By Ray Anderson and John A. Lanier: The original Mid-Course Correction, published 20 years ago, became a classic in the sustainability field. It put forth a new vision for what its author, Ray C. Anderson, called the “prototypical company of the 21st century”—a restorative company that does no harm to society or the environment. In it Anderson recounts his eureka moment as founder and leader of Interface, Inc., one of the world’s largest carpet and flooring companies, and one that was doing business in all the usual ways. Bit by bit, he began learning how much environmental destruction companies like his had caused, prompting him to make a radical change. Mid-Course Correction not only outlined what eco-centered leadership looks like, it also mapped out a specific set of goals for Anderson’s company to eliminate its environmental footprint.

Those goals remain visionary even today, and this second edition delves into how Interface worked toward making them a reality, birthing one of the most innovative and successful corporate sustainability efforts in the world. The new edition also explores why we need to create not only prototypical companies, but also the prototypical economy of the twenty-first century. As our global economy shifts toward sustainability, challenges like building the circular economy and reversing global warming present tremendous opportunities for business and industry. Mid-Course Correction Revisted contains a new foreword by Paul Hawken, several new chapters by Ray C. Anderson Foundation executive director John A. Lanier, and interviews with Janine Benyus, Joel Makower, Andrew Winston, Ellen MacArthur and other leaders in green enterprise, the circular economy, and biomimicry.

A wide range of business readers—from sustainability professionals to green entrepreneurs to CEOs—will find both wise advice and concrete examples in this new look at a master in corporate and environmental leadership, and the legacy he left.

Reviews and Praise

• “Unlike most business leaders for whom ‘the business case for sustainability’ is all that really matters, Ray Anderson unapologetically advanced a moral case as well, constantly focused on our duty to future generations. This is more important today than ever before, as we come to recognize that an incremental, softly-softly approach to corporate sustainability is pretty much a busted flush—we’ve simply run out of time. The Interface story is as inspirational today as ever, but it needs to be read for its deeper, radical reckoning: If not now, when? If not you, who?”—Jonathon Porritt, founder and director, Forum for the Future; author of The World We Made
  
• “I’m so glad Ray Anderson’s story is getting another telling—few sagas are more inspiring or more timely. We desperately need more and more people following in his footsteps with the same blend of humility and determination!”—Bill McKibben, author of Falter
  
• “Twenty years after its first edition, there is still so much for us to harvest and learn from Mid-Course Correction. When it came to the precariousness of our shared future, Ray Anderson was both impatient and relentless in fighting for a world of beauty, abundance, justice, and fairness. When Ray asked me to join the Interface board, his exact words were, ‘Come help me change the world!’ Those words stayed with me throughout my seventeen years working with him. This twenty-year update provides the perfect guide for others to join in climbing Mt. Sustainability, the most critical mission of our time.”—Dianne Dillon-Ridgley, CEO, Women’s Network for a Sustainable Future

• “So far, Ray C. Anderson is the twenty-first century’s undisputed master of making business a potent force for saving people and the planet. As his winning carpet and textile firm, Interface, now wrings out the last few percent of its fossil-fuel use, his bold strategy—take nothing, waste nothing, do no harm, do very well by doing good—inspires visionary leaders everywhere. This valuable update, with additions from his grandson, John Lanier, maps out necessary next steps.”—Amory B. Lovins, cofounder and chief scientist, Rocky Mountain Institute; author of Reinventing Fire

• “Twenty-one years ago my friend Ray Anderson brought an engineer’s insight, a businessman’s rigor, a grandfather’s love, and a poet’s heart to what he called ‘the creative act of business.’ He challenged his company to ‘first to attain sustainability and then to become restorative,’ reminding all who would listen that ‘if your sustainability program is costing you money, you’re doing it wrong.’ And in this book and in his countless speeches—with a vision as clear as any since, to our peril and shame, and with a roadmap still valid—he challenged us all to do the same.”—Gil Friend, CEO, Natural Logic, Inc.; founder, Critical Path Capital

• “Ray Anderson was one of the most extraordinary business leaders I ever met—and I have met and worked with scores. He was extraordinary in his early embrace of the sustainability agenda, years before most of his peers were even aware of the term. And he was extraordinary in his willingness to admit he had got parts of his response wrong, which is the remarkable tale brought bang up to date in Mid-Course Correction Revisited. Highly recommended for anyone wanting leadership in these challenging times.”—John Elkington, founder and chief pollinator, Volans; originator of the Triple Bottom Line

• “When I began my personal journey from a traditional business career to this world of ‘sustainability,’ Ray Anderson’s Mid-Course Correction was the first book I read. I felt the same ‘spear in the chest’ that Ray described, and so I followed his intellectual path of discovery. I am indebted to Ray’s legacy, and I know it is long past time to revisit his work. The global challenges we face are more daunting than ever, so the imperative Ray described has only gotten more urgent. We must convert ‘business as usual’ from an obsession with short-term profits to a relentless focus on using business to build a thriving world. Ray saw it clearly years before almost everyone, and it’s a critical time to bring his vision to a new generation of business leaders.”—Andrew Winston, founder, Winston Eco-Strategies; author of The Big Pivot and coauthor of Green to Gold

About The Author

Ray C. Andersonwas founder and chairman of Interface, Inc., one of the world’s leading carpet and flooring producers. His story is now legend: Ray had a “spear in the chest” epiphany when he first read Paul Hawken’s The Ecology of Commerce, inspiring him to revolutionize his business in pursuit of environmental sustainability. In doing so Ray proved that business can indeed “do well by doing good.” His Georgia-based company has been ranked number one in a GlobeScan survey of sustainability experts, and it has continued to be an environmental leader even after Ray’s death in 2011. Ray authored the 1998 classic Mid-Course Correction, which chronicled his epiphany, as well as a later book, Confessions of a Radical Industrialist. He became an unlikely screen hero in the 2003 Canadian documentary The Corporation, and was named one of Time magazine’s Heroes of the Environment in 2007. He served as cochairman of the President’s Council on Sustainable Development and as an architect of the Presidential Climate Action Plan, a 100-day action plan on climate that was presented to the Obama Administration.

