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| | Overview The SourceBook is a concise (58 pages), attractive and user-friendly personal manual for contributing to a sustainable world. It contains essential information on the state of the planet and recommended solutions, effective actions for greening your life, and a resource directory of useful organizations, books, films and websites. We will make available updates on the book periodically that can be downloaded from our site. 1. GLOBAL • Overview of the global vital signs and trends in the most critical areas: aaa- Environment: Ecosystems and Natural Resources • Wherever possible, accompanying these trends with viable solutions, and ideas about how to best implement these solutions. • Principles and actions for "greening" one's personal life and lowering one's ecological footprint, covering energy use, purchasing & investment guidelines, waste, transportation, food choices, etc. • How communities can become (and are becoming) more sustainable. • Guidelines for creating and running Community Action Teams. • Directory of organizations relevant to personal engagement and action, with description by category. This includes a regional section (San Francisco Bay Area), national and international. • Listings of useful books, films and websites that similarly support citizen education and engagement.
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Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Sustainable World SourceBook
Strategy for Environmental Education for Sustainability in Mexico
National Strategy 2006-2014
1. To consolidate environmental education for sustainability as a public policy based on specific legislation and mainstreamed in other related fields, on solid governmental and civic institutions, on significant financial resources earmarked for important programs and project that aim for the construction of an environmental culture in
2. To create a broad of environmental education and capacity building alternatives that will provide the country and its different areas with environmental educators responding to environment demands for the construction of sustainability and critical activities.
3. To have frameworks, at different levels, for the development of environmental education for sustainability.
4. To consolidate the Environmental Education as field of knowledge through programs to systematize and evaluate practices, foster educational innovations, training researchers, and create mechanisms for articulating, communicating, etc.
The strategy and the main objectives of the strategy sounds really great, but until now that´s just paper. The Sustainable are in the National Strategy Plan as a main goal for the country for the next 6 years, but the specific plan are not ready yet, during the next months we will know what exactly the government are going to develop in order to achieve the goal.
Regards from
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Latest UN Environment Report Describes a 'Threatened Planet
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has released its latest detailed report, "Global Environment Outlook: environment for development (GEO-4)," which examines the state of the planet from a number of different aspects. The scientists who put the report together are concerned. They identified a number of "major threats," including "climate change, the rate of extinction of species, and the challenge of feeding a growing population."
GEO-4 is the latest in UNEP's series of flagship reports. The first one, "Environment and Development, Our Common Future" [the Brundtland Commission], appeared 20 years ago. The reports assess the current state of the "global atmosphere, land, water and biodiversity." The latest one describes the changes since 1987 and identifies priorities for action.
"GEO-4 is the most comprehensive UN report on the environment, prepared by about 390 experts and reviewed by more than 1 000 others across the world," UNEP's bulletin noted.
The report is not entirely negative. There has been progress "in tackling some relatively straightforward problems," and environmental concerns are now "much closer to mainstream politics everywhere." However, there remain "the harder-to-manage issues, the 'persistent' problems." A look at these concerns led the GEO-4 report to state: "There are no major issues raised in Our Common Future for which the foreseeable trends are favorable."
In addition the UNEP warns that "failure to address these persistent problems may undo all the achievements so far on the simpler issues, and may threaten humanity's survival." But it did add: "The objective is not to present a dark and gloomy scenario, but an urgent call for action."
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary General and UNEP Executive Director, noted that the "international community's response to the Brundtland Commission has in some cases been courageous and inspiring. But all too often it has been slow and at a pace and scale that fails to respond to or recognize the magnitude of the challenges facing the people and the environment of the planet.
"But, as GEO-4 points out, there continue to be 'persistent' and intractable problems unresolved and unaddressed. Past issues remain and new ones are emerging - from the rapid rise of oxygen 'dead zones' in the oceans to the resurgence of new and old diseases linked in part with environmental degradation. Meanwhile, institutions like UNEP, established to counter the root causes, remain under-resourced and weak," Steiner continued.
