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

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

Good News! Whole Foods and Wal-Mart Execs Agree: We’re Not Green

This is some of the best news I’ve heard in a long time around sustainability. Good news?! Yep. Read the article at B-net in which representatives from Wal-Mart & Whole Foods speak about the realities of CSR. Thanks to Lance for pointing it out.

To quote:

“If Wal-Mart is not a green company, then Whole Foods is not a green company. We do a lot of green things, and we have green intentions, but we don’t believe that we are, and we try not to say that we are.”

And later:

Sustainability, Besancon added, creates a great deal of tension between the three legs of the “triple bottom line”: People, planet, and profits. Replacing plastic bags, which cost a penny each, with paper bags, which cost as much as 17 cents each, is not a zero-sum move.

These men and many other men and women like them are running into the systemic realities of sustainability. There are no zero sum, linear and tidy solutions. And, more importantly, there is a lot of tension between the eco-logic and the eco-nomic. Our economic systems are based on perceptions, assumptions and thinking that are simply deeply misaligned with eco-systemic processes. Throw in a big helping of “green” oughts and it becomes very hard to see what is, much less what to do. It takes a lot more than unilateral actions to intervene in systemic dynamics. In human systems, in particular, we’re talking about changing the actions of millions of self-interested systemic constituents (people). 

There are two other key points in this pithy little article:

1. There is potential for retailers and consumers to work together to “push for more transparency in the supply chain.” This is where, with a little facilitation, there is potential for some very powerful and meaningful synergy.
2. In the wake of Katrina it was corporations and other organizations that were most responsive and able to help. We are just beginning to tap the potential of non-governmental entities to contribute to social welfare and sustainable interventions.

Wal-Mart and Whole Foods wisely acknowledged they have a long way to go before they believe they are approaching sustainability in their operations. This is good news. It shows they know where they would like to go and that there is organizational awareness of the gap that needs to be closed. They are beginning to show signs of coherence in their approach to sustainability. The limitations of partnership are becoming clear.

What will help them and others make the jump is an evolution in the capacity of key organizational members (and eventually the organization as a whole) to see the world in its systemic and inter-systemic complexity and let what they see guide their actions. That is when the boundaries begin to blur between corporate and communal, between self and system and when our interconnectedness ceases to confound.

To appropriate the tag line of the X-Files: The truth is out there (and in there). We simply need the capacity to see it.

Tags: capacity evolution, corporate social responsibility, csr, sustainability

The Meaning to be Made in a VUCAlicious World

Found this primer to the challenges facing the Next Generation Leaders on Jessica Margolin’s site. Called, Next Generation Leadership it is a short PDF on leading in the VUCA world.

VUCA stands for: Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous-the four horsemen of chaos and complexity.

Margolin goes on to astutely assert that success will favor those who thrive in VUCA environments. Couldn’t agree more.

When we talk about capacity evolution, we have just an environment in mind. Our work in Japan has brought us client after client who are caught flat-footed as they rather suddenly have to try and navigate a world of little certainty, rapid & unpredictable change, and situations with no and many “right” answers that are often questions themselves.

In a VUCA world, leaders need the capacity to perceive, act and make meaning in non-linear, trans-rational ways. Some come to it naturally, some will be called, many will have to be shown the way.

Where do you fit in?

Tags: ambiguity, capacity evolution, complexity, leadership, uncertainty, volatility

A Simple Truth

Found an opinion piece from the Washington Post called “Wake Up, America. We’re Driving Toward Disaster.” Some of you might think some of the news items cited in this blog are overwrought gloom and doom prognostications. And, it may be true that some of the predictions the authors make may tend toward extreme extrapolations of our current situation. 

However let’s look at a simple truth: any disruption in the supply or availability of oil will affect all aspects of our lives. The article by James Howard Kunstler cited above states this clearly:

The public, and especially the mainstream media, misunderstands the “peak oil” story. It’s not about running out of oil. It’s about the instabilities that will shake the complex systems of daily life as soon as the global demand for oil exceeds the global supply. These systems can be listed concisely:

The way we produce food

The way we conduct commerce and trade

The way we travel

The way we occupy the land

The way we acquire and spend capital

And there are others: governance, health care, education and more.

