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Thursday, March 31, 2016
Sustainable New Urban Mobility
Raising Greenagers
What inspires teens to think and act green? As the mother of a
current teen and two former ones, I still wrestle at times with that question.
I’ve
found that most teens want to do the right thing. Although they may be
great at hiding it, they really do look to their parents and other
influential adults for guidance.
The
teen years are about developing a separate and unique identity from
parents. A challenge faced by parents and other caregivers is how best
to connect with teenagers in ways that recognize their need for
autonomy while guiding them towards becoming environmentally-responsible
and mindful adults.
Below are some ideas for getting there.
 Generation Z
Today’s teens are members of Generation Z. Born after 1995, they represent about 25% of the U.S. population. Recent
research has shown that they are pragmatic, digitally
hyper-connected, and informed. They are also socially-conscious and
entrepreneurial, say researchers.
Be a Model. “The
biggest way to demonstrate the importance to your teens of living green is to
model good behavior at home,” noted my former colleague, Jeff. He added, “It’s also important is to make
sure you get involved in issues and programs in your community.”
In Jeff’s case, that meant stepping up to serve as advisor
for his daughter’s initiative, a high school environmental club, until suitable
school staff could take over. “Through my guidance, they were able to
accomplish a lot of great things at their school and received a lot of
recognition, including scholarships,” he said.
Look for opportunities at
home to foster your teen’s green
side. For example, involve them in brainstorming ways to reduce
household and personal energy and water use. Tap into their entrepreneurial side by challenging
them to come up with ideas for new green businesses or for greening existing
businesses they care about.
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Encourage
Volunteerism. “Service and volunteering is increasingly a big deal for
teens. It’s something that they know is important, for example, on college
applications,” said Kevin McDonald, a father of two teens.
Indeed, the research confirms Kevin’s observation. A 2014 study
found 77% of high school students on a national level either extremely or very
interested in volunteering. The top three things they reported wanting to
get out of it were new skills, work experience, and mentorship/networking.
At VolunteerMatch.org,
teens and adults can search for volunteering opportunities based on location
and interest area. A recent search
turned up 60 environment-related opportunities in the Twin Cities area. Hands
on Twin Cities is another good source.
The organization DoSomething.org inspires teens to volunteer and take action on causes they care about by
providing a ton of fun project ideas and information.
Conservation
Corps Minnesota & Iowa offers a few different environment-related
service programs for teens age 15-18. Teens in one such program, Youth
Outdoors, participate in environmental restoration projects within the Twin
Cities. Teens 18 and over are eligible to serve as AmeriCorps members in a
variety of settings.
Citizen
science provides teens with an opportunity to combine volunteerism and the great outdoors. See Living Green 365: Citizen Science for resources and information.
Lastly, check with schools, nature centers, park and rec
departments, local nonprofits, and local government offices for leads and
information on volunteering. Earth Day, Arbor Day, and similar events often provide many volunteering opportunities. High
school environmental clubs like the one that Jeff’s daughter started are
another good option.
Additional Resource: WaysToHelp.org exists to engage, inspire and enable high school students to make a
positive difference in the world. It does this by making it easy for
them to learn about, and take action on, sixteen of today's most
pressing social issues as well as providing teens & schools with
toolkits to improve in-school food and volunteer drives.
WaysToHelp.org offers grants (up to $500) to teens in the U.S. to to fund their community service ideas across any one of 16
issue areas, including clean water, land preservation, global warming
and recycling.
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Expose them to
Nature. Exposure to nature can result in a lifelong interest in environmental protection and
conservation.
Invite
your teen to go on nature walks and hikes, biking, camping,
fishing, canoeing, and similar. Involve them in planning outdoor
activities
that the family can do together. Need to sweeten the deal to gain your
teen’s participation? Encourage/allow her to invite a friend along.
For additional inspiration and ideas, check out familiesoutdoors.org.
Encourage biking/walking. For
many teens, learning to drive a car is a rite of passage. Parents may
find themselves under increased pressure to hand over the keys.
Chat with your teen about the environmental impacts of driving. Encourage him to bike or walk to activities and places
that are within a reasonable distance. Teach her how to take the bus or other means
of public transportation (for the Twin Cities area, click on "How to Ride" at metrotransit.org).
Consider meeting your teen halfway when the opportunity arises. “I told
my 15 year old son that I would buy him any bike that he wanted, an IPhone 6,
and a bus pass if he would agree to wait until he’s 18 to get his driver’s
license,” said Ned. Given the costs of insurance, gas, vehicle wear and tear,
and the many environmental impacts of driving, this type of “negotiated
settlement” can potentially be a win-win.
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Plug into their
digital world. Smartphones. Gaming systems. Tablets. Laptops. Teens
love their gadgets, and being “connected” is virtually a requirement anymore. Unfortunately,
the same devices that they adore can be huge energy wasters.
Lots of devices use power even when they’re in standby mode. Ask your
teen to unplug her digital devices—and their cords—when they’re
done charging. Where possible, install advanced
(aka smart) power strips in your home.
