Fix the system - get a global 'circular economy' by blindspotter

The proposal to Reshape the Whole Economy seems to put the cart in front of the horse, meaning that a massive public awareness campaign is required first. The Wikipedia article "CO2 in the earth's atmosphere" may be a start. The Keeling Curve is shown along with a chart of global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. A third piece of important information may be found at the end of the discussion for the article, where I show how our emissions would raise the CO2 by about 2.4 ppm per year, except that the oceans are absorbing about half.

James, I support your proposal because it has the right scope. The international system is stuck and, to use a US football analogy, the solution is an endrun, not a frontal assault. The Intermix Collective Communication Software that I am developing -- see intermix.org -- is a first step towards the collective intelligence software that we need to turn things around. Good for CoLab for giving it a go, but so far, I think we see that collective intelligence is not within our grasp. I'd like to be proved wrong, but it seems there are too many facets and angles, so the conversation, even a colab organized conversation, is chaotic and/or too unwieldy, to come to a conclusion. InterMix instead aims to create the global consciousness that would underpin a global collective intelligence.

Thanks so much Dave, Roger, Jess (and others) for your support - much appreciated! Roger, really interesting to be working on a software approach to collective intelligence. Great idea to flag it up here. I recommend also the discussion area of this site where more people can find out about your work and hopefully cross-fertilise. https://www.climatecolab.org/web/guest/discussion#discussion%3DpageType%3ATHREAD%2CthreadId%3A7411 What could the CoLab learn from your experiences do you think? Jess, delighted that you're involved. Lovely perspective to involve divers in a climate revolution to save coral reefs. Admire how you make the connection between that specific focus and the need for a revolution in dealing with climate and all related issues together. That's why I propose using the vast power of a society and economy that is set up to relentlessly phase out all accumulating waste (including GHG emissions). This beats the wishful power of legislation or treaties that focus at the end of the pipe to try to make the existing economy emit less. We need a complete climate-friendly paradigm not just hopes for controls on a climate-destructive one. What do you think? What other info would you like? Please invite all SCUBA divers to the site. They can support any proposals, get involved in discussions and even start new proposals before Sept 30th. Winning proposals get the chance to be considered by top climate negotiators and hopefully get used to begin the 'cultural revolution' we need.

Great stuff Jess, especially about collective leadership. Consciousness is tricky to discuss but fun to picture using a systemic view, where consciousness is another variable (like so many) that both causes and is caused by the paradigm we're in. That might explain why working harder (at awareness raising for example) doesn't raise awareness, since the underlying paradigm keeps chugging away, self-reinforcing and generating movements of denial that outpace progressive movements. A way forward, as you suggest, is to shift focus from end-of-pipe band-aids to policies that fix whole systems, like the whole economy. And like humanity's upside-down sense of belonging. You might enjoy a peek at my paper on precisely this topic, http://bit.ly/switch5 ? The world seems to have a wonderful capacity to begin movements on important issues - if a movement was to focus on fixing whole systems we might quickly see what collective intelligence and collective consciousness could do. It takes a whole population to ignore its blindspots but only a few people to reveal them! How would you like to involve your SCUBA community in the CoLab? Would be splendid to see more people doing more here :-)

If something does in fact end up as waste, who files the insurance claim?

I like the general idea, just trying to hash out the mechanics of it. It seems to me there's always a possibility for failure...for wastes to enter the environment despite your efforts. Is there a penalty for that? Or do you just decide on an amount of money to spend on preventing each type of waste, and hope it's sufficient? Who makes these decisions, about either penalty amount or premium amount? Is it the government? If so, how do you avoid the process getting corrupted by industry lobbyists?

Am I understanding this correctly: With regard to fossil fuels, the premiums function as a carbon fee, perhaps with the money applied to renewables. But you're looking at risk of emissions, not actual emissions. That keeps you from having to measure actuals from everyone. But if one coal company is turning their emissions into a product, maybe they don't get the full benefit. Instead it reduces the risk of coal producing waste from 100% to 95%, and everybody's premiums go down a bit.

