Before we reinvent the economy, we must reinvent ourselves By Navi Radjou [8 minute read]

A sustainable economy won’t mean much if we are still driven by a desire for unceasing consumption and mired in unhappiness and alienation.

The bioeconomy–a sustainable economic system based on clean energy and natural products–aims to eliminate our dependence on finite fossil resources and enable equitable use of renewable biological resources and ecosystems. The bioeconomy will use frugal innovation to reinvent agricultural and industrial systems, so we can produce healthier food, drugs, and other products for more people with fewer inputs and greenhouse emissions.

The bioeconomy–a sustainable economic system based on clean energy and natural products–aims to eliminate our dependence on finite fossil resources and enable equitable use of renewable biological resources and ecosystems. The bioeconomy will use frugal innovation to reinvent agricultural and industrial systems, so we can produce healthier food, drugs, and other products for more people with fewer inputs and greenhouse emissions.

But before we transform our agricultural and industrial systems, we must transform ourselves as human beings. To preserve nature, we must first change our inner nature. If we build the bioeconomy with the same mind-set that built our existing economic system–characterized by resource-hungry mass production and individualistic mass consumption–we will end up producing, consuming, and doing the wrong things faster, better, cheaper, and more “sustainably.”

What’s the point of using a self-driving car built with biomaterials and powered by biofuel that runs on solar-powered highways to get us to work faster when 87% of employees feel disengaged or work to death (literally, as Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer shows in his scary new book, Dying for a Paycheck)?

The average American house size has more than doubled since the 1950s, while the average family size shrunk by half during that same period. Moving to a new house that is 3D-printed with wood-based materials and is solar-powered might be good for the environment (as long as it does not further increase resource consumption per capita). But it won’t combat widespread loneliness and social isolation in America, where nearly half of all adults feel lonely today, a rate that has more than doubled since the 1980s.

Chronic diseases (cancer, heart disease, diabetes) are now epidemic in the developing world–accounting for 53% of deaths–due to unhealthy lifestyles. Obesity is now killing three times more people than malnutrition. Drinking and eating processed foods and beverages neatly packaged and bottled in biodegradable plastic won’t solve this serious healthcare issue.

Replacing toxic nylon and polyester in our clothes with biomaterials won’t help us overcome our addiction to cheap and fast fashion, which lead Americans to throw away 14 million tons of clothes each year, a 100% increase in the past two decades. Better recycling technologies won’t fix this addiction: They will only make it worse.

Professor John Schramski, a systems ecologist at the University of Georgia, views Earth as a once-charged battery that stores chemical energy built up by our planet over 4.5 billion years of evolution. With great concern, Schramski notes: “In just the last few centuries–an evolutionary blink of an eye–human energy use to fuel the rise of civilization and the modern industrial-technological-informational society has discharged the earth-space battery.” With such rapid depletion, Earth is irrevocably moving to a state where it would become inhospitable for humanity. For the sake of nature–and our own survival as human species–Schramski believes we must change our lifestyles and slow down.

The bioeconomy on its own can’t protect and preserve nature unless all of us–growth-hungry producers and voracious consumers–rein in our wild insatiable inner nature. We just can’t pursue infinite growth in a finite planet.

To transform our inner nature, it’s not enough we shift our mind-set; we must shift our consciousness. We must come out of our unconscious mode of existence and become more conscious in how we produce, consume, work, relate, and live. Only then will we be able to collectively build what I call a conscious bioeconomy.

What do I mean by conscious? The Indian yoga tradition uses the seven chakras–energy centers located in our subtle body–to describe our levels of consciousness. These seven chakras and their associated energies influence and shape our worldview, motivation, and behavior in a particular way.

In many parts of the world, we live in capitalistic societies that favor winner-takes-all competition and extol the virtues of individualistic consumerism, which is satisfied by resource-intensive and heavily polluting mass-production. In this context, we operate unconsciously driven mainly by the energies of our three lower chakras–fear (“I want to survive”), desire (“I want more”), and power (“I want it all”)–that are all about self-preservation. Driven by a perpetual sense of scarcity and insecurity, we lead self-centered unsatisfactory lives shaped by our wants rather than our needs.

To become conscious, we need to unlock our four upper chakras, so we can harness the constructive energies of compassion, ingenuity, wisdom, and unity (“I am one with everything and everyone”) to transcend the survival mode and selfish desires and co-create with others an inclusive, healthy, and caring bioeconomy. Here are ways we can do that:

COMPASSION
The bioeconomy should catalyze and enable social inclusion. We must speed up knowledge transfer and training and invest in breakthrough technologies and business models that make bio-products and services highly affordable and accessible to the poorest and empower them (especially women) economically.
For example, in rural India, Husk Power Systems has installed mini-grids, powered by locally sourced agricultural waste like rice husks and corn cobs. Each mini-grid serves 300 customers and offers uninterrupted, clean energy to even the poorest villagers who can buy it on a pay-as-you-go basis with their cell phone.

