Astraea News and Views - March 2006

Lester Brown's newly released book, Plan B 2.0: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble, helps put energy issues into perspective. Petrol/gasoline costs over $ 2.50 a litre ($11 per gallon).  "In the United States, the gasoline pump price was over $2 per gallon  in mid-2005. But this reflects only the cost of pumping the oil,  refining it into gasoline, and delivering the gas to service stations.  It does not include the costs of tax subsidies to the oil industry, such as the oil depletion allowance; the subsidies for the extraction, production, and use of petroleum; the burgeoning military costs of protecting access to oil supplies; the health care costs for treating respiratory illnesses ranging from asthma to emphysema; and, most important, the costs of climate change.  If these costs, which in 1998 the International Center for Technology Assessment calculated at roughly $9 per gallon of gasoline burned in the United States, were added to the $2 cost of the gasoline itself, motorists would pay about $11 a gallon for gas at the pump. Filling a 20-gallon tank would cost $220. In reality, burning gasoline is very costly, but the market tells us it is cheap, leading to gross distortions in the structure of the economy. The challenge facing governments is to incorporate such costs into market prices by systematically calculating them and incorporating them as a tax on the product to make sure its price reflects the full costs to society."

Vinod Khosla, founder of Sun Microsystems and then a partner at Kleiner Perkins,  and Stephen Bing, a Hollywood producer, are financing a campaign to get Californians to endorse clean energy in a state-wide vote next November. "Californians for Clean Energy" will need to get more than 500,000 signatures just to make it onto the ballot. If it were then passed, its effect would be to increase taxes on Californian oil production by up to $380m a year, eventually raising billions of dollars for investments in clean energy. The plan is to help California cut its oil use by one-quarter within a decade, thereby setting a powerful example for the rest of the world.  They are particularly enthused by "cellulosic" ethanol, an efficient way of making fuel from agricultural waste. President Bush touted this new technology in his recent state-of-the-union speech, suggesting that it may come to market in six years. Khosla wants to halve that gestation period.

In the US also, the Transportation Department announced new fuel economy standards for sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks and minivans that will make some of them go farther on a gallon of gasoline than the average car does, and will apply to many of the biggest S.U.V.'s for the first time.  Unfortunately, the overall fuel savings, 8.1% when the rule is fully phased in, were characterized as too modest by many conservation advocates, who also noted that the biggest pick-up trucks will still be unregulated. Remarks by auto manufacturers were restrained. The transportation secretary, Norman Y. Mineta, said that the cost of the new rule would be justified by the fuel saved, but that more than economics ia involved. "Saving fuel is as important to our national security and economic viability as it is to preserving our environment," he said. The final rule announced is slightly tougher than the one proposed last summer. This was partly because of the president's commitment in the State of the Union address in January to reduce the nation's "addiction" to imported oil. But oil consumption will continue to rise under the new rule.

UK wholesale gas prices jumped 23% to 230p a therm after supply troubles forced National Grid to ask industrial users to limit their usage. Prices had quadrupled after a fire shut the UK's main storage facility and the recent cold snap made domestic usage soar. If the situation gets worse, industrial users could see supplies cut off. "This is as close as the UK has got to a national gas emergency," said the Energy Intensive User Group.

Experts at a World Bank conference said that developing countries can meet their need for power sources without further contributing to global warming.  Noting that those who do have power often have to deal with environmental and health effects of their reliance on heavily polluting fossil fuels, World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz said, "1.6 billion people still have no access to the electricity grid. There are 1.6 million deaths every year due to fuel pollution, of which half are children under five."

Sweden has set itself the goal of achieving total independence from oil by 2020. The country is already covering many of its energy needs with re newable resources such as bioethanol to fuel its cars and wood to fire its power plants.  If Swedish entrepreneur Per Carstedt is right, the next big energy revolution will really be a step backward. "The industrial age began with the transition from wood to fossil fuels," he says. "Now we're going in the other direction." Carstedt wants to turn wood chips into fuel for cars.  The liquid produced in the pilot project of Sweden's Bioethanol Foundation will eventually reach the tanks of so-called Flexible Fuel Vehicles (FFVs) that run on both ethanol and gasoline. Tens of thousands of Swedes are already driving such cars. They're an important part of this ambitious project become independent from oil by the year 2020.

