Society has such great potential. What are we here for if not to make the world a better place for each other? We know the world can be better. Our dreams tell us what we are capable of. But there are so many formidable challenges between our dreams and our realization of a better world in which to live.
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Food. A hundred years ago, we would have dreamed of a world where nobody goes hungry. Today, we still live in a world where people go hungry and even starve to death. The world is in the middle of a food crisis. And here in the U.S., the food crisis is made even more complicated by a fatally compromised food system.
We have totally lost control of the way we produce food in this country. Livestock is fed hormones to make them grow faster so they can be slaughtered sooner. Their brief lives are spent in absurdly tiny spaces, feeding on food-meal that can barely be called food. Our vegetables are picked before they’re ripe so they can survive shipping. They are sprayed with chemicals to make them appear ripe and attractive in the marketplace while, in truth, they’ve had all their nutrients bio-engineered right out of them in order to make them easier to sell in massive quantities.
To describe the facts surrounding our current food crisis makes one sound like an alarmist because it all seems so crazy and impossible. But the fact remains, that even though we have nearly 17 million children in the United States facing hunger, we are intentionally turning perfectly good food into fuel in a misguided attempt to reduce our reliance on foreign oil while there are other, more sustainable alternatives. Despite the fact that every Congressional District in the country has more than a tenth of respondents reporting food hardship, Americans waste 100 billion pounds of food every year.
Our children are either starving to death or they are growing obese from hormone-laced foods that are completely depleted of their nutritional content. Farmers and ranchers who are committed to ethical practices are unable to make a living because of the pressure brought to bear on them by the corporate farming industry. It’s a highly complex and complicated situation but it’s not hopeless. There are companies and organizations that are committed to doing their part in solving our nation’s food crisis.
Learn more about the American food crisis by watching the documentary, “Food Inc”
Read the PositiveBrand articles on the food crisis here.
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Water. We have dreams of being surrounded by water. We are drawn to it. We plan our vacations to be nearer to it. We live as close to water as possible. Nearly 71% of our planet is covered in water. Despite its apparent abundance, water is in short supply due to wasteful industrial practices, pollution, privatization, and consumer waste.
Consider these facts: Colorado farmers watched their crops wither because of a lack of irrigation water; Atlanta, Georgia, came within three months of running out, so it banned watering lawns, washing cars, and filling swimming pools; Orme, Tennessee, did run out and was forced to truck water in from Alabama; Scientists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography predicted that Lake Mead, which supplies water to Los Angeles and Phoenix, could dry up by 2021; Hundreds of workers lost their jobs at Bowater, a South Carolina paper company, because low river flows prevented the plant from discharging its wastewater; lack of adequate water prompted the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to rebuff Southern Nuclear Operating Company’s request to build two new reactors in Georgia; and more than thirty-five of the lower forty-eight states are fighting with their neighbors over water.
Our natural watersheds have been compromised not only by the pollution that we allow into the water system, but also by our own city engineering. We have covered our cities with rooftops and pavement. These surfaces allow all types of pollutants to accumulate. And every time it rains, because these surfaces are impervious, the rainwater mixes with the pollution to create rancid storm water runoff and subsequently washes into water bodies, severely degrading water quality.
Recognizing the coming water crisis, the world’s power centers are already maneuvering to take control of water for their own interests. Who has the right to own a lake? A river? An ocean? The documentary, “Blue Gold: World Water Wars” sheds light on a subject that the world seems totally oblivious to. “Corporate giants force developing countries to privatize their water supply for profit. Wall Street investors target desalination and mass bulk water export schemes. Corrupt governments use water for economic and political gain. Military control of water emerges and a new geo-political map and power structure forms, setting the stage for world water wars.”
Learn more about the world water crisis by watching the documentary, “Blue Gold: World Water Wars.”
Read the PositiveBrand articles on the water crisis here.
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Shelter. By the time you’re 12 years old, you’ve probably formulated some idea in your mind of what a dream home would be like. Homes are much more than simply a roof over one’s head and protection from the harsh elements of the world. If you had a decent night’s sleep last night then you would probably agree that living in a home that keeps you safe from the elements should not be a dream for anybody, it should be a reality for everybody. Nonetheless, a study done by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty states that approximately 3.5 million people, 1.35 million of them children, are likely to experience homelessness in any given year (National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, 2007). And that’s just in the U.S.
