly the celebration itself -- the social gathering of family and friends -- is an important piece of our society. But a wedding that is completely in compliance with the four principles probably would not fly in general society just yet... so there needs to be a strategy for moving the wedding industry slowly -- in baby steps -- toward sustainability.

It is exciting to see how many people in the US are beginning to slow down -- to excuse themselves from the rat race, visit the farmer's market, eat good food, and generally be more healthy. As cynical as I often am, I also know that we're nearing a tipping point. There's a business book with this title "Tipping Point" of which I've only heard the audio summary... but it talks about how new technologies typically follow a trend in which there is slow, hard-fought growth for some period of time, followed by a huge boom in which a product or service comes into great demand. Fax machines are a wonderful example; in the early 1980's fax machines were invented. Few people had them for the first few years, and since there weren't very many people to whom you could send a fax, you didn't have a great reason to have a fax machine of your own. But as the popularity of these machines slowly increased, eventually their use reached a point at which it made sense for every business to have a fax machine... and the industry boomed. Internet providers and email have experienced similar tipping points...

All this to say that I'm very optimistic about the coming tipping point in the US... the tipping point that says big business is necessary at some level, but must be done with a far, far greater level of integrity and responsibility than as ever been done before. A tipping point in which politicians are held accountable for their decisions -- brought on by both frustration with corruption AND by the incredible communication technologies that have come into existence over the last decase. The tipping point in which people stop settling for the crap for food that is being provided by so many grocery stores and fast food joints, and instead demand local, organic foods that taste good and create jobs.

I hear laundry calling...

Fight Ignorance

This links to an article that provides a little hope for the news: The Economist effect: Not all news media are dumbing it down. Clearly there are downsides to news magazines that would be willing to reduce circulation as Times seems to be considering - but if it gets real news into the hands of people that will consume it... cool.

Another good note for the day: it sounds as if Congress has moved to place federal expenditures in a searchable database that is available online.

Less positive toward the US, the Human Rights Record of the US (published by China in 2003) is an interesting read and includes this statement: "Its (the US's) military spendings for the 2004 fiscal year reaches 400.5 billion US dollars, exceeding the total amount of defense budgets of all other countries in the world in summation"

"Most Wanted" Corporate Human Rights Violators of 2005 lists (and provides brief summaries of) some well-known corporations, including Caterpillar, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Ford Motor Co., Lockheed Martin, Monsanto, Nestle USA, Pfizer, and Wal-Mart, among others.

Read about the differences between the GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and a relatively new idea of the GPI (Genuine Progress Indicator) on this link at Redefining Progress's website. Politicians and business leaders are excited when the GDP goes up... but does that mean lives are better?

Ignorance is Bliss

I'm fuming. Ok - there's not literally steam coming out my ears. But there just as well be -- and there should be steam coming out of your ears, too.

Take any number of issues. Perhaps it's ABC's airing of the movie "Path to 9/11" -- a docudrama (not documentary) that combines fact and fiction in a made-for-tv movie. How can this be appropriate at any point in time, let alone at a time when the effects of 9/11 are continuing to cost life after life after life after life?

It's particularly appalling precisely because we know the impact of distortion of truth in America. American people by and large are ignorant of what the country is really all about. I was. And still am to a great extent... I have a lot to learn no doubt. But when THE MAJOR reason that the truth about global warming is not reaching the American public is because the federal government is taking time to edit scientific reports before they are published -- and not edit for the scientific content but rather to make language as vague as possible or as least-damning as possible?

Folks, we've been duped. Many of us know that history as it's taught in the public schools is not what actually happened. Ok - it's one perspective on what actually happened. As Howard Zinn describes it, it's history as told by the doers... when it would really be nice to see history written by the done-tos.

I've started looking more and more into American foreign policy / foreign involvement over the years. It makes me sick.

