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#240 From: "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Mon Oct 13, 2008 5:02 pm
Subject: Newsletter from James Robertson 		fekbritton
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JAMES ROBERTSON'S NEWSLETTER  

No 16, October 2008

 

 

My latest newsletter is now out. Read it in full at:  

http://www.jamesrobertson.com/newsletter.htm

 

Below is a list of the contents.

 

1.  Common Sense about Money and Banking - after the emergency

 

2.  The American Monetary Institute - making great progress

 

3.  Dethroning the Dollar - a role for India?

 

4. "A Green New Deal" - the New Economics Foundation

 

5.  Bring Back Keynes? - Ann Pettifor

 

6.  "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste" - Hazel Henderson

 

7.  Fairness with Freedom - Charles Bazlinton's recent blog  

posts on banking

 

 

Best wishes,

 

James Robertson

 

 

13 October 2008

 

james@...

 

http://www.jamesrobertson.com/newsletter.htm

 

 

 

The Old Bakehouse

Cholsey

Oxfordshire

OX10 9NU

United Kingdom

--


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#239 From: "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Mon Oct 13, 2008 3:13 pm
Subject: Sorry to interrupt but this is very good news. Paul Krugman. 		fekbritton
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STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Paul Krugman, the Princeton University scholar and New York Times columnist, won the Nobel economic prize Monday for his analysis of how economies of scale can affect trade patterns and the location of economic activity.

Paul Krugman Nobel economic prize

Paul Krugman, winner of this year's Nobel economic prize, has been critical of the Republican Party.http://i.cdn.turner.com/cnn/.element/img/2.0/mosaic/base_skins/baseplate/corner_wire_BL.gif

Krugman has been a harsh critic of the Bush administration and the Republican Party in The New York Times, where he writes a regular column and has a blog called "Conscience of a Liberal."

He has come out forcefully against John McCain during the economic meltdown, saying the Republican candidate is "more frightening now than he was a few weeks ago" and earlier that the GOP has become "the party of stupid."

The 55-year-old American economist was the lone of winner of the 10 million kronor ($1.4 million) award and the latest in a string of American researchers to be honored. It was only the second time since 2000 that a single laureate won the prize, which is typically shared by two or three researchers.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences praised Krugman for formulating a new theory to answer questions about free trade.

"What are the effects of free trade and globalization? What are the driving forces behind worldwide urbanization? Paul Krugman has formulated a new theory to answer these questions," the academy said in its citation.

"He has thereby integrated the previously disparate research fields of international trade and economic geography," it said.

The award, known as the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, is the last of the six Nobel prizes announced this year and is not one of the original Nobels. It was created in 1968 by the Swedish central bank in Alfred Nobel's memory.

Besides his work as an economist at Princeton University in New Jersey, where he has been since 2000, Krugman also writes about politics and inequality in the U.S. and other topics for The New York Times. He has also written for Foreign Affairs, the Harvard Business Review and Scientific American.

Commenting on the global economic meltdown, Krugman told a news conference in Stockholm by telephone from the United States that some of his research was linked to currency crises and related issues.

"This is terrifying," he said, comparing it to the financial crisis that gripped Asia in the 1990s.

He said winning the Nobel award won't change his approach to research and writing.

"The prize will enhance visibility," he said, "but I hope it does not lead me into going to a lot of purely celebratory events, aside from the Nobel presentation itself."

Krugman's work on new trade theory garnered him the John Bates Clark medal from the American Economic Association in 1991. That prize is given every two years to an economist under the age of 40.

The citation said Krugman's approach is based on the premise that many goods and services can be produced at less cost in long series, a concept known as economies of scale. His research showed the effects of that on trade patterns and on the location of economic activity.

In contrast to his treatment of U.S. financial officials, Krugman has praised leaders in Britain for their response to the global financial crisis.

In an October 12 article on the New York Times' Web site, Krugman wrote about the global financial meltdown and its reach into Europe, saying that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Chancellor Alistair Darling "defined the character of the worldwide rescue effort, with other wealthy nations playing catch-up."

Whereas U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson rejected a "sort of temporary part-nationalization" involving governments giving financial institutions more money in return for a share of ownership, the British government "went straight to the heart of the problem ... with stunning speed."

Krugman said the major European economies have "in effect declared themselves ready to follow Britain's lead, injecting hundreds of billions of dollars into banks while guaranteeing their debts."

"And whaddya know," Krugman continued, "Mr. Paulson -- after arguably wasting several precious weeks -- has also reversed course, and now plans to buy equity stakes rather than bad mortgage securities."

 


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#238 From: "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Mon Oct 13, 2008 1:24 pm
Subject: Eating transportation 		fekbritton
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Normally I try very hard to keep these posts within the fairly strictly defined domain of each of our twenty or so fora (The Commons, carsharing, bike sharing, LotsLessCars, value capture, the Journal, etc.). Which would suggest that this one which has come to us with the kind help of Lee Schipper, would normally end up only in the World Transport Policy and Practice group. But in this case, since it is so very central to the total rethinking of our besieged sector which has to get underway is we are to have a chance to save our collective future from the worst, here it is as food for thought here as well.

 

Now I understand that most of us do not love to read long pieces on their screens and this one, which spins out over ten full pages, is nonetheless worthy of the close attention of anyone here who wants to be part of the solution. Or at the very least have a feel for the sort and level of housecleaning that is now called for. So put on your specs and start to read. You’ll have kind thoughts about my taking your time with this.

 

Eric Britton

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html?pagewanted=1&ref=magazine

 

The Food Issue of the NY Times. I pasted in only the first screen, as it is too long to clog cyber space.

His points about the greenhouse and transportation links to the US food system are well made.

Health links are perhaps even more important.

Farmer in Chief

By MICHAEL POLLAN

Published: October 9, 2008

Dear Mr. President-Elect,

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration — the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.

Complicating matters is the fact that the price and abundance of food are not the only problems we face; if they were, you could simply follow Nixon’s example, appoint a latter-day Earl Butz as your secretary of agriculture and instruct him or her to do whatever it takes to boost production. But there are reasons to think that the old approach won’t work this time around; for one thing, it depends on cheap energy that we can no longer count on. For another, expanding production of industrial agriculture today would require you to sacrifice important values on which you did campaign. Which brings me to the deeper reason you will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change. Unlike food, these are issues you did campaign on — but as you try to address them you will quickly discover that the way we currently grow, process and eat food in America goes to the heart of all three problems and will have to change if we hope to solve them. Let me explain.

After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy — 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do — as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. This state of affairs appears all the more absurd when you recall that every calorie we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis — a process based on making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that simple fact.

In addition to the problems of climate change and America’s oil addiction, you have spoken at length on the campaign trail of the health care crisis. Spending on health care has risen from 5 percent of national income in 1960 to 16 percent today, putting a significant drag on the economy. The goal of ensuring the health of all Americans depends on getting those costs under control. There are several reasons health care has gotten so expensive, but one of the biggest, and perhaps most tractable, is the cost to the system of preventable chronic diseases. Four of the top 10 killers in America today are chronic diseases linked to diet: heart disease, stroke, Type 2 diabetes and cancer. It is no coincidence that in the years national spending on health care went from 5 percent to 16 percent of national income, spending on food has fallen by a comparable amount — from 18 percent of household income to less than 10 percent. While the surfeit of cheap calories that the U.S. food system has produced since the late 1970s may have taken food prices off the political agenda, this has come at a steep cost to public health. You cannot expect to reform the health care system, much less expand coverage, without confronting the public-health catastrophe that is the modern American diet.

The impact of the American food system on the rest of the world will have implications for your foreign and trade policies as well. In the past several months more than 30 nations have experienced food riots, and so far one government has fallen. Should high grain prices persist and shortages develop, you can expect to see the pendulum shift decisively away from free trade, at least in food. Nations that opened their markets to the global flood of cheap grain (under pressure from previous administrations as well as the World Bank and the I.M.F.) lost so many farmers that they now find their ability to feed their own populations hinges on decisions made in Washington (like your predecessor’s precipitous embrace of biofuels) and on Wall Street. They will now rush to rebuild their own agricultural sectors and then seek to protect them by erecting trade barriers. Expect to hear the phrases “food sovereignty” and “food security” on the lips of every foreign leader you meet. Not only the Doha round, but the whole cause of free trade in agriculture is probably dead, the casualty of a cheap food policy that a scant two years ago seemed like a boon for everyone. It is one of the larger paradoxes of our time that the very same food policies that have contributed to overnutrition in the first world are now contributing to undernutrition in the third. But it turns out that too much food can be nearly as big a problem as too little — a lesson we

 


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#237 From: "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Thu Oct 2, 2008 12:14 pm
Subject: Doors of Perception: October 2008 		fekbritton
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DOORS OF PERCEPTION REPORT
OCTOBER 2008
By John Thackara

TRIBAL CURRENCIES
Reading blogs about the financial crisis feels like watching one of those
reality car chase programmes in which you wait, guiltily, for the felon - or
in
this case, the global financial system - to crash. It's hard not to be
mesmerised by reports that even the failed $700 billion plan did not address
the
true scale of the global problem. One insider blogger - Illargi, at
Automatic
Earth - reckons that "the global shadow banking system, the source of
perhaps
$800 trillion in outstanding derivatives is shaking on its foundations, and
will
inevitably tumble." Part of me hopes the crash is real because a meltdown
would
deflate an economy which will otherwise eat the biosphere alive. But a crash
would also cause enormous hardship, including to one's own nearest and
dearest.
Besides, rooting for collapse puts you on the same side as the loony-tune
end-days crowd - and that's not a club I want to join. It's all very
complicated. A healthier response, I'm sure, is to get out of the house and
look
for positive things to do. As often mentioned here, there's an awful lot of
regenerative activity out there - only most of it is below the radar. A lot
of
people are busy designing and deploying complementary currencies, for
example.
If this week's news is not persuasive enough, the need for complementary
currencies is well-explained by the Open Money Manifesto. (And whilst you're
at
it, do re-read Margrit Kennedy's paper at Doors of Perception 8. That one
lecture - in Delhi in Spring 2005 - was when I, for one, first realised that
the
mainstream money money system was going to run off the rails in the major
way
that's happening now). For my part, I plan to become an active user of
complementary currencies starting on 7 October: I'm giving a talk that day
at
the University of Brighton - and I'm hoping to be paid in Lewes Pounds.
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/09/open_money.php
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/

CITY ECO LAB
Speaking of positive things to do, City Eco Lab opens in 45 days from now.
To
recap: this two-week-long market of sustainability projects in St Etienne,
France, is the pilot of a scalable, reproducable event, at the level of a
city-region, that will materially accelerate its transition to
sustainability.
As with Dott07 which we programmed in England last year, citizen co-design
of
projects are at the core of City Eco Lab. In that spirit, Francois Jegou is
working with AMAP to finalise scenarios of ways to improve community
supported
agriculture systems. Avinish Kumar is collecting sounds and images of
bicycle-based merchants in Delhi for an installation on the delights of
de-motorised transportation. Mathieu-Benoit-Gonin is working on a composting
event, and Clare Brass from SEED, in the UK, is putting together a
presentation
of neighbourhood-level composting services. Magalie Restallo is designing a
prototype vital flows dashboard for an eco-quartier in St Etienne. Five
schools
from the region are measuring their ecological footprint (using an adapted
version of the Dott 07 calculator); they will begin designing solutions
during
City Eco Lab itself. Hugo Bont and Olivier Peyricot are building their urban
fish farming demo. Emanuel Louisgrand is designing an urban garden toolkit.
Bethany Koby and Ellie Thornhill are devising novel ways to select and
exchange
software and organisationals tools Ezio Manzini, and Allan Chochinov, the
editor
of Core77, are preparing their keynote talks for 19 November. So if all this
money stuff gets just too much for you, come and say hello.
http://www.doorsofperception.com/mailinglist/archives/2008/09/city_eco_lab_7
0.php

LONDON BURNING - AND FLOODING, AND DRYING
Fifteen per cent of London is at high risk from flooding due to global
warming -
an area that includes 1.25 million people, almost half a million properties,
more than 400 schools, 75 underground and railway stations, 10 hospitals,
and an
airport (London City ). According to the draft of the London climate change
adaptation strategy, an estimated 160bn British pounds worth of assets is at
stake. That doesn't sound so much after the last few days. This dry but
gripping
document does not deal with the causes of climate change - it focuses on
effects, arguing that "even if all global greenhouse gas emissions could be
stopped today, the immense inertia in Earth's climate systems means that
changes
to our climate for the rest of this century are unavoidable". Preparing for
these inevitable changes is not an alternative to reducing our greenhouse
gas
emissions, it says, but a "parallel and complementary action." An immense
amount
of innovation will be needed to retrofit buildings and infrastructure with
equipment to enable greater water and energy efficiency. Even more important
than these hard actions will be soft ones - the design of services to help
Londoners meet daily life needs in new ways,
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/09/london_burninga.php

LOW ENTROPY URBANISM
"What would architects design, if they did not design buildings?" My
question is
not a rhetorical one. The inputs and outputs of industrial society are wildy
out
of balance - and that includes its buildings and infrastructure. We have
reached
the end of a brief era in which we could burn cheap fossil fuel, and despoil
ecosystems, mindless of the consequences. We need to re-imagine the built
world
not as a landscape of frozen objects, but as a complex of interacting
ecologies:
energy, water, mobility, food. Our life-sustaining ecologies, especially,
need
to be nurtured, not swept away, built over, or diverted. The need for new
buildings will be rare. Sometimes the design choice will be to do nothing".
Do
you find this abstract to be tendentious piffle? I'm developing this talk at
three events this Autumn, and would welcome your critical participation.
University of Brighton, 7 October; Arc en Reve in Bordeaux, 9 October;
Megacities conference in Amsterdam, 28 October.

OTHER EVENTS

SOLUTIONS INSPIRED BY NATURE
The annual Bioneers conference helps identify breakthrough solutions to the
global ecological and social collapse imperiling our world. In their own
words,
bioneers are "social and scientific innovators from all walks of life and
disciplines who have peered deep into the heart of living systems to
understand
how nature operates, and to mimic nature's operating instructions to serve
human
ends without harming the web of life". The programme of this year's meeting
in
California is indeed amazing. There will be sessions on Green Cities; Using
Fungi to Help Save the World; Politics and Environment; Seed Saving and
Biodiversity Gardening; Resilience Thinking; Re-Naturing Education; National
Green Plans; Pachakuti Mesa Shamanism; Large-Scale Climate Initiatives;
People
and Stuff; Digital Media and Distribution Innovations; Knowing Our
Foodsheds;
Herb Walks; Biomimicry and Traditional Indigenous Knowledge; Watershed
Guardians; Latin American Agroecology; Sustainable MBA Programs; Slow Money;
Local Living Economies; the Greening of Medicine. And that's just the formal
programme. Candidly, it looks like too much to digest - but I'm still sorry
not
to be going. Maybe the event is best thought of as a kind of Woodstock of
one
planet living, not as a conference. 16-19 October,  San Rafael, California.
http://www.bioneers.org/node/2617

RETHINKING SCHOOL LUNCH
One way to handle the excessive richness of the Bioneers meal would be to
have
just one course. The first day includes a workshop by the Center for
Ecoliteracy
which developed the award-winning Rethinking School Lunch program. They're
now
launching a nationwide eco schools campaign to make K-12 education relevant
to
the environmental and social challenges of the next several decades. The day
kicks off with keynotes by internationally recognized educators Fritjof
Capra
and David Orr. (If the Center for Ecoliteracy is reading this, we they will
touch base with the Dott 07 schools programme in the UK, France and
Australia).
Thursday, October 16, 2008
http://www.bioneers.org/program
http://www.dott07.com/go/school/eco-design-challenge/

OIL-FREE SWEDEN
I don't understand the concept of "sustainable technologies": There are ways
to
inhabit the biosphere sustainably - or not - and both ways can be enabled
(or
not) by technology. No technology, on its own, can be "sustainable". Even
six
months ago, such pedantry would not have deterred enthusiasts for a eco-tech
market projected to be worth $800 billion by 2015 - not counting renewable
materials and alternative energy retrofitted to existing infrastructures. I
do
not argue that wind, solar, biomaterials, bio-energies, green buildings,
sustainable mobility, smart grids, water filtration, and energy monitoring
products and technologies are all useful - it's just they are tools - and
tools
that will be hard to pay for in the times ahead.  (The machine tool industry
is
in free fall in the markets right now). Speakers at Sustainable Innovation
08,
who seem mostly to be research and policy types - not red-blooded tech
entrepreneurs - may choose to disagree. Besides, the conference is in
Sweden,
which is a good place to find out about all this... stuff. The country plans
to
be world's first oil-free economy within 15 years, and is making good
progress:
Renewable energy consumption now surpasses the 40 per cent mark.
27 - 28 October 2008, Malmo University, Malmo, Sweden
http://www.cfsd.org.uk/events/tspd13/index.html

INDIAN DESIGN EDGE
Can India assume leadership in the world of design? A new book, Indian
Design
Edge, by Dr Darlie Koshy, takes a "hands on, minds on" approach to this
question.There are design case studies, historical milestones, policy
perspectives, industry insights, and scenarios. A foreword by Ratan Tata,
one
India's industry titans, is added evidence that mainstream design is now
taken
seriously by mainstream industry. I hear that Dr Koshy is about to leave his
job
as Director of the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. We wish him
well:
he has been a generous host of several Doors of Perception meetings in India
over recent years - a series which began at NID in 2000. In all our India
encounters, the design edge that most inspired us was the sheer variety of
"less
stuff, more people" services - a quality that the rest of the world needs
now to
re-discover. It will be fascinating to see what direction NID takes next.
http://rolibooks.com/lotus/lotus-collection/-/indian-design-edge/

TELL ALL TO NOON
Noon Mongolnavin London to sing its stories on buses and let commuters enjoy
more about their dead time on a bus and re-sense stories on the city's
streets.
At the moment, Noon is collecting material from people who travel on buses
and
people who have been living in specific areas to "tell me some hidden
stories
that might never have been told".  Are you ready to tell all? You need to do
so
before an an exhibition on 28 November - 3 December at Shoreditch Town Hall.
http://www.BusSoundtrack.com

BARELY LIVING TEXTILES
One of the autumn's more pretentious announcement has arrived from the
Textile
Futures Research Group. Asserting that "textile designers are uniquely
placed to
inhabit other design fields and cohabit with the world of science," they go
on
to promise that "unimaginable (sic) materials are being developed... for
applications such as spray on clothing and biocouture." For my money,
textiles'
future belongs to people who can make decent felt hats and slippers.
23 and 24 October, ICA, London.
http://www.tfrg.org.uk/magazine/current

THINK PUBLIC
Warm congratulations to thinkpublic, the social innovation design agency in
London: They've won the British Council's Young Design Entrepreneur Award.
Thinkpublic, formed in 2004 by Debora Szebeko, were one of our partners in
Dott
07, when they led the Alzheimer 100 project.
http://www.dott07.com/go/alzheimer100

21st CENTURY IMAGE SCIENCE
Second Life, Micromovies, Flickr, Virtual Reality, YouTube, Visual Music,
Scientific Visualisation, Google Earth: The range of ways we can produce,
project and distribute visual material is expanding - but how to manage
them? A
conference on Image Science, in Goettweig, is about the the inventory,
classification and historiography all these images concerning art, popular
culture and science. A list of heavyweight speakers includes Felice Frankel,
Barbara Stafford, and Peter Weibel. The exploding carbon footprint of the
server
farms needed to store all these images is not mentioned on the agenda - but
you
can always raise the issue during Q+A.
October 16 -18 , Goettweig.
http://www.donau-uni.ac.at/dis/goettweig2008

OPEN EVERYTHING
At the closing debate of Doors 8 in Delhi a questionaer asked Joi Ito, "is
nothing sacred anymore". Joi's answer - "open-ness" - has stuck with me ever
since. Another global conversation about the art, science and spirit of
'open'
has been moving round the world this past year; it involves "people using
openness to create and improve software, education, media, philanthropy,
neighbourhoods, workplaces and the society we live in". The next opportunity
to
talk about thinking, doing and being open is at the Young Foundation in
London
on 8 November. A Berlin event has also been proposed for early December.
http://www.openeverything.net

LONG LIVE THE CITY
Designer Michael Young, architect Jeffrey Inaba, designer Ilse Crawford,
architect and urban planner Jaime Lerner, horticulturalist Lisa White,
architect
Bjarke Ingels, architect Gert Wingardh, consumer insight director Shari
Swan,
zen buddhist teacher Sante Poromaa, sustainability designer John
Manoochehri,
and economist/politician and writer Antoni Vives, and Malmo director of
cityplanning Christer Larsson, are among the speaers at this year's Design
Boost
event.
16 October Malmo University, Sweden.
http://www.designboost.se/

DESIGN FOR SOCIAL IMPACT
I was critical, at the time it was announced, of a plan by the Rockerfeller
Foundation to convene a meeting about Design for Development. Their starting
point was "to bring together the world's best designers with people and
organizations that work on the world's most important and complex problems"
- an
objective that struck me as being too designer-centric, and too uncritical
of
the notion of "development". A report of the meeting at the Foundation's
Bellagio Center in Italy, in June. has now been published - and I have to
say
that my misgivings persist..The project has acquired a macho new title -
"Design
for Social Impact" - and there are repeated references to "the social
sector" as
if society, in all its complexity, is best understood as a market for design
services. The language reminds me of time I heard a senior person from Cisco
talk about "the sustainability space". It is also assumed, throughout the
report, that "the social sector" contains only NGOs - whereas, for a lot of
critics, NGOs are as much a part of the problem as the solution. Most
uncompofortable of all, for me, is that nowhere in the report can I find one
single mention of the lessons design might learn from other cultures.
http://www.dcontinuum.com/upload/Design4SocialImpact-tabloid.pdf
http://www.designobserver.com/archives/entry.html?id=38773


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#236 From: "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Mon Sep 15, 2008 12:08 pm
Subject: Sustainable Innovation 2008 Conference 		fekbritton
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Sustainable Innovation 08
 Future Products, Technologies and Industries
 13th International Conference
 27th - 28th October 2008
 Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden 
 
Organised by:
The Centre for Sustainable Design, University for the Creative Arts

Sponsored by:
The City of Malmö  
Region Skåne
Malmö University          

Supported by:

European Environment Agency

green.tv

Network for eco-Innovation

 

Programme for Sustainable Innovation 08

Download from http://www.cfsd.org.uk/events/tspd13/index.html

 

Speakers include:

·        Eva Ahlner, Principal Technical Officer, Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, Sweden

·        Arnold Black, Network Director, The Resource Efficiency Knowledge Transfer Network, UK

·        Martin Charter, Director, The Centre for Sustainable Design, University for the Creative Arts, UK

·        Robin Edman, CEO, Swedish Industrial Design Foundation (SVID), Sweden  

·        Pelle Ehn, Professor, School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University, Sweden

·        Mats Eliasson, CEO, Watreco AB, Sweden

·        Kaj Embren, CEO, Respect, Sweden/UK

·        Per Eriksson, Director General, VINNOVA, Sweden*

·        Professor Jun Fujimoto, Research Centre for Advanced Science & Technology, University of Tokyo, Japan

·        Trevor Graham, Project Manager, Strategic Development, Environment Department, City of Malmo, Sweden

·        Dr Mark Hinnells, Senior Researcher - Lower Carbon Futures, Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University, UK

·        Bob Johansen, President, Institute for the Future, US*

·        The KaosPilots, Denmark

·        Professor Magnus Klofsten, Director of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), Linkoping University, Sweden

·        Michael Kuhndt, Head, UNEP/Wuppertal Collaborating Centre on Sustainable Consumption and Production, Germany

·        Professor John Paul Kusz, Center for Sustainable Enterprise, Stuart School of Business, Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), US

·        Lars Mortensen, Head of Group, Sustainable Consumption and Production European Environment Agency, Denmark

·        Artur Moustafa, Design Vice President, Vujj AB, Sweden

·        Sven-Olof Ryding, Managing Director, Swedish Environmental Management Council, Sweden

·        Dennis Pamlin, Global Policy Advisor, WWF, Switzerland

·        Oriol Pascual, Business Developer, Enviu, Netherlands

·        Dr Inge Paulini, Head of Department “Sustainability Strategies and Instruments”, Federal Environment Agency, Germany

·        Lari Pitka-Kangas, Deputy Mayor, Urban Ecology and Consumer, City of Malmo, Sweden

·        Lennart Piper, Research Manager and Senior Advisor, Environment & Quality Sinf – Swedish Industry Association, Sweden

·        Katarina Pelin, Director, Environmental Department, City of Malmo, Sweden

·        Astrid Severin, Executive Manager, Greenovate! Europe, Belgium

·        Alex Steffen, www.WorldChanging.com, US

·        Marco Versari, Director, Novamont, Italy

·        Gary Waterworth Owen, CEO, ResponseAbilityAlliance, UK/Zimbabwe


*To be confirmed

 

 

Why attend Sustainable Innovation 08?

·        Unique: forum for new ideas and concepts

·        Leading-edge: presentations from key international researchers, practioners and policy-makers

·        Content: new research, results and thinking

·        Networking: opportunities to meet business, government and academia

·        Track-record: over 1500 delegates from over 40 countries have attended previous ' Towards Sustainable Product Design' conferences

 

What are the fees for Sustainable Innovation 08?

  • Business/Consultants/Government.
    Day 1 or 2: £250.00 (€336.50/$490.21)
    Both Days: £490.00 (€659.45/$960.56)
  • Academic/NGOs
    Day 1 or 2: £185.00 (€248.98/$362.63)
    Both Days: £360.00 (€484.00/$705.67)
  • Speakers: 'refereed papers'
    Day 1 or 2: £155.00 (€208.42/$303.78)
    Both Days: £300.00 (€403.38/$587.95)
  • Masters/Graduate students
    Day 1 or 2: £125.00 (€168.10/$244.98)
    Both Days: £240.00 (€322.75/$470.03)
  • Conference Dinner
    To be advised
  • Exhibition Space
    £625.00 (€840.70/$1,224.12)
  • Technical Tour
    To be advised

*Please note payments must be made in GBP pounds (£)

 

 

 

For more information on Sustainable Innovation 08 please contact: http://www.cfsd.org.uk/events/tspd13/index.html

 

Administrator
The Centre for Sustainable Design
University for the Creative Arts at Farnham

Falkner Road

Farnham

Surrey

GU9 7DS


Tel:  + 44 (0) 1252 892772                Fax: + 44 (0) 1252 892747                        
Email: cfsd@...   Website: http://www.cfsd.org.uk/

 

 

 

 


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#235 From: "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Fri Sep 12, 2008 5:45 pm
Subject: Car Free Day - some propaganda from Chevrolet - 1933 worth a visit 		fekbritton
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A reminder from the past – and how we got where we are today. Take it out for a short spin. It will help you forget Sarah.

 

 

As we prepare for Car Free Day on September 22, here’s more from the Prelinger Archives. This particular piece of Chevrolet’s automobile pomposity is excused, due to having been filmed in 1933. Watch the impact that cars were having on our environment and communities (including the “Borneo Wild man”) even 75 years ago.

Get it at: http://blog.greens.org.nz/2008/09/12/car-free-day-some-more-propaganda-from-chevrolet/

 

a political blog from the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand

 


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#234 From: "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Thu Sep 11, 2008 10:30 am
Subject: strategy to prepare London for climate change 		fekbritton
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Mayor of London launches 'world-first' strategy to prepare London for climate change

29 August 2008

London’s Climate Change Adaptation Strategy outlines the impact that past and present carbon emissions will have on London’s climate. It shows that currently our city is not designed to cope with the predicted changes. The launch of the strategy comes weeks after the Government’s chief scientist advised that the UK needs to adapt to increased average global temperatures of four degrees.

By the end of the century, winters will become warmer suggesting a traditional white Christmas might happen just once in a Londoner's lifetime. The rising temperatures will mean new and exotic flora and fauna in London which are more commonly seen in Mediterranean climates.

Key findings of the report:

·         Currently we are not very well adapted to our climate – the impacts of the heatwave of summer 2003 (in which 600 people died here and 15,000 in Paris) and the floods of summer 2007 highlight how vulnerable we are to extreme weather today.

·         As the climate changes, London will experience warmer, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers, whilst ‘extreme’ weather events such as heat waves and tidal surges will become more frequent and intense.

·         Londoners will face an increased risk of floods, droughts and heatwaves that will endanger the prosperity of the city and the quality of life for all Londoners, but especially the most vulnerable in the city.

·         The strategy proposes ‘greening’ the city by improving and increasing London’s greenspaces to keep the city cool in summer, managing flood risk coming from the tributaries to the Thames and surface water flooding from heavy rainfall, encouraging Londoners to use less water and raising public awareness to flood risk.

·         London is well placed to help the world adapt to climate change: it has the skills and services to prepare for the predicted changes, and there is a clear economic opportunity to capitalise on this leading position.

Mayor Boris Johnson

The Mayor of London said: ‘We need to concentrate efforts to slash carbon emissions and become more energy efficient in order to prevent dangerous climate change. But we also need to prepare for how our climate is expected to change in the future.

‘The strategy I am launching today outlines in detail the range of weather conditions facing London, which could both seriously threaten our quality of life - particularly that of the most vulnerable people - and endanger our pre-eminence as one of the world’s leading cities.

‘London is not unique - all major cities such as New York and Tokyo are at risk from climate change. By producing this strategy, we put London in a position of strength.’

The Mayor launched the strategy at a visit hosted by the Environment Agency to the Thames Barrier – London’s most famous example of a structure designed to manage the threat of extreme weather.

Robert Runcie, the Environment Agency's Thames Regional Director, said: ‘London's world class city is currently protected from the increasing risk of tidal flooding by the iconic Thames Barrier, which will see us into the next century as the people and businesses of London move forward in adapting to meet the challenges of climate change.

‘We welcome the Mayor’s strategy and will be playing our part in helping deliver the solutions such as planning for London's future tidal flood defences.’

The publication of the strategy underlines the Mayor’s manifesto commitment to make London a leading ‘green’ city through effective, value for money programmes including an ambitious target to cut carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2025.

This strategy will now be open to consultation with the Greater London Authority bodies – the London Development Agency, Transport for London, London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, Metropolitan Police Authority – and the London Assembly although wider comment from organisations are invited. The Mayor will consider the responses submitted by these bodies and then publish a second version of the strategy for public consultation. The Mayor’s intention is to publish the public consultation draft of the London Climate Change Adaptation Strategy in 2009.

Ends

Notes to Editors

·         The Mayor of London is required by the Greater London Authority Act to produce a strategy on climate change adaptation.

·         Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for up to 100 years – climate change adaptation measures take into account past emissions – ie: from the rise of the industrial age – but also current and future emissions.

