Childhood leukemia doubles around nuclear plants
A new study in the International Journal of Cancer (Jan. 2012) confirms the Academy’s repeated warnings that nuclear power plants’ routine operations create an increased risk of leukemia among children who live nearby.
“The study found a doubling of occurrence of childhood leukemia between 2002 and 2007 among children under 5 years living within 5 km of nuclear plants – similar to the findings of a 2008 German study which found a higher risk of childhood leukemia among those living near nuclear power plants.
The new study was conducted by a team from a French Institute that had tried to discredit previous French studies showing that nuclear facilities impacted health.
14,000 U.S. deaths tied to Fukushima
“An estimated 14,000 excess deaths in the United States are linked to the radioactive fallout from the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear reactors in Japan, according to a major new article in the December 2011 edition of the International Journal of Health Services. This is the first peer-reviewed study published in a medical journal documenting the health hazards of Fukushima.”
Infant deaths were particularly high. Read more at the Radiation and Public Health Project website.
Stop taxpayer bailouts of the nuclear power industry!
The Administration and Congress are pushing increased subsidies for the nuclear power industry despite reliable estimates that there is a 50% chance the industry will default on new taxpayer-guaranteed loans.
For an overview of the problems with nuclear power, including its economics, how it hampers our ability to fight climate change and enhances the risks of nuclear proliferation, terrorism, and cancer, read the Academy’s articles, “The Nuclear Nemesis” and “The Nuclear Nemesis Redux,” and Chapter 5 of its 2007 book, Freedom from Mid-East Oil.
On many levels, cutting military spending makes more sense than cutting aid to cash-strapped states that are laying off teachers and police and cutting vital social services.
The U.S. military has been battling Congress to get it to stop wasteful "pork barrel" spending on programs the military itself doesn't want, such as F-22 fighter jets and the Boeing C-17.
Visit the National Priorities Project to see the cost of war and the trade-offs for your community.
 S&P’s downgrade of 9 European nations may finally lead to reforms of statutes and rules that have made the $1.7 billion credit rating industry too powerful. “Politicians, regulators and investors are to blame: banks are allowed to use the ratings when calculating capital ratios, insurers are only allowed to buy bonds if they have certain ratings and the same holds true for many funds." We must “free ourselves of the ghosts we ourselves have called to life,” writes the financial daily Handelsblatt. A piece in the Guardian UK nails it: “Why should S&P and Moody's earn such vast sums? Certainly not for their oracular genius .… [They] failed to warn investors about the Asian financial crisis, Enron, the subprime crisis, Lehman Brothers – and Greece…. Of the corporate debt rated by S&P as AAA, 32% has been downgraded within just three years, 57% within seven years….” We need a transparent ratings system that does not usurp decisions that should be left to informed investors or the democratic process.
 The UN climate change meeting in Durban, South Africa, closed with an agreement to try to agree on a new treaty limiting carbon emissions, to go into effect in 2020. But by then it will be too late (if it isn’t already) to prevent an atmospheric temperature rise of more than 2°C (3.6°F) above pre-Industrial Revolution levels—the threshold for “potentially dangerous” runaway climate change. The biggest accomplishment of the two-week conclave was that the three biggest emitters—China, the U.S. and India—pledged to work towards an agreement to limit their carbon emissions from fossil fuels. …more…
 Rinaldo Brutocco, the founder and president of the World Business Academy, recorded a message of thanks to the Occupy Wall Street movement for fundamentally realigning the economic discourse in the United States. You can view the video on the Truthout.org website.
 Under the U.S. federal tax code, corporations ostensibly pay taxes on their profits at a 35% rate. Citizens for Tax Justice looked at 280 of the largest U.S. companies—all members of the Fortune 500—and found that between 2008 and 2010, the effective rate for the 280 companies was less than half that. During that time, 78 of the companies paid zero or less (i.e., received a rebate) for at least one year. Thirty paid nothing at all over the entire three years even though they collectively made $160 billion in profits during that time. The corporate share of federal government tax receipts has dropped from 32% in 1952 to 9% now, partly due to aggressive accounting to disguise U.S. profits as foreign profits, as well as unproductive tax loopholes and other subsidies. Congress should reject demands by U.S. multinationals for a tax holiday to “repatriate” the funds they shifted offshore to avoid paying taxes. Current and retired business people are invited to sign Business for Shared Prosperity’s petition in support of responsible corporate tax reform.
 Upswings in food prices present a major threat to food security in developing countries. In 2010-11, rising food costs pushed nearly 70 million people into extreme poverty, according to the World Bank. The effectiveness of U.S. and EU food aid is severely undercut by practices that waste taxpayer dollars and make it harder for small farmers in developing countries to compete with food imports and sell their products in local markets. The Center for American Progress has identified five reforms that would make foreign agricultural programs more effective while saving U.S. taxpayers more than $2 billion.
 The Nike Foundation and Liberty Mutual Insurance have been named winners of 2011 EthicMark® Awards for advertising that “uplifts the human spirit and society.” Rinaldo Brutoco announced the winners of the annual EthicMark® Award, founded by Academy Fellow Hazel Henderson, October 2 at the 22nd annual SRI in the Rockies Conference in New Orleans. Liberty Mutual won in the for-profit category for an ad, “Responsibility: Doing the Right Thing,” which fosters discussion about what it means to do the right thing. Nike Foundation won in the not-for-profit category for “The Girl Effect: The Clock is Ticking,” which shows that “investment in girls in developing countries can unleash the world’s greatest untapped solution to poverty.” Several other media campaigns won honorable mention, including:
 Remarkably diverse groups across the U.S. political spectrum are calling for a high and rising price on carbon as part of their deficit-reduction strategies. This is a potentially momentous development that could spark the end of the political logjam in the U.S. over energy and climate change policy. A carbon tax imposed at the point that high-carbon fuels enter the economy would create an unprecedented market opportunity for the clean tech sector. The funds collected should be returned directly to citizens to compensate for higher energy costs. Read “The Market is Lying: Why We Must Tax Carbon, Not Subsidize It” at Truthout.org.
