Economist Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize winner, supports a mining tax and a carbon tax in UQ oration.

When Opposition Leader Tony Abbott talks about Labor's inability to manage the finances of this country because of their poor credentials who are you going to trust - Tony Abbott or a Nobel Prize-winning economist?

Will you trust Professor Joseph Stiglitz, the former chief economist of the World Bank whose theories and research won him a Nobel Prize or Tony Abbott?

He gave the UQ Centenary Oration on Monday at the University of Queensland. 

If you don't feel like reading this long post then listen to this interview Fran Kelly did for Radio National Breakfast.

Professor Stiglitz told a packed UQ Centre that Australia's economic stimulus package was the best designed in the world.

AND he said natural resources - coal, iron ore - should be properly valued at market just like the electromagnetic spectrum.

The government auctions the spectrum to the highest bidders who want to operate mobile phone networks, cable companies, television and radio stations. 

Basically, a country - like Australia - will end up poor if doesn't get the best price for its assets - and natural assets are not renewable, once they are gone they are gone. If the proceeds from the sale of these assets are not invested in infrastructure to support and grow other sectors the economy (manufacturing and value-adding, goods creation) then a country and it's people will not prosper - HELLO! HELLO! Drowning not waving.

"It should be subtracted from Gross Domestic Product (GDP)," he said. "You are selling off assets at a very low price if you don't have adequate taxes on mining - you are being cheated," he said to audience applause.

He thinks resources should be auctioned off to the highest bidder - the free market at work. Of course, the mining industry will make all kinds of threats.

To everyone's amusement he joked about how mining companies bamboozled, threatened and bribed governments of developing, fragile nations. 

"I assume that's not the case in Australia," he mused.

To prosper, a country needs to set up a stabilization fund (from a mining tax, if not a resources auction) for nation building.

This is what he calls an investment fund for building infrastructure and to grow value-adding industries, maintain education, job creation.

Not only that but the sell-off of natural resources should appear on a country's accounts as a kind of depreciation of assets - otherwise the accounts are not accurate.

((This kind of faulty accounting by banks led to the lovely GFC - Global Financial Crisis.))

He made these comments at the end of the oration after he explained the difference between the financial sector and the economy - the economy is not the financial sector.

The financial sector (the banks and regulators) are the culprits behind the global financial crisis which has crippled the global economy. Apparently, moneylenders have been skimming 40 percent of the profits from companies that actually make and produce things. His big point was that this is not really the role of the financial sector. The financial sector's job is to support economic growth, not cripple it. 

"Finance is a means to an end," he said. "The lack of balance between the financial sector and the economic sector was actually the real problem in this economic crisis (NOT the real estate bubble)."

He said the bubble was not real - the imbalance is reality. 

And no government is doing very much to redress this problem - the big bailout of banks in the USA basically allowed these culprits to continue "business as usual" by transferring something like $$US4 Trillion dollars of bad debt to the public sector. He's actually amazed at the fact that these guys - the bankers and the regulators (who don't really believe in regulation) - aren't even embarrassed. They didn't use the bailout money to extend credit to the struggling economy, to grow (or save) businesses and jobs. No. They just padded their own bottom lines. It's one of the reasons why, he says, the global economy is going to be staggering around for a long time to come yet.

The solution? Proper regulation.

The only time there has been any economic stability in the world economy is in the three decades after the Great Depression which heralded good banking regulation - perhaps this is why Baby Boomers have been able to thrive and prosper and pass on well-honed consumption patterns to their offspring. ;)

However, back to the oration.

Professor Stiglitz said that the deregulation started by Thatcher in the UK and Regan in the US basically led us to what we enjoy today  - a free market in free fall, an overbloated financial sector, a stumbling economy, people borrowing more than 100 percent of their income to buy overpriced houses, bankers believing they could turn F-rated mortgages into secure A-rated assets worthy of being in the portfolios of pension funds.

Part of the solution is investing in clean new industries and addressing poverty so that more people get jobs and pay taxes and have money to spend to boost the economy - because consumption is key to recovery. He's not a socialist but his research blows apart the idea that the "invisible hand" of self-interest in a free market free of regulation will address imbalances. The GFC proved this again, he said. (Are you listening Tony Abbott?)

He talks about quite simple economic principles which somehow seem to have been covered over by people shoveling shit - sorry those are my words, not his.

And as for Climate Change and the price of carbon and waiting for the rest of the world before we do anything?

