Astraea.net - home of holonics

Reflections in May focussed on the need and nature of system change that humanity requires to preserve and enjoy the biosphere.

There is debate about whether or not humanity will, is, has or never will reach a limit to growth. Many say Malthus and the Club of Rome are wrong and forecasts of growth limits have been proven wrong time and time again as technology has provided resource leverage which has resulted in more consumption, both in quantity and quality. But that is only correct if your perspective is personal and you have not considered the Big Picture. It is deluded to think that the planet is healthy and humanity is happy, simply because our perspective is selfish and short term. We think and behave as if a lifetime is a long time. But in the context of the biosphere it is a second. And the seconds are ticking.

When was the last time you had fresh water? Perhaps you never have. Perhaps it has always been treated, filtered, pasteurised, bottled. And you are rich, not one of the billions of poor people pushed to the edge of existence by others' greed. The limit of physical growth has surely been reached. While the attention to spiritual growth has been ignored and neglected if not ridiculed.

There are many who talk about and even work towards a "sustainable" model. Whether it is investors, industrialists, politicians, journalists, artists, scientists, all too often their perspective is that others must change, and their initiatives are wholesome. But it is rare for world leaders (i.e. people with stuff like us) to actually make changes themselves. Perhaps you can reflect on your own company, business or industry and consider what it is actually doing to moderate consumption. Invariably the answer is "not enough", if not "nothing".

Take for example carbon trading. (Which is a very good thing because it focusses attention on a critical aspect of the biospheres balance.) Carbon trading is like buying indulgences. It was once a common practice for people to pay the Catholic church for a blessing or indulgence absolving the purchaser of sins and perhaps even more. Of course, this was simply a way for the Roman Catholic church to make money. And it was a convenient way for ignorant and superstitious, but wealthy individuals to feel good and be seen in a bright light by peers and society. They did not actually have to do anything to make amends, to redress the harm that they may have done. Is that not like big companies buying carbon credits so that they can feel good about themselves, look good in the eyes of society, but actually not do anything to redress the pollution and inequity that they perpetuate?

An industry that I focus on, the finance industry, is perhaps the best example. It is a particularly relevant example because "money makes the world go round". Or as we say: "Energy is the currency of the biosphere. Money is the blood of our world." (Money is the proxy for our values which is not always a happy thought.)

So let's briefly reflect on the world of money. Just in the past year, as a slew of high level globally endorsed scientific reports have come out warning us of the Inconvenient Truth of global warning. So now it is acceptable to talk about the environment, sustainability and related issues. Clean tech investment has ballooned, doubling in the past year. Responsible investment has taken on a new dynamic so that all established fund managers are pitching their green, sustainable, ethical, SRI funds.

Unfortunately, little has changed in the way in which the funds are managed. There has been little innovation in the structure of the financial services industry. Funds continue to separate management responsibility and reward from investors'. Few managers have demonstrated a commitment to ethical principles by restructuring investment or compensation dynamics. Vanguard remains one. But where are the others? A few small innovators are walking the talk - read about the Appleseed Fund in the Investment section. But even the pioneers of sustainability are doing less than they could. Why, for example, is Al Gore, backing a vehicle that invests in listed equities? His fund does not actually finance green technologies, it pays its money to other investors for their shares; it is a secondary transaction. And why has the fund not structured itself to align the interests of investors, managers and holdings? Because David Blood would not be able to take such a nice fee and because they haven't even thought about it (or hadn't when I spoke to him at the fund's inception).

So while we can pat ourselves on the backs for beginning to wake up to the fact that the planet is dying (as well as half the human population) we have done little to actually address the core problems - we eat too much and we care too little. We are teenagers. And if we are large companies we might even be a little psychotic.

Reflections in May were therefore rather sober. But not hopeless because change is happening and increasingly it is the change that is needed - a holonic system change. An emerging intelligence that is accelerating and may allow humanity to enjoy the excitement of space age technology. It is small DIY communities of business, science, politics and industry that are the models for tomorrow. There is no future in a few big units of human agglomeration whether that is company or country. We are all in this together and we must put others first before we will be able to create a system that reflects the realities of nature. And it will happen in my lifetime ... or not at all.

Geopolitics

America's relationship with China and Russia continues to be frosty. The hardball approach of the US administration is not helpful, can not have the same result as its approach in the Middle East and is more likely to compromise America's opportunities. While America continues to whine about intellectual property and currency in China, neither issue is actually that important to the US economy (copied DVDs and software would not sell at full price in emerging markets and a stronger Yuan would exacerbate US inflation and dent its consumption) and the aggravated tone of US Congress and trade diplomats does not enhance a positive relationship with what will be the largest economy in the world in five years. Similarly, self-serving rhetoric by the US administration about Russia's control of energy pipelines in and around Russia or American military posturing in Europe only raises the tension with Russia which can increasingly grow internally and through relationships in Europe and elsewhere. America is using China and Russia as scapegoat and distraction from problems at home, such as healthcare, education and inequality, which would be better resolved by domestic policy and investment, instead of playing hard ball in China, Russia and the Middle East.

Another mass popular outcry, similar to that over Zhengzhou University's qualification degradation in Shengda College last year, occurred in south west China because of China's one-child policy. Thousands of villagers attacked family planning officials, overturned cars and set fire to government buildings in a riot sparked by the state's controversial family planning restrictions (urban dwellers may have one child, villagers can have two if the first child is a girl). Riot police were dispatched to at least four townships in the Guanxi autonomous region after a weekend of disturbances that led to multiple injuries and unconfirmed reports of two fatalities. The unrest comes in the wake of a new crackdown by the Bobai county government against families that break birth control regulations. Financial penalties have increased and parents who fail to pay are being punished by having their property confiscated or destroyed. This is another sign of a maturing society and culture in China that is driven as much by the people as by the Party.

In the US the democrat-controlled Congress approved a further $ 95 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan till October, without setting timetable for troop withdrawal, thereby providing a momentary truce in the bitter struggle over war policy. The compromise is that the legislation requires the Iraqi government to meet a series of benchmarks as a condition for receiving further American reconstruction aid. It also calls for reports from the President in July and Sept about how his strategy is unfolding in Iraq and requires independent assessments of performance of Iraqi government by Sept 1 and the abilities of the Iraqi military forces within 120 days.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration is developing plans to "internationalise" the Iraq crisis, including an expanded role for the United Nations, as a way of reducing overall US responsibility for Iraq's future and limiting domestic political fallout from the war as the 2008 election season approaches. This is a critical objective of the US President as there is increasing concern that the "surge", led by the US commander, General David Petraeus, is not working and that Iran is winning the clandestine battle for control of Iraq. Although sectarian killings have fallen in Baghdad since the surge began in February, the level of violence across the country remains broadly unchanged. And Bush's UN move may receive a more sympathetic hearing now that Kofi Annan, a stern critic of the Iraq invasion, has retired as secretary-general. His successor, Ban Ki-moon, owes his job to US backing and may prove more accommodating. Zalmay Khalilzad, the former ambassador to Baghdad who is now Washington's envoy at the UN, is expected to play a key role. The Bush administration is already exploring other avenues to build international support, looking to Mr Sarkozy's new government in Paris for diplomatic and other assistance. Support from the UK is uncertain as Tony Blair is retiring and Gordon Brown's intentions are unknown.

