Companies will fill leadership vacuum on climate, ICC chief warns

London: The head of the world's largest business organisation has defended employers who publicly advocate for action on diversity and climate change, arguing workers are "crying out" for leadership and boardrooms must have a "bigger purpose than just profit".

John Denton has moved to Paris to lead
the International Chamber of Commerce.

John Denton, the first Australian to be appointed secretary-general of the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce, said critics of corporate activism also failed to recognise that small businesses - not just major firms - were some of the most enthusiastic backers of a stronger response to global warming.

"A number of shock jocks and political commentators seem to run this 'stick to your knitting' line but it's just completely ridiculous," Mr Denton said.

Read the story from The Age by Bevan Shields - “Companies will fill leadership vacuum on climate, ICC chief warns.”

Why This Farmer Wants To Go Beyond Organic

Luke Peterson is a Minnesota farmer with the soil in his veins. He grew up in Laq qui Parle State Park, and his father was a Department of Natural Resources (DNR) employee.

Emmer wheat. 

Peterson also spent time working for the DNR, focusing on the critical undertaking of prairie restoration. During the Public Land Survey from 1847-1907, Minnesota had 18 million acres of prairie. Only 1% of that remains.

During his time in the DNR, Peterson “learned how diversity is key to ecosystem survival.” He then moved to conventional farming and began “learning about the politics behind seed, synthetic fertilizer and pesticide sales. I began questioning if I was a farmer, or a mere pawn for Big Agriculture,” he says.

Taking what he’d learned from his time with the DNR, he came to this conclusion: “Diversity would be key to my farming future.” So he decided to transition the 80-acre farm settled by his great-great-grandfather and go completely organic.

Read the story from Forbes by Theresa Beckhusen - “Why This Farmer Wants To Go Beyond Organic.”

Human domination of Earth goes almost unnoticed

H

umans dominate the Earth to an extent few are really aware of.

 

Biodiversity is diminishing, and our extinction crisis is in no small part down to our clearing of ever more wilderness to further develop the human enterprise.

If survival of any part of the web of life is dependent upon the whole, then we are playing a dangerous game.

Deep ecology holds that the all life – human and nonhuman – holds intrinsic value, independent of any utility for human purposes. As the richness and diversity of life are integral to the flourishing of the biosphere as a whole, it is only acceptable to disturb nature to the extent necessary to satisfy vital needs.

Allowing the natural world to slip from the perceived grasp of human control and re-wild itself requires surrender to the reality that we do not have ultimate control. Author and activist Derrick Jensen advocates for this ecocentric approach, arguing that we will need to relinquish our perceived position as superior to nature, and recognize ourselves as simply a part of it.

Jensen invites us to tune in to nature’s frequency – to observe and listen to what the natural world is telling us. Most westerners interpret the idea of listening to nature as just a metaphor, but Jensen insists that it is literal, making reference to indigenous cultures whose way of life is in tune with their landbase, who understand the world as a network of living beings with whom we can enter into a relationship. It is therefore within reach for us to genuinely commune with nature, and not just take from it.

This short piece – “Preservation of the wilderness” - is from Shift magazine.

Call for climate change discussion at Brisbane's G20

Dr Thomas E. Lovejoy -
climate change must be
discussed at G20 Forum.

Thomas E. Lovejoy believes the world needs to act now on addressing climate change.

The world renowned conservation biologist who coined the phrase “biodiversity” in the 1980s, is presently in Sydney for the IUCN Parks Congress, believes it is inevitable and critically important that climate be discussed at Brisbane’s G20 forum.

Dr Lovejoy has said biodiversity should be high on the agenda at the G20 this week in Australia because it could help deliver a more sustainable economic system and mitigate climate change.

He is a Senior Fellow at the United Nations Foundation and University Professor in the Environmental Science and Policy department at George Mason University.

Dr Thomas E. Lovejoy directed the World Wildlife Fund-US program from 1973 to 1987 and was responsible for its scientific, Western Hemisphere, and tropical forest orientation.

From 1985 to 1987, he served as the fund’s executive vice president and he is generally credited with having brought the tropical forest problem to the fore as a public issue, and is one of the main protagonists for the science and conservation of biological diversity.

He was the first person to use the term biological diversity in 1980 and made the first projection of global extinction rates in the Global 2000 Report to the U.S. President that same year.

The conservationist was interviewed on Radio National this morning – “Biodiversity should be on G20 Agenda: Thomas Lovejoy”.