The devastation from Hurricane Katrina in 2005 made it brutally clear that climate change is as much a social crisis as it is an environmental one. While the hurricane ultimately caused approximately $160 billion in damages, the face of this tragedy was the thousands of people who could not escape its course. The poor and the elderly suffered very dearly, and it is estimated that about 15 million people were affected either directly or indirectly.
Rubicon Seven Foundation, an incorporated 501(c)3 founded in 2009, takes, as its sole purpose, bringing the benefits of regenerative development to the underprivileged. The foundation’s work is fundamentally no different from that of Rubicon Seven, LLC; we generate or regenerate socio-ecological healthful life through a multidimensional and very holistic approach. Like Rubicon Seven, social sciences are deeply a part of any work that we develop. But the foundation is in service to the disenfranchised as we strongly believe that all people deserve to be a part of the new world that so many are trying to create. We seek to bring regenerative abundance to the vast majority of people around the world who are in desperate need of healthy food, clean water, healthy habitat, resource equity, and opportunity.
Our planet cannot succeed when 1 in 3 people suffers from some form of malnutrition.1 We are a failed planet when approximately 26.5% of the people on this earth are “multidimensionally poor” and inequality is worsening.2 We are a dying planet, with a precipitous drop in biodiversity due to pollution and over-consumption beyond what the earth can handle.3
To date, Rubicon Seven Foundation projects have typically focused on processes and products that encourage rethinking the patterns of our lives. We have used dead parking space4 to encourage art, diversity and life. We have used an old building to create dialogue on the existentialism of contemporary life5, and we have brought grounded imagination from the world of sustainable development to kids in underserved communities.
We ask for your hearts, your souls, your minds, and your help in building a new approach that God smiles on. For it is our will to be a positive and loving force of effectiveness.
1. World Food Programme. 2017, “Zero Hunger”, Retrieved 06/28/2018, 2018 (http://www1.wfp.org/zero-hunger).
2. (a) Alkire, Sabina andRobles, Gisela. 2017. “Global Multidimensional Poverty Index 2017 (16 page briefing).” University of Oxford, Oxford, England; (b) Wodon, Quentin T. andLeroy De La Briere, Benedicte. 2018. “Unrealized potential: The High Cost of Gender Inequality in Earnings (English). The Cost of Gender Inequality.” World Bank Group, Washington, D.C; (c) Mandle, Jay R. 2003. Globalization and the poor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; (d) Stiglitz, Joseph E. 2002. “Globalism’s Discontents.” The American Prospect, January 1, 2002 – January 14, 2002, pp. A16-A21; (e) —. 2012. The price of inequality : [how today’s divided society endangers our future]. New York: W.W. Norton & Co; (f) Ehrenreich, Barbara. 2001. Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
3. (a) Global Footprint Network. 2018, “Earth Overshoot Day 2018”, 2018 (https://www.overshootday.org/); (b) Cardinale, Bradley J., Duffy, J. Emmett, Gonzalez, Andrew, Hooper, David U., Perrings, Charles, Venail, Patrick, Narwani, Anita, Mace, Georgina M., Tilman, David, Wardle, David A., Kinzig, Ann P., Daily, Gretchen C., Loreau, Michel, Grace, James B., Larigauderie, Anne, Srivastava, Diane S., andNaeem, Shahid. 2012. “Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity.” Nature 486:59-67; (c) Earth Science Communications Team. 2018, “Global Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet”, Retrieved 03/01/2018, 2018 (https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/); (d) Hsiang, Solomon, Kopp, Robert, Jina, Amir, Rising, James, Delgado, Michael, Mohan, Shashank, Rasmussen, D. J., Muir-Wood, Robert, Wilson, Paul, Oppenheimer, Michael, Larsen, Kate, andHouser, Trevor. 2017. “Estimating economic damage from climate change in the United States.” Science 356:1362-1369.
4. (a) Jakle, John A. andSculle, Keith A. 2004. Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press; (b) Shoup, Donald C. 2005. The High Cost of Free Parking. Chicago, Ill.: Planners Press.
5. (a) Marx, Karl. 1961[1835]. “Reflections of a Young Man on The Choice of a Profession.” The New Scholasticism XXXV:pp. 197-200; (b) —. 1975[1837]. “1837 Letter to Father.” Pp. 10-21 in Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 01: 1835-1843, vol. 01. New York: International Publishers; (c) —. 1975[1842]. “Debates on the Law on Thefts of Wood.” Pp. Pp. 244-263 in Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol. 01: 1835-1843, vol. 01. New York: International Publishers; (d) —. 1978. “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.” Pp. 66-125 in The Marx-Engels Reader, edited by R. C. Tucker. New York: W. W. Norton & Company.