Connect with this author

• Ray C. Anderson Foundation
• Ray Anderson on Facebook
• Ray Anderson on Twitter

Interviews and Articles

• Fast Company – How a Carpet Maker Became an Unlikely Hero of the Environmental Movement
• Atlanta Business Chronicle – Family of Interface Founder Ray Anderson Carrying on his Environmental Mission
• New York Times – Executive on a Mission: Saving the Planet

Author Videos

• Ray Anderson: The business logic of sustainability

About John A. Lanier

John A. Lanier joined the Ray C. Anderson Foundation as executive director in May 2013 to advance the legacy of Ray, his grandfather. He is chair of the board of directors for Southface Energy Institute, the southeast’s nonprofit leader in the promotion of sustainable homes, workplaces, and communities through education, research, advocacy and technical assistance. Previously, Lanier was an associate attorney with Sutherland, Asbill and Brennan, LLP (now Eversheds Sutherland), specializing in US federal taxation. Lanier earned his juris doctorate from the University of Virginia School of Law, and he holds bachelor of arts degrees in history and economics from the University of Virginia. He blogs regularly and his TEDx can be viewed on YouTube.

The copy in the post is reprinted from chelseagreen. You can find the original post here. The video is reposted from the YouTube channel of the Ray C. Anderson Foundation.

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Radical Realism for Climate Justice. A Civil Society Response to the Challenge of Limiting Global Warming to 1.5°C

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial is feasible, and it is our best hope of achieving environmental and social justice, of containing the impacts of a global crisis that was born out of historical injustice and highly unequal responsibility.

To do so will require a radical shift away from resource-intensive and wasteful production and consumption patterns and a deep transformation towards ecological sustainability and social justice. Demanding this transformation is not ‘naïve’ or ‘politically unfeasible’, it is radically realistic.

This publication is a civil society response to the challenge of limiting global warming to 1.5°C while also paving the way for climate justice. It brings together the knowledge and experience of a range of international groups, networks and organisations the Heinrich Böll Foundation has worked with over the past years, who in their political work, research and practice have developed the radical, social and environmental justice-based agendas political change we need across various sectors.

Radical Realism for Climate Justice includes the following eight volumes:

A Managed Decline of Fossil Fuel Production by Oil Change International shows that the carbon embedded in already producing fossil fuel reserves will take us beyond agreed climate limits. Yet companies and governments continue to invest in and approve vast exploration and expansion of oil, coal and gas. This chapter explores the urgency and opportunity for fossil fuel producers to begin a just and equitable managed decline of fossil fuel production in line with the Paris Agreement goals.

Another Energy is Possible by Sean Sweeney, Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) argues that the political fight for social ownership and democratic control of energy lies at the heart of the struggle to address climate change. Along with a complete break with investor-focused neoliberal policy, this “two shift solution” will allow us to address some of the major obstacles to reducing energy demand and decarbonizing supply. “Energy democracy” must address the need for system-level transformations that go beyond energy sovereignty and self-determination.

Zero Waste Circular Economy A Systemic Game-Changer to Climate Change by Mariel Vilella, Zero Waste Europe explains and puts numbers to how the transformation of our consumption and production system into a zero waste circular economy provides the potential for emission reductions far beyond what is considered in the waste sector. Ground-breaking experiences in cities and communities around the world are already showing that these solutions can be implemented today, with immediate results.

Degrowth – A Sober Vision of Limiting Warming to 1.5°C by Mladen Domazet, Institute for Political Ecology in Zagreb, Croatia, reports from a precarious, but climate-stabilized year 2100 to show how a planet of over 7 billion people found diversification and flourishing at many levels of natural, individual and community existence, and turned away from the tipping points of catastrophic climate change and ecosystem collapse. That world is brought to life by shedding the myths of the pre-degrowth era – the main myth being that limiting global warming to 1.5°C is viable while maintaining economic activities focused on growth.

System Change on a Deadline. Organizing Lessons from Canada’s Leap Manifesto by The Leap by Avi Lewis, Katie McKenna and Rajiv Sicora of The Leap recounts how intersectional coalitions can create inspiring, detailed pictures of the world we need, and deploy them to shift the goalposts of what is considered politically possible. They draw on the Leap story to explore how coalition-building can break down traditional “issue silos”, which too often restrict the scope and impact of social justice activism.

La Via Campesina in Action for Climate Justice by La Via Campesina in Action for Climate Justice by the international peasants movement La Via Campesina highlights how industrialized agriculture and the corporate food system are at the center of the climate crisis and block pathways to a 1.5°C world. In their contribution, La Via Campesina outline key aspects of system change in agriculture towards peasant agro-ecology and give concrete experiences of organized resistance and alternatives that are already making change happen.

Re-Greening the Earth: Protecting the Climate through Ecosystem Restoration by Christoph Thies, Greenpeace Germany calls to mind that greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture and the destruction of forests and peatlands contribute to global warming and dangerous climate change. His chapter makes the case for ecosystem restoration: Growing forests and recovering peatlands can sequester CO2 from the atmosphere and protect both climate and biodiversity. This can make untested and potentially risky climate technologies unnecessary – if emissions from burning fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas emissions are phased out fast enough.

Modelling 1.5°C-Compliant Mitigation Scenarios Without Carbon Dioxide Removal by Christian Holz, Carleton University and Climate Equity Reference Project (CERP) reviews recent studies that demonstrate that it is still possible to achieve 1.5°C without relying on speculative and potentially deleterious technologies. This can be done if national climate pledges are increased substantially in all countries immediately, international support for climate action in developing countries is scaled up, and mitigation options not commonly included in mainstream climate models are pursued.

We hope that the experiences and political demands, the stories and recommendations compiled in this publication will be as inspiring to all of you as they are to us.