Climate Change and Environment

according to a report presented at the annual carbon market conference, organised by analysts Point Carbon and attracting 12,000 delegates (compared with around 200 in 2004), the European emissions trading scheme (ETS) grew rapidly through its first year of operation to represent almost half of the 799 million tonnes of carbon traded on the global market in 2005, reflecting the sector's rapid growth. Point Carbon's report shows that demand for the Kyoto clean development mechanism (CDM) credits, which was initially low, has increased significantly since the introduction of the EU emissions trading scheme. In terms of volume, CDM credits are the biggest contributor of emission reductions achieved through the market, which means they are likely to survive even if there is no successor agreement to the Kyoto protocol, the report says.  (Follow-up: See Point Carbon and conference details.)

Also, an expert panel told a conference organised by Danish environmental assessment institute IMV, that jobs created by the emergence of new markets such as organic farming and renewable energy will almost entirely be offset by the decline of "sunset industries".  Presenting their conclusions to EU policy makers, experts argued that there is no empirical evidence showing green policies can generate net economic growth, however, there are synergies between environment and growth. Examples include energy efficiency, clean technologies and public procurement. Policy makers can boost eco-innovation through green taxation and subsidies for research into clean technologies. One delegate called for an EU forum to help the market adopt green products in the most cost-effective way. Interestingly, several delegates warned that the EU risks losing its leading position in global environmental goods to the USA and China, who are now investing massively in clean technologies, a market expected to top € 565 billion by 2010. "Europe is good at setting high environmental standards but it is not investing in finding solutions to problems".  Our anecdotal evidence suggests that the US market already offers a healthy demand for green products which is more attractive to start-ups than Europe.

March saw World Water Day and along with it the release of the Global International Waters Assessment (GIWA) by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which highlights the problems of water scarcity that the world now faces.  Agriculture poses the biggest threat to the world's freshwater resources, while over-fishing threatens the oceans, according to the first global assessment of fresh and salt water resources. Human pressures on water are weakening aquatic ecosystems, which is having a negative impact on human health and sustainable development. Freshwater shortages are likely to trigger increased environmental damage and social unrest over the next 15 years, concludes the review, which was compiled by 1,500 experts.  Water is commonly underpriced and undervalued, especially in agriculture, and that is at the root of much of the waste problem and lack of investment efficiency. GIWA is the final synthesis report of detailed studies of the current and future trends in the freshwater and coastal waters of some 66 transboundary water areas, mainly linked with developing countries. China's rising meat consumption is a cause for concern because it requires much more water to produce cow than a similar food value in vegetables.  And the problem is made worse by the fact that China has badly damaged its aquatic ecosystems and polluted its freshwater limiting how much food it can grow.  China is already importing large amounts of grain, pushing up world grain prices, a disturbing trend for developing countries.  The report advocates a fundamental shift to growing food, living our lives and running our economies on as little water as possible. Most importantly "we need more action and less talk about water".

A new study  “The reality of water provision in urban Africa”, written by Franklin Cudjoe and Kendra Okonski, and published in The Water Revolution: Practical Solutions to Water Scarcity has studied urban water and sanitation issues in Africa. It criticises Africa’s governments for denying the poor basic legal rights which could massively improve their access to water and sewerage services.  “The fundamental problem across urban Africa today is that Africa’s national and local governments do not recognise the legal rights of the poor,” explained Kendra Okonski, Environment Programme Director at International Policy Network.

