[Pil-pc-oceania] it's your call

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  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Martin Naylor 
  To: pil-pc-oceania at lists.permacultureinternational.org 
  Sent: Tuesday, November 20, 2007 10:09 AM
  Subject: [Pil-pc-oceania] it's your call


  This is from pearmalearnsuk 
   
  1a. 
  Re: Tomorrow's Child 
  Posted by: "Aranya" aranya at permaculture.greenisp.org   freearanya 
  Sun Nov 18, 2007 3:48 am (PST) 
  Thanks Stella,

  Ray is interviewed extensively on the DVD 'The Corporation 
  <http://www.popmatte rs.com/film/ reviews/c/ corporation- 2004.shtml>', 
  which is well worth viewing if you haven't seen it before, even at 
  nearly three hours long!

  Many blessings,

  Aranya

  Stella wrote:
  >
  >
  > I knew the story of Ray Anderson (and infact have used it in our PDC
  > teaching for a few years now) .. but I´d never seen this lecture of
  > his before.
  >
  > it is 4yrs old, & it is awesome.
  >
  > This guy is a business man & industrialist - and one of the more
  > inspiring permaculturists that I know of.
  >
  > long but well worth making the time to read in full, especially for PC
  > educators
  >
  > .........
  >
  > http://www.ncseonli ne.org/NCSEconfe rence/2003confer ence/page. cfm? 
  > <http://www.ncseonli ne.org/NCSEconfe rence/2003confer ence/page. cfm?>
  > FID=2504
  >
  > A Call for Systemic Change
  >
  > Ray Anderson
  > Chairman, Interface Flooring Systems, Inc.
  >
  > Plenary Lecture at the 3rd National Conference on Science, Policy and
  > the Environment:
  > "Education for a Sustainable and Secure Future"
  > Sponsored by the National Council for Science and the Environment
  >
  > January 31, 2003
  >
  > It seems that Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson go on a camping trip.
  > Night comes on, and they go to bed.
  > In the middle of the night, Sherlock Holmes wakes up and punched Watson
  > awake.
  > "Watson, what do you see?"
  > Watson looks up and in his inimitable way says, "Meteorologically
  > speaking, I see we're in a high pressure zone. The sky is perfectly
  > clear. Cosmologically speaking, I see an expanding universe with
  > billions and billions of galaxies, each containing billions and
  > billions of stars. Astronomically speaking, I see our own galaxy, the
  > Milky Way, and five first magnitude stars. There is Altair, Arcturus,
  > Deneb, Vega, and Regulus. Astrologically speaking, I see that Mars is
  > in Capricorn and Saturn is in Sagittarius. Chronologically speaking, I
  > deduce from the position of the stars that it's 3:15 a.m.
  > What do you see, Holmes?"
  > Holmes hesitates a moment, collects himself, and then replies,
  > "Watson, you idiot. Someone has stolen our tent."
  >
  > Hang onto that punch line. We'll come back to it.
  >
  > I am a Georgia Tech engineering graduate, Class of '56, the Founder,
  > Chairman and, for 28 years, the CEO of Interface, Inc. - a billion
  > dollar manufacturer of carpets, textiles, and architectural products
  > for institutional and commercial interiors.
  > I am an industrialist, but I changed my view of the world in the summer
  > of 1994.
  > After 21 years of unwittingly plundering the earth, I read Paul
  > Hawken's book THE ECOLOGY OF COMMERCE (Harper 1993).
  > It came for me at a propitious moment.
  > Our customers, especially interior designers, had begun to ask, "What's
  > Interface doing for the environment? "
  > So, I had agreed, reluctantly, to speak to a newly assembled
  > environmental task force of Interface people to address this awkward
  > question. Awkward, because I could not get beyond, "We obey the law; we
  > comply."
  >
  > Hawken's book changed that. It convicted me on the spot, not only as a
  > plunderer of Earth, but also as part of an industrial system that is
  > destroying Earth's biosphere, the source and nurturer of all life.
