I love the future.
A new water-creating billboard in Peru helps tackle a serious problem — as well as projects a message of hope — in an area that’s long-faced water insecurity issues.
A university and an ad agency have built the first-ever billboard to capture air humidity and turn it into potable drinking water in Lima, the second largest desert capital in the world.
Full story:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/billboard-lima-peru-water-crisis_n_2901882.html
George Lucas Will Donate Disney $4 Billion To Education.
George Lucas is ensuring that the force may be with young Jedis everywhere.
The “Star Wars” director will donate the $4.05 billion he will receive from the sale of Lucasfilm Ltd. to Disney to a foundation focused on education, according to the Hollywood Reporter….
From the IdeaConnection Blog…
How the Crowd Can Benefit Local Communities
Local authorities are hardly awash with cash these days which means that some community and urban renewal projects may get put on the back burner indefinitely.
But thanks to the crowd, community-minded crowdfunding platforms can pick up the slack and start, develop and complete projects without having to wait for government bodies to get their acts together.
One such platform is Brickstarter. Conceived in Finland, the site is modeled after the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter and could save buckets of tears of frustration by cutting through layers of red tape to get projects online in rapid time-frames.
From GOOD.is:
These days a finger tap on a mobile device yields reviews of everything from a five-star restaurant to a grungy hole-in-the-wall gem. Foodies depend on contextualized local search to guide their chow hound adventures, and a new mobile application aims to become a Yelp for the socially-minded.
“Social Impact” is a free app that utilizes the iPhone’s GPS system to display the closest retail social enterprises—including restaurants, coffee shops, and craft stores. The developers, Rolfe Larson Associates, have added nearly 700 businesses to the app’s database so far—each include serving the common good as part of their mission. The developers are eager for users to suggest more socially progressive businesses to grow the network.
Lance ⋅ Business & Economy, Food & Agriculture, Protecting The Environment ⋅ No comments
Stephen Colbert seems to have a propensity for finding GreenLiberty-type guests, and “humanitarian design” advocate Emily Pilloton appears to be another sterling example. Her book Design Revolution: 100 Products That Empower People discusses how the power of smart design can and should be leveraged toward making life better for people. In her words: “Humanitarian design is really about taking design, as a creative process–which is really about problem solving–and putting it to work on some of the biggest social issues that we’re facing today. ”
Watch the full interview with author Emily Pilloton here.
Buy Design Revolution at Amazon.
Visit Emily Pilloton’s Project H Design project online.
Lance ⋅ Books, This is Green Liberty ⋅ humanitarian design, smart products, third-world solutions ⋅ No comments
This superb interview/feature about Whole Foods CEO John Mackey is reproduced here in full for non-profit archival purposes. The original copy at the Wall Street Journal can be found here.
The Weekend Interview with John Mackey: The Conscience of a Capitalist – Wall Street Journal
By STEPHEN MOORE
“I honestly don’t know why the article became such a lightning rod,” says John Mackey, CEO and founder of Whole Foods Market Inc., as he tries to explain the firestorm caused by his August op-ed on these pages opposing government-run health care. “I think a lot of people who got angry haven’t read what I actually wrote. There was a lot of emotional reaction—fear and anger. I just wanted to get people to think about whether there was a better way to reform the system.”
Mr. Mackey has flown into Washington, D.C., for a board meeting of the Global Animal Partnership, a group that advocates for the humane treatment of animals. There was no private jet: He arrived on Southwest Airlines from Austin, Texas, and he bought the “Wanna Getaway” bottom basement fare. “I barely got the last aisle seat,” he says. While in town he stays in the bedroom of his regional president, who lives in Maryland.
For the 12th straight year, Mr. Mackey’s company has been praised as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” by Fortune Magazine. Whole Foods sells healthy food, practices “socially responsible trade,” and prides itself on promoting foods that are grown to support “biodiversity and healthy soils.” Mr. Mackey donates 5% of company profits to charity and has been one of America’s loudest critics of runaway compensation on Wall Street. And he pays himself $1 a year. He would seem to be a model corporate citizen.
Yet his now famous op-ed incited a boycott of Whole Foods by some of his left-wing customers. His piece advised that “the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us closer to a complete government takeover of our health-care system.” Free-market groups retaliated with a “buy-cott,” encouraging people to purchase more groceries at Whole Foods.
Why did he write the piece in the first place?
“President Obama called for constructive suggestions for health-care reform,” he explains. “I took him at his word.” Mr. Mackey continues: “It just seems to me there are some fundamental reforms that we’ve adopted at Whole Foods that would make health care much more affordable for the uninsured.” More
Lance ⋅ Health ⋅ CEO, free market, natural capitalism ⋅ No comments
This story shows how a non-profit, Remote Area Medical, was able to provide medical care for free to approximately 8,000 people over the course of a week in a temporary clinic in the southern Los Angeles area.
Thousands Line Up for Promise of Free Health Care – NYTimes.com
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER
Published: August 12, 2009
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — They came for new teeth mostly, but also for blood pressure checks, mammograms, immunizations and acupuncture for pain. Neighboring South Los Angeles is a place where health care is scarce, and so when it was offered nearby, word got around.
For the second day in a row, thousands of people lined up on Wednesday — starting after midnight and snaking into the early hours — for free dental, medical and vision services, courtesy of a nonprofit group that more typically provides mobile health care for the rural poor.
Like a giant MASH unit, the floor of the Forum, the arena where Madonna once played four sold-out shows, housed aisle upon aisle of dental chairs, where drilling, cleaning and extracting took place in the open. A few cushions were duct-taped to a folding table in a coat closet, an examining room where Dr. Eugene Taw, a volunteer, saw patients.
Lance ⋅ Health, This is Green Liberty ⋅ health care ⋅ No comments
From this author’s birth region of Berkshire County, MA, comes this story about local currencies–a fantastic way for people and businesses to take matters into their own hands when it comes to ensuring local financial security and establishing concrete ways to encourage a “buy locally” approach.
Communities making their own currencies (AP/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Decentralization is a key concept for both libertarians and greens, and this is a way to reduce our dependence on the federal and state governments to manage currency and the economy. (Consider that money which was tied into “BerkShares” most likely was not impacted by any of the national economic dips, crises, and scandals that have thrown so much of the nation’s wealth into instability.)
And the only action required by government for local currencies to work is to stay out of the way. (Which, unfortunately, it probably won’t do.)
Lance ⋅ This is Green Liberty ⋅ community currency ⋅ No comments
Daniel Esty has a book titled Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy to Innovate, Create Value, and Build Competitive Advantage. I saw him on The Colbert Report recently, and while I haven’t read his book, his comments on the show reflected many elements of the Green Liberty worldview.
Lance ⋅ Books ⋅ smart companies, smart products ⋅ No comments