The HotSpring Quarterly, Winter 2013 by The HotSpring Network

Second Edition January 2013 Copyright ÂŠ 2013 The HotSpring Network All collaborators, including publications sharing previously published work in these pages, retain copyright protections pertaining to those works. Read & share online The HotSpring Quarterly is available online, at: http://bit.ly/hotspring-q

Welcome to the second edition of The HotSpring Quarterly. This publication represents the work of a community of thinkers, researchers, reporters, educators, innovators and committed change-makers, focused on cultivating a broader and deeper awareness of the types of crisis that face humanity. Our purpose is to share ideas to bring solutions into being that are better, more effective and more conducive to mutual thriving, than anything within the prevailing paradigm. We take as our thematic focus, for this inaugural edition, the HotSpring Network's aim of enacting change through collaborative brainstorming and direct engagement. Each of the articles included, aims to provide meaningful information about the motivations for, and the ways we might enact thoughtful, humane, fairness-expanding change. We are announcing two concrete projects through which the HotSpring Network seeks to do just

Contact If you are interested in contributing to the HotSpring Quarterly, joining the HotSpring Network or organizing an event with featured authors on or these subjects, please direct all correspondence to the editors, via email, at: hsq@thehotspring.net

that, and in future editions, more reporting on our progress and on new initiatives will be central to this publicationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s editorial framework.

Join the Network Visit www.TheHotSpring.net to join the network and start building a more vibrant human future, today.

determine conditions at the human scale.

Over the course of the next year, we plan to launch a number of new projects that will help to build that brighter, smarter, more resilient future, and we look forward to sharing each of them with you. We are working to build a global community of imaginative collaborators, hopeful about the future and committed to contributing their voice, their energy, their creativity and their leadership, to building better outcomes into the fabric of choices and influences that define our experience and

As always, we hope to bring you the information you need to be part of that process. Joseph Robertson Creator / Director, The HotSpring Network

The Hot Spring Network is committed to the idea that optimism is not a project of hoping against all probability, but rather one of accurately judging that better is possible, then striving for the optimal outcome, in any given circumstance. To spread awareness, we highlight on TheHotSpring.net specific projects, individuals, organizations and ventures that help to illustrate this principle and to carry out this project. The following articles are representative of the spirit that holds that BETTER is possible. For more information, please visit: http://bit.ly/betterispossible

What is Needed Now Are Social Innovations that Deeply Empower

(CCET). After founding RESULTS, the citizen

by Sam Daley-Harris

this question, “Of all that you have done over the last four decades, what lights you up the most but is least implemented in the world?”

lobby on ending global poverty 32 years ago, and then founding the Microcredit Summit Campaign 17 years ago, I began looking at what my next focus would be. I asked myself

The answer was clear. It was the early work with RESULTS to empower citizens in having breakthroughs with their elected officials and the media that inspired me the most and is still so desperately missing in the world.

It was about 15 years ago that Robert L. Schwartz stepped to the podium to introduce Muhammad Yunus before a speech at the State of the World Forum. I had heard Prof. Yunus introduced many times before, but

What kind of breakthroughs am I talking about? It was volunteers in RESULTS who persuaded editorial writers from 28 U.S. cities to join a

never like this. Schwartz, who had a distinguished career as a journalist and publishing executive including a stint as an editor at Time magazine, had also founded the Tarry-

conference call with Muhammad Yunus in 1987, 19 years before he received the Nobel Peace Prize. One could say that conference call technology was a physical innovation, but

town Conference Center in New York. In his introduction Schwartz outlined seven physical innovations and inventions that allowed for the development of the modern city. He

the training and coaching that enabled volunteers to get dozens of editorial writers on the phone with Prof. Yunus was a social innovation and breakthrough of a wholly different

cited steel frame construction and the elevator which enabled the building of skyscrapers and spoke about other innovations like the subway.

order. The technological innovations are important but they can languish until there is an effective mobilization. For example, Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccine was devel-

Then he said that what the world needs now, more than ever, are not so much the technological innovations, but social innovations like Muhammad Yunus has created with the

oped in 1796 but smallpox was not eradicated until 181 years later when the World Health Organization mobilized an effective global eradication program.

Grameen Bank.

My aim with the Center for Citizen Empowerment and Transformation is to help nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) find and train that small percentage of their members

The Center for Citizen Empowerment and Transformation (CCET) This same contrast, the distinction between technological and social innovation, is at the heart of my latest initiative, the Center for Citizen Empowerment and Transformation

who want to go far beyond mouse-click advocacy in order to create champions in Con-

gress and the media for their cause.

But

Lobby (CCL) over the last five years. In both

what I mostly encounter are organizations enamored by the latest technological innovations: Facebook, Twitter, e-mails, on-line petitions, and text messages, but that are mis-

cases the work was with start-ups. Now I am committed to bringing these innovations to established organizations. How did the work with CCL begin?

trustful of or uneasy about a focus on personal empowerment and transformation, uncomfortable with the social innovations. Advances like Twitter and on-line petitions are

In 2007 businessman and RESULTS volunteer Marshall Saunders came to me for assistance. Years earlier Saunders had been inspired by Grameen Bank and had started his

widely misnamed “social media” but in fact they can help people avoid the deepest interpersonal social interactions on which true change so often depends. I may be alone

own microcredit program in Mexico, Grameen del la Frontera. Years later he saw the Al Gore documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” three times over a 10-day period. When he

when I say this, but I agree with Schwartz, it is the truly social innovations that are most needed today. Let me explain what I mean.

learned that much of the work of microcredit programs in Bangladesh could be wiped out if millions of people were under water as a result of climate change, he went to Nashville,

An inventor can develop a breakthrough in solar technology, but if our governments continue to deny or downplay the role greenhouse gasses play in climate change, we are doomed. A researcher can discover a vaccine

Tennessee, to be trained by Gore to lead the slide show. Saunders returned to his home in San Diego, California, and led the presentation 43 times.

that will prevent an intractable disease, but if our governments can’t find the political will to make its dissemination a priority and if nations and communities can’t build the social

Early on he realized that the slide show was almost exclusively focused on the problem of climate change and included very little on what people could do about it. He also knew

structure and outreach necessary to ensure its use, then the innovation will lie dormant. If the ten nations of the world that spend the most on defense can allocate over $1 trillion a

that participants could not change enough light bulbs or buy enough Priuses to make up for what the government was or wasn’t doing. Just as RESULTS worked to create the politi-

year combined and there is little or no outcry for a change in priorities then how will we ever be good stewards of this planet?

cal will to end poverty, he knew that there had to be a major effort to create the political will to ensure a stable climate.

As with any innovation, especially social in-

Saunders approached a number of large envi-

novations, there are the early adopters and there are those who sit on the sidelines waiting to see if it works. Up until now, my only experience with citizen empowerment and

ronmental organizations and asked them to start a small program that would train a portion of their members to go far beyond mouse-click advocacy and become deep advo-

transformation strategies that CCET is working to promulgate has been with RESULTS some 30 years ago and with Citizens Climate

cates on this issue. They all said no.

That was when Saunders asked me to coach

grown to more than 60 chapters in the U.S.

him on starting Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL). When he called there were no volunteers, no groups—not even a serious mailing list. What he did have was his experience with

and Canada. In 2011 CCL volunteers had 255 meetings with members of Congress or their staff. During the first eight months of 2012 there had already been 452 such meet-

RESULTS, his commitment to do something significant about climate policy, and a radical honesty about what he saw was needed in the world.

ings. In 2011 CCL volunteers had 181 letters to the editor published. During the first eight months of 2012 there had already been 292 letters published.

Futurist and inventor R. Buckminster Fuller once said: “The things to do are the things that need doing, that you see need to be done and that no one else seems to see needs to be

And what is the impact of these letters? Just ask the legislators whose constituencies read them and begin to re-evaluate their representatives on the basis of what they have read.

done.” Saunders saw something that needed to be done and either very few others saw it or, if they did, few had any hope in finding an effective way to address it.

What kind of social innovation is required to awaken and empower volunteers to address the climate crisis in the political arena like this?

What is critical to this equation is not just the first purpose of RESULTS and CCL, creating the political will to end poverty or creating the political will to ensure a stable climate. Per-

One of the ingredients is a deep structure of support, an ongoing system of inspiring conference calls, coaching calls, and printed materials. During 2012 I have met with dozens

haps even more important is the second purpose which is to empower individuals to have breakthroughs in expressing their personal and political power. I believe that this second

of non-governmental organization (NGO) leaders from groups both large and small. I have met with the leaders of organizations that have millions of stakeholders and some

purpose is the essence of Schwartz’s call for social innovations, innovations that empower individuals in having breakthroughs in expressing their personal and, in the case of

that have thousands. At a meeting with the CEO of one of the smaller organizations, a group with an annual budget that might not be much greater than US$1.5 million and a

RESULTS and the CCL, their political power. Isn’t that what Grameen Bank did? It wasn’t just focused on giving loans and taking savings, it was focused on doing so in a way that

staff of no more than seven, the CEO explained that the organization did not have the budget or staff to take on a new program to empower their rather large grassroots base,

unleashed the personal power of its members, unleashed the human spirit. Here are some examples of Citizens Climate Lobby’s success during its young life:

large for the group’s staff size. I found myself agreeing with the CEO during the meeting only to realize on the train ride home that the group’s budget was 100 times greater than

CCL’s first chapters were started in September 2007. By September 2012, CCL had

that of RESULTS in its early years and that RESULTS had no full-time paid staff during

its first four and a half years.

What RE-

monthly action sheets, and 4) packets for

SULTS did have was an ethos and commitment to breakthroughs and to empowering extraordinary citizen action.

editorial writers. Without that, all of the commitments listed below become interesting ideas that are seldom implemented.

It is true that one cannot expect a large NGO

It must be emphasized that a structure of

to launch a major grassroots empowerment and transformation initiative on a shoestring budget. Just because RESULTS was able to do it 30 years ago one can understand a large

support can fall into the “going through the motions” category or, instead, consistently strive to be groundbreaking. For example, one component of the monthly conference call

organization’s trepidation about going down this path. Even so, I still wanted to better understand what commitments were required for success and began making a list. There

is the guest speaker. Even if the guest speaker is dazzling each month, if they are given 25 minutes but leave no time for questions, the volunteers will be proverbial

are 13 commitments listed below. While the first six commitments deal more with the organizational infrastructure needed for success, the final seven offer a way for volunteers

“bumps on a log” and not as profoundly engaged as they would with a 10 minute talk followed by 15 minutes of questions and answers. Another section of the monthly con-

to embrace a series of personal breakthroughs.

ference call is the shares from the grassroots. But if all that the volunteer says is, “We had a great meeting with our member of Congress and can’t wait to do it again,” and they leave

A powerful structure of support This is the first commitment—the foundation. A power-

out the fact that it took 11 phone calls to get the appointment and their knees were knocking before the meeting took place, it won’t be as useful for the others listening in. Another

ful structure of support is where this model differs from that of most other organizations. If greatness is expected from volunteers, then a great structure of coaching and empower-

section of the monthly conference call is practicing through a role play or some other form of training. If a volunteer tries the role play and does a terrible job, but the staff can say

ment will be required from the organization and its staff, something much more than eblasts and the occasional webinar. Among the failures of grassroots empowerment is the

no more than, “Thank you for volunteering,” then we have missed an opportunity for real growth and are left with a moribund structure of support.

myth that all volunteers need is a training session on meeting a member of Congress, a packet of materials, and a sense that their cause is just. But this analysis ignores the heavy layer of cynicism and despair found in each of us and throughout society. Each of the items mentioned in this list comes to life in a powerful structure of support which in-

But with a profound structure of support people are empowered to live their lives aligned with these words from George Bernard Shaw’s Man and Superman:

cludes inspiring 1) monthly conference calls for group members, 2) weekly coaching calls for group leaders with brilliant coaching, 3)

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a

mighty one, the being a force of nature, in-

information but also with moments that truly

stead of a selfish, feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life be-

inspire and move the volunteers and staff. Selecting the right staff Another critical ingredient is selecting the right staff. One must select a staff that is entrepreneurial, unstop-

longs to the whole community, and it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice

pable, and inspiring or committed to learning to be more inspiring. Building a unit that truly delivers citizen empowerment and transformation requires the commitment of a

in life for its own sake. Life is no brief candle to me, it is a sort of splendid torch which I've got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as

successful startup. No matter how good the coaching, if the staff is not entrepreneurial and unstoppable and is not committed to being inspiring, the effort will not succeed.

possible before handing it on to future generations. Inspiration and idealism Being at peace with and confident in one's idealism and vi-

There must be a perceived pain that this program will relieve and a true sense of calling that goes far beyond the effort put into a typical 9-5 job. There must be an attitude of “we

sion and one’s commitment to inspiring others is critical. This idealism includes holding ourselves to our fullest potential and our governments to their greatest ideals. If govern-

will get this done, no matter what.” The staff must own the vision completely as any great entrepreneur would do and be persistent in the face of opposition.

ment is broken, we ness and must heal ing with grassroots hear a staff member

are part of that brokenourselves first. In workadvocates one can often say, “People are too busy

Focused, inspiring agenda Another piece of the organizational DNA and a clear failure of deep grassroots empowerment is the lack of legislative focus and the mistaken belief that

to get involved.” People are too busy for gestures, for going through the motions, but there are some who are not too busy to make a real difference. One’s idealism and inspira-

if there is one major issue that is returned to throughout the year, the volunteers will become bored. That is only true if the grassroots are given a simple request to make over

tion should not be surrendered to reason or to the petty pace of everyday life. The dictionary defines “inspire” as to fill with an animating, quickening, or exalting influence; to in-

and over on the same issue. But if the groups are not just trying to get a co-sponsor on a bill but are instead working to really create champions in Congress, the media,

fluence or impel. The purpose of deep advocacy is to influence or impel, to change hearts and minds. That cannot be done with facts and figures alone. The urgency of the need

and among community leaders, to take a little known issue and make it a political imperative, then boredom will not be a problem. Developing a legislative agenda that is inspir-

for change must also be conveyed with inspiration. When a monthly conference call or weekly group leader call agenda is being created, it must be filled not only with accurate

ing and focused allows volunteers to drill down deep on an issue rather than flit from issue to issue and allows volunteers to be

moved by their own growth as community

These next commitments are a promise to the

leaders.

volunteers, a stand for a program that delivers excellence. While they must be encouraged by the staff, their achievement are more in the hands of the volunteers themselves.

