Post by Stefan Pasti on May 26, 2012 17:19:53 GMT -5
From the Section "Four Summaries of Critical Challenges Ahead" in the IPCR document "A Multi-Angle View of the Debt Crises" (p. 105-107) (at www.ipcri.net/A_Multi-Angle_View_of_the_Debt_Crises.pdf )
A. “…the world is only one poor harvest away from chaos.”
From “World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse” by Lester R. Brown Earth Policy Institute W.W. Norton and Company New York 2011 Accessible for free at the website of the Earth Policy Institute (see www.earth-policy.org/books/wote ) (Confirmed April 19, 2011)
a) (from Press Release for “World on the Edge”, at www.earth-policy.org/books/wote/wotepr )
(Confirmed April 19, 2011)
“The new reality,” says Brown, “is that the world is only one poor harvest away from chaos. It is time to redefine security. The principal threats to our future are no longer armed aggression but instead climate change, population growth, water shortages, spreading hunger, and failing states. What we now need is a mobilization to reverse these trends on the scale and urgency of the U.S. mobilization for WorldWar II. The challenge is to quickly reduce carbon emissions, stabilize population, and restore the economy’s soils, aquifers, forests, and other natural support systems. This requires not only a redefining of security but a corresponding reallocation of fiscal resources from military budgets to budgets for climate stabilization, population stabilization, water conservation, and other new threats to security.”
b) From “World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse” by Lester R. Brown Earth Policy Institute
“Food price stability now depends on a record or near record world grain harvest every year. And climate change is not the only threat to food security. Spreading water shortages are also a huge, and perhaps even more imminent, threat to food security and political stability. Water-based “food bubbles” that artificially inflate grain production by depleting aquifers are starting to burst, and as they do, irrigation-based harvests are shrinking. The first food bubble to burst is in Saudi Arabia, where the depletion of its fossil aquifer is virtually eliminating its 3- million-ton wheat harvest. And there are at least another 17 countries with food bubbles based on overpumping.” (p. 13-14)
B. “Humanity is now being challenged as never before to grow in wisdom, maturity, and understanding.”
From the preamble to a 116 page “Ecovillage Design Curriculum” document (accessible at the Gaia Education website) (see
gaiaeducation.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47&Itemid=62 )
“We live in a rapidly changing world that is transforming before our very eyes. Humanity is now being challenged as never before to grow in wisdom, maturity, and understanding. A plethora of deep and pressing concerns is calling for our immediate attention, concerns such as: Earth's environmental degradation, including the loss of precious topsoil and forest cover, the encroachment of deserts, the depletion of fisheries and aquifers, the loss of habitat and the extinction of species, etc.; the glaring and increasing disparity between rich and poor leading to exploitation, poverty, and the associated regimen of malnutrition and over-population; the disintegration of families, communities, even entire cultures; unrestrained urbanization resulting in social alienation, displacement, and feelings of disconnection with the natural world; the dimming of a sense of spiritual awareness and purpose; global warming and ozone depletion; etc. And now, looming on the horizon is “peak oil,” with its coming adjustments and retrofits, including the probability of ongoing conflict over access to the remaining energy reserves.
“All of these problems are quite real and, by now, well-documented; but gaining awareness of the extent of the problems is only half the project of becoming educated these days.
“Amidst these intense challenges, and largely catalyzed by them, lies the prospect for tremendous growth in human potential and consciousness. People and communities all over the globe are coming together to reclaim responsibility for creating their own living situations – at local and regional levels. In the process, they are overcoming prior limitations and developing new talents, skills, knowledge and approaches. Paradoxically, many of the most innovative solutions rely on a timeless, perennial kind of wisdom that seems to have been disregarded recently. The potential for a refreshed, renewed, revitalized humanity goes hand-in-hand with meeting the challenges of our present Age.
“The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) believes the most promising and effective way to deal with all these issues is through education….”
C. “We have to somehow get through this collapsing passageway and into the next paradigm….”
From a blog entry titled “Fracking Culture” by Albert Bates at his blog titled “The Great Change” on June 30, 2011 (at peaksurfer.blogspot.com/ )
“We are right at that spaghetti junction where all the lines converge with population and resources, food supply, energy, water and the rest. We’re at that point right now, in exactly the decade The Club of Rome predicted we would arrive here. We have to somehow get through this collapsing passageway and into the next paradigm….”
