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Welcome to the 14th 2021 edition of The Nett Report. We began publishing this report in 2020 to provide our clients and friends with new perspectives and insights in hopes of stimulating creative thinking. Please feel free to forward to a friend! Links to the 2020 reports can be found here and the 2021 reports here.

 
 

 
 

“Inspiration comes from within yourself. One has to be positive. When you’re positive, good things happen.”
— Deep Roy (Mohinder Purba), a 72-year-old, 4’4” tall, Kenyan-British actor


The Political Divide

How can a healed femur indicate the beginning of civilization?

We live in a world with huge gaps in perception about what the world should look like culturally and politically. Anthropologist Margaret Mead said this about what would be the first sign of civilization in a culture:

“The first sign of civilization in an ancient culture was a femur (thighbone) that had been broken and then healed. In the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You cannot run from danger, get to the river for a drink or hunt for food. You are meat for prowling beasts. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for the bone to heal. A broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with the one who fell, has bound up the wound, has carried the person to safety and has tended the person through recovery. Helping someone else through difficulty is where civilization starts.”

Maybe helping each other to understand what we each see in today’s world could be the first step in healing the broken femur we call the political divide.


Documentarian Ken Burns thinks hypersensitivity about the past is the pill that could kill us

According to a column by Alyssa Rosenberg in the June 24, 2021, issue of the Washington Post, “for millions of Americans, Ken Burns and his collaborators have served as trusted guides through subjects alternately entertaining and painful, from jazz music to Prohibition to the Vietnam War.” Burns told her that he thinks hypersensitivity to the past and its connections to the present are “the greatest threat to our republic ever. Not the Depression, not World War II, not the Civil War. This moment of all these intersecting viruses, of novel coronaviruses and of racial injustice — [a] 402-year-old-virus. And it’s an age-old human virus of lying and misinformation and paranoia and conspiracy. This is the pill that will kill us unless we do something.”

 
 
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The Future of Work / The Economy

“What I found remarkable during the pandemic is that our employees found a sense of purpose. And once they found a sense of purpose, there was incredible creativity at the front line—very, very locally—to do things that we never imagined that we would do… An example was going to somebody’s home delivering groceries every week because she was 95 years old and couldn’t use the Internet and couldn’t get to a store.”
—Vivek Sankaran, CEO, Albertsons


In Iceland, testing of a four-day workweek called an “overwhelming success”

The BBC, in a July 6, 2021, story, reported on a series of trials between 2015 and 2019 testing the response to a four-day workweek. The workers were paid the same amount of money for working fewer hours. “Productivity remained the same or improved in the majority of workplaces,” leading researchers to call the trials an “overwhelming success.” Additional testing is underway in Spain and New Zealand.


Commercial real estate expected to lag in recovery, business travel not so much

On June 29, 2021, CEO Daily reported on its latest CEO poll conducted with Deloitte. One of the results is that commercial real estate is expected to lag in the economic recovery from the pandemic. Half of the CEO’s plan to reduce real estate spending in the next 12 months and only 10% intend to increase it.  Business travel fared better, with 55% seeing an increase in travel expenditures while 28% see a decrease. “Both airline and hospitality CEOs say they see signs pointing to a much more rapid business travel recovery than generally expected.”


Lumber prices come down, home prices hit record high

After lumber prices skyrocketed in recent weeks, Cottage Life on July 6, 2021, reported that they have “come crashing down” from a high of $1,680 for 1,000 board feet in May to $750 in early July. Home prices have done the opposite. According to a June 22, 2021, Wall Street Journal story, the median sale price topped $350,000 for the first time in May, 24% more than a year ago. California's homebuyers can only drool about such a low median sales price.

 
 

 
 

Covid-19

Early claims of victory over Covid could be the biggest risk to global economic growth

A story on July 9, 2021, in CEO Daily reports that “the pandemic is not over yet by a long shot.” Mary Daly, the head of the Reserve Bank of San Francisco, told the Financial Times that she thinks one of the biggest risks to our global growth going forward is that we prematurely declare victory on Covid.” The story notes the state of emergency for the Tokyo Olympics and increasing rates of infection in parts of Europe and the United Kingdom as examples. England’s Health Secretary Sajid Javid acknowledges fully opening the economy could mean 100,000 new cases a day. “We want to be very straightforward about this in what we can expect in terms of case numbers. But what matters more than anything is hospitalization and death numbers,” he said.

 
 

 
 

Climate Change

Oxnard creates huge battery to eliminate the need for a gas plant

According to a July 6, 2021, story in Canary Media, the City of Oxnard, California, has installed a 100 megawatt/400 megawatt-hour battery that can store enough energy to power the city of 209,000 for four hours all by itself. The battery came to be because a grassroots environmental justice group teamed up with the clean energy industry as a way to stop a natural gas plant development on the city’s shoreline.


International lawyers propose a new law defining “Ecocide”

There are four core internationally defined crimes: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression. Now, twelve lawyers from around the world are proposing a new international crime: ecocide. According to a June 27, 2021, story on NPR, ecocide means “unlawful or wasteful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts.” The story says the law would be “a first step in preventing future environmental disasters like the deforestation of the Amazon." There are many steps that will have to be taken before the proposal could become law. Similar efforts in the past have been unsuccessful.


Schwarzenegger urges messaging on pollution rather than climate change

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has long been an advocate of addressing climate change. However, he thinks the messaging about climate change is all wrong. In a June 30, 2021, story posted by the Associated Press, he says that the public perceives the environmental movement as being "stuck in despair and confusion,” and using language that goes over people's heads. He argued that activists need to zero in on one message: “Pollution is enemy No. 1. ... It is the very thing that causes climate change.”

 
 

 
 

The Nett Light-Side

Dexter the dog walks like a human

9News in Denver aired a story about Dexter, a dog in the town of Ouray, Colorado, that was hit by a car when he was one year old. Now, without two functioning front legs, he takes walks with his owner, upright like a human. Don’t miss this one! Reminds me of the need to remain positive!


48 reasons to be optimistic

Outdoor Magazine took an upbeat view of the world in this May 11, 2021, story listing 48 reasons to be optimistic. See if you agree.


Dubai goes big with a 165-foot-deep swimming pool

Already the home of the world’s tallest building, the 1,000-foot-tall Burj Khalifa, Dubai has now built the world’s deepest swimming pool at 165 feet, according to a story in CNN Travel on July 9, 2021. The pool includes a sunken city and opportunities to play pool and foosball underwater.

 
 

 
 

Nettleton Strategies - Helping You Navigate the Big Reset

This is a challenging time for all of us, in a way we have never experienced before. If you would like help navigating your way forward, contact us to learn how we can help!


Carl Nettleton is an award-winning writeracclaimed speaker, facilitator, and a subject-matter expert regarding water, climate, sustainability, the ocean, and binational U.S. Mexico border affairs. Founded in 2007, Nettleton Strategies is a trusted source of analysis and advice on issues at the forefront of public policy, business and the environment.

 
 

 
 
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Nettleton Strategies
P.O. Box 22971
San Diego, Ca 92192-2971
U.S.A.
+1 858-353-5489
info@nettstrategies.com
www.nettstrategies.com

 
 

 
 

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