Practice and coaching One of the great challenges to the future of our planet is our short attention span. But when one has a 20-30 minute meeting with a member of Congress, editorial writer or other community leader, what had been a superficial understanding can now travel much deeper. But this is only

Empowering breakthroughs For a citizen to go from not knowing the name of their member of Congress to having a deep, trusted relationship with them requires a series of

possible if the volunteer has practiced and prepared and has something profound to offer. Practice builds confidence and develops one’s leadership. We shy away from arrang-

breakthroughs—it requires moving out of their comfort zone. That is essentially the definition of a breakthrough, seeing something that seems difficult or impossible, hav-

ing a meeting with a Member of Congress, writing a letter to the editor or calling into a talk show because we think we don’t know what to say. Only real practice can change

ing some discomfort in taking it on, and then, with coaching and support, going through that comfort zone to experience the joy and accomplishment on the other side. These

that. The organization must be committed to ensuring the volunteers have ongoing opportunities for real practice in order to become spokespersons themselves. This call for prac-

breakthroughs can happen with a member of Congress, with an editorial writer, with other leaders in the community, and with oneself. Empowering others in this way and providing

tice includes an organizational commitment to improvement, coaching, and being coached.

opportunities for them to express their greatness is one of the gifts of deep advocacy.

Integrity Volunteers give a very precious

Enrolling others Engaging other community members in being empowered volunteers is

commodity: their time. There must be a deep commitment as an organization and as individual staff members to keeping one’s word, being someone who can be counted on. If

part of the structure of support. If one invites a friend to a meeting there is always the fear that they will say no or that they will come and see this as a useless activity. When vol-

there is a conference call, be on time and deliver a quality agenda. If there is an action sheet, have it arrive on time and be both accurate and inspiring. One could say that

unteers become senior to that fear, when the commitment to the purpose and vision is greater than the fear of rejection, then big things can happen.

global poverty and a deteriorating environment are the result of a lack of integrity on a global scale. They cannot be solved by individuals and organizations that have ques-

Building deep relationships When an op-ed is selected for publication it has less to do with the quality of the op-ed and more to do with the relationship one has developed with

tionable integrity.

the op-ed editor. Of course timing and quality are important, but it is more valuable to

have 10 people who have great, trusted rela-

being persistent until you find the right

tionships with op-ed editors pitch a good oped than to send a great op-ed to 10 editors with whom there is no relationship. So the commitment is not so much to having an edi-

connection.

torial writer or member of Congress say yes to every request, but to building a deep, trusting relationship. Hearing “no” from a member of Congress early on should be seen as just one

to meet with you. That’s what our Congressman’s legislative director (LD) told us in January. Since then, we’ve met four times with the LD. We schedule 45 minute

….I see the relationship with a member of Congress as an arranged marriage. If you live in her district, the member’s aide has

step along the path to building a great relationship over time. Here is how Elli Sparks, a volunteer leader with Citizens Climate Lobby, described her search for a model for building

meetings with him. He keeps us for well over an hour. He doesn’t want us to leave! Why? Because a good arranged marriage starts out cold and heats up over time.

deep relationships:

That’s different than a love match, which starts out hot and slowly cools down.

….[O]ur director Mark Reynolds likes to say, “We’re betting the farm on relationships.” Then he tells us that we need to

…I see the editorial page writer as a painter. His canvas is the editorial pages.

build relationships with members of Congress and editorial writers. Most of us CCL volunteers have never done that before!! What in the world does a relationship with

His pallet is filled with letters to the editor, op-eds, and editorials. I am his muse, model, and assistant….I want him to fill his canvas with colors that I like, so I’ll

a member of Congress look like? How do we connect with an editorial page editor?

have my group send 3 – 5 letters to the editor whenever the opportunity arises. The more colors I put on his pallet, the better chance of having him pick one or two of my

Some of us have found models for those relationships in other parts of our lives.

favorite colors.

Gary in Boston uses the model of a work relationship….

….Last summer, he printed three climate denier letters from international denier groups. At first, the denier letters felt like a

My relationship model is different. I adore romantic relationships, so I use romance as

blow to the gut. Then, I dug deep for the love language… My editor was proud of his work in standing up for the climate. Those denier letters were in response to his own

my model. That first meeting with the editorial writer… it’s like a blind date, only you’ve decided beforehand you are going to marry this fellow. You are going to be

articles encouraging conservatives to help conserve the climate. He had been courageous in writing those editorials. He was getting national attention because of them.

sweet and interesting, but not too intense…. if it doesn't work out with the editor, you are going to marry one of his friends at the newspaper – the business

He was not backing down. I thought he might enjoy a pat on the back from across the nation. I called Gary in Boston, a scien-

editor, environmental writer, or city editor. Someone at this paper will find you interesting and compelling – it’s just a matter

tist in NY, and our CCL director [in Califor-

through partnership, not partisanship.

nia]. All three sent letters. All three letters were printed! I guess I was right… my editorial page editor likes national attention!!

must see the humanity and essential goodness in each person, especially those who are seen to oppose us. In 1987 the RESULTS group in Atlanta adapted the following prayer

….During our conference I met with 20

for their own member of Congress, a prayer that had originally been written by Newton Hightower of Houston for his member of Congress. They would read this prayer at the be-

congressional offices. I met with many folks whose view of the world was very different than mine. Going into their offices was hard. I had to let go of a lot of emo-

ginning of each of their meetings and think, a touch cynically, “Yeah, right” when they first read it. But they read it as a way of opening their hearts to the humanity of their member

tional baggage. I could no longer judge them or hold hostility in my heart towards them. I had to let go of my fear of climate change and my fear that they wouldn’t lis-

of Congress who had voted against famine relief for Ethiopia in 1985.

ten to me. I had to center myself in love. Releasing fear and centering in love… this is sacred and profound work….

Thank you God for Pat Swindall. We know that he is a good man who wants to

Being vulnerable Showing an emotional

do right in the world. We know that he struggles with the same problems we do: closing our hearts to those who don’t agree with us. There are no thoughts or

video or reading convincingly an excerpt from an evocative article to a member of Congress is more important than just sharing information. The goal is to tap into their humanity

feelings that he has had that we haven’t had and vice versa. We pray for all of us to have compassion for people in our country and far away, for rich and poor. We

and create a deeply memorable moment. The goal is to have the meeting be as close to an actual field visit as possible. But people shy away from being vulnerable, especially with

pray that Pat and we will be less frightened of each other. We pray our focus will be more to love and appreciate him and less to change him. Help us to remember

those in positions of power. Bringing an emotionally moving video or reading to a member of Congress can make a volunteer feel especially vulnerable. Instead we are more likely

that sharing love with the world is the highest contribution we can make and will lead to children being fed and the planet surviving. Forgive our righteousness and

to hide behind a presentation of facts and figures. However, a willingness to be vulnerable is essential to having breakthroughs, engaging others, building powerful relation-

anger. Open our hearts and minds to find the next expression of love for Pat that he can receive.

ships, and, ultimately, success. Partnership not partisanship The most profound breakthroughs and transformations come when those whom we perceive as

When we are faced with someone who appears to oppose us or our cause the normal tendency is to give up. If we don’t give up we are likely to be defensive, retaliatory, or argumentative, but this seldom works. The

against us or our cause begin to see the truth and importance of our issue and embrace it as their own. But that can only happen

commitment being discussed here has noth-

share your commitment, and being inspired

ing to do with being weak or without resolve. Rather it is a clear understanding that change is not likely to occur without communication. No matter how backward one’s

by living a committed life. Approaching the work with lightness and cheerfulness and celebrating the victories along the way, both large and small, will help bring joy and sus-

member of Congress’s views might seem, one must decide whether one wishes to be right about their backwardness or, instead, engage him or her in a deep conversation for change.

tain the volunteers and staff for the long run. What are people capable of? The preceding list of commitments is a tall order, but what is at stake is the quality of

Being unreasonable Time magazine once stated: “Visionaries are possessed creatures, men and women in the thrall of belief so powerful that that they ignore all else—even rea-

life on this planet and perhaps life itself. There are two competing visions of people and their ability to change the world for the better. One vision sees individuals as weak,

son—to ensure that reality catches up with their dreams. But always behind the action is an idea, a passionate sense of what is eternal in human nature and also what is coming

inadequate, inconsequential, and just not up to the job. The other sees people as being strong, committed, brave, visionary, audacious, and heroic. Honestly, when it comes

but as yet unseen, over the horizon.” Taking a stand for a stable climate, the end of poverty, or for achieving world peace is seen by most others as naïve and futile. It is the vi-

to ending global poverty or ensuring a stable climate or sustainable peace, how do you see people? How do you see yourself?

sionaries whose actions get us closer to those goals and whose actions are buttressed by “an idea and a passionate sense of what is eternal in human nature and also what is

I believe Apollo Astronaut Rusty Schweickart was correct when he said, “We aren’t passengers on Spaceship Earth, we’re the crew. We aren’t residents on this planet, we’re citizens. The difference in both cases is responsibility.”

coming but as yet unseen, over the horizon.” A program for citizen empowerment and transformation is an incubator and nurturing place for visionaries.

If our species is to have any hope of living up to that responsibility, of succeeding and thriving, we must see people as strong, brave, visionary, audacious, and heroic. And if we

Humor, joy and celebration The issues of global poverty and climate change often involve addressing great personal or global pain or sounding an alarm for action on a dire and

embrace that vision we must return to Robert Schwartz’s assertion that now, more than ever, we need social innovations, innovations that empower individuals to have break-

critical issue. We must not let the heaviness inherent in the task overwhelm us. Instead we must find the joy in the work so it does not become drudgery. That joy can be found

throughs in expressing their personal and political power for the good of humanity. But we know that these breakthroughs do not occur spontaneously or without being nurtured.

in the act of making a difference, having personal breakthroughs, assisting others in making a difference, finding partners who

If we are to help people achieve them, we must create the profound structures of inspi-

ration, challenge and support that enable individuals to do the work of healing creation.

The Author Sam Daley-Harris is the founder of RESULTS (1980), the Microcredit Summit Campaign (1995), and the Center for Citizen Empowerment and Transformation (2012). sam@empoweringcitizens365.org

(This article was adapted from a piece that originally appeared in the September 2012 issue of the Journal of Social Business.)

When he's finished listening to you explain Danish turbines, Chinese solar panels, and Volvo’s zero carbon truck manufacturing plant, located right here in the USA, he'll ask you about a transition plan. Then he'll want to take a good look at that plan to make sure it’s covered all of the bases.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie, Ask Your Congressman to be a Climate Hero by Elli Sparks If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (ISBN 0-06024586-7) is the title of a 1985 children's book illustrated by Felicia Bond. It is the best-known book written by Laura Numeroff. Its plot deals with a boy named Estuardo who gives a cookie to a mouse. After eating a cookie, the mouse has some milk. Then he decides to clean his face. This starts simply enough, but the mouse keeps getting distracted and is constantly moving on to other projects, leaving unfinished ones behind. In the end, this leads back around to the mouse wanting another cookie and Estuardo being so exhausted that he falls asleep on his desk.

