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Climate Prosperity generates substantial economic and employment growth and sustainable business and community development
by demonstrating that innovation, efficiency, and conservation in the use and reuse of all natural and human resources is
the best way to increase jobs, incomes, productivity, and competitiveness. In addition, Climate Prosperity
is the most cost-effective method of promoting renewable energy and clean technologies, protecting the environment, and preventing
harmful impacts from global warming.
“A penny saved is a penny earned.” – Benjamin Franklin
“Less is the new more.” –
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
“No problem can be solved from the
same level of consciousness that created it.” – Albert Einstein
GLOBAL COAL
TRANSITION AND CLEANTECH INVESTMENT INITIATIVE
James Nixon, President, Global Urban Development, Jigar Shah, CEO,
Carbon War Room, and Marc Weiss, Chair, Climate Prosperity
Alliance
January 2010
FOUR KEY ELEMENTS OF THE GLOBAL STRATEGY:
1)
Phase out burning coal worldwide by 2050
2) Establish a fixed global price on all
coal exports
3) Raise funds to finance the transition to non-coal energy sources
4)
Support private investment in a sustainable economic transition, particularly in developing
countries
The post-Copenhagen outlook for an international
treaty under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) appears to be quite bleak.
This is mainly because the original 1992 Rio/1997 Kyoto approach is no longer working. National
governments negotiating a new treaty are in conflict over both of the two key elements of Kyoto: 1) mandatory greenhouse gas
emission reduction targets by country, to be implemented primarily through cap-and-trade regulatory systems; and 2) direct
transfer of resources from developed country governments to developing country governments.
A
viable alternative or supplement is to focus on a more unconventional strategy from the perspective of global diplomacy, but
one that can be more effective both politically in terms of gaining support, and more importantly, economically and environmentally,
in terms of actually preserving a global climate that supports healthy and prosperous lives for people and communities everywhere,
as well as for other animals, plants, and living organisms throughout the world.
The two key elements
of this new approach are: 1) completely and permanently phasing out all burning of coal worldwide by 2050,
with an internationally agreed upon 40-year schedule for progressively phasing out all coal burning; 2) promoting $100 billion
annually to be invested in energy and resource efficiency, renewable energy production, and clean/green technology infrastructure
and companies in developing countries. These investments mainly will be made by the global private sector, with the support
of financing, regulations, and other policies and programs from national governments and international agencies.
The
best diplomatic framework for the coal phase-out and global investment strategy probably consists of bilateral negotiations
between the US and China. Once the US and China reach agreement, then negotiations can be extended to major
coal-exporting countries, and later to the UNFCCC.
The progressive coal phase-out will be financially
enhanced by establishing a global fixed price on all coal exports by every nation. No country will have
a competitive advantage over any other country in terms of price competition. The global fixed coal market
export price will deliberately be set at a level that includes measurable transition costs, higher than current market prices.
Coal companies will sell their product internationally, collect the revenues and profits, and then pay portion of the
premium as a coal transition tax to their national government. National governments will disburse some
portion of these funds to the UN and the World Bank.
The global fixed market price on coal exports
will rise over time, and the national government tax will be scaled up accordingly. National governments
can use such funds to subsidize an economic transition for the coal industry (including research and development on alternative
economic and environmental uses for coal), for the electric utilities industry, for the shipping industry, and for coal workers
and communities, as well as utilizing funds to invest in promoting and developing renewable energy, clean technologies, and
sustainable infrastructure.
The UN and the World Bank will use their portion of the coal export
funds to subsidize the economic transition for developing countries whose economies depend on coal imports, enabling them
to generate alternative power sources and increase their overall resource efficiency, technological innovation, and sustainable
economic competitiveness.
The reason that the global fixed price on all coal exports will serve
as an effective policy tool is it will provide a market-based economic incentive for countries that have large coal reserves
to discourage domestic coal consumption and encourage coal exports in order to raise domestic incomes, increase domestic jobs,
expand public revenues to be reinvested in stimulating resource efficiency, and improve their nation’s global balance
of payments and trade. Similarly, countries that do not possess large coal reserves but who depend on importing
coal for cheap energy will now have a strong incentive to minimize coal imports and develop alternative power sources.