Without a doubt, the US has done some very good things for the world over the last 230 years. Please don't think that I'm not willing to acknowledge, celebrate, and be thankful for those actions and efforts, and the men and women who served the country at great sacrifice. It is perhaps because of that very model of sacrifice that I feel compelled to try and improve our current situation rather than bail out and do something crazy like marry a Swede.

The US is also the most free country in the world; that level of freedom provides incredible opportunity to all who pursue it. Certainly there are great benefits to being a citizen of such a nation. That is particularly why I have such an issue with so much of what is going on -- because we are neglecting our responsibility as citizens of this great nation. Yes - we have the freedom. For now. But at what cost - and are we willing to pay that cost to continue as we have been?

Mind you, these good things are also the things that are drilled into our heads and hearts... the relentless drumbeat of American history as we know it... the annual celebrations, the parades, the playing of out national anthem before every sporting event. These are the partial-truths that permeate the American landscape which we all call home. These are partial-truths that ring very clearly as a reminder of other partial-truth governments from around the world that we have declared as evil and communistic. And yet we don't see it when it's happening here, so close to home.

Unfortunately, we've also been quite content to sit in our safety and comfort and not pay attention to what goes on in the world around us. Blame the government for doing it or the media for not making the government's actions known... we've had that excuse for the last many years. But now, as the world becomes smaller, we can not claim that ignorance of the real events -- the real actions of our government -- we can not claim that ignorance is our shield.

It's time that we overcome our bias; it's time that we overcome our baby-like status that finds us content to sit in the safety of our homes and be spoon-fed edited "scientific" reports and newsfeeds and fictionalized movies based on loose facts.

It's time to create a new framework for America. A framework provides a way for thinking about a complex system... we're using frameworks in my class now to talk about the incredible complexity of the system that supports life on earth. Our professor is fond of saying that groups of 5 or more people are incredibly dumb... that you put any 5 people together in a room and give them a problem to work on, and invariably they, collectively, come up with a very dumb solution. Individually they may be very intelligent, capable people... but as a group they are dumb. But provide a framework from which they can share an understanding of the problem... and they can build on the intelligence of each individual so that the solution derived by the group is greater than any one of them could have derived alone.

So it's time for a new framework for America. The "make money at all costs" or - as our current administration likes to say it "if it is not better for our economy than for anyone else's, we're not going to do it" -- framework has to end. We've got to come up with a framework that puts the reality of the world that we live in into perspective. I can't describe exactly what that framework might look like, but I can assure you that it wouldn't promote something as stupid as putting money in the bank today, while the very process of earning that money risks the existence of that bank tomorrow.

Shit. Just realized it sounds like I'm running for office. I'm not.

Please don't write to me and say that really nothing is new in the US -- that the country was founded by people that killed other people in order to carve out a little place for themselves... then continued killing and carving... and that really the trend is just continuing. Please don't remind me of that, and ask me why I'm surprised as I learn more... I'm not in the mood.

And don't write me saying that I sound as though I'm advocating communism. Maybe I am and maybe I'm not. But maybe we should think about communion and community and other ways in which we celebrate, embrace, and joyously partake in activities that begin with "comm" -- and then learn the factual differences between each instead of reacting in strong emotion rooted both in truth and propaganda. I, for one, can't of the top of my head tell you what's good or bad about communism with a degree of certainty -- nor can I tell you the differences between republics and democracies with a comfortable level of confidence. But I'm willing to admit that I don't know and then take action to learn... so check back in a few days.

Do write and tell me about the things that you're doing -- whether it's striving to be more informed by alternative media sources ( try the Christian Science Monitor www.csmonitor.com)

Yes, yes... I'm a little off the topic of sustainabilty today. Actually, though - it's very directly related, because if we aren't able to communicate through the mass media honestly about the facts of global warming or other equally as pressing sustainability issues... we'll never reach a tipping point at which we'll actually be able to do something about it. So maybe there IS a reason for exploring Mars...

Ignorance is bliss, but not very fulfilling.

Ok. So what do I have to do to convince you?