  > I began to understand, reading Hawken, things I never learned in
  > college: that there is red ink everywhere - that every life support
  > system and every living system that make up the biosphere (where we and
  > the other creatures live), that spherical shell that is 8,000 miles in
  > diameter (the diameter of Earth) and only about 10 miles thick --
  > extending about five miles downward from sea level into the depth of
  > the oceans, and about five miles upward into the troposphere, that
  > spherical shell that contains and nurtures all life - on a
  > basketball-size Earth, tissue paper thin - that every life support
  > system and all the living systems that together comprise the biosphere
  > are stressed and in long-term decline, and the rate of decline is
  > accelerating: Where is the red ink coming from?
  >
  > * Polluted rivers and streams from municipal, industrial, agricultural,
  > and construction sources.
  > * Polluted and over-fished oceans. PCBs accumulating in orcas. Fish
  > stocks collapsing, coral reefs dying. Scuba divers know it's true.
  > * Lakes polluted, many dead from acid rain, industrial pollution, and
  > agricultural runoff; forests, too, dead and dying from acid rain and
  > atmospheric ozone, originating in our cities, drifting into our rural
  > areas; affecting crop yields adversely, too. We don't think about this
  > in our land of abundance, but it is of special importance to China.
  > Increasing pollution from advancing industrialization will determine
  > the balance of whether China can feed itself. A China that cannot feed
  > itself is everyone's problem. Yours, mine, our children's, our
  > grandchildren' s, and theirs and theirs.
  > * Disappearing wetlands -- the beginning of the food chain, that leads
  > to us at the other end.
  > * Devastated rainforests, a critical lobe of Earth's lungs; old growth
  > forests (haven for bio-diversity) almost gone, mostly clear cut,
  > destroying habitat for countless species.
  > * Depleted and polluted aquifers. In parts of India and China water
  > tables are falling 10 feet a year. *
  > Spreading deserts.
  > * Farmlands, denuded of topsoil, increasing in salinity from
  > irrigation, and toxified by pesticides, turning into deserts.
  > * Range lands, pushed to the limit of their carrying capacity to feed
  > the livestock which feed us.
  > * Atmosphere, polluted by countless toxins, CO2 and other greenhouse
  > gases building up, inexorably to create climate aberrations -- global
  > warming; the scientific debate about global warming is over; the debate
  > is now political and economic.
  > The science is clear and compelling. The threat is real; 2600
  > scientists from all over the world agree; a dwindling handful hold out
  > in skeptical disagreement. Another U.N. report recently published says
  > average temperatures could rise 10 degrees Fahrenheit this century.
  > That would be devastating! The precautionary principle dictates: We
  > must act as if global warming is real, the risk from not acting is just
  > too great.
  > The Kyoto protocol were it ratified into treaty, would make only a tiny
  > dent in the total problem.
  > It's only a beginning, and not nearly enough. Many scientists are
  > advising a strategy of adaptation. It's too late to prevent, so adapt
  > to, drastic changes in Earth's climate in the 21st Century, and work
  > now to mitigate the 22nd Century.
  > We have trouble getting serious about a time frame like that, that
  > extends beyond our own lifetimes.
  > * And even the stratosphere itself, beyond the troposphere in which
  > ozone shields us from deadly u.v. radiation.
  > * All severely stressed by man-made degradation.
  >
  > I know there are exceptions, and they ought to be celebrated: Maybe
  > the ozone hole is healing. Let's hope the current report is a trend,
  > not a blip. You can now see across the street in Pittsburgh. The
  > Cuyahoga River in Cleveland no longer catches on fire. There are
  > eagles again on the upper reaches of the Mississippi. The Great Lakes
  > have stabilized. In London, there are fish in the Thames at Tower
  > Bridge. (The Minister of the Environment, 40 years ago, took the
  > Parliament down there and made them drink out of it -- it didn't take
  > them long to clean it up! It illustrates what "The Power of One" can
  > do.) In many western countries, toxic emissions are down over the last
  > 25 years. British Columbia's old growth is finally being protected.
  > Beach closings are down in New Jersey. (For God's sake!) Well, down is
  > better than up. Clams are back in Puget Sound.
  >
  > But the salmon are disappearing from the rivers that feed Puget Sound.
  > We need many more victories to celebrate, because the general pattern
  > worldwide is frightening and getting worse. For every positive
  > exception, there are huge deficits on the other side of the ledger:
  > Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Cairo, Delhi, the
  > Amazon, the spreading Sahara and Gobi, and on and on, eventually my
  > city, Atlanta, and your city. Some of those places seem far away until
  > we remember, there is only one global biosphere.
