DISCLAIMER: As a visionary multidisciplinary scientist, artist, and designer of ultragreen dream homes and affordable ultragreen communities, on the leading edge since 1976, I learned to appreciate the value of winning hearts and minds with beautiful, compelling visions. I also discovered the real nature, scope, and depth of the ecological crisis and the roots of our main problem.
In his daily comic strip, while playing war with cartoon animal buddies, cute little Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
Beautiful visions and green dreams will never be a future reality without a massive majority backing a major change of mind and paradigm. So, what follows may challenge or wipeout everything you believed about the world, wealth, value, money, and all the other things we need to take for granted, ignore, or deny in order to keep the ecocidal socioeconomic game going. Some of the passages deal with issues in a way that may seem unscholarly, too blunt or polarizing. However blunt, the purpose of this book is to reduce the polarization of people in the green and ungreen camps, by identifying the real causes and providing an effective prescription.
This is not about good and bad people, it is about good and bad habits, ideas, policies, laws, solutions and options. So, this is about the real nature, scope, depth, and mechanics of The Problem, and how to solve it. Nobody is perfect but, no matter how bad our ideas and habits, most of us love our children and would like to do our best for them and ourselves. By facing the challenge with courageous compassion for our children and grandchildren with adequate understanding, skill, and persistence, we can accomplish The Mission, on this planet or elsewhere.
Remember, if the Fed's banking system and its debt dollars can survive on trust and deception, a nonprofit, green credit system will thrive on trust and realism.
The totality of the content and most of the links provided below have never been assembled in a coherent, comprehensive way in one place before. This permits a realistic big picture view of the problem, but it can be daunting. So, please, read on with heroic courage. With the double edged sword of wisdom and compassion, we can win the race against time, while building invulnerable self-esteem and a healthy, sane, sustainable civilization.
Overview: Greening Reality
"Well, have you solved all the world's problems yet?"
Most people take that as a joke, for use as a cynical icebreaker at a bar or coffee shop. For green law makers, sustainability experts and educators the joke grows ever less funny. The more we see of the true scope and severity of our worst problems, the less we feel like laughing.
How do we solve the most complex problem in human history, stay happy and sane? Not by continuing the inadequate methods of the last 40 years. With enough time and skill, any complicated problem, however vast, can be solved by cutting through the complication, identifying the main components, and systematically resolving the dilemmas, either one at a time or all at once. When the problem is a whole world afflicted with a Consumer Society terminally addicted to oil, waste, profit, and deception (AKA advertising) the choice is clear. Some give up, get cynical, mean and clever, grabbing for as much of the loot as they can get, while it lasts. The rest of us get to be heroes or dupes, but this is a race against time.
How can anyone know that current efforts are inadequate to the challenge? Sustainability SMEs and educators are overlooking or ignoring the main causes of the human factors. How can we be sure of that?
The planetary environment can be thought of as a system, and its various processes that make the global climate can be seen as subsystems. The main driver of radical global climate change is the cumulative effect of multiple interacting feedback loops building up in earth's subsystems. A single system caught in a positive feedback loop can go into an exponential chain reaction of changes that can end in what we call disaster. When multiple interdependent systems all go into interactive feedback loops, the rapidity of change and increasing imbalance accelerate at a much greater rate. In early 2005 I started publishing warnings about the mounting symptoms of runaway climate imbalance and explaining the mechanisms. I accurately predicted that the process would accelerate progressively, calling for emergency preparations. A few months later, An Inconvenient Truth (the film) came out, but failed to tell the whole truth about the process snowballing beyond measure. Nor did it warn people of the true level of danger or the full consequences of being unprepared. Then came The Day After Tomorrow (the film), which speeded up the process by 5 to 10 years. I then pointed out the potentially horrific results of that scenario happening in 5 or 10 years instead of 10 days. Then corruption, unreasoning fear, denial, and business as usual continued as usual held real change to a snail's pace, blocked it, and keeps trying to block it.
Huge global disasters can cause very serious national security risks. With our fragile economy staggering through the aftermath of financial disaster, a colossal natural mega-disaster would be ruinous. During the last Bush administration, the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) website featured reports that show over 70% of humans living in disaster zones of one kind or another, mainly coastal areas and floodplains. That majority is now about 4.9 billion of us. About 5 years ago both the UN and the Pentagon agreed that there may be well over 120 million climate change refugees by 2030, but that number is clearly far too low.
Real scientists now realize that effects of the process that they previously predicted for the year 2070 now look more likely for 2030. Eighteen years from now, the effects of the dual polar ice melt may be far more extreme than currently predicted, and much of the probable damage is not being mentioned. People in the tropics are moving inland, abandoning their islands now, or preparing to do so. Along the subarctic and arctic coasts, the shoreline is ever more rapidly washing away in summer waves, and the permafrost--with double the carbon in the sky--is starting to melt, rot, releasing CO2 and methane as well, which is over 22 times worse.
All these processes are aggravated by greed and addiction to energy, waste, money, denial, and illusions of wealth, luxury, status, progress, and convenience. Yet, no schools or green politicians are proposing any alternative to our ecocidal socioeconomic system or the retarded paradigm that enables it. In January of 2010 a mass media magazine (Discover) included feature articles on the huge, increasing loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic and on the brain science behind behavioral economics. Yet, the for-profit money system keeps rewarding sociopaths for destroying the economy and the environment, while cynical exploiters and faux patriots get prime time media coverage for ecocidal propaganda and insane nonsense.
As long as the root causes are unseen, unexamined, and left untreated, our symptoms will worsen. In this case, that means that the 7 becoming 9 billion of us would keep aggravating and accelerating the nonhuman processess at work in the environment.
We really should have started 40 years ago. In 1968, in Jimi Hendrix's first song on the second album, he mentioned climate change and the smell of a burnt world. By 1970, the best minds of the time saw this coming, and held conferences, gave interviews and lectures, wrote books, and articles trying to get us to change our ways, our minds, our attitudes, delusions and habits. But they failed and not entirely because we were too stupid and addicted to care.
Taoist psychologist and Zen philosopher Alan Watts attended one of those conferences on the environmental crisis and found himself and everyone else struggling with countless dilemmas. After all, they decided that they didn't know what to do about it.
See >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aufuwMiKmE
Also >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMheNLq97D4
Clearly, early proto-greens were hampered to some extent by wisdom deficiency and disinformation about the root causes, means, and defensive mechanisms of pandemic ecocidal mania. The problem is complicated, but initiating effective action requires no more than reducing the fog of complication and disinformation with a reasonable dose of ethics. To be fair, we must remember that the pandemic was not so obvious, blatant, and virulent in 1971, and most of us now fail to recognize and understand it and all the complications. That is why there is still no unified, comprehensive, global response, and why this book is necessary.
