Footprints

Dunedata
This is a pretty good description in general of sustainability and the footprint measurement and idea is a very clear way of understanding to a degree the resource load that we impose upon the planet and landscape.Have a look. http://www.footprintnetwork.org/

Global Warming?

A lot of times these days my thoughts turn to how we are changing our perceptions in regards to safety,organisation and change within businesses to make them better and more relevant,sustainable workplaces.What are some of the important issues and contexts within which we are operating,why are we chnaging...or more why should we?In my case I believe there are some extremely important reasons to change.Physical & Mental health reasons are important, as well as the justice/legislative reasons of course ...but importantly all our practices are and should be framed within this context.The world is warming with some potential radical and disasterous side effects to our environment and planet overall.This should chasten us to look at the way we work and create our lifestyles...it should give us reason to pause and reorientate the way business is done .Sustainability should become a more real and relevant concept in many spheres of our working and everyday life.Below is an excerpt of an article by Robert Manne in The Monthly Magazine laying out some of the key issues;


"

Comment: Robert Manne

2005 was the warmest year in the history of Australia and the second warmest in the history of the Earth since records have been kept. Ten of the Earth’s 11 warmest years have occurred since 1990. The European summer of 2003 was so hot that, according to the statisticians, it was a one in 44,000 chance. Since the mid-1990s ferocious hurricanes, whose intensity is directly linked with the temperature of the sea, have occurred with an unaccustomed regularity in the Gulf of Mexico. Mitch in 1998 killed ten thousand people. Katrina in 2005 took out New Orleans. During the 1990s in the South Pacific there were five consecutive El Niños, an unprecedented event. In the summer of 2002 the Arctic and Greenland ice sheets shrank by one million square kilometres. In February of the same year, at the other end of the world, the Larsen ice sheet broke up in a matter of weeks. You may regard all this as coincidence. Despite my naturally sceptical temperament, I do not.

During the 1980s the world received its first great post-industrial environmental shock. By the use of chlorofluorocarbons as a manufacturing convenience in refrigerators and spray-cans a hole began to appear in the ozone layer protecting human beings and the Earth from the sun’s ultraviolet rays. If instead of chlorine, bromine had been chosen, with a capacity to destroy ozone thirty times as great, by the time the link had been discovered the ozone layer most likely would have been entirely destroyed.

After solid scientific understanding of the threat of CFCs had been reached, 20 countries of the developed world in 1987 signed the so-called Montreal Protocol. It proved a triumph of effective global action and of reason. CFCs were soon more or less entirely removed from industrial production. The ozone layer began to repair itself.

It was at this time and in this context that the infinitely greater problem of global warming came generally to be recognised. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, major international conferences were held in Villach, Toronto and Rio. In 1988, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – comprising 2500 of the world’s leading climate scientists from one hundred countries – was formed. This was a crucial achievement. Through their ultra-cautious, meticulously peer-reviewed research, the climate scientists of the IPCC, in association with the world’s leading climate science institutes, managed to convince the world that the cause of global warming was the release into the atmosphere of vast amounts of the six or so greenhouse gases, most importantly carbon dioxide, by the ever-accelerating burning of fossil fuels – coal, oil and gas.

For several thousand years the Earth’s average temperature had remained steady at around 14ºC. During the course of the twentieth century it rose by 0.6ºC. In its 2001 report, the IPCC warned that if the world were to continue with a business-as-usual approach to the burning of fossil fuels, in the course of the twenty-first century the average temperature of the Earth would rise by a further 2ºC to 6ºC.

If this happens, at the very least, never-before-experienced levels of droughts, hurricanes, bushfires, searing heatwaves, bleaching of coral reefs, plagues of malarial or dengue-fever bearing insects, and meltings of ice are certain to occur. Yet things could be even worse. As Tim Flannery has warned us recently in his brilliant book The Weather Makers, which is based on a comprehensive reading and a lucid summarising of the relevant scientific literature, it is not impossible that if the Earth’s temperature does not reach an equilibrium large parts of the Amazonian Forest might turn to savannah plain; that oceans might rise several metres as a consequence of the rapid melting of the Greenland and Arctic ice sheets; that the flow of the Gulf Stream might falter; that very large numbers of species might become extinct; and that human beings might find the Earth an increasingly alien and unfriendly place.