·         Download the Draft London Climate Change Adaptation Strategy: www.london.gov.uk/mayor/publications/2008/08/climate-change-adapt-strat.jsp.

For more information:

Hilary Merrett or Helen Collier in the Mayor of London’s Press Office – environmentdesk@...

 


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#233 From: "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Tue Sep 2, 2008 10:42 am
Subject: Climate and transport: Will the New Mobility Agenda suffice do the job? 		fekbritton
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From: Michael Yeates [mailto:michael@...]
Sent: Tuesday, 2 September 2008 02:49

 

Eric ...
        (and all .. if Eric thinks this plea is worth sending to a wider audience)

A number of philosophers are credited with the "advice" that as part of any move or strategy for change, both "long term strategic AND short term pragmatic" must be considered.   (Incidentally, if anyone has references to any of the many possible sources or similar ideas from other than western  European cultures, I would be grateful if you would send the quotations and references to me privately).

The nature of the changes being addressed by the New Mobility Agenda (NMA?) and the magnitude would seem to make including and applying this advice "up front" essential.

Essentially the short term "pragmatic" is those which are perhaps easy, marginal, partial, incremental or in some cases maybe even radical, but they set the scene for others to experience and explore in different situations and settings (in the broadest sense).

The long term "strategic" is essential to guide in more certain directions and necessitates a "picture" but not a "plan" of the desired outcomes. Too often these are whimsical or "unrealistic" or negative or exaggerated, and thus are readily not believed, like that wonderful image of the 20-30 lane width freeway heading towards ..., is it LA?

The problem of course as you and Theo raise, is the tendency to get the decisions wrong ... and arguably, this is because the decisions are almost always based on the short term pragmatic for "political" reasons rather than including long term strategic reasons, not least because most of us appear to have difficulty accepting change let alone deciding which of many possible changes to adopt. This is inevitable without clear strategic directions (the long term strategic) but then the problem is envisaging those changes and how they might come about indeed how they might be implemented ... ie implementation (if necessary, incremental) in the short term.

It is also inherent in long term strategic decisions that do not also take account of the short term pragmatic. These are exemplified by the many worthwhile strategies that somehow never seem to be implemented ... usually because something more politically pragmatic has been..!

It is also worth considering that rather than informed critique, negative doubts are always much more effective in opposing change than are positive thoughts in trying to encourage change. Sadly much the same applies to selective and/or biased "research" as much of it is biased towards what we do now and therefore it is assumed can then improve (which is a quite reasonable rational pragmatic management approach) rather than what other might be better and why ... often despite awareness of the issues involved ... or lack of it.

I am reminded here of two quotations.

One reports that the Coroner investigating the circumstances of the death of first pedestrian fatally injured when struck by a motor car in the UK was horrified by the speed of the motor vehicle said to be as fast as a bicycle. The Coroner also hoped such an occurrence would not happen again. That was in 1896.

The other reports that UK Prime Minister (Asquith) in 1907 described the motor car as 'a luxury that is apt to degenerate into a nuisance' while commenting on a proposal to introduce a tax on motor cars.

Mmmmmmm ... some lessons in those perhaps?

The more things (appear to) change, the more they stay the same?

Another of the relevant pieces of "advice" ... summarised as follows ... comes from the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) ...

All truth passes through three stages.

 

·                 First it is ridiculed.

·                 Second it is violently opposed.

·         Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

 

We now appear to be in the third stage ... we accept that motor vehicles are killers and a nuisance ... and we still want them and more ..! 

One area that appears to be very useful at least potentially to explore this dilemma is a concentration on younger children in terms of the extent that both ideas and behaviour are inculcated at a surprisingly early age. By way of this concentration, preceding generation(s) are also included both historically and where living, in person. For similar reasons, a concentration on the aged/elderly is also useful ... the benefit of experience and hindsight, having seen change(s) ... or "the wisdom of the elders" to (mis)use Suzuki's book title?

For an excellent example, Jonathon Porritt has used this very effectively in his wonderful book "Captain Eco and the fate of the Earth" (DK 1991) ... encapsulated in a section in which Captain Eco explains to the two children that it is the parents and grandparents who have "made a mess of looking after the earth, they may deny it, but they are little more than vandals. And they are stealing your future from under your noses." Is that us??

After taking the two children on an exhaustive trip around the Earth looking at and undertaking detailed exploration of, the evidence, Captain Eco says to them, "It's all come as a bit of a shock to your parents. When they were at school, nobody worried much about the environment ... Now they worry about all the changes that are needed. They know that we can't go on in the same way but they don't know what to do about it" .

And that is one aspect of the problem ... everyone knows or has ideas on what to do ... they compete for "success" ... and the politicians (and others) "cherry pick" ...! 
        (As an aside, I understand the book may not have been allowed to be sold in some places but that needs verification.)

The generalised result?

Almost everybody "worries" about the changes ... about what to do ... but it seems today and my own interests are much more important than tomorrow and others' interests ... a great way to do little or nothing ... other than more of the same ...! 

Mind you it IS worth recalling that some of what we now do is OK ... it is a matter of (deciding or agreeing?) which bits ...;-).

So what and where are some good examples to adopt as "long term strategic AND short term pragmatic"?

Two "projects" I suggest have much merit are "Safe Routes to Schools" (Odense) and "30km/h default speed limit" (Graz). I have been lucky enough to have experienced Graz after a 3 year detailed study of the project and reports. And the "Safe Routes to School" project seems so obvious as to not require critique and but is well documented.

So why not agree and adopt the principles from these two projects?

While I ask that a little rhetorically, I also ask it deadly seriously...!

Children and their parents and grandparents across the world are being killed or injured or constrained or impacted on in so many ways because we/they don't have the opportunity to know what to do or we/they don't have the ability to do it.

Well, let's DO something ... something that is almost impossible to counter.

Your ie "our" answers to these suggestions in our particular locations across Captain Eco's Earth will help illustrate why the short term pragmatic usually dominates the long term strategic ... a human failing I suspect, but one that needs to be addressed and hopefully reduced if not overcome.

I hate to think how many people will, would or might oppose these two projects and their principles for pragmatic reasons ... but that too is a learning exercise ... an exercise in "learning our way out" of dilemmas (Milbrath,1989).

So the question raised by your request (see below) is whether there is scope to incorporate these two projects and their principles into the work of the New Mobility Agenda (NMA) as global "flag ship" case studies that have the cross-generational multi-cultural educational value and power of both "long term strategic AND short term pragmatic" and lets see what variations emerge across the world while at the same time using these as a means to develop and test, evaluate and monitor the success of the many other related aims of NMA.

Not surprisingly given the above, I like Enrique Penalosa's goal that children should be free to walk and cycle their city ... but even with his wonderful projects, the children are not free ... they are greatly constrained by roads and busways etc ... their freedom is compromised and constrained. By whom and by what and most importantly, why?

Yet this is just one example of the direction needed ... and there are many. This is not to criticise but to critique. The question is how to further free the children and what are the short AND long term consequences of not doing so.

Of course there are already people and groups working in these fields so is there scope to partner with them to extend these "flag ship" projects to diverse locations across the globe?

After visiting Graz, for a while, a group of us communicated by way of an email network "Global Network for Gentle Mobility" but the task seemed too immense ... too many people seemed opposed to "gentle mobility" ... too many people wanted to maintain the status quo while adding to rather than changing the status quo. The fundamental problems remained and constrained.

Indeed as still seems to be the case, many who argue the roads are dangerous somewhat paradoxically don't appear to want to make them less so. They advocate for separate systems and networks. They forget that the slogan "STOP THE CHILD MURDER" assisted in the adoption of the 30km/h sped limit in the Netherlands some 25-30 years ago.

But who knows what "gentle mobility" is or might be?

If they don't, then how can it be considered, let alone agreed or adopted? Does it seem too radical to be realistic and thus too radical to even be bothered with?

In fact it was the support "branding" slogan for the campaign for and implementation of the 30km/h speed limit in Graz ... still as far as I know the only city in the world to have such a setting ... despite the success.

I often wonder why. This is one of those times.

Michael Yeates ..............................

 

 



At 10:01 PM 1/09/2008, Eric Britton wrote:

I am in the process of adding a final short section to our work program statement, the text of which I attach below. I would be grateful to have reactions, privately if you think it best or to the group as a whole if you consider that is appropriate. I appreciate your sharing your thoughts.

"We should not wait to cut back on burning fossil fuels until we have developed greener technology to supply our energy needs, despite what many economists are advising their respective governments. Such a waiting game may have deadly consequences." *[1]


Climate?  Will the New Mobility Agenda do the job?

 

This is a critical question -- and the answer is a resounding no!

 

That is not to say that the measures introduced in these pages are not central parts of the solution set. They definitely are.  But the patient is very sick, the problems are enormous, and additional strong medicine is needed.

 

The parallel policy path that needs to be explored and activated in conjunction with the mobility specific measures and tools that the Agenda proposes is the broad category which we refer to as “economic instruments”, all of which at the end of the day are critical means for bringing about a level playing field via full cost pricing. Of these the most important and notable include:

 

  • Carbon taxes. Yes, we are aware of all the problems.  Still it’s a must-do for sustainability.
  • Full cost pricing for moving cars in cities.  This is a parallel traffic reduction track to further reinforce our aggressive repartitioning of street space in favor of space efficient travel modes.
  • Full cost pricing for parking: Again, economic instruments plus carefully phased physical reductions and changes in planning ordinances and tax/subsidy policies.

 

Performance standards: The other prong of this combined multi-level approach is the continued strategic and aggressive use of fuel economy and environmental standards (possibly for older vehicles as well as new ones) to create achievable performance targets for the supplier industries. 

 

Does this sound like a great deal to you?  It certainly should.  Cutting emissions from the transport sector by 80% in the next ten to fifteen years is no small task.  We need to respond with all our competence and willpower to these challenges. It’s a choice.  We don’t have to wait for the future to happen to us.

 

The Achilles heel of transport policy

 

Among the principal factors holding back meaningful reform in the transport sector is the fact that people and policy makers feel comfortable in taking positions on these issues, because they seem to be so very commonsensical and self evident.  Essentially this is a sector in which just about everybody feels comfortable in freely recommending this or that policy; since after all transport is what they do every day.

 

But the fact is that the transport sector  of a large city is an organic metabolism of gargantuan complexity.  If you think of it as a kind of brain with tens of billions of neurons, each with thousands of complex connective tissues, then you are starting to get an idea of the level of systemic complexity and the level of competence needed to make wise decisions as to what to do next.

 

But here we are in an age in which everybody – citizens, media, politicians and you bet! interest groups and lobbies -- is ready to jump in and do the equivalent of open brain surgery on their city based on what they think they know.  Which is one of the reasons that we are in the mess we are in.

 

Brains are complex metabolisms, and so too are cities.  So let’s not be too hasty to accept that those “first great ideas” are the way to go.  A very careful look is called for before you start sharpening those knives.

 

 


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#232 From: "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Tue Sep 2, 2008 8:53 am
Subject: Doors of Perception: September 2008 - City Eco Lab Preview 		fekbritton
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DOORS OF PERCEPTION REPORT
City Eco Lab Preview
September 2008
by John Thackara

CITY ECO LAB PREVIEW
This two-week-long market of sustainability projects opens in 70 days from
now
in St Etienne, France. We have set out to design a scalable, reproducable
event, at the level of a city-region, that will materially accelerate its
transition to sustainability. As with Dott07 in North East England, citizen
co-design of projects are at the core of the City Eco Lab experiment.

In the food zone, projects to do with production, distribution, storage, and
composting will surround the biennial's best restaurant, Cantine 80km. (It's
called that because 80km is the limit beyond which transported food has to
be
refrigerated). The Cantine will feature Green Maps to help visitors identify
and contact suppliers directly. Nearby, Debra Solomon will present the Lucky
Mi snack wagon from the Netherlands, including its high-performance
sprout-growing module. Also in the food zone, visitors will be able to
pickle
vegetables using locally-sourced pots, and babies will make bread. Francois
Jegou will present scenarios for enhancing AMAP, the French network of of
community-supported agriculture systems; and we'll see how AMAPs compare
with
the new spin-farming idea from the USA - and alternative trade networks for
coffee.

Casino, a big supermarket chain, will present its state-of-the-art green
labeling scheme. St Etienne's architecture school will launch Soupe de Ville
which is based on ingredients grown within city limits (some by the
architects
themselves). Visitors will also be able to compare small, medium and
large-scale composting solutions: these include the beautiful pots of the
Daily Dump system from Bangalore; London's SEED foundation proposal for a
neighbourhood green waste service in which the celebrated Rocket composter
accelerator is used by a new social enterprise; and a high-tech,
industrial-scale system in Clermont Ferrand.

City Eco Lab's mobility zone will be mainly about bicycles, and especially
their potential use to de-motorise the distribution of 7,000 items of
freight
about the city each day. Prototypes of new bike-based services will be
presented by Les Cousiers Verts and by La Poste. Plans for a city-wide car
share system conceived for poorer people, will be shown - and compared with
Dott07's Move Me project presented by David Townson.

The central area of City Eco Lab will ask: what exactly is an "eco quartier"
(neighbourhood)? Live projects on show will deal with energy, water and
mobility. A team led by Justine Ultsch at St Etienne's city hall will
explore
ways to re-open Le Furan, the city's built-over river. Tools to capture and
clean rainwater will be on show, next to a description of Melbourne's
extraordinary plan to turn that whole city into a water catchment, and
Rotterdam's vision of itself as a water city. A unique array of dry toilets
will be on show, together with proposals from an Australian designer, Dena
Fam, of ways designers can make them physically and culturally more
attractive. A community-wide energy dashboard will be demonstrated by
Magalie
Restalo. Half way through the event a town hall meeting, convened by the
Maison du Quartier,wil discuss what to do, and how, with the ideas and
scenarios emerging from the City Eco Lab marketplace.

Continuing the water theme, plans to remove 60 dams from the Rhone will be
presented by the World Wildlife Fund's Martin Arnoud. Designers Hugo Bont
and
Olivier Peyricot will demonstrate their proposal for large scale urban fish
farming. The artist gardener Emanuel Louisgrand will recreate elements of
his
stunning l'ilot d'Amaranthes gardens from Lyon.

Next to the Eco-Quartier zone will be the "Germoir" (Nursery) co-designed by
the rural design collective Pomme_Z. Here, school students from the region
will work on live projects to reduce their schools' environmental footprint.
Five schools are involved in this Defi Eco Design, which is based on
Dott07's
Eco Design Challenge for schools in the UK. Defi Eco Design is the trial for
a
larger programme that it's hoped will be launched in 2009.

In addition to these daily-life zones of City Eco Lab, a large Cabane a
Outils
(Tool Shed) will contain some of the resources citizens will need to start
their own projects. The Tool Shed will feature books and films 9in English
and
French); a database of environmentally high-performance materials; a
selection
of software platforms; templates for new economic models; a map of skills
available within a 100km radius of the event; and a range of environmental
monitoring instruments and off-grid media tools.

City Eco Lab will also feature a Club des Explorateurs (Explorers Club) in
which a wide varietry of groups will meet to discuss practical ways to
enhance
or scale up their projects. Companies, community groups and grassroots
projects from across the Rhone-Alps region will participate - often together
with international visitors. The Explorers Club will be located next to to a
Salle des Cartes in which a wide variety of resource maps will be presented
by
a team from The Why Factory led by Winy Maas and colleagues from TU Delft
in The Netherlands. 15-30 November, St Etienne, France.
http://biennalesaint-etienne.citedudesign.com/?#/home

GREEN NOISE: EXPERT MEETING
The biggest challenge we face in City Eco Lab is the explosion of public
events, media channels, reports, platforms, trade shows, and government
initiatives, at all levels, to do with sustainability. Paul Hawken's
WiserEarth web portal, alone, alone lists over 100,000 non-profit projects
and
organisations. In the UK, the Transition Towns movement is growing virally.
Across Europe, thousands of other initiatives are bubbling away beneath the
radar of mainstream media and education. This explosion of energy and
diversity is great, but does beg the question: are any more new initiatives
needed? if so, what kind? and who will pay for them? Doors of Perception
will
host a discussion among city managers, policy makers and design producers
during the design biennial in St Etienne. If you think might want to join
this
meeting, plan to be there for Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 November.

IN THE BUBBLE - BOOK LAUNCH IN VENICE
The Italian edition of In The Bubble will be launched at the Architecture
Biennale in Venice on Saturday 13 September. The Biennale, which is
directed this year by Aaron Betsky, will feature site-specific
installations,
manifestos, landscapes and "scenes of an architecture beyond building".
The book moment on Saturday follows my lecture at the Dutch Pavilion
in the Gardini.
http://www.labiennale.org/en/architecture/exhibition/en/62183.1.html

ARCHITECTURE AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
"Sustainable development will necessarily bring profound changes to how we
design our cities and their architecture. How does this apply to
architecture
and urban design?" I've been asked to address this modest topic in my
opening
talk at The European Forum for Architectural Policies at in at arc-en-reve
in
Bordeaux on 9 October. It's open to professionals from across Europe, but
you do have to register.
http://tinyurl.com/6r2kqd

Other news

THE LONG DESCENT
John Michael Greer's new book The Long Descent is a welcome antidote to
the armageddonism that often accompanies peak oil discussions. "The decline
of a civilization is rarely anything like so sudden for those who live
through
it" writes Greer, encouragingly; it's "a much slower and more complex
transformation than the sudden catastrophes imagined by many social critics
today." Greer finds it helpful to look at Russia's recent journey - from
superpower status through collapse, contraction, stabilization, and recovery
-
as one example of where the rest of us may be headed. "Despite economic
collapse, urban populations did not turn into starving mobs roving the
landscape. Instead, as existing supply chains broke down, local
entrepreneurs
jerry-rigged new ones, and the backyard gardens of the Soviet era went into
overdrive to keep most Russians fed". The changes that will follow the
decline
of world petroleum production are likely to be sweeping and global, Greer
concludes, but from the perspective of those who live through them these
changes are much more likely to take gradual and local forms. "This will
make
them harder to notice, but paradoxically easier to meet".
http://www.newsociety.com/bookid/4014

DE-GROWTH
The French have a nice word, "decroissance", or de-growth, to describe a
growing movement to right-size global and national economies. The movement
defines degrowth as "a voluntary transition towards a just, participatory,
and ecologically sustainable society". The movement's Declaration is light,
to put it mildly, on how de-growth will be implemented - but it's an
interesting manifesto.
http://tinyurl.com/5js3jk

FOOD DECLARATION
Another Declaration has been published in the US - this one about food.
Leading US voices in the movement for sustainable agriculture systems have
published "Declaration for Healthy Food and Agriculture." A 12-point set of
principles reorients American food away from corporate farms and long-haul
delivery to local producers and land stewardship. The declaration is a
draft:
its organizers are soliciting public input for 90 days and will then deliver
a final document to US policymakers in time to shape debate over
the next farm bill.
http://fooddeclaration.org/

BRANCHLESS BANKING
In Brazil, customers open bank accounts, make deposits, and pay bills at
lottery houses and small retail outlets. In the Philippines, urban migrants
send money to their families in rural areas using mobile phones. Both of
these
activities are described as "branchless banking" in a new report; it
describes
the use of technology, such as payment cards or mobile phones, that enable
transactions remotely. The report's publisher, CGAP, describes itself as
"the
leading independent resource for objective information and innovative
solutions for microfinance" - but I could not help noticing that CGAP
is housed at the World Bank.
http://www.cgap.org/p/site/c/template.rc/1.9.2640

TAKE TO THE BOATS!
Dmitry Orlov, a writer about life after oil, has sold his beachfront house,
bought a boat, and is sailing up and down the east coast of the US. "It's a
lifestyle choice, plus a way to minimize costs and maximize available
options"
he says. If you, too, fancy a "just in case" boat, an online guide by Ian
Swan
includes suggestions to suit every pocket. Me, I'm probably best-suited
to inflatables: "they are very stable and great load carriers - their one
downside is that they are harder to row, especially upwind, because
of their high windage".
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46452

__________________________________________________
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#231 From: "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Wed Aug 27, 2008 9:36 am
Subject: Hey, we're a lobby. 		fekbritton
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While you’re snoozing in the sun in the last days of summer, here is something that I found a very thoughtful read that is very close to all our work here. It made me think, hey, we’re a lobby. Now that we know that, the next step for me – for us? --  at least is to try to be a more effective one. Eric Britton

Conflict of Interests

Does the wrangling of interest groups corrupt politics—or constitute it?

by Nicholas Lemann - http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/08/11/080811crat_atlarge_lemann

Pundits like Thomas Frank deplore the role of interest-group lobbying, but aren’t we all part of some interest group or other?

In a year saturated with political conversation, can there be any topic that has not yet been discussed? Well, here’s one: 2008 is the centenary of a curious and mesmerizing book that was long considered the most important study of politics and society ever produced by an American—“The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures,” by Arthur Fisher Bentley. The reason its big anniversary hasn’t been celebrated is that “The Process of Government” is an ex-classic, now sunk into obscurity. The reason it should be celebrated is not just that it deserved its former place in the canon but also that it is uncannily relevant to this Presidential election.

Arthur Bentley was the son of a Midwestern banker. He was born in 1870 in Freeport, Illinois, graduated from high school in Grand Island, Nebraska, and, after working briefly for his father, attended Johns Hopkins, which was then making itself into one of the first American research universities, on the German model. After graduation, he went to the University of Berlin and studied with Georg Simmel and other late-nineteenth-century giants of political theory. The work he did there became the basis for a Ph.D. from Hopkins.

Bentley took a lectureship at the University of Chicago, but, rather than pursuing the career for which he had formally prepared himself, he went to work as a newspaperman, mostly at the Chicago Times-Herald. Ten years or so into his newspaper days, Bentley began using his spare time to write “The Process of Government,” a long, erudite theoretical work, tacitly buttressed by a newspaperman’s intense familiarity with the day-to-day public life of a bumptious big city.

The University of Chicago Press brought out “The Process of Government” in 1908, to almost no notice. In 1911, Bentley quit Chicago and newspapering and moved to the small town of Paoli, Indiana, where he remained until his death, in 1957. He produced a series of increasingly abstruse books (sample title: “Linguistic Analysis of Mathematics”), and his renown grew steadily. His closest intellectual companion was John Dewey—a published collection of their correspondence runs to more than seven hundred pages—but Bentley’s papers, at Indiana University, also contain letters sent to him over the years by, among many others, Albert Einstein, Thomas Mann, Sidney Hook, Estes Kefauver, and B. F. Skinner.

“The Process of Government” is a hedgehog of a book. Its point—relentlessly hammered home—can be stated quite simply: All politics and all government are the result of the activities of groups. Any other attempt to explain politics and government is doomed to failure. It was, in his day as in ours, a wildly contrarian position. Bentley was writing “The Process of Government” at the height of the Progressive Era, when educated, prosperous, high-minded people believed overwhelmingly in “reform” and “good government,” and took interest groups to be the enemy of these goals. The more populist Progressives liked having the people as a whole decide things by direct vote; the more élitist Progressives wanted to give authority to experts. But Bentley, who seems to have shared the Progressives’ goal of using government to curb the power of big business, rejected such procedural tenets. In Chicago terms, Bentley was the rare Progressive intellectual who believed, in effect, that the machine had a more accurate understanding of how politics worked—how it always and necessarily worked—than the lakefront liberals did.

Bentley’s reputation soared in the years after the Second World War, and there’s a reason. His presentation of politics as a never-ending, small-bore struggle for advantage among constantly shifting coalitions of interest groups, which appalled the Progressives, was appealing in the wake of Hitler and Stalin. Big ideas about the collective good had come to seem scary—the prelude to mass murder. Bentley spent the last years of his life being honored. Students of American politics read “The Process of Government” alongside Tocqueville and the Federalist Papers.

But pluralism—the name for Bentley’s theory of politics—has always been good for starting an argument. The standard objections are that pluralism gives too little weight to the power of ideas and of social and economic forces, and that it leaves no room for morality. (Pluralism’s equivalent in foreign relations is realism, which strikes people who don’t like it as having the same flaws.) What if there actually is such a thing as a policy that’s right on the merits? Shouldn’t we find a way to make sure that it’s enacted, instead of having to trust in the messy workings of the political marketplace? If politics worked the way Bentley thought it did, wouldn’t the richer interest groups buy themselves disproportionate political power? To a lot of people, pluralism sounded like pessimism. It was during the nineteen-sixties, when reform was again in the air and impatience with traditional forms of politics was on the rise, that “The Process of Government” began to fall out of favor.

Bentley’s insights are almost entirely missing from political discussion these days. Only in the realm of foreign policy is it permissible even to use the word “interests” in a positive way, and then they must be vital national interests. In domestic policy, interest groups (and particularly those in that ill-defined but malign category known as special-interest groups) are always the bad guys. So are their representatives in Washington, the lobbyists. We’re inclined to think that the wheedling of interest groups—tree-hugging anti-free-traders, the Sugar Association, AIPAC—distorts politics. (For Bentley, the workings of interest groups—in interaction with one another—constitute politics.) When a politician speaks at an interest group’s convention, we want to hear that he has somehow challenged or confronted the group, rather than “pandered” to it. Partisanship is bad, and “partisan bickering,” which by Bentley’s lights would count as a basic description of politics, is even worse. To an unusual extent, our Presidential candidates this year got where they are by presenting themselves as reformers, as champions of the transcendent public interest—as the enemies of Washington dealmaking-as-usual. For Bentley, there was no such thing as a transcendent public interest, and no politics that didn’t involve dealmaking, disguised or not.

Closer attention to Bentley would help us understand why, as politicians succeed, they become more obviously attentive to interest groups, more obviously engaged in bargain and compromise. Hillary Clinton was this year’s version of the pandering, old-politics candidate, a role that proved more appealing the longer the primary season went on. But when she was a new face in Washington, back in 1993, her identity was pretty much the opposite. Both John McCain and Barack Obama have disappointed some of their early, ardent supporters by modifying many of their positions to accommodate the established and organized interests of their parties. Much of the conversation about the Presidential election over the summer has been about how censorious we should be about their “flip-flops.”

Indeed, these days we’re inclined to think of interest groups as political interlopers, whose importance we hope to minimize, rather than as the entirety of politics. Party machines are supposedly moribund, and the organizational fabric of American society severely deteriorated. Politicians are forced to reach out to us as atomized individuals, via messages beamed into our heads through the media of mass communication, aren’t they? Well, maybe not. Maybe Obama’s and McCain’s mutating behavior is evidence that Bentley was on to something.

The heart of “The Process of Government” is a series of dyspeptic rejections of other explanations of how politics works. If Bentley’s strictures were applied today, just about everybody who makes a living explaining American politics (practitioners of what Bentley called “that particular form of activity which consists in the moving of the larynx or the pushing of a pencil”) would be out of business. Under Bentley’s rules, you can’t talk about public opinion, because there is no such thing as “the public” (there are only groups) and opinions don’t matter, only actions do. Abstractions like “the people” and “popular will” have no real content, either. “The public interest” is a useless concept, he says, because “there is nothing which is best literally for the whole people.” You can’t talk about a society as a whole having a collective soul, or about events being moved by the “spirit of the age” or the “Zeitgeist” or by feelings, individual or collective. You can’t talk about race or other biological factors (Bentley was almost alone among Progressive Era intellectuals in dismissing eugenics as silly) or about national character: it doesn’t matter what people are, it only matters what they do. You can talk about Presidents, parties, and other major political actors, but only if you understand them chiefly as mediums through which interest groups operate. Bentley took that pretty far: he wrote that the name of Theodore Roosevelt, who was President when “The Process of Government” was published, “does not mean to us, when we hear it, so much bone and blood, but a certain number of millions of American citizens tending in certain directions.” You can’t talk about morality as a force in politics, because such talk is almost always a cover for somebody’s interest. You can’t talk about progress, only about the waxing and waning of the power of different groups. You can’t talk about ideals—especially the ideals of the Founders of the United States, who represented just another collection of interest groups—as affecting the course of events. Here’s a typically sarcastic passage on that subject:



Let the stump speaker appear at the old-fashioned Fourth of July celebration. What does he tell us? Our forefathers who created this nation were led by a great ideal of liberty. It was their highest good. Without it they would never have made this land what it is. Also they sought independence. Had they not suffered and labored many long hard years to breathe the air of freedom, they never would have been “free.” . . . After which, speaker and hearers alike go back to the same old round of buying and selling, laboring and advantage-seeking. Did the speech change their methods of dealing with their fellows, privately or publicly? Did it move the country forward toward anything? Did the renewed assent of all its hearers to its principles have any such results?

For Bentley, every political force that matters is an interest group, regardless of whether it cops to the charge. States and cities are “locality groups,” the legal system is a collection of “law groups,” income categories are “wealth groups,” devoted followers of a popular politician are “personality groups”; interest groups lie at the heart of monarchies and dictatorships as well as of democracies. “When the groups are adequately stated, everything is stated,” Bentley declares. “When I say everything I mean everything.”

Bentley generally divides interest groups into two categories: organization groups (contemporary instances would include the American Association of Retired Persons, the National Association of Broadcasters, and the National Council of La Raza) and discussion, or “talk,” groups. Discussion groups encompass all those who claim to represent the public interest or a good cause— journalists, reformers, activists, humanitarians, policy analysts—and, in Bentley’s view, they matter far less than we think. He saw “an enormous overvaluation of the forms of activity which appear in words.” Besides, anyone who comes into public life claiming not to have an interest is either deluded or deceitful.

At first, this all sounds shockingly cynical and depressing. We deeply want politics to have good guys and bad guys, good policies and bad policies. We want inviolable principles, like human rights, democracy, the rule of law, or carbon neutrality. Yet Bentley, who helped organize Robert La Follette’s 1924 Progressive Party Presidential campaign in Indiana, didn’t consider pluralism to be the stuff of defeatism; if anything, it was a call to action. People get involved in politics to get things that they want, which may or may not entail economic advantage. People matter politically only as members of groups, and groups matter only when they act, but political life is complicated: nobody is a member of only one interest group, and no interest group stands apart from other groups and behaves in a single, consistent way. Alliances are constantly shifting. No realm of government is immune to interest-group pressures, including the judiciary. (Liberals who, in the sixties and seventies, thought they could counteract the power of big business with institutions beholden only to the “public interest”—whether regulatory agencies or the courts—discovered that conservatives were capable of capturing any such apparatus.) The net result, according to Bentley, is this: “Intelligent actions, emotional actions, linked actions, trains of action, planned actions, plotted actions, scheming, experimenting, persisting, exhorting, compelling, mastering, struggling, co-operating—such activities by the thousand we find going on around us in populations among which we are placed.”