Yep thanks. I started in a somewhat similar direction with my Carbon Rights proposal last year, and I'm taking it further this year.

You refer to a coal producer selling coal where the emissions get turned into new resources. This confuses me. Do you mean things like enriching the CO2 in algal ponds? Keeping it simple, I would imagine that any seller of coal would pay a high PIP. A buyer of coal would pay as well? But maybe less if they grow algae or sequester their emissions? I do like the concept of Precycling Insurance Premiums (PIPs). The mechanics of how the system might work and what the premiums (or relative premiums for different products) might be deserves a lot of consideration. It is not that I am eager to pay these premiums, I would like to know how to avoid paying even hypothetical PIPs. All types of entities (corporations, local governments, people, etc.) could plan and make purchases more appropriately for the future if PIPs were published (albeit as always changing approximations), along with the methods used to calculate them. I understand that PIPs would be administered by a third party, much like a new type of insurance whose task is to help "insure" mankind's future. A free-market has a very strong tendency toward short-term thinking, a very strong focus on this quarter. To expect government regulations to take on all the responsibilities of thinking long-term may be unreasonable. These PIPs seem like a way to include long-term thinking in a free-market. It is a bold proposal, and I like it. My thanks to all.

I’m sympathetic to the message: I think the system is broken and we have largely been only with the symptoms. In fact, the drivers of environmental impact are consumption and population growth. This proposal only focuses on the first. The hardest part of this proposal is seeing the feasibility of adopting a system of “precycle insurance.” For instance, look at the #3 in “How?” -- subsidies are hard to remove and many industries will fight to the death. There is a definite lack of political will. Starting a momovement will be required and that takes time. Time that, as you point out (Climate Works paper that ClimateInteractive.org helped with) we don’t have. Questions: 1. Why would premiums go to financing products compatible with sustainability? Wouldn’t they be used to fund clean up of waste? Thinking of medical insurance, the healthy premiums are supposed to covers the ill’s medical costs. 2. I’m worried about the rate of change here. How does the proposal get peak emissions before 2020, as stated is needed? 3. How does this system allow/promote demand side efficiency or only supply side? Seems to be more on manufacturing and less on how much my power my TV uses. 4. The MIT modelers have trouble coming up with pathways that are below 350ppm because they don’t seem to be feasible before 2100. There is too much momentum in the climate system (http://climateinteractive.org/momentum). Does your proposal support a carbon capture technology? That is what would be required. Biochar has limitations in the amount and permanency of sequestration. Also, unclear how precycling insurance would promote biochar.

Hello, James! I like "Circular Economy" in this proposal. All processes of production should become circular in the future. However, in terms of means, that you offer to do that, I mean Premiums, I suppose that it should be improved. As a economic method to influence on producers it is good but how it can be done if every country follows its own economic interests? In other words, if it was profitable for every country this method would accept all states, I think.

What do you mean by "the resources needed for future growth are systematically converted into growing liabilities"? Could you clearify this point? Thanks a lot! Boris.

After reading this through along with another of your presentations on the circular economy I find the ideas very compelling in there simplicity. I do wonder how to put this into action in the face of extreme corruption in governments and obstruction by carbon fuel interests. Is there a way to organize resistance to the status quo economy while building the circular model. See link on non violent resistance: http://www.aeinstein.org/organizations/org/FDTD.pdf It seems that right now facing squarely the abuses of power by the corporate cartels that dominate the global economy and building a global resistance movement to the power structure would be a top priority. I'm thinking about a proposal to wed this resistance to the creation of a circular economy One thing that I have personal experience with is tapping the waste stream for building materials, in a sense this is already a global phenomena in most third world countries. The question is how to make this more of a movement, with homelessness in the US on the rise this could take shape in a powerful way. But we need an even broader scope of action as you point out, much to ponder here.

