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The Common Good Economy
My daughter Shannon first introduced me to the term “tragedy of the commons” after she heard it in an undergrad economics course. I may have missed the concept myself in college but I didn’t miss its relevance to the major challenges that confront us today. From oil spills to loose nukes to global warming, there are some problems so big that they transcend borders, so seemingly intractable that they invite paralysis. They’re everybody’s problem, so they wind up being nobody’s problem.
Humankind’s next great evolutionary challenge, it seems to me, is to recognize and put in place rational responses to avoid such “tragedy of the commons” before the tragedy part is a foregone conclusion.
This challenge goes straight to the heart of our free enterprise/free market economy. We can debate endlessly about just how free our free market system actually is, but it’s fair to say that in recent years, some corporations have freely pursued short-term profits with little to no regard for the long-term public interest. For them, rules and regulations of any kind represent annoying bureaucratic speedbumps, to openly mocked and scorned. In hindsight, it would seem that BP, Goldman Sachs, and the like may have run a little too “free.” [...]
Wear species protection on your sleeve
Citizen just launched Tatzoo, an innovative project that recruits young leaders to launch creative community-based projects to help save local endangered species. The incentive for participants is the chance to receive custom artwork of their chosen species by one of 11 world-class tattoo artists.
The project is supported by a TogetherGreen Fellowship I received from the National Audubon Society. As I say, it was a crazy idea that Audubon was brave enough to believe in it and Citizen was creative enough to bring it to life.
Not many young people realize we are on the verge of the sixth greatest extinction in over 25 million years, threatening to kill 30% of all species within our lifetimes. That's messed up, heartbreaking, and incredibly dangerous. This project stemmed from the belief that my generation must unleash our fresh ideas, fearless attitudes, and social connectivity to tackle this crisis, starting with our local species and communities. [...]
100% Cork Petition
Recently, we began a partnership with Apcor, the Portugese Cork Association in order to incite consumers towards pressuring American winemakers to use exclusively natural cork in their bottles. We found that a lot of questions people had were based on misconceptions about cork and how it is produced.
This was even further amplified by discussions on the facebook wall. So seeing as how this is the most talked about portion of our adventure to evangelize the sustainability & natural properties of cork and the cork forest ...here are the best tidbits that one should take away:
1. The bark is sustainably harvested--cork oak trees are not harmed or cut down to produce corks.
2. The cork forests of Portugal are the second largest bio-gem in the world, after the Amazon rainforest.
3. Cork naturally sequesters carbon--CO2 emissions are 24x higher for screwcaps and 10x higher for plastic stoppers than natural cork. [...]
