by Charis Michelsen

Well-known tire manufacturer Bridgestone announced their new prototype tire, claiming it requires no air at all. The prototype is also supposed to be greener to produce and recycle, and is on display at the Tokyo Motor Show this week.

The new prototype looks normal on the outside, but underneath the conventional wheel tread is a honeycomb of curved spokes. The spokes themselves are made of reusable and recyclable materials, allowing the tires to be recycled with little more difficulty than current traditional tires.

Bridgestone’s prototype has a number of safety considerations to recommend it, as well. As it doesn’t rely on air pressure, it should be more puncture-proof than traditional tires, and that same lack of air pressure eliminates the need to check tire pressure. Smaller rims also allegedly give the tire points in crash safety tests.

According to Bridgestone, they’ve developed the prototype with an eye towards mass production. Would you like to see zero-air tires on your car? Let us know in the comments, below.

The top three banks that finance coal plants and thus are major contributors to climate change are:

- JP Morgan Chase: $22 billion.
- Citi: $18.27 billion
- Bank of America: $16.79 billion

They are followed by Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, and Royal Bank of Scotland. See the Top 20 list.

The top 20 coal financing banks are from the US, UK, Germany, France, Switzerland, China, Italy and Japan. Since 2005, the 93 banks analyzed in a study have financed coal to the tune of $309 billion.

"Bankrolling Climate Change," released at the Climate Summit in Durban, South Africa, examines commercial bank lending practices in the coal industry. It was produced by several NGOs - urgewald (Germany), groundwork and Earthlife Africa Johannesburg (South Africa) and international network, BankTrack.

The organizations examined the portfolios of 93 of the world's leading banks, analyzing their support of 31 major coal-mining companies (representing 44 percent of global coal production) and 40 coal-fired electricity producers (which together own over 50 percent of global capacity).

"We chose to look into coal financing as coal-fired power plants are the biggest source of man-made CO2 emissions and the major culprit in the drama of climate change," explains Heffa Schuecking of urgewald. "In spite of the fact that climate change is already having severe impacts on the most vulnerable societies, there is an abundance of plans to build new coal-fired power plants. If banks provide money for these projects, they will wreck all attempts to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius," says Schuecking.

Coal plants are expensive, typically costing about $2 billion to build a 600 megawatt plant. They can't be built without financing and "Our figures clearly show that coal financing is on the rise," notes Tristen Taylor of Earthlife Africa Johannesburg. "Between 2005-2010, coal financing almost doubled.

Interestingly, almost all the banks in the top 20 have made far-reaching commitments to addressing climate change. They've adopted policies and signed onto voluntary industry initiatives like the "Equator Principles," "Carbon Principles," or "Climate Principles, but it turns out that's just rhetoric.

"The numbers show their money is not where their mouth is," says Yann Louvel of BankTrack.

Here's the report:

Website: www.banktrack.org/download/bankrolling_climate_change/climatekillerbanks_final_0.pdf

Photo by Joost J. Bakker/flickr/Creative Commons

by Chris Keenan

It’s a typical scenario: a college student rolls out of bed and goes to the kitchen to grab a bowl of cereal on his way to class. He pulls the milk out of the refrigerator and notices that it expired two days ago.

After smelling it and determining that it doesn’t smell like it’s gone bad, he goes ahead and pours it into his corn flakes. Or a woman is busy making dinner for her in-laws when she realizes that her eggs expired last week. She throws them away promptly and has to purchase new eggs before she can finish cooking her meal. These things happen every day, and the way people react to the “best by” or “sell by” dates on packaging tends to change based on how they were brought up.

Some people throw the product out immediately when their date is past, but others are willing to keep food for days or even weeks after it’s expiration date. It turns out that none of these people are particularly correct. The confusion arises because a “sell by” date is not the same as a safety date – that is, the dates printed on food packaging aren’t actually about when the food is safe for human consumption.

They may be suggestions about when the food will be at “peak quality”, or recommendations to the grocery store regarding how long the product should be kept on the shelf. Eggs are a good example; they can be safely eaten for up to five weeks after they’ve been purchased, even if their expiration date passes during that time. It is probably due to this that expiration dates aren’t even required by federal law.

Grocery stores frequently throw out food once it has hit its expiration date – perhaps because customers don’t understand what the dates mean, and won’t buy a food that they essentially think will poison them. At the same time, that creates a huge amount of waste. In addition, consumers frequently throw away food that has not yet gone bad despite its sell by date. They also waste a significant amount of food this way.