Lili Fuhr and Linda Schneider

Please help us spread the word about this 1.5°C collection:

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Photo by Jason A. Samfield

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By Emily Yates, reposted from Medium.com

From open source innovation to the vanguard of the blockchain movement; the ‘global resilience guru’ discusses the conflicts, dangers and opportunities of the world to come.

The future we are facing calls for new perspectives, new concepts and new guides. How, then, should we introduce Vinay Gupta — a man who more than any other speaker at Meaning challenges our basic assumptions about reality, and the extent of the problems we are facing? In a simpler era we might have called him an inventor, a philosopher, or a spiritual activist. But all of these definitions are breaking down, and perhaps they must. If we are facing a fourth industrial revolution, then all our beliefs and assumptions are due for a radical overhaul.

We first heard from Vinay at Meaning 2012, where he began with a nod to his reputation for apocalyptic thinking — identifying himself as a ‘merchant of doom’ confronting a whole spectrum of ‘plausible utopias’. If the source of our creativity is to be found in our limitations, then Vinay draws his from worst case scenarios; unafraid to depict the likely trajectory of climate disaster and hypercapitalism. I caught up with him last month to inquire about his current outlook.

“The world is dying, and we have a 30% chance of making it through the end of this century. Certainly, we’re likely to see a capitalist famine in which maybe a few hundred million or a few billion starve to death. The first time that global warming gets heavily intersected with the food supply is going to be a massive termination event. And everybody is going to turn around and say ‘Oh my god this is terrible, we never saw it coming!’”

In the five years since Vinay shared his hexayurt housing project with Meaning, the stakes have clearly got higher. At the time, Vinay described how the hexayurt’s simple, open source structure could change the game in the housing market, returning the commodity to its use-value and removing the banking and speculation aspects that keep the market artificially inflated and static. In this, as in other disruptive grassroots technologies, he has argued that the creation of abundance (or the removal of scarcity) is the route to breaking industrial stalemates. How much has his hexayurt mission progressed in the interim; given the prospect of looming climate disaster and increasing political volatility in the West?

“At this point, what I’m working towards is trying to redesign how we handle refugees — for example, climate refugees. I came to the conclusion that I’m going to have to do a lot of privately financed, fairly large-scale research and development, so that has taken me into a kind of indirect loop forward which is: go into the markets, make some money in technology, hopefully come back and follow the Elon Musk strategy of ‘pay for the change you want to see in the world’. I tried ‘being the change’ and it wasn’t working all that well, but ‘paying for the change’ — that seems like it might work.

“So, step one is to make about £800 million. Step two is to spend this money setting up charter cities that are designed to accept refugees, and finance the process by having the refugees export goods and services on preferential tax rates; which would basically be a subsidy provided by the first world countries as a way of getting the refugee problem solved. So, you have a jurisdiction where the refugees can export goods into Europe without paying taxes on them, and that encourages foreign direct investment. You basically set up free trade zones for the refugees to be able to take care of themselves; rather than us trying to find the budget to cover 300 million displaced people.”

Hexayurt communities at the Burning Man festival

While on course to realising his vision for the hexayurt project, Vinay has emerged as one of the leading thinkers in the second generation of blockchain; speaking and publishing prolifically on the revolutionary potential of crypto-currencies to cut out the middle man. Now an undisputed pioneer of the smart contracts platform ethereum, he recently designed the Dubai blockchain strategy as well as presenting his new thesis — the Internet of Agreements — at the World Government Summit. Could Ethereum be the route to the £800 million he needs?

“I certainly ran into capitalism in a really dedicated way three years ago because I figured out that we were just screwed. It is time to run. If I was attempting to run now, I wouldn’t be at the head end of the blockchain as basically a late entrant. I’m in the position that I’m in because I started running early enough that I got a good position as I ran into the system. If you wait too late it’s quite hard to get a decent position inside of the next round. So, the awareness landscape is basically a sort of a stress network — I look in society for the places where stress has accumulated and I use that map to position myself forward, because I’m carrying this hexayurt thing. It’s going to require the investment of enormous sums of money to build hexayurt cities and then hexayurt countries for the climate refugees. If I get squashed now, none of that is going to get done.”

It seems that we are now entering a cultural explosion around the blockchain. This has come with a large amount of political baggage — with crypto-currencies claimed by libertarians, anarchists and survivalists as a revolutionary tool to break free of both the state and existing markets. I was interested to know to what extent Vinay would agree with their creed — that decentralisation is the key to political liberation:

“I’m running around with a view of the future which is far more realistic than almost anyone else in the blockchain space has. Therefore I’m continually three or four steps ahead because I don’t believe that decentralisation is utopian. I don’t think it’s going to produce a better world at all. Centralisation can be the FDA ensuring you don’t have dioxins in your food. Decentralisation can be people marrying their thirteen-year-old cousins in rural Utah. This all cuts both ways. There is getting it right and there is any particular given political dogma. And all of the political sides are wrong — all of them are wrong.

“I think accountability could produce a better world, and you could get accountability from blockchain; but decentralisation in the mode that people are currently practising it is simply hypercapitalism with another set of fangs. I also believe that the state is not going anywhere because the nuclear weapon stockpiles are exactly the way they were when we started and they’re not going away. So, at that point whatever we’re building is going to end up interfacing with the state. I have a fundamentally different view of where cryptography fits into the future — and I take the risk of terrorists using this stuff completely seriously. These are all fundamentally anathema to the vast majority of people in the blockchain space. They think you’re going to get full decentralisation, they don’t want to think about the black state and its weapon stockpiles, they absolutely don’t want to think about environmental constraints. It’s just a ‘yeah it’s all going to work out’ kind of future. But it’s not all going to work out. It might work out for well-armed white people in rich countries, but it’s certainly not going to work out for everybody else.”