When he looks at the plan, he might notice our economy needs a price signal. So he'll probably ask you about a carbon tax. When he's finished considering the elegance of a carbon tax, he'll want to write a carbon tax bill. He’ll start writing that bill. He’ll send his staff to visit other congressional offices. He might get carried away and reach across the aisle. He may even end up co-sponsoring that bill with a member of the other party! When he's done, he'll probably want to present that bill to committee. You'll have to support him as he does with letters to the editor and op-eds in the local papers in his district. He'll feel comfortable knowing those letters are there. The opeds will give him political cover. He'll probably need the newspaper to come out in support of his actions. So you'll call your new friend on the editorial board, and ask the paper to celebrate the courage of this congressman.

I have taken that story and rewritten it based on my continuing experience in climate solutions advocacy.

If You Ask Your Congressman to be a Climate Hero If you ask your congressman to be a climate hero, he's going to want you to explain urgency.

When the editorial page editor writes an article celebrating the congressman’s actions, the congressman will get so excited he'll want to write one of his own. He'll ask for paper and a computer. He'll

When you tell him why climate change is urgent, he'll probably ask you what others are doing about it.

write his article. When the article is finished, he'll want to sign his name with a pen. Then he'll want to send the article to the newspaper. Which means he'll need their address. He'll send in his article, they will print it, and he’ll stand back to look at it. Looking at his article in the newspaper will remind him that he's fighting for the climate.

Johanna Stoneking, Jim Metz, Richard Taranto (who is the group’s other cofounder), Jordan Grubbs (a wonderful intern from University of Richmond) and others. In Keysville, Elli has started a biodynamic permaculture farm with her husband, children, and several interns. She will be increasing the carbon sucking capacity of her pastures with mob grazing. She is feeding her family with food they raise and prepare. Her farm is called Sacred Foods Farm. The name comes from the research done by Dr. Weston A. Price and the book he wrote that collected together in one place the food wisdom of our ancestors. It is this wisdom that has helped Elli heal from rheumatoid arthritis and depression.

So... he'll think about the urgency of climate change. He’ll think about China and Denmark and Volvo. He’ll remember the transition plans. He will connect the dots from a consumer-friendly carbon tax to the health, security, and wellbeing of his family. And chances are: if he thinks about his family, he's going to be glad he is a climate hero.

You are welcome to contact her about her work with Citizens Climate Lobby, her farm, or the food wisdom of our ancestors. Her email is: elinorsparks@gmail.com

The Author Elli Sparks was the co-founding member of the Richmond Chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby. She is building relationships with members of Congress, their aides, and the local newspaper’s editorial board for the purpose of ensuring her own children’s health, security, and wellbeing. She has since moved from Richmond to Keysville, Virginia. She will be starting a new group there in January with the help of interns from Longwood University. She has passed the Richmond baton to her wonderful friends Dr. Bill Nelson and his wife Judy Nelson, Monica Lewis,

Deep green economics entails a focus on full-spectrum sustainabilityâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;sustainability in all aspects of our relationship to the universe: the natural environment, human neighbors, even our conscious envisioning of what exists and/or is possible. Two foundational principles underly this way of thinking green: 1. G.O.O.D.-based economic reasoning and analysis (addressing the generative organic optimization demand not previously addressed in the conventional economic and political dynamics we think of as business-as-usual); 2. Impact at the human scale (genuine inquiry into what happens to individual, family and community-level lived experience, as the result of policies that foster development, investment distribution, innovation or technological enhancement). This section explores aspects of the deep green economic revolution, already ongoing, and suggests solutions that can help point the way toward a future in which no one is disadvantaged by resource scarcity, the manipulation of commodities markets, or lethal forms of industrialscale contamination. Deep green means conducive to sustainable mutual thriving across the full spectrum of human relationships, to the advantage of human liberty.

now find to be routine about physical elec-

Major Flow of Investment to Clean Energy on the Horizon

tronics output. But we don’t need to wait until 2200, or 2100 for that matter. As of 2009—according to research conducted by Mark Jacobson of

by Joseph Robertson

Stanford and Mark Delucci of UC Davis—then state-of-the-art technology for wind, solar and hydro power production could cover many times our total energy demand. Ramping up

We are not in the business of forecasting investment trends, here at the HotSpring Network, but we are in the business of hunting the paradigm shift, and the coming economic paradigm shift is all about energy. Fossil fuels have outlived their usefulness, in that

to 100% clean energy production, given questions of affordability and the need for new infrastructure, would take roughly 20 years, by their estimation.

they are now causing far too costly external impacts to human civilization and the world economy, given the alternatives we have available. Clean energy technology will cap-

The truth is: as of Jan. 2013, after backto-back years of record growth in wind and solar power production in the United States, and faced with the massive cost burden of

ture the next major investment boom, and that boom could last longer than the oil boom of the last 150 years.

upgrading fossil fuel infrastructure for ready planned petroleum and natural production and distribution, we have an portunity to achieve at least 80% clean

In the year 2200, if they are still around at all, institutions like Goldman Sachs will be the most skilled investment engines centering their activities on clean energy technologies and clean energy “reserves”, not as they are

algas opre-

newable energy production, without added costs, over and above what is already planned, by 2020.

now: the world leaders in petroleum investment holdings. Petroleum will be an expensive commodity harvested primarily for refinement activities such as the creation of

All we need to do is transfer investment planning from outmoded, inefficient, highseepage, fossil fuel infrastructure to selffunding, cost-effective, efficiency-accelerating clean energy infrastructure, planning as we

high-grade medical polymers and other plastics; recycling will diminish the need for new extraction.

go for the seamless introduction of new technologies. There are four crucial energy sectors we need to retool, and we can immediately ramp up retooling on all four, without further

The clean energy boom will be economically sustainable, because it will be environmentally sustainable. The logic of clean energy pulls the overall economy ever further along the road to full-spectrum sustainability,

delay: electricity, transport, industrial production and military. The Pentagon has already established policy finding that localized spontaneous clean-

and electronics allow us to activate more and more robust efficiency gains. Quantum computing and manufacture will also allow us to achieve efficiency gains far beyond what we

energy production capability is a measurable asset, in tactical and fiscal terms, in both combat and non-combat zones. The USS

Makin Island—the first true hybrid-drive

The all-important question serious inves-

combat-ready warship—is already at sea, and advanced research into 100% clean renewable energy options, beyond the capabilities of 100% solar-powered drone aircraft, is un-

tors need to ask is: Why will clean renewables generate a sustained, global boom in major capital investment? Clean renewable energy technologies will be the next long-running

derway and gathering momentum.

world-altering capital investment boom economy, because 1) they afford solutions to several major global problems confronting humanity, 2) they af ford more ef ficient

By the year 2016, we expect to see on the consumer market advanced solar photovoltaic technologies, such as “spray-on solar”

investment-to-output return, regarding energy production, and 3) they will establish a new paradigm that will likely never be displaced by anything but a more efficient varia-

or “solar paint”, and fabrics comprised at least in part of “solar glitter”, solar threads and “printable solar” inks. These advances will make solar power the most efficient and

tion of clean, scalable renewable power sourcing.

user-friendly way for consumers to power mobile devices. Even children’s toys may finally move beyond the “Batteries Not Included” warning so many parents dread. Applying the kind tion to innovate that Apple to re-establish design efficiency and

This last point is the most important for policy-makers, energy producers and investors to understand right now. The primitivefeudal model of toll-for-passage energy use— we own a finite resource, you pay us for access to it—will be replaced by a new, more

of relentless determinaallowed Steve Jobs and the rules for industrial compact-form user em-

open, more democratic mode of production—we give you technology, you use it as efficiently as possible, collaborate in overall production, and new technologies will allow

powerment, embodied in the iPhone, Richard Branson, of Virgin, is heading a consortium of aero-space investors aiming to create zeroemissions jet fuel within 10 years. The work

you, the consumer to continue to make efficiency gains at regular increments.

of Solar Impulse, based in Switzerland, has already shown the promise of a future in which airplanes will not require combustible fuel at all.

When that transformational tipping point happens, and we enter the clean renewable distributed-production energy market paradigm, the logic of energy economics will change, drastically, and the balance of power will shift to the consumer side in unprece-

Solar Roadways, in Montana, and the Israeli-American venture Better Place, together illustrate the immense potential for a rapid and seamless retooling of our transpor-

dented ways. Technological innovation will rapidly replace land and lease-ownership, or futures speculation, as the leading indicator of market power and leadership. Apple Com-

tation infrastructure, that will allow not only for “instant recharge”—via battery switchout—of electric vehicles, but also for an immense distributed energy production plant,

puter surpassing Exxon-Mobil in total market value is the first indicator that this transition is irreversibly underway.

across the continental United States, capable of replacing nearly 100% of our national electricity supply.

Information, electrons, efficiency and in-

cheaper and more prevalent sooner rather

novation, now demand that leading market drivers (goods, services, technologies, companies, regions or nations) be prepared to function in the innovation-centric sustainable

than later. The main obstacle that has until now stood in the way of the clean investment expansion has been the lack of choice for most

economy. No longer is it feasible to use 17thand 18th-century combustible fuel technologies, which have lent themselves to relatively minor edge-nibbling improvements over time,

consumers and most businesses. That atmosphere of scarcity is now fading, as new technologies, which produce energy far more efficiently, become more readily available. For

to power the 21st century economy. The age of clean renewable power is setting down roots, and we all need to understand the lay of the land.

some leading investors, the inflection point has already passed, and they have missed the crucial moment to buy into the most promising high-efficiency clean-energy technologies

There are ways to motivate this massive flow of new investment capital into clean, renewable energy technologies. The simplest is to offer a coordinated, reliable price signal to

in the first round of affordable investment.

A version of the following article first appeared on The Hot Spring Network, TheHotSpring.net,

major institutional investors, by putting a price on the introduction of carbon-dioxideemitting fuels into our economy, returning revenues to householdsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;so this simple solu-

on January 1, 2013.

tion spans the entire marketplaceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and steadily escalating that carbon fee, and the household reimbursement, so the market can better see the cost-efficacy of clean renewables. The fossil fuel divestment movement is gaining traction, with activity on more than 200 campuses across the United States, committed groups on more than 100 of them, and some municipalities, including the city of Seattle, declaring their plans to reorganize public finances to comprehensively divest from fossil fuels. This is another marketdriven motivator of an accelerated transition, and another reason the United States' economy will benefit from a revenue-neutral carbon correction fee and household reimbursement plan that makes clean renewables

pioneers in sustainability thinking and prac-

ANNOUNCING

tice, equipped with the wealth and infrastructure to motivate change on a massive scale, the truth is that Gotham on the Hudson faces serious challenges, not least of which are degraded infrastructure in need of costly maintenance, persistent widespread social and economic crisis, and extremely high costs. FreeClearNYC.com, however, imagines a New York City that has the talent, the means, and the wherewithal, to take advantage of what may be an historic opportunity: as the cost of infrastructure upkeep and restoration continues to climb, while community conditions degrade, and residents seek ever more scarce wages suitable to the cost of living, New York City finds itself positioned to transfer any and all investments that might flow into the upkeep and improvement of basic infrastructure, restoration and expansion of transport infrastructure, into the also much

Project aimed at brainstorming the full-spectrum sustainable Gotham by Joseph Robertson

needed transition to clean energy and sustainable practices. The cost of major innovation can be met by devoting the same dollars to more than one long-term goal at the same

The phrase “full-spectrum sustainability” describes initiatives that bring sustainability thinking to all aspects of policy that affect how people live in a given community. The

time: don’t just rebuild or build new; do that, and innovate while doing it. Put the nextgeneration technologies into service now so public dollars are not wasted now or in the

goal is to speak more directly and more imaginatively about how to make not just our energy and farming sustainable, but also our industry, our housing and construction, our

future. As a major hub of global capital investment, scholarship, research, industrial design and entrepreneurship, New York City

transport, our home and office operations, our educational infrastructure, our government, our military, major sea ports and small businesses lining Main Street in small towns

can be the world’s first full-spectrum sustainable city of more than 5 million residents. There are innumerable ways to say that New York City will not do this, primarily because it

dotting the countryside. Yet while many communities have taken bold steps toward deep sustainability, and many activists take for granted that places

cannot does this, but we consider those rhetorical choices to be rooted in a dangerous commitment to false pessimism—dangerous,

like New York City are well positioned to be

because its upkeep requires that we dismantle the imaginative framework that allows us to address and eliminate serious threats to human wellbeing, intelligently, sustainably and with responsibility to others and to pos-

Build Back Better: Build a Humane, Sustainable Future Free Clear NYC is committed to building a trusted reservoir of notes, references, brainstorms and policy projects, which see over the horizon and help others to envision a New

terity. The most important aspect of the fullspectrum sustainability concept is the way it affects areas of policy not normally thought to

York City that aims for and step by step achieves full-spectrum sustainability in one corner of the city, and another, and another. We propose that, faced with the massive re-

be tied in with sustainability, and does so for the better. By building sustainable communities, that grow their own food, process their own waste, generate their own energy, and

building effort required, after the tragedy of SuperStorm Sandy, New York City does need to “build back better”, and that doing so means building sustainability into every area

provide shared-use spaces for living, working, buying and selling, those communities become not only sustainable and “green”, but also more prosperous, more conducive to im-

of public rebuilding and infrastructure maintenance, including the viability of schools, as relating to their ability to provide the highestquality discipline-diverse world-ready educa-

provement of the human condition, and more secure. As we face ever-more-costly potential threats from global climate destabilization, the need to build resiliency into the basic

tion.

structure of our communities becomes ever more important.

