2012 11 03 “Design Me A Planet”A Futurist Global Think Tank A Profile of Michel Saloff-Coste

November 3, 2012

FROM : http://birth2012.shiftmovement.com/2012/11/03/“design-me-a-planet”/ 

“Design Me A Planet”—A Futurist Global Think TankA Profile of Michel Saloff-Coste

Perhaps our most ambitious hub is an organization called “Design Me a Planet” based in of Paris, France—an inspired “think tank” founded by Michel Saloff-Coste whose purpose is to create and disseminate solutions for global issues at the planetary level. The founder of the Club of Budapest in France, Michel has been closely associated with Welcoming Committee member Ervin Lazslo and many other leading European innovators and visionaries. Michel is a bestselling author in France who is known worldwide as a change catalyst, global futurist, and integral thinker—and also as an artist whose work hangs in prestigious museums. And now he’s a friend of the Birth 2012 movement.

Michel was introduced to Barbara while she visited France in June of this year, and the two met again last week in Tuscon along with “Evolve Tuscon” founder Reverend Angel, and filmmaker Karen Everett. Michel had been invited to nearby in Tempe, Arizon to present a talk entitled “Passport for the Future: Why We Need to Re-design the Planet” to the Global Institute of Sustainability at the Arizona State University. He was there at the invitation of the president of the university. Karen shot a piece of this lecture, viewable here.

Michael got an early start in systems thinking when he directed a multidisciplinary workshop on societal change from 1985 to 1987 at the Ministry of Research in France. After working at one of Europe’s top consulting firms in management strategy, he went on to create his own research and consultancy firm that specializes in global governance, sustainable development, and information society issues. The focus of Saloff-Costes’s research and the subject matter of many of his books is the paradigm shift to what he calls the “creation-communication society.”

Michel writes in a recent essay: “Social inequalities are now back to what they were in the nineteenth century. . . We remain locked in a neoliberal stance that is too insensitive to social dislocation and ecological crisis, and we have undermined biodiversity and accelerated global warming. We cling to growth in developed economies as the sole engine of development without offering a real solution for our broader economic and social crisis. . . The societal systemic crises we are experiencing are structural. None of the traditional ‘recipe policies’ that we already know (free markets, social redistribution, marginal preservation of nature) are equal to the scope of the problem. We need a new political epistemology based on the most advanced transdisciplinary research in philosophy, economics, society and technology—one that is systemic, holistic and comprehensive.”

“Design Me a Planet” (“Dessine-moi une planète”) is meant to do just that. Michel’s idea is to create a “think-and-do-tank” on the theme of creating a comprehensive global vision for the future. “There seems to be no think-tank interested in building a vision on a planetary scale,” says Michel, “and the ‘do-tanks’ such as ecovillages or transition towns are focused only on local sustainability.”

The broad questions Michel wants to answer include:
• How can we overcome our fears so we can think with new political imagination?
• How do we organize global governance in the new paradigm?
• How can we create a new civilization on a global scale?
• What are the conditions of full democracy?
• How can we open a space for dialogue between peoples and civilizations?

Among the events Michel has organized in many countries on behalf of his innovative NGO was a large meeting in Austria in 2011 that featured presentations from numerous thinkers including Ervin Laszlo, followed by visits to innovative companies in Austria that are working at the leading edge of sustainability in farming, technology, and manufacturing.

Michel’s research priorities are to:

1. Identify a rich, diverse set of possible scenarios for the long-term future

2. Study the more robust scenarios and pinpoint the critical factors of success within them for an individual, a company, a nation, and the world.

3. Provide venues that allow a rich exchange of views and creativity within an international, multidisciplinary, networked organisation.

4. Be a resource centre for organisations and institutions dedicated to studying the future, while providing analytical tools and strategies for shorter-term decision-making in a rapidly changing world.

Design Me a Planet is truly the first hub dedicated to open innovation to address all the challenges facing the planet. Michel concludes: “For the first time in the history of mankind, our systemic crises require that we combine collaboration and innovation on a global scale . . . We are creating a context facilitator among all stakeholders of our planet to promote the changes that now are necessary. The transition that lies ahead in the next ten years is infinitely more profound, complex and fast, than all previous experience. Today we must rethink the way we think and rebuild the foundations of our civilizations.”

You can find more informations on : http://designmeaplanet.blogspot.com