With his arguments for post-scarcity economics, Vinay has also become associated with ‘left-accelerationism’ and the development of simple, open source technologies — even setting down principles for how ‘open source appropriate technology’ should be ethically approached. His hexayurt falls into this category, along with water filters and solar panels; commodities with an economic rationale of “the lowest investment for biggest increase in quality of life”. Where this kind of technological progress is emancipatory, ‘right-accelerationism’ is considered its technocratic counterpart; further intensifying the concentration of wealth under capitalism. I asked Vinay if this is still a battleground on which he wishes to fight:

“I’m going to get back to that stuff in ten years if I’m still alive. The ‘if I’m still alive is important, right!’ Of the 1960’s generation of leaders — the vast majority of them were dead by the 1990s. The Alan Watts and all the rest of that kind of crew, even the Robert Anton Wilsons of the world — he was broken down to a shadow of himself by the time the 90s came round. Over and over and over again we lose the top end of leadership because they just get crushed in history. People just stick to their guns and they carry the weight until the weight crushes them.

The mind-set should not be one of ‘stick to your guns, die with your boots on’. Every generation has tried that approach and it’s been completely ineffective. The activists keep getting suckered into that trap again and again — this is spiritually right, this is spiritually wrong, we’re only going to do the spiritually right — then they get materially broken and they get shoved off the wreck. Another generation of totally inept youngsters then stands up as the next round of spiritual leadership and then gets the shit kicked out of them again in the next round. Armies that go into battle with no general will lose, and the generals are dying in the streets — twenty years too young to actually have any real effectiveness. Forty-five is the age that you begin to enter structural power, and for the most part the hippy leadership never made it that far. It’s a recurring, inter-generational cycle.”

It seems significant that Vinay evokes the activism of the 1960s, and I get the feeling that it’s a cultural trajectory he’s spent a lifetime thinking about; one that could not be better expressed than by one of his favourite literary passages, Hunter S Thompson’s description of ‘the wave’ from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I once heard him quip that the aftermath of the 60s would have been very different if the activists had emerged with something like blockchain. For Vinay, this is a time for building, not fighting.

Our discussion goes on to survey the contemporary political scene — the rise of the right and infighting of the left on both sides of the Atlantic. If activists have allowed themselves to be drained of their effectiveness, could this be because they have too often prioritised sensibility above strategy? I can’t help but raise that old bone of Marxist contention — does Vinay believe that the contemporary focus on identity politics has diverted the left from addressing the more urgent question of resources?

“This is why I think basic income is the next winnable fight — and the proper response to global hypercapitalism. Because you could potentially unite the shattered disparate wreckage of the left and indeed the former middle classes under basic income as a banner in the age of robot socialism. So, after the manufacturing economy is gutted by robots, after the drivers are gutted by self-driving cars, as all that stuff unfolds and the right promises the world to get into power and then completely fails to deliver, there will be an opportunity for large scale renegotiation. So, the objective is basically to keep the powder dry and keep the front line activists safe until that large scale renegotiation occurs. No one really understands the issues, you’ve got to wait until people are actively beginning to push for basic income before you start dropping everything to go and deliver basic income. It’s a waiting game.”

Vinay warns that we might be waiting ten years before the scene is set for the “next round” of activism for basic income. But, if activists are to leave the front lines and reinvent their strategies, is there really nothing to fight for in the meantime?

“The one thing that I think might be worth fighting for is laboratory grown meat. It’s now close enough that a fight for that might be really important. If the lab meat thing works and you wind up with the ability to get the population off cow, it will make an enormous difference to our global warming emissions. Enormous. Bigger than getting rid of cars. It takes all of the land use pressure of nature. So, you get the jungles beginning to grow back, you get the English countryside beginning to come back — you get a huge restoration of natural systems because you’re no longer grazing everything in sight to turn it into hamburgers, because the hamburgers are coming out of an enormous factory on the far side of Dundee for a pound a kilo! So, I actually think that beating the hell out of green resistance to lab meat — a ‘tech will save us’ kind of thing — is a really good idea. And getting into the lab meat industry — can you imagine how much money is going to come out of lab meat? Cutting greenhouse gas emissions by maybe 20%, hugely improving access to protein in the developing world, saves the lives of untold millions of cows by simply failing to have them exist. It’s something where the culture gets all up in arms about it, you can imagine the farming lobby now. But if they ban it we are screwed, because it’s the next big shift we could make technologically that could protect the ecosystem from our stupidity.”

The lab meat question is exactly the kind of pressure point that Vinay Gupta likes to hone in on, for the extent they challenge our comfort levels and ask us to think through our contradictions. He will regularly remind you that it’s impossible to confront the future without also tearing up your sensibilities; and it is clear that this is a deeply held existential position. As an advanced practitioner of Kriya Yoga, Vinay likens the task to the ancient principles of Tantric philosophy: ”the continual pursuit of truth over social conformity.”

This November, Vinay will share his experiences at the vanguard of Ethereum — in particular The Internet of Agreements, his thesis on how blockchain can build the future of global trade and co-operation. In approaching how data and commerce should interface with the state in the era of blockchain, he is sure to be fearless in addressing the blind spots created by the blockchain craze; and in deconstructing the belief systems that have so strongly influenced its first wave. As with any topic on which Vinay holds forth — you pigeonhole him at your peril.

You can hear more about Ethereum at the Meaning conference in Brighton, UK on 16 November 2017 — where Vinay Gupta will join a line-up of diverse speakers exploring the role of business in creating a more sustainable, equitable and humane world. Find out more via the event website.

Photo by lotus8

The post Vinay Gupta returns to Meaning with his biggest vision yet for global systems change appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Fortunately, there exist many experiments with non-capitalist modes of assessing and exchanging value, sharing goods and services, and making decisions that can help us transition to a more sustainable political economy based on principles of degrowth. One of the best ways to generate non-capitalist subjects, objects, and spaces comes from systems designed to manage common pool resources like the atmosphere, ocean, and forests. Commons-based systems depend upon self-governance and reciprocity. People rely on and take responsibility for each other, finding mutually beneficial ways to fulfill their needs. This also allows communities to define the guidelines and incentives for guiding their own economic behavior, affording people more autonomy and greater opportunity for protecting and cultivating shared values. Commons-based systems cut across the private/public, market/state dichotomy and present alternative economic arrangements defined by communities.