A Weekend of Learning

It's Sunday afternoon... it's been a lazy weekend of much reading and a little documentary-watching... I watched "An Inconvenient Truth" last night. Yikes! Al Gore makes a very strong case that global warming is even more severe than I'd realized and that it's time to take action NOW! Definitely a piece that everyone should see -- he shows that carbon levels in the atmosphere are much, much higher than they have ever been in the last 650,000 years... that yes, there have been cycles of increasing then decreasing carbon levels... but that now we are so far off the charts that there are very real threats. He concludes but listing 8-10 major initiatives that would put carbon levels back to the 1970 level -- which would be a big step in the right direction. He also points out -- as I mentioned in a previous post -- a study of 928 scientific, peer-reviewed publications over the past 10 years found that NONE of them disputed that global warming is happening and is caused by human activity... which contrasts sharply with the public media in which 53% of stories present global warming as a controversial "theory." Gore makes a point that tobacco industries did the same thing years ago when trying to dispute medical claims that smoking causes cancer...

I also watched a 30-min episode of PBS's NOW that interviewed the director of "Who Killed the Electric Car?" -- I believe this documentary is coming (did?) out this summer... and should be quite interesting. Historically (1890-1910) my understanding is that electric cars were very competitive with cars powered by internal combustion engines -- but gas won out because electricity was relatively more expensive and harder to find, whereas gas was a waste product from oil production. Electric cars have really never had much market since, though there were a 1,000 or so in the late 1990's when California had legislation requiring that vehicles with zero emissions be brought in. Of course, US automakers and oil companies lobbied heavily - and won - the changing of those requirements. That's as much as I'll say, because I think the doc goes into detail -- and probably does so with much more accuracy then I'll be able to right now.

Robert Newman's "History of Oil" was also on my watch list... he's an intelligent British gent that spends an hour on a stage recapping the fights for oil over the last 100 years or so -- beginning with World War I and going on to explain the far-too-complicated-for-my-simple-mind idea that the US's interest in Iraq is as much about oil currency as the oil itself. Basically... the US dollar is the currency in which oil is traded. In 1970, when the US military was active in Vietnam, Nixon allowed the US gold reserves to be disconnected from the dollar itself -- so that for every dollar printed there did NOT have to be gold in reserve. The strength, then, of the US dollar became oil... other countries needed dollars in order to buy oil, which created global demand for dollars, which allowed the US's economic growth to continue. Somewhere between 2000 and 2002, Iraq began to trade oil in Euros... the new (1999) European currency used by a population comparable to that of the US (and with a probability for growth as more countries used the Euro in following years). This greatly threatened -- and continues to threaten -- the US dollar. And that's as far as I can go -- only wish that I would have studied a wee bit more economics in college.

Yikes. What else should I say... it's a beautiful day here -- upper 60's -- so a little cool, but a long-sleeve shirt is comfortable. I went for a short run this morning -- there's a great trail that goes along the water for several km... otherwise I've been reading, writing, and studying for this week's exam. I love being able to focus on little other than learning -- I find that as I'm reading assigned texts and articles, I'll go off on dozens of tangents... and for right now anyway I have time to just go off and look things up!

A couple of days ago I did some pretty extensive looking into land use worlwide and how it has changed over the last 300 years. (Did I write about that already??) I created a couple of charts -- one which shows a funnel as cropland has increased (3.1% of total land use in 1700, up to 13.8% in 1990) whereas the other side of the funnel is primarily two types of land: forest (down from 41.2% in 1700 to 35.6% in 1990) and savannah/grassland (down 24.6% in 1700 to 20.7% in 1990). That all came from Land area in database at http://www.sage.wisc.edu/ -- Center for Sustainability and Global Environment. This has all kinds of implications for us.

