Dave Pollard's environmental philosophy, creative works, business papers and essays. In search of a better way to live and make a living, and a better understanding of how the world really works.
Sample information map from International Networks Archive.
A deep green tinge to this week's two dozen links.
Environment and Energy:
Toronto Home Buyers Offered New Green Options: Mattamy Homes in Toronto is surveying home-buyers to see how much they are willing to pay for 50 potential green options on their homes,
including solar panels, rooftop wind turbines, bamboo floors,
computer-driven thermostats, natural paint and water heat-recovery
equipment. The survey results will determine which options will be
offered, and may even become standard in the future. Thanks to PURE for the link.
Comprehensive Environmental News Portal: Ecological Internet integrates six thematic environmental portals through a single site. All the bad news you can handle, available in one place.
How to Run the World Like Nature: Rules for stewardship of complex systems, taken from nature, compiled in an extraordinary article on natural governance
by Catherine Burton. Bioregionalism, permaculture, and community-based
self-management are key underlying principles. Thanks to IshCon's Matthew J for the link.
Pipeline Corrosion: Another Oil Crisis Precipitator: "The oil industry is not revealing the true extent of pipeline corrosion
that could harm production seriously. According to Richard Pike, head
of the Britain’s Royal Society of Chemistry, 'people are keeping this
quiet and just getting on with it because there is an awful risk that
the outside world will overreact'." Meanwhile ExxonMobil and the rest
of the oil oligopoly are bullying Canadian governments
to approve the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, an ecological disaster in the
making, quickly and expediently or they'll take their ball and go home.
Responsible Shopping Reference: Just a reminder that Responsible Shopper is one of the best sites for researching which companies to boycott.
The US Economy: Profits Without People:
The NYT explains that wages are becoming a less and less significant
part of the US economy, and that US 'profits' and 'productivity' (i.e.
margins), and ROI to executives and shareholders are now rising while real wages continue to decline. Anyone see anything wrong with this picture?
Why the Bushies' Social Security and Tax Cut Strategies Just Make Things Worse: The brilliant and innovative Lee Arnold has put his clever and damning ecolanguage visualizations debunking the neocon social security and tax cut strategies on YouTube.
Olbermann Eviscerates Rumsfeld: Just watch this stirring editorial (via YouTube) revealing Rumsfeld's deranged and dangerous perception of reality and how he gets the lessons of 'fascism' exactly backwards. Thanks to Dale Asberry for the link and the one that follows.
Too Late for Empire: An articulate explanation from Jon Schell in The Nation of why asynchronicity has resulted in a world where empire is no longer possible, where no one is in control, and the myth of the existence of real superpowers is as dangerous as any weapon of mass destruction.
Hide and Seek: Pictures from Iraq: Also from YouTube, Imogen Heap's great song is illustrated with stirring pictures of what Bush hath wrought.
Entrepreneurship:
A Story of Corporate Disservice: Shannon Clark's fascinating tale of a moving-day nightmare explains why big corporations are inherently incapable of rendering the quality of customer service that entrepreneurs can.
Michael Schrage gets Customer Co-Development: Innovation guru Schrage explains "The business goal is not to make a profit by selling internal techniques; it’s to alter the innovation ecosystem,
making it easier, safer, and more advantageous for suppliers and
customers to take a chance on one another’s work — and to learn far
more about each other, and themselves, in the bargain."
The 'Dog Whisperer's' Dangerous Myths: The hugely popular animal behaviourist Cesar Millan has reintroduced the unhealthy and regressive animal training myth that our fellow creatures respond better to bullying and power than to kindness and positive reinforcement.
George Orwell's Essays: A wonderful online collection of writings
from a guy a century ahead of his time. Thanks to Drew Terry for the
link. Start with Politics and the English Language and learn why
'values' has always been a meaningless and generally misused term.
MADE IN CANADA
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