If you spend any time in Washington, Bentley’s account helps explain the nagging sense that the official conversation about American politics doesn’t match the reality. Just about everything in politics that is too mundane to be part of that conversation operates, quite obviously, by the logic of pluralism—groups struggle against other groups and finally make deals, through politicians and agencies and courts—and, in the end, the higher-profile parts of politics inevitably fall prey to the tug of pluralism, too. That’s why McCain and Obama have to keep explaining away their connections to lobbyists and why they have to keep recalibrating their positions on the big issues. Like Theodore Roosevelt, they may be reformers, but they stand at the head of armies of interest groups that they must tend to. A politician who says that he wants to run for high office so that he can clean up the mess in Washington and change the old way of doing things is, in Bentley’s book, really saying that he’d like to adjust the correlation of forces among interest groups, bringing some into greater positions of power, and relegating others to lesser positions. To assert this is not necessarily to be despairing about politics. It merely means that if, for example, you want to understand Obama’s remarkable rise, you will want to know less about his passion to get beyond partisanship and more about whom his campaign mobilized to come to all those state caucuses and to make all those Internet donations, and what those groups’ political aspirations are. If that’s being cynical, then it’s cynical to try to understand the civil-rights era as having been propelled by a movement that African-Americans organized to make life better for themselves, rather than by a miraculous increase in the appeal of racial equality to the nation as a whole.

“The Process of Government” can be annoying—in its obsessive repetition of its main theme, in its lack of interest in empirical evidence—and yet it’s one of those rare books which change the way you look at the world. Like a tune that you can’t get out of your head, it’s always playing in the background. Most of what is said and written about American politics, which stipulates that, although the politics we have may be awful, a radiant, transcendently good politics is a genuine possibility, becomes hard to take altogether seriously.

A case in point is “The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule,” by Thomas Frank (Metropolitan; $25), the successor to “What’s the Matter with Kansas?,” which he published four years ago, to wide acclaim from liberals. In both books, Frank starts from the premise that if conservatives are in the saddle in Washington it must be the result of trickery or connivance, since people who aren’t rich have no rational reason to vote Republican. “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” presented red-state voters as having been gulled into voting against their real economic interests by means of dubious cultural appeals. When Obama had to spend a couple of weeks last spring backing away from his explanation of why small-town Pennsylvanians weren’t voting for him (“Bittergate”), it looked as if he’d got into trouble for channelling Thomas Frank.

“The Wrecking Crew” offers another account of conservatives’ political power: they have built a mighty lobbying apparatus that has taken over Washington and disabled the normal workings of the federal government. Although Frank’s timing could be better—his book dwells psychically in the heyday of Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff, but they’ve fallen, the Democrats control both houses of Congress, and Washington is expecting a big liberal sweep in November—he has hold of something real. As Reaganism became the dominant strain in the Republican Party, a new group of politicians and operatives, many of them products of the legendarily rough-playing College Republicans (Abramoff, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist), adopted as their grand strategy the task of systematically disabling the Democratic Party’s structures of support, so as to achieve a lasting Republican political order. This was no secret: they loved talking about it to anyone who would listen. Frank himself has spent time with Norquist, getting briefed on the plan over lunch at the Palm. The idea was that the Republicans would relentlessly peck away at unions and tort lawyers until the Democrats’ ability to sustain themselves was irreparably harmed.

Frank regards this project as having been strikingly successful. Wherever he looks, he finds evidence of this, especially in the downtown corridors of Washington where lobbyists have their offices and in the Virginia suburbs where prosperous Republicans live. Frank is a little like an anti-pornography crusader in his intense fascination with the thing that horrifies him—his Washington is full of mansions, fine wines, expensive suits, cigars, and wood panelling. Evoking the lobbyist as a type, he writes, “You can spot him in the field by his perfectly fitted thousand-dollar suits, usually blue; his strangely dainty shoes; his shirts, which often come in pink or blue with white collars and cuffs, the latter of which display cufflinks of the large and shiny variety; his vivid, shimmering ties, these days preferably in orange or lavender; his perfect haircut; his perfect tan; the tiny flag attesting to his perfect patriotism on his perfect lapel.”

These are, in Frank’s account, the objective correlatives of the underlying problem: because conservatives, for economic and ideological reasons, don’t want government to work, they have arranged for it not to be able to work. A crippled government removes the best reason for people to vote for liberals, so the conservatives become ever stronger. As he puts it, conservatism “seems actively to want an inferior product.” Frank’s theory isn’t undermined when Democrats win, because, in his view, they consort with many of the same conservative interest groups that Republicans do. Bill Clinton is a favorite negative example of Frank’s, and no one should be surprised if Barack Obama soon becomes another.

Washington, as Frank sees it, plays host to a simple clash of interests: money and business on one side, the people on the other. “The Wrecking Crew” is written in a voice of high derision—much more so than the sincere, bewildered “What’s the Matter with Kansas?”—and it can be good, spirited fun. Frank captures a quality of exuberant bullying in those of his conservative subjects he knows well enough to identify individually, rather than categorically. He registers their self-justifying certainty that the other side is playing as rough as they are, and the soaring rhetoric about evil and freedom that they use to discuss even trivial matters.

“The Wrecking Crew” is what Arthur Bentley would call a discussion-group activity, meant to fire up the troops. It is reportorially and intellectually imprecise. How many lobbyists are there in Washington, exactly? By what yardstick did Frank conclude that we are undergoing “the greatest wave of political corruption in living memory”? What would be the sign that conservatives no longer rule, if Democrats’ controlling the political apparatus doesn’t count? Frank rarely mentions Democratic lobbyists or interest groups and glosses over the complexity in the coalitions that form the two parties: “corporations” and “conservatives” seem always to operate in perfect concert, on the Republican side. “Lobbying brings a constant pressure in a single direction,” he writes. An illustrative example is one that he offers in passing: “There was the two-day get-together between House Republicans and media company CEOs, after which the various broadcasters and publishers were asked to replace their Democratic lobbyists with Republicans; the Telecommunications Act of 1996, almost certainly written by industry lobbyists, followed soon afterward, deregulating the airwaves and trailing clouds of glorious profits for the media companies.” You’d never guess from this that the Telecom Act pitted one group of telephone companies and their lobbyists against another group of telephone companies and their lobbyists—or that business-versus-business battles of this kind go on constantly in Washington.

Arthur Bentley, a man untroubled by insecurity, treated Karl Marx as a promising fellow in the few pages devoted to him in “The Process of Government”—at least Marx saw politics in terms of groups struggling against each other—but one whose work did not, in the end, live up to its potential. Marx insisted on excessively large, unitary groups, like the proletariat, and then, even worse, claimed that under an ideal form of government they would disappear. Frank, viewed from a pluralist point of view, has the same problem. He tends to characterize the Republicans and the Democrats as representing business and workers, period, rather than as ever-mutating coalitions of groups with differing motives—business mainly but not entirely on the Republican side, unions mainly but not entirely on the Democratic side, and many groups whose interests are not primarily economic divided between the two. Political issues, for him, usually boil down to labor-management disputes; government failures are the consequences of market ideology and the profit motive. The troubles of the American venture in Iraq, for example, are the result of “extreme privatization” and the attempt to create a “libertarian utopia.” The horrifyingly slow pace of rescue and recovery in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina can also be ascribed to the Bush Administration’s devotion to cronyism and privatization. Nor does Frank’s analysis adequately explore the possibility that Republicans pay a political price when they fail to govern competently, even though that seems to explain the way elections have been going since 2006.

It’s tempting to see Frank as a neo-Marxist, because he rarely misses an opportunity to bash capitalism. He writes, “Left unconstrained by other forces, the free-market system is one of the most restless, destructive arrangements ever contrived—tearing down and building up, obsoleting last year’s fashions and praising this year’s, driving up prices and bidding down wages, moving populations willy-nilly about the map, and scheming always to reduce the arts and sciences to sycophancy.” Really, though, Frank is closer to being an old-fashioned mugwump-style Progressive. He believes that liberals, once in power, will not merely transfer economic resources from business to working people but will tend to the public interest, to good government. Underneath all the fun Frank has with lobbyists and their dainty shoes, the heart of his book is the idea that, just as conservatives actually want government to be corrupt and incompetent, liberals have an equally strong interest in making government work properly. By his lights, if you want bad government you should vote Republican, and if you want good government you should vote Democratic.

Yet even in a world without conservatives there would be no general agreement about how government should handle anything truly important. The Clinton Administration pushed through the North American Free Trade Agreement amid gusts of public-interest rhetoric—but Frank no doubt located the public interest on the other side. What about the much hated “earmarks” and “pork-barrel projects” that voters seem to want legislators to get for their districts—are they bad government, from the point of view of the folks back home? As Arthur Bentley pointed out, no political actor ever fails to argue that his interest is the public interest. Frank, who, at the end of “The Wrecking Crew,” seems nostalgic for the great liberal historian Richard Hofstadter, would do well to reread Hofstadter’s “The Age of Reform.” Hofstadter persuasively portrays the anti-special-interest reformers of the Progressive Era as an interest group themselves, an educated and refined élite disadvantaged by the rise of industrial capitalism in the late nineteenth century. Frank, given to wistful and self-mocking riffs on how little he matters in Washington compared with the conservative operatives he meets at parties, can sound that way himself.

Just before the table of contents in “The Process of Government,” on a page all alone, is the avowal “This book is an attempt to fashion a tool.” A century later, the tool that Arthur Bentley was attempting to fashion retains its utility, and not merely for understanding the American political system. (Those who believed in 2003 that Iraqi politics was best understood as a struggle between democracy and dictatorship, rather than as a struggle among groups, could have learned from him.) Bentley may have pressed his arguments too far, but, given our tendency to dismiss interest groups as the serpents in the political Eden that the Founders created, “The Process of Government” serves as an indispensable corrective.

When the reputation of Bentley’s masterpiece was at its peak, it was not just because he had fashioned a useful tool, of course; it was because many people saw pluralism as being not only accurate but attractive. To regain that perspective today requires an even greater undoing of deeply ingrained habits of thought. Pluralism, in the tradition of Bentley, requires that one see one’s own political passions, and those of such unimpeachable actors as winners of the Nobel Peace Prize and members of the Concord Coalition, as representing something other than the promptings of pure justice. That does not come naturally. One has to see that sincere talk of the public interest and the general good can be dangerous tools in the hands of people one disagrees with, if not in one’s own. (If you’re a liberal, reread President Bush’s second inaugural address, a grandiose exercise in public-interest rhetoric meant to lay the groundwork for waging the war on terror and privatizing Social Security.) One has to get over the habit of assuming that “interests,” and, worse, lobbying and corruption, are the province only of one’s political opponents, and not one’s allies. Pluralism means dialling down the moral stature that we attach to universalist arguments, and dialling up the moral stature of particularism.

Still, the pluralist vision does admit an element of justice. In any political system that gives people the freedom to organize and vote—and even, historically, in many systems that don’t—the logic of pluralism explains why those who do the hard, quotidian precinct work of politics will generally have more influence than those whose political participation is confined to writing, thinking, filing lawsuits, writing regulations, and spending money on media buys. In Bentley’s scheme, that’s all interest-group activity, but of the weaker “talk” (instead of the stronger “organization”) variety. Throughout American history, political organizing has been the means that outsiders—immigrants, farmers, African-Americans in the Reconstruction South, and, more recently, netroots activists on the left and evangelicals on the right—use to gain advantage against the more talk-oriented élites, who regard their political aims as corruption or special pleading. On the last page of “The Wrecking Crew,” Frank finally mentions what, from a pluralist perspective, would be the first order of business if you believe as passionately as he does that business-controlled conservative lobbyists are running Washington into the ground: organizing a political opposition. To be truly effective, though, such an opposition would have to muster its own army of Washington lobbyists. It’s tempting to think that just over the horizon lies a procedural reform that will lead to the lasting triumph of what looks to you like good government. But the truth is that the only way to defeat one set of interests is with another set of interests. ♦

 

 


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#230 From: "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Tue Aug 5, 2008 5:40 pm
Subject: Price Tags 105 - the Erie Canal 		fekbritton
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PRICE TAGS 105 – Erie

 

Download the latest Price Tags here:

 

 http://www.pricetags.ca/pricetags/pricetags105.pdf

 

 

This is a special issue of Price Tags, for two reasons.

 

I had so much material from this summer’s bicycle tour along the Erie Canal that I created “Tag Alongs” – mini-Price Tags that act as appendices – so I could pursue particular interests (mainly architecture) without distracting too much from the storyline.   You can link to these mini-issues whenever you see a “Tag Along” in Price Tags 105, or directly by clicking these links:

 

 Architecture in Upstate New York - http://www.pricetags.ca/pricetags/tag105arch.pdf

 

 Ruins - http://www.pricetags.ca/pricetags/Tag105ruins.pdf

 

 Rochester - http://www.pricetags.ca/images/Tagalong105roch.jpg

 

This issue describes “one of the wonders of the world” - the Erie Canal - and speculates about a way of life that may be seeing its last days.  You can add your own observations and speculations in the ‘Comments’ section when I post Price Tags 105 on my blog – www.pricetags.wordpress.com

 

There were over 500 people who cycled almost 600 kilometres across Upstate New York on this tour.  I’m betting many of them would be interested in this issue, but I have no way of sending it to them.  That’s why I’m asking for your help.

 

If it’s true that everyone is separated by only six degrees, then if every Price Tags reader forwarded this issue to someone who might have a connection to someone who knows someone who knows someone, etc., who might have cycled the canal this July, we can reach them all!

 

So a favour: please forward this issue AT LEAST ONCE to someone who knows someone who might, say, live in New York State, or has a passion for transportation history, or does bike tours.  And then ask them to forward it at as well. 

 

That would make this issue doubly special.

 

Thanks,

 

Gord Price

 

www.pricetags.ca

www.pricetags.wordpress.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

int


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#229 From: "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Wed Jul 16, 2008 10:47 am
Subject: Newsletter correction from James Robertson 		fekbritton
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Dear Eric,

This is a correction to the original text of my July
newsletter - http://www.jamesrobertson.com/newsletter.htm

The link in Item 5 for Ron Morrison's "Debt and Deception"
booklet (which I strongly recommended) should read:

      For the text of the booklet, go to
      http://www.scottishmonetaryreform.org.uk
      Then click on �Read the Booklet�.

Best wishes,

James Robertson





The Old Bakehouse
Cholsey
Oxfordshire
OX10 9NU
United Kingdom

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#228 From: "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Thu Jul 10, 2008 4:23 pm
Subject: Newsletter from James Robertson 		fekbritton
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JAMES ROBERTSON'S NEWSLETTER
No 15, July 2008


Dear Eric,

My latest newsletter is now out. Read it in full at:
http://www.jamesrobertson.com/newsletter.htm

This email summarises its contents.

1. Editorial.
Peak oil - peak food? peak money? peak population? Could the
present crises be early signs of a lasting worldwide
"downsizing" to come?

2. "Money From Thin Air" - Guardian online article.
Where did the money come from? and where has it gone?
Democratic governments must come clean about how the money
system now works.

3. Book Reviews.

      (1) Brian Hodgkinson, "A New Model Of The Economy", 2008.
      A ground-breaking textbook for all serious students of
      economics - offered by the publisher at a discount to
      readers of this newsletter. My review questions the claim
      of economics to be an objective science.

      (2) Fred Harrison, "The Silver Bullet, 2008". Proposes a
      much more realistic way to "make poverty history" than
      today's conventional economic policy makers and theorists
      do. Far-reaching, practical.

4. "Changing Games In The Global Casino", Trendspotting
article by Hazel Henderson in Ethical Markets -  "... huge,
mounting costs ... now feed the suspicions of millions that
global finance is indeed a casino with rules rigged by the
insiders."

5. "Debt & Deception", Ron Morrison's no-frills booklet on "a
core proposal for banking reform at a time when the present
system is in disarray - perhaps terminally so".

6.  IMF Enquiry Into U.S. Financial System - "nothing less
than an X-ray of the entire US financial system".

7.  A New Ecological Website, from Sandy Irvine and colleagues
- green, radical, but realistic.

STOP PRESS

The updated German edition of Joseph Huber's & James
Robertson's "Creating New Money: A Monetary Reform for the
Information Age" (2000) has just been published. Go to
http://www.sozialoekonomie.de and click on ALLGEMEINES
PROGRAMM to see details.


Best wishes,

James Robertson


10th July 2008

james@...
http://www.jamesrobertson.com/newsletter.htm



The Old Bakehouse
Cholsey
Oxfordshire
OX10 9NU
United Kingdom
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#227 From: "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Fri Jul 4, 2008 4:53 am
Subject: Doors of Perception: July 2008 - Design for resilience 		fekbritton
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DOORS OF PERCEPTION REPORT
Design for resilience
By John Thackara
July 2008

CITY ECO LAB: BARN-RAISING FOR UNDER-16s?
Last month's request prompted you to send me some terrific suggestions about
mapping eco-system services; thanks in particular to Wendy Brawer and
GreenMaps.
My next request is for examples of projects in which under-16 school
students
do some kind of collective barn-raising event that has a connection with the
sustainability of their school or town. We would need to adapt this activity
to an indoor, two week-long activity in which a school group would add -
something - every  day.
<john at doorsofperception dot com>

DESIGN FOR RESILIENCE
The speed with which Transition Towns are multiplying is another sign that
far
more is happening beneath the radar of mainstream media and politics than
above.
The core activity of a Transition Town is Energy Descent Action Planning
(EDAP),
a process developed by Rob Hopkins, in which a community develops its own
vision
of their town 20 years in the future and then backcasts from then to now.
Hopkins describes the capacity of a community to embark on an EDAP as
"resilience" - a set of capabilities to which designers can certainly
add a dimension or two.
http://transitionculture.org/

CASHLESS CURRENCY
"We've got to get out of this 'saving Africans' mindset" says singer Damon
Albarn; "we're the ones that need to be saved". Actually Damon I think we
probably need each other - but I do agree that there's a lot we can learn
from
Africa. I'm especially mesmerised by the rapid diffusion of airtime-based
value
exchange via mobile phones. Niti Bahn's has written about banking, airtime,
transaction models, and informal economies:
http://www.nitibhan.com/perspective_20/2008/05/musing-on-the-w.html

CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS?
Possibly driven over the edge by the above news from Africa, Australia's top
treasury official is taking five weeks leave to look after endangered
wombats.
The BBC reports that Ken Henry, treasury secretary, has warned that
hairy-nosed
wombats are "on death row". Mr Henry will miss a central bank meeting, even
though it (the bank) probably shares the wombats' predicament.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7477083.stm

HUNGRY CITY
Cities, like people, are what they eat. The gargantuan effort necessary to
feed
them arguably has a greater social and physical impact on us and our planet
than
anything else we do - yet few of us are aware of the process. Carolyn Steel,
an
architecture professor, has written a wonderful book about the ways that we
live
in a world shaped by food - or, in the case or city design, have failed even
to
think about food systems. She puts it all into an historical and cultural
context - but with a wonderfully light touch. The culpable insouciance of
many
policy makers today is eerily similar to the food policy that hastened the
last
days of Rome. "Food is about networks", Steel concludes, "things that, when
connected together, add up to more than the sum of their parts". You need
to be connected to the Hungry City network, so do buy the book.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hungry-City-Food-Shapes-Lives/dp/0701180374

CONTINUOUS PICNIC
If you're in or near London on Saturday, take your copy of Hungry City to
Continuous Picnic. It's organized by Bohn & Viljoen Architects with a team
of
community gardeners, designers and food enthusiasts. The day kicks off in
the
morning with an "Inverted Market" to which  anyone may take locally produced
fruit and vegetables and have it included in a 150-metre long installation.
(Which, I assume, one then eats). Saturday 5 July 2008
http://continuouspicnic.blogspot.com/
http://www.lfa2008.org/event.php?id=103&name=The+Continuous+Picnic

LIDO
Also part of the part of the London Architecture Festival,
<http://southwarklido.wordpress.com/> my new mates at Exyzt
<http://www.exyzt.org/> have opened the Southwark Lido
<http://southwarklido.exyzt.org/>. Exyzt and Gaelle Gabillet
are the scenographer-builders of City Eco Lab with me in St Etienne
in November, so do go and say hello to them in Southwark.
http://southwarklido.exyzt.org/

URBAN CLIMATE CAMP (SINGAPORE)
Drew Hemment is looking for community activists and scientists who have
undertaken innovative projects on sustainability in urban environments,
and who are based in or near to Singapore, unless they are traveling
there to attend ISEA2008 already on 30 July.
http://imagination.lancaster.ac.uk/cracksinthepavement/ISEA2008

THE TRUE PRICE OF SMOKING
What does a pack of cigarettes cost a smoker, the smoker's family, and
society?
MIT Press has published a book about the private and social costs of
smoking.
The total social cost of smoking over a lifetime is put at $106,000 for a
woman
and $220,00 for a man - which is almost $40.00 per pack over a lifetime of
smoking. But that $40 does not include the environmental impacts of growing
the
crop. Tobacco growing is responsible for damage to ancient forests, causes
soil
depletion through soil erosion and nutrient loss, and vast quantities of
pesticides, fertilizer and herbicides are used; some crops require more than
a
dozen applications of pesticides during their three-month growing period.
Nearly
600 million trees of forest are destroyed each year to provide wood to dry
the
stuff; in Tanzania, an estimated 65 pounds of wood is needed to dry one
pound of
tobacco. Water is a big issue, too: Pesticide runoff from tobacco
plantations
pollutes ground and surface waters. So what shall we say, after adding in
these
environmental costs: $100 per pack?
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?tid=10298&ttype=2
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/05/ecosystems_as_e.php

SO YOU DON'T LIKE IT HERE?
Is it possible to re-locate a city? This is the challenge set for City Move
Interdesign, an international workshop in Gellivare, Sweden next year. The
project will look at ways to create new spaces for people in a more humane
and
creative way when homes, workplaces, tourist attractions and meeting places
have
to be left behind or relocated.
http://www.svenskatecknare.se/download.asp/Invitation.pdf?id=53EA480E93328E8
66D1962105F0E728D&NAME=Invitation.pdf
or http://tinyurl.com/5efmdt

LAND AS MEDIA (1)
Homo sapiens is the only known species consciously to effect change to the
Earth's geologic environment. We reshape the Earth, intensify erosion,
modify
rivers, change local climates, pollute water resources, soils and geologic
media, and alter soils and the biosphere. We dig holes in it, remove parts
of
it, and bury highly toxic materials in it. Ernest Solomon drew my attention
to
this fascinating ournal about possible roles for the geoscience community in
sustaining and preserving the Earth.
http://www.nhbs.com/title.php?tefno=146356

LAND AS MEDIA (2)
This website changes pixels on the screen into digital sand. This can be
used as
building material for "cosmic landscapes, Clemens-style sand paintings,
mandalas
and so on". It's a joint project by designers Johanna Lundberg and Jenna
Sutela
with the Flash programmer Timo Koro.
http://thisissand.com

FEWER FLOWERS, MORE DISCIPLINE
The UK government plans to spend more than three billion euros on innovation
in
public services that deal with chronic disease, youth crime, climate change,
and
teenage pregnancy. But how to spend that money well? A stern Matthew Horne,
in a
new report, argues that "experimentation without discipline does not lead to
innovation at scale... the kind of innovation that transforms outcomes for
people on a large scale does not come from letting 1,000 flowers bloom".
Horne proposes a kind of House of Correction for social innovators - a
mediation
service that would help innovators to improve their problem definition,
benchmarking, experience sharing, and brokering. Matthew probably has
a point - it's just that me, I'm in the flower blooming business.
The report, Honest Brokers, is free to download:
http://www.innovation-unit.co.uk/content/view/448/1023/
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/06/innovating_our.php

CONSENSUAL AND CONTESTIBLE
Britain's Local Government Association has published a list of 100 words
that public bodies should try not to use if they want to communicate
effectively with local people. Amazingly, the words concept, cultural,
and creative do not appear in the blacklist - but its authors have promised
to consider them for the next edition.
http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/aio/209444
http://www.lga.gov.uk/lga/core/page.do?pageId=41517

CAN DYNAMIC CITIES BE DEMOCRATIC?
Cluster magazine ran an interview with me and Sunil Abraham for its special
issue published this month at the World Congress of Architecture
http://www.uia2008torino.org:80/U8T/Engine/RAServePG.php
which opens later this month in Torino.
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/06/post_22.php

FEELING GUILTY?
You will be after taking this test:
http://www.globalrichlist.com/
Next: Assuage your guilt by writing in person to ten people with your warm
recommendation that they subscribe to this newsletter. It's free, so it
won't
make them any richer - or guiltier. All they have to do is send a mail to:
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#226 From: Kerry Wood <kerry.wood@...>
Date: Wed Jun 4, 2008 8:38 am
Subject: Re: WorldTransport Forum population growth and sprawl 		kerry.wood@...
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I haven't seen any response on Zurich so let me have a go. My sole qualification is that I visited in 1994 and was shown the tram depot and some sample routes. I was impressed.

According to Wiki the population has increased 3.3% in a decade, so nothing very rapid there. But the population figures were in the 300 000s and I seem to remember that the transport zone was more like a million - it might make a difference.

But is there any real reason why this matters? If rapid growth can be managed by aggressive road building and sprawl (can it?) then why not by an aggressive PT model?

Some years ago Light Rail & ModernTramway (UK) published a photo of a tram at a suburban terminus in one of the large Dutch cities. It was in the middle of a very large building site. The point was that the transport authority wanted to capture as many new residents as possible and was determined to have the new extension opened before the first flat was occupied. 

Rapid growth cannot be managed for long simply by extending tram (or bus) routes but here are other options. Reinforcing suburban rail too, so that longer trips can be on a faster mode, reinforcing central area routes for capacity and so on. And of course integrating everything.

When I was in Zurich they were widening a key link so that the tramlines could be 4-tracked, but two lanes were thought sufficient for motor vehicles.

k

Kerry Wood
New Zealand

On 2008 Jun, 1, at 1:02 PM, Michael Yeates wrote:

From Australia ...

Southeast Queensland (SEQ) and in particular Brisbane is facing an unprecedented rate of population growth increase from incoming migration ... a "sunbelt" example although also an escape from higher to lower government charges and services than in Sydney and Melbourne and an escape from traffic congestion ... to lower cost housing etc ... also a classic "growth machine" example ... as supply cannot meet demand ...!  Both interstate and international migration is involved ...!

Planning is based on "predict and provide". Congestion causes pollution and increases costs ... more roads are good solutions to reduce cost and pollution and create more jobs etc etc.

In many ways, it is the classic Thatcher argument that the economy depends on roads ... and it sure does.

So the rapid growth in population is requiring massive road expansion ... and lower cost housing at a greater rate ... cheapest on the edges and green fields...!

And house prices are increasing as are wages and taxes ... and congestion ... and demand for more suburban sprawl ...!

The current figure is said to be 1500 people per week heading into a population of around 800,000 but was only 1000 about 5 years ago.

In recent discussions, Zurich and its public transport system and operations have featured strongly.

However it has been suggested this is not an appropriate comparison or even a reasonable example as Zurich does not have much population growth. Is this true?

This raises the following general "policy" questions ... (and many more of course) ... but please note, the suggestion is not to completely stop road improvements or extensions but rather to take ALL the commuter growth PLUS some existing commuter trips by public transport.

The road problem is primarily one of peak hour congestion ... and a perception of poor public transport (although parts are good) ... for information, maps, frequency and timetables etc,  go to http://www.transinfo.qld.gov.au/

First question ... if cities like Zurich don't have much population growth, where is the growth and at what rate(s)?

Second question ... are there examples of high growth rate cities that have NOT chosen to expand their roads?

Third question ... given Australia was dragged into signing Kyoto, what is the international view of a policy from both national, state and local government that funds major roads post signing Kyoto rather than public transport and cycling?

Final question ... given there is at least some concern globally about Global Warming, Peak Oil, etc, are there any current examples of high growth cities/regions with similar political and socio-economic aspirations to Australia that have embraced public transport and cycling and walking rather more than building more roads?

Possibly the best source for an update on the projects is via the web ... the local paper is The Courier-Mail  and the national TV broadcaster is the ABC TV 2 Brisbane which had a 30 minute special on this topic on the programme STATELINE on Friday June 30 .... both of which should be accessible via GOOGLE ...

It was suggested in the STATELINE programme that the state government is spending more than $1.5m per hour 24/7 on roads and other growth supportive infrastructure necessitated by the growth ... with another $100 billion in infrastructure presumably NPV in a new SEQ plan to be released this week ...! Some $6b just announced in road projects near the airport and shipping port and adjacent to the $2b upgrade of the major north-south freeway east of the city. About 90% of freight is by road.

The Brisbane City Council has about $6-10 billion worth of roads, bridges and tunnels underway in the centre or inner ring suburbs alone.

In my view, Brisbane and SEQ is a classic example of the North South divide ... as such I would welcome indeed encourage comments to this list but not to me personally.

The water and the frog are getting hotter ... but the frog still has not noticed ...!

Michael Yeates ..................



