RESPONSE TO G-20 SUMMIT

The G-20 April 2nd Summit in London acknowledged the group’s interdependence and moved toward greater cooperation now essential to reforming global finance. The G-20 endorsed the goal of building a resilient, sustainable and green economy. “We will make the transition towards clean, innovative, resource-efficient, low-carbon technologies and infrastructure.” The G-20 also reaffirmed their commitment to address climate change and to reach agreement at the December 2009 UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen.

Commitments underway by G-20 countries of $5 trillion are expected to raise global output by 4% and accelerate the transition to a green economy.

Fundamental reforms were not addressed, including the need to re-design debt-based money and banking or to create a new global reserve currency, already proposed by China, Russia, India, Brazil and other G-20 members so as to relieve imbalances and excessive pressure on the US dollar.

More immediate reform of the voting representation on the boards of the World Bank and the IMF are a step forward, together with an additional $750 billion: with $250 billion for a new issuance of Special Drawing Rights (SDRs); $250 billion to support trade finance; $100 billion of additional lending to developing countries, as well as an additional $1.1 trillion from IMF gold sales for concessional finance to the poorest countries.

The heart of the G-20 agreements is to move beyond the “Anglo-Saxon” economics typified by the now-rejected “Washington Consensus” model. Many sensible new rules were promulgated to regulate and oversee global financial firms, including hedge funds, new principles for executive pay, accounting rules, credit rating agencies, excessive leverage and restraining excessive risk taking. Rules for tax and regulatory arbitrage are to be tightened and tax-havens “named and shamed.” However, the hypocrisy reported by Australia’s Griffith University professor Jason Sharman must be addressed: that the US states of Nevada, Delaware and Wyoming, as well as some OECD member countries, must be included in the “shaming.”

No mention was made on correcting GDP as proposed by the European Parliament to include statistics on education, health, environment or poverty gaps; nor on the need for incorporating such ESG factors in company balance sheets and reporting (www.globalreporting.org).

A New End: A New Beginning (Part 3)

So, it doesn’t look to me like we’re going to be able to do what might be needed to maintain the present system . . . and it is likely that we’re at one of those extraordinary moments in history when each of us gets the opportunity to play an important role in not only transitioning to a new world, but also designing it.

It appears that the financial system is likely to collapse sometime this year – probably before the third quarter – which will then require a great deal of effort next year (and into 2012?) to design and build a new framework. It is obvious that many businesses will fail as the result of this abrupt slowdown (just read the papers today), and there will be unprecedented hardship for many people around the world. A long view of what is happening could posit that only through the collapse of a legacy system could a new world evolve . . . and that is what is happening.

So, what to do in the face of unprecedented change? Two specific things come to mind:

1. Plan for the transition – Start to think now about how you’re going to provide for yourself and those who are important to you in a time when many things don’t work the way that always have in the past. Dmitry Orlov talks about some options in his above-mentioned talk and book. There are many websites and books on this subject. Key Concept: Cooperation You can’t do this alone. Start to work together with like-minded individuals to sustain yourself – regardless of whether your concerns are food, water, shelter, transportation or finances.
2. Start thinking about the new world – Now is the time to begin contemplating the design of the new world. Governments should be doing this. Companies should start skunk works. Big international organizations should put it on their agendas.

Here’s the catch. This might not happen. Personally, I think that if there is any one person that has the potential to at least soften this transition it is Barack Obama. As I’ve suggested, he will have his hands full just trying to get the underlying people and institutions to think differently and act fast enough, but if anyone has the chance to pull it off, it would be him. Already he’s getting government to move faster and in more substantive ways than any of his predecessors. It may be, by the way, that he will be the best guy to wind down the old system and reconstitute a new one. It’s all of the other folks running the government that I’d be concerned about – the ones who continue to see the world as it used to be.

There are any number of reasons why this scenario might not manifest itself, not least of which is that there will be many thousands, if not millions of people who will be working very hard to assure that the system doesn’t come apart (but then, they may be doing the wrong things).

