In his latest book, sustainable development expert Jorgen Randers offers an analysis of what the world will be like in the year 2052. It’s not a pretty picture.

The “well-oiled machine” model of organizations with its hierarchical leadership, tightly defined functions, and centralized control, is going the way of the dinosaurs. Organizations that thrive in the 21st century will operate as conscious living social organisms committed to evolving in ways that maximize their generation of ‘true wealth’ — their lasting contributions to the wellbeing of both their immediate and extended stakeholder families.

 

Project 10X is an organic and elegantly simple (but not simplistic) approach to growing such leadership throughout today’s organizations. Rather than providing 'The Solution' in the form of a ready-mode new model and/or structure, Project 10X engages, develops and supports leaders and 'changemakers' inside the organization in evolving their own unique solutions – and leading the organization in navigating the transitions. Project 10X is low cost, can start small, and is designed to become self-managing and self-propagating early on — with benefits growing exponentially over time.

Charles Eisenstein shares his concerns about how pervasive the 'technology will fix it' mentality has become, and proposes an entirely different approach to healing our current ecological and social crises.

 

"In the United States, we respond to the failure of metal detectors, lockdowns, and other forms of control in our schools by calling for even more control. European countries unable to pay their debts are lent even more money, with the proviso that they try even harder to pay their debts. Imperialist powers apply military violence to fight the terrorism that is a response to previous imperialism and violence. Doctors prescribe drugs to address the side-effects caused by other drugs. Urban planners address traffic congestion by building more roads (which leads to more development and more traffic). And millions of people manage the emptiness of a life of material acquisition by buying more material possessions."

...

"Technology in service to Earth includes things like regenerative agriculture and permaculture to heal the soil, replenish the aquifers, and sequester carbon. It includes green energy technologies, conservation technologies, bioremediation, wetlands restoration, zero-waste manufacturing, anything that contributes to the health of the planet and its ecosystems."

Five ways to drive large-scale social change by working cooperatively.

Overview of the 400-page report World in Transition: A Social Contract for Sustainability from the German Advisory Council on Climate Change (WGBU), the heavyweight scientific body that advises the German Federal Government on ‘Earth System Megatrends'.

‎"A key conclusion here is that ‘individual actors and change agents play a far larger role as drivers of transformation’ than they’ve been given credit for in the past.

The most effective change agents, states the report, ‘stimulate the latent willingness to act by questioning business as usual policies’. They also put open questions and challenges on the agenda, and embody alternative practices in the ways they work.

Change agents, the think tank finds, ‘tend to frequent the margins of society where unorthodox thinkers and outsiders are to be found’."

John Thackara 

07 Dec 2012

Snippets from Christine Milne's speech at the National Press Club in Canberra.

26 Sep 2012

"The economy is a tool; a tool we humans invented - like democracy and politics - to help govern our relationships between each other, and between ourselves and the world we live in. If our economic tools are not getting the outcomes we want, making us happy, safe, healthy, better educated and fulfilled and protecting and preparing our country for an increasingly uncertain future in a world on track to be 4 degrees warming, then it is time our economic tools changed."

"Most of the battles of political philosophy over the last two centuries have been about competing views of how to run an economy. Where the old economic right, broadly speaking, has sought to create a 'strong' economy and the old left sought to create a 'fair' economy, neither has grappled with how an economy can be strong or fair when ecological limits are being reached: 'without environment there is no economy'."

"What is not excusable is that the old parties continue to do so. They have failed to keep up over recent decades when the huge ecological challenges of the 21st century - from accelerating global warming to food and water shortages, from air and water pollution to energy crises and resource depletion in a world headed to 9 billion people - have become overwhelming. How can we say we are working towards a strong or fair economy when we aren't addressing these challenges? Just as we hit the limits, the big old parties are moving closer to each other and further out of touch with what people and the real world need."

"To set us on our new path, a path to an economy which serves the needs of people and nature, both for today and for tomorrow:

• We will need new economic tools;
• We will need to learn to do more with less;
• We will need to reprioritise our investments; and
• We will need sensible management of taxation and revenue to fund these investments.

"What will be different is that we will have replaced the idea that Australia's wealth is dependent on digging-it-up, cutting-it-down and shipping-it-overseas with the knowledge that our prosperity depends at a personal and collective level on our brains, on our health, on our creativity and on a healthy environment."

"But are the Greens actually anti-growth? That depends on what you are growing and how it is measured. I am for growing natural, human, social, manufactured and financial capital and I am against growing global warming, species extinction, poverty, poor health, inequality, conflict and corruption."

"The Greens want to see everyone given the opportunity to "practise the Art of Living", we want to see people lifted out of poverty, and we know that unless this is done while protecting the environment which sustains us it can only last a very short time. That is what growth is supposed to achieve. The problem is, we measure it with the wrong tools; tools which tell us we're growing when in fact we're not.

If economic growth as it is currently measured isn't actually making us happier, healthier, cleverer or safer then it isn't real growth. If we are growing our economy in defiance of physical limits, that isn't real growth: it's a confidence trick."

"IMAGINE A SUSTAINABLE world, driven by clean and renewable energy. Now imagine large space sailboats driven by solar radiation, production of biofuels via nanotechnology, the advent of photosynthetic humans, and, as there is no perfect society, even terrorism against corrupt businesses and governments. Welcome to the bright green world of solarpunk."

It is increasingly clear that the institutions of yesterday are inadequate for the challenges of tomorrow.  Multinational corporations bent toward the myopia of quarterly returns are ill-fit for extended periods of volatility and turbulence.  Centralized governments, with an opacity built in to ensure secrecy, cannot keep pace with the speed-of-light communications of 21st Century internet-based and mobile technologies.  They must be opened up and redesigned with agility and integrity as guiding principles.

 

What is needed now is nothing less than the wholesale redesign of civilization.  Our banking institutions must be reconnected to the thriving of human communities.  Our schools and universities must cultivate a creative resilience that enables massive-scale innovation.  Our businesses must produce positive social impacts alongside healthy revenues.  And our governments must successfully provide the supports through which well-being is sustained and spread across the entirety of nations, cities, and villages.

 

This concept of bridge-building across paradigms was developed by the Berkana Institute. http://berkana.org/about/our-theory-of-change/

Social Media is rooted in relationships, the dynamic interaction and collaboration between real people.

Individually, we’re realizing the power and potential of social media.

The rise of Social Media resembled a global celebration of freedom and empowerment.

The 2000's engendered a more social Web.

Essentially, attention dashboards are any one of the three screens (mobile device, PC, TV) within the Golden Triangle (mobile, social, real-time) and is usually experienced as an activity stream, TweetDeck, the Facebook Newsfeed, FriendFeed, any feed reader, etc.

To have any hope of connecting with discerning consumers in the social web, we have to gain visibility and momentum across individual attention dashboards, where, when, and how they’re tuned.

It is this practice that lays a promising foundation for implementing a social CRM (sCRM) or Social Relationship Management (SRM) infrastructure supported by established workflow, processes, and governance.

To help, the social Web is on the verge of realizing the potential and corresponding benefits of real-time filtering technology.

As we traverse the dynamic landscapes defining the social and attention economies, we realize that something much more powerful is required to earn ongoing attention in the social web.

With time, our contribution to the state of the social, attention, and trust economies is measured by reciprocity, recognition, value, and benefaction.

Brian Solis

09 Dec 2009