Saturday, 27 March 2010, 8:30pm, nationwide.
In 2009 hundreds of millions of people around the world showed their support by turning off their lights for one hour.
Earth Hour 2010 will continue to be a global call to action to every individual, every business and every community. A call to stand up, to show leadership and be responsible for our future.
Pledge your support turn off your lights for one hour, Earth Hour at 8.30pm, Saturday 27th March 2010.
If you’ve heard about Cap & Trade, but aren’t sure how it works (or who benefits), this is the film is for you.
The Story of Cap & Trade is a fast-paced, fact-filled look at the leading climate solution being discussed at Copenhagen and on Capitol Hill.
Host Annie Leonard introduces the energy traders and Wall Street financiers at the heart of this scheme and reveals the “devils in the details” in current cap and trade proposals: free permits to big polluters, fake offsets and distraction from what’s really required to tackle the climate crisis.
Just Focus
What is sustainable development?
Well let’s take a step back and first ask - what is development? It is a pretty difficult term to define because no one really agrees exactly what it is. For many people development simply refers to reducing poverty and improving living condition in poor countries. Others believe that poor countries should pursue the development path that richer countries have followed. For the purposes of this article, lets think about it is as “growth and change that creates a world where more and more people can enjoy a good quality of life and reach their potential”. Sounds pretty good right?!
So then sustainable development would be growth and change that helps us all enjoy a good quality of life, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Even better! I think almost all of us can agree that sustainable development is a good thing. But how do we achieve it? For many of us when we hear the word ‘sustainability’ we think immediately of the natural environment, but sustainability is not just about protecting Mother Earth. A truly sustainable world requires us to look after the people too! The Just Focus crew like to use the Four Pillars of Sustainability, which are; Environmental responsibility, Economic health, Social equity and Cultural vitality.
Four Pillars of Sustainability
This helps us to look at sustainability a bit differently and make connections between happy healthy people and a happy healthy planet.
Over the next few months Just Focus is going to look at each pillar and explore ways each of us can help contribute to creating a sustainable world. In this article we look at a HEALTHY ECONOMY.
To create an economy that is both sustainable and healthy, we need to do things a little differently than we are now. Looking after the environment and our workers has to be held in balance with business development and making a profit. Sounds hard, but we don’t have to choose one over the other. Here are some of the things we could work on…
Energy
Energy is a necessity. We use it for heating, cooking, manufacturing, construction and transportation. It’s hard to imagine life without it. But the way we use it needs to change. And fast! We are currently consuming non-renewable resources, such as oil and gas, faster than they can be produced, creating harmful environment effects and creating a global dependency on a resource that will one day run out. We must preserve some non-renewable resources for use in the future and focus on developing renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and hydro power.
Personal Action: We are pretty lucky in New Zealand because 70 % of our power is from renewable sources, but it is still good to try and conserve power. Check out www.climatechange.govt.nz for some games and activities.
Transport
Our transport system help us to move people, food and other goods around cities, countries and the world. But the recent growth in the transport sector is damaging the environment, and many believe it is contributing to climate change The volume of traffic and increased congestion in the big cities also has an economic cost, with loss of work hours and slower delivery services. Transport is an essential part of life, but it is also harmful to the economy and the planet. What do we do!? A good place to start is reducing our dependency on cars. We also need new technology to improve vehicle efficiency and more investment in public transport systems.
Personal Action: Petition your local council to provide incentives for car pooling and using public transport, so more people will be encouraged to do it. You can save money and the planet!
Education and Employment
Without adequate investment in education and training our economy couldn’t grow. Economic prosperity relies on on-to-it people and businesses who provide high quality products and services that others want and are prepared to pay for. Education and training creates skilled workers who are able to meet this need. Helping people improve their skill level and find jobs is also the best way to reduce poverty. To be truly sustainable, work needs to be valued and workers treated fairly and we need regular opportunities to update our skills and knowledge, so that we can adapt to our rapidly changing world.
Personal Action: Make the most of your education and training and never stop learning! Be aware of your rights as a worker www.youthlaw.org.nz
Business and industry
The business and industry sector has a HUGE role to play in achieving sustainable development around the world. Although many big corporations are accused of causing environmental damage and undermining workers human rights they also have the potential to make a huge contribution, by creating jobs and business opportunities, and using resources more efficiently. Also, by improving their environmental practices, producing less waste, and raising labour standards and valuing their workers, they can set an example to other businesses (try googling ‘Interface Inc’ for an example of a company doing exactly that!).