The report makes clear that the world community "does not face separate crises - the 'environmental crisis', 'development crisis' and energy crisis' are all one."
Specifically, a phenomenon such as climate change is interconnected with "extinction rates and hunger." Other problems are driven simply by the world's increasing population – highlighted by the "rising consumption of the rich and the desperation of the poor."
Copies of the GEO- 4 report are available for download at: www.unep.org/geo/geo; and on UNEP's official distributor's web site: http://www.earthprint.com/go.htm?to=DEW0962NA; printed copies are also available through EarthPrint Limited, - P.O. Box 119, Stevenage, Hertfordshire SG1 TP, U.K., or by fax: + 1 38 7 88 -Tel: + 1 38 7 8 111 and e-mail: unep@earthprint.com
Source: UNEP - www.unep.org
>> DOWNLOAD REPORT |
Full Report (Large file: 22.5 MB) |
Monday, October 29, 2007
The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, Cuba's economy went into a tailspin. With imports of oil cut by more than half – and food by 80 percent – people were desperate. This film tells of the hardships and struggles as well as the community and creativity of the Cuban people during this difficult time. Cubans share how they transitioned from a highly mechanized, industrial agricultural system to one using organic methods of farming and local, urban gardens. It is an unusual look into the Cuban culture during this economic crisis, which they call "The Special Period." The film opens with a short history of Peak Oil, a term for the time in our history when world oil production will reach its all-time peak and begin to decline forever. Cuba, the only country that has faced such a crisis – the massive reduction of fossil fuels – is an example of options and hope.
The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil is a project of The Community Solution, a non-profit organization that designs and teaches low-energy solutions to the current unsustainable, fossil fuel based, industrialized, and centralized way of living. Visit www.communitysolution.org for more information.
Presentation: Low-energy Cuba
The End of Suburbia
But as we enter the 21st century, serious questions are beginning to emerge about the sustainability of this way of life. With brutal honesty and a touch of irony, The End of Suburbia explores the American Way of Life and its prospects as the planet approaches a critical era, as global demand for fossil fuels begins to outstrip supply. World Oil Peak and the inevitable decline of fossil fuels are upon us now, some scientists and policy makers argue in this documentary.
The consequences of inaction in the face of this global crisis are enormous. What does Oil Peak mean for North America? As energy prices skyrocket in the coming years, how will the populations of suburbia react to the collapse of their dream? Are today's suburbs destined to become the slums of tomorrow? And what can be done NOW, individually and collectively, to avoid The End of Suburbia ?
Promo trailer:
Full movie (low image quality. only audio quality is fine):
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Steep Decline In Oil Production Brings Risk of War and Unrest, Says New Study
· Output peaked in 2006 and will fall 7% a year
· Decline in gas, coal and uranium also predicted
· Decline in gas, coal and uranium also predicted
World oil production has already peaked and will fall by half as soon as 2030, according to a report which also warns that extreme shortages of fossil fuels will lead to wars and social breakdown.
The German-based Energy Watch Group will release its study in London today saying that global oil production peaked in 2006 - much earlier than most experts had expected. The report, which predicts that production will now fall by 7% a year, comes after oil prices set new records almost every day last week, on Friday hitting more than $90 (£44) a barrel.
“The world soon will not be able to produce all the oil it needs as demand is rising while supply is falling. This is a huge problem for the world economy,” said Hans-Josef Fell, EWG’s founder and the German MP behind the country’s successful support system for renewable energy.
The report’s author, Joerg Schindler, said its most alarming finding was the steep decline in oil production after its peak, which he says is now behind us.
The results are in contrast to projections from the International Energy Agency, which says there is little reason to worry about oil supplies at the moment.
However, the EWG study relies more on actual oil production data which, it says, are more reliable than estimates of reserves still in the ground. The group says official industry estimates put global reserves at about 1.255 gigabarrels - equivalent to 42 years’ supply at current consumption rates. But it thinks the figure is only about two thirds of that.
