Sustainable Development: Graziadio Business Report Loop

Inside Info from The Graziadio School...

"SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT"
Conservationism? Pseudo-Conservationism?
Enlightened Capitalism? Sneaky Capitalism?
Oxymoron?
The S.D. term spins like the Earth itself but,
in this orbit of The LOOP,
your Loopmaster shares his unique perspective
from within the Pepperdine biosphere.

So relax...
Download this biodegradable screensaver...

And take time to smell the Ozone...
Here in the Sustainable Development LOOP!

Complex Challenges
The world's present development path is not sustainable. Efforts to meet the needs of a growing population in an interconnected but unequal and human-dominated world are undermining the Earth's essential life-support systems. The extraordinary complexity of the challenges that lie ahead is suggested by today's emerging interactions among global environmental changes and the profound transformations underway in social and economic life. These include such diverse alterations of the earth as climate warming, land transformation, and loss of biological diversity, together with social transitions including a population that is growing more slowly, while aging and urbanizing; an economy that is globalizing while increasing both wealth and inequality in the face of persisting poverty; and a system of resource utilization that in the energy, manufacturing, and agricultural sectors is making more with less even as it increases its overall demands on the earth to unprecedented levels. (Harvard Forum on Science and Technology for Sustainability)

Get Out of the Trenches!
A key reason that solutions to problems arising from perpetual material expansion are sought through more expansion, is the inertia of cultural entrenchment. We are familiar with the idea of economic growth and there is no question that the light of the media and those holding wealth and power shine more brightly on such solutions. (Cyberus)

Material Boy
I argue that the whole world can reach and maintain American standards of living with a population of even 15 billion. I also argue that maintaining material progress is the highest priority and the best way to ensure that population eventually stabilizes at a sustainable level with a standard of living above the present American level and continues to improve thereafter. (John McCarthy, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford University)

Population Control Not P.C.?
The growth ideology is extremely attractive politically because it offers a solution to poverty without requiring the moral disciplines of sharing and population control. (Herman Daly)

Mischief Makers?
The refusal to recognize progress, and act responsibly to foster it plagues many greens. This problem is theirs to address. Until they do so, they will generate mischief and great suffering among the world's most poor and cause third world practices to produce much unnecessary ecological damage. (John A. Baden)

Rio Declaration
on Environment and Development
Principle 1
Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to
a healthy and productive life
in harmony with nature.

Click on the logo to take an online Consumption Quiz

Sustainable Products

The Bamboo Bicycle
A men’s model leisure bike, assembled in France. The frame is made in block-dyed black chrome and hand-shaped and tied bamboo. The bamboo frame is reinforced with wood for stability and carbon fibre is used to get rigid frame joints. Handlebar grips are cork, the rims are beech wood and the seat is leather. The three speeds are integrated into the hub and the bike has drum brakes. The bicycle is still in development. One problem is finding enough high quality bamboo for the frame.

Shades of Green
In the arena of companies and products, we distinguish black (sports utility vehicles), brown (sports utility vehicles that get higher mileage), beige (current compact cars), faintly green (the new gas-electric hybrids), jade (hydrogen-powered cars), spring green (hydrogen-powered buses and trains), deep forest green (bicycles). Most of the products in "green" catalogs are actually somewhere on the beige border, and most of the companies who proudly call themselves "sustainable" are struggling to move from brown to beige. Good for them. They're going in the right direction. But they have a long way to go. (Donella Meadows)

Color them Greenish...
About a dozen Fortune 500 companies are in the process of becoming certified as "climate neutral," which requires them to reduce their emissions as much as possible and offset those that remain with investments that reduce emissions elsewhere. Last month, the Climate Neutral Network named Shaklee, Interface, and the Boston-based Saunders Hotel Group as its first three certified companies. (Grist Magazine)

Be All That You Can Be
"We can no longer have everything we want, but we can be more than we ever imagined." (Howard Jerome)

Important information from the Cosmic Ray Deflection Society of North America

Knowing that in some future time when the ozone layer has been further destroyed by man-made chemicals such as fluorocarbons and exhaust fumes, the earth and its inhabitants will be mercilessly bombarded by deadly cosmic rays (DCRs), the Cosmic Ray Deflection Society of North America, Inc. has been organized to discover ways to survive the coming onslaught.

Something had to be done!!! An Anti-Cosmic Ray Suit [ACRaS] would be constructed! Man-made items that are really unnecessary and have no real value for our lives were attached to a hat and a shirt... By believing that the collection of trinkets, tickets, plastics, toys, auto parts, jewelries, beads, buttons, and other trivial items would repel the cosmic rays, the DCRs were actually repelled!!!