Top

IT

The Economist published a special report on open-source business in March.  It offers a useful summary of some of the key open-source projects and issues.  What is clear from their synopsis is that the challenges of ensuring quality and dealing with intellectual property are being overcome quickly and more cheaply than in conventional business models, often by adopting some simple, formal management practices like structure, checks and balances and leadership.  The benefits far outweigh the costs - look at Firefox which has tripled its market share of browsers to 14% in a year and Wikipedia with 2.6 million entries, 120 languages and more visits than the New York Times.  Open business models are now successfully applied in bio-sciences (CAMBIA) and Toyota organises its teams to promote the benefits of decentralisation, flexibility and autonomy.  For those who find it difficult to get comfortable with the lack of control over results, you might consider it in light of democracy which similarly allows fringe views but, hopefully, allows the emergence of enlightened social dynamics.

Not surprisingly, Microsoft's efforts to comply with the European Commission's anti-competition ruling are "entirely inadequate" according to the Commission, which said it would impose fines of up to € 2 million euros a day if the firm continued to drag its feet.

The web-based business model applied to a new sector, real estate, seems to be taking off.  Shares in Rightmove, the UK's largest property website, have soared on its London stock market debut. Strong demand for the shares saw them priced at the top end of expectations at 335p, valuing the firm at £ 425 million. Rightmove lists more than 700,000 properties offered by estate agents around the UK and says it gets 10 million visits per month. The company reported revenues of £18.2m last year - almost double 2004's figure of £9.2m. By the end of last year, it had contracts with customers representing almost two-thirds of the total estimated number of estate agency offices in England and Wales, and a further 957 rental agents. 

America has topped the latest Networked Readiness Index from the World Economic Forum ( Global Information Technology Report), winning back its top position from this year's number two, Singapore. The survey looks at numerous factors, such as how much nations are using the internet to increase competitiveness. The full top 10 list is as follows: US, Singapore, Denmark, Iceland, Finland, Canada, Taiwan, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. 

Microsoft is finally unbundling IE from Windows for its next release.  Unfortunately this will slow the operating system down and remove some of previous functionality.  It also appears that the next release eats up 25% more power; power management software is not yet up to scratch.  In fact, there is conjecture that the release might be delayed from this Autumn until next year.  Apparently tabbed browsing will finally be introduced.  Windoze is now trying to catch up as it is surpassed by Linux desktop functionality.

A quick note is prompted by reports of newly demonstrated properties of graphene at the American Physical Society.  It is in this section because graphene's immediate applications could well be in nano-electronics.  Graphene, a relative of graphite and carbon based, is a 2-dimensional counterpart of bucky-balls and bucky tubes and may be used to make nano-chip-boards.  It also has attractive properties like stability and it has been demonstrated that in graphene the so called Hall effect is quantum and relativistic, meaning that quantum experiments may be carried out on the desktop rather than in a particle accelerator or neutron star.  While the science is well beyond me, it appears that commercialisation of this material is approaching fast (within a year) and will have immediate applications in high-end tech applications and soon may bring down the cost and size of consumer electronics.

Further evidence of the benefits of modern technology has been enhanced by the results of trials in text-messaging.  In the UK, patients were texted reminders of doctor and hospital appointments with the results that missed appointments were reduced from 25% - 50% which would translate to national savings of £ 256 million to £ 364 million.

We finally extended the office network at Ballin Temple, with encouraging results.  On the hardware side a new NetGear FWG114P is providing a stable, wired/wireless, broadband/analogue, print server, router hub linked with a Belkin54G wired/wireless, broadband router to extend the b - g wireless/wired LAN.  The PCs are running Linux.  The setup is effective and cost efficient so these brands of router and the software get our vote.

Top

Holonics and LOHAS

Holonics * Health * Environment * Education * Living

Holonics

Holonics generally tries to look at the big picture, as well as micro-detail, and in this aspect scenario planning is valuable.  In the general field of projections, forecasting and futuring a number of tools were seen in March.  (See Activities, Books and Gatherings below for more.) EMCC presents a series of forward-looking features, focusing on the trends and drivers of change in selected sectors of the economy. Three separate articles are published for each sector. The first paints a broad picture of the changing dynamic of the sector, the second presents future scenarios and the third draws out key policy issues.  The reports are based on findings from existing foresight studies, scenario work, innovation studies and reliable data sources.  Please click to see them: Automotive, Biomedical healthcare,  Chemicals (excluding pharmaceuticals),  Financial services, Food and drink, Health and social services, Hotels and catering, Information and communication technologies, Knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS),  Performing arts,  Publishing and media,  Textiles and leather, and Transport.