Despite being widely misunderstood, “best by” and similar labels are frequently used. It could be due to manufacturers being overly cautious about their products, but it’s also part of a larger cultural phenomenon.

From garage doors to televisions, Americans would generally rather throw a product away than repair it, and it doesn’t seem to trouble them to do the same with their food – although it, too, can be expensive to replace. Ultimately, taking a more relaxed approach to sell by dates is less wasteful, less expensive, and just smarter all the way around.

by Marc Stoiber

This spring, Alabama was hit by terrifying tornadoes that ripped through centers like Birmingham. Then, the priority was about creating permanent shelter for the victims, but there is an incredible opportunity to do much more.

The focus of the conference was rebuilding using sustainable technology, creating better, more future-proof homes. An equally important focus should be on the opportunity to reinvent the region’s brand.

I would argue that all cities have brands. Some excite their audience (New York), some don’t (Cleveland). Fixing a less-than-ideal city brand is a daunting prospect. After all, you’re fighting status quo ideas and infrastructure that reinforces negative perceptions.

But a city that has endured a catastrophe has license to revamp its brand. Its residents are looking for a ‘reset’ button – they want to look forward to a better tomorrow. And if infrastructure has been destroyed, symbols of the old way can be replaced with symbols of the new.

That said, some key steps need to be taken to ensure the new brand is convincing, can grow, and has staying power.

Define your essence

Simon Sinek believes most corporations and people (and, I would venture, cities) have no trouble saying what they do, or how they do it. But very few can define why.

This is due to the way we process information: the part of our brain that defines rational thoughts like ‘what’ and ‘how’ also happens to control our language. The part that controls deeper, emotional concepts like ‘why’ isn’t wired for words. So we can easily verbalize rational thoughts, but are tongue-tied when someone asks us why we exist.

Successful brands like Apple have cracked this code. They’ve created legions of fans not just because they create cool devices but because they understand why they exist: to challenge the status quo (perfectly encapsulated in the ‘Mac vs PC’ commercials). And that why forms a bond with every tech user who doesn’t want to be perceived as a geek.

So the first lesson to any city that wants to build its brand is to begin with some serious soul-searching. Define your why.

Find your white space

Once you’ve defined your essence, you need to hold it up to a very critical filter. Can it claim its own white space?

White space is the space in your target’s psyche that is unoccupied by other brands. Find it, and your brand sticks. Don’t find it, and you’re quickly forgotten.

There are three key questions to ask yourself to assess whether you’ve struck white space gold:

1. Is your essence a natural fit? If you live in the frozen north, claiming to be a sunny paradise simply won’t wash. You aren’t being honest with yourself. Your essence needs to line up with an attribute that is true and recognized by your audience as true.
2. Is your essence important? You may be the silly putty capital of the world, but if your audience doesn’t care about silly putty, you’ll be preaching to empty pews. Your essence needs to line up with something your audience finds attractive.
3. Is your essence hard to copy or compete with? How many cities claim to be ‘friendly’? In your case, friendliness may be true, it may resonate with your audience – but it will never differentiate you from your competitors. If this seems obvious, check into how many cities in North America are claiming to be capitals of sustainability. If you don’t differentiate, you’ll become a ‘me-too’. And waste your branding money.

Futureproof your brand

Our world is going through unprecedented change. Climate change, technological change and cultural change. Is your brand resilient enough to thrive in this environment?

Although there are no guarantees, building the following five elements into your brand will give it a better than average chance of success.

1. Sustainability. Sustainability needs to be a strong undercurrent in everything you do. Not only because it draws the best and brightest potential residents or because it keeps punitive legislators away but because it makes financial sense. Sustainability is newspeak for infrastructure efficiency, and that saves money. Which city doesn’t want to save money?
2. Innovation. Innovation is one of the most used, and abused, words of the past three years. But no matter what you call it, fostering an environment for creativity and invention is a powerful tool for building a better city. It’s an incredible brand attribute to be known for.
3. Design. English no longer rules the world, and words aren’t the best way to communicate with a diverse audience. You need to incorporate strong design into your brand, to enable your audience to intuitively and instantly understand you.
4. Insight. Is your brand built on an insight with a ‘best before’ expiry date or an insight that’s perennial? On the surface, BMW’s iProject is about creating electric cars. But look deeper and you see they’re working to an entirely new insight: mobility. The company is investing in new, exciting ways for people to get around without cars, because they understand the future is about megacities, where public transport and hyperdensity will make cars an expensive novelty.
5. Social interaction. Don Draper, RIP. The new world of branding is about interactivity, meaningful dialogue with consumers and creating movements instead of campaigns. That means your brand needs to be able to listen as effectively as it speaks. And, more importantly, it needs to be able to turn feedback into action.