This one vital market incentive will strongly support a more rapid and relatively smoother transition to the post-coal
era.
In a sense the phasing out of coal-burning, as a communications campaign, can be compared to the campaigns in many
countries to discourage smoking cigarettes and other tobacco products for public health reasons (“thank you for not
burning coal”). For example, the State of Maryland utilized the funds received from the settlement
of the tobacco company lawsuit to enable the state’s tobacco farmers to voluntarily either sell their farms at a favorable
market price, or to accept payments in exchange for switching to the cultivation of alternative crops or converting their
farmland to alternative land uses. From the perspective of global diplomacy, phasing out the burning of
coal can also be compared with treaties and other international agreements to reduce nuclear weapons.
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CLIMATE PROSPERITY MEDIA/ARTS SALONS
Dr. Marc A. Weiss, Chairman
and CEO, Global Urban Development, and Chair, Climate Prosperity Alliance
December 2009
Global Urban Development and the Climate Prosperity Alliance propose to help organize and serve as among the hosts
of "salons" that will meet for several hours on a weekday evening every two or three months in cities around the
world. These gatherings will be open to people from the communications media industries and performing arts-related
professions who want to participate. The purpose will be to engage in wide-ranging conversation about how to more effectively
create and promote a new paradigm of advanced technological environmental sustainability, something that has never existed
since the modern industrial revolution began more than three centuries ago.
Through the media and the arts, we aim to identify new ways to create and present images of a future society of "Climate
Prosperity" that is in relative harmony and balance with the cycles of nature based on conserving and reusing all natural
resources (not only fossil fuels, but water, land, materials, etc.), rather than overusing and wasting them. In other words,
under Climate Prosperity, people, places, and organizations worldwide actually get richer (or stay rich) by becoming greener,
and earn more money by using fewer resources and reusing more. Everyone will be better off economically and environmentally,
with greater prosperity, improved health, enhanced quality of life, and much more stable peace (because people won't be killing
each other over increasingly scarce resources).
There are three ways that media/arts professionals
can enlighten and entertain the general public about this new paradigm of sustainable industrial development, and "Be
the Change" as Mahatma Ghandi famously said:
1) Create futuristic
stories and scenarios, especially with visual elements, which portray people throughout the developed and developing world,
living in advanced technological sustainability. Regardless of what drama or comedy, science fiction, documentary non-fiction,
or video game content is in the foreground, the background will be digital and other images of modern sustainability. For
example, there will still be Times Square in the future, but it will be based on LED lighting powered by renewable energy,
and there will still be people driving cars to work and play, but they will be driving plug-in electric vehicles powered by
renewable energy. All businesses and jobs will be "green" in the sense that their revenues are shaped by technological
innovation and resource efficiency based on Green Savings, Green Opportunities, and Green Talent.
2) Present interesting and compelling images of current sustainability efforts, such
as the amazing story chronicled in Ray Anderson's recently published book, Confessions of a Radical Industrialist, about how
a corporate CEO of a petroleum-based industrial carpeting manufacturer and installer that was a wasteful polluter, decided
to become a sustainable company and succeeded over 15 years in becoming far more environmentally friendly both in terms of
the production processes and the products, and along the way substantially expanding market share, revenues, and profits.
Ray Anderson's Interface Corporation definitely got richer by becoming greener and earned more money by using fewer resources
and reusing more.
3) Identify, document, and share experiences about the most resource
efficient, conserving, and recycling ways to produce telecommunications media and performing arts events and products. Media
and arts professionals and businesses should also be getting richer by becoming greener, and demonstrating that innovation,
efficiency, and conservation in the use and reuse of all natural and human resources is the best way to increase jobs, incomes,
productivity, and competitiveness. In the Climate Prosperity/Sustainable Development/Green Economy paradigm, both the
production process and the media/arts/educational content are at peace and in harmony with Mother Nature. Sustainability will
be the guiding principle in theory and practice to the mutual betterment of everyone and everywhere.