Seems to me, therefore, that flexibility and permeability (allowing new ideas to get through) are of critical importance here. Remember the first law of Discordianism: “Convictions cause convicts”. Whatever you believe imprisons you.

So, stay loose. The winners need to transcend, not try to work their way through all of this. Concentrate on building the new world, don’t get emotionally involved in the daily reports of the current global erosion.
If your group would like to hear more about this, I’m always happy to come give presentations on these subjects. Drop me a note and we’ll see if we can make something happen.

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Swine Flu: Pandemic or Lesson on Releasing Fear?

In recent weeks I’ve had the opportunity to speak to hundreds of people in person and through radio interviews and teleconferences about 2012: what may be coming in the way of earth shifts and human-caused changes and how to prepare for the most probable outcomes, while envisioning a new way of being in a transformed world and beginning to live out that vision now.

The question that keeps coming up is this: what do we need to know and do now to make it through the coming shift and transition to a higher consciousness?

The first part of the answer is, emphatically, not to go into fear. Fear is a lower-vibration energy that can spread as quickly as a pandemic and cause as much damage energetically. Since 2001, we’ve gotten so used to fear-based interpretations of the world through media, politics, and conspiracy theories that we either panic at the first sign of trouble, giving energy to the worst case outcomes, or sink into denial, ignoring the signs of the times that tell us the world is transforming in many ways at once.

Giving in to fear clouds our judgment and vision, snatching away our sense of security and control of our own lives. It also saps our ability to choose to participate in bringing about the best possible outcome for the highest good of all life on this planet.

Witness the so-called swine flu pandemic. Conspiracy theorists tell us the swine flu virus was concocted in secret labs and released on the public by dark forces hoping to kill off millions of excess humans on this planet or just to create massive panic. The Egyptian government ordered that country’s 300,000 pig population slaughtered out of sheer ignorance and fear, which it multiplied exponentially with this worst possible response to a perceived threat. Even the National Institutes of Health, by recommending that school systems with possible cases close down for days or weeks until the virus is contained, amped up the fear by giving it probable cause and threw a wrench into the end of school year plans of hundreds of thousands of students, teachers, and parents left without child care options. Individuals who can afford to get Tamiflu prescriptions from their doctors are doing so to protect themselves. Spiritual healers are recommending natural products like essential oils to ward off the virus and restore the physical and energy bodies to full health.

It seems that each institution or individual is demonstrating its own level of consciousness in its reaction to this virus.

What is the truth about swine flu? Is the threat overblown, considering the number of cases worldwide? It appears so. And yet, as I point out in “Spiritual Wisdom for a Planet in Peril: Preparing for 2012 and Beyond,” pandemics are one kind of natural- or human-caused disaster we may experience in this time of great change for which we can prepare on both physical and energetic levels.

While science works on understanding the virus and and governments on containing it, we, from a higher consciousness perspective, can deal with swine flu and other potential disasters by recognizing that through directing positive intention and energy to the threat we can influence the outcome. By consciously choosing not to participate in fear but rather to surround the virus, the people and animals touched by it, and the medicines and personnel prepared to counteract it with the energy of love, we can help convert a potential disaster into a soft landing. The more of us who practice sending the high vibration of universal love into the world in place of the lower vibration of fear, the less likely a potential disaster is to become a real one.

This is a huge lesson to be learned as we move forward through this cosmic shift marked by 2012. Knowing how to heal the body, mind, and spirit is essential. Choosing not to participate in fear and to offer love in its place will make all the difference.

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Deep CO2 Cuts May Be Last Hope for Acid Oceans

UXBRIDGE, Canada, May 15 (IPS) – Ocean acidification offers the clearest evidence of dangers of climate change. And yet the indisputable fact that burning fossil fuels is slowly turning the oceans into an acid bath has been largely ignored by industrialised countries and their climate treaty negotiators, concluded delegates from 76 countries at the World Oceans Conference in Manado, Indonesia.