  > China's sandstorm today becomes Denver's fallout next week.
  > One result of the stress from human intervention is that species are
  > disappearing into extinction at a rate unknown on Earth since the mass
  > extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. This is not good
  > news for our species, either, because we are fouling our own nest, too.
  > We cannot live without those life support systems anymore than the
  > other species can, though in our denial and arrogance, we may think we
  > can.
  >
  > And, as if that were not enough, you can add to that list a growing
  > nuclear cleanup that no one knows how to deal with. What language
  > shall we use to instruct people 20,000 years from now how to deal with
  > this legacy of nuclear waste we are leaving them? (What is it?
  > Seventy-seven thousand metric tons and counting, in the U.S. alone.)
  > No language on Earth is 20,000 years old! And to that, add one billion
  > of Earth's people unemployed; and to that add another billion living in
  > starvation conditions; and another billion hanging on by their
  > fingernails. Half of Earth's people, human beings, in serious trouble,
  > subsisting on less than $2 a day, many on much less. Two-thirds of
  > humanity left out by the present economic system, except perhaps to be
  > exploited.
  > Social equity (attention to human capital) like the environment
  > (attention to natural capital), lost in the shuffle, as we focus
  > myopically on financial capital through the lens of a misbegotten
  > economic system. We cannot escape the consequences of that misplaced
  > focus. We witness the ravages of AIDS and we wonder, "What's next?"
  > September 11th gave us one "what's next."
  > Now, we wonder, what's next?
  >
  > Furthermore, especially for companies like mine, finite, exhaustible,
  > non-renewable resources -- natural gas, coal, and oil -- Earth's stored
  > natural capital, capital, mind you -- being gobbled up at an obscene
  > rate, most of it burned for energy and, in the process, converted into
  > carbon dioxide to exacerbate the greenhouse effect. And the beat goes
  > on -- it is a crisis: the crisis of our times and all time to come.
  > Because it is a funeral march to the grave, if we don't figure out and
  > do what's necessary to reverse the deadly trend.
  >
  > Back to that task force and that first speech, I was struck to the core
  > by Hawken's central point, that only business and industry, the major
  > culprit, is also large enough, powerful enough, pervasive enough,
  > wealthy enough, to lead humankind away from the abyss toward which we
  > are plunging.
  >
  > It was an epiphanal experience for me, a "spear in the chest", and the
  > resultant speech went way beyond compliance, to put our company on the
  > path toward sustainability.
  > I myself became a recovering plunderer. At Interface we call this new
  > direction, climbing Mount Sustainability, the point at its peak
  > symbolically representing zero environmental "footprint" - our
  > definition of sustainability for ourselves, to reach a state in which
  > our petro-intensive company (energy and materials) takes nothing from
  > the earth that is not naturally and rapidly renewable, and does no harm
  > to the biosphere: "zero footprint."
  >
  > We simply asked ourselves in the summer of 1994, "If Hawken is right,
  > who will lead?" Unless somebody does, nobody will. It is axiomatic.
  > I asked, "Why not us?" The people of Interface responded
  > magnificently, taking on this higher corporate purpose as their own.
  > It has added meaning to their lives and, at the same time, engaged our
  > customers, suppliers and communities in countless opportunities to do
  > the right thing for Earth. "Doing well by doing good" has emerged as a
  > viable paradigm, perhaps THE paradigm of true business success that
  > will prevail in the 21st Century. It is a better way to bigger, and
  > more honorable, profits - and beyond profits, to purpose; beyond
  > success to significance.
  >
  > We are approaching the challenge of Mount Sustainability on seven
  > fronts - the seven faces of the mountain. The entire industrial
  > system, including the educational sector, must climb these same seven
  > faces, if it is to become sustainable:
  >
  > This is our Master Plan:
  >
  > * Waste elimination, emulating nature in our industrial processes,
  > nature where one organism's waste is another's food. This means
  > revolutionary re-design and re-engineering of processes. *
  > Benign emissions, to do no further harm to the biosphere. This means
  > re-shaping inputs to our factories. What comes in will go out - as
  > product, waste, or emissions.
  > * Renewable energy, energy efficiency first, then harnessing sunlight,
  > wind, bio-mass, and hydrogen - to cut the fossil fuel umbilical cord to
  > Earth.
  > * Closed-loop material flows, to cut the material umbilical cord to
  > Earth for virgin materials.
