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  • From: Cory <cory8570@yahoo.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Straw bale instructor needed for pine ridge
  • Date: Thu, 8 Apr 2010 12:16:07 -0700 (PDT)

I would like to offer a straw bale workshop this summer at pine ridge Lakota
reservation and am looking for an instructor
We have some funding potentially available and will also market the course
nationally
See our web site for other offerings
Ideally it would dovetail overlap with our youth pgm
Permacultureguild.us
Write me for more details

Cory Brennan


Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 8, 2010, at 4:45 AM, Wesley Roe and Santa Barbara Permaculture Network
<lakinroe@silcom.com> wrote:

Building the Blue Economy, with Gunter Pauli
~ April 23, 24, 25, 2010 ~
Santa Barbara City College Campus, Santa Barbara, California


Event information, (805) 962-2571;
margie@sbpermaculture.org,
www.sbpermaculture.org.


From Green Jobs to the Building the Blue Blue Economy

The Blue Economy
*
http://www.worldacademy.org/forum/blue-economy
The Blue Economy
Cultivating a New Business Model for a Time of Crisis
by Gunter Pauli*

How a new generation of entrepreneurs can bring
innovations to the marketplace, secure the basic
needs of all, and make sustainable businesses
competitive.
Mere months after the 2008 financial meltdown,
the International Labor Organization (ILO)
reported the loss of 50 million jobs. Developing
economies were deeply affected by massive layoffs
in the formal sector and the loss of income in
the informal sector. It was a social shock that
unsettled the world. In essence, the world
economy for the past few decades was capitalized
on money that simply did not exist. Downsizing
and outsourcing were some of the key driving
forces of every major industrial group. "Wealth"
was generated by making "assets" appear as though
by magic through leveraging credit and creating
financial instruments that contributed not even
remotely to the value of the business. Money was
multiplied over and over in special accounts
without risk, initiative, or production of real
assets. Innovation was limited to investments
that could produce multiple short term returns.
Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, verged on
becoming a vanishing breed.
The form of capitalism that has dominated world
societies is entirely disconnected from peoples'
real needs. Some two billion people struggle to
get by on less than two dollars a day, lacking
access to food, water, health, and energy, the
most basic requirements for survival. Over 25% of
the world's youth are unemployed. Yet one billion
of us are overnourished and swim in 400 million
tons of electronic waste with higher metal
concentrations than the ores extracted from the
earth. Conservatively, the top 70% of the world's
wealth is concentrated in the top 10% of the
population.

The business model that requires companies to
invest more in order to save the environment will
be replaced with a framework that permits less
investment and more revenues while building
social capital.
Fortunately, times are changing. This book is
about that change. As the second decade of the
21st century sets the stage for a new economy,
the core question we answer is, "What is the
business framework we really need?"
Up to now, the model driving our economies
depended on perpetual growth, requiring ever more
resources and investments. This model has
inherent flaws. It leads to unjust societies,
highly skewed and exploitative economies, and
devastated ecosystems. The business model that
defines corporate environmental responsibility in
terms of size of investment, and defines
corporate success as increased shareholder value
and grandiose executive compensation, must be
replaced. The new economy must be more effective
and more collaborative. It must become truly
sustainable, introducing innovations that permit
less investment, generate more revenues, and
build the strengths of a community and builds up
social capital - not debt. This is the business
framework that will drive the new Blue Economy.
This is the framework that will seek out and
define true sustainability for all living species
on Earth.
The prevailing economic model predicates that
scarcity is the major limitation. Industry
searches for ever higher agricultural yields and
manufactory outputs, demanding that the Earth and
human labor produce more. We must re-evaluate
this notion and begin to more fully utilize what
the Earth and labor produce, rather than
demanding more materials and more output. It is
time to end the insatiable quest for ever lower
costs that drives business towards economies of
scale through egamergers and acquisitions
financed by billion dollar loans. It is time to
adopt broad-based innovative strategies that
generate multiple revenues and greater cash flows
while creating more jobs. It is time for a Blue
Economy.

In shifting our focus to economies of scope, the
framework of the Blue Economy opens possibilities
for a new generation of entrepreneurs who use
what is available to sustainably address the
needs of the Earth and all its citizens.
The shift from the model of core businesses based
on a single core competence and economies of
scale to a framework of multiple businesses with
aligned economies of scope may sound unrealistic
to the executive trained by any leading business
school. However, the current global crisis
highlights the need for an framework of economic
development that is based on fundamental
innovation and that will generate desperately
needed jobs while sustainably addressing the
needs of the earth and all its citizens. This
"blue" approach is not only viable, it has
already begun to take root. Four years of
research has identified a portfolio of 100
innovations including whole systems models that
have the potential to generate as many as 100
million jobs worldwide over the next 10 years.