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#225 From: "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Sat May 31, 2008 10:44 am
Subject: Doors of Perception: June 2008 - Mapping Ecosystem Services 		fekbritton
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Doors of Perception Report
>From the frontiers of regenerative design
June 2008
by John Thackara

CITY ECO LAB: YOUR BENCHMARK SUGGESTIONS PLEASE
City Eco Lab, the "nomadic market of projects" that we are producing
in November for the Cite du Design biennial, will put live projects
from the St Etienne region side-by-side with best-practice projects
from other parts of the world. Will you help by telling us about
the best benchmark projects we might consider inviting to sit
next to a St Etienne one?
Question 1: we plan to map the resources of the St Etienne region,
with a focus on ecosystem services and biodiversity, and human skills;
where, in your experience, have maps of this kind been done really well?
Question 2: a big part of City Eco Lab will be about food distribution
projects and systems; we'd like to know who is leading the way in
bicycle-based courier services - from the point of view of the
service, and of equipment;
Question 3: we plan to run a "eco design clinic" for small businesses
throughout City Eco Lab's 15-day run; we'd like to know, who is doing
really fantastic work helping small companies change, especially
if the model being used might easily be transfered to our event?
A simple email with a link or pdf will suffice at this stage:
<john@...>

ECOSYSTEMS AS ECONOMIC ASSETS
The drinks industry depends on ecosystems to supply fresh water;
agribusiness relies on grasslands for insect pollinators, nutrient
cycling, and erosion control; the insurance industry benefits from the
fact that coastal marshes reduce the damage caused by hurricanes and
that wetlands absorb water from floods. Though our wellbeing is totally
dependent upon these "ecosystem services" they are predominantly public
goods with no markets and no prices; so they often are not detected by
our current economic compass. As a result, due to the pressures coming
from population growth, changing diets, urbanisation and also climate
change, biodiversity is declining, our ecosystems are being continuously
degraded and we, in turn, are suffering the consequences. Some
economists, and some global companies, are finally beginning to measure
the value of ecosystem services; this could be an important step towards
looking after them better (and/or, of course, attempting to privatise
them). An important report published last week, Economics of Ecosystems
and Biodiversity (TEEB), begins to develop a yardstick that is more
effective than GDP for assessing the performance of an economy.
And the World Resources Institute has developed the Corporate Ecosystem
Services Review to help managers take more explicit account of their
company's dependence and impact on ecosystems.
http://idw-online.de/pages/en/news?id=262707
http://www.wri.org/stories/2008/03/companies-respond-ecosystem-degradation

ECO "STANDARDS" BLIZZARD
"These are my principles. If you don't like them, I have others".
Groucho Marx could also have been talking about environmental standards.
Any supermarket these days contains hundreds of labels and displays that
make claims about the environmental attributes of different products.
Organic, Fairtrade, FSC Certified, "sustainable". This blizzard of
assertions is confusing - in some cases, one suspects, intentionally so.
At the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali 85 per cent of respondents
agreed that "some companies are advertising products and services with
environmental claims that could be considered false, unsubstantiated or
unethical". Greenwashing Index allows users to post, rate and comment on
"green" advertisements; but how, otherwise, are we are to decide which
issues are most important, and which labels we are supposed to trust?
Read more at:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/05/eco_standards_b.php

SUSTAINABLE DESIGN STANDARD WORKSHOP
These overlapping standards and measurement systems make it hard to
define when "sustainable design" is truly sustainable. In the UK, new
regulations will place specific eco-design obligations on designers
across the product lifecycle. Undaunted, an event in London called
Setting Standards for Sustainable Design will communicate good practice
in environmentally conscious design, and indentify priorities for
development. Design Council, 10 June 2008
http://www.bsigroup.com/en/Training-and-Conferences/About-conferences/UK-con
ferences/SustainableDesign/
or: http://tinyurl.com/4v486f

SOFT INFRA
Developing economies are being transformed by the phenomenon whereby
soft infrastructure - such as, especially, mobile phone networks - is
installed despite the absence of hard infrastructure - such as roads,
or national power grids. The Centre for Knowledge Societies in Bangalore
has published Emerging Economy Report about the phenomenon. It's a
crucial element of what Ezio Manzini calls the "leapfrog hypothesis;"
this is when developing countries jump over the environmentally most
damaging stages of industrial development. The CKS report contains a
rich variety of descriptions of daily economic life in India, China,
Indonesia, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt and Brazil. The report argues
strongly for the importance of the informal economy: the majority of
urban retail is conducted outside the corporate sector in developing
countries - and favelas contain very few chiller cabinets.
Read more at:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/05/emerging_econom.php
http://www.emergingeconomyreport.com/

WIRELESS TECH FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
Mobile technology is transforming the way advocacy, development, and
relief organizations accomplish their institutional missions. The UN
and Vodafone have published a report called Wireless Technology for
Social Change.
http://www.vodafone.com/start/foundation/news/mobile_technology.html
http://www.unfoundation.org/vodafone/communications_publication_series.asp

SOFT BUT NOT LIGHT
Mobile networks may be soft - but that does not make them light. The
phone in your pocket contains a tiny quantity of gold, for example,
whose extraction required 200 pounds of earth to be moved. A Forum
for the Future report called Earth Calling lists the processes most
responsible for the environmental impacts of the sector: extracting
the raw materials that are used in phones and network equipment;
manufacturing phone components; running the networks; managing phones
and network equipment at end-of-life; using, and particularly charging,
phones; rolling out network infrastructure; transporting people and
physical parts to maintain the system; constructing and managing
offices, retail stores and call centres. And that's not counting the
impactful behaviours that mobile phones enable or cause, such as
spontaneous trips, or sudden purchases.
http://www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/node/389

LUDIC LIDO IN LONDON
The event designers of City Eco Lab, in November, will be Gaelle
Gabillet and the architecture collective EXYZT. In London, Exyzt
and filmmaker Sara Muzio have created the Southwark Lido. Following
in the tradition of Roman baths and Turkish hammams, it provides
a setting for social gathering, ritual cleansing and uninhibited
political discussion among residents of Southwark and visitors
to London Festival of Architecture.
http://www.lfa2008.org/event.php?id=165&name=Southwark+Lido
http://www.exyzt.net/tiki-index.php

FOOD IN LONDON
How might more food be grown in London? A conference will provide
a review of the urban agriculture movement internationally and closer
to home - including a presentation by Ian Collingwood who led the
Middlesbrough Urban Farming project in Dott 07 (whose senior producer
was David Barrie). Also talking is Fritz Haeg, author of Edible
Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn. The event will look at urban
agriculture through the lens both of food security, open space,
education and health.
http://www.sustainweb.org/page.php?id=433

AETHER'S AMAZING ACTUATORS
Scattered House is an architectural experiment that deals with issues
of ubiquitous connectivity, family diasporas, design-by-occupant, and
public control technology. What you experience is an installation
assembled from inexpensive electronic toys and gadgets. We are all
invited to visit the Hungarian Cultural Centre in London and contribute
toys and gadgets that will become part of the amalgamated whole.
Architects and interaction designers Adam Somlai-Fischer and Usman
Haque, authors of the online manual "Low Tech Sensors and Actuators",
will be on hand to advise and assist in this process.
http://scattered.propositions.org.uk/

TORINO GEODESIGN
For Torino Geodesign, which has opened in Turin, fifty designers
worked with local communities and companies to realise prototypes.
The resulting exhibition promises "atmospheres, installations, working
prototypes, non-working prototypes, old masters, young ambitions, radio,
research, experiments of all kinds, video, images, until arriving at
the cognitive collapse of the visitor". It's open until June 13.
Then in July the main conference of Torino Geodesign, Changing The
Change, features Marco Susani, who these days has the grand title
of Vice President, Global Digital Experience Design, Motorola;
and Geetha Narayanan Founder Director of Srishti School of Art
Design and Technology, India.
http://emma.polimi.it/emma/showEvent.do?idEvent=23

REINVENTING PUBLIC CONSULTATION
Governments, public sector agencies, and businesses all spend a ton of
cash trying to connect with members of the public. They use focus
groups, hold meetings, conduct extensive polling, spam citizens with
online surveys, and talk endlessly about social software. Their efforts
either achieve unusable results, or they ignore them anyway, or both. In
Toronto, Peter MacLeod has started a new company, MASS LBP, that takes a
new approach. "We like to talk about 'creating a seat at the table, a
hand at the wheel and a turn at the mic' says Peter, who argues that
better, more durable decisions are made when decisions become shared
with the people they affect.
http://www.masslbp.com/masslbp.php

METRICS FOR SOCIAL BENEFIT
How do you measure the benefit of socially directed design? A
methodology for evaluating social benefits called Social Return on
Investment (SROI) has been developed to help social enterprises put
a monetary value on the future social benefits of their activities.
It allows discussion of how (and where) they create social value
with their stakeholders in a more compelling way than saying
'invest in us - we're a good thing'.
http://www.sroi-uk.org/

SOUGHT: DESIGNER CITZENS
Elizabeth Resnick is writing a book about the notion of the "designer
citizen" and the inclusion of social responsibility within design
curriculums. She would like to connect with design educators in the UK,
Europe, Australia and Asia, who are engaged in similar teaching and
project work, who might wish their projects to be included in the book.
ElizRes@...

TRAIN TIMETABLE TREASURE TROVE
Are you in the market for a collection of 250,000 out-of-date public
transport timetables? Robert Forsythe has amassed a treasure trove
of transport and travel publicity ephemera dating back to 1838. The
collection has a strong focus on UK nationalised railway from 1948,
but it also covers coastal and cross channel ferries, waterways,
de-regulated buses, and "certain elements of 19th century interest
and all sorts of surprises, like Garden Festival transport".
If you are running a museum of timetables, this is a one-off
opportunity. Don't be late.
http://www.forsythe.demon.co.uk/transport.htm

ARCHITECTURE OF GAMESPACE
"Space Time Play" is an incredibly useful book about "the future of
ludic space" based on 500 pages of examples and reflections. The book
includes milestone video and computer games, and virtual metropolises
and digitally-overlaid real world spaces. It's staggering how many
different ways people have devised to blend video games, locative
technology, cinema genres, and real world situations. My conclusion,
after reading "Space Time Play", is that a second edition is needed.
The 'real' world contexts here are mostly Bladerunner-urban; most people
in the book probably imagine that our futures will be overwhelmingly
urban. I I don't buy this widespread assumption at all: in an age of
unreliable food and water systems cities will become inhospitable.
The next edition of this book should be about locative media
used in camping and foraging.
http://www.spacetimeplay.org/

BATTERIES FOR BATTLE
The U.S. military relies so heavily on more than 500 mobile
battery-dependent devices that soldiers must often carry 20 to 35 pounds
of batteries on a mission. Batteries are needed to power night vision
equipment for vehicle drivers, radios, weapon scopes, lasers, mine
detectors, sensors, GPS, meteorological systems and various forms of
Illumination. NATO forces are spending $57,000 per soldier per year
in Iraq and Afghanistan for batteries alone - and 75 per cent of the
capacity of those batteries is wasted as soldiers discard partially
used batteries after every patrol. A company called M2E promises
that its power produts offer "grid-free operational life and
lower weight, improve the soldier's load factor and provide
mission extension opportunities".
http://www.m2epower.com/apps/military.htm

THREAT DESIGN
Bruce Schneier started his annual Movie-Plot Threat Contest to create
fear. Not just any fear, but "a fear that you can alleviate through the
sale of your new product idea. The idea is find a risk or create one:
It can be a terrorism risk, a criminal risk, a natural-disaster risk,
a common household risk -- whatever. The weirder the better. Then,
you create a product that everyone simply has to buy to protect
him- or herself from that risk, and finally, you write a catalog
ad for that product.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/04/third_annual_mo.html

MEDIA ART: NOT SO NEW?
"New media" were an important component of the early Doors of Perception
conferences - but can they still be called new? Maybe they never were:
Contributors to a new book called Media Art Histories trace the
evolution of digital art from thirteenth century Islamic mechanical
devices, and eighteenth century phantasmagoria, magic lanterns, and
other multimedia illusions, to 1960s Kinetic and Op Art. They also
consider the blurry divide between art products and consumer products,
and between art images and science images. Media Art Histories is
edited by Oliver Grau and published by MIT Press.
http://www.mediaarthistory.org/pub/mediaarthistories.html

BED-TIME STORIES FOR GEEKS
Tom Erickson has published a collection of 51 short, personal essays
and reflections on the story-so-far of human computer interaction.
Each text reflects on a piece of work - book, paper, demo - that's
at least 10 years old. Tom tells me he thinks of it as "bedtime
stories for HCI geeks".
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=11330

FOR OUR ROMANIAN READERS
http://www.bizcity.ro/management/john-thackara-afacerile-ar-putea-deveni-sub
iect-de-design-31790.html?&search_words[0]=thackara
or: http://tinyurl.com/43ge6p

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#224 From: "Eric Britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Wed Apr 9, 2008 2:50 pm
Subject: Doors of Perception: April 2008 		fekbritton
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Doors of Perception Report
Design steps to a one planet economy
April 2008
by John Thackara

CITY ECO LAB
We have started work in earnest on City Eco Lab, a 'nomadic market of
projects' that takes place in November in St Etienne, France. The
concept is simple: literally millions of people are active in projects
which, in different ways, are the building blocks of one planet living.
These projects deal with different aspects of daily life: food, water,
energy, mobility, school, and economy. But many of these projects are
invisible, even locally. So it can feel, depressingly, as if nothing is
happening. City Eco Lab, by making some of these projects visible to the
wider populace, starts people talking about ways they might be improved
- or about doing similar projects themselves. The live projects we are
researching from the St Etienne region (it's an hour right from Lyon as
you head south) will be shown side-by-side with best practice projects
from other parts of the world. There will also be a tool shed with
resources to help people improve their projects: tools for designing,
tools for modelling and making things, tools for monitoring local flows,
tools for finding and sharing resources.In the middle of this market
(it's in a 5,000 square metre former gun factory) will be a campfire
zone for encounters between citizens, project leaders, tool makers, and
designers. The event is hosted by the St Etienne Cite du Design; its
designers are Exyzt and Gaelle Gabillet. Yes, we do want your
suggestions for best-practice projects to show next to the St Etienne
projects: for now, a short email, a weblink and a pic will suffice:
john [at] doorsofperception [dot] com
Biennale Internationale Design 15-30 November 2008, Saint-Etienne.
http://www.citedudesign.com/2008.html

FREE DOTT 07 MANUAL OFFER
The offer of a free Dott 07 Manual is open for one more week.
The Manual explores two questions: "What could life in a sustainable
region be like?" and, "how can design can help us get there?"
Here are some sample spreads:
http://www.thackara.com/dott/dottexamples/index.html
We will send five free copies to you if you tell us which four other
people you will send a book to - someone likely to make other Dott-like
events happen. Please send the names of your nominees, plus your full
postal address, to: john [at] doorsofperception [dot] com
(and please put Manual in the header).

T-SHIRT MILES
If cheap clothing chains used only bamboo and soyabean fibres, grew
these plants 100% organically, and produced only locally, their t-shirts
woud still not be sustainable. This is because of what happens when we
get a garment home. The average piece of clothing is washed and dried 20
times in its life: 82 percent of its lifetime energy use, and over half
the solid waste, emissions to air, and water effluents it generates,
therefore occurs during laundering. I learned this in Kate Fletcher's
excellent new book Sustainable Fashion and Textiles. Read more at:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/03/from_food_miles.php

MOBILE MONEY
Imagine a cashless economy where there's no paper, no plastic, no coins
- just mobile banking. iAfrica reports that a virtual currency is is
reaching critical mass there as pre-paid airtime is traded to exchange
goods and services. At the touch of a button, value can stored as
airtime in your cellphone and used to purchase items from your local
street vendor. MTN Nigeria is among several companies supplying prepaid
top-up cards also allow people living in the UK to buy airtime for
members of family back home as a convenient alternative to sending small
amounts of money home. Fact: More than 800 million mobile phones were
sold in developing countries in the last three years.
http://business.iafrica.com/features/649690.htm

USE YOUR FEET TO REDUCE YOUR FOOTPRINT
"Walking is the Grand Central Station of life; it is the heart of
community life, the backbone of fitness, the centrepiece of community
security, the glue of transportation, the essence of learning and
creativity (from no less a source that the Peripatetics of ancient
Greece), the medium of romance, the humility of leadership, the heart of
social and economic justice, and the exchange medium of the physical
world". Chris Bradshaw, who wrote those words,is fantastically expert
on everything to do with informal transportation - walking, and most
cycling. He is also the owner of Pednet, the international mailing list
for walking advocates and those promoting pedestrian rights.
http://www.flora.org/pednet/

USER-LED INNOVATION
Darren Sharp writes from Australia to anounce a new report on user-led
innovation. It's based on in-depth interviews with leading thinkers on
user-led innovation including: Eric von Hippel (MIT), Yochai Benkler
(Harvard), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Siva Vaidhyanathan (Virginia),
John Howkins (Adelphi Charter), Michel Bauwens (P2P Alternatives)
and Mitch Kapor (Linden Lab).
http://smartinternet.com.au/ArticleDocuments/121/User_Led_Innovation_A_New_F
ramework_for_Co-creating_Business_and_Social_Value.pdf.aspx
or http://tinyurl.com/5e7ttc [both 2.4 MB pdf downloads]

SPAM SPAM
I'm getting regular spam from The Survival Food Store with offers of
long term storage food for times of emergency. Their copy editing leaves
so much to be desired that I'm reluctant to eat their products. But you
be the judge on whether or not to "stock up now and be ready when man
made or natural disaster strike" (sic).
http://www.survivalfoodstore.com/

EXPENSIVE WATER
Severe water shortages in Barcelona have prompted the Catalan government
to import drinking water by ship from Marseilles, not that far from
where I live in southern France. Barcelona's water company, Aigues de
Barcelona, is now installing port facilities in preparation. The seven
tankers employed in the water supply will have a capacity of 28,000
cubic metres each; five will be used on the route between Tarragona
and Barcelona, and two to transport water coming from the Rhone river
in southern France, from Marseille to Barcelona. The cost of these
emergency measures is estimated at 1.3 billion euros.
http://www.ansamed.it/en/spain/news/ME03.@AM19401.html

TIME TO START DIGGING?
Moving bags, moving people, moving goods: Logistics are life-critical
for us all. I was therefore alarmed to read in Supply Chain Standard
about logistics in the supermarket industry. On checking the software
descriptors of 14,000 product lines, one analyst found one or more
errors in the information lines of every single item contained.
(A standard description has 200 attributes, but industry customers
typically add up to 1,500 extra items of information on their own
account). Many supermarkets admit to at least 35 percent data inaccuracy
in their product files (says the industry's own in-house magazine).
"It's little surprise", concludes the writer, that "retailers end up
with little idea of what is in store, in transit, on order or at the
warehouse". Supermarkets only have three days supply of food in stock
at any one time... or so they think. So I don't know about you, but
I'm reminded that  this is planting season at my home in France:
I need to get back and start digging.
Supply Chain Standard January 2008 page 9 Penelope Ody

DESIGNING CONNECTED PLACES
A summer school in Pollenzo and Torino, Italy, addresses such topics
as active welfare (health and well-being) open and safe places (social
life and security) food networks (sustainable food systems) and
multi-mobility (efficient urban mobility). Tuition costs and hospitality
(food and accommodation) are covered by grants offered by the Torino
2008 World Design Capital; students will be responsible only for
travel to/from Pollenzo; plus a notional fee of Euro 100.
Deadline for applications is 15 May 2008
http://www.torinoworlddesigncapital.it/portale/en/content.php?sezioneID=445

IN THE BUBBLE 2.0
In a welcome turn of events, In The Bubble is going to be published in
Italian, French, Japanese, Portuguese, and Chinese. I've reduced the
whole thing to 100 pages, added three new chapters, and changed the
sub-title to "design steps to a one planet economy". If you know of
a publisher in a language other than those listed above, who might
also be interested, do please drop me a line.

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#223 From: Administrative User <eric.britton@...>
Date: Wed Mar 5, 2008 8:31 pm
Subject: Doors of Perception: March 2008 		fekbritton
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Doors of Perception Report
by John Thackara
March 2008

TRAVELS IN UNCANNY VALLEY
Many of us are confronted by a painful dilemma: we travel to earn money,
and to see loved ones - and yet the only way to reduce the ecological
footprint of flying is to stop flying. I took 78 flights last year,
for example, which must put me in the top one per cent of individual
polluters in the world. I have committed to fly 30 per cent less this
year, and to reduce my flights by 90 per cent within ten years after
that; but this will still leave me open to the valid charge of
hyprocrisy for years to come. So I am very seriously motivated to
explore substitutes for mobility. My search kicks off at a Pixelache
University seminar on "Traveling Without Moving" in Helsinki. My fellow
speakers are Juha Huuskonen, Andreas Zacharia (Carbon Hero), Matt Jones
from Dopplr (remotely) and Danie Peltz (remotely). Saturday 15 March,
Kiasma Theatre, Helsinki 15:00-16:30. Yes, I'm flying there; I promised
Juha I'd be there nine months back - and you're right, that's no excuse.
Read more about Uncanny Valley here:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/01/traveling_witho.php
Details of the seminar at Kiasma are here:
http://helsinki.pixelache.ac/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76&It
emid=74

DOTT 07 WRAP EVENT
Before we close the doors at Dott 07 for the last time, the final Dott
07 Explorers Club takes place in Newcastle next week. We'll have updates
from the community design projects, and the Eco Design Challenge; we'll
also debate what design schools are doing (or not) for sustainability.
News on the next Dott will also be announced. This is your last chance
to enjoy (with us) the Robert Stephenson Centre space - birthplace of
the railway age. Time 1730h-2100h. Wednesday 12 March. Spaces are
limited due to fire regulations so you need to book by email:
susan.lowthian@...
(Please put Explorers Club in the subject line).

WOULDN'T A FREE DOTT 07 MANUAL BE GREAT!
What could life in a sustainable region be like - and how can design can
help us get there? Here are some sample spreads from the Dott 07 Manual:
http://www.thackara.com/dott/dottexamples/index.html
We've got a couple of boxes of the book left over, so I will send five
free copies to the person(s) who most intrigue me with the names of four
other people you will send the books to when you get them. Hint: they
should be people likely to make other Dott-like events happen. Email
the names of your nominees, plus your full postal address, to:
john [at] doorsofperception [dot] com
(and please put Manual in the header). Subject to availability.
Single copies are still available from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/wouldnt-be-great-if-1/dp/1904335152

SOCIAL INNOVATION CAMP
What happens when you get a bunch of software developers and social
innovators together, give them a set of social problems and only 48
hours to solve them? The Young Foundation plans to find out at the
first ever Social Innovation Camp. They will select between five
and 10 projects to come to the weekend where there will be funders
who, it's hoped, will take on some projects. Ideas already submitted
include Barcode Wikipedia, a tool for sharing cycle routes in London
and an idea for how the web could help the UK prison system become
a more humane institution. Call for Ideas closes this Friday.
The camp is in London 4-6 April 2008
http://www.sicamp.org/

SHOULD DESIGN SCHOOLS BE CLOSED DOWN?
Neil McGuire asks me, in this Wodcast interview, whether I meant it
when I said that design schools should be closed down.
http://www.wodcast.org/wodcast_webarchive/wodcast_thackara.mp3

THE BIG CHILL
Shopping for a snack in central London I counted 78 metres (256 feet)
of chiller cabinets in one small central London branch of Marks and
Spencer. M&S have made a laudable commitment to make its operations
carbon neutral within five years - but the company's Plan A does not
mention refrigeration.This is a huge issue, because more than
50 percent of food in developed countries is retailed under
refrigerated conditions. Read more at:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/01/the_big_chill.php

DAM NATION
Ever since I learned about about water mapping from Georg Bertsch, and
about watershed-based planning from Chris Hardwick, at Doors 9 on Juice
last year, I've been aware that we don't think enough about water. In a
fit of guilt I bought a bunch of books about greywater harvesting; these
now sit in a dispiriting and unread pile next to my bath. Then, I found
a book called Dam Nation: Dispatches From the Water Underground which
I have read - and commend to you all.
http://www.doorsofperception.com/archives/2008/02/dam_nation_disp.php

REAL AND VIRTUAL, HYPER-LOCAL
Steven Johnson's books on the intersection of science, technology and
personal experience have influenced everything from the way political
campaigns use the Internet, to urban planning. He also co-created the
online magazine FEED, Plastic.com, and most recently the hyperlocal
media site, Outside.in. Steven will give the annual Stephan Weiss
lecture in New York in 13 March; it commemorates the life of the late
artist and sculptor, Stephan Weiss, partner of Donna Karan.
Thursday 13 March 13, 6:00pm, Theresa Lang Center,
55 West 13th Street, NYC, 2nd floor.
RSVP +1.212.229.5391 or email: maligi@...

WE THINK
Charles Leadbeater's new book is 'We Think: Mass Innovation Not Mass
Production'. It's published this week. Charlie will debate the impact
of the web with Jonathan Friedland of the Guardian at the British
Library on 26 March. You can book for that event here:
http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/whatson/events/march.html
The first three chapters can be downloaded from:
http://www.charlesleadbeater.net

ORANGE DESIGN REVOLUTION
A serious-looking book from the Said Business School at Oxford
University is called "Designing for Services: Proceedings from
the Exploratory Project on Designing for Services in Science and
Technology-based Enterprises". Not a thrilling title, it's true,
but many of the names on the contents page are Doors (and Dott)
regulars - so you may want to check it out. A degree of dedication is
required to decipher the orange pages with white text on them.
http://designingforservices.typepad.co.uk/designing_for_services/service_des
ign/index.html

SOCIAL INNOVATION EXCHANGE (SIX)
The new SIX website lists projects and case studies from
the International Social Innovation eXchange network.
http://www.socialinnovationexchange.org

BIO-INNOVATORS
The European Commisson has made bio-based products a green
priority alongside sustainable construction, recycling and
renewable technologies. In bio-based innovation we have a lot
to learn from the natural world. This workshop brings together
will bring together a number of leading bio-Innovators.
7 April, Reading, UK.
www.dexigner.com/product/news-g13732.html

COMING WITH THE FLOW
A sign when you arrive at Heathrow's Terminal 4 says "Welcome To
Britain" and you enter... a sleazy gift shop. Now I understand why:
The chief executive of BAA, which runs Heathrow, was promoted to the
job from Retail Director. He's now been been sacked - but before we
rejoice, consider this: His replacement's last job was running
a water company, Severn Trent. What will await us next time we
arrive at Heathrow - a sluice?

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#222 From: "eric.britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Mon Mar 3, 2008 8:38 pm
Subject: In measuring carbon emissions, it's easy to confuse morality and science 		fekbritton
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Big Foot

In measuring carbon emissions, it’s easy to confuse morality and science.

by Michael Specter - http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/02/25/080225fa_fact_specter?printable=true#

A little more than a year ago, Sir Terry Leahy, who is the chief executive of the Tesco chain of supermarkets, Britain’s largest retailer, delivered a speech to a group called the Forum for the Future, about the implications of climate change. Leahy had never before addressed the issue in public, but his remarks left little doubt that he recognized the magnitude of the problem. “I am not a scientist,” he said. “But I listen when the scientists say that, if we fail to mitigate climate change, the environmental, social, and economic consequences will be stark and severe. . . . There comes a moment when it is clear what you must do. I am determined that Tesco should be a leader in helping to create a low-carbon economy. In saying this, I do not underestimate the task. It is to take an economy where human comfort, activity, and growth are inextricably linked with emitting carbon and to transform it into one which can only thrive without depending on carbon. This is a monumental challenge. It requires a revolution in technology and a revolution in thinking. We are going to have to rethink the way we live and work.”

Tesco sells nearly a quarter of the groceries bought in the United Kingdom, it possesses a growing share of the markets in Asia and Europe, and late last year the chain opened its first stores in America. Few corporations could have a more visible—or forceful—impact on the lives of their customers. In his speech, Leahy, who is fifty-two, laid out a series of measures that he hoped would ignite “a revolution in green consumption.” He announced that Tesco would cut its energy use in half by 2010, drastically limit the number of products it transports by air, and place airplane symbols on the packaging of those which it does. More important, in an effort to help consumers understand the environmental impact of the choices they make every day, he told the forum that Tesco would develop a system of carbon labels and put them on each of its seventy thousand products. “Customers want us to develop ways to take complicated carbon calculations and present them simply,” he said. “We will therefore begin the search for a universally accepted and commonly understood measure of the carbon footprint of every product we sell—looking at its complete life cycle, from production through distribution to consumption. It will enable us to label all our products so that customers can compare their carbon footprint as easily as they can currently compare their price or their nutritional profile.”

Leahy’s sincerity was evident, but so was his need to placate his customers. Studies have consistently demonstrated that, given a choice, people prefer to buy products that are environmentally benign. That choice, however, is almost never easy. “A carbon label will put the power in the hands of consumers to choose how they want to be green,” Tom Delay, the head of the British government’s Carbon Trust, said. “It will empower us all to make informed choices and in turn drive a market for low-carbon products.” Tesco was not alone in telling people what it would do to address the collective burden of our greenhouse-gas emissions. Compelled by economic necessity as much as by ecological awareness, many corporations now seem to compete as vigorously to display their environmental credentials as they do to sell their products.

In Britain, Marks & Spencer has set a goal of recycling all its waste, and intends to become carbon-neutral by 2012—the equivalent, it claims, of taking a hundred thousand cars off the road every year. Kraft Foods recently began to power part of a New York plant with methane produced by adding bacteria to whey, a by-product of cream cheese. Not to be outdone, Sara Lee will deploy solar panels to run one of its bakeries, in New Mexico. Many airlines now sell “offsets,” which offer passengers a way to invest in projects that reduce CO2 emissions. In theory, that would compensate for the greenhouse gas caused by their flights. This year’s Super Bowl was fuelled by wind turbines. There are carbon-neutral investment banks, carbon-neutral real-estate brokerages, carbon-neutral taxi fleets, and carbon-neutral dental practices. Detroit, arguably America’s most vivid symbol of environmental excess, has also staked its claim. (“Our designers know green is the new black,” Ford declares on its home page. General Motors makes available hundreds of green pictures, green stories, and green videos to anyone who wants them.)

Possessing an excessive carbon footprint is rapidly becoming the modern equivalent of wearing a scarlet letter. Because neither the goals nor acceptable emissions limits are clear, however, morality is often mistaken for science. A recent article in New Scientist suggested that the biggest problem arising from the epidemic of obesity is the additional carbon burden that fat people—who tend to eat a lot of meat and travel mostly in cars—place on the environment. Australia briefly debated imposing a carbon tax on families with more than two children; the environmental benefits of abortion have been discussed widely (and simplistically). Bishops of the Church of England have just launched a “carbon fast,” suggesting that during Lent parishioners, rather than giving up chocolate, forgo carbon. (Britons generate an average of a little less than ten tons of carbon per person each year; in the United States, the number is about twice that.)

Greenhouse-gas emissions have risen rapidly in the past two centuries, and levels today are higher than at any time in at least the past six hundred and fifty thousand years. In 1995, each of the six billion people on earth was responsible, on average, for one ton of carbon emissions. Oceans and forests can absorb about half that amount. Although specific estimates vary, scientists and policy officials increasingly agree that allowing emissions to continue at the current rate would induce dramatic changes in the global climate system. To avoid the most catastrophic effects of those changes, we will have to hold emissions steady in the next decade, then reduce them by at least sixty to eighty per cent by the middle of the century. (A delay of just ten years in stopping the increase would require double the reductions.) Yet, even if all carbon emissions stopped today, the earth would continue to warm for at least another century. Facts like these have transformed carbon dioxide into a strange but powerful new currency, difficult to evaluate yet impossible to ignore.

A person’s carbon footprint is simply a measure of his contribution to global warming. (CO2 is the best known of the gases that trap heat in the atmosphere, but others—including water vapor, methane, and nitrous oxide—also play a role.) Virtually every human activity—from watching television to buying a quart of milk—has some carbon cost associated with it. We all consume electricity generated by burning fossil fuels; most people rely on petroleum for transportation and heat. Emissions from those activities are not hard to quantify. Watching a plasma television for three hours every day contributes two hundred and fifty kilograms of carbon to the atmosphere each year; an LCD television is responsible for less than half that number. Yet the calculations required to assess the full environmental impact of how we live can be dazzlingly complex. To sum them up on a label will not be easy. Should the carbon label on a jar of peanut butter include the emissions caused by the fertilizer, calcium, and potassium applied to the original crop of peanuts? What about the energy used to boil the peanuts once they have been harvested, or to mold the jar and print the labels? Seen this way, carbon costs multiply rapidly. A few months ago, scientists at the Stockholm Environment Institute reported that the carbon footprint of Christmas—including food, travel, lighting, and gifts—was six hundred and fifty kilograms per person. That is as much, they estimated, as the weight of “one thousand Christmas puddings” for every resident of England.