  > * Resource-efficient transportation, to achieve carbon neutrality by
  > eliminating or off-setting greenhouse gas generated in moving people
  > and products from Point A to Point B.
  > * Sensitivity hook-up. This is the cultural shift, the mind-set shift,
  > to sensitize and educate everyone - customers, suppliers, employees,
  > communities - to the plight of Earth, and to inspire environmentally
  > responsible actions. I suggest that this is, perhaps, education's
  > greatest challenge - your greatest challenge - overcoming and shedding
  > a mind-set that embraces the status quo.
  > This is a good place to invoke the words of Frank Outlaw: "Watch your
  > thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions.
  > Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become
  > character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." I would
  > add: Even before thought, there is mind-set. Watch your mind-set; it
  > underlies the entire system.
  > * Commerce redesign, to create the true service economy selling service
  > - in the case of carpets: color, texture, design, acoustics, comfort,
  > cleanliness - service, rather than product, retaining ownership in the
  > means, and giving those products life after life in closed loop
  > material flows; bringing about manifold improvement in resource
  > efficiency.
  >
  > I have told this story of personal and corporate transformation in
  > greater detail in my own book, MID-COURSE CORRECTION (Chelsea Green
  > 1998).
  >
  > Fast forward seven years to 2001. Deeply immersed in trying to expand
  > my understanding of sustainability, as I have been since that 1994
  > awakening, I find myself reading another compelling book, Janine M.
  > Benyus's BIOMIMICRY - INNOVATION INSPIRED BY NATURE (William Morrow,
  > 1997), recommended to me by David Oakey, Interface's Head of Product
  > Design.
  > A fascinating story is unfolding: An abalone quietly goes about
  > building its protective shell from the "bottom up" as protein molecules
  > self-assemble into a three dimensional latticework, like nano-scale
  > apartment houses with protein walls, floors, and ceilings; then
  > minerals, abundantly available in sea water, fill the cubical spaces to
  > create the smooth and ultra-hard nacre.
  > The walls and ceilings don't line up in neat grids the way an architect
  > would design such a development at human scale. Rather, the partitions
  > of protein are offset in all directions the way a good bricklayer knows
  > to do.
  > Miraculously, when stressed, this mother-of-pearl with built-in protein
  > crack arresters, proves to be twice as difficult to break as the
  > toughest ceramics made by the most "advanced" fossil fuel driven, heat,
  > beat, treat methods known to man. But which protein? How does the
  > abalone "know" to do this? Where in its DNA is the code to be found?
  > Perhaps no one knows yet, though inquiring minds are seeking the
  > answers, because therein lie new insights into advanced material
  > technologies not yet imagined.
  >
  > Preparing for this speech, I wondered whether such inquiries were
  > happening in our Ceramic Engineering schools? Were our ceramics majors
  > engaged in the quest? Were they being exposed to nature's far better
  > way? And I answered my wondering: Probably not, because I read that
  > these pursuits are happening in biology laboratories with shoestring
  > funding, while our universities remain locked in their traditional
  > mind-set and curricula, teaching fossil fuel powered heat, beat, treat
  > technologies - the very ones that industry is using to destroy the
  > biosphere.
  >
  > A similarly fascinating story follows the abalone's. It is the
  > spider's production of its silk web, yielding a fiber that is five
  > times stronger, pound for pound, than the aramide Kevlar®, the toughest
  > man-made fiber yet developed by Dupont's heat, beat, treat technology
  > which employs sulfuric acid at boiling temperatures.
  > Kevlar is strong enough to stop a bullet, but a weakling compared with
  > spider's silk, made from bugs at body temperature. And I wondered
  > again whether our textile and chemistry students were learning nature's
  > better way by studying spiders' silk. I answered my wondering again:
  > Probably not, because I read that these studies are happening in
  > biology laboratories with shoestring funding, while our universities
  > remain locked in their traditional mind-set and curricula, teaching
  > heat, beat, treat technologies - the very ones that industry is using
  > to destroy the biosphere.
  >
  > The emerging field of work, endeavoring to answer the question "How
  > does nature do it?" in material sciences and a growing number of other
  > fields, is "Biomimicry" - nature as model, nature as measure, nature as
  > mentor.
