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An Environmental Bonus: Finding the Missing Piece

By Chris Cote

Over the past few weeks, President Obama has sent an important message to the United States and the world: we will not sacrifice the environment. Sure, several pressing environmental issues have been put further back on the burner in order to stimulate banks and other economic sectors, but these issues are all connected. Stability is needed in all sectors to have any be truly effective. $70 billion (8%) of the stimulus package is being provided for our energy economy, and most of those dollars are directed toward green energy. The boost is aimed toward solar and wind technologies, infant technologies that are more vulnerable in economically difficult times. America cannot afford to have these technologies wiped out. We are in a period when their importance grows each day. Thankfully President Obama has shown that he is not just a fairweather friend of the environment and will continue to support it in hard times as well. To move forward in a sustainable manner, a manner which we can continue over many generations, we must link together our social, economic, and environmental issues.

Green jobs are an example of one way to link these three issues together. By developing new green technologies, such as solar or wind, we are creating jobs. These jobs can largely employ people with low incomes providing benefits to them as individuals, and to society at large. Whatsmore, we are clearly helping the economy, developing more jobs and diverting away from dead-end industries. With investment, these sectors will continue to grow and produce more jobs, becoming sectors indespensable to our workforce/economy, and leading America into a new future.

… Continue reading
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America Sets Sail: Crossing the Border toward Peace and Hope

Read in Japanese (日本語)

By Akio Matsumura

In December 1995 the World Assembly on Reconciliation was to be held at Jericho, hosted by Prime Minister Rabin and Chairman Arafat. A steering committee meeting I attended was held at Jericho in June, 1995. During our lunch break we went to see the Dead Sea. In case you haven’t been there, the Dead Sea is between Israel and the West Bank. It is the lowest point on the surface of the Earth on dry land and the water is 8.6 times saltier than the ocean. It was remarkable to see people reading their books while floating on the water. On the tour my friends also pointed out the Mount of Temptation where it is said Jesus was tempted by the Devil. We enjoyed our lunch and tour and returned to the afternoon session of our meeting. We kept moving to finish our agenda because I was scheduled to meet with Chairman Arafat at 9 PM that evening in Gaza.

During the afternoon, while finishing our agenda, we received an emergency phone call informing us that a suicide bomb had exploded on a public bus in Tel Aviv. There were more than 25 deaths, one of the largest death tolls in many years. The accident closed the border between Israel and Gaza—no car, diplomatic or not, was allowed to cross the border.

Immediately I rushed to the office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Palestine to meet with the representative, Mr. Wate.… Continue reading

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A Day of Service

 

“An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. “ -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 
Martin Luther King Jr with medallion NYWTS

President-elect Obama is setting an important example for Americans today with his participation in the national day of service. A commitment to service, be it in the Armed Forces or in a local homeless shelter brings about a set of values that will propel this country to be a world leader in many new ways. Here are 3 values that are as important to individual relations as international relations.

1. Compassion. United we stand, divided we fall. Every school children in the country knows that. Yet we are too often divided in this country. Our compassion is neutralized through competition in the labor market and many other areas of life and we far too often forget the plight of others. By volunteering we see a different area of life and begin to understand how someone else’s life works–an experience that encourages us to live in a better way. Realizing the difficult decisions and struggles other leaders are making, we can rethink our decisions and perhaps not to choose to exploit a situation that would leave us better off but damage others.

2. Cooperation. The US often ‘goes it alone’ until we realize we can’t. Competition is emphasized daily in this countryfrom the job market to the supermarket. We constantly jockey to be first in line for everything we do.… Continue reading

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Response from Akio Matsumura

Dear Chris,
I would like to respond to your article titled “Changing Ethics in Business.”
I think this is a wonderful and timely article that provides a moral appeal to the current business leaders, and speaks to basic human principles.
Twelve U.S. Senators and sixteen U.S. Congressmen including Senator Al Gore, Senator Clairborne Pell, Congressman Hamilton, among many others, attended the Parliamentary Earth Summit Conference at Rio de Janeiro in 1992, co-sponsored by the Brazilian Congress. The photograph of the children from Rio’s favelas speaking from the balcony at Parliament asks us what we have accomplished of our resolutions since then. Let us reflect on what we discussed at that historic event in regard to tackling the global environmental issues we would face in the 21st century. Senator Al Gore, one of the leading environmental legislators in the US Congress at the time and a member of the Global Forum Executive Committee, gave the keynote address and set the tone with a spiritual appeal unusual for a politician. He inquired, “People all over the world feel themselves part of a single global family. Why then are spiritual leaders not joining parliamentarians in this dialog?” Mr. Stephan Schmidheiny, Chairman of the Business Council for Sustainable Development said that the true sustainable development ultimately comes down to ethical, moral and spiritual considerations—we must all become care-takers, working to safeguard the interests of future humans and the interests of the other species with which we share the planet.
These fundamental appeals remind us that we still must tackle these pressing issues of human survival in the 21st century.
… Continue reading
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Beyond Wall Street: Our Ecological Debt


Welcome to Unhappy Earth Overshoot Day! Today is a milestone, and an unfortunate one at that. Today, September 23, we have already used up our natural resources for the year, in order to live within the biocapacity of the planet. The New Economics Foundation, nef, has calculated our ecological footprint on the Earth and where our sustainable use of natural resources would lie relevant to our year calendar. 1987 was the first year we were to consume our resources before the end of the year, and we have been encroaching quickly further into the year as time passes.

Although Wall Street is in shambles (or doesn’t even exist!) and soon the U.S. government and public will be after bailing them out, this is just a smaller piece of a larger system, which clearly is in dire need of a patch. Our system of investments, hyperconsumption, and flexible labor are coming to an end, whether we like it or not. The system doesn’t work any more on its own, and that will just be emphasized more as China and India grow and continue to exploit the very system the US prided its own growth on. There are Limits to Growth, as has been known at least in academic circles for 35 years, and we are pushing those limits right now. Each year that we ignore our ecological debt to the planet is another year we will have to pay it back, and sooner rather than later.

So does the system really need a patch?… Continue reading