What you didn’t know about US Senator Ted Cruz…

Oct 20, 2013

What you didn’t know about US Senator Ted Cruz…

US Republican Ted Cruz, Junior Senator from Texas, was the public figure of the Tea Party in the shutdown fight that closed the US government for over a half a month. In the course of his faux-filibuster, he read among other things Dr.Seuss “Green Eggs and Ham”... to publicise his views against Obamacare.

Well, not surprising for a Tea Party republican, he’s also against any form of gun control.

But what is less well known, according to Newsweek, are his views on sustainability, notably on one of the founding documents of the modern sustainability movement, “Agenda 21” that came out of the UN Rio conference of 1992. For Cruz, it’s nothing short of a global conspiracy:

“Cruz believes Agenda 21, a non-binding 1992 United Nations document on sustainable development endorsed by that well-known radical, President George H.W. Bush, is a sinister "globalist plan that tries to subvert the U.S. Constitution and the liberties we all cherish as Americans." He accuses U.N. plotters of aiming to abolish "golf courses, grazing pastures, and paved roads" and fingers George Soros, a billionaire funder of liberal causes, as the puppet-master behind the plan.”

Now we know how batty the Tea Party really is…

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Our project: Making it happen - the transition to a sustainable society

This blog is a continuation of a project at the University of Ottawa Telfer School of Management dealing with innovation, public policy, and climate change. We are not developing another vision for a sustainable society. We want to focus on the implementation and the barriers to change and innovation, hence the title "Making it happen". (See Post “The start of a new project”)

We have divided the project into two broad steps. The first step is to review various sustainable visions for regions. See our following Posts:
Setting sustainability and environmental targets (1): Recent announcements on GHG emissions
Setting sustainability and environmental targets (2): the dimensions of sustainability
and
Setting sustainability and environmental targets (3): Ottawa’s “Choosing our future”

The next broad set of activities is to parse out what needs to happen if we are to achieve these visions and identify the barriers - institutional, social, behavioural - to make the change happen, i.e. “What’s stopping us from becoming a sustainable society?”

The intent is to design improved policy interventions.

So, in addition to continue looking at sustainable visions, our posts have examined through past examples and case studies how various technologies and changes are implemented. And we will look at barriers and obstacles.

We invite you to share your experiences with the difficulties of implementing new technologies and changes to address the challenge of climate change, and how these can be overcome. Post a comment!

Our Team

ANDRE POTWOROWSKI is an adjunct professor at the Telfer School of Managemnent at the University of Ottawa, and a management consultant in environmental research management, innovation, and environmental policies. He has been working in the environment field since the mid-70s, when he was part of the original Conserver Society study at the Science Council of Canada. He is president of TMA Technology Management Associates, and Managing Partner, Science and Technology of the Professional Development Institute

TOM BRZUSTOWSKI, Chair of our Advisory Board during the project, was the RBC Chair in Innovation and Technology Commercialization at the Telfer School, and is the past President of Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council. He authored a book on productivity and innovation, "The Way Ahead: Meeting Canada's Productivity Challenge", and more recently "Why we need more INNOVATION IN CANADA: and what we must do to get it."

Making it happen - the transition to a sustainable society

Oct 20, 2013