Russia called for an emergency conference in June on the key Soviet-era conventional forces in Europe treaty, which has been a source of increasing friction between Moscow and Nato. Russia has been incensed by the US plans to site missile interceptors and radar shields in Poland and the Czech Republic. The row has contributed to the worst relations between Russia and the US for 20 years. Russia has declared a moratorium on observing Russia's obligations under the treaty, which limits the number of aircraft, tanks and other non-nuclear heavy weapons around Europe. The treaty was first signed in 1990 and amended in 1999 to reflect changes since the Soviet breakup. Russia has ratified the amended version, but the US and other Nato members have refused to do so until Moscow withdraws troops from the former Soviet republics of Moldova and Georgia - an issue Moscow says is unrelated. Russia could dump the treaty altogether if western nations refused to ratify its amended version, and the foreign ministry said that it had lodged a formal request for a conference among treaty signatories in Vienna, Austria, on June 12-15. Russia demonstrated its outrage with the United States by announcing that it had successfully tested both a new multiple-warhead intercontinental missile, the RS-24, and an improved version of its short-range Iskander missile. The new intercontinental ballistic missile capable of penetrating American defences. We have not heard any justifiable rationale for the US to increase its armaments in Europe.

Russia was also blamed for a denial-of-service internet attack on Estonia after the removal of the Bronze Soldier statue in central Tallinn, which was just the spark that ignited a process fully loaded with old resentments, nationalism and unresolved political issues. This event was not so interesting for the active role that Russia is taking in the region but for its demonstration of exposure of our internet connected world to the risk of breakdown from such an attack. Read more in Risk and Terror.

In the aftermath of the French election, won, as expected, by Nicolas Sarkozy, we came across some interesting data: Out of France's 577 parliamentary deputies, 51% are former civil servants, making support for big spending cuts unlikely. Between 1982 and 2007, the French government added one million people to the state's payroll, increasing the total number of workers being paid by the state to five million people. In 2007, the public sector employed one-quarter of France's labour force, twice the ratio in 1970 and four times the ratio in 1936. In 2007, France's per capita GDP was 71% of the U.S. level, a decrease from 1991, when France's per capita GDP was 83% of the U.S. level. It may be that Sarkozy's more business-like approach will complement the social culture of France.

And in the UK prime minister Tony Blair set a date in a couple of months for his handover to Gordon Brown. While Brown is seen to be competent, he is not charismatic and will have to work to gain popularity.

The US's Center for Political Accountability�s new report �Open Windows: How Company Codes of Conduct Regulate Political Spending and a Model Code to Protect Company Interests and Shareholder Value,� was recently released amid a climate of growing shareholder concern over political spending. The report has some stark findings on political spending policies at S&P 100 companies. For example, although 81 companies do mention corporate political spending in their code of conducts, none have comprehensive policies that guarantee transparency and only 34 companies require board oversight of political giving. �Open Windows� calls on companies for greater transparency and accountability in political giving and outlines a model of political accountability. Few would argue that political spending by companies is strengthening our democracy. Regulation of corporate political spending is weak and few companies have taken it upon themselves to construct codes of conduct around political spending. The report offers an eleven-point model code that creates transparency and responsibility for political spending.

Risk and Terror

UK foreign policy think tank Chatham House says that Iraq faces the distinct possibility of fragmentation and collapse (if it isn't already well on its way). Its report Accepting Realities in Iraq says the Iraqi government is now largely powerless and irrelevant in many parts of the country. It warns there is not one war but many local civil wars, and urges a major change in US strategy, in particular, as has been noted several times by this newsletter, including Iraq's neighbours more. It notes that Iraq's neighbours also have a greater capacity to affect the situation on the ground than the US.

Ironically US diplomats are seeking help from Iranian diplomats on the security situation in Iraq while they also apply their aggressive double standard to berate Iran over its nuclear programme. It would serve the world better if the US superpower would reduce its military muscle rather than continually build and flex it, especially because the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors think Iran has solved most of its technological problems and is now beginning to enrich uranium on far larger scale than before. The lessons of Dr Strangelove must be learned by the US or a doomsday scenario, with Iran or Russia, will become a possibility. The IEA findings may change calculus of diplomacy in the US, which wants Iran to suspend enrichment activities to prevent it from learning how to produce weapons-grade material.

The US track record for diplomacy however has been further denigrated by a confidential UN report. The highest ranking UN official in Israel has warned that American pressure has "pummelled into submission" the UN's role as an impartial Middle East negotiator in a damning confidential report. This is not news to many of us, but it is a positive sign that this view is overcoming US/Israeli propaganda. The 53-page "End of Mission Report" submitted at the beginning of May by Alvaro de Soto, the UN's Middle East envoy, presents a devastating account of failed diplomacy and condemns the sweeping boycott of the Palestinian government. De Soto condemns Israel for setting unachievable preconditions for talks and the Palestinians for their violence and notes that Western-led peace negotiations have become largely irrelevant. (The report is solely by de Soto, was meant only for senior UN officials, and its wording is far more critical than the public pronouncements of UN diplomats.) De Soto notes:

The six-month Gaza cease-fire came to an end with tit-for-tat missile strikes and air-raids between Israel and Palestine and another invasion of Gaza by Israel. The Israeli attacks occurred as fighting eased between Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah. Furthermore, the consequences of the unhelpful interference by the US, UK and other Europeans were again illustrated in May when Israel arrested 33 prominent Palestinians, including cabinet minister, 3 legislators and 3 mayors, calling them 'senior members of the Hamas terror organization', without any criticism.

Human rights groups in Israel, B'Tselem and the HaMoked Centre for the Defence of the Individual, have accused the Israeli Security Agency of routinely mistreating Palestinian detainees. The two groups said detainees were held in appalling conditions, and were sometimes tortured. They said the maltreatment was intended to "break the spirit" of those who were being interrogated. Techniques range from preventing detainees from contacting their lawyers, to painful shackling to a chair, threats and intimidation, beating and sleep deprivation.