To prevent the predictable and possible disasters, the climate scientists at the IPCC propose a straightforward but not simple cure. If the temperature of the Earth is to be stabilised at 15ºC or 16ºC, that is to say if the Earth is to remain humanly habitable in the long-term, there is no alternative, they argue, but to reduce by the year 2050 the tonnage of the emissions of the fossil fuels we now burn by something like 60%. If we fail to do this, we will, as it were, be cooked.

We rely as never before on experts to solve many of the self-created crises of our technological civilisation. Yet to judge the soundness of their reasoning and the merit of the solutions they offer requires a depth of scientific understanding available only to a tiny group. If this is one of the most fundamental paradoxes of contemporary politics, on no question is this paradox more obvious than over the problem of global warming. No one who is not a climate scientist can independently judge the quality of the research summarised by the IPCC or the conclusions they have reached. The real choice before politicians and citizens is, then, as Clive Hamilton once remarked, not what to believe but who.

Even if scientists were equally divided between global-warming believers and sceptics, given what we stand to lose if we are wrong, on customary precautionary grounds there would be very good reason to place our trust in the believers. The very future of the Earth is, after all, at stake. In reality, scientific opinion on climate change is divided between the views of the 2500 world experts, represented by the IPCC, and a dozen or so sceptics. As Ross Gelbspan has demonstrated in his book The Heat Is On, the sceptics have been granted an altogether undeserved importance by the encouragement and the sponsorship they have received from some of the world’s largest coal, oil, aluminium, electricity and automobile corporations.

The choice as to whom we ought to trust is, then, obvious in the extreme. With the initial ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 by more than one hundred and fifty nations, on the basis of the warnings of the climate scientists, the international community made the rational choice.

Kyoto was founded on four fundamental principles. Because of the problem of global inequality and poverty, it was agreed that the first step in the campaign to wean ourselves from dependence on fossil fuels would be made only by the developed economies. Because breaking the habit of fossil fuel dependence was so daunting a task, it was agreed that, in taking this first step, the developed economies would be asked to reduce their fossil fuel emissions by 2010 only by a modest amount. Because of the commonsensical recognition that for a problem as large as this no voluntary system could possibly work, it was agreed that binding emissions targets would need to be set. And because of the success of the emissions trading system that had been pioneered successfully in the US to curb the problem of acid rain, it was soon agreed that a parallel system of trading in greenhouse gas emissions would be established, as a market incentive for the countries and the corporations involved.

Even before 1997, it was obvious that the greatest dangers to the Kyoto process were situated in the US. Corporate America had formed a very powerful lobby in favour of the freedom to emit, the Global Climate Coalition. On the eve of the Kyoto discussions, the US Senate passed a resolution, 95 to zero, which opposed American involvement in any emission reduction treaty that discriminated against the economies of the developed world. It is probably true that without Bill Clinton, American involvement in the Kyoto process, alongside the Europeans and the Japanese, would not have occurred.

At Kyoto, it was Australia and not America that played a spoiling role. Because of our near-total dependence on coal for electricity, Australia produced the largest per capita carbon dioxide emissions in the world. None the less we championed the dangerous principle of differentiated treatment of developed economies regarding emission reduction targets, and, in addition, demanded for ourselves especial leniency. While the US, the EU and Japan accepted greenhouse gas reduction targets of between 6% and 8%, Australia would only sign if it were permitted an 8% emissions increase and a further 20% or so in consideration of the forests that by 2010 we would no longer be chopping down. Wearily, at the thirteenth hour, the Kyoto delegates agreed. When the Environment Minister, Senator Robert Hill, returned to Canberra with what was in effect a promise of a 30% increase in permissible carbon dioxide emissions, as Australia’s contribution to the problem of global warming, his cabinet colleagues cheered.