  > Biomimicry is in the early days of inspiring and helping define our
  > sustainable future, not only in materials science, but also in food
  > production (polycultural rather than monocultural, perennial rather
  > than annual, crops); easier on the land, especially vanishing topsoil;
  > in energy production (as scientists probe the mysteries of the complex
  > physics and chemistry of nature's exclusive process of photosynthesis -
  > easier on the atmosphere and climate); in medicine, e.g.,
  > pharmaceuticals that are identified by watching animals in the wild
  > cure themselves naturally; in storing and retrieving knowledge (through
  > studying shape-based computing, learned from how our own cells process
  > information) ; in architecture (as we learn from termite mounds); and
  > even in industry, as we begin to look to natural systems to teach us
  > more intelligent organizing principles for production that does not
  > consume and destroy nature. Abundance through waste-free processes:
  > that is nature's way. And we are light years behind in our feeble
  > efforts thus far to emulate nature.
  >
  > So I ask you who are shaping curricular and academic research: Why are
  > our universities not teaching Biomimicry? Perhaps it is thought to be
  > too new - and outrageous. Nature, 3.8 billion years old, is too new?
  > Given the 50,000 year history of educating homo sapiens to live with
  > nature, perhaps it is latter day ideas for destroying nature that are
  > too new, and truly outrageous.
  > The overpowering consideration that prompts the question about
  > Biomimicry is the increasingly obvious destruction of the biosphere,
  > being wrought by the industrial system that is being taught in our
  > universities.
  > The mind-set that grips the entire industrial system, of which our
  > educational institutions are integral parts, takes nature for granted
  > as if a finite Earth were infinite, both as a source of stuff and as a
  > sink for the system's waste - yours, mine, everybody's.
  > The universities, in their academic programs, credit requirements,
  > curricula, course design, campus design, and campus operations,
  > perpetuate this flawed mind-set from generation to generation, with
  > scarcely a pang of conscience, much less a serious re-examination of
  > the universities' roles in the destruction of the biosphere.
  > Obsolete curricula are clear symptoms of this obsolete, flawed
  > mind-set. And the clear evidence of the flaw is all around us in the
  > form of declining natural systems upon which all else depends.
  >
  > I ask about biomimicry by way of example, but biomimicry is only one
  > aspect of the emerging, cutting edge thinking that has been inspired by
  > the usual mother of invention, necessity; the necessity to find a
  > better way to organize a civilization that wants to survive.
  > I could ask similar questions about other technical fields: renewable
  > energy, closed loop material flows, reverse logistics, energy storage
  > devices that are better than batteries, and green chemistry, e.g.,
  > enzymatic chemistry in water.
  > Here, I refer you to the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation
  > and Development) Task Force on "Biotech for Sustainable Industrial
  > Development, " and its wonderful report of case studies:
  >
  > Among them, the production of:
  >
  > * PLA - textile fibers and polymers from corn dextrose
  > * Amino acids - precursors to healthy food and feed
  > * Acrylic acid - precursors to nylon and urethane polymers
  > * Low temp polyester through enzymatic condensation of diols and diacids
  > * Ethanol production from agricultural residue, cellulose into sugar,
  > and
  > * Bleach removal from textiles to reduce processing energy; all from
  > green chemistry (biotechnology) not being taught in our universities,
  > which remain locked in their traditional mind-set and obsolete
  > curricula - teaching destruction.
  >
  > I could ask about economics and such issues as the elimination of
  > perverse subsidies that incent bizarre behavior (tax credits for
  > SUVs!), or such intriguing ideas as shifting taxes from good things
  > (labor and capital) that you would like to encourage, not discourage
  > through taxation, to bad things (waste and pollution) that you would
  > really like to discourage, rather than encourage, even to subsidize; to
  > internalize the externalities (the environmental and social costs) and
  > to make prices ecologically and socially honest.
  > I could ask about history and whether the extinctions of past
  > civilizations, whose extractive economies led to their ecological
  > collapse, are being studied seriously.
  > The sad fact is that the answer is most likely overwhelmingly, "No," as
  > our universities continue to teach and operate in, the system that is
  > destroying the biosphere.
  >
  > I raise all these question, and imply hundreds more, to suggest that
  > adherence to the old mind-set, the old curricula, obsolete pedagogy,
  > and short-sighted planning, are producing graduates who are trained to
  > perpetuate the destruction of the biosphere.