According to David Bollier, “As the grand, centralized market/state systems of the 20th century begin to implode through their own dysfunctionality, the commons will more swiftly step into the breach by offering more local, convivial and trusted systems of survival.”³ Already, there is evidence of this happening. The commons is spreading rapidly among communities hit hardest by recent financial crises and the failures of austerity policies. In response to the failures of the state and market, many crises-stricken areas, especially in Europe and South America, have developed solidarity economies to self-manage resources, thus insulating themselves from systemic shocks in the future. It seems likely that a community’s capacity to share will be crucial to its survival on a wetter, hotter, and meaner planet.

From the perspective of researchers, there are several different ways to define the commons. In most cases, the commons are understood to be material objects. For example, the atmosphere and ocean are global commons, because they are resources we must all learn to regulate and share collectively. This notion of the commons as material resource goes hand-in-hand with another notion that the commons can be both material and immaterial, a product of either nature or culture. Using this second definition enhances our appreciation for what is often undervalued by traditional economic measures such as care work, shared knowledge production, and cultural preservation. Together, both these perspectives are helpful in devising political and economic strategies for managing the commons, which remains the dominant interest of most commons researchers and policymakers.

Nevertheless, whether material or immaterial, the commons are viewed as a given concept or thing, ignoring that more fundamentally they are generated by social practices. In other words, there are no commons without commoners to enact them. From an enactive perspective, commons are not objects, but actions generated by many different actors in relationship. Whereas the prior notions assume that individuals need to be regulated and punished to prevent overconsumption (an assumption known as the tragedy of the commons), an enactive perspective on commons conceives the individual in relation to everyone (and everything) involved in co-managing the more-than-human commons. It therefore diverges from the prior two notions in assuming a relational epistemology rather than being premised on a liberal epistemology based on the individual. From a Buddhist perspective, one could say that the commons emerges co-dependently with a field of objects, forces, and passions entangling the human and nonhuman, living and non-living, organic and machinic.

The more-than-human commons thus does not dualistically separate the material and immaterial commons, the commons (as object) from the commoners (as subjects), nor does it separate humans from nonhumans. Instead, the commons are always understood as a more-than-human achievement, neither wholly produced by nature or culture. Commoning becomes, as Bayo Akomolafe points out, a material-discursive doing shaped by practices and values that engage humans with their environments.⁴ In Patterns of Commoning, David Bollier and Silke Helfrich argue that all commons exceed conceptual distinctions, because they are not things; rather, they are another way of being, thinking about, and shaping the world.⁵ Commoning is about sharing the responsibility for stewardship with the intent to construct a fair, free, and sustainable world—a goal that is all the more important given the unequal distribution of risks posed by intensifying climate change.

Read the entire essay/issue at The Arrow: A Journal of Wakeful Society, Culture & Politics.

Zack Walsh is a PhD candidate in the Process Studies graduate program at Claremont School of Theology. His research is transdisciplinary, exploring process-relational, contemplative, and engaged Buddhist approaches to political economy, sustainability, and China. His most recent writings provide critical and constructive reflection on mindfulness trends, while developing contemplative pedagogies and practices for addressing social and ecological issues. He is a research specialist at Toward Ecological Civilization, the Institute for the Postmodern Development of China, and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam, Germany. He has also received lay precepts from Fo Guang Shan, an engaged Buddhist organization based in Taiwan, and attended numerous meditation and monastic retreats in Thailand, China, and Taiwan. For further information and publications, please connect: https://cst.academia.edu/ZackWalsh, https://www.facebook.com/walsh.zack, and https://www.snclab.ca/category/blog/contemplative-ecologies/.

Illustration by Alicia Brown

The post Contemplating the More-than-Human Commons appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Sure. It’s the scary thing that’s happening to the planet because we burn too much carbon.

But do you actually understand the science of why it’s happening?

Whether you’re completely new to this or you just want a refresher, you’re in luck.

I’ve picked out 5 excellent videos for you which explain it in beautifully simple terms. They’re short, and they have animations. I know the subject matter is a little threatening so I’m making this as easy as I can. If you watch all these then I promise you will get the basics of climate science – even if you’re not the scientific type.

1. Climate Science: What You Need To Know via It’s Okay To Be Smart

6.20 minutes

This one starts off pointing out how well established and consensus-filled the science is, despite some haters still doubting it. The presenter of this cute science channel then goes on to explain the basics in 24 easy steps. They want you to be prepared for that day you end up chatting to an enraged climate denier at a party who’s furious about the “polar bear lobby”, so they debunk a couple of stubborn myths, too.

2. CLIMATE 101 with BILL NYE via Climate Reality

4.33 minutes

This one starts off with a scientist in a lab coat using plants, a globe and a bunch of chemical bottles to act out the greenhouse effect, which later turns into animation – all narrated by Bill Nye. He gets interrupted a few times by a TV showing climate deniers talking crap, and clearly explains the basics of the science, which as he points out, has been understood for decades. If you fancy it, Bill even shows you how to recreate the greenhouse effect with a simple DIY science experiment!

3. Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s Simple Explanation of Climate Change via Guy Science

3.59 minutes

Famous for bringing astrophysics to the masses, Neil DeGrasse Tyson heads up this one. He explains the greenhouse effect and how it’s just very basic physics and isn’t scientifically controversial at all. In fact Carl Sagan wrote about the greenhouse effect on Venus back in the 1960s, and in the 1980s warned that the same could happen to Earth, “turning our only heaven into a kind of hell”. Neil tells us why we know the extra carbon isn’t coming from volcanoes. He also makes a good final point: it’s such a shame that carbon dioxide is an invisible gas – we would be so much better at dealing with it if we could all see it.

4. Climate Change Is Simple – David Roberts Remix via Ryan Cooper

15.01 minutes

This video is a remix, mostly of a talk by David Roberts of established environmental news site Grist, and also includes visuals of the earth to explain the greenhouse effect, much like the others. The difference? This one is pretty hard hitting. Not gunna lie, it’s pretty scary. He thinks we’re going to shoot way past the 2 degrees safety limit and that at current levels we’re heading towards something as high as 6 degrees (we don’t know for sure – scientists are uncertain about that). Which is pretty terrifying. But I think it’s important to watch it, because to really get climate change, you do need to get the seriousness of the crisis, before moving on to being proactive. He ends with the bold call to action: “Your job now is to make the impossible possible”.

