Regenerating Earth: From Palliative Care to Natal Care?

Through Systems Impact Investments and Innovation?

PART 1

The time to create a Systems Impact Fund of Funds and a Global Systems Impact Lab is NOW.

THE CURRENT REALITY:

Is Earth entering Palliative Care?

Climate Week has come to an end. Many gloomy news stories emerged these past few days, and many more will appear. One story that caught my attention and made me tear up and go to bed early, with a feeling of hopelessness, was the graphic below of the Nine Planetary Boundaries- We surpassed 6 of the 9 planetary boundaries.? These boundaries are considered the Earth’s vital signs.?

?“That’s it- we will not make it- the Earth is now in palliative care.”? I noticed my mind whispering into my consciousness.

More on the Industrial Mindset?

From a Newtonian physics, problem-solving,? linear thinking perspective of life, most of us will see these graphs, and our minds conclude that before 2030, we will have crossed all other planetary boundaries. It will be the end of humanity as we know it. Though researchers have cautioned from making conclusions about the implications of crossing the planetary boundaries, the unconscious mind will probably go into the worst-case scenario.?

Mine did. As I read the research carefully and saw the sequence below,? my mind whispered an even more dire prognosis:

“Earth has entered Hospice Care.”?

Or has it? What if we composed an overture for Earth instead of a requiem?

The Oscillation Trap and the Quantum Leap

Mediating between fatalistic and optimistic futures, I encounter a psychological oscillation that immobilizes me. My coaching sessions frequently revolve around liberating executives from this very inertia. The stakes are high: either we stay mired in Newtonian linearity” and” accept the apocalypse by 2030, or embrace the quantum paradigm and envision a self-regenerative Earth capable of sowing life on Mars and beyond—a renaissance rather than a requiem.

THE DESIRED REALITY:

Choosing a Future, we want to co-create

As a visual learner, I realized I needed to give myself a visual of a potential future as strong or stronger than the image that now captivated my mind and made me feel hopeless. It would have to be an image that would get me out of linear thinking and into a systems view of life.? I took to pen and paper and soon realized that I shouldn’t have skipped art class in school.? So, I turned to a talented designer friend to help bring a different narrative to life: a Quantum physics, co-creative systems thinking perspective.?

What needs to happen for the future sequence of the boundaries to look more like the images below??

Please stay with me- I am about to land the plane (spaceship) and lay a viable proposition- I hope that some of it will resonate with the powers to be (that’s you- reading this post). After all, we did turn things around with the boundary for ozone depletion with the Montreal Protocol, and this boundary is no longer an issue. We also witnessed how fast Earth can recover when humans hibernated during COVID, and we have all the resources needed to jumpstart the golden spiral of exponential change. The potential future envisioned is within reach.

BRIDGING THE GAP?

How do we bridge this gap between the here and now and this aspirational future?

How do we move Earth from Palliative Care to Natal Care?

We co-create a Global Systems Impact Accelerator (with hubs around the globe) and a Systems Impact Investing Fund of Funds with different tiers (windows) of innovative financing from ideation all the way to exit to market, including a transformation of the Market to include the TRUE PRICE of goods and services.???

We have proof of concept for all of the above, and many teams of bright minds have proposed and are executing similar approaches. There have even been prototypes implemented with the participation of all sectors of society, yet, to my knowledge, there isn’t one that exists today and definitely not one with the required level of financing, agility, and impact.?

?You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Buckminster Fuller

Hey, humanity!- there was enough WILL to create a Manhattan Project, to create the atomic bomb intended to destroy each other- why not create a similar initiative to regenerate the Planet and achieve the SDG’s?

How could it work?

You are about to read an oversimplification of existing blueprints of the Global Systems Accelerator and the Systems Impact Investment Fund of Funds. I know the fantastic work Catalyst 2030, Global Alliance for Social Entrepreneurships are doing and have secured $2.2 billion in pledges. It is an incredible accomplishment. I am proposing to find ways to build on all these initiatives to accelerate their impact and help them grow exponentially and attract key team members together to work on co-creation for months at a time and immediate funding to test their prototypes.?