The way our energy grid is structured can be improved, to avoid falling into the design traps that were laid bare by Sandy’s record

The quality of life we can expect from schools, parks, roads, railways, air travel,

storm surge. The sources of energy we use can be made to be more local, more precise, more cost-effective, more modular, and yet be knit back into a smart grid that provides for

food production and distribution, emergency response, cost-effective problem-solvingoriented municipal government, national political structures, national defense—and all

options in case of emergency that at present are too hard to make real. Transport infrastructure can be overhauled to make automotive transport less necessary, less useful and

the range of other activities, services and institutions we expect to provide improved quality of life—will be determined to a great extent by questions of how we locate, harvest

less appealing, without punishing anyone or making anyone less free in their movements and their ability to access opportunity.

and distribute energy, how we use resources, how we conserve and enhance vital lifesupport systems, how we define our relationship to nature.

In fact, transport is so intimately linked with quality of life and access to opportunity that getting the wider transit network right can literally liberate millions of people from

unnecessary and dehumanizing constraints

cal. The new fire is everywhere. The old fire

on their freedom, and rescue whole communities from the degradation that comes with the separation and collapse of families. People are more prosperous, more collaborative and

was transient. The new fire is permanent. And except for a little biofuel, biogas and biomass, all grown in ways that sustain and endure, the new fire is flamelessâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;providing

more resilient in their personal and public spheres, when they are in closer contact with people who matter to them, networks of activities that genuinely hold their interest and

all the convenient and dependable services of the old fire but with no combustion. If you visit Flushing Meadows Corona Park, in the heart of Queens, New York, you

enrich their minds, and when their productive capacity as affecting society more broadly does not impede their ability to be part of a close-knit responsible intimate web of per-

will find that the infrastructure to match the power of this moment of global economic transformation is lagging. New York City's 3term mayor, billionaire media-mogul Mike

sonal relationshipsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;a reliable feeling of family, in whatever form. Transportation is absolutely essential to achieving that kind of human-scale resiliency.

Bloomberg, who professes to be an imaginative, collaborative pragmatist recuperating from his years immersed in the dogma of party politics, also professes to be greening

We propose a combination of GOOD-based economic analysis, generative funding models for concrete learner-empowering upgrades to the education system,

the City, and of course everyone who lives here wishes him great good luck with that endeavor. But what one sees at Flushing Meadows Corona Park is that the project of greening New York City is in a state somewhat similar to the old World's Fair grounds: there are symbols and ideas, there is possibility and

Building a Fuel Free NYC The world is now entering into a new period of economic upheaval and transformation, in

there is longing, but the action is not there; the City is leaving the full potential of the scene remorselessly untapped.

which old models of energy production, hobbled by massive contamination and market manipulations rooted in scarcity, will be phased out and new sources of energy will

The park is surrounded by highways. On the east, it is flanked by the Van Wyck Expressway, on the south, by the Long Island Expressway, and on the west by the Grand Central Parkway. Just beyond Citi Field, to

allow for a clean, renewable, energy economy based on the logic of natural abundance. In his book Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era, Amory Lov-

the north, Northern Boulevard carries a constant flow of local traffic congestion past the park. One of the biggest green spaces in Queens is ringed by one of the tightest com-

ins explains that: The old fire was dug from below. The new fire flows from above. The old fire was scarce. The new fire is bountiful. The old fire was lo-

plex of interchanges in the borough.

This is not an uncommon feature of New

tion, starting with mass transit. The following

York City's green spaces: they are meant to be oases of seminatural semi-open-air experiences, in a forever agglomerating matrix of asphalt and construction. They are not so

are some simple examples that would help to pull as many as half of all the cars off the highways in Queens, the Bronx, Brooklyn and even Staten Island:

much a break from the built environment as an organic part of the built environment, a confirmation of its power over the human experience of everyone living in the City.

• Flank major highways with a network of electric trams and monorails (which could be built into the Subway system—remember, vehicles with dedicated rail networks

To go jogging in Bayside, one of the greener sections of New York City, is to enjoy the view of greenery while breathing particulate matter from the many highways in the

don't get stuck in traffic like buses) • Replace as many bus routes as possible with streetcars and trams, running on electricity

surrounding area. To go jogging at Flushing Meadows is, similarly, to come in constant contact with carcinogenic contaminants emitted in massive volume from the surrounding

• Build green passageways and parkways along and between the tracks where possible, to green the city and clean the air

web of interstates and local highways.

• Work with leaders in Albany to accelerate New York State's coming solar-energy boom

So, what is missing?

• Direct major new tax incentives to the production and distribution of 100% cleansourced electricity

What is missing is the fuel free, cleanenergy based smart transport infrastructure that will allow New York City's green spaces to be genuinely green. The "outer boroughs" are notoriously underserved by New York City's MTA, the metropolitan mass transit

• Work with leaders in Washington to build a renewable energy infrastructure bank • Identify and deploy as many clean-energy and clean-transport technologies as possi-

authority. The Subway doesn't reach all the way to the perimeter of Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Staten Island. So the further out one travels from Times Square, the more one

ble • Work with the Carbon War Room and other brainstorming and organizational operations devoted to speeding the transition to a

needs a personal automobile to get around. Otherwise, despite the astonishing population density, practical needs end up being too far away to allow for the village life people need

fuel-free economy • Implement a strategy to place electric vehicle charging stations throughout the City's entire network of highways and shopping

in order to live locally. This is what makes "going green" expensive. The built environment is organized as a network of obstacles opposing the transition.

districts (New York City should not be trailing Tennessee in doing this)

New York City has the resources, the ingenuity and the industrial and commercial capacity to implement a speedy, city-wide transi-

• Implement a city-wide bikeshare program to help provide access to 100% fuel free trans-

port (make it the world's most extensive,

The Author

imaginative, well-funded and well-managed low-cost bikeshare project)

Joseph Robertson is the creator and director of the HotSpring Network, and the editor-inchief of the HotSpring Quarterly. He is a volunteer for the non-partisan, non-profit or-

Citizens across New York City should begin a campaign to pressure Mayor Bloomberg to re-engage the logic of his self-professed entrepreneurial spirit, to accelerate the green transition city-wide and across the region. Citizens should also organize locally to help

ganization Citizens Climate Lobby, and is the author of the Sept. 2010 report Building a Green Economy: on the Economics of Carbon Pricing and the Transition to Clean, Renewable

Citizens Climate Lobby to persuade Congress to pass fee and dividend legislation that will make the clean energy transition easier, faster, to the profit of consumers and the ex-

Fuels, which is distributed free of charge to elected officials on Capitol Hill. He directs the publications Quipu.cc, FuelFree.me, FreeClearNYC.com, Independ-

pense of those who stand in the way, defending dirty energy.

ents of Principle, Protect El Yunque, and Futurismo Verde. He is a visiting instructor at Villanova University, where he now serves as chair of the Environmental Sustainability

At the community level, citizens can come together to demand that their City Council members become leaders in demanding, envisioning, crafting and implementing state-ofthe-art, on-time fuel free transportation options. This pressure should come from all

Committeeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s subcommittee on Operations and Energy Use, directs the ClimateTalks.info series of interdisciplinary roundtables and lectures, and leads the GreenNOVA.org com-

corners of the City simultaneously, and should press the problematic truth that less affluent and more remote neighborhoods are virtually neglected in terms of the relation-

munity for coordinating sustainability activities and information on campus and beyond. All of his projects can be found through the website: PoetEconomist.com

ship between their transport options and their quality of life. Let's take Mayor Bloomberg's own tweet to heart: "Life is too short to spend your time avoiding failure," and let's ask him to live that spirit in building the world's most robust, imaginative and human-friendly fuel-free transport system. We can build a fuel free

A version of the plan for building a fuel free New York City first appeared July 19, 2012, at FuelFree.me

New York City; we can breathe clean air in our parks, even when their borders are defined by major transport arteries. We can be free from the environmental squalor of the combustion-everywhere way of living. Think about it. Think about it seriously and with all available technologies in mind.

A paradigm is the predominant way of dealing with the shape and the nature of reality, and represents the consensus of human consciousness within a given scope of thought, skill or inquiry. A paradigm shift is a moment in which the entire edifice of presumed meaning is altered, simultaneously, because the shape of the universe itself, with respect to the point in question, has been discovered to be different. New insights flow from a paradigm shift instantaneously, and what was previously not understood to be possible becomes not only possible, but the focus of inquiry. The Internet constitutes a paradigm-shift in human communication, for instance. How we envision our relationship to people around the world is, with the Internet, fundamentally altered. The paradigm shift allows us to solve problems we could not otherwise envision a way to solve. The Hot Spring Network is committed to â&#x20AC;&#x153;hunting the paradigm shiftâ&#x20AC;? through collaborative inquiry, creative critical thinking and technological invention.

top-quality educational outcomes for

In Education, the Bottom Line Must Be Learner Empowerment

individual learners: numbers will force compliance with goals, and whole school systems will achieve... so goes the logic of test-score centered reform. It sounds logical, but ultimately, this is magical thinking. Schools donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t automatically get better because we hope they will, and pressuring schools to meet goals without the

by Joseph Robertson A version of this article first appeared on December 17, 2012, at FreeClearNYC.com. An early version of the generative education proposal that follows was presented to the City of Sacramento in May, 2010, at no cost, in an effort to help the city's administration rethink how the state legislature should value dollars contributed to the education budget of the city.

resources needed to attend to the work of meeting those goals is little more than stating our hopes with defiant alarmism. There are real human concer ns at work in the educational process that preclude basing all decisions on standards, statistics and selfinterest.

Children are empowered when they learn. That empowerment is both practical. For the building and fulfilling future for nothing is more vital than

First of all, most people do not go into

psychological and of a vibrant, free our democracy, making that kind

teaching, because it is a cushy job or will make them rich. Even the best and most successful teachers will not be made wealthy, no matter how much they do to improve the

of empower ment the focus of all our education policy. But empowering learners is not as simple as taking the burden for student performance off the shoulders of

future of our society. People commit to the long hours, the everyday public performance requirement, the grueling emotional strains, and what is often lifelong underappreciation,

students; in fact, there is evidence that doing precisely that shifts funds away from learning empowerment practices and inhibits longterm educational progress.

because they value the work and they want to be of value to the lives of others. It is redherring cynicism to approach the dynamics of the educational system with a logic of pure

Too often, public officials strapped for cash look for magical solutions that purport to be able to solve our education-quality crisis in one simple stroke. Then, wanting to

self-interest, and all honest policy-makers know this. Self-interest does not produce high quality educational outcomes; genuine hard work and commitment to human

feel secure in the process of magical solutionseeking, these same officials look to test scores as pressure mechanisms. The logic feels easy to those in need of a substitute for

interest do. Because it is so difficult to quantify what it is that makes any individual teacher effectiveâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the "inspiration factor" is one

the funding, administrative discipline, talent, and attention to detail, required to produce

exampleâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it is difficult to use numbers to qualify the best way to use the insights and

experience any one teacher may bring to the

more focused on learning and more skillful at

job, on any given day, for the benefit of the system as a whole. There is a paradox at the heart of the educational system: it is the most scale-oriented profession in our culture, and

acquiring new infor mation from more complex constellations of new, technical or conceptual information. In other words, consider the obvious: the experience of

yet it does not lend itself to mechanistic scalability. Outcomes will be individuated, because the educational process occurs within the mind and character of the human

learning across a diverse range of skill-sets, disciplines and creative abilities, does more to develop the capacity to learn across a diverse range of skill-sets, disciplines and creative

individual. What all good teachers learn, at some point, in some way, is that learning is active and imaginative, not passive and mechanical. Learners do the learning;

abilities. As students become adults and move into the civic space, through their work, their family and their community engagement, this capacity is increasingly vital

teachers work hard to facilitate that process, and to give attention to the needs of each individual. There must be focused, visionary,