“…We have to somehow get through this collapsing passageway and into the next paradigm. And so what we do at the Ecovillage Training Center —what ecovillages around the world are all trying to do — is to provide models, transition pathways, to get us to that next step, to get us to where we are going. And some of that is food supply, some of that is energy, some is building materials and how we get our buildings, some of that is microeconomics, like complimentary currencies. Some of that is new methods
of social networking and alternative education and midwifery and alternative health care and doing things in ways that we have known for hundreds of thousands of years and we need to get back to.”
D. “…overcoming the challenges of our times will require problem solving on a scale most of us have never known before….”
From “A Four Page Summary of The IPCR Initiative” by Stefan Pasti (the compiler of this document) [accessible at the website for The IPCR Initiative (at www.ipcri.net ), and at www.ipcri.net/A_Four_Page_Summary_of_The_IPCR_Initiative.pdf )]
“We now live in very complex world. There are many difficult challenges ahead. These challenges include, but are not limited to:
a) global warming and reducing carbon emissions
b) peak oil and reducing dependence on petroleum based products
c) global inequities and the tragic cycles of malnutrition, disease, and death
d) an increasing world population requiring more resources when many resources are becoming more scarce (with a special emphasis on the increasing number of people who are consuming resources and ecological services indiscriminately)
e) cultures of violence, greed, corruption, and overindulgence—which have become so common that many of us accept such as inevitable; which are a significant part of the current crises of confidence in financial markets; and which are in many ways slowing the restructuring of investment priorities needed to respond to an increasing number of other critical challenges
f) a marginalization of the wisdom associated with religious, spiritual, and moral traditions
“More and more people are coming to the realization that overcoming the challenges of our times will require problem solving on a scale most of us have never known before—and that there is an urgent need to restructure our economic systems and our education systems to respond to these challenges.
“How can we get more “on track” with the problem solving we so urgently need to do?....”
[Special Note: The feature article in The IPCR Journal/Newsletter (Winter 2010-2011 issue) is “The IPCR Initiative: Creating a Multiplier Effect of a Positive Nature”. From this article, and other supporting pieces in the 58 page issue, an IPCR peacebuilding approach emerges which may be summarized as follows:
A central focus of The IPCR Initiative is its advocacy for a combination Community Visioning Initiatives, "Community Teaching and Learning Centers" with ongoing workshops, and "sister community" relationships as a way of generating an exponential increase in our collective capacity to overcome the challenges of our times.
[Note: For more details about The IPCR Initiative peacebuilding approach, see Section VIII (“Solutions”), subsection A, and Appendices C—H.]
A. “…the world is only one poor harvest away from chaos.”
From “World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse” by Lester R. Brown Earth Policy Institute W.W. Norton and Company New York 2011 Accessible for free at the website of the Earth Policy Institute (see www.earth-policy.org/books/wote ) (Confirmed April 19, 2011)
a) (from Press Release for “World on the Edge”, at www.earth-policy.org/books/wote/wotepr )
(Confirmed April 19, 2011)
“The new reality,” says Brown, “is that the world is only one poor harvest away from chaos. It is time to redefine security. The principal threats to our future are no longer armed aggression but instead climate change, population growth, water shortages, spreading hunger, and failing states. What we now need is a mobilization to reverse these trends on the scale and urgency of the U.S. mobilization for WorldWar II. The challenge is to quickly reduce carbon emissions, stabilize population, and restore the economy’s soils, aquifers, forests, and other natural support systems. This requires not only a redefining of security but a corresponding reallocation of fiscal resources from military budgets to budgets for climate stabilization, population stabilization, water conservation, and other new threats to security.”
b) From “World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse” by Lester R. Brown Earth Policy Institute
“Food price stability now depends on a record or near record world grain harvest every year. And climate change is not the only threat to food security. Spreading water shortages are also a huge, and perhaps even more imminent, threat to food security and political stability. Water-based “food bubbles” that artificially inflate grain production by depleting aquifers are starting to burst, and as they do, irrigation-based harvests are shrinking. The first food bubble to burst is in Saudi Arabia, where the depletion of its fossil aquifer is virtually eliminating its 3- million-ton wheat harvest. And there are at least another 17 countries with food bubbles based on overpumping.” (p. 13-14)