Other ideas:
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Get Loud. Has your teen heard
of the "Get Loud" competition? It's a joint effort of NextGen Climate
America and the Alliance for Climate Education to engage and empower
young Americans
to take civic action online and in their communities to combat climate
change.Teens earn points and potential prizes by taking highly-visible
online and offline actions, sharing content, and recruiting other teens
to participate.
Listen, Acknowledge,
Engage, and Empower. One of the great things about teens is that they’re
not yet adults. They are still forming opinions and behaviors and absorbing
information that will guide them in their adult years.
“Teens
are sensitive about the increasing amount of news regarding the potential for
environmental collapse”, said Kevin. " They can find it overwhelming and depressing," he added.
Yet, says Kevin, it's still important to talk with teenagers about environmental issues, even if it's in small bites.
Look
for opportunities to engage them in
conversations about environmental topics and issues. Ask for their
opinions and
ideas. Encourage them to be creative problem-solvers. Point out how
personal choices (purchasing, transportation, energy use) can have an
impact, and what they can do to make a difference.
Looking for guidance? The Alliance for Climate Education offers parents and educators some excellent resources for talking with adolescents about climate change.
DoingGoodTogether.org has activities, book lists, and
discussion questions for families. For their earth-themed list see http://www.doinggoodtogether.org/bhf/heal-the-earth.
Additional Resource: Consume This - Buying That Matters. This 40-page booklet from the Canadian Centre for Pollution Prevention
is aimed at 14- to 18-year-olds. The information and resources provided
in the booklet focus on sustainable consumption and help to raise
awareness among youth about the effects that their choices have on the
environment.
Issues addressed in the booklet—including resource
conservation, consumer behavior, and environmentally friendly production—are presented
in a manner relevant to teens. Examples such
as "The Life-Cycle of a T-Shirt", "What's in a Soccer Ball", and "How to
Pack a Litterless Lunch" introduce young people to the concept of
sustainable consumption using a practical and relevant approach. To download a free PDF of the publication, visit www.mysustainablecanada.org.
Monday, March 28, 2016
Permaculture Fundamentals Cards
"All 21 cards of the Mollison Permaculture Ethics and Design Principles card set are now free to download from <www.permaculturefundamentals.com/>.
These are the original permaculture ethics and design principles from
the writings of Bill Mollison, the father of permaculture and developer
of the Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC).
I first taught the PDC in
1993, and this arrangement of the original ethics and principles from
Permaculture: A Designers' Manual (Mollison 1988) and Introduction to
Permaculture (Mollison and Slay 1992) came about after many years
teaching permaculture and running permaculture projects. The cards are
organised into ethics, energy principles, component placement
principles, principles from nature, and attitudinal principles. It is
these attitudinal principles, which along with the ethics are the
'heart and soul' of permaculture, that are often missing from condensed
versions of the permaculture principles. The cards are designed to be
printed as 6x4 photos, as this is often the cheapest form of high
quality printing if you only want a small print run."
~Brett Pritchard
~Brett Pritchard
Wednesday, March 2, 2016
How Nature Can Make You Kinder, Happier, and More Creative
By Jill Suttie
We are spending more time indoors and
online. But recent studies suggest that nature can help our brains and
bodies to stay healthy.
I’ve been an avid hiker my whole life. From the time I first
strapped on a backpack and headed into the Sierra Nevada Mountains, I
was hooked on the experience, loving the way being in nature cleared my
mind and helped me to feel more grounded and peaceful.
But, even though I’ve always believed
that hiking in nature had many psychological benefits, I’ve never had
much science to back me up…until now, that is. Scientists are beginning
to find evidence that being in nature has a profound impact on our
brains and our behavior, helping us to reduce anxiety, brooding, and
stress, and increase our attention capacity, creativity, and our ability
to connect with other people.
“People have been discussing their profound experiences in nature for
the last several 100 years—from Thoreau to John Muir to many other
writers,” says researcher David Strayer, of the University of Utah. “Now
we are seeing changes in the brain and changes in the body that suggest
we are physically and mentally more healthy when we are interacting
with nature.”
While he and other scientists may believe nature benefits our
well-being, we live in a society where people spend more and more time
indoors and online—especially children. Findings on how nature improves
our brains brings added legitimacy to the call for preserving natural
spaces—both urban and wild—and for spending more time in nature in order
to lead healthier, happier, and more creative lives.
Here are some of the ways that science is showing how being in nature affects our brains and bodies.
1. Being in nature decreases stress
It’s clear that hiking—and any physical activity—can reduce stress
and anxiety. But, there’s something about being in nature that may
augment those impacts.
In one recent experiment
conducted in Japan, participants were assigned to walk either in a
forest or in an urban center (taking walks of equal length and
difficulty) while having their heart rate variability, heart rate, and
blood pressure measured. The participants also filled out questionnaires
about their moods, stress levels, and other psychological measures.
Results showed that those who walked in forests had significantly
lower heart rates and higher heart rate variability (indicating more
relaxation and less stress), and reported better moods and less anxiety,
than those who walked in urban settings. The researchers concluded that
there’s something about being in nature that had a beneficial effect on
stress reduction, above and beyond what exercise alone might have
produced.
