This Says It All...

... the geometry of death and life...

on the left - the pyramid - how we, in our arrogance and ignorance, have deluded ourselves into thinking the world is ordered (almost killing the planet in the process)...

and on the right - the circle - how it really is ...

If we want a future for ourselves, our children and the other surviving life forms with whom we share this time, space and place, we're going to have to re-frame our understanding, our choices and our actions...

It's time for:

Triple P Bottom Line Accounting

Planet

People

Prosperity

20 Years On....

Severn Suzuki - an old soul in a young body - laid it on the line in 1992...

 

This young woman is now 31... and really, nothing has changed for the better in the two decades since she made that impassioned plea to the United Nations for the grown-ups to get real and responsible...

If we kill the earth, we kill ourselves... 

So it would seem logical that we ought not to kill the earth, that we ought to nurture her, care for her, protect her, nourish her, VALUE HER...

But some of us, it seems, know the cost of everything and the value of nothing... 

Instead of having stars in our eyes, too many of us are blinded by dollar signs... 

And that short-sighted vision can't see value in any form other than profit and loss columns...

I wonder how many zeros you'd need

and how wide the column would have to be,

to measure the loss of the earth

and all that lives on, in and above her?

Counting for Nothing - Women's (non) Value in the World's Accounting Systems

 

From TUC radio: 

http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/7310

"There is something fundamentally wrong with the way we measure the well being of a society. In our upside-down system of accounting (GNP & GDP) war is productive, misery caused by it is not taken into account and a dead tree is better than a living forest."

 
This is a radio version of the feminist economics film about the New Zealand author and former member of parliament Marilyn Waring, directed by the Oscar winning Canadian director Terre Nash.

http://emma2.radio4all.net/pub/archive/07.08.03/0628waringone.mp3

http://emma2.radio4all.net/pub/archive/07.08.03/0628waringtwo.mp3

The End Times?

Hopi prophecy: "And the oceans shall turn black".....

Triple Bottom Line Accounting in Socially Responsible Businesses

Speaking of old paradigms... there are some 'socially aware' businesses around the world who have adopted the Triple Bottom Line operating and accounting philosophy of PPP, which stands for People, Planet, Profit...

Now, in my opinion, they've still got the focus wrong: It should be PLANET, PEOPLE, PROSPERITY....

As a species we are merely one variety of life in the ecosphere; we seem to have developed the arrogance of
thinking the planet is our playground and we can do what we want to it, regardless of the rights of other species....

None of the beings on this planet can live within a damaged ecosphere, so our first responsibility is to the PLANET...

And I think the word PROFIT ought to be replaced by PROSPERITY... profit still implies exploitation and benefit only for some, while prosperity implies benefit for all...