In a recent post, Joel Makower points to the seemingly missing vision of what a “bright green” future might look like as playing a significant role in the lack of on-the-ground support for sustainability.

There’s long been a fundamental problem with the green world — the myriad companies, activists, evangelists, politicians, clergy, thought leaders, and others who, each in their own way, have prodded us to address our planet’s environmental ills. And it explains why, after four decades of the modern environmental movement, only a relative handful of companies and citizens have joined in, while many more have dragged their heels to slow, or even reverse, environmental progress.

The problem is this: No one has created a vision of what happens if we get things right.

I couldn’t agree more – I think it is something that is sorely lacking. For me, one of the inspirational elements of Cradle to Cradle was it’s appeal to our sense of aspiration for a better life. It presented concrete examples of what a bright green future might look like, that there was an alternative to business as usual that met our aspirational needs without bankrupting the planet.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately, and I’m more and more convinced of the need to reframe the debate about “growth” and sustainability.

Instead of spreading a message of “less”, we need to appeal to our natural, innate, human sense of aspiration – replacing the aspiration for “more stuff” to focus on what really does constitute a “better life”.

Can we do a judo move (I’m channelling Naomi Klein in No Logo here), to take the weight and momentum of this idea of “growth” and “aspiration” and hurl them towards sustainable goals?

Maybe it’s possible, but to do this we absolutely need a vision of what the future could be like – something to aspire to (rather than away from) – as Joel suggests.

In an earlier TED video, Barry Schwartz talks about the paradox of choice – that as we get more options (which, he points out, is often equated with “freedom”) we are actually less happy.

I think many people recognise that our drive for “more stuff” isn’t working. Certainly in my day-to-day interactions with friends and family we collectively recognise the problems in the banking system, in the corporate payouts for un-performance, in deteriorating public health and education systems, of layoffs following multi-million (if not billion) dollar profit announcements. And of course in the global financial meltdown.

A lot of us intuitively know this is wrong. It grates against our sense of justice, of our ideals of meritocracy and our social values. But we feel trapped – lost without an alternative. If only we had… a compelling alternate vision.

This is a latent force that, I think, has yet to be fully tapped. If we can reframe the debate – from the oppositional framing of “growth vs. sustainability” to the inclusive and aspiration embracing “wellbeing and a better life” – I believe we can go a long way to leveraging this sentiment to achieve significant, and rapid, change in our world.

Excellent TED talk I got to watch over the weekend on the “loss of wisdom” in society that, in part, led to the collapse of the economic system.

He begins by focusing on Barack Obama’s appeal to our sense of virtue, rather than material things nor our call to rely on and trust the state. A great talk – well worth the time to watch…

Last time I was around at the Igloo (Digital Eskimo‘s HQ) I was excited to hear that a new project of there’s, focused on sustainable living, was close to launch.

The other day Dave announced that it’s live – the project is called “Live Local” and it is a community driven site where people can share their experiences with living more sustainably.

I’m quite excited about the site because in many respects it extends my original vision for the (now very different) Future is man made.

The site already has a bunch of great ideas on it. You can share your own story, comment on others’ stories. or join in the action by “re-creating” the idea in your world. For example, I’ve re-created the Riding my bike between work and home idea – this is something I’m already doing and it was easy to add my name to the list of people participating.

While this is a simple example, I think the site has a lot of potential. For other activities, like the Bristol Street Party or the Permablitz in Newtown, re-creating gives you an opportunity to try some different things and share your experience in more detail, including adding videos and photos.

Collectively we can be inspired and inspiring, and share our learnings to make it easier for the next person who wants to do something a bit more, or a bit different, to help make their small part of the world a bit more sustainable.