To survive and thrive, we need to solve all the essential dilemmas at once. How long we have for doing it is unknowable. How much skill it will take is unknown but, with enough time, that is knowable. Why have we failed so far? One of the worst parts of the problem is the coupling of faux security and apathetic shock that follow faux solutions and inadequate assessments of the problem. Greening the world requires a workable alternative to the ecocidal economy and the social meta-infrastructure that keeps it going. This one-stop resource for noble green heroes elected, appointed, or hired to solve the problem provides all the previously hidden or missing links, building blocks, and tools necessary to accomplish The Mission.
There is no time to waste. The interdependent, interactive components of the problem are as numerous and complex as the set of all diseases known to man. The solution is essentially a cure, and the result is wellness. Quick fixes at the drugstore or supermarket treat symptoms, not causes. The best doctors diagnose a whole patient, a whole life, looking for all causes of illness, and then prescribe the best possible protocol. Since the patient is the world, our emergency medical team needs enough interdisciplinary knowledge and skills for extraordinary teamwork.
Clearly, the most effective sustainability expert will be a master of several arts and sciences or else know enough of the essential principles and governing dynamics to be conversant with those who are. For the sake of discussion, at least, the arts of civilization include economics, politics, management, education, art, and religion; and science is seen to include medicine, psychology, ethics, philosophy, etc.
The Greenbook policy directives begin with seven decisive essentials for preventing cultural, socioeconomic, and ecological collapse, initially inspired by the work of Dr. Jared Diamond, author of the best selling books Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Gandhi's principles, strategies, and tactics inspired an update supporting the effective mandate needed for appropriate policy, law making, enforcement, and cultural empowerment. The section on global policy necessities, based on the UN's Earth Charter, serves as a master template for green laws that work. If the Seven Essentials are the heart of the Greenbook, effective planning standards and the Greenbook rating form are the arms and legs. The Greenbook form simplifies evaluation of policies, planning, development, projects, products—and much more—with realistic qualifications. The Greenbook rating form is based on the sophisticated yet simple standard developed by Malcom Wells, the godfather of ultragreen earth-sheltered architecture. The section on Green Credit features a practical nonprofit alternative to universal debt slavery and further ruin of the economy.
The section on Green Credit is rather long, because the economic dimensions of the problem and solution are complex and complicated; and because the impacts of financial tyranny and financial confusion are so severe. Systemic corruption rules and rigs the market economy for the sake of corporations and major stockholders whose current strategies are totally opposed to global wellness, affluence for all, and cultural sustainability. So, understanding green spirit and ethics is essential for a realistic response and for motivating billions of very religious people, voters, and tax payers.
Drawing from the accumulated wisdom of ancient sustainable cultures, from great leaders, policy analysts, bioneers, ecotects and scientists, great teachers, healers and culture heroes, the other sections of the Greenbook offer realistic options for remedial action and real recovery. Our socioeconomic paradigm needs a major overhaul and, without elemental wisdom and ethical pragmatism, the paradigm will remain beyond repair.
For now, we can all agree that, basically, "green" and "sustainability" and the Green Mission have always been about meeting the needs of the present in ways that do not diminish, impair, or limit the ability of future generations to meet theirs. Catering to modern desires without realistic consideration of the consequences may be destroying our ability to live healthy lives now or even to survive for more than a few decades or so.
The findings of cognitive science, psychoneuroimmunology, epigenetics, and ecopsychology all show that wellness of mind and body and environment are inseparable. Greening the world means greening our mind-bodies and the environment all at once. We are subject to illness as much from our own biochemistry, toxins produced with each negative decision or reaction, as from the tens of thousands of synthetic chemicals pervading the air, the waters, the soil, our food & mothers' milk. We cannot afford the pretense that making green shopping lists for corporations and governments will lead to healthy, peaceful sustainability.
Numerous scientific studies show that buildings are directly responsible for over 40% of energy use and over 50% of our pollution, but the total should also include transportation. Most cities and suburbs are now hastily designed for cars and trucks, for a total of more than 80% of energy use and pollution. Yet, most city planners and most architects still face seemingly insurmountable legal and fiscal constraints on their ability to create truly effective, positive change. If we could respond accordingly, the current socioeconomic paradigm and prevailing customs prevent a massive, rapid restructuring of cities and elimination of suburbs. As the top of the food chain, humanity now eats about 40% of what the plant realm produces. To adequately feed, clothe, house and educate the nine billion of us expected to be here in 2030, we may need over 250% more biological resources than we consume today. With less than 5% of humanity, the USA consumes nearly 30% of all resources. If all of us demand a typical American lifestyle in the next 20 years... The arithmetic is simple, 20 or 30 years from now 95% of us will not be able to consume 600% more of everything without radical, unimaginable changes.
Though a 600% upgrade of the global standard of living (GSL) may now be unimaginable, it may not be impossible. It seems likely that a more modest upgrade of our GSL may be more realistic and still improve our global quality of life (GQL) beyond measure. Yet, our antique, semi-barbaric, 17th century politics and economics deliberately oppose or discourage realistic analysis and planning for the next two decades. Most of the multinational corporations governing the realm of for profit politics are allergic to sustainability, efficiency, and wellness. If products last longer and work better, if people stay healthy and happy without constant consumption, buying, drugging, policing and war then how will industry and banking survive?
The time for wishful thinking and faux solutions is long gone. Ecologists look for what works 'as is' and what does not, their job is science, not solutions. Yet, we have much to learn from the best of ecologists, like Carl Safina, author and president of the Blue Ocean Institute. In his book, Hope at Low Tide, Safina gives us doses of inner ecology that may prove effective, for example:
"So, we're navigating a changing world with concepts that are not up to the task, concepts that lack—or prevent—modern comprehension of the world.
"Consequently, most of civilization remains uninformed about the two great realities of our existence: all life is family, and the world is finite. That is why we keep making choices that threaten our own monetary economy, the economy of nature, and the economy of time; otherwise known as the future of the world. What I'm saying, basically, is that in very consequential ways, our modes of conduct are so out of sync with reality that they are essentially irrational."
While we may debate how finite the world is, we can all agree that the time left for getting real may be more limited than we know. We should also be able to agree that irrationality so severe that it ruins our GQL, our wellness (and our odds of survival), is a psychopathic illness (ecocidal insanity). So far, it seems chronic.
To be truly effective, green law makers, sustainability policy advisors, consultants, managers, and directors need to foster much more effective innovation and systemic change, but how? Most green businesses are thriving and growing as the rest of the economy fails or falters. Yet, most builders and other businesses are still in the dark, trapped in the economic system's addiction to waste, inefficiency, cancerous growth, and rampant consumption regardless of the damage. Most of us are too busy watching TV, job hunting or struggling to stay employed to keep up with all the news and real science. Most of the opponents of sustainability are multinational corporations that limit or virtually suppress the best news and science. Thus, the solution requires pervasive and persistent education, by stealth if necessary, and almost constant coaching. That is why sustainability experts must master the art of education and the essence of psychology. We also need better information about realities and possibilities.