In another study,
researchers in Finland found that urban dwellers who strolled for as
little as 20 minutes through an urban park or woodland reported
significantly more stress relief than those who strolled in a city
center.
The reasons for this effect are unclear; but scientists believe that we evolved to be more relaxed in natural spaces. In a now-classic laboratory experiment
by Roger Ulrich of Texas A&M University and colleagues,
participants who first viewed a stress-inducing movie, and were then
exposed to color/sound videotapes depicting natural scenes, showed much
quicker, more complete recovery from stress than those who’d been
exposed to videos of urban settings.
These studies and other provide evidence that being in natural spaces— or even just looking out of a window onto a natural scene—somehow soothes us and relieves stress.
2. Nature makes you happier and less brooding
I’ve always found that hiking in nature makes me feel happier, and of
course decreased stress may be a big part of the reason why. But,
Gregory Bratman, of Stanford University, has found evidence that nature
may impact our mood in other ways, too.
In one 2015 study,
he and his colleagues randomly assigned 60 participants to a 50- minute
walk in either a natural setting (oak woodlands) or an urban setting
(along a 4-lane road). Before and after the walk, the participants were
assessed on their emotional state and on cognitive measures, such as how
well they could perform tasks requiring short-term memory. Results
showed that those who walked in nature experienced less anxiety,
rumination (focused attention on negative aspects of oneself), and
negative affect, as well as more positive emotions, in comparison to the
urban walkers. They also improved their performance on the memory
tasks.
In another study, he and his colleagues extended these findings
by zeroing in on how walking in nature affects rumination— which has
been associated with the onset of depression and anxiety—while also
using fMRI technology to look at brain activity. Participants who took a
90-minute walk in either a natural setting or an urban setting had
their brains scanned before and after their walks and were surveyed on
self-reported rumination levels (as well as other psychological
markers). The researchers controlled for many potential factors that
might influence rumination or brain activity—for example, physical
exertion levels as measured by heart rates and pulmonary functions.
Even so, participants who walked in a natural setting versus an urban
setting reported decreased rumination after the walk, and they showed
increased activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex, an area of the
brain whose deactivation is affiliated with depression and anxiety—a
finding that suggests nature may have important impacts on mood.
Bratman believes results like these need to reach city planners and
others whose policies impact our natural spaces. “Ecosystem services
are being incorporated into decision making at all levels of public
policy, land use planning, and urban design, and it’s very important to
be sure to incorporate empirical findings from psychology into these
decisions,” he says.
Courtesy of Grand Canyon National Park3. Nature relieves attention fatigue and increases creativity.
Today, we live with ubiquitous technology designed to constantly pull
for our attention. But many scientists believe our brains were not made
for this kind of information bombardment, and that it can lead to
mental fatigue, overwhelm, and burnout, requiring “attention
restoration” to get back to a normal, healthy state.
Strayer is one of those researchers, at the University of Utah. He
believes that being in nature restores depleted attention circuits,
which can then help us be more open to creativity and problem-solving.
“When you use your cell phone to talk, text, shoot photos, or
whatever else you can do with your cell phone, you’re tapping the
prefrontal cortex and causing reductions in cognitive resources,” he
says.
In a 2012 study,
he and his colleagues showed that hikers on a four-day backpacking trip
could solve significantly more puzzles requiring creativity when
compared to a control group of people waiting to take the same hike—in
fact, 47 percent more. Although other factors may account for his
results—for example, the exercise or the camaraderie of being out
together—prior studies have suggested that nature itself may play an
important role. One in Psychological Science
found that the impact of nature on attention restoration is what
accounted for improved scores on cognitive tests for the study
participants.
This phenomenon may be due to differences in brain activation when viewing natural scenes versus more built-up scenes—even for those who normally live in an urban environment. In a recent study
conducted by Peter Aspinall at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, and
colleagues, participants who had their brains monitored continuously
using mobile electroencephalogram (EEG) while they walked through an
urban green space had brain EEG readings indicating lower frustration,
engagement, and arousal, and higher meditation levels while in the green
area, and higher engagement levels when moving out of the green area.
This lower engagement and arousal may be what allows for attention
restoration, encouraging a more open, meditative mindset.
It’s this kind of brain activity—sometimes referred to as “the brain default network”—that is tied to creative thinking,
says Strayer. He is currently repeating his earlier 2012 study with a
new group of hikers and recording their EEG activity and salivary
cortisol levels, before, during, and after a three-day hike. Early
analyses of EEG readings support the theory that hiking in nature seems
to rest people’s attention networks and to engage their default
networks.
Strayer and colleagues are also specifically looking at the affects
of technology by monitoring people’s EEG readings while they walk in an
arboretum, either while talking on their cell phone or not. So far,
they’ve found that participants with cell phones appear to have EEG
readings consistent with attention overload, and can recall only half as
many details of the arboretum they just passed through, compared to
those who were not on a cell phone.