As the world passes the all-time oil production high and watches as the price of a barrel of oil busts another record, as it did last week, these systems will run into trouble. Instability in one sector will bleed into another. Shocks to the oil markets will hurt trucking, which will slow commerce and food distribution, manufacturing and the tourist industry in a chain of cascading effects. Problems in finance will squeeze any enterprise that requires capital, including oil exploration and production, as well as government spending. These systems are all interrelated. They all face a crisis.

The current rise in oil prices may be due more to speculation than shortages or supply issues but, really, it doesn’t matter. As a world we are now in a situation where the strands of commerce, trade and production that interconnect us (imagine a mandala of rubber bands all stretched taut) are getting pulled pretty tight. Any little vibration resonates throughout the entire interconnected system. This situation will not ease anytime soon. In fact, the stress on these strands will most surely increase due in no small part to the ascendancy of China and India.

The question is, are we going to wait for conditions to force us to make changes in the way we produce food, the way we conduct commerce and trade, the way we travel, the way we occupy the land, the way we acquire and spend capital, etc. or are we going to embrace the opportunity to proactively re-design the way we engage these activities.

In his article Kunstler chides Americans for their child-like attachment to wishful thinking. Americans are optimists and recently that optimism has revealed itself in some pretty shallow practices like those arising from the escapist idiocy being stoked by the The Secret. Still, that optimism, if grounded in an understanding and acceptance of the complex and dynamic systemic realities confronting us can, I believe, still be quite magical. As Kunstler says:

We cannot afford to remain befuddled and demoralized. But we must understand that hope is not something applied externally. Real hope resides within us. We generate it — by proving that we are competent, earnest individuals who can discern between wishing and doing, who don’t figure on getting something for nothing and who can be honest about the way the universe really works.

We can still have hope, still dream and wish for better times but we can’t stop there. We have to let that intrinsic desire to be and live well manifest itself in informed, well-timed and thoughtful action. The logic behind that action is also key.

We have to evolve our understanding of the world from one of linear cause and effect that can be controlled to an understanding of the world of interconnected open, complex systems that can, at best, be influenced. And, we’re going to have to learn to live and act lightly, coherent with the systems that support and sustain us.

You want a simple truth? We’re not in control, never have been, never will be. Deal with it and remember the rubber band mandala. 

Tags: capacity evolution, leadership capacity, peak oil, sustainability

On the Subject of Gas Prices…

Another C+C News Update. Found this while browsing links from the Wall Street Journal article referenced in Shifting the Focus Away from Oil. Called AP IMPACT: What makes up the price of gas?, it starts off as a fairly linear description of the crude oil refining process and its impact on prices. However it quickly digresses into a number of vignettes on the other elements of price people are paying at the pump. One interesting story sheds some light on the non-rational, non-linear elements at play:

Kelly Bosley, who manages Rutter’s, doesn’t even have to look across the highway to know when Sheetz changes its price for a gallon of gas. When Sheetz raises prices, her own pumps are busy. When Sheetz lowers prices, she has not a car in sight.

She calls Rutter’s headquarters to report the competition’s new price and wait for instructions.

“I call a lot of times and say, ‘They went down, hurry up! Hurry up! Call me! Call me!’ Or it could be where theirs goes up, and I’ll say, ‘Take your time! You know, I like being busy.’ But I have no control over that.”

You think you feel helpless at the pump?

The point is its not poor Ms. Bosley who’s responsible or the greed of the oil companies or the oil producing nations. It is a constellation of interlinked, inter-related phenomena that inter-influence each other. Ms. Bosley, the oil companies, oil producing nations, increase demand for oil in China and India, car sales in those nations and others, the fluctuation of the dollar against other currencies, unemployment rates, etc. are all to “blame”. A cause becomes an effect and vice versa. Linear reasoning in this wicked mess will only up our frustration and sense of powerlessness in the world.

We need to take a few steps back and see that we are dealing with a complex system of relationships. It is the interaction of these relationships that affect the price of gas. 

Try this: put all the causes in the article in different areas on a piece of paper and start drawing lines between them as you think of connections. You have just made a crude map of the system. As you can see it is definitely not of the linear, cause and effect family of problems. The next step is studying the nature of the connections between these diverse elements. From there it is possible to design an entry point for an intervention to alter the system. More on influencing and affecting systems later.

