planted city

Sustainability on the Mind: ‘Externalities’

From Sustainable Man:

David Suzuki explains the fallacy of conventional economics, in an interview done for the BBC. The song is “Outro” by M83.

Source: Cottage Country & The David Suzuki Foundation

From Coursera:

This course introduces the academic approach of Sustainability and explores how today’s human societies can endure in the face of global change, ecosystem degradation and resource limitations. The course focuses on key knowledge areas of sustainability theory and practice, including population, ecosystems, global change, energy, agriculture, water, environmental economics and policy, ethics, and cultural history.

This subject is of vital importance, seeking as it does to uncover the principles of the long-term welfare of all the peoples of the planet. As sustainability is a cross-disciplinary field of study, this foundation requires intellectual breadth: as I describe it in the class text, understanding our motivations requires the humanities, measuring the challenges of sustainability requires knowledge of the sciences (both natural and social), and building solutions requires technical insight into systems (such as provided by engineering, planning, and management).

All you need to participate is a decent internet connection and an up to date browser. More details including how to sign up here. You can download the class text for free here.

(Image source: Globaia)

From The Guardian:

Tens of millions of new jobs can be created around the world in the next two decades if green policies are put in place to switch the high-carbon economy to low-carbon, the UN has said.

Between 15m and 60m additional jobs are likely, according to a new report from the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep). These are net gains in employment for the world economy, taking into account any job losses in high-carbon industries that fail to transform.

Achim Steiner, executive director of Unep, said: “The findings underline that [the green economy] can include millions more people in terms of overcoming poverty and delivering improved livelihoods for this and future generations. It is a positive message of opportunity in a troubled world of challenges.”

As well as generating net new gains in the number of jobs, the switch to a green economy could help to lift millions of people out of poverty.

In the US, there are now about three million “green jobs”, in sectors such as wind power and energy efficiency, the study found. In the UK, the number is close to one million and has been one of the few areas of the economy that has been creating jobs. There are about 500,000 people working in green jobs in Spain. In the developing world, too, the number is growing rapidly – about 7% of people employed in Brazil, amounting to three million people, are now in the green economy.

However, realising the full potential of green jobs depends on countries taking action to develop the green economy and bringing in policies that will foster investment, according to the report.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Image credit: UNEP)

An important first line from the recent Time Magazine article, ‘How Climate Change Is Growing Forests in the Arctic’. 

Related:

• ‘The Other Arab Spring’ (New York Times)
• ‘A Planetary Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste’ (Yale e360)
• ‘The Environmental and Economic Crises Share the Same Cause’ (UNEP)
• ‘Issues’ (Post Carbon Institute)
• ‘Anthropocene’ (Welcome to the Anthropocene)

A quote from the Forbes article, ‘Pedaling to Prosperity: Biking Saves U.S. Riders Billions A Year’.

Related:

~ Bicycling Magazine’s new ranking of ‘America’s Top 50 Bike-Friendly Cities’.

(Photo credit: Bicycling Magazine)

Amazing: ‘Hans Rosling’s 200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes’

From BBC 4 via YouTube:

Hans Rosling’s famous lectures combine enormous quantities of public data with a sport’s commentator’s style to reveal the story of the world’s past, present and future development. Now he explores stats in a way he has never done before - using augmented reality animation. In this spectacular section of ‘The Joy of Stats’ he tells the story of the world in 200 countries over 200 years using 120,000 numbers - in just four minutes. Plotting life expectancy against income for every country since 1810, Hans shows how the world we live in is radically different from the world most of us imagine.

Above is response given by biologist Walter Reid to the following question:

Given the current state of the world and of ecosystem services, what changes are most critical in order to move toward a sustainable and desirable future for humanity?

(Source: Solutions Journal; Graphic credit: Millennium Ecosystem Assessment via US E.P.A.)

Beyond Growth: ‘Gross Domestic Happiness’

From TVO:

The British government measures progress not just by how the economy is growing, but also by the quality of life of its citizens. The United States is following the UK’s lead and looking at how it can incorporate wellbeing into its census data. The move is based on the idea that on its own, GDP is an incomplete measure of a country’s success. Can you judge success by economic growth alone? Will measuring happiness help government make better policy?

From the Globe & Mail:

The richest of the rich have gained more ground in Canada, and are now making 189 times the average Canadian wage, according to a new report.

The 100 highest paid chief executives whose companies are listed on the S&P/TSX composite index made an average of $8.38-million in 2010, according to figures pulled from circulars by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a left-leaning think-tank.

That’s 189 times higher than the $44,366 an average Canadian made working full time in 2010, the report says.

And it’s a 27 per cent raise from the $6.6-million average compensation for the top 100 CEOs in 2009, the report says.

Regular Canadians, on the other hand, have seen their wages stagnate over the past few years. In 2010, after adjusting for inflation, average wages actually fell.

“The gap between Canada’s CEO elite 100 and the rest of us is growing at a fast and steady pace, with no signs of letting up,” says economist Hugh Mackenzie, who authored the report.

“The extraordinarily high pay of chief executive officers is more than a curiosity. It actually is a reflection of a troubling redistribution of society’s resources in Canada and the United States, and in most of Western Europe,” he said in an interview.

He points out that in 1998, the top 100 CEOs were paid 105 times the average wage. Since then, the ratio has generally climbed up.

Check out the rest of the article here.