BPA, SP2, BoP, Funnel Walls, T&B,

BPA:

Last week the LA Times ran the following story about a report by the National Toxicology Program (part of the National Institutes of Health), which says there is concern about the affects of Bisphenol A (BPA) – a common synthetic chemical used in polycarbonate plastic – on human health (and therefore other forms of life).

A controversial, estrogen-like chemical in plastic could be harming the development of children's brains and reproductive organs, a federal health agency concluded in a report released Tuesday.

The full story is here:

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/medicine/la-na-plastic16apr16,1,498138.story

SP2:

From a sustainability perspective this comes as no surprise. Sustainability Principle 2 states that in a sustainable society nature is not subject to systematically increasing concentrations of substances produced by society (such as synthetic chemicals). With all the plastics, including the additives, plasticizers, by-products, etc., that are persistent and foreign to natural systems, there is no doubt that our production, use, and disposal of them results in their systematic increase in nature. Living systems and organisms (including us) haven’t co-evolved with these compounds, and they are toxic. Shouldn’t really come as a surprise.

BoP:

This brings us to a core concept in creating a sustainable society – where falls the burden of proof. Right now it falls on the citizens, and our representative groups to respond to potential threats, and to prove that they are indeed threats, and battle through layers of bureaucracy, inertia, and special interests to secure the elimination (or partial elimination) of those threats. The burden of proof should, of course, fall on any of us that produce and sell a product, to ensure that to the best of our knowledge and that of the scientific community it is safe, and if greater knowledge reveals that it is not safe, we should no longer be able to produce and sell it.

Funnel Walls:

From an organizational perspective, companies that rely on BPA might be surprised, and will now have to react. Nalgene is trying to tactfully back away, saying they’ll stop using BPA in their water bottles because they think their customers will want that, even though they maintain it’s safe – so as to dampen the impact with the funnel walls, which could come in the form of litigation or loss of customers. Wal-mart has said it will adjust and stop selling baby bottles with BPA. It’s good their being responsive to the information, but the reactive approach is more expensive.

The Trunk & Branches:

By sticking to the “trunk and branches” of sustainability – the 4 sustainability principles – organizations can strategically move out of this reactive mode (or at least have the best chance possible of doing so). Instead of only trying to keep up with every study and judge which is serious, and what we can get away with, we can all (in our various roles in our various organizations) identify and champion creative ways to systematically eliminate our violations of sustainability principles.

Stay going…

Democracy and Sustainability

Some new slides from big Al at this year's TED talks - http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007974.html. And a needed jolt about the importance of putting in some sensible laws to increase our chances of survival living under the laws of thermodynamics.

And a good, quick way to take some political action - check out www.PowerVote.org and sign the pledge... let's rally up around the common enemy of unsustainability, move past the partisan politics, and amp it up on redesigning our society so we can thrive and improve our quality of life by living within sustainability constraints.

Stay going...

Dictatorship and unsustainability

Yesterday’s WSJ had an interesting piece from Morgan Tsvangirai, the president of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Zimbabwe’s main opposition party. He ran through the main points of the corruption and totalitarianism of the ruling ZANU PF regime, headed up by Mugabe.

I studied in Zim for a few months in the fall of ’99, when things were still pretty good, and the country was a model for African independence and success. That spring was the election that really changed all of that – it was clear the vote was stolen and that Democracy in Zimbabwe was over. Since then the situation has deteriorated – land seizures, voter intimidation, cronyism, outrageous spending on personal luxuries while the population starves… it gets worse. Our prof from my time there has kept us posted over the years with inside accounts of what’s happening on the ground. It’s heart breaking.

Hyperinflation has been out of control for years – current stats are around 150,000% or something ridiculous, with unemployment at 80%. Clearly, the situation is unsustainable.

Recently, a colleague mentioned that we need to deepen the dialogue around sustainability – to address questions like ‘is it possible to have a sustainable dictatorship?’ For me, the question illustrates how approaching sustainability without a concrete working definition can create confusion. And, as confusion can stifle action, or lead to misguided action, this can be dangerous in the face of the urgent threat of unsustainability.