And for another Big Picture view of the future,  Worldmapper (via Infosthetics) has produced more than 50 morphed maps of the world that reflect underlying statistical data (e.g. imports & exports, tourism, immigration, population, etc.). In this case, it's a map of projected total population density in the year 2050.

For a really big picture, courtesy of Florida State University, view the Milky Way at 10 million light years from the Earth then move through space towards the Earth in successive orders of magnitude until you reach a tall oak tree just outside the buildings of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida, after that, begin to move from the actual size of a leaf into a microscopic world that reveals leaf cell walls, the cell nucleus, chromatin, DNA and finally, into the subatomic universe of electrons and protons.

An intersting paper discussing business capital structure and Adizes lifestage model may be found here.

Health

The Soil Association called for several common food additives to be banned from all foods. The move follows the publication of a three-year study on the effects of combining four common food additives which was presented to the UK health secretary Patricia Hewitt. The research suggests that specific combinations of additives can have a neurotoxic effect. Researchers at the University of Liverpool examined the toxic effects on nerve cells by using a combination of the following four common food additives: E133 Brilliant Blue with E621 monosodium glutamate (MSG) and E104 Quinoline Yellow with E951 L-aspartyl-L-phenylalanine methyl ester. The mixtures of the additives had a much more potent effect on nerve cells than each additive on its own. The effect on cells was up to four times greater when Brilliant Blue and MSG were combined, and up to seven times greater when Quinoline Yellow and Aspartame were combined.  The study shows that when the nerve cells were exposed to MSG and Brilliant Blue or Aspartame and Quinoline Yellow the additives stopped the nerve cells from normal growth and interfered with proper signalling systems. The experiments were done in laboratory conditions and the additives were combined in concentrations that theoretically reflect the compound that enters the bloodstream after a typical children's snack and drink. This marks the start of a campaign from the Soil Association and Organix Brands who are calling for the additives in question to be removed from food. The Soil Association has identified 30 foods currently marketed to children, which include the four additives studied. 

The Ecologist reported on the link between nutrition and criminal behaviour and presents empirical evidence that better food in prisons would improve rehabilitation. This is also supported by similar findings in the area of school food and children's nutrition.

According to consultants Deloitte UK in a new report, if workers exercised more, levels of sick leave could be cut dramatically, saving the UK economy £ 487 million each year.  Only 48% of the population exercise enough to meet the government's recommended target of 150 minutes per week. But if 70% took that amount of exercise, it would cut sick leave by 2,783,808 days a year, according to the report. This would improve firms' productivity and ease the burden on the National Health Service.  The survey of 10,000 people found that those who exercised less than the recommended 150 minutes per week took an average 3.5 sick days per year, compared to three days for those who exercised for over 150 minutes each week.

Intercessory prayers offered by strangers had no effect on the recovery of people who were undergoing heart surgery, a large and long-awaited study has found. And patients who knew they were being prayed for had a higher rate of post-operative complications like abnormal heart rhythms, perhaps because of the expectations the prayers created, the research suggested. Because it is the most scientifically rigorous investigation of whether prayer can heal illness, the study, begun almost a decade ago and involving more than 1,800 patients, has for years been the subject of speculation.   At least 10 studies of the effects of prayer have been carried out in the last six years, with mixed results. The new study was intended to overcome flaws in the earlier investigations. The study's authors, led by Dr. Herbert Benson, a cardiologist and director of the Mind/Body Medical Institute near Boston, said that the findings were not the last word on the effects of so-called intercessory prayer, but the results raised questions about how and whether patients should be told that prayers were being offered for them. The study cost $2.4 million, and most of the money came from the John Templeton Foundation, which supports research into spirituality. The government has spent more than $2.3 million on prayer research since 2000.  While the results are interesting, our contention is that praying oneself improves recovery because it imitates meditation and therefore the attendant benefits on moderating heart rhythm and frontal lobe circulation.

