Rova Saxophone Quartet returns to Kanbar Hall for another no-sounds-barred evening of improvisatory collaboration. Acclaimed Berlin-based multimedia artist/wunderkind Lillevan joins international music giants from the field of improvised music to perform Fissures, Futures, a set of pieces dedicated to the visionary genius that was Buckminster Fuller. Live music and digital animation will lock themselves into a continuous feedback loop – with the music influencing the real-time films’ creation and the film images inspiring the music. Not to be missed. Both shows will be recorded live for future DVD release.

When:
8PM, May 22-23, 2009

Where:
Kanbar Hall, Jewish Community Center of San Francisco
3200 California St.
San Francisco, CA 94118

Who:
Rova Saxophone Quartet (Larry Ochs, Jon Raskin, Bruce Ackley, Steve Adams)
Lillevan
Charlotte Hug
Lisle Ellis
Joan Jeanrenaud
Thomas Lehn
Carla Kihlstedt
Kjell Nordeson

Ticket Info:
415.292.1233 or www.jccsf.org
$24 regular; $21 JCCSF members; $16 students

Online:
http://rova.org/rovate2009/

Image Credits:
Lillevan Pobjoy

GEO-3 is published 10 years after the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 and in time for its successor, the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. It sets an action-oriented environmental agenda for the future.

Continuing the global and regional focus of the series, it complements the detailed assessment of the state of the global environment set out in GEO-2000. GEO-3 examines environmental trends over the past 30 years to provide an integrated explanation of the developments that have occurred. It not only examines the state of the environment over that period, but also the full range of social, economic, political and cultural drivers that have brought about change. Highlighting human vulnerability to environmental deterioration, it assesses effects of the spectrum of policy measures adopted.

From this retrospective analysis, GEO-3 then projects future outcomes. It develops a range of scenarios for the next 30 years, from 2002-2032, with detailed exploration of the policies and instruments available at all levels for improving environmental conditions.

Clearly organized and in accessible non-technical language, in full colour with extensive graphics, statistics, boxes and quick highlights, GEO-3 will be an essential tool for teaching and research as well as a vital guide for policy-makers and stimulus to future action.

• Chapter 1: Integrating Environment and Development: 1972-2002 provides an overview of environment and development issues over the past 30 years.
• Chapter 2: State of the Environment and Policy Retrospective: 1972-2002 presents an integrated state of the environment and policy analysis of key environmental issues at global and regional levels.
• Chapter 3: Human Vulnerability to Environmental Change discusses increasing vulnerability of people due to environmental degradation and disasters.
• Chapter 4: Outlook 2002-2032 uses a scenario approach to present four different visions of the future.
• Chapter 5: Options for Action summarizes major cross-cutting issues and presents a range of policy actions aimed at strengthening the environmental pillar of sustainable development.

The CD-ROM contains the full text of the report accompanied by a compendium of the data used in preparing it.

GEO-3 will help to set, in a hopeful and positive tone, an action-oriented environmental agenda before and after the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, as it delivers relevant and timely information to the world's leaders and other policy makers.

See also:
Read entire report online
Purchase from earthprint.com

by Mark Hertsgaard.



The bad news is that we have to change our ways — and fast. Here's the good news: it could be a hugely profitable enterprise.

So what do we do? Everyone knows the planet is in bad shape, but most people are resigned to passivity. Changing course, they reason, would require economic sacrifice and provoke stiff resistance from corporations and consumers alike, so why bother? It's easier to ignore the gathering storm clouds and hope the problem magically takes care of itself.

Such fatalism is not only dangerous but mistaken. For much of the 1990s I traveled the world to write a book about our environmental predicament. (see Earth Odyssey book review on page 5). I returned home sobered by the extent of the damage we are causing and by the speed at which it is occurring. But there is nothing inevitable about our self-destructive behavior. Not only could we dramatically reduce our burden on the air, water and other natural systems, we could make money doing so. If we're smart, we could make restoring the environment the biggest economic enterprise of our time, a huge source of jobs, profits and poverty alleviation.