Global oil production is currently about 81m barrels a day - EWG expects that to fall to 39m by 2030. It also predicts significant falls in gas, coal and uranium production as those energy sources are used up.
Britain’s oil production peaked in 1999 and has already dropped by half to about 1.6 million barrels a day.
The report presents a bleak view of the future unless a radically different approach is adopted. It quotes the British energy economist David Fleming as saying: “Anticipated supply shortages could lead easily to disturbing scenes of mass unrest as witnessed in Burma this month. For government, industry and the wider public, just muddling through is not an option any more as this situation could spin out of control and turn into a complete meltdown of society.”
Mr Schindler comes to a similar conclusion. “The world is at the beginning of a structural change of its economic system. This change will be triggered by declining fossil fuel supplies and will influence almost all aspects of our daily life.”
Jeremy Leggett, one of Britain’s leading environmentalists and the author of Half Gone, a book about “peak oil” - defined as the moment when maximum production is reached, said that both the UK government and the energy industry were in “institutionalised denial” and that action should have been taken sooner.
“When I was an adviser to government, I proposed that we set up a taskforce to look at how fast the UK could mobilise alternative energy technologies in extremis, come the peak,” he said. “Other industry advisers supported that. But the government prefers to sleep on without even doing a contingency study. For those of us who know that premature peak oil is a clear and present danger, it is impossible to understand such complacency.”
Mr Fell said that the world had to move quickly towards the massive deployment of renewable energy and to a dramatic increase in energy efficiency, both as a way to combat climate change and to ensure that the lights stayed on. “If we did all this we may not have an energy crisis.”
He accused the British government of hypocrisy. “Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have talked a lot about climate change but have not brought in proper policies to drive up the use of renewables,” he said. “This is why they are left talking about nuclear and carbon capture and storage. ”
Yesterday, a spokesman for the Department of Business and Enterprise said: “Over the next few years global oil production and refining capacity is expected to increase faster than demand. The world’s oil resources are sufficient to sustain economic growth for the foreseeable future. The challenge will be to bring these resources to market in a way that ensures sustainable, timely, reliable and affordable supplies of energy.”
The German policy, which guarantees above-market payments to producers of renewable power, is being adopted in many countries - but not Britain, where renewables generate about 4% of the country’s electricity and 2% of its overall energy needs.
Earth Is Reaching The Point of No Return, Says Major UN Environment Report
The speed at which mankind is using and abusing the Earth’s resources is putting humanity’s survival at risk, scientists have said.
The bleak assessment of the state of the environment globally was issued as an “urgent call for action” amid growing concerns of worldwide waste, neglect and governmental inertia.
Fundamental changes in political policy and individual lifestyles were demanded by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) as it gave warning that the “point of no return” for the environment is fast being approached.
The damage being done was regarded by the UN programme as so serious that it said the time had come for the environment to be a central theme of policy-making instead of just a fringe issue, even though it would damage the vested interests of powerful industries.
Marion Cheatle, of the environment programme, said that damage sustained by the environment was of fundamental economic concern and, if left unchecked, would affect growth.
“The report provides incontrovertible evidence of unprecedented environmental change over the last 20 years that, unless checked, will fundamentally undermine economic development for current and future generations,” she said as the report was released in London.
The report, the fourth Global Environment Outlook: environment for development (GEO-4), assessed the impact on the environment since 1987.
It was drafted on the basis of reports by almost 400 scientists, all experts in their fields, whose findings were subjected to review by another 1,000 scientists.
Climate change was identified as one of the most pressing problems but the condition of freshwater supplies, agricultural land and biodiversity were considered to be of equal concern.
It came 20 years after the publication Our Common Future by the Brundtland Commission, the first attempt by the UN to provide a comprehensive review of Man’s impact on the environment.
The authors of the latest report said there had been progress on some environmental problems in the past two decades, most notably the international agreement to protect the ozone layer. But while maintaining that they wanted to avoid presenting a “dark and gloomy scneario”, they concluded: “There are no major issues raised in Our Common Future for which the foreseeable trends are favourable.”
They said the scale of the challenge was huge and highlighted a series of problems that need to be faced and tackled by people and governments around the world before damage to the environment becomes irreversible.
Increases in the world population, which has risen almost 34 per cent from 5 billion in 1987 to 6.7 billion today, have caused many of the challenges because of the demands on the Earth’s natural resources.
Demand, heightened by a three-fold increase in trade since 1987, means that more is now being produced than can be sustained in the long term. On average, each person needs 21.9 hectares of the Earth’s surface to supply their needs whereas, it was calculated, the Earth’s biological capacity is 15.7 hectares per person.
The report was critical of the lack of action by governments in protecting the environment. The response to climate change was described as “woefully inadequate” but it was regarded as one of several significant problems that need to be addressed effectively.
“We appear to be living in an era in which the severity of environmental problems is increasing faster than our policy responses,” it said. “To avoid the threat of catastrophic consequences in the future, we need new policy approaches to change the direction and magnitude of drivers of environmental change.
“The need couldn’t be more urgent and the time couldn’t be more opportune, with our enhanced understanding of the challenges we face, to act now to safeguard our own survival and that of future generations.”
Overfishing was singled out as an issue that needed to be tackled as a priority. Measures to protect biodiversity, with species being forced into extinction at a rate 100 times faster than any in fossil records, were regarded as equally urgent.
Achim Steiner, executive director of UNEP, said that the international community’s response to environmental issues was at times “courageous and inspiring”, but all too often was inadequate.
“The systematic destruction of the Earth’s natural and nature-based resources has reached a point where the economic viability of economies is being challenged - and where the bill we hand to our children may prove impossible to pay,” he said.
Mike Childs, of the environmental campaign group Friends of the Earth, said: “The steady degradation of the world’s environment threatens the well-being of everybody on the planet.
John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, said the report illustrated the importance of living sustainably: “It is the only way to improve global life expectancy and income inequality, beat climate change, reduce deforestation and protect biodiversity.”
If we hold on together
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These come via Tuco Rides - A cyclist and vegetarian willing to do some fairly crazy stuff to save a few polar bears.
1. Photographer Norbert Rosing planned to take some sunset photos of a group of sled dogs near Churchill, Manitoba, in northern Canada on the Hudson Bay, when from stage left comes a 1200 pound polar bear.
2. The dogs' owner thinks he's just about to lose his pack. The dogs, though, don't growl, but crouch down and bark and wag their tails as though they want to play.
3. The polar bear thinks, yeah, I want to play, too!
4. And it turns out that you don't have to weigh less than a thousand pounds to be gentle.
5. So the dogs say "You should come back and play some more."
6. The polar bear does. He comes back several times during the course of the next week to roughhouse with his little friends.
It's pretty wonderful, this planet we've been given to live on. Need I say more?
Environmentalism means less deprivation
Link source from "No Impact Man"
People ask me if the reduced use of consumer conveniences that goes with the No Impact project doesn't mean a lot of deprivation. I say that I spend more time with my family, eat more healthily, get more exercise and am a better dad. Then I ask: "Was I more deprived before or am I more deprived now?"
The point is that the money we make, the things we buy and the planetary resources we use--or waste--aren't what make us happier. This is the finding of the forthcoming book The How of Happiness by University of California, Riverside researcher Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky.
Her findings show that contributions to our happiness come:
- 50% from a genetically-determined set point (which we can do nothing about)
- 10% from our life circumstances or situations (which means we could trash the entire planet to get ourselves the biggest house and fastest car and still barely feel better)
- 40% from--are you ready?--how we act and how we think.
This confirms my No Impact experience that environmentalism--preserving rather than using up planetary resources--means nothing like depriving ourselves of happiness. Instead, it suggests that using less and treating the planet kindly means we get to stop distracting ourselves from what really makes us happy.