B. “Humanity is now being challenged as never before to grow in wisdom, maturity, and understanding.”
From the preamble to a 116 page “Ecovillage Design Curriculum” document (accessible at the Gaia Education website) (see
gaiaeducation.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=47&Itemid=62 )
“We live in a rapidly changing world that is transforming before our very eyes. Humanity is now being challenged as never before to grow in wisdom, maturity, and understanding. A plethora of deep and pressing concerns is calling for our immediate attention, concerns such as: Earth's environmental degradation, including the loss of precious topsoil and forest cover, the encroachment of deserts, the depletion of fisheries and aquifers, the loss of habitat and the extinction of species, etc.; the glaring and increasing disparity between rich and poor leading to exploitation, poverty, and the associated regimen of malnutrition and over-population; the disintegration of families, communities, even entire cultures; unrestrained urbanization resulting in social alienation, displacement, and feelings of disconnection with the natural world; the dimming of a sense of spiritual awareness and purpose; global warming and ozone depletion; etc. And now, looming on the horizon is “peak oil,” with its coming adjustments and retrofits, including the probability of ongoing conflict over access to the remaining energy reserves.
“All of these problems are quite real and, by now, well-documented; but gaining awareness of the extent of the problems is only half the project of becoming educated these days.
“Amidst these intense challenges, and largely catalyzed by them, lies the prospect for tremendous growth in human potential and consciousness. People and communities all over the globe are coming together to reclaim responsibility for creating their own living situations – at local and regional levels. In the process, they are overcoming prior limitations and developing new talents, skills, knowledge and approaches. Paradoxically, many of the most innovative solutions rely on a timeless, perennial kind of wisdom that seems to have been disregarded recently. The potential for a refreshed, renewed, revitalized humanity goes hand-in-hand with meeting the challenges of our present Age.
“The Global Ecovillage Network (GEN) believes the most promising and effective way to deal with all these issues is through education….”
C. “We have to somehow get through this collapsing passageway and into the next paradigm….”
From a blog entry titled “Fracking Culture” by Albert Bates at his blog titled “The Great Change” on June 30, 2011 (at peaksurfer.blogspot.com/ )
“We are right at that spaghetti junction where all the lines converge with population and resources, food supply, energy, water and the rest. We’re at that point right now, in exactly the decade The Club of Rome predicted we would arrive here. We have to somehow get through this collapsing passageway and into the next paradigm….”
“…We have to somehow get through this collapsing passageway and into the next paradigm. And so what we do at the Ecovillage Training Center —what ecovillages around the world are all trying to do — is to provide models, transition pathways, to get us to that next step, to get us to where we are going. And some of that is food supply, some of that is energy, some is building materials and how we get our buildings, some of that is microeconomics, like complimentary currencies. Some of that is new methods
of social networking and alternative education and midwifery and alternative health care and doing things in ways that we have known for hundreds of thousands of years and we need to get back to.”
D. “…overcoming the challenges of our times will require problem solving on a scale most of us have never known before….”
From “A Four Page Summary of The IPCR Initiative” by Stefan Pasti (the compiler of this document) [accessible at the website for The IPCR Initiative (at www.ipcri.net ), and at www.ipcri.net/A_Four_Page_Summary_of_The_IPCR_Initiative.pdf )]
“We now live in very complex world. There are many difficult challenges ahead. These challenges include, but are not limited to:
a) global warming and reducing carbon emissions
b) peak oil and reducing dependence on petroleum based products
c) global inequities and the tragic cycles of malnutrition, disease, and death
d) an increasing world population requiring more resources when many resources are becoming more scarce (with a special emphasis on the increasing number of people who are consuming resources and ecological services indiscriminately)
e) cultures of violence, greed, corruption, and overindulgence—which have become so common that many of us accept such as inevitable; which are a significant part of the current crises of confidence in financial markets; and which are in many ways slowing the restructuring of investment priorities needed to respond to an increasing number of other critical challenges
f) a marginalization of the wisdom associated with religious, spiritual, and moral traditions
“More and more people are coming to the realization that overcoming the challenges of our times will require problem solving on a scale most of us have never known before—and that there is an urgent need to restructure our economic systems and our education systems to respond to these challenges.
“How can we get more “on track” with the problem solving we so urgently need to do?....”
[Special Note: The feature article in The IPCR Journal/Newsletter (Winter 2010-2011 issue) is “The IPCR Initiative: Creating a Multiplier Effect of a Positive Nature”. From this article, and other supporting pieces in the 58 page issue, an IPCR peacebuilding approach emerges which may be summarized as follows:
A central focus of The IPCR Initiative is its advocacy for a combination Community Visioning Initiatives, "Community Teaching and Learning Centers" with ongoing workshops, and "sister community" relationships as a way of generating an exponential increase in our collective capacity to overcome the challenges of our times.
[Note: For more details about The IPCR Initiative peacebuilding approach, see Section VIII (“Solutions”), subsection A, and Appendices C—H.]