Should private companies control our most precious natural resource?
Sitka, Alaska, is home to one of the world’s most spectacular lakes. Nestled into a U-shaped valley of dense forests and majestic peaks, and fed by snowpack and glaciers, the reservoir, named Blue Lake for its deep blue hues, holds trillions of gallons of water so pure it requires no treatment. The city’s tiny population—fewer than 10,000 people spread across 5,000 square miles—makes this an embarrassment of riches. Every year, as countries around the world struggle to meet the water needs of their citizens, 6.2 billion gallons of Sitka’s reserves go unused. That could soon change. In a few months, if all goes according to plan, 80 million gallons of Blue Lake water will be siphoned into the kind of tankers normally reserved for oil—and shipped to a bulk bottling facility near Mumbai. From there it will be dispersed among several drought-plagued cities throughout the Middle East.
Phi Beta Iota: The commercialization of Earth has already resulted in enormous costs most of which are barely understood today, at the same time that changes to the Earth that used to take 10,000 years, now take three. The “true cost” of shipping bulk water is already known to be much higher than the engaged parties recognize–these are costs to the environment, the balance of nature, and ultimately to the sustainability of the very water supply being looted.
The Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability class has launched several internationally known start-ups (including Embrace, Driptech and D.Light.) But main route for student teams to get their life-changing products into the hands of people in the developing world is by working with NGO partner organizations.
Working with partners is the quickest way to market: it eliminates the need to create a business model and distribution infrastructure, so that students can focus on getting the best possible product to people who need it.
Professor Jim Patel, who founded the class, and Erica Estrada, who teaches the class and directs our Social Entrepreneurship Lab, discuss why this is such a critical route-to-market for students in the class:
Engineering for Change is an online environment bringing together engineers and other problem solvers with NGOs and local communities to address basic quality of life issues such as access to clean water, electricity and proper sanitation. Also see their Twitter feed
Unorthodox thinking is essential to overcoming the most persistent challenges in global health. Vaccines were first developed over 200 years ago because revolutionary thinkers took an entirely new approach to preventing disease. Grand Challenges Explorations fosters innovation in global health research.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has committed $100 million to encourage scientists worldwide to expand the pipeline of ideas to fight our greatest health challenges.Launched in 2008, Grand Challenge Explorations grants have already been awarded to 340 researchers from 34 countries.
Open to All Disciplines: Anyone Can Apply The grant program is open to anyone from any discipline, from student to tenured professor, and from any organization – colleges and universities, government laboratories, research institutions, non-profit organizations and for-profit companies.
Agile, Accelerated Grant-Making
The initiative uses an agile, accelerated grant-making process with short two-page applications and no preliminary data required.
Applications are submitted online, and winning grants are chosen approximately 4 months from the submission deadline.Initial grants of $100,000 are awarded two times a year. Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to $1 million.
Phi Beta Iota: The problem with this well-intentioned initiative is that it throws money as items in isolation. All well and good. It would be much more impressive if it had a strategic analytic model that emphasized healthy lifestyle, healthy environment, and natural/alternative cures; and if it demanded some form of intelligence coordination in relation to all the other policies that impact on health far more negatively that we can solve–the bottom line is that we are killing our species faster than any amount of innovation can help it survive. In our humble opinion.
The contest between coal-fired energy production and water demand is a mismatch. Mining and burning coal accounts for half of all water withdrawals in the United States, which is the same amount of water that pours over Niagara Falls in five months. Burning coal in power plants also is the source of more climate-changing carbon emissions than any other industrial sector. Here’s a look at the economically essential and ecologically damaging accord between coal and water.
This year's report focuses primarily on environmental factors that contribute to cancer risk. According to the report, pharmaceutical drugs are a serious environmental pollutant, particularly in the way they continue to contaminate waterways across the country.
According to a U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) study conducted back in 2002, antidepressants, blood pressure and diabetes medications, anticonvulsants, oral contraceptives, hormone replacement therapy drugs, chemotherapy drugs, antibiotics, heart medications and even codeine are all showing up in the water supplies of American cities. This study was the first national-scale evaluation of pharmaceutical drug contamination in streams, and roughly 80 percent of the streams tested were found to be contaminated as well.
The philosophical foundation for The WRSC is in its founding premise stated as a question posed in R. Buckminster Fuller's World Game™ simulation:
“How do we make the world
work for 100% of humanity
in the shortest possible time
through spontaneous
cooperation without
ecological damage or
disadvantage to anyone?”
The World Resources Simulation Center (WRSC) will be a non-profit visualization facility where you can literally “see” the critical trends of global and regional issues, the relationships between issues, and the consequences of different strategies. For detailed information, begin by downloading the proposal documents to learn more about the specifics of the project. Next, explore several quick demonstrations of new technologies and how data and mapping information can be utilized in powerful new ways. (videos follow, continue with post) Continue reading “Event: 7-30 Sept 2010, San Diego CA, World Resources Simulation Center Demo”
This year's report focuses primarily on environmental factors that contribute to cancer risk. According to the report, pharmaceutical drugs are a serious environmental pollutant, particularly in the way they continue to contaminate waterways across the country.