If we factor out the elements of the averages in the statistics of doom, we see that 5% of the 5% of us who are Americans are controlling over 90% of the US economy while using over 45% of the 30% of global resources "we" consume. Globally, the elite 5% of humans expect 95% of us to share less than 13% of the available stuff (including food, water, etc.). There may be more sustainable options than most of us have ever dreamed possible.
Yet, despite or because of the many books, articles, standards, programs, and advertising, what green really means, and what is really sustainable are still questionable. In the USA, at least, the roles of sustainability directors, managers, and consultants are usually subservient to institutionalized greed, the relentless hunt for maximum profit at all costs. To achieve the best possible results, even professionals committed to accomplishing the Mission now need a single, truly holistic standard and a unifying reference. We must rapidly educate a massive majority, effectively coordinate local initiatives, regional planning, and legislation appropriate to the national and global challenges threatening civilization as we know it. Otherwise, CEOs and corporate directors will not turn their firms into truly Earth friendly enterprises, nor let them go extinct.
So far, after nearly three years of trying, even mega-billionaire Warren Buffet has failed to arouse or instill a humanitarian ethic or humane conscience in the global elite. It may be that no single individual could do any better.
It seems most likely that the solution, the cure, if any, will come from the combined efforts of those of us devoted to the professions most concerned with sustainability. First, for a sane, healthy, sustainable culture and a greener future for all generations, we need a more realistic, positive definition of green and sustainability. The following seems most appropriate to the current challenge:
"Green" means sustainable success, thriving while enhancing the ability of all generations to do the same.
An ancient Chinese saying reminds us that good advice grates on the ear. Nobody likes to hear about needing an amputation or chemotherapy. When you feel fine, strong and healthy, hearing that you have stage four cancer is bad news. The current efforts to "green" the world would be fine if they were happening 30 or 40 years ago. This is now. This is a wake up call, a reality check, an honest diagnosis, and a prescription. Not all the news is good, nor all bad. Our disease may be curable. Our chance of recovery may be far better than 50%, if we start taking our medicine.
If we fail to accomplish the Mission, we will fail to create a future with a high quality of life for all people of all generations. Yet, no previous standard or set of official policy directives provides a workable basis for implementing the changes needed to change our destiny for the best. This little "Greenbook" offers the evolutionary solution.
If the severity of the crisis and the anti-green propaganda were not so extreme, some of the language, phrasing, and metaphors in the text might seem unusually harsh or extreme. In radical therapy for cancer and AIDS, medical analogies are often reinforced with metaphors from the realms of war and sports. Healthy immune system cells are seen as "good" warriors attacking and killing "evil" cancer cells and pathogens. Doctors and medical staff, family, friends, and the patient are like a team battling a deadly aggressor. Winning and losing are truly matters of life or death. That explains the Greenbook strategy.
You may wonder if any new policy directives can really enable more effective change than current programs and initiatives in progress. Fair enough, yet while previous efforts and texts work to remedy symptoms, this Greenbook reveals virus-like root causes that have long evaded full detection and treatment, preventing a cure. Here we also have detailed explanations of game changing principles, legal and organizational tools, cultural strategies, potent political tactics, logistical options, and funding alternatives for accelerated cultural healing. This comprehensive guide supports rapid development of action plans, potent legislation and effective initiatives for truly sustainable success.
How? The first section, on the determining factors of cultural success distills the mission, goals, strategic, tactical, and logistical issues down to just seven positive prerequisites, clearly sensible to anyone who appreciates life, wellness, sanity, children, and sustainable fulfillment. Dr. Diamond and his UCLA research team compiled a massive body of evidence showing that just five of the essentials have saved real-world nations from total disaster.
Gandhi's discovery, development, and use of his Satyagraha principles, strategy, and tactics led others to adopt and use them. Their first victory was in response to the first Apartheid laws, in the ruthlessly fascist nation of South Africa. The next victory was almost total, the end of British Colonial rule in India, a huge subcontinent at that time sustaining 300 different cultures. Their are only three basic aspects of Gandhi's mandates for a sane, healthy culture of free people. Their are just six related directives that flow from the three basics. The Gandhi mandates are not complicated, but they support the resolve necessary to choose social success and a sustainable green culture.
A wholly valid ecological planning paradigm and the new Green Rating Standard are essential for effectively evaluating what is green, what is deadly, and everything else in between. The new rating form has only 25 qualifying categories and a simple 4 degree scoring system. For well educated professionals, planners, teams of architects, ecologists, consultants, and elected officials or teachers, the new rating form will not be hard to use effectively. If the majority ignore it or refuse to use it, then the odds are they will not use any other method effectively either. In that case, we will fail to make the right choices, failing to sustain civilization through the mounting crisis.
The UN's Earth Charter is a valuable tool for green consciousness raising, with great guidelines, but it lacks the legal power and force appropriate to the state of ecocidal emergency. The new global policy imperatives provide effective provisions for enforcement for implementing the principles of the Earth Charter as viable law. The Earth Charter's form and content were developed before extensive research and reporting on the real scope and impact of antigreen corporations, pollution, and climate change. The Earth Charter is a wish list of great ideas, principles and values designed by hundreds of wonderful people who offered no positive or negative incentives or practical tactics for changing profitable ways and means that cause incalculable harm, illness, disability, death, massive destruction and other disastrous consequences. The Earth Charter could not prevent the worst ecological disasters in world history, the oil industry disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, constant oil pollution along the coasts of Africa, nuclear power plant disasters, and hundreds of other daily disasters.
Why? The Earth Charter politely suggests that nations and cities and towns beg heartless, chronically corrupt investors and corporate executives to embrace empathy, be wise, loving, noble, harmless heroes.
We need to recognize psychopathic evil for what it is and unplug the ecocidal money scam before it kills us all. The section on Green Credit & Commonwealth seems long but actually provides a compact diagnosis and prescription for the economic addiction, illness, and delusion that make ecological sanity and a beautiful, peaceful, healthy world seem unaffordable. The magnificent work of Stephen Zarlenga is referenced and linked to help us untangle the mysteries of monetary mechanics, but it stops short of the deeper issues, the defensive mechanisms and governing dynamics. The evolving discipline of behavioral economics is a helpful step in the right direction but, like the obsolete yet respectable modes of economics, it fails to tackle the realities of bogus monetary theories, bankrupt policies, and the underlying ethical and spiritual issues. Our money system rewards ecocidal mania. It needs emergency intervention, detox and rehab. Our best option is understanding the hidden mechanics of credit and banking, then establishing a new hybrid economy with an interest-free, inflation-proof credit system. That will rapidly stimulate real recovery, sustainable stability, and real equity. Otherwise, if all other nations give up on our bad debt dollars, 95% of us will soon be bankrupt Third World debtors. Without a viable alternative, we will only get more dysfunction and worse results. So, an appropriate effort is a small price to pay.
