7 minute read
Perspectives
Rinaldo S. Brutoco is the Founding President and CEO of the Santa Barbara-based World Business Academy and a co-founder of JUST Capital. He’s a serial entrepreneur, executive, author, radio host, and futurist who’s published on the role of business in relation to pressing moral, Restoring Our Planet, One Beach at a Time
In the film, 21-year-old Benjamin by mass school shootings. Your freshdown the mineral, pulling CO2 from the air. Braddock (played by Dustin man year began with Donald Trump’s “Our vision is to help reverse climate change by turning a trillion tons Hoffman), has just returned from election and only 8 percent of you of carbon dioxide into rock,” says Tom Green, executive director of Project his college graduation to his parents’ between the ages of 18 and 29 believe Vesta. The idea is to speed up a natural process that normally takes place very home in Pasadena. He has no clue that the government is functioning slowly. “When rain falls on volcanic rocks, those rocks dissolve a little bit, and about what could possibly come next, appropriately. Your graduation shares it triggers a chemical reaction that pulls carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere even as the psychedelic ‘60s were the “stage” of public opinion with the and into the water as a molecule called bicarbonate,” Green says. ramping up and a crack in our colstatistic that over 100,000 Americans Grinding up olivine, and then spreading it on beaches where ocean waves lective American culture created such have died and there is no end in sight can further break it down, triggers the same chemical reaction that pulls CO2 a wide divide that nothing the prior for the pandemic or for the downward out of the air. In the water, marine organisms use the bicarbonate to build generation ever envisioned was relspiraling economy. shells, and it will eventually end up as limestone on the floor of the ocean. evant anymore. Graduating seniors’ You already know the bad news: Some critics raise the possibility that the olivine could release heavy metexpectations that year were “up in there are no jobs, the one you thought als, although Green says that shouldn’t impact marine species. The initial the air.” At the opening of the film, you had was an offer that has now pilot will closely monitor metal concentrations in the water, sand, and tisa friend of Benjamin’s father assures been rescinded; you are mired in stusues of local organisms, as it seeks to fully understand all of the impacts of him that it is ok to not know for sure. dent debt; the Greatest Depression is the intervention. •MJ Just get into a growth opportunity for getting worse daily; there is no way your career, he says, by exhorting that you can afford to rent an apartment, “there is a great future in plastics.” let alone try to start a family; you planet at this time needs your energy can immediately begin to re-employ Plastics! are literally staring into the abyss of and your focus to co-create the world the tens of millions who have no
The reference to plastics was a way unknowing. You have my profound that should have been waiting for you work but could “share” the jobs being of saying “industry of the future” in sympathy. This is the worst year to at graduation but wasn’t. Vote so that recreated. Demand that no person is code. And, despite the destruction that graduate since Harvard opened its Senator Elizabeth Warren can get her allowed to be homeless in this once industry has unleashed upon the biodoors in 1636. That’s quite a statebill passed that would provide $2,000 great Nation that could be great again. sphere and all sentient beings, it was ment, and it’s absolutely accurate. per month to everyone over 18 in this Vote to ensure that everyone has medthe industry of the future for about Historically, we know that massive country until these twin pandemic and ical insurance coverage. Demand that four decades, until we collectively societal breakthroughs occur in times economic crises are past. Demand at we re-purpose the tens of thousands realized the destruction caused by of greatest crisis for a very simple reathe voting booth that we restore the of vacant hotel rooms that are unlikely a product that won’t biodegrade for son: if you have zero investment in the balance in our biosphere. Demand we to soon re-fill, and the shopping cencenturies. current system, you have 100 percent finally heal the original sins of Native ters that will never exit bankruptcy
Like Benjamin, unfortunately, incentive to create a new system. You American genocide and slavery as a are used creatively. Yes, you have today’s college graduates have no literally have nothing to lose. This is pre-condition for creating the more nothing to lose, but you have everyidea what to do, and see their job prosa great gift. Having nothing to lose just society we collectively long for, thing to gain. So, go vote and co-crepects as close to non-existent. Even means you can co-create a 100 percent need, and deserve. Demand that we ate the society we should have given the temporary job has disappeared, positive future. But where to start? actively close the gap between the top you this Graduation Day. Make that where one could become a waiter over Start with using all your free time to one to two percent and the bottom 90 humanely glowing, shining society be the summer while figuring out one’s turn the political system upside down. percent. Demand infrastructure repair your graduation gift to yourself. Vote future in terms of graduate school, Vote! Vote in massive numbers. Use and transportation systems deserving and co-create your sustainable future. or a permanent job, or whatever. This your spare time to organize that vote of a first world country rather than If Mr. Maguire was advising year’s graduation literally occurred in so that up and down the ballot you the decaying mess you have inheritBenjamin in 2020, he would have said the middle of a war zone with a panco-create a more just, more compased. Demand that every person who that the future opportunity was to get demic raging, a Great Depression in sionate, and more caring society that wants a job can find one. Demand stuinto sustainability. It will last longer full swing with upwards of 25 percent is sustainable. Organize and vote as if dent debt be cancelled and all tuition than plastics and give you great joy unemployment (over 40 million unemyour life depends upon it, because it from now on be free at state schools. every day on your journey. ployed not including recent graduates does! You and everyone alive on the Demand a 35-hour work week so we Congratulations Graduates! •MJ 26 MONTECITO JOURNAL “If you want peace, work for justice.” – Pope Paul VI 4 – 11 June 2020
“Plastics, Benjamin”: environmental, and social concerns for over 35 years M ost of the materials used for cleaning up oil spills are used only once, after which they are bound to end up in landfills. Now, however, scientists have created an oil-absorbing sponge that can be used A Letter to the Class of 2020 over and over again. Developed by a team led by Northwestern University, the actual sponge M ike Nichols’ 1967 iconic and classic film, for which he received the Best Director as I write this), and the climate crisis bearing down on us all with maybe ten years before massive, irreversible, itself is much like any other. What makes it special, however, is the thin coating that’s applied to it, made up of magnetic nanostructures, on a carbon-based substrate. Award among four other Academy catastrophic consequences become That substrate is both oleophilic and hydrophobic, meaning that it attracts Awards, was The Graduate. The film unavoidable. Dear Graduates of 2020, oil and repels water. As a result, the sponge can soak up over 30 times its is a masterful exploration of the malthings couldn’t get much worse than this weight in oil, without also filling up on water. aise of college graduation at a time of in the worst possible dystopian science Additionally, the magnetic aspect of the coating allows it to be moved great social turmoil. A promotional fiction novel ever conceived. You have my around the water’s surface with the help of a large ship-mounted electromagposter captured the tension brilliantly: profound sympathy. And, you carry with net, similar to those seen at auto wrecking yards. “This is Benjamin. He’s a little woryou our most profound hopes. Down the road, the technology could conceivably be adapted to selectively ried about his future.” How incredibly “We stepped into the world as it soak up and release other waterborne pollutants, such as dissolved nutrients appropriate for the times our recent was starting to fall apart,” observed from agricultural runoff or sewage. graduates are experiencing. “What Simone Williams, a Florida A&M Geohacking: Could “green sand” beaches help us fight climate change? are you going to do now?” Benjamin University 2020 graduate. You were In the Caribbean, a nonprofit called Project Vesta will soon begin testing a is asked, to which he replies, “Well, in daycare or kindergarten for 9/11. radical new way to fight climate change that involves spreading ground-up that’s a little hard to say.” Your childhood has been punctuated olivine – a cheap green mineral – over the sand, where ocean waves will break
