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No man is an island, and no idea should stand alone. Solutions hosts discussion groups ranging from nuclear experts to college discussion panels. These groups can be private or open to the public. We're happy to host any conversation. Create a group by tess [dot] croner [at] thesolutionsjournal [dot] com (emailing us), or sign up to an existing one, and join the conversation.
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December's Copenhagen Climate Conference was a critical and controversial moment in our struggle to contain man-made global warming. The conference is over, ending in a non-binding international...
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The purpose of this forum is to explore big questions about society and environmental change, such as
- What does the good life mean in the 21st Century?
- How do personal choices and values play a role in this conversation?
- What do the natural sciences have to say about the way our world is changing?
- What do the social sciences and humanities have to say about the ways that the social and the cultural intersect with questions surrounding environment?
- How can we address environmental and social challenges at the same time?
- How is environmentalism changing in response to these pressures?
- What’s the role of higher education in facilitating sustainability and environmental literacy?
There are a lot of environment blogs that assess daily political battles on energy and climate. Others take a “100 things you can do to save the environment” approach. And many others provide a laundry list of daily news, from solar panels to tree frogs to Copenhagen to sea ice, and so on. Those approaches are useful and helpful, especially for fast-moving matters like policy. But they sometimes lose sight of the big questions we need to be asking in our quest to develop a more ecologically sustainable and socially just world. The blogosphere delivers a great deal, but it also fails in making important interdisciplinary connections that foster a more-sophisticated, substantive analysis.
globalchangeblog.com forges a new path (to visit the blog, click here). I want to analyze environmental change by focusing on the interaction between nature and culture, showcasing big ideas from all disciplines —sociology/anthropology, ethics, ecology and other natural sciences, psychology, history, political science, ethnic studies, religion, literature, visual and performing arts, and so on.
I hope this forum will provide the creative space to attract the best and most-interesting ideas for how we might get to a more ecologically sustainable and socially just world. I hope that the constellation of posts can lead to a more useful integration of ideas around these big questions.
Join this group to read posts and participate in the discussion.
WORLD’S FIRST HAPPINESS-BASED EDUCATION SYSTEM!
Bhutan, the world’s newest democracy, is taking on an unprecedented challenge– to radically transform its national education system to reflect fundamental human and ecological values. According to Education Minister, Lyonpo Thakur Singh Powdyel, hesitation in this endeavor “is no longer an option” because “our young people are subject to a bombardment of materialist and consumerist messages as never before.”
On December 7-12 top international educators in the fields of critical thinking, eco-literacy, holistic and contemplative education, and indigenous knowledge are meeting with Bhutanese officials and educators in the remote mountain city of Thimpu, Bhutan. Renowned participants will include Dr. Vandana Shiva, Dr. John Miller, Dr. Satish Kumar, Dr. Gregory Cajete and Dr. David Orr. The workshop is titled, Educating for Gross National Happiness.
Gross National Happiness (GNH) has been the guiding development philosophy of Bhutan since King Jigme Singye Wangchuck proclaimed, “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product.” GNH strives to balance sustainable economic development with environmental conservation, good governance, and cultural promotion. In 2005 Bhutan received the UN Champion of the Earth Award. In a world facing staggering cultural and environmental challenges, this workshop could have effects well beyond Bhutan’s borders.
The Need for Designing the Future Collaboratively:
To Whom the Future of the Earth Might Concern.
I propose that the differences that there exist among all our ideas--ideas of all who share this planet--about what our common existence on this planet should ideally look like be resolved by what-so-ever expedient, appropriate means first by modeling (computer, or any other kind), round table style discussions at the community level, and any such--before those differences resolve in real life, causing real waste of lives, resources, and time occurring in real world.
Once there is a clear idea of what we all agree that our common existence in this world should look like, it would be practicable to achieve this commonly held ideal.