Oceans and coastal areas must be on the agenda at the crucial climate talks in Copenhagen in December, they wrote in a declaration. “We must come to the rescue of the oceans,” declared Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at the opening of high-level government talks on Thursday in the northern city of Manado.

It is fair to say most international climate negotiators aren’t aware of the impacts of climate change on the oceans, said Carl Gustaf Lundin, head of the IUCN’s Global Marine Programme.

“Very few people understand that carbon emissions are making the oceans acidic,” Lundin told IPS.
Over the past 150 years, burning of fossil fuels and deforestation has put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The oceans have absorbed more than one-third – about 130 billion tonnes – of those human emissions and have become 30 percent more acidic as the extra CO2 combines with carbonate ions in seawater, forming carbonic acid.

Each day, the oceans absorb 30 million tonnes of CO2, gradually and inevitably increasing their acidity. There is no controversy about this basic chemistry.

This increased acidity is affecting coral reefs and shell-forming organisms like clams and many types of plankton. Newer research suggests that it may also affect basic physiological functions for many types of marine organisms.

Rising levels of acidity may also increase the size of oceanic dead zones – areas that have too little oxygen to support life, according to research published in Science magazine Apr. 19. Dead zones, such as the one in Gulf of Mexico, have dramatically increased in number and size around the world in the past three decades.
“Climate change will have a huge number of very serious impacts on the oceans,” said Duncan Currie of Greenpeace New Zealand.

“What we do in the next 10 to 15 years (regarding carbon emissions) will affect the oceans for thousands of years,” Currie said in an interview from Manado.

And that is why Indonesia, a country made up of 17,508 islands, is hosting the May 11-15 conference and wants to send a message to Copenhagen about the impacts of climate change on the oceans, he said.
The Copenhagen talks under the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are expected to result in a new agreement on reducing carbon emissions by a set target for all developed nations by 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol expires.

Participants and experts at the conference spoke about tropical forests receiving far more attention while there was little awareness in the global community about the broad impacts of climate change on the oceans.
There is also little awareness that coastal mangrove forests soak up large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, protect shorelines and are “fish nurseries”. Protection of mangroves is essential and restoring coastal forests are “win-win” situations that must be encouraged and supported under a future climate agreement, Currie said.

“The role of coastal mangrove forests has not been part of the climate debate at the climate meetings,” agreed Lundin.

Some coastal plants can increase their size by 10 percent per day, a rapid growth rate that exceeds land-based plants. “What are the benefits of CO2 capture and sequestration? I think coastal species offer an excellent opportunity to capture carbon,” he said.

IUCN is working with experts to collect data on this and will soon be able to quantify the carbon capture potential, he said. “Right now no one is talking about this,” Lundin added.

There is also little awareness that oceans and coastal zones have been in steep decline for the past few decades.

At the conference, the international conservation group World Wildlife Fund released a report showing that 40 percent of reefs and mangrove in the Coral Triangle have already been lost. This 5.7 million sq km area, considered the Amazon of the ocean with 75 percent of all coral species, spans eastern Indonesia, parts of Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste and the Solomon Islands.

The 40 percent is probably an underestimate, said the report’s chief author, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, a coral biologist at the University of Queensland, Australia. Much of that decline is not due to climate change but result from pollution, overfishing and damage done to coastal regions such as chopping down mangrove forests and inappropriate coastal development.

“…These are destroying the productivity of ocean, which is plummeting right now,” Hoegh-Guldberg said according to media reports. And since oceans absorb about 40 percent of carbon emissions, damaging that enormous carbon capture system will make climate change far worse.

“To preserve ocean health we’re calling for 40 percent of the oceans to be protected,” Greenpeace’s Currie said.

Greenpeace is campaigning for a global network of fully protected marine reserves – off limits to all fishing – that would include large areas in the high seas where there is little management. Daniel Pauly, a renowned fisheries expert at the University of British Columbia, has called for protection for at least 60 percent of the oceans.

Lundin says the IUCN also wants large areas of the oceans protected to help restore the health of fish stocks, protect ocean life from habitat destruction and collapse so that they can better withstand climate change.

