Building a Sustainable World

1. Building a Sustainable World Robert D. Cormia Foothill College

4. Civilization 2.0 How do we live? What do we do? Is the planet healthy – or in peril?

13. Sustainability System Social Natural Economic Self Directed Sustainability Graph – goal is to build ‘capital’ in all four dimensions!

16. Wrenching on Humanity http://www.valuenewsnetwork.com/davos-2015-a-pivotal-decade.html

17. The Story of Stuff http://www.storyofstuff.org/

20. Sustainability by Design http://www.greenskinslab.sala.ubc.ca/

21. Imagine a World…

22. Buildings designed with efficiency as a 'first ethic', some net zero, and all integrated with the environment

24. With renewable energy and zero emission power

26. A smart energy infrastructure, seamlessly integrating distributed production with demand

27. GE Digital Energy Solutions

28. A world of smart appliances - designed to communicate internally and designed for low power demand

30. Transportation systems integrated with cities, and driven by electricity, and some of it 'recycled' (quantum rail technology)

34. Water recycling to reduce the energy needed to purify and transport water

37. This is Clean Technology

48. Earth Out of Balance http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20050428/

52. Vision an Electron Economy

56. IntelliGrid™ - Smart Grid http://intelligrid.epri.com/

59. Wind Power – Real Power

61. Vanadium redox flow cells Store excess power for later use!

62. A plug-in hybrid or full electric EV looks like an entire house to the utility . The majority of electric vehicles will need to draw power at about the same time of day. Need to coordinate EV charging through two-way Internet communications, including transfer of ‘stored power’ EVs use half to a quarter of the BTUs per mile compared to ICE (gasoline), and GHG emissions can be significantly lower if RE is used.

64. Building a Better World It’s time that we got serious about working together to build a better world

65. Sustainable Core Values Environment 1. Ecosystem services – Eco-economy and valuing ecosystem services 2. Concept of limits – linear / exponential rates of extraction in a finite world. Peak Everything. 3. IPAT (Gapminder) – impacts from population, affluence (consumption) and technology 4. Waste = food and ‘cradle to cradle’ manufacturing / remanufacturing and recycling 5. Biomimicry – learning from nature – and employing ‘natural’ (biogenic) solutions 6. Diversity – how it works in nature – how it works in society – specialization of skills (economic) Social 7. Social equity – healthy societies / social systems – foundation of sustainable societies 8. Environmental justice (more complex subset of industry, and social systems, class issues) 9. Cultural sustainability – awareness of cultural identity and cultural values, language, art 10. Personal sustainability – health, personal relationships, foundation for lifelong learning 11. Intergenerational impacts (economics and environmental – debt and resource depletion) 12. Civic engagement (interaction of individual and society) – healthy societies / social systems 13. Ethics (doing what’s right when no one is looking) 14. Conflict resolution (at all levels – personal / interpersonal / organizational / political) Economic 15. Sustainable development – building new innovation economies not tied to consumption 16. Built to last – design, build, and maintain for the long haul 17. Collaboration vs. individualism (as an ethic vs. individual wealth) 18. Collaborative value creation (personal, social and economic models) – Wikinomics 19. Value vs. wealth (new economic models and metrics) 20. Social production / Social capital (adding to information, knowledge and culture)

67. Indigenous Sustainability Science Nature-society interactions confront a range of challenges including maintenance of ecosystem services, conservation of biodiversity, and continuance of ecosystem functioning at local and global scale. Local people over thousands of years, have developed an intimate knowledge about landscapes they interact with, inhabit and manage. Natural and social sciences are now converging into a novel discipline called sustainability science. Recognizing that transition to sustainability shall be a knowledge-intensive journey, this paper argues that a careful use of Indic resources provides options to design innovative policies and programs for management of natural resources. Sustainability science of tomorrow shall be a basket of tools drawn across disciplines from the natural and social sciences, as well as local and formal knowledge systems. Equity of knowledge between local and formal sciences results in empowerment, security and opportunity for local people. Incorporation of people’s knowledge into the resource management decisions, reduces the social barriers to participation and enhances the capacity of the local people to make choices to solve the problem. In order to facilitate the humanity’s progress towards a sustainable future, traditional knowledge systems and Indic traditions can contribute to local actions relevant to the sustainability of earth system as a whole. http://www.infinityfoundation.com/indic_colloq/papers/paper_pandey2.pdf