_________________________________________
For Immediate Release: NEW GLOBAL CLIMATE PROSPERITY SCOREBOARD FINDS OVER $1 TRILLION INVESTED IN GREEN SINCE 2007
Washington, DC – December 4,
2009 – Ethical Markets Media (USA and Brazil) and the Climate Prosperity Alliance today launched their Global Climate Prosperity Scoreboard® which tracks private investment in companies growing the
green economy globally. This new, never before reported number, showing $1,248,740,645,993.00 (over $1.248 trillion)
in total investment since 2007, indicates how investors and entrepreneurs are leading governments in promoting sustainable
growth. The scoreboard totals investments in solar, wind, geothermal, ocean/hydro, energy efficiency and storage, and
agriculture. We purposefully omitted nuclear, "clean coal," carbon capture and sequestration, and biofuels.
We indicate which investments have been publically announced and committed by major companies for 2010 and beyond.
Dr. Marc A. Weiss, Chairman and CEO of Global Urban Development and Chair of the Climate Prosperity Alliance, said,
"This $1.248 trillion of investments are not only from North America and Europe, but also from China, India, Brazil and
other developing countries. They indicate that the private sector currently is ahead of governments in understanding
that during the 21st century, people, places, and organizations can only get richer by becoming greener and only earn more
money by using fewer resources and reusing more. Private capital investment is now leading globally in promoting technological
innovation and resource efficiency that will accelerate environmentally and socially sustainable industrial growth and economic
development throughout the world."
Dr. Hazel Henderson, futurist, author of Ethical
Markets: Growing the Green Economy (Chelsea Green, 2006) and president of Ethical Markets Media, serves as vice-chair
of the Climate Prosperity Alliance together with vice-chairs C.S. Kiang (China), Rodrigo Loures (Brazil), Lawrence Bloom (UK)
and James Nixon (USA). Dr. Henderson said, "Ethical Markets Media's mission is reforming markets and growing the
green economy globally. Our Global Climate Prosperity Scoreboard® will be updated regularly to show progress toward
the ecologically sustainable economies that are vital to our common future. Societies are transitioning from the 300-year
old, polluting, fossil-fueled Industrial Era to the advanced technologies of the information-rich Solar Age."
The Climate Prosperity Alliance, a volunteer, global network of financiers, businesses, economic development authorities,
scientists and NGOs is based on earth systems science, showing the widespread evidence of destruction caused by the now-obsolete
technologies of the combustion-based Industrial Revolution and its extraction and exploitation of the Earth's capital:
oil, coal, gas, minerals, forests, water, land and biodiversity. Human societies are now gradually re-industrializing
our economies using the Earth's income – the renewable energies of sun, wind, ocean/hydro, geothermal and
non-agricultural biomass – based on human capital: new knowledge of planetary processes and ecosystems,
designing our economies with Nature.
The Climate Prosperity Alliance uses the Climate
Solutions 2 computer model of Australia's Climate Risk Pty., showing how $1 trillion invested every year for the next 10 years
can assure the global transition to sustainable prosperity and job growth. This $10 trillion is less than the bailouts
of failed banks in the USA and Europe and less than 10% of the world's pension and institutional funds of $120 trillion.
Institutional fund managers can shift 10% of their assets away from hedge funds, risky derivatives and commodity speculation
to real investments in a greener global economy, thereby assuring their beneficiaries a healthier future.
"While we encourage progress toward directly investing in growing the green economy, we urge government officials
meeting in Copenhagen December 7-14, 2009, to follow the lead of these private investors that have already committed $1.248
trillion. We applaud our pension fund colleagues of the UN Principles of Responsible Investing who have joined in pledges
to allocate more of their members' $19 trillion of assets into similar green companies. Now, governments must go beyond
arguing over targets, caps and carbon-trading – and follow the lead of China and the USA in their comprehensive plan
for cooperation on clean energy and climate change. Such a general agreement in Copenhagen can promote and underwrite
more direct investments and growth of the green economy," said Dr. Henderson.
The
new Global Climate Prosperity Scoreboard® is researched and compiled by the Ethical Markets Media expert team: Timothy
Nash, M.Sc., principal, Strategic Sustainable Investments, Toronto; Rachel Tubman, M.Sc., senior researcher/futurist; assisted
by The Cleantech Group and members of the Ethical Markets Sustainability Research Group. As these investments increase,
the scoreboard will track totals, providing investors and governments with tangible evidence of the growing green economy.