  > Business, upon which so much depends, will never "get it" with
  > graduates like these entering the work force. It is a crime against
  > nature, numbering perhaps 30 million species (some think as many as 100
  > million), including humankind itself, for we are part of nature, not
  > above it.
  >
  > Why does this travesty go on?
  > What are our educators thinking about?
  > Do they think Earth is infinite in its ability to meet our ever-growing
  > wants (not needs, wants) here in the rich North?
  > Do they think Earth is infinite in its ability to absorb and assimilate
  > the waste from our heat, beat, treat, destructive, voracious, consuming
  > technologies?
  > Maybe they think we have all the time in the world to correct these
  > errors.
  > We don't.
  > The Union of Concerned Scientists, in their Urgent Warning to Humanity
  > (1992), concludes:
  > "No more than one or a few decades remain before the chance to avert
  > the threats we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity
  > immeasurably diminished."
  > Here we are, more than a decade later.
  > Maybe our educators think that all this is someone else's job, maybe
  > another generation's.
  > It isn't.
  > The challenge is now.
  > What are they thinking?
  > Are you, they?
  > What an awesome responsibility to assume, presuming to send graduates
  > into the world trained in the traditional way which is, in effect,
  > destroying life on Earth!
  > The educational system is failing society, more precisely, society's
  > future.
  > It is a crime.
  > Dr. Colwell spoke of obstacles in the educational system.
  > That's putting it kindly.
  >
  > The crime is occurring in subject after subject, field after field.
  > Our economics students are taught a system of economics in which the
  > externalities do not count - a market system that externalizes life
  > itself.
  > Does, for example, the price of a pack of cigarettes, established by
  > the market in its revered wisdom, reflect its cost?
  > Not close, considering the societal costs associated with smoking; but
  > does the market, as we teach it, care? No.
  >
  > Does the price of oil, established by the market in its revered wisdom,
  > reflect its cost?
  > Not close, considering the military power projected into the Middle
  > East to protect the oil at its source, not to mention the occasional
  > Gulf War and the future costs of global warming, such as 9000 square
  > miles of America that will disappear under rising sea levels, this
  > century alone.
  > Who knows what the 22nd Century will bring.
  > But does the market as we teach it care?
  > No. Do the accounting systems taught to our business students reflect
  > this inescapable reality? No. Yet, long ago, Einstein said,
  > "Everything counted does not necessarily count, and everything that
  > counts cannot be counted."
  > And, by the way, in how many of our universities are the causes of
  > global warming, itself - the burning of fossil fuels for energy - being
  > taught, and the research and development of alternative energy sources
  > being pursued?
  >
  > Instead, we continue to teach economics students to trust the
  > "invisible hand" of the market, when the invisible hand is clearly
  > blind to the externalities, and treats massive subsidies, such as a war
  > to protect oil for the oil companies, as if the subsidies were
  > deserved.
  > Can we really trust a blind invisible hand to allocate resources
  > rationally?
  > Meanwhile, we continue to teach extractive, linear, wasteful, abusive
  > technologies whose essential characteristics date from the dawn of the
  > industrial revolution.
  > They are producing more sophisticated products, to be sure, but by the
  > same fossil fuel powered, brute, abusive force that Thomas Newcomen
  > harnessed to drive the first steam driven pump in 1712, the dawn of the
  > industrial revolution.
  > And our universities, in their daily operation, set terrible examples
  > by contributing to the abuse.
  >
  > The tragedy is that our graduates, steeped in traditional technical
  > education, liberal arts, economics, and the humanities, are themselves
  > too often emerging from our universities blind to reality - oblivious
  > to the realities of a finite Earth.
  > Blind to a growing population with increasingly unsatisfied needs -
  > needs, not wants - two-thirds of the human population essentially left
  > out of the modern industrial and economic system; half of Earth's
  > people subsisting on two dollars a day, or less.
  > Why do our graduates (the few who do) have to enter the Peace Corp to
  > learn these stark facts of life and death?
  >
  > How many of our graduates are being taught to ask, for example, why
  > China's Gobi Desert is spreading and generating dust storms that now
  > reach Denver?
  > Do you know? Does your Dean of Science know, or care?
  > How many of our universities operate as if the Gobi Desert was of no
  > concern to them, though the Gobi's dust storms become Seattle's and
  > Denver's fall out this year and, maybe, New York's next year?
