Karen Blincoe on Turning Crisis into Opportunity in our Cities

Janine Benyus: The Promise of Biomimicry

She's Alive . . . Beautiful . . . Finite. . . Hurting . . . Worth Fighting For!

This is a non-commercial attempt from http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/ to highlight the fact that world leaders, irresponsible corporates and mindless 'consumers' are combining to destroy life on earth. It is dedicated to all who died fighting for the planet and those whose lives are on the line today. The cut was put together by Vivek Chauhan, a young film maker, together with naturalists working with the Sanctuary Asia network (http://www.sanctuaryasia.com/).

Content credit: The principal source for the footage was Yann Arthus-Bertrand's incredible film HOME http://www.homethemovie.org/. The music was by Armand Amar. Thank you too Greenpeace and http://timescapes.org

The Biomimicry Institute: 3.8 Billion Years of Inspiration and R & D

Biomimicry 3.8 is the global leader in biomimicry innovation consulting, professional training, and educational program and curricula development. Our mission is to train, equip, and connect engineers, educators, architects, designers, business leaders, and other innovators to sustainably emulate nature’s 3.8 billion years of brilliant designs and strategies. Over the past 14 years, our company has helped more than 250 clients and partners redesign carpets, furniture, manufacturing processes, airplanes, and even entire cities, all in nature’s sustainable image. In concert with our partners we have reached millions through talks and the media and have trained hundreds who now practice biomimicry in their professions.

The Biomimicry 3.8 Institute (our 501(c)3 not-for-profit arm) focuses on academic and public education, offering trainings, curricula, tools and resources for schools, universities, museums, zoos, nature centers, and other public forums. Our evolving offerings of workshops, online courses and research tools include AskNature.org, the award-winning online library of nature’s design strategies and solutions. More at Biomimicry.net.

 A BRIEF HISTORY

 When Janine Benyus coined the term “biomimicry” in her seminal book Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature (1997), she admits she had no idea it would galvanize an entire movement. To respond, she and Dayna Baumeister formed the Biomimicry Guild, a consulting company. As interest in biomimicry escalated, it soon became clear that an institute dedicated to biomimicry education was needed. In 2005, Bryony Schwan and Janine Benyus co-founded the Biomimicry Institute and in 2007 Chris Allen joined the team to help launch AskNature, the world’s first digital library of nature’s solutions. Then, we all evolved. In 2009, Janine, Dayna, Bryony, and Chris began to look for a more efficient and cohesive way to integrate the work of the two organizations. In 2010, they founded Biomimicry 3.8, a hybrid social enterprise comprised of a for-profit B Corporation and a 501(c) 3 not-for-profit corporation under a single brand and integrative management strategy.

A Date with History: 17 yr old Brittany Trilford addresses world leaders at the UN Earth Summit

Jermey Rifkin on the Third Industrial Revolution

Writer and thinker Jeremy Rivkin delivered this address to the Royal Society of the Arts (RSA) in London on the critical need to develop our economies into a post carbon Third Industrial Revolution, or else we’ll spiral into a ‘dangerous endgame’. This was posted on ABC on May 21, 2012. It's available at http://www.abc.net.au/tv/bigideas/stories/2012/05/21/3507370.htm Rivkin is the president of the Foundation of Economic Trends and the author of numerous books on the impact of scientific and technological changes in on the economy, the workforce, society and the environment. Rifkin is compelling in addressing the coming convergence of internet technology and digital communications with energy and environmental issues. He has been an advisor to the European Union since 2002 and in that capacity has been the principle architect of the Third Industrial Revolution long term economic sustainability plan addressing the global economic crisis, energy security and climate change.

Amazon.com's Nick Hanauer's TED Talk

Here's what Ezra Klein of Wonkblog on the Washington Post's web site has to say about Nick Hanauer's TED Talk on taxing the wealthy: "Chris Anderson, head honcho at TED, has responded to Nick Hanauer’s claims that his TED talk was censored. TED, Anderson says, tries “to steer clear of talks that are bound to descend into the same dismal partisan head-butting people” and that Hanauer “framed the issue in a way that was explicitly partisan.” The upshot, though, is that he’s letting viewers decide for themselves. Watch the video above. To my ears, Hanauer framed the issue in a way that was explicitly nonpartisan. The only mention of either party comes at the beginning: 'If taxes on the rich go up, job creation will go down,' Hanauer says. “This idea is an article of faith for Republicans, is seldom challenged by Democrats, and has indeed shaped much of the economic landscape. But sometimes the ideas we’re certain are true are dead wrong.'" (taken from Wonkblog, May 22, 2012) This is an interesting post and a controversial issues, so alive in today's discussion about our economy. Was Hanauer successful in being nonpartisan? What aspects of his argument appealed to you? Which were you persuaded of? Which left you unconvinced?