In Lebanon, clashes in the vicinity of the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli erupted between Lebanese Army soldiers and the Islamic militant group Fatah al-Islam (not the Fatah political party) in one of the most significant challenges to the army since the end of Lebanon's bloody civil war. It has raised fears of a wider battle to rout militants in 12 other refugee camps, where radical Islam has been gaining in recent years. This is not surprising given the plight of Palestinians in Lebanon (as well as elsewhere around the middle east):Lebanon is home to more than 350,000 Palestinian refugees, some 215,000 of whom live in camps, including descendants of those who fled from Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. As in many other Arab countries, Lebanese citizenship is unavailable to them, and many are banned from all but menial jobs in Lebanon, forcing them to mostly live off of United Nations aid.

The consequences of internet guerilla attacks was demonstrated by the events in Estonia mentioned in Geopolitics. The country was hobbled by hackers flooding Estonias internet servers with bogus data. The attackers used a giant network of bots (enslaved computers) - perhaps as many as one million slave computers in places as far away as North America and the Far East -- to amplify the impact of their assault. In a sign of their financial resources, there is evidence that they rented time from transnational criminal syndicates on Botnets. The combination of very large packets of information streams - generated by tens of thousands of machines - provide the mechanism for very damaging Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks. Traffic spiked to thousands of times the normal flow rising to a level that forced Estonia's biggest bank to shut down its online service for more than an hour. After 2 days it appeared that the attackers' time on the rented servers expired, and the botnet attacks fell off abruptly. But even days later, the bank, HansaBanka, was under assault and continued to block access to 300 suspect internet addresses. No security appliance or anti-DDoS solution can help against a coordinated and focused series of attacks. It's just pure mathematics, if you have a 100 Mbits/s (100 Million) pipeline and your attacker sends you 1 Gbits/sec (1 Billion) of junk data, security appliances might prevent the junk traffic reaching the network plug, but the incoming pipeline will still be filled by ten times the amount of data it can handle, virtually disconnecting the target from the rest of the Internet. Worse still, any young hacker can build a DDoS network capable of several Gigabytes per second firepower in a matter of a few days utilising publicly available compromised computers and bandwidth. Another reason why many small distributed units rather than one big one are more stable and less risky organisations.

Energy

Greenpeace published an independent report demonstrating that support for nuclear power as a way of tackling climate change would be an economic disaster. The report published by a team of international energy and economic experts conclusively proves that nuclear power is neither a practical nor economically viable solution to tackling climate change. �The Economics of Nuclear Power�, commissioned by Greenpeace International, concludes that nuclear power station construction can run up to 300% over budget and, on average, take four years longer to build than planned.

Developing and improving energy technologies could cut trillions a year from the global cost of fighting global warming, according to a report released today by the Global Energy Technology Strategy Program. The report says a combination of six major technologies could yield significant savings if they are employed to curb emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases over the next century. The technologies are: the capture and underground storage of carbon dioxide, biotechnology, hydrogen, nuclear power, solar and wind power and end-use efficiency. as you can see their rationale is plainly compromised by the inclusion of nuclear, which demonstrates that they have used a unidimensional analysis rather than an integral systems approach which is what our world needs.

A study released last week by Johnson Controls found widespread concern among North American business executives about energy -- but more about prices than climate change or other environmental impacts. Nevertheless, the survey shows growing interest in energy efficiency, at least for projects that meet minimum financial hurdles. More than three-quarters of American business leaders believe energy prices are going to continue climbing, and as a result 60% of them say their companies have already or will soon implement energy efficiency in their offices and operations. The survey of 1,250 of executives from companies large and small, across sectors, found that a variety of economic and environmental concerns are pushing business to adopt energy efficiency in a big way. More than half of the respondents (52%) said saving money is the main or primary reason behind the move to reduce energy use, while only 13% said environmental concerns were the main motivator. Both economic and environmental reasons figured prominently for 35% of respondents.

The Clinton Climate Initiative launched a project at the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit to boost building energy efficiency in 40 of the world's largest cities. The partnership brings together city leaders (15 cities will make up the first phase of the project) with banking institutions and companies that specialize in creating energy-efficient solutions for buildings. This will accelerate moves like those made by Livingstone and Bloomberg to green London and New York.

Former U.S. president Bill Clinton also announced a $5 billion program to renovate municipal buildings at cities worldwide. The C40 Large Buildings Retrofit Program will help reduce energy use and curb greenhouse gas emissions around the globe. As an example, the city of New York estimates that the electricity, oil and gas needed to run the city's buildings creates 79% of the Big Apple's carbon emissions. Buildings worldwide account for as much as 40% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate Change and Environment

In early May the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its third report, entitled "Mitigation of Climate Change." The report says that in order to keep global average temperatures from rising as much as 3.6% this century, the world must work together to stabilize the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by 2015. By 2050, carbon dioxide emissions will have to drop by at least 50% from present levels to prevent severe changes in the global climate.

Carbon emissions grew an alarming three times faster between 2000-2004 than in the 1990s worldwide, as wealthy and developing nations showed no progress in managing the greenhouse gas. The study noted that the growth of global emissions in the 2000s was faster than in the highest scenarios by the IPCC, the United Nations' scientific authority on global warming.Carbon emissions grew at a 3.1% annual rate between 2000-2004, compared to 1.1% per year in the previous decade, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The rise is a reversal of a long-term trend toward greater energy efficiency and reduction in the use of carbon fuels. The accelerating rate of carbon dioxide emissions is largely due to rising energy consumption and use of carbon to produce it, in tandem with increasing population and per-capita gross domestic product.

Only a third of companies currently have no way of monitoring their own carbon emissions, or the indirect emissions of their supply chain, and they have no plan to begin doing so, a new survey of global executives, "A change in the climate: Is business going green?", has found. The survey, "A Change in the Climate," asked 634 executives at manufacturing and service-industry companies around the world what their companies are currently doing or plan to do in the near future about their own carbon-dioxide emissions. Only one in ten of the companies responding said they comprehensively monitor their carbon impact across the entire business. One-quarter of companies monitor some or all of their emissions in parts of their operations, and 18% simply measure energy efficiency. 32% said they neither monitor their emissions or have any plans to do so in the near future. Unfortunately it is global leaders that fail to set an example. North American companies trail behind the rest of the world in cutting carbon costs, according to the survey. Only 7% of companies based in North America pay attention to their carbon footprint, and 41% neither monitor their emissions or plan to start such monitoring programs. In Europe, 28% of companies monitor their emissions, and 32% of companies globally do so.The report did find that there are signs of progress across companies worldwide. Among companies that do not currently monitor their carbon output, 28% said they intend to have a monitoring program in place by 2010. Survey respondents were clear in their belief that government regulation is the single largest factor that will determine how their companies address climate-change issues. Without a clear government framework, like a market-based system to set the price of carbon, the report says corporate efforts will suffer from uncertainty about expectations and requirements. (More information from the Economist Intelligence Unit 's website.)