David Davis, a biochemist at the University of Texas, US told the American Association for the Advancement of Science, that high-yield crops grown with chemical fertilisers could be hampering important public health goals. “High yield crops grow bigger or faster, but are not necessarily able to make or uptake sufficient nutrients to maintain their nutritional value.”  Davis pointed to the serious decline of vitamin and mineral levels in fruit and vegetables over the past 50 years, a phenomenon known as the ‘dilution effect’.But he said that recent research had shown that this decline can be reversed by switching to organic farming — with around 30% increases seen in antioxidant levels. “Organically grown produce offers significantly enhanced health-promoting qualities, contributing to important national public health goals,” he added.

Health awareness is certainly rising quickly. UK consumers are taking a more active interest in food and diet a new survey by the Food Standards Association (FSA) has found. The FSA’s sixth Consumer Attitudes to Food Survey, just published, shows that 67% of people are now aware that they should eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day — up from 43% in 2000. The survey also reveals a growing number of food label watchers. 53% of people now check labels for salt/sodium content (22% in 2000), 48% now check for sugar content (28% in 2000), and 60% say they check labels for fat content. Another significant change identified by the survey is the rise in the number of people who claim to prepare/cook a meal from raw ingredients at least once a day, plus a rise in the proportion of consumers who claim to sit down together for a main meal at least once a day.

Environment

The appropriate management of forests is critical and now being recognised as such by economics.  Tracking of individual trunks now allows a premium for sustainably managed timber to be better satisfied and both logging companies and processors are now making the distinction.  The special report by The Economist on the logging trade illustrates the changing market conditions.

A new report by the Cornucopia Institute, which campaigns on behalf of family farmers, accuses some leading organic dairies of exploiting and misleading consumers. The report is based on a survey it carried out recently into the farming and environmental practices of 68 different US organic dairy brands. It accuses a number of large “2000-6000 cow industrial confinement dairies” of taking over the organic dairy industry using substandard practices. “Consumers who pay premium prices for organic products do so believing that they are produced with a different kind of environmental ethic, a different kind of animal husbandry ethic, and social justice for family farmers,” said Mark Kastel, the report’s author. According to Kastel, the report highlights corporate exploitation by a “handful of leading marketers” that is leading to many organic consumers being shortchanged. 

In the UK, Anthony Steen MP opened up a House of Commons debate on GM Terminator technology. The debate was the first opportunity for MPs to challenge DEFRA’s revised policy on Terminator technology (varietal – Genetic Use Restriction Technology, or v-GURTs). MPs and anti-GM campaigners have been alarmed by a statement posted on the DEFRA webstite on February 21 which reveals that the British government’s position on terminator crops has changed.  In 2000 the UK signed up to an international moratorium on developing, or even testing, the technology under the UN Convention for Biological Diversity. The revised DEFRA statement says that Britain’s position is that it will listen to new scientific evidence about terminator technology at a meeting of the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) group in Brazil in April and then make future judgments on a “case-by-case” base.  This is not good.  As we have reported before the evidence against the terminator technology is damning and little positive research on GM agriculture generally is available - it is predominantly negative.

Terminator plants produce sterile seeds so that farmers cannot use the seed for future planting. Campaigners argue that this forces farmers into a dependency on multinational biotech companies, whose aim, they say, is to patent the world’s main staple food crops. The companies themselves have argued that vGURT is a green solution to one of the most serious drawbacks of GM technology - the way their genes spread through pollen to create ‘superweeds’ and contaminate conventional and organic crops.  Of course it actually creates a new risk, that of making conventional plants sterile too, which would quickly destroy nature.

