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Remaking the Office

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We had some water leakage issues a few weeks ago and have taken the opportunity to restore our office after ten years of constant use. The process has us deciding what is useful and what is not…also, what to store as historically relevant and what to recycle, trash, use as firestarter, etc.

One of the interesting discoveries was the transcript from the meeting we had on April 2, 2002 to ‘design’ a new venture…what would become EcoAsset Markets, Inc. It was a helpful and resourceful group of entrepreneurs – folks from SAIC, E2Value Real Estate Appraisal, TNC, FirstSearch Environmental Data, an investment advisor, etc. Ten of us ‘thought’ of EAM by the time we had lunch…it was exciting.

Building a new venture in a nascient economy is a bit like remaking the office…sorting through all that has come before to determine what has value to the future. As in the office, we’ve tried to respect and continue to use what is practical and productive…even if it is old. That includes ‘ancient’ software that is ten years old as well as a dictionary stand that is three hundred years old (I still prefer using the paper dictionary to spellcheck…somehow it connects me to the ‘root’ of the word).

This is the first opportunity for lengthy work at the computer since last Wednesday. I notice in the financial news that GM is running out of cash. The auto industry is ‘product bankrupt’ and looks to be approaching financial bankrupcy. They could use an office remake!

Minnesota Spends the Big Bucks

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Yesterday Minnesota voters approved the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment, the largest conservation ballot measure in history, according to The Trust for Public Land (TPL), a national conservation organization. At more than $5.5 billion dollars for land and water conservation, the winning measure nearly doubles the previous largest conservation ballot measure, New Jersey’s Constitutional Amendment in 1998, which dedicated $2.94 billion in sales tax to the Garden State Preservation Trust.

For the entire article

Sustainable Livelihood

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Many times over the past few years I’ve referred to our land use and environmental work in terms of their improvements to health and livelihood of communities. We have never methodically developed indicators or measures of “healthy, sustainable livelihood”…but think it is critically important.

Attached is a white paper that begins to take the issues apart and structure some approaches.

This is enormously important to the future of carbon markets and conservation finance. Without measures of social well-being we are lost.

http://www.ids.ac.uk/ids/bookshop/wp/wp72.pdf

Food Fight

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An interesting review of a new movie about eating locally produced, healthy fresh food.

The reviewer points out the shortcoming of using lots of ‘elite’ chefs to sing the virtues of fresh food when the real issues are not the value of fresh, organic foods, but how to have it available (and reasonably priced) in the neighborhoods that now see only canned and processed products on their grocery shelves.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/11/movie-review-food-fight.php

Green Jobs

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The pursuit of so-called “green jobs”-employment that contributes to protecting the environment and reducing humanity’s carbon footprint-will be a key economic driver of the 21st century. “Climate-proofing” the global economy will involve large-scale investments in new technologies, equipment, buildings, and infrastructure, which will provide a major stimulus for much-needed new employment and an opportunity for retaining and transforming existing jobs.

The number of green jobs is on the rise. The renewable energy sector has seen rapid expansion in recent years, with current employment in renewables and supplier industries estimated at a conservative 2.3 million worldwide. The wind power industry employs some 300,000 people, the solar photovoltaics (PV) sector an estimated 170,000, and the solar thermal industry more than 600,000.More than 1 million jobs are found in the biofuels industry growing and processing a variety of feedstocks into ethanol and biodiesel.

http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5925

Socialism and Income Re/Distribution

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I find it interesting that the Republicans are bantering around the “s” word with respect to Mr. Obama’s tax platform…referring to it as income redistribution. Look at the following graph….then let’s discuss income redistribution!

If you want to see tax-based income redistribution, I suggest you look at the Bush Administration tax policy over the past eight years.

I’d also throw in the recent bailout package and Treasury measures.

It appears socialism is good with the Republicans if it benefits the wealthy…but bad if it benefits a broad base of American households.

From Teddy Roosevelt (by way of Phipps):

We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community. … The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and … a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.

Criticizing Market-Based Conservation

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At IUCN World Conservation Congress in Barcelona, Global Forest Coalition managing coordinator Simone Lovera said: “The report provides a number of fascinating real-life stories on how these mechanisms work out at the community-level. It forms an important addition to the increasing number of studies that focus on the potential benefits of these mechanisms for local communities and the rules and standards that are needed to generate these benefits. As the case studies describe, such rules and standards seldom exist, and even where they exist, they are not well-implemented as market mechanisms make it attractive for powerful actors to circumvent them. The costs of these mechanisms, also in terms of undermining community governance, seem to outweigh the benefits in real-life situations.”

It appears that international market-based conservation has some of the same problems that international banking has had over the past few years. I have read two articles…here is one with a link to the study released at the IUCN meeting in Spain.

http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1431/1/