The Futures Foundation

Why Rudd's 2020 Summit missed the mark
Written by Richard A. Slaughter   
Friday, 15 August 2008
rslaughteredit2.jpgWhen I first heard that a summit was being planned I felt that it could be good news – a sign, perhaps, of new options for Australia after the long and depressing Howard years. How wrong can you be?

Two things were immediately apparent when I looked at the summit outline. First, there was the list of ten conventional categories clearly reflecting the bureaucratic origins of the exercise. Second, there was nothing original – such as any attention to futures concepts, methods and capability. As a result my initial hopes for the summit nose-dived right away. Far from being ready to put my name forward, I realised that there was really no point. And so it proved.

When the weekend of the summit arrived, and like others perhaps who’d considered applying, I felt a certain sense of disappointment at NOT being there. Perhaps I’d been mistaken. Perhaps some chance meeting might have opened doors, aired new ideas. Yet when the early reports came in I knew that my initial decision was correct.
Last Updated ( Friday, 15 August 2008 )
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From challenge to opportunity -- new ways to invest
Written by Hazel Henderson   
Friday, 15 August 2008
hazel2.jpg

“Even if you were lucky and got your money out of a failed bank... what are you to do with it?”, asks Hazel Henderson, a leading futurist who has been challenging conventional economics for more than 30 years.  In  this article she explores risks and opportunities and argues that the best new asset class is all the entrepreneurial companies that make up the Sustainability Sector – many of which have quietly outperformed the Dow and S&P indices.

We all know the story of the tulip mania, a favorite but short-lived asset of Europeans in the 1700s.  Gold has always been a favorite safe haven in spite of its volatility and recent efforts of central banks to devalue the yellow metal by leasing it and selling off their reserves.  We have lived through bubbles in art, antiques, jewelry, junk bonds, dot.coms and housing, as investors continually search for safety and diversification.
 Today, it's commodities – oil, corn, wheat, rice – that are in the news as ETFs (exchange-traded funds), hedge funds and even our pension funds pour billions into futures contracts.  Most of these institutional investors don't ever want to take delivery of the barrels of oil or bushels of grain.  They just roll over the contracts and buy and sell them, betting on higher prices.

Last Updated ( Friday, 15 August 2008 )
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More green jobs than brown
Written by Jan Lee Martin   
Friday, 25 July 2008
earth2.jpg    Remember when commercial fishing interests were opposing restrictions on their operations on the grounds of job losses?  We can’t stop depleting fish stocks, they said, because if we do we’ll lose our jobs.  Uh-huh.  And then?

    Now we are seeing the same argument applied to carbon-producing industries.  We can’t stop destroying our natural environment because if we do we’ll lose our jobs.  Uh-huh.  And then?

    The fact is there are already millions of new, green jobs in the sustainable economy while jobs in the old, industrial economy are being replaced by machines.  And the new ones are jobs people might actually want to do.  What’s more, they are less likely to be exported.

    The Worldwatch Institute reports that the coal, oil and natural gas industries have been offering fewer and fewer jobs as high-cost production equipment takes the place of people.

    “Many hundreds of thousands of coal mining jobs have been shed in China, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, and South Africa during the last two decades, sometimes in the face of expanding production,” says the Institute’s latest update.  In the US alone, coal industry employment has fallen by half in the last 20 years, despite a one-third increase in production.

    Renewables, on the other hand, are poised to tackle our energy crisis and create millions of new jobs worldwide.  Senior Researcher Michael Renner argues that fossil fuel jobs are increasingly becoming fossils themselves, as coal mining communities and others worry about their livelihoods.

    Unlike Australia, whose Coalition government stood loyally by its industrial age partners to the very death, strong government support has allowed Germany, Spain, and Denmark to emerge as leaders in renewable energy development - and green jobs.
Last Updated ( Friday, 25 July 2008 )
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