Green Mondays 2

Attended the second Green Mondays event on, well, Monday. Thanks go to Laurence again for putting together a great event. We had two speakers: Paul Sands from Virgin Atlantic and Darrell Nelson from the Kisho Kurokawa Green Institute.

Paul described Virgin’s diverse approach to greening their business including updating their fleet to more fuel efficient planes, offices powered by renewable energy resources, leveraging the presence and power of their visionary founder, Richard Branson and, a crowd favorite, off-loading all of the empty champagne bottles consumed by passengers before take off!

The highlight of his presentation, though, was his report on the successful test flight of a biofueled airplane. Virgin Atlantic Airlines, in the face of considerable skepticism, demonstrated jets can fly using a jet fuel/biofuel mix. Virgin is now sharing their findings with other airlines who will also run such tests. Look out for more news on biofueled flights in the upcoming months as New Zealand Airways, Japan Airlines, Continental and others step up and tackle airline CO2 emissions issues.

Darrell’s talk focused on the need to raise managers capable of handling sustainability related issues in business. Although short on details, he outlined the Kisho Kurokawa Green Institute/Anaheim University online MBA program which is designed to give future managers a much needed foundation in sustainable approaches to doing business. He emphasized that “green business” is a fast growing field and opportunities are plentiful. It’s a good start and kudos to Anaheim University for putting together this program.

Tags: biofuel, corporate, csr, green MBA, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable management

The Evolution of Sustainable Leadership

Sustainable leadership arises from being able to see the world as it is: in its infinite complexity and subtle simplicity. It requires deep capacity to know and reflect on yourself and the multiple implications of your actions. It also requires that you extend your concept of “self” to include much more than “me” and home to be much more than “my house.” As the poet Gary Snyder has written “home is as big as you make it.”

Leadership is a practice. One CEO I recently spoke with said that leadership is a performance. Indeed it is both. Leadership is the enactment and realization of our capacity as humans to engage others and the world around us and inspire thinking, reflection and action. At its best, leadership is transformative. Great leaders transform themselves and with the depth of their perception, the strength of their conviction and the beauty of their vision they help others transform as well. Often these transformations can be “spiritual” in their quality. Spirit being that which connects you to your self, your self to others, that self to the world, the divine and those mysterious, powerful insights that arise from these relationships.

Sustainable leadership is the practice, performance and enactment of a perception, conviction and vision that respects, nurtures and supports that which sustains us and, importantly, that which sustains that which sustains us.

The evolution of sustainable leadership is commitment to a process of self development that begins with “me” but necessarily expands to include and transcend “me.” The deeper we dive, the broader we roam, the richer our understanding of our place and purpose. From this process our practice: our words and actions arise. The greater the depth of our perception, the greater potential we bring for transformation, the greater our capacity to create sustainable approaches to living, community, innovation and business.

Sustainable leadership may, sometimes, be in response to something, however, at its best it is an inspiration and invitation for something. It comes from the inside. It is radiant and compellingly transparent. It is not easy and it is not what you think it is, right now.

This is just the beginning. More to follow soon…

Tags: leadership, sustainability, sustainable leadership

Our World 2.0

Brendan Barrett, Head of the UNU Media Studio is web publishing a nice looking, thoughtful and thought provoking magazine called Our World 2.0. Here’s a recent article I recommend checking out:

Peak Oil What does it mean to you? Excerpt:

Does oil priced at over $140 per barrel signal the arrival of Peak Oil? The experts disagree on the cause of the price jump but agree on one message: The era of easy oil is over.

How this affects you: Health: 

The rising fuel prices cause a lot of stress and worry for everyone. We all know that stress is not good for your health. One important point is to make sure to stay informed about why this is happening and then consider how you can put a positive spin on the situation, one that can actually bring about improvements in your health. For instance, by cycling rather than driving, which is good for you and good for reducing your costs associated with fuel consumption.

Brendan does a good job of making the current rise in fuel costs understandable. He does a particularly good job of connecting the systemic dynamics to everyday living. 

Good work Brendan. 

Tags: peak oil, sustainability, United Nations University

Vertical Farming…?

Just got a shout out from my friend Lance. There’s a captivating article in the NY times called “Country, the City Version: Farms in the Sky Gain New Interest”. It details the work of Dickson Despommier around creating vertical farms in the city-basically applying the skyscraper model to agriculture:

Dr. Despommier estimates that it would cost $20 million to $30 million to make a prototype of a vertical farm, but hundreds of millions to build one of the 30-story towers that he suggests could feed 50,000 people. “I’m viewed as kind of an outlier because it’s kind of a crazy idea,” Dr. Despommier, 68, said with a chuckle. “You’d think these are mythological creatures.”