Define your brand. Or be defined.

Building a brand isn’t as simple as creating a logo. It takes commitment, courage and time. Ample reason to put it on the back burner while you address more pressing issues, like rebuilding your city.

But if you don’t define your brand, someone in your audience will. Chances are the perception they create about your city won’t be as flattering as you might like.

It’s your city. It’s your brand. Futureproof it.

Photo by Luz/flickr/Creative Commons

The Occupy encampments: What are they? Who are they? From national news to blogs across the internet, I have been seeing pictures of rows upon rows of tents lodged precariously in city parks.

So far, hundreds and often thousands have taken to the streets to voice their dissatisfaction with the current sociopolitical climate. These people are part of the more general “Occupy” movement, but surely there is not room for everyone in these tent cities across the country.

Earlier this week, I read that the tent city in St. Louis’s newly renamed “Freedom Square” had recently been evicted. This came along with news of the evictions in New York, Oakland, and other Occupy encampments. My first fear was: This is the end of the movement, it has been shut down! But, to my surprise, the marches and rallies went on unaffected. With that in mind, I set out to discover what role the occupy encampments serve for the movement and who is living in them. Armed only with rumors that the encampments were mostly the homeless and radical anarchists, I set out to put real people and faces in place of these vespers.

On a bright and chilly morning, I arrived in Nashville, TN, home of one of the more persistent and lasting occupy encampments. Nervous, I approached the information desk to ask if and where I could pitch a tent. As I walked, the people passing me smiled warmly and called out with the greeting “Hello brother!” At the information desk, a clearly intelligent young man passionately spoke a few words to the key causes of the Nashville movement and invited me to pitch a tent wherever I liked.

Heading to a quiet corner of the plaza I was struck by the diversity of age, race, and class I saw around me. As the rumors had indicated, there were many homeless, and ragged-looking youth, but there were also many others. That day, I talked with a civil rights lawyer, a young punk activist, a neurologist, a homeless individual, a local restaurant owner, a grad student, and a plumber.

That night, I attended the General Assembly, or GA as the occupiers call it. The GA is a meeting of all the encamped occupiers, the movement’s supporters, and friends of the movement. In Nashville, they meet every day to make proposals, work in small task forces, and share ideas. I was amazed at how respectful folks were of every individual’s right to speak and have their words respected. That evening I saw the words of the homeless inspire as much clapping and support as the words of the group’s elegant and well-dressed lawyer. It was truly a sight to behold.

Through my time in the Occupy Nashville encampment, I have begun to learn the purpose and personage of my temporary new home. The Encampments serve as a place where individuals from all walks of life can come together and meet, all on the same level. They are a think tank, and a mingling ground, in one. I have learned a lot from my fellow humans at the encampment and I look forward to continuing to do so.

If you have not yet been down to one of the occupy camps, I highly encourage you to do so. The best time to get a feel for what is going on is during the general assembly. Look up the time of the GA for your city’s local movement and drop in for a visit.

Reprinted with permission from Ecolocalizer

by Andrea Learned

I just read the great Grist piece by Andrew Zaleski: Go, Fight… Green? His point about the work needed in order to green professional sports is: how much can we really expect the Bud-drinking, Cracker Jack-eating crowds to care about the environment (or the fact that a stadium is becoming more energy efficient and composting food waste, for example)? One of the obstacles he mentions comes via a study by OgilvyEarth, which found that 82 percent of responders viewed “going green” as girly. Yikes.

What those involved in greening sports venues are hoping (and getting help from The Green Sports Alliance to do) is that greener consumer behavior might come to be seen as less “Seattle treehugger” and more social norm by these simple nudges that encourage composting, recycling or a similar attitude change. I could go on and on because I find this challenge so intriguing, but instead let’s just say I spy an opportunity through my gender lens.