There's another interesting stat that I came across today -- it takes 10 calories of energy to produce/transport every 1 calorie of energy that an American eats. (Taken from / Read more at http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/100303_eating_oil.html) This is fascinating, because it has changed so much over the last 100 years... I can't find a stat on it right now, but in the days before mass use of oil (for diesel in farm equipement and trucks, fertilizers, etc.) the ratio was at worst 1:1 -- and if logic works, should have been substanitally better than 1:1 or everyone would have been hungry... because before fossil fuel dominated food production, the way food added energy value was by converting energy gained from sunlight. Clearly sun still provides a significant source of energy for agriculture production... but if we're putting so much oil + sun's energy into getting just a little food out, AND we know that oil production is peaking someday sooner rather than later... seems like we might be in trouble somewhere within my lifetime. I'm thinking I might want to get back to the farm and make sure I know how to grow vegetables, add more stock fish to the pond, and plant some nut trees! Read more about what some US farmers are doing/thinking in this article: http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/41023/?comments=view&cID=202632&pID=200581

So. It's all pretty cool stuff -- but it's also VERY scary to think of the hole that we've gotten ourselves into on a global level. Hope y'all are taking heed and starting to do what you can to be part of the solution!

Where did the week go?

Gosh - it's Friday already! I'm definitely ready for a weekend, and yet it seems like the week just started. Class-wise, we will conclude our second official week of class, but really we're just concluding our first week of having course material to learn (much of the first week was learning where stuff is on campus -- even though it's only five buildings, learning people's names, and so on). Our first exam is next Wednesday, and for the most part I feel like it's a review of high school biology, chemistry, and physics all rolled into one... it will cover things like the biogeochemical cycles and the four sustainability principles.

Biogeochemical sounds complicated... and for sure it can be if one goes into great depth. But it can also be relatively simple -- essentially it just refers to the basic flows within nature. Most of the energy on earth comes from the sun (there are two other sources of energy: one is the nuclear reactions that occur at the earth's core, the other is the energy we see in the tides which is caused by planetary motion).

If you take time to think about it, you'll realize that the other kinds of energy that we access today are linked back to one of these three energy sources -- usually the sun. Windmills turn by the power of wind -- which, as we all remember from 7th grade science when Mrs. Christiansen not only taught us that "wind is caused by the uneven heating of the earth's surface" but also encouraged us to share this simple fact with her husband at every opportunity because he "liked" little factoids. The earth's surface, obviously, is heated unevenly by the sun. Oil... is hundreds of thousands of years of material settling and being compressed and heated... the material having been living organisms that used the sun's energy.

So. The sun's energy. Plants use it to create simple sugars through a process we know as photosynthesis; energy + carbon dioxide + water creates a simple sugar + oxygen. Animals (including people) then eat the plants to take in the simple sugars, and in our bodies we combine those simple sugars with oxygen in a process we know as cellular respiration to produce carbon dioxide, water, and energy... the energy we then use to go about the business of keeping our bodies healthy and active.

So that's where energy comes from.

Along those lines, oil seems to always be an issue... Al Gore's film is now out... the big oil companies have run ads disputing facts in the film... it's all very entertaining, until you take time to think about what it means. Science Magazine analyzed 928 peer-reviewed scientific papers on global warming published between 1993 and 2003. Not a single one challenged the scientific consensus that the earth’s temperature is rising due to human activity. That's the fact.

Scientists may not (they don't) agree on how fast global warming is happening. And it really doesn't matter... it is happening, and some day it's going to prevent many challanges. Just as the fact is that there's a finite (limited) amount of oil in the earth... there is an increasing population... there is an increasing demand for oil as countries like China and India and many others become more industrialized... so go back to the funnel analogy I presented on Sept 1.

This does not need to be a doomsday threat -- as many on the left often present it to be. Rather, it's an incredible opportunity for big business to invest in alternative techonologies today that can lead the way into future sustainability. I just wish that we'd do it intelligently, instead of as a stupid herd of elephants...