An estimated 100 million people are homeless worldwide. An estimated 3 million people are homeless in Europe. An estimated 15,000 people are homeless in Buenos Aires. An estimated 4,500 children are homeless in Buenos Aires. 100,000 people sleep on the streets of Australia everyday. That’s just the beginning of a long list of statistics from all over the globe.
And that’s only part of the problem. According to Habitat for Humanity, “About 1.6 billion people live in substandard housing. These people are increasingly urban residents, and every week more than a million people are born in, or move to, cities in the developing world. Today, a billion people―32 percent of the global urban population―live in urban slums. If no serious action is taken, the United Nations reports that the number of slum dwellers worldwide will increase over the next 30 years to nearly 2 billion.”
Habitat for Humanity has shown that building homes does more than put a roof over someone’s head. In clean, decent, stable housing: families can provide stability for their children; a family’s sense of dignity and pride grow; health, physical safety, and security improve; and educational and job prospects increase.
Read the PositiveBrand articles on the housing crisis here.
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Health. In the U.S., the health system is fatally tied to our political system. In 2008, if you had dreams of a better system that would make good health care not just safe and affordable, but uncomplicated and easy to pay for, then by 2011 you were awakened to what a true nightmare we are all dealing with. The cost for health care is so outrageous that we have to be insured against natural health occurrences like pregnancy, broken bones, or even viral infections. We’re not talking about bypass surgeries or cancer treatments. We’re talking about country doctor level treatments that force us to pay hundreds of dollars every month to insurance companies just so we can be financially prepared in case we have an allergic reaction to a bee sting.
Too make matters worse, our food crisis and water crisis are pumping toxins and pollutants into our bodies, making us overweight, weakening our immune systems, and robbing us of vital nutrients. As a result, our bodies are simultaneously being weakened and attacked. Add to this our sedentary lifestyle and you have a nation of people that are good for one thing in particular: keeping doctors and surgeons and insurance companies flush with cash.
God help you if you have a chronic disease, as this BusinessWeek article points out. “Treatment today for multiple sclerosis often exceeds $10,000 a year, and this disease is a lifetime commitment on the part of the insured’s health insurance plan. Moreover, treatment with the newest drug, Biogen’s (BIIB) Avonex, could cost upwards of $18,000 per year. The proposed treatment involved in this case could have amounted to a lifetime cost of more than $450,000—and this for a patient who in fact does not have the disease for which the treatment was prescribed.”
Perhaps the most disturbing trend in our health care crisis is that of doctors over-prescribing medication. “The expensive overmedication of America really began 12 years ago, when the Federal Drug Administration allowed drug companies to advertise their products on TV. Americans could now diagnose themselves during commercial breaks, and then “ask their doctor” to prescribe the most expensive, no-generic-available wonder drugs. The U.S. is the only industrialized country in the world that allows this practice, and it’s not without controversy here.”
Hyper-expensive treatment, over-complicated insurance policies, health care that has been completely compromised out of a fear of litigation against caregivers, a polluted food and water supply, and a dangerous absence of priority given to exercise and wellness. This is our national health crisis. And if you think we are challenged here in the U.S., just imagine the nightmare experienced by people in impoverished third-world countries.
Learn more about the health care crisis by watching the Michael Moore documentary, “Sicko.”
Read the PositiveBrand articles on the health crisis here.
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Energy. If you grew up in the seventies like I did, then you’ve been hearing about our energy crisis since you were a kid. Back then, we dreamed of having hover cars and jet packs and being beamed to school like on Star Trek. And then we found out that there was a limited supply of oil and nuclear energy was dangerous and coal was deadly and before too long, we’d all be back in the stone age waiting for lightning to strike a dried up tree. For a while, cars got smaller and more gas efficient. We built electric cars, solar energy plants, and wind farms but after awhile longer, we went back to driving humongous, gas guzzling behemoths while we left every light in the house turned on.