If going green is seen as “girly,” why not look to the “girls” who are pro sports fans? It is not that the percentage of women in those ranks comes close to meeting that number for men, but that the women who ARE fans have a lot of influence over how their households are run, and how their families live their lives. Women are raising tomorrow’s sports fans, so why not get their help shaping their kids to be the future’s more compost-loving and recycling aware “butts” in stadium seats?

Sustainability is a movement, not something that we’ll see the mass population embrace over night. If those of us working for change can stand the fact that there will be no immediate and visibly huge shift in consumer behavior in our lifetimes (let’s face it), we should lay some good groundwork for future generations. In that way, you and I and the sports venues/teams looking to go green might not want to obsess about converting today’s sports fans from their fear of “girly green,” but focus on engaging with those “green girls” who can influence fans to come.

Photo by Audrey Pilato/flickr/Creative Commons

by Gernot Wagner

Some U.S. politicians have been attacking environmental regulations, arguing that they hurt the economy and that the costs outweigh the benefits. But four decades of data refute that claim and show we need not choose between a clean environment and economic growth.

In recent months, some in Congress have been waging a whole-scale war against the Environmental Protection Agency. By now it has reached comical dimensions, with three separate bills aimed at preventing a so-called EPA “dust rule” that has never even existed.

The spectacle would indeed be funny, if it wasn’t deadly serious. Republicans in Congress and in the GOP presidential debates are seeking to defund an already cash-strapped EPA under the pretense of caring about the federal deficit and are trying to hamper the agency by arguing that its rules hurt the economy.

Quite to the contrary. We have 40 years of data to show that a cleaner environment goes hand in hand with solid economic growth.

Harvard Professor Dale W. Jorgenson, one of the deans of macroeconomic modeling who has been honing his model of the U.S. economy for decades, calculates that gross domestic product in 2010 was 1.5 percent higher because of the Clean Air Act of 1970. It turns out that protecting children from foul air leads to more productive adult workers.

That’s the moral equivalent of arguing for child labor laws by saying that keeping kids in school will increase their earnings as adults. But even this reductionist argument, focused only on a narrow definition of dollars and cents, works to show the benefits of cleaner air.

Overall, benefits of the 1970 Clean Air Act exceed costs by a factor of 30 to 1. The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments match that ratio: $1 of investments led to $30 in benefits — fewer children sick or dying, more productive workers, and healthier environs.

In a 2010 analysis of rules passed in the prior decade, the non-partisan Office of Management and Budget calculated benefits-to-cost ratios across various government agencies. The EPA came out on top with the highest ratios by far, with benefits from its regulations exceeding costs by an average of more than 10 to 1. If you care about well-functioning, free markets, the EPA would be the last federal agency you’d want to cut.

None of this is magic. It’s something much more mundane: honest accounting.

As any economist worth his or her professional crest will tell you, regulation solves problems that markets ignore. For example, they ensure that the costs of those who pollute show up on their own books, rather than increase the costs for others — either those left with cleanup costs or the healthcare expenses of those who live downwind or downstream.

Those who create costs pay for them — that simple idea is the logic behind the Clean Air Act and most other environmental regulations. It forces markets to reckon with the true costs of doing business, to be more efficient, and to innovate. And it does so at a great benefit to society, even boosting GDP in the long run by making us all healthier and more productive.

But is now the right time to strengthen environmental rules? No major piece of U.S. environmental legislation has been passed when the unemployment rate was above 7.5 percent. (U.S. unemployment currently stands at 9.0 percent.) Environmental protection, after all, costs money that we don’t currently have, or so the story goes. Wrong again: smart environmental regulation creates long-term policy certainty and mobilizes capital in the short term.

Sadly, economic models aren’t helping here. Professor Jorgenson’s model, for example, shows large, long-term benefits of cleaner air. But it also shows short-term costs. The benefit-cost ratio may be high, but there are still costs after all. Someone needs to pay for building retrofits or investments in newer, cleaner technologies.

That, however, is largely a function of the model, which, like most others, assumes a Panglossian economy of full employment, humming along at full speed. Any alteration to that perfect world will, by definition, entail costs.

That’s clearly not the world we live in. Our current economy, with record unemployment, cries out for investment to fuel growth. Sure, government can pay to dig and fill those proverbial holes in the ground. We clearly need massive investments in updating crumbling public infrastructure like roads, railroad lines, and bridges. But we ought to be looking for smarter investments that go beyond paying for jobs that will cease once the government money stops flowing. The whole-scale transition of our energy sector into a cleaner, leaner one is the prime example.

What’s needed more than anything is policy certainty. Smartly enforced regulation provides it and allows us to mobilize private capital to meet the regulatory — and societal — goals. Will that regulation cost money? Yes, but the flipside of cost is investment: Much-needed spending is needed now, and it is the only way to create jobs.

Leave it to the CEO of one of the largest U.S. utilities to set the record straight. Michael Morris, the CEO of American Electric Power, said during an investors’ conference call last month that EPA’s proposed tighter mercury and toxics standards would be anything but a job killer: “Once you put capital money to work, jobs are created.” Someone needs to install the scrubbers and modernize the existing energy fleet.

As Josh Bivens from the Economic Policy Institute put it in a recent congressional hearing on the same EPA toxics rules: “In short, calls to delay implementation of the rule based on vague appeals to wider economic weakness have the case entirely backward — there is no better time than now, from a job-creation perspective, to move forward with these rules.”

Indeed, the numbers just for the EPA toxics rule speak for themselves: up to 17,000 lives saved, and anywhere from 28,000 to more than 150,000 jobs created. That should satisfy even the worst cynics who believe jobs created should trump lives saved.

Yes, EPA regulation does bring down the unemployment rate — and that’s just when you consider traditional clean air regulation. It doesn’t take into account global warming, which poses an even larger investment opportunity and multiple benefits in lives and jobs alike.

When detractors speak of the enormous costs associated with sensible global warming policy, we can safely discount these figures. But we should always remember that one person’s “cost” is another’s “investment.” A dollar spent is a dollar pumped into an economy that sorely needs more spending to create jobs.

“Green growth” isn’t just a catch phrase. It’s the only way to reconcile our relentless pursuit for material wealth on a finite planet with an atmosphere at the boiling point. The fact is that sound environmental regulations — whether they address dirty air or an overheating planet — can create jobs and be a boost, rather than a burden, for the economy.

Photo by Taber Andrew Bain/flickr/Creative Commons

by Beth Buczynski

The collaborative consumption movement scored a huge victory yesterday: The Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives with overwhelming bipartisan support.

“It’s clear that we need new ways to help small businesses and entrepreneurs take their ideas from the dinner table to the production line, said Congressman Patrick McHenry (NC-10), who championed the bill. ”The first step is to modernize outdated regulations that stand as barriers to American innovation. This legislation will ensure that our small businesses are not left behind. Crowdfunding can help give them the means to create jobs for hard-working individuals here at home.”

Of course, the bill will still have to survive the tense partisanship of the U.S. Senate before it becomes law, but this victory in the House and a written statement of support from the President is a good start.

What makes this “Crowdfunding Bill” so important?

First and foremost, it makes it much easier for small businesses and entrepreneurs to seek capital from individual public investors in very small amounts, and without all the regulation and oversight of the SEC. (Note: these regulations are good and important when we’re talking about international mega-corps and billions of dollars in securities. But when it comes to the local solar company or mom and pop bakery down the street, the rules should be different).

Another big benefit of this bill is that it begins the important process of legitimizing the crowdfunding industry and creating a legal framework for companies to utilize it safely. Until recently, crowdfunding was more of a donation process, in which individuals offered money but enjoyed no hope of financial compensation if the idea was successful. This bill changes that by making it possible for companies to offer equity-based crowdfunding opportunities to investors and startups to spur capital formation without involving the Big Banks.

The bill will also:

- Create a crowdfunding exemption from SEC regulations for firms raising up to $2 million, with individual investments limited to $10,000 or 10 percent of an investor’s annual income.
- Exclude crowdfunding investors from counting as shareholders for purposes of calculating the 499-shareholder cap under 12(g) of the Securities Exchange Act.
- Preempt state law and exempt the ban on general solicitation for the new crowdfunding exemption (making it legal for companies to advertise investment opportunities to the general public).

“Small business folks in Western North Carolina tell me time and time again that uncertainty and over-regulation are hampering their growth,” said McHenry. “So it unfortunately comes as no surprise that over two years into a sluggish economic recovery, nearly 14 million Americans remain unemployed as entrepreneurs continue to struggle with gaining access to much needed capital.”

By taking the decision about what companies to support out of the hands of politicians and banks, The Entrepreneur Access to Capital Act could be the first step toward changing that depressing reality and encouraging innovation in America once again.

by Francesca Rheannon

The General Assembly of New York City (the self-governing decision-making body of Occupy Wall Street) released a “Declaration of the Occupation of New York City” on September 29. The document listed 23 grievances against the “1 percent,” who are seen as the lords of our financial system and the economy. The grievances begin with “They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage” and end with “they continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.”

