Integral City Meshworks: The Blog

As we are striving to create new frameworks, approaches and paradigms, it is often easy to overlook how far we have come and what progress we are making. For someone, like Hazel Henderson, who has demonstrated decades of commitment to changing our perspectives on economic performance the following is good news indeed.

MH/Integral City

For Immediate Release:

NEW GLOBAL CLIMATE PROSPERITY SCOREBOARD FINDS OVER $1 TRILLION INVESTED IN GREEN SINCE 2007

Washington, DC – December  4, 2009 – Ethical Markets Media (USA and Brazil) and The Climate Prosperity Alliance today launched their Global Climate Prosperity Scoreboard® which tracks private investment in companies growing the green economy globally.  This new, never before reported number, showing $1,248,740,645,993.00 (over $1.248 trillion) in total investment since 2007, indicates how investors and entrepreneurs are leading governments in promoting sustainable growth.  The scoreboard totals investments in solar, wind, geothermal, ocean/hydro, energy efficiency and storage, and agriculture.  We purposefully omitted nuclear, “clean coal,” carbon capture and sequestration, and biofuels.  We indicate which investments have been publically announced and committed by major companies for 2010 and beyond.

 Dr. Marc A. Weiss, Chairman and CEO of Global Urban Development and Chair of the Climate Prosperity Alliance, said, “This $1.248 trillion of investments are not only from North America and Europe, but also from China, India, Brazil and other developing countries.  They indicate that the private sector currently is ahead of governments in understanding that during the 21st century, people, places, and organizations can only get richer by becoming greener and only earn more money by using fewer resources and reusing more. Private capital investment is now leading globally in promoting technological innovation and resource efficiency that will accelerate environmentally and socially sustainable industrial growth and economic development throughout the world.”

Dr. Hazel Henderson, futurist, author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy (Chelsea Green, 2006) and president of Ethical Markets Media, serves as vice-chair of the Climate Prosperity Alliance together with vice-chairs C.S. Kiang (China), Rodrigo Loures (Brazil), Lawrence Bloom (UK) and James Nixon (USA).  Dr. Henderson said, “Ethical Markets Media’s mission is reforming markets and growing the green economy globally.  Our Global Climate Prosperity Scoreboard® will be updated regularly to show progress toward the ecologically sustainable economies that are vital to our common future.  Societies are transitioning from the 300-year old, polluting, fossil-fueled Industrial Era to the advanced technologies of the information-rich Solar Age.”

The Climate Prosperity Alliance, a volunteer, global network of financiers, businesses, economic development authorities, scientists and NGOs is based on earth systems science, showing the widespread evidence of destruction caused by the now-obsolete technologies of the combustion-based Industrial Revolution and its extraction and exploitation of the Earth’s capital: oil, coal, gas, minerals, forests, water, land and biodiversity.  Human societies are now gradually re-industrializing our economies using the Earth’s income – the renewable energies of sun, wind, ocean/hydro, geothermal and non-agricultural biomass – based on human capital: new knowledge of planetary processes and ecosystems, designing our economies with Nature.

The Climate Prosperity Alliance uses the Climate Solutions 2 computer model of Australia’s Climate Risk Pty., showing how $1 trillion invested every year for the next 10 years can assure the global transition to sustainable prosperity and job growth.  This $10 trillion is less than the bailouts of failed banks in the USA and Europe and less than 10% of the world’s pension and institutional funds of $120 trillion.  Institutional fund managers can shift 10% of their assets away from hedge funds, risky derivatives and commodity speculation to real investments in a greener global economy, thereby assuring their beneficiaries a healthier future.

“While we encourage progress toward directly investing in growing the green economy, we urge government officials meeting in Copenhagen December 7-14, 2009, to follow the lead of these private investors that have already committed $1.248 trillion.  We applaud our pension fund colleagues of the UN Principles of Responsible Investing who have joined in pledges to allocate more of their members’ $19 trillion of assets into similar green companies.  Now, governments must go beyond arguing over targets, caps and carbon-trading – and follow the lead of China and the USA in their comprehensive plan for cooperation on clean energy and climate change.  Such a general agreement in Copenhagen can promote and underwrite more direct investments and growth of the green economy,” said Dr. Henderson.

The new Global Climate Prosperity Scoreboard® is researched and compiled by the Ethical Markets Media expert team: Timothy Nash, M.Sc., principal, Strategic Sustainable Investments, Toronto; Rachel Tubman, M.Sc., senior researcher/futurist; assisted by The Cleantech Group and members of the Ethical Markets Sustainability Research Group.  As these investments increase, the scoreboard will track totals, providing investors and governments with tangible evidence of the growing green economy.

Contacts:

• Dr. Hazel Henderson, president, Ethical Markets Media, www.ethicalmarkets.com, hazel.henderson@ethicalmarkets.com, 1-904-829-3140

• Dr. Marc A. Weiss, Chairman and CEO, Global Urban Development; and Chair, Climate Prosperity Alliance, www.climateprosperity.com, marcweiss@globalurban.org, 1-202-554-5891.

• Rosalinda Sanquiche, Executive Director, Ethical Markets Media, rosalinda.sanquiche@ethicalmarkets.com, 1-904-826-1381
• Timothy Jack Nash, Co-founder, Strategic Sustainable Investments, nash@ssinvest.com, 1-416-821-9179