Unsurprisingly, but disappointingly, a majority of ExxonMobil shareholders defeated resolutions, urging the oil giant to set goals to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and to boost its use of renewable energy, at ExxonMobil's annual shareholder meeting. Senior executives, including ExxonMobil chairman Rex Tillerson, had urged shareholders to reject the proposals. Without referring explicitly to global warming or climate change, Tillerson, with his head in the clouds or his hand in the till, said the jury was still out on the "complex issue of climate science." The votes spelled defeat for a group of large public pension funds holding ExxonMobil shares, including the California Public Employees Retirement System, the biggest US public pension fund, and the New York City Employees' Retirement System, among others. The shareholders would have a larger impact if they sold their shares.

New research from Hill & Knowlton found that 77% of business decision makers surveyed believe there is a need to create a new position of Chief Energy Officer to manage, implement and measure a company's return on investment in environmental technology, the so-called "Return on Environment." Although 82% of senior technology leaders from around the globe said they "closely monitor" global warming news, only 35% have a concrete energy strategy to deal with it. The study finds that the majority of companies do not have an energy strategy for dealing with global warming, and creating a CNO position would help them better manage energy needs. A quick browse through some of the data suggests that China and Asia are ahead of the US in awareness and implementation!

One of Earth's most important natural absorbers of carbon dioxide is failing to soak up as much of the greenhouse gas as it was expected to, according to a study by an international team published in the journal Science.. The decline of Antarctica's Southern Ocean carbon "sink" - or reservoir - means that atmospheric CO2 levels may be higher in future than predicted. These natural sinks are vital as they mop up excess CO2 from the atmosphere, slowing down global warming. This effect had been predicted by climate scientists, and is taken into account - to some extent - by climate models. But it appears to be happening 40 years ahead of schedule.

One of the world's top conservation experts issued a rallying cry to save the great apes, man's closest biological cousins, which are under serious threat of extinction. Richard Leakey said apes across the world faced unprecedented threats from the combined effects of hunting, disease and logging which could mean the disappearance of the remaining 50,000 animals there within a generation.. And he said efforts to tackle global warming through the use of biofuels could cause more damage to ape populations because of pressure to chop down their tropical forest homes. About 80% of orang-utan habitat in south-east Asia has been destroyed in the past 20 years because of soaring demand for land to produce palm oil for western markets. Palm oil is used in vegetable oil, soaps, shampoos, industrial substances, and is an alternative to fossil fuel. He said preventing deforestation would help curb global warming as well as preserving endangered apes. Carbon released by deforestation is reckoned to account for 25% of all human greenhouse gas emissions, second only to the energy generation sector. The Great Apes Survival Project (Grasp), a United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) initiative, has warned that great apes are at risk of imminent extinction unless drastic action is taken. In pictures

ICT

When Estonian authorities began removing a bronze statue of a World War II-era Soviet soldier from central Tallinn, they expected violent street protests by Estonians of Russian descent. But what followed was what some describe as the first war in cyberspace. The attacks came close to shutting down the country�s digital infrastructure, clogging the Web sites of the president, the prime minister, Parliament and other government agencies, staggering Estonia�s biggest bank and overwhelming the sites of several daily newspapers. The dynamics of this Denial of Service attack are discussed in Risk and Terror.

Young women are now the most dominant group online in the UK, according to new research from Nielsen/NetRatings. Women in the 18 - 34 age group account for 18% of UK web surfers. They also spend the most time online - accounting for 27% more of the total UK computer time than their male counterparts. Interestingly, of UK males active online, the 50+ age group is the most prevalent - perhaps the younger generation are still in the pub. Women in the 18- 34 category are visiting a variety of sites including those dedicated to fashion, family and lifestyle issues. While sites dedicated to childrearing dominate the top ten, for younger women it is the websites of high street stores such as Miss Selfridge and H&M that are the most popular, along with social networking sites such as Facebook.

A recent report by Forrester Research found that, in the US, spending on clothes and accessories had outstripped the sale of computer equipment for the first time in 2006. In 2007 Forrester estimates some $22.1 billion will be spent on clothes, accounting for 10% of all clothing sales.

Even in the traditionally male-dominated world of gaming, women are catching up, according to figures from the Entertainment Software Association. They now account for 38% of game players. Women over 18 represent a significantly greater portion of game players compared to boys under 17.

A free programming tool that allows anyone to create their own animated stories, video games and interactive artworks has been developed. Primarily aimed at children, Scratch does not require prior knowledge of complex computer languages. Instead, it uses a simple graphical interface that allows programs to be assembled like building blocks. The digital toolkit, developed in the US at MIT's Media Lab, allows people to blend images, sound and video. Related sites are: MIT Media lab, Lifelong Kindergarten, LEGO Mindstorms, BCS, University of Southampton, HacketyHack.

Apple is the third major computer maker, after Dell and Hewlett Packard, to create take back programs for computers. For us that is a major reason to buy one of these brands, since other differentiators are difficult to find.

Amazon.com, the biggest online seller of CDs, is joining Apple and others against copy-protection software for digital music. It plans to sell songs that can be freely copied to any computer, cellphone or music player, including the iPod from Apple. It will add a music download store to its Web site this year. It will sell songs and albums in the MP3 format without the layer of software for digital rights management, or DRM, that is used by most other online music retailers. The service would include music from one major label, EMI, and from 12,000 independent music companies that have chosen not to use copy-restricting software. Not everyone thinks selling unprotected music can offset the decline in CD sales and save the music business. Many industry watchers are urging the industry to experiment with other approaches, including wholesale changes in its business model, like introducing music services that are free and supported by advertising.

The Free Software Foundation recently released their latest draft of the proposed new GPL license, "v3." In its current form, GPLv3 may unintentionally end up limiting one of the most important things we love about "free" open source software...freedom of choice. As currently drafted, GPLv3 limits the options of Linux distributors to have open source software interoperate with some proprietary software, drivers, codecs, and patented technology. On the surface, this may sound like a great idea, focusing more attention on open sourced, patent-free software. However, in practice, if GPLv3 is adopted by key Linux projects, it could hamper desktop Linux from growing beyond the 1.25% market share it has today. To bring desktop Linux to a broader audience, and beyond the early adopters and tech crowd, it will need to interoperate with legacy technologies from Apple, ATI, IBM, Microsoft, nVidia, Sony, and many others.

Microsoft laid out the next chapter in their plans regarding patents and open source Linux software, by going public with the claim that Linux infringes on some 235 of their software patents. The first chapter in this story began back in November of last year, when Microsoft entered into a agreement with Novell. The agreement included technical collaboration between Microsoft and Novell, in an effort to bring better interoperability between MS Windows and Linux. However, the main thrust of this agreement was really about patents and was Microsoft's way of trying to monetize any success Linux might have. Since this time, Dell too has entered the playing field, by announcing its plans to begin offering Novell's Linux products which include a promise from Microsoft not to sue users over any infringements of Microsoft's alleged IP. I bet Microsoft will start selling Linux in the next 5 years as it builds revenues from non windoze sources.