The thought I have had is that the relation to other harmful activities could be made more explicit. I was thinking about food, and how harmful foods are made, which don't necessarily end up as waste, although they do a lot of harm to health. People have been talking about high fructose syrups which cause obesity. Much of this would be prevented by premiums on carbon-emitting agriculture, but would it all be? And Colin Mason's axioms from 2030 Spike may be useful: 1. Useful change is likely to come about only if it clearly benefits the community in which it is planned. (I.e. the big energy companies?) 2. If proposed solutions do not take the lowest common denominators of human nature into realistically into account, they will not work. (I don't think it means humans are just at that level - there is obviously huge altruism.)

Thanks Ann. The proposal aims for sustainability so we should expect many harmful activities to subside. Zero harm and 100% healthy sounds like a future next stage? Great that you made the link between price signals, new agricultural patterns and healthier foods and lifestyles. If the proposal wasn't already a bit long we could go on to look at how less dependence on long-distance processed foods would improve diets and less fossil fuel dependence would increase exercise etc. Lots of interesting detail to explore... This proposal does benefit the global community in which it is planned. Whether it benefits big energy companies will depend upon their capacity for change. Guess we shouldn't restrict proposals to those that the big energy companies most enjoy? Human nature can be heavy going to discuss but does it help that making market prices compatible with sustainability would also make self-interest compatible with sustainability?

Thanks Sophia. The Fix the System proposal would implement 'circular economics' to keep valuable resources as resources at ground level rather than disperse them in incinerators as toxic nano-particles and greenhouse gases. Solving this problem at the whole system level also has the benefit of new opportunities for those who have supported incinerators in the past. "Ah, we can now design out waste rather than just try to make it disappear." "Ah, we can revive economic activity by preserving and regenerating resources rather than just using them once." "Ah, we can make money by managing materials creatively rather than seeking ways to destroy them faster."

So many great comments here. I am of full support of what you are proposing James. Peggy (From WiserEarth @wiserEarth)

Internalize Economy in Earth Ecosystemby vishal Open Source Information Age Economyby tedschulman Intellectual Property Exchange,2009 ©.by boris-lagutin Systems of Collective Intelligence by dsweeney Platform for mutual development to reduce resource consumption by haller Ongoing Global Brainstorm by gmoke Fix the system - get a global 'circular economy'by blindspotter Environmental Balance Index: ecosystem internalized money. So collective aspiration to procure, prosper and evolve economyby taras.bebeshko All of these proposals advocate open source/crowdsource mechanisms to speed response to climate change, at least as I read them. It seems we each have different parts of the puzzle and should consider collaborating whatever the outcome of the contest.

Hi Dave, sorry I missed your comment #28. Yes. Donella Meadows was right about cheap abundant energy not being the blessing it seems. This is what has powered global dependence on linear (one-way material flow) economics. On your questions I recommend your own answers ;-) http://www.greaterdemocracy.org/archives/1205 I shared my work on precycling premiums with Forum for the Future a couple of times since 2006. Good to see the language coming through though it's harder to pin premiums on activities (as they suggest) than products (as I suggest).

On the other hand, it takes energy to recycle things. Cheaper energy = cheaper recycling. At some point, you run into the second law of thermodynamics. Because of entropy, there will always be waste, and turning disordered waste into ordered product will always take energy. So I'm not convinced that cheaper energy implies more extraction. Maybe we do so much extraction because, with expensive energy, extraction is cheaper than recycling. With cheaper energy, the reverse could be true.