  > How many of our graduates are being taught to ask about the causes or
  > consequences of species extinction?
  > How many of our universities operate as if they had no responsibility
  > for species extinction, though their furniture and their President's
  > office paneling are produced from rainforest mahogany?
  > How many of our graduates are learning to measure the industrial
  > metabolism of our factories, its effects throughout the supply chain,
  > from mine and wellhead to landfill or incinerator, and the mountains of
  > waste generated to satisfy society's wants?
  > How many of our universities operate as if their own waste could be
  > thrown away (out of sight, out of mind), though their thermodynamics
  > courses teach clearly there is no "away?"
  > And how many are learning about alternative industrial systems with
  > factor 10 improvements in resource productivity?
  > How many are learning green chemistry?
  > How many are learning to design cities for no sprawl, or to structure
  > laws and incentives to encourage the implementation of such designs?
  > How many are learning about the connections that lead to the vicious
  > cycle of poverty and environmental destruction?
  > Down and down they spiral together!
  > How many of our universities are teaching through precept or example,
  > ways to redress the overwhelming reality of our times, the
  > deterioration and eventual collapse of the global biosphere, and
  > humanity along with it?
  > For, if we persist in the present system, the one that is being taught
  > and lived and practiced in those same universities, collapse is what we
  > will surely get.
  >
  > "Watson, you idiot, someone has stolen our tent."
  >
  > Watson overlooked the obvious and got caught up in the details of the
  > firmament.
  > What does that mean to us, here? I heard it first from Tim Wirth,
  > former Undersecretary of State for Global Affairs, though I think he
  > may have heard it from Sylvia Earle.
  > Tim said, "Get it straight, don't overlook the obvious.
  > The economy is the wholly owned subsidiary of the environment.
  > It's not the other way 'round, the way an economist might have you
  > believe.
  > The economy is the child, the environment is the parent.
  > We cannot hope to have a prosperous child without a healthy parent."
  >
  > Thinking about that, I asked myself, "What CEO do I know who, given a
  > subsidiary that required a constant, continual infusion of capital
  > (natural capital, in this instance) just to keep going, would hold on
  > to that subsidiary for very long?"
  > Not one that I know of, and I'm pretty sure Nature is a better manager
  > than any CEO I know, and capable of being far more ruthless if she
  > needs to be.
  >
  > The biosphere's capacity to supply nature's services - air (plant
  > transpiration) , water purification and distribution (the hydrologic
  > cycle), soil formation and maintenance (thus food), pollination and
  > seed dispersal (thus primary production), insect control, nutrient
  > cycling, the processing of our wastes, without any of which human
  > survival is impossible - is threatened as never before.
  >
  > When our educators finally confront the question, Why?, they need only
  > look in their mirror for the answer.
  > Of course, they will have plenty of company in that mirror's reflection
  > - an entire industrial, economic, as well as educational, system that
  > has been led down the garden path by a blind invisible hand.
  > It is time to change that, and time is short.
  >
  > The title of this conference is "Education for a Sustainable and Secure
  > Future."
  > We may not want to hear it, denial is easier, but we have a long way to
  > go.
  >
  > Change is often hard and sometimes painful.
  > Yet it need not be, as we have learned at Interface, and the pain that
  > is in store for humanity and the species with which we share Planet
  > Earth will be infinitely greater if we don't change.
  > But, who will lead?
  > Unless somebody does, nobody will.
  > Why not you?
  > If you have the courage and wisdom to seek change, then, to quote
  > Gandhi, you must be the change.
  > That is leadership.
  > The question is, can education lead?
  > Or can only business lead?
  > It really doesn't matter.
  > Education must be part of the solution.
  >
  > The truth is, we have an essentially illiterate populace when it comes
  > to the environment.
  > Our brightest minds, at least - the ones you shape - have just got to
  > "get it."
  > As Paul Hawken says in The Ecology of Commerce, "The average adult
  > American can identify 1000 commercial brands and a dozen species of
  > plants."
  > That must change.
  >
  > It is time for our educators, especially at the university level, to
  > get off the sidelines as spectators and into the game as participants.
  > If Paul Hawken is right that only business can lead, who will prepare
  > tomorrow's business leaders to lead responsibly?
  > You and your associates!