The Rockefeller Foundation has launched Smart Power India to set up mini-grids like Husk’s in 1,000 Indian villages. These will power job training centers and small medium businesses that can train and employ poor women and youth and unleash grassroots entrepreneurship, potentially impacting 1 million lives.

INGENUITY
The German minister of education and research Anja Karliczek says: “The bioeconomy will not sell itself. It will not simply fall into our laps, nor can it be decreed from above. It is a societal transition process, which will need time.” But we can’t afford to wait. We must speed up the transition to a bioeconomy by actively involving citizens in its creation.

In addition to funding big R&D projects in biotech, governments must also invest in bottom-up citizen science platforms. These will empower inventive “Maker citizens” to use their collective ingenuity and DIY tools to co-build an inclusive bioeconomy of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Schools and colleges can turn their students into young inventors by giving them access to open science labs like La Paillasse and low-cost R&D tools such as Stanford professor Manu Prakash’s $1 microscope and a 20¢ paper centrifuge. Students from rich and poor countries could team up to co-create eco-friendly solutions for climate change.

WISDOM
We have so far identified fewer than 15% of the 8.7 million species on Earth. Sadly, we may never learn much about the remaining 86% of the species, as half of them could go extinct by 2050. Conversion of natural ecosystems (grasslands, forests, wetlands) into agricultural land, deforestation, overpopulation, rapid urban development, and pollution are all accelerating biodiversity loss.

The Earth is 4.5 billion years old. Modern humans emerged only 200,000 years ago. We must humbly, and quickly, learn from the natural world’s great resilience and vast wisdom to find innovative ways for nearly 10 billion people on Earth to produce, consume, and live sustainably by 2050.

Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, a biodiversity scientist and former president of Mauritius, believes that Africa’s incredible variety of plant species have powerful medicinal properties and hold the key to the future of food for whole humanity. We need to cherish, study, and maintain this rich biodiversity as our very survival depends on it.

The bioeconomy could even regenerate biodiversity: A team led by Harvard geneticist George Church plans to create a genetically engineered Asian elephant-mammoth hybrid and bring it to the Arctic to prevent the tundra from thawing, which could worsen global warming. These hybrids could also help preserve the highly endangered Asian elephants.

UNITY
We can no longer view nature as something “out there,” to be either exploited or protected. We must consciously realize we are nature, and nature is us. Our perspective and actions must embody this integral awareness that nature and we are essentially One. In particular, profit-driven corporations, which have long maintained an antagonistic “business vs. nature” relationship with the environment, must learn to think, feel, and act like nature. Firms need to evolve into what I call “business as nature.”

Specifically, businesses must unlearn their selfish and competitive instincts and demonstrate generosity and cooperation–two inspiring qualities that Suzanne Simard, a professor of forest ecology at University of British Columbia, has found in nature. Firms can emulate Interface, the world’s largest modular carpet manufacturer, which is building a “factory as a forest.” This plant offers freely to local communities many ecosystem services–carbon sequestration, clean air and water, and nutrient cycling–that the local ecosystem it replaces used to provide.

Mahatma Gandhi said: “The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” Our gluttonous socioeconomic systems are depleting natural resources and polluting our atmosphere and oceans so rapidly that, by the end of this century, the Earth will cease to be hospitable for the human species.

If we want to survive and thrive, we need a radical shift in consciousness. We must learn to value quality of life over quantity in life. We must help each other enhance our material, emotional, and spiritual well-being and reach our full potential. Let’s use our compassion, ingenuity, wisdom, and sense of unity with nature to co-create a conscious bioeconomy.

Navi Radjou is a fellow at Cambridge University Judge Business School. He is the coauthor of Jugaad Innovation (2012), From Smart to Wise (2013), and Frugal Innovation (2015). His next book, Conscious Society: Reinventing How We Consume, Work, Relate and Live, will be published in 2019. 06.20.18

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IN SUPPORT of UNITY and UNITE!!!:

The Day When We Stand Together Edward P. Blackcloud Snr
https://twitter.com/theycallmebob/status/1021676505125015553 … [Video] Standing Rock UNITE!!!

[Video] Neil Conway Song - Up in Labrador Territory
https://labradorleadstheworld.blogspot.com/2018/05/updates-for-your-calendar-labrador-land.html
UPDATES FOR YOUR CALENDAR

1.  openlettermuskratfalls.wordpress.com Scholars call on PM Canada to halt Muskrat Falls dam; goo.gl/Z6swvr  Where next in fight over Muskrat Falls and Rate Mitigation? NL CA Ans: UNITE!!!