â&#x20AC;&#x201D;allowing for more robust stores of cognitive and adaptive lear ning capacity, when individuals and small groups are confronted with new information, new frameworks within

coordinated attention to those details of school practice that empower students to learn. Where the average student has no one at home until after 5 pm and no safe place to

which information is stored and propagated, and new opportunities for active participation in society. Well-funded private preparatory schools,

play with friends, schools cannot â&#x20AC;&#x153;do betterâ&#x20AC;? by cutting after school programs in sports and the arts. It is precisely in underserved communities, where engaging extracurricular

public schools in affluent neighborhoods, and major universities, all organize implicitly and explicitly around this principle of disciplinediverse learning experiences. None of them

activities are most scarce, that public funding most urgently needs to flow to music, dance, visual arts, athletics, and after-school science and reading programs. None of those

would dream of degrading the quality of educational experience they offer by cutting programs that empower their students across a diverse range of disciplines; to do so would

programs are trivial or superfluous to the long-term development of free-thinking, engaged citizens; much to the contrary, they are instrumental in allowing individuals to

be to limit the students' future facility for engaging the most promising, if challenging, opportunities that come to them.

develop the full potential of their intellect and their psycho-social engagement with the civic space. Developmental cognitive science shows

students with special needs, specializing in education of students with autism spectrum diagnoses, says he has witnessed over and over again that even students who are

that minds more engaged by a diverse range of intellectual and physical challenges are

severely challenged need to be challenged to rise above their already-existing level of

A very skilled, very effective teacher of

ability and comprehension in order to reach

recreational spaces, and have sought to direct

their true potential. Rising above alreadyexisting levels of ability and comprehension is, after all: learning. We condemn a school—and possibly entire

funding to the kind of initiatives that build value at the human scale, by promoting learning, recreation, community activity and share responsibility in the civic space.

communities—to failure if we eliminate, deplete or “redeploy” funding that is needed for those kind of engaged-learner disciplinediverse skill-set-developing extracurricular

If we r efocus funding and human attention on those elements of the educational process that provide students with opportunities for intellectual

programs. That money is hard to find is an indefensible argument. That an individual school or local district may lack resources is a real problem, but that states and the

empowerment, learner-focused insight, and direct engagement with fact, skill and safe performative environments where they can practice and further develop as scholars,

federal government would not be well-served to invest in education, ahead of other services, is not borne out by the facts. As Raj Patel notes, in The Value of

athletes and artists, we can break the cycle of hyper-scarce funding, low test scores and attrition—student drop-out, intellectual shutdown, teacher talent flight and broader

Nothing: How to reshape market society and redefine democracy, "the public benefits of an educated population are greater than the private costs of educating children. Giving

degradation of community infrastructural supports—that are breaking the system. Raj Patel also reminds us of an important consideration, when we apply the logic of the

away education for free is, demonstrably, a good way of ensuring that every child is educated. It's also the route to reduced levels of crime, increased productivity and healthier

marketplace to the process of crafting a marketplace of ideas worthy of a great democracy: "the opposite of consumption isn't thrift—it's gener osity". (29) The

and more engaged citizens." (76-77) That last point is important, because more engaged citizens mean a more authentic democracy.

commercial marketplace needs to recognize that its performative virtues are best suited to commercial activity and that commercial activity is most likely to thrive and to

Better quality education, with a broader range of opportunities and persistent access to higher education degrees, has been shown to lower crime rates in a given community, while increasing incomes and allowing for

generate value when a genuinely free, educated and engaged populace undergirds the abstract structures we call the marketplace.

enhanced resilience tied to asset-building and open (safe and democratic) community engagement. City managers and police departments have taken note of the cost-

We need to keep in mind how exactly public policy empowers the private sector—by creating the conditions in which a vibrant, healthy, competitive and innovative

effective improvements to public safety, resulting from better education and

marketplace can reinforce those socioeconomic values that allow for true

democracy to exist. To remind readers of the

available to millions of Americans. But

vast and important difference between tradable goods and the structural supports that need to be present in order for those goods to function in a marketplace of

education is the key to strong, resilient democracy and the only way to build a secure and prosperous future. The National Strategic Narrative report,

numerical values, Patel explains that governments can benefit the private sector by putting the wellbeing of human beings first, so that such structural supports can be

from two top Pentagon analysts working for then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, found that the United States must put top-quality education above

guaranteed. The private-sector profit motiveâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; which operates on the terrain opened up by a vibrant, engaged, democratically liberated and empowered populaceâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;benefits from

all other priorities, privilege the virtues of sustainability in economic and security policy, and leverage mutually beneficial relationships with foreign powers, in order to

"decommodifying the things that society deems valuable". (77)

build a truly vibrant and secure 21st-century democracy, with a global strategy adequate to the challenges we face.

National priority for secure, sustainable future: world-leading education

The value of top quality education for the future of any society is almost incalculable: it affects the relative value of all other elements of the economy, and the efficacy of all areas of public policy, governance and democratic process, including security policy and conflict resolution. There is substantial evidence that lack of universalized top-quality education imposes major costs on entire societies.

The United States of America has been, since its birth 236 years ago, a world leader in promoting universal public education. It has also been a world leader in promoting universal access to higher education and to advanced degrees. That history has made the US a leader in technological innovation and advanced problem solving for two centuries.

Those added cost burdens, from economic and policy inefficiency, to counterproductive security actions, degraded infrastructure and sluggish entrepreneurial activity, can degrade

That legacy is under threat, and our list of national educational aims demands immediate attention.

the quality of life for most people in a society, degrade the quality of public discourse and public policy action, and undermine national security and economic prosperity, generally.

In the current budgetary and economic climate, cuts to public education, the rolling back of teachersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; salary opportunities, job security and benefits, and the underfunding of financial aid for higher education, are

Lower quality educational resources build into a society patterns of unnecessary waste and degradation. Top quality educational resources build into a society the capacity for

threatening to stunt the quality of education

vibrant, rapid, innovative adaptation to

changes in an evolving landscape. With the

it has to maintain its ability to be the most

21st century more likely to be defined by an evolving global political and economic landscape, nothing is of more paramount concern than the quality of education

credible, open and constructive resource for problem-solving, and that means it must have the best quality human capital, the most talent, the most informed, creative and

available to every last person living within a given geographical area.

forward-thinking population. Pres. Obama instituted one of his boldest and least well-known reforms in 2009, when he replaced the expensive, slow and bank-run

Nothing will define a nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ability to compete in international markets more directly or comprehensively than the level of educational opportunity enjoyed by its people.

system of student financial aid with a more direct system of loans from the government to students, with incentives for repayment, lower interest rates, better access to top-flight institutions, and long-term incentives to make use of oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s talents in ways that benefit the wider economy and the nation.

The age of complex informational problem-solving

That student financial aid reform must be a building block, with new initiatives at the state and national levels both to foster not test-score improvements, but genuine improvements in educational quality, critical

We are entering an age that is no longer about building industrial capacity or penetrating beyond new frontiers in terms of geographical or spatial exploration. Technology is advanced enough that many new technologies can be mapped out intelligently long before they are within the

thinking, creative reasoning and intellectual skills that infuse the landscape of scientific and commercial innovation with real potential for designing and riding the wave of the new

realm of the practical.

economy of this century.

We are entering an age in which the ability of an individual, a company, a region or a nation, to solve problems rapidly, efficiently

We are falling behind, even in our policy aims

and with little resulting negative feedback, will be the decisive factor in determining success or failure, prosperity or ruin. Borrowing problem-solving capacity from

But we are not doing all that we should to

another society is not like borrowing industrial capacity; there is no way to export the cost while importing the benefit.

promote top-quality, world-leading In too man ways, public officials looting education budgets unaffordable tax giveaways or

If the United States is to prosper in the

education. are either to fund imposing

counterproductive bureaucratic regimes designed to punish teachers and telegraph

21st century as it did during the 20th, if it is to lead on the global stage in a credible way,

student training for test-taking, effectively

• Ensure that no child drops out of school for financial reasons.

gutting our educational system’s ability for providing the challenges, the resources and the personal commitment to excellence that we know produce the best outcomes.

• More than double enrollment in higher education.

As the New York Times reports, a new study from the Center for American Progress and the Center for the Next Generation—‘The Competition that Really Matters’—finds:

Taking it to the local, getting involved

• Half of U.S. children get no early childhood education, and we have no national strategy to increase enrollment.

The people of New York City have choices. We are at a moment of reckoning. We can choose to spend money to help transnational

• More than a quarter of U.S. children have a chronic health condition, such as obesity or asthma, threatening their capacity to learn.

corporations pad their quarterly reports or we can choose to fund the world-leading infrastructure for education, innovation, citizenship, transport and public safety we all

• More than 22 percent of U.S. children lived in poverty in 2010, up from about 17

believe we deserve. If you want to have a good idea of whether your kids’ school is focused on educating your children for global citizenship and

percent in 2007. • More than half of U.S. postsecondary students drop out without receiving a degree.

intellectual mastery or simply training them as bureaucracy-reinforcing test-takers, find out how the administrators think about the city’s regime of high-stakes testing.

Meanwhile, China is investing heavily in education, planning to build the largest, most holy educated, most skilled workforce in world history. By 2020, China’s current

If your school’s administrators are obsessed with bumping test scores, or frame all discussion of student progress in terms of numbers and data, they are likely applying

policy trajectory aims to: • Enroll 40 million children in preschool, a 50 percent increase from today.

their own intellectual capacity to harnessing your kids’ intelligence for test-score improvement. These regimes carry with them a powerful psychological reorganization of

• Provide 70 percent of children in China with three years of preschool. • Graduate 95 percent of Chinese youths through nine years of compulsory education (that’s 165 million students, more than the

reality, and whole school systems can find their better knowledge about educational excellence cast aside in favor of dangerous fictions and short-term thinking.

U.S. labor force).

A certain kind of curriculum distortion

without even noticing the achievement, to do

tends to follow—specifically: the kind that downplays arts, cognitive complexity, advanced reasoning, precise language usage and creativity, focusing instead on how to

what they do and to excel. Talk to educators, parents, community leaders, and elected officials about what will actually work to achieve the ultimate goal of

solve the specific kind of math or readingcomprehension problems found on standardized tests.

top-quality education: making students into fully intellectually self-reliant full-functioning citizens of a vibrant democracy.

If your school’s administrators talk a lot

Make sure arbitrary qualifiers—like

about math and science as skill areas for future growth, but emphasize active learning of art, music, precise language usage, cognitive complexity, advanced reasoning and

impersonal data, test-score tracking, budget itemization and administrative paperwork requirements—are not inter fering with genuine instruction and learning.

even physical education, as vital for the healthy development of the individual mind, then they are likely focusing on producing the best outcome for your kids.

Look for opportunities to supplement your kids’ school-hours education, then to bring those kind of activities into the school building or school yard.

Here too, a certain kind of curriculum enhancement tends to follow—specifically: emphasizing students’ ability to experience a wide range of intellectual, physical and

In your community and across the local apparatus of policy-making, work to build interest in a full-spectrum empowerment paradigm: an education that builds

psycho-synthetic challenges, so their ability to synthesize the substance of their experience into one fabric of imaginative practical capacity (talent) is expanded and

intellectual, civic and professional value for the whole character and ability of each student.

fortified for future application.

Recommendations

In the interest of developing a more direct, and comprehensive, proposal for how to move the nation forward on the question of

Ask for more programs, with richer content,

educational quality and sustainable optimal outcomes, we are including in the following pages a generative education policy proposal. The aim of the proposal is to respond to the

creative practice and physical experience, for your kids. Ask administrators to do what they are supposed to do—succeed by making

issues highlighted here in a way that will build discipline diversity and intellectual flexibility into the educational experience of any and all learners.

themselves, and the regime of administrative labor, invisible. Their work should be so effective that everyone else is empowered,

landscape of education budgeting,

Generative Education: A Proposal

curriculum and community activity availability: 1. Protect funding for schools

Why re-think education spending?

2. Expand funding for best practices 3. Develop students’ full intellectual potential

With the recent trend toward massive cuts in funding for public education—in California, in New Jersey, in New York City and other major metropolitan areas and country—a new focus on economics could provide fresh the value of specific areas of

4. Implement cost-effective reforms 5. Win new federal funding

across the generative insight into funding for

6. Help build community fabric through schools 7. Fix education funding gaps long-term

education, both for long-term economic outcomes and for the real quality of life for families and communities.

Guiding Principles

In the Fall 2012 edition of the HotSpring Quarterly, we detailed the central concepts and practical aims of generative economic policy, by looking at Generative Organic Optimization Demand (G.O.O.D.) and

Expanding intellectual capital

G.O.O.D.-relative economic thinking. We introduced the idea of generative organic reinforcements in the following categories: biological, structural, intellectual, political

works to create value and long-term human and economic prosperity for individuals, communities and states, r equir es an investment in the intellectual development of

and community. The last three cannot be secured without adequate learner empowerment in our educational policy, and the biological and structural reinforcements

the individual student, not a numbersfocused model of funding that plays a carrotand-stick game with the quality of services and resources available to students in need.

