[P2P-F] Fwd: Sallie Calhoun and Greg Watson Videos Available for Viewing

Sat Dec 14 07:03:51 CET 2019

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Schumacher Center for a New Economics <
schumacher at centerforneweconomics.org>
Date: Fri, Dec 13, 2019 at 4:34 AM
Subject: Sallie Calhoun and Greg Watson Videos Available for Viewing
To: <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>

view this email in your browser
<https://mailchi.mp/5941c1d7ecf8/calhoun-watson-vidoes-available?e=ad2b992b93>
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=b447261448&e=ad2b992b93>
Greg Watson addresses the crowd at the 39th Annual E. F. Schumacher
Lectures on Sunday, October 27, 2019 at Saint James Place in Great
Barrington, MA.
Christina Lane Photography
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=b2a0a0cce6&e=ad2b992b93>
Dear Michel Bauwens,

Steve Dubb was in the audience for the 39th Annual E. F. Schumacher
Lectures. His fine report
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=25fbacf02a&e=ad2b992b93>
on the event appeared in Nonprofit Quarterly online on December 4, 2019. It
is reposted here with permission.

You can watch the videos of Sallie Calhoun and Greg Watson's talks by
clicking on the images below.

*Unearthing Effective Responses to Our Climate-Emergency and Economy*
by Steve Dubb

This past October, hundreds gathered in the small town of Great Barrington,
Massachusetts, for the 39th annual E.F. Schumacher lectures, an event
organized by the nonprofit Schumacher Center for New Economics
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=036c9f0c35&e=ad2b992b93>.
Over the years, a number of high-profile speakers have headlined the annual
event, including Wendell Berry, Jane Jacobs, Van Jones, and Winona LaDuke,
to name just a few.

This year’s theme—actionable responses to climate change—was nothing if not
timely.  Speaking on this topic were Sallie Calhoun
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=9d10843d64&e=ad2b992b93>—co-owner
with her husband Matt Christiano
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=8f9bd138c7&e=ad2b992b93>
of Paicines Ranch
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=494bd67d2b&e=ad2b992b93>,
a 7,600-acre (11.875 square miles) farm near Monterrey, California, and
founder of an impact investing fund, Cienaga Capital
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=1e36dac9ce&e=ad2b992b93>—and
Greg Watson
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=255e4fb57f&e=ad2b992b93>,
former Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture and a student of Buckminster
Fuller
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=ee5559e317&e=ad2b992b93>,
whose work centered on holistic approaches.

A central theme that emerged from both speakers was the need to take
action, even as the path to ultimately achieving climate stabilization
remains uncertain. As both speakers made clear, there are plenty of
approaches that can be taken to address the global climate emergency. At
the same time, given the complexity of human social systems, there are no
easy, ready-made solutions that will guarantee success.  Creativity and
flexibility, in short, will be required.

As Watson cautions, the goal cannot be to avoid climate change, because
already “we are in the midst of climate change.” Instead, Watson contends,
the goal is “to avoid the worst-case scenario.” How does one do that?
Calhoun and Watson addressed this question from two directions. For her
part, Calhoun addresses the question from what a single practitioner
(albeit one with considerable philanthropic resources) can do. Calhoun does
not attempt to develop a systemic approach, but instead talks about the
approach she has taken as a philanthropist and investor. By contrast,
Watson attempts to address the question of climate change at the level of
the global system.

<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=a8673ba081&e=ad2b992b93>

Sallie Calhoun at the 39th Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures on Sunday,
October 27, 2019 at Saint James Place in Great Barrington, MA. Video by
Richard Sands.

*Addressing Climate Change amidst Uncertainty*

Calhoun was born in the 1950s in Knoxville, Tennessee. She went to Rice
University to study engineering and moved to Silicon Valley, where she was
one of a small number of women engineers, and made her fortune as chief
operating officer of Globetrotter Software, a company she co-owned with her
husband. Selling the company in 2000 gave Calhoun and her husband the cash
that enabled them to purchase the 7,600-acre Paicines Ranch a year later,
where they have sought to implement principles of regenerative agriculture.

In 2014, Calhoun became a cofounder of an investment company called Cienaga
Capital, which makes loans and grants in regenerative agriculture. As
Calhoun describes her work, her goal “is to regenerate soils in America.”
Calhoun adds that she calls the whole initiative the “No Regrets
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=6454fe0971&e=ad2b992b93>”
initiative, since she wants to be able to look back at her own actions with
regard to climate change without regret. In general, the initiative invests
in carbon sequestration and negative emissions technologies that promise to
“take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.”

Calhoun emphasizes the need to act now. Calhoun noted that she and her
husband decided that a perpetual foundation did not make sense given the
severity of the climate emergency. “How can anyone talk about perpetuity?”
Calhoun asks. “We need to have a world that future charitable funds can
operate in.”
“We picked 10 years,” Calhoun adds. “In 10 years, I’ll turn 70.”  Her hope
is that within 10 years, soil health, rather than “being a little room to
the side” in climate crisis discussions, “will be in the center.”