We call the point at which the DCRs actually start being repelled CRITICAL MASS. As you attach each piece to your cosmic ray deflection item be it hat, shirt, car, house, shield or footgear, you think that this will be the item that gives you critical mass. At some point it actually starts happening!!!

That is the important point in this first law of cosmic ray deflection. As you attach each piece to your cosmic ray deflector, you must believe that this little bit of your life is going to protect you from DCRs. As you attach items to your deflector, these little pieces of your memory slowly grow and multiply in strength and energy and actually start deflecting DCRs.
We hope...

DCRs Penetrating the Brain

Milestones
In 1962 Silent Spring was published, a book many consider a turning point in our understanding of the interconnections between the environment, economy and social well-being. In the decades that have followed, many milestones have marked the journey toward sustainable development. Click here for a Sustainable Development Timeline.

The Heat is On
There's no question but that global warming is a real phenomenon, that it is occurring... And while scientists can't predict where the droughts will occur, where the flooding will occur precisely or when, we know those things will occur. Christine Todd Whitman

Is There an Alternative?
Federal policy over the past century has largely failed to promote an energy system based on safe, secure, economically affordable, and environmentally benign energy sources. The tax code, budget appropriations, and regulatory processes overwhelmingly have been used to subsidize dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear power. The result: increased sickness and premature deaths, depleted family budgets, acid rain destruction of lakes, forests, and crops, oil spill contamination, polluted rivers and loss of aquatic species and the long-term peril of climate change and radioactive waste dumps - not to mention a dependency on external energy supplies. (Ralph Nader)

Rio Declaration
on Environment and Development
Principle 2
States have, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and the principles of international law, the sovereign right to exploit their own resources pursuant to their own environmental and developmental policies, and the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other States or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.

Top Five
Global Warming Polluters...
1. U.S.
2. China
3. Russia
4. Japan
5. U.S. Automobiles

Better Living Through Chemistry
Some of the large companies that were once big-time polluters are now taking proactive steps to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The most impressive company has been the chemical giant DuPont, which has already cut its emissions in half and plans to achieve 65 percent reductions by 2010. (Christian Science Monitor)

Sustainable City
The City of Santa Monica, California in 1994 implemented a progressive new course of action regarding the city’s environmental concerns. Working under the sustainable development framework, the City reworked eleven major citywide policies with regard to both urgent environmental concerns as well as cost effectiveness of each improvement plan. These issues are community and economic development, construction and development, education, energy, hazardous materials, housing, purchasing, solid waste, storm water and wastewater, transportation and water.

Santa Monica’s long-term solution is a complete switch to renewable resources. However, at the present technology level this switch is unfeasible, so the next-best alternative is maximizing energy efficiency. Working with the local energy companies Southern California Edison and The Gas Company the city has come up with a plan to reduce energy consumption by 16% by 2000.

With education, the City realizes that the success of the policies implemented now depends on the level of commitment and dedication of the next generation. In curriculum planning, sustainable development has become an underling theme. In total seven programs have been introduced, each introducing students and teachers to resource friendly behaviors.

What Santa Monica has done is a big step towards sustainability but its success should be viewed with some caution. Santa Monica is located in a very wealthy area of this country and can afford to be concerned with environmental issues. With wealth comes an increased concern with the environmental, but sustainability is not limited to a handful of wealthy communities.

Rio Declaration
on Environment and Development
Principle 3
The right to development must be fulfilled so as to equitably meet developmental and environmental needs of present and future generations.

Vacation Reading...


Kathryn Fitzgerald suggests... Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia Ahmed Rashid	Charla Griffy-Brown suggests... Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism Are Reshaping the World Benjamin R. Barber	Miriam Lacey suggests... The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order Samuel P. Huntington

Frieda Gehlen suggests... Jack: Straight from the Gut Jack Welch	Peter Koestenbaum suggests... Love's Executioner: And Other Tales of Psychotherapy Irvin D. Yalom	Your Loopmaster suggests... Your Money or Your Life: Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Achieving Financial Independence Joe Dominguez, Vicki Robin

Q. Won't global warming do us in unless we drastically reduce our use of energy?

A. No. Global warming can be avoided or reversed should it turn out to be a serious problem. However, read Why Global Warming Would be Good for You by Tom Moore of the Hoover Institution. (John McCarthy, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at Stanford University)

Rio Declaration
on Environment and Development
Principle 4
In order to achieve sustainable development, environmental protection shall constitute an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it.

Loop du Jour...

Visit Cobb Hill...

...an intentional community of people who want to explore the challenge of living in ways that are materially sufficient, socially and ecologically responsible, and satisfying to the soul.

Nadir...

Sure You Can Buy Happiness...

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