Cascading nutrients and energy
The first set of innovations, all proven and
benchmarked at a remarkable scale, cascade
nutrients and energy the way ecosystems do. This
means that everything contributes according to
its capacity, and everything stays in the
nutrient stream - even waste is not wasted.
Instead of contrived scarcity and shortages, what
we see in the new economic framework is abundance
- of food, energy, jobs, and revenue. For example:
* Under the leadership of Paolo
Lugari, Las Gaviotas in Colombia converted a
desolate savannah created by 400 years of
extensive cattle farming into a lush rainforest
that provides residents with abundant water,
food, and fuel while building valuable social
capital. The project regenerates biodiversity,
and becomes an island of peace in a world of
poverty and violence, while the land value
increased more over 25 years than the shares of
Microsoft, turning the local population bankable.
* Small-diameter wood is a
pernicious fire hazard in forests throughout the
world. In New Mexico, USA, the peoples of a
Native American Picuris pueblo have used a whole
systems model introduced by Robert Haspel and
Linda Taylor centered on mushrooms and their
growth substrate to converted this fire hazard
into a resource that provides jobs, food, and
livestock feed while upholding their traditions
and culture. This stands in stark contrast to how
this hazard is handled elsewhere in the western
US. Each year we see dramatic images of wild
fires devastating rural and even suburban areas
of California.
* The silkworm converts leaves into
nutrients, which easily blend with soil bacteria,
quickly attracting micro-organisms and
regenerating topsoil that will safeguard
agricultural production and build food security.
Additionally, silk -as discovered by Fritz
Vollrath based at Oxford University- itself can
be used to replace high performance titanium in
health care and consumer products, reducing the
burden that titanium mining places on the Earth,
while sequestering carbon. Simply replacing the
titanium and stainless steel razor requires the
planting of 250,000 hectares of mulberry trees on
desolate and infertile land, which apart from
generating top soil creates an estimated 12.5
million jobs.
* Anders Nyquist (Sweden)
mathematically codified the termites' ability to
utilize air flows for temperature and humidity
controls into a model that makes automated
climate control systems obsolete, successfully
moderating the effect of ice-cold Scandinavian
winters. With the new technology made possible by
his research, buildings can be designed to warm
or cool as needed. The "energy saving" model of
locking all living species into an airtight and
heavily insulated room cannot truly serve the
purpose of energy savings. It merely creates an
environment where the infectious species
proliferate. If one person sneezes, then everyone
sneezes.

Substituting "something" with "nothing"
Our society is heavily accustomed to consuming
products that create massive waste and pollution.
These products and their manufacturing processes
have squandered limited resources and mired many
in living environments that are loaded with toxic
residue and the spoils of production. The genesis
of M1H1 or swine flu can be attributed to just
such a scenario. Real, lasting solutions - truly
sustainable solutions - require a fundamental
shift in our awareness. We will need breakthrough
innovations, such as the second set of
innovations which exemplify how "something" -
models of unsustainable production and
consumption - can be replaced by "nothing." For
example:
* Consumers do not realize that the
cost per kilowatt hour of electricity stored by a
hearing aid or a pacemaker battery may easily
surpass 100!. The 40 billion batteries we dump
into landfills every year required
energy-intensive mining and smelting in their
manufacture. While a "green" battery may someday
be developed, it remains dependent on mining
which is part of the old business model. The
technology is available that would permit us to
simply eliminate the battery altogether. The
Fraunhofer Institute in Germany has already
presented a cellphone powered by the differential
between ambient and body temperature and the
pressure generated by our voice. Professor Jorge
Reynolds (Colombia), a pioneer in whale research,
has developed the first pacemaker that requires
no batteries, no surgery, and only local
anaesthesia, cutting costs carried by social
security by factor 200, and dramatically reducing
the trauma for the patient.
* The alarming proliferation of
drug-resistant bacterial and viral strains
requires science to venture towards solutions
based on technologies that mirror natural
systems, such as the ability of red algae seaweed
to deafen bacteria. Australian scientists Peter
Steinberg and Staffan Kjelleberg (Australia)
discovered that red algae seaweed could mitigate
the spread of bacteria - without killing them and
without poisonous chemistry - simply by making
the bacteria unable to communicate. If bacteria
do not hear others of their species, they move on
and do not populate a surface. This means that
they cannot create a biofilm, a superstructure
that plays a critical role in many diseases.
* The simple but elegant power of a
vortex as industrialized by Curt Hallberg and his
team at Watreco AB (Sweden) replaces chemicals
with purely physical effects to remove bacteria
and air from water. This eliminates the need for
bactericides while cutting energy consumption.
Many chemicals are replaced by the forces of
physics. Since a vortex is reliably generated by
gravity, it has the potential to generate
drinking water with a minimal expense of energy.

