Why is it so difficult to make a difference and make a living at the same time? For decades self-help gurus have been telling us to “follow our bliss” and ”live our passion”. For many this has simply become a new age version of the well-worn “Buy My Book and I’ll Make You a Millionaire” genre (think of the “The Secret” which has certainly made its authors multi-millionaires)? Or is there something more here than meets the eye?

We need to move beyond the hype, and fast. In their desperate search for “eyeballs”, the advertising, publishing, internet and self-help industries have created a shameless culture of self-promotion. Add to this heady brew the fact that the “ME Generation” has reached its peak in the more developed parts of the world, and we have a recipe for narcissism on an unprecedented scale.

Meantime, we have a planet in deep crisis ecologically, economically and culturally. In deep denial. So what can we do about this? I am a positive person by nature, but like most of you who are reading this, I am not prepared to stand idly by while watching our planet burn as the new age charlatans push ever more “You are worth it” stuff at a public desperate for some release from the stress and pain we see everywhere.

So, to make a living and make a difference at the same time, it is really important that we penetrate the hype, deal with the reality we currently face, act from a balanced understanding of who we are and develop pragmatic options to create the world of our dreams.

i. Moving Beyond the Hype

If ever there was a time for personal and collective effectiveness and integrity, this is it. We have become ever more demanding of our politicians (though in many countries people are so apathetic they can’t even be bothered to turn out and vote). We are the first to complain about shoddy products, services and places- complaining on the internet is a new growth industry. Yet we are desperately short of real solutions being implemented right now in the face of the major challenges we all confront over the next decade.

I know that for most of you reading this right now, you are also fed up with this “junk-throwaway-careless” culture we have created. Most of you are mindful, caring, sensitive people who are making a difference in one or more ways through your life and your work. A few are desperately hoping that a 1% shift in consciousness is going to herald a new dawn for human civilization. Others believe that if only 11% of the planet “get it”, then the rest will miraculously convert to the cause and save the planet. Just don’t bet your life or our planet’s future on that anytime soon.

ii. Facing Hard Truths

So, let’s get real- it’s time for hard truths. What actual difference have you and I made in other’s lives? In the spirit of “charity begins at home”, how renewable and generous is our home and lifestyle? What good long-term decisions have we both made recently? Can we confidently look each other in the eye and say: “I’ve done what it takes to make a real difference in my life and work, and its working- I and others can see the difference. I also inspire others around me to take right action and live right livelihoods. I am scaling up the kind of impact I can make in my world, and helping others live their dream while living mine. Life is beautiful, and I am rich in many ways- inwardly and outwardly. Life is Good!” (Let’s call this the “Things are Really Working out Well!” outcome).

Or would the following more accurately describe how you are currently feeling: “I’ve acted out of good intentions most of the time, yet there is a gap between what I would like to see happen and what actually shows up. Just when things seem to be coming together while I am shifting into a new space, some kind of shit seems to hit the fan. Sometimes I wonder why I bother: people seem to be so self-centred and stressed right now. I desperately hope for a better future, but some days it seems hard to get out of bed. I know there is a crisis, so perhaps I should just keep my head down until it blows over and things get better”. (Let’s call this the “Why Bother?” outcome)

I am sure if we are honest with ourselves, even the best of us will have the odd day where “Why Bother?” dominates. In fact, in my own experience, after a strong phase of “Things are Really Working out Well!”, one can almost guarantee that setbacks will show up and that we will experience one or more “Why Bother?” periods. (Remind me to tell you why this is a common pattern, in my next blog!)

iii. Acting From a Balanced Understanding of Who We Are

Idealists are particularly prone to this syndrome, as they get more excited than most about the need and opportunities for change around them. We may be idealists for many different reasons: because we were born that way, or because we develop a vision of a better world and want to make it happen.

Each of us is a multi-facetted bundle of talents, traits and tendencies. Our strengths may be physical, emotional, mental and/or spiritual at a general level, and more specifically defined at a technical level in the thousands of fields and disciplines characteristic of a modern society. We are also motivated by different value systems at different times in our lives as we mature (our “vertical” development), as well as displaying our character traits through our personalities (our “horizontal” aspect), which tend to remain fairly stable over time. One of the most popular vertical measures of development is the integral/spiral dynamics approach, while the most popular personality test is the Keirsey version of the Myers-Briggs test. The Keirsey framework defines four principal personality types: idealists, guardians, artisans and rationals.

Idealists are the most likely of all types to resonate with the Boomer phrase, “Finding Your Passion”, and strive to find meaning and unique identity in their lives. Idealists are the group most attuned to values and seeking the greater good. Famous Idealists include Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Ghandi, and Oprah Winfrey. As Abstract Cooperators, Idealists speak mostly of what they hope for and imagine might be possible for people, and they want to act in good conscience, always trying to reach their goals without compromising their personal code of ethics.