Photo courtesy of www.verticalfarm.com

See his website http://www.verticalfarm.com/ for more info: 

The cons to his proposal:

“Why does it have to be 30 stories?” said Jerry Kaufman, professor emeritus of urban and regional planning at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Why can’t it be six stories? There’s some exciting potential in the concept, but I think he overstates what can be done.”

and

Armando Carbonell, chairman of the department of planning and urban form at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Cambridge, Mass., called the idea “very provocative.” But it requires a rigorous economic analysis, he added. “Would a tomato in lower Manhattan be able to outbid an investment banker for space in a high-rise? My bet is that the investment banker will pay more.”

Mr. Carbonell questions if a vertical farm could deliver the energy savings its supporters promise. “There’s embodied energy in the concrete and steel and in construction,” he said, adding that the price of land in the city would still outweigh any savings from not having to transport food from afar. “I believe that this general relationship is going to hold, even as transportation costs go up and carbon costs get incorporated into the economic system.”

As we move into a post-oil economy and transporting food over long distances, potentially, becomes non-viable thinking and discussions like this are exactly what we need. There are empty buildings all over the place. Why not turn them into farms? If a community were to invest in a building it would be a tremendous source of community generating energy as well as a way for people to integrate waste and water management into the creation of neighborhood food security. Think about it: waste to compost to food. It works for me in my small garden and vermiculture compost system in Tokyo. Closed loop local solution to waste generation and food production. Think about it, now,

Do something about it.

 

Tags: agriculture, green buildings, sustainability, urban farming

Innovation & Climate Change Pt. 4: Alex Evans

As noted in previous posts, Alex Evans and others spoke on inter-related elements of the implications and science surrounding global warming and climate change. Present only for the first half, my impressions are recorded below:

Alex Evans ended his presentation with the pronouncement that he doesn’t believe that the G8 leaders can fully grasp, develop and relate the climate change story in a meaningful way. This begs the question, “OK, well then, who does get it?

Actually, it’s not so much “getting it” as it is the storytelling aspect that is eluding our leaders. Al Gore, certainly has no trouble getting his point across in An Inconvenient Truth. Yet his story is one that falls well short of relating the inter-related complexities of food production & distribution, food availability, energy availability, climate change. 

I think the problem is choosing what story to tell. Where do you begin? Where do you end? What do you leave out? What do you include? Evans pointed out that without shared awareness acting as an attractor for attention it’s very difficult to craft a moving national or global narrative. Also, with little causal fuel for creating a sense of urgency, getting the public or a leader’s constituency to support sustained action (and sacrifice) regarding climate change is also quite a challenge.

What Evans said we needed was a “shared OS” and “shared platforms” that would allow multilateral functionalism and cooperation on climate change issues. I would add that the OS and platforms should be “open source” to allow development of shared applications that can be localized and run “glocally.”

With the above architecture in place Evans implied that it then becomes more plausible to

• create systems level measurement and detection tools
• implement strategically targeted and transparent financial interventions
• refocus trade policy along systemically apparent needs and dynamics
• develop useful risk management and assistance programs

Tags: climate change, innovation, sustainability, United Nations University

Innovation & Climate Change Part 4: David Sanborn Scott

As noted in previous posts, Dr. Scott and others spoke on inter-related elements of the implications and science surrounding global warming and climate change. Present only for the first half, my impressions are recorded below:

David Sanborn Scott presented an elegantly systemic overview of the patterns which underlie energy consumption (reproduced below). The overview identifies “roles” as opposed to the “things” that fill those roles during different eras of energy use. 

One of the points he made is that policy makers don’t understand the “energy architecture”, the structures and patterns that undergird energy issues. They tend to focus on “things” and outputs without understanding the relationships between those things and outputs. This creates debacles like the Kyoto Protocol and the emissions trading ridiculousness that arose with it.

Instead, what policy makers and energy producers should be looking is something like Dr. Scott’s model:

(services) – (service technologies) – (currencies) – (transformer technologies) – (sources)

This model begins not with the source of the energy (coal fields, gas deposits, crude oil) but with the service that source enables (for example, heating). To provide heat there must be heat providing technologies as well as “currencies” that power the service technologies. These currencies are what we generally call “fuel” such as coal, natural gas, and gasoline. The transformer technologies are things like coal mines and mining tools and oil refining technology. 