Calhoun concedes that increasing soil absorption of atmospheric carbon is
just one tool of many to address the climate emergency. Still, she
contends, it is an important one. As *NPQ*’s Marian Conway noted earlier
this year
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=02c415328a&e=ad2b992b93>,
a single application of natural compost on half of California’s rangeland
could “increase the capacity for carbon sequestration by 42 million metric
tons,” a nontrivial contribution of about 0.7 percent of total annual US
emissions
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=1530e66e4b&e=ad2b992b93>
.

Soils, if properly maintained, can remove a considerable amount of carbon
out of the atmosphere. “In a lot of cases, we know what to do, but we don’t
know how to pay for it,” Calhoun explains. Changing the crop insurance
system to promote restorative soil practices by farmers would be one lever
that could greatly accelerate progress.

As Calhoun points out, restorative soil practices, even though they are
officially promoted by the US Department of Agriculture
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=b6c84f4794&e=ad2b992b93>,
are hardly the norm. Most vineyards, for example, “are tilled to death.”
This kills native grasses that can help absorb carbon. On Paicines Ranch,
Calhoun’s family is having some success at getting native grasses to come
back, though a lot of the work involves “trying to come up with systems
that are financially viable and build soil health.”

The fund Calhoun supports has invested $47 million to date, with $23
million currently outstanding in 58 loans. Calhoun adds, “On the
philanthropic side, we do operating grants and a few loan guarantees.” All
told, Calhoun estimates that there have been 80 grants. which total about
$2 million.

The goal, as Calhoun explains it, is to focus on making a lot of “small
bets,” with the hope that by doing so an ecosystem of small organizations
develops. This stands in contrast to the current philanthropic fashion of
making “big bets.”

“It is all about seeing differently and connecting people into a vibrant
network of people trying to change the world. Every bit of our work informs
every other bit,” Calhoun explains. Or, as Calhoun puts it, the vision is
about “scaling across rather than scaling up.”

Part of the reason for these small bets is the opacity of future
development. Calhoun quips, “As my son says, ‘I can predict the future. I’m
just usually wrong.’”

Still, there is more intentionality behind Calhoun’s approach than simply
making a bunch of small bets and hoping some pay off. Fostering
communication within emerging networks is one critical strategy for helping
connect the disparate efforts. Calhoun notes that she and her husband are
founding members of a number of collaboratives for this reason.

Calhoun emphasizes that responding to climate emergency requires a
willingness to act with a high degree of uncertainty. “How does this scale
in the time that we have?” Calhoun asks. The challenge, Calhoun notes, is
not small: “Last fall, we were asking the question of, ‘Can we live in the
face of smoke and destruction?’ This year, we have intermittent electricity
for three months. It is grim.”

Calhoun concedes, “Any plan that I can give you that was hopeful and might
effect change is totally unrealistic.” What is the way out? For Calhoun,
the only reasonable path is to hope that many different efforts,
approaching the question of climate change mitigation from different
directions, might in combination succeed at capping runaway global heating.

Calhoun adds, “I think it will look like magic.” Still, she contends that,
by supporting a wide range of community-based climate change mitigation
strategies, “the conditions for magic” can be created.
  Climate Change Viewed from a Systemic Perspective
As noted above, if Calhoun approaches the question of climate change
mitigation from the perspective of a single philanthropist, Watson attempts
to apply whole-systems thinking to the challenge of the global climate
emergency. Yet, even so, Watson agrees with Calhoun that, “what we need is
a diversity of perspectives.”
Watson highlights a few areas where he feels coordinated effort at the
global level might help boost the kind of local efforts Calhoun champions.
One of these vectors is policy.
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=29880d63ce&e=ad2b992b93>

Greg Watson at the 39th Annual E. F. Schumacher Lectures on Sunday, October
27, 2019 at Saint James Place in Great Barrington, MA. Video by Richard
Sands.

“Policy is a powerful tool if it is used correctly and it is an inclusive
policy,” Watson explains. “Humanity has a once-in-century chance: to fix an
economic system that is failing on multiple fronts.”

In particular, Watson lifts up attention to proposals for a Green New Deal
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=19286b8eb2&e=ad2b992b93>,
noting that the matter of a “green new deal” is not simply a matter of
policy, but of creating “a new worldview.”

Watson says he is optimistic that in that some fields, such as sustainable
agriculture, society has a “head start” on new worldviews that he views as
necessary for addressing the global climate emergency. Watson contends that
applying biomimicry—that is, the conscious design of technology in such a
way that it works with and boosts natural systems, instead of trying to
“overcome” nature—is one promising strategy. The restorative soils approach
Calhoun is working on, of course, is one example of a strategy that seeks
to accentuate natural processes that can remove carbon from the atmosphere.

Watson, drawing on the work of his late mentor Fuller, also advocates using
simulations as a tool to spur both new thinking and technological
development. Watson observes that “war games” are frequently used by
military planners. Instead, Watson suggests, we could apply what he calls
“world games” that use the “same information, the same data, and…instead of
developing weapons, put that to the use of solving human needs for everyone
on Spaceship Earth.”