Today, we are all too familiar with the term “energy crisis.” The motivation to conserve energy is being generated as much by political forces as environmental forces. Our dependence on foreign oil has our country involved in two wars in the Middle East in order to “protect American interests.” And then there is climate change. According to Al Gore, our planet’s health is in a downward spiral due to greenhouse gases created by the over-consumption of fossil fuels and one of the ways we will save our home planet is by using alternative sources of fuel for producing the energy we need to live.
The concept driving us towards a solution is “sustainability,” the magic formula that produces more energy for us to use than the energy that it costs us to produce it. And without using up fuel supplies that are limited (which are basically all fossil fuels — oil, gas and coal). Our available sources of energy include petroleum, natural gas, coal, nuclear, biomass, hydro, wind, geothermal, and solar. Of these, hydro, wind, geothermal, and solar are from sustainable sources. Unfortunately, they currently only supply a mere fraction of our overall energy needs. So what’s the answer?
Innovation. We have to modify our current methods and invent new ones. It’s definitely not hopeless. We have a lot of great minds working on these problems today. But there is one more obstacle we need to overcome. And that’s education. Unfortunately we also have an education crisis. Americans are slipping further behind every year in math and science proficiency. If we are going to innovate our way out of our energy crisis, we’ll have to solve our education crisis along the way.
Learn more about the energy crisis by watching the documentary, “A Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash”.
Read the PositiveBrand articles on the energy crisis here.
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Education. Schools are where we turn dreamers into doers. We value education because we know that in order for society to progress, we have to understand ourselves, each other, and the world we share. Unfortunately, this value is not shared by everyone in our country. This is evident by the rapid decline in the last 30 years of American proficiency of mathematics and science. In a 2007 study on education, the New York Times reported, “In science, American students had an average score that was lower than the average in 16 other countries. In math, they did even worse, posting an average score that was lower than the average in 23 other countries.”
Not only are our students falling behind in critical areas like math and science, they are failing high school altogether. According to the Christian Science Monitor, “The percent of students earning a standard diploma in four years shifted from 69.2 percent in 2006 to 68.8 percent in 2007, according to an analysis of the most recent data in “Diplomas Count 2010.” That translates to 11,000 fewer graduates in 2007 than in 2006. At its peak in 1969, the national graduation rate was 77 percent.” Please note: that’s nearly a third of all students — one out of three — that are failing high school.
This drop out rate has a compounding effect. In cities with large populations, failing high schools are returning their citizens back to the community without an education and without the necessary knowledge and skills to help bring their communities out of poverty. Unable to leave their communities, they continue to have families and their children, in turn, go to the same failing school systems, destined to become a part of the growing problem instead of the solution. Experts used to believe that it was poverty that was causing these schools to fail. Today, they accept that it is the failing schools that are responsible for poverty.
At a time in our history when we need innovators to help us solve enormous societal problems, we are reducing our pool of intellectual resources at an alarming rate. Unfortunately, we can’t solve this problem with money. That approach has been tried and failed. The United States spent $553 billion on public elementary and secondary education in 2006-2007, equal to 4.2% of gross domestic product (ranking third in the world for spending in education). Education spending is set to increase sharply to 7% of GDP by 2015. Compare that with U.S. military spending which accounts for only 6% of GDP in 2010. Why are we so ineffective at improving education in our country despite all of the money that has been poured into the system? Tragically, it’s because the education system is severely broken.
Learn more about the education crisis by watching the documentary, “Waiting for Superman.”
Read the PositiveBrand articles on the education crisis here.
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Environment. Our dreams of heaven on Earth ended with the onset of the Industrial Age. Today, we are all painfully aware of the damage we’ve done to our planet. Our water is polluted. Our skies are filled with smog. We have ozone alert days that warn us when our air is unsafe to breathe. Our watershed is completely compromised by misguided attempts to take water away from nature to be used for industrial reasons. We are wiping out entire species at an alarming rate, ruining major food sources such as livestock and seafood. And we are seriously tampering with the future nutritional value of our fruits and vegetables by recklessly introducing genetically modified plants into the ecosystem without sufficient testing or safeguards.