Following the initial signature of the Kyoto Protocol, but well before the necessary ratifications were achieved, between the US and Australia an anti-Kyoto understanding quietly formed. In 1998, the Howard government secretly agreed that if the US Congress did not agree to Kyoto, nor would we. In March 2001, as Republican insider Clyde Prestowitz explains, in part because he had been convinced by the greenhouse sceptics, in part because he regarded Kyoto as a European anti-capitalist conspiracy, and in part because he owed fuel and energy corporations serious political debts, President George W. Bush made clear that under his presidency the US would not be associated with the Kyoto Protocol. The Australian government was only too willing to follow the American lead. Like Bush, Howard had convinced himself that on the question of global warming “the jury was still out”. Like Bush, he was unhappy with Kyoto’s bias against the developed world. Like Bush, he intended to protect domestic growth and jobs. One of the most dismaying political puzzles of contemporary times is how two of the three leaders who supported the invasion of Iraq, on the basis of exaggerated or falsified intelligence reports about the danger to the world supposedly offered by Saddam Hussein, managed to convince themselves that, despite the near-universal consensus of the relevant scientists, the threat of global warming was not real.

As an alternative to Kyoto, the US and Australia proposed to form the so-called Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate. It held its inaugural meeting in Sydney last month. For reasons that are not altogether clear, the Partnership is content with six members: the US, Japan, China, India, South Korea and Australia. A request by the EU merely for observer status was apparently refused. The Partnership pretends that the problem of global warming can be solved by goodwill – in his opening address the US Energy Secretary reminded the audience that big business leaders had children and grandchildren, too – and by encouraging corporations to take up clean technology voluntarily, without either the stick of binding national emission targets, to which US and Australian governments are opposed, or even the carrot of an emissions trading system, which their corporations do not want.

As it happened, it was the report of the Australian government’s house-trained environmental modelling agency, the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics, that inadvertently let the cat out of the bag. According to ABARE if everything of which the Partnership dreamt went perfectly to plan, greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 would be 23% less than they might otherwise be but 100% higher than they presently are. While the IPCC thinks that by 2050 a 60% decrease in emissions is vital if the Earth is to be saved, the total fulfilment of the Asian Partnership’s plans will give us a 100% increase instead.

The local politics surrounding last month’s conference captures, in microcosm, the dismal situation Australian politics has now reached. Even though the Asia-Pacific Partnership is unofficially a US-sponsored attempt to wound Kyoto, with regard to global warming our only hope, the Australian public was given no opportunity to grasp the seriousness of what was at stake. The Murdoch press enthusiastically backed the conference. Its masthead, the Australian, published two astonishingly sloppy editorials, whose bottom line was the suggestion that claims about global warming were little more than the propaganda of the anti-capitalist extreme greens. One piece by Clive Hamilton provided ‘balance’. No fewer than five articles or opinion pieces supported the Australian’s party line.

As might have been anticipated, the Labor Party failed to rise to the occasion. Kim Beazley remained on holiday. His deputy, Jenny Macklin, spoke, but without effect. By using the Partnership conference to point to the need for Labor to support big business and to break with the ‘political correctness’ of the Greens, its Resources and Energy spokesman, Martin Ferguson, merely created the occasion for another Murdoch-manufactured ‘crisis’ of the Labor Left.

Unlike Beazley, the Prime Minister broke his summer holiday to attend. In his low-key speech, John Howard, with stunning hypocrisy, criticised Kyoto supporters for their indifference to the problem of global poverty. He conveniently forgot that it is the European supporters of Kyoto who are the most generous foreign aid donors in the world, and its American and Australian opponents who are members of the group of developed countries who give the least. He also forgot that one of the grounds for the refusal of the United States and Australia to sign on to Kyoto was its supposed discrimination in favour of the non-developed world. Howard praised the Conference with his favourite word: ‘practical’. In the mouth of the Prime Minister ‘practical’ is a highly loaded term, the opposite of ‘utopian’ or ‘ideological’, qualities of mind that, in the perpetual culture war he is fighting, he routinely locates among his enemies on the Left.