Personal Action: Check out www.stopcorporateabuse.org and join campaigns that challenge irresponsible and dangerous corporate actions around the world
Trade
International trade isn’t new, people began trading silk and spices thousands of years ago, but the volume of world trade today and the rules that control it have increased the impact it has our everyday lives. Trade has lots of positives but it also contributes to rising pollution levels and has reduced biodiversity (that is the number of living species on the planet). On top of this, the gap between the world’s richest and poorest people has widened, partly due to unfair trade rules created by the World Trade Organisation. How we trade and invest around the world is going to have significant impact on the planet’s future. We need trade rules that benefit people AND the planet.
Personal Action: Purchase products that are Fair Trade and/or Organic certified, which means that the environment and the workers who made these products are getting a better deal. Go one step further and get involved with an NGO like Oxfam and work towards reforming the World Trade Organisation
Good time for change
We need to make quite a lot of changes if we want to create a healthy sustainable economy. You may be thinking that this is not really the best time, what with most of the world in an economic recession. But rather than let all the statistics and media hype get us down this could be the perfect time to take stock. Why did this happen? What are we doing wrong? What would be the impact if we continue to do things like this? This is a great time to think about how we could do better! How could we organise the global economy so that as many people as possible benefit and so that we use the world’s resources sustainability? For our sake, and the sake of those to come, this is a question we cannot ignore any longer.
Edited by Alex Steffen; Forward by Al Gore.
This book is a ground breaking compendium of the most innovative solutions, ideas and inventions emerging today for building a sustainable, livable, prosperous future.
Sections on Power, Shelter, Business, Community and just Stuff are divided into short, easy to read explanations of a few hundred of the best solutions out there. The guide is put together by a team of people who invite us to join their conversation on the best tools we can use to improve our lives.
You can join our library and get books and DVDs out for Free!
By Josh Wright
Something’s missing amidst all the discussion of the most pressing environmental problems of the times: climate change the degradation of land due to agriculture, and water shortages. To date, almost all the comment in the media has been about the need for new technology to solve these problems and continue to accommodate the growing world population - and almost nothing has been said about the impact of human population growth. Yet stabilising the population at present levels might be an easier and more durable solution than developing and applying more technology, at increasing costs.
We tend to think this way because historically, population growth has been an easy path to economic growth. Many of us, particularly the younger generation, believe (or have been led to believe) that our technology has allowed us to break free from the resource constraints that limit the populations of every other species. Indeed, it’s almost as if we believe that in limiting our population we would be showing a loss of nerve as a species. But while a steadily growing population may have once contributed to improving quality of life for all of humanity, it is now leading to a high quality of life for a few and a low quality of life for many. While once population growth drove technology development, that rate of growth the resulting consumption may now be driving the need for new technology at a faster pace than it can be reliably developed and applied.
Climate Change 
Consider climate change. Ever since humans mastered fire over 400,000 years ago (our first big technological breakthrough), we have relied primarily on burning carbon-containing materials for our energy, a process that releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Before the Industrial Revolution 250 years ago, the natural ‘respiratory’ cycles (photosynthesis by most flora) could deal with the carbon emissions. But now our sheer numbers and per-capita consumption have overwhelmed the capacity of these cycles and started to destroy the natural environments in which they are based. This is a serious problem, with emissions accumulating rapidly and actually changing the climate.
Technological Advancements
One of the most favoured technological solutions to the problem of carbon emissions is clean coal (find out more here: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_coal.) But clean coal, which involves the development of not one, but several new technologies, is at this stage a hope, not a reality. What if it doesn’t work, or works only one-third as well as we hoped? Nuclear energy is another technology paraded as a solution to the problem of accumulating carbon emissions. But again, there is a significant problem with the technology, which has remained unsolved for more than 50 years: what to do with the enormous amounts of waste that no natural nor man-made cycle can currently deal with in a meaningful time frame? In lieu of all this uncertainty, it could only be wise to at least simultaneously start stabilising human population, which we know we can do.
A key problem with using technology to overcome limited natural resources is that even when it works, it is never a permanent fix. The unforgiving increase in human numbers ultimately creates new problems, leading to yet another scramble to find a technological solution as quickly as possible. Take the solution to the problem of hunger for example: no sooner had the enhanced harvests achieved in the green revolution been made available to the hungry millions than we were told that we now urgently needed more advanced genetic engineering to help feed a new generation of hungry millions.
Another obvious problem is that technology alters the condition of the things to which it is applied, particularly processes in nature. Technology can turn something naturally occurring into something effectively human-made. For example, what begins as a free-flowing river ends up as a dammed, power-producing, flood-mitigating, controlled water channel. The loss of natural states and processes may not concern some. But to others, what remains of the natural world is now more valuable than the expanding number of humans for which these remnants may have be sacrificed if unlimited population growth (and as such, consumption of energy and food) continues.
What Lies Ahead?
