By: Kyle Westaway

Even as Wall Street is being occupied and corporations are reviled, there is a revolution quietly raging across the country that empowers corporations to be a strong force for good. This week, California joined that revolution when Governor Jerry Brown created two new classes of corporations for businesses that seek to pursue both profit and purpose: Benefit Corporations and Flexible Purpose Corporations.

These new legal structures are revolutionary in two ways. First, they broaden the duty of a company beyond maximizing shareholder value to include maximizing stakeholder value, such as operating the business in an environmental and social responsible manner. Second, they increase transparency and accountability.

Though it is the first state to pass the Flexible Purpose Corporation type, California is the sixth state to approve the Benefit Corporation classification.

Here is a look at exactly what Benefit Corporations and Flexible Purpose Corporations are, and what they could mean for your company.

What is a Benefit Corporation?

The Benefit Corporation is a new class of corporation that allows companies to pursue profit as well as a strong social and environmental mission.

Hunger & Poverty Statistics, although related, are not the same.  Unemployment rather than poverty is a stronger predictor of food insecurity. Below are important hunger facts and poverty statistics from Feeding America.

Poverty 

• In 2009, 43.6 million people (14.3 percent) were in poverty.
• In 2009, 8.8 million (11.1% percent) families were in poverty.
• In 2009, 24.7 million (12.9 percent) of people ages 18-64 were in poverty.
• In 2009, 15.5 million (20.7 percent) children under the age of 18 were in poverty.
• In 2009, 3.4 million (8.9 percent) seniors 65 and older were in poverty.

Food Insecurity and Very Low Food Security[2]

by Ken Alltucker - Oct. 23, 2011 12:00 AM
The Arizona Republic

WASHINGTON, D.C. Oct. 18, 2011 — According to Dr. Peter Gleick and his colleagues in the newest volume of the most important assessment of global water challenges and solutions, more and more regions of the world, including the United States, may be reaching the point of "peak water." To conserve this critical resource without harming the economy or public health, businesses, communities, governments, and individuals are looking for new techniques to move to sustainable water management.

The World's Water, Vol. 7 offers discussion and analysis for developing those reforms. For more than a decade, this biennial report has provided key data and expert insights into freshwater issues. In the seventh volume in the series, Gleick and his colleagues at the Pacific Institute address such issues as increased conflicts over water resources, "fracking" natural gas contamination, corporate risks and responsibilities around water, and the growing risks of climate change. They specifically explore:

More than 4,000 people commented on San Diego’s Regional Transportation Plan. It is designed to help the region absorb more than a million new residents by 2050, while cutting greenhouse gases.

San Diego county is one of 61 grantees in US states and communities awarded with a Community Transformation Grant. The $3 million award is the second largest dollar amount awarded to a county government, under this grant program.

The County-funded projects will address issues such as tobacco-free living, active lifestyles, healthy eating, and the increased use of clinical prevention services.

“This Community Transformation Grant will help the County focus on projects that will improve the community’s health and well-being,” said Chairman Bill Horn, County Board of Supervisors. “The grant will assist us in reducing the three behaviors; lack of exercise, poor diet and tobacco use, which result in the four top chronic diseases that cause over 50 percent of the deaths in San Diego.”

Emerging insights from adaptive and community-based resource management suggest that building resilience into both human and ecological systems is an effective way to cope with environmental change characterized by future surprises or unknowable risks. In this paper, originally published in Ecology and Society, authors Emma Tompkins argue that these emerging insights have implications for policies and strategies for responding to climate change. The authors review perspectives on collective action for natural resource management to inform understanding of climate response capacity. They demonstrate the importance of social learning, specifically in relation to the acceptance of strategies that build social and ecological resilience. Societies and communities dependent on natural resources need to enhance their capacity to adapt to the impacts of future climate change, particularly when such impacts could lie outside their experienced coping range. This argument is illustrated by an example of present-day collective action for community-based coastal management in Trinidad and Tobago.

In 2008 emergency planners predicted that if a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck southern California, 60 percent of hospital beds in Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, and Orange counties would be knocked out of commission.

To allow aid workers to treat the thousands of potentially injured residents during the quake, first responders are developing alternative medical care policies like emergency tents stocked with medical equipment.

Kay Fruhwirth, the head of the LA County Office of Emergency Management, said the number of available beds “is really dependent on the level of impact, but we have plans and we know in general what hospitals can do to meet increased demands for a lot of people who need medical care.”

To that end, Fruhwirth said surge tents would be put in place for initial triage and the sorting out of patients for short-term care. In addition, thirteen hospitals in ten locations throughout the region have Disaster Resource Centers, which are equipped with tent shelters that are capable of housing at least forty patients for the first forty-eight hours after a disaster.

“All hospitals do planning for disasters, but these centers have additional supplies and equipment, which can also be moved to the impacted area,” Fruhwirth explained.

submitted by Linton Wells - October 13, 2011

  Did you know…

…that in certain places of the ocean, the amount of suspended plastic particles actually outnumbers ambient plankton?
…that approximately one million seabirds and one hundred thousand marine mammals die from ingestion or entanglement in plastics each year?
…that with the exception of a small amount that has been incinerated, virtually every piece of plastic that has ever been created still exists in some shape or form?

Well now that you do….Read more about RAPtoberfest on Surfrider Foundation to take action in being part of the solution!
WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!?!?! CLICK HERE

Early this year, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin released their rankings of the health of residents in almost every county in the nation based upon 2010 data. The "County Health Rankings" report, which used 27 measures to gauge public health in all 50 states, ranked San Diego County as California's 16th healthiest county.

The information should be “a call for action for communities to work together to address the things that are influencing their health,” said Patrick Remington, an associate dean at the University of Wisconsin and a study director. “These rankings tell us that where we live matters to our health.”

According to experts, it is predictable that residents in California’s five healthiest counties — Marin, San Benito, Placer, Santa Clara and San Mateo — are also among the wealthiest and best educated. Residents in the five unhealthiest counties — Trinity, Del Norte, Siskiyou, Lake and Yuba — have incomes nearly half of the statewide median and live in isolated areas of Northern California.

In Southern California, Orange County ranked sixth, Los Angeles County ranked 26th, Riverside County 29th and Imperial County 37th.