Contacts:
·
Dr. Hazel Henderson,
President, Ethical Markets Media, www.ethicalmarkets.com, hazel.henderson@ethicalmarkets.com, 1-904-829-3140
·
Dr. Marc A. Weiss, Chairman
and CEO, Global Urban Development, www.globalurban.org, and Chair, Climate Prosperity Alliance,
www.climateprosperity.com, marcweiss@globalurban.org, 1-202-554-5891
· Rosalinda Sanquiche, Executive Director, Ethical Markets Media, rosalinda.sanquiche@ethicalmarkets.com,
1-904-826-1381
·
Timothy Jack Nash, Co-founder,
Strategic Sustainable Investments, nash@ssinvest.com, 1-416-821-9179
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GLOBAL CLIMATE PROSPERITY AGREEMENT:“THE ONE TRILLION DOLLAR DEAL” Dr. Tariq Banuri, Director, Division of Sustainable Development, United Nations Department of Economic and Social
Affairs, and Dr. Marc A. Weiss, Chairman and CEO, Global Urban Development, and Chair, Climate Prosperity AllianceMarch 2009
The Global Climate Prosperity Agreement -- “The One
Trillion Dollar Deal” -- can become the worldwide game-changer that will demonstrate the positive path forward for human
civilization in the 21st century, namely the peaceful transition from the current globally unsustainable economy
to an advanced technology-driven and environmentally sustainable industrialized society. Key private sector executives are
organizing this completely voluntary, market-oriented, public-private investment and development strategy whereby corporations,
financial institutions, insurance companies, pension funds, equity investment funds, and others will commit to invest
one trillion dollars in developing countries over the next decade to build a new and modern infrastructure based entirely
on renewable energy and clean technologies, including plug-in electric vehicles and “smart” and “super”
electric grids. These investments and related projects will be supplemented and enhanced by additional funds, tax incentives,
and regulatory policy support from governments, along with funds that will come from international donor agencies, official
development assistance, and private philanthropy. The United Nations and World Bank, including various UN agencies and regional
development banks, can play a key role in enabling these investments to succeed. The Global
Climate Prosperity Agreement will help achieve the Millennium Development Goals in developing countries, by raising living
standards and promoting sustainable economic and employment growth and sustainable business and community development through
innovation, efficiency, and conservation in the use and reuse of all natural and human resources. It will
benefit developing and developed nations alike, generating a dynamic upward cycle of sustainable economic prosperity, job
creation, and income growth worldwide, while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions, through increased production
and distribution of renewable energy and clean technologies that optimize overall resource efficiency. Under
Climate Prosperity, economic livelihoods and well-being, quality of life, public health and safety, and peace and security,
will improve for billions of people in every place throughout the world. It will revive the global economy
from its current market recession, stimulate massive long-term employment and income growth, and protect the economy and environment
from resource supply shortages, catastrophic climate change, and other major threats and challenges.
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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS BY POTENTIAL INVESTORS ABOUT THE GLOBAL CLIMATE PROSPERITY AGREEMENTQ: Is this philanthropy? A: No.
All of the one trillion dollars worth of investments will be based on typical market rates of return for the type of risk
category according to your financial institution’s underwriting criteria and fiduciary responsibility. Q: What type of investments will we be making? A: Investments will be in infrastructure based on renewable
energy and clean technologies, with physical asset value and dedicated, predictable revenue streams with which to repay both
debt and equity investments, but primarily debt instruments such as normal capital market bond financing to build and operate
basic infrastructure. Investments also will be in renewable energy and clean technology businesses located and operating
in developing countries, including venture capital, shares of stock, and other equity investments, in addition to debt financing. Q: Will we be contributing money into some type of managed
fund? A: No. Your institution will directly
make all of the investments. You will control the decision-making process as to whether or not to make any particular
investment, choosing from a broad and diverse range of types of investments by country and region, by technology, by governance,
by rate of return, by risk, by growth potential, and many other key decision factors. Q: Will there be any kind of credit enhancement, loan guarantees, or public subsidies? A: We expect that for each investment opportunity there will be public intervention
by national governments, international agencies such as the UN and World Bank, and international donors ranging from official
development assistance from developed country governments to private foundations, to ensure the safety and soundness of these
investments both as to definite returns to the investors and as to the effectiveness of the infrastructure and technologies
in promoting Climate Prosperity. Q: If I make
a commitment, is it legally binding? A: No.