5. The No-Nonsense Guide to Climate Science via The New Internationalist

4.18 minutes

In this one, Danny Chivers, author of the No Nonsense Guide to Climate Science pocket book, runs through why the planet is heating up (the greenhouse effect again) what the current impacts are, and what the future impacts are likely to be. He tells us all this while wandering about the streets of Oxford, supported by on-screen text and special effects. A key point: the basics of the greenhouse effect has been understood since 1896. That’s eighteen ninety six, not nineteen.

To sum up…

The greenhouse effect is the process where greenhouse gases (like carbon dioxide) in the earth’s atmosphere trap some of the sun’s heat and stop it radiating back out to space. That’s normal, but releasing extra carbon into the mix accelerates the process and makes Earth hotter.

Carbon is like salt. A little is essential for life, but too much is dangerous. And modern life makes it very easy to have too much.

The greenhouse effect has been well understood for a long time and is based on very basic physics. There is lots of uncertainty about the details of climate change, but the core equation of fossil fuels > carbon > greenhouse effect > global warming is really not debatable. It’s the political implications that are controversial. And it’s how we respond that’s debatable.

What now?

Assuming you’re not a denier (if so please rewatch those videos and pull your head out of the god damn sand) then you’re probably feeling pretty bad right now.

Here’s the thing: while getting to grips with the science is crucial to climate action, I don’t think it helps to dwell on the science too much. Once you get the core facts, it’s better to focus on the political and practical sides of climate action. I suggest starting with my post on The 3 Simplest Things You Can Do To Fight Climate Change. One of them is extremely helpful and only takes 10 minutes. Action time!

Featured image: The greenhouse effect works a lot like an actual greenhouse. (Out.of.Focus / Flickr, Creative Commons). 

Reposted from The Climate Lemon

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Yay for the Paris Agreement!… Wait. What actually is that?

If you’ve read anything much about climate issues, you’ve probably come across the term ‘Paris Agreement’ – aka ‘Paris Accord’, ‘Paris Climate Treaty’, ‘Paris Climate Deal’ or simply the ‘2015 climate deal’. Like a lot of climate lingo, it isn’t immediately obvious. This post will explain the Paris Agreement in simple terms. As a global diplomatic agreement which was 40 years in the making, there’s a lot of intricacies that we won’t be able to cover here. But this is the gist of it.

So, enough chit chat. What actually is it?

The Paris Agreement is a binding international agreement, led by the UN, that the global community will work together to limit climate change to less than 2 degrees of warming, compared to pre-industrial levels.

2 degrees has long been seen as the safety limit, above which climate change would be likely to spin out of control. The Agreement states that we will also “pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees” – a much tougher goal, but a much safer and fairer one (more on that later). Over 100 nations have ratified the Agreement, covering over 75% of global carbon emissions. The Agreement was hashed out at an UN conference in December 2015 and came into force on 4th November 2016.

It’s seen as such a big deal because the UN has been calling conferences on how to deal with the threat of climate change for the best part of four decades, and they’ve always failed, until this one. There’s so many vested interests and conflicting views and different national priorities that it’s next to impossible to get everyone to agree. While there are many weak spots, the Agreement is a big achievement because it’s the world’s first global and binding climate deal.

The key highlights

Apart from the headline goal of staying below 2 degrees, here’s some of the key highlights.

(If you want to check out the official text, be my guest. To be honest it makes The Silmarillion look as readable as The Very Hungry Caterpillar, so good luck).

• We’ll be effectively net zero carbon by 2100

  There’s a statement that carbon emissions must be no higher than absorption by the environment by 2100, but no clear deadline for when fossil fuels must be phased out. This could mean carbon pollution continues far in to the future, as long as there are enough forests and other natural ecosystems to absorb it (known as ‘carbon sinks’). Only problem is, by the end of the century is waaay too far away. To limit warming to 2C we must keep around 80% of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground – and of course even more for the tighter 1.5C target. Still, this is the first time we’ve had a global target to get to a post-carbon society.

• We’ll ramp up ambition every five years

  There is going to be a review mechanism, where every five years the world’s nations will ”take stock” of their collective progress, and ramp up climate commitments, with the first official one in 2023. This is crucial because so far the national climate action plans are only sufficient to limit global warming to 2.7C – a dangerous level. This was a major sticking point, with large developing nations – notably India and China – opposed to ramping up their contributions so soon. It’s good news this is included in the text. Also, nations are “encouraged” to revisit their climate plans in 2018, before they take effect in 2020.

• Irreversible climate damage gets lip service

  The thorny issue of loss and damage is included – kind of. The most climate-vulnerable states have been adamant that they will suffer some irreversible impacts that cannot be mitigated nor adapted to. For example, losing part of their country to sea level rise, mass deaths and forced migrations, the inability to continue growing a staple crop. The have passionately, and rightly, demanded they must have some form of compensation from the rich nations for these losses – in addition to the finance mobilised for mitigation and adaptation (which is for things like renewable energy and flood defences).

  The rich nations, especially the USA, have opposed these calls. The American government have been terrified of any language denoting legal liability, because if the deal leaves American companies or the American government open to being sued on climate grounds, the climate-denying corporate-loving Republicans will block the deal and we’ll all be screwed. The final draft includes the principle of loss and damage and says something must be done about it, but clarifies this action cannot be through legal liability. This isn’t fair. But it is pragmatic.

• Target confirmed for $100 billion in yearly climate finance

  As previously agreed, the rich countries will provide at least $100 billion a year of climate finance to the developing world, in a ”transparent” manner. How exactly this will be done is still being worked out. It’s very important that the word ”transparent” was used, but it should have gone further. This was a sticking point in the negotiation, as many of the richer nations claimed that nearly $60 billion had already been mobilised, but many developing nations claimed this was not true. They said the calculations were not clear, and that the figure includes loans and the double-counting of finance already provided for other reasons. This is a valid objection.