EU environment ministers have urged a shake-up of risk assessment and decision-making procedures used to approve new genetically-modified crops. The development marks the latest stage in the EU’s struggle to achieve a regulatory regime for GM crops that enjoys backing from all 25 member states.  In a public debate held during their council meeting in Brussels recently, ministers called almost unanimously for the European food safety authority (EFSA) to improve transparency in its scientific assessments of GM crops. Some appealed for extra assessment steps. Several ministers urged the scrapping of comitology procedures that have allowed the European commission to end the EU’s de facto moratorium on new GM crops despite opposition from many governments. In most cases the commission’s approval of new crops has been based on positive scientific opinions from EFSA.  The debate was tabled by Austria, which holds the EU presidency but is also vehemently opposed to GMOs. Vienna has defied the commission and EFSA by imposing a national ban on several EU-approved crops, citing scientific uncertainty.

We are losing the fight to tackle the world's water crisis, now one of the greatest causes of mass suffering, says the UK relief and development agency, Tearfund, in their report Pipe Dreams.  The situation which sees 1.1 billion people with no access to safe water and 2.6 billion people without basic sanitation is steadily getting worse, in spite of a major pledge by the global community to improve it. The UN's Millennium Development Goal (MDG) to "halve by 2015 the proportion of people without access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation" is in danger of becoming no more than a dream, said the agency's new report. New figures suggest five million people in Kenya are now facing food shortages as a result of failed rains. The Tearfund report's main point is that international aid, from the EU especially, is failing to keep pace with the worsening water stress hitting a growing numbers of countries. "Governments are simply failing to tackle a crisis in which a child dies from dehydration caused by diarrhoea every 14 seconds."  The report points out that the amount of extra money needed to meet the MDG - $ 15 billion - is "a small proportion of the $ 100 billion that consumers spend each year on bottled water, mainly as a fashion accessory".

As reported above in Climate Change and Environment, another major report issued, the UN-led Global International Waters Assessment, said the over-use of water for farming is the biggest environmental threat to the world's fresh water resources.

Animal copyright seems to be catching on as a way to compensate nature for its use in promotion and offering an endorsement to promoters using animals in their marketing.  Gregory Colbert, exhibitor of Ashes and Snow, is setting up the Animal Copyright foundation which hopes to "collect 1% of media buy, including print, broadcast and internet, that uses animals.  The distributions will then be made to conservation projects.  It is on one hand an appropriate way to help protect nature, but in the other a sad reflection of the culture of intellectual property and complacency about nurturing nature.

Education

In the UK, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has stepped into the controversy between religious fundamentalists and scientists by saying that he does not believe that creationism - the Bible-based account of the origins of the world - should be taught in schools.   Giving his first, wide-ranging, interview at Lambeth Palace, the archbishop was emphatic in his criticism of creationism being taught in the classroom, as is happening in two city academies founded by the evangelical Christian businessman Sir Peter Vardy and several other schools. "I think creationism is ... a kind of category mistake, as if the Bible were a theory like other theories ... if creationism is presented as a stark alternative theory alongside other theories I think there's just been a jarring of categories ... My worry is creationism can end up reducing the doctrine of creation rather than enhancing it," he said.  The debate over creationism or its slightly more sophisticated offshoot, so-called "intelligent design" (ID) which argues that creation is so complex that an intelligent - religious - force must have directed it, has provoked divisions in the UK but nothing like the vehemence or politicisation of the debate in the US. There, under pressure from the religious right, some states are considering giving ID equal prominence to Darwinism, the scientifically accepted account of the evolution of species. Most scientists believe that ID is little more than an attempt to smuggle fundamentalist Christianity into science teaching.

Public commentary on religion remains high.  We wrote about atheist christianity in the last quarter, and increasingly non-traditional views, like atheism, are being expressed in news, analysis and art.  In holonics, religion is associated with the "Impersonal" Zone or heart chakra or Truth Force/Abolutistic Saintly in spiral dynamics. Perhaps on a global level the world consciousness is moving to another level.  The acceleration of this process is important given the quickening pace of the biosphere's climate volatility and the need for us all to do things differently.