Dave Hurd, retired CEO of Principal Financial and past board chair of the Iowa Environmental Council wrote in a letter to the editor of the Des Moines Register a couple of years ago commenting that we often think about 3-5 year strategic plans and 10-20 community growth plans, and then went on to ask "Who is thinking about the 1,000 year plan?"

I've found a group that is working on that... at least from the point of ecological sustainability. And rather than trying to agree on what the details of life will look like 1,000 years from now... the idea is to look at the principles of what life will look like 1,000 years from now: what conditions will have to be met in order for life to be able to exist? This way we don't have to argue about whether people will be riding horses or operating vehicles that George Jetson would drive... we just agree that based on science, certain things have to happen or not happen in order for life to continue.

Time for class -- looks like I'm saved by the bell. :)

Beginnings of Sustainability

We had the first day of lectures yesterday... well, the first full day anyway. Karl-Henrik Robert (founder of The Natural Step) talked first about his work in the area of sustainability over the last 15 years, including how he lead an initiative among dozens of scientists from a variety of areas (his own expertise was a specific area of cancer) who came together to establish basic principles of sustainability -- that is, what general principles systems on earth might operate under which would allow them to be around for a long, long time.

Before getting into the sustainability principles, it's obviously necessary to establish that we are currently on an unsustainable path. I probably should have done this before even mentioning sustainability, but I know that those who are reading this do so with anopen mind... so I won't go back to edit, but rather will continue...

Let's start with same basic questions -- everyone can answer these! Generally, is the world's population increasing or decreasing? Increasing, right? In general, are businesses becoming more competitive or less competitive? More competitive, right? In general, are resources becoming more available or more scarce? More scarce. We don't have to agree on how fast these things are happening... just that in general, there are trends that on their own will not change.

If we're in agreement on that point, then we can go on to make the case that it makes sense for a business, and presumably an individual as well, to make investments in ways that reduce the risks that come along with an increasing demand (more people) for a decreasing amount of resources. Whether it's the basics (food, supplies for houses, clothes, etc.) or lake-front property... we know that as there are more people, there are relatively fewer of the desirable lake-front lots... thus the cost of those lots will go up.

We also know that other costs will also go up... for examples, insurance rates and transportation costs are increasing. The point is that a smart business, organization, and/or individual will begin moving toward a direction that reduces the risks associated with the walls brought on by an increasing demand and a decreasing resource base. Think of a (two-dimensional) funnel -- where one funnel wall is the decresing amount of resources, and the other is the increasing demand:

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXX decreaasing XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXX resources XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Sustainability -- point at which
current trends are altered

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXX demand XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXX increasing XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It would have been much easier to use a picture rather than doing that with X's... but you get the idea.

So the question for us is as businesses and organizations -- how do we avoid bumping into the funnel walls knowing that are unwitting competitors are likely to do so?

Yes, yes... I'm going through this very, very quickly and will need to come back at a later time to clarify points. Remember I've just been introduced to this yesterday, and certainly have not yet tried to explain it to anyone! But I do want to introduce the sustainability principles today -- these principles will be in effect when we are truly sustainable... or, perhaps a more appropriate way to state this is -- as we work toward being sustainable, these are the principles to keep in mind. They are:

1) Eliminate our contributions to systematic increases in concentrations of substances from the earth's crust;

2) Eliminate our contributions to systematic increases in concentrations of substances produced by society;

3) Eliminate our contributions to systematic physical degradation of nature through over-harvesting, introduction and other forms of modification;

4) Eliminate our contribution to the systematic undermining of people's ability to meet their needs.

Principle #1 includes things like lead, mercury, and copper.

Principle #2 includes man-made substances such as CFC's, PCBs, freon, etc.

Principle #3 includes farming/fishing/forestry practices, city planning, etc.

Principle #4 essentially states that people are social people, and as social beings we have responsibilities to each other -- a social contract, if you will... and that people have the right to be able to meet their needs.

Give me a week and I'm sure that I'll explain it much more clearly... but that's what I've got for now!