Metro Hippie Joshua Foss presents 'How THIS Generation Has the Chance to Change the World.' Learn about his 5 eco-villains and how we can overcome them to create a bright green future.
14. We are currently demanding nature’s services at a rate 44% faster than what it can regenerate and reabsorb. Well Past a Sustainable Threshold *Global Footprint Network
Hey there, my name is Joshua Foss and thanks for tuning into my seminar.
I run a business called Thrive Design Studio out of Minneapolis… also very active with the US Green Building Council… have a blog at Metrohippie.com covering all sorts of sustainable ideas. I was on the second season of HGTV’s Design Star and hosted my own series on HGTV.com called Get Green… finally, track me down on Twitter.com/JoshuaFoss
Green is pretty much everywhere… very exciting times we live in! We’re beginning to recognize that our lifestyles, particularly here in America, are not built to last…Green is about finding ways to make better decisions that include our future needs as much as our current needs.
Environmental movement really got its legs when Apollo 8 took this photo, the first ever of our planet from outer space… it made us realize that our home is quite fragile and that our choices in one part of the world can affect people in another part… recognized that we are very interconnected.
Plastics are of particular concern… every bit of plastic that has ever been created is still in the environment today… it doesn’t break down naturally. We are producing so much petroleum based plastics today, yet have no idea how to deal with it tomorrow…
And when we throw stuff away, we often don’t know where ‘away’ is… surprisingly, not many know about the islands of garbage in our oceans… the great pacific patch is the largest with some saying it’s as big as the lower 48 states!
Cradle to cradle is an incredible idea that virtually eliminates the waste stream… everything that we make should accomplish one of two things: Be forever recyclable… have the chemical integrity to be used over and over again, indefinitely… 2. Be biodegradable… become food for the soil and reenter the natural system.
36 out of 50 states will face water shortages within the next 5 years.
The average piece of food travels 1500 miles here in America... Very inefficient.
Meat is extremely inefficient way to gain nutrition… takes 10 times the energy and resources to create meat vs. eating plants… Cows also create a huge amount of methane and contribute to deforestation, rapidly accelerating climate change.
20 million Americans currently have asthma.
100,000 synthetic chemicals in commerce today, only a handful have been tested.
I’ve discovered that how we treat the planet directly correlates to how we treat our bodies… food is great example. Pesticides are placed on crops, and we end up ingesting them, bad for global health and personal health.
In our current model, we place value on the things we extract from nature. If you harvest a tree, or pump a barrel of oil out of the ground, you can sell those commodities and use them in an industrial process…. Well, we can’t cut all the trees down, or pump all of the oil out of the ground (even though some people wouldn’t be opposed to that!)… we need a system that creates more value for preserving nature’s services than for degrading it… An ecosystem is worth 82% more, on average, than the same parcel clear-cut, drained, paved, or developed in an unsustainable way. All told nature’s services have been valued at $33 trillion a year. Global gross national product total is around US$18 trillion per year. *wall street journal
We need to realize that it’s not like we’re on the Titanic and we have to avoid the iceberg… we’ve already hit the iceberg and the water is rushing in below… many of us are refusing to leave the buffet and dance floor…
Can be very overwhelming to think about everything that is happening today… it’s easy to say, what difference does it make, I’m only one person! But one person as a change agent can alter the world with the right tools and ideas.
About 1 in 5 Americans can be classified as living LOHAS…
Check out the GoodGuide… database of 50,000 products that have been tested for environmental, social and health scores… new iPhone app lets you scan products with its phone and gives you instant score… incredibly powerful tool for shopper who wants to support businesses that are doing their part to create a better world.
All of these issues are incredibly interconnected and collectively we have an amazing opportunity in front of us… never before has a single generation had the opportunity to change the world for the better… the tools and information are in place, all we need is collective willpower.