Tags: complexity, gas prices, oil prices, systems thinking

Shifting the Focus Away from Oil

Here’s the latest installment of the C+C News. There’s an article in the Wall Street Journal called If $4 Gas Is Bad, Just Wait. The gist of it is that, in the US, gas has gone up and over $4.00 a gallon. Prices in Japan are averaging over $5.00 a gallon and as the graphic from the article suggests, prices are going to continue to rise with Goldman Sachs predicting an upper limit of somewhere around $200 a barrel.

I don’t think we should “just wait.” Wait for what? For things to get so bad that travel becomes simply untenable? C’mon we are smarter and more capable than that. These rising oil prices are a glimpse of a future (and the reality of our present) in which petroleum powered travel and petrochemical manufacturing become non-sustainable. There’s nothing evil or malicious at work here. Oil and oil production are not inherently bad. I’m not suggesting some Luddite shunning of technology either. We are simply entering into a period of transition away from a century of fossil fuel dominated industry and development. Let’s acknowledge it, get over and get on with it.

Just waiting, now, would be about the worst thing we could do. We are being presented with an opportunity to expand our individual and collective capacities to engage the world. We, now, have the opportunity to radically re-imagine and re-create commerce, communities and lifestyles in ways that support our mutual, inextricably inter-related short and long term futures. Forget oil, forget the new “war” on global warming. Let’s stop trying to fix what’s irretrievably broken and shift our attention awareness, intention and attention to a more eco-systemically coherent, resonant and sustainable way of living, working and playing together. Imagine a future where oil dependency and carbon emissions are no longer a concern. Let’s plan and design that. 

Let’s recognize “now” for what it is. It is a gift, the opportunity to change change and respond with a proactive vision of a future we want versus the future we will get if we “just wait.”
 

Tags: climate change, gas prices, global warming, peak oil, sustainability

We Have Met the Enemy and He is Us

Tags: capacity evolution, global warming, leadership, sustainability

We are What We Eat

My colleague Norio has dug up another stunning article called Eating Fossil Fuels. Based on the book by David Allen Pfeiffer its main point is hard to ignore. Current agricultural production is expending more energy than it is producing. Much of the energy expended is of the fossil fuel and especially the petrochemical variety. Whether you believe in peak oil scenarios or not, what is indisputable is that as the cost of oil continues to increase the cost of food will also soar-unless we drastically change our approaches to food production. Or, as Pfeiffer succinctly points out in the forward:

…without the fossil fuel input, modern agriculture will fail and we will no longer be able to produce the food necessary to sustain more than a fraction of our present population 

 The article makes some other significant points as well:

In a very real sense, we are literally eating fossil fuels. However, due to the laws of thermodynamics, there is not a direct correspondence between energy inflow and outflow in agriculture. Along the way, there is a marked energy loss. Between 1945 and 1994, energy input to agriculture increased 4-fold while crop yields only increased 3-fold. Since then, energy input has continued to increase without a corresponding increase in crop yield. We have reached the point of marginal returns. Yet, due to soil degradation, increased demands of pest management and increasing energy costs for irrigation (all of which is examined below), modern agriculture must continue increasing its energy expenditures simply to maintain current crop yields. The Green Revolution is becoming bankrupt.

Solar energy is a renewable resource limited only by the inflow rate from the sun to the earth. Fossil fuels, on the other hand, are a stock-type resource that can be exploited at a nearly limitless rate. However, on a human timescale, fossil fuels are nonrenewable. They represent a planetary energy deposit which we can draw from at any rate we wish, but which will eventually be exhausted without renewal. The Green Revolution tapped into this energy deposit and used it to increase agricultural production.

Total fossil fuel use in the United States has increased 20-fold in the last 4 decades. In the US, we consume 20 to 30 times more fossil fuel energy per capita than people in developing nations. Agriculture directly accounts for 17% of all the energy used in this country. As of 1990, we were using approximately 1,000 liters (6.41 barrels) of oil to produce food of one hectare of land.

Modern intensive agriculture is unsustainable. It is damaging the land, draining water supplies and polluting the environment. And all of this requires more and more fossil fuel input to pump irrigation water, to replace nutrients, to provide pest protection, to remediate the environment and simply to hold crop production at a constant. Yet this necessary fossil fuel input is going to crash headlong into declining fossil fuel production.

What used to sound like gloom and doom pessimism is now the emergent results from our inter-related thinking, actions and the way we have been engaging the world. Don’t you think it’s time we tried another way?

(The article can also be downloaded HERE)

Tags: food crisis, peak oil, sustainability