Dr. Scott went on to explain why hydrogen is a compelling choice for a “new” major currency. It can be transformed using a number of currencies as sources including sunlight, wind, natural gas and uranium. In terms of sustainability, then, Dr. Scott argued that renewable resources are neither wholly necessary or sufficient. For example trees are renewable but if we switched to wood as a primary currency we would still have emissions problems. destroy a key CO2 absorbing mechanism and run out of wood in pretty short order.

What is necessary, he claimed, is a diversity of sources that yield currencies (like hydrogen) that do not destabilize the atmosphere and climatic conditions. In broader terms, the currency when transformed to a service needs to have a minimal intrusion on eco-systemic flows. 

Dr. Scott concluded with how hydrogen could assume a greater role including powering vehicles like cars, submarines and planes as well as generating power for other electrically powered services.

What was really compelling about Dr. Scott’s presentation was the way in which he re-framed the energy consumption process and how, when we begin to see it as a system, we can begin to see where we can apply leverage to generate meaningful change and what is required to enable that change. 

Also, he convinced me that hydrogen may very well have an important role to play in reducing emissions and stabilizing supply and demand issues.

Dr. Scott left us with this message concerning the role hydrogen can play in affecting climate change:

The needs are critical.

• The fundamental ideas, simple.

• The lack of understanding, stupefying.

• The dithering, scary.

• The promise, brilliant.

Tags: climate change, hydrogen, innovation, sustainability, United Nations University

Innovation and Climate Change Part 3: Gwyn Prins

As noted in the previous post, Dr. Prins and others spoke on inter-related elements of the implications and science surrounding global warming and climate change. Present only for the first half, my impressions are recorded below:

Dr. Prins took us on a romp through the folly of emissions targets and trading in a presentation starting at Kyoto and ending at the collective feet of policy makers at the G8 summit in Hokkaido. He compared the challenge of creating climate policy to understanding a double helix intertwining the physical and socially constructed worlds of humanity.

Really more than a double helix, Dr. Prins described climate change issues as “wicked problems” that arise from the interaction of the complex open systems in which we live. Wicked problems are not “solved”. In an oversimplification they only improve or worsen. Remember that a gain in one place, though, is often a loss somewhere else.

Dr. Prins stated clearly that Kyoto brought no real decrease in emissions and, in fact, could not even decrease the rate of increase. He stated (and I agree) that we need to stop trying to control outputs and focus on affecting and changing the inputs. His proposed solution was to target the industries responsible for ~60% of carbon emissions and work with them to set limits, targets for reduction and development of alternative non-carbon producing processes.

Another significant aspect of Dr. Prins’ presentation was on why the public is having such a hard time engaging with climate change issues. Using the Issue Attention Cycle he described how (we) the public has heard the media and governments sound the alarm twice now yet little is accomplished, there are very few tangible, clearly causally related events and seemingly little people can do help. Thus, there is a very real risk that, yet again, climate change and the behaviors that create and feed CO2 into the atmosphere will, yet again, subside in importance and urgency in the public eye.

In my opinion, the only way out of this cycle is to move as individuals, communities and organizations toward Coherence. At that stage of engagement we begin to re-design, re-organize and re-create from eco-centric, sustainable ways. We need to become sustainable from the inside-out as opposed to having “green” ideologies imposed upon us from the outside-in. 

Actually, there is another way. We can do nothing and wait for all hell to break loose-which it will. Then, we’ll have a whole new set of problems to “fight.” And fight we will.

Tags: climate change, global warming, Gwyn Prins, sustainability, UN University

Innovation & Entrepreneurism in the Time of Climate Change Part 2: Jim Hansen

CLIMATE CHANGE – Messages to the G8 from UNUChannel on Vimeo.

The above video is from the United Nations University symposium entitled: “Innovation & Entrepreneurism in the Time of Climate Change.”

As noted in the previous post, Hansen and others spoke on inter-related elements of the implications and science surrounding global warming and climate change. Present only for the first half, my impressions are recorded below:

In general, what I found most interesting and disturbing is the panelists agreement that there is no shared understanding of the problem much less any coherence on what needs to be done.