Why include a section on Green spirit in a work for professionals and officials? Anyone who thinks religion can be left out of the diagnosis and therapy needs therapy. Anyone who really wants sustainable personal, cultural, and ecological wellness can see the necessity of responding to the full scope of the problem, from the "hidden" roots on up. Principles, ethics, truth, justice, corruption, and ecological responsibility will never be effectively discussed without considering the primacy of attitude, intentionality, values, and the validity of the paradigm, the cultural conceptual framework, the social matrix of ideas and words. The spiritual dimension of the problem-solution space is at the core of sustainability. We will either deal with the influence and effects of religion, spirituality, and philosophy or we will keep choosing negligent insanity, irresponsibility, failure, and collapse.
The section on law provides legal depth charges and special power tools to sustainably disempower and dethrone corrupt judges, politicians, and corporations. Current laws for protecting us and the environment from ecocidal maniacs are too weak to work. The carbon Cap & Trade system created an illusion of progress that serves as a red herring and whipping boy for the professional loudmouths of Far Right TV and Talk Radio. Unless deterred by penalty of severe punishments and colossal fines, corrupt corporate officers, directors, and their politicians will prevent any costly inconvenience to the major stockholders. Real post-Meltdown inflation plus costs of cap & trade are increasingly passed through to residential rate payers, soon to double then triple monthly energy bills. That, on top of all the other financial burdens heaped on middle class backs, will add to the severely distressing, oppressive impact of the financial End Game scenario, a compelling diversion from ecocide. So, the Far Right attack dogs of the finance & energy cartels can whip their ignorant dupes into blaming their green rescuers instead of the corporate devils ruining the economy and exporting jobs to Asia.
We urgently need to educate the victims and enact and enforce green law protecting the QOL (quality of life) for all beings of all generations here and yet to come. All governments and executive officials need to enact emergency executive orders and laws with severe enforcement methods. Preparing for reality is sane responsibility, not green extremism.
The international legal activists' movement to make ecocide an international crime (similar to genocide) is a step in the right direction, but it lacks a conceptual and ethical foundation strong enough to support a sustainable popular movement, essential for global adoption and enforcement. Either we end ecocide and corporate rule or they will end any hope of a healthy civilization for Earth's children and grandchildren.
The section on green governance lays out the basis of a cure for disabled, toothless, faux-green policy and worm infested green apple agencies. A bright green paradise full of healthy, happy people is not the business of ecocidal politicians and greed crazed corporations. They think we need more war and damage, more prisons, more poisons, more expensive meds for pandemic depression, illness, and other profitable exploits. Their inner demons are obviously incapable of caring even that their children and them will suffer from an increasingly damaged environment. We, the people and the biosphere need policy mandates for effective legislation and regulations with sharp teeth — and consistent enforcement. The average person may be too dazed or busy to see the gradual destruction and poisoning of our planetary life-support system, but ignorance is no excuse.
The section on Green Action Planning offers the basics for appropriate emergency response and radical healing throughout all levels of government and society. To unlock the full potential available for timely recovery of our economy, sovereignty, and ecological wellness we need to use all the keys provided in this green policy and planning guide. To defeat well organized, well funded ecocidal mania, we need a massively popular, global alliance of healthy organizations and officials with a coherent master plan for orchestrating the cure. For leaders who do see the snowballing process accelerating, and who do understand the science, now really is the time for more radical action. We need much more than wish lists and voluntary compliance with inadequate standards. We need true nobility and heroic action guided by compassionate wisdom and great planning.
Is the Greenbook pragmatic enough for the complicated, 'real world' realms of law, politics, and bureaucracy? Are ecocidal "bad guys" or well meaning but disinformed officials being demonized here? No, ecocidal egos and spiritual illness are diagnosed and discussed in an honest way appropriate to the severity of the symptoms. Should we try to legislate morality? No, but if we keep pretending that ethics are optional or irrelevant to the solution, then we will have neither ethics nor a solution. Remember, karma is a simple, unbreakable, universal law. The basic issues seem complex because political and corporate corruption are confusingly complicated on purpose. Corporate devils and ego demons fear and hate anything simple enough to end delusional addictions to oil, greed, deception, illusion, and so on.
Is it too much to ask that policy makers and law makers think effectively about the whole of the problem? Is thinking about the basics on up, while making decisions determining the quality of life for all generations to much to ask? No, but old habits die hard, and replacing them with good ones has been an unpopular option for a very long time.
Over 5,000 years of history proves that without sustainable realism, healthy civilization is clearly unsustainable. We need to catch up with psychosocial reality. For professionals or officials entrusted with the fate of humanity, failing to get real is far worse than Nero fiddling while Rome burned. Real protection and prevention of harm sometimes take more than talk and lengthy political wrangling over what kind of actions might offer the best cost per benefit ratio. We need decisive yet compassionate action based on deep understanding of the essentials.
In protecting our mothers or grandmothers or children and grandchildren or our best friends--to prevent sudden murder, violent assault, torture, mutilation, maiming, poisoning, plagues or psychopathic atrocity--we rarely take time out to consider all the possibilities or wait for a fiscal feasibility study. If we think of this planet, Earth, as our mother, and love Nature as our grandmother or as the essence of our lives, then we see the need for action, not more wishful thinking and counter-productive debates. Our mother and grandmother, our natural life support system and our children are suffering attempted murder, torture, mutilation, disabling abuse, massive poisoning, biochemical warfare and pandemic ecocidal mania.
We need a real solution, effective action now, not later. When ecocidal maniacs agree to therapy will probably be too late. We need to make government effective now or as soon as possible. Consider the most likely consequences of unrealistic policy and inadequate response, then consider this the heart and start of an evolutionary master plan for a real solution. Why not stop the ecocidal assaults? Why not initiate effective therapy and truly sustainable recovery?
Each section of the Greenbook includes supportive commentary, but more extensive help is available through direct consultation, multimedia conferences, seminars or lectures. Though not mentioned in the text by name, some pioneering whole systems thinkers and problem solvers provided essential elements of this holistic approach. R Buckminster Fuller, Donald Schon, and many other brilliant visionaries, theorists, planners, and unsung heroes provided much of the knowledge, wisdom, and inspiration embodied and expressed in the Greenbook. The value of their truly amazing contributions to civilization and humanity is immeasurable. As time permits, all the pioneers, mentors, and champions of sane sustainability, their books and reference links will be included in the Appendix.