This comment from a forum of the Open World Initiative should stimulate thought in most of us ...

What is really interesting is the link between religion and politics, which as far as I know exists from the first dynasties in Egypt, more than 5.000 years ago, well before Abraham & co. Some annoying facts:-

Before Monotheism, different religions lived in peace: there were Egyptian temples in the Hitite empire, and Hittite temples in Egypt, despite the continued wars between both of them. Rome accepted Greek gods and vice-versa.

Religious war are typical from the Christian age, despite (as far as I know) that no religion says war is a good idea.

Judaism, Christianity and Islamism have the same background, all are considered to be Abraham’s followers. The actual dilemma is just who is the last prophet (Moses, Christ, Mohamed?). But their wrong fundament is the reason why these brother religions fight one with the other 

Roman church "religious empire" succeeded the roman political empire; and the first large split in church was exactly when the Roman Empire was split between western and eastern.

Christianity was a background reason for the largest genocide in the world: native people in Latin America and Australia almost disappeared and was substituted by Europeans

Henry the eight founded Anglicism just because Rome didn’t want to give him a divorce (and church’s fortune in England seemed interesting).

Cathars were considered guilty of heresy (and killed) just because they accepted other religious principles than Rome’s. (they lived just in the border of Muslim occupation in Europe).

Templairs were killed by the French King (with Rome’s blessing) just because they were becoming more rich and powerful than France and Rome...

Protestantism in Europe is associated to the idea that accumulating capital is good (in opposition, original Christianity pledged for poverty votes)

the original Francs that came to France just needed to change religion (they were of nordic origin) to obtain church’s approval for ruling..

George Bush always advocates god is alongside America in his speeches... (well, - the crusades used a religious argument (recovery of the holy land) for solving an inter-europe continuo’s conflict and consolidating pope’s Urban II power.

Jews were Christian enemies and killed during inquisition and now are allied against the “Fundamentalist Islamic danger” (which is a good allied to the defence industry, by the way).

Capitalists argued that communists were atheists to assure communism was wrong, and now use the opposite argument (i.e. the western secularized world) against  Islamic fundamentalism...and so on.

(for the very religious, sorry for this simple factoid...)

after all, religion is a way of controlling the people (Moses founded a land with that premise, the ten divine commandments)

Is there a link between monotheistic religions and intolerance and hostility? As Jean-Pierre Lehmann argues in The Dangers of Monotheism in the Age of Globalization, monotheistic religions have caused much turmoil throughout history - and continue to do so today. What is needed is a new global ethical and spiritual role model, and in his opinion, the best candidate to fill that spot is India.

Living

A female blogger has added fresh fuel to the already heated abortion debate that divides the US by posting online detailed and explicit instructions on how to perform such an operation. She said she had received half-a-dozen death threats as a result of her action. The blogger, who uses the pseudonym Molly Blythe, said she was inspired to post the DIY abortion guide after the recent signing of legislation in South Dakota that outlaws abortion, even in cases of rape and incest. The only exception to the new law would be if the woman's life was threatened if she continued with the pregnancy. "Myself and some friends have been collecting this information for the last couple of years because we believed that Roe versus Wade [the 1973 Supreme Court case that affords women the right to an abortion] was not going to be around for ever," the 21-year-old-blogger said yesterday. "We had to take steps to make sure this information was available." The guide - titled 'For the Women of South Dakota: An Abortion Manual' - makes stark reading. It lists both the equipment required and the procedure to follow to carry out a dilation and curettage, or D and C, abortion. But Ms Blythe said she believed it was essential people were aware of the facts, even if that put some people off the idea of an abortion. "My philosophy is if you don't want to have an abortion, don't have one," she added. "But people have the right to know exactly what is involved."

50 per cent of people in parts of Africa and Asia have no access to medicines due to harmful government policies, reports the Civil Society Report on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Health. The document produced by 16 civil society organizations from around the world, is being released ahead of a report on a similar theme from the World Health Organization. Examples of harmful government interventions identified in the report are:

• Taxes and tariffs of up to 55 per cent on imported medicines price people out of treatment.