Economies are not restructuring because there is no carbon price. The western world worries about the growing and changing consumption patterns of China and India.

Professor Stiglitz doesn't believe the West should begrudge them at all.

It's not consumption that's evil - it's profligacy. WASTE! Now, I wonder who wastes more the West or countries raising people out of poverty?

India and China will follow the wasteful ways of the West if the world fails to set a carbon price and force everyone to consume less to save the planet - the planet will force us to change in the end (*he says).

"If we had agreed to have a price on carbon at Copenhagen that would have been the answer," he said. "It would have provided an increase in global aggregate demand (global economic spending) as firms all over the world needed to retrofit (their business to meet pollution standards)."

 

 

 

James Cook University about to unleash bacteria on the CO2 generated by the Tarong Power Station - bio sequestration trial.

Bio sequestration is a productive, "sustainable" solution to reduce our carbon footprint - an experienced mining & finance industry player told the Women in Technology BioTech Forum this week over breakfast at Brisbane's PriceWaterhouseCoopers office overlooking the river.

As the audience of scientific and business folk tucked into fruit salad and poached eggs on toast, the guest speaker introduced them to a humble bacteria an alien born on Planet Earth that doesn't like "organic" food. 

Mine bugs don't need oxygen or light - they eat toxic chemicals. They feed upon stuff such as CO2.

Maree Klemm,  who has 35 years experience in the finance and mining industries, explained her belief that nothing - not even CO2 - should be considered "waste". Instead it should be seen as the input for another process, part of the system.

It was biotechnology that allowed the mining industry (in 1947) to start leeching or extracting metals from low-grade ore by speeding up the reproduction rates of "Mine Bugs".

This process allows mining companies to extract a few grams of gold from tons of low-grade ore.

Now it's being tested at Tarong Power Station as a means to grow "sustainable" oil - they will feed the bugs CO2 emissions from the stacks to grow algae.

Mine Bugs require a "radical eco-system". The nutrients this bacteria needs to survive are inorganic compounds.

So the perfect test facility for the "Bio Carbon Capture and Storage (bio CCS) Synthesiser is one of Australia's three largest power stations.

The Tarong trial, which is about to start, takes research out of James Cook University and puts it into the real world to grow algae that feeds off the CO2 emissions produces useful by-products: oil used in plastics, jet fuel and fertilisers. The algae can also be used for stock feed. The bio mass can also be used as fuel for power generation. It will grow in a buffer zone around the station.

Here's a comparison table for land use by crop:

0.24ha algae produces 100,000 tonnes of oil.

715ha corn produces the same amount of oil.

100ha canola ....................

20ha Palm Oil ....................................

The cost of the trial? $3.5m. Full-scale project would cost $300m consuming 1.4m tonnes of CO2 to produce 700,000 tones of algae, 250 tonnes of oil and 450 tonnes of algae meal.

Compare this to geo-sequestration - or carbon sinks - which costs $5B to set up and $2.2B to operate.


We Can't Pay We Won't Pay - the Carbon Tax gap in public logic that no one's closing.

Why is it that tsunamis always obliterate farms, villages and tropical islands and miss densely populated cities such as Tokyo? 

I'm not trying to be funny by asking seemingly irrelevant questions.
But this sprang to mind after I asked another question: 
Are the earthquakes and natural disasters the planet's way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions?
Reasoning: Get rid of the species causing the problem, or at least reduce the problem.
Maybe there are other considerations which we are not yet aware of in the way climate change affects the Earth's crust?
All you see is that there's a gap in my logic.

 

(This is a gap. This is a gap. This is a gap. This is a gap.this is agapthisisagapthisisagapthisisagap...)

 

How is it that so few people seem able to see the gap as wide and as high as the tsunami that hit Japan in this country's thinking about what should be done about climate change?

 

(This is a gap. This is a gap. This is a gap. This is a gap...his is a gap.this is agapthisisagapthisisagapthisisagap...)

In the polls we cry: "Do something!"

(This is a gap. This is a gap. This is a gap. his is a gap.this is agapthisisagapthisisagapthisisagap......)

 

The Climate Institute's 2010 exit poll on the night of the election of a hung parliament found that 32 percent of Green voters would have voted Labor - if Julia Gillard had shown leadership on Climate Change and not delayed the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
Labor could have won outright and had a mandate to take action - instead they lost the farms and villages. 
And Opposition Leader Tony Abbott insists that people flat out don't want change.
All the surveys show that Australians do want action on climate change but they're petrified of taking their private "Tokyo" down.