Thank you. MM
In his daily comic strip, while playing war with cartoon animal buddies, cute little Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
Beautiful visions and green dreams will never be a future reality without a massive majority backing a major change of mind and paradigm. So, what follows may challenge or wipeout everything you believed about the world, wealth, value, money, and all the other things we need to take for granted, ignore, or deny in order to keep the ecocidal socioeconomic game going. Some of the passages deal with issues in a way that may seem unscholarly, too blunt or polarizing. However blunt, the purpose of this book is to reduce the polarization of people in the green and ungreen camps, by identifying the real causes and providing an effective prescription.
This is not about good and bad people, it is about good and bad habits, ideas, policies, laws, solutions and options. So, this is about the real nature, scope, depth, and mechanics of The Problem, and how to solve it. Nobody is perfect but, no matter how bad our ideas and habits, most of us love our children and would like to do our best for them and ourselves. By facing the challenge with courageous compassion for our children and grandchildren with adequate understanding, skill, and persistence, we can accomplish The Mission, on this planet or elsewhere.
Remember, if the Fed's banking system and its debt dollars can survive on trust and deception, a nonprofit, green credit system will thrive on trust and realism.
The totality of the content and most of the links provided below have never been assembled in a coherent, comprehensive way in one place before. This permits a realistic big picture view of the problem, but it can be daunting. So, please, read on with heroic courage. With the double edged sword of wisdom and compassion, we can win the race against time, while building invulnerable self-esteem and a healthy, sane, sustainable civilization.
Overview: Greening Reality
"Well, have you solved all the world's problems yet?"
Most people take that as a joke, for use as a cynical icebreaker at a bar or coffee shop. For green law makers, sustainability experts and educators the joke grows ever less funny. The more we see of the true scope and severity of our worst problems, the less we feel like laughing.
How do we solve the most complex problem in human history, stay happy and sane? Not by continuing the inadequate methods of the last 40 years. With enough time and skill, any complicated problem, however vast, can be solved by cutting through the complication, identifying the main components, and systematically resolving the dilemmas, either one at a time or all at once. When the problem is a whole world afflicted with a Consumer Society terminally addicted to oil, waste, profit, and deception (AKA advertising) the choice is clear. Some give up, get cynical, mean and clever, grabbing for as much of the loot as they can get, while it lasts. The rest of us get to be heroes or dupes, but this is a race against time.
How can anyone know that current efforts are inadequate to the challenge? Sustainability SMEs and educators are overlooking or ignoring the main causes of the human factors. How can we be sure of that?
The planetary environment can be thought of as a system, and its various processes that make the global climate can be seen as subsystems. The main driver of radical global climate change is the cumulative effect of multiple interacting feedback loops building up in earth's subsystems. A single system caught in a positive feedback loop can go into an exponential chain reaction of changes that can end in what we call disaster. When multiple interdependent systems all go into interactive feedback loops, the rapidity of change and increasing imbalance accelerate at a much greater rate. In early 2005 I started publishing warnings about the mounting symptoms of runaway climate imbalance and explaining the mechanisms. I accurately predicted that the process would accelerate progressively, calling for emergency preparations. A few months later, An Inconvenient Truth (the film) came out, but failed to tell the whole truth about the process snowballing beyond measure. Nor did it warn people of the true level of danger or the full consequences of being unprepared. Then came The Day After Tomorrow (the film), which speeded up the process by 5 to 10 years. I then pointed out the potentially horrific results of that scenario happening in 5 or 10 years instead of 10 days. Then corruption, unreasoning fear, denial, and business as usual continued as usual held real change to a snail's pace, blocked it, and keeps trying to block it.
Huge global disasters can cause very serious national security risks. With our fragile economy staggering through the aftermath of financial disaster, a colossal natural mega-disaster would be ruinous. During the last Bush administration, the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) website featured reports that show over 70% of humans living in disaster zones of one kind or another, mainly coastal areas and floodplains. That majority is now about 4.9 billion of us. About 5 years ago both the UN and the Pentagon agreed that there may be well over 120 million climate change refugees by 2030, but that number is clearly far too low.
Real scientists now realize that effects of the process that they previously predicted for the year 2070 now look more likely for 2030. Eighteen years from now, the effects of the dual polar ice melt may be far more extreme than currently predicted, and much of the probable damage is not being mentioned. People in the tropics are moving inland, abandoning their islands now, or preparing to do so. Along the subarctic and arctic coasts, the shoreline is ever more rapidly washing away in summer waves, and the permafrost--with double the carbon in the sky--is starting to melt, rot, releasing CO2 and methane as well, which is over 22 times worse.
All these processes are aggravated by greed and addiction to energy, waste, money, denial, and illusions of wealth, luxury, status, progress, and convenience. Yet, no schools or green politicians are proposing any alternative to our ecocidal socioeconomic system or the retarded paradigm that enables it. In January of 2010 a mass media magazine (Discover) included feature articles on the huge, increasing loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic and on the brain science behind behavioral economics. Yet, the for-profit money system keeps rewarding sociopaths for destroying the economy and the environment, while cynical exploiters and faux patriots get prime time media coverage for ecocidal propaganda and insane nonsense.
As long as the root causes are unseen, unexamined, and left untreated, our symptoms will worsen. In this case, that means that the 7 becoming 9 billion of us would keep aggravating and accelerating the nonhuman processess at work in the environment.
We really should have started 40 years ago. In 1968, in Jimi Hendrix's first song on the second album, he mentioned climate change and the smell of a burnt world. By 1970, the best minds of the time saw this coming, and held conferences, gave interviews and lectures, wrote books, and articles trying to get us to change our ways, our minds, our attitudes, delusions and habits. But they failed and not entirely because we were too stupid and addicted to care.
Taoist psychologist and Zen philosopher Alan Watts attended one of those conferences on the environmental crisis and found himself and everyone else struggling with countless dilemmas. After all, they decided that they didn't know what to do about it.
See >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aufuwMiKmE
Also >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMheNLq97D4
Clearly, early proto-greens were hampered to some extent by wisdom deficiency and disinformation about the root causes, means, and defensive mechanisms of pandemic ecocidal mania. The problem is complicated, but initiating effective action requires no more than reducing the fog of complication and disinformation with a reasonable dose of ethics. To be fair, we must remember that the pandemic was not so obvious, blatant, and virulent in 1971, and most of us now fail to recognize and understand it and all the complications. That is why there is still no unified, comprehensive, global response, and why this book is necessary.