Though Strayer’s findings are preliminary, they are consistent with
other people’s findings on the importance of nature to attention
restoration and creativity.
“If you’ve been using your brain to multitask—as most of us do most
of the day—and then you set that aside and go on a walk, without all of
the gadgets, you’ve let the prefrontal cortex recover,” says Strayer.
“And, that’s when we see these bursts in creativity, problem-solving,
and feelings of well-being.”
4. Nature may help you to be kind and generous
Whenever I go to places like Yosemite or the Big Sur Coast of
California, I seem to return to my home life ready to be more kind and
generous to those around me— just ask my husband and kids! Now some new
studies may shed light on why that is.
In a series of experiments
published in 2014, Juyoung Lee, GGSC director Dacher Keltner, and other
researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, studied the
potential impact of nature on willingness to be generous, trusting, and
helpful toward others, while considering what factors might influence
that relationship.
As part of their study, the researchers exposed participants to more
or less subjectively beautiful nature scenes (whose beauty levels were
rated independently) and then observed how participants behaved playing
two economics games—the Dictator Game and the Trust Game—that measure
generosity and trust, respectively. After being exposed to the more
beautiful nature scenes, participants acted more generously and more
trusting in the games than those who saw less beautiful scenes, and the
effects appeared to be due to corresponding increases in positive
emotion.
In another part of the study, the researchers asked people to fill
out a survey about their emotions while sitting at a table where more or
less beautiful plants were placed. Afterwards, the participants were
told that the experiment was over and they could leave, but that if they
wanted to they could volunteer to make paper cranes for a relief effort
program in Japan. The number of cranes they made (or didn’t make) was
used as a measure of “prosociality.,” or willingness to help.
Results showed that the presence of more beautiful plants
significantly increased the number of cranes made by participants, and
that this increase was, again, mediated by positive emotion elicited by
natural beauty. The researchers concluded that experiencing the beauty
of nature increases positive emotion—perhaps by inspiring awe, a feeling
akin to wonder, with the sense of being part of something bigger than
oneself—which then leads to prosocial behaviors.
Support for this theory comes from an experiment
conducted by Paul Piff of the University of California, Irvine, and
colleagues, in which participants staring up a grove of very tall trees
for as little as one minute experienced measurable increases in awe, and
demonstrated more helpful behavior and approached moral dilemmas with
ethically, than participants who spent the same amount of time looking
up at a high building.
5. Nature makes you “feel more alive”
With all of these benefits to being out in nature, it’s probably no surprise that something about nature makes us feel more alive and vital.
Being outdoors gives us energy, makes us happier, helps us to relieve
the everyday stresses of our overscheduled lives, opens the door to
creativity, and helps us to be kind to others.
No one knows if there is an ideal amount of nature exposure, though
Strayer says that longtime backpackers suggest a minimum of three days
to really unplug from our every day lives. Nor can anyone say for sure
how nature compares to other forms of stress relief or attention
restoration, such as sleep or meditation. Both Strayer and Bratman say
we need a lot more careful research to tease out these effects before we
come to any definitive conclusions.
Still, the research does suggest there’s something about nature that
keeps us psychologically healthy, and that’s good to know…especially
since nature is a resource that’s free and that many of us can access by
just walking outside our door.
Results like these should encourage us as a society to consider more carefully how we preserve our wilderness spaces and our urban parks.
And while the research may not be conclusive, Strayer is optimistic
that science will eventually catch up to what people like me have
intuited all along—that there’s something about nature that renews us,
allowing us feel better, to think better, and to deepen our
understanding of ourselves others.
“You can’t have centuries of people writing about this and not have
something going on,” says Strayer. “If you are constantly on a device or
in front of a screen, you’re missing out on something that’s pretty
spectacular: the real world.”
Source:
More on the Power of Nature:
Thursday, February 25, 2016
10 Commandments of Commons Economics
How Peer Production can create a future that’s free, fair & sustainable
By Michel Bauwens
Photo by Lawrence OP under a Creative Commons license.
This article addresses the emerging practices that should inspire these entities of the ‘ethical’ economy. The main aim it to create new forms that go beyond the traditional corporate form and its extractive profit-maximizing practices of value extraction. Instead of extractive forms of capital, we need generative forms, that co-create value with and for the commoners.
I am using the form of commandments to explain the new practices. All of them have already emerged in various forms, but need to be generalized and integrated.
What the world and humanity, and all those beings that are affected by our activities require is a mode of production, and relations of production, that are “free, fair and sustainable" at the same time.
I. OPEN AND FREE
1. Thou shalt practice open business models based on shared knowledge
Closed business models are based on artificial scarcity. Though knowledge is a non- or anti-rival good that gains in use value the more it is shared, and though it can be shared easily and at very low marginal cost when it is in digital form, many extractive firms still use artificial scarcity to extract rents from the creation or use of digitized knowledge. Through legal repression or technological sabotage, naturally shareable goods are made artificially scarce, so that extra profits can be generated. This is particularly galling in the context of life-saving or planet-regenerating technological knowledge. The first commandment is therefore the ethical commandment of sharing what can be shared, and of only creating market value from resources that are scarce and create added value on top or along these commons. Open business models are market strategies that are based on the recognition of natural abundance and the refusal to generate income and profits by making them artificially scarce.
