http://www.visionofhumanity.org/
Related: know about world • alternatives • Projets de SociétéAn Epochal Discovery: A Habitable Planet Orbits Our Neighboring Star One hundred and one years ago this October, a Scottish astronomer named Robert Innes pointed a camera at a grouping of stars near the Southern Cross, the defining feature of the night skies above his adopted Johannesburg. He was looking for a small companion to Alpha Centauri, our closest neighboring star system. Hunched over glass photographic plates, Innes teased out a signal. Across five years of images, a small, faint star moved, wiggling on the sky. It shifted just as much as Alpha Centauri, suggesting its fate was intertwined with that binary system. But this small star was closer to the sun than Alpha.
GNH Centre Bhutan Gross National Happiness, or GNH, is a holistic and sustainable approach to development, which balances material and non-material values with the conviction that humans want to search for happiness. The objective of GNH is to achieve a balanced development in all the facets of life that are essential; for our happiness. • The Story of GNH • The 4 Pillars & 9 Domains • GNH Today • GNH Organizations Harvard - Online Data Sources Online Data Sources Political Governance Stability Corruption Your Favorite Housewares Are Spewing Poison Dust Inside Your Home People buy the nicest homes they can afford. They spend years—sometimes decades—pouring money into nest-feathering by stocking up on creature comforts. It’s no wonder we spend 90 percent of our lives indoors. Like George Carlin said, it’s where all our stuff is.
mancunian green: Boon - or Bobbins? As the banking crisis continues, alternative or complementary currencies are back on the agenda, as evidenced by George Monbiot's last piece in the Guardian , and a feature on Lewes Pounds on BBC's radio 4 in the last couple of days. The idea of an alternative currency is not new, and back around 15-20 years ago, LETS schems (Local Exchange Trading Systems)were seen as a key part of the move to a sustainable society and there were close links between Green party activists and LETS schemes in various places around the country. The scheme in Manchester used a currency called 'bobbins' after the cotton industry and for a while local Green Party membership could be paid for in bobbins, though hardly anybody ever did. Unfortunately in recent years I have heard much less about them, and even their co-ordinating body, Letslink, reports a likely drop in membership since the early days. I can think of two reasons why this might be.
UN Statistics New York, 1 June 2016 - The chair of the Statistical Commission, Ms. Wasmalia Bivar of Brazil, addressed the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on 1 June during its Coordination and Management Meeting. Ms. Bivar, who provided her briefing by videolink, informed the Council that the Statistical Commission at its last session in March had agreed “as a practical starting point” on a global indicator framework, which had been developed by the Inter-agency and Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal Indicators (IAEG-SDGs). Pacific Islanders appear to be carrying the DNA of an unknown human species Hints of an unidentified, extinct human species have been found in the DNA of modern Melanesians - those living in a region of the South Pacific, northeast of Australia. According to new genetic modelling, the species is unlikely to be Neanderthal or Denisovan - two ancient species that are represented in the fossil record - but could represent a third, unknown human relative that has so far eluded archaeologists. "We’re missing a population, or we’re misunderstanding something about the relationships," Ryan Bohlender, a statistical geneticist from the University of Texas, told Tina Hesman Saey at Science News. Bohlender and his team have been investigating the percentages of extinct hominid DNA that modern humans still carry today, and say they’ve found discrepancies in previous analyses that suggest our mingling with Neanderthals and Denisovans isn’t the whole story.
An Unconventional Billionaire Is Revolutionizing Philanthropy By Closing His Foundation Some people are into extreme sports, others extreme eating. You could call self-made billionaire Chuck Feeney an extreme philanthropist. Feeney, the 83-year-old co-founder of the pioneering retail business Duty Free Shoppers (the company that sells the tax-free alcohol and perfume in airports), is practically unknown as a public figure. Though Forbes once ranked him the 23rd-richest person alive, you wouldn’t realize it if you met him on the street: In his prime, he famously wore a $15 watch and flew economy. You certainly won’t find his name on any buildings. Yet his foundation, Atlantic Philanthropies, will soon become the largest ever foundation to purposefully give away all its money—seeded by almost Feeney’s entire fortune, which was worth about $4 billion when he donated it anonymously three decades ago—and then go about shutting its doors.
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Ross Sea Designated as World’s Largest Marine Protected Area Today’s closing of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) meeting made history by declaring the largest marine protected area on the planet in Antarctica’s Ross Sea. This marks the first time that CCAMLR’s 24 member countries and the European Union reached consensus to protect this huge area of the Southern Ocean after similar proposals were blocked for the past five years. The 1.55 million square kilometer marine protected area will provide critical habitat, including breeding and foraging grounds, for a multitude of penguins, seals, krill, whales, and other species. It will also implement crucial policies needed to guide human activities such as fishing, shipping, and tourism, safeguarding this region, one of the last pristine oceans left on Earth. This would not have been possible without Russia joining with other countries to pass the proposal. Andrea Kavanagh directs Pew’s Antarctic and Southern Ocean work.
The Secret Agents of Capitalism Are All Around Us The young people grouped at the end of the bar resemble Gap models. They are facially attractive, in that asymmetrical sort of way, and they wear the new uniform of the Internet cast-aside who still has money to carouse with: tight dark blue jeans, T-shirts a bit too small and hair slightly greased. It's a Wednesday night at a small bar on Manhattan's Lower East Side. ''I feel so great, so real,'' says a slight young woman with spindly arms and wide eyes. A blue bandanna is tied tightly around her head. ''It's this drink!''
World Wealth Report 2011 Wealth and population of global HNWIs surpass pre-crisis levels in nearly every region as HNWI wealth reaches US$42.7 trillion The world’s high net worth individuals (HNWIs) expanded in population and wealth in 2010 surpassing 2007 pre-crisis levels in nearly every region, according to the 15th annual World Wealth Report from Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management and Capgemini. The World Wealth Report covers 71 countries in the market-sizing model, accounting for more than 98% of global gross national income and 99% of world stock market capitalization. The report has built a strong and lasting reputation as the industry benchmark for HNWIs market sizing—originally at a global and regional level but increasingly at a country level. Download the Report to learn more about trends in HNWI wealth worldwide. The report is available in English, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Japanese.
The $100bn gold mine and the West Papuans who say they are counting the cost In 1936, Dutch geologist Jean Jacques Dozy climbed the world’s highest island peak: the forbidding Mount Carstensz, a snow-covered silver crag on what was then known as Dutch New Guinea. During the 4,800-metre ascent, Dozy noticed an unusual rock outcrop veined with green streaks. Samples he brought back confirmed exceptionally rich gold and copper deposits.
Small is beautiful – an economic idea that has sadly been forgotten EF Schumacher's Small is Beautiful was the first book on politics I ever read; it was the only book about politics I ever saw my father read or heard him talk about. It arrived in our cottage in rural North Yorkshire as a manifesto from a radical countercultural world with which we had no contact. Re-reading its dense mixture of philosophy, environmentalism and economics, I can't think what I could possibly have understood of it at 13, but in a bid to impress my father I ploughed on to the end. Looking back over the intervening almost four decades, the book's influence has been enormous. "Small is beautiful" was a radical challenge to the 20th century's intoxication with what Schumacher described as "gigantism".