Holonics and LOHAS

Holonics

"What is realistic is to accept that the familiar can only remain if everything changes."

Like the rules of holonics, this is enlightened and zen. It jumped out of a recent paper by Sascha Muller-Kraenner, formerly a green MP in Germany and now the European representative of the Nature Conservancy, and his co-authors. It is refreshing to hear a politician address issues without the usual naivete of partisan bureaucrats. You can read the paper An appeal for a new realism in environmental policy here.

It was exciting to see a 2 page report in mainstream news weekly BusinessWeek covering open space meetings. Regular readers will be aware of the utility of this conference format in which participants and presenters are the same. The article reported on a recent large open space gathering in San Francisco attended by a host of major companies from Apple to Yahoo, titled Web2Open. Of course the IT industry has always been more open and innovative than conventional industry, but perhaps this trend will quickly spread through corporate cultures, thereby reducing time and cost of decision making while raising productivity.

It is also interesting to see the scandal at Duke University where 10% of the 2008 class was caught cheating. While some students obviously did not contribute honestly to their assignments, the high ratio is merely symptomatic of increasing cooperation and collaboration. Considering this new culture, combined with the efficacy of open space technology and declining value of patents (see Education below) suggests a rapid emergence of a culture of cooperation instead of competition. While I might be simply hoping that this is actually happening and quickly, the trend is definite and raises optimism that humanity might reengineer its culture from a primitive and possessive psyche to an intellectually enlightened world that will cooperate, mimic nature and rejuvenate the planet.

SustainAblity's recent report on social entrepreneurship is a valuable handbook for all businesses that would like to do more with less. The main conclusions of Growing Opportunity are that:

Health

The EU is giving the food industry 3 years to self-regulate. The White Paper on 'A Strategy for Europe on Nutrition, Overweight and Obesity related health issues', was adopted by the Commission at the end of May. Building on the EU obesity platform and the Green Paper on promoting healthy diets and physical activity, the White Paper calls for more cross-sectoral action-orientated partnerships across the EU. These would involve private actors and public health and consumer organisations. The Commission is also urging the private sector to develop stronger advertising codes, the food and retailing industry to make greater efforts to reformulate foods and sport organisations to develop advertising and marketing campaigns to encourage physical activity focusing in particular on children. The Commission will monitor the progress and performance of all actors in the next three years and conduct a first review in 2010. The Commission's support for self-regulation is welcomed by food industry and advertisers but consumer organisations say the obesity strategy is 'minimalistic' and built on unrealistic expectations. Let's see if self-regulation happens, consumers take action or the Commission gets its excuse to get tough in 2010.

A new 'shopping channel run by drugs companies' called Pharma TV has been proposed. Pharma TV is being presented by the drugs companies as an opportunity to give patients more information about treatment options. But as Which? magazine says, what people actually want is more independent information, not more information from the drugs industry. The EC should be taking serious note of the finding of The International Society of Drug Bulletins that in the US and New Zealand - two countries which allow direct-to-consumer drugs advertising - it has been detrimental to health. That also does not bode well for the self-regulatory approach of food companies mentioned above.

Checkout this new project www.getwelluk.org is a brilliant web interface showing all the free and low-cost complementary therapy services with a view to raising visibility and adding pressure to the government to make access free through the NHS. It will be launched to friends and complementary therapists in early June to capture more data and test it, and then a proper launch in October.

At the British American Tobacco AGM young activists from around the world gathered to turn the tables on the tobacco giant to highlight its disgraced marketing tactics and mark the company's contribution to the 5 million tobacco related deaths each year. In the words of one young protester, "If they have 15% of the world market then they are responsible for 15% of the world's tobacco deaths, three quarters of a million deaths every year."

UK supermarket chains Asda and M&S said that they are phasing out virtually all artificial food colours and additives from their own-label products. Great news and something that Tesco can not copy.

Watch Bill Mahar's interview with Michael Moore (Moore's first in 2 years) about his new movie "Sicko". What's interesting is that one of the principal measures Mike recommends is to look after oneself better - "move around a bit and eat some fruit and vegetables". Mike himself owns up to having to energise his lifestyle a bit. If nothing else this film may help to galvanise debate and improvement of US health care which is rated with those of developing countries. (If you are in America you may take action in support of House Bill 676, The United States National Health Insurance Act, (Medicare For All), which aims to provide affordable, privately delivered, quality health care for all.)

Police stations across the Indian city of Calcutta have been equipped with oxygen devices to enable police to offset the effects of pollution. The extra air is for the benefit of hundreds of traffic policemen in the city who have to brave some of the worst pollution in the world. The move follows a recent report which said that some 70% of people in the city suffer from respiratory disorders. It said that traffic police were among the worst hit by poor air quality. Ailments include lung cancer, breathing difficulties and asthma, the Chittaranjan National Cancer Institute study said. The CNCI is one of India's foremost research bodies, and its investigation, published earlier this month, took six years to complete. One of its key findings was a direct link between air pollution among the 18 million people of Calcutta and the high incidence of lung cancer. Now the city's 11 traffic offices, where policemen report for duty, have been equipped with oxygen concentrators that are normally used for patients in hospitals. Calcutta's traffic police chief, Javed Shamim, says his men have the facilities to take oxygen for at least 20 minutes after doing an eight hour shift amid the dust and smoke of the city. Unfortunately, they will still be breathing toxic gas for the 8 hour shift.

Environment

According to a report published by the government, China's environmental woes have worsened this year with increasingly polluted rivers and lakes causing a sharp drop in the quality of drinking water. China's leaders have called repeatedly for government and industry around the country to take into account the environment and not simply pursue blind economic growth, but the report indicated those orders have been ignored.

A super comparison of controversial Three Gorges Dam is illustrated by the satellite image here. While the dam plainly wiped out many habitats and moved many people, at least we can see the damage (pollution) it has created, unlike the fossil fuel and nuclear power stations which we have ignored for so long.

As previously reported beekeepers across the US are experiencing record losses of honeybees. Some states have reported up to 70% disappearances of commercial bee populations. Researchers are struggling to find the causes of this mysterious collapse. Interestingly, organic beekeepers across North America are not experiencing colony collapses. The millions of dying bees are hyper-bred varieties whose hives are regularly fumigated with toxic pesticides by conventional beekeepers attempting to ward off mites. In contrast, organic beekeepers avoid pesticides and toxic chemicals and strive to use techniques that closely emulate the ecology of bees in the wild. Researchers are beginning to link the mass deaths of non-organic bees to pesticide exposure, genetically modified organisms, and the common practice of moving conventional bee hives over long distances.