But Idealists are in a minority, comprising only 15 to 20% of the population. To get anything done on any scale, idealists need to gain the cooperation of guardians, artisans and rationals.

Guardians are the largest personality type group. Comprising 40 to 45% of the population, Guardians speak mostly of their duties and responsibilities, of what they can keep an eye on and take good care of, and they’re careful to obey the laws, follow the rules, and respect the rights of others. Guardians are “Concrete Cooperators.”

Comprising 40 to 45% of the population, Artisans speak mostly about what they see right in front of them, about what they can get their hands on, and they will do whatever works, whatever gives them a quick, effective payoff, even if they have to bend the rules. Artisans are “Concrete Utilitarians.”

The scarcest group of all are the Rationals, comprising 10 to 15% of the population. Rationals speak mostly of what new problems intrigue them and what new solutions they envision, and always pragmatic, they act as efficiently as possible to achieve their objectives, ignoring arbitrary rules and conventions if need be. Rationals are “Abstract Utilitarians.”

Whatever your personality type, pragmatism is the order of the day. We have limited time and resources to align ourselves around transcendent goals and create coherent solutions. They key is to find the balancing point between conserving what works and really matters to us (Guardians), living in the now for a full and rich life (Artisans), developing oneself and inspiring and growing others (Idealists), and finding clever solutions to difficult problems (Rationals).

When you’ve finished reading this piece, why not check out your own personality profile for free here to see if you are an idealist, or have a dash of idealist lurking beneath the surface: http://www.keirsey.com/personalityzone/wz21.asp

iv. Developing Pragmatic Options to Create the World of our Dreams

Each of us is a complex package of nature (our heredity and genes) and nurture (our culture and past life conditions). Our nature and nurture shape our personality and capabilities, which influence how we engage with and even create our current life conditions. Companies, institutions and networks also have cultures and capabilities which shape what is possible. Recent research into the patterns of success tell us that we are most likely to succeed when building on our strengths, rather than trying to remedy our weaknesses. They also suggest that pragmatic intelligence is the key to unlocking all our other intelligences and capabilities.

At the heart of Renaissance2 lies our commitment to support each of our members in their personal and professional development, as part of a thriving set of networks aligned by powerful meshworks which enable complementary strengths to collaborate and co-create new solutions and better outcomes. Accelerated learning and development are possible in such a hothouse of ideas, capabilities and inspiration.

Join Renaissance2 now if you’ve not done so already. Get involved in one or more of the Renaissance2 innovation crucibles and groups, and join us for our June R2 GreatShift Partner event in Perpignan to meet others like you. We look forward to meeting you!

A conversation with Acumen Fund’s CEO: Jacqueline Novogratz discusses the challenges that divide and unite today’s philanthropic community.

As global philanthropy reshapes itself to accommodate a widening array of private-sector involvement and a blend of private and public investment, discussion of both the ethics and effectiveness of these diverse methods has moved front and center. In this video interview, Jacqueline Novogratz, CEO of venture-philanthropy firm Acumen Fund, shares her perspective on the current challenges facing the philanthropic community and the opportunity she sees to move past a traditional public-sector approach to charitable giving.

This interview was conducted by Bill Javetski, an editor with The McKinsey Quarterly, in February 2009. It was taped in Acumen Fund’s New York office. Click below to watch the video

http://r2meshwork.ning.com/profiles/blogs/social-innovation-capitalism

“Not to dream boldly may turn out to be simply irresponsible.”

George Leonard

Is there a future for human civilization as we know it? We are at a tipping point between a new dark ages and a second Renaissance- the choices we make in the next few decades will dramatically shape the future of both our planet and our civilization. The Asian Development Bank recently calculated that the current global economic crisis has destroyed $50 trillion in wealth- that is about $75 000 for each person on the planet. ($50 trillion= 50 000 000 000 000- yes, a 5 followed by 13 zeros). That is two-thirds of the global economic output of our planet each year.

The choices made by the leaders of the world’s 20 richest nations and their representatives and aides during April 2009 for the G20 Summit will be critical. Are they up to the task?

In a world where ocean levels are now rising twice as fast as previously forecast (by 50 to 100cm by 2100), we find our politicians and bankers trying to refloat a global financial system which is sinking faster than anyone could have imagined. This unholy alliance between governments, politicians, bankers and regulators has failed us many times before, and could fail us again. Why? Simply put, these interest groups have maintained a system whose main purpose is to reinforce each other’s interests and power, with only a passing recognition of the interests of the citizens whose money and lives they are playing their own game with. In good times they get away with it, as economic growth masks the increasing inequities in the system. At times of recession and depression, the game becomes transparently self-serving for “our leaders”. This is the time to act, as President Obama and Prime Minister Gordon Brown both know- we are all Keynesians and New Dealers now.

