2020people co-creating a sustainable world

"It has been used time and again to justify stealing indigenous peoples' lands, privatizing health care and other social services, giving corporations 'tradable permits' to pollute the air and water, and much more."

http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/bullet133.html

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The Myth of the Tragedy of the Commons
by Ian Angus

'Public wellbeing: local action making national change'
The Local Well-being Project is a unique three year initiative aimed at testing out practical ways of improving public well-being in three very different areas of the UK, Hertfordshire, Manchester and South Tyneside. The most comprehensive attempt to date to apply well-being to public policy, the conference will focus on the practical steps that can be taken in public services to improve local well-being.

Quietly last Monday, the Ecuadorian Constitutional Assembly changed the world. Seriously. As the report below shows, they approved legislation that would transform the planet, and ecosystems, from mere things into entities with legal rights to exist and flourish. It's the sort of thing that will give jurisprudence something to work on for a good long while.

by: David Moberg, In These Times

How deregulation fuels the global food crisis.

In April, crowds of angry Haitians - reduced to eating mud cakes to staunch hunger - erupted in deadly protests against high food prices, forcing the prime minister to resign. The price of rice, a staple of the Haitian diet, had risen 16 percent on the world market last year, then shot up 141 percent from January to April.

From nef (new economics foundation):

Green New DealOn the first anniversary of Northern Rock falsely reassuring markets, and 75 years since President Roosevelt launched a New Deal to rescue the US from financial crisis, a new group of experts in finance, energy and the environment have come together to propose a ‘Green New Deal’ for the UK.

Sir Martin Reees, Pres of The Royal Society holds 50% probability of human extinction this century (Our Final Century).

by Simon Fairlie

In 1975, the Scottish ecologist Kenneth Mellanby wrote a short book called Can Britain Feed Itself?. His answer was yes, if we eat less meat. The way in which he worked it out was simple, almost a back of the envelope job, but it provides a useful template for making similar calculations. In this article I have adapted and embellished Mellanby’s “basic diet” to show how much land modern UK agriculture might require to produce the food we need under six different agricultural regimes — chemical, organic and permacultural, each with or without livestock.

Democracy Now 17Jul08

There’s one issue that President Bush and presidential hopefuls John McCain and Barack Obama all agree on: expanding the use of nuclear power. We speak with Amory Lovins, the co-founder, chairman and chief scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado, who has been described as “one of the Western world’s most influential energy thinkers.” [includes rush transcript]
Amory Lovins, co-founder, chairman and chief scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute in Colorado.

Rush Transcript

Below I have attached a letter to my direct representatives in the Scottish Parliament. I intend to post their responses in due course.

FOR THE ATTENTION OF:

Fiona Hyslop MSP
Ian McKee MSP
Gavin Brown MSP
Robin Harper MSP
Shirley-Anne Somerville MSP
George Foulkes MSP
Margo MacDonald MSP

Lothians

Wednesday 16 July 2008

Dear Gavin Brown, Margo MacDonald, Ian McKee, Fiona Hyslop, Shirley-Anne Somerville, Robin Harper and George Foulkes,

I am writing to you as my directly elected representatives to ask your individual views on monetary reform as it relates to Scotland.