The document has been sent out to Occupy groups across the country for input and ratification. I was at one such gathering this past Sunday at “Occupy the Hamptons,” where about 100 people clustered by a picturesque windmill on Sag Harbor’s wharf to discuss the document. (Yours Truly – ever the climate hawk – suggested the inclusion of a grievance reading, in part, “In spite of the overwhelming scientific consensus that our current path of carbon emissions will cause catastrophic climate change… corporations have refused to cut carbon emissions to bring them down to the safe level of 350ppm in the atmosphere.”)

But, even as the movement’s grievances are still being articulated, it has begun to move toward educating itself about alternatives to the current top-down, vertically organized market economy – one that has seen income inequality soar to rates unseen since the last Gilded Age and incomes of ordinary Americans – the 99 percent – stagnate or fall. (New figures show that 50 percent of Americans make less than $26,364, the lowest in real dollars since 1999.)

The 99 percent -ers have been taking back the political sphere by re-defining the relationship Americans have toward the political process, from passivity to participatory democracy. As David Graeber, one of the original organizers of OWS and author of the recent book, Debt, wrote on the blog Naked Capitalism:

It is almost impossible to convince the average American that a truly democratic society would be possible. One can only show them. But the experience of actually watching a group of a thousand, or two thousand, people making collective decisions without a leadership structure, let alone that of thousands of people in the streets linking arms to holding their ground against a phalanx of armored riot cops, motivated only by principle and solidarity, can change one’s most fundamental assumptions about what politics, or for that matter, human life, could actually be like.

Now they are seeking economic structures that will embody the same horizontal principles. The New York General Assembly at OWS is in the process of designing a new currency based on gifting. Gift economies are ancient; Graeber argues in Debt that they may be the oldest economies in human history. They are getting an update in the work of such thinkers as Charles Eisenstein, as outlined in his book (available free online), Sacred Economics. He argues money should be an agent of abundance, not scarcity, connecting “human gifts with human needs.”

In that spirit, the Alternative Currencies Working Group at OWS is putting out for consideration by the General Assembly a software-enabled gift currency called PermaBank, that’s premise is “to develop and deploy a set of technologies that align 'financial services' with the principles of permaculture.” PermaBank would enable individuals and groups “to post their wish/requests and gifts/offers and indicate whether they've been completed.” It would also use paper money and credit cards (on a local credit union).

It seems the currency will formalize and organize an economy that has already spontaneously sprouted, enhancing “the efficiency of the gifting culture that currently exists within Liberty Plaza.”

The protestors have already deposited their money into a small credit union on the Lower East Side serving poor people who have been denied loans or accounts by other banks. In an extraordinarily mean-spirited move, Goldman Sachs retaliated against the bank by withdrawing a $5,000 pledge when the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union planned a fundraising event honoring the Occupy movement.

Alternative local currencies are not new – they have been promoted for decades by the Shumacher Society (now the New Economics Institute), among others, and are thriving in the Berkshires of Massachusetts (Berkshares) and elsewhere and in the explosion of time banks around the country.

The Metacurrency Project (whose proponent Arthur Brock was invited to speak to the 99 percent -ers at Zucotti Park) promotes the idea that “people should be able to decide what they value and how that will be measured and acknowledged. This means they have to be able to create their own currencies.” It aims to create the technology “tools, protocols and platforms” that will enable people to “transact directly with each other with no segment of that interaction relying on a centrally controlled system,” where “all levels are sovereign” (horizontally, not vertically determined).

The horizontal, democratic participation that Web-based technology makes possible is being used by another ad hoc group formed in the wake of OWS. Initially put out into the digisphere by Ralph Meima of Marlboro College’s MBA in Managing for Sustainability, “The American People’s New Economic Charter” is hoping to crowd-source an open, national conversation that develops a plan for redress for 18 of the 23 grievances in the Declaration of the Occupation—the ones dealing with economic issues.

Originally in the form of a public document on Google Docs, the Charter came under malicious attacks and migrated instead to a wiki that requires registration to join and edit. Since then, it’s taken off. “In three weeks we’ve come out of nowhere and have a community of far-flung people who have never worked together before,” Meima told CSRwire.