Your commitment is a statement of intent. You are stating that your financial institution, in its strategic portfolio
investment planning for the decade 2010 to 2020, intends to make a certain dollar amount of investments in renewable energy
and clean technologies in developing countries, provided that each and every investment meets all of your institution’s
underwriting criteria as to safety and soundness. You will not be required to make any investments that do not fully
satisfy all such criteria, meaning that by the end of 2020, you might not fulfill your original commitment in terms of the
total dollar amounts invested, or alternatively, you might also exceed your original commitment and invest more money than
you initially intended. Q: How do you define
developing countries? A: We use the United
Nations definition of developing countries, all of which will be eligible for investments under the Global Climate Prosperity
Agreement. In addition, $200 billion of the total one trillion dollar deal will be targeted to the Least Developed Countries,
as defined by the UN. Q: How do you define renewable
energy? A: The Global Climate Prosperity Agreement
follows the definition of renewable energy according to the official Statutes of the International Renewable Energy Agency
(IRENA) signed by 136 countries worldwide. Eligible investments include solar, wind, hydropower, geothermal, tidal, wave,
biomass, biofuels, and energy efficiency. Q:
How are clean technology investments defined? A:
The specifics will change over time as new technologies emerge and can be scaled up, but the bottom line is that clean technologies
are defined as being environmentally sustainable in terms of the overall ecological footprint based on how the resource inputs
are obtained, the production process in the use of the materials, the deployment and environmental impacts of the technologies,
and the ability to completely recycle all of the component resources in harmony with the cycles of nature such that essentially
there is no waste. Q: Why do you take
this approach? A: We agree with the business
sustainability movement’s argument that Resource Efficiency and Energy Productivity, as defined for example by McKinsey
and other management consultants, is the only way for companies or communities to survive and thrive. As we say, in the 21st
century people, places, and organizations can only get richer by becoming greener, and can only earn more money by using fewer
resources and reusing more. Q: What is
the main purpose of the Global Climate Prosperity Agreement? A: The overall purpose of Climate Prosperity is to enable people, places, and organizations
worldwide to achieve and maintain a high standard of living based on innovation, efficiency, and conservation in the use and
reuse of all natural and human resources, thereby moving the global economy by 2020 from its current system of resource-wasting
industrialism to a new economically and environmentally sustainable resource-saving industrialism. Climate Prosperity
is about the wise and efficient use and reuse of all resources in relative harmony and balance with nature. This includes,
of course, reducing the use of fossil fuels such as oil, gas, and coal, and drastically reducing emissions of greenhouse gases
such as carbon dioxide and methane, as well as removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through natural and sustainable
processes. However, it also involves water, land, air, trees, plants, animals, and every other resource, especially
people. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Climate Prosperity: Why Marx was wrong and Mother Nature is right Marc A. Weiss (This article was published in the May/June 2009 issue of Tikkun Magazine.)
During the 1840s, two young German scholars, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, applied George Hegel’s dialectical
philosophy of history to economics and politics. They envisioned modern history in three distinct phases: Phase
1 Economy: agricultural feudalism and urban
mercantilism Governance: monarchy or dictatorship Phase 2
Economy: industrial capitalism Governance: monarchy or dictatorship, with limited experiments
in democracy Phase 3 Economy: industrial
socialism/communism Governance: proletarian dictatorship
While Marx and Engels later strongly supported European Social Democratic political parties and movements, they never
modified their basic historical framework. They could not envision in 1848 how democratic capitalism would provide unprecedented
human freedom, civil rights, and economic opportunities for millions of people worldwide by 2009. Once people taste the fruits
of liberty, they never want to return to living with tyranny. This
one simple explanation, more than any other factor, accounts for the dramatic decline of communist and socialist ideologies
during the past three decades, as I discovered while working in Prague after the Velvet Revolution.