Hi Dennis, thanks for mentioning thermodynamics. Happily we don't need to break any laws of nature to implement circular economics. The 2nd law applies in closed systems and the biosphere is open to energy that adds entropy outside the biosphere (in the sun and Earth's core for example). This is how nature was able to create net natural resources. Nature takes care to be efficient with using energy and also to find ways for materials to avoid accumulating was dispersed wastes. We can take care similarly. Yes recycling requires energy. Wider view is that not recycling in general means more energy loss (consider life-cycle analysis) and more resource loss (consider ecological rucksacks). Used resources are generally highly ordered not 'disordered waste'. Used solid resources are typically very close to being usable again (by reuse, repair etc) and also very close to the places where they will be needed in future. The alternative of making new products from scratch involves high energy investments to gather dispersed natural resources from around the world (ores, oil, biomass etc) and running them through waste-making energy-intensive globalised manufacturing and logistics. It usually helps to consider the energy and resource flows first and then the economics. Cheapness then can be seen as a way of encouraging whatever is the current economic model. In linear economics energy has been kept cheap so allowing more resources to become wastes faster. Cheap energy wasn't used to enable less resources to be used more efficiently and meet more people's needs. Ironically the failure to use prices to cut energy and resource dependence has led to volatile and fast rising energy and resource prices.

James, there is such an idea – to give globally systemic introduction for your project proposal. Why this needs? The cause is that a consecutive systemic approach, at when global problems like economic or environmental ones enter into consideration, a priori consists in taking into account the whole system of global problems facing Humanity, and to explain why in the project proposal «Fix the System – Get a Global ‘Circular Economy’» any your self-limitation was done means possibly to remove some future pretensions when the fate of Proposal will be decide, to be taken or not into practical realization. Thus James, it is the question here about to replenish your systemic argumentation already presented with new arguments, and I am waiting your okay to start. I need near 10 days for this.

Lots of good ideas here that would provide a useful shift in prevailing political thought processes i.e. we do things this way because we've always done things this way. More than anything else right now, global politics lacks good ideas, whether it's solve economic or ecological problems. The difficulty of the theory is putting it into practice and that where this proposal has holes. Premiums would be fought by lobbyists armed with budgets many times the size of civil society groups. If such a re-wiring of the system is to gain consensus and momentum then it needs to show how it will continue to make money for the money men and provide growth for the politicians. Communicate that in a concise and compelling way and there's a G8 governments will adopt some of it. Good luck.

Hi James!:D Great Work!!:D Reference new wall graphic/flow chart, one point for now - 'lead by example' - should not be top down, (we've waited far too long for this to happen) - this should be bottom up. The first people who need the opportunity of living sustainably, are all those who cannot afford to live in the first place. Examples of perfectly feasibile Ecological, Economical & sustainable solutions are already seen across the world - but few decision makers pay heed to these viable solutions. Certainly, when it comes to gaining planning consent on any Build Code 6 application, the road of passage is still thwart with hurdles - not least at local committee level, as so few people making decisions at planning committee level, have knowledge on the latest predictions & scientific evidence. Invariably, decisions at this level are influenced by whether a planning application for a straw or earth house with renewable technologies, might devalue someone else's property. I wonder if the wall could become a fence - where on the one side - everyone who wants to, can be allowed to get on and live sustainably, (crucially, without any waste), and the other side would reside those who continue to ignore the evidence. Creating one perfectly viable, ethical and balanced economy -separate from that which people are so desparate to hold onto. If we sidelined 'the dinosaurs' - it would make the engine of a circular economy run an awful lot faster & smoother. (They could join us all later - it's not as if the best guidelines & rules weren't already written inGreat Agenda 21, Earth Charter, Brudtland etc.) Best Regards, Linda.