2.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf-yza33qh8 [Video] Denise Cole on Muskrat Falls and ecological consciousness

3.  https://goo.gl/3RQzwY LEGAL RIGHTS OF RIVERS AND PEOPLE

4.  https://goo.gl/L5qJKJ Silencing Human Rights and Environmental Defenders @JustinTrudeau @DwightBall #ShutMuskratDown

5.  Peggy Blake wants the dam removed. She rejects anyone saying that can’t happen. “As long as they’re out there continuing on, we’re going to be standing right here against them,” she says, confirming that will continue even beyond construction. “We’re going to stand our ground and yes, we’re going to continue. … This is our home. This is our culture. This is our life. This is everything to us. They can’t see that. They can’t see this is who we are and we’re not going anywhere…
Continue reading Labrador Land Protectors Facebook page

6. Full Article:

A mosaic, as seen outside of the Labrador Friendship Centre in Happy Valley-Goose Bay in August 2017. [Ashley Fitzpatrick]
“That Dam Project: Labrador Land Protectors refuse to end the fight Say they’ll continue to pursue an end to the damming at Muskrat Falls

It’s a quiet room in the Labrador Friendship Centre, with photos of generations past looking down on the sharing circle. The gathering has deep meaning, but practically speaking involves a circle of chairs and a chance for everyone to say their piece.

In this case, the meeting is about Muskrat Falls.
The people here speak, always, as if the Muskrat Falls hydro dam can still be done away with.

It’s a late August night and raining outside. Inside the centre, about 45 kilometres away from Muskrat Falls, you can almost see the blood pounding in Kirk Lethbridge. He leans forward in a seat that will get stacked before we leave, repeating the same points he’s made 100 times over to people not from the area — likely more, given the years.

His voice is a notch above average speed and volume, but remains controlled. It’s powerful and direct as his hands hammer out the comments.

“I don’t know the words to tell you how wrong this feels.” — Kirk Lethbridge

Everyone here has heard these things before, but they’re still relevant.

“If I toxified one-third of the Avalon, what would happen to me? If I toxified 500 square yards of the Avalon Peninsula, what would happen to me? I’d be charged,” he says.

He’s referring to expected methylmercury contamination of wild foods — fish, seals — consumed by the people of the Lower Churchill River and Lake Melville. The project is, at this point, in an awkward phase of partial flooding, limiting the methylmercury release, but the expectation here is that consumption advisories will come and there will be a choice between safety and long-challenged livelihoods and traditions.

The idea causes particular pain for the Indigenous people of the area. A study focused on the Inuit of Nunatsiavut, led by a team out of Harvard University, stated that people in communities far from the dam site were at a greater risk than was previously publicly discussed, based on human health study factoring in the unique characteristics of the Lake Melville estuary.
Lethbridge was one of the protesters who was, in part, fuelled by these findings and entered the main Muskrat Falls construction site in October 2016, taking part in a sit-in. He acted as spokesman for the group in communications with the company and responding RCMP.

He doesn’t describe the protest event as a success. He doesn’t feel like the group was really heard, or that political leaders and the people of the province really responded.

He hasn’t heard much from the Independent Experts Advisory Panel on methylmercury. Its creation ended the on-site protest, but he says people have heard little since.

“I don’t know the words to tell you how wrong this feels,” he says.

The Commission of Inquiry beginning in 2018 may not lay blame, even for the project’s blown budget and timeline, but Lethbridge isn’t as concerned with budget and timeline as much as he is with what has happened since the project was green lit.

He suggests there’s plenty of blame to go around on the sanctioning of Muskrat Falls and what it means for people living closest to it. He thinks the sanctioning was simply wrong.

“I think the media has fallen down on the job. A lot of the media has,” he says.

He doesn’t understand how more hasn’t been said, for example, about the mass of RCMP officers and private security that descended on the area, down to the presence of police dogs.

And he and others have been subjected to court date after court date. At this point he feels the justice system was used strategically by the corporation, encouraged by the provincial government, to quell the wave of objections to the dam in the wake of the methylmercury study.

He asks: “Where is the outrage from the Canadian people?”

Peggy Blake
“We’re raising money every which way we can for our lawyer,” says Peggy Blake.

Soft-spoken, she seems uncomfortable sharing her thoughts and might have stopped, but has protection against interruption and judgement offered by the circle.

Methylmercury is on her mind, too, and a feeling of dismissal, being seen as a “naysayer” or “critic.”

“We fish these waters all the time. We’ve grown up fishing these waters. That’s our life and … they just come in and take it from us,” she said.

