According to the International Organization for Migration there will be 200 million climate-change migrants by 2050. Other organizations put the total at 700 million migrants caused by worldwide climate-change. Of course, this will be a more or less gradual process, interrupted by some major upheavals. As everyone can see it has started already some time ago.
So, it’s time to do really something, isn’t it?
EU-Kommission präsentiert aktuelle Studie zum Jobmotor Erneuerbare Energien
Bis 2020 können in der EU bis zu 2,8 Millionen neue Arbeitsplätze im Bereich der erneuerbaren Energien geschaffen werden. Das meldet die EU-Kommission aus Brüssel. Gleichzeitig könne durch den Erfolg der Branche der Wert des Bruttoinlandsprodukts um 1,1 Prozent wachsen. Voraussetzung dafür sei, dass das Ziel eines 20-Prozent-Anteils erneuerbarer Energien auch erreicht wird.
http://ec.europa.eu/energy/renewables/studies/renewables_en.htm
I believe, what we have reached with the European Union is absolutely amazing. The first time in known history countries are joining voluntarily and peacefully for a better future.
The European Parliament gets more important by the day. Therefore it is so important to go voting!
Unfortunately, there is no real European party yet. In most countries voters will go more for national items instead of for a European agenda. Fortunately, we have the Internet to add support to our decision-making process.
Check out www.eudebate2009.eu. There is a debate in 6 languages with lots of information.
And there is www.votematch.eu where you can answer a number of questions and the result will show you which party comes closest to your ideas.
The other portal www.electioncampaign.eu will show you something about the activities of your country’s Members of the European Parliament.
For the first time in history more people are living in cities than in the countryside. The Helmholtz Society, one of the major research institutions in Germany started research into the problems of a mega city on the example of Santiago de Chile. On that particular evening at the Technical University of Munich we talked about their water supply systems. Due to an increased population and the effect of the climate change it is already obvious now, that in a few years time there will be a serious shortage of water. As in most other places in the world nothing very much is done about it! Unfortunately, knowing about the problem is not enough. So, what can we do in a case like this and in the thousands of other cases all around the world?
I just recently found out about this project: a free, online collection of human knowledge. This is no encyclopedia like Wikipedia, it is a collection of knowledge structured into several categories. These categories include e.g.: copies of old Internet sites, MP3 files, videos, lectures, books and even software. It is a great project guided by Brewster Kahle who also created the Alexa project. As of this moment there are more than 300,000 MP3 files, 150,000 videos, 60,000 concerts (including works of the Grateful Dead) and I don’t know how many books. All of this is completely free for everyone to access. It is part of the open movement and should be supported by everyone. www.archive.org
I was astonished to read how much water is required to produce certain items:
1,120 L water for 1 liter coffee
120 L water for 1 L tea
300 L water for 1 L beer.
16,000 L water for 1 kg hamburger
(Peter Gleick et.al. “The world’s water 2008 – 2009” Island Press, waterfootprint.org)
Everyone should drink at least 1.5 liters, better 2 liters (some even talk about 3 liters) per day. How often can this be read in all kind of publications? I always wondered where this comes from because it is against my innermost conviction. I just believe that presumed we live a healthy life our body will know how much liquid to consume, regulated by a certain distinct feeling called “thirst”.
A US researcher from the University of Chikago confirms that conviction in as much as he could not find any scientific research proving this ‘requirement’! (S.D. Levitt & S. J. Dubner; “Freakonomics”, HarperCollins, N.Y., 2006). For more information watch also the “Book Blog”: Freakonomics.
Another case of justifying the occasional question: who says so?
At this moment renewable energy has a share of 15 % in Germany. Only six years ago it had little more than 7%. Assuming a continued growth rate, the share of renewables will reach
30 % in 2014. Looking at the increasing cost of conventional energy generation on one hand and technological progress at the renewable energy front on the other hand, it seems to be a safe bet that the growth will continue. If this trend of growth is continued to 2020, a rate of
60 % of renewable energy seems to be in reach. Imagine! And this just by continuing present politics, and being a bit on the optimistic side.
So, with some additional effort even 100 % seem to be achievable! If you look at Al Gore’s objective of reaching 100 % within 10 years from now…
Maybe, we can still save the world!
A lot of management gurus have been emphasising the extreme importance of empowering the people. Stephen Covey, Tom Peters and many other management gurus have based a great deal of their worldwide success on the concept of empowerment. There has always been quite a number of managers, myself included, who used this concept more or less intuitively, more often than not based on empirical experience. Most of us believed not only on the effectiveness but rather on the imperative requirement of empowering people.
Now for the first time, Pamela Smith and colleagues, of Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands, seem to have found scientific evidence that empowerment works.
One of the tests was to give a group of people the task to write about a time when they had a top experience, when they felt extremely good and powerful. The other group was given the opposite task, to write about a time when they felt very low and powerless. All other things being equal the “empowered” group performed significantly better than the other. Other tests showed the same significantly better performance. Details can be found in the May issue of Psychological Science.
The logical conclusion can only be a call to all managers: get up from behind your desk, start talking and even more important, start listening to your people. Get an idea what you can do to empower people. Give them responsibility and the power to decide! Increase everybody’s potential for self-actualisation..! Empower them and reach for the best in everybody! Obtain better performance, and, a happier life, within your company or institution, or even within your family or any other kind of group! Now, even with the stamp of scientific approval!
This teacher from the ancient Bon-Buddhist tradition of Tibet was in Munich for the first time. He explained that we sleep more or less a third of our lives and then asked: what about using this time more productively, for example by using it for meditation and/or lucid dreaming? With his good sense of humour, similar to the Dalai Lama’s (or is this typical of Tibetans?), he went on to go more into detail about secrets of the Bon tradition. Some of his lecture occasionally went very far into Tibetan mysticism and is probably not suitable/acceptable for everybody, although it always is fascinating for me. For anybody more interested in these teachings visit his website: www.ligmincha.org/
Something which most will agree upon was his emphasis on the importance to to something for a better life as he described in his first steps of Dream Yoga. (Actually, similar ideas can be found in other directions of thought/schools as well!)
As a simple first step towards Dream Yoga one particular basic method is: “The one or two or three minutes before you fall asleep think about all the positive events of that day. If something doesn’t look so very nice, think about what you can learn from it, take all of it as feedback for your personal improvement, open your heart and so become ready for this night’s sleep, and, for the next day.
Of course, as short and simplified as I described it here, this is not a very original, new technology. Nevertheless, for anybody who isn’t practising something like this already, it can certainly enrich one’s life.