Currently viewing the category:
"Quipu Economic Forum"
It is a virtual mantra in the universe of political analysis that “business doesn’t like uncertainty”, and it is true that declining consumer spending, increasing fuel costs, squeeze profits and that in some cases, businesses worry about changes to the regulations they must follow. But uncertainty is the nature of an evolving global economy, and with the accelerating pace of innovation, doing any business well is going to require dealing intelligently with uncertainty.
Solar Roadways is proposing a long-view paradigm-shift solution to major infrastructure, energy and climate challenges. The Solar Roadways system would might, at present, cost about three times what it costs to install an asphalt road, but would be more durable more easily replaced in modular fashion, and able to pay for itself by generating [...]
Today, the percentage of college graduates stands at 40 percent, with about 30 percent of working-class Americans possessing a bachelor’s degree and about another 10 percent holding an associate’s degree, according to census statistics. The question is, “Can we actually push that percentage to 60 percent?” The answer is maybe, if we make a concentrated effort to remove some of the barriers to a college education.
Borders Books and Music was a place of pilgrimage for book lovers, music lovers and people who loved to sit with coffee and read, chat or peruse magazines they might or might not buy. It has played a vital role in the distribution of books of both wide and narrow market interest, and has driven the cathedral-warehouse paradigm of big bookstore chains. Its failure, however, opens the field for more innovative, more reader-friendly experiments in book selling.
Opportunity cost is a serious, long-term stress on economies hampered by rampant governmental corruption, or by severe productive resource deficits—in consumer capital, infrastructure, or long-term reliable energy flows. With the ongoing boom in development of shale gas drilling and tar sands oil recovery, there is now massive investment, into the tens of billions of dollars of public and private money, in high-risk, low-yield ways of extracting carbon-based fuels, with the explicit purpose of extending old-fashioned combustible fuel technologies beyond what would otherwise be economically viable.
As the Pentagon issues its official cyber-security posture, it is imperative that we move into the era of strategic cyber-security with one paramount aim: that cyberspace not be militarized in any substantive way by any nation. Cyberspace should operate much the way our space exploration has worked: aiming for technological superiority and peaceful, international cooperation. [...]
The United States of America has been, since its birth 235 years ago, a world leader in promoting universal public education. It has also been a world leader in promoting universal access to higher education and to advanced degrees. That history has made the US a leader in technological innovation and advanced problem solving for two centuries. That legacy is under threat, and reasoned policy planning demands immediate attention to national educational aims.
Generative economics is rooted in a simple insight: that economic activities can have corrosive or generative impacts on future available resources. The dynamics of an economic environment can add another layer of corrosive or generative potential to the activities in question. Analysis can be subtle, however, because generative qualities are often not the focus of conventional thinking or play out over the long term.
Citizens Climate Lobby is an international non-partisan, non-profit volunteer organization, working to build political will for a livable world. To do that, they aim to find an ideologically neutral, democratically viable, market-focused way to reduce the amount of carbon trapped in Earth’s atmosphere and speed the transition to clean, renewable fuels.
Teachers across the country are suffering, and the children they teach are seeing their futures limited, by the misuse of budget policy as a blunt instrument to roll back social spending on vital, community-building programs. In the case of Christine Simo, there is a clear correlation between misguided cut-first education budget policy and the real harm to the quality of education students can expect.
There is one way of steering outmoded, combustion-burdened economic systems toward a healthier state-of-the-art 21st-century energy economy, that will not entail rapidly escalating price burdens on a consumer market economy. With a carbon fee and dividend approach, we can make sure that only those interests that refuse to innovate and to improve their standards of operation for power generation pay for falling behind.
Ownership is liberating only if it liberates; the new paradigm has to be a participatory society
In order to push his 2004 bid for re-election, and his radical and untenable economic ideology, George W. Bush touted the need for an “ownership society”. In theory, this meant ordinary people could have access like never before to [...]
What do we mean when we talk about sustainability? Do we mean forging, after thousands of years of civilization, at last, a truly sustainable relationship with nature? Do we mean “net-zero” resource impact (which, by the way does not necessarily equate to being rid of practices corrosive to natural systems)? Do we mean “living within our means”, according to the metabolic limitations of our natural environment?
This essay was presented to the second Climate Talks roundtable event, “One Environment vs. Radical Freedom”, at Villanova University, on February 17, 2011. It is an introduction to the theory of “generative economics”, an approach to measuring the value of economic activity according to its capacity for building the resource base, instead of eroding it.
Clean Energy for a Strong U.S.A. is a short film that explores clean energy economy in a new way. You’ll hear from laid-off workers given another chance by clean energy investments; veterans who know their role in the clean energy economy will make America safer; and business leaders and investors who see new ways to revitalize our economy and make the United States the global leader in clean energy.
Andrew Winston, in a blog for the Harvard Business Review has asked a stunning and vital question: Is water the next carbon? Of course, the tongue-in-cheek irony is the suggestion that these are trends like any other, when they are in fact issues that determine how we interact with the underlying value structure of the global environment. The carbon footprint concept allows for assessment of whether we are over-using energy; the water footprint concept may help to show whether we are depleting the most vital natural resource for life, other than air.
In this 2007 TED talk, the novelist Isabel Allende speaks about passion as a guiding, even humanizing principle, about the “best four minutes” of her life, walking the Olympic stadium at the Torino Games, Rose Mapendo’s amazing story of struggle and survival, and the tragic inequity women suffer across the global economy. “Although women do two-thirds of the world’s labor, they own less than one percent of the world’s assets. They are paid less than men for the same work, if they are paid at all.”
Today, the Federal Communications Commission approved new rules on net neutrality that seem designed to appease all parties to the debate but are sure to raise the ire of many. The rules essentially grant the need for and defense of long-term network neutrality —the free and open Internet— for fixed-line web connections, but they nearly erase this protection for wireless connections, putting free speech and technology innovation rights at risk.
The coalition government of the United Kingdom, a joint effort between the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats, is planning tuition fee increases of up to triple the current maximum. The increases would push higher eduction fees from a cap of £3,000 to as much as £9,000. Ed Milliband, leader of the opposition Labour party, has said the coalition government’s steep tuition fee rises are “cultural vandalism”.
At the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month, we held the first of our series of Climate Talks, to explore with more depth and more detail some of the intricacies of the climate crisis, including social, philosophical and political, dynamics, and the way we frame our perception of global-scale phenomena. It was a construtive conversation, from four points of view, each of which was able to benefit from a kinship of interest, so that whether we were discussion environmental justice, political solidarity, economics and collaborative politics or Villanova’s ongoing commitment to reducing its carbon footprint, there were ways to deepen and broaden our understanding of each facet of the problem from each of the different perspectives.
The Hot Spring connects people to brainstorm, solve problems, and build a more just, more sustainable future.
Events
Archives