 Meridian University’s interview with Academy President Rinaldo Brutoco has launched the University’s new series Creative Enterprise: Voices of Transformation, “a series of interviews with visionary social entrepreneurs, executives, and authors whose work embodies the core emphases and values of the Creative Enterprise MBA at Meridian.” Meridian states: “The series will evolve as an emergent library of inspiring voices articulating views of how business, non-profits and hybrid organizations can help transform our culture into one that is productive and life affirming for far more of its citizens.” The series expands the question whether we are making enough progress as a society, “challenging us to consider sustainability and social entrepreneurship in the context of wider notions of applied wisdom and transformative innovation.” Meridian invites you to listen to or download the interview with Rinaldo and participate in the rest of the series.
 In the final stages of World War II, Japan found young men willing to give their lives in suicidal missions against Allied warships. Scarves tucked around their necks blowing in the wind identified them as men willing to die for their country. The modern day kamikazes are the men who have been sent day after day into the unshielded nuclear morass of the smoldering Fukushima nuclear power complex. Why must we ask such noble sacrifices from individuals when this crisis could and should have been avoided? The only way to avoid another nuclear crisis is to decommission nuclear reactors. They persistently emit cancer-causing radiation even during their routine operations and generate radioactive waste that no country in the world has found a safe way to permanently store for the millennia it stays radioactive. Read the Academy’s most recent article on nuclear power, “Japan’s Nuclear Kamikazes: A Morality Tale of Energy Madness,” by Rinaldo Brutoco and Madeleine Austin.
 The record-breaking amount of corporate spending in the November U.S. elections, much of it secret, undermines democracy and the public policies necessary to create a just and sustainable economy. View the companies that disclose and require board oversight of their political spending with corporate funds, according to the Center for Political Accountability. Mainstream mutual funds (which hold almost 25% of the shares of U.S. publicly traded companies) increasingly support shareholder resolutions calling for transparency and accountability in company political spending, according to a Center report about the 2010 proxy season. Investors should ensure this trend continues during the 2011 proxy season. The Center partnered with The Conference Board Governance Center to create the “Handbook on Corporate Political Activity,” which sets out emerging best practices for political spending.
 The uprisings sweeping Egypt and the region have put a renewed spotlight on the illicit capital flows that let corrupt rulers and terrorists launder money and stash assets overseas, draining resources from developing countries and feeding a growing global income inequality. Egypt reportedly loses $6 billion/year in illicit outflows, which are growing faster in the Middle East and N. Africa than in any other region. To learn more:
 Dr. Joseph Romm, who writes an award-winning blog, ClimateProgress.org, reviews the most important recent scientific presentations and studies in his post, “A stunning year in climate science reveals that human civilization is on the precipice.” He writes: “Any one of these would be cause for action — and combined they vindicate the final sentence of Elizabeth Kolbert’s Field Notes from a Catastrophe: ‘It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we are now in the process of doing.’” …more…
 A new report, “Socially Responsible Investment Trends in the U.S.,” by the Social Investment Forum Foundation, shows that assets involved in socially responsible investing (SRI) increased by 13% during the 2007-09 economic downturn, while the broader universe of assets under professional management grew only 1%. Investors interested in assessing the impacts of climate change on their portfolios or supporting climate-friendly corporate practice through their investments may be interested in “The Handbook on Climate-Related Investing across Asset Classes,” by the Institute for Responsible Investment and the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship.
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“When you work you fulfill a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when that dream was born, and in keeping yourself with labor, you are in truth loving life, and to love life through labor is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.” -Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
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 Please join us on Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 11 a.m. PT for our next monthly radio show, New Business Paradigms: Conscious Commentary on Business and Society. To join the call live, dial (347) 989-8946. To download free podcasts of past episodes or listen to them on demand, visit our website directory of past shows. Subscribe to the show on iTunes.
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 The Academy has become a partner of the American Sustainable Business Council and will be working with it to mobilize business organizations and create a vibrant, just, and sustainable economy. Please join the Business for Democracy campaign, a collaborative effort of companies and business leaders in support of government by the people—and opposed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s radical Citizens United decision that allows corporations to spend unlimited money to support or oppose candidates for political office.  Winning the mind-game of golf—and life Most of golf gets played in your own head, not on the grass. Golf Mind: Unlocking the Real Game, the full-length DVD filmed at the Academy’s 2006 Fairways to Transformation Tournament, shows you how to detach from desired outcomes so you're free to be fully present in your golf game—and in your life. Featuring Academy Fellow Deepak Chopra, famed course designer Robert Trent Jones, Jr., golf pro and TV commentator Tina Mickelson, Esalen's Michael Murphy (Golf in the Kingdom), Dr. Joe Parent (Zen Golf ), and Fred Shoemaker (Extraordinary Golf ), this remarkable DVD contains the keys to unlock the transformative potential of the game of golf. It is now available through Netflix and the Academy’s online store.
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