It is true that per capita consumption is an important contributor to the problem of limited resources. However, population growth is the primary contributor, because each birth sets into motion a lifetime of consumption at some level. In contrast, a birth foregone means a lifetime of consumption foregone, even at its most subsistent level.
There will never be a better time to think about the benefits of stabilising the human population than now! Society has dedicated its thoughts mostly to dealing with the nearly irreversible problems of climate change, peak oil and lack of clean water. A more stable population would make a lasting contribution to solving these, as well as similar environmental problems that are likely to arise. It seems irresponsible not to discuss the idea along with all the technological solutions being considered. As an economist might say, it’s time to look at the problems arising from limited natural resources from the demand side as well as the supply side.
Human Rights 
Of course, the stabilisation of human population is a contentious issue. The most obvious case study of population control is in China, and the one-child policy implemented there. The policy has attracted controversy and has garnered a negative reputation because of its perceived harmful side effects; that it serves to widen the gap between the rich and the poor, and rural and urban areas; that it can contribute to infanticide – particularly female, and that it is a fundamental breach of human rights But this policy, which was implemented in 1979, seems to have been effective. The Chinese government estimates that it has three to four hundred million fewer people in 2008, than it would have had otherwise. As a result of this huge number of reduced births, supporters of the policy argue that China’s health care service is of a higher quality, especially for women, and financial savings per-person have increased. Perhaps more importantly the slowing of population growth has eased the demand on the tight supply of resources, and lowered China’s ecological footprint – allowing for a better quality of life for the Chinese people.
There are now more than six billion of us. Is another billion of us going to make life better overall or worse? Isn’t it time to divert the resources that will go into managing the increasing quantity of human beings, into stabilising numbers and increasing our quality of life? Is there any problem that wouldn’t be easier to solve with fewer of us?
LEARN MORE
Population Connection www.populationconnection.org
The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement www.vhemt.org
What Stops Population Growth, Hans Rosling www.gapminder.org/videos/what-stops-population-growth
By William Zhang
2008 has been a year of financial meltdowns, chaotic weather, a global food crisis and of course elections, both here and abroad. But we want to do something about the issues we are facing, so check out our ideas for taking action!
10. Drugs
Take Action:
9. Human Rights
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8. Global Food Crisis
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7. Healthcare
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6. The Oil Crisis
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5. Global Security
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4. Education
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3. Climate Change
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2. Violence and Conflict
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1. The Economy
Take Action
This article was originally published in Tearaway Magazine.
By William Zhang
The year of 2008 was one of financial meltdowns, chaotic weather, a global food crisis, and of course, elections both here and abroad. If you get depressed easily, you might want to stop here. If you want to keep up and get ahead with the issues that will affect us most through 2009 though, read on. This is my Top 10 countdown for the issues of 2008 and 2009.
Just to show you I am not a complete pessimist the Top 10 list is followed by the actions you can take on each issue.
10. Drugs
Drugs continue to be a global problem. Annually the US alone spends $35 billion on its ‘War on Drugs’. 2009 will mark a century of international cooperation on drug control. In 1909 leaders from around the world met in Shanghai to discuss the drug problem of the time - the Chinese opium epidemic. In Aotearoa New Zealand, 2008 has been the Year of the Drug Bust. The aptly named Operation Viper saw the New Zealand Police make almost a hundred arrests, following numerous drug busts throughout September. The following month, a $28 million shipment of pseudoephedrine (a component of P), was intercepted by Customs - and that’s only the third largest drug bust in New Zealand history!
9. Human Rights
For human rights campaigners around the world many milestones were made in 2008, such as the signing of an international treaty which bans the use of cluster bombs after years of campaigning by peace and disarmament groups. We also witnessed the spectacle (and sport) of the Beijing Olympics, which was accompanied by protests over China’s human rights record, raising some much needed awareness and generating media coverage around the world. 10 December 2008 marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a chance to celebrate achievements and focus on the upcoming challenges for 2009 and beyond.
8. Global Food Crisis
Millions of people in some of the world’s poorest nations face starvation in 2009 and beyond, due to skyrocketing crop prices and food shortages. Last year, over 25 000 farmers committed suicide in India alone, disillusioned by the debts they had been driven into by grain shortages and soaring costs. 2008 was the International Year of the Potato, but while the world celebrates the virtues of this staple food, the issue of hunger in developing countries remains as significant as ever.
7. Healthcare
Globally over a billion people are still living without access to basic healthcare, with huge numbers dying from preventable diseases, such as tuberculosis and malaria. Locally too, the healthcare system was stretched to its limit in 2008, with red - and even purple - alerts flying everywhere, indicating shortages of hospital bed space. And let’s not forget the many overworked doctors and nurses around the country. 2009 may see further challenges, with many governments struggling to maintain expenditure on healthcare given the global economic slowdown and falls in GDP.