She mentions concerns over flooding — a breach in the dam, the loss of a section of the North Spur, a piece of land being incorporated into the dam development.
Blake simply doesn’t believe the company when they say it is safe. She’s hasn’t heard from anyone else with any degree of certainty.

Her husband sits behind her. He is no less frustrated and nods in agreement when it’s said the group has come to rely on each other to get information, to determine the facts as best they can.

No one in government outside of the Land Protectors has been able to convince them they really care — about neighbours sleeping with life-jackets under their beds (they remain convinced it’s necessary) or about the expectation that activities like fishing for food will be forbidden.

Blake wants the dam removed. She rejects anyone saying that can’t happen.

“As long as they’re out there continuing on, we’re going to be standing right here against them,” she says, confirming that will continue even beyond construction.

“We’re going to stand our ground and yes, we’re going to continue. … This is our home. This is our culture. This is our life. This is everything to us. They can’t see that. They can’t see this is who we are and we’re not going anywhere.”

Denise Cole
There’s rhythm in the speech of Denise Cole, who has become a recognizable face for the Labrador Land Protectors group.

Travelling between St. John’s and Happy Valley-Goose Bay, she has been able to promote talks and organize demonstrations, adding to her initial objections to the project going back to the provincial-federal Joint Review Panel more than six years ago.

“You look right across Canada and these hydro dams are showing up and it’s the same. It’s not a private company driving them, it’s Crown corporations that are backed by provinces and they’re backed by the feds. The feds do it in two ways: loan guarantees and permits,” she says.

Cole learned about the project’s environmental assessment while in her former job, promoting the direct participation of women in resource development. She decided in good conscience she had to speak up against the development.

Muskrat Falls is a development for somebody, she says, but not the people in the area. They don’t need the power — something she communicates on social media and in active events taking up much of her time outside of work for years now.

Among other things, she doesn’t think people are looking beyond the idea of lost country foods, even for a time, to fewer trips out onto into the great outdoors, detrimental changes in diets, even disruption in people’s sense of identity, all contributing to health concerns.

She believes it should be enough for this development to never have happened.

As for the response that comes?

“It’s this pass the blame game,” she says.

She doesn’t believe an inquiry will address the concerns of the area, as people here are perpetually in minority to the interests of the province as a whole.
“(And) what does that mean? What is the result of said inquiry? What is the actual consequence to action? Sure to God it can’t just be the leader comes in and says an apology,” she says.

Without trust, no place to start

The bottom line is that while many members of the Labrador Land Protectors never began as being anti-Muskrat Falls, they’ve reached a point where they can’t imagine being anything else.

Since the August sharing circle, Land Protectors have demonstrated at Memorial University of Newfoundland’s main campus and at Nalcor Energy’s headquarters at Hydro Place in St. John’s, with the latter leading to a similar sharing of concerns with Nalcor Energy president and CEO Stan Marshall and senior Nalcor Energy staff on Nov. 29.

On Dec. 14, a post to the Labrador Land Protectors Facebook page referenced the fears of downstream flooding, and the flooding in Mud Lake that destroyed property and forced emergency evacuation earlier this year. A third-party investigation — with a report released in early October — found that flooding was the result of natural causes and not the dam construction.

“Nalcor may say it’s not their fault,” the post stated. “We know better than that.”
Ashley Fitzpatrick ([email protected]) 23 January 2018 The Telegram”

7.  https://goo.gl/57ADkj  "We believe in moving forward on evidence-based policy.“ Justin Trudeau 20.4.18 Therefore, Prime Minister of CA and Premier Ball of NL: Act honourably on clear scientific evidence about non-sustainable hydro and fossil fuel sources of energy for our planet

8.  https://goo.gl/Y76Nb6  https://goo.gl/2neSMJ  Whilst rightfully condemning Saudi Arabia Human Rights Activists, Govts. NL CA currently trying very hard 2 Silence own Muskrat Falls Human Rights Activists by using INEQUITABLE Nalcor Crown Corp. Court Injunctions

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https://goo.gl/tU5t2D "We can no longer view nature as something “out there,” to be either exploited or protected. We must consciously realize we are nature, and nature is us.” [Navi Radjou]  #ShutMuskratDown #FreeNL #StopSiteC.#ProtestsRateHikes #PublicUtilitiesBoard #ShutSiteCDown #StopPipelines #NoDAPL #StandingRock #WaterIsLife #ThisIsZeroHour
[https://www.fastcompany.com] https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQmpcc4e7wVhh6q3ZuEgOHNrTR31UB8oJH5RTHWamIrZF3DjyNuqkCYM9UAYVO1Xk3NZEUszSLHB-uW/pub