I should confess, after near acquaintance with this Proposal my worldview [1] has been essentially corrected. I had until a prejudice concerning climate change initiatives [2]. My reasoning was: once civilization of Homo Sapiens Sapiens created in several ten millennia by human Reason, therefore the root cause of the hard, unsolved and threatening global problems face the humanity is and may only be this Reason, and just it is the place where the leverage point of systems change to provide a civilization secure existence should be applied. In other words I considered that global problems facing the humanity may only be solved all together and all at once, and no one of them separately. So, I came to a depressing conclusion [3] that we are forceless to cope with global problems, climate one among them, until the world education will have been rebuilt itself to educate people being able to overcome the evolution backwardness of their mentality creating the problems and aggravating them. For this some decades need at least, what possibly aren’t given people… James Grayson used another logic of arguing: since “emissions, climate disruption and the impacts of climate disruption are all symptoms of underlying systemic errors“, therefore to correct the errors, some constructive approaches have to be found. And he discovered the hard bunch “climate change and economic reshaping” and proved that first might be influenced by the second, what gave him a ground to infer: “There is no solution just for climate, but we can fix the whole system”. Question is about the world economic system that having realized the proposed could work so that all used resources regenerated by nature or industry be turned into new resources. In result, the proposal permits to establish such the achievements: 1: James Greyson’s proposal grounded on his peer reviewed before published papers, the main being Seven Policy Switches for Global Security, is convincingly proving its own economical feasibility owing to lucky founded mechanism of the insurance-like premiums paid by large producers accounting for the risk of the resource ending up as waste; 2: This feasibility was demonstrated by describing all the circular-economic mechanism in operation and confirmed by information about direction of China economy, one of the very effectively working (9% annual growth!), to be circularly developing; 3: Arguments are given that global precycling economy having been got usual practice of its functioning can provide a reverse of climatic and environmental factors to better values. All this means that the question set by the 2011 Climate CoLab contest -How should the 21st century economy evolve, bearing in mind the risks of climate change?- is answered by James Greyson with significant exceeding. However other positive consequences of the project proposal rather not foreseen by the very author, appear to be not less essential. Really, 4: In systemically theoretical plane, it is proved that though all global problems are found in mutual interactions, for all that there is principal possibility to realize a very significant project giving global economy new reserve possibilities to get out of the crisis and to rise further tempo of its development without worsening and even with bettering both environmental and climate factors. 5: We have grounds to suppose that the path of secure, sustainable, unthreatening civilization development goes through an educational system aiming to liberate human minds of their evolution-conditioned backwardness, as only widely, ethically and systemically thinking people may create really and efficiently acting global brain being only able to reach the aim. While realized James Greyson’s project to relieve both climate change and worsening environmental problems would assist to solve this main problem of the very humanity existence giving more time of comparatively still, without global catastrophes development for our civilization till now “headless” to gain that organ of global-problem-solving and global governance. References [1] Creating a civilization security system in the 3rd Millennium: http://uladzimir.bravehost.com/civ_secure.html. [2] Climate change problem should be taken wider: http://uladzimir.bravehost.com/my_cl_change.html. [3] All humanity must have been fooled: http://uladzimir.bravehost.com/betise.html. Expert opinion given by Dr. Vladimir N. Tretyakov, FM IAIT, inteltech.iap.by, tvinteltech.narod.ru; uladzimir.bravehost.com; www.wiserearth.org/group/Sch_pan_th

Thanks Vlad and Linda, great comments with a common theme of re-educating ourselves. The big obstacle seems to be that people seek out the solutions that fit the way they think already, not the way a future sustainable society will think. However if proposals such as this can be somehow advanced then the public debate around it could be a super introduction to thinking beyond narrow tram-line solutions. If the proposal is somehow implemented then the public dialogue about how to spend premiums would be similarly valuable. A big opportunity for Eco-Ark Festivals? Helpful also to start thinking about how education and the media mould our thinking and what to change to give us thinking fit for purpose. Vlad has done much work on this and I agree with Linda's assessment that the change need not take long. http://bit.ly/2ndswitch