Thou shalt find more information on this here
II. FAIR
2. Thou shalt practice open co-operativism
Many new more ethical and generative forms are being created, that have a higher level of harmony with the contributory commons. The key here is to choose post-corporate forms that are able to generate livelihoods for the contributing commoners.
Open cooperatives in particular would be cooperatives that share the following characteristics:
1) they are mission-oriented and have a social goal that is related to the creation of shared resources
2) they are multi-stakeholder governed, and include all those that are affected by or contributing to the particular activity
3) they constitutionally, in their own rules, commit to co-create commons with the productive communities
I often add the fourth condition that they should be global in organisational scope in order to create counter-power to extractive multinational corporations.
Cooperatives are one of the potential forms that commons-friendly market entitities could take. We see the emergence of more open forms such as neo-tribes (think of the workings of the Ouishare community), or more tightly organized neo-builds, such as Enspiral.org, Las Indias or the Ethos Foundation. Yet more open is the network form chose by the Sensorica open scientific hardware community, which wants to more tightly couple contributions with generated income, by allowing all microtasked contributions in the reward system, through open value or contributory accounting (more below).
Thou shalt find more information on this here.
3. Thou shalt practice open value or contributory accounting
Peer production is based on distributed tasks, freely contributed by an open community-driven collaborative infrastructure. The tradition of salaries based on fixed job description may not be the most appropriate way to reward those that contribute to such processes. Hence, the emergence of open value accounting or contributory accounting. As practiced already by Sensorica, this means that any contributor may add contributions, log them according to project number, and after peer evaluation is assigned ‘karma points’. When income is generated, it flows into these weighted contributions, so that every contributor is fairly rewarded. Contributory accounting, or other similar solutions, are important to avoid that only a few contributors closely related to the market capture the value that has been co-created by a much larger community. Open book accounting ensure that the (re)distribution of value is transparent for all contributors.
Thou shalt find more information on this here.
4. Thou shalt insure fair distribution and benefit-sharing through Copyfair licensing
The copyleft licenses allow anyone to re-use the necessary knowledge commons on the condition that changes and improvements are added to that same commons. This is a great advance, but should not be abstracted from the need for fairness. When moving to physical production which involves finding resources for buildings, raw materials and payments to contributors, the unfettered commercial exploitation of such commons favours extractive models. Thus the need to maintain the knowledge sharing, but to ask reciprocity for the commercial exploitation of the commons, so that there is a level playing field for the ethical economic entities that do internalize social and environmental costs. This is achieved through copyfair licenses, which allow full sharing of the knowledge but ask for reciprocity in exchange for the right of commercialization.
Thou shalt find more information on this here.
5. Thou shalt practice solidarity and mitigate the risks of work and life through Commonfare practices
One of the strong results of financial and neoliberal globalization is that the power of nation-states has gradually weakened, and there is now a strong and integrated effort to unwind the solidarity mechanisms that were embedded in the welfare state models. As long as we do not have the power to reverse this slide, it is imperative that we reconstruct solidarity mechanisms of distributed scope, a practice which we could call ‘commonfare’. Examples such as the Broodfonds (Netherlands), Friendsurance (Germany) and the health sharing ministries (U.S.), or cooperative entities such Coopaname in France, show us the new forms of distributed solidarity that can be developed to deal with the risks of life and work.
Thou shalt find more information on this here.
III. SUSTAINABLE
6. Thou shalt use open and sustainable designs for an open source circular economy
Open productive communities insure maximum participation through modularity and granularity. Because they operate in a context of shared and abundant resources, the practice of planned obsolescence, which is a feature of profit-maximizing corporations, is alien to them. Ethical entrepreneurial entities will therefore use these open and sustainable designs and produce sustainable good and services.
Thou shalt find more information on this here. http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Design
7. Thou shalt move beyond an exclusive reliance on imperfect market price signals towards mutual coordination of production through open supply chains and open book accounting
What decision-making is for planning, and pricing is for the market, mutual coordination is for the commons!
We will never achieve a sustainable ‘circular economy’--in which the output of one production process is used as an input for another-- with closed value chains in which every cooperation has to be painfully negotiated under conditions of little transparency. But entrepreneurial coalitions that are already co-dependent on a collaborative commons can create eco-systems of collaboration through open supply chains, in which the production process becomes transparent, and through which every participant can adapt his behaviour based on the knowledge available in the network. There is no need for over-production when the production realities of the network become common knowledge.
Thou shalt find more information on this here.
8. Thou shalt practice cosmo-localization
“What is light is global, and what is heavy is local”: this is the new principle animating commons-based peer production in which knowledge is globally shared, but production can take place on demand and based on real needs through a network of distributed coworking and microfactories. Certain studies have shown that up to two-thirds of matter and energy goes not to production, but to transport, which is clearly unsustainable. A return to re-localized production is a sine qua non for the transition towards sustainable production.