Generative education funding policy requires specific devotion to the principle that what

are also much harder to achieve if individuals, families and communities, lack access to the full scope of opportunities that come with a discipline-diverse full-spectrum

Better and more abundant resources are not automatically generated through aggressive cutting and punitive testing models; there are real financing, staffing and

free and democratic education. With that in mind, we propose here a series of central aims that will allow policy makers to consider and to build in all five

pedagogical practices that expand the resources available to learners, and those best practices include a wide range of disciplines that public authorities, often with

kinds of reinforcements, across the policy

little close connection to the classroom

experience, are all too fond of eliminating in

reinforcements of generative organic

service of pretended but not necessarily constructive fiscal austerity. Generative educational policy must include the reorganization of funding priorities to

optimization demand-based reasoning—needs to be available in lived space, at the human scale, so that a given community's unique organic optimizing activities can thrive and

achieve generative outcomes—that is to say: an ongoing expansion of the overall educational resource base, such that real students, in real need, see real and

extend out into the future. Community resilience, and the integrity and fairness of our political and economics systems, require the building of intellectual

substantial improvements to the range and depth of experiences available to them as learners. By providing an expanded range and depth of resources for learners, they are

capital, around and for and within each human being who participates in that community.

empowered to become not only better students, but scholars, thinkers, innovators, entrepreneurs and conscientious, ethical, engaged citizens. We cannot do better at this

Against counterproductive punitive measures The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act's punitive approach to funding, as relating to

without a generative approach, and the generative approach will help us in all of the key areas of educational policy that affect students' ability to learn, and to adapt to new

test-score performance, has generated two major obstacles to improving the educational resource spectrum within which the nation's students must situate themselves:

and more complex learning environments. Intellectual capital, at the individual level, is a fundamental good that benefits the wider society, especially in an open democracy,

1) First of all, it created a direct and overwhelming incentive to alter curricular substance in order to "teach the test", favoring specific fields of inquiry and skill

where so much depends on the quality and rationality of the participation of individuals and small groups in the political process. To privilege the intellectual reinforcements of

sets that are useful in taking and passing "high-stakes tests"; 2) Next, it has had an adverse impact on funding for the neediest school districts.

G.O.O.D.-driven economics is to provide society with a stronger foundation, a more secure metaphysics—the organization of our ideas, our worldview, and the parameters

While it may have seemed in many ways a valid experiment at the time, the logic of the punitive response turns out to have been built around the idea that ignoring

within which we imagine ethical obligation and generalized shared responsibility in an open democracy. Communities need strong intellectual reinforcements of their unique

the problem would cause it to resolve itself—i.e., if we revoke funding, people will perform better (as if underpaid teachers, underfunded school districts

organic optimizing activities, and educational potential—which provides those intellectual

and poor families, were deliberately

base, and expanding these is central to

underperforming because they felt there was so much easy money coming through the door).

establishing a generative policy trajectory, along which the use of resources leads to the generation of more such resources.

Ultimately, we can see that a failure to fund those practices that directly empower learners at the human scale—this may include directly funding more teachers, more textbooks, more art and music, more sports,

Education spending R.O.I. Education funding is one of the highestreturn forms of investment of public funds in the lives of ordinary people, helping to create

more in-house school libraries, more science labs, more school trips, more valuable educational experiences for those who can't afford to fund it themselves—is a failure to

great opportunities for economic improvement and ultimately generating significant increases in tax revenue for states and municipalities. The other side of this coin

produce better educational outcomes, plain and simple. It is the generative lens, informed by the intention of addressing generative organic optimization demand, that allows us

is that steep cuts to education spending have a downward spiral effect, often causing the most qualified and effective teachers, those whose experience is also needed to properly

to see this. So to expand the resource base for empowering learners, we need to redefine what, exactly, that r esour ce base is comprised of.

train the next generation of career educators, to retire. The effect is a rapid and exaggerated deterioration in the overall quality of education in the affected communities.

The generative economic approach to funding patterns looks at whether a given project or

Policy makers need to accept that "education dollars" first of all have a much higher -than-average return-on-investment ratio than almost any other type of public

program has the capacity to expand the basic resources on which economic activity, innovation, prosperity and successful pr oblem-solving, ar e built. The mor e

investment, but they must also understand that the real value of that spending far exceeds the numerical improvement of balance sheets, as relating to tax revenues

resource-expansive an activity, the more generative its economic output.

generated within a given geographical area, over time. Virtually every aspect of civil society benefits materially, substantially and persistently, from improvements to the

Redefining the resource-base

In relation to learner empowerment and quality of educational opportunity, the

educational resource base and quality of experience available to empowered learners, working as individuals and in small groups. This understanding must infor m our

availability of modes of instruction and discipline-specific learning strategies that go beyond the "teach the test" way of thinking are crucial aspects of a healthy resource

examination of the value of spending on

education, not the false assumption that

model are: a sense of structure, creative

education spending is a dollar-for-dollar zerosum game where reducing spending is an automatic improvement to value returned, and therefore an always responsible practice.

thinking capacity, an idea of fairness, and the ability to use inferential reasoning, without making irrational leaps or giving in to lazy short-cut oriented thinking.

Reasoning, not test-taking

Language ability

Focusing on the kind of educational outcomes that actually do improve long-term

Another highly generative component of a complete learning process is language skills:

educational performance ("teaching the test" is not one of these) can help to redirect dwindling funds to where they will have the most positive impact on student development,

not only do students benefit from a rigorous, far-ranging exploration of the details of their own native language, but familiarization with, or experience in, a second language can

and possibly protect funds that would otherwise be seen as vulnerable and easy to explain cutting.

dramatically increase their ability to deal with new infor mation and new conceptual environments as they mature in their studies and in their careers. Strong second-language

What does $1 in funding buy?

ability also helps to forge stronger connections across the fabric of society, with positive effects for both commercial enterprise and civic engagement.

With these principles in mind, a comprehensive re-imagining of the aims of

Let students learn

Educational Methodology

public education funding, as relates to performance, can help create an environment where teachers can more ably apply their skills, motivate and engage their students,

Each of these is a complex task that requires specific attention over many years, but the outcome of a successful effort to cultivate these abilities is a marked increase on standardized test scores, due not to instructional bias ("teaching to the test"), but

cultivate active participation in the work of learning, and develop new, more humanizing metrics that will allow for a more complete assessment of students' growth and progress.

Basic intellectual skills

rather as a result of students' having developed the capacity to acquire knowledge through active, deductive reasoning and apply intellect in the moment. Learning is a

Beyond math, reading, diction and attention to detail, the key intellectual skills that need

process of forging new intellectual terrain, by active participation in the instructional process; students not trained to think and

to be developed by any successful learning

reason will not be as able to acquire new

Knowledge is Wealth 1

information or enter into new fields of study. Knowledge is wealth in its purest form, fully possessed by and inseparable from the individual. The application of deliberately obtained knowledge to complex situations

Expect to get what you pay for Spending the right amount on the right

establishes the sovereignty of the individual. Variety is wealth insofar as it offers an array of options that may be combined in countless ways to confront the problems of living in the

constructive inputs (like high-quality teaching, new technology, facilities for recreation, sports, art and music education) is an asset; over time, it builds not just the

w o r l d . Va r i e t y i n k n o w l e d g e o f f e r s adaptability, and adaptability is the key to survival and prosperity at all levels. Ultimately, resilience, rooted in such

r eputation and attraction of a given community, but the talent base tied to that community, which means a draw on income and revenues for the state. Under-investing

flexibility, is the real meaning or value of wealth, of any kind.

in such programs means planning the longterm decline of a community. Consider increased spending in key areas a vital means of fixing the budgetary problems plaguing the

Within the intelligent recourse to variety, there exists for humanity a maximum

Community-building

possibility for resilience in changing and adverse conditions. Inherent in this variety of choice is not only existence, but the possibility of freedom. Choice is not freedom

Education is more than just wealth of

as such, but together with intellect, offers us the possibility of really approaching it.

system.

character; it builds wealth in the community. Higher levels of education, not just in terms of the quality of local schools but the longterm opportunity for children emerging from

It could be said that all social ills are the direct result of insufficient communicative agreements between and among individual people and the constituents they represent, whatever the political structure within which those ills arise. It could be said that most

a given community, and therefore of their families more broadly, tend to correlate to lower levels of crime, higher levels of earning potential and an expanded capacity to build

political structures are the direct result of insufficient eloquence, having led to the use of force where it would otherwise not be suggested at all. In order to engage in

assets and savings, all of which feed back into a virtuous loop of security and prosperity.

dialogue, or in heated disagreement, we need to have an agreed semantic base, use shared measurements, make common assumptions

î&#x20AC;&#x201A;e discussion of "Knowledge as Wealth" can be found online at: http://www.casavaria.com/hotspring/groups/ education-policy/forum/topic/we-should-emphasize-reasoning-knowledge-as-wealth-to-spur-education/ 1

about the world —we live on the Earth, it is

stir the creative process of learning in the

round, it has a geological history, there were civilizations that pre-date our own, trees that shed their leaves in winter and those that don’t are categorically different—, so at least

widest number of young people possible. The more able they are to reason, the more able they are to learn, to learn quickly and across a broad range of subjects, to get beyond the

we know what concepts we agree or disagree over.

limitations of their own experience and maximize their potential.

Culture, the vague and potent mix of ideas, traditions, changes, principles,

What has any of this to do with funding? As mentioned in the section on Guiding

language, will and expression, which defines all civil structures and to some degree all human communication, is an abstract category within which we conceptualize the

Principles, above, it is this ability to reason that makes for more able, more talented students. A process that involves trying to build a community of able test-takers is not

intelligent diversity of a society. This is why diversity becomes a key element in the project of building an educated, adaptable democratic society.

the same as a successful educational process, so we have to be sure we steer all funding priorities toward the more effective, worthier goal of cultivating a talent for

The more numerous the contributions, the more tolerant and open the means of administering and delivering cultural expressions of all sorts, the more knowledge

complex, spontaneous, informed reasoning, if we are to maximize the return on our investment in public education.

there is available, the more possibility for new directions there is, the more resilient a system of human interaction within which those cultural expressions occur, will be. To

Specifics to be Explored Fact & Detail

benefit from such diverse inputs, from such pr oductive oppositions, frictions and propositions, is to gain vital cultural and organizational resilience, to increase the

Programs that allow students to explore the facts of history, of mathematics, language and science, will provide the most concrete foundation for long-term learning capacity. But fact-oriented instruction cannot be limited to rote learning; it must include a

wealth —as opposed to expending it— of a community, projecting its future potential as far as possible, in as many directions as possible.

focus on detail and the ways in which detail and context shape meaning. Social studies cannot be phased out in favor of multiplechoice history; layered English study

The ability to reason is the basis for a civilization’s deep resilience, so we should emphasize reasoning and knowledge as wealth, as the bases for wealth in the life of

(phonics, reading, writing and speech) cannot be phased out in favor of multiple-choice grammar testing.

every individual. Our education policy needs to work toward methods that do the most to

(like athletics, debate and social justice Proposals:

awareness programs).

1. Texts that give detail and analysis along with historical fact

Proposals:

2. Promote active, critical reading

1. Protect funding for after-school and interschool sports

3. Promote debate and public speaking 4. Examine overlap between language ability and talent for science and related fields

2. Promote community recreational sports outside of schools

5. Test advanced language learning as

3. Launch social justice awareness programs prior to high school

means to expand student capacity to find and consume fact

4. As above, promote debate and public speaking 5. Civics classes, including ethics component

Focus on Fairness Without an understanding of fairness (i.e. the meaning of rules, the ethical principle that one should not do to others what one would not accept oneself), the actual understanding

Focus on Creativity Creative thinking encourages the mind to make connections, to seek the information

of fact in human context is diminished. If we consider that a complete and effective education, worthy of the public spending devoted to the work, must produce

t h a t b r e e d s a b r o a d e r, y e t s h a r p e r understanding of complex truths. Learning the vast array of specific facts inherent in the study of advanced physics, or biochemistry,

intellectually active, engaged citizens capable of guiding a democratic society toward the best expression of its ideals, then we must understand that knowledge without a sense

or structural engineering, requires a mind that is agile enough to see beyond the strict limits of one idea or set of ideas, and make connections between apparently distinct

of ethics and fairness is not conducive to that kind of moral engagement with community or the rule of law.

realms of experience. Programs that foster creative thinking (like arts and theater) are necessary for developing the ability of students to think,

Fairness makes education work in the human sense, because to achieve or understand it, one has to exercise complex subjective reasoning, with the confidence and discipline to be both subjective and just, so

not just for themselves, but in ways that synthesize fact and concept to reach a more thorough understanding of complex realities. Without that base of lear ning in the

we must give real funding and real time to programs that cultivate a sense of fairness

humanities, students are less prepared to do the truly difficult work later on in fields that

would appear more logic-based and

practices for achieving the highest expression

structured around empirical fact.

of their talent.

