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Sustainability

Class 33: Cradle to Cradle CofC Fall 2010. Sustainability. Natural Capitalism : Problem - Solution.

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Sustainability

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  1. Class 33: Cradle to Cradle CofC Fall 2010 Sustainability

  2. Natural Capitalism: Problem - Solution • Problem: resource extraction/use, using nature as a limitless resource, and externalizing waste and pollution  We have a “broken economic compass” (market is chalk full of distortions and perverse incentives) • Result: leads to environmental degradation and depletion of resource that ultimately negatively affects social/human systems • Solution: Reverse logic  Nature is scarce, people are abundant (away from limitless nature and scarce labor) • How?: Change system of production to address production-consumption cycle (away from cradle to grave) and address waste at all stages of the process. Engage a “Whole Systems Approach.” Do this by mimicking ecological system. • Result: “Abundance by design”  replenishing nature’s reserves

  3. 4 Central Ideas for Natural Capitalism • 1. Increase resource productivity • “radically reduce the throughput in the system” • 2.Biomimicry– mirror ecological systems in design • Change what is in the throughput (i.e. the materials themselves) • 3. Shift away from production of goods to flow of service and value (using #1 and #2) • Key: synergistic incentives between production and consumption (not perverse) • Keep your stuff and sell the service • 4. Reinvest in environment (natural capital streams)

  4. Blessed Unrest: Attack on Coke • Coke/Pepsi: • Highest pesticide residue of any soft drink • Heavy metal content of processed sludge distributed to farmer • Consuming mass quantities of water and producing waste • Violation of basic human rts • Health issues: diabetes, obesity • Waste stream  landfills • Marketing and misleading ads/press reports • Highlights concerns of a rts of a community and consumers vs. the rts of a corporation

  5. Blessed Unrest Main Point • Demonstrates deep systemic issues that perpetuate “endless injustices and hurts endured by the earth and its people” • Largest social mvmt to counter these issues (unnamed movement)  combines shared understanding globally around • Social justice • Environment • Indigenous culture • Fundamentally about civil rts, human rts and and democratic mvmt • Hope is found in an “assembly of humanity that is representative but not centralized, because no single ideology can ever heal the wounds of this world.”

  6. Blessed Unrest  Conclusion • “To come together we must know our place in a biological and cultural sense, and reclaim our role as engaged agents of our continued existence…We became human by working together and helping one another. According to immunologist Gerald Callahan, faith and love are literally buried in our genes and lymphocytes, and what it takes to arrest our descent into chaos is one person after another remembering who and where they really are.”

  7. Vids • Berkeley Lecture: Trade and Natural Capitalism • Roundtable Rocky Mtn Inst: Natural Capitalism • Paul Hawken, Blessed Unrest

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