Help Last Call “Change the Ending!”
Posted By: Sarah Parkinson, Published: April 30th, 2013
Last Call, a new documentary film, revisits the message of The Limits to Growth and shares a compelling vision of a sustainable future.
It’s been forty years since Donella Meadows and her team at MIT published The Limits to Growth, but their message still needs to be heard–today more than ever. When their groundbreaking book first came out in 1972, the Limits to Growth team argued that there are limits in any finite system, and we were rapidly approaching them. Forty years later, many scientist believe that we have already overshot many of these limits on our planet, echoing the study’s famous “Overshoot and Collapse” scenario.
Last Call: The Untold Reasons of the Global Crisis examines these limits in today’s context. The film reconnects with key members of the original study, including Jorgen Randers and Dennis Meadows, both of whom are still working to spread their urgent message and change the course of the crises we’re currently facing.
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Renewable Energy Leaders to Engage with Upper Valley Community
Posted By: Sarah Parkinson, Published: April 22nd, 2013
Leaders in Europe’s new energy economy will discuss their successes and how they can be applied to the Upper Valley region at a public forum this Wednesday, April 24.
Dr. Andreas Wieg and Dirk Vansintjan, two leaders in Europe’s community-based transition to renewable energy, will visit the Upper Valley as part of their Vermont, New Hampshire, and Ontario week-long tour starting April 22, 2013. During their time here, they will engage with local colleges and schools, businesses, and organizations and explore how renewable energy projects can spur local business, strengthen the
economy, and benefit the environment.
In Germany, much of the push towards a clean energy transition comes from a bottom-up approach at the local level. A revolution is literally underway where towns and villages are designing community-owned cooperatives for producing and distributing renewable energy. People are increasingly realizing the potential of these initiatives for economic development in the form of well-paying jobs, tax revenues, and strengthened community ties.
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Endurance
Posted By: Sarah Parkinson, Published: April 18th, 2013
By Pamela Paquin
Monday’s events in Boston have had our staff here at DMI hen-like in their soft “clucking” concerned for our friends and family in Boston and the region.
Indeed, it has been hard to focus on what seem like trivial “to-dos” compared to what people were going through who were present and/or connected to individuals running and cheering around Copley this Monday.
Two immediate things were important that day –
- Checking in on friends and family to ensure they were safe, and
- Doing whatever might be useful for those who were suffering either from injury, shock, dislocation, or grief for another.
In that sense, as a former runner, I felt the athletes present were examples of qualities we might call up in ourselves: those of tenacity, dedication, patience, and self-awareness. They were examples of holding fast to that which drives us in life – our relationships, the moments of connection and community which so exemplify the essence of Marathon Monday.
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DMI Directors to Crestone, CO for leadership retreat and wilderness solo
Posted By: Sarah Parkinson, Published: April 2nd, 2013
By Pamela Paquin
April 28 through May 5, DMI’s Co-Directors Marta Ceroni and Pamela Paquin will embark on a Learning Journey with the Academy for Systemic Change and the Way of Nature in Crestone, Colorado. Our board enthusiastically supported this internal development and it is an honor for us to attend–we will truly be among the “Jedi Masters.” As leaders in the Upper Valley, we hold ourselves fiercely responsible to ensure our own capacities continue to expand and strengthen. It is one thing to discuss “the system” and assist with the efforts and initiatives of others, but quite another to expose and work with your own beliefs and assumptions and ask “how better might I do the good work?” During our time in Colorado, we will be taking a 3 day solo in the mountains. I know I am at once incredibly eager and intensely skittish at what will pop up in the night–this is a great chance to practice my “productive use of tension” theory with the bears and cougars (both real and imagined)!
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The Happiness Initiative: The Serious Business of Well-Being
Posted By: Sarah Parkinson, Published: February 26th, 2013
By Laura Musikanski and John de Graaf
Growth in GDP was long ago decoupled from personal indicators of well-being, as many Americans report being overworked, stressed, and lonely. (image credit: Stanley Wood)
Happiness: is it just a fad of the day or the wave of the future? On July 19th, 2011, the United Nations (UN) passed a resolution urging governments across the globe to start measuring happiness and well-being “with a view to guiding public policy.” The UN recognizes that gross domestic product (GDP) is an insufficient guide for safeguarding the well-being of people or our future. Instead, the UN suggests “a more inclusive, equitable and balanced approach to economic growth that promotes sustainable development, poverty eradication, happiness and well-being of all peoples.”
In April, 2012, the UN held its first High Level Meeting on Happiness and Well-Being. Prime Minister Jigmi Thinley of Bhutan set the tone:
The time has come for global action to build a new world economic system that is no longer based on the illusion that limitless growth is possible on our precious and finite planet or that endless material gain promotes well-being.
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