Thou shalt find more information on this here.
9. Thou shalt mutualize physical infrastructures
Platform cooperatives, data cooperatives and fairshare forms of distributed ownership can be used to co-own our infrastructures of production.
The misnamed sharing economy from AirBnB and Uber shows the potential of matching idle resources. Co-working, skillsharing, ridesharing are examples of the many ways in which we can re-use and share resources to dramatically augment the thermo-dynamic efficiencies of our consumption.
In the right context of co-ownership and co-governance, a real sharing economy can achieve dramatic advances in reduced resource use. Our means of production --inclusive machines -- can be mutualized and self-owned by all those that create value.
Thou shalt find more information on this here.
10. Thou shalt mutualize generative capital
Generative forms of capital cannot rely on an extractive money supply that is based on compound interest that is due to extractive banks. We have to abolish the 38% financial tax that is owed on all goods and services and transform our monetary system, and substantively augment the use of mutual credit systems.
Thou shalt find more information on this here.
Source: http://www.onthecommons.org/magazine/10-commandments-of-commons-economics
Wednesday, February 17, 2016
What If Schools Taught Kindness?
Walking to class one day,
one of us (Laura) saw a young student crying and waiting for his mother
to arrive—he had split his chin while playing. When Laura got to class,
the other students were very upset and afraid for their friend, full of
questions about what would happen to him. Laura decided to ask the class
how they could help him.
“Caring practice!” exclaimed one of the children—and they all sat in a
circle offering support and well wishes. The children immediately
calmed and they continued with their lesson.
This is what’s possible when kids learn to be kind at school.
Various mindfulness programs have been developed for adults, but we and our colleagues at the Center for Healthy Minds
at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, wanted to develop a curriculum
for kids. Every school teaches math and reading, but what about
mindfulness and kindness?
We ended up bringing a 12-week curriculum to six schools in the
Midwest. Twice a week for 20 minutes, pre-kindergarten kids were
introduced to stories and practices for paying attention, regulating
their emotions, and cultivating kindness. It’s just the beginning, but
the initial results
of our research, coauthored with Professor Richard Davidson and
graduate research assistant Simon Goldberg, suggest that this program
can improve kids’ grades, cognitive abilities, and relationship skills.
Why teach kindness to kids?
The school environment can be very stressful; in addition to any
issues they bring from home, many students struggle to make friends and
perform well in class. Being excluded, ignored, or teased is very
painful for a young child, and we thought it could be impactful to teach
empathy and compassion.
When other kids are suffering—like that boy who split his chin—can we
understand how they might be feeling? Kindness bridges those gaps and
helps build a sense of connection among the students, the teachers, and
even the parents. Learning to strengthen their attention and regulate
their emotions are foundational skills that could benefit kids in school
and throughout their whole lives.
On top of that, having classrooms full of mindful, kind kids
completely changes the school environment. Imagine entire schools—entire
districts—where kindness is emphasized. That would be truly powerful.
Teaching kindness is a way to bubble up widespread transformation that
doesn’t require big policy changes or extensive administrative
involvement.
Running and studying a Kindness Curriculum
If you had visited one of our classrooms during the 12-week program,
you might have seen a poster on the wall called “Kindness Garden.” When
kids performed an act of kindness or benefitted from one, they added a
sticker to the poster. The idea is that friendship is like a seed—it
needs to be nurtured and taken care of in order to grow. Through that
exercise, we got students talking about how kindness feels good and how
we might grow more friendship in the classroom.
Another day, you might have found students in pairs holding Peace Wands, one with a heart and one with a star. The child with the heart wand speaks (“from the heart”); the other child (the “star listener”) listens and then repeats back what was said. When there was a conflict between students, they used the wands to support the process of paying attention, expressing their feelings, and building empathy.
Our Kindness Curriculum combines creative activities like these, as
well as books, songs, and movement, to communicate concepts in a way
that is understandable to four year olds. Our instructors taught the
curriculum with active participation by classroom teachers.
The Kindness Curriculum is designed around the ABCs—or, more specifically, A to G:
- Attention. Students learn that what they focus on
is a choice. Through focusing attention on a variety of external
sensations (the sound of a bell, the look of a stone) and internal
sensations (feeling happy or sad), children learn they can direct their
attention and maintain focus.
- Breath and Body. Students learn to use their breath
to cultivate some peace and quiet. Instead of listening to a
meditation, we played a song from Betsy Rose’s CD Calm Down Boogie,
“Breathing In, Breathing Out,” while the children rested on their backs
with a beanie baby on their belly. The beanie provided an object to
“rock to sleep” with the natural in- and out-breath, while the breathing
calmed the body.
- Caring. Here, we teach kids to think about how others are feeling and cultivate kindness. We read the book Sumi’s First Day of School Ever,
the story of a foreign student who struggles with English, and
brainstorm ways to help a student like Sumi—as simple as offering a
smile.