If you are a citizen in a G20 country- (the Group of 20 represents the world’s 20 richest nations), you have probably played the game of Monopoly at some stage. Not only did you play this game on a board with “Go Directly to Jail- Do Not Pass Go” marked on one of the squares- the banks, your government and the regulators were also playing this game on your behalf in the real economy, the only difference being that fewer financial criminals go to jail in real life in this system than do so in a board game of Monopoly. The rich and powerful may have no more monopoly on greed or cunning or lack of ethics than the rest of us, but they have a lot more to gain.

As a young and idealistic twenty something, after campaigning for Nelson Mandela’s release for several years while a law student at Wits University in Johannesburg,  I went to London and wrote the world’s first manual on currency and interest rate swaps at Citicorp, then the world’s largest bank. The idea was innocent enough- lowering the cost of finance for the World Bank and other large corporate making investments in real things like 747’s. I left investment banking of my own accord, having reached the conclusion this was a game played by rich folks for rich folks, and I was more interested in the electronic revolution going on so I moved into electronic banking and pioneered new systems in that arena. Of course, swaps then went on to become simply another currency in the casino of international finance, and credit default swaps led to the downfall of our current international financial system.

I’ve just handed my most recent book over to the publishers. It is entitled: “The Great Shift- Catalyzing the Second Renaissance”. At one level, the central thesis of the book is simple: we have to fundamentally change the way our global political and economic systems operate before it is too late for our biosphere and our civilization. To do so means we must first change our story as a species- from one that dominates the natural and human worlds through technological, economic and military means, to a species capable of co-creating a fair and beautiful global civilization through a process of accelerated conscious evolution.

I am not a utopian or a conspiracy-theorist- I am an economist, lawyer, ex-investment banker, part-time integral philosopher, complexity theorist, entrepreneur, writer, parent and activist. In my observation and experience, human beings develop through several psychological levels as they “grow-up”, and the world is currently still a teenager on steroids- though much of the international arena reminds me more of a pre-nursery school playground than a relatively sophisticated teenager. In making strategy and policy, we have to accept people as they are and work with that, rather than hoping or demanding that they become suddenly enlightened and share our more world-centric perspective. Yet we must also demand both accountability and responsibility from those we elect and those who invest and look after our wealth.

It is salutary that both international criminal syndicates and globe-trotting executives and financiers are able to deploy the same global strategies, using the same tax-havens and advisors to pay the lowest possible tax-rates on their earnings worldwide. Don’t get me wrong- I am a libertarian and a believer in free markets, but having different rules for different people in a system based on their ability to hire better lawyers and tax advisors appears to be contrary to the public interest, and to your and my interests too.

We also need a fair and consistent global legal regime- international law has long been the Cinderella in the legal profession, as until recently it has had no teeth relative to the national government bulldogs who get their way through might rather than right. Not only are conmen and billionaires getting away with fiscal murder- so too are Presidents and terrorists in the Sudan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Colombia, Congo, Zimbabwe and other sad places and failed states.

This is all made possible by our failure to create a binding international legal system that enables us to regulate our planet in the interests of the common man and woman, the citizens of the world. What is needed is a way of infusing wisdom, intelligence and fairness into the way we do this. Despite the derogatory reception by much of the press regarding the preparations for the G20 summit meeting in London during April 2009. Barack Obama and Gordon Brown are no doubt well aware that the 488 billionaires and 10 million millionaires on our globe own most of the planet’s wealth and also pay the lowest proportion of their income in taxes compared with the rest of us. These folks are also the biggest donors to political parties and want their interests protected.

Historically, we have had a system of government by the wealthy, for the wealthy, as there are historically relatively few Browns, Mandelas, Gandhis and Obamas who have made their way to the top from humble origins, including Honest Abe Lincoln himself. Though many wealthy people do give money to charities and foundations, this ensures they control exactly how that money is spent, for good or bad. It is laudable that Bill Gates and Bill Clinton are working together to eliminate AIDS, malaria and other deadly diseases, particularly in Africa, but in the long run people would probably prefer to make their own wealth and look after themselves. That is the lesson of history, which teaches us that the middle classes are a major engine for social change, leading to the spread of democracy and small and medium sized businesses which power the growth of all major economies.