I’ve participated in three teams that have worked hard to design detailed blueprints and produce prototypes for both. Unfortunately, these initiatives were ahead of their time, and nearly a decade ago, securing funding was a significant challenge in all three cases.?

I hope that bold leader(s) and investors reading this will be open to assembling the right team and taking this on. Better yet, someone will reply, saying that something even better exists.?

Either way, I will happily share more details with anyone interested in learning more about the efforts I have been directly involved with.?

In my direct experience, all but one of the five critical components to make this viable and successful exist.?

1. The expertise and knowledge?Thousands of social entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs-vetted fellows working in Climate and SDGs-( Catalyst 2030- Global Alliance for Social Entrepreneurship- League of Intrapreneurs- MacArthur Foundation- Fellows);Thousands of innovations by reputable public, private, and non-for-profit sector companies with a systems impact potential;?Thousands of system-thinking researchers and practitioners dedicated to Climate and other SDGs; An increasing number of system startups dedicated to Climate and other SDGs (though they may still be operating under industrial names ??- For example, Housing Investments vs. Lifting Whole Communities out of Poverty)
2. The financial resources. US $8.28 trillion in Cash(M1) in the top 20 countries in the world (Bank of International Settlements); US$5.8 trillion in trapped cash held by US companies in 2022 ( Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management); US $1.164 trillion in Impact Investing (GIIN 2023)US$ 100 billion per year in pledges by developed nations to help with Climate Crisis in developing countries ( Pledge 2020- United Nations);??The Giving Pledge - 236 billionaires have pledged US $600 billion- $1 trillion(appreciation since 2018) in Philanthropy; ?The same amount of money in Philanthropy as in VC; World Bank and other Development Agencies are significantly increasing the funding required (World Bank Group- US$31 billion in 2023- up from US$19 billion in 2022)
3. The technology?Blockchain; Generative AI; Fusion technology (coming sooner than we expect); Quantum Computing (coming sooner than we expect)
4. The awareness that massive immediate action is needed?The agendas of important events prioritize Climate- UNGA, Concordia, Clinton Global Initiative, GIIN, SOCAP, Nexus, etc.; A network of 7,000 Universities declare a Climate Emergency, committing to Carbon Neutral between 2030 and 2050 at the latest, mobilizing resources, and increasing teaching and learning?Leader corporations (See Apple’s Board meeting with Mother Nature *- though Apple is still not seeing the opportunity through a systems view [more on this in a later post]) in all sectors are committing to Carbon Neutrality; Strict legislation is being passed in many countries at all levels of government; ESG has become a household name, and the number of CSOs appointed at publicly traded companies increased from 29 in 2011 to 183 in 2023 (Weinreb Chief Sustainability Report 2023)

What is missing?

The Collective WILL to take Systemic Action from a regenerative perspective. We need to move away from competition towards co-creation and innovation by taking risks and allowing for "failures.

The initiatives, expertise, funds, and technology exist, yet they operate like lifeboats on the Titanic—half-filled and underutilized. And maybe?

STAY TUNED FOR PART 2

Where we explore some ways we can muster the Collective WILL with a little(or a lot) of help from Nature itself.?

Preview of PART 2

Have you heard of The Golden Spiral??

The Golden Spiral can is nearly everywhere. We can see it in the Universe, the solar system, the formation of hurricanes, plants, animals, and the human body. Some people call it “ nature’s secret code”. Biomimicry practitioners have advocated for its use to solve the world's problems for years.?

It has recently been applied to innovation, management, and behavioral economics. Could it hold the secret to unlocking a self-regenerative, continually expanding Earth? Could it unlock our Collective Will??Does this image seem more plausible to you now?