In reality, the repudiation of Kyoto by Bush and Howard is the opposite of practical. It is true that Kyoto might fail. To achieve a major long-term reduction in the burning of fossil fuels, against the natural egoism of the nation-state, is one of the most difficult challenges humankind has faced. But it is also true that with regard to that ambition, as a means for the coordination of international action in the defence of a fully habitable Earth, Kyoto is the only game in town.
Both Bush and Howard believe they are conservatives. Their behaviour over global warming belies the claim. At the heart of any decent conservatism is the understanding that the most important responsibility of each new generation is to act as the trustee of the spiritual and material world it has inherited, and to ensure that this world is passed on in good order to the next. Blinded by their faith in markets, economic growth and individual freedom; hubristic in their instincts about the superiority of the English-speaking nations; disdainful of Europe and the UN; highly selective in their attitude to the role of science in our civilisation – the neo-liberals, Bush and Howard, have now formed an anti-Kyoto Axis, a kind of Coalition of the Unwilling, which is placing the very future of the Earth at risk."

From the February 2006 issue of The Monthly

© 2006 The Monthly

The Importance of Global and Personal Change

In developing an understanding of sustainability its helpful to think of the fact that it requires a change in personal and world view.This may entail quite a major leap in lifestyle but also the underlying values that underpin such decisionmaking and change.We cant underestimate such work and practice.Inherent in wanting to live more sustainably is a sense of balance.But what sort of balance are we talking about?Is it a personal health and wellness type balance between work and leisure to reduce the stresses and strains of living in our modern scenarios/work etc.Is it about less materialism,consumerism,living more simply?Is it about environmentalism and a greener approach to living in an urban environment?Is it about growing and eating food in a slower more quality way?There are many links that are increasingly being made as the world seems to become more networked and less abstractedly interlinked and bound up to each other.

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A question of interpretation and connections

Dunedata
many times these days we are not making enough connections of innovation and advancement in different fields of study and work that can if acknowledged and understood , add to the further development of an understanding of eco solutions and true balance in sustainability(is that an oxymoron?)Anyway what I am saying is that there is a need to have a broad brush and networked linking ...as allowed and promoted by the technology and approaches/concepts of internet/www.I believe it is called transversalist/transversalism...(dont quiote me...just a academic thumbnail note to point the direction)
The answers for survival and inspiration can be found in many fields ...but we must look and listen attentively.An Example is the permacultural movements and appropriate technology movements and ideas...they look for a balance between ecology, independence,sociability innovative and appropriateness of technological innovation...a type of responsible stewardship.the concepts need to be dusted off again and rebnjewed or further inform the sustainability debate at many levels.Though there is not a sophisticated global response entailed as well as clear senses of social justice(which continually gets redefined depending on value sets)there is at least some building blocks for balance.Ethical investment and the funding of sustainable business and business relations is another sphere of this tying in that neeeds to take place as an approach to global and yet local networked change.The investments have implications for funding and support of projects and reach into the spheres of personal superannuation in this and other countries wher we are the funders of such wealth...albeit being largely directed by management /directorships as our proxies.There needs to be tighter accountability requirements as to what these funds are investing and funding...and I /we need to direct and know more about this.this especially so as some of the largest funds are union and industry based that could really influence sustainable work/business practices in a big way.

http://web.argo.net.au/apace/

Sustainable lifestyles?

Sometimes I wonder to what degree we intend to carry forward the concept of sustainability.it is a bit of a chameleon of a concept and to a degree rightly so...as it must penetrate the many levels of our lifestyle and living.

Links for thoughttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifht

Below I have included some relevant links to the topic of prtofessionalism versus practitioner.Its only a brief list.Ciao.

"http://www.demos.co.uk/events/productionvalues/
http://www.demos.co.uk/events/productionvalues/
"http://www.demos.co.uk/projects/adaptivestateprogramme/
"http://www.sustainabilitynetwork.org.au/home.html
"http://avel.library.uq.edu.au/
http://www.sustainability.dpc.wa.gov.au/CaseStudies/southbeach/southbeach.htm
"http://www.sustainabilitynetwork.com/
"http://www.csp.uts.edu.au/csn/"
http://www.sustainabilitypractitionersassociation.com/spa/

Practitioner versus professional?

