Not exactly, says British epidemiologist Richard Wilkinson.

For decades, Wilkinson has studied why some societies are healthier than others. He found that what the healthiest societies have in common is not that they have more—more income, more education, or more wealth—but that what they have is more equitably shared.

In fact, it turns out that not only disease, but a whole host of social problems ranging from mental illness to drug use are worse in unequal societies. In his latest book, The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better, co-written with Kate Pickett, Wilkinson details the pernicious effects that inequality has on societies: eroding trust, increasing anxiety and illness, encouraging excessive consumption.

The good news is that increased equality has the opposite effect: statistics show that communities without large gaps between rich and poor are more resilient and their members live longer, happier lives.

YES! Magazine web editor Brooke Jarvis sat down with Richard Wilkinson to discuss the surprising importance of equality—and the best ways to build it.

To read the interview, click here.

From: Xinhua News Agency, and Environmental Health News

China’s western Qinghai Province, containing major deposits of the country’s “combustible ice,” will see increased explorations for this emerging clean energy, Provincial Governor Luo Huining said on Saturday.

The plateau province plans to allow large energy companies along with researchers to tap this new source of energy while minimizing environmental threats, Luo said on the sidelines of the annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislature.

“Combustible ice,” or natural gas hydrate, is mainly found in deep seas and atop plateaus. Approximately one cubic meter of “combustible ice” equals 164 cubic meters of regular natural gas.

At a time of energy bottlenecks, the new energy resource has drawn interest from many countries. Additional attention has focused on the “ice” having a low proportion of impurities, resulting in it generating almost no pollutants when burned.

More than 100 countries around the world have found deposits of “combustible ice.” The deposits in Qinghai Province, home to one-quarter of China’s total reserve on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, were discovered in September 2009.

“Combustible ice” reserves on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are estimated to equal at least 35 billion tonnes of oil, which could supply energy to China for 90 years.

Luo said tapping this new energy resource should be given high priority in China’s energy strategy.

I’m in Bangkok. Steamy with lots of cars and scooters spewing their fumes. They probably have never heard about The Yike Bike. An elegant well designed new paradigm solution to personal urban transportation. No gas. Zero Pollution. At $4400, it may be a bit steep but if its a hit, you can be sure the price will drop. I imagine you’ll see them appearing on green celebs and executives wish lists. But one day, the technology will be licensed for mass production and it may be available for about the pirce of a regular bike. I can’t wait.

Jim Channon is a retired Army Colonel, visionary strategic thinker and consultant who dreamed The First Earth Battalion as a way for the Army, Air Force and Navy to restore the planet.  Believe it or not, his dream is moving toward reality.

Actor George Clooney is the latest to find inspiration in The First Earth Battalion. The Men Who Stare at Goats takes a playful shot at psychic soldiers and high performance technologies in the military, with Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey and Ewan McGregor joining Clooney. Bridges humorously portrays Channon in his role as Bill Django, founder of the New Earth Army. “It’s impossible to keep a great legend down,” says Channon.

To read the inspiring Ode Magazine story on Jim, click here

San Francisco 12/24/04

James George is a retired Canadian ambassador with a long-standing record of service concerning environmental issues. A founder of the Threshold Foundation and president of the Sadat Peace Foundation, he led the international mission to Kuwait and the Persian Gulf to assess post-war environmental damage.

I talked with James George and Barbara Wright in San Francisco at Barbara’s apartment a few weeks before their marriage.

Richard Whittaker: Let’s start with the here and now. You’re preparing to get married in a few days. So I wondered if you wanted to reflect on that and what’s right ahead of you.

James George: It is rather extraordinary at eighty-six to be looking ahead rather than behind. And that is entirely due to the fact that I’ve fallen in love. I’ve really found my partner, which is a miraculous thing at any age, but exceptional at my age! Or even at Barbara’s [Barbara Wright] somewhat more tender years. [laughs] That colors everything, doesn’t it? When you’re in love with somebody, you’re simultaneously in love with everyone and everything, aren’t you? I think it’s surprising that it happens like that. And yet, I think it’s quite real.

RW: That energy transforms one’s whole outlook.

JG: Yes. We live in such an obviously, or perhaps not so obviously, interdependent, interconnected world. Quantum mechanics is again discovering this after it was discovered thousands of years ago in the spiritual traditions. And where do we go with this interconnectedness? is it just a theory? Or is it right now, the sense between us that the words are trying to catch up with; the much more subtle reality that we’re sharing, a reality of feeling and intellect and body all at the same time; an awareness of presence, I suppose one could say.

RW: The part where you said, Maybe it’s not so obvious, this interconnectedness, I mean people don’t really feel this very often, do they?

JG: No. I don’t think they do, because it becomes intellectual, a theory for them, even if they’re the scientists who believe this is the case. I heard Hans Peter Durr, the director of the Max Planck institute, Heisenberg’s successor, really, speaking in San Francisco a few years ago, saying with a sort of missionary zeal, that there is nothing in the world, really, but relationship; energy patterns of relationship. Everything that appears to be solid is in fact almost entirely empty. It’s held together by these patterns of relationship, different densities and different levels, vibrations basically on different frequencies. Yet when we put it in those words, it doesn’t seem to correspond at all to the world our senses are perceiving, or which we are conditioned to think about when we wonder about the nature of reality and the meaning of it all.

RW: Let’s talk about relationship in a less abstract way and go back to your own career as a diplomat. One of the basic things about that, I assume, would be relationship. You would be meeting people and wouldn’t that aspect, relationship, be an essential aspect of it?

JG: Yes. I think that is one way, a good way of putting it. A less flattering way, as one of my former colleagues once expressed it, perhaps too graphically, was that a diplomat is one who makes a profession out of picking up the shit around the world.

RW: What did he mean by that?

JG: All the discord and violence and paranoia and fear that go into the relationships between cultures and peoples everywhere, and which surface in wars and disputes and litigation. All that make the world disharmonious, when it could be harmonious, disordered when it could be ordered. Continue Reading »