(This is a gap. This is a gap.this is agapthisisagapthisisagapthisisagap...

How you ask the question makes the difference. 
For instance, the Climate of the Nation survey taken by Auspoll for the Climate Institute last year asked people: "Do you want cheaper clean fuel through large-scale development of solar, geothermal and wind power?"
Only one percent of respondents opposed it.

(This is a his is a gap.this is agapthisisagapthisisagapthisisagap... is a gap...)

 

And at least three-quarters of those surveyed wanted either a "detailed plan to change Australia using cleaner sources of energy" and/or they want "a plan to reverse our rising pollution in the next three years" - btw, that countdown is now just over two years.
Act now! Just don't direct charge us - say 5 percent of the population surveyed. 
And what ever you DO do ... do not set up an emissions trading scheme that will raise our cost of living - 16 percent of respondents opposed an emissions trading scheme. This was before the election.

 

(This ihis is a gap.this is agapthisisagapthisisagapthisisagap...

Reminds me of a Dario Fo play called We Can't Pay We Won't Pay - it's Nobel Prize-winning high Italian farce by a communist leaning thinker. 
And exactly where is the leadership of this country heading with this?

 

his is a gap.this is agapthisisagapthisisagapthisisagap...

This is a gap in logic which no political party seems willing to breach. We have a "Multi-Party Climate Change Committee" which reports to the Prime Minister and Cabinet and it sits behind closed doors - no attempt to breach the gap in public thinking on this issue. They simply proclaim the decision to introduce the very thing that everyone is "afraid" of: a carbon tax. Which I support but that's beside the point.

a gap.this is agapthisisagapthisisagapthisisagap...

 

Maybe we need a TV reality show: So you think there's a gap in my reasoning? 
Perhaps it should be the title of Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's Global Warming action manifesto - the one he has yet to write.
Meanwhile, the 6th update of the Garnaut Climate Change Review recommends tax reform to compensate low to middle income earners for the effects of the mooted carbon tax.
"Most other developed countries now have falling or steady emissions but, largely as a result of the contemporary resources boom, our emissions continue to increase rapidly," Ross Garnaut writes in this latest update.
Any gaps here when you consider this in the context of our future demand for electricity as shown in the graphs from Chapter 20 of the Garnaut Review: 


Political debate carbon tax cartoon: Do you really want the global warming debate to be an intelligence test?

When I visited San Francisco's Exploratorium I bought this postcard showing psychologist's EG Boring's little intelligence test. 

I think the climate change debate is a reincarnation of the postcard.

Do you see a young or old woman or both?

Tim Flannery and the rest of the Climate Commission appointed by the Federal Government in February held it's first community meeting in Geelong on Friday.

Listen to an ABC podcast 

I watched it on the ABC. They responded to the fears of the average Australian from how a carbon tax will affect petrol prices and groceries to whether jobs will be lost in the most energy intensive industries such as aluminum smelters. This unfortunately was broadcast on the ABC on a Friday night after 8.30pm while the Tony Abbott in the climate skeptics crowd speech was all over every media outlet for the past few days.

So here's how I think it must look to the average Aussie who bothered with last week's debate at all: 

By the way, here are some answers given to questions at the Geelong forum:

  • Petrol prices would go up $2-$3 a tank (depending on the size of the tank) with the introduction of a recommened $20-$30/tonne price on carbon.
  • Jobs at Alcoa would be saved if (as is part of every plan under consideration) the aluminum industry gets some form of compensation - because it's actually doing something about reducing its energy consumption already and is already internationally competitive in this area.
  • There is no global warming debate in the scientific community. Why? Because the existence and cause of Global Warming is accepted as fact by 98 percent of the scientific community.
  • "UNCERTAINTY" is the reason investors are not investing in clean energy which means it will take even longer to bring the price of clean energy down.
  • Scientists are annoyed and frustrated by the "political" debate around climate change and went back to their test tubes, exploration ships and the like to do the work rather than argue with people who don't have their facts straight.

PS: If television's morning programs really want to do a public service then perhaps they should do a segment every morning with a scientist!

Translation for international readers of da Scriffles: 

The GoGo Bird: Prime Minister Julia Gillard - leader of a minority government in a hung parliament - is captive to the Greens (hence green shoes).