Central to Hansen’s presentation is that there is an absence of strategy addressing climate change and how to engage it. His approach is, first, to set a limit of 350 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. He bases this calculation on paleo-historical evidence that indicate this has been the relatively stable level of CO2 in the atmosphere during times in which the Earth’s climate has most resembled the climate we, as humans, have been enjoying for the last few thousand years. In order to realize the above limit, Hansen recommends 

1. Post fossil fuel thinking + behavior: Phase out emissions from coal plants and stop building more. Institute carbon taxes which are returned to people in the form benefits for reducing carbon emissions and using and developing alternatives to carbon producing technologies (a “cap-dividend” model). Create “low loss” electric grids for the dispersion of energy. His letter to Prime Minister Fukuda that outlines this strategy can be dowloaded here.
2. Changes in agricultural practices (not elaborated)
3. Reforestation + soil stewardship (not elaborated)

Hansen, I believe, wisely is pushing for action closer to the roots of climate change dynamics. Pushing for an end to emissions from coal burning is a powerful and very challenging goal as both China and India are revving up their infrastructures through-you guessed it-coal burning power plants.

Climate change and the human influenced dynamics responsible for it are a lot like kudzu. Topical spraying and hacking away at the edges of the plant do little to stop it from spreading. We’ve got to find the roots and stop proliferation there. In this case the roots are us. We’ve got to change or change will change us. Guaranteed.

Tags: climate change, entrepreneurism, G8, global warming, innovation, sustainability

Innovation & Entrepreneurism in the Time of Climate Change Part 1

Attended a symposium at the United Nations University in Tokyo as a prelude to the G8 summit in Hokkaido. It focused on a number of differently related topics on climate change. Featured speakers included Jim Hansen, the NASA scientist responsible for sounding the initial alarm around climate change, a thoroughly entertaining and informative Gwyn Prins from the LSE, Bill McKibben, environmentalist author, and a host of other people with different takes on reducing CO2.

Though only present for the first half, my reflections and rationale for missing the second half are below:

I passed on the second half because a large number of the presentations focused on reducing CO2 output. “Fighting” global warming or focussing on carbon emissions reduction and offsets is simply a waste of time, money and energy. Focusing on shrinking our “carbon footprints”, trading emissions and setting disconnected CO2 emissions reduction goals is, to quote the Godfather of Soul “Talkin’ loud…but we ain’t sayin’ nothin’.”

To have any meaningful effect on this issue, we’ve got to look at and change the fundamental behaviors contributing to global warming, rises in oil costs, food shortages and renewed interest in coal and nuclear energy. We also need to understand the meaning of that behavior for the long-term (100+ years) sustainability of human civilization. Less than our survival, a focus on flourishing, I believe, is in order.

The behavior I’m referring to includes individual, family, community, regional and national habits of energy consumption, corporate research, development and production, policy setting and cross-industry, cross-sector co-operation and collaboration. Underlying this behavior is a desire to live well, make money and an unhealthy penchant for short-term “green” action that hurts much more than it helps (oil palm plantation expansion into rain forests is but one example).

The current challenge we are facing is: How can we flourish (live well) while reducing demands for unhealthy energy sources like coal and oil? Linked to this challenge is the, even greater, challenge of integrating our lives with the eco-systemic dynamics that support us and take the Cradle to Cradle approach of creating 0 waste and ongoing, creative recycling. 

This does not mean falling backward in some painful Luddite breakfall. It means learning to roll smoothly forward, land on our feet and co-create communities, businesses and economies that are flexible, adaptable and focused on flourishing within the eco-systems from which we emerged and in which we are inextricably embedded.

This means we become eco-centric innovators and entrepreneurs developing technologies, products and services that serve eco-logical and eco-nomic health. This is not an issue of being liberal or conservative, capitalist or socialist, hawkish or dovish, monotheistic, polytheistic or atheistic, Muslim, Wiccan, Christian, Hindi or Buddhist, “dark green”, “bright green”, brown or blue. It is about understanding our fundamental relationships with others and the world around us and intending benefit for all.

The Buddhists call it “right intention.” From right intention springs right action.

What is your intention and, more importantly, what are you doing?

Tags: climate change, corporate social responsibility, csr, G8, global warming, sustainability

Green Mondays

 

Attended a great event last night called Green Mondays. Put together by Laurence Smith, it was an excellent night for networking with green-minded and interesting individuals.  Thanks to Jon Maier from ERM for a relatively light hearted look at some of the environmental risk conundrums in Japan. We’ve got over fifty members on our Ning site now. If you’re interested, come join us or start your own Green Mondays networking gig.

Tags: csr, green mondays, sustainability