But creating Marine Protected Areas is not enough – ecosystem-based management of these and even larger regions is needed. Current fisheries management on a species by species basis has been a disaster, leading to collapse of fish stocks like tuna, Lundin said.

Major reforms are needed, among them the creation of regional oceans management organisations based on ecosystem principles, he said.

But when it comes to the impacts of climate change on the oceans, the only solution is a global agreement to sharply reduce emissions. While Lundin is optimistic there will be a deal in Copenhagen, he acknowledges some countries will put their self-interest first and foremost, and the global recession will make it difficult for politicians to agree to significant emissions cuts.

“We have to realistic in our expectations about the emission targets that will be agreed to,” he said.

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Celebrating the Summer Solstice on the Path to 2012

As the Winter Solstice of 2012 fast approaches, marking a time of great transition for humanity and our planet, each turn of the cosmic wheel becomes more significant. The summer and winter solstices, along with the spring and fall equinoxes, have been occasions for celebrations and rituals for thousands of years. The ancients looked to the heavens with awe and gratitude for the gifts of each season and built cosmic calendars on the Earth to mark the movements of the heavenly bodies. They were aware of early or late signs of spring to know when to plant their crops and noticed the changing angles of light as summer lengthened their shadows. They lived in harmony with the rhythms of the universe.

In the last century, as populations have become more urban than rural, many of us have lost our conscious connection to the natural world. We may note the change of seasons–warmer or cooler weather, longer days or nights–but have largely forgotten the significance of the Earth’s annual journey around the sun as it tilts on its axis.

This yearly orbit is linked with much larger cosmic movements, as Earth moves counterclockwise through the twelve signs of the Zodiac, each about 2160 years, and completes what is called the Precession of the Equinoxes about every 25, 950 years. All of these cycles, as well as the shorter lunar and solar cycles, were known to the ancients. The Mayan calendar gives evidence of this, and many monuments around the Earth similarly indicate that the movements of the heavens were well observed.

According to interpreters of the Mayan calendar’s long count, December 21, 2012 is the date when all of these cycles–short and long–complete, as Earth and Sun align with the dark rift at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Some plausibly argue for other dates, but the Winter Solstice of 2012 (Summer in the Southern Hemisphere) is now part of the collective consciousness of our time, as media focus on this date builds.

What precisely will happen then no one knows, but speculation ranges from Doomsday scenarios to the ushering in of the Aquarian Age of enlightenment and peace, with all species including the human living sustainably on the Earth. I am firmly in the latter camp, as those who have read my book, Spiritual Wisdom for a Planet in Peril: Preparing for 2012 and Beyond,” are aware. Our task is to bring about the most positive outcomes for ourselves and our planet.

The Summer Solstice on June 21 offered an opportunity to reconnect with the natural rhythms of Earth and to celebrate the time when the sun at its zenith appears to stand still in the heavens. Now light wins out once more over darkness, as the longest day of the year marks the beginning of summer. From this day forward to the December solstice, daylight diminishes again until darkness settles in and winter pulls us inward.

Summer is an expansive time, when all things seem possible. Now through the autumn equinox on September 21 is a time of great abundance, as Earth nourishes her species through growing plants, plentiful waters, and new generations of animals, birds, and insects. Our home garden produces a rich bounty of lettuces, tomatoes, squash, beans, and herbs, offering us fresh, nutritious meals through September. Last year one of our pumpkins, harvested in July, lived on our front porch through January, before the frost turned it rotten. Mocking birds nest in our yard, large bumblebees buzz around our purple ice plants, and the butterfly bushes in our side yard attract many beautiful species. Wild blackberries turn ripe and disappear quickly as the local deer population gobbles them up. Visual and edible symbols of Earth’s abundance are one of the great joys of summer.

Since ancient times, people have celebrated the Summer Solstice as the victory of light over darkness. Monuments like England’s Stonehenge are gigantic calendars marking the Earth’s turning toward the light and have become sites of annual festivals to give thanks to the Divine for the life-giving sun.