The Poll Dancer: Opposition Leader Tony Abbott & his team of fat cats are worried about the cost of living for ordinary Australians and the fact that Julia Gillard lied before the election when she said her government would never introduce a carbon tax. Now that she needs the support of The Greens to remain in government she's changed her mind. 

 

    Daintree upland possum faces extinction with 3 degree temperature rise.

    Ocean warming affects the cloud forest of the Daintree where lives a white possum that drinks dew off leaves in the uplands - the most ancient highest parts of the Daintree.

    Some species of plants which existed when Australia was part of  Gondwanaland still live here - and it is the only place in the world you find them. 

    If the mists stop rolling in off the ocean and hitting the highlands then the biodiversity of the Daintree will diminish because the forest will change.

    The upland species will disappear from the mountains which were part an ancient reef system before tectonic movement pushed them up leaving only the Great Barrier Reef.

    These ancient mountains have been worn down by the millennia.

    The possums, frogs and insects which are unable to live in warmer zones would move up the mountain if it went any higher, but it doesn't.

    (I'm paraphrasing information from a technical tour of the Daintree hosted by James Cook University's Professor of Geography Steve Turton.)

    Greenhouse is personal - but when does the national interest take priority? 2020? 2050?

    When you cut open a piece of fruit, you discover something about its intrinsic nature. 

    The fruit is divided into sections. 
    A cross-section reveals a floral pattern - you might even think that you have discovered straight lines in nature (a rarity).
    But if you look closely you will see an ever so slight gentle curve in the lines. These are called observations.

    If you were a scientist, an agrarian economist even, you'd create an avalanche of statistical data: where does it grow, how much is harvested, how much is exported, the sugar content level optimals...
    Observations and data make up the weight of evidence about the nature of the thing...

    An artist's perspective is different to a scientist's which is different to a grocer's view or a shopper's view. But all views take in a level of uncertainty: cost versus quality (is it rotten inside?), how much can I sell (popularity?), why does the season shift (climate change?).  

    Your personal interest and taste determines whether or not you buy and eat the fruit - your personal taste may run against popular taste or industry interests.
    So when does it become necessary to put personal interest - or industry interests - aside?
    You can't keep growing persimmons if the cost of production skyrockets. Similarly, the cost of production for many industries (affecting many people's personal interests) are going to skyrocket if we fail to make a transition to a low-carbon economy.
    This is true whether or not Australia takes action to reduce the human carbon footprint - as Ross Garnaut says, any money raised by a carbon tax should benefit the future not be used to "smooth the pillows of dying economic activities". This is not a threat to our way of life. Even coal-fired power plants like Tarong are looking clean alternatives such as bio-sequestraion - they see the need to make the transition.
    At the CSIRO's Greenhouse 2011 Forum in Cairns last week, economist Ross Garnaut reiterated the point he has been making since 2008 when he presented his report to then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
    "Economics says it's worth doing something about the issue (of climate change) and that it won't be unmanageably expensive if we do it well," Garnaut preached to the converted. 
    It was an assembly of representatives of the mainstream scientific view: human contribution to climate change must be mitigated as it poses a significant threat to our civilization (and our global economy).
    "We can't solve the problem on our own," Garnaut said, "but we make it much harder if we don't participate." The lowest possible cost way is to put a price on carbon.
    "China has moved emissions growth a long way from business as usual and that makes quite a big difference to the risks humanity faces. Even they have a long way to go but we have even further."
    The awful reality is that Australia is not pulling its weight. Our skyrocketing consumption of electricity and excessive use of motor vehicles makes us one of the most wasteful countries (per capita) on Earth.
    "Setting an economy-wide price for carbon on external costs will gie us the lowest cost solution," Garnaut advises. 
    Australia is richly endowed with renewable energy resources and with the technical expertise (engineering, geological and earth sciences) to thrive in a low-carbon global economy, he says.
    "Uncertainty is not a case for not acting that's an unanalytical way of approaching this," Garnaut said. Humans take out insurance against uncertainty - what's the difference here, he asks. "It would be a reckless country and a reckless species that turned its back on the weight of authority coming from mainstream science. 
    "We know from that the world is warming. We know that from observation without much science except statistical analysis."
    Shifting seasons, flowering plants, bird migration - these are observations biologists and gardeners have been making for years.

     

    This is an article I wrote for a newsletter sent to financial planners - I'm publishing it here because the comments made in response might be of interest. I'm not identifying the authors of the comments.

    Tax junk food instead of carbon: Obesity is when you can't walk and chew gum.

    You can find on the outside only what you possess on the inside. – Adolfo Montiel Ballesteros

    When an armed robber makes up his mind to do whatever it takes to get whatever it is that he needs what motivates him is self-interest - right?

    Only a madman would stand in front of a desperate person wielding a gun or a knife and advise him to get in touch with his authentic self - it's the same with trying to tell a junk food addict not to binge on crap -  that's all you folk who load your shopping trollies with soft drinks, chips, biscuits and LCMs <YES LCMs> processed and bottles of unnatural yuk and go into debt to pay your shopping bill.

    OKAY. Instead of a carbon tax, let's tax junk food and spend it on renewable energy innovation. Who's the robber now, hey?

    Do you like the Barren Von Carben series by my nieces? I thought up the Baron and asked them to create him. I like the way they spell his name: BARREN. I created his oily haired bride. The Barren's Bride.

    It's really weird for me at the moment because I've been writing reports of health forums on children's nutrition and diabetes - there's a massive epidemic in our society and no one's taking up arms. The rate of bowel cancer in children is rising. 

    Two-thirds of Australians are overweight or obese. People basically aren't eating fruit and vegetables.

    Obese children suffer horrible systematic discrimination. The emotional and psychological impact (not to mention the cardio-vascular disease, diabetes and kidney failure) follows them into adulthood - they drop out of school, they can't get jobs, they suffer social discrimination. Read the stats. 

    The one good thing Tony Abbott has going for him is that he cycles, he runs, and he surfs - even though he leads a busy life. He's time poor too but he finds time! Perhaps he might get elected if he starts to truly care about something OTHER than being elected.

    Here's a suggested Australian Constitution based on our TRUE and HONEST Australian values:  

    * The right to live forever! *The right to smokes and booze! *The right to Maccas! *The right take whatever I want and pay nothing - or close to nothing! *To hell with everyone but ME! *The right to hold to self-righteous arrogance and claim it as fact - that is to lie. *The right to whinge about someone else's lies. *The right to kick and spit and punch people for no good reason (Have you listened to the news lately?).

    Are these the values we defend our shores with?

    THIS is the AUSTRALIAN way of life that refugees aspire to? You can own a Nintendo and eat Maccas at the same time.

    Once upon a time, Australian children bragged about being able to walk and chew gum at the same time - and they could!

    That's because the energy spent walking was greater than the calorie intake of chewing gum!

    I've stopped blogging because I know that I've started ranting over climate change and it's boring. But really people!

    You take up arms against future proofing the environment but you do nought to protect your children's health. Throw that extra pack of chips in the trolley, go on! Hello??? Anyone in there??? Honestly! 

    A third of Australian children will be obese by 2020 - these are the figures helpless health professionals talk about as they tremble thinking about the future burden on our health system, not to mention our society. Imagine how they feel being unable to turn the Titanic around?

    I realized that there are a lot of good people in the health system who feel bad about fighting a losing battle - if only you could hear them.

    When is it time to change? It's taken half a century to change people's attitudes to smoking. We do not have half a century here folks.

    Continue to swallow those Maccas "family" meals and guzzle your soft drink, instead of water. Is it that difficult to cook fresh family meals? 

    Our economy is groaning - the Health economy is bankrupt - that's what waiting lists mean people! There's no money to cover the deficit. It's not a pretty picture if you're on a waiting list.

    If you aren't on those waiting lists then you're lucky. Me? I'm not on a waiting list but I do need to lose a few pounds. I don't eat junk food though - not in all my life! When I was kid if we wanted pizza my parents told us to make them - the base, the sauce, cut up the topping and wait for it to cook! Fresh out of the oven. Good honest, authentic food from flour and whole tomatoes and cheese and olives and ...

    I wonder what will happen to me these days if I end up in a nursing home unable to take a hot shower so that I can move in the morning... After a month of yoga twice a week, my spine can move again. Ah the splendor of life tied to a desk.

    Let us live forever! We crawled out of the ooz and we can crawl back ... are you shocked yet? 

    Where exactly is this "authentic" self that the heeby new age body beautiful creepies talk about?

    Bullshit is authentic too if you know what you're looking at.

    Creepies because all they are doing is pushing their latest product down your throat! You too can be thin if you pay a fortune for my secrets. Agh!