Of our assumptions about happiness, Lyubomirsky writes:
"Perhaps the most common error is that we assume that positive events ... will provide much more happiness than they really do. Take materialism, the pursuit of money and possessions, as an example. Why is it so hard for us (even myself!) to believe that money really doesn't make us happy? Because the truth is that money does make us happy. But our misunderstanding, as one happiness researcher eloquently puts it, is that 'we think money will bring lots of happiness for a long time, and actually it brings a little happiness for a short time.' Meanwhile, in our effortful pursuit of such dead ends to pleasure, we end up ignoring other, more effective routes to well-being."
What are the more effective routes? Well, that gets you back to how you think and how you act, and for more on that, you'll have to read Lyubomirsky's book. But a few bullet points include:
- Nurturing and enjoying relationships with family and friends
- Being comfortable expressing gratitude
- Being the first to offer help to coworkers and passersby
- Practicing optimism about the future
- Savoring life's pleasures and living in the moment
- Exercising at least once a week
- Committing to lifelong goals and ambitions
- Coping with challenges with strength and poise
Monday, October 22, 2007
The New Values of the 21st Century Citizen
Link source
Values guide decision making
Values guide decision making. They provide a shorthand to help your mind figure out what actions to take when a decision has to be made.
If you were faced with a choice, for example, between buying a hybrid vehicle or buying an SUV, the decision would be based partly on how much they cost and how much room you needed for groceries, kids, etc. But at least part of the choice is also made based on your values — which is more important to you?
If you are faced with a choice to purchase organic apples versus buying the regular apples, part of the choice is made based on price and taste — but again part of the decision is based on values. How important is eating organic to you compared to eating the normal foods?
Values guide decision making in every part of your life. When you make a decision — even the simple decisions you don’t think about — your values help your brain figure out what to do. Your mind frames the decision against your internal values and makes a decision that’s in line what what’s important to you.
You can tell how much you have in common with other people based on their values. If their values are aligned with yours, that means they would likely make the same decisions as you when faced with certain choices.
The 21st Century Requires New Values
In order to meet the challenges we will all face together in this new century, our values will have to change. Different things will have to become important to us in order to change our behaviors, consumption patterns and the way we solve problems.
The main reasons for this are:
- Global Warming and other environmental challenges won’t be met without significant changes in individual behavior.
- The world will face many new challenges that can’t be met by any single country. We will need to work together differently.
- Governments and corporations can’t be counted on to solve these problems on their own. They have their own agendas.
- The consumption patterns of people are currently unsustainable.
In order to solve the problems of the 21st century, individual citizens will need to play a more active role. We will need to ask — or more likely push and demand — that governments and corporations take the steps required.
This will require that we as individual citizens make decisions differently. It will require that different things become important to us as individuals. It will require, in other words, that our values change.
The New Values of the 21st Century Citizen
What values will people need in the 21st Century to meet the challenges before us?
People will need to adopt values that allow us to work together and collaborate to resolve our common challenges. This means both changing our consumption patterns and our collaborative problem solving skills.
We’ll need to reduce our consumption of resources. Plus we’ll have to begin making a lot of the things we need in sustainable ways. This will be a challenge. We’ll also have to move faster to resolve problems, as well as solve problems that are big.
Governments can’t move fast enough. Worse, they can’t be trusted to provide solutions that are the best for everyone. Governments can force solutions that are only optimal for certain groups.
Corporations can’t be trusted to provide the best solutions to our problems. They work mainly in the interest of their shareholders.
So people will need to work together in collaborative groups to resolve their common problems. And our values will have to change in order for us to do so.
While there are really many, many values that people need — including those that revolve around family, community and faith — here is a set of fundamental values that the 21st Century Citizen will find valuable as we work to face the challenges of this new century:
- Reduce, Recycle, Reuse
- The Individual is more important than the corporation
- Those who make the mess, should clean it up.
- Collaboration between people is more important than government efforts. And more effective.
- You can make an impact. To magnify your impact, collaborate with others.
- Don’t blindly trust your leaders.
- Don’t blindly believe the media.
Following is a short discussion of each of the above.
Reduce, Recycle, Reuse
I knew people who had lived through the Great Depression when I was young. Their values with regard to waste, saving and getting by on less were much different than today.