This contrasts with the way in use now when we are mostly trying to improve our existence in this world by forever fixing the infinite problems stemming from our past mistakes that plague us--and usually causing new problems to arise with our fixes--never knowing well what kind of existence we are trying to achieve, and therefore never achieving any kind of existence that would be fully acceptable by all.
Please read "Designing a Lasting Peace Together" - http://www.modelearth.org/peace.html, where the need for collaboratively designing the future of the world could be seen best.
Please see Some Suggestions for Designing a Sustainable Earth Co-operatively(http://www.modelearth.org/princmodsus.html).
N.B.
The concept of designing the future collectively described in these pages owes its existence to the Mahayana philosophy ( http://www.modelearth.org/mahaecosoc.html ) and to ideas presented in The Path of Least Resistance by Robert Fritz, which I paraphrase and quote from often, not always necessarily acknowledging this.
Tellus Institute was established in 1976 as an interdisciplinary not-for-profit research and policy organization. The times were propitious for a young institute bringing fresh thinking and scientific rigor to environmental and social challenges, and it grew rapidly. Over the years, we conducted 3,500 projects throughout the world, becoming an international leader in resource and environmental strategies, and helping shape the embryonic field of sustainable development.
Tellus has worked at every geographic level – global, regional, national, local, and enterprise – bringing both vision and analytic rigor to fashioning strategies, policies and decision-support tools. Our projects have been distinguished by an integrated perspective in order to illuminate the important linkages across spatial scales and among environmental, social, and economic dimensions of development. Key foci have included energy, water, sustainable communities, corporate social responsibility, and climate change. The Institute’s wide diversity of sponsors – foundations, government agencies, multilateral organizations, civil society organizations, and business – reflect the range of our program. Tellus has partnered with hundreds of organizations, most notably the Stockholm Environmental Institute with which we coordinated programs for nearly two decades.
In 2005, Tellus entered a new phase, consolidating its programs to address the grand challenge of this century: a Great Transition to a sustainable, just, and livable global civilization. To attain this vision, the world must navigate toward ways of producing, consuming, and living that balance the rights of people today, future generations, and the wider community of life. The prospects for such a transition rest with the ascendance of new values, a planetary consciousness, and a sense of global citizenship. These aims will lie at the heart of the Institute’s program of research, education, and network-building in the coming years.
To learn more, visit the Tellus Institute's website: http://www.tellus.org/
Join this group to show your support and receive updates on the Tellus Institute's work.
What will we have to do to achieve the goal of 350 PPM, the determined safe level of CO2 in the atmosphere? This group will discuss the implications of this goal as well as the work of the international climate action campaign 350.org, founded by Solutions' board member Bill McKibben.
This is the University of Vermont Solutions Group. We are based in and around Burlington, VT, USA. Many of our members are associated with UVM, but we are not exclusively a UVM Group. We welcome people from the greater Burlington area to the group.
We will discuss topics of local interest, especially issues related to UVM and Burlington. Monthly meetings will occur on the first Wednesday of every month. Please submit a request to join to learn more about this group, its meetings, topics of discussion, etc.
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Director of the Gund Institute for Ecological Economics; Gordon and Lulie Gund Professor of Ecological Economics; and co-founder of the International Society for Ecological Economics.
Founder of the international climate campaign 350.org; scholar in residence at Middlebury College.
Professor Ostrom won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics "For her analysis of economic governance, especially the commons." She is the first woman to win the Economics prize. More Information: http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/450#EO
Adjunct Professor at Duke University; Visiting Professor at the University of Vermont, the University of Cape Town and the United Nations University; Honorary Visiting Fellow of Green College (Oxford), External Fellow of the James Martin Institute, and Visiting Professor at the Oxford Centre for the Environment.
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Bowdoin College's Phil Camill offers a fresh perspective to the issues surrounding environmental change.
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Since 1976, the Tellus Institute has been working to bring fresh thinking and scientific rigor to environmental and social...
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This is the University of Vermont Solutions Group. We are based in and around Burlington, VT.
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What Drives "Our" Productivity
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