Blindspotter, your rewrite is a great upgrade of what was already an excellent proposal. Now we have an real chance of taking both the popular and the judges' prizes. Next up is the modest problem of implementing this vision of circular economics. A friend of mine likes to say "we leave the details as an exercise for the reader!" but something tells me we will have to do this one ourselves. High on my list: a proposal for Kickstarter.com to mash up three Ruby on Rails projects, Diasporafoundation.org, BetterMeans.org and InterMix.org. Diaspora and BetterMeans are free open source and InterMix will be the same by the end of the year. Diaspora provides peer-to-peer social media. The importance of peer-to-peer is that it will allow all the civil society organizations of the sort represented on WiserEarth.org to bring in their entire email lists without breaking their promise to keep the emails confidential. This they can do by creating their own gated Diaspora community, where their members are free to step out the gate into the wider Diaspora world. BetterMeans allows bottom up teams to set goals and work together in a flexible yet responsible way. InterMix will provide the social glue to make a global transition possible. We are dealing not just with an inherited linear economic system, but also with an inherited international system founded on hyper-selfish national identities. Try as it may, this system just cannot seem to overcome its limitations. The people of the world, and especially the women and the younger crowd, know better. Ask people one by one if humanity needs to cooperate to handle global problems and most of us agree. Nuclear weapons, of course they are evil and stupid! Peace is a no-brainer! Food, clean water and an education for all! InterMix "Voices of Humanity" Software allows groups to have collective voices. The mechanism is simple enough. Members of a group in a forum can vote on each other's messages. The highly rated messages are automatically tweeted, facebooked and blogged. These highly rated messages form the voice of the group. We are still a couple months away, but have shown enough progress to be worth a look: intermix.org. Organizations, metropolitan areas, nations, religions, ages and genders, each will be able to say what is on its collective mind. Capping this system will be the four voices of humanity: Women's, Men's, Youth and Humanity as One. People everywhere appreciate love and wit, so messages elected at the global level will consistently be intelligent and generous. These globally elected messages will also form the stuff of humanity's collective consciousness. All who are plugged in at the global level will be assumed to have read the highly rated messages, so a reference to one of these messages will be immediately understood by the listener without having to explain the context. In such a system of collective voices, individual participants will be able to give their allegiance to humanity without being traitors to their nations. Indeed it will be the hardliners who will be marginalized. Either they participate in a system that implicitly places humanity as arbiter between the nations, or they will have no say at all in the discussion. There is a way to fund this system in its early days and at the same time patch up the major problem with the whole idea of collective voices. While electing a message from the grass roots to represent humanity would seem all to the good, the fact is that participation in the process is not that easy to obtain. Things global seem so remote to people, and they don't see a payoff. To make the process take off, we need an incentive. Paying the participants would not be appropriate, but allowing them to funnel money to the climate change / circular economy organization of their choice, that should work. Say five dollars if they write a message that lands in the top 5% and a dime for each vote they cast, something on that order. Not for themselves, but for the related organization of their choice. Then we go to the grant makers and to the organizational memberships of participating organizations and we ask for donations which will a) help get the whole world on one page and b) promote their particular organization. With the correct algorithm, we can guarantee that a minimum percent of donations end up going to the organization of the donor's choice. The minimum percent would be specifiable by the donor up to, say, 66% and donors would receive a detailed breakdown of where their money went. With this kind of set up, the climate change / circular economy organizations will want to ask their members both to donate and to participate, so the process becomes self-reinforcing. This kind of dual-purpose fundraising will bring in new money and bolster active participation in the organizations. If I can convince you, I would like to link your Fix the System proposal to my InterMix / Diaspora / BetterMeans mash-up plan as part of the Kickstarter.com proposal. InterMix will be ready by the end of the year to begin automatically tweeting highly rated items from group forums. If you would like to try it, we could bring in people from Wiser Earth and from the CoLab to discuss the KickStarter idea as I develop it, with a possible March deadline for submitting to KickStarter. Anyways, whether or no on that, I'll do what I can to bring in people to vote for Fix the System in this second round. All the Best, -- Roger Eaton rogerweaton@gmail.com

This sounds suspiciously like the old perpetual motion machine. What a wonderful world it would be if using up resources created more resources, but that simply isn't the case. People do in fact use waste products as resources, as the economics of that makes sense. If making biodegradable and reusable products were more productive, than people would jump at the opportunity. But the simple fact is, there either isn't enough benefit from these things, or there isn't enough demand. Its all well and good to have a lofty goal of sustainability and earth-friendliness, but you also need a realistic way to achieve this. Expecting a whole planet to change to this model is simply unrealistic - change must be made organically by reinforcing individual actions. Trying to take a holistic approach is not going to get very far.