Some people continue to live in denial but the drastic changes in our environment are inescapable. “Climate disasters are on the rise. Around 70 percent of disasters are now climate related – up from around 50 percent from two decades ago. These disasters take a heavier human toll and come with a higher price tag. In the last decade, 2.4 billion people were affected by climate related disasters, compared to 1.7 billion in the previous decade. The cost of responding to disasters has risen tenfold between 1992 and 2008. Destructive sudden heavy rains, intense tropical storms, repeated flooding and droughts are likely to increase, as will the vulnerability of local communities in the absence of strong concerted action.”
Climatecrisis.net explains the situation, “Carbon dioxide and other gases warm the surface of the planet naturally by trapping solar heat in the atmosphere. This is a good thing because it keeps our planet habitable. However, by burning fossil fuels such as coal, gas and oil and clearing forests we have dramatically increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere and temperatures are rising. We’re already seeing changes. Glaciers are melting, plants and animals are being forced from their habitats, and the number of severe storms and droughts is increasing.”
You can learn more about the climate crisis by watching the documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Read the PositiveBrand articles on the climate crisis here.
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Community. The answer to most of these problems — education, energy, food, and health, even water and our environment — lies within the communities where each of us lives. The dream community is one where everyone takes responsibility for raising our children, providing employment for our neighbors, supporting our local farmers and ranchers, donating blood to our local blood banks, volunteering at schools and hospitals, using energy responsibly, and respecting the environment we all share.
Sadly, today this is only a dream. Thankfully, there are people, companies and organizations that are working daily to make this dream a reality. But it requires everyone in the community to become involved for it to work.
You can learn more about these community-centric businesses and individuals here at PositiveBrand.com
Read the PositiveBrand articles that cover community involvement here.
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Art. Our dreams can become reality through art. Art helps to elevate us as a species above all others. It is a reflection of our complex understanding of ourselves and the world around us. As a society, our appreciation for art is in decline. And with it, our humanity. Take away art and we are just animals bent on survival. Unfortunately, we are currently headed in that direction.
Consider Kaplan Publishing’s comments in their recent SAT 2010 Edition: Strategies, Practice, and Review. “While many of us express disdain at the declining condition of artistic awareness, let alone appreciation, in this country, we cannot honestly express surprise. This general decline in tastes has not escaped the commentary and analysis of cultural critics who have warned us that we may be turning into a nation of Philistines. These same critics have pointed to a pair of causes for this cultural decline. Perhaps, they note, the decline is due to the crumbling state of our educational system, or to the media’s focus on pop culture and the decline of taste this breeds. Nevertheless, this scholarly discussion about the roots of the decline, while relevant to sociological and cultural historical analysis, does nothing to solve the problem. Understanding the causes does not change the sad fact that the same country that gave the world film noir, jazz, and abstract expressionism now mostly concerns itself with teen movies and boy bands.”
Our inability to appreciate art is directly connected with our pre-occupation with vacuous consumerism. Our society is so enthralled with feeding itself through ego-enhancing experiences like owning luxury cars, dining in over-priced restaurants, spending too much to attend sporting events, and watching hours of television content revolving around pathetic, despicable people just so we can feel better about ourselves, that we fail to appreciate a higher quality of living as it can only be expressed in the arts.
Read the PositiveBrand articles that cover art here.
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If you have read this far by now you are most likely bummed out. The topics covered here can be overwhelming and create a sense of hopelessness. But it’s only hopeless if you do nothing. And there are plenty of things we can all do to help turn our world around. Here are just a few really simple suggestions. Buy from local businesses, farmers and ranchers. Buy organic fruits and vegetables. Drive a fuel efficient vehicle. Or take mass transit if its available to you. Donate blood. Volunteer at the local school or hospital. Plant a tree. Conserve energy. Recycle. Use reusable shopping bags. Compost as much of your household waste as possible. Don’t waste water. Visit a museum. Watch less television. Exercise. Meet a neighbor. Vote. Take an interest. Be involved.
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Mike’s 26-year career as a creative director, strategic leader, and entrepreneur has included a wide array of experiences from traditional advertising to interactive marketing, and digital media. He’s worked on brands that include Pepsi, American Airlines, ExxonMobil, Subaru, and The United States Air Force. He is currently a partner and the creative and strategic services director for Numantra, an ad agency based in Las Colinas, Texas. 