Using the 4 Sustainability Principles as our definition of a sustainable society, we know it’s not possible to have a sustainable dictatorship. The 4^th principle states that in a sustainable society, people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their basic needs. The situation in Zimbabwe is clearly causing circumstances that make it impossible for people to meet their basic need for subsistence – to simply stay alive – some are being killed, more are starving. This is not a sustainable society –something needs to give, and something will.

More generally speaking, the circumstances resulting from dictatorships are not always so dire. But, by definition, a dictatorship systematically undermines people’s capacity to meet their need for Participation – another basic need that we all have. It systematically undermines people’s capacity to meet their need for Freedom, as well. So by definition, it’s not possible to have a sustainable dictatorship. That’s not to say they can’t last for a long time. We know we can exhibit unsustainable behavior for long periods of time. But we also know at some point there will be undesirable consequences for people and other life. There are basic, underlying design flaws. Dictatorships are a dramatic illustration as to how abuses of power create unsustainable situations and negative impacts. They’re also a good example of how sustainability is not just about the environment. It’s about people live fulfilling lives on planet earth.

That’s a tough thing to do in Zimbabwe right now. And the situation has no easy answers – the country’s entrenched in downward spiral, created and influenced by a complex blend of historical context, cultural realities, international pressures, forces of the global economy, and so much more. Of course a return to democracy, a transfer of power, and a win for the opposition would be a huge step, and one I pray will come soon. There have been many calls but little action from the international community, no oil, of course - although China's been showing interest, presumably due to the food export potential. But as we know, we're all in this together, and while this may seem like an unfortunate, but isolated and irrelevant situation from our lives, it's not. For the people of Zimbabwe; Stay going.

Tulane - 500th Signatory to the ACUPCC

I've been dying to write on quite a few topics of late - but it's been a busy time personally and professionally - which is all great, but not so much for the blog. The Bear collapse and Fed bailout needs to be covered from a sustainability perspective, what it means, why it happened, and the risks associated with a corollary event on a larger scale as the GDP growth-for-its-own-sake goal drives us to do crazy things.

But for now, just a quick note on a happier topic - Tulane University just publicly announced that they were the 500th signatory to the ACUPCC. This is a huge landmark for the initiative - putting it halfway to its goal of 1000 signatories - and incredible powerful to have it come from Tulane, which is still feeling the effects first hand of what climate disruption can bring.

For the full press release, check out - http://tulane.edu/news/releases/pr_031808.cfm.

The announcement also timed up with the first meeting of the CGI U - Clinton Global Initiative University - which is garnering great commitments from students, faculty, and administrators to create positive change. www.cgiu.org.

And while we're on the topic of garnering commitments and bringing the ACUPCC closer to 1,000, check out the Facebook page we've created to help students and alumni get involved and encourage their presidents to sign on - http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=32064695003

much more to follow in coming months... in the meantime, stay going.

Salvation??

A new article in Science looks like we might have another 'silver bullet' for the climate crisis:

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/02/15/tech-carbon-capture.html

Chemists at the University of California Los Angeles said the crystals — which go by the name zeolitic imidazolate frameworks, or ZIFs — can be tailored to absorb and trap specific molecules.

"The technical challenge of selectively removing carbon dioxide has been overcome," said UCLA chemistry professor Omar Yaghi in a statement.

This is clearly great news - a could be a big piece of an intermediate solution. I think it's important to remember at the same time that increasing concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are but one sustainability challenge (albeit one that is of great magnitude, urgency, and to which we all contribute). There are still many sustainability issues associated with our fossil fuel based economy - the physical destruction of nature from coal mining, the social injustices of exploitative oil extraction, etc. So let's hope this works, and at the same time keep our eyes on the big prize, of a holistic, comprehensive vision of a truly sustainable, healthy, just, and caring society.

Stay going

Spread the love...