This is a great proposal and I think you have a lot of the right ideas. I look at your proposal from the ecological economics perspective first. There is a dichotomy in the thinking of ecological economists but the implications of the ideas on both sides are similar. Georgescu-Roegen believed that there was a 4th law of thermodynamics - the entropy law for materials - and that implied that the quality of materials always degrades irreversibly. The further implication of this law is that the economy would inevitably run down. Herman Daly's thinking echoes Georgescu-Roegen's ideas and that's the basis of his steady-state economy model. On the other side, Robert Ayres wrote (rightly) that there is no entropy law for materials. Using the waste stocks and enough exergy (usable energy), materials could, theoretically, be recycled indefinitely. However, there are many difficulties in practice and Ayres wrote extensively about these as well. The important distinction between Ayres and Daly, however, is that growth isn't limited in theory but it is limited in practice. Even on a theoretical level, though, it requires closing the loop. Your proposal is consistent with the ideas of Ayres and my own beliefs as well. I believe that a circular economy can facilitate further development (improvement in quality of life), if not growth (increase in economic throughput). One caveat is that it is difficult to truly close any or all resource loops and to keep them closed because systems are dynamic, not static. I think can be addressed with your proposal but it should always be kept in mind, so that we don't delude ourselves into thinking that problems need to be solved once, rather than continually. As far as the more conventional economic aspects, I think you have the right basic ideas but I might make some suggestions that could improve the implementation (these should be researched, of course, and modelling could help to evaluate each approach). Things I think you have captured perfectly: - Externalities should be reflected in the cost of products and services. - Paying the cost of preventing them (abatement) is more economically efficient than paying unpredictable future costs of impacts (undesirable because of inefficiency and discounting). - Pricing the premiums at the cost of the externality and making them the responsibility of the producer (Pigouvian principle) is the most economically efficient as well. These things are important because we want to fix the problems without giving up other aspects of social welfare. - The focus on materials instead of energy fits with ecological economics principles - there is way more exogenous solar energy (174,000 PW) than we use (15 TW). The goal is to harness that exogenous energy source using renewable resources to close the material resource loops. A few things to consider: - I'm not sure if allocating the funds to 'insurers' is the best approach. If the producers themselves have to pay for their impacts, they should probably be the ones that find and administer the solutions for two reasons: (1) If firms are finding the solutions themselves, it provides incentive to innovate or find the most competitive solutions (or eliminate the premium cost altogether); if insurers are doing it, firms may not receive the same innovation signal and the insurers actually have no incentive to innovate (they are not bearing the cost of the externality themselves). (2) The transaction and administrative costs could be quite high with the insurers in the middle. - Be careful suggesting specific technologies as the solutions. While biochar might be the best known solution now and funding may help accelerate the learning curve, picking winners can be dangerous and costly. Again, if the producers are bearing the costs (and the costs are comprehensive and set appropriately) and finding their own solutions, they will find the best ones and they will do it better than governments or other third parties. - You mention how many aspects of circular economy can be GDP-positive. I do agree but I would say go even further and include recommendations for national accounts that are more compatible with this model (eg. Genuine Savings). These are just some quick suggestions but I think your proposal is a great start in the right direction. I'd be glad to discuss ideas in more detail if you're looking for ideas in the future.