What we need is a Global Green Deal: a program to renovate our civilization environmentally from top to bottom in rich and poor countries alike. Making use of both market incentives and government leadership, a 21st century Global Green Deal would do for environ-mental technologies what government and industry have recently done so well for computer and Internet technologies: launch their commercial takeoff.

Getting it done will take work, and before we begin we need to understand three facts about the reality facing us. First, we have no time to lose. While we've made progress in certain areas — air pollution is down in the U. S.big environmental problems like climate change, water scarcity and species extinction are getting worse, and faster than ever. Thus we have to change our way profoundly — and very soon.

Second, poverty is central to the problem. Four billion of the planet's 6 billion people face deprivation inconceivable to the wealthiest 1 billion. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that the bottom two-thirds of humanity will strive to improve their lot. As they demand adequate heat and food, not to mention cars and CD players, humanity's environmental footprint will grow. Our challenge is to accommodate this mass ascent from poverty without wrecking the natural systems that make life possible.

Third, some good news: we have in hand most of the technologies needed to chart a new course. We know how to use oil, wood, water and other resources much more efficiently that we do now. Increased efficiency — doing more with less — will enable us to use fewer resources and produce less pollution per capita, buying us the time to bring solar power, hydrogen fuel cells and other futuristic technologies on line.

Efficiency may not sound like a rallying cry for environmental revolution, but it packs a financial punch. As Joseph J. Romm reports in his book Cool Companies, Xerox, Compaq and 3M are among many firms that have recognized they can cut their green-house-gas emissions in half — and enjoy 50% and higher returns on investment — through improved efficiency, better lighting and insulation and smarter motors and building design. The rest of us (small businesses, homeowners, city governments, schools) can reap the same benefits.

Super-refrigerators use 87% less electricity than older, standard models while costing the same (assuming mass production) and performing better, as Paul Hawken and Amory and L. Hunter Lovins explain in their book Natural Capitalism (see Winter 2000 Trimtab). In Amsterdam the headquarters of ING Bank, one of Holland's largest banks, uses one-fifth as much energy per square meter as a nearby bank, even though the buildings cost the same to construct. The ING center boasts efficient windows and insulation and a design that enables solar energy to provide much of the building's needs, even in cloudy Northern Europe.

Examples like these lead even such mainstream voices as AT&T and Japan's energy planning agency, NEDO, to predict that environmental restoration could be a source of virtually limitless profit. The idea is to retrofit our farms, factories, shops, houses, offices and everything inside them. The economic activity generated would be enormous. Better yet, it would be labor intensive; investments in energy efficiency yield two to 10 times more jobs than investments in fossil fuel and nuclear power. In a world where 1 billion people lack gainful employment, creating jobs is essential to fighting the poverty that retards environmental progress.

But this transition will not happen by itself — too many entrenched interests stand in the way. Automakers often talk green but make only token efforts to develop green cars because gas-guzzling sport-utility vehicles are hugely profitable. But every year the U. S. government buys 56,000 new vehicles for official use from Detroit. Under the Global Green Deal, Washington would tell Detroit that from now on the cars have to be hybrid-electric or hydrogen-fuel-cell cars. Detroit might scream and holler, but if Washington stood firm, carmakers soon would be climbing the learning curve and offering the competitively priced green cars that consumers say they want.

We know such government pump-priming works; it's why so many of us have computers today. America's computer companies began learning to produce today's affordable systems during the 1960s while benefiting from subsidies and guaranteed markets under contracts with the Pentagon and the space program. And the cyber-boom has fueled the biggest economic expansion in history.

The Global Green Deal must not be solely an American project, however. China and India, with their gigantic populations and ambitious development plans, could by themselves doom everyone else to severe global warming. Already, China is the world's second largest producer of greenhouse gases (after the U.S.). But China would use 50% less coal if it simply installed today's energy-efficient technologies. Under the Global Green Deal, Europe, America and Japan would help China buy these technologies, not only because that would reduce global warming but also because it would create jobs and profits for workers and companies back home.