To survive and thrive, we need to solve all the essential dilemmas at once. How long we have for doing it is unknowable. How much skill it will take is unknown but, with enough time, that is knowable. Why have we failed so far? One of the worst parts of the problem is the coupling of faux security and apathetic shock that follow faux solutions and inadequate assessments of the problem. Greening the world requires a workable alternative to the ecocidal economy and the social meta-infrastructure that keeps it going. This one-stop resource for noble green heroes elected, appointed, or hired to solve the problem provides all the previously hidden or missing links, building blocks, and tools necessary to accomplish The Mission.
There is no time to waste. The interdependent, interactive components of the problem are as numerous and complex as the set of all diseases known to man. The solution is essentially a cure, and the result is wellness. Quick fixes at the drugstore or supermarket treat symptoms, not causes. The best doctors diagnose a whole patient, a whole life, looking for all causes of illness, and then prescribe the best possible protocol. Since the patient is the world, our emergency medical team needs enough interdisciplinary knowledge and skills for extraordinary teamwork.
Clearly, the most effective sustainability expert will be a master of several arts and sciences or else know enough of the essential principles and governing dynamics to be conversant with those who are. For the sake of discussion, at least, the arts of civilization include economics, politics, management, education, art, and religion; and science is seen to include medicine, psychology, ethics, philosophy, etc.
The Greenbook policy directives begin with seven decisive essentials for preventing cultural, socioeconomic, and ecological collapse, initially inspired by the work of Dr. Jared Diamond, author of the best selling books Guns, Germs, and Steel, and Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. Gandhi's principles, strategies, and tactics inspired an update supporting the effective mandate needed for appropriate policy, law making, enforcement, and cultural empowerment. The section on global policy necessities, based on the UN's Earth Charter, serves as a master template for green laws that work. If the Seven Essentials are the heart of the Greenbook, effective planning standards and the Greenbook rating form are the arms and legs. The Greenbook form simplifies evaluation of policies, planning, development, projects, products—and much more—with realistic qualifications. The Greenbook rating form is based on the sophisticated yet simple standard developed by Malcom Wells, the godfather of ultragreen earth-sheltered architecture. The section on Green Credit features a practical nonprofit alternative to universal debt slavery and further ruin of the economy.
The section on Green Credit is rather long, because the economic dimensions of the problem and solution are complex and complicated; and because the impacts of financial tyranny and financial confusion are so severe. Systemic corruption rules and rigs the market economy for the sake of corporations and major stockholders whose current strategies are totally opposed to global wellness, affluence for all, and cultural sustainability. So, understanding green spirit and ethics is essential for a realistic response and for motivating billions of very religious people, voters, and tax payers.
Drawing from the accumulated wisdom of ancient sustainable cultures, from great leaders, policy analysts, bioneers, ecotects and scientists, great teachers, healers and culture heroes, the other sections of the Greenbook offer realistic options for remedial action and real recovery. Our socioeconomic paradigm needs a major overhaul and, without elemental wisdom and ethical pragmatism, the paradigm will remain beyond repair.
For now, we can all agree that, basically, "green" and "sustainability" and the Green Mission have always been about meeting the needs of the present in ways that do not diminish, impair, or limit the ability of future generations to meet theirs. Catering to modern desires without realistic consideration of the consequences may be destroying our ability to live healthy lives now or even to survive for more than a few decades or so.
The findings of cognitive science, psychoneuroimmunology, epigenetics, and ecopsychology all show that wellness of mind and body and environment are inseparable. Greening the world means greening our mind-bodies and the environment all at once. We are subject to illness as much from our own biochemistry, toxins produced with each negative decision or reaction, as from the tens of thousands of synthetic chemicals pervading the air, the waters, the soil, our food & mothers' milk. We cannot afford the pretense that making green shopping lists for corporations and governments will lead to healthy, peaceful sustainability.
Numerous scientific studies show that buildings are directly responsible for over 40% of energy use and over 50% of our pollution, but the total should also include transportation. Most cities and suburbs are now hastily designed for cars and trucks, for a total of more than 80% of energy use and pollution. Yet, most city planners and most architects still face seemingly insurmountable legal and fiscal constraints on their ability to create truly effective, positive change. If we could respond accordingly, the current socioeconomic paradigm and prevailing customs prevent a massive, rapid restructuring of cities and elimination of suburbs. As the top of the food chain, humanity now eats about 40% of what the plant realm produces. To adequately feed, clothe, house and educate the nine billion of us expected to be here in 2030, we may need over 250% more biological resources than we consume today. With less than 5% of humanity, the USA consumes nearly 30% of all resources. If all of us demand a typical American lifestyle in the next 20 years... The arithmetic is simple, 20 or 30 years from now 95% of us will not be able to consume 600% more of everything without radical, unimaginable changes.
Though a 600% upgrade of the global standard of living (GSL) may now be unimaginable, it may not be impossible. It seems likely that a more modest upgrade of our GSL may be more realistic and still improve our global quality of life (GQL) beyond measure. Yet, our antique, semi-barbaric, 17th century politics and economics deliberately oppose or discourage realistic analysis and planning for the next two decades. Most of the multinational corporations governing the realm of for profit politics are allergic to sustainability, efficiency, and wellness. If products last longer and work better, if people stay healthy and happy without constant consumption, buying, drugging, policing and war then how will industry and banking survive?
The time for wishful thinking and faux solutions is long gone. Ecologists look for what works 'as is' and what does not, their job is science, not solutions. Yet, we have much to learn from the best of ecologists, like Carl Safina, author and president of the Blue Ocean Institute. In his book, Hope at Low Tide, Safina gives us doses of inner ecology that may prove effective, for example:
"So, we're navigating a changing world with concepts that are not up to the task, concepts that lack—or prevent—modern comprehension of the world.
"Consequently, most of civilization remains uninformed about the two great realities of our existence: all life is family, and the world is finite. That is why we keep making choices that threaten our own monetary economy, the economy of nature, and the economy of time; otherwise known as the future of the world. What I'm saying, basically, is that in very consequential ways, our modes of conduct are so out of sync with reality that they are essentially irrational."
While we may debate how finite the world is, we can all agree that the time left for getting real may be more limited than we know. We should also be able to agree that irrationality so severe that it ruins our GQL, our wellness (and our odds of survival), is a psychopathic illness (ecocidal insanity). So far, it seems chronic.
To be truly effective, green law makers, sustainability policy advisors, consultants, managers, and directors need to foster much more effective innovation and systemic change, but how? Most green businesses are thriving and growing as the rest of the economy fails or falters. Yet, most builders and other businesses are still in the dark, trapped in the economic system's addiction to waste, inefficiency, cancerous growth, and rampant consumption regardless of the damage. Most of us are too busy watching TV, job hunting or struggling to stay employed to keep up with all the news and real science. Most of the opponents of sustainability are multinational corporations that limit or virtually suppress the best news and science. Thus, the solution requires pervasive and persistent education, by stealth if necessary, and almost constant coaching. That is why sustainability experts must master the art of education and the essence of psychology. We also need better information about realities and possibilities.