This proposal was sadly axed from this year's contest on Friday after a mysterious 'feasibility' check by judges. The message I received was unclear. It was also not clear why judges felt that a popular choice winner would be seen as being endorsed by judges, so that the public could be allowed to choose only from proposals that pass both feasibility and endorsement tests. Given the evident need for new thinking and policies that begin to match the scale of the the climate crisis, it would seem vital that novel, popular and ambitious proposals are encouraged and not excluded. Are judges sure they have not dismissed exactly the kind of policy the world needed to have a chance? If judges were concerned about being perceived as being supporters of a potential popular choice winner they only needed to clarify this within a comment on the proposal. This would have allowed the collective intelligence of the community in creating new solutions to really benefit from the experience and expertise of the distinguished judges. I respectfully invite judges to make a comment here and mark it as an expert review so that the judging process can be seen to be transparent and the large group of people with an interest in this proposal can try to make sense of what happened.

Fry on Blindspotter's comments page: I agree it would be instructive to know the judges rationale. But let's not lose sight of the big picture. The importance of this contest is not really to pick winners, its to advocate good ideas, to help shape and improve them. While contests generate excitement and motivation, the real motivation is getting this planet back in shape. To that end, we can learn from this contest and make better rules for next year's event. One of them might be to have a grand synthesis of good and mutually compatible ideas at the end of each event. That "meta-proposal" is part of the "presentation of winners". There could thus be the people's choice, the judges choice, and the synthesis choice. This synthesis might snatch just the best pieces of many proposals. So for instance, the core precycle idea might be a chosen piece but other aspects of the proposal it came from could be left out. I don't have a process for constructing such a synthesis but I'm sure we could come up with one. That process should avoid, however, merely picking "lowest common denominator" ideas. In comment #60 above, there's a proposal which boils down to: "more UN emphasis on ensuring basic human rights to clean food and water" to which I respond, gee why not throw in peace, justice and happiness too? To be useful, a proposal needs to specify concrete actions, dollar amounts (or other reasources) needed, and where those dollars come from. If a proposer isn't willing to put stakes in the ground, why should its reviewers?

The likelihood that this was rejected on feasibility grounds underscores the enormity of the problem before us. And it's sad, because global concensus and action taking precedence over disparate interests is precisely what's required.

BlindSpotter asked me "Would you have a minute to flick through my past proposal and add a quick comment on whether this gets to one of the sources of the problem? Does a more systemic policy automatically hit more change resistance or could it help with resistance?" Here's a short and hopefully helpful answer: Skimming over your very long proposal, it seems to be based on the suggestion that "Global problems can be solved as a whole, for example with a 'circular economy'." For any particular large social problem there are a number of solutions that could work. The environmental sustainability problem is a good example. Solutions like renewable energy, zero population growth, product life cycle design, etc could all help. The problem is the system is not significantly adopting them. This is the barrier all suggested solutions face: How to get them accepted by the system? There is nothing (?) in this proposal to overcome the root causes of system change resistance. Right now the human system is strongly resisting change to solutions that would solve various common good problems, like climate change. Until we know the root causes of change resistance, how can we design solutions with a high probability of working the first time? Please see this paper for much more detail on this topic: http://www.thwink.org/sustain/articles/009/ChangeResistanceAsCrux.htm Hope this helps, Jack Harich

Hi there blindspotter. First, what is your real name? I find it difficult to communicate with people who hide behind a crazy user name. It's a real put off. In professional circles, people use their real name. Second, you are having trouble with basic analytical technique. Your thinking is not tight. You are making many cause and effect leaps with no logical proof. This is called an intuitive problem solving approach, as opposed to an analytical approach. In your case you are breezing right through rigorous analysis and just announcing conclusions, with no real consideration of proof. May I suggest you study a few books on problem analysis. An excellent one to start with is Morgan Jones' "The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 powerful techniques for problem solving." Studying, and not just reading, books like this can change your life. Before the book, please see this page on "What is an analytical approach?" http://www.thwink.org/sustain/articles/000_AnalyticalApproach/index.htm This should help you to see what I'm trying to say here. Third, you need to make the leap to becoming a systems thinker. This skill is required for solving difficult complex system problems, or to contributing to such solutions in a major way. The book that did it for me, and for many others, is Peter Senge's "The Fifth Discipline." Just trying to help, Jack Harich