Creating a Time Trade Circle

The Berkeley Tool Lending Library

Hosting a Clothing Swap

How to Start a Solar Co-op

Solving Problems through Community Wisdom

This video contains some great examples regarding community actions to address food justice and to solve problems with "food deserts." At the heart of this effort is how we define the American dream. As you watch this video, consider how you define what the American dream is for you.

The New Plenitude--A Model for a Sustainable Economy

The High Price of Materialism

Here's an interesting video that makes connections among our culture of consumerism, research studies of depression and anxiety, and sustainability. The video suggests several ways in which intrinsic values can be emphasized and thereby diminish the influence of consumerism. What ways can you think of to consciously give more weight to a more intrinsically gratifying lifestyle for you and your friends and family?

Saving Lives: Reframing Climate Change around Health, Wellbeing, and Livelihood

The presentation "Saving Lives: Reframing Climate Change around Health and Livelihood" makes the case for reaching out to conservative audiences so as to widen the political space for the necessary social-economic transition. It takes a critical look at climate change messaging to date, identifies its shortcomings, and, drawing on the cognitive sciences, outlines a human-centerd communication that acknowledges the threats, demonstrates agency and inspires empathy.

Killing Us Sotly: Women, Advertising, & Sustainability

Advertising shapes so much of what we believe and aspire to. What if those images are so contrived and without a basis in reality that they are not really achievable, except through extreme self-deprivation and photo-shopping? Participating in the glamor game is unsustainable on so many levels. What connections do you see to sustainability in this presentation?

Corporations Are Not People by Jeff Clements

 Corporations Are Not People
Wednesday 1 February 2012
by: Thom Hartmann, Truthout | Book Review
Published on Truthout (http://www.truth-out.org)

Most Americans don't realize that the idea that "corporations are people" and "money is speech" are concepts that were never, ever considered or promoted or even passed by any legislature in the history of America. Neither were they ever promoted or signed into law by any president - if anything, the opposite, with presidents from Grover Cleveland in 1887 to Barack Obama in 2010 condemning them.

And Congress and the executive branch are the two of the three branches of government that are elected by the people, and thus the only two to which the founders of this country and the framers of the Constitution gave the right to create laws.

The Supreme Court is so much not supposed to create law, that Article 3, Section 2 of the Constitution even says that it must operate "under such Regulations as the Congress shall make."

Nonetheless, as I pointed out in 2001 in my book "Unequal Protection: How Corporations Became People [4]," the Supreme Court itself has invented, out of whole cloth, the doctrines of corporations as people and money as speech.

Now comes into our political milieu a new and significant contribution to the literature of "corporate personhood" (available directly from Truthout [3]). Jeff Clements, a former assistant attorney general for Massachusetts, has written a brilliant and very accessible guide to the 2010 US Supreme Court Citizens United decision, how it came about and what can be done about it.

Most interestingly, Jeff's book also tracks the rise of corporate power over the past 40 years since Lewis Powell wrote his infamous memo to his friend and neighbor, who was the head of the US Chamber of Commerce - which led to everything from the Federalist Society to the Heritage Foundation.

Clements suggests that the modern revival of the doctrine of corporate personhood, which first appeared back in 1819 in the Dartmouth case, reached its 19th-century zenith with a misunderstood Santa Clara County, California, decision. It came into full flower in 2010 with the Citizens United ruling, which was, in fact, a direct child of that 1973 memo by Powell and subsequent corporate and Republican implementation of his recommendations.

"Corporations Are Not People" is accessible, readable, and fascinating. It's the book you want to hand to your co-worker or brother-in-law when they start spouting corporate drivel that they heard from Limbaugh or Romney. It's a nice, tight summary of the modern application of this doctrine, with a quick overview of its history, particularly its contemporary implications.

And Jeff hasn't just written a book.

With his friend and colleague John Bonifaz, he's co-founded freespeechforpeople.org [5] - one of a half-dozen or so very accessible and well-done efforts to build grassroots support for a constitutional amendment that repudiates the notion that corporations are people and that money is speech.

As the movement grows to take back our rights under the Constitution from the transnational corporations that have hijacked them (and taken our legislators captive), "Corporations Are Not People" (with a foreword by Bill Moyers) will become an increasingly important handbook to the movement. It brilliantly makes the case for us all to recite the mantra, "Corporations are not people, and money is not speech!" and then to do something about it.


Thom Hartmann interviews Jeff Clements, Part I

Thom Hartmann interviews Jeff Clements, Part II


This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License [6].

Source URL: http://www.truth-out.org/corporations-are-not-people/1328107954

Links:
[1] http://www.truth-out.org/print/12093
[2] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail/12093
[3] https://members.truth-out.org/bgift70-gift/choose-type-donation
[4] https://members.truth-out.org/bgift23-gift/choose-type-donation
[5] http://www.freespeechforpeople.org
[6] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/us/
[7] http://www.truth-out.org/printmail
[8] http://www.truth-out.org/content/thom-hartmann
[9] http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6694/p/salsa/web/common/public/signup?signup_page_KEY=2160
[10] https://members.truth-out.org/donate