  > Environmental and social responsibility are critical - as much as
  > financial responsibility.
  > So, challenge the status quo that, today, is preparing leaders to lead
  > irresponsibly, because vast ignorance of the problem is allowed to
  > abound.
  > If your job is to dispel ignorance, then put ecological and social
  > ignorance at the top of your priorities.
  > Let your research help define the path society should choose for
  > survival of homo sapiens, not its extinction, and the preservation of
  > those other 30 million species.
  >
  > Finally, set an example: green your campus operations and buildings,
  > and green your supply chains.
  > If you want to reduce your environmental footprint and show students,
  > faculty, and administrators how, the quickest and surest way is to deal
  > with those suppliers who have already reduced theirs.
  > If you don't know who they are, find them; that is a good place to
  > start learning from those who are doing it, the early movers.
  >
  > This year's entering kindergarten class is your college graduating
  > class of 2020.
  > That happens to be the year by which we intend for Interface to be
  > totally sustainable.
  > What will those graduates need to have learned if they want to work for
  > my company or our suppliers?
  > Certainly not heat, beat, treat technologies, not petroleum geology or
  > petroleum engineering, not blind economics, not internal combustion
  > engines, not the chemistry to make the next CFC or PCB, not the social
  > pap of the rich North, and not globalization of a totally flawed
  > industrial and economic system.
  >
  > Instead, get them ready for a different future.
  > Paradigms are shifting.
  > The folly of the prevailing paradigm, represented by the "modern"
  > industrial system, stands exposed in all its errors.
  > A new paradigm is taking hold: waste-free, renewable, cyclical,
  > resource efficient, benign, socially equitable, in harmony with nature.
  > Get it into your curricula, pedagogy, research, operations, and supply
  > chains now.
  > There is no time left for pondering, much less denial.
  >
  > I have entitled this speech: "A Call for Systemic Change."
  > That's what I am presumptuous enough to call on you to create in
  > education.
  > I do not ask you to do anything I am not trying to do in industry.
  > Unless somebody leads, nobody will. Why not you?
  >
  > Let me conclude by telling you what drives me.
  > Why is all this so important?
  > I will sum up with the ultimate reason, as I close with this personal
  > story.
  > If we listen carefully we can hear a distant cry from someone we know
  > but may not have met, yet. Let me tell you how I came to know this
  > person.
  > On a Tuesday morning in March 1996, I talked about all of this to the
  > Bentley Mills (one of the Interface companies) sales force during their
  > annual sales meeting, bringing them along, but not knowing whether I
  > was connecting.
  > A few days later, over my e-mail, totally out of the blue, came an
  > original poem, composed after that meeting by one of the Tuesday
  > morning participants.
  > It was one of the most encouraging moments of my life, because it told
  > me that at least one person in that Tuesday morning audience (and I
  > think he surely represented many people) "got it."
  > Here's what Glenn Thomas wrote:
  >
  > Tomorrow's Child
  >
  > Without a name; an unseen face
  > and knowing not your time nor place
  > Tomorrow's Child, though yet unborn,
  > I saw you first last Tuesday morn.
  >
  > A wise friend introduced us two,
  > and through his shining point of view
  > I saw a day which you would see;
  > A day for you, and not for me.
  >
  > Knowing you has changed my thinking,
  > for I never had an inkling
  > That perhaps the things I do
  > might someday, somehow, threaten you.
  >
  > Tomorrow's Child, my daughter-son,
  > I'm afraid I've just begun
  > To think of you and of your good,
  > Though always having known I should.
  >
  > Begin I will to weigh the cost
  > of what I squander; what is lost
  > If ever I forget that you
  > will someday come to live here too.
  >
  > Glenn Thomas, ©1996
  >
  > Tomorrow's Child speaks to us across the generations with a simple, but
  > profound message:
  > "We are all part of the web of life.
  > During our brief visit here, we have a choice to make:
  > we can either help it or hurt it.
  > The old mind-set or the new?
  > Exploitation and destruction, or restoration?
  > Which will it be?
  >
  > Every day of your life with every action you take,
  > every investment you make,
  > everything you buy and every student you teach
  >
  > - it's your call."

  martin





  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUr4uPe9WBk
  Bill Mollison and permaculture
  http://www.permacultureportal.com/network_resources.html



   


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