    What is enough for an armed robber? $5000 ... $50,000? ... $1000 or just a carton of smokes?

    Well, what exactly are you prepared to take up arms for? 

     

    Cradle nature with cradle-to-cradle innovation - a new industrial revolution. Muir Wood video 30MB

    Ralph Waldo Emerson was wrong when he wrote: "Essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf". Because the Industrial Revolution has touched everything.

    The 18th Century is coming to a close - a little late - in the 21st century when what we need is another industrial revolution, thanks to peak oil and peak debt and climate change. Revolution of universal design with universal application ... if you want to invest, invest in community, invest in people.

    This is the message from today's philosophers who gathered at Berkeley's Ecoliteracy Centre for the Systems Thinking seminar by Fritjof Capra in June.

     

    In one action-packed week in San Francisco, I managed to more than fulfil all three goals for my trip:

    • to catch up with family
    • to hear Fritjof Capra speak
    • to walk in nature.

     

    On the riverboat trip across Lake Tahoe to Emerald Bay, we listened to words of Mark Twain delivered by an actor who impersonated Twain.

    "To obtain the air the angels breathe, you must go to Tahoe." _ Mark Twain

    My cousin informed me that "They ran a bumper sticker campaign to "Keep Tahoe Blue". Turns out climate change has warmed the waters of one of the world's largest alpine lakes. 

    The dramatic landscape and cool, cool basin of blue water was carved by melting glaciers. But less snow falls in winter, more rain falls, the seasons have changed. To me, it seems that angels still breathe the air there but imagine what it must have been like when Emerson and Twain were around? 

    My father's cousin took me to see Muir Woods - a massive, old-growth, redwood forest basically in the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area. It is as incredible as the Daintree Rainforests of North Queensland. Except instead of ascending into the mountains, you descend along a winding road into the depths of a fairytale forest.

    Here's a quick video of Muir Wood:

    What's all this got to do with Systems Thinking? Well, ecology is a system and we are part of this system. Definitely no better than a redwood.

    I'm guessing that the wood may exist due to the cloud forests - the infamous bay mists - just as the Daintree's Uplands are sustained by the cloud forests that blow in from The Great Barrier Reef. If these mists disappear due to seasonal changes (read global warming) these ancient ecosystems will fail due to climate change.

    Scientists say Evolution started in places like these. The oldest coastal redwoods in Muir Woods are up to 1200 years old - so they were giants even 200 years ago when Ralph Waldo and Twain marvelled at nature.

    Ralph, a philosopher poet who loved nature, could not ever imagine that man could exhaust nature - even though he worried about the consequences of the great Industrial Revolution's inexhaustible drive to make more stuff quicker. This is quite a feat.

     I travelled to San Francisco to hear another philosopher, the physicist-author Fritjof Capra, talk about Systems Thinking at the Ecoliteracy Centre. 

    He's writing a new book on Systems Thinking. I've wanted to hear him speak ever since I read his book The Tao of Physics in about 2008 - I came to it late. It was first published in 1975. I managed to ask him to elaborate on how he came to write it.

    The physicist took took time out from his academic and scientific research to write this book about how physics is proving Eastern philosophy. People hung on his every word.

    Climate skeptics can deny all knowledge and ban climate science from being taught in schools but the truth is that when you teach ecology you are teaching systems thinking and systems connect us to everything in the cosmos - all the way through evolution to the first bubble the popped.

    Fritjof Capra, Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Ecoliteracy Centre, Aristotle share one trait - they teach that we must learn from nature rather than try to defeat nature.

    I bought many books at the Ecoliteracy Centre, like Cradle to Cradle, Remaking the Way We Make Things, ©2002, by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. 

    Many books, such as this one and the one Capra is writing, advocate a new Industrial Revolution. We need to learn to make things better so that there is not so much waste - as in nature.

    "If the first Industrial Revolution had a motto, we like to joke, it would be 'If brute force doesn't work, you're not using enough of it'." _ Cradle to Cradle.

    If "make it fit" was good enough for industrial solutions in the 18th century then what's wrong with industry of today? Make it fit again, redesign it, make it fit in ways that follow nature's design. Build new industries, build new markets, isn't that what business and industry do? 

    See Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation. Berkeley's Ecoliteracy Centre is funded through philanthropy and is designed to the tip-top sustainability ratings in the USA.