• Byzantine and costly registration requirements mean many medicines already approved in the US, EU and Japan are simply not registered in most poor countries because manufacturers cannot justify the investment in registration.

• Health insurance is hampered by government regulations, so the poor are unable to obtain insurance and are only able to pay for treatments if they have sufficient savings, or must rely on charity or meagre government healthcare provision.

• Price controls - which proponents claim benefit the poor - actually reduce the availability of drugs, especially in distant rural regions, by making it uneconomic for pharmacies to stock them. Even in relatively wealthy South Africa, price controls have led to the closure of scores of rural pharmacies - leaving thousands of poor people without any access to medicines at all.

• Inadequate protection for intellectual property in poor countries undermines incentives to invest in R&D for the diseases of poverty by making it more difficult to recover costs. The report found no evidence that intellectual property protection had hampered access to medicines.

• Low pay and poor conditions at government run hospitals and clinics mean that a large number of trained medical professionals (doctors, nurses, etc.) have emigrated to wealthier countries with better healthcare systems.

The Civil Society report was motivated in part by a concern that the WHO's Commission on Intellectual Property, Innovation and Health, would not address these fundamental issues because of concerns about the response of member governments. Barun Mitra (Liberty Institute, India), one of the lead authors of the report, said "Our report shows that, when it comes to medicines for the diseases of poverty, governments are the main barriers to access and innovation. Intellectual property is an important driver of innovation but in poor countries governments currently prevent people from accessing cheap, generic medicines that could cure many of the diseases they face. In such circumstance, what is the point of producing new drugs for these diseases? Governments must remove the taxes, tariffs and regulations that prevent the sick from getting treatment."

Top

Activities, Books and Gatherings

March was hectic because spring is upon us in the garden, the river opened and has been busy, and we were advising on complex VC transactions.  It has been fun and now all areas are coming down to a comfortable simmer.

Here are four additional futuring/forecasting links referred to above in Holonics:

European Monitoring Centre on Change:  covers futures in a  variety of sectors, including publishing, textiles, transportation, and, most recently, the performing arts.

Future Think’s "Snap Shots" innovation index: The Future Think team, led by CEO Lisa Bodell, provides succinct summaries of innovative strategies by various organizations as they
respond to ever-shifting trends.

Worldwatch Institute's Vital Signs Facts:  Offers statistical snapshots of important trends in environment, resources, and global development.

Social Technologies: offer summaries of their forecasts and trend analyses to the public.

And just for some business fun try the McVideoGame ...

Again, in March, my extracurricular reading was restricted to Dr Pratchett.  But The Last Continent proved to be great fun.  Interestingly I noticed that the book jumps straight into quantum physics and time travel (re.: What The Bleep Do We Know!?) and was published in 1998 when I started to focus energy on understanding the Theory of Everything.  Pratchett weaves brilliantly his satire through Australian caricature - enjoy the ride!

Ethical Markets TV sponsored by Hazel Henderson is up and running with a number of series broadcast already and some clips online.

We reported on Confessions of An Economic Hitman last year.  Here is a video interview with the author.  From 1971 to 1981 John Perkins was Chief Economist and Director of Economics and Regional Planning for Chas T. Main, an international consulting firm based in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2004 he published a best-selling memoir called "Confessions of an Economic Hitman," in which he describes his work at Main and the duplicitous means by which corporate America has prospered at the expense of many of the world's poorest nations.  Covertly recruited by the US government and on the payroll of an international consulting firm, Perkins traveled to Indonesia, Panama, Ecuador, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and other nations of strategic importance to the US. His job involved implementing policies that promoted the interests of what Perkins calls America's "corporatocracy" (a coalition of government organizations, banks, multilaterals and private corporations), while at the same time professing to alleviate poverty.

We'll be at BeTheChange on 11 - 13 May and are looking forward to the opening session on Finance and the Planet.  If you might be there, let us know.