It later turned out, as we now know, that there is a big problem with contemporary capitalism, namely the massive and
inefficient utilization of a wide variety of natural resources both for industrial production and for human consumption. Resource depletion and environmental challenges were generally ignored until
the second half of the twentieth century. Only a few earlier commentators such as the poet William Blake raised concerns about
industrialization (Blake called nineteenth-century British textile factories “dark Satanic mills”). It took until
the 1960s for rapidly accelerating physical damage, diminishing supplies, and rising costs to finally place the issue of sustainability
on the global policy agenda. Climate change is really just the tip of the iceberg in that all natural resources—land,
water, and materials—are becoming increasingly scarce, expensive, and dangerous to continue using so excessively and
wastefully. Fortunately it is not too late to create an even higher standard
of living for every person and community throughout the world, by shifting from resource-wasting capitalism to resource-saving
capitalism. In the twenty-first century, the only way to get richer is by becoming greener, and the only way to earn more
money is by using fewer resources and reusing more. In other words, the global economy can significantly enhance prosperity
and quality of life for people everywhere by treating Mother Nature as our good friend and one of our most precious assets,
rather than as our enemy to be exploited and conquered. The main
challenge is for each of us to acknowledge the ancient wisdom of two essential values: 1) new is not always better than old;
and 2) more is not always better than less. Global Urban Development is coordinating
Climate Prosperity, whose core belief is that “innovation, efficiency, and conservation in the use and reuse of all
natural and human resources is the best way to increase jobs, incomes, productivity, and competitiveness.” The project’s
main purpose is to creatively use business sustainability concepts taken from Paul Hawken, Amory and Hunter Lovins, Peter
Senge, Karl-Henrik Robert, William McDonough, Daniel Esty, and the McKinsey Global Institute, as applied by companies such
as GE, IBM, Toyota, IKEA, DuPont, Google, Nike, and Apple. This model has three key elements: 1) Green Savings—reducing waste and cutting costs; 2) Green Opportunities—expanding jobs and businesses by raising revenues
and increasing market share; 3) Green Talent—investing in fundamental assets including technology, infrastructure,
and most importantly, modern entrepreneurial and workforce skills, because people are now the world’s most vital economic
resource.
Through state, regional, and local
Climate Prosperity Strategies, places like Silicon Valley and the State of Delaware are now using the three-part business
sustainability model to promote economic development that saves money, creates jobs, raises incomes, and keeps us all safe
from environmental harm. This summer the International Economic Development Council will publish the Climate Prosperity Handbook,
describing the various strategies and explaining how to develop and implement such approaches most effectively. Currently there is talk of a Global Climate Prosperity Agreement, with developed
countries committing to invest one trillion dollars in developing countries over the next decade to build renewable energy
and clean technologies, enabling living standards to rise and poverty to be eliminated through sustainable innovation and
resource efficiency. These investments will generate substantial economic and employment growth for every nation throughout
the world. The bottom line is that Marx and Engels were wrong, because the
real three-phase historical dialectic is as follows: Phase 1
Pre-industrial sustainability Phase
2 Resource-wasting industrialization Phase 3 Innovative, efficient, sustainable, inclusive, democratic, resource-saving industrialism.
Now that we can envision a healthier, more peaceful, and prosperous future
in harmony with Mother Nature, let’s all thank her for showing us the one and only path that can definitely ensure our
grandchildren will thrive. (Dr. Marc A. Weiss is Chairman
and CEO of Global Urban Development and Chair of the Climate Prosperity Alliance. He served as Special Assistant
to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Clinton administration, and was a Professor
of Urban Development and Planning at Columbia University.) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reviving the Economy through Climate Prosperity Marc A. Weiss (This newspaper column is nationally syndicated by Citiwire, and was published
on October 20, 2008.) Climate protection and economic growth are
not enemies. Core strategies to create a vibrant economy – innovation, efficiency, strategic investment,
and finding better ways to use and reuse resources – are exactly the same steps we need to cope with global climate
change now. These actions will increase jobs, incomes, productivity, and competitiveness, and they’re
green. There are commentators who advocate postponing
investments in renewable energy and clean technologies, suggesting this will somehow delay economic recovery.