6. The Oil Crisis
In July, the price of petrol was thrust above $2 a litre, reaching new all time highs. While the price may have come down significantly since then, once economic growth takes off again when the world emerges from the economic slump, petrol prices are likely to soar once more - look out for new highs by 2010. In the long-term future, the peak oil crisis is coming. We’ll start to experience 
a decline in the availability of cheap and easily accessible oil sources, with some predictions picking petrol prices to surpass $10 a litre within a decade. (And to think we were complaining when it hit $1 a litre back in April 2000!)
5. Global Security
Both Iran and North Korea are carefully nurturing their nuclear programmes going into 2009. In the case of Iran, retaliatory action from other countries, such as the US or Israel, threatens to throw the Middle East into further turmoil. The picture looks a little brighter for North Korea though, with agreements made to dismantle their central nuclear complex in return for financial aid from the US. Meanwhile, terrorism continues to remain a risk to global security as we head into 2009, with the prospect of biological weaponry being used against civilian targets a very real threat according to US National Intelligence Agency.
4. Education
Millions of children worldwide don’t even have access to the most basic forms of education. Over a billion people will enter 2009 unable to even read a book or sign their name. In 2009 progress will be made towards addressing this issue, with US$ 4.5billion pledged to support Education For All, a UN programme with the goal of meeting the learning needs of all children, youth and adults by 2015. In Aotearoa New Zealand, over 20% of students leave secondary school without any formal qualifications. While the solution to this is debated, the merits of NCEA continue to draw harsh criticism for not being challenging enough; with over 10% of New Zealand schools opting to offer Cambridge or IB instead - the list is growing steadily going into 2009.
3. Climate Change
The Aotearoa New Zealand winter was full of extremes, with the coolest May since 1992, followed by higher than average temperatures in June and July, and of course the ‘weather bombs’ of August. Globally, Australia was hit by record droughts in early 2008, and South-East Asia was hit by record storms later in the year. This trend may turn out to be a title page for what’s to come in future years, with many scientists claiming climate change is responsible for this extreme weather and that things are likely to get worse. But its not just weather we have to worry about. A recent report found that the impact on ecosystems of climate change is already very severe, with falls in krill population caused by rising sea temperatures even being attributed to cannibalism among polar bears in the Arctic - nasty!
2. Violence and Conflict
According to the 2008 Global Peace Index, a system used to rank countries by their levels of conflict, Iraq is the least peaceful country, with the most internal conflict. Most of this can be attributed to US-led occupation of the region, with much of the violence being targeted at coalition forces. Meanwhile, Iceland took out the top spot as the most peaceful country. Aotearoa New Zealand was ranked fourth most peaceful, down two places from last year. 2008 saw violent crime in New Zealand rise, despite the overall crime rate going down. What seemed to be an endless string of senseless murders throughout the year left the country shaken and demanding action. Yet, this violence may be a dramatic symptom of deeper social issues, such as poverty, education and unemployment. If so, such issues will have to be addressed in 2009 before the issue of violent crime can be tackled successfully.
1. The Economy
Crises in the financial markets have dominated the news, election campaigns, and conversation since September. Aotearoa New Zealand is in a gloomy recession going into 2009, and many economists believe that the world’s going to join us soon. The underlying issues to the economic crisis are yet to be untangled though, so 2009 is looking to be a year which will be financially difficult for people throughout the world, including many New Zealanders. Sure, could have lower interest rates, but troublesome things may also be ahead - job cuts for example. This issue is also likely to have spill-over effects into several other areas. For instance, the climate change issue will likely take a back seat in the face of economic uncertainty. Likewise, those in poverty will be hit especially hard, as the willingness of governments and individuals to contribute financial aid and support may diminish.
2009 is going to be a rollercoaster of a year
The year of 2008 may have looked pretty gloomy, but there is still hope for the future. The United States has a new President and New Zealand has a new government. Will 2009 see Obama’s vision of “change we can believe in”, or the new government’s promise for a “brighter future” realised? Let’s hope so.
TAKE ACTION
William has lots of ideas for ways to take action Check them out here.
This article was originally published in Tearaway Magazine.
Latest video from the 350 campaign.. advocating a new Emissions Reductions Target of 40% by the year 2020.
Who are they?
An online petition, initiated by Greenpeace, to ask John Key to sign on to strong emissions targets at the Copenhagen conference in December 2009. Over 55,000 New Zealanders have already Signed On, from Lucy Lawless, Stephen Tindall and Cliff Curtis through to Rhys Darby.
How can I get involved?
Sign the petition, spread the word to your mates, and check out other NGos involved in raising awareness of Climate Change Go here to sign up or get more info.
24 October - An International Day of Climate Action
link here:
