Nov 22, 09
Pervasive Plastics: Why the U.S. Needs New and Tighter Controls
by John Wargo Long a ubiquitous part of modern life, plastics are now in everything from diapers to water bottles to cell phones. But given the proven health threats of some plastics — as well as the enormous environmental costs — the time has come for the U.S. to pass a comprehensive plastics control law. Since 1950, plastics have quickly and quietly entered the lives and bodies of most people and ecosystems on the planet. In the United States alone, more than 100 billion pounds of...
Fairtrade is the Best Hope for India's Tea Producers
by Nick Mathiason The Chamraj estate in Tamil Nadu is thriving thanks to the Fairtrade Foundation - but the same cannot be said for the south Indian tea industry The price of basic farm commodities has been hammered over the past 40 years, placing unbearable pressure on farmers. At the bottom of the food chain are smallholders. With processors, brokers, auctioneers, speculators and retailers all taking a cut, there is little left to pay the producer. The situation adds to the rural...
Neri Oxman: Design is Truly Alive
Ethan Zuckerman is blogging from Camden, Maine, at the wonderful Pop!Tech conference. Celebrated designer Neri Oxman wonders what is the origin of form? How do we invent form? Is it a preconcieved image of narrative? Intelligent design? Getting rid of the stone in the way, as Michelangelo speculated? If form is to follow function, how is that function tested and evaluated? It has been my assumption that design by shift of perspective may be, perhaps, considered a second nature. ...
Mobility as a Basic Human Right
by Sarah Goodyear Advocates of sustainable transportation are sometimes charged with elitism and criticized for being out of touch with the mainstream of America. A new exhibit of photographs showing in Los Angeles, "Without a Car in the World: 100 Car-Less Angelenos Tell Stories of Living in LA," graphically makes the point that the people who have the most to gain from effective public transportation and complete streets are hardly the elite. Stephen Box, author of the...
Just Launched: Journal of Participatory Medicine
The Journal for Participatory Medicine has just launched with a session at the Connected Health Symposium in Boston. According to the press release,"the Journal will be written and peer-reviewed by and for all stakeholders: patients, healthcare providers, caregivers, researchers, payers and policymakers. Physicians who have practiced in the participatory model report greater satisfaction when they work with patients who are actively engaged. Similarly, participatory patients say they feel...
Creating 1.7 Million Clean Energy Jobs to Drive Economic Recovery: The National Strategy and the Pennsylvania Opportunity
CAP Action’s Bracken Hendricks testified Friday before a Senate field hearing on job growth, tax incentives, and small business. I’m reprinting the full testimony below since he lays out the policy agenda as well as the benefits — nationally and for Pennsylvania. For details on the jobs analysis, see “New analysis shows how clean energy legislation will create 1.7 million jobs and opportunities for low-income families, including lower energy bills Thank you Senator...
Stiglitz and Sen's Manifesto on Measuring Economic Performance and Social Progress
A recent report commissioned by the French government (mentioned previously on WorldChanging) foreshadows why and how GDP should be supplemented as the de facto measure of progress. The authors are world-class - Joseph Stiglitz was the chair, advised by Amartya Sen. Commission members included Nobelists and creative thinkers Kenneth Arrow and Daniel Kahneman, Nick Stern of Stern Review fame, and Robert D. Putnam. We went through a phase transition a few years back, when the...
On Connecting The Dots - A Response To Lessig On Transparency
Celebrated legal scholar, intellectual property activist and now congressional reformer Lawrence Lessig has written a provocative and somewhat surprising article in this month’s New Republic. Titled “Against Transparency“, the article questions whether a move towards increasing government transparency – as advocated by President Obama as a candidate and by nonprofit groups like the Sunlight Foundation – will lead towards better government or, as he fears,...
Don Tapscott And Learning From Our Kids
I’m in Providence, Rhode Island today speaking at BIF-5 – the Business Innovation Factory’s fifth annual storytelling conference. I’ll be doing my best to blog when not on stage.Don Tapscott tells us that the children of the baby boom are the first to be bathed in bits. Their time online hasn’t taken away from doing their homework or learning the piano – it’s taken time away from television. “There is no more powerful force to change society...
If Obama Can't Defeat the Republican Headbangers, Our Planet is Doomed
by Jonathan Freedland One year on, the world still looks to the US and holds its breath. The fate of a global climate treaty rests in American hands Anyone who cares about the survival of our planet should start praying that Barack Obama gets his way on reforming US healthcare. That probably sounds hyperbolic, if not mildly deranged: even those who are adamant that 45 million uninsured Americans deserve basic medical cover would not claim that the future of the earth depends on it. But...
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