If we factor out the elements of the averages in the statistics of doom, we see that 5% of the 5% of us who are Americans are controlling over 90% of the US economy while using over 45% of the 30% of global resources "we" consume. Globally, the elite 5% of humans expect 95% of us to share less than 13% of the available stuff (including food, water, etc.). There may be more sustainable options than most of us have ever dreamed possible.
Yet, despite or because of the many books, articles, standards, programs, and advertising, what green really means, and what is really sustainable are still questionable. In the USA, at least, the roles of sustainability directors, managers, and consultants are usually subservient to institutionalized greed, the relentless hunt for maximum profit at all costs. To achieve the best possible results, even professionals committed to accomplishing the Mission now need a single, truly holistic standard and a unifying reference. We must rapidly educate a massive majority, effectively coordinate local initiatives, regional planning, and legislation appropriate to the national and global challenges threatening civilization as we know it. Otherwise, CEOs and corporate directors will not turn their firms into truly Earth friendly enterprises, nor let them go extinct.
So far, after nearly three years of trying, even mega-billionaire Warren Buffet has failed to arouse or instill a humanitarian ethic or humane conscience in the global elite. It may be that no single individual could do any better.
It seems most likely that the solution, the cure, if any, will come from the combined efforts of those of us devoted to the professions most concerned with sustainability. First, for a sane, healthy, sustainable culture and a greener future for all generations, we need a more realistic, positive definition of green and sustainability. The following seems most appropriate to the current challenge:
"Green" means sustainable success, thriving while enhancing the ability of all generations to do the same.
An ancient Chinese saying reminds us that good advice grates on the ear. Nobody likes to hear about needing an amputation or chemotherapy. When you feel fine, strong and healthy, hearing that you have stage four cancer is bad news. The current efforts to "green" the world would be fine if they were happening 30 or 40 years ago. This is now. This is a wake up call, a reality check, an honest diagnosis, and a prescription. Not all the news is good, nor all bad. Our disease may be curable. Our chance of recovery may be far better than 50%, if we start taking our medicine.
If we fail to accomplish the Mission, we will fail to create a future with a high quality of life for all people of all generations. Yet, no previous standard or set of official policy directives provides a workable basis for implementing the changes needed to change our destiny for the best. This little "Greenbook" offers the evolutionary solution.
If the severity of the crisis and the anti-green propaganda were not so extreme, some of the language, phrasing, and metaphors in the text might seem unusually harsh or extreme. In radical therapy for cancer and AIDS, medical analogies are often reinforced with metaphors from the realms of war and sports. Healthy immune system cells are seen as "good" warriors attacking and killing "evil" cancer cells and pathogens. Doctors and medical staff, family, friends, and the patient are like a team battling a deadly aggressor. Winning and losing are truly matters of life or death. That explains the Greenbook strategy.
You may wonder if any new policy directives can really enable more effective change than current programs and initiatives in progress. Fair enough, yet while previous efforts and texts work to remedy symptoms, this Greenbook reveals virus-like root causes that have long evaded full detection and treatment, preventing a cure. Here we also have detailed explanations of game changing principles, legal and organizational tools, cultural strategies, potent political tactics, logistical options, and funding alternatives for accelerated cultural healing. This comprehensive guide supports rapid development of action plans, potent legislation and effective initiatives for truly sustainable success.
How? The first section, on the determining factors of cultural success distills the mission, goals, strategic, tactical, and logistical issues down to just seven positive prerequisites, clearly sensible to anyone who appreciates life, wellness, sanity, children, and sustainable fulfillment. Dr. Diamond and his UCLA research team compiled a massive body of evidence showing that just five of the essentials have saved real-world nations from total disaster.
Gandhi's discovery, development, and use of his Satyagraha principles, strategy, and tactics led others to adopt and use them. Their first victory was in response to the first Apartheid laws, in the ruthlessly fascist nation of South Africa. The next victory was almost total, the end of British Colonial rule in India, a huge subcontinent at that time sustaining 300 different cultures. Their are only three basic aspects of Gandhi's mandates for a sane, healthy culture of free people. Their are just six related directives that flow from the three basics. The Gandhi mandates are not complicated, but they support the resolve necessary to choose social success and a sustainable green culture.
A wholly valid ecological planning paradigm and the new Green Rating Standard are essential for effectively evaluating what is green, what is deadly, and everything else in between. The new rating form has only 25 qualifying categories and a simple 4 degree scoring system. For well educated professionals, planners, teams of architects, ecologists, consultants, and elected officials or teachers, the new rating form will not be hard to use effectively. If the majority ignore it or refuse to use it, then the odds are they will not use any other method effectively either. In that case, we will fail to make the right choices, failing to sustain civilization through the mounting crisis.
The UN's Earth Charter is a valuable tool for green consciousness raising, with great guidelines, but it lacks the legal power and force appropriate to the state of ecocidal emergency. The new global policy imperatives provide effective provisions for enforcement for implementing the principles of the Earth Charter as viable law. The Earth Charter's form and content were developed before extensive research and reporting on the real scope and impact of antigreen corporations, pollution, and climate change. The Earth Charter is a wish list of great ideas, principles and values designed by hundreds of wonderful people who offered no positive or negative incentives or practical tactics for changing profitable ways and means that cause incalculable harm, illness, disability, death, massive destruction and other disastrous consequences. The Earth Charter could not prevent the worst ecological disasters in world history, the oil industry disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, constant oil pollution along the coasts of Africa, nuclear power plant disasters, and hundreds of other daily disasters.
Why? The Earth Charter politely suggests that nations and cities and towns beg heartless, chronically corrupt investors and corporate executives to embrace empathy, be wise, loving, noble, harmless heroes.
We need to recognize psychopathic evil for what it is and unplug the ecocidal money scam before it kills us all. The section on Green Credit & Commonwealth seems long but actually provides a compact diagnosis and prescription for the economic addiction, illness, and delusion that make ecological sanity and a beautiful, peaceful, healthy world seem unaffordable. The magnificent work of Stephen Zarlenga is referenced and linked to help us untangle the mysteries of monetary mechanics, but it stops short of the deeper issues, the defensive mechanisms and governing dynamics. The evolving discipline of behavioral economics is a helpful step in the right direction but, like the obsolete yet respectable modes of economics, it fails to tackle the realities of bogus monetary theories, bankrupt policies, and the underlying ethical and spiritual issues. Our money system rewards ecocidal mania. It needs emergency intervention, detox and rehab. Our best option is understanding the hidden mechanics of credit and banking, then establishing a new hybrid economy with an interest-free, inflation-proof credit system. That will rapidly stimulate real recovery, sustainable stability, and real equity. Otherwise, if all other nations give up on our bad debt dollars, 95% of us will soon be bankrupt Third World debtors. Without a viable alternative, we will only get more dysfunction and worse results. So, an appropriate effort is a small price to pay.