There are over one hundred such innovations
described in the forthcoming book, The Blue
Economy, presented as a Report to the Club of
Rome. Each has been benchmarked and brought to
fruition in different parts of the world. They
are are just a few examples of what is possible,
and the insights they supply give us a positive
future outlook. The new "blue" business framework
will work with what is locally available to
generate multiple revenues and respond to basic
needs. It will provide a platform that merges
creative entrepreneurship with breakthrough
innovations to nurture life, secure food and
shelter for all, and sustain the Earth's natural
systems.

This mirrors the evolutionary path of nature.
Indeed, just as ecosystems evolved to ever more
efficient nutrient and energy cycles, bringing
ever more diversity while developing resilience,
flexibility, and performance, the Blue Economy
will increasingly rely on less energy and provide
more diversity through innovations brought to the
market by ever more entrepreneurs fortified with
a vision of real sustainability and prepared to
take the risks. More players will be encouraged
to respond to critical needs, linking the
triangle of innovation, sustainability, and
entrepreneurship away from scarcity and into
abundance. Debt becomes social capital, external
costs become opportunities to differentiate on
the market.
Re-imagining our economic future requires
entrepreneurs in science, social affairs,
business, environment, and culture. We must make
information available, exposing the opportunities
we have to accelerate these innovations on the
market, and refrain from imposing the laws. We
will reach out to others we never imagined
working with, so that we efficiently and
purposefully allocate resources so that we can
respond to the needs of all with what we have. We
must to move away from an economy where the
engine of growth is indebtedness loaded upon our
children and grandchildren, squandering those
future generations' material resources.
The incapacity to imagine meaningful jobs and to
provide worthy challenges to a whole generation
equates to telling the young that there is no
future for them, that their generation is lost.
With over one billion young people entering the
labor market in the next decade, we must move
toward a Blue Economy, based on what we have and
what we can share with those who have not.

*Gunter Pauli (1956) is an inveterate
entrepreneur whose scope of initiatives span
business, culture, science, and education.
Aurelio Peccei, founder of the Club of Rome,
exposed Gunter to a systems approach which has
influenced his research and projects ever since.
In 1994, with the support of the Japanese
government at Tokyo's United Nations University,
he launched an initiative to design an economic
framework and business model that converts all
waste, including emissions, into a value- added
cascading model that draws from whole systems in
nature. In 2004 he undertook a massive research
project to identify innovations that would shift
business towards higher levels of competitiveness
and sustainability, while generating millions of
jobs through the creation of a platform for
entrepreneurship. In Spring 2010 he will
personally direct a two-year initiative that will
regularly present Blue Economy business models to
inspire entrepreneurs to translate these
opportunities into worldwide business
initiatives. Gunter is a member of the Club of
Rome and the author of 17 books, published in 21
languagues, and 36 fables that bring science and
entrepreneurship to young children. He is married
with four children, including his adopted
daughter from Zimbabwe, Chido Govero.

This paper is based on the new book The Blue
Economy: 10 years, 100 Innovations. 100 Million
Jobs,published by Paradigm Publications (New
Mexico, USA) with the support of UNEP and IUCN.
Written by Prof. Dr. h.c. Gunter Pauli,
Founder and Director of ZERI,
September 2009





Gunter Pauli on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piH8lIZDwLQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9Ctoy1PuuY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJbJHo7sbZU



Quotes by Gunter Pauli:

"There is no unemployment in eco-systems"

"Eliminate pollution by absorbing waste the way ecosystems do"

"A new model of enterprise, see the company as an
open economic system and a closed ecological
system"

Nature does not know the concept of waste; the
only species capable of making something no one
desires is the human speciesî.

-end-


* Lo
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