As an educator, Meima sees the Charter as an educational project that will use a process of continual collaborative iteration to inform ordinary people about complex issues and engage them in finding solutions.

It’s a new experiment, Meima says, one that expands the Occupy movement to the virtual space to create solutions on the ground. “Imagine a group of citizens who get together on the local level, it’s face to face. This is an experiment in virtual local activism – online education and local citizen activism moved to the national and virtual level.”

A movement toward creating a New Economy has been organizing since well before Occupy Wall Street first took to the streets. The New Economy Working Group is one key segment, bringing together thought leaders like David Korten (who publishes regularly on CSRwire) and Gar Alperovitz together with the Institute for Policy Studies.

The New Economic Institute in New York is making direct links to OWS. They will be putting on a forum, “Voices of the New Economics,” with Gar Alperowitz and Juliet Schor on November 5 that will also feature a youth panel with participants from Occupy Wall Street.

The work of The New Economy Working Group and New Economic Institute on local economies, regional banks, alternative currencies and other forms of democratic, sustainable economic systems are an invaluable resource for the 99 percent -ers. Last week, I wrote, “Let a hundred flowers of economic experimentation bloom.” This week, I see the shoots already pushing through the earth.

Photo by David Shankbone/flickr/Creative Commons

As I approached my local Apple store on the Saturday afternoon after Steve Jobs’ death, I wondered briefly about the change in decor on the front window. What looked like a stucco or clapboard finish seemed out of keeping with the company’s angular, austere, ever-so-modern image.

It turned out the new look was made up of dozens of post-it notes placed by avid customers to mourn the passing of the Apple founder and ex-CEO. The tableau included several bouquets and one (non-digital) candlestick, the kind of full-scale memorial that usually signals the death of royalty or a well-known pop icon, or marks the spot of a major tragedy.

I didn’t begrudge Jobs the recognition. His keen sense of human nature translated into generations of products that touched millions at a deep emotional level. But walking past the Apple store, I knew something was wrong with this picture.

A post on the Harvard Business Review (HBR) blog contrasted the mass outpouring for Jobs with the muted response to the loss of Dr. Ralph Steinman, the Nobel laureate in medicine who co-discovered the dendritic cell, but died just hours before his award was announced. Steinman’s research led to therapies that will add years and quality to millions of lives—including his own.

While Steinman’s discovery helped extend his life, Jobs’ work was at best extended his image—because if you want to commemorate him with a digital candle, there was an app for that.

Not so much for Wangari Maathai, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of Kenya’s Green Belt Movement, who also died of cancer in September. Maathai was a trailblazer for women, democracy, and human rights on a continent where there are still thousands who can’t afford iPhones.

In the industrialized North, where constant communication is an afterthought, her death passed with scarcely a word.

And for the millions of words that were written after Jobs’ death, parts of his story received scant attention. Monologuist and comedian Mike Daisey, creator of The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, visited the Foxconn plant in China that manufactures a large share of Apple’s output. He came away horrified by the suicides, 34-hour work shifts and hideous injuries behind the intuitively humane products that workers had never even seen fully assembled. Daisey hasn’t stopped using Apple products, but he thinks anyone who carries an iPad or a Macbook should get a better understanding of the supply chain behind their purchases.

The portrait of Jobs as an object of mass grief also stood in contrast to the everyday heroes who never made a Nobel committee’s short list. One of mine was Sophie de Villers, vice-president of strategy management at Canadian Blood Services, who died last February at the age of 50. Sophie joined Blood Services in the wake of a tainted scandal that undermined Canadians’ confidence in one of the cornerstones of an effective health system. She was a colleague, an ally, a remarkable mentor—and the results of her 60-hour work weeks stay well below the radar, unless you’re one of the estimated 525,000 Canadians who need safe transfusions every year.

In the HBR blog, Shyam Sunder says “we tend to overrate Jobs because of his showmanship.” Alternatively, he continues, Ralph Steinman “not only saw the vision but worked on it himself,” yet “we’ve got to accept that his contribution will not be that widely recognized.”

The contrast is a bit oversimplified, because Jobs arguably earned the accolades he’s received. But if all our attention goes to a handful of celebrities, with none left over for people who are revolutionizing immunology, combating climate change and deforestation, or helping rebuild a national blood system from the ground up, which path are we expecting the next generation of researchers, activists and system thinkers to choose?

Photo by James O'Brien II/flickr/Creative Commons

Reprinted with permission from CSRwire