- Depending on other people. We emphasize that everyone supports and is supported by others through the book Somewhere Today,
which describes acts of kindness that are going on in the world right
now. Students learn to see themselves as helpers and begin to develop
gratitude for the kindness of others.
- Emotions. What do emotions feel like and look like?
How can you tell what you’re feeling? We play a game where the teacher
and students take turns pretending to be angry, sad, happy, or
surprised, guessing which emotion was expressed, and talking about what
that emotion feels like in the body.
- Forgiveness. Young kids can be particularly hard on themselves—and others—and we teach them that everyone makes mistakes. A book called Down the Road tells the story of a girl who breaks the eggs she bought for her parents, but they forgive her.
- Gratitude. We want kids to recognize the kind acts that other people do for them, so we have them pretend to be various community workers like bus drivers and firefighters. Then, they talk about being thankful to those people for how they help us.
Sixty-eight students participated in the research, with about half
going through the Kindness Curriculum and the other half measured as a
comparison. To investigate the impact of the curriculum, we tested
children before and after the training period.
“Students who went through the curriculum showed more empathy and kindness and a greater ability to calm themselves down when they felt upset, according to teachers’ ratings.”
The results of our study were promising. Students who went through
the curriculum showed more empathy and kindness and a greater ability to
calm themselves down when they felt upset, according to teachers’
ratings. In an exercise with stickers, they consistently shared about
half of them, whereas students who hadn’t gone through the curriculum
shared less over time. They earned higher grades at the end of the year
in certain areas (notably for social and emotional development), and
they showed improvement in the ability to think flexibly and delay
gratification, skills that have been linked to health and success later in life.
This was a small study, and we’d love to see deeper investigations
into our Kindness Curriculum in the future. For example, what happens
over a longer time if we support students’ practice throughout the year
and into the next school year and beyond? If parents got involved in the
curriculum, they could provide powerful support as well.
“Kindfulness” in daily life
Mindfulness and kindness go hand in hand, so much so that the phrase
“kindfulness” accidentally (but aptly) came out in one of our
conversations and has stuck with us. While we administered a specific
curriculum for the purposes of our study, any teacher or parent can
bring the principles behind it to bear on their interactions with
children.
The first key is simply to model mindfulness and kindness. For
example, what quality of attention do we bring when we interact with our
kids? Do we give them our full attention—eye contact, kneeling down to
speak with them, asking questions—or are we distracted? Kids are
extraordinarily observant, and they pick up on whether we are paying
attention to them. By modeling behavior, and through our interactions,
we show them what it’s like to be seen and heard and to be compassionate
with others.
Another simple activity is to relax and feel the natural breath for a
few moments during the day. Kids need to be active and run around, of
course, but they can also benefit from cultivating a bit of stillness.
For example, when Laura enters the classroom, she or one of her students
rings a bell, which signals students to listen until the sound ends and
then feel five in- and out-breaths together. This practice settles
students and gathers their attention so they are more ready to learn.
We can also help kids reflect on their emotions, which sometimes feel
overwhelming, and change their relationship to them. After a child
calms down, we can sit with them and reflect on that feeling. Which part
of the body felt angry, happy, or upset? All emotions are natural, so
kids shouldn’t feel bad about experiencing them; we can teach them to
cultivate a kinder attitude. For example, a parent might say, “When I
feel sad or angry, it doesn’t feel good in my body. But all people have
feelings. Feelings help us learn about ourselves and others. I can be
kind to myself no matter what feelings come. I can get better and better
at learning from my feelings.”
And, by the way, practices like these are equally useful for parents
and teachers, who are struggling with stressful workplaces or busy
classrooms. For teachers, brief practices with students many times
during the school day allow everyone to pause and be fully present to
themselves, each other, and what is happening, whether it is pleasant or
unpleasant. For parents, mindfulness and self-kindness training allow
them to be more present with their spouse and children at home and with
their coworkers at work.
Finally, to combine the concepts of mindfulness and kindness, we can
teach caring practice to our kids. These phrases work well for children:
May I be safe, may I be happy, may I be healthy, may I be peaceful.
When the boy split his chin, the other four-year-olds got together to do this practice: May you be safe, may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be peaceful.
And these wishes can be extended further: To my entire classroom,
my school, my neighborhood, my whole community…May we all be safe, may
we all be happy, may we all be healthy, may we all be peaceful.
In the midst of their distress, the children found comfort and
support for themselves and their friend rather than feeling upset and
worried. They later shared with him that they had offered him these
wishes. It’s these small changes, spread across classrooms, that could
make schools more kind—and educate a new generation of more
compassionate and connected citizens.
This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, one of Mindful’s partners. View the original article.
Laura Pinger
Laura Pinger completed her M.S. in
communication sciences and disorders and is currently a Senior Outreach
Specialist at the Center for Healthy Minds (CHM) at the University of
Wisconsin, Madison, at the Waisman Center. She develops and teaches
research-related mindfulness-based curricula for educators, students,
and parents.
Lisa Flook completed her PhD in clinical
psychology at UCLA and is currently a scientist at CHM. CHM has been
investigating the impact of mindfulness-based practices in educational
settings with students, teachers, and parents.
