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

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

What this is about

Some say we are special people living in a special time. A number of powerful, seemingly uncontrollable dynamics like peak oil and global climate change seem poised to wreak havoc on a grand scale. Ecologically, geopolitically, at work, at home many of us have never felt so at risk, so exposed to the potential for chaos and complexity to overwhelm our lives. 

What can we do? We can open ourselves to the change at hand, to that which is emerging. We can strive to engage our selves, others and the eco-systems into which we interwoven as fully as possible. In that engagement there is opportunity, in opportunity hope and potential to influence the chaotic and complex, to change change. 

That which is emerging is, in a sense, that which has always been there. It is change. Change wrought by the beauty and infinity of open, living systems at play. The world is not in danger–we are. The silk cocoons of security we have woven for ourselves individually, communally, globally are fraying. The order we have dreamt into existence is deteriorating. Things change. Earth will continue to spin, life will go on–with or without us.

Yet here we are. Things are changing. Things are complex. Chaos is doing her dance of destruction and birth. What do we need to face this change? We need the capacity to engage and face all that we are as open living human systems intertwined with and contained by other open living systems in the dance of life. We need the capacity to pace, we need the capacity to lead and, maybe, change from a waltz to a rhumba. We need the capacity to be flexible, agile and centered, grounded, compassionate, firm and aware as that which we are emerging, does its thing.

That’s what this is about. Any questions?

Tags: capacity, climate change, peak oil