Scientists at the University of Nebraska, US, have engineered a new category of transgenic crops. The new plants, which include broad-leafed greens such as soy beans, tomatoes, and tobacco, harbour a bacterial gene that makes them resistant to a herbicide called dicamba. As we reported before, the efficacy of Roundup (the main brand of herbicide glyphosate) is declining. According to the story in Science, 24% of farmers in the northern Midwest and 29% in the South say they have glyphosate-resistant (GR) weeds. These weeds make arable land virtually useless to industrial farmers because only mechanical (hand) weeding works. Crop scientists in Argentina, Brazil, and Australia report GR grasses popping up too. The love affair with glyphosate is showing the damaging consequences of industrial monoculture. Unfortunately, instead of changing or reversing course, we're simply forging ahead with more chemical solutions, more layers of genetic dye when the first dicamba-resistant soya goes into production. These mighty duos of herbicide and herbicide-resistant crops create a vicious loop that we've been happy to run in because there's profit to be had. The fallout, though, is biodiversity itself. The widespread planting of these GM marvels to the exclusion of all else wreaks havoc on ecosystems, on levels we can see and on those we don't yet understand.

And its not just genetic engineering that we have to worry about from Monsanto and others. May's edition of The Ecologist reports on one of the most frightening chemical cover-ups that one can imagine in which Monsanto dumped tonnes of mixed chemical waste in open land fills in the 1960s resulting in mystery deaths. They covered up their crime and still have not cleaned it up nor compensated the local community. The story Silenced in May's The Ecologist is worth the read.

The problem of cancer causing benzene turning up in sodas seems to pop up in the US with alarming regularity. In May the FDA reported that it tested 100 sodas and found unacceptable levels of the known carcinogen in 5 of the drinks. Some of these drinks had benzene levels nearly 100 times that which is considered safe by the EPA for drinking water. The toxin is formed when a soda manufacturer uses two ingredients that can react to form benzene: ascorbic acid and sodium benzoate or potassium benzoate.

In the US, Since 1998, the biotech industry and industrial food corporations have unsuccessfully tried to take away local and states' rights to ban or regulate genetically modified organisms and other controversial foods and crops. Failing to suppress grassroots control over food safety laws and labels in the last session of Congress, industry has now called on their friends in the House Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry to slip a similar poison pill into an obscure section of the voluminous 2007-2012 Farm Bill. The provision would give the White House appointed Secretary of Agriculture the power to eliminate local or state food and farming laws, such as those in four California counties banning genetically engineered crops, and set an an ominous precedent undermining states' rights.

Monsanto's plans to grow 500,000 acres of genetically engineered crops in Venezuela have been thwarted by the nation's popular President, Hugo Chavez. Chavez is now encouraging Venezuela's national legislature to pass some of the most sweeping restrictions on genetically modified organisms in the entire Western Hemisphere.

Just published Genetic Roulette: The documented health risks of genetically modified foods by Jeffrey Smith, is a must-read for every policy-maker, educator, and journalist. It's also invaluable for anyone who wants to sharpen up their weaponry in the battle against the imposition of GM foods. Jeffrey Smith shatters the biotech industry's claim that genetically modified foods are safe. Nearly forty health risks of the foods that Americans eat every day are presented in easy-to-read two-page spreads. The left page is designed for the quick scanning reader; it includes bullets, illustrations, and quotes. The right side offers fully referenced text, describing both research studies and theoretical risks. It is presented in the clear, accessible style that made Jeffrey Smith's "Seeds of Deception" the world's best-selling book on genetically engineered foods. An example double page, discussing the mortality of rats fed GM flour, is here. The second half of "Genetic Roulette" explores why children are most at risk, how to avoid GM foods, false claims by biotech advocates, how industry research is rigged to avoid finding problems, why GM crops are not needed to feed the world, the economic losses associated with these crops, and more. This book, prepared in collaboration with a team of international scientists, is for anyone wanting to understand GM technology, to learn how to protect themselves, or to share their concerns with others. You don't need a science background to understand it and the excellent table of contents gives a one-sentence summary of each of the risks of GM foods and enables the reader quickly to access the evidence.

The USDA has announced a controversial proposal, with absolutely no input from consumers, to allow 38 new non-organic ingredients in products bearing the "USDA Organic" seal. Most of the ingredients are food colourings derived from plants that are supposedly not "commercially available" in organic form. But at least three of the proposed ingredients, backed by beer giant Anheuser-Busch and pork and food processors, represent a serious threat to organic standards. The "Budweiser exemption," allowing conventionally grown hops, produced with pesticides and chemical fertilizers, to be used in beers labelled as "USDA Organic". Also, the USDA proposes to allow the use of conventionally raised factory-farmed animals' intestines (we'll spare you the gory details of what these animals have been fed) as casing for sausages labelled as "organic." Adding salt to the wound, the USDA has indicated the public comment period will not be the standard 30 - 60 days. Although the USDA has been working closely with industry on these proposed changes as far back as 2002, the agency will only be accepting public comments for 7 days.

The US FTC agency's plan to try to block Whole Foods Market's proposed merger of Wild Oats is bizarre. Neither player dominates the grocery sector and the combined entity would still be far smaller than the big players, especially Wal-Mart. In fact, the combined entity would be better able to provide alternatives for consumers. The only rationale for disallowing the merger would be some conspiracy theory to do with lobbying from competitors or agripharma companies who want to limit access to clean food.

Maybe the US could take a page from China's book on tackling US corruption in the food, agriculture and pharmaceutical sectors. China has sentenced the former head of the State Food and Drug Administration to death after he was convicted of corruption. Zheng Xiaoyu was convicted on charges of taking bribes and of dereliction of duty. The sentence is unusually harsh for a senior figure, but Zheng could have his sentence reduced to life on appeal. The verdict came as the government announced plans for the first ever recall system of unsafe food products.

The German government has imposed stricter regulations on the "food" company Monsanto regarding the sale of genetically modified corn seeds. The new rules are tantamount to an outright ban. The government writes that GM corn from the MON 810 product line can only be delivered to third parties if the firm also provides an accompanying monitoring plan which researches the effects on the environment. Well done Germany.

Japan will consider walking away from the International Whaling Commission and setting up a rival organisation. It was especially irked by the refusal of anti-whaling countries to discuss a small amount of commercial whaling by four Japanese coastal communities. Anti-whaling countries view the proposal as a breach of the 21-year moratorium on commercial whaling. After securing a narrow majority of members for last year's meeting, first majority in 20 years, pro-whaling countries again found themselves in the minority and lost a number of key votes. A recruitment campaign by European and South American countries over the last year brought more members into the IWC to vote for the anti-whaling bloc. Proposals for a South Atlantic whale sanctuary have been defeated in the first vote at the International Whaling Commission's meeting this year. Proposed by Latin American countries, it would have seen whale protection extended northwards from the existing Southern Ocean sanctuary. Meanwhile, Denmark has moderated a controversial plan to boost subsistence whaling by Greenland Inuits.