Proposals:

1. Expand funding for music and art in

1. Extracurricular academic competitions

struggling schools

(math, science, writing)

2. Create programs that foster an interest in writing and language

2. Performing arts (theatre, music, seasonal productions)

3. Expand funding for lab study in sciences

3. I n s p o r t , e l e v a t e s p o r t s m a n s h i p , leadership

4. Test programs that blend civics with writing and public speaking

4. Encourage â&#x20AC;&#x153;area of focusâ&#x20AC;? learning, for students to pursue interests, plan for future

5. Promote study of successful achievements in innovation

5. EXPAND ACCESS: a. Native-language learning must be a priority (so students maximize their potential according to character and

Reward Discipline, Expand Access Standardized testing tends to work on the assumption that all minds represent the

talent, and not language limitations)

same knowledge in the same way. Though psychologists, cognitive scientists and educators, all know this to be false, the false assumption continues to dominate our

b. Adult education needs to be part of overall generative policy framework, allowing access, ability to reach full potential

thinking about student preparedness and per formance. There is no particular intellectual faculty that is cultivated fully by a focus on test-taking, but cultivating a

Â Accounting & Funding Clearly, the issue most difficult to resolve and

disciplined approach to study and learning.

most central to planning an education policy based on generative economic strategy is funding. Where do the dollars come from during hard times, when there is no longer

Serious resources need to be devoted to rewarding students whose approach to study and learning is disciplined, consistent and sincere. Teachers can know this through more personal interaction with students, which means class sizes need to remain smaller, and classroom methods should

enough money to go around? We know all the standard mechanisms, some of which are not an option in California, due to constitutional provisions limiting discretionary control over

encourage students to explore their own best

the budget).

Normally, we have some variation on the

the elimination of spending blocks; reshaping

following: raise taxes, sell bonds, move funding from longer-term spending priorities, furlough state workers, lay off a certain number of employees, etc. The logic tends to

the cost trajectory simply aims to make existing spending paradigms more generative, more efficient in achieving the stated purpose of that spending.

be to cut wherever possible, in order to use those same dollars somewhere else. But there might be a smarter way to find that money, which would be to look at all spending

Proposals: 1. E n e r g y : m o v e t o w a r d 1 0 0 % l o c a l , renewable energy

through the lens of generative economics: if we buy $4 worth of future revenue with $1 of education spending today, that $1 is actually worth $4. If we buy $0.01 worth of future

2. Opening and closing hours: consider resource-expanding efficacy

government efficacy with $1 of spending on electricity, that $1 is worth $0.01.

3. Administrative efficiency: repeated tasks? inflated spending?

These are just hypotheticals, but we can do a complex enough analysis of education

4. Study generative profile of key teaching methods, programs, skill-sets, funding dynamics

and other public spending to locate areas where spending is not just generative, or perhaps is sapping resources at an alarming rate, but

those nonstate where

a. A p p l y g e n e r a t i v e l e n s a c r o s s education, budget policy domains

simple adjustments might make it possible to achieve massive savings. For instance, outfitting all schools with solar power arrays large enough to power the school might allow

b. Establish guidelines for generative pr ograms designed to maximize independent student intellectual

the schools to sell energy back to the grid, while spending nothing on energy over the long term, a net gain instead of a costly expenditure.

c. Consider community-building aspects of successful education spending (opportunity, reduced crime)

development

5.Â Aim to expand investment in key programs

Such generative adjustments require investment, admittedly, but federal and state grants, perhaps even private grants, could become available if such strategies are

a. Public-private partnerships to spur vibrant generative education funding paradigm

adopted, that build efficiency and sustainability into the system. There is a fundamental difference between cost-cutting measures and measures designed to reshape

c. Seek legislation to promote generative models of education spending

b. Reward best generative models

d. Use community-building data to

the cost trajectory: it may seem like semantics, but it isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. Cost-cutting privileges

secure shared funding from other

budget priorities (public health, public

assimilate and comprehend new information

safety, employment, even pensions)

rapidly, effectively and in a way that situates what they have learned in a cumulative order of dynamic, adaptable knowledge. Some don't have this facility. But we know how to

There are common-sense ways we can enact intelligent, creative, immediately-operative school funding policy that responds to

cultivate more effective, more adaptive learning practices, and we know it does not come most readily through teaching students to hunt and peck among multiple choice

considerations of generative organic optimization demand. Many of these are wellknown and even old-fashioned standards of the "well-rounded" educational approach

options.

followed by private college preparatory schools and well-funded public schoolsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;the kind that give students options for extracurricular activity that range from football to environmental science, community service to debate, drama, film-making and radio and TV-studio management. There are, however, more affordable options for districts that don't enjoy such splendor: these start with protecting highquality educational materials and learner empower ment experiences, such as a substantial on-campus library, up-to-date computer technology, athletic and creative experience opportunities and the direct and conscientious empowerment of educators to

Join the HotSpring Networkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s discussion on education policy innovation:

empower learners by not teaching the test. Making sure students have the basic materials they need to fully participate in a discipline-diverse lear ner -empowering

http://www.casavaria.com/hotspring/groups/ education-policy/forum

educational process is the only way to prepare them for a life of adaptive, expansive learning, of the kind we all need now. It is evident to anyone who has spent time in front of a classroom that some students come in better prepared than others. Some have had experiences that advantage them, sometimes in numerous ways; some enjoy the benefits of an attitude toward information, learning and knowledge, that allows them to

Buckminster Fuller described the human brain as â&#x20AC;&#x153;natureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most powerful anti-entropy engineâ&#x20AC;?. The significance of that observation lies in the fact that we often perceive ineluctable entropy as the only true fate of any system that, for however short a time, pretends order. In fact, Fuller argued, the human brain is specifically designed to interfere with the process of unraveling inherent in all systems, and to build order sustainably into the fabric of anything it comes in contact with. We recognize that this is the driving force behind science, politics, anthropology and economics, and we hope to use these pages as an opportunity to show how insight, the quest for knowledge, real human learning and ingenuity, can help us to transcend the unforgiving limitations of the physical universe and achieve something better, something more valuable, and more conducive to mutual thriving, than what would occur had we never sought or discovered that insight.

newly available tractors, powerful plows, and

Dust Bowl Revisited

mechanized harvesters to turn over the sod that had long sustained Native American tribes and millions of bison.

by Janet Larsen

The plowing began during years of rain,

On October 18, 2012, the Associated Press reported that “a massive dust storm swirling

and early harvests were good. prices, buoyed by demand and guarantees during the First encouraged ever more land to be

reddish-brown clouds over northern Oklahoma triggered a multi-vehicle accident along a major interstate…forcing police to shut down the heavily traveled roadway amid

High wheat government World War, turned over.

But then the Great Depression hit. The price of wheat collapsed and fields were abandoned. When the drought arrived in the early 1930s, the soils blew, their fertility

near blackout conditions.” Farmers in the region had recently plowed fields to plant winter wheat. The bare soil—desiccated by the relentless drought that smothered nearly

stolen by the relentless wind. Stripped of its living carpet, freed from the intricate matrix of perennial prairie grass roots, the earth took flight.

two-thirds of the continental United States during the summer and still persists over the Great Plains—was easily lifted by the passing strong winds, darkening skies from southern Nebraska, through Kansas, and into Oklahoma. Observers could not help but harken back to the 1930s Dust Bowl that ultimately covered 100 million acres in western Kansas, the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles, northeastern New Mexico, and southeastern Colorado. Yet when asked if that was the direction the region was headed, Oklahoma’s Secretary of Agriculture Jim Reese was unequivocal: “That will never happen again.” In the early decades of the twentieth century, earnest settlers of the semi-arid Plains, along with opportunistic “suitcase farmers” out to make a quick dollar, plowed under millions of acres of native prairie grass.

Credit: Arthur Rothstein, Library of Congress

Clouds as tall as mountains and black as night rolled over the land. Regular dust storms pummeled the homesteaders; the big ones drew notice when they clouded the sun

Assured that “rain follows the plow,” and lured by government incentives, railroad promises, and hopes of carving out a place for their families, these farmers embraced the

in New York City and Washington, DC, even

sullying ships hundreds of miles out in the

Oklahoma, and Colorado was slashed by

Atlantic. Dunes formed and spread, burying railroad tracks, fences, and cars. “Dust pneumonia” claimed lives, often those of children. People fled the land in droves.

nearly three-quarters from its 1931 high of 411 million bushels, taking until 1947 to reach that level again. In 2012, the wheat output of these four states exceeds 700 million bushels, a third of the U.S. wheat harvest.

In The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan describes the topsoil loss, how a “rich cover that had taken several thousand years to develop was disappearing day by day.” The sodbusters had quickly illuminated the dangerous hubris in the 1909 Bureau of Soils proclamation: “The soil is the one indestructible, immutable asset that the nation possesses. It is the one resource that cannot be exhausted; that cannot be used up.” The rechristened Great Plains looked like it would revert back to its original name: the

Credit: D.L Kernodle, Library of Congress

Great American Desert.

After World War II, well-drilling and pumping technologies allowed farmers to tap

When a series of dust storms reached farflung Washington, DC, in the spring of 1935, a reluctant Congress was finally convinced to

into the Ogallala aquifer, a vast reservoir of water beneath the Plains, stretching from southern South Dakota through the Texas Panhandle. Irrigation expanded, with center-

allocate resources to help stabilize the soil. With government subsidies and direction from the newly created Soil Conservation Service, practices were introduced to help

pivot sprinklers creating the green circles overlain on brown squares that are familiar to anyone who has flown over the central United States.

hold down the earth. Grasses were replanted; shelter belts of trees were planted to slow the persistent winds; contour far ming or terracing was used to farm in line with the

In recent decades irrigation has allowed the traditional Corn Belt to move westward onto drier lands. Kansas, for instance, sometimes called “the Wheat State,”

natural shape of the land; strip cropping was used to leave some protective cover on the soil; and crop rotations and fallow periods allowed the land to rest.

harvesting one-sixth of the U.S. crop, now produces as much corn as it does wheat. The wheat is primarily rainfed, but more than half the corn is irrigated.

While some of the Dust Bowl land never recovered, the settled communities becoming ghost towns, many of the once-affected areas have become major food producers. By 1933

As extraction of the underground water has increased, however, water tables have fallen. The depletion is particularly

wheat production in Kansas, Texas,

concerning in the Central and Southern Plains where replenishment of foreshadowing an resource. In the

there is virtually no the aquifer from rainfall, end to the use of this finite former Dust Bowl states,

irrigation had its boom, but in many areas it is beyond its peak. With wells going dry, some farmers have returned to the more-common rainfed wheat farming, which typically yields far less than with irrigation; others have gotten out of wheat all together.

Credit: Dan L. Perlman, EcoLibrary.org

In Kansas the average drop in the water table is 23 feet (7 meters), but drops of 150

With soil conservation measures in place, when drought revisited the Plains in the

feet or more have been reported. The fall in water tables is even greater in the Texas Panhandle. Statewide, Texas’ irrigated area is down more than 20 percent from its high

1950s, the mid-1970s, the early 2000s, and again in 2011-2012—when Texas and Oklahoma baked in their hottest summers on record—a full-blown Dust Bowl did not

nearly 40 years ago. Only recently, after the water table fell fast during the back-to-back droughts, have limits been placed on withdrawals from individual wells there to

develop. But will the ground hold forever? The United States is by far the world’s leading grain exporter; thus the fate of the nation’s “breadbasket” matters for food prices, and

slow the depletion. According to scientists at the University of Texas at Austin and the U.S. Geological Survey, if current rates of extraction continue, irrigation over a third of

food security, around the globe. While our understanding of and respect for the soil is greater now than it was at the turn of the last century, erosion still exceeds

the southern High Plains will be untenable within 30 years.

new soil formation on most acres. The combination of higher temperatures, prolonged drought, and irrigation limitations turns the prospects for continued large-scale

Beyond the farm, climatologists are making it clear that the recent droughts are exactly the sort of event predicted to come more frequently as the planet heats up. So rainfed crops are in trouble, too. Models agree that with the global warming in store

crop production on the Plains grim. In case going through the worst recession since the Great Depression was not enough to remind Americans of hard times in the country’s

absent dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, much of the western United States —from Kansas to California—could enter into a long-term state of dryness, what physicist

past, climate change and the pressures of population and consumption growth pushing farmers to produce ever more food on limited land will make it harder to avoid a repeat of

Joseph Romm has termed “dustbowlification.”

history.

USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service

For Additional Information Lester R. Brown, Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012).

This article first appeared Nov. 16, 2012, as Plan B Update 109, on the Earth Policy Institute website, http://www.earth-policy.org

Lester R. Brown, “Rising Temperature Raising Food Prices,” Plan B Update, 8 August 2012.