On a number of occasions, I have traveled to power points and sacred sites on the planet to participate in solstice or equinox celebrations: Stonehenge, Chitchen Itza in Mayan Mexico, Egypt’s Giza Plateau, Ireland’s Newgrange, and Chaco Canyon in New Mexico among them. In these and other locations, ancient astronomers and priests left solid evidence in stone of the path of the sun’s seasonal alignments so that their communities could anticipate and benefit from this knowledge. Ancient gods were worshiped as bringers and sustainers of life.

Now science confirms what spiritual people have always known intuitively: the interconnected web of life throughout the universe that flourishes, dies, and is reborn in new forms and patterns, as the process of creation continues to unfold throughout time. The evolution of human consciousness that 2012 is about is one significant culmination of a more than 16 billion year old cosmic process, and those alive today may experience this shift.

On last year’s summer solstice, I joined an annual ceremony in northern Michigan led by several generations of Ojibway women at the site of petroglyphs sacred to their people. The women hauled water in purifying copper buckets from a nearby stream to cleanse the large rock on which the ancient messages were written for our own time. Barefoot, grandmothers and their daughters and granddaughters scrubbed the rock with brooms, then offered a traditional feast representing Earth’s bounty to guests. It was a wonderful way to honor Mother Earth and ancestral wisdom.

This year I had intended to join a group of spiritual energy healers at another ancient sacred site, the Serpent Mounds of Ohio, to ground and amplify healing energy through the site, connecting with the Earth’s grids to bring a higher dimension of healing and harmony to the planet. Instead, I stayed home to be with visiting family. However, through the power of the internet, you don’t have to travel around the globe to join in a summer solstice celebration. At 8 p.m. EDT on June 21, I tuned into the Concert for the Living Water at www.liveh2o.org and joined millions around the world in sending love and healing through thought, intention, and chanting to the Earth’s oceans, lakes, rivers, and streams. I concentrated especially on the Great Lakes because of their importance and my own spiritual connection to these great bodies of water.

Feeling very aligned with the intention of this experimental gathering held around the planet and virtually through the internet, I was grateful to be able to contribute through this medium to cleansing and healing the waters. We know from the work of Japanese scientist Dr. Emoto, who was involved in this project, as well as from the science of energy healing, that water holds memory and vibration. As humans and invasive species have polluted the life-giving waters on which all life depends, their healthy vibrations have shifted and diminished. Through our collective intention, we can change that, and this concert held, appropriately, on the summer solstice was a way to focus and amplify our energy through the sound frequency of love. As the www.h2o.org website states, “love is the universal healer and water the universal solvent.” Bringing these together with amplified power can cleanse and heal us all.

The Concert for the Living Water is a great example of what is possible when each of us joins with others as one voice to raise the vibration of the planet and contribute to the transformation of consciousness that will bring about an era of peace and harmony on Earth. It was especially appropriate that it should happen on the most enlightened day of the year.

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Faces – They Belong to All of Us

There are 6.67 billion humans on planet earth; and 2.2 are between the ages of 0 an 18 years! These figures came up in a recent conversation with colleagues on climate change and sustainability. I was intrigued: What does or what will this mean? Thinking, as opposed to feeling, about these numbers, my reflection was eerily intellectual. I found myself trying to remember the formula on how to arrive at a percentage, and wondering how many of the 2.2 lived in the USA. As the conversation continued, my eyes wandered to a photo of my grandchildren on my desk. There they were, from 3 months to 10 years old, all smiles, except for Riley, who with a pretty pink bow in her hair sat crying. It was at that moment that the numbers and the conversation became clear and took on a level of urgency that I wasn’t connecting with. The most important people in my life are part of those 2.2 billion faces, and they, along with all the other faces, will not be excused from the consequences of climate change.