Education

World leaders have been criticised for failing to meet their promises to provide universal basic education. Businesses are joining forces with governments and international groups to try to meet a pledge to provide education for all children by 2015. The Partnerships for Education was announced in Brussels by the World Economic Forum and Unesco. The announcement came as world leaders were criticised by the Global Campaign for Education (noted in last month's newsletter) for failing to live up to their promise to fund basic education for every child. The GCE has produced a "league table" of countries' achievements in this area which puts the USA, Italy, Germany and Japan at the bottom. A total of 22 wealthy countries pledged to help fund dramatic improvements to schooling in the developing world. Around the world 77 million children do not go to school. 40% of those are in areas affected by war or places where there has been conflict.

While business continues to find it difficult to incorporate ethics in their culture and the stereotype of the psychotic big company, illustrated by the film The Corporation, continues to reflect the reality behind the greenwash, American business schools appear to have made rapid changes to their programmes in the last few years. The Economist reports that MBA programmes in the US have depreciated the role of managers as automatons raising quarterly profits and emphasised managers' role as nurturing an environment which delivers triple bottom line performance.

"Tell me, and I forget. Show me, and I remember. Involve me, and I understand" (Chinese proverb) Trapese a popular education collective which offers workshops and training aimed at inspiring and promoting action for changing our world has collaborated on Do It Yourself: A Handbook for Changing Our World - A Radical Guide to Ethical and Sustainable Living.

In The UK, at the same moment that the prime minister was making a speech about how important he considered science, the University of Reading announced the closure of its physics department. 30% of physics departments have either been closed or merged in the past five years. This is ludicrous. Without first-class science graduates, how will we understand and deal with the crises caused by global warming, let alone innovate improving lifestyles. The laissez-faire attitude to science education has resulted in a disaster exemplified by the fact that more young people are opting for media studies than physics. The need for a general population with a satisfactory understanding of science and technology has never been greater. We live in a world economically, socially and culturally dependent on science not only functioning well, but being wisely applied. Nobel laureate Harry Kroto has poignant and perceptive views on the need for encouraging science rather than neglecting it.

Researchers from the University of Atlanta, US have published a paper in the journal of the National Academy of Sciences suggesting that language by gesture came before language by sound. Their study of groups of apes suggests not only that gesture, sign and expression are more universal languages but also that there is a language of gestures employed by our primate cousins.

It is refreshing news that the Supreme Court in the US has finally taken action to make the granting of patents more difficult. Applications for intellectual property protection have ballooned in the past couple of decades and many of them are frivolous. To obtain a patent an invention must be novel, useful and not obvious. The courts are now encouraged to use more common sense in applying the last criteria so that combinations of technologies are now less likely to be considered not obvious. We hope that this is the first step in a reduction of intellectual property protection which seems to have exploded beyond reason with the most agregious examples being the patenting of naturally occurring genetic code or patenting "business method" such as shopping online. The private actions of Apple to distribute music without DRM protection is another positive sign.

In May 2007, the United States celebrated Jamestown�s 400th Anniversary, commemorating the experiences of the European settlers, Native Americans, and Africans whose lives and cultures intersected in the earliest years of the American colonies. National Geographic produced an interesting report and online interactive presentation illustrating some of the ecological and social impacts of that settlement, including the introduction of invasive species from Europe.

May saw Be Nice to Nettles Week. Check out to see how useful they can be at Nettles.org.uk.

Living

Another sign of widening inequality in America was reported by the Economist.

A widening "marriage gap" is evident as divorce rates trend up for those with less education and trend down for better educated people. The trend reinforces itself as poor single parents can not provide more education for their children and better educated wait longer to have children, have fewer children and can afford to provide more education. Public education can also be simply a child-minding activity in some of the worst neighbourhoods.

For the first time since its inception 11 years ago, the Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability industry's annual forum sold out. Among the predictions emerging from the conference is that of major growth in the market in green goods. Based on new research that it presented at the LOHAS 11 Forum, the Natural Marketing Institute says that the $200 billion+ industry is on track to grow to $420 billion in just three years and then could quickly climb as high as $845 billion by 2015.

Check out this video: The Beauty of Green A video tour of a building where luxury living meets eco-friendly construction.

A new Hartman Group survey indicates that US consumers have generated a greater demand for green and sustainably produced products than the market is able to provide. While the vast majority of consumers say they want to purchase a wide variety of products from companies with sustainability ethics, relatively few consumers actually know where to find those products.

Hartman Group says companies have a lot to learn in "selling green" to consumers. It may come as no surprise that the term "sustainability" has little currency for most consumers, given the myriad meanings applied to this word, which is a confusing concept from the get-go. And yet the meaning behind the word has relevance, given consumers' desires to see companies be environmentally responsible, give back to communities, treat workers well, and be a good corporate citizen. Sustainability is not just about saving the Earth. Although the term is widely used by the media and industry, it has little to no consistent meaning to consumers, and they define it by widely different personal meanings. "The Hartman Report on Sustainability: Understanding the Consumer Perspective," examines how public perception of sustainability affects consumer behaviour. It finds that although the term "sustainability" strikes a chord with only the most "green" of consumers, that doesn't make it irrelevant to everyone else. Instead, the report says, there are strong indications that a host of issues related to sustainability have become mainstream concerns to masses of American consumers. The study finds that a cultural shift is taking place in terms of consumer awareness, acceptance and practices that relate to sustainability. It looks at how consumers perceive the risks from a variety of ecological areas, including air, water, sun and food, and how they translate those perceptions into both personal action and personal beliefs.

Regular readers will know that we think bottled water is one of the worst signs of gluttony and neglect of our planet. When was the last time you had fresh water? (Not bottled, filtered, treated.) You probably can't remember, if ever. So PPIonline's comment on bottled water is welcome:

Liters of bottled water imported to the United States in 2006, from:

World: 622 million
France: 194 million
Fiji: 119 million
Italy: 117 million
All other: 192 million

Much economic and trade theory rests on the concept of "rationality": that is, consumers search for low price and high quality, businesses compete to offer it to them, efficiencies emerge, and the standard of living rises. Thorstein Veblen, in Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), observed that actual behaviour among some slices of the very wealthy was close to the opposite of "rational": Wealthy Victorians often searched for ways to pay higher prices for goods of equal or sometimes lower quality. Rich families, for example, refused to buy cheap, shiny, and perfectly made aluminium spoons, insisting instead on expensive silver spoons that tarnished easily. Veblen called the phenomenon "conspicuous consumption," and explained it as a powerful desire to buy products simply to show one's wealth. Thus, as America observes "National Drinking Water Week," we come to the practice of buying exotic foreign waters.