Dunedata

Without getting too academic about it all... there is a need for discussion and action on the development of the sustainability paradigmn in Western Australia ... as well as to what such a concept really means to all and sundry not just to a select few experts ,academics,corporates and other allied or connected professional groups.It is a situation in which there must be adopted a praxis and transversalist approach.That is... similar to what is advocated for professionals in 'fields' under conversion to a more sustainable approach...more multidisciplinary and connecting understanding across traditional boundaries.It must go beyond this limited expert approach and field to a transversalist approach that is open,inclusive of the masses of diverse opinioned and practiced workers and other professional groups who have not yet been touched,.. let alone heard of sustainability in all its many guises.Practitioners need to be seen as experts in praxis as well as developing theory.

The danger in developing accreditations,certifications and professionalisation too widely is that it may exclude and not necessarily facilitate a better and broader understanding of and practice of sustainable living...and it is after all, what we are attempting in our many ways to achieve.The example is that we may have many ecologists but this does not an environmentally friendly society make.So what sort of expert do we want?.What sort of proslytiser can we afford?

I think at base one of the problems is that we all have as a motivation of course the ability to be able to survive in a workforce sustainably ourselves.Given the mask and body of professionalisation and a body of gathered knowledge we hope to justify our expert status,as wellas maintain a standard for the ethics of the field and a certain type of control of application of the ideas.In addition though is embedded the notion of holding onto control of this field for experts only.This is something that we as practitioners and promoters of the concept need to come to grips with.How to be inclusive?At base of course is the need for experts to be paid there due and rightly so...this enables them to be sustainable in lifestyle.We dont want to go so far down the track that it excludes other forms and the aim of the understanding of praxis.

Like in permaculture there is room for many levels of training and types of educational practice...the body of knowledge is commonly owned ...but being an expert in permaculture means that you can train and practice acceptably at many differing levels.Ther are many bodies that govern this practice and promote it amongst garden enthusiasts,architects,engineers and many other fields of endeavour.Whether one professional body should determine who is allowed to enter the field and govern training is a delicate and fraught point.Should ethical standing,pay issues,educational levels and certification be set by one body?

Whatever types of bodies that do exist and develop there must be room for many certification levels that allow a progressive and non exclusive understanding of the concepts and principles of body of knowledge called sustainability.

More to follow.

Sustainability Practitioners?

Dunedata
In a recent discussion with a number of professional people who work in the broad church of sustainability and are looking at the training and educational development needs of 'practitioners'the following issues popped into my head...

''From previous meetings discussion the thought has been going around in my head that we are talking about two differing directions at least in our discussions, plans and clarifications of definitions/directions.The first is who are we attempting to serve/povide training for...is it a grass roots movement?... who need professional training in the area of sustainability ethics?understandings etc.skills?Secondly are we attempting to formulate a skills and training knowledge base to 'in service train and develop a profession' or justification for a profession who are titled sustainability professionals or practitioners.?I think what I am coming to grips with is are we establishing a knowledge base that will justify and support only professional or is it more open than this...eg in the manner of say ...action research professionals and those that facilitate in the broadest understanding? http://www.iaf-world.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=3280
http://www.facilitators.net.au/

In addition are we gearing ourselves and skills development to various or specific sectors?eg.corporate,civic,construction,architectural,arts/visual arts?etc.

Are we organisational change management specialists and require the skills of such?

Even the whole idea of the profession and professional is under threat and attack as can be seen with journalism and the the plethora of new or nots so new media/medium explorations such as blogs designed with many particular slants and backgrounds attached?
http://www.demos.co.uk/projects/currentprojects/theproducers/
Ciao for now. :-) 8-)

Fuel For Thought

Fuel,Sustainability ,Industry and Lifestyle

With the focus being very much in Australia on the so called fuel crisis with soaring petrol prices we seem to forget some of the basic binds and links and grab for easy solutions to our transport woes.Such things as the following ill conceived strategy whom many may have received in their email inboxes recently (or if your lucky your junkmail box!)below is one silly example...

… ‘Send it on to your mates!! (no don't!...my words not theirs)

HI all, I really agree with this. The first increases were almost acceptable due to world conditions and Hurricane Katrina but now the oil companies are making a mockery of the situation. Please follow these instructions and forward to as many friends as you can and DO NOT BUY PETROL ON THE 22nd OF SEPTEMBER.