Governments would not have to spend more money, only shift existing subsidies away from environmentally dead-end technologies like coal and nuclear power. If even half the $500 billion to $900 billion in environmentally destructive subsidies now offered by the world's governments were redirected, the Global Green Deal would be off to a roaring start. Governments need to establish "rules of the road" so that market prices reflect the real social costs of clear-cut forests and other environmental abominations. Again, such a shift could be revenue neutral. Higher taxes on, say, coal burning would be offset by cuts in payroll and profits taxes, thus encouraging jobs and investment while discouraging pollution. A portion of the revenues should be set aside to assure a just transition for workers and companies now engaged in inherently antienvironmental activities like coal mining.

All this sounds easy enough on paper, but in the real world it is not so simple. Beneficiaries of the current system — be they U. S. corporate-welfare recipients, redundant German coal miners or cut-throat Asian logging interests — will resist. Which is why progress is unlikely absent a broader agenda of change, including real democracy: assuring the human rights of environmental activists and neutralizing the power of Big Money through campaign-finance reform.

The Global Green Deal is no silver bullet. It can, however, buy us time to make the more deep-seated changes — in our often excessive appetites, in our curious belief that humans are the center of the universe, in our sheer numbers — that will be necessary to repair our relationship with our environment.

None of this will happen without an aroused citizenry. But a Global Green Deal is in the common interest, and it is a slogan easily grasped by the media and the public. Moreover, it should appeal across political, class and national boundaries, for it would stimulate both jobs and business throughout the world in the name of a universal value: leaving our children a livable planet. The history of environmentalism is largely the story of ordinary people pushing for change while governments, corporations and other established interests reluctantly follow behind. It's time to repeat that history on behalf of a Global Green Deal.

This article was first printed in Time Magazine's Earth Day 2000 issue. It is reprinted here with permission from Mark Hertsgaard, author of Earth Odyssey and three other books. Earth Images courtesey of Wernher Krutein.

back to:
Humanity's Option for Success

Purpose
To develop an understanding of our planet as a system by designing a very-long-duration space mission in which the life-support system is patterned after that of earth.

Context

This lesson was developed by Dr. Penny Firth, a scientist, and Mr. Bradley Smith, Director of the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program of the Department of Defense, as part of a set of interdisciplinary Science NetLinks lessons aimed at improved understanding of environmental phenomena and events. Some of the lessons integrate topics that cross biological, ecological, and physical concepts. Others involve elements of economics, history, anthropology, and art. Each lesson is framed by plain-language background information for the teacher and includes a selection of instructional tips and activities in the boxes.

One of the really nice things about living on earth is all of the stuff we don't have to worry about. We don't have to worry about running out of oxygen. There is always plenty of water somewhere on the planet. And where the soils and climate are right, we can find or grow ample food for ourselves. In short, the earth functions as a massive life-support system for over six billion humans as well as the trillions of other life forms that share the planet with us. Click on the Earth Observatory site for a spectacular image of earth. The "blue marble" picture is the most detailed true-color image of the planet to date.

How does our planetary life-support system work? There is no real mystery to the broad outlines of the story (although scientists continue to refine our understanding of various bits): the requirements for human life are provided by organisms and their interactions with the non-living environment. Energy from the sun powers the food webs and the water cycle and all parts of the system are interconnected. Outputs from one part of the system are inputs for another part. This linked output-input setup is often called feedback, and feedback is what keeps the system from careening out of bounds like a soccer ball. For earth, out of bounds might mean runaway global climate change (such as ice ages), or catastrophic loss of important species leading to the collapse of vital ecosystems, or wildly unusual extreme weather patterns and the consequent loss of life and property.

This lesson is entitled Spaceship Earth to reinforce the idea that our planet is — in reality — like a spaceship hurtling through space on a long-duration mission. There is no resupply from outside sources. Recycling is as much a part of the natural order of things as is the sunrise everyday. Pollution occurs when there are outputs that cannot be used as inputs for something else. Pollution is harmful and can be downright dangerous. The connections between parts of the natural system are imperative to its normal operation. By actively thinking through what it takes to keep people alive on a spaceship, the students will come to understand more fully what it takes to keep people alive on this planet.

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