They’re dead wrong. In the 21st century, the only way for people and places to get richer
is by thinking and acting for sustainability, specifically aiming to become “greener.” How do we get this message out to the cities and regions of America?
How do we encourage them to switch their economic growth, community development, infrastructure, education and workforce,
land-use, transportation, housing, and environmental policies to look courageously forward? Climate Prosperity was launched in 2007. It is coordinated by Global Urban
Development and Collaborative Economics, with financial support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Environmental
Defense Fund. We’ve been joined by a highly diverse public-private partnership of pro-business groups
such as the International Economic Development Council, American Chamber of Commerce Executives, Urban Land Institute, Council
on Competitiveness, International Downtown Association, and American Council on Renewable Energy. We hope to get millions of people involved in learning
the new 21st century economic paradigm. Technology companies, including Google and Applied Materials,
helped launch the Silicon Valley Climate Prosperity Strategy in partnership with elected officials such as San Jose Mayor
Chuck Reed. Among other cities, counties, and metropolitan regions working with us
on Climate Prosperity Strategies are King County/Seattle, Denver, Portland, St. Louis, Cleveland, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Charlotte,
Pittsburgh, San Antonio, Southwest Florida, and Montgomery County (Maryland). States working with us on
Climate Prosperity Strategies include Delaware, Florida, Maryland, and California. In July 2009 the International
Economic Development Council will publish the Climate Prosperity Handbook. The economics driving a shift to new approaches seem compelling.
Oil prices have hit huge peaks in the past year as global demand grows exponentially (hindered only temporarily by
the current recession). The United States consumes one-quarter of the world’s oil and yet possesses
just three percent of the world’s reserves. The only way to stop the bleeding and staunch the flow
of over one-half trillion dollars annually to foreign oil producers is by consuming less petroleum. Fossil fuels are not the only commodities becoming
increasingly expensive. Steel prices, for example, have skyrocketed by nearly 170 percent since 2002.
As economic development and population growth accelerate in Asia and throughout the world, serious conflicts are growing
as people and places fight over scarce water, land, and many other vital resources. Even the states
of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida are battling over fresh water sources due to a severe drought. America,
with five percent of the world’s population, consumes 25 percent of the world’s resources. The idea of moving from “resource-wasting capitalism”
to “resource-saving capitalism” is not new. Business development experts such as Paul Hawken,
Amory and Hunter Lovins, William McDonough, and Peter Senge have long advocated this approach. The business
sustainability model works in three mutually reinforcing ways: 1) Green Savings — cutting resource
costs; 2) Green Opportunities — enabling businesses and jobs to grow and thrive; 3) Green Talent — developing
globally competitive entrepreneurial and workforce skills, and attracting and retaining talented people. Numerous corporations, including DuPont, General Electric, IBM, and Nike, are
practicing innovation, efficiency, and conservation to enhance their productivity and competitiveness. DuPont
responded to “peak oil” by switching from petrochemicals to life science bio-products, substantially improving
their profitability through saving $3 billion and expanding revenues by producing goods that are better for the environment. Fortunately, we have some success
stories in which these business sustainability principles have guided economic development in place-based, area-wide economies.
According to the California Green Innovation Index, Californians saved $56 billion on electricity expenses over the
past three decades through improved energy efficiency, primarily from state and local government policies requiring higher
standards for buildings and electrical appliances and providing financial incentives for utility companies, businesses, and
households to conserve energy and use renewable sources. Private consumers reinvested much of this savings
in the state's economy, directly contributing to higher economic growth and greater prosperity by generating 1.5 million full-time
jobs with total annual income of $45 million.
Similarly,
people in metropolitan Portland, Oregon save more than $2 billion annually due to the land-use and transportation changes
that have occurred during the past three decades. By modestly increasing population and building densities
and developing light-rail transit together with mixed-use communities encouraging walking and bicycling, Portlanders have
reduced greenhouse gas emissions and vehicle miles traveled while jobs, incomes, and investments have boomed.
California and Portland both got richer by becoming greener. So we know how to build more prosperous, green, climate-protecting regions.
Now is the time to get serious and spread the message to communities, cities, regions, and states.
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