A decade ago I analysed the sources of economic growth globally for a global accounting firm, to find that multinational corporations are shrinking as a percentage of the global economy. By definition, most of them are in mature business models serving mature markets in mature countries. The more adventurous are going for the “bottom of the pyramid”, the four billion people who are not served at all by our global economic system. The new Brazilian, Russian, Indian and Chinese multinationals such as Lenovo and Tata are certainly gaining a much larger share of their revenue and profit at this level. Together with 30 000 micro-finance initiatives inspired by Mohamad Yunus, pioneer of Grameen Bank and micro-credit in Asia, such developing economy tigers are helping the poor become middle-class and the middle class become more prosperous.

The Danger of Old Thinking Leading to More Business as Usual

That is all well and good as they say, but I believe we are missing a golden opportunity to transform the global economic system if the G20 does not at least begin to tackle the following issues:

1.    Get the Basics Right- A Reflationary Global Green New Deal: yes, we need to create a global regulatory regime built on a standardised version of the best national regulatory systems to ensure our stock markets and financial markets do not melt down again as they have twice in the past decade. That includes bringing tax havens into the system so that the wealthy and global corporations can no longer escape their fair share of the tax burden. And yes, we lamentably need to “reflate” the global economy with coordinated stimulus packages which are part of a global green new deal, in the most effective way possible using direct green incentives, tough environmental regulation and indirect cap and trade carbon permits and taxes. Give the IMF a trillion dollars of lending capacity and offer a fair share to developing nations so that they can take their rightful place in the new global economic order.

2.    Creating Level Playing Fields: Avoid the Failed Rhetoric of the Market Solving our Problems- markets are very useful things, when they are efficient and offer a level playing field for all players. Open global trade and the World Trade Organization are “good things”, in principle. But if most markets are only open to multinational corporations, wealthy individuals and large banks, then this rhetoric will continue to fail the rest of humanity. The naked inefficiency of markets in the last two global bubbles: the dotcom crash then the property crash, and the naked greed of the moneymen, oil barons, politiciansand many others in profiteering from the loss and suffering of others, has to become a thing of the past. They may tell you that they have the best of intentions, but their actions often speak far louder than their words. The ultimate test of any G20 deal will be the extent to which it can help the poor around the world gain access to the formal economy and earn the right to become members of the middle class. Let’s shift our energy and resources from the elitist, monopoly market models of the 20^th century to the bottom-up, distributed, open source markets of the 21^st century.

3.    Global Governance that Works for Everyone- although this is not directly on the G20 agenda, it will be at the back of the minds of many who are attending and even more who will be observing. Globalization has done a great deal of good and a great deal of harm, with the balance between the two hotly debated. A system of global governance that would require a minimum level of accountability from individuals and elected representatives, as well as corporate entities, according to current United Nations conventions, standards and goals, would be a good place to start. We have the beginnings of a global governance system in place, but we need our leaders to demonstrate the will and develop the means to make this work effectively. Stop bashing the UN and its agencies and start using it as one of the many vehicles to create a thriving planet for us all.

4.    Incentivising Wealth Creation at the Bottom of the Pyramid- let’s get poor, middle class and even rich people back to work. Gone are the days when you could rely on your pension scheme and savings to live out a retirement of ease. Nor would you want to, if you have anything resembling a social conscience or a desire to live your life freely and not within a protected fortress. There is much to do in the area of social innovation, and there are many “innovation crucibles” which can create hotspots of economic growth and regeneration. The G20 governments need to agree a framework to incentivise people to get back to work and create wealth, and remove as much of the dead hand of the state in this process as possible. Social entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs need to be liberated and empowered right now, to deal with our pressing global challenges of renewable energy, climate change, poverty and hunger, a shortage of clean water, insalubrious neighbourhoods, ugly dirty stressful cities, “dumb” culture and depressing news.

5.    Just Do It Integrally- much of our first Renaissance genius has been focused on crafting scientific and technological solutions to our social, political and economic systems, to creating modern infrastructures and cities, and to creating healthy bodies and excellent individual performance in such complex systems. In doing so we have ignored both our personal and social interiors- our inner motivations and intuitions, and our collective cultural genius. We need to create places, spaces and time for personal and collective reflection and lower the entropy of our consciousness to a more stable, loving and peaceful state. That is not a recipe for endless meditation- au contraire, we must be able to draw on such states of consciousness while in action, ensuring we act from inner inspiration and not outer despair. We need to shift out of factory models of industrial education to learner-centred learning, where each of us can prepare for a future we previously could only imagine.

In just doing it integrally, we also need to respect both the rainbow of cultures we are part of, as well as the various levels of development and hence motivations and needs of the people we are working with to make a difference around the globe. Our global leaders and their advisors have a tendency to push “one size fits all” models which play to their national interests, wherein lies great harm and danger when those models fail in action amidst the radical diversity of reality. True integral approaches value what we at Renaissance2 call “Transactivism”: the ability to both trascend and include multiple models and approaches in an over-arching framework, while thinking at a world-centric level. In other words, what is in the interests of the global system, not just our voters, our donors or our shareholders?