A friend’s grandmother always used less detergent to wash clothes than was recommended on the box. And when the box was empty, she’d rinse water through the box to use any detergent dust that was left.
Reduce, Recycle, Reuse means that we will have to learn to adopt some of these same values.
The Individual is more important than the corporation
Corporations are perfect if you want to efficiently turn an old growth forest into paper and building materials. But if what you want is to preserve it for future generations, corporations don’t work.
There are resources on earth that need to be protected from corporations. They only way to do that is if governments put the needs of people before the desires of corporations. Governments won’t do this unless the people force it to.
It’s critical that one of our fundamental values is the assumption that corporations are subservient to the needs of people.
Those who make the mess, should clean it up.
Once I went to a concert with a friend and we sold lemonaid in the parking lot to help pay our expenses. After we’d sold a dozen or so glasses, I began to see the empty plastic cups we’d sold our lemonaid in blowing through the parking lot. One of our customers told us we should’ve provided a garbage can so people didn’t throw the cups on the ground.
She was right. We should’ve.
And if Walmart is going to sell 100 Million Compact Fluorescent Light (CFL) bulbs a year, they should somehow enable you to recycle them after they burn out. Each of the bulbs contains mercury that may otherwise end up in local landfills.
The costs for cleaning up the mess should be built into the price. Otherwise, they’re just creating problems that others will have to pay for later.
Collaboration between people is more important than government efforts. And more effective.
Individuals collaborating are more effective than governments for solving many kinds of problems.
The Linux Operating System is one of the best examples of individuals collaborating on a project that changed the world. If corporations or governments had begun a project to develop Linux, they would’ve failed.
Meeting the challenges of the 21st Century will require bringing the best people in the world together in ways that are flexible and that allow them to quickly and easily share and organize information.
The scientific breakthroughs that solve the next flu crisis could come from a team that includes a scientist in China, a corporate researcher in Texas, a government official in Belgium and a university grad student in Buenos Aires. Teams like that can come together quickly and move faster than government sponsored research groups or corporate think tanks.
Problem solving approaches that rely on governments coordinating research are slower and can be subject to political interference.
One of our fundamental values should be that we work to resolve problems through the creation of collaborative groups, rather than wait for or assume that governments will solve problems for us.
You can make an impact. To magnify your impact, collaborate with others.
One of the key components of collaborative problem solving is having individuals who really believe they can make a difference. A small, committed group of individuals can move faster and accomplish more than groups many times their size.
And the truth is, individuals **can** make a difference. But when individuals change the course of history, it’s normally because they banded together with others to address a common problem.
Two people together make a bigger impact than either would by themselves. Three people can make an even bigger impact. Large groups of committed, collaborating individuals can truly change the world.
In fact, I’d propose that there is almost no problem that can’t be solved by a dedicated group of people collaborating — the trick is just to get a large enough group together.
Don’t blindly trust your leaders.
Your leaders have an agenda. That agenda is likely to be influenced by the individuals who support and fund their efforts to stay in office. Also, they may lie to you in order to retain their elected position and their control of power.
This is especially true in societies where corporations or rich individuals can exercise undue influence over government.
It’s critical then that our values reflect a fundamental distrust of government. This fosters healthy skepticism as well as a belief that government won’t solve our problems for us.
Don’t blindly believe the media.
Media is a business. As a business, it’s charter is to maximize the profits of its shareholders. It is the job of the leaders of the media corporations to put their shareholders first.
That is, you and your well-being is not first in the minds of the media. Their corporate profits are.
For example, media companies that count on advertising revenue from Oil companies and Auto manufacturers are likely to have their presentation of global warming data colored by their need to protect that advertising revenue.
As a result, there are times when news presentation is influenced by the desire to protect or increase profits. It is critical that we build into our values a basic distrust of any media source.
To meet the challenges of the 21st Century, we will need good, accurate information on Global Warming and the many other challenges we’ll face. We need to demand this from the media and learn to impact their profits when they don’t provide it.