Lester R. Brown, “The Earth is Shrinking: Advancing Deserts and Rising Seas Squeezing Civilization,” Plan B Update, 15 November 2006.

The Author

Janet Larsen, “Deserts Advancing, Civilization Retreating,” Plan B Update, 27 March 2003.

Janet Larsen is the Director of Research for the Earth Policy Institute.

Janet Larsen and Sara Rasmussen, “2011: A Year of Weather Extremes, with More to Come,” Eco-Economy Indicator, 31 January 2012. From Other Sources Timothy Egan, The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great Dust Bowl (New York: Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006). David R. Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007). Bridget R. Scanlon et al., “Groundwater Depletion and Sustainability of Irrigation in the U.S. High Plains and Central Valley,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 109, no. 24 (12 June 2012), pp. 9,320–25. Richard Seager et al., “Model Projections of an Imminent Transition to a More Arid Climate in Southwestern North America,” Science, vol. 316 (25 May 2007), pp. 1,181-84. LINKS PBS: Ken Burns film “The Dust Bowl”

those who are not considered by the

Quipu.cc

economic reporting infrastructure at work in shaping the policy espoused by public officials and major investors.

User-made economic atlas for the 21st century to launch this spring

ProjectQuipu, now online at Quipu.cc, The way we get information about the economic landscape is skewed toward those who benefit from policies enacted in the interests of those already in power. In other

aims to build a user-made economic atlas of activity at the human scale. The purpose of this project is to allow stakeholders normally excluded from economic policy negotiations to

words, our economic informational system is skewed toward the privileged, and effectively perpetuates a “trickle-down” model for measuring progress, even as the same system

not only have their say, but to correct vital misconceptions communicated by a flawed and incomplete economic reporting model and to steer policy—locally, nationally and

produces numbers showing that model is not adequate to fomenting sustainable economic frameworks that secure and advance the democratic possibilities of an expanded

internationally—towards a more intelligent response to the problems facing humanity in our world, as we live it.

middle class. The better our leading economic indicators do, the better the wealthy do, and eventually, we hope, that “generalized”

the principle that economic information affects all people everywhere. The word “stakeholder” is often treated as a euphemism for those victimized by policies directed at

prosperity will go far enough to allow new affluence to reach those not already enjoying the boon and squabble of perpetualized growth. The financial collapse of 2008—which

benefitting powerful interests. But the protection of such stakeholders also protects each of us who are not directly victimized by those particular policies. It does so, because

to many seemed a mysterious “perfect storm” of real estate market correction, unraveling mortgage-backed derivative securities and extreme indebtedness among households and

at any given time, policy decisions are being made that will affect our lives, through the fabric of economic activity; often, these are governmental decisions that will affect us

small businesses—was in fact, measurably and crucially, the result of too much consumer spending capacity having been transferred to those who least need to spend

through the private market economy, and often it is so-called “free marketeers” who champion that very process, whereby decisions made in government offices benefit

or invest to sustain their quality of life.

them to the detriment of the overwhelming majority.

One key feature of the Quipu.cc project is

What causes money to move through our economy is not well-enough understood, if we assume that such a dynamic can be

Quipu is intended to shed light on the misappropriation of resources, the forceful redistribution of wealth, by the often flawed

sustained, and what is missing is the voice of

structural mechanics of political and

to craft a more relevant, human-scale model

economic power, and the many ways in which misunderstanding of economic reality contributes to or actively determines the degraded condition of so many human beings

for economic information and application. The following is a brief conceptual description of what we believe is possible through this project:

and communities across the world.

Examining the manner in which financial news is reported in the popular media, the HotSpring Network proposes to create a system whereby live-update, rss-technology,

Origins

micro-blogging, spontaneous video creation, and financial and editorial expertise, come together to produce a reliable up-to-theminute resource for evaluating broad

The quipu [pronounced keep-Ăź] was a system of strings, knots, colors and patterns, created in each case by the individual agent whose job was to oversee the history of taxation and tributes offered to the Inca (the emperor of

economic trends and engagements, without limiting analysis to single-parameter references like GDP, stock indices or government-generated statistics aimed at

the realm of the Incas) by his subjects in a given region. It provides an evaluation of geography, social composition, currency and chronicle.

assessing employment, consumer behavior or the viability of a given rate of interest for a given financial service.

The quipu was used to evaluate the state of economic and political affairs through a dynamic system of spontaneous coding, a system open to the introduction of new

It is often thought that in order to organize ideas or to put some kind of order to any analysis, one needs uniformity, a limited number of generic categories and a single system of uncomplicated parameters by

elements, categories and coding patterns, at nearly any time. The quipuâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s creator might have been the only living soul able to fully decode its meaning, which was, in itself, a

which to categorize each subject under review. But the truth is, this uniformity is not and will not be the rule of any part of lived reality. Complexity is much more the rule in

way of establishing enhanced economic value in the work of formatting and maintaining the document itself.

human experience, and we need to find ways to intelligently assess and address the complexities that actually influence the situation of any given community at work

Power could be decentralized through the artistry of the individuals who coded the documents through which the poetry of human need, alliances and relationships, was to be conveyed. Project Quipu is an endeavor

within the economic landscape. To emerge from the fog of flawed, incomplete and opportunistically limited economic and financial analysis, means we

to create a global economic forum, a usermade atlas of economic infor mation, reporting, negotiation and planning, in order

need to come to grips with the fact that all

resources, all functions or ‘services’, be they

in a significant and problematic way, that

natural or the product of human ingenuity, figure somehow in economic values at all levels. There may be no clear way to quantify their contribution or mercantilize them, but

they are indispensable and dynamic values. They exceed all calculable value of our own activities, which without their contribution would simply not make sense or could not

they are there, and nothing can be fully understood in economic terms without seeing this. An equation that balances out only because inconvenient variables are ignored

take place at all. Metaphorically, their incalculable immensity could be compared to the way the tides at the edge of a great sea shape and

does not tell the whole truth.

define the shoreline and the kind of activities that can be conducted at that point of contact. It is necessary to think of how such information could then be integrated into a

We could calculate, for instance, that to do by artificial means what nature does of its own accord in a handful of basic environmental ‘services’ stabilization or the global —avoiding discussions processes such as new

(such as climate fresh water supply of such complex species evolution,

more complete and less untruthful matrix of economic calculations. What parameters determine downward and upward trends, and what do such trends

deep-sea current patterning or ultraviolet light blockage and refraction)—we would have to spend well in excess of 10 times the entire global economic output (using GDP in sum as

mean for our ‘traditional’ economic footing, financial activities, international treaty obligations on issues like trade, water, farm subsidies, and transportation? These

a base). And that is for just a handful of basic environmental life-support services.

questions only begin to gain relevance when we see that the ‘macro’ view is in fact far broader than the segmented vignette-style of economics we are accustomed to pursuing,

Recognizing this problem in the way we identify and examine economic information helps us to take note of the immense ecological influence we have erased from economic calculations, seeing it as inconvenient or even unquantifiable, in the

for the level of mathematical and sociological comfort it affords. So, everything is very big, all numbers are astronomical, nature is everything and more,

terms we are accustomed to using. But it does not help us to place a useful economic value on such influence over the economic infrastructure of civilization, globally or

we cannot make it all fit into a nice little frame… yes, yes, yes, this is true and it’s a problem. But what can we do to apply this observation to our economic outlook in

locally. For that, we need to find ways to look at what actually happens, at the human scale.

general or to programming the calculations for this quixotic pursuit of an intregrated generative economics?

It may be enough to say, though this shades all following calculations of any kind

decommissioning the plant, clean-up of all dangerous substances or contaminated panels or constructions, then pay all the expenses for containment and security, for 1 to 10 million years, during which you will not

1. Correct the Errors We first need to correct the errors that are already built into our economic calculations, and which are part of the traditional economic outlook: for energy. Why do we not long-term maintenance, national technological

be able to take any profit from your activities. The offer would not be convincing. So, in our calculation of the usefulness of such technologies, we need to take very seriously

example, nuclear count the costs of security, protecting secrets, pollution

the reality that those costs will be paid or those operations will not be successfully carried out. Though we may see the economic value now, and tell ourselves as a society, it’s

clean-up and, above all, the long-term hermetically-sealed containment of nuclear waste?

worth it to get the gain we get from “cheap” energy now, we need to see clearly what those costs look like, across the entire spectrum of human activity, how they will affect life at the

Primarily, because that last figure requires examining the huge costs of sealing radioactive materials in a hermitically-sealed, non-conductive container, immune to corrosion from radioactivity, for between 1

human scale, throughout the life of the project, and what they will take away from us in the future.

million and 10 million years, which may take us only to the half-life of the radioactivity of the spent fuel.

The calculations need to be wholecloth and transparent. The healthy functioning of any market depends on there not being unreliable pockets of secrecy and deceit where the eye is fooled and the ‘magic’ of

Depleted uranium, for example, which is used as a heavy metal for armor and bombcasings in US military machinery, has a radioactive half-life of 4.5 billion years. 1 to 10 million years to abide by public health and

economic value just a trick.

safety laws and prevent widespread radioactive contamination of the natural environment or of human habitat.

2. Integrate and Comprehend

We can calculate these costs, but they

The founding principle, the goal and the

remain unimaginably vast. Imagine telling a businessman—it is irrelevant whether he is serious or not, talented or not—we would like you to build a nuclear plant for electricity

challenge of this undertaking is to integrate and comprehend in an integrated manner the economic, ecological, financial and spending data that account for real long-term viability

generation, move toward taking a profit after a few decades, maybe make a few billion dollars over another few decades, then pay for

and prosperity at the human level. It begins in the theoretical realm, and through analysis and discussion, could reach the moment of

practical application, likely with much new

moments which may appear numerically

information technology put into the process. The model will be the physical metaphor of the Inca quipu, a tool for measuring taxation in an empire that combined urban centers,

similar may in fact have amply divergent significance. It is therefore vital to understand that any data with real impact will emerge either more slowly or more

agriculture, nomadic hunter-gatherer bands and sea-faring fishing communities and traders.

rapidly than our ability to perceive it, just out of reach of our attempts to ‘capture the moment’.

The problem will be, evidently, how do we

We cannot take a ‘snapshot’ and live the

program moment economic and, how

into a matrix for moment-bycalculation of an international outlook, values we cannot quantify? do we allow for a dynamic, bottom-

captured moment at the same time, so we must manage that lapse in time appropriately and understand that it carves out a hollow in the information available to us. This nature of

up intregration of new code, new parameters, and new paradigms into what should be, in theory, a consistent model for evaluating global economic trends, beyond the bounds of

the moment helps to shape the method, so to top off the aggravating complexity of this challenge: we cannot assume at any time that we have rendered the definitive picture of a

the traditionally ‘economic’?

global economy. It escapes our grip like water…

3. Moment vs. Method Our Project These are questions that need answers, and will form the basis of ProjectQuipu. Allow for discussion, criticism, analysis and the contest of ideas, to guide us toward a series of solutions that help make such a matrix

We can provide people across the world with a platform on which to raise their voices, to have a say in the development of policies that will affect their lives and the lives of those

possible.

around them and who succeed them in their culture and in their region. We can correct the inequities and inefficiencies of intensely distorted markets currently biased in favor of

ProjectQuipu proposes as a rule that we not shy away from seemingly impossible calculations, because they likely contain vital

entrenched interests, and so liberate human imagination and potential, to do real problem solving that generates the possibility of real and sustained prosperity not corrosive of

economic data which may come to us in forms not quantifiable but in fact relevant and comprehensible, when seen through the adequate lens.

human quality of life or of the natural environment.

One key feature will be timing: as with any economic reality, the moment brings context that cannot be discarded, and two

Our project begins as an attempt to observe and to make sense of the global fabric of economic activity, blending highlevel reporting with anecdotal analysis, effectively putting global policy-makers and ordinary people at the same table. Join Project Quipu today, and help us start to build a more sensible, more honest, more open, more human future, in which people from all parts of the world enjoy not only the expectation of basic sustenance, but of dignity, liberty, opportunity and the right to build something smarter than what befalls them.

e Hot Spring Network is founded on the view that genuinely revolutionary ideas for solving the most intractable crises come more easily when open and imaginative minds collaborate, without prejudice. e poet Linda Hogan wrote, in her book Dwellings: “What we are really searching for is a language that heals [our] relationship [with the rest of the natural order], one that takes the side of the amazing and fragile life on our life-giving earth…” Today’s human population faces emerging crises of a complexity and a scale never before confronted by humanity. Our intention is to develop the vocabulary for over-thehorizon thinking, as rich in detail as the broad fabric of humanity, so we are ﬁt and able to deal with the complexities we face.

Visit, read & share the Hot Spring î śuarterly online, at: http://bit.ly/hotspring-q