I wonder a little about the idea of making electronic devices that will last a whole lot longer, rather than having them replaced every few years.
For certain types of appliances that aren't really improving this makes a whole lot of sense - e.g. your microwave isn't getting much more efficient.
For other devices, this seems to make less sense - although improvements to waste disposal mechanisms and electronics recycling seem to make sense. For a bunch of electronics, the use phase of their lives has a bigger environmental impact than their manufacturing costs and embedded materials. If you can provide a device with equivalent functionality, but half the power consumption (e.g. the PS3 slim that I bought a year ago), then this may make up for throwing out your device every few years.
The article does make some good points: e.g. the cost of mining is about 1/3rd the price of gold at the moment, which seems to suggest it's overpriced even if prices continue upwards. (i.e. if you want to invest in gold, try investing in mining). The article notes that "Bringing back the gold standard would indeed limit central banks' ability to independently manipulate currency or increase the money supply and stimulate the economy. But remember, that also means gold would tie the hands of central banks in trying to do good. " That last sentence seems to implicitly assume that whatever the motivation, the results are indeed good... one I'm not so sure about.
The above movie is being released in theatres in a bunch of US cities today, and was also shown at the Toronto International Film Festival. However I can't find a local theatre showing this movie which is annoying, as I'd like to see it.
Glow-in-the-dark trees... sounds very cool. Someone I suspect that seeing these might at first cause people to reconsider whether or not they'd had a little too much to drink or had been smoking something "interesting" recently.
The introduction to this story: "Dr. Anthony Bradley, speaking on issues of economic justice, once said in a lecture to the Marketplace One Institute that the job of nonprofits is to work themselves out of business. By that he meant that nonprofits are generally set up to address a social problem, and thus they need to solve it and move on. If they are in business serving the same need for generations, then they have failed in their goals." I agree, and I'm happy to see that WorldVision seems to be taking this to heart.