Why include a section on Green spirit in a work for professionals and officials? Anyone who thinks religion can be left out of the diagnosis and therapy needs therapy. Anyone who really wants sustainable personal, cultural, and ecological wellness can see the necessity of responding to the full scope of the problem, from the "hidden" roots on up. Principles, ethics, truth, justice, corruption, and ecological responsibility will never be effectively discussed without considering the primacy of attitude, intentionality, values, and the validity of the paradigm, the cultural conceptual framework, the social matrix of ideas and words. The spiritual dimension of the problem-solution space is at the core of sustainability. We will either deal with the influence and effects of religion, spirituality, and philosophy or we will keep choosing negligent insanity, irresponsibility, failure, and collapse.
The section on law provides legal depth charges and special power tools to sustainably disempower and dethrone corrupt judges, politicians, and corporations. Current laws for protecting us and the environment from ecocidal maniacs are too weak to work. The carbon Cap & Trade system created an illusion of progress that serves as a red herring and whipping boy for the professional loudmouths of Far Right TV and Talk Radio. Unless deterred by penalty of severe punishments and colossal fines, corrupt corporate officers, directors, and their politicians will prevent any costly inconvenience to the major stockholders. Real post-Meltdown inflation plus costs of cap & trade are increasingly passed through to residential rate payers, soon to double then triple monthly energy bills. That, on top of all the other financial burdens heaped on middle class backs, will add to the severely distressing, oppressive impact of the financial End Game scenario, a compelling diversion from ecocide. So, the Far Right attack dogs of the finance & energy cartels can whip their ignorant dupes into blaming their green rescuers instead of the corporate devils ruining the economy and exporting jobs to Asia.
We urgently need to educate the victims and enact and enforce green law protecting the QOL (quality of life) for all beings of all generations here and yet to come. All governments and executive officials need to enact emergency executive orders and laws with severe enforcement methods. Preparing for reality is sane responsibility, not green extremism.
The international legal activists' movement to make ecocide an international crime (similar to genocide) is a step in the right direction, but it lacks a conceptual and ethical foundation strong enough to support a sustainable popular movement, essential for global adoption and enforcement. Either we end ecocide and corporate rule or they will end any hope of a healthy civilization for Earth's children and grandchildren.
The section on green governance lays out the basis of a cure for disabled, toothless, faux-green policy and worm infested green apple agencies. A bright green paradise full of healthy, happy people is not the business of ecocidal politicians and greed crazed corporations. They think we need more war and damage, more prisons, more poisons, more expensive meds for pandemic depression, illness, and other profitable exploits. Their inner demons are obviously incapable of caring even that their children and them will suffer from an increasingly damaged environment. We, the people and the biosphere need policy mandates for effective legislation and regulations with sharp teeth — and consistent enforcement. The average person may be too dazed or busy to see the gradual destruction and poisoning of our planetary life-support system, but ignorance is no excuse.
The section on Green Action Planning offers the basics for appropriate emergency response and radical healing throughout all levels of government and society. To unlock the full potential available for timely recovery of our economy, sovereignty, and ecological wellness we need to use all the keys provided in this green policy and planning guide. To defeat well organized, well funded ecocidal mania, we need a massively popular, global alliance of healthy organizations and officials with a coherent master plan for orchestrating the cure. For leaders who do see the snowballing process accelerating, and who do understand the science, now really is the time for more radical action. We need much more than wish lists and voluntary compliance with inadequate standards. We need true nobility and heroic action guided by compassionate wisdom and great planning.
Is the Greenbook pragmatic enough for the complicated, 'real world' realms of law, politics, and bureaucracy? Are ecocidal "bad guys" or well meaning but disinformed officials being demonized here? No, ecocidal egos and spiritual illness are diagnosed and discussed in an honest way appropriate to the severity of the symptoms. Should we try to legislate morality? No, but if we keep pretending that ethics are optional or irrelevant to the solution, then we will have neither ethics nor a solution. Remember, karma is a simple, unbreakable, universal law. The basic issues seem complex because political and corporate corruption are confusingly complicated on purpose. Corporate devils and ego demons fear and hate anything simple enough to end delusional addictions to oil, greed, deception, illusion, and so on.
Is it too much to ask that policy makers and law makers think effectively about the whole of the problem? Is thinking about the basics on up, while making decisions determining the quality of life for all generations to much to ask? No, but old habits die hard, and replacing them with good ones has been an unpopular option for a very long time.
Over 5,000 years of history proves that without sustainable realism, healthy civilization is clearly unsustainable. We need to catch up with psychosocial reality. For professionals or officials entrusted with the fate of humanity, failing to get real is far worse than Nero fiddling while Rome burned. Real protection and prevention of harm sometimes take more than talk and lengthy political wrangling over what kind of actions might offer the best cost per benefit ratio. We need decisive yet compassionate action based on deep understanding of the essentials.
In protecting our mothers or grandmothers or children and grandchildren or our best friends--to prevent sudden murder, violent assault, torture, mutilation, maiming, poisoning, plagues or psychopathic atrocity--we rarely take time out to consider all the possibilities or wait for a fiscal feasibility study. If we think of this planet, Earth, as our mother, and love Nature as our grandmother or as the essence of our lives, then we see the need for action, not more wishful thinking and counter-productive debates. Our mother and grandmother, our natural life support system and our children are suffering attempted murder, torture, mutilation, disabling abuse, massive poisoning, biochemical warfare and pandemic ecocidal mania.
We need a real solution, effective action now, not later. When ecocidal maniacs agree to therapy will probably be too late. We need to make government effective now or as soon as possible. Consider the most likely consequences of unrealistic policy and inadequate response, then consider this the heart and start of an evolutionary master plan for a real solution. Why not stop the ecocidal assaults? Why not initiate effective therapy and truly sustainable recovery?
Each section of the Greenbook includes supportive commentary, but more extensive help is available through direct consultation, multimedia conferences, seminars or lectures. Though not mentioned in the text by name, some pioneering whole systems thinkers and problem solvers provided essential elements of this holistic approach. R Buckminster Fuller, Donald Schon, and many other brilliant visionaries, theorists, planners, and unsung heroes provided much of the knowledge, wisdom, and inspiration embodied and expressed in the Greenbook. The value of their truly amazing contributions to civilization and humanity is immeasurable. As time permits, all the pioneers, mentors, and champions of sane sustainability, their books and reference links will be included in the Appendix.
Thank you. MM
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Technical comments, suggestions, and contributions are welcome, and may be included in the ebook and paperback editions (with full acknowledgment). Thanks. M
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