My reflection shifted from my head to my heart, as the faces of Lexie, Jaxson, Luke, Henry, Riley, Hopper and Owen came into my heart and head, and the number 2.2 billion was no longer an abstraction. By seeing the faces of “my” kids in the portrait of the 2.2 billion faces, I felt how intimately connected we are to all the faces in the world. At this moment, before my grandchildren can even comprehend the meaning of the words, millions of children are experiencing the devastating and life-changing affects of climate change.

I’m old: hopefully I have another 20 to 30 years of life. Not a lot of years when you think about it. In contrast, our children and grandchildren have, if life treats them kindly, 70 to 90 years of living to navigate. What will they experience and what will be the quality of their life? Gordon Brown, prime minister of Great Britain, at a recent conference shared a glimpse of their future:

“According to estimates from the intergovernmental panel on climate change, an extra 1.8bn people – a quarter of the world’s population – could be short of water by 2080 as a result of climate change.

And the threat was not confined to people in the developing world, Brown said.

“The extraordinary summer heat wave of 2003 in Europe resulted in over 35,000 extra deaths. On current trends, such an event could become quite routine in Britain in just a few decades’ time.”
“And within the lifetime of our children and grandchildren the intense temperatures of 2003 could become the average temperature experienced throughout much of Europe. In Britain we face the prospect of more frequent droughts and a rising wave of floods.”

I’ve heard the views of those who believe that climate change is not real, or the minimzers who say that the consequences won’t be as severe as predicted, or that it is just a natural evolution of the earth. I’ve also watched and listened to the legions of the self-interested, who claim that the actions needed to reduce the causes of climate change will hurt their businesses financially. Can they not see or allow themselves to see, the faces of their children and grandchildren when they advocate for dollars over their children’s well-being? Maybe they think wealth will protect and excuse them from the consequences.

I’ve heard the majority of world leaders and scientists who say that Gordon Brown’s vision is not a probability, but a reality. And the only questions are how soon and to what extent will the consequences of climate change impact our lives and the planet.

Growing up, I was advised that parenting was the most important and responsible vocation I could ever aspire to. And as a parent, I’m well aware of the sacrifices required to nurture and educate children. I believe most parents agree that the health, safety and well-being of their children is their most important adult responsibility.

For a moment, envision that your child has been ill, and after a series of diagnostic tests a highly respected doctor from a well known children’s medical facility informs you that your child has a rare and progressive life threatening disease. She indicates that the treatment recommended for this disease has been effective, but not in all cases, and with the treatment your child has a better than 65% chance of recovery. Any delays in treatment will reduce its effectiveness and risk a full recovery. After researching the Internet, you find that the preponderance of information supports your physician’s diagnosis. However, you do find a minority of physicians who disagree and recommend withholding treatment until additional symptoms emerge. What decision would you make? I would proceed with the treatment.

In essence, the threat of climate change and its effects are very similar to the terminal disease dilemma. We can choose to risk our children’s health and well-being on the basis of minority views or choose to be courageous, and honor our primal parental responsibility and fight for their right to live on a planet that is healing and moving towards a sustainable future.

In every parent’s heart there is space for enormous love and fear – emotions that can move mountains when our children are threatened. Let’s call upon the power of our love and fear to confront the challenge of climate change, which threatens our children and grandchildren’s future.

Our children and grandchildren hold the keys to creating and perfecting a healthier and sustainable life for their children and our planet. Don’t risk denying them and our planet of their unique presence, contributions and stewardship of our world.

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Private R&D Driving Growth of Global Green Economy

St. Augustine, FL, August 29, 2012 –  As of July 2012, $3.6 trillion has been privately invested in a greener, global economy, since 2007.  The Green Transition Scoreboard® reports research conducted by Ethical Markets Media tracking private investments in creating cleaner, greener economies globally.  As the world continues to invest at least $1 trillion per year until 2020, we are leaving the fossil fueled industrial era and entering a new solar age based on principles of equity, sustainability, and design based on nature.

The August 2012 Supplement to the February 2012 report focuses on investments companies are making in green research and development (R&D).  TheGreen Transition Scoreboard® (GTS) tracks investments in Renewable Energy, Green Construction, Smart Grid, Energy Efficiency, Cleantech and R&D.  Of these, R&D accounts for 6.7% of the total GTS at the end of Q2 2012, more than Smart Grid, Energy Efficiency or Cleantech.