  I know for sure that my own county, the UK, was doing this. Cameron’s government pledged to redirect our whole aid budget to climate finance. As many of the countries that would be receiving standard development aid are the same ones that will be getting climate finance, our pledge amounts to almost nothing. It’s highly likely other countries are doing the same and it’s totally out of order.

  The rich countries have the historical responsibility for causing this mess – the least we can do is help poorer countries transition and adapt. Anyway, this point is right to be included but it should be stronger.

• Only voluntary action until 2020

  The Agreement “encourages” voluntary climate action in the years running up to 2020– when this deal will take effect. It is not good enough to wait until then before doing anything, so I sincerely hope countries start early. The good news is momentum is still running high from getting the Agreement into force within a year, which is earlier than expected. The text “decides” (sounds better than the other funky verbs flying around the document) that the period 2016-2020 will see a “technical examination process” around clean technology transfer. That sounds promising, if vague.

• We need cities and businesses to step up to the plate

  The Agreement “urges” nations to work with “non-state actors” (anything that isn’t a whole country, e.g. a city, county, business, university, community group, NGO etc))to ramp up action prior to 2020, and beyond.  It also looks like non-state actors are going to be relied on to bridge the gap between what the national climate plans can achieve, and what we need to stay under 2 degrees. The good news is 450 cities made climate pledges at the 2015 climate summit. 165 local governments have pledged to get to net zero carbon by 2050, and 90 major cities (covering 25% of world GDP) have joined the C40 climate action program.  I’ll write more about that in other posts as it deserves more attention. Spoiler: Copenhagen wins most ambitious prize, pledging to completely decarbonise by 2025!

https://twitter.com/c40cities/status/818842356665450496/photo/1

• It’s legally binding. Sort of…

  Although the Agreement is described as legally binding, it’s actually only true to a certain extent. Basically, it is now international law that every country which has ratified the Agreement has to submit a climate action plan every five years, and each plan has to be more ambitious than the last. Great. But here’s the thing: actually implementing the plans is not a legal requirement. As the plans will be submitted to international scrutiny at the regular UN climate summits, the idea is that the motivation to be seen as a climate leader rather than being shamed on the world stage will be enough to get everyone to comply. I’m not convinced. But unfortunately several countries – including China and the USA, the two largest emitters – promised to reject the deal if specific emissions cuts were legally binding. So what we got was an imperfect compromise.

How is it different to other attempted climate deals?

It’s novel in two main ways.

One, it covers all countries in more or less the same way, while previous agreements (such as the Kyoto Protocol of 1997) had two distinct categories for developed and developing nations, with only the developed ones being required to make emissions cuts. That approach became unfeasible when the larger developing countries started supercharging their pollution. It also gave sceptics in the rich countries a great excuse to drag their heels. (“Not fair! Why should we do anything when China doesn’t have to?”).

Two, the process started with each country being asked to produce  national climate action plans, called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs – what a mouthful!) which together forms the bones of a global action plan to actually implement the Agreement. The idea got a lot of buy-in from countries that may have resisted the process otherwise, and it allows plans to be nationally relevant (e.g. many poorer countries said they’d plant forests, rather than cutting down on their small and vital energy use). However the problem with the ‘what can you do’ as opposed to the ‘this is what you need to do’ model, is that when all the plans were in, they didn’t add up to enough to stay below 2 degrees. Scientists who analysed the plans said if they’re all implemented to the letter (in itself a big if) then we’re on track for 2.7 degrees of warming. Ouch.

So, will it be effective or not?

It’s hard to say. The good news is, this is the closest we’ve ever got to a workable global action plan. All the major polluters are on board, climate action is getting more mainstream every day, and the renewable energy revolution is snowballing so fast it’s probably got a critical mass of its own now.

The bad news? We’ve already hit 1C of global warming, and even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, there’s a good chance that could climb to 1.5C – or even more. The reason is because carbon doesn’t just do its business and then piss off, it hangs out in the atmosphere for ages – up to a century. There’s a delay between carbon pollution and the climate change it causes. Essentially, we’re always dealing with the impacts of what we did about 50 years ago.

Staying below 2C is a HUGE challenge. But it is physically possible. Although the climate is already changing, but we still have time to avoid that worst bits.

The other good news is that many of the actions needed to reach net zero carbon are also good for society in other ways. There’s plenty of win-wins and win-win-wins to be had. The rest of the posts on this blog explore those opportunities!

Here’s some quotes from the experts

I’m a climate blogger, not a scientist or NGO leader. Let’s hear from some people who should know.

“This marks the end of the era of fossil fuels. There is no way to meet the targets laid out in this agreement without keeping coal, oil and gas in the ground,”
– May Boeve, Executive Director of 350.org

 

“We have witnessed something incredible today. Finally, we can feel hopeful that we are on a path to tackling climate change,”
– Tim Flannery, scientist and conservationist, The Climate Council

“It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.”
– James Hansen, climate scientist and author

Quick note on that one: sadly, he’s probably right. So it’s lucky that fossil fuels won’t be the cheapest energy source for much longer.

“The fact that we got an agreement with a temperature target, with a commitment to a direction of travel, with a commitment to improving and enhancing the financing that’s going to be necessary to meet that direction, I’m pretty optimistic about it,”
– Nigel Arnell, climate scientist at University of Reading

What’s next for the Paris Agreement?

The Paris Agreement is actually ahead of schedule. It passed into force less than a year after the original agreement, which was faster than anyone expected. A promising start! But what next?

There was a climate summit in November 2016, in Marrakech, Morocco, and there will be one each year (next up is May 2017 in Bonn, Germany). But the next big one won’t be until 2018. Until then, the aim of the game will be to iron out all the vague language in the Paris Agreement and decide on rules for transparency and reporting. This administrative stuff will be known as the ‘Paris Rulebook’. It’s not very sexy (unless you find legislative small-print sexy!?) but it’s bound to have important repercussions for its overall effectiveness.