I do hope that a community grows around the site. I’ll certainly be contributing when I can – I hope you will too

• Unleashed: Web of secrecy – Mark Pesce on the ACMA blacklist leak this week.
• Willie Smits restores a rainforest – An inspiring example of clever thinking, local engagement and ecological intelligence to regenerate and revitalise a community and gorilla habitat in Indonesia.
• The illusion of clean coal – "The private sector, however, is reluctant to fork out not just because of the upfront cost of power plants, but also because, tonne for tonne, CCS looks like an expensive way of cutting carbon. The cost of it may fall, but probably not by much, given the familiarity of the technologies it uses." Yet more evidence that "clean coal" is a pipe dream. How 'bout we follow the market and invest public funds where the private funds are going?
• Choice ATM Watch – The folks at Choice Magazine are watching the banks to see what charges they are clobbering ATM users with. Leave a comment on the site with your experience…
• Designer baby row over US clinic – I love Gattaca (the movie), in part because of its "just in the future" predictions around genetic selection and how that might impact society. Seems we'll be grappling with those questions soon…
• Getting Priorities Right – Humorous anecdote suggesting how to get your life priorities right. [hat tip @rosshill]

These links come from my Delicious feed.

In this TED video, Sylvia Earle talks about her TED wish – to protect the oceans. It’s a pretty amazing video, and an important statement about the damage we’re collectively doing to our oceans and how it’s going to affect us before long.

I can’t help but think that while our “political reality” is centered around an unsustainable concept of growth, the required changes to behaviour simply won’t come about.

In a similar vein to framing sustainability around aspiration, perhaps we need to reframe our concept of growth to something that is more akin to the growth we see in natural ecologies (the very ones we are destroying).

So rather than saying “we have to stop growing”, we could instead change how we view growth so that our human tendency to pursue it can be satiated, but not at the expense of the planet.

Over the past two weeks we’ve all been reeling from the news coming out of Victoria, of the devastation wrought by the bushfires.

Although I’ve been silent here (and on my personal blog) this has been primarily because I simply don’t know what to say. That said, there are times for words and times for prayers – an event like this is a time for prayer in my opinion…

Needless to say my thoughts and heart join all those at the memorial gatherings today in sending my best wishes to all those touched by this tragedy.

• NT Intervention: Let’s Try That In Sydney – Fascinating thought experiment by a New Matilda contributor. Turns out the author lives in my apartment complex! (I saw the “Alcohol prohibited” sign on his balcony…)
• ethipedia – Truly Sustainable Business Practices – This is something I was thinking Choice Magazine could do for the Australian market, but never quite got around to expressing it. A site that "crowd-sources" data to test ethical business claims to help highlight greenwashers.
• Obama to Limit Executive Pay to $500,000 a Year Under New Rules – "President Barack Obama will announce tomorrow that he’s imposing a cap of $500,000 on the compensation of top executives at companies that receive federal rescue funds, an administration official said." About. Bloody. Time….
• Israel’s use of white phosphorus confirmed – "Amnesty International delegates visiting the Gaza Strip found indisputable evidence of widespread use of white phosphorus in densely populated residential areas in Gaza City and in the north. … Such extensive use of this weapon in Gaza's densely populated residential neighbourhoods is inherently indiscriminate. Its repeated use in this manner, despite evidence of its indiscriminate effects and its toll on civilians, is a war crime,"
• Rudd hampers police child-protection efforts – "$2.8 million, which the Howard government allocated to expand the Australian Federal Police’s Online Child Sexual Exploitation Team (OCSET), was instead used by Rudd to help create Conroy’s $44.5 million Rabbit-Proof Firewall. … Without that money, OCSET simply doesn’t have the staff to investigate all of the suspected pedophiles it already knows about."

These links come from my Delicious feed.

Part of the Jager Uprising series. 5 bands across 2 stages with great Sydney acts The Grand Lethals, City Calm Down, Beggars of White Noise, The Kandy Apples.

Bands start at 8:00pm and we’re on at 9:30pm sharp.

In a previous post I outlined the costs of recording an independent EP, and hinted that with Fuzu‘s second EP we were trying to significantly reduce our costs.

Some friends who read the post found it useful, and I’ve also participated in some further discussions on a related post over at new music strategies.

As we’ve just completed mixing and mastering (i.e. we’re close to finished the project) I thought it might be worthwhile looking at the costs so far…

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My friends Sonny and Biddy who are We Buy Your Kids have an exhibition along with Greedy Hen on at China Heights at the moment. Details below:

Details are:

China Heights – Opening Fri 6 Feb
Upstairs 257 Crown Street, Darlinghurst