The GTS research is the most comprehensive assessment of corporate, green R&D performed to date, derived from sustainability reports, company financial statements and media reports.  This Supplement identifies companies responsible for more than $241 billion in green R&D.

“I believe $241 billion understates by half real global R&D private investments,” says Rosalinda Sanquiche, Ethical Markets executive director. R&D goes unreported for competitive reasons, international companies’ R&D not making it into the media, and because of the tens of thousands of middle-market and smaller companies with R&D budgets below reporting thresholds.

Major investment from large corporations evidences management’s bet on increasing revenues from consumers purchasing green products. R&D investments result in new products that meet human needs while minimizing the impact on the natural environment. The GTS data identifies and supports innovative companies ahead of the curve in responding to heightening environmental risks and regulations.  Significant investments in green R&D validate that a company has integrated sustainability into its core strategy.

The Supplement includes country and sector analysis. Breakdown by country shows Germany, Japan and the USA leading the way among the top 24, with China, Brazil and India, three of the BRIC, making a strong showing. R&D is strongest in the automotive, semiconductor, and electrical components and equipment sectors. Electronics and computer sectors are 4^th and 5^th, above environmental controls and building materials, pointing toward consumer-driven demand for greener everyday products.

Companies large and small around the world are recognizing a competitive advantage, and are making big bets on green innovation. They see significant growth potential in green markets, and are positioning themselves to profit from a larger market share. The transition to a green economy is happening, and it is the world’s most innovative companies that are driving it forward.

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Sustainability: The 5 Core Principles

Deeper reflection on the concept of sustainability and the five core principles which together prescribe it reveals that the spiritual dimension, the spiritual principle, is fundamental to the quality and coherence of the whole. It is rarely incorporated, however, in the conventional calculus of practical affairs.

As a guiding principle, the spiritual dimension does not carry the connotation of conventional religion. Rather, it evokes the soul-focused integration of mind and heart in realization of the essential oneness at the center of being.

By anchoring the essence of human motivation and intention, the spiritual principle acts as the causal root which sets the tone for the whole. It drives the integration of the other four principles, those related to the material, economic, life, and social domains. If integrated in a balanced way, it can infuse a common purpose, provide a common foundation, and stimulate common resolve. Lacking the ethical commitment implied by the spiritual principle, considerations of questions related to the four other domains, no matter how elaborately expressed, are reduced to mere technicalities.

By their very nature language, logic and action force separation, discrimination and choice. A balanced and full integration of all five principles is essential, however, for conceptualizing and realizing sustainability as a state. The whole set has to be integrated into a single unity in which the five principles come together as one.

The five domains underlying the principles interact and co-define one another and, as in a holographic image, each embodies the whole general scheme in its own sphere. When the principles are thus integrated and seamlessly inform choices and actions, a state of sustainability, which otherwise appears as a difficult, distant goal, can be realized spontaneously and completely.

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City States – How Cities are Vital to the Future of Sustainability

GreenBiz | March 12, 2012 – The following report by SustainAbility explores a new take on the concept of “citystates” and how the sustainability of cities and business are inextricably linked.

Produced in partnership with GreenBiz and sponsored by Ford Motor Company, the paper lays out seven characteristics or “states” for sustainable cities that can enable both cities and businesses serving them to flourish.

“The purpose of ‘Citystates,’ ” say report authors Chris Guenther and Mohammed Al-Shawaf, “is to seed a dialogue, the central question of which is: How might business and others come together to strengthen and leverage the unique characteristics and advantages of cities to accelerate progress on sustainability?”

The idea of cities as catalysts for sustainability will be the focus of a panel talk at VERGE DC 2012 this week. The topic will be in the spotlight at further VERGE events this year.

The report is also described in this video briefing from SustainAbility: Citystates from SustainAbility on Vimeo.