Tuesday, February 16, 2016
Practical Green Infrastructure Solution to Alleviate Nation’s Water Woes
by GBE FACTS
As America’s expanding urban areas struggle with major water supply
shortages and runoff pollution problems, capturing rainwater from
rooftops provides a tremendous untapped opportunity to increase water
supply and improve water quality, according to a recent analysis on “Capturing Rainwater from Rooftops” by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
In its report, NRDC demonstrates the benefits and potential of rooftop rainwater capture, a “green infrastructure” practice that can be used to retain stormwater runoff on-site, by analyzing ways in which eight diverse U.S. cities could incorporate this simple water collection approach. By comparing annual rainfall totals to rooftop coverage, NRDC determined that opportunities exist in each city to capture hundreds of millions of gallons of rainfall every year for reuse. By doing so, residents of these communities would obtain inexpensive onsite water supplies for non-potable uses, such as yard watering and toilet flushing; reduce runoff pollution; and would lower energy costs associated with treating and delivering drinkable-quality water.
The report comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is in the process of updating its national standards for controlling runoff pollution from new development and existing paved areas. NRDC encourages the agency to adopt national standards for on-site stormwater retention that will increase green infrastructure approaches such as rainwater harvesting. As a result, communities can effectively transform polluted runoff flowing to our waterways into captured rooftop rainwater used as an on-site water supply resource.
For more information on rooftop rainwater capture, please see Noah Garrison’s blog.
Photo: Steve Crane
Source: http://greenbuildingelements.com/2012/02/14/capturing-rainwater-from-rooftops-report-spotlights-practical-green-infrastructure-solution-to-alleviate-nations-water-woe
NRDC
analysis illustrates the potential for billions of gallons of rainwater
falling on eight U.S. cities to be harvested every year
As America’s expanding urban areas struggle with major water supply
shortages and runoff pollution problems, capturing rainwater from
rooftops provides a tremendous untapped opportunity to increase water
supply and improve water quality, according to a recent analysis on “Capturing Rainwater from Rooftops” by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).In its report, NRDC demonstrates the benefits and potential of rooftop rainwater capture, a “green infrastructure” practice that can be used to retain stormwater runoff on-site, by analyzing ways in which eight diverse U.S. cities could incorporate this simple water collection approach. By comparing annual rainfall totals to rooftop coverage, NRDC determined that opportunities exist in each city to capture hundreds of millions of gallons of rainfall every year for reuse. By doing so, residents of these communities would obtain inexpensive onsite water supplies for non-potable uses, such as yard watering and toilet flushing; reduce runoff pollution; and would lower energy costs associated with treating and delivering drinkable-quality water.
“Our analysis shows that solutions to one of America’s biggest urban challenges are right in front of us – in this case, literally falling from the sky,” said Noah Garrison, lead author of the report and NRDC water policy analyst. “The potential exists for cities throughout the U.S. to capture hundreds of millions or even billions of gallons of rainwater each year from urban rooftops. We encourage policymakers to look closely at the bottom-line benefits of rooftop rainwater harvesting, and consider implementing policies and incentives that generate more momentum for rainwater collection while making the practice more accessible as well.”Specifically, NRDC’s report illustrates opportunities for capturing, treating and supplying harvested rainwater for non-potable purposes in Atlanta, Ga.; Austin, Texas; Chicago, Ill.; Denver, Colo.; Fort Myers, Fla.; Kansas City, Mo.; Madison, Wisc.; and Washington, D.C. Several success stories also demonstrate the effectiveness of rooftop rainwater capture for new construction in New York, N.Y., and redeveloped buildings in Santa Monica, Calif. The total annual volume of rainwater falling on rooftops in these cities alone, if captured in its entirety, would be enough to meet the water supply needs of at least 21 percent to as much as 75 percent of each city’s population.
The report comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is in the process of updating its national standards for controlling runoff pollution from new development and existing paved areas. NRDC encourages the agency to adopt national standards for on-site stormwater retention that will increase green infrastructure approaches such as rainwater harvesting. As a result, communities can effectively transform polluted runoff flowing to our waterways into captured rooftop rainwater used as an on-site water supply resource.
“Urban areas struggling with water supply issues and runoff pollution should look to this report for ideas and encouragement,” said Jon Devine, senior attorney in NRDC’s water program.NRDC encourages cities and states to develop policy options and incentives to encourage more rainwater harvesting. These include:
- Adopt storm water pollution control standards that require on-site volume retention.
- Adopt standards that require or promote rainwater harvesting and/or water efficiency.
- Review building, health and plumbing codes for barriers to reusing rainwater.
- Provide incentives for decreasing storm water runoff and promoting water conservation.
- Require use of rainwater harvesting on all public properties.
For more information on rooftop rainwater capture, please see Noah Garrison’s blog.
Photo: Steve Crane
Source: http://greenbuildingelements.com/2012/02/14/capturing-rainwater-from-rooftops-report-spotlights-practical-green-infrastructure-solution-to-alleviate-nations-water-woe
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