Last year, Americans spent about $11 billion on 31 billion litres of bottled water, which the International Bottled Water Association says was about a third of all water drinking. Status-conscious high-end shoppers buy from abroad; the three top sources, together accounting for 430 million of the 622 million litres of imported waters, were France, Italy, and the South Pacific island state Fiji. The expense of the 4774-mile trip from Suva to Los Angeles means Fijian water, advertised for a unique artesian source and "silky" taste, sells for $2.20 per litre - twice as much as milk and as much as some beers and table wines. America's celebrities, gourmet restaurants, and high-end hotels thus bought 119 million litres of Fijian water for $48 million, accounting for a tenth of the islands' total exports to the
world. Nonetheless, a taste-test conducted by the Boston Globe in 2005 came up dry:

"No matter how hard they tried, the testers failed to detect any significant difference between the bottled and tap waters. The bottled waters came from as far away as the South Pacific island of Fiji and ranged in price from 79 cents to $6.82 a gallon. The Massachusetts Water Resource Authority came straight out of a Milton tap or the public drinking fountain at the John F. Kennedy Library in Dorchester and cost a half-centa gallon."

Do you know what you're eating? UK chocolate maker Mars has apologised for a widely mocked decision to use animal products in chocolate bars and said in future its confectionery would be suitable for vegetarians. The company said it was reversing a decision announced last week to change its chocolate recipe to include trace amounts of rennet, a natural enzyme produced from the stomachs of calves which is used in traditional cheese and chocolate making. That recipe change had infuriated vegetarian campaigners. Forty members of parliament signed a protest petition, and the media was bemused. The Independent newspaper called it a "truly cruel but funny prank played by the universe on vegetarians". Other interesting lifestyle choices turned up by the news are: The black colour of Guinness beer is known as isinglass and has been made from a jelly made from fish gills. Many American types of beer use plastic particles to improve foam. In their cereals "Frosted Wheats", Kellogs used beef jelly to "stick" the sugar to the cereal. The jelly is derived from animal muscle tissue collagen, that is, tendons and ligaments that would otherwise be butcher waste. Yummy!

The ancestors of humans began walking upright while they were still living in trees - not out on open land, according to a new theory. The traditional view is of bipedalism evolving gradually from the four-legged "knuckle-walking" displayed by chimpanzees and gorillas today. A study published in the journal Science disputes this idea. Susannah Thorpe, Robin Crompton and Roger Holder came to their conclusions after analysing the movement of wild orang-utans, which spend most of their lives in trees. The authors say that upright walking was always a feature of great ape behaviour. Humans inherited it without ever passing through a knuckle-walking phase. They believe that knuckle-walking evolved only recently as a way of getting around the forest floor.

A scientific exploration of the various ways people attempt to make themselves happy has won the annual Royal Society Prize for Science Books. Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness had been tipped as the favourite to win the prestigious �10,000 award. Its now on our reading list.

Activities and Media

For the past three years I've enjoyed the BeTheChange gathering in May. Unfortunately, the format has changed to cater to UK consultants. However, I was blessed with an invitation to participate in Making Green Pay a Salzburg Seminar (Session 442).This 5 day excursion to a palace in Austria served as a annual training and holiday. The setting is splendid. The organisers professional and friendly. The 30 or so participants provided a very broad spectrum of views being from a range of industries and representing 22 countries from around the world - I left feeling I had made friends with many. The discussions were valuable. I highly recommend anyone to visit Salzburg and participate in one of these seminars if you ever get the chance. It is far removed from an air-conditioned hotel networking event where people are selling themselves to one another. It is top class. The Salzburg Seminars, started by 3 Harvard students aiming to build intellectual and ethical ties between Europe and the US, celebrates its 60th anniversary this year. If you can not go on business, this summer various celebrations are taking place. The palace, Schloss Leopoldskron, is an education in itself and you might recognise it having been a setting for the Sound of Music.

On the journey to Salzburg, I took the opportunity to spend a day in Munich where I caught up with a friend from school. Touring the city I managed to cover a lot of ground from Nyphenburger Palace to downtown, including residential neighbourhoods, the central street market, a community garden allotment and even a large cemetery . And my gracious host was a font of information about Germany and Bavaria. It was a wonderful experience which left me wanting more and knowing that there is much to learn from this part of the world. The strongest impression was that Germany's reputation far undersells the place. Whether it be in town or rural planning, food, architecture, social diversity, quality of life or people.

I also learned a bit more about Angela Merkel, who I previously thought was competent, but now know is far more than that for a whole host of reasons from her extraordinary upbringing in east Germany, to her career trajectory. Most importantly she is an enlightened change agent most clearly demonstrated by her unpartisan, pragmatic and integral approach to resolving issues. Someone who works to create a nurturing environment for all stakeholders, for the future and for the planet. I hope to see her continue to be able to influence Germany, Europe and the world.

Apart from that tour, May is always a busy time in the garden so days have been spent weeding, tilling and planting. The roof extension that I'm building also occupied dry days. Evenings were used to play catchup in the office.

Dr Pratchett expects to publish his next book in September. I only mention my hero's novel Making Money because after less than a month its already ranked 137 on Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank in Books from presales! I guess other people like him too ...

Yahoo!'s Media Group introduced Yahoo! Green, a new, one-stop eco-site offering the latest news and tips for green-motivated consumers.

WorldChanging.com is a new public interest website providing examples of sustainable and positive change. According to the Worldchanging.com founders "We pay special attention to tools, ideas and models that may have been overlooked in the mass media. We make a point of showing ways in which seemingly unconnected resources link together to form a toolkit for changing the world."

Check out the newly launched Encyclopaedia of Life which is an interactive log of species all over the world. You too can make a contribution if you've a good photo of a species not yet logged.

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This report has been prepared for information purposes. The information on which this report is based, has been obtained from publicly available sources and private sources which may have vested interests in the material referred to herein. Although Astraea and the distributors have no specific reasons for believing such information to be false, neither Astraea nor the distributors have independently verified such information and no representation or warranty is given that it is up-to-date, accurate and complete. Neither Astraea nor the distributors nor any of their affiliates and/or directors, officers and employees shall in any way be responsible or liable for any losses or damages whatsoever which any person may suffer or incur as a result of acting or otherwise relying upon anything stated or inferred in or omitted from this report.

holonics
The Big Picture

body

mind

spirit

About
Astraea

Astraea News and Views
May 2007

Perspective

Geopolitics

Risk and Terror

Energy

Climate Change and Environment

ICT

Holonics and LOHAS

Holonics

Health

Environment

Education

Living

Activities and Media

holonics The Big Picture

body

mind

spirit

About Astraea

Astraea News and Views May 2007

Perspective

Geopolitics

Risk and Terror

Energy

Climate Change and Environment

ICT

Holonics and LOHAS

Holonics

Health

Environment

Education

Living

Activities and Media

holonics
The Big Picture

About
Astraea

Astraea News and Views
May 2007