Yesterday marked the anniversary of the death of Donella Meadows, an amazing pioneer in systems thinking and sustainability. I received through an email chain an excerpt from a 1992 piece of hers, it is quite powerful. It will take billions of intangible acts of love to restore and strengthen the social fabric. The full column is available at: http://www.sustainer.org/dhm_archive/index.php?display_article=vn433btlloveed

From "There Are Limits To Growth But No Limits To Love"

....OPERATE FROM LOVE. One is not allowed to say that seriously any more. Anyone who calls upon the human capacity for love, generosity, wisdom, will be met with a hail of cynicism. "Of all scarce resources, love is the scarcest," I have heard people say.
I just don't believe that. Love is not a scarce resource, it is an untapped one. Our jazzed-up, hustling, quantitative culture does not know how to tap it, how to discuss it, or even what it means.

I am a child of that culture myself, and worse, a scientifically trained one. I have been educated to trust in rationality, not in love. But I have also been trained to see whole systems, and the more I do that, the more I see that rationality and love are in fact the same thing. What is love, but the ability to identify with someone or something beyond your own skin? Love is the expansion of boundaries, the realization that another person, or family, or piece of land, or nation, or the whole earth is so intimately connected to you that your welfare and his, her, or its welfare are one and the same.

In truth, of course, we are all intimately interconnected with each other and with the earth. We have always been. Love has always been a practical idea, as well as a moral one. Now it is not only practical but urgent. It is time to accept the astonishing notion that to be rational, to ensure our own self-preservation, what is required of us is to be GOOD. We have to look far into the future, care for and share the resources of the earth, and moderate our numbers and desires. We have to -- and we can -- create a culture that draws out of us not only our technical creativity and our entrepreneurial cleverness, but also our morality.

Nothing is more difficult than to practice goodness within a system whose rules, goals, and information streams are geared to individualism, competitiveness, and cynicism. But it can be done. We can be patient with ourselves and others as we all confront a changing world. We can empathize with resistance to change; there is some clinging to the ways of unsustainability within each of us. We can include everyone in the challenge; everyone will be needed. We can listen to the cynicism around us and pity those who indulge in it, but refuse to indulge in it ourselves.

The world can never pass safely through the adventure of bringing itself to sustainability if people do not view themselves and others with compassion. That compassion is there, within all of us, just waiting to be used, the greatest resource of all, and one with no limits.

Stay going.

The Social Fabric

It has been a crazy month, with time flying by as it will. That things are busy is a good sign, as it reflects the growing awareness around sustainability and desire to act -from segments of all of the sectors of our society. But I have not been leaving enough time for myself to think and reflect, particularly on the situation that my sister is experiencing at her home in Nairobi. Here is a recent quote from her blog:

In case you couldn't hear Kofi Annan's words over the roar of machete-wielding youths burned villages news reports... this "post-election violence" has morphed into its own slightly ruthless creature. What is happening in Kenya is no longer a fist fight over who actually won the election, it's an explosion of pent-up frustrations, animosities, ambitions and neglect. It is gangs of "unemployed youths" with not much to lose. It's poor people attacking poor people. It's what happens when populations grow to the point where land and resources become so stressed you're willing to kill your neighbor for a water source.

Upon reading it, my brother reflected that it exemplifies the risk to the ‘globalization strategy’ we live in. I am reading Looming Tower and as my mom pointed out this is a book that “every American should read”, I believe this theme will continue to play out in many countries where the middle class is disappearing…


These types situations, have always been around, but are becoming all too common, and increasingly all too frequent. They have crashed civilizations before (or more aptly, they have been the symptoms of crashing civilizations ) - but never on this global scale. As I talked to my sister on skype today, her voice clear and connected, about the reality of the brutal slaying happening just a few miles down the road, it is impossible not to feel the pressure of the funnel walls -- the systematic deterioration of the social fabric, caused by conditions that have systematically undermined people's capacity to meet their basic needs. In this case, the tipping point was the Luo facing barriers to satisfy their need for participation in their political system. But in the context of the larger global system, people's capacity to meet their needs has been systematically undermined in a variety of ways.

The 4th sustainability principle can be tough to get one's head around - but it is central to the sustainable development challenge, it is after all what our whole endeavor is all about. it is why it is so important to feel empathy for others, to build community, to engage and interact, to deliberately build the social fabric, and be conscious of how our personal and professional activities contribute to widening the wealth gap, and what we can do to eliminate those contributions. Stay going.