We have reached the limits of our current models of growth- our challenge is to shape a new form of renewable human civilization capable of inspiring all of us. I am very encouraged by the thinking of people such as President Lula da Silva of Brazil and South Africa’s President Kgalema Motlanthe, whose comments on how we should reform global capitalism make a lot of sense to those who would like to see greater equity in the global system and an elimination of poverty, hunger and incessant civil and drug wars.

To sum it all up, here is a simple equation : the survival and future thrival of you, me, and all of us, will be decided by two competing forces in the next decade or so:

·         The Bad News: The Speed of Climate Change together with the Rate of Ecological, Economic & Social Decline

·         The Good News: The Speed at which we design and build a Renewable Economy together with our shift towards World-Centric Consciousness

Right now the balance between the bad news and the good news is tipping toward the dark side, and only a major acceleration in our shift toward a renewable economy plus a shift toward world-centric consciousness can ensure we make it.

Given the failure of big governments, corporations and banks, big media and large non-governmental organizations to prevent economic, ecological and social meltdown, I believe that a new approach is required to ensure that we create the conditions for the continued existence of human civilization on planet earth.

This is an exceptionally complex problem, which cannot be solved with simplistic slogans, movements or obvious solutions. Yet, even if you agree only partially with my analysis of this situation, it is hard to argue with the important shifts which need to occur rapidly in our global political, economic, social and technological systems if human civilization as we know it is to survive the 21^st century:

·         From growth and size to development and scalability- our current reliance on big governments, corporations and banks, big media and large non-governmental organizations to get us out of this mess needs to shift to self-reliance and responsibility leading to activism in our families, communities, organizations and networks to create the systems we need for a sustainable future;

·         From national and transnational to world-centric systems of governance- we need to shift our current “top-down” approach to organizing our world to include a much stronger and healthier “bottom-up” approach, creating genuine participatory democracy, while also ensuring that we enhance global standards ensuring ecological, economic and social wellbeing;

·         From a global economy powered by carbon-based fuels to a glocal economy powered by renewable sources of energy, food, housing and transport-  There is no energy shortage on earth- simply a shortage of the will and imagination required to design and deliver a renewable economy offering a better quality of life for all who wish to benefit from the cascade of innovations being implemented right now around the world;

·         From conventional, power-driven consciousness and leadership to post-conventional, distributed creatorship- in addition to harnessing the energy of the sun, we need to harness the creative talents of the world’s population by demonstrating how they can develop and apply innovation to improve their quality of life without costing the earth.

In order to catalyze these shifts, we also must accelerate the shift in human consciousness from unconscious evolution to conscious evolution. This means giving people the power, the tools and the resources to become fully conscious of their impact on the lives of other living creatures while at the same time enabling them to experience the joy of a long and satisfying life lived with purpose. I believe that together, we can do it.

For more information about Dr Robin Wood and Renaissance2, visit us at: www.renaissance2.eu and attend one of our Great Shift events in June and October 2009

Welcome to Renaissance2

Positive News for Global Citizens from the Renaissance2 News Network: December 2008

The collective action of hundreds of thousands of people is finally enhancing our global capacity to respond to climate change and our environmental, social and economic crises. For example, here are some of the positive developments in the past month around the world, and some of the actions you can take to make a difference:

1.    Global

 a.    The Obama Effect- since Barack Obama’s election as the 44^th US President on 4 November the level of hope for peaceful solutions to some of the world’s greatest challenges has risen dramatically. Neither he nor the USA can do this alone however- we (global citizens everywhere) need to ensure that he does not meet the fate of other American Presidents who have had transformative visions for the world yet were unable to deliver on those visions. The EU in particular needs to work very closely with the new President and also take a lead globally as this will further amplify the new President’s efforts which still face opposition from fundamentalists and traditionalists everywhere.

b.    Taking Longer Term Measures to Deal with our Global Economic Crisis-

On 20th April 2009 the 20 leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies comprising 80% of our planets economic output will be meeting in Washington DC. Their job is to create international institutions which will ensure that we never again experience a global credit crunch or a global financial crisis. We recommend that these leaders take bold steps to not only reform the United Nations, the World Bank and the IMF but that they also agree the principles of a Global Green New Deal which will achieve 3 important goals:

(1) To ensure that we meet the UN Millennium Development Goals of reducing poverty and disease and improving the well being of the poorest 4 billion people on Earth who will suffer the most from climate change.

(2) To create a global framework for investment in renewable technologies and green initiatives and to link this into the successor to the Kyoto Treaty.