As the Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions elegantly puts it:

“In the long evolutionary arc of the U.N. climate effort, Marrakech was an important transitional moment, pivoting from the years of negotiation that produced the Paris Agreement to a new phase focused on implementation.”

Bring on the implementation!

Featured image: Celebrating the signing of the Paris Agreement. Credit: UNclimatechange / Flickr, Creative Commons. 

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Overview

The country of one’s dreams must be a country one can imagine being constructed, over the course of time, by human hands.”
-Richard Rorty

Among capitalism’s many critics, it is standard procedure to state that neoliberalism has failed and that unless our societies construct a new paradigm for how economies work, human societies will collapse under the weight of an unsustainable and environmentally catastrophic capitalist system.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF), the most powerful purveyor of neoliberal ideas over the last forty years, has now admitted that perhaps its signature ideology has been oversold, and that the costs of free market ideology may have outweighed the touted benefits. When this happens, we may be sure something has reached a breaking point. Whether this signals a fundamental shift in thinking, or a tactical maneuver to preserve the status quo, is a matter of political perspective. (My money is on the latter.)

In fact, neoliberalism has not failed. From the vantage point of its ultimate purpose—maximizing wealth to the owners of capital—it is succeeding admirably.  As a doctrine, it is true to its principles. The problem is that these principles are not just unsustainable—they are pathological. The deification and normalization of greed and the hoarding of wealth by an ever-shrinking and increasingly predatory minority has brought us to the brink of economic and social collapse.¹ What is more, the dominance of neoliberal ideas in our culture has literally deprived people of the capacity to imagine any alternative. This is the ultimate triumph of ideology. If ever there was a time when alternative visions of how economies might work were urgently needed, it is now. The absence of alternatives from public debate is one clear symptom of the crisis we are in.

If ever there was a time when alternative visions of how economies might work were urgently needed, it is now.

The election of Donald Trump in the US, the success of Brexit in the UK, and the rise of neo-fascist parties across the face of Europe only highlight the continuing failure of leftist movements to present such a vision and to address the massive discontent that is now driving political developments. But it is also true that the direction this discontent can take is still up for grabs. Despite recent disheartening events, the election of Syriza in Greece, the popularity of the Sanders campaign in the US, the rise of Podemos and Barcelona en Comú in Spain, and the success of the Pirate Party in Iceland show that the triumph of right wing reaction is not guaranteed. But the failure of Syriza to challenge the status quo in Europe and the rise of Trump in the US also indicate that a change of political direction is not tenable within the parameters of our present institutions. We have entered an age where it is entirely likely that change—in whatever form—will come not as a result of conscious political effort on the part of social movements, but rather from the collapse of the current system.

What is entirely unknown is what form this change will take. Already, the absence of an alternative to capitalism has given rise to forms of reaction not witnessed since the fascist era of the 1930s. Even more frightening is that the pathology of fascist ideas has taken hold in what were once the strongholds of liberal democracy. In the US, the first weeks of a Trump administration has revealed the face of an Orwellian dystopia in the making. It seems clear that the urgency of our present moment is now primarily political. The consequences of global warming, growing inequality, disappearing civil liberties, and the consolidation of the surveillance state all point to the necessity of political mobilization on a scale not seen since the uprisings of the mid 1800s. It is also clear that any such mobilization must be propelled by a vision and a plan that concretely and radically challenge and transform the underpinnings of our current system.

It means the recovery of economic and political sovereignty by nations, the radical curtailment and redistribution of wealth, the social control of capital, the democratization of technology, the protection of social, cultural, and environmental values, and the use of state and civil institutions to promote economic democracy in all its forms. Above all, it means the evolution of new forms of governance that deliver decision-making power to citizens in an era of global power dynamics. A tall order. But if the grievances that are polarizing societies across the globe are not channeled in ways that offer people constructive pathways to reform, positive visions of society that they can believe in, ways of life that have meaning beyond self-aggrandizement and the worship of money, what comes next will be a nightmare, fueled by rage and resentment. In the US, we are seeing this unfolding before our eyes.

Thankfully, the elements of a new imaginary are all around us.

Thankfully, the elements of a new imaginary are all around us. The outlines of a new political economy that is both humane and in which the fulfillment of the person is conjoined to the well-being of one’s community are already visible in the innumerable examples of cooperative and social enterprises that are showing daily that social values can be the basis for a form of economics in which the common good prevails. Ethics can be a basis for a new economic order. In this essay, I will not dwell on what has gone wrong with late stage capitalism. The seemingly permanent state of economic, social, and environmental crisis that it has engendered is evidence that our economic system is both unjust and unsustainable. Nor can I address all aspects of what a Next System entails. What I will do is describe elements of political economy that I think are indispensable for paradigm change; including, the forms by which such an economy might function; the roles of citizens and the state; the role of technology; and, examples of how these ideas may be realized in strategic areas. These include the provision of social care, the creation of money and social investment, the creation of social markets, and the containment of corporate power. It is true that the rapid regressions that we are now witnessing daily clearly require urgent and immediate action to resist very specific threats that affect real lives and cannot wait for what may come next. These range from the erasure of civil liberties, to the rollback of environmental protections, to the racist discrimination against minorities that is now public policy. But if these regressions are in fact symptomatic of a political order in crisis, as I argue in this paper, thinking about what comes next can ensure that the urgency of our actions in the here and now reflect a vision for the long term that gives meaning and coherence to what we do today.

George Monbiot, “Neoliberalism – The Ideology at the Root of all Our Problems,” The Guardian,
April 15, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot.

This paper by John Restakis, published alongside three others, is one of many proposals for a systemic alternative we have published or will be publishing here at the Next System Project. We have commissioned these papers in order to facilitate an informed and comprehensive discussion of “new systems,” and as part of this effort, we have also created a comparative framework which provides a basis for evaluating system proposals according to a common set of criteria.

Continue reading, download the PDF here.

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