A lot of our technology, Watson points out, comes from military
research—supercomputers, software, fiber optics, artificial intelligence,
satellite technology, broadband internet, and transistors. Watson suggests
that with a concentrated focus on the climate emergency, the focus could
shift from designing technology for weaponry to designing technology for
sustaining life.

Watson also warns against magical thinking that might imply that green
technology—unlike all forms of technology that have preceded it—will have
solely beneficial consequences. A “reality we have to face,” Watson says,
“is that some renewable energy technologies themselves depend on extractive
industry.” Watson emphasizes, “We have to be honest about that. You still
have to go into the mines to get rare earth minerals.” The challenge is
that even if a new model based on renewable energy succeeds in making the
old fossil fuel industries obsolete, the result is highly unlikely to be a
utopia. Success, Watson observes, “creates new problems.”
  Closing Thoughts

Not surprisingly given the global dimensions of the climate challenge,
thinking about the climate emergency has often focused on big centralized
initiatives. Certainly, both Watson and Calhoun strongly favor policy
frameworks like the Green New Deal that can amass resources on the scale
required to meet the challenges we face. At the same time, both Calhoun and
Watson emphasize the importance of experimentation and local action.

It is a point that has been made before. The late Elinor Ostrom, who won
the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=5a6f878ac8&e=ad2b992b93>,
argued in a background paper produced for the 2010 World Development Report
on Climate Change
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=5d57aaac34&e=ad2b992b93>
that a “polycentric approach
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=569372fb38&e=ad2b992b93>,”
rather than a centralized, global approach is to be preferred. One reason,
she offered, is that “waiting for effective policies to be established at
the global level is unreasonable.”

But, Ostrom added, there is a positive reason too—namely, to “encourage
experimentation and learning from diverse policies adopted at multiple
scales.” Ostrom, who won her Nobel Prize based on her studies of the
conditions for effective collective action, drawing on over 5,000 case
study examples
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=f8d74ba822&e=ad2b992b93>,
also observed that it is far easier to build the trust and commitment
necessary to achieve behavioral change if larger scale problems are broken
down and made meaningful at the local level.

In short, if we take the observations of Calhoun, Watson, and Ostrom to
heart, the real work of addressing the climate emergency will occur not
just in the halls of government, but in the actions of our own local
communities. It is a message that emphasizes the very real role—and
responsibility—that organizations in civil society will have to play.
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=abe65e5098&e=ad2b992b93>
Sallie Calhoun and Greg Watson answer audience questions at the 39th Annual
E. F. Schumacher Lectures on Sunday, October 27, 2019 at Saint James Place
in Great Barrington, MA. Video by Richard Sands.

<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=7cb91f9e52&e=ad2b992b93>
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=b1f586312f&e=ad2b992b93>
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=f23e8f8896&e=ad2b992b93>
[image: Facebook]
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=be1c758e7a&e=ad2b992b93>
Facebook
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=4907331a04&e=ad2b992b93>
[image: Instagram]
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=194088110c&e=ad2b992b93>
Instagram
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=ce6ad72cf7&e=ad2b992b93>
[image: Twitter]
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=1ac839a19a&e=ad2b992b93>
Twitter
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=d06d9082b8&e=ad2b992b93>
[image: LinkedIn]
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=a550518322&e=ad2b992b93>
LinkedIn
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=951a499fd6&e=ad2b992b93>
[image: Website]
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=844fc672e8&e=ad2b992b93>
Website
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=4cc98d5292&e=ad2b992b93>
[image: YouTube]
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=22e5ae3632&e=ad2b992b93>
YouTube
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=25d85d23a6&e=ad2b992b93>
[image: Email] <schumacher at centerforneweconomics.org>
Email <schumacher at centerforneweconomics.org>
[image: Podcast]
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=d8e567f469&e=ad2b992b93>
Podcast
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/track/click?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=4005bb5e42&e=ad2b992b93>

You are receiving this email because you are a friend of the Schumacher
Center for a New Economics.
 update your preferences
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/profile?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=b87c5e4bcc&e=ad2b992b93>
  unsubscribe from this list
<https://centerforneweconomics.us5.list-manage.com/unsubscribe?u=69d509d113032e3126c4543ce&id=b87c5e4bcc&e=ad2b992b93&c=aa67187a7b>

*Schumacher Center for a New Economics 140 Jug End Road, Great Barrington,
MA 01230 | (413) 528-1737*

-- 
P2P Foundation: http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net <http://p2pfoundation.net>  -
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

Discuss: http://lists.ourproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/p2p-foundation

Updates: ; http://twitter.com/mbauwens; http://www.facebook.com/mbauwens

Curation of news on p2p/commons developments:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/p2p.open/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ourproject.org/pipermail/p2p-foundation/attachments/20191214/ec43bb30/attachment-0001.html>