(3) To create a robust regulatory framework for the global financial industry which makes it impossible for hot money and tax avoiding magnates to escape their obligations to pay their fair share of the cost of transforming our planet from a type 0 civilisation powered by fossil fuels at great human cost to a type 1 civilisation powered by the sun while creating equal opportunities for all.

c.    Declaration of a Global State of Emergency- The Club of Budapest (founded by Ervin Laszlo, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Dalai Lama and other luminaries), has issued the first draft of its “Declaration of a Global State of Emergency”. This is a powerful document which should be read, commented on and endorsed by all global citizens with a social conscience. 

ACTION: Read the declaration:

http://www.worldshiftnetwork.org/declaration/index.html

A One Planet Strategy

2. European Union

a.     UK

                   i.      New Legislation- The UK committed to an 80% emissions reduction goal enshrined in recent new legislation.

                 ii.      Saving the Rainforests- As HRH The Prince of Wales turns 60, he tells us that halting deforestation offers the quickest possible route to tackling climate change. The bottom-line is, ‘We have to ensure the forests are worth more alive than dead’.

ACTION: Sign up to support Prince Charles’ laudable project Check out his new Rainforest Project. 

ACTION:  Support Earth Charter Day hosted by Green Cross Holland in Eindhoven on July 5th (http://www.ecd2009.nl) to be followed up by the full Global Emergency Consultation being planned for Toronto in September.

b.     Earth Hour-

WWF International and their ambitious project aimed at engaging one billion people. Should be no problem with Google on the team

ACTION: Check out Earth Hour.

c.      European Union

On the 11th of December, EU Leaders will decide Europe’s response to climate change for the next 12 years. Italy, Poland and other EU newcomers are opposing the plan. Without the right deal at the Brussels summit, it could seriously derail progress in time for the critical global conference at Copenhagen in December 2009.

ACTION: Click here to tell the EU its time to lead:

http://weblog.greenpeace.org/makingwaves/archives/2008/09/the_heat_is_on_tell_your_mep_i.html

3. USA

a.     The New Presidential Agenda- In the past year America has finally moved from being part of the problem to being part of the solution. Barack Obama is committed to an 80% emissions reduction goal. Watch Obama speak about America’s new chapter on climate change.

b.     US EPA Limits Coal Emissions: America’s Environmental Protection Agency has just ruled that coal power stations must limit their emissions. Congratulations to the Sierra Club and everyone who fought hard for this victory. America’s clean energy economy is on the way.

c.      Real Vision - Al Gore’s inspiring Repower America campaign caught our attention. In an editorial published in the New York Times, Al Gore outlined the Repower America Plan on how to achieve 100% clean electricity within ten years. The editorial is in full below, so you can cut and paste it into an email or a letter. If America can have such a plan, why can’t your country too.

ACTION - Send Al Gore’s editorial to your leader(s) and ask them, ‘What’s Our Plan?:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/opinion/09gore.html?_r=1&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

A leader could be your country leader, the leader of your community, your employer’s leader or the leader of a school. Why not ask them all? Let’s ask the big question. Let’s push the big vision.

AND FINALLY…..REMEMBER TO ACT!

Of course this is all good news and we believe we may have reached the turning point in our global crisis now that Barack Obama is about to take office as the 44th President of the United States of America. On 20th January 2009 he will outline a bold set of initiatives to ensure that in the next decade we eliminate our dependence on fossil fuels and create a major new global industry around renewable technology and green initiatives. We also believe President Obama will commence a series of global peace making deals which could make our planet a much less dangerous place than it is today. In the meantime however, we need to get the leaders of the European Union acting more boldly and aligning themselves to these ambitious goals.  By taking the actions recommended above you can do your bit to influence our leaders and bring about a better future for us all.

This is R2NN signing off for 2008, have a great festive season and a good start to the New Year. We will be back on air in January 2009 to update you with the latest, most important developments.

 

 

Rose Gardens

It has been a mad, sad week. Yet as I write this I am more profoundly grateful to be alive than ever before. This story starts on a Thursday night, 27 November 2008, while my wife Elena, my oldest friend and I were sitting around our dinner table eating dessert. I had experienced some chest pains on the left-hand side of my body earlier in the evening, and we were discussing how fragile life can be. My oldest friend was telling us how dangerous his crossing of the Mediterranean from Mallorca to Saint Tropez had been in his yacht.

At that moment the phone rang- it was Dee, our receptionist in the Chateau, who had just heard on the news that an Airbus carrying 7 pilots and engineers from Air New Zealand and XL Airways, had crashed into the Mediterranean 3km off the coast of Canet, after taking off from Perpignan airport that afternoon. There were no survivors.  

We live about a five minute drive from Perpignan airport, and often have pilots and their crew staying with us. About six hours earlier I had shaken hands with Noel, Murray, Brian, Michael and a German pilot who had been staying with us for a while in our self-catering apartments. (Captain Brian Horrell, 52, from Auckland; and engineers Murray White, 37, from Auckland, Michael Gyles, 49, and Noel Marsh, 35, both from Christchurch.) I wished them the best of luck for their long journey to the other side of the world.

We had chatted with this crew on several occasions and developed a great deal of affection for them and for Noel’s wife and two small boys. I flew light aircraft and gliders for twenty years and had experienced several close shaves with death in cars, planes, fighting apartheid and in the South African Army. I’ve known many heroic men and women, and admired them all. We chatted about the joys and risks of flying and life in general, and laughed together at the absurdity of it all. I could tell these guys were silent heroes too. Face everything, avoid nothing.

We exchanged gifts- we gave them some our best local Roussillon wine and they in turn gave us a cute little Maori handbag with a small Air New Zealand replica aircraft inside. They were due to fly the Airbus home via Frankfurt, Gander (in Canada), Los Angeles, Samoa then Auckland.

Rose from La Tour Apollinaire Gardens

We were shocked and deeply saddened by this sudden loss. The pains in my chest increased, and my old friend and wife rushed me to hospital, suspecting a heart attack. Both my grandfathers died of heart attacks in their early fifties, and my father followed in their footsteps at 68. I am 52.  After several cardiograms, some drugs and a few blood samples, I was told to stay for the night. I slept in the emergency ward on a gurney with Elena by my side in an armchair. As I lay there I kept on thinking that I was the lucky one, because I was still alive, and the last words spoken between Noel, Murray, Brian, Michael and their bright eyes and big smiles played over and over again in my mind. How could it have all gone so wrong, with such a gifted crew? The doctors and nurses at the hospital also shared our sadness and disbelief.

After a tortured, broken nights sleep, we were moved to a hospital corridor the next morning after having been told that there were anomalies on my cardiogram and that I would have to see the cardiologist. We were surrounded by elderly patients on hospital trolleys, with visiting relatives crowding round them. We kept on asking for news of our Kiwi friends, but no further news was forthcoming. At 5 pm I was wheeled into the operating theatre, for a coronoragram- a procedure where the cardiologist inserts a long tube up the artery in your arm starting from the wrist. This tube then reaches the arteries supplying the heart with its precious oxygenated blood, and enables the heart specialist to effectively see the state of the coronary arteries. When people have a heart attack it is because one or more of these arteries becomes narrowed or blocked and the heart is starved of blood.

No anesthetic is involved, so one watches the sight of one’s own heart beating on the screen and sees the doctor injecting the radioactive fluid into the arteries one by one. I was lucky: my heart and coronary arteries are in great shape, so the pain in my chest is probably due to stress and perhaps a small hernia of some kind. Despite the crowded and slightly run down state of the old Perpignan hospital facilities (the brand new flagship hospital opens in September 2009), we were highly impressed by the empathetic and competent doctors, nurses and administrators we met. It was wonderful to meet so many people who really cared.

I spent the night under observation in the cardiology ward with a friendly elderly gentleman who was recovering from a heart attack and was hooked up to a satellite via an implant in his chest so that if his heart failed it would be automatically restarted. He would never be able to go home, but would have to live in a rest home for his final days. Yet he smiled a lot and offered me some of his biscuits and pepper because the food was a little bland.

I awoke the next morning crying silently for our Kiwi and German friends and their families. Why do such bad things happen to good people? The image of that Airbus turning over the sea then veering downward and plunging suddenly into the ocean played like a tragic action movie in my head. How could this happen? Did the left engine fail? Why could they not pull out of the dive? I wished I would somehow have warned them, if only I could have foreseen this possibility. Would it have made any difference?

And I was simultaneously wildly grateful to be alive, to realize how lucky I was to have a strong heart, a loving wife, gorgeous children, a caring mother and many good friends. For any survivor there is both a combination of guilt at having survived, and also a simple joy at being alive. There are moments in life, even whole days and weeks, where we should be celebrating just how sweet it is to be alive, able to turn our heads toward the sun and breathe the fresh air deep into our lungs.

I silently thought of all the unsung heroes in all the airlines and hospitals and places around the world where people are putting themselves on the line every day for others without ever asking for any thanks or special treatment. These are the unsung heros, the people who make our world go around. We salute you.

I blame the business schools. Though I have PhD from London Business School, and was a Fellow there for a while, I am embarassed, even outraged, at the complete lack of vision or accountability they display for their product: hyper-numerate, hyper-individualistic, hyper-ambitious jocks with spreadsheets who can calculate IRR’s and ROI’s, but seem to know little and care even less about the consequences of their financial engineering. This time, instead of blowing up the real economy, they have strapped the explosives to themselves and pulled the cord in the lobbies of their own banks, taking entire organizations with them. Leveraged suicide bombers, kamikaze kids, call them what you will, they are deadly, as the entire US administration has discovered in the past few weeks.

So, what next? Once the dust has settled and the American, British and a few European taxpayers have bailed out the unaccountable to the tune of over one trillion dollars (2.5% of the global gross domestic product of $40 trillion), can we expect any mea culpas from the Chicago School, the high priests of financial capitalism who invented the idea that greed is good and that markets will solve all our problems? Not likely, given they were able to blame everyone except themselves the last dozen times they came close to destroying an entire country (Argentinians are especially grateful to them), or the global financial system (remember Long Term Capital Management in 1998, the hedge fund founded by, guess who, Nobel prize winners who trained and taught in, uuuhhmm, Chicago?)

The problem, sadly, goes alot deeper than the b-schools- it is deeply embedded in our modernist, conventional cultural assumptions that if you do well at school, go to good university, get a good job, and then, perhaps an MBA, you are set for life. This year many believers in this worn nostrum will experience the reality of financial capitalism- there is zero loyalty, and even less trust in this hyper-trophied system. Some of the banks, such as HSBC, JP Morgan Chase and to a lesser extent, Citigroup, have been able to weather the storm and demonstrated, in the latter’s case, a degree of accountability by firing top executives who failed to deal with the excesses of their colleagues in the sub-prime market.

But, as Barack Obama rightly points out, we should be worrying about “Main Street”, not Wall Street. In a world where the rich have been getting ever richer while the middle class  has stagnated and the poor have stayed poor, it is a bizarre kind of politics which is offering oil companies and the world’s richest people even more tax breaks in the McCain/Palin Dark Ages express. Even Gordon Brown should hang his head in shame, though he finds it more convenient to blame short-sellers and “speculators”, those vague, undefinable bad guys who are guilty of ruining his ever so perfect long-term financial planning.

Let’s face it- they have all been out to lunch, literally and figuratively- the government leaders, the central banks, the executives in the posh dining rooms at the top of those glass towers in the world’s financial capitals, and the regulators. 18 years of unbroken economic growth in the UK and the USA save for the dotcom bubble crash and subsequent commodities and property fuled boom had left them all asleep at the wheel. And who gets to pay for the mess? We, the people in the real economy do: as taxpayers, as property owners, as employees and as folks with alot less money in their retirement funds.

They had much important things to do than ensuring fairness and reliability in our global economy. They were ”saving us from terrorism” (a vastly over-hyped threat which governments and the security industry have benefitted from enormously in terms of increased power and money); they were trying to unstick the stuck WTO talks (a mixed blessing if ever there was one); they were spending more of our money less wisely than ever before in history, with even less accountability than we have seen from top banking executives.

It is no wonder that polls show that levels of trust in politicians, leaders and business are lower than ever- we have all had a chunk of flesh bitten out of us by these charlatans, and we are powerless to do anything except vote them out of office for another bunch of egomaniacs with different policies which may or may not work.

So, what would restore our confidence in the “system”? Let us count the ways:

1. We could start by developing leaders who think systemically about the whole system, and can assemble collations of diverse groups to achieve some of our core needs: better education, healthcare, stable markets, more jobs and a genuinely more compassionate society;
2. Our business schools could stop glorifying charismatic egomaniacs who have “succeeded” as role models, and instead highlight the critical need for collective leadership and responsibility that will define the 21st century;
3. Our education system and businesses could begin to focus on the welfare of the communities they operate in, and involve students and employees in projects which cut across boundaries of wealth and class with social as well as business objectives;
4. We could each take responsibility for our footprint on our community and our planet, and only deal with people and businesses that do the same.
5. We could encourage more social entrepreneurs and corporate intrapreneurs to take the risks needed to get new business models off the ground that will lead to a more sustainable, healthier world;
6. We could invest our money only in ethical and sustainable businesses, and boycott the bad boys who make all the mess and leave it to the rest of us to clean it up;
7. We need to agree transparent global financial regulations that leave no loopholes for financial con-artists dressed up as bankers, and for regimes and politicians salting away fortunes at the expense of their fellow countrymen;
8. We need to prosecute fraudsters in all markets, fast, and make examples of them so that those who do not care about or consider the consequences of their actions will at least think twice before they attept to get rich quick at someone else’s expense;
9. We have to develop the next generation, known as the “Renaissance generation” or “Rengen”, into post-conventional leaders who will co-create the systems of the future for a sustainable business model for a thriving planet;
10. Each of us need to seriously re-consider why we are here, what we are doing, and the consequences of being on automatic pilot when we have in our power to change the world if we could only be bothered to step up and take action, now.