22 September - No petrol day.

IT HAS BEEN CALCULATED THAT IF EVERYONE IN AUSTRALIA DID NOT PURCHASE A DROP OF PETROL FOR ONE DAY AND ALL AT THE SAME TIME, THE OIL COMPANIES WOULD CHOKE ON THEIR STOCKPILES. LETS SEE THEM CHOKE!

AT THE SAME TIME IT WOULD HIT THE ENTIRE INDUSTRY WITH A NET LOSS OVER 4.6 BILLION DOLLARS WHICH AFFECTS THE BOTTOM LINES OF THE OIL COMPANIES.

THEREFORE THURSDAY SEPTEMBER 22nd HAS BEEN FORMALLY DECLARED "STICK IT UP THEIR BEHIND" DAY AND THE PEOPLE OF THIS NATION SHOULD NOT BUY A SINGLE DROP OF PETROL THAT DAY. THE ONLY WAY THIS CAN BE DONE IS IF YOU FORWARD THIS E-MAIL TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN AND AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN TO GET THE WORD OUT.

WAITING ON THE GOVERNMENT TO STEP IN AND CONTROL THE PRICES IS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REDUCTION SINCE WORLD PRICES BEGAN TO FALL YESTERDAY?

WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.

IF THEY DON'T GET THE MESSAGE AFTER ONE DAY, WE WILL DO IT AGAIN AND AGAIN.

SO DO YOUR PART AND SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD THIS EMAIL TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW.

MARK YOUR CALENDARS AND MAKE SEPTEMBER 22nd A DAY THAT THE CITIZENS OF AUSTRALIA CRIED, "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!"…..”

Please don’t send the above on to your mates as is requested.Its quite a naïve and ill conceived exercise which doesn’t address some of the basic assumptions i.e. that petrol is a polluting luxury in many ways and we are far too reliant on cheap polluting fuels.As to the calculations and premise that any fuel company would worry too much if a small group of customers refuse to buy petrol on a given day…I doubt the effectiveness and directions of such action…I understand the sentiment though.I am sure no one is happy about our reliance on fuel oils for our energy needs and exhorbitant profits to very influential oil companies…but what is our part in the cycle…? and apart from seeing our selves as victims what can we do to relieve our collective transport and economic pains?

What is the issue?The issue is that in Australia have not supported and developed enough a sustainable energy policy that fully incorporates and promotes alternative energy usages and lifestyle changes that are more ‘green’but also less reliant on hydrocarbons.Secondly not enough thought goes into promoting incentives to make changes in lifestyle.One of the key drivers for and against is of our the ease with which we can use cars locally in Perth and indeed most of Western Australia/Australia with relatively cheap petrol.Of course the lack of a collective/communal feeling of responsibility for sharing resources goes against us as well.It makes it hard to even contemplate pooling cars to work etc.as a first base change to lifestyle and immediate reliever of costs with very little economic or social change required.The other great driver ‘s of course, where we spend over half our waking lives and that is the workplace.Not enough businesses are making a shift to cleaner , leaner fuel and energy consumption practices and encouraging workers to innovate in this area.This of course is also born out of a lack of a feeling of responsibility for our community or societal directions and decisions.How do we change the situation though?.Well what amazes me is that there is so much activity and resource that is going into ‘sustainable ‘practices and networks locally and nationally…but it has not had as much an influence as it should in the mainstream and our suburbs.

I provide the below links as examples of some the groups and networks that can be accessed locally and internationally via the internet.Ciao and speak further on this issue of networks and lifestyle change.

http://www.somervilleecovillage.com.au/festival/index.htm

http://www.ecocom.org/

http://www.wacollaboration.org.au

The Beginning of A Journey

This is the first post of my new venture to create discussion,resource in network and in other ways, a broadly human resource and sustainable management based blog.Beware though, I will interpret these issues as broadly as my interests are varied.This should insure that things stay interesting though.Ciao Warren

LITANY AGAINST FEAR
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear - From Frank Herbert's Dune Book Series
© 1965 and 1984 Frank Herbert
Published by Putnam Pub Group
ISBN: 0399128964