As a source of global warming, the food we eat—and how we eat it—is no more significant than the way we make clothes or travel or heat our homes and offices. It certainly doesn’t compare to the impact made by tens of thousands of factories scattered throughout the world. Yet food carries enormous symbolic power, so the concept of “food miles”—the distance a product travels from the farm to your home—is often used as a kind of shorthand to talk about climate change in general. “We have to remember our goal: reduce emissions of greenhouse gases,” John Murlis told me not long ago when we met in London. “That should be the world’s biggest priority.” Murlis is the chief scientific adviser to the Carbon Neutral Company, which helps corporations adopt policies to reduce their carbon footprint as well as those of the products they sell. He has also served as the director of strategy and chief scientist for Britain’s Environment Agency. Murlis worries that in our collective rush to make choices that display personal virtue we may be losing sight of the larger problem. “Would a carbon label on every product help us?” he asked. “I wonder. You can feel very good about the organic potatoes you buy from a farm near your home, but half the emissions—and half the footprint—from those potatoes could come from the energy you use to cook them. If you leave the lid off, boil them at a high heat, and then mash your potatoes, from a carbon standpoint you might as well drive to McDonald’s and spend your money buying an order of French fries.”

One particularly gray morning last December, I visited a Tesco store on Warwick Way, in the Pimlico section of London. Several food companies have promised to label their products with the amount of carbon-dioxide emissions associated with making and transporting them. Last spring, Walkers crisps (potato chips) became the first of them to reach British stores, and they are still the only product on the shelves there with a carbon label. I walked over to the crisp aisle, where a young couple had just tossed three bags of Walkers Prawn Cocktail crisps into their shopping cart. The man was wearing fashionable jeans and sneakers without laces. His wife was toting a huge Armani Exchange bag on one arm and dragging their four-year-old daughter with the other. I asked if they paid attention to labels. “Of course,” the man said, looking a bit insulted. He was aware that Walkers had placed a carbon label on the back of its crisp packages; he thought it was a good idea. He just wasn’t sure what to make of the information.

Few people are. In order to develop the label for Walkers, researchers had to calculate the amount of energy required to plant seeds for the ingredients (sunflower oil and potatoes), as well as to make the fertilizers and pesticides used on those potatoes. Next, they factored in the energy required for diesel tractors to collect the potatoes, then the effects of chopping, cleaning, storing, and bagging them. The packaging and printing processes also emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, as does the petroleum used to deliver those crisps to stores. Finally, the research team assessed the impact of throwing the empty bags in the trash, collecting the garbage in a truck, driving to a landfill, and burying them. In the end, the researchers—from the Carbon Trust—found that seventy-five grams of greenhouse gases are expended in the production of every individual-size bag of potato chips.

“Crisps are easy,” Murlis had told me. “They have only one important ingredient, and the potatoes are often harvested near the factory.” We were sitting in a deserted hotel lounge in Central London, and Murlis stirred his tea slowly, then frowned. “Let’s just assume every mother cares about the environment—what then?” he asked. “Should the carbon content matter more to her than the fat content or the calories in the products she buys?”

I put that question to the next shopper who walked by, Chantal Levi, a Frenchwoman who has lived in London for thirty-two years. I watched her grab a large bag of Doritos and then, shaking her head, return it to the shelf. “Too many carbohydrates,” she said. “I try to watch that, but between the carbs and the fat and the protein it can get to be a bit complicated. I try to buy locally grown, organic food,” she continued. “It tastes better, and it’s far less harmful to the environment.” I asked if she was willing to pay more for products that carried carbon labels. “Of course,” she said. “I care about that. I don’t want my food flown across the world when I can get it close to home. What a waste.”

It is a logical and widely held assumption that the ecological impacts of transporting food—particularly on airplanes over great distances—are far more significant than if that food were grown locally. There are countless books, articles, Web sites, and organizations that promote the idea. There is even a “100-Mile Diet,” which encourages participants to think about “local eating for global change.” Eating locally produced food has become such a phenomenon, in fact, that the word “locavore” was just named the 2007 word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary.

Paying attention to the emissions associated with what we eat makes obvious sense. It is certainly hard to justify importing bottled water from France, Finland, or Fiji to a place like New York, which has perhaps the cleanest tap water of any major American city. Yet, according to one recent study, factories throughout the world are burning eighteen million barrels of oil and consuming forty-one billion gallons of fresh water every day, solely to make bottled water that most people in the U.S. don’t need.

“Have a quick rifle through your cupboards and fridge and jot down a note of the countries of origin for each food product,” Mark Lynas wrote in his popular handbook “Carbon Counter,” published last year by HarperCollins. “The further the distance it has travelled, the bigger the carbon penalty. Each glass of orange juice, for example, contains the equivalent of two glasses of petrol once the transport costs are included. Worse still are highly perishable fresh foods that have been flown in from far away—green beans from Kenya or lettuce from the U.S. They may be worth several times their weight in jet fuel once the transport costs are factored in.”

Agricultural researchers at the University of Iowa have reported that the food miles attached to items that one buys in a grocery store are twenty-seven times higher than those for goods bought from local sources. American produce travels an average of nearly fifteen hundred miles before we eat it. Roughly forty per cent of our fruit comes from overseas and, even though broccoli is a vigorous plant grown throughout the country, the broccoli we buy in a supermarket is likely to have been shipped eighteen hundred miles in a refrigerated truck. Although there are vast herds of cattle in the U.S., we import ten per cent of our red meat, often from as far away as Australia or New Zealand.

In his speech last year, Sir Terry Leahy promised to limit to less than one per cent the products that Tesco imports by air. In the United States, many similar efforts are under way. Yet the relationship between food miles and their carbon footprint is not nearly as clear as it might seem. That is often true even when the environmental impact of shipping goods by air is taken into consideration. “People should stop talking about food miles,” Adrian Williams told me. “It’s a foolish concept: provincial, damaging, and simplistic.” Williams is an agricultural researcher in the Natural Resources Department of Cranfield University, in England. He has been commissioned by the British government to analyze the relative environmental impacts of a number of foods. “The idea that a product travels a certain distance and is therefore worse than one you raised nearby—well, it’s just idiotic,” he said. “It doesn’t take into consideration the land use, the type of transportation, the weather, or even the season. Potatoes you buy in winter, of course, have a far higher environmental ticket than if you were to buy them in August.” Williams pointed out that when people talk about global warming they usually speak only about carbon dioxide. Making milk or meat contributes less CO2 to the atmosphere than building a house or making a washing machine. But the animals produce methane and nitrous oxide, and those are greenhouse gases, too. “This is not an equation like the number of calories or even the cost of a product,’’ he said. “There is no one number that works.”

Many factors influence the carbon footprint of a product: water use, cultivation and harvesting methods, quantity and type of fertilizer, even the type of fuel used to make the package. Sea-freight emissions are less than a sixtieth of those associated with airplanes, and you don’t have to build highways to berth a ship. Last year, a study of the carbon cost of the global wine trade found that it is actually more “green” for New Yorkers to drink wine from Bordeaux, which is shipped by sea, than wine from California, sent by truck. That is largely because shipping wine is mostly shipping glass. The study found that “the efficiencies of shipping drive a ‘green line’ all the way to Columbus, Ohio, the point where a wine from Bordeaux and Napa has the same carbon intensity.”

The environmental burden imposed by importing apples from New Zealand to Northern Europe or New York can be lower than if the apples were raised fifty miles away. “In New Zealand, they have more sunshine than in the U.K., which helps productivity,” Williams explained. That means the yield of New Zealand apples far exceeds the yield of those grown in northern climates, so the energy required for farmers to grow the crop is correspondingly lower. It also helps that the electricity in New Zealand is mostly generated by renewable sources, none of which emit large amounts of CO2. Researchers at Lincoln University, in Christchurch, found that lamb raised in New Zealand and shipped eleven thousand miles by boat to England produced six hundred and eighty-eight kilograms of carbon-dioxide emissions per ton, about a fourth the amount produced by British lamb. In part, that is because pastures in New Zealand need far less fertilizer than most grazing land in Britain (or in many parts of the United States). Similarly, importing beans from Uganda or Kenya—where the farms are small, tractor use is limited, and the fertilizer is almost always manure—tends to be more efficient than growing beans in Europe, with its reliance on energy-dependent irrigation systems.

Williams and his colleagues recently completed a study that examined the environmental costs of buying roses shipped to England from Holland and of those exported (and sent by air) from Kenya. In each case, the team made a complete life-cycle analysis of twelve thousand rose stems for sale in February—in which all the variables, from seeds to store, were taken into consideration. They even multiplied the CO2 emissions for the air-freighted Kenyan roses by a factor of nearly three, to account for the increased effect of burning fuel at a high altitude. Nonetheless, the carbon footprint of the roses from Holland—which are almost always grown in a heated greenhouse—was six times the footprint of those shipped from Kenya. Even Williams was surprised by the magnitude of the difference. “Everyone always wants to make ethical choices about the food they eat and the things they buy,” he told me. “And they should. It’s just that what seems obvious often is not. And we need to make sure people understand that before they make decisions on how they ought to live.”

How do we alter human behavior significantly enough to limit global warming? Personal choices, no matter how virtuous, cannot do enough. It will also take laws and money. For decades, American utilities built tall smokestacks, hoping to keep the pollutants they emitted away from people who lived nearby. As emissions are forced into the atmosphere, however, they react with water molecules and then are often blown great distances by prevailing winds, which in the United States tend to move from west to east. Those emissions—principally sulfur dioxide produced by coal-burning power plants—are the primary source of acid rain, and by the nineteen-seventies it had become clear that they were causing grave damage to the environment, and to the health of many Americans. Adirondack Park, in upstate New York, suffered more than anywhere else: hundreds of streams, ponds, and lakes there became so acidic that they could no longer support plant life or fish. Members of Congress tried repeatedly to introduce legislation to reduce sulfur-dioxide levels, but the Reagan Administration (as well as many elected officials, both Democratic and Republican, from regions where sulfur-rich coal is mined) opposed any controls, fearing that they would harm the economy. When the cost of polluting is negligible, so are the incentives to reducing emissions.

“We had a complete disaster on our hands,” Richard Sandor told me recently, when I met with him at his office at the Chicago Climate Exchange. Sandor, a dapper sixty-six-year-old man in a tan cable-knit cardigan and round, horn-rimmed glasses, is the exchange’s chairman and C.E.O. In most respects, the exchange operates like any other market. Instead of pork-belly futures or gold, however, CCX members buy and sell the right to pollute. Each makes a voluntary (but legally binding) commitment to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases—including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide—and hydrofluorocarbons. Four hundred corporations now belong to the exchange, including a growing percentage of America’s largest manufacturers. The members agree to reduce their emissions by a certain amount every year, a system commonly known as cap and trade. A baseline target, or cap, is established, and companies whose emissions fall below that cap receive allowances, which they can sell (or save to use later). Companies whose emissions exceed the limit are essentially fined and forced to buy credits to compensate for their excess.

Sandor led me to the “trading floor,” which, like most others these days, is a virtual market populated solely by computers. “John, can you get the carbon futures up on the big screen?” Sandor yelled to one of his colleagues. Suddenly, a string of blue numbers slid across the monitor. “There is our 2008 price,” Sandor said. Somebody had just bid two dollars and fifteen cents per ton for carbon futures.

A former Berkeley economics professor and chief economist at the Chicago Board of Trade, Sandor is known as the “father of financial futures.” In the nineteen-seventies, he devised a market in interest rates which, when they started to fluctuate, turned into an immense source of previously untapped wealth. His office is just north of the Board of Trade, where he served for two years as vice-chairman. The walls are filled with interest-rate arcana and mortgage memorabilia; his desk is surrounded by monitors that permit him to track everything from catastrophic-risk portfolios to the price of pollution.

Sandor invents markets to create value for investors where none existed before. He sees himself as “a guy from the sixties”—but one who believes that free markets can make inequality disappear. So, he wondered, why not offer people the right to buy and sell shares in the value of reduced emissions? “At first, people laughed when I suggested the whole future idea,” he said. “They didn’t see the point of hedging on something like interest rates, and when it came to pollution rights many people just thought it was wrong to take a business approach to environmental protection.”

For Sandor, personal factors like food choices and driving habits are small facets of a far larger issue: making pollution so costly that our only rational choice is to stop. When he started, though, the idea behind a sulfur-dioxide-emissions market was radical. It also seemed distasteful; opponents argued that codifying the right to pollute would only remove the stigma from an unacceptable activity. You can’t trade something unless you own it; to grant a company the right to trade in emissions is also to give it a property right over the atmosphere. (This effect was noted most prominently when the Reagan Administration deregulated airport landing rights, in 1986. Airlines that already owned the rights to land got to keep those rights, while others had to buy slots at auction; in many cases, that meant that the country’s richest airlines were presented with gifts worth millions of dollars.)

Sandor acknowledges the potential for abuse, but he remains convinced that emissions will never fall unless there is a price tag attached to them. “You are really faced with a couple of possibilities when you want to control something,’’ he told me. “You can say, ‘Hey, we will allow you to use only x amount of these pollutants.’ That is the command approach. Or you can make a market.”

In the late nineteen-eighties, Sandor was asked by an Ohio public-interest group if he thought it would be possible to turn air into a commodity. He wrote an essay advocating the creation of an exchange for sulfur-dioxide emissions. The idea attracted a surprising number of environmentalists, because it called for large and specific reductions; conservatives who usually oppose regulation approved of the market-driven solution.

When Congress passed the Clean Air Act, in 1990, the law included a section that mandated annual acid-rain reductions of ten million tons below 1980 levels. Each large smokestack was fitted with a device to measure sulfur-dioxide emissions. As a way to help meet the goals, the act enabled the creation of the market. “Industry lobbyists said it would cost ten billion dollars in electricity increases a year. It cost one billion,” Sandor told me. It soon became less expensive to reduce emissions than it was to pollute. Consequently, companies throughout the country suddenly discovered the value of investing millions of dollars in scrubbers, which capture and sequester sulfur dioxide before it can reach the atmosphere.

Sandor still enjoys describing his first sulfur trade. Representatives of a small Midwestern town were seeking a loan to build a scrubber. “They were prepared to borrow millions of dollars and leverage the city to do it,” he told me. “We said, ‘We have a better idea.’ ” Sandor arranged to have the scrubber installed with no initial cost, and the apparatus helped the city fall rapidly below its required emissions cap. He then calculated the price of thirty years’ worth of that municipality’s SO2 emissions and helped arrange a loan for the town. “We gave it to them at a significantly lower rate than any bank would have done,” Sandor said. “It was a fifty-million-dollar deal and they saved seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year—and never had to pay a balloon mortgage at the end. I mention this because trading that way not only allows you to comply with the law, but it provides creative financing tools to help structure the way investments are made. It encourages people to comply at lower costs, because then they will make money.”

The program has been an undisputed success. Medical and environmental savings associated with reduced levels of lung disease and other conditions have been enormous—more than a hundred billion dollars a year, according to the E.P.A. “When is the last time you heard somebody even talking about acid rain?” Sandor asked. “It was going to ravage the world. Now it is not even mentioned in the popular press. We have reduced emissions from eighteen million tons to nine million, and we are going to halve it again by 2010. That is as good a social policy as you are ever likely to see.”

No effort to control greenhouse-gas emissions or to lower the carbon footprint—of an individual, a nation, or even the planet—can succeed unless those emissions are priced properly. There are several ways to do that: they can be taxed heavily, like cigarettes, or regulated, which is the way many countries have established mileage-per-gallon standards for automobiles. Cap and trade is another major approach—although CO2 emissions are a far more significant problem for the world than those which cause acid rain, and any genuine solution will have to be global.

Higher prices make conservation appealing—and help spark investment in clean technologies. When it costs money to use carbon, people begin to seek profits from selling fuel-efficient products like long-lasting light bulbs, appliances that save energy, hybrid cars, even factories powered by the sun. One need only look at the passage of the Clean Water Act, in 1972, to see that a strategy that combines legal limits with realistic pricing can succeed. Water had always essentially been free in America, and when something is free people don’t value it. The act established penalties that made it expensive for factories to continue to pollute water. Industry responded at once, and today the United States (and much of the developed world) manufactures more products with less water than it did fifty years ago. Still, whether you buy a plane ticket, an overcoat, a Happy Meal, a bottle of wine imported from Argentina, or a gallon of gasoline, the value of the carbon used to make those products is not reflected by their prices.

In 2006, Sir Nicholas Stern, a former chief economist of the World Bank, who is now the head of Britain’s Economic Service, issued a comprehensive analysis of the implications of global warming, in which he famously referred to climate change as “the greatest market failure the world has ever seen.” Sir Nicholas suggested that the carbon emissions embedded in almost every product ought, if priced realistically, to cost about eighty dollars a ton.

Trading schemes have many opponents, some of whom suggest that attaching an acceptable price to carbon will open the door to a new form of colonialism. After all, since 1850, North America and Europe have accounted for seventy per cent of all greenhouse-gas emissions, a trend that is not improving. Stephen Pacala, the director of Princeton University’s Environmental Institute, recently estimated that half of the world’s carbon-dioxide emissions come from just seven hundred million people, about ten per cent of the population.

If prices were the same for everyone, however, rich countries could adapt more easily than countries in the developing world. “This market driven mechanism subjects the planet’s atmosphere to the legal emission of greenhouse gases,” the anthropologist Heidi Bachram has written. “The arrangement parcels up the atmosphere and establishes the routinized buying and selling of ‘permits to pollute’ as though they were like any other international commodity.” She and others have concluded that such an approach would be a recipe for social injustice.

No one I spoke to for this story believes that climate change can be successfully addressed solely by creating a market. Most agreed that many approaches—legal, technological, and financial—will be necessary to lower our carbon emissions by at least sixty per cent over the next fifty years. “We will have to do it all and more,” Simon Thomas told me. He is the chief executive officer of Trucost, a consulting firm that helps gauge the full burden of greenhouse-gas emissions and advises clients on how to address them. Thomas takes a utilitarian approach to the problem, attempting to convince corporations, pension funds, and other investors that the price of continuing to ignore the impact of greenhouse-gas emissions will soon greatly exceed the cost of reducing them.

Thomas thinks that people finally are beginning to get the message. Apple computers certainly has. Two years ago, Greenpeace began a “Green my Apple” campaign, attacking the company for its “iWaste.” Then, last spring, not long before Apple launched the iPhone, Greenpeace issued a guide to electronics which ranked major corporations on their tracking, reporting, and reduction of toxic chemicals and electronic waste. Apple came in last. The group’s findings were widely reported, and stockholders took notice. (A company that sells itself as one of America’s most innovative brands cannot afford to ignore the environmental consequences of its manufacturing processes.) Within a month, Steve Jobs, the company’s C.E.O., posted a letter on the Apple Web site promising a “greener Apple.” He committed the company to ending the use of arsenic and mercury in monitors and said that the company would shift rapidly to more environmentally friendly LCD displays.

“The success of approaches such as ours relies on the idea that even if polluters are not paying properly now there is some reasonable prospect that they will have to pay in the future,’’ Thomas told me. “If that is true, then we know the likely costs and they are of significant value. If polluters never have to pay, then our approach will fail.

“You have to make it happen, though,” he went on. “And that is the job of government. It has to set a level playing field so that a market economy can deliver what it’s capable of delivering.” Thomas, a former investment banker, started Trucost nearly a decade ago. He mentioned the free-market economist Friedrich von Hayek, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1974. “There is a remarkable essay in which he shows how an explosion, say, in a South American tin mine could work its way through the global supply chain to increase the price of canned goods in Europe,” Thomas said. I wondered what the price of tin could have to do with the cost of global warming.

“It is very much to the point,” Thomas answered. “Tin became more expensive and the market responded. In London, people bought fewer canned goods. The information travelled all the way from that mine across the world without any person in that supply chain even knowing the reasons for the increase. But there was less tin available and the market responded as you would have hoped it would.” To Thomas, the message was simple: “If something is priced accurately, its value will soon be reflected in every area of the economy.”

Without legislation, it is hard to imagine that a pricing plan could succeed. (The next Administration is far more likely to act than the Bush Administration has been. The best-known climate-change bill now before Congress, which would mandate capping carbon limits, was written by Senator Joseph Lieberman. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain are co-sponsors. Most industrial leaders, whatever their ideological reservations, would prefer a national scheme to a system of rules that vary from state to state.) Even at today’s anemic rates, however, the market has begun to function. “We have a price of carbon that ranges from two to five dollars a ton,” Sandor told me. “And everyone says that is too cheap. Of course, they are right. But it’s not too cheap for people to make money.

“I got a call from a scientist a while ago”—Isaac Berzin, a researcher at M.I.T. “He said, ‘Richard, I have a process where I can put an algae farm next to a power plant. I throw some algae in and it becomes a super photosynthesis machine and sucks the carbon dioxide out of the air like a sponge. Then I gather the algae, dry it out, and use it as renewable energy.” Berzin asked Sandor whether, if he was able to take fifty million tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in this way, he could make a hundred million dollars.

“I said, ‘Sure,’ ” Sandor recalled, laughing. “Two dollars a ton, why not? So he sends me a term paper. Not a prospectus, even.” Sandor was skeptical, but it didn’t take Berzin long to raise twenty million dollars from investors, and he is now working with the Arizona Public Service utility to turn the algae into fuel. Sandor shook his head. “This is at two dollars a ton,” he said. “The lesson is important: price stimulates inventive activity. Even if you think the price is too low or ridiculous. Carbon has to be rationed, like water and clean air. But I absolutely promise that if you design a law and a trading scheme properly you are going to find everyone from professors at M.I.T. to the guys in Silicon Valley coming out of the woodwork. That is what we need, and we need it now.”

In 1977, Jimmy Carter told the American people that they would have to balance the nation’s demand for energy with its “rapidly shrinking resources” or the result “may be a national catastrophe.” It was a problem, the President said, “that we will not solve in the next few years, and it is likely to get progressively worse through the rest of this century. We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent world for our children and grandchildren.” Carter referred to the difficult effort as the “moral equivalent of war,” a phrase that was widely ridiculed (along with Carter himself, who wore a cardigan while delivering his speech, to underscore the need to turn down the thermostat).

Carter was prescient. We are going to have to reduce our carbon footprint rapidly, and we can do that only by limiting the amount of fossil fuels released into the atmosphere. But what is the most effective—and least painful—way to achieve that goal? Each time we drive a car, use electricity generated by a coal-fired plant, or heat our homes with gas or oil, carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases escape into the air. We can use longer-lasting light bulbs, lower the thermostat (and the air-conditioning), drive less, and buy more fuel-efficient cars. That will help, and so will switching to cleaner sources of energy. Flying has also emerged as a major carbon don’t—with some reason, since airplanes at high altitudes release at least ten times as many greenhouse gases per mile as trains do. Yet neither transportation—which accounts for fifteen per cent of greenhouse gases—nor industrial activity (another fifteen per cent) presents the most efficient way to shrink the carbon footprint of the globe.

Just two countries—Indonesia and Brazil—account for about ten per cent of the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. Neither possesses the type of heavy industry that can be found in the West, or for that matter in Russia or India. Still, only the United States and China are responsible for greater levels of emissions. That is because tropical forests in Indonesia and Brazil are disappearing with incredible speed. “It’s really very simple,” John O. Niles told me. Niles, the chief science and policy officer for the environmental group Carbon Conservation, argues that spending five billion dollars a year to prevent deforestation in countries like Indonesia would be one of the best investments the world could ever make. “The value of that land is seen as consisting only of the value of its lumber,” he said. “A logging company comes along and offers to strip the forest to make some trivial wooden product, or a palm-oil plantation. The governments in these places have no cash. They are sitting on this resource that is doing nothing for their economy. So when a guy says, ‘I will give you a few hundred dollars if you let me cut down these trees,’ it’s not easy to turn your nose up at that. Those are dollars people can spend on schools and hospitals.”

The ecological impact of decisions like that are devastating. Decaying trees contribute greatly to increases in the levels of greenhouse gases. Plant life absorbs CO2. But when forests disappear, the earth loses one of its two essential carbon sponges (the other is the ocean). The results are visible even from space. Satellite photographs taken over Indonesia and Brazil show thick plumes of smoke rising from the forest. According to the latest figures, deforestation pushes nearly six billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. That amounts to thirty million acres—an area half the size of the United Kingdom—chopped down each year. Put another way, according to one recent calculation, during the next twenty-four hours the effect of losing forests in Brazil and Indonesia will be the same as if eight million people boarded airplanes at Heathrow Airport and flew en masse to New York.

“This is the greatest remaining opportunity we have to help address global warming,” Niles told me. “It’s a no-brainer. People are paying money to go in and destroy those forests. We just have to pay more to prevent that from happening.” Niles’s group has proposed a trade: “If you save your forest and we can independently audit and verify it, we will calculate the emissions you have saved and pay you for that.” The easiest way to finance such a plan, he is convinced, would be to use carbon-trading allowances. Anything that prevents carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere would have value that could be quantified and traded. Since undisturbed farmland has the same effect as not emitting carbon dioxide at all, people could create allowances by leaving their forests untouched or by planting new trees. (Rain forests are essential to planetary vitality in other ways, too, of course. More than a third of all terrestrial species live in forest canopies. Rising levels of CO2 there alter the way that forests function, threatening to increase flooding and droughts and epidemics of plant disease. Elevated CO2 in the forest atmosphere also reduces the quality of the wood in the trees, and that in turn has an impact on the reproduction of flowers, as well as that of birds, bees, and anything else that relies on that ecosystem.)

From both a political and an economic perspective, it would be easier and cheaper to reduce the rate of deforestation than to cut back significantly on air travel. It would also have a far greater impact on climate change and on social welfare in the developing world. Possessing rights to carbon would grant new power to farmers who, for the first time, would be paid to preserve their forests rather than destroy them. Unfortunately, such plans are seen by many people as morally unattractive. “The whole issue is tied up with the misconceived notion of ‘carbon colonialism,’ ” Niles told me. “Some activists do not want the Third World to have to alter their behavior, because the problem was largely caused by us in the West.”

Environmental organizations like Carbon Trade Watch say that reducing our carbon footprint will require restructuring our lives, and that before we in the West start urging the developing world to do that we ought to make some sacrifices; anything else would be the modern equivalent of the medieval practice of buying indulgences as a way of expiating one’s sins. “You have to realize that, in the end, people are trying to buy their way out of bad behavior,” Tony Juniper, the director of Friends of the Earth, told me. “Are we really a society that wants to pay rich people not to fly on private jets or countries not to cut down their trees? Is that what, ultimately, is morally right and equitable?”

Sandor dismisses the question. “Frankly, this debate just makes me want to scream,” he told me. “The clock is moving. They are slashing and burning and cutting the forests of the world. It may be a quarter of global warming and we can get the rate to two per cent simply by inventing a preservation credit and making that forest have value in other ways. Who loses when we do that?

“People tell me, well, these are bad guys, and corporate guys who just want to buy the right to pollute are bad, too, and we should not be giving them incentives to stop. But we need to address the problems that exist, not drown in fear or lose ourselves in morality. Behavior changes when you offer incentives. If you want to punish people for being bad corporate citizens, you should go to your local church or synagogue and tell God to punish them. Because that is not our problem. Our problem is global warming, and my job is to reduce greenhouse gases at the lowest possible cost. I say solve the problem and deal with the bad guys somewhere else.”

The Tesco corporate headquarters are spread across two low-slung, featureless buildings in an unusually dismal part of Hertfordshire, about half an hour north of London. Having inspired many of the discussions about the meaning of our carbon footprint, the company has been criticized by those who question the emphasis on food. As Adrian Williams, the Cranfield agricultural researcher, put it, the company has been “a little bit shocked” by the discovery that its original goal, to label everything, was naïve.

The process has indeed been arduous. Tesco has undertaken a vast—and at times lonely—attempt to think about global warming in an entirely new way, and the company shows little sign of pulling back. “We are spending more than a hundred million pounds a year trying to increase our energy efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions,” Katherine Symonds told me. A charismatic woman with an abiding belief that global warming can be addressed rationally, Symonds is the corporation’s climate-change manager. “We are trying to find a way to help consumers make choices they really want to make—choices that mean something to them. This is not all about food. We just happen to be in the food business.

“One of our real responsibilities is to say to our customers, ‘The most important thing you can do to effect climate change is insulate your house properly,’ ” she went on. “ ‘Next would be to get double-glazed windows,’ ” which prevent heat from escaping in the winter. “Third, everyone should get a new boiler.’ We are trying to put this into context, not to say, ‘Buy English potatoes.’ ” Consumers are unlikely to stop shopping. Economies won’t stand still, either; those of China and India are expanding so speedily that people often ask whether sacrifices anywhere else can even matter.

“We have to be careful not to rush from denial to despair,” John Elkington told me, when I visited him not long ago at his offices at SustainAbility, the London-based environmental consulting firm he helped found more than two decades ago. He believes there is a danger that people will feel engulfed by the challenge, and ultimately helpless to address it.

“We are in an era of creative destruction,” he said. A thin, easygoing man with the look of an Oxford don, Elkington has long been one of the most articulate of those who seek to marry economic prosperity with environmental protection. “What happens when you go into one of these periods is that before you get to the point of reconstruction things have to fall apart. Detroit will fall apart. I think Ford”—a company that Elkington has advised for years—“will fall apart. They have just made too many bets on the wrong things. A bunch of the institutions that we rely on currently will, to some degree, decompose. I believe that much of what we count as democratic politics today will fall apart, because we are simply not going to be able to deal with the scale of change that we are about to face. It will profoundly disable much of the current political class.”

He sat back and smiled softly. He didn’t look worried. “I wrote my first report on climate change in 1978, for Herman Kahn, at the Hudson Institute,” he explained. “He did not at all like what I was saying, and he told me, ‘The trouble with you environmentalists is that you see a problem coming and you slam your foot on the brakes and try and steer away from the chasm. The problem is that it often doesn’t work. Maybe the thing to do is jam your foot on the pedal and see if you can just jump across.’ At the time, I thought he was crazy, but as I get older I realize what he was talking about. The whole green movement in technology is in that space. It is an attempt to jump across the chasm.” ♦


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#221 From: <martin.strid@...>
Date: Fri Feb 29, 2008 10:08 am
Subject: (No subject) 		eurotics
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"...to expand the analysis to cover what I consider to be the even more pressing nexus between the Nano, productivity improvement, and world oil consumption"
La artikolo pravigas tion kion mi respondis sube.  
 
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Från: the-commons@yahoogroups.com [mailto:the-commons@yahoogroups.com] För Strid Martin Sted
Skickat: den 26 februari 2008 15:34
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Ämne: SV: [The Commons] Critique on Amory Lovins / RMI



I defy you to show me one instance where a more resource efficient technology has led to less use of resources and not to increased use of technology.

Amike vin salutas

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Martin Strid

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´´·.¸¸.·´¯` ·.¸¸.·´´·.¸¸.·´¯` ·.¸
http://2-2.se


Från: the-commons@yahoogroups.com [mailto:the-commons@yahoogroups.com] För eric.britton
Skickat: den 25 februari 2008 18:39
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Kopia: BE.Buscher@FSW.VU.NL
Ämne: [The Commons] Critique on Amory Lovins / RMI

Der Colleagues,

This commentary which just slipped in over the transom is something that I share with you not to demean the intelligence or good intentions of Amory Lovins as a person or thinker, but because the rather vigorous author -- to my mind -- puts his finger right on a very important weak point in the present sustainability debate. Other than that let me give the stage to the author for his trenchant commentary.

Eric Britton

From: Bram Büscher [mailto:BE.Buscher@FSW.VU.NL]

Sent: 25 February 2008 03:23

To: EANTH-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

Subject: [Spam] Critique on Amory Lovins / RMI

 

Dear All,

I was at the Berlin conference of the Human Dimensions of Global Change yesterday and attended a (video conference) presentation by dr. Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain institute. I have seen few people so bluntly reduce all environmental problems (and the politics around it) to technological fetishes (apparently accessible to all?).

He also advocated another book of his and colleagues entitled 'Natural Capitalism' that again combines all the good and the ugly into a 'profitable' 'win-win' mix for all of humankind and nature... On the website of the book (natcap.org) it says that they want to publish cheers and jeers, but that 'so far, the book has received almost pure praise and that frankly, this is a bit embarrassing'.

Now, personally, I cannot imagine this, and wonder whether anybody on the list has some suggestions for critical literature/articles. Basically, I'm looking for some more practical armour in the face of people who so optimistically go about selling such grand illusions.

Thanks,

Bram


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#220 From: "Kevin Gaudette" <chinamoviemagic@...>
Date: Fri Feb 29, 2008 5:16 pm
Subject: Re: [The Commons] Critique on Amory Lovins / RMI 		chinamoviemagic@...
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Hi Eric,

Here's another perspective, dealing specifically with the issue:

In terms of the despiritualization of the universe,
the mental process works so that it becomes virtuous
to destroy the planet.
Terms like progress and development are used as cover words here,
the way victory and freedom are used to discover butchery
in the dehumanization process...

Most important here, perhaps, is that
the Europeans  feel no sense of loss in all this.
After all, their philosophers have despiritualized reality...

All European theory, Marxism included,
has conspired to defy the natural order of things.
Mother Earth has been abused,
the powers have been abused,
and this cannot go on forever.

No theory can alter that simple fact.

Mother Earth will retaliate,
the whole environment will retaliate,
and the abusers will be eliminated.

Things come full circle,
back to where they started.
That's revolution.

And that's a prophecy of my people,
of the Hopi people
and of other peoples.

Where White Men Fear to Tread
Russell Means
(voice of the Father, in Pocahantas)

Kevin Gaudette
Hangzhou
www.chinatefl.com







Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (4)
#219 From: "Lee Schipper" <SCHIPPER@...>
Date: Tue Feb 26, 2008 10:25 pm
Subject: RE: [The Commons] Critique on Amory Lovins / RMI 		SCHIPPER@...
Send Email Send Email
  
Less of a resource THAN otherwise, easy to show.
Less absolutely..harder to show..wait, let me look for my buggy-whip.

In other words, the "less" has to be framed as "less than otherwise". And the
"led to" martin mentions implies causality, as if more efficiency CAUSED more
use than otherwise. There are examples in both directions. Insulate fairly
modern homes and the occupants use less fuel for heating THAN OTHEWRISE,.
Insulate poorly insulated homes of low income people and the occupants may use
MORE heat than before their houses were insulated (Scott 1980; Scott and Capper
1982) because of very complex income, price, and utility effects.

For transport, well, ah um its more complex when time becomes more valuable than
fuel and so it goes.



Lee Schipper
EMBARQ Fellow
EMBARQ, the WRI Center for Sustainable Transport
www.embarq.wri.org
and
Visiting Scholar
UC Transportation Center
Berkeley CA USA www.uctc.net
skype: mrmeter
+1 510 642 6889
Cell +1 202 262 7476


-----Original Message-----
From: the-commons@yahoogroups.com [mailto:the-commons@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf
Of martin.strid@...
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 6:34 AM
To: the-commons@yahoogroups.com
Subject: SV: [The Commons] Critique on Amory Lovins / RMI


I defy you to show me one instance where a more resource efficient technology
has led to less use of resources and not to increased use of technology.

Amike vin salutas

#ЄЭ#
Martin Strid

´´·.¸¸.·´¯` ·.¸¸.·´´·.¸¸.·´¯` ·.¸
´´·.¸¸.·´¯` ·.¸¸.·´´·.¸¸.·´¯` ·.¸
http://2-2.se <http://2-2.se/>


________________________________

Från: the-commons@yahoogroups.com [mailto:the-commons@yahoogroups.com] För
eric.britton
Skickat: den 25 februari 2008 18:39
Till: NewMobilityCafe@yahoogroups.com; The-commons@yahoogroups.com
Kopia: BE.Buscher@...
Ämne: [The Commons] Critique on Amory Lovins / RMI



Der Colleagues,

This commentary which just slipped in over the transom is something that I share
with you not to demean the intelligence or good intentions of Amory Lovins as a
person or thinker, but because the rather vigorous author -- to my mind -- puts
his finger right on a very important weak point in the present sustainability
debate. Other than that let me give the stage to the author for his trenchant
commentary.

Eric Britton

From: Bram Büscher [mailto:BE.Buscher@... <mailto:BE.Buscher@...> ]

Sent: 25 February 2008 03:23

To: EANTH-L@...

Subject: [Spam] Critique on Amory Lovins / RMI



Dear All,

I was at the Berlin conference of the Human Dimensions of Global Change
yesterday and attended a (video conference) presentation by dr. Amory Lovins of
the Rocky Mountain institute. I have seen few people so bluntly reduce all
environmental problems (and the politics around it) to technological fetishes
(apparently accessible to all?).

He also advocated another book of his and colleagues entitled 'Natural
Capitalism' that again combines all the good and the ugly into a 'profitable'
'win-win' mix for all of humankind and nature... On the website of the book
(natcap.org) it says that they want to publish cheers and jeers, but that 'so
far, the book has received almost pure praise and that frankly, this is a bit
embarrassing'.

Now, personally, I cannot imagine this, and wonder whether anybody on the list
has some suggestions for critical literature/articles. Basically, I'm looking
for some more practical armour in the face of people who so optimistically go
about selling such grand illusions.

Thanks,

Bram

Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (4)
#218 From: <martin.strid@...>
Date: Tue Feb 26, 2008 2:33 pm
Subject: SV: [The Commons] Critique on Amory Lovins / RMI 		eurotics
Offline Offline
Send Email Send Email
 

I defy you to show me one instance where a more resource efficient technology has led to less use of resources and not to increased use of technology.

Amike vin salutas

#ЄЭ#
Martin Strid

´´·.¸¸.·´¯` ·.¸¸.·´´·.¸¸.·´¯` ·.¸
´´·.¸¸.·´¯` ·.¸¸.·´´·.¸¸.·´¯` ·.¸
http://2-2.se


Från: the-commons@yahoogroups.com [mailto:the-commons@yahoogroups.com] För eric.britton
Skickat: den 25 februari 2008 18:39
Till: NewMobilityCafe@yahoogroups.com; The-commons@yahoogroups.com
Kopia: BE.Buscher@...
Ämne: [The Commons] Critique on Amory Lovins / RMI

Der Colleagues,

This commentary which just slipped in over the transom is something that I share with you not to demean the intelligence or good intentions of Amory Lovins as a person or thinker, but because the rather vigorous author -- to my mind -- puts his finger right on a very important weak point in the present sustainability debate. Other than that let me give the stage to the author for his trenchant commentary.

Eric Britton

From: Bram Büscher [mailto:BE.Buscher@FSW.VU.NL]

Sent: 25 February 2008 03:23

To: EANTH-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

Subject: [Spam] Critique on Amory Lovins / RMI

 

Dear All,

I was at the Berlin conference of the Human Dimensions of Global Change yesterday and attended a (video conference) presentation by dr. Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain institute. I have seen few people so bluntly reduce all environmental problems (and the politics around it) to technological fetishes (apparently accessible to all?).

He also advocated another book of his and colleagues entitled 'Natural Capitalism' that again combines all the good and the ugly into a 'profitable' 'win-win' mix for all of humankind and nature... On the website of the book (natcap.org) it says that they want to publish cheers and jeers, but that 'so far, the book has received almost pure praise and that frankly, this is a bit embarrassing'.

Now, personally, I cannot imagine this, and wonder whether anybody on the list has some suggestions for critical literature/articles. Basically, I'm looking for some more practical armour in the face of people who so optimistically go about selling such grand illusions.

Thanks,

Bram


Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (1)
#217 From: "Tom Wayburn" <twayburn@...>
Date: Tue Feb 26, 2008 3:28 pm
Subject: RE: [The Commons] Critique on Amory Lovins / RMI 		twayburn
Offline Offline
Send Email Send Email
 

Hi Eric,

 

I have had a go at the Amory Lovins brand of idiocy before. The paper “The Demise of Business as Usual” was written to apply the remarks in “On the Conservation-within-Capitalism Scenario” to The Apollo Alliance, which Mike Ruppert and Dale Allen Pfeiffer wanted to shoot down; but, it could be made to apply to Amory Lovins mutatis mutandis, which we can let the intelligent reader do for himself.

 

Essentially it’s this: Lovins and his ilk know about Peak Oil but nothing about Maximum Renewables, which they leave out of account in operating a market system, which is certain to be energy intensive. They don’t seem to understand that every economic transaction has energy consequences; and, in particular, in a market economy, it must bear the huge cost of commerce. Just ask yourself how many people you know who produce the things we need to live rather than transfer money to themselves or their employers. If you leave healthcare out of account, which is a peculiar artifice of the diseased capitalist economies, you will get a more realistic answer of how much energy can be saved.

 

To drive home this observation, I wrote “Energy in a Mark II Economy”, which provides an Excel spreadsheet for an economy that is simple but complicated enough to illustrate my point – perhaps even prove my point.

 

Tom Wayburn, Houston, Texas
http://dematerialism.net/

 

 

From: the-commons@yahoogroups.com [mailto:the-commons@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of eric.britton
Sent: Monday, February 25, 2008 11:39 AM
To: NewMobilityCafe@yahoogroups.com; The-commons@yahoogroups.com
Cc: BE.Buscher@...
Subject: [The Commons] Critique on Amory Lovins / RMI

 

Der Colleagues,

This commentary which just slipped in over the transom is something that I share with you not to demean the intelligence or good intentions of Amory Lovins as a person or thinker, but because the rather vigorous author -- to my mind -- puts his finger right on a very important weak point in the present sustainability debate. Other than that let me give the stage to the author for his trenchant commentary.

Eric Britton

From: Bram Bscher [mailto:BE.Buscher@FSW.VU.NL]

Sent: 25 February 2008 03:23

To: EANTH-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

Subject: [Spam] Critique on Amory Lovins / RMI

 

Dear All,

I was at the Berlin conference of the Human Dimensions of Global Change yesterday and attended a (video conference) presentation by dr. Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain institute. I have seen few people so bluntly reduce all environmental problems (and the politics around it) to technological fetishes (apparently accessible to all?).

He also advocated another book of his and colleagues entitled 'Natural Capitalism' that again combines all the good and the ugly into a 'profitable' 'win-win' mix for all of humankind and nature... On the website of the book (natcap.org) it says that they want to publish cheers and jeers, but that 'so far, the book has received almost pure praise and that frankly, this is a bit embarrassing'.

Now, personally, I cannot imagine this, and wonder whether anybody on the list has some suggestions for critical literature/articles. Basically, I'm looking for some more practical armour in the face of people who so optimistically go about selling such grand illusions.

Thanks,

Bram


Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (4)
#216 From: "eric.britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Mon Feb 25, 2008 5:38 pm
Subject: Critique on Amory Lovins / RMI 		fekbritton
Offline Offline
Send Email Send Email
 

Der Colleagues,

This commentary which just slipped in over the transom is something that I share with you not to demean the intelligence or good intentions of Amory Lovins as a person or thinker, but because the rather vigorous author -- to my mind -- puts his finger right on a very important weak point in the present sustainability debate. Other than that let me give the stage to the author for his trenchant commentary.

Eric Britton

From: Bram Bscher [mailto:BE.Buscher@...]

Sent: 25 February 2008 03:23

To: EANTH-L@...

Subject: [Spam] Critique on Amory Lovins / RMI

 

Dear All,

I was at the Berlin conference of the Human Dimensions of Global Change yesterday and attended a (video conference) presentation by dr. Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain institute. I have seen few people so bluntly reduce all environmental problems (and the politics around it) to technological fetishes (apparently accessible to all?).

He also advocated another book of his and colleagues entitled 'Natural Capitalism' that again combines all the good and the ugly into a 'profitable' 'win-win' mix for all of humankind and nature... On the website of the book (natcap.org) it says that they want to publish cheers and jeers, but that 'so far, the book has received almost pure praise and that frankly, this is a bit embarrassing'.

Now, personally, I cannot imagine this, and wonder whether anybody on the list has some suggestions for critical literature/articles. Basically, I'm looking for some more practical armour in the face of people who so optimistically go about selling such grand illusions.

Thanks,

Bram


Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (4)
#215 From: "eric.britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Fri Feb 8, 2008 5:43 pm
Subject: Newsletter from James Robertson 		fekbritton
Offline Offline
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JAMES ROBERTSON'S NEWSLETTER
No 14, February 2008

Dear Eric,

My latest newsletter is now out and can be read in full at:

http://www.jamesrobertson.com/newsletter.htm

This email gives a short description of its contents.

1. "The Sane Alternative: A Choice of Futures".

The text of the revised (1983) edition of this book, including
a new five-page 2008 Preface, can now be downloaded from my
website.

As the new Preface says, looking back 25 years - and to the
first edition, 30 years - it is humbling to reflect how slowly
the world has moved toward the "SHE" (Sane, Humane,
Ecological) path into the future, and how fast we have gone
down the path toward "Disaster".

But, looking forward, it is still possible to hope.  Changing
to a new direction of development based on principles of
"enable and conserve" is now becoming more obviously urgent
every day.

2.  Ethical Volunteering.

A conflict of values in the workplace between ethical
volunteers and conventional employees could help to discredit
the conventional wisdom that useful work has to be organised
by employers.   Read the Germane Society's report.

3. Business in Society and Environment.

A "new wave of social businesses" is envisaged by Nobel Prize
winner Mohammed Yunus, and Peter Reason talks about the
ecological aspect of "Transforming Education" in the context
of the MSc course in "Responsibility and Business Practice" at
Bath University.

There is also a note on "social entrepreneurs".

4. The Money System.

A short reflection on alternative currencies is followed by:
my article in the latest "Quarterly Review" on Northern Rock
and the current financial crisis; a recent proposal for a
joint popular/parliamentary movement for money system reform;
and two initiatives on Land Value Taxation to celebrate the
centenary of the Lloyd George budget of 1909.

Belated best wishes for 2008

James Robertson

8th February, 2008


james@...

http://www.jamesrobertson.com/newsletter.htm




The Old Bakehouse
Cholsey
Oxfordshire
OX10 9NU
United Kingdom
--

Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (7)
#214 From: "eric.britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Tue Jan 29, 2008 12:30 pm
Subject: "Are we designers?" - Some food for thought. 		fekbritton
Offline Offline
Send Email Send Email
 

I thought this was a pretty good article and insights on “design” from an important, broader perceptive., and am pleased to share it with you.  

 

And in the case of our common interests – above all sustainable development and social justice --  it beings up I believe some important points that are worth reflecting on.

 

We in this group are, in fact, “designers” of a sort, many of us at least. We have a vision of something that we think is important, something that is missing in many places and that we would like to see better perceived and perhaps even used.  

 

And, since the world is not yet following our designs, it is clear that we have to get better at it.

 

Let me see what I can do from this end.

 

Eric Britton

 

 

 

International Herald Tribune

Alice Rawsthorn: Four speakers debate the future of design

By Alice Rawsthorn

Sunday, January 27, 2008

DAVOS, Switzerland: The brief was simple. Identify three themes that, you believe, will define design in the future. That was the challenge to the four speakers in the Future Design debate at the World Economic Forum here last week.

Joining me in the debate were: Paola Antonelli, senior curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; Hilary Cottam, who develops design solutions to problems in education, health care and other public services as co-founder of the London-based agency Participle; and, the digital design star and newly appointed president of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), John Maeda. What did we all choose?

I'll skip through my themes briefly, given that you've already had the chance to read about them in these weekly columns. One was that designers will devote more time and energy to the underprivileged majority, the 90 percent of the world's population who can't afford basic products and services. Until now, they've designed mostly for the wealthy minority, the richest 10 percent, who arguably need their innovations the least.

Another theme was dematerialization. Rather than creating new things, designers will also strive to make existing products disappear, often by integrating them into digital devices. You can see this happening already in multifunctional devices like Apple's iPhone. If you own one, do you really need a watch, clock, diary, notebook, sat nav system, pager, calendar, barometer and phone too?

My final theme was guiltless consumption. At a time when none of us can ignore the environmental and ethical consequences of the things we buy, an essential element of "good design" is feeling free from guilt about how they were designed, made, sold and will eventually be disposed of.

Paola Antonelli of MoMA focused on design's relationship with science and technology. Her first theme was 3D printing, the extraordinarily precise rapid manufacturing processes now being developed by companies like Materialise in Belgium. These processes will eventually enable us to order objects, like furniture, to be custom-made by computer. No material will be wasted during production, and neither the factory nor the retailer will need to hold stocks. "There will be no waste of resources or space," predicted Antonelli, "but unfortunately fewer end-of-season sales."

She also believes that the yearning for privacy - or Existenzmaximum, as she calls it - will be an increasingly important issue for designers in the future. This phenomenon began in the early 1980s with the launch of portable devices, like the Sony Walkman, and has since accelerated with the development of iPods, noise-canceling headsets and other digital products that enable us to create "private" spaces for ourselves even in the busiest public places.

Antonelli's final theme was the potential for design to translate advances in science and technology into things we need or want. Recent developments in bioengineering and the cognitive sciences have tremendous potential, but need to be applied intelligently. "Because of their role as intermediaries in research and production, designers often act as the main interpreters in interdisciplinary teams," said Antonelli, who sees designers as "society's new pragmatic intellectuals." She is exploring this theme in "Design and the Elastic Mind," an exhibition opening at MoMA next month.

Hilary Cottam presented "design as a political force - the ways in which a design approach has real power to address the big social issues of our time." She advocated using design to encourage people to change their behavior. An example is Activmobs, a program she helped to develop when working for Britain's Design Council in which designers collaborated with health workers to find ways of helping groups of friends to work together to ease common problems, such as backache, heart disease and being overweight. The friends were given access to a trainer, and encouraged to monitor each other's health with positive results.

Another role for design is to develop new ways of tackling social problems through mass collaboration. This approach is being applied successfully in another Design Council health project, whereby people with diabetes in Bolton, Lancashire, are given packs of cards, each noting an issue relating to their condition and its treatment. The cards help patients, especially those with language and reading difficulties, to feel more confident when talking to nurses and doctors, and help them to remember to raise important issues. They also act as prompts to remind them about aspects of their treatment, and to communicate with people looking after them at home.

Cottam also addressed the role of design in policy making, arguing that designers are better equipped than politicians to understand the ambiguities and contradictions of daily life. She suggested that since "designers understand the power of story telling," they should be more adept at explaining political issues to the public, and that every parliament should include at least one designer.

John Maeda addressed the moral responsibility of designers. He stressed the importance of transparency in design, and of extending the participatory "open source" development process now popular in software design to other sectors. He maintained that although keeping secrets creates the illusion of power, if nobody knows you have a secret, its value is worthless. On the day he was named as president of RISD, Maeda launched an internal blog on which everyone there can talk openly to him about the school.

His second theme was simplicity, and its importance at a time when our lives are increasingly complicated, often unnecessarily so. One of the chief culprits, according to Maeda, is technology, which has tremendous potential to simplify our lives, but frequently has the opposite effect. A priority for designers in the future, he said, will be to ensure that we can use it simply and intuitively.

Maeda ended by stressing the importance of appreciating the beauty of the everyday objects and places that are often taken for granted. He makes a point of seeking out examples of unexpected beauty wherever he goes, such as quirky signs and stones in intriguing shapes. He suggested that the rest of us should do the same.

 

 

Technology. Economy. Society.

Francis Eric Knight Britton
Collaborative problem solving

The New Mobility Agenda
The Commons (Association 1901)
8/10, rue Joseph Bara
75006 Paris, France

eric.britton@...
fekbritton@...
IM: Skype: newmobility
www.newmobility.org

tel:
tel2:
mobile:
Skype ID:

+331 4326 1323
+1 (310) 601-8468
+336 7321 5868
ericbritton

 


Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (1)
#213 From: <stevencord2000@...>
Date: Wed Jan 16, 2008 10:59 am
Subject: Tax system reform for sustainability 		fekbritton
Offline Offline
Send Email Send Email
 

From: steven cord [mailto:stevencord2000@...]
Sent: Wednesday, 16 January 2008 01:24
To: eric.britton@...
Subject: Re: State of the Commons/EcoPlan 2008 Report and Outlook

 

Dear Mr. Britton,

 

This is altogether possible if you can effectively advocate the land value tax (see below).

 

Steven B. Cord (Professor-Emeritus, I.U.P.),

10528 Cross Fox Lane, Columbia MD 21044,

1-866-997-1182 (toll-free), stevencord2000@..., www.economicboom.info

 

 

No Tempest in a Teapot

 

Some people say that the movement to tax buildings less and land values more is just a tempest in a teapot, that it wouldn’t make any significant difference in the economy.  Let’s see how big a teapot tempest it is. 

 

I live in Howard County, Maryland.  Its taxable land values are assessed at $24,473,747,530 (per Howard Levinson, Chief Assessor, 1/7/08).   If the land tax rate were gradually increased to 7%, $1,713,162,327 would be raised each year.  This is $978,992,327 more than the total 2008 county budget of $734,170,000 (Howard County Construction Report, 10/07). 

 

The estimated population of the county is 279,799 (Internet, H.C. Md. govt.).  If the entire $978,992,327 were rebated to each resident, a typical family of four would receive $13,996 per year!  Not only that, but county production would leap upward since what jobs produce wouldn’t be taxed by the county and the up-taxed land would be used more efficiently.  Recreational & open-space areas should continue to be tax-exempted.

Should the county immediately adopt a 100% tax rate on land assessments?

 

Absolutely NOT – no, no, no.  No.  A few property owners would receive big tax increases - but not if rate increases aren’t allowed to raise anyone’s property taxes by more than 3% above the previous year’s property tax payment, or if the current building tax rate is lowered by about 20% in each of the next five years with the land tax rate being raised to prevent loss of property-tax revenue.  Other measures can be suggested. 

 

By the fifth year, only land assessments would be property-taxed.  Then gradually replace other county taxes by the land tax.  Most people would get substantial tax decreases and production would be less taxed, to the great benefit of the county’s economy.  Land tax good, all other taxes bad (especially the building tax). 

 

Agricultural land could be completely exempted altogether, as could the land of the poor, elderly, temporarily unemployed, veterans, etc.  Also, such land could be taxed at lower rates or tax-deferred until time of land sale or bequeathal.   The revenue loss would be inconsequential. 

 

            Considering the benefits of doing all this, land value taxation is obviously not a tempest in a teapot.  Just proceed gradually.

 

For free, experienced help in implementing a land value tax, contact Steven Cord, professor-emeritus (IUP), 10528 Cross Fox

Lane, Columbia MD 21044, 1-866-997-1182 (toll-free), stevencord2000@...

 

 


Reply | Forward | Messages in this Topic (1)
#212 From: "eric.britton" <eric.britton@...>
Date: Fri Jan 11, 2008 6:36 am
Subject: 233 Empirical Studies Of a Tax That Has Always Produced Economic Development 		fekbritton
Offline Offline
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From: steven cord [mailto:stevencord2000@...]
Sent: Thursday, 10 January 2008 23:33
To: eric.britton@...
Subject: Re: State of the Commons/EcoPlan 2008 Report and Outlook

 

Mr. Britton:

 

I am intrigued by your efforts.  Let me tell you about mine; then we can think about working together. 

 

I have encountered a tax that (a) lowers taxes for most people and (b) promotes the economy. 

 

Lest you think this sounds too good to be true, I am appending a report below that lists hundreds of empirical studies showing that these 2 things have actually happened (I can email you many more such studies, at your request; I personally induced 23 localities in Pennsylvania to adopt this tax, always with good economic results).

 

If this interest you, please let me hear from you. 

 

========Hoping to hear from you soon, Steven B. Cord (Professor-Emeritus, I.U.P.), 10528 Cross Fox Lane, Columbia MD 21044, 1-866-997-1182 (toll-free), stevencord2000@..., www.economicboom.info

 

 

 

 

   

233 Empirical Studies (plus 5 Endorsements)

Of a Tax That Has Always Produced

Economic Development

by Steven B. Cord

 

A tax on land values requires land to be put to productive use, thereby making investments in capital and labor more profitable because they would be less taxed.  By gradually decreasing taxes on production:

(1) Production is enhanced when it isn’t taxed, and if land is taxed more, land sites will be used more productively (it’s a tax that actually creates jobs!).  Since one tax is replacing another, there is no change in government revenue.     

(2) Most taxpayers get significant tax reductions when a tax on land values replaces taxes on what’s been produced because it is the most ability-to-pay major tax there is.  The really valuable taxable land is in our urban downtowns and in natural resources that few people own.  Most people pay higher taxes on their income, sales (or purchases), buildings, payroll, imports, etc. than they do on their land.  

(3) Strict revenue neutrality for the government is maintained because one tax is only replacing other taxes.

Actual practice fully supports these three logical advantages.  While a 100% tax on land values to the exclusion of all other taxes has never been levied anywhere, various localities in the United States and abroad (particularly in Australia) have levied it in part, enabling us to study its real-world effects.

It is vitally important to make this tax shift gradually, over at least ten years, in order to avoid undesirable economic dislocations.  Contact us for how-to-do-it.  

Many of these studies have been fully corroborated by independent sources.  For instance, before Fortune Magazine ran its 1983 article advocating land value taxation (hereinafter LVT), it sent two of its researchers, Gurney Breckenfeld and Ed Baig, to visit the city halls that I had visited and found that I had accurately stated the building permits issued (the magazine is to be praised for such careful research checking). 

Professor Nicolaus Tideman of Virginia Tech University and his then-graduate student, Florenz Plassmann (now a professor in Binghamton, N.Y.) confirmed all my studies completed when they did their research in 1995.  Their research was peer-reviewed and published in the Journal of Urban Economics (3/00, pp. 216-47).

A study by the prestigious Pennsylvania Economy League contained facts supporting the conclusions of these empirical studies (see p. 16 of their 1985 study).      Later, the P.E.L. was instrumental in getting two cities (Clairton and DuBois, Pa.) to adopt a two-rate building-to-land shift in their property tax.    

The empirical studies are based on government-issued building-permit statistics. Many of the studies come from Australia where the Australian Bureau of Statistics publishes an annual statistics manual (comparable to the U.S. Statistical Abstract) that contains building permits issued for every locality in the country.  Every month, the U.S. Census Bureau also publishes building permits issued. 

A representative 74 of these 238 studies have been reprinted in the book, The Golden Key to Continuous Prosperity (available at 10528 Cross Fox Lane, Columbia MD 21044, $16, free s&h).  This book contains valuable information on this tax and how to levy it.

If a partial shift to LVT has produced these positive economic results, it would seem that more LVT would produce even better economic results if you act. 

 

SUGGESTION: if reading 233 summaries of empirical studies (plus 5 endorsements by prominent authorities) is somewhat daunting, pick any 3 numbers at random and read just those summaries.  Then pick another 3 numbers and just read those.  Then read all 238.

 

I – The 233 Empirical Studies (plus 5 Endorsements)

 

                              (1) The accountancy firm of Price, Waterhouse & Co. performed a study for H.U.D. that found that the abatement of building taxes was conducive to new construction  (p. 4, reported in the summer 1975 issue of Incentive Taxation (hereafter referred to as IT). 

P. 8 of the PW study: “Based upon the evidence collected it appears that the Fairhope Single Tax Corporation’s practice of site value rental [equivalent to LVT] has been effective in that it has encouraged more intensive development of its property.”    

                              Just do it gradually, not as a single tax all at once; ask us how to do that.

(2) In the early 1970s, the General Council for Rating Reform of Australia (GCRR) reported that in Kilmore Shire, Victoria, the dollar value of construction and renovation increased 3.19 times in the three whole years immediately after it shifted from taxing both buildings and land income as compared to the three whole years immediately before when it taxed both types of income (IT, summer 1975). 

                              Local property-tax switches in Australia were made in April, so there was a year in which both systems applied.

                              (3) In Buninyong Shire (Victoria), the GCRR found that, comparing the three whole years immediately prior to the shift from taxing the income of both building and land to the first two whole years after the shift when only the assessed land value was taxed, there was an average 5.9 increase in the annual dollar value of new construction and renovation (Ibid. - the Australian Bureau of Census was the ultimate source).

(4) In Orbost Shire (also Victoria), the GCRR compared the three whole years before the shift to taxing only land values to the year immediately after the shift.  It found that the average annual construction and renovation increased 1.74 times (source: Australian Bureau of Census).

(5) Harry Gunnison Brown, a prominent American public-finance economist in his time, found that those localities in the states of South Australia and Victoria which taxed land values were markedly superior in new dwelling construction. 

For instance, in the state of Victoria, “although at the 1921 census only 16 per cent of the state population was in the fourteen districts rating [taxing] land values, these districts accounted for 46 per cent of the total increase in dwellings for the State between the two census years [1921 and 1933].”

(6) Brown’s figures on the Melbourne suburbs were even more striking.  He found that those suburbs which are about five rail miles from Flinders Street in the center of Melbourne and which tax land values only had 50% more dwellings constructed per available acre in the 1928-1942 period than those which did not.  Making a similar comparison for suburbs seven miles out, the LVT suburbs did 2.33 times better; LVT suburbs 9.5 miles out did twice as well (IT, 9/75).

(7) Melton Shire (Victoria) switched from taxing real-estate income to taxing only land values in 1973 (as the result of a poll of landowners only) and then saw the Australian-dollar value of its building permits increase 1.68 times in the first year after the switch as compared to the year previous (Land Values Research Group (LVRG), successor to GCRR – IT 10/75.  All of LVRG’s studies are based on figures coming from the Australian Bureau of Census). 

(8) The average 1954-61 population growth of rural LVT towns in Victoria was 21.8%, but for their non-LVT neighbors it was only 13.4%.  Their 1955-63 dwelling construction was 38.3% higher (source: GCRR, using Victoria state govt. statistics).

(9) New York State taxpayers spent more than $400 million to build the New York Thruway, but land values along the route increased by considerably more than $400 million (Perry Prentice, vice-president of Time, Inc., in Architectural Forum, per IT 1-2/76).

(10) Life editorial (1965): “Since the [Toronto] subway was built the neighborhoods around the stations have experienced a small construction boom and land values have skyrocketed.  A 100-square-foot plot purchased in 1947 for $22,000 sold ten years later for $257,000.”  This was reported in IT, 1-2/76. 

Conclusion: it would seem that if land values are taxed, the government could regain its expenditures on transportation.

(11) “The landowners on Staten Island in New York City pocketed a $700 million windfall because other taxpayers put up $350 million for the Verrazano Narrows Bridge; now their land is much more accessible than before.  And one can wonder about the increase in land valuation on the Brooklyn side of the bridge.” So wrote Perry Prentice in an article in The Commercial and Financial Chronicle, 8/22/68, as reported in IT, 1-2/76.

(12) In the seven years following the construction of New York City’s IRT subway from 135th St. to Spuyten Duyvil, the rise in land value was $69.3 million.  Subtracting the normal increase during the previous seven years - $20.1 million – left an increase of $49.2 million directly attributable to the opening of the line.  But that section of the line cost only $41.8 million (Gilbert Tucker, The Self-Supporting City, quoting a City Club study); see IT, 1-2/76.  Once again, LVT could re-coup public expenditures.

(13) According to one public official in New Jersey quoted by Gilbert Tucker in The Self-Supporting City, the opening of the George Washington Bridge in 1928 increased land values on just the New Jersey side by $300 million, or more than six times the original construction cost (IT, 1-2/76).  If the land were taxed, the bridge wouldn’t have increased public costs at all.

                              (14) Less than two years after the property owners of Wangaratta (in Victoria, Aus.) had voted 4-1 to adopt LVT only, the following headline appeared in the local newspaper: “Building ‘Wave’ Envelops Whole of Town.”  This occurred during a building recession in the surrounding area (IT, 9/75). 

(15-30) IT (5-6-7/76) reported on random-sample studies in sixteen U.S. cities substantiating that most homeowners pay less with a two-rate building-to-land property-tax shift.  In addition, all tenants (as tenants) paid less space-rent for their lodgings. 

(31) Two years after adopting an LVT-only property tax, 1957 construction in Mildura City (351 miles northwest of Melbourne, Aus.) broke all records, “and at the present rate, the 1957 record will be broken this year” (source: researcher Elizabeth Read Brown in the American Journal of Economics & Sociology (1/61, p. 12).  See IT 9/76.

(32) “As a means of encouraging owners of sub-standard dwellings to install improvements, the City of New York adopted in 1936 a law granting property-tax exemption for five years upon the value added to existing buildings by improvements completed before October 1, 1938, provided the improvements did not increase the size of the building.  Mayor LaGuardia estimated that renovation work in that year ran as high as $75,000,000…” (Harold S. Buttenheim, founding editor of the American City Magazine, as reported in IT 11/76).

(33) A Pittsburgh City Council study showed conclusively that a 1% earned income tax would hit the city’s homeowners 3.59 times harder than an equivalent-in-revenue LVT increase.  The same study also found that a two-rate LVT would down-tax 73.6% of homeowners (IT 12/76).

(34) Then there’s Horsham, a city in rural Victoria, Australia.  To quote from Progress (an Australian monthly magazine, 6/74, as cited in IT 12/76; ultimate source - Australian govt. building-permit statistics):

“Horsham made the change to site value rating during the rural recession.  For the three years before the un-taxing of buildings, the numbers and values of permits issued to private homebuilders had fallen drastically (from A$718,000 down to A$418,000 immediately before the change).  The rot was stopped in the first year of untaxed buildings and the slow climb back commenced.  For the year ended 30th June 1973, the numbers of privately built dwelling units approved rose to 94 and their value to (A)$1,153,000.

“This is almost double the numbers of approvals and almost triple their values of the last year of taxed buildings.  Site value rating has done much to beat the rural recession in this area.”

 

This ends our examination of the first bound volume of Incentive Taxation (there are nine such volumes).  This first volume covers a period before many two-rate building-to-land shifts occurred in the United States.  Therefore, in these early studies, IT had to rely primarily on statistics of the impact of a building-to-land tax shift in Australia.

 

(35) A Washington, D.C. study done in the 1970s shows that if the current property tax were shifted from land and building assessments to land assessments only, there would be these tax reductions: single-family homes = 18.1%, two-family homes = 20.9%, row houses = 14%, walkup apartments = 38.9%, elevator apartments = 22.5% (IT W/77).

(36) From 1921 to 1933, 7% of the municipalities in Victoria, Aus. taxed only land values, but they accounted for 46% of home construction.  In the years 1947-54, the LVT municipalities had increased to 12%, but they accounted for 42% of the home construction.  During 1954-58, 19% were using LVT, but they accounted for 62% of new home construction (source: building-permit issuance per LVRG).  See 1T, 10/77.

(37) In 164 localities outside Melbourne, Aus., during the two-year period 1955/56 to 1957/58, there were 42 new factories, of which half were in the 17 localities (out of 147 localities) using LVT-only.  Not only that, but factory employment in these 17 LVT-only localities increased by 445 whereas in the remaining 147 localities, factory employment decreased by 361 (source: Aus. govt. statistics in “Public Charges Upon Land Values,” a 1961 study of the GCLR).  See IT, 1077.

(38-49) Twelve studies in rural Victoria show that LVT-only towns averaged a construction-and-renovation growth of 29% as against their land-and-building-taxing neighbors’ growth of a modest 2.6% in the same period of time (source: GCLR study of building-permits issued as reported in Progress, 3/75, per IT, 10/77).  LVT-only was adopted in each case as a result of a poll of landowners only.

(50) Wellington, New Zealand taxed land values while Auckland did not.  In 1965, Wellington had ₤219 in improvements for every ₤100 in land value while Auckland had only ₤143 in improvements per ₤100 in land value (source: N.Z. govt. statistics per GCLR).  See IT, 10/77.

(51) When LVT-only Sydney and building-taxing Melbourne in Australia are compared in 1965, Sydney had ₤222 in improvements for every ₤100 values whereas Melbourne had only ₤125 in improvements for every ₤100 in land values (source: GCLR, ABS); see IT, 10/77.

(52) Ken Synett (former mayor of Marion, Aus): “For many years the Marion area remained static.  Much of the land now being developed was in the hands of speculators. 

“They held it as a lock-up investment.  Tax rates were low…. Then in 1954, the year after we achieved city status, our rating system was changed from a rental basis [i.e., real-estate-income tax] to one based on unimproved land value [LVT].  This sent the tax rates up [on land values]…The land investors decided it was time to sell…We are now watching Marion’s phenomenal expansion with pride.”  See IT, 10/77.  

(53) After Camberwell, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, adopted LVT-only in 1922, its development was meteoric.  For twenty years, it headed the Victoria building-development figures both in numbers and values until displaced by Moorabin in 1946 after that city also changed to LVT-only.  In addition, Camberwell exhibited another advantage of LVT-only – it was fully in accord with ability-to-pay (source: LVRG in Progress, using Aus. govt. statistics; see chart in IT, 11/77).

(54) A 1965 study sponsored by the California General Assembly (prepared by Griffin, Hagen and Kruger) revealed that over 92% of the homeowners and renters in Fresno, CA would get tax reductions with a building-to-land tax shift.  See IT 12/77.

(55-59) An LVRG study of five towns in rural Victoria, Australia between 1965 and 1966 showed that they exceeded the construction growth of their neighbors by 18%, 23%, 52%, 66%, and 48%.

(60) In November 1964, the property owners of South Melbourne voted in a switch to the LVT-only system.  In the first six months of 1965, building values increased 2.4 times over what they had been in the four preceding six-month periods.  The expenditures for alterations and additions to houses were 2.8 times the average in the four preceding six-month periods.  The total value of construction permits for industrial buildings increased 3.3 times. 

Not only that, but the growth in construction continued unabated in the ensuing years (source: Aus. govt. statistics per GCLR). 

Many decades ago, South Melbourne had been a fashionable spot in the Melbourne area.  Then it ran down, went to seed.  After switching to LVT-only, it revived and became known as the “Cinderella City.”  An article headline in the Melbourne Herald (12/2/72) called its renaissance “The Kiss of Life.”  See IT, 1/78.

(61) The Local Government and Shires Association of Australia reported that “a survey made by the city of Sydney [LVT-only] in 1950, showed that the building taxation system would have penalized the factory owner, the house investor, the homeowner, and the small shopkeeper, to the benefit of the large business interests in close proximity to the City.”  See IT, 1/78.

(62) H. W. Eastwood (Chief Assessor in the 1970s of New South Wales Province, Aus.) strongly supported local land value taxation, primarily because re-assessments could more easily be made every two years.  His testimony appears in the 1966 Royal Commission of Inquiry into Rating Valuation and Local Government Finance (section 4.25).  See IT, 1/78.

(63) Landowners in rural Mildura - pop. 11,000, 350 miles northwest of Melbourne in rural Victoria - voted in LVT-only in August 1956 by a 3.6:1 margin.  The value of building permits rose by one-third in 1957 and by another third in 1958 in the face of a 10% house-building recession in rural Victoria during those years (Progress 11/59 and Land & Liberty 4/57 and 3/58).  See IT, 1/78.

(64) After Moorabin, the largest of the municipalities comprising Greater Melbourne, voted in LVT-only in 1946, its total value of all building permits jumped 21% and within three years they had jumped 141% (Moorabin Standard-News, 8/22/58).  Especially remarkable was the growth in Cheltenham, which had been a particularly blighted section of Moorabin.  See IT, 1/78.

(65) Towns in Victoria, Australia that adopted LVT-only between 1955 and 1964 grew at a 58% faster rate than their real-estate-income taxing neighbors (source: GCLR).  See IT, 1/78.

(66) If eastern Americans fell through the earth, they would emerge near Perth, Western Australia (pop.400,000).  The 17 largest localities in Western Australia taxed land values only; they experienced a 34.36% increase in the total number of dwellings between 6/30/71 and 6/30/76.  The nine localities taxing real-estate income experienced a 0.02% decrease in the same time period (source: Progress, 11/77, p. 10).  See IT, Sp./78.

(67) In the country districts of Western Australia, 36 localities taxed land values only; they experienced a 13.34% increase in the total number of dwellings between 6/30/71 and 6/30/76.  The 69 localities partly taxing land values only and partly taxing land and buildings together (they use both systems simultaneously, called shandy rating) experienced only a 1.53% increase.  In other words, the more land was taxed and buildings un-taxed, the more new construction occurred. 

It should be noted that the LVT-only localities were distributed rather widely throughout the country districts, as well as in the Perth suburbs.  They were not concentrated in certain areas where development may have proceeded for such non-LVT reasons as geography, nearness to cities or new highways, etc.  See IT, Sp/78.

  (68) Richard Noyes, editor of the Salem (N.H.) Observer, found that the group in his hometown whose property taxes would increase the most with a higher tax rate on land were out-of-town land speculators (see IT, 7/78).  Noyes later became a state legislator.

  (69) Gary Carlson and Ralph Todd, economists working for the Omaha city government, found that 59% of the city’s building owners would pay less if the property tax was two-rated (i.e., if the property tax was partially shifted from buildings to land values).  See IT, 7/78. 

(70-80) Nine of eleven studies made in various cities showed that homeowners saved on property taxes with a two-rate building-to-land shift.  The cities were Fresno CA, all cities in Oregon, Bergen County (in N.J.), Pittsburgh, Erie, Harrisburg, and Allentown in Pa., Korumburra and South Melbourne in Australia.  Homeowners paid slightly more in Farrell and Monessen, Pa. (but not Monessen today).  See IT, 10/78.

But do keep in mind that all renters (as renters) save with LVT.

(81-85) Five LVT-only localities in rural Victoria (Aus.) had 11.2% more construction and renovation during the years 1967-74 than occurred in their statistical districts (these neighbors were subject to the same economic influences).  The five localities were Kerang Borough, Kerang Shire, Cohuna Shire, Horsham City, and Kilmore Shire (source: A.B.S., as quoted in Progress, 6/75, p. 8).  See IT, 11/78.

(86) Buninyong (in rural Victoria) experienced a nearly five-fold building boom after it started taxing land values only instead of real-estate income (the latter tax fell mainly on the value of buildings).  The surrounding localities increased their construction and renovation also, but by less than half as much (source: Progress, 11/75, p. 11, also 11/76, p. 10).  See IT, 11/78.

(87) Most homeowners in Newtown, Victoria (Aus.) saved, some considerably, with LVT-only, and an examination of building permits showed that homeowners in Newtown improved their properties more than the homeowners of nearby real-estate-taxing Geelong and Geelong West (source: Progress, 10/69, pp. 9-10; see IT, 11/78).    

(88) In 1979, Pittsburgh added 4.8% to its tax rate on land assessments, nothing to its tax rate on building assessments.  A study performed under the direction of William Coyne, Finance Chairman of the City Council (later Congressman) found that the average homeowner paid $62 extra land tax, but the average wage earner would have paid $188 per year with a wage tax yielding the same amount of total revenue for the city (keep in mind that many families have two or more wage earners).

One of the “pay-mores” was Kaufman’s Department Store, which paid $6,900 additional land value tax – but Coyne figured this to be 0.0009% of their annual sales.  See IT, 1-2/79.

(89) Steven Cord and his student William Ritter studied the impact of land value tax on farmers in Indiana County, Pa. (American Journal of Economics & Sociology, 1/76).

They found that if the property-tax rate on buildings was reduced 25% and the tax rate on land values was increased to make up for the lost revenue, more farmers would get tax increases than tax reduction, especially for those near the growing town of Indiana, the county seat (their land was generally selling at speculative, not farming, prices). 

Farming increases were generally minor: for half the sample, the tax increases and decreases were less than $50; for a quarter of the sample, the changes were in the $50-$100 range (see IT, 3-4/79).

(90) In North Dakota, farmers were paying no property tax on farm buildings, and a survey by a high official of the N.D. League of Cities revealed that this has encouraged new farm construction (USN&WR, 4/3/78, p. 54). 

(91) Economist Mason Gaffney’s Wisconsin study revealed that “farmers would generally break even” (6/70 Urban Institute symposium).  See IT, 3-4/79.

(92) Mark Mraz, a graduate student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, found the same thing to be true in Elk County, Pa. (unpublished manuscript, 1977).  See IT, 3-4/79.

(93) A 1963 survey by the Land Values Research Group (their Rural Rating Study #5) revealed that in the rural areas of Victoria, an LVT-only shift would reduce taxes for 668 of the farms with houses (average reduction 22%) while increasing taxes for only 407 of the farms with houses (average increase 18%).  As expected, 442 holdings without houses would experience tax increases of about 35%.  See IT, 3-4/79.

(94) California Irrigation Districts – in 1909, California law required that when new irrigation networks were built, they were to be financed by a tax on the affected land values only; all privately owned irrigation improvements were to be property-tax exempt.  The theory was that since land values increased because of the publicly owned irrigation networks, the expense of those networks should be borne by the landowners. 

The result was beneficial to the local farmers, particularly to the smaller ones.  The irrigated valleys are among the most productive in the world, and in 1914 the Modesto Chamber of Commerce stated:

“As a result of the change many of the large ranches have been cut up and sold in small tracts.  The new owners are cultivating these farms intensively.  The population of both country and city has greatly increased…the new system of taxation has brought great prosperity to our district.  Farmers are now encouraged to improve their property.  Industry and thrift are no longer punished by an increase in taxes” (Congressional Research Service, “Property Taxation,” p. 48).  See IT, 3-4/79.

 (95) According to a Pittsburgh City Planning Dept. study, if the city switched all property taxes off buildings onto land value, the 60-story U.S. Steel skyscraper on Grant St. would save $750,000 in property taxes annually.  See IT, 3-4/79.

(96) When Wangaratta, a small rural town, pop. 11,000, in Victoria, Aus., voted in LVT-only in 1956, there was an immediate upward leap in building permits issued – they averaged ₤645,921 annually in the three years following the switch vs. ₤393,692 in the year previous.  A veritable building wave enveloped the town. 

Wangaratta’s building-permit issuance was 5.24 times what it could expect if it had followed the general rural trend in the Victoria (source: Progress 5/59 and 11/59).  See IT, 7-8/79.

(97) Professor Arthur Becker of the University of Wisconsin (Milwaukee) studied the impact of LVT in Milwaukee and found that commercial and industrial construction would be stimulated (see the article by economist Gary Carlson in the Nation’s Cities magazine, 2/72; a summary of Becker’s 13 advantages of LVT are listed in IT, 9-10/79.

(98) A rate increase on water use would cost the average Pittsburgh homeowner more than five times what a land tax increase raising the same revenue would cost that homeowner, according to a Pittsburgh City Council study of 1977.  See IT, 11-12/79.

(99) Malvern, Aus. experienced a marked construction spurt after it adopted LVT-only in August 1955, but the most extensive construction took place in its blighted problem neighborhoods. 

Prior to the introduction of LVT-only in 9/55, only 22% of the city’s building permits were for construction in such neighborhoods, but in each of the five ensuing years, that percentage jumped first to 35% and then steadily moved up to 47% in 1960 (these percentages were of continually larger figures).  Construction also boomed elsewhere in Malvern (source: Victoria Building and Construction Journal).  See IT, 11-12/79.

(100) Anthony Pileggi, a student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (now a lawyer in Columbia, Md.), studied the land assessments in the town of Indiana, Pa. (pop. 15,000).  He found that 1.5% of the biggest landowners in Indiana paid 50.5% of the town’s tax on land values, whereas in that year the 3% of the top income earners in the U.S. paid 30.6% of the federal income tax (source – USSA).

He therefore concluded that the land value tax in Indiana was much more in accord with the ability-to-pay theory than is the federal income tax.  See IT, 4/80. 

But Pileggi could not know all the interlocking land ownerships in Indiana, as when a person might own land under a personal, family or corporate name.  So he necessarily under-estimated the concentration of landownership in Indiana (which would be even greater in larger cities, where a greater proportion of citizens are non-landowning apartment tenants or office-building small-business tenants). 

(101) A study by Gale Thoman, a student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, found that the average homeowner in Indiana, Pa. would substantially save with LVT.  See IT, 4/80.

 

This concludes our excerpts from the second (of nine) bound volumes of Incentive Taxation.  Eventually I induced 24 American jurisdictions to adopt a two-rate property-tax LVT, thereby making studies of the effects of LVT possible in America.

 

(102-104) Three Australian shires (equivalent to counties in America) – Kilmore, Buninyong and Melton – experienced spurts in construction and renovation after LVT-only adoption in 1971, 1972 and 1974 respectively.

For Kilmore, the average annual building-permit issuance of the four whole years after adoption exceeded the average annual building-permit issuance of its three whole years before adoption by 3.88 times.

For Buninyong, the average annual building-permit issuance of the three whole years after adoption exceeded the average annual building-permit issuance of its three whole years before adoption by 3.22 times.

For Melton, its average building-permit issuance of its one whole year after adoption almost doubled its average annual building-permit issuance of the three years before adoption.

But even more important was the comparison of these three LVT-only shires with what they could have expected had they experienced the same change in building-permit issuance as did their statistical districts; this counters the sometimes-heard criticism that the jurisdictions choosing LVT-only were already growing before they chose LVT-only and that LVT-only didn’t cause growth but rather the growth caused the adoption of LVT-only.

Kilmore’s new construction and renovation exceeded its statistical district by 54%, Buninyong by 97%, and Melton by 65% (Progress, 11/75, p. 11; see IT, Sp/80).   

All the LVT-only localities in the entire state of Victoria which adopted LVT-only between 1955 and 1974 exhibited the same results. 

(105-6) After the Sydney (Aus.) Metropolitan Water Sewerage and Drainage Board switched to LVT-only, it showed a steady increase of 94.1% in dwelling approvals in the ensuing four years. 

For instance, when the Hunter District Board (serving Newcastle and its surrounding area) switched to LVT-only, its total value of all dwelling approvals increased 87.2% over the previous four years. 

During the same period of time, Melbourne saw its total value of dwelling approvals increase by only 42.7% (source: Progress, 9/79, p. 32; see IT, Sp./80).

(107) In the Melbourne metropolitan area, the 27 LVT-only cities showed an average inter-census growth for privately built dwellings of 12.9%, while the 15 cities that taxed real-estate income showed an average growth of only 2.8%. 

“Inter-census” refers to the difference in private dwelling construction between the government census of 6/30/76 and the previous census of 6/30/71.  These statistics are from Progress, 7/79, p. 8 and were based on a 17-page government report giving statistics for each of the 211 cities in Victoria.  See IT, Sp/80.

  (108) For the entire state of Victoria, the average growth rate was 15.2% for the LVT-only localities but only 10.9% average growth rate for the neighboring real-estate-income taxing localities.  Evidently, if you un-tax buildings and up-tax land, economic growth results.

(109) A Pittsburgh, Pa. City Council study (1979) showed that 64% of the city’s homeowners would pay less in taxes with a two-rate building-to-land property-tax shift.  See IT 10/80.

 (110) In Washington, D.C. a 1976 study authorized by the city council discovered that a two-rate building-to-land property-tax shift would cut taxes on the owners of residences by 14% to 38.9%.  See IT, 10/80.

(111) A study I did revealed that Pittsburgh’s 1980 near doubling of land tax rates (without any increase in building tax rates) cost the average homeowner an extra $35 a year, but if a wage tax increase raising the same revenue had been imposed, the average wage earner would have paid an extra $110 a year (keep in mind that many families have more than one wage earner).  See IT, 10/80.

(112) In the year following Pittsburgh’s sizeable 1979 increase in land tax rates, new construction jumped 22% over the previous year as measured by the dollar value of building permits issued, despite a fall-off in construction and renovation in the surrounding four-county area and in the nation at large.  I conducted this study for the I.U.P. Center for Local Tax Research. 

The study also showed that vacant lot sales increased 16.5% in the first seven months after the land tax increase, indicating that the tax was putting pressure on inefficient landowners to develop their sites.  

It would seem that cities should tax what they create – i.e., land values – before they taxes what individuals create – i.e., buildings and wages.

(113) A 1980 study funded by the city of New Castle, Pa. found that seven vacant and two poorly developed sites in the downtown area would be developed and the owners would save $150,851 in taxes if LVT-only were adopted.  If the county and school system also adopted LVT-only, the owners of those sites would then save about $243,750 in taxes.  Of course, if these sites were developed, the city would get additional tax revenue.  See IT, 12/80.

(114) I found that when McKeesport, Pa. adopted a two-rate building-to-land switch in its property tax, the average homeowner saved 15%.  Low-income homeowners did even better because their land value was generally minuscule; they saved about 29%.  A city study revealed that a wage tax would have cost the average homeowner much more than a property tax raising the same revenue.  See IT, 12/80.

(115) The Center for Community Affairs (C.C.A.) at Indiana University of Pennsylvania found that after Pittsburgh increased its land tax rate, the number of building permits issued in Pittsburgh, Pa. increased markedly.  See IT, 12/80.

(116) In another study, I.U.P.’s C.C.A. found that in the year following McKeesport, Pa.’s switch to LVT, its dollar value of building permits increased markedly over the previous non-LVT year.  See IT, 12/80.

(117) A study by Daniel Sullivan of 2,000 randomly selected properties in Pittsburgh found that homeowners would save 30% on their property taxes with an LVT-only property tax.  See IT, 11/81.

(118) A 1980 Washington, D.C. city-council study found that land values boomed all along the Metro subway line then under construction. Vacant land that sold for $6 to $8 per square foot rose to $15 to $20 despite sharply rising mortgage rates.

“Before Metro opened,” noted local realtor Brenda Engeberg in the Washington Post, “an average three-bedroom home in Cheverly [serviced eventually by the Metro] was selling for $45,000 to $50,000…  Now most of them are selling for $70,000 and up.”

Conclusion: Metro created those land value increases; if they were taxed, the Metro subway would have cost Washington producers nothing.

(119) “Assessment officials [in Australia] advocate the [land value tax] system   strongly, stressing their belief that equity is much more easily achieved in the assessment of unimproved land than in the assessment of land and buildings together.” (from a study by the U.S. Congressional Research Service, 2/12/71, p. 50).  See IT, 2/81.

(120) An Incentive Taxation study revealed that the property tax on buildings in Philadelphia in 1980 taxed away 24% of expected building income.  If this tax were replaced by LVT, then 0% of the building income would be taxed away.  See IT, 2/81.

(121) A 12/02 C.S.E. study showed that 66.9% of the owners of developed properties in Blairsville, Pa. saved with LVT.

 (122) A 1995 study in Falls Church, Va. conducted by Steven Cord showed that homeowners paid slightly more with LVT.  Reason: the town contained almost only homeowners; there were almost no commercial properties or apartment buildings.

(123) Fairhope, Alabama was founded in 1894 as a Single Tax colony.  In 1980 it had collected enough land rent to pay for more than half of the town’s public revenues.  It is an attractive town and has far outgrown its older and much-better-situated neighbors, Daphne (five miles away) and Battles Wharf (three miles away).  See IT, 4/81.

(124) A study by the Appalachian Land Ownership Task Force and funded by the U.S. Appalachian Regional Commission found that 43% of the total land area in the 80 Appalachian counties was owned by absentee individuals and corporations, and not much taxed (IT, 5-6/81 per N.Y. Times, 4/5/81).

The biggest four landowners in the region controlled more acreage than in Rhode Island.  IT (5-6/81) concluded: “If they [the residents] wish to give the land rent to absentee corporations, they should not berate the recipients.  The fault is theirs.  They are sitting on great natural riches, yet they languish in poverty because they allow strangers to take these riches away.”

(125) In Columbia, 3% of the population own 60% of the arable land.  In Venezuela, 1.7% own 74.5%.  In Chile, 2.2% own 75% (from John Gunther’s Inside South America, 1967).  In the United States, less than 3% own 95% of the private land area (U.S.D.A. study by Gene Wunderlich).  See IT, 5-6/81.

 (126) Of eight finalists in the Premier Town Contest held in the state of Victoria, Australia in 1976, seven were LVT-only (the eventual winner was LVT-only).  Only about 62% of the towns in Victoria (of about 90 altogether) were LVT-only.

(127-129) Three studies sponsored by the Danforth Foundation, the city of St. Louis, the Milwaukee Central Area Study (3/73), and the H.R. Subcommittee on the City, recommended at least partial LVT.  See IT, Summer 1981.

 (130) The League of Women Voters of New Castle, Pa. found that the majority of New Castle residents would pay less property tax with LVT.  See IT, 9/81.  Reason: most residents had little land-rent income.

(131) A 1980 study by William Coyne, councilman and chair of the Finance Committee, using Pittsburgh City Planning Department figures, found that unincorporated properties (almost entirely residential) had a building-to-land ratio of 3.3059:l compared to the city’s 2.7779:1.  This indicates that most Pittsburgh homeowners saved with LVT.  See IT, 9/81. 

As for tenants, they all would save because less building tax would be passed on to them (and in the long run, they pay no land tax at all; read any basic economics textbook on this).

  (132) A study by Allan Hutchinson found that in Kilmore Shire (Victoria, Aus.), construction grew 104% in the four years prior to the LVT switch (1967-1970), then 179% in the four years thereafter (1972-1975; 1971 was a transition year, taxing non-LVT for nine months and LVT for three months, so it wasn’t counted).

Even more important, Kilmore Shire far out-constructed the towns in its statistical district (which were subject to the same economic growth influences).  Like all his other studies quoted here, Hutchinson’s study was based on original data: building permits in an Australian government publication.  See IT, 10/81.

(133) LVT-only suburbs in Melbourne, Aus. had 59.3% fewer properties in tax arrears than the non-LVT suburbs (from Hutchinson’s 1/7/81 letter to Steven Cord, citing the A.B.S. - Australian Bureau of Statistics).  See IT, 10/81.  This issue also contains a picture of Hutchinson.

 (134-135) Assessment officials in both Pittsburgh and Scranton, Pa. reported that after these cities shifted some of their local property taxes off buildings onto land, there were no significant changes in assessment appeals.  See IT, 10/81.

(136) A New Castle, Pa. study conducted in 1980 by the mayor’s office found that 218 of the city’s homeowners out of 279 (78.14%) sampled at random saved with a building-to-land property-tax shift.  See IT, 10/81.

 (137) Building permits in McKeesport, Pa. increased 98% in 1980 as compared to the average of the three years prior to its two-rate LVT adoption (1977-79), whereas in adjacent Duquesne, the increase was only 12% and in nearby Clairton there was a decrease of 44%. 

In January-August 1981, McKeesport’s registered a 70% increase; Duquesne registered an 84% decrease; no comparable figures were available for Clairton.  Both Duquesne and Clairton later adopted two-rate LVT.  See IT 11/81, 12/81.

(138) In New Zealand in the late 1950s, ten large LVT-only cities had slightly less defaults than three large non-LVT-only cities, thereby indicating that exempting buildings from local taxation does not increase tax defaults (source: H. Bronson Cowan in a 1961 report published by the Canadian Federation of Mayors & Municipalities, p. 31).  See IT, 12/81.

(139) Urban Land Institute Research Monograph #4 endorsed LVT and called it “the golden key to urban renewal – to the automatic regeneration of the city, and not at public expense” (p. 28).  See IT, 12/81.

(140) In 1981, Pittsburgh city council was considering a mercantile tax increase that would have cost the Gimbel’s department store an estimated $60,000 a year, whereas a land tax increase raising the same revenue would have cost Gimbel’s only $8,987 more (note that the $60,000 mercantile tax would have been passed on as higher prices to the shoppers at Gimbel’s, but not the $8,987).  See IT, 1-2/82.

(141) According to a 1977 Pittsburgh City Planning Department study based on U.S. Census figures, most of the wards having below-average citywide family incomes would get decreases with a building-to-land property tax shift.  See IT, 1-2/82.

(142) Every U.S. state has laws that require agricultural land to be assessed at the lower agricultural-use value rather than at the higher market value.  But according to a USDA Economic Research Service study (reported in IT, 1-2/82), these laws have not preserved agricultural land from development and give little tax relief to low-income farmers; the chief beneficiaries have been the largest farmers and land speculators.

However, a higher tax on land values would attain the desired goals.

(143) A study entitled “State Taxation and Economic Development” of the U.S. Council of State Planning Agencies found that a land value tax facilitates the desirable consolidation of smaller sites; there were other benefits.  See IT, 1-2/82.

(144) According to a study published in Land Economics (11/71), 21% of the land area in 13 prominent U.S. cities was vacant yet buildable upon; our cities are porous.  Presumably, the people who would have lived on that vacant (or partially developed) land are sprawling instead on nearby suburban and rural land.  Only LVT can combat urban sprawl into the clean-and-green countryside. See IT, 3-4/82.

(145) Buninyong is a rural shire 73 miles west of Melbourne.  It was once famous as a rich gold mining center but its fortunes declined when the mines played out.  In 1972, the local taxpayers, mostly farmers and cattlemen, voted out the old property tax system and replace it with LVT-only.  It levied no other taxes. 

In its first six years of full LVT-only (1973-78), Buninyong’s annual construction and renovation was 10.54 times more than the annual construction and renovation of the three years before it switched to LVT-only.  In 1975 and 1976, there was a serious recession in the rural Victoria building industry, but it did not affect Buninyong.  See IT, 3-4/82, based on a Progress study (6/79, p. 3) of A.B.S. statistics, series catalog # 8703.2.

(146) Researcher Daniel Sullivan found that when McKeesport, Pa. adopted two-rate LVT, the property tax for the average homeowner was 15% less than it might have been without the two-rate LVT shift.  He found it to be 29% less for working-class homeowners.  See IT, 5-6/82.

(147) Only eleven miles separate Wilkes-Barre and Scranton; both are nestled in the hills of northeastern Pennsylvania.  Wilkes-Barre had been the recipient of massive federal aid, a veritable flood of federal dollars, but not Scranton.  But in 1980, Scranton almost doubled its tax rate on land assessments (leaving its building tax rate untouched); in addition, it exempted all newly constructed commercial and industrial improvements from the property tax for ten years. 

The result was that Scranton’s building permits increased 22% in 1980-81 as compared to 1977-79, but Wilkes-Barre suffered a 44% loss in building permits issued during the same periods of time (Steven Cord study as reported in IT, Summer/1982).

(148) A 1982 Incentive Taxation study found that the average wage earner in Philadelphia paid $806 in an annual wage tax, but would pay only $407 with a land value tax raising the same revenue.  See IT, summer/1982.

(149) Researcher Dan Sullivan surveyed Clairton, Pa. in the early 1980s and discovered these interesting facts: 

>>A deed-transfer tax would cost the average homebuyer between $211 and $250, but an LVT raising the same revenue would cost only $1.19 a year (assuming the same revenue for both).

>>An earned income tax would cost any household earning $3,000 or more (at least 90% of the Clairtonites at that time), more than an LVT (equivalent in revenue). 

>>Occupational Privilege Tax vs. LVT – For the average household, LVT wins, $10 to $4 (if the same revenue is raised by both).  The win is even more for households having more than one worker. 

>>Per Capita Tax vs. LVT – The average homeowner wins again with LVT, $10 to $1.14 (more if the cost of tax collection is considered) assuming the same revenue to be raised by both.  But of course the average household had many taxable capitas.

>>Residence Tax vs. LVT – The average homeowner wins again with LVT, $5 to $1.14 (same revenue for both). 

>>Mercantile and Business Privilege Tax vs. LVT – The mercantile tax costs the average homeowner $1.48 a year while the business privilege tax costs the average home- owner $14.33 a year compared to an LVT cost of $1 (assuming the same revenue for all three taxes).  Also, the mercantile and business privilege taxes harmed the business climate in Clairton while the LVT would improve it.  

                              (150) Congressman William Coyne found that after Pittsburgh’s land tax rate was nearly doubled in 1979, vacant lot sales rose 17%, “suggesting that the new tax made it uncomfortable to just sit on valuable urban space.”  See IT, 9-10/82.

(151) An Incentive Taxation examination of Pittsburgh’s building permits revealed that when the city’s land tax rate greatly increased in 1979, its building-permit issuance jumped 14% as compared to the 1977-78 average, and then jumped 312% in 1980 (in that year, all new construction, but not the underlying land value, was granted a three-year property-tax exemption). 

In 1981, new construction and renovation exceeded the 1977-8 averages by an astounding 590% despite the decline in Pittsburgh’s steel industry.  Nationwide office building starts increased much less in those years (see IT, 10-11/82).

(152) USDA study, 1978: less than 1% of all landowners in the U.S. hold 40% of all private land.  See IT, 10-11/82.

(153) In 1982, Harrisburg, Pa.’s immense retail-and-hotel complex called Strawberry Square save $112,857 a year in property taxes because of the city’s two-rate LVT (the savings are greater now because the city has shifted more of its property tax on buildings to land).  See IT, 10-11/82.

(154-174) Homeowners saved big with LVT in these 21+ cities: Meadville, Harrisburg, Lancaster, Erie, Pittsburgh (all in Pa.), San Diego, La Mesa, San Marcos, Chula Vista, Delmar, Escondido, Oceanside, Fresno (all in Cal.), Omaha (Neb.), Port Credit (Ontario), Washington, D.C., Southfield (Mich.), all cities and the county in Bergen County (N.J.), South Melbourne and Korumburra (Aus.), Whitsable (England), and Edmonton (Canada).  See IT, 5-6-7/76 and 10/78.

(175-187) Homeowners also saved big in McKeesport, Easton (both in Pa.), New York City, Grand Island, West Seneca (all in N.Y.S.), Des Moines (Iowa), San Diego County (Cal.), St. Louis (Mo.), and could save big in five municipalities in Tasmania (Aus.) with LVT (see IT, 11-12/82, which also reported that there were 70 cities on Long Island where the homeowners would pay less with LVT - probably true, but the information was not adequately verified).

(188-189) Homeowners saved in Allentown and Butler (both in Pa.) when surveys were taken in those cities.

 (190) U.S. Rep. Bill Coyne: building permits issued in Pittsburgh for new housing rose 15% after the land tax was increased in 1979, while for the same time period they dropped 19% in the rest of the metropolitan area outside Pittsburgh.  See IT, 4/83.

(191) More government building-permit research from Allan Hutchinson: 19 LVT-only road districts in the state of Western Australia experienced a 38% increase in owner-occupied dwellings from 1929 to 1938 (depression years), whereas 27 non-LVT rural road districts in that state experienced only a 6.6% increase during the same time.

(192) In the state of South Australia from 1929 to 1938, none of the 14 LVT-only rural road districts experienced a decrease in occupied dwellings, but 16 of the 53 non-LVT rural road districts in that state experienced decreases (per Allan Hutchinson). 

(193) A study by Yu Hung Hong for the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (LILP) revealed that 39% of the “land-value increments” were collected by the government of Hong Kong between 1970 and 1991 from land leased in the 1970s.  As it happens, Hong Kong enjoys prosperity and low taxes on production (Andelson, LVT Around the World, p. 343).  LVT is preferable to government land-renting, but the two are economically equivalent.  

(194) Singapore is another Asian economic success story.  76% of its land was state-owned in 1985 (Ibid., p. 345).  In 1994, land-leasing revenue exceeded income-tax revenue (Ibid., p 348).  In 1996, residential properties paid a 4% tax rate on land rental value (Ibid., p. 346), nothing on building value.

(195) The Pennsylvania Economy League, a prestigious Pennsylvania public-policy research organization, in 1988 urged the financially strapped city of Clairton, an industrial suburb of Pittsburgh, to adopt a two-rate land-oriented property tax as part of its recovery plan (p.27).  It later urged DuBois, Pa. to adopt two-rate LVT.  Both cities took their advice and prospered.

In 2006, the Clairton School District moved to two-rate LVT: 7.5% on land assessments, coupled with 0.31% on building assessments.  Immediately thereafter, construction and renovation boomed.

(196) After Pittsburgh jumped its land tax rate in 1979 and again in 1980 (without increasing its building tax rate at all), its nonresidential new construction (in dollar value, adjusted for inflation) for the four years following was 3.57 times greater than for the four years previous (P.E.L. report, 1985, p. 16). 

(197) Professor Kenneth M. Lusht, Chairman of the Real Estate Department at the Pennsylvania State University and a prominent U.S. real-estate research economist, conducted an analysis of 53 Melbourne (Aus.) municipalities in 1992.  Almost half of these were LVT-only.  He concluded:

“There is evidence that the use of the site value tax [ed.: the full land rent was far from being taxed] stimulates development and that the advantage persists in the long run, though somewhat eroded.  The results also suggest that the level of the property tax in Melbourne, which is similar to levels in typical US cities, is sufficiently high to affect behavior. 

“The site value tax was a consistently significant predictor, with most specifications showing 40-60 percent more stock per acre in SV-taxing LGAs [site value-taxing local govt. authorities].”

(198) In 1982, Philadelphia’s City Council imposed a 29% property tax on building income.  The effective tax rate on building assessments was 3.83% and the interest rate at the beginning of the fiscal year was 13.3%, meaning that in 1982 the actual tax rate on building income had become about 29% (3.83%/13.3% = about 29%).    

Such a high tax rate on building income amounted to confiscation, but a higher tax rate on land assessments could have avoid that.  See IT, 5/83.

(199) 41% of Ohio farmland is rented out to tenants (The Ohio Farmer, 8/80).

In addition, a large percentage of farmland is mortgaged, so that economically Ohio farmland (probably elsewhere also) is only partly owned by the farmers tilling it.  Banks, via mortgages, would seem to own most of the farmland in the U.S.

                              (200) 11.7% of the land area of New York City was vacant yet buildable upon, according to a research article in the Journal of Land Economics, 11/71.  Few cities are as built up as New York.

                              (201) Fortune Magazine, 7/73: “In the past 15 years the average price of land in the U.S. has risen at a rate of about 7% a year.  Over the same period the consumer price index rose at an average rate of 2.7%.”

                              (202) In 2003, the mayor of the city of Harrisburg, Pa., Stephen Reed, urged the city of Philadelphia to adopt the two-rate [two-tier] LVT-oriented property tax, which he said had been so successful in Harrisburg:

                              “The two-tier system encourages the highest and best use of land and rewards those who properly maintain or invest in buildings.  One of the effects of the split-rate tax [LVT-oriented] is to benefit the lower-income homeowner and small business owner who struggle more than any others to make ends meet and to keep and maintain their homes and businesses. 

“It also has the residual effect of keeping rents lower than they otherwise would be for persons in lower income homes and apartments.  It rewards productivity and investment, in contrast to the single tax rate system which penalizes both.”

(203) An April 2003 study by CSE of the entire Pittsburgh assessment roll revealed that 59.8% of poor homeowners (defined as having a family income below $30,000/yr.) save with a two-rate building-to-land tax shift.

 (204) Researcher Philip Finkelstein examined the assessment roll of New York City in the early 1970s and found that 55% of single-family homeowners in the city would save with LVT; 65% of the 2-family owners would save.  His research was published by Praeger in 1975.  Utilities were the biggest benefiters; presumably this would result in lower bills for utility users.

(205) An anti-LVT testifier asserted before a California legislative committee that he found that homeowners in Oakland, California paid slightly more with LVT, but he offered no exact figures or documentation, and by chance I later examined the assessment register and found that homeowners paid slightly less. 

(206) Godfrey Dunkley, an economist and mechanical engineer, extracted interesting statistics from the official Municipal Yearbooks of the government of South Africa. 

                              He compared 1959 building assessments to 1979 building assessments and found that the one-rate towns (taxing land and buildings the same) increased their total assessments by 486%, but the two-rate towns (taxing land more than buildings) experienced a 561% increase and the 46 towns that taxed only land assessments experienced an 850% increase.  Inflation affected all these figures, but note that the more a town taxed land values, the faster it grew.

                              Further substantiation from the same study: the eight towns that switched from one-rate to two-rate increased their building assessments by 748%, but the 15 towns that switched to land-taxing-only increased by 996% (see IT 9/83). 

A later Dunkley study of a different time comparison yielded similar figures.

(207) In a letter to me dated 2/26/83, Dunkley reported that LVT default “is almost unknown here in South Africa.”  See IT, 9/83.  There would seem to be no reason why the down-taxing of buildings would cause tax default. 

                              (208) Scranton, Pa. almost doubled its LVT rate in 1980, leaving its tax rate on building assessments untouched.  In the three years after the switch, building permits issued increased 23% over the three years before the switch, whereas during the same periods, nearby Wilkes-Barre’s building permits decreased 47% (eleven miles separates the two cities, and Wilkes-Barre had been the recipient of a flood of federal grants). 

                              Steven Cord conducted the research by visiting the city hall of both cities where the building records were kept.  See IT, 10/83.

                              (209) After Seymour Shire in rural Victoria, Aus. switched to LVT-only in September 1981, it experienced an unprecedented building boom, even though construction throughout Victoria slumped to a 20-year low (as reported by government statistics).  Source: Progress magazine, 12/82-1/83, as reported in IT, 9/83.

                              (210) Although Pittsburgh was enmeshed in a steel-industry recession in 1982, its new construction and renovation was 2½ times greater than the average of the three years prior to its 1979 and 1980 land-tax-rate increases (source: city statistics).  See IT, 11/83.

                              (211) McKeesport, Pa. made a major building-to-land tax switch in 1980.  Its building-permit issuance in the three following years increased by 38% over the three years before, whereas its close neighbors, Clairton and Duquesne, experienced a decrease of 28% and 20% respectively.  All three cities were steel-based.  See IT, 11/83.

                              In 1980 both Clairton and Duquesne were one-rate, though they later switched to two-rate, like McKeesport.

 

                              (This ends our examination of the second bound volume of Incentive Taxation.  We have eight more volumes to examine.)

 

                              (212) Economics professors at Drexel University (Phila.) found that 78% of Philadelphia’s property owners would save money if the LVT proposal by the city controller, Jonathan Seidel, was adopted.  The Drexel report was funded by the Greater Phila. Assn. of Realtors, Phila. BOMA, the Phila. Chamber of Commerce, and others. (source: Phila. Business Journal, 5/2-8/03).

                              (213) In August 1972, the voters in Orbost Shire (in rural Victoria, Aus.) switched to LVT-only.  The three-years-after period had 48.9% more construction than in the three-years-before (Progress magazine [Melbourne], 10/77, p. 7; see IT 6/84).

                              While it may sometime seem to many Americans that Australians are walking around upside down, that is not so; they are very much like Americans.  Builders throughout the world build more if they are un-taxed; landowners will develop their sites more if land is up-taxed, which also results in more and better buildings.

(214) After the Orbost Shire Sewerage Authority switched to LVT-only during 1973, its 1974-1976 building-permit issuance increased by 78% as compared to 1970-1972.  See IT, 6/84, citing Progress magazine, 6/75, p. 8).

(215) Kilmore Shire (in rural Victoria, Aus.) issued 24% more building permits annually than what might have been expected had Kilmore Shire exhibited the same rate of construction change as its comparable neighbors (IT, 6/84; source - Progress, 6/75, p. 8, using govt. statistics).

(216) Government statistics show that Australia’s three states with the most LVT increased their agricultural acreage, 1938/39 (depression years) as compared to 1929/30, while the three states with the least LVT experienced a decrease in agricultural acreage during the same period.  The more these states had LVT, the greater their agricultural-acreage increase (see IT, 6/84, citing Allan Hutchinson’s Public Charges Upon Land Values, 1961).  It would seem that LVT is good for farmers.

 (217) An empirical study of the Melbourne (Australia) area disclosed that from 1921 to 1940, suburban municipalities using LVT built 2.12 times more houses per building-available acres than similar neighborhoods taxing real-estate income - “similar” means taking size, distance from the center of Melbourne, and residential-industrial mix into account (Progress magazine, 9/64, p. 5, by G. A. Forster).

(218) I performed a study of suburban-and-agricultural White Township, Pa. in 1984 and found that the average homeowner would pay a land tax that would be 31.1% of his or her wage tax, assuming that both taxes would raise the same revenue.  The land-tax saving would be much greater for those households with more than one wage earner.  See IT, 12/84.

(219) Fairhope, Alabama paid some of its municipal expenses with the equivalent of a land value tax.  It grew faster than its older and better-situated neighbors, Daphne and Point Clear.  See IT, 12/84.

(220) Pittsburgh, Pa. increased its land tax rate, but not its building tax rate, in 1979 and then again in 1980.  Its 1979 building-permit issuance was 14% greater in 1979 than in the previous years of 1977 and 1978, but in 1980 it was 312% greater and in 1981, 590% greater (despite a sharp steel slump).  See IT, 12/84.

The 312% and 590% figures were boosted because of public expenditures (mostly on a convention center, since torn down).  As for private construction, it greatly increased (source: city statistics on public and private building-permits issued). 

(221) In 1976, the Land Use Taxation Study Committee of the Indiana legislature concluded: “Property tax should be restructured so that the tax is levied on land and not the buildings and other improvements to the land.”  See IT, 12/84.

(222) After reviewing the Assessment Register in Scranton, Pa., Austin Burke, president of the Chamber of Commerce, reported: “We’ve experienced positive development from this [LVT]…We would rather have a land-only tax phased in over several years.”  See IT, 12/84.

(223) A 3% tax rate on building assessments is equivalent to a 30% excise tax on building profits, given an interest rate of 10% (IT).  Such a tax would seem to discourage new construction and renovation.  An LVT could do away with that tax altogether.

(224-233) Generally, a building-to-land shift in the local property tax in the U.S. would reduce the property tax on factories.  Reductions would occur in ten localities surveyed (two outside the U.S.): Erie County, N.Y., Des Moines, Iowa, Easton, Pa., Wellington, N.Z., Sydney, Aus., Nassau County, L.I., N.Y., Philadelphia, Pa., Milwaukee, Wisc., Erie, Pa., and Altoona, Pa.  See IT, 1/85.

 (234) Researcher Robert Willis of Des Moines, Iowa found that if the state subsidy to local school systems was replaced by an LVT, the average homeowner would pay $550 less in total taxes.  See IT, 1/85.

 (235) All four farms within the city limits of Altoona, Pa. would save with a building-to-land shift in the property tax.  See IT, 1/85.  Altoona is now a two-rate LVT-oriented city.

(236) A study by the assessment division of the city of Schenectady, N.Y. showed that single-family homeowners would pay very slightly more with a building-to-land tax shift, but two and three-family homes would receive substantial tax cuts.  

In the long run, apartment houses owners would save big in the short run (reason: big building on moderately priced residential land), but in the long run, their tenants would pay less because there’ll be less building taxes to be passed on to them and the land tax is never passed on to them.  See IT, 1/85.

(237) “A recent study estimated the market value of this spectrum [a section of the airwaves] at $770 billion” (Norman Ornstein and Michael Calabrese in the Washington Post, 8/12/03, A13).  A 10% tax on that (equivalent to a land tax) could yield annual revenue of about $77 billion and would ensure efficient use of the spectrum.

 (238) The Best Study of Them All: Pittsburgh had been taxing land assessments more than building assessments ever since 1915, but for the year 2001 and thereafter, it reverted to taxing both types of assessments at the same rate.     

Why did the city do that? This question is irrelevant to our current concerns, but let us consider it briefly anyway: the well-to-do voters in Pittsburgh were suddenly aroused to fever pitch as never before about their property tax because their new land assessments (instituted by the county) were suddenly increased overnight by five-to-eight times – an absolute political no-no (most county elected officials lost the next election). 

These well-to-do voters thought they would pay less if they got the land tax rate brought down to the building tax rate, not realizing that this would require a precipitous increase in their building tax rate (as well as an increase in property taxes for most Pittsburghers).  They were completely unaware of the many pro-LVT studies in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, so they pressured their city council to reduce the land tax rate.   

After it rescinded its land tax, Pittsburgh suffered a 19.57% decline (adjusted for inflation) in private new construction in the three years after rescission as compared to the three years before, even though during the same time period, the value of all construction nationwide, also as measured by building permits, increased 7.7% (also inflation-adjusted).

Examining and evaluating all 13,457 of Pittsburgh’s building permits for the six-year period took about 200 hours.  The full details of the study are reported in IT 5/04).

A computer examination of the entire Pittsburgh assessment roll found that 54% of all homeowners paid more property tax with the rescission.  As for tenants per se, they all would eventually have to pay more space-rent because the increased building tax would be passed on to them but not the land value tax in the long run (as explained in all basic economics textbooks).  Since big cities have many tenants (both residential and business) their citizenry would particularly benefit from the taxation of land values.

The Pittsburghers hurt themselves, à la Samson, but this LVT rescission has actually been a blessing in disguise because it enables us to examine the effect on construction of a land-to-building tax switch.

                                                                                                                                II - Validity

But how valid are these studies?  Could other factors have been the main cause of economic growth?  Here follows a discussion of their validity:

            1) Logic maintains that if we tax buildings, fewer will be built and they’ll be

more expensive because their price will have to include the tax, but if we tax land more, we’ll encourage its fuller use and lower its price – you’ll surely pay less for a land-site if it is taxed, and land-sites would have to be productively used in order to generate at least enough income to pay the tax (remember, the use will be down-taxed). 

            Economic growth has always followed the switch to land value taxation, and most people will get tax reductions because they get little income from land.  Successfully combating worldwide poverty isn’t possible unless land is adequately taxed.

            2) Original Sources - All the empirical studies are based on original data – building permits issued and kept on file by local governments.  When someone wants to build something, they must take out a carefully reviewed building permit.  The actual construction costs are carefully investigated.  Governments everywhere (including the U.S. Census Bureau) use building permits to measure new construction.     

             3) Economic growth always followed a building-to-land switch in all cases.  If only five or six cases could have been cited, or maybe eight, other factors could possibly explain the growth, but surely not in hundreds of cases.

             The very best evidence: 63 of the studies compared the economic growth of the land-taxing localities to neighboring non-LVT localities subject to the same economic influences (or in some cases to national averages).  The growth of the land-taxing localities always exceeded that of their neighbors (or the nation).   

             4) In my own 18 empirical studies, I found very few non-land-tax growth factors  - none that could refute the conclusion that if land is taxed, economic growth ensues and taxpayers pay lower taxes.   

             In these studies, I compared the building permits issued in the 3 years after the land-value switch to the 3 years before precisely because I wanted to eliminate other possible factors (longer periods might introduce other factors and shorter periods might not allow enough time for new construction to begin).  Whenever I could, I compared the building permits issued in my two-rate cities with neighboring one-rate-but-otherwise-comparable cities; the two-rate cities always out-constructed their neighbors.

            5) Many competent researchers concurred - At least 48 researchers other than me authored these studies.  Seventeen of them were economics professors.

            6) Peer-Reviewed - Two of these researchers authored a peer-reviewed article 

published in the Journal of Urban Economics (3/00).  All my conclusions reached when the research was done (1995) were completely corroborated. 

            7) No contradicting empirical studies - I assiduously reviewed as much of the scholarly land-tax literature as I could and found no contradicting empirical studies. None.  Objections were rare and never empirical.  It would seem that these empirical studies pass the test of scholarly validity.

            8) Widely endorsed – Literally hundreds of well-known historical personalities

and urban officials have endorsed this proposal.   

            Perhaps you have thought “If LVT is so good, why hasn’t it been more widely adopted?”  None of the well-known endorsers knew how to implement it, and if you do nothing after reading this tremendous mass of empirical evidence, then you have your answer.     

                                                                III - Caveat           

            No matter how valid and beneficial this tax is, its actual implementation takes ten to twenty years, and only two people in the whole world know how to do that.  Faster implementation will cause bankruptcies.  

The first tax to be gradually replaced should be the local property tax on building assessments.  Use a two-rate property tax - higher tax rate on land assessments coupled with a lower tax rate on building assessments.  This requires knowing two simple formulas for figuring out the new building and land tax rates is required; at times, a faster implementation is possible.   

In order to facilitate the gradual transition to a land value tax, 94 implementations have been identified (ask for them).  For instance, property tax increases resulting from a rate change (not assessment change) could be limited to 3% over the previous year (5% for commercial property).  Also available is a list of 20 land assessment techniques.

Considering the vast empirical evidence for this tax, shouldn’t we start as soon as possible to substitute a land value tax for taxes on production?

 IV - Conclusion

                              These empirical studies, and there are many more, clearly indicate that it is better to tax locations rather than production, since no one can produce locations.  There will be terrible social consequence if these studies are ignored.     

                              Such ignorance is like driving a car by pressing on the gas and brake pedals at the same time.

 

 To find out how exactly to implement this tax, contact Steven B. Cord, professor-emeritus, 10528 Cross Fox Lane, Columbia MD 21044, 1-866-997-1182 (toll-free), stevencord2000@...

 

 

 

  

 

 



Eric Britton <eric.britton@...> wrote:

State of the Commons/EcoPlan 2008 Report and Outlook

 

     The New Mobility Agenda - Triple-dividend: 

                  • Protect the environment
                  • Improve our cities
                  • Strengthen the economy

 

Paris, Wednesday, 9 January 2008

 

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

 

Attached kindly find our annual State of the Commons/Ecoplan Report, offering a quick recap of 2007, a look ahead to 2008 and an introspection which I am pleased to share with you and hope to get your feedback on.

Before we dive into the note, an important preamble: I know that our various  projects and contributions are valuable and worthy of being continued, and hope you do too. However in the last few years I have slipped into an unsustainable pro bono mode, with all the financial difficulties that it inevitably brings with it. Thus I now with some urgency need to switch back to adequately charging the people, governments and institutions who have been profiting directly or indirectly from our efforts. That’s the big challenge for 2008.


To be clear, I am calling on you, the people I most trust and who know me best, for your brightest ideas, input and help about how to best monetize these programs and my time. If each one of you can pitch me just one funding path or actionable business idea to provide a solid financial base  for the work we are doing . I am sure I will find a glove that fits - Short-term money generators and longer-term programs, sponsorships, new business models, new customer ideas, university links, whatever.  Sometimes it is easier to do from the outside looking in, and I am counting on your objectivity, creativity and individual/collective intelligence.

 

I thank you for whatever you can share with me on how best to attack all this.

And now on to the recap and outlook for our on-going programs.

 

Eric Britton

 

 

  Pointing the way to New Mobility

 

  

 

 

Europe:   8/10 rue Joseph Bara,     75006 Paris,  France.      T:  +331 4326 1323

USA:        9440 Readcrest Dr.  Los Angeles, CA  90210.        T: +1 310 601-8468

E. eric.britton@.... E2. fekbritton@... Skype: ericbritton

 

 

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#211 From: "Tom Wayburn" <twayburn@...>
Date: Sat Jan 5, 2008 9:28 am
Subject: RE: [The Commons] Doors of Perception Report by John Thackara January 2008 		twayburn
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Send Email Send Email
 

Friends, Colleagues, Allies, Comrades, and Detractors,

 

It appears that the author of the Doors of Perception Report has been reading the wrong people.  In general, by which I mean without exception, he is discussing bad ideas.  It would take too long to start at the beginning, go to the end, and then stop.  For now, I will be content to note that I would have been better off in the development of the notion of dematerialism if I had identified materialism with the notion of resource dominance from evolutionary biology.  Thus, we don’t need tools for survival, design festivals, school designs, conferences on change, sustainable mobility, wikinomics, or sustainability lists.  If we don’t find a way to change the political system in such a way as to eliminate resource dominance, all of these activities are guaranteed to do more harm than good.  To borrow an analogy, it’s like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.  John Gray represents my only serious opposition, which is summarized very briefly at http://www.dematerialism.net/#_Toc172928972 without mentioning Gray.

 

Tom Wayburn, Houston, Texas
http://dematerialism.net/
http://dematerialism.blogspot.com/
http://dematerialism.wikispaces.com/
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Dematerialism
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?TomWayburn
http://energybulletin.net/23259.html

 

“Every revolution is hopeless until the night before it occurs.”  [attribution forgotten]

 

From: the-commons@yahoogroups.com [mailto:the-commons@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of eric.britton
Sent: Thursday, January 03, 2008 5:54 AM
To: The-commons@yahoogroups.com
Cc: John Thackara
Subject: [The Commons] Doors of Perception Report by John Thackara January 2008

 

OF DOOMERS AND BOTTLE-FILLERS
In Sao Paulo before Christmas someone referred to me as a "doomer." I
had not heard the word before, but was told that it describes sad,
train-spotter-like people who can't stop talking about peak oil, climate
change, the instability of financial markets, the impending food crisis,
and what John Michael Greer calls the "catabolic collapse" of industrial
civilisation. [snip]

 
TOOLS FOR SURVIVAL: ST ETIENNE DESIGN BIENNIAL
Imagine that you have the attention and presence of 80,000 designers and
architects. Which five tools, business models, platforms, or
applications, would you badly want them to learn about - and use? Tools
for Survival is such an opportunity.  [snip]


SCALE DILEMMA (1): DESIGNS OF THE TIME (DOTT)
Doors is still working with its partners on the legacy of Dott 07.  [snip]

 
SCALE DILEMMA (2): Eco Design Challenge FOR SCHOOLS
Dott's Eco Design Challenge is a good example of the scalability
dilemma. More than fifteen thousand school students used
custom--designed calculators to measure their school's eco-footprint
during 2007. [snip]


THE ASSETS OF AFRICA
As Saki Mafundikwa aptly stated, "Africa is not poor, it just doesn't
have a lot of money." If Africa does not have a lot of money, what then
does it have?. This question, posed by Mugendi Mrithaa to conference
chair Ezio Manzini, has persuaded us we should participate in the Change
the Change conference in Torino, in July.  [snip]


SUSTAINABLE MOBILITY
There are two ways to reduce transportation emissions: reduce emission
rates per vehicle-kilometer, or reduce total vehicle-travel.  [snip]


FREAKY WIKINOMICS
Don Tapscott's new book Wikinomics gallops along at a heady pace. "The
knowledge, resources, and computing power of billions of people are
self-organising into a massive new collective force", it gushes. This
marvelous news is tempered by the suspicion that either I, or the Web
2.0 world, is afflicted by a severe reality deficit. Wikinomics promises
us an internet-powered business utopia, but the words climate change,
peak oil, and catbolic collapse, are notable for their complete absence.
A better text for CEOs is John Gray's Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion
and the Death of Utopia. "The pursuit of utopia must be replaced by an
attempt to cope with reality" writes Gray. Warning that "an irrational
faith in the future is encrypted into contemporary life", the
laugh-a-minute philosopher recommends a diet of Spinoza and Tao-ism for
those whose new year resolution is: Get Real. 



NO NEW LISTS!
My own new year's resolution is to stop writing sustainability to-do
lists.  [snip]


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http://lists.webtic.nl/mailman/listinfo/doors-report


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