What if “eating local” in Shanghai or New York meant getting your fresh produce from five blocks away? And what if skyscrapers grew off the grid, as verdant, self-sustaining towers where city slickers cultivated their own food?

Dickson Despommier, a professor of public health at Columbia University, hopes to make these zucchini-in-the-sky visions a reality. Dr. Despommier’s pet project is the “vertical farm,” a concept he created in 1999 with graduate students in his class on medical ecology, the study of how the environment and human health interact.

The idea, which has captured the imagination of several architects in the United States and Europe in the past several years, just caught the eye of another big city dreamer: Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president.

When Mr. Stringer heard about the concept in June, he said he immediately pictured a “food farm” addition to the New York City skyline. “Obviously we don’t have vast amounts of vacant land,” he said in a phone interview. “But the sky is the limit in Manhattan.” Mr. Stringer’s office is “sketching out what it would take to pilot a vertical farm,” and plans to pitch a feasibility study to the mayor’s office within the next couple of months, he said.

“I think we can really do this,” he added. “We could get the funding.” (Source: The New York Times)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/15/science/15farm.html

Today’s children are inheriting a rapidly changing world. Unfortunately, most of the world educates students for a world that will no longer exist when they graduate. The Green School in Bali is a a new paradigm holistic educational system that will help prepare its students for a far different future than we are living in today.

Green School opens in September 2008 for students in Preschool and Kindergarten through Year Eight, with highly talented students and faculty from communities in Bali and 15 countries around the world. Our innovative curriculum combines demanding academic content taught through a holistic approach that aims to inspire and enhance all of a child’s capacities. Talented faculty apply classroom lessons to real life through a range of entrepreneurial and environmental projects. Our goal is to foster a spirit of inquiry and a love of learning that prepares our students to thrive in the challenging, complex 21st-century world.

Check out Green School’s brilliant solution at greenschool.org

Gary Malkin is the founder and Creative Director of Wisdom of the World, Inc. “Media for a Meaningful Life” + Musaic, Inc. “Music that Matters™” in Greenbrae, Ca.

Gary is also an Emmy award winning composer who takes his social responsibility seriously. Rather than taking any job that came his way, including violent films and games, Gary consciously chose to work exclusively on projects that touch the heart and soul including composing music and spoken word for people making their transitions, health care providers, scores for uplifting films and acting as musical director for inspirational events around the world.

If you use the itunes search engine and visit his websites, you’ll discover a rich vein of healing music from solo piano to richly orchestrated sound tracks.

Gary’s websites include:

http://www.wisdomoftheworld.com
http://www.musaic.biz
http://www.garymalkin.com
http://thewisdomproject.net
http://companionarts.org

“Instead of tolerating media that fragments and frightens us, I believe that we can use the media arts to inspire and empower us, helping us to feel more connected to one another and to our essential humanity through the use of gorgeous, wise, awe-inspiring messages, music and images. Throughout my thirty-year career producing music for all kinds of media, I’ve been passionate about working on projects that could make a difference in people’s lives. Whether it’s for media about environmental issues, social justice, or healing of any kind, I’m committed to creating experiences that will get under people’s skin so that the content could be deeply felt, and, hopefully, use those feelings to catalyze compassionate activism. This is the true purpose of ‘innertainment’: to awaken us into a radical responsibility for every iota of this life. “

Gary Malkin

I recently discovered a wonderful resource, Conversations.org, a collection of in-depth interviews with artists from all walks of life. Richard Whittaker, editor, also offers a monthly newsletter highlighting recent articles and a gift-economy
works & conversations

In a recent issue Richard interviewed two pioneers of the urban gardening movement, Bob Woodsworth and Michael Levenston of City Farmer. I liked the interview and if you’d like to explore the subject of urban gardening, you won’t find a better source.

In 1969, a 14-year-old Beatle fanatic named Jerry Levitan, armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck, snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room in Toronto and convinced John to do an interview about peace. That interview with some great animation is

Enjoy!

The Institute at GlobalShift University™ is an innovative, non-traditional university for people who want to become positive change agents and effective leaders in a transformed world. GSU, which will open in the fall of 2009, will offer undergraduate and graduate degrees in Sustainable Transformation. The studies are based upon a powerful, newly developed curriculum called MacroShift Studies. Students successfully completing the course of study will be able to work effectively in a wide array of fields towards the solution of the world’s most vexing and universal problems, those undermining the attainment and sustainability of productive, happy and healthy human life, ecological equilibrium and world peace.

As most NPN readers know, hemp is one of earth’s most amazing sustainable plants for personal and planetary health. It has thousands of uses and deserves to be grown in the US as it is in over 60 other countries.

So we were pleased to learn that thanks to Nutiva Founder and CEO John W Roulac’s recent interview with the Health Ranger, Mike Adams, about Nutiva’s great hemp protein, hemp seeds, hemp oils, coconut oil and other whole food products produced by the company, both in-store and online sales have spiked in the last few days.

Natural News features over 25,000 pages of news on natural lifestyle products and services and is one of the top 3200 web sites in the US.

With the price of energy impacting just about everything we buy, the world is crying for a solution.

BlackLight Power Inc. is the inventor of a paradigm-shifting new primary energy source and a new field of hydrogen chemistry with broad commercial applications. The Blacklight Process is a novel way of creating new types of energy states from Hydrogen that if successfully commercialized, could literally solve the energy crisis.

Of course there’s a lot of territory to cover from lab to commercial application but its good to know that the possibility exists to change the limited energy paradigm into one of abundance and on May 28, 2008, Blacklight introduced a 50,000 watt prototype.

Enjoy this radio interview with Dr. Randy Mills of Blacklight Power, Inc.